snatches it and dashes from the restroom.
CUT TO:
INSIDE THE STALL: The drug dealer resumes his seat, opens his magazine.
MERLIN
Can’t say I didn’t warn him.
(It was notable, perhaps, that Merlin was the only specific element in the script that Booth singled out for praise. “The fellow who lives in the restroom stall, the drug dealer, him I did find quite amusing.”)
■ ■ ■
That the agents presented Rick’s participation in the context of his usual salary—a fee well in excess of the forty thousand Bummer City had promised—was irrelevant. Sam didn’t hesitate to respond that it was no problem. It didn’t matter that he had tapped everyone he knew or that it was too risky to press Wassel and Patch for more. (To request additional funding from Brooks was a last, last resort. Dealing with the AD made Sam feel like he was sticking his bare hand in a dark, mossy hole—the guy was just off—and he preferred not to unless there was no other choice.)
He’d figure something out.
5.
Occasionally, Sam allowed himself the release of an evening on campus, where, between sips of frothy beer in plastic cups, he tried to impress girls (usually freshmen, sometimes sophomores) with the details of his endeavor. A (very) few were stirred to invite him back to their vanilla-scented dorm rooms. More often the young women of Russell seemed to find his approach transparent. One comely sophomore, an artfully cracked iron-on of Germaine Greer stretched across her braless and forthrightly nippled chest, told Sam that he made “the art of cinema sound like bomb defusal.” He said that was exactly what it was, “but only if you know what you’re doing.” She smirked and said, “Nope. Nopety-nope-nope-nope.” The result was, that night, and most others like it, toodrunk or too stoned to make his way home to the apartment, he crashed in Brooks Hartwig, Jr.’s, dorm room/lair.
These drop-ins, no matter how late after midnight Sam knocked on the door, were always welcomed by Brooks, who was nocturnal.
“Sleepover!” he said the first time Sam showed up. “Yay!”
Shitfaced, Sam clung to the doorknob and put his finger to his lips. “Down to a dull roar, please, Brooks.”
“You can make a bed out of my laundry, okay?”
“No.” Sam lurched to Brooks’s mattress and flopped down. “You can make a bed out of your laundry.”
“Oh.” Brooks gave an appreciative nod, as if some long-puzzled-over concept had finally clicked. “Right.”
The AD never complained about Sam’s visits—not about the discomfort, or the distraction from his studies, or the intrusion on a potential booty call. Though in Sam’s defense, it became clear that he wasn’t hindering the other man in any way. Brooks was apparently undeterred in his nightly procedure, which did not in any case include studying, sleeping, or amorous appointments.
If he awakened before morning, Sam would inevitably open his eyes to see Brooks, hunched Indian-style on the floor while something foreign and esoteric and creepy played on his laptop: a Dutch movie where everyone moved backward, talked backward, and the subtitles appeared backward; a dubbed Portuguese movie that was a single seventy-two-minute take of an eerily upbeat chef matter-of-factly guiding the viewer through an old family recipe for making soup out of a lonely person. While he watched, the AD rocked continuously, like some kind of holy man. The behavior disturbed Sam but also intrigued him. Where did Brooks find these things? Did he actually enjoy them? What were the names of the drugs that Brooks consumed, and what quantities?
The semiotics of these films, and of Brooks’s own film, struck Sam as baldly psychiatric. He could understand why someone might want to make one—to see if it could be done, as a strange joke, maybe—but he had no earthly idea why someone would want to watch them.
“Brooks,” he demanded one night, “what is the point of this shit?”
Sam lay in
CUT TO:
INSIDE THE STALL: The drug dealer resumes his seat, opens his magazine.
MERLIN
Can’t say I didn’t warn him.
(It was notable, perhaps, that Merlin was the only specific element in the script that Booth singled out for praise. “The fellow who lives in the restroom stall, the drug dealer, him I did find quite amusing.”)
■ ■ ■
That the agents presented Rick’s participation in the context of his usual salary—a fee well in excess of the forty thousand Bummer City had promised—was irrelevant. Sam didn’t hesitate to respond that it was no problem. It didn’t matter that he had tapped everyone he knew or that it was too risky to press Wassel and Patch for more. (To request additional funding from Brooks was a last, last resort. Dealing with the AD made Sam feel like he was sticking his bare hand in a dark, mossy hole—the guy was just off—and he preferred not to unless there was no other choice.)
He’d figure something out.
5.
Occasionally, Sam allowed himself the release of an evening on campus, where, between sips of frothy beer in plastic cups, he tried to impress girls (usually freshmen, sometimes sophomores) with the details of his endeavor. A (very) few were stirred to invite him back to their vanilla-scented dorm rooms. More often the young women of Russell seemed to find his approach transparent. One comely sophomore, an artfully cracked iron-on of Germaine Greer stretched across her braless and forthrightly nippled chest, told Sam that he made “the art of cinema sound like bomb defusal.” He said that was exactly what it was, “but only if you know what you’re doing.” She smirked and said, “Nope. Nopety-nope-nope-nope.” The result was, that night, and most others like it, toodrunk or too stoned to make his way home to the apartment, he crashed in Brooks Hartwig, Jr.’s, dorm room/lair.
These drop-ins, no matter how late after midnight Sam knocked on the door, were always welcomed by Brooks, who was nocturnal.
“Sleepover!” he said the first time Sam showed up. “Yay!”
Shitfaced, Sam clung to the doorknob and put his finger to his lips. “Down to a dull roar, please, Brooks.”
“You can make a bed out of my laundry, okay?”
“No.” Sam lurched to Brooks’s mattress and flopped down. “You can make a bed out of your laundry.”
“Oh.” Brooks gave an appreciative nod, as if some long-puzzled-over concept had finally clicked. “Right.”
The AD never complained about Sam’s visits—not about the discomfort, or the distraction from his studies, or the intrusion on a potential booty call. Though in Sam’s defense, it became clear that he wasn’t hindering the other man in any way. Brooks was apparently undeterred in his nightly procedure, which did not in any case include studying, sleeping, or amorous appointments.
If he awakened before morning, Sam would inevitably open his eyes to see Brooks, hunched Indian-style on the floor while something foreign and esoteric and creepy played on his laptop: a Dutch movie where everyone moved backward, talked backward, and the subtitles appeared backward; a dubbed Portuguese movie that was a single seventy-two-minute take of an eerily upbeat chef matter-of-factly guiding the viewer through an old family recipe for making soup out of a lonely person. While he watched, the AD rocked continuously, like some kind of holy man. The behavior disturbed Sam but also intrigued him. Where did Brooks find these things? Did he actually enjoy them? What were the names of the drugs that Brooks consumed, and what quantities?
The semiotics of these films, and of Brooks’s own film, struck Sam as baldly psychiatric. He could understand why someone might want to make one—to see if it could be done, as a strange joke, maybe—but he had no earthly idea why someone would want to watch them.
“Brooks,” he demanded one night, “what is the point of this shit?”
Sam lay in
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