tonight, or right now, well … it’s like… well

Should be should be should be should be

Somehow you’ve gotten completely off story.
Not exactly
You’ve taken some sort of wrong turn into visual experiments again.
Plots always start to bore me and things catch my eye and I follow.
And I thought this was a comedy.
It’s hard to tell.
You’re telling me.
Am I?
So what’s going on now?
Well we’re here looking across the street at Willoughby and there is a sort of triangle drawn by the three of us.
Then what happens?
Nothing. We wait and see what Willoughby does.

Willoughby falls out off bed and rises.

Willoughby followed after his song

A song like petals in the street moving down in the wind to where we were talking and Clark said, “Now he’s singing.”

Willoughby sings softly to himself a tune with the simple lyric,”I don’t want to die” and the tune is sort of poppy and peppy and he holds onto the mattress and sings and soon it is louder and he is awake

He is silent now.

And the sound of Willoubhby’s snoring came out the window and down the street and went on and on and we were wondereing when it was ever going to stop when it did stop.

“He’s alive,” Clark said.

“Or he just died.”

“why don’t we have a beer and talk about it?” Clark said.

“Because it’s breakfast,” I told him.

“It’s only weird if you’ve slept,” he said. “I’ve been up all night. I haven’t slept in days.”

“I’m not having beer with you at nine in the morning,” I informed him.

“Well then at lunch,” he said. “We’ll have lunch at the pub and we’ll order every sandwich on the menu and a pint of every beer they’ve got on tap and we’ll discuss the movie.”

“I’m not going to do that,” I said.

“Why not?”

“There’s seventeen sandwiches on the menu and over thirty beers on tap.”

“I’m buying.”

“It’s too much.”

“I’ve got money.”

“It’s too much beer and too many sandwiches.”

“Well, we’ve got to try them some time,” he said.

“Why?”

“Catering.”

We ignored Willoughby’s snoring and lit another cigarette and Clark started to tell me the story of some movie he’d stayed up late watching on his mother’s ancient RCA television. It was a movie about a bunch of guys making a movie and it had given Clark the idea that he should really make a movie himself and that the way to do it was to string a video camera up on every streetlight on the block and then you could just act out the story on the street and it would be like a big sound stage with all angles covered.

“I’ve figured the whole thing out,” he said. “They’ve got these radio mikes so that you can capture the sound from anyone anywhere on the street and mix it all together like a d.j.”

“But what’s the story,” I asked.

“I don’t know, you tell me,” he said, but it sure would be cool and cheap to film and, “Isn’t there the guy at the bar who works at CBS, or ABC, or one of them? We could tell him about it, I bet he’d want to work on it too.”

“I think he drives a truck for them.”

“He must know people,” Clark said and he got very excited about the idea of doing a movie on the street and suddenly I was in charge of the story idea, because he’d already come up with the master plan of cameras and the street lights and after all I had to contribute something if I wanted in on the ground floor of the whole production.

“It’ll be Like surveillance,” He said

“Who’d want to watch it,” I asked. “Unemployed security guards?”

“That’s not a bad idea,” he said.

“What isn’t?”

“Shoot the whole show from an ATM machine camera… it all takes place in that little glass cage… money, sex, danger.”

Then he was off on the ATM movie and forget the streetlights and we’d pitch it to CBS, or
ABC, or whatever.

Clark said.

“No,” said Clark. “I’m getting a little sick of hearing that.”

“Hearing what?”

“I don’t want to die,” said Clark.

“Has he been saying it long?”

“A few days,” he said.

“I thought I was the only one who’d noticed. It’s more like a couple of weeks.”

“But he’s getting louder now and I ain’t seen him in days.”

“Yes,” I said.

“What the fuck is wrong with fucking Willoughby?”

“He doesn’t want to die,” I said.

If Willoughby gets back in bed, Willoughby will sleep.
If Willoughby sleeps, Willoughby will dream.
If Willoughby dreams… no one knows what he dreams about…

That’s what he does. He gets back in bed and slowly drifts in and out of sleep.

We heard his voice grow louder and repeat over and over again:

Willoughby wakes up and Willoughby says, “I don’t want to die.”

He sits on the edge of his bed and repeats it and repeats it like a mantra. Five words counted on the fingers of his right hand.

We couldn’t hear a radio or t.v. coming from any of the apratments on the block, but we could hear Willoughby.

We could hear him all the way out in the street.

Our voices rise up from the street and he enjoys them at first like the singining of birds. He is in and out of dreams and some how it is like we are all talking together only we are not talking in the street. We are way up on the top of a mountain and talking in the clouds, but then Clark gets loud and Willoughby opens his eyes and he is back in his bed and in the apartment and Clark is going on and on and Willoughby can’t sleep and so he can’t dream and so he is out of the clouds.


Willoughby gets out of bed and goes to the window and closes it. Maybe he gets back in bed, or maybe he just stands there for a while behind the blinds. It’s hard to know with the window closed.

Clark informed me as we stood on the sidewalk talking and smoking like we do every morning.

“We are all out on the street because of fucking women. Do you know what I mean? Do you?”

“What do you mean?” I asked to stop him from asking again.

“You’re out here becausee of your wife, right? She won’t let you smoke in the house, am I right?”

He was and he didn’t need me to tell him because I’d been bitching about it ever since we’d first met.

“Willoughby’s out here cause his wife left him and he’s got no one else to talk to, right?”

“Wrong,” I said. “Willoughbys not down here.”

“Well if he was… when he was… when he will be, it’s because of a woman… his ex.”

“Who’d you fuck to end up down here?” I asked, actually curious.

“Fuck? Fuck you. Who said anything about fucking you sick fuck?.”

“You said, ‘we’re all out on the street because of fucking women’,” I reminded him.

“Figure of fucking speech,” He said and he was quiet for a minute and smoked. “I’m talking about my dead mother. I mean that’s sick. I’m down here because my mother’s dead and she never let me smoke in the house in the end… the cancer… It became a habit.”

“Smoking?”

“Smoking outside,” he said “I’m here out of respect for the dead and you…?” and he made a nauseous face and I could see his eyes working in his head.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you were going to open up about your personal relationships.”

“I don’t have any personal relationships. I got you and Willoughby.”

“Willoughby’s not here.”

Clark looked up at Willoughby’s window and said, “So what’s wrong with Willoughby?”

Clark asked.
“In Hell,” I said.
“Behind the window?”
“Yes behind the window… Behind his eye lids. Up there. Down the street. Where ever.”
“Seriously,” Clark said. “I haven’t seen that stupid fuck in weeks. It’s like he’s breaking up our old gang. He used to be down here smoking and shooting the shit with us and now I ain’t seen him for weeks.”
“He’s having a rough time,” I said.
“He’s having a rough time? Why? Rough time? I’m having a rough time. Shit, you’re having a rough time. Whose not having a rough time?”
“Well he’s having a rougher time than most,” I said.
“Bull shit,” Clark said.

He was quiet and then the Helicopter came back and he was yelling at me again, “Did you see that other Spielberg movie?”
“What?”
“War of the Worlds,” He said.
“Say, was Orson Welles an alien?” I asked.
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“He did the radio War,” I yelled.
“Oh that guy. No. He was just fat. No,” Clark said. “But Hitchcock was. He was fat and an alien. You know how I know that?”
“You look at him and he’s fat,” I said.
“Rear Window… who else would make a movie where a skinny fuck like Jimmy Stewart tries to give Grace Kelley the air. He should be so lucky.”
“Well Jimmy Stewart was a big movie star,” I said.
“Not in the movie,” he said. “In the movie he was a stupid shutterbug. Grace fucking Kelley!? Please.”
“Well she wasn’t Grace Kelley in the movie either,”I pointed out.
“Who gives a shit?” Clark said. “She still looked like Grace Kelley didn’t she?”
“Yeah,”I said and I could see his point.

He was talking and talking, but none of it made much sense to me. Something about the will and his dead mother and probate and the estate and then he was off onto God and the desert and the funeral and the first miracle of water and wine and over head a helicopter said, “badadadada badadada badadada” as it chopped the air and he was yelling over it at me and I hadn’t even had my second cup of coffee yet and then I could see Willoughby shut his window on the second floor. Nobody could stand Clark’s noise, but Clark.

“The Military,” he said. “Has been taken over by the last remaining branch of the Hitler’s S.S., who are it this very moment in the desert building an arena for the Ascension, like in Close Encounters of the Third kind? You think that’s an accident? Hell no. Spielberg is one of them…”

“Spielberg is one of the last remaining members of Hitler’s S.S.?”

“No, of course not… One of THEM.”

“A Jew?”

“No. Boy are you ignorant. Religion is a code and smoke screen… NO, he’s an Alien. One of THEM. Raiders of the Lost Arc? E.T.? You think that’s a Coincidence?”

And the helicopter was louder now and it said,”BADADADA BADADADA BADADADA!” and It fealt like a hammer hitting my head.

“Don’t you ever breath,” I yelled over the noise when the helicopter zoomed off and I finished the “breath” in the insant of quiet.

“Breath? Of course I breath,” he said. “I don’t want to die….
…Not before the truth comes out. It’s going to be fascinating. You don’t believe me?…Listen.”

Then he was talking again and then the helicopter was back and it said,