I SEARCH THE CLOSET FOR THE LEATHER JOURNAL AND PEN, BUT I can’t find them. I never took them to Keenan with me, so I hope they didn’t get lost. I never peeked at what Hayley wrote. When she said what she wrote would hurt her, it ascribed supernatural powers to it in my mind, like it was a curse or something.
I plop down on the floor. With nothing else to distract me, I take a deep breath and start to read Oren’s script.
EXT. VEGETABLE PATCH -- NIGHT
A moonlit vegetable patch on a farm in Nova Scotia. In the distance there is an iceberg melting. JUSTON BIEBERMAN, a lonely farmer of twenty-one years old, steps onto his porch smoking a pipe and staring at the sky. He curses the sky with anger, holding up his fists, which block out the moon. Then he removes his fists from the sky and stares at his fists.
JUSTON BIEBERMAN
(staring at his fists)
My fists . . .
His fists are hard and callused like the fists of a farmer or someone who has punched a cabinet. He regards his fists.
JUSTON BIEBERMAN
I had the fists of a young man, but now they are not that. They are the fists of someone who has experienced grief and hunger and whose cauliflowers did not turn out good. I am hungry and want some crops, but the winter froze them and I am upset my wife, SELENA GOMEZ BIEBERMAN, got run over by a tractor because a moth flew in her mouth. I did not want to feel these things and I know I am feeling them because of that EVIL SHAMAN FARMER who lives down the road from me and put a curse on my farm because he wants to grow nicer vegetables than me. I have to kill that foul shaman!
My thumbs are pressed against my tightly closed eyes. “It’s not really funny.”
“It’s pretty funny.”
I woke up Jude because I had to. He’s crouched beside me on the floor of our bedroom, wearing his tighty whities (and Mexican wrestler cape, which he apparently now sleeps in), lit by one of the dim lamps. I’m afraid if I turn on more light, the script will somehow get worse, if that’s possible. Jude is slapping himself and giggling as he flips through each page. Ordinarily I would find this hilarious, too, except Oren is seriously about to start filming this shit tomorrow, and it’s supposed to be the movie that saves Moldavia from extinction. (I did laugh a little after Jude read the first page and asked if the movie should be renamed Fisting.) “I don’t understand any of this,” says Jude, turning over another page.
I pace the room. “How does Oren not understand that anyone might have a few minor snags growing crops if an iceberg is floating down the street?”
“I’m not sure. . . .”
I look down at the script, and then back at Jude, as if hoping Jude can magically make this script better. Or vanish. “God,” I say. “I don’t know what to do.”
Moldavia movies were proudly and stalwartly of the B variety. They had an inherent look and tone about them, and despite their silliness, for the most part they were well made. People gather to actually watch them, not make fun of them. There’s a fine line—fun bad vs. truly bad bad—that my dad was careful not to cross, even if he didn’t always succeed. The Moldavia name was sacred to him.
Although I stopped watching Moldavia movies when I got to Keenan, Jude had seen a few. He was careful not to bring it up around me, but he had definitely seen Zombie Children of the Harvest Sun. One Friday night we both got wasted at some horrible dance thing with another, rougher, group home; the girls, heavily tattooed, many of them wearing distressed white leather, looked like they’d sooner cut you than dance with you. But one of them thought Jude was hot and she had a bottle of Jack in her purse.
We stumbled home, drunkenly cackling at nothing, a little sick, and found the DVD of Moldavia’s Conjoined Connie in Keenan’s DVD bin in the rec room. Jude swore that DVD was in the collection, and I didn’t believe him until we found it. So we watched it together in that last chunk of night when the sky starts to turn cobalt.
Conjoined Connie is fucking ridiculous, but there was a certain art to it, especially the acting of Yolanda Deir Nasterfeld as both Connies. I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid, and I couldn’t deny a new appreciation for it; mostly because of Yolanda, who funneled genuine torment into her performances. She was my first introduction to some of the truly messed-up people who came through the Moldavia gates, the ones who gave my father that certain gleam in his eye, the ones his camera loved most.
My dad was naturally attracted to people plagued by demons. I was just a sad kid with a sick mom. So he played upon that pain—getting inside my head, exacerbating my fears, inflaming my loneliness. I was only halfway to the edge. It was my dad who tried to push me over it. And he almost succeeded.
When I first got to Keenan, I was prone to violent outbursts. Two snarky dudes who provoked me both got their noses broken. It was like I was still punching my dad in the face—over and over again. At first, there was the hornets’ nest—the furious buzzing in my ears. Then everything would drop away, leaving me in the middle of a pulsing red tidal wave. It was like I slid out of myself. My mom, at her worst, also had no control over herself. That link terrified me.
The last time I pummeled someone, it took three counselors to hold me down. If it happened again I was out. So I let them help me. I didn’t write in journals anymore—that reminded me of the past. Group therapy helped unravel some of my anger issues, and Jude gave me boxing lessons, which gave me a healthy outlet for my aggression.
I didn’t want to become someone like Yolanda Deir Nasterfeld.
Yolanda, a Hollywood actress, sometime porn star, and alleged retired Mafia hit woman, came from a place in Italy called Toscana nascosta. She was known for her husky voice, her slinky black dresses, and her heavy smoking. Apparently, she would refuse to ever put out a lit cigarette, creating untold continuity issues. She made a few notable films with Moldavia, but then one day declared she was done. She was found a month later, dead of a heroin overdose, in a seedy Culver City motel.
“If only she hadn’t left,” everyone at Moldavia mumbled, as if this place really did shield you from all the evil temptations outside. But some of these people just had haunted lives. It didn’t matter where they were.
Oren, however, is haunted in an entirely different way: by self-delusion.
He not only fails to understand narrative and write believable dialogue, but he also doesn’t seem to know how human beings behave. It’s like he’s an alien disguising himself as a human who decided to write and direct a movie about humans.
This is what’s written, fifteen pages later, when Juston Bieberman—the Farmer Obsessed with His Fists—walks down the dry, bramble-ridden dirt road (in Nova Scotia!) and confronts this “evil shaman farmer” whose side anyone watching this movie would instantly take: INT. HUT OF EVIL SHAMAN FARMER -- NIGHT
JUSTON BIEBERMAN walks into the hut. There are pots and pans in there. It is cramped and dirty. The SHAMAN FARMER is standing by the fire, stoking it, and also eating marshmallows. He wears a tan robe.
SHAMAN
Hello. Would you like some marshmallows?
JUSTON BIEBERMAN
Don’t tempt me with your candy, Satan’s spawn!
SHAMAN
(throws down marshmallow)
What intense rudeness. I have invited you to dinner here at my hut and you insult me! Juston, was it you who stole those cauliflower seeds from my shed?
JUSTON BIEBERMAN
Is that why you cursed my crops? And my wife, Selena Gomez?
SHAMAN
The night is cold. I can cook us a ham.
The SHAMAN moves around the hut preparing the ham and getting salt.
JUSTON BIEBERMAN
(staring at his fists)
When a man can no longer sleep because of the grief, he knows he has been cursed, and it was you, Macaulay. We used to be friends in the old days. I never stole seeds from you then or now. What an insult.
SHAMAN
You stole my seeds, but I never cursed you for it.
JUSTON BIEBERMAN
I never stole your seeds.
SHAMAN
You took my seeds and my trust. But I offer ham.
JUSTON BIEBERMAN
How could I eat a man’s ham whose seeds I did not take?
SHAMAN
You cannot even eat a man’s ham.
JUSTON BIEBERMAN
I love man’s ham. But not his seeds.
SHAMAN
I am insulted by this accusation. Get out of my hut!
JUSTON BIEBERMAN
(shaking his fists)
I miss Selena Gomez! She was my flame of desire. I wish only death and conjunctivitis on you, Evil Shaman.
SHAMAN
I am not evil, just a nice, hardworking shaman. Ohhhh. A man’s cauliflower crop is a reflection of his soul -- for you, cold and flavorless.
JUSTON BIEBERMAN
I am nothing without my cauliflowers. I will kill you.
SHAMAN
(pointing a glowing stick at Juston)
I did not curse you then, but now you are cursed.
JUSTON BIEBERMAN
Do not!
Evil yellow laser rays shoot out of the SHAMAN’s stick.
SHAMAN
Bastard farmer! You are cursed to behold the living embodiment of your greed and selfishness. Your dead cauliflowers will be reanimated as vegetable demons from the foulest pits of hell!
THE SHAMAN screams and breaks open, and light shoots out of his open chest. The hut collapses all around them as THE SHAMAN laughs and flies into outer space.
THE SHAMAN lands on the moon, walks around on it, laughing, and pulls out the American flag and dances around with it. Then he flies to Mars and hops around the red sand. Then he flies around Saturn’s rings, still laughing, and swings around vines in the jungles of the Amazon, rolls around the sand dunes of the Sahara desert, and strolls around the streets of London drinking tea. He points two evil fingers at Big Ben and changes the time, just for fun.
Then he returns to his destroyed hut in Nova Scotia and confronts JUSTON BIEBERMAN, who is not cowering, but standing very strong.
SHAMAN
You should have had my ham.
What’s most amazing about this is . . . well, everything.
But also within the span of a tiny paragraph, Oren managed to raise the budget of The Ciller Cauliflowers by about $300 million. The rest of the pages Oren gave me are mostly, incredibly, Juston and the shaman continuing their argument in the shaman’s hut about whether or not Juston Bieberman stole this fucker’s seeds.
I start nervously pulling at loose strands of my hair. “I’m playing Stanhope.”
“Who’s that?” says Jude.
“We haven’t met him yet. He’s like the leader of the . . . the, uh, killer cauliflowers. Oh, and Oren wants you to be in this too.”
Jude’s face lights up. “In the movie? Really? Are you serious?”
“Oh, c’mon, man, you don’t really want to be in this crap, do you?”
“I don’t know? Maybe?”
There’s a knock at the door. Expecting Gavin, I open it a crack, but Hayley is outside, hugging herself in a gray shawl. “Did you read it yet?” she asks.
“Uh, hi. Yeah. Most of it.”
“Can I come in?” she says.
“Yeah you can,” says Jude.
She steps inside, extending her hand to Jude with an amused smile. “Hayley.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” says Jude, grinning, shaking her hand while elbowing me in the ribs.
Hayley laughs, clearly charmed by Jude, like everyone always is. “It’s nice to meet you. I love the cape.” She looks at me. “I know it’s late. I saw light under the door.” She points at the script on the floor. “Oren told me he gave you the first part. How far did you get?”
“Far enough. You read it too?”
“He read most of it aloud to me while he was working on it.”
That sounds like a form of slow torture.
“This movie can’t happen,” she says. “We can’t waste the time or the resources. If Oren attempts to make this, we’re cooked.”
“I’m sure we can persuade him to cut the part where the shaman flies to the moon and then visits London.”
Jude laughs a little, looks at me, sees my face, and stops laughing.
“It’s more than that,” she says. “This studio needs a hit. Desperately. It needs something people will actually watch. We can’t afford to make another Brain Breakfast. Not now.” She points at the script again. “If we make this, it’ll be a disaster.”
“Yeah, this makes Brain Breakfast look like Citizen Kane. What the hell has Oren been smoking?”
“It’s not what he smokes. It’s the tea he drinks.”
I stare at her, slowly blinking.
“Oren grows mushrooms out in the fields,” she explains.
I’m so confused. “Magic mushrooms? How long has he been doing that?”
Hayley looks at me like I just started speaking in tongues. “For years, Dario. That’s nothing new.”
Okay, well, I didn’t know about that. Things clearly took a turn after I left. Or I was just too young to know what Oren was getting up to when I was here. I cannot imagine hallucinating at Moldavia.
“I think Oren only wrote the part where the shaman goes to the moon under the influence of psilocybin,” she says. “What’s really scary is, the rest of it he wrote stone-cold sober.”
Yep. That’s terrifying. “Well, good luck telling him the truth about his script.”
Hayley holds out both her hands like I’m about to ram her. “Oh, no. I can’t be the one to break his heart.”
“Well, I can’t do it! I’m his estranged brother.”
Hayley’s eyes shoot to the ceiling. “You guys are not estranged! And you’re not just his brother. You’re the de facto studio chief now. Welcome to your new job.”
“Well, I don’t know what to do. So I guess I suck at my new job.”
“You’re gonna be great,” Jude whispers to me with a wink.
Hayley paces the room. “I’ve tried telling Oren about his script. He’s hypersensitive and doesn’t listen—he does this thing where he turns your criticism into a huge compliment. I’ve never seen anyone do that before. It’s bizarre.”
“Bizarre? Look who we’re talking about!” I say.
Over the years, Oren and Hayley seem to have developed a tension-filled sibling-like relationship where they just disappoint each other in different ways.
“Tomorrow’s the first day of shooting,” she says. “I don’t even know what scene he’s doing. No one does. He was supposed to finish No Chance in Hell. There are three scenes left. But Oren halted production on that so he could dive right into this cauliflower thing.” She sighs deeply. “Which is not how we do things around here.”
“Well, have you told him that?”
“I’ve tried! And he knows that! But he had the crew transform the parlor in the Karloff Wing into a giant vegetable patch with the facade of a farmhouse.”
“That is so cool,” says Jude.
I want to take charge. I want to show Hayley that I can run this place, fix everything, mitigate shit, but I just wind up wringing my hands and giving her this helpless look.
Hayley lowers her voice: “I wish I could tell you we have time to play around, but we don’t. We could get lucky, though. In the past, I’ve seen the crew turn against something that’s really sucking. If that happens organically, maybe Oren will see reason, and you won’t need to fire him off his own—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say, jumping back, “that sounds extreme.”
“Sorry, but you need to be prepared to pull the plug on this.”
I draw my knuckles across my forehead. I’m sweating.
“Also,” she says, “we already have the sets, costumes, props . . . something else will have to be made using the materials we’ve already spent our entire budget on.”
“Okay. I’m not Cecil B. DeMille. I just got here.”
“We’ll let him get through his first day of shooting,” she says. “That way it won’t look like you’re usurping him completely. We have to let him fail a little first.”
“That’s our plan? Let Oren publicly fail?”
“Only for one day.”
I sit, shakily, on the armrest of the leather armchair, totally overwhelmed.
I didn’t envision killing Oren’s dream as my first major decision at Moldavia. I was already so wary of coming back here, but I was also hoping I’d finally manage to feel like I belonged. Creating an adversarial relationship with Oren right off the bat won’t foster any sense of belonging; it’s just going to make me regret not trusting my instincts about coming back to Moldavia in the first place.
I came back because of my dad’s will, because my time at Keenan is over, and because I have no other home, but also because of what Oren thinks of me: that I’m a self-centered brat. I need to prove to myself that I’m better than that. Better than my dad, better than Oren, even. So here I am, hoping for closure to my horrific childhood. And also, there’s Hayley.
“In the morning Madge wants to do some makeup tests on you,” says Hayley. “Freakify you.”
“Okay.”
She sighs. “Anyway, I should get to bed.” As she moves toward the door, she looks over at the open closet with the light spilling out. She stops for a second and glances at me, and her face softens. Then she turns to Jude. “Welcome to Moldavia. I’ll be seeing you around.”
“Yeah, you will!”
I follow her out into the hallway, closing the door behind us.
Hayley flicks her eyes to Oren’s door, down the hall. “Keep your voice down.”
“Look, are you upset with me?”
She looks startled. “Why would I be upset?”
“I didn’t see you all day. I thought you were ignoring me.”
“I was working.” She narrows her eyes at me. “I’m always working, Dar.”
“Yeah, okay.” I feel unsure all of a sudden. “I know you thought I should consider my own future. Be more selfish about that. But deferring college is a small sacrifice to make if I can preserve our family legacy, and everyone’s jobs—”
“That’s what Oren told you, right?”
I stare at her, chewing my lip. I am basically repeating his pitch.
“Do I have the facts wrong?”
“So did you call Harvard and tell them you’re deferring?” she says.
I take a breath. “Um. No. Not yet. . . .”
Hayley puts her hands on her hips. “If you were confident coming back was the right thing to do, it seems to me that small administrative detail would be the first thing you’d want to get out of the way.”
“I’m confident,” I say. “I’m here.”
“Then you should let Harvard know. Because the longer you dither, the less likely another student can take your place in the entering class.”
“Fine, I will. I didn’t realize you were moonlighting as dean of admissions.”
I don’t understand why Hayley is giving me shit about this. She seems so angsty. I guess there are a lot of changes happening, and uncertainty, but she almost seems a little disappointed in me that I came back and didn’t take her advice.
Hayley lets out a sharp wisp of breath. “I just want you to understand what all this entails. This isn’t going to be a summer vacation. I hope Oren didn’t sell you on that.”
I cover my face. “I got super-stressed so fast,” I say into my hands. “I thought coming back was the right thing to do. But I didn’t know about the script.” I rub my hands together. “No one warned me about that.”
She taps her foot. “I’ve been trying to talk him out of this idea for months. The script has been a slow, steady descent into the mess it is now. But”—she throws her hands in the air—“I don’t know what to do anymore. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”
I smack my lips. I bet that’ll go smoothly. Can’t wait for that conversation.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she says. “I’m sure it was a tough decision. I didn’t know if I would see you again.”
I didn’t know if I would see her again either. And I didn’t like that. The sweetness of just being with her right now cuts into my rising panic about what I got myself into.
“It’s just . . .” Hayley’s eyes get all scrutinizing. “I don’t want to be the reason you came back.”
I shake my head, vaguely, because she was definitely part of the equation.
“Well,” she says, glancing behind her, “we should probably get some sleep?”
“Okay.” I nod, and we quickly hug before Hayley hurries off to bed.
When I go back inside my room, Jude is grinning at me, rocking back and forth on his heels. “Now I get it,” he says. “Noooowwww I get it!”
I shake my head, closing the door. “I’m in over my head, man.”
Jude is practically dancing around the room. “Nah, this is going to be awesome.”
“Ugh!” I pound the door. “My fists!”