Crash Page #4

RENATA:

I saw the blood. It looks like motor oil.

JAMES:

You were the last one I saw just before

the accident. Do you remember? We made

love.

RENATA:

Are you still involving me in your crash?

An airline coach passes, the passengers bound for Milan staring

down at the pair. Renata buttons her coat.

EXT. FIRST CRASH SITE - DAY

James steps from the car, his right knee giving way after the

effort of driving. At his feet lies a litter of dead leaves,

cigarette cartons and small drifts of safety glass crystals.

A hundred yards behind them a dusty old American car, a Lincoln,

is also parked on the verge. The leather-jacketed driver watches

James through his mud-spattered windshield, broad shoulders

hunched against the door pillar. As James crosses the road he

picks up a camera fitted with a zoom lens and peers at James

through the eye-piece.

Spotting the man, Renata opens the car door for James.

RENATA:

Who is that man? Is he a private

detective?

James gets back in the car.

INT. RENTED CAR - DAY

RENATA:

Can you drive?

JAMES:

I can drive.

James shifts the car into gear and cruises slowly towards the man

with the camera. As they approach him, he gets out of his own car,

ignoring them, and kneels down to study the hieroglyphics of the

skid marks on the road surface.

As James and Renata drive past the Kneeling man, the sunlight

highlights the ridges of scars on his forehead and around his

mouth.

The man looks up at James and he recognizes Vaughan, the young

doctor he last saw in the hallway at the airport hospital.

EXT. AIRFIELD - HANGAR - DAY

James proudly shows off his new car to Catherine and Karen at

their offices at the airport. The car is identical to the one he

crashed.

James sits sideways in the driver's seat, door open, weirdly

jaunty.

CATHERINE:

I can't believe you've done this.

KAREN:

This is the exact same car as your old

one, isn't it?

CATHERINE:

Yes, it is.

(to James)

Are you planning to have another car

crash?

JAMES:

I'm not thinking about the crash at all.

James is telling the truth. What he is thinking about is the way

that Karen's hip casually brushes against Catherine's hip, without

either woman seeming to be consciously aware of it.

EXT. POLICE POUND - DAY

James enters the gate of the police pound compound on foot, and

shows his pass to the guard at the gate. His pass now stamped, he

hesitates for a beat before he enters.

INT. POLICE POUND - DAY

Some twenty or so crashed vehicles are parked in the sunlight

against the rear wall of an abandoned cinema. At the far end of

the asphalt yard is a truck whose entire driving cabin has been

crushed, as if the dimensions of space had abruptly contracted

around the body of the driver.

Unnerved by these deformations, James moves from one car to the

next until he comes to his own car. The remains of towing tackle

are attached to the front bumper, and the body panels are splashed

with oil and dirt. He peers through the windows into the cabin,

runs his hand over the mud-stained glass.

Without thinking, he kneels in front of the car and stares at the

crushed fenders and radiator grille.

Two policemen cross the yard with a black Alsatian dog. They watch

James hovering around his car as if they vaguely resented his

touching it. When they are gone, he unlatches the driver's door

and with an effort pulls it open.

James eases himself onto the dusty vinyl seat, tipped back by the

bowing of the floor. He nervously lifts his legs into the car and

places his feet on the rubber cleats of the pedals, which have

been forced out of the engine compartment so that his knees are

pressed against his chest.

The two policemen are exercising their dog across the yard. James

opens the glove compartment, forcing the shelf downwards. Inside,

covered with dirt and flaked plastic, are a set of route maps, a

mildly pornographic novel, a Polaroid of Renata sitting in the car

near a water reservoir with her breasts exposed.

James pulls open the ashtray, which promptly jumps onto his lap,

releasing a dozen lipstick-smeared butts.

Someone passes in front of the car. A policeman's voice calls from

the gatehouse. Through the windshield, James sees a woman in a

white raincoat walking along the line of wrecked cars. The woman -

Helen Remington - approaches the car next to his, a crushed

convertible involved in a massive rear-end collision.

James sits quietly behind the steering wheel. Helen turns from the

convertible. She glances at the hood of James's car, clearly not

recognizing the vehicle which killed her husband. As she raises

her head she sees James through the Classless windshield frame,

sitting behind the deformed steering wheel among the dried

bloodstains of her husband.

Helen's strong eyes barely change their focus, but one hand rises

involuntarily to her cheek. She takes in the damage to the car,

then takes in James. Without giving away anything, she turns and

moves away towards the damaged truck, then turns and comes back as

James gets out of his car.

She gestures towards the damaged vehicles, then speaks to James as

though just continuing a conversation already in progress.

HELEN:

After this sort of thing, how do people

manage to look at a car, let alone drive

one?

(pause)

I'm trying to find Charles's car.

JAMES:

It's not here. Maybe the police are still

holding it. Their forensic people...

HELEN:

They said it was here. They told me this

morning.

She peers critically at James's car, as if puzzled by its

distorted geometry.

HELEN:

This is your car?

She reaches out a gloved hand and touches the radiator grille,

feeling a chrome pillar torn from the accordion, as if searching

for some trace of her husband's presence among the blood-spattered

paintwork.

JAMES:

You'll tear your gloves.

James gently takes her hand and moves it away from the grille.

JAMES:

I don't think we should have come here.

I'm surprised the police don't make it

more difficult.

HELEN:

Were you badly hurt? I think we saw each

other at the hospital.

(pause)

I don't want the car. In fact, I was

appalled to find that I have to pay a

small fee to have it scrapped.

JAMES:

Can I give you a lift?

(almost apologetically)

I somehow find myself driving again.

INT. JAMES'S CAR - DAY

James is driving Helen Remington away from the police pound.

JAMES:

You haven't told me where we're going.

HELEN:

Haven't I? To the airport, if you could.

At these words, James is stricken by an odd feeling of loss.

JAMES:

The airport? Why? Are you leaving?

HELEN:

Not yet - though not soon enough for some

people, I've already found. A death in the

doctor's family makes the patients doubly

uneasy.

JAMES:

I take it you're not wearing white to

reassure them.

HELEN:

I'll wear a bloody kimono if I want to.

JAMES:

So - why the airport?

HELEN:

I work in the immigration department

there.

James is very aware that as they speak, Helen is intently watching

his hands and feet operating the controls of the car, perceiving

these motions in a way that she never would have before her crash

with him.

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