The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing Read Free Page B

from what has come before as if a different director or cinematographer has taken over. It’s the familiar three bikers. They are in the same diner as earlier and yet everything is a little larger, cleaner, brighter. But the scene doesn’t begin that way. It begins in darkness. You can hear the sounds of the diner: scraps of conversation, the clattering of dishes, the cash register, maybe the scuffling of shoes on the floor. The light comes up slowly as if traveling through a frozen universe. After a few minutes the dim shapes assume their familiar forms. The bikers sit at the same table. But instead of leather and denim they wear uniforms of some sort, navy blue uniforms. This time the audio is clear. In the background, the window has a soft red smudge mark where the bird hit.
    “‘We should tell them that he’s still following us,’ the woman says, stirring her coffee. She pauses. ‘And that Mr. Cyclone orMr. Destroyer or whatever the girl calls him came in and that he’s the one who took that money.’
    “‘How can we?’ the tattooed biker asks. ‘Steadman already suspects. The girl’s on record as saying she’s being watched all the time, man. In every transcript I’ve fuckin’ read the girl refers to Mr. Cyclone or Mr. Destroyer as It . Not as him . What she says is: I have a feeling It’d destroy us if It could. If only to get at her . It, man.
    “‘I wonder if It knows we’re talking about it,’ the woman says, with venom, ‘and what if It is a beast and not a man, or a beast that was a man?’
    “The scene cuts with no preparation or warning or musical cues to the Datsun as it pulls up beside another car, a black one, that’s stopped on the side of a desert road. It’s a crane shot, the camera stationary in the air as if attached to an invisible telephone pole. For a few minutes nothing seems to happen, at least nothing that can be seen. We hear the wind moving sand across the hot road and the watery waves of heat rippling off the tops of the cars seems CGI’d but that’s impossible in a film from 1969. Finally, the limping man with the black cowboy hat gets out of the Datsun and walks slowly around to the back of the car. He keys open the trunk and pulls something out, something that looks like a heavy iron rod. He holds it to his side and walks around the black car, looking in its windows. If there’s someone or something in there we can’t see it, not from this canted angle. When he taps on the passenger side window with the iron bar we hear it from within the car itself, as well as the soft sound of breathing. It’s as if there’s a split: we’re now hearing things from the inside of the car but seeing things from outside. The Datsun driver taps the window harder and there’s a shuffling noise from within the car, as if someone is searching for something in the glove box. Then suddenly he takes the bar in two hands, raises it over his head, and brings it down against the car window once, then does it again. He drops the bar and reaches in through the shattered window and there are screams, either from him orfrom whomever’s in the car, and then suddenly it’s clear that he’s trying to pull away, that whatever’s in the black car has got a hold of him and is trying to pull him in, and he’s struggling to get free. The screams are louder now, high-pitched and terrible, and his body is half in the car, his legs kicking in the air, the camera just holding the shot like a one-eyed torturer, watching as, finally, the man goes limp, half his body in the black car and half out.
    “The next scene is back at the diner,” Laing continues. His demeanor, sitting there at that table with his large hands folded in front of him, suggests that he doesn’t show the slightest interest in me. And yet I feel that he’s observing me with intensity even as he pretends to be lost in the movies he describes.
    “A red line appears in the center of the screen, from top to bottom. It’s about the