A Picture of Guilt Read Free Page B

Wild Strawberries was running on cable. Ostensibly about a professor who confronts the void of his life, the film opens with one of the best dream sequences ever filmed: boarded up windows, a clock with no hands, a hearse disgorging a coffin, the creepy, outstretched hand of a corpse.
    Okay. Bergman is not what you’d call warm and fuzzy, but what can you expect from a Swede? His work even looks a little stagey now, but that’s because every filmmaker in the world has copied his style. The way he works with light and shadow. The nuances of his camera moves. The way he imbues his characters with personality through one simple but perfect gesture. In the journeyman work I do for a living, I might set up a pretty shot or a smooth pan, but there’s no emotional investment. No fusion of form and function. Even Bergman’s outtakes are works of art.
    As good as the film was, my eyelids began to droop. I forced them open a few times, but it was hopeless. I snapped off the tube and burrowed under the covers—and then sat bolt upright in the dark. The water. Nighttime. Outtakes. I knew where I’d run into Johnnie Santoro.

C HAPTER F OUR
    For a month or so each fall, the mums take over Chicago. It’s as if the Big Florist in the Sky has commanded, “Thou shalt have chrysanthemums and plant them everywhere.” Huge planters of the red and yellow flowers, their spiky petals irrepressibly cheerful, flanked the door to Mac’s studio as I headed inside.
    When we started working together, MacArthur J. Kendall III had a tiny studio crammed with camera gear and editing equipment. Ten years later, his studio boasts two nonlinear editing suites, a soundstage, and one of the best editors in the galaxy.
    Some people’s bodies are made for the work they do. Michael Jordan. Martha Graham. Hank Chenowsky. With long, supple fingers, a lanky torso, and eyes that blink in sunlight like a mole’s, Hank was destined to be either a concert pianist or a video editor. He chose editing, but to watch those fingers fly over the console is to watch a virtuoso perform.
    He and I have spent more than a few late nights working, and he alone is responsible for the magic that makes our shows a cut above. I’m grateful to Mac, who appreciates what a talent he has and has managed to keep Hank happy. Though with Hank, happiness is more or less a permanent state of being. I’ve never seen him cranky.
    I remember once asking him about his idea of heaven on earth.
    “You first,” he’d said.
    “Okay.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “A box of warm Krispy Kremes waiting for me…on a bed at the Four Seasons Hotel.”
    He cocked his head. “The Four Seasons?”
    I opened one eye. “You ever been on one of their beds?”
    “Uh, no.”
    “First of all, they’re huge. Soft and firm at the same time. Perfect for sitting, and lying, and—well—they sell over two hundred beds a year, you know.”
    “And you know about beds at the Four Seasons because…”
    “Um—uh—”
    “Right.” He cut in. “Okay. What flavor?”
    “Pardon me?”
    “The Krispy Kremes.”
    “Oh.” I considered it. “Doesn’t matter.”
    We exchanged nods.
    “Your turn.”
    He bent over the keyboard to finish an edit. “Heaven on earth, huh?” He laced his fingers together and flexed them backward. “That’s easy. Playing with Clapton.”
    “Where?”
    “Shea Stadium.”
    “Instrument?”
    “Bass, of course.”
    “Not piano?”
    “That’s my backup.”
    “What?”
    “Playing with Count Basie at Carnegie Hall.”
    See what I mean about destiny?
    But on this morning, garbled noise spewed out of the editing room door. It sounded like a flock of angry pigeons had taken up residence. I skirted the door and headed to Mac’s office.
    “Hey.”
    With his crewneck sweaters and khakis, Mac looks like an aging preppie, but it’s dangerous to underestimate him. He’s an excellent director and a shrewd judge of character. He looked up from a pile of paperwork. “What brings