Slow Fade by Rudolph Wurlitzer

and the strength in her neck and shoulders and it was sometimes then that he remembered why he had married her.
    Only now there was no response from underneath the towel or silk robe.
    “I don’t think it’s too bad,” she said. “Sloppy and weird because it’s so intense, but it seems like a story.”
    “It isn’t good or bad. It isn’t anything.”
    She could feel a coiled tension leaking out of him, like the red message light on the phone that had been blinking on and off for the past hour, and she moved off the bed and slipped into a pair of white slacks and shirt.
    “You started it, didn’t you?” she asked. “I mean with that strange man, A.D. Ballou. Pulling him into a project with Walker.”
    “I didn’t start it,” he said abruptly. “It came oozing up like the snout of some swamp animal. I simply lassoed the opportunity.”
    “I don’t understand why you’re drawn to him, to people like A.D. Ballou.”
    “Because he still believes in change, no matter what the price. It’s the American way, in case you haven’t noticed. Besides, Walker needs a connection to that kind of malignant hustle to get back on his feet, to find the courage to tell me his tale. The boy is off his feed, and I don’t want him looking to me for nourishment. That way we’d both go hungry.”
    “Maybe that’s true about Walker. I wouldn’t know what he needs. But didn’t you believe in change when you married me?”
    “Not really. I was more attracted to your romantic belief that you could change through me. I found it touching and painfully nostalgic. It made me want to protect you, to expose you to change but not the illusion of it.”
    “And now?”
    “Now you’re looking to change again. At my expense. For protecting you too well.”
    He stood up and, letting the towel drop to the floor, went into the sitting room.
    He didn’t recognize the two men sitting stiffly on the couch. One wore a mottled array of buckskin and furs, an otter cap pulled over the top of his gaunt face, a long jagged scar across his cheek. The other man was older, with a twisted white beard and baggy pants held up by rope suspenders.
    “You asked to see us about a wardrobe check,” the older man said.
    “What scene?” Wesley asked.
    “In the saloon where we ask Pancho Villa if he’ll hire us as mercenaries.”
    “What happens?” Wesley asked, pouring himself a shot of tequila.
    “Pancho Villa shoots Hank,” Scarface said. “After we tell him our credentials and ask where we can get laid.”
    “Why does Hank get shot?”
    “Pancho Villa tells me that I’ve lost my courage,” Hank said. “He says that I’m too old and cynical to be of any use and he just pulls out his pistol and shoots me.”
    Wesley took the script from the older man and looked at the pages where his lines were underlined in red. He tore out the pages and handed the script back.
    “I think we’ll just go out to the set and shoot the fucking thing,” he said.
    “You mean shoot the scene now?” Hank said.
    “Right now. On the set,” Wesley said and walked into the bedroom.
    “I want to get it over with,” he said to Evelyn.
    “Get what over with?” she asked, thinking that he meant get himself over with.
    “The film. The whole thing. Are you ready to hit the road?”
    “Where to?”
    “Who cares where to,” he said angrily. “Are you ready to hit the road?”
    “Wesley, ever since I’ve known you we’ve been on the road.”
    “Well, do you want to get off the road?”
    “Yes. I would like to get off the road.”
    “Good.”
    He called the second unit cameraman and told him to meet him on the set with a 16mm camera and the sound man. Then he called the Mexican actor playing Pancho Villa and told him they were shooting the saloon scene and to be out there as well.
    “But it is ten o’clock, Señor Hardin,” the actor said, his speech slowed by a combination of booze, Quaaludes, and sex.
    “Bring her along, too,” Wesley said and hung