NightScape Part 8

flinches. THE BEEP INCREASES. But she stays in place.

Abruptly the current CRACKLES AND SIZZLES, and as if thrust by a cattle prod, she lurches forward. THE BEEP becomes EVEN MORE RAPID.

JAMIE.

You broke your word! I'll break mine!

MORE CRACKLING AND SIZZLING.

Her face contorted with agony, Jamie stumbles across an open s.p.a.ce and reaches a metal ladder. Prodded by the SIZZLING electrical current, she scurries upward.

JAMIE.

Jamie Neal. Jamie Neal. Jamie Neal.

She disappears through a circle in the ceiling above the ladder.

The SIZZLING stops as Jamie topples from the ladder and lands hard in another area. Groaning, she slowly raises her head.

Squints.

Shakes her head to clear her vision.

JAMIE.

(seeking refuge in her song) "The oceans and the forests, the earth and the sky belong to you and me."

The room is filled with mirrors, like a "fun house" in an amus.e.m.e.nt park.

JAMIE.

You changed it again!

With enormous effort, she stands. THE BEEP INCREASES.

JAMIE.

It's all a lie! You never meant to...!

She struggles forward, glaring toward the mirrors.

Each reveals a different image. She's fat. She's thin. She's tall. She's short. She's twisted. Concave. Convex.

JAMIE.

Now I'm the one who's a monster! You've turned me into...!

(recoils from the mirrors) You! I'll get even! I swear I'll get even!

OFF STAGE, WE HEAR A HISS. Jamie spins in terror, THE BEEP EVEN FASTER. A door slides open. A shadow fills the entrance. Jamie cringes.

The shadow becomes a...what to call it?...not human...misshapen, with ganglia, and boils, and several eyes.

MONSTER.

(voice distorted, an electronic simulation) You've done very well. Today you've been especially adaptive...and especially amusing. You've earned your reward.

The monster raises a flat box.

MONSTER.

Your nourishment. Just the way you prefer it. With double cheese and black olives.

JAMIE.

I'm allergic to black olives.

The monster's grotesque arm sags.

MONSTER.

I'm sorry. I'm new at this facility. I was told that your species craves those foods.

JAMIE.

straightens, braces her shoulders, inhales, and glowers. THE BEEP BECOMES VERY RAPID.

JAMIE.

And I told you I'd fight back. You broke your bargain. Now I'll break mine.

MONSTER.

There's nothing you can do. This is the way things are. You have one more task to perform before you can eat.

Suddenly horizontal RAYS OF LIGHT fill the s.p.a.ce between them. The rays are like transparent, multicolored poles in a grotesque climbing gym. They CRACKLE AND HISS with electrical current.

JAMIE.

looks more angry.

JAMIE.

I'm Jamie Neal!

MONSTER.

We know.

Jamie crawls under one of the rays. A portion of it touches her back and shocks her.

Groaning, she stands. She squeezes between two other rays but comes too close and again gets shocked.

JAMIE.

I'm a human being!

MONSTER.

We know that, also.

JAMIE.

Wrong! You don't have the faintest idea! Watch me prove it!

She braces herself and walks straight into the remaining rays, electricity jolting her. As the CRACKLE becomes unbearable, she takes slow, agonized, determined steps, plodding toward her captor. Blisters appear on her face. Emerging from the rays, she staggers toward the monster, grabs the box, hurls it angrily away, wavers, then falls to the floor.

CLOSE UP on her burned, bleeding hand as it twitches, then becomes motionless.

THE FRANTIC BEEP STOPS.

The monster stares down in bewilderment.

A section of the ceiling slides away, revealing another monster.

MONSTER 2.

(distorted voice) How unfortunate. She was particularly entertaining.

MONSTER 1.

After all this time...I still don't understand their emotions... but...

(lowers his head) I suspect that I'm feeling...what do they call it?

MONSTER 2.

Grief.

MONSTER 1.

Yes. An unusual emotion. The experiment failed.

MONSTER 2.

Not totally. We learned something.

MONSTER 1.

What?

MONSTER 2.

When we scanned her mind, we learned that her species kept rodent-like creatures...hamsters? ...in similar cages. What they called "habitats." Apparently her kind were hypocrites. They enjoyed having...but didn't like...in fact, they loathed...being pets.

FADE OUT.

Few writers have been as prolific as Stirling Silliphant, whose literate yet action-filled scripts for the cla.s.sic TV series Route 66 (1960-64) made me want to be a writer. Over the decades, we became friends. Indeed, thanks to his urging, NBC produced a miniseries of my novel, The Brotherhood of the Rose, A pleasant, stocky man with sandy hair, a boyish smile, and a wonderful tenor voice, he was 70 when I last saw him. During our final dinner together, he confided in me that he was being offered fewer and fewer writing a.s.signments. "In a youth-oriented industry, I'm perceived as too old," he told me. It didn't matter that he had received an Academy Award for 1967's In the Heat of the Night, or that his script for 1968's Charly had given Cliff Robertson the opportunity to deliver an Oscar-winning performance, or that Stirling had written some of the most financially successful movies of the 1970s (The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno), fill the industry cared about was the young, new flavor of the month. In fact, most of the executives with whom Stirling had meetings were so young (in their mid-twenties) that they had never seen In the Heat of the Night, Charly, or The Towering Inferno, As for Route 66, the series had been on TV so long ago that it was re-run as a nostalgia series on Nick at Nite. Hardly the "with it" factor that executives wors.h.i.+p. The intelligence of the industry had so declined that Stirling's agent advised him not to take a complete list of his credits to a studio interview because a: the executive wouldn't believe that anyone could write that much and b: the executive would feel intimidated.

Stirling eventually decided to chuck it all and move to Thailand, where he believed that in a past incarnation he had been an Oriental. He had what he called "a Beverly Hills garage sale," relocated to Bangkok, and became a Buddhist. We exchanged letters and tried to make plans for me to visit him, but something always interfered. In 1996, at the age of 78, he died from prostate cancer.

Front Man Tell me that again," I said. "He must have been joking."

"Mort, you know what it's like at the networks these days." My agent sighed. "Cost cutting. Layoffs. Executives so young they think Seinfeld is nostalgia. He wasn't joking. He's willing to take a meeting with you, but he's barely seen your work, and he wants a list of your credits."

"All two hundred and ninety of them? Steve, I like to think I'm not vain, but how can this guy be in charge of series development and not know what I've written?"

This conversation was on the phone. Midweek, midafternoon. I'd been revising computer printouts of what I'd written in the morning, but frustration at what Steve had told me made me press my pencil down so hard I broke its tip. Rising from my desk, I clutched the phone tighter.

Steve hesitated before he replied. "No argument. You and I know how much you contributed to television. The Golden Age. Playhouse 90. Kraft Theater. Alcoa Presents. You and Rod Serling and Paddy Chayefsky practically invented TV drama. But that was then. This executive just started his job three months ago. He's only twenty-eight, for Christ's sake. He's been clawing his way to network power since he graduated from business school. He doesn't actually watch television. He's too d.a.m.ned busy to watch it, except for current in-house projects. What he does is program, check the ratings, and read the trades. If you'd won your Emmys for something this season, he might be impressed. But The Sidewalks of New York ? That's something they show on Nickelodeon cable reruns, a company he doesn't work for, so what does he care?"

I stared out my study window. From my home on top of the Hollywood Hills, I had a view of rus.h.i.+ng traffic on smoggy Sunset Boulevard, of Spago, Tower Records, and Chateau Marmont. But at the moment, I saw none of them, indignation blinding me.

"Steve, am I nuts, or are the scripts I sent you good?"

"Don't put yourself down. They're better than good. They don't only grab me. They're f.u.c.king smart. I believe them, and I can't say that for..." He named a current hit series about a female detective that made him a fortune in commissions but was two-thirds t.i.ts and a.s.s and one-third car chases.

"So what's the real problem?" I asked, unable to suppress the stridency in my voice. "Why can't I get any work?"

"The truth?"

"Since when did I tolerate lies?"

"You won't get p.i.s.sed off?"

"I will get p.i.s.sed off if- "

"All right already. The truth is, it doesn't matter how well you write. The fact is, you're too old. The networks think you're out of touch with their demographics."

"Out of-"

"You promised you wouldn't get p.i.s.sed off."

"But after I s.h.i.+fted from television, I won an Oscar for The Dead of Noon."

"Twenty years ago. To the networks, that's like the Dark Ages. You know the axiom - what have you done for us lately. The fact is, Mort, for the past two years, you've been out of town, out of the country, out of the G.o.dd.a.m.n industry."

My tear ducts ached. My hurried breathing made me dizzy. "I had a good reason. The most important reason."