Part Forty Two

In Las Vegas, Nevada, in August of 1998, there was a lavish party to mark the premiere of a big-budget heist picture.

One of the people there was Dylan Finch. He had finished shooting a big-budget thriller of his own, called Ravens. Ever seen it? Sucks. But in August of 1998 nobody knew that yet. Well, Finch might have suspected, but he was paid handsomely to appear in the picture so he didn’t admit that it sucked. Plus, it was still in editing at the time of the party, so one could always argue that he didn’t yet know it sucked.

(Right. The Magnificent Ambersons was ruined in editing. Ravens was doomed from the beginning.)

At any rate, appearing at film premieres was a sort of pre-promotional effort on behalf of Ravens. He wasn’t officially plugging the film yet. It was scheduled for release the day after Thanksgiving. He was just sort of… reminding people that he existed. It had been a year since he was named one of People’s Sexiest and almost two years since his last picture. Of course it had been five years since he did work he could be proud of, but that’s another story entirely.

I’m an alcoholic ex-history professor, not a film critic. What the hell do I know?

At any rate, Finch went to be photographed and he went to get out of LA. And he went to get away from his ever-swelling entourage. He only told two people where he was going – his manager and his personal assistant. And he swore them both to secrecy, saying, if anybody I know shows up at this thing, I will know you told, and you might as well not even be here when I get back.

He drove.

It takes about four and a half hours to get from Malibu to Las Vegas. The easiest part is also the longest, that big stretch of I-15. Finch noticed a little hesitation in his Range Rover when he was moving out of traffic heading east-north-east on the highway. It struck him then that it was a bit absurd for him to have four cars. He thought that he might get rid of everything but the Porsche when he got back. Movie star with the Carrera, he thought. What a cliché. But then again so was the SUV and the entourage. Those he would gladly give up. The Porsche… he liked driving the Porsche too much.

He arrived. Got his picture taken. No starlet on his arm, this time.

At the party – before Finch’s fashionably late entrance – was a woman named Cassidy Harding. She was there on time – which is to say, early – because she didn’t know any better. She was there, period, because she had done some work for the studio, designing specialized software, and they were so happy with her work that they offered her the trip and an invitation to the premiere.

She knew nothing at all about the film, and didn’t care to.

It was unlike her to be at a party in Vegas wearing a little black dress. All three of those things were unlike her – party, Vegas, dress. She worked too hard, she never went away (her home and office were in San Francisco), she favored jeans and tee-shirts.

She was petite and very pretty with fair skin from her Irish father and jet-black hair and eyes from her Argentine mother. She was 28 and in 1998 (as now), a dot-com millionaire. Several times over. Despite the fact that she had an annoying habit of mostly refusing to work for stock options, and when she did accept them, she almost always turned around and sold them within a few months.

Finch saw her early. She pretended she didn’t recognize him. Then she allowed that she might have seen Dogs Of War, a film he’s made five years earlier, the one that put him on the map, the last real bit of acting he did before doing three successive high-paying “blow things up” films. Including Ravens.

He pretended to understand her when she said she designed user interfaces for software applications. Which was sort of like saying that Bobby Orr ice-skated.

Anyhow they talked and they flirted and she made him work harder than he usually had to, which he appreciated.

She knew that he would.

And it turned out that they both like blues music, or at least she did and he was willing to fudge it a little bit, and so around midnight they took it into their heads to leave the party and hop in his car and drive all the way to Bakersfield, California, to see BB King.

All the while silently patting themselves on the back for being wild and impetuous and free. Finch was just glad to finally be by himself, and was all the more determined to purge himself of a few hangers-on when he got back.

Harding just wanted a little more time before deciding if she wanted to sleep with him or not.

They stopped at a Circle K and bought bottled water and she got a Snickers bar. And Finch asked the night clerk for “back country” directions into California. He felt self-conscious about the fact that he’d driven a car that got 10 miles to the gallon from Malibu to Vegas. She didn’t say anything but he thought that she thought that…

Dylan Finch, the actor, the movie star, had done a lot of scenes that were rewritten even as the cameras were being positioned. And he paid careful attention to the directions the night clerk gave him. So I don’t think he got the directions wrong. I think the night clerk at the Circle K on Boulder and Sahara Avenue was just an idiot.

But regardless, country highways turned into country roads turned into dirt roads turned into mining access roads turned into, by the time the sun came up, a broad expanse of arid wasteland marked by the occasional tire track. The occasional skinny tire-track of an ATV, not even genuine wheel-ruts.

They both knew he was lost.

Just before noon, he admitted it. “I’ll just follow the GPS west until we find a highway, or a fence, or a building,” he said.

The Foo Fighters were in the CD player. She took another pull on her bottle of water, smiled, tapped her fingers to the music, said nothing. She thought to herself “too bad they don’t put longitude and latitude on Texaco roadmaps,” but she said nothing.

Just after noon, as the big SUV lumbered down an incline, the engine suddenly revved higher while the vehicle slowed down. Finch pushed down on the gas pedal and the engine roared but the car continued to freewheel. They drifted toward the bottom of the hill.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

He frowned at the dashboard. “Don’t know,” he said. “Think it’s the transmission. The engine’s running but the wheels aren’t getting any power." He thought back to that little hesitation he’d felt in the car when pulling out of traffic on I-15 earlier.

They rolled to a stop. He downshifted into both low settings, turned off the four wheel drive – nothing.

“Put it in reverse,” she said. “My father used to have an old truck and when the transmission got so bad we couldn’t climb hills anymore, he used to put the thing in reverse to get going.”

Finch moved the gearshift to “R” and stepped on the gas gingerly. The wheels engaged for perhaps two revolutions and then stopped, and the engine revved higher again.

They sat, motionless, and watched the shimmer of the midday heat bounce off the hard-pack around them.

“Now what?” she said.

“Now we use the cell phone and the GPS and get someone out here,” he said. He took out his cell phone.

“I can’t get a signal,” she said, staring at hers. His was to his ear. “Anything?” she asked.

After a second or two he shook his head. He was just the kind of person who would try it even when it showed no signal. She, on the other hand, was the kind of person who wouldn’t even try if the display showed no signal.

Incongruously and utterly inappropriately, it was at that moment she realized she wasn’t going to sleep with him, no matter how soon they were picked up.

“I’m going to try the top of that hill,” he said, gesturing with his head to the top of the incline they’d just rolled down.

“Take mine, try them both,” she said, handing him her cell.

He left the engine running and was gone longer than she would have guessed. Long enough that she got nervous and climbed out on the running board and squinted up to see him.

Jesus, it was hot.

When he made it back she said, “well?”

“Nothing,” he said. They sat in silence for another moment.

“So now what,” he said to her.

She liked the fact that he asked her opinion. Not that she wouldn’t have given it anyhow.

“So we sit here with the AC running and wait for someone to come along. There were tire tracks not far back. If nobody’s here before it gets dark, we put out your emergency flares. They should show pretty far from the top of the hill, out here in the desert.”

“No flares,” he said. “I had a flat tire on the freeway a couple of weeks ago.” It was more like six months ago. He’d just never bothered to replace them.

The Gin Blossoms were playing on the CD player.

“Well, then, when it gets dark we walk out of here. Like you said, if we walk in a straight line we’re bound to hit something sooner or later.”

He looked over at her in her little black dress and fuck-me pumps.

“How far can civilization be?” she said, reading his mind.

“I guess we’ll find out,” he said. “You might want to save the last of that water.”

“Nope,” she said. “So long as I don’t drink so much I have to pee. Hydrated is hydrated. I’d rather carry it inside me than in the bottle.”

Later, before the sun had dipped below the horizon, she went into the back of the SUV and pulled out the little tool-kit and used a screwdriver to pry the heels off of the shoes. They weren’t really her style anyhow. Her friend and office manager Desiree had helped her pick them out. While she was back there she picked up a baseball cap.

“Ravens,” she read aloud. “Is this from the football team?”

“No,” he said. “It’s a film I just finished.”

“What’s it about?” she asked, mostly because the silence was unbearable.

“There’s this… secret security force that works for the UN,” he said, “and we have to stop a plot to blow up the UN buildings in New York and The Hague. And, um, Geneva.”

“That must have been fun, working in Europe,” she said.

He shrugged. “Sure.” He hadn’t had a lot of time to be a tourist. Short shooting schedule.

“Let me guess,” she said, “it turns out there’s a traitor in your midst.” She laughed and he glowered at her. He hadn’t even read the script in advance. Big-name action director and big-time paycheck. And his name above the title.

“It must be hard,” she said, trying to make amends, “to have to co-star with explosions all the time.”

“I co-star with Mira Sorvino in this one,” he said, snapping a bit more than he’d intended.

“No,” she said, “I meant that as a compliment. I mean…”

“Most of the time I’m not even there when stuff blows up,” he admitted. “I have to spend a lot of time throwing myself through the air and landing on mats. But sometimes I’m there when it happens. It takes a really long time to set it all up.”

She finished prying off the heels on the shoes. “How are we doing for gas?”

“It will run out right around the same time as nightfall,” he said, looking at the gauge.

“Even with the AC going it’s hot as hell in here,” she said. “Good thing it was just the transmission.”

“I guess,” he said.

He felt like it was his fault. Ignoring the bad transmission. Deciding to drive across the desert. No flares.

She never really thought that. Even when things got bad she didn’t blame him. It was just an accident. Accidents happened.

It got dark and the engine sputtered out and they got out of the truck wordlessly. The water was gone by then.

“Which way?” she said when they met in front of the ticking grille. It was still hot as hell – the air was cooler but there was still a lot of warmth coming up from the desert floor.

“We’re pointing straight west,” he said. “We know it’s too damn far to go back the way we came. Might as well keep going. There might be a Howard Johnson’s right on the other side of the horizon.”

“Might be,” she admitted. She looked to her right. “That’s the Big Dipper,” she said. “That’s the north star. Keep it right there in the sky.”

He looked at where she was pointing, and then looked at her. A little surprised. A little impressed. He wrote a note on a scrap of paper and turned the headlights on. “Just in case,” he said.

At first, things went well. They were both in pretty good shape. They were really inappropriately dressed, of course. Removing the heels from those sandals hadn’t made them any more comfortable. The little black dress didn’t have much fabric but it wasn’t really meant for hiking. And he was wearing long pants and Gucci loafers. Again, not optimal hiking gear.

So the night wore on and they both grew exhausted and sore and they couldn’t see the truck anymore. Whether it was from distance or a dead battery, they didn’t know.

When they got to the pile of rocks it was a welcome relief from the monotonous terrain. They were dimly aware of mountains ahead and to the right but they didn’t seem to be getting much closer despite a lot of walking. The pile of rocks told them that they were actually making progress, that the landscape could and would change. The pile of rocks gave them a little hope.

“Let’s take a break,” he said, and she was happy to agree. They squatted and rested and then he straightened and began to climb the rocks.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“If there’s anything ahead – anything man-made – I might be able to see it if I get a little higher,” he said.

She looked at the rocks doubtfully. “Be careful,” she said, “there could be rattlesnakes in there.”

He looked down at her. “Thanks,” he said, after a moment. “I wasn’t nervous enough.”

He kept on climbing and then something shifted – his foot? A rock? Whatever it was, he pitched backwards off the pile, not very far, just three or four feet, and came down hard on his left leg, which broke with an audible pop.

He screamed and clutched at it as he rolled onto his side, as she raced over to him.

For a moment he couldn’t say anything, just held his leg about two inches above the ankle and writhed, his forehead pressed into the grit and sand.

“Shit,” he panted when he could. He felt hot and cold at once, clammy and nauseous. He breathed hard through his mouth and concentrated on not throwing up. Can’t lose the water, he thought to himself fiercely. Can’t lose the water.

“Let me see,” Cass said, but didn’t try to touch him until he stopped writhing, sat upright, and nodded his OK.

She eased his pant leg up gingerly. The moon was fairly bright. Bright enough that she could see a large bulge in the lower part of his shin, an extra joint in his tibia that hadn’t been there before.

“Shit,” he said again, rocking slightly. “It’s broken, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I think so.”

“Oh, Christ it hurts,” he said. He looked down at it. “And I tore my pants.” She laughed despite herself. He chuckled, too, and then winced as even that slight vibration made the leg hurt worse.

“This isn’t funny,” she said. “How are we going to walk out of here now?”

“We aren’t,” he said. “You are. This is the only damn landmark for ten miles. You’ll be able to find me again. Go get help and come back for me. I’ll be OK.”

“I don’t like leaving you here,” she said.

“You don’t have any choice. The best hope for both of us is for you to keep walking until you find somebody. Because if we’re still out here when it gets hot again, we’re both screwed.”

He was right.

“Take my shoes and socks,” he said.

“What?”

“Take my shoes and socks. The socks, at least, will help your feet some. Maybe the shoes. I’ve got little feet. They’ll still be too big but you can decide if they’re better than those sandals you’re wearing.”

It made sense. She put on his socks and stepped into his shoes. They were way too big. But not as uncomfortable as the pumps.

“Now get going,” he said, hissing a little around the pain. “I thought I saw something straight west from here. We’re going in the right direction.” That was a lie. She knew it, and didn’t press him on what he saw.

“I promise I’ll get back here,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “I’m too famous to die in the desert. So get going. If someone happens along, I’ll know to send them straight west. So don’t change directions.”

“I won’t,” she said. She glanced up at the North Star, looked at him again, and set out.

Finch dragged himself over to the rocks and leaned against them and tried to focus on the pain shooting up his leg. It was a distraction from the thought that he was likely to die alone in the desert, famous or not.

Dehydrated, terrified, exhausted, and slipping in and out of shock from the injury, somehow he managed to sleep when he could no longer see her moonlit form receding away from him. And he had no idea what time it was when he screamed himself into wakefulness, hurling his body away from the rocks and swinging his hand away from the fire that shot through it.

Rattlesnakes are reptiles. They can’t control their body heat in the desert. So they hunt at dusk and at dawn, and look for rocky, shady places that can protect them from the sun during the day, and that offer some residual heat during the night. They look for places like that pile of rocks. The surprising thing is not that Finch was bitten as he slept there. It was that it took him that long to be bitten.

As he rolled away from the stones he heard the rattling, too late, and his leg shot a fire up that touched his belly and the little bit of moisture left in him stained the front of his pants. The bone that had bulged against his skin broke through with this frenetic movement and he could do nothing but scream wordlessly, almost soundlessly, paralyzed by the agony in his left hand and left leg.

Calm, he told himself. Calm. You get scared, your pulse races, your blood pressure goes up, you just spread that venom through your system faster. Lie still. Still. You’re motionless. It doesn’t hurt.

It was the best bit of method acting he’d done in a long time. But he convinced himself, at least enough that he could feel his pulse rate slow and the pain seemed to float outside his body.

He lay on his side on the hard-packed earth, motionless, and wondered where the snake was.

Not all that far away -- not all that far, considering how long she’d been walking, and how tired she was – Cass Harding shuffled in a line that was surprisingly straight and true west. She wondered, not for the first time, if splitting up had been a mistake. If she should have stayed with him. If he got picked up, of course, he would tell them which way she had gone. So she had to stay straight west. If he didn’t get picked up, then it was up to her to save them both. But if he was unconscious when someone found him, he wouldn’t be able to tell them which way she went. Or that someone had even been with him. Nobody knew that they’d left together. Not that she could think of. Should she have stayed with him?

This looped thinking was interrupted by her first fall. The oversized loafer caught on something and she fell straight forward and landed on her face.

For a moment she lay there, stunned, tired, thirsty. She heard her father’s voice in her ear. “Get up, Cassidy,” he said. It was just like when she was a kid, after her mom died, when her father would get her up for school. “Get up, Cassidy.” It was a gentle voice but one that did not allow for defiance.

She got up and continued walking. Were the mountains a little closer? The mountains looked a little closer.

Right when the sun came up she fell the second time. The shadow she cast, with the sun at her back just peeping over the horizon, made the ground look uneven and she took a false step and she fell again.

This time her mother was there. “Just get some rest,” her mother said.

Cass struggled to her feet. “You’ve been dead for 15 years,” she muttered.

“You know I’m an hallucination,” her mother said. Or the voice said. She didn’t actually see her mother. Just heard her, just to her left. But she resisted the urge to turn her head.

“Yes,” Harding said aloud, through clenched teeth.

“So why go and ruin it with all of this, this… objectivity?” her mother said. Cass didn’t answer and there was no follow-up from her mother.

The mountains were definitely closer. Jesus, she was thirsty. She knew she was bleeding, her knees and palms and forehead, from the falls. The sun was already fierce and it wasn’t completely above the horizon yet.

What if they’d found Dylan, but he wasn’t able to speak?

No, it was just a broken leg. That doesn’t render you mute.

The sun went higher and she grew hotter and she could feel her skin reddening. She tried not to think about water. For some reason oranges were stuck in her head. A cool, sweet, perfectly ripe orange. The flesh beneath her teeth. The juice on her tongue. That acrid smell when her fingernails broke through the peel.

She was thinking about oranges when she came to the cliff wall. Doddering, blank-eyed, just a few stages shy of heat-stroke, she came to the cliff wall like a zombie, as if she walked simply because she’d forgotten to stop.

But the wall stopped her. It was sheer and rose sharply perpendicular to the desert floor, and stretched north and south as far as she could see in either direction. She stood in front of it, just a few feet away, and blinked at it stupidly. A wall. How could there be a wall in the middle of the desert? She looked up and saw that she’d reached the edge of the mountains, reached them at a point where there were no foothills and gradual slopes but just this giant upthrusting of rock.

A wall.

She collapsed.

When the sun came up Finch awoke. His throat was dry and sore. His leg was a throbbing horror. His hand was numb and when he looked at it he saw that it was swollen and purple and that the swelling was reaching toward his elbow.

And yet it was the sun that awakened him. It touched one bare foot with an almost-gentle, almost warm probe and he saw the red lip of it above the horizon and he was afraid.

Shock? He thought. Dehydration? Snakebite? No, the sun will kill you quicker than those other things. He watched the sun rise, watched his shadow move a little.

Might as well make a race of it, he thought. Dying of snakebite seems somehow a little more… fitting than dying of thirst or shock or sunstroke. Yes, I think I should work to let snake venom win the contest. Then that fucking snake will try to eat me and choke and die.

He tried to say something out loud but couldn’t. Too dry. He worked his mouth a few times and then settled for glaring at the rock pile. Hear that, fucking snake? Eat me.

With an inaudible groan he tried to use his right arm and leg to drag himself into the shade of the rocks. Every pebble, every grain of sand sent exquisite bolts of pain shooting up his leg and from his arm across his shoulders. It seemed as though he’d dragged himself a hundred yards by the time he got into the shade, but when he looked back across the sand he saw that it had only been six feet or so.

Fuck you, snake, he thought, settling in close to the rocks. We’re just going to have to share.

The sun rose up behind him.

Thirst – a distant third behind the pain in his leg and the pain in his arm – began to move up in the standings and before too long it stood proudly in first place. To distract himself from that desire he stared at his arm and was disappointed when he could see no further progress from the snake venom. Fucking snake, he thought again. Wasted all your venom on some rabbit before you hit me. Could’ve had a movie star for dinner. Wasted it on some rabbit. Come here and finish the job.

The sun was almost directly overhead when he finally understood, really understood, that he was going to die. He’d told himself before that he was going to die but some part of him hadn’t really believed it. Hadn’t quite accepted it. But now it was right there. Tomorrow the sun would rise, and he wouldn’t see it. Everywhere on earth people would go on living their lives, his friends and family would get up and do things and new movies would come out and someone else would drive his Porsche and there would be, be, current events, people would become President and just life, life would go on and he wouldn’t be there. It would go on without him.

He felt utterly insignificant. Had he the moisture, tears would have flowed. It was so… unfair. Unfair. That everything would continue just fine without him. Maybe he would be remembered for Dogs of War. And the fact that he died would sell a few more tickets to Ravens. But the fact that there would be a Ravens premiere after he died…

Selfishness, he realized. That was really it. The urge to live, fighting death – it was just self-centeredness. It was an inability to accept the fact that the sun would continue to rise and set long after you were dust.

When you freeze to death, he recalled, you stopped feeling cold as you drifted off to sleep. Maybe he would stop feeling thirsty.

It was the last thing he thought.

On the ground in front of the cliff wall Cass heard her parents arguing.

Let her sleep, her mother said.

It’s time for school, her father replied.

What difference does that make? She’s going to be dead soon.

She has perfect attendance, her father sputtered. Why should she throw that away? She made a commitment to finishing this. No excuses.

“Perfect attendance” she whispered, and opened her eyes, and got to her knees, and stood, weakly, tottering.

Her parents were nowhere to be found.

She stood there for a moment, her feet spread wide apart for balance, her eyes closed, until things stopped spinning. Then she looked at the cliff wall. North, or south?

She turned north, thinking, it’s cooler up north.

After about a hundred yards she went down again. She lay on her side, facing the cliff, her eyes closed, waiting for her father to get her up again. But she heard nothing. Felt nothing. Just a tiny puff on her face, the hint of a breeze. And then a faint, faint squeak of metal.

Her eyes snapped open. A breeze from the cliff? A metallic squeak? She listened intently but didn’t hear anything else. Felt no more breeze. Her eyes scoured the cliff wall in front of her and then she saw it pop into view, like one of those 3D images that she’d gone cross-eyed trying to make out.

An opening. A path. Maybe three or four feet across. Camouflaged perfectly by the coloring of the rocks and the angle of the sun… an opening all but invisible unless viewed at exactly the right angle.

When she tried to stand she found that she was now too weak to do it at first. Even the idea of a passage through, the squeak of metal that said “humans,” the breeze – her arms and legs trembled and wobbled and would not lift her up. She had to crawl to the opening and then grabbed hold of the rocks and pulled herself up.

She took a step inside. There was a word painted in something dark on a rock. Kerith. It meant nothing to her. She staggered onward, leaning on the rocks for support, and followed the thin defile through the cliff wall and navigated a dogleg and then the rocks on either side of her were gone and she was standing in a small box canyon, one that seemed green to her eyes grown used to the barren brown waste of the desert. And ahead of her was a deeper, fuller green, and she heard the metallic squeak again. Her eyes focused on the windmill and she staggered toward it, and as she fell for the last time she became aware of a figure rushing toward her very fast.