Chapter 37. Funding
Bel Air, California. Home of Actor Skip Drame.
The gated, glass-and-steel mansion was enormous. Professor John Morse had met actor Skip Drame on the movie set of The Nostradamus Prophecies, an action-adventure movie based upon Morse’s book last year about his travels to Europe to find the missing prophecies of Nostradamus. Drame had originally been hired to play Morse, but half way through filming, Drame had been fired when he showed up for work one morning bouncing off the wall from doing seven lines of cocaine. He was an excellent actor, when he was sober and clean, but the hard part was keeping him that way. When he went on a drug binge, he was prone to say ridiculous things. That morning, he had claimed to be Nostradamus and had infuriated the director when he issued a prophecy that the director would be “his future voodoo witch bitch,” whatever that meant. Filming had stopped and Drame, despite his fame and money, was on the blacklist in Hollywood. He was toxic. No one would hire him until he made a firm commitment to a substance abuse program. Unfortunately for Drame, he did not like being told what to do, so he had spent the last month since the firing speeding around Hollywood in his yellow Ferrari antagonizing every policeman he could find. His lawyer currently had seven scheduled court dates for Drame, ranging from possession of a controlled substance, to driving over one hundred miles per hour on Sunset Blvd., to assaulting a photographer. When Morse rang the doorbell, Drame’s doorman—fired the day before by Drame for allegedly “trying to play your sneak attack Ninja racquetball games in my head”—did not answer the door. Drame answered the giant walnut door himself, wearing blue pajama pants and a purple Lakers jersey. His black hair was pushed up in the middle. Morse was unsure if this was some Beckham hairstyle or if Drame merely had just rolled out of bed.
“Johnny! Que pasa, bro?” said Drame, opening the door and welcoming Morse in. Drame walked past an exercise bike turned upside down in the front hallway. “Hey, sorry for the mess. I just fired the cleaning lady.” The cleaning lady, who had been fired the day before for—in the words of Skip Drame--“goin’ Martha Stewart up my ass,” joined the doorman in the line downtown for unemployment benefits, baffled as to what she had done wrong to deserve her termination. She figured Drame would probably hire her back in the next week.
Drame welcomed Morse into the kitchen, where Morse sat down at the huge wooden kitchen table. Drame walked behind the butcher block, making himself a nutrition drink in a blender, pouring in bananas, whey protein, flax seed, and something green. He blended the ingredients together, poured it into a cup, and started drinking it. He grimaced. “Ah, fuck this! Staying healthy sucks.” Drame poured the rest of the health drink down the sink. “ I am sick of this health shit. Fuck it. I’m making a Bloody Mary. You want one?”
“It’s a little early for me,” said Morse, smiling.
“Suit yourself,” said Drame, pouring in Worcestershire sauce and adding a long, firm celery stick. “You know, whatever happened to the fuckin’ celery stick, John? The fuckin’ fantastic celery stick? Lately, all you get is pearl onions or those stupid mini pickles or olives or something? A Bloody Mary is nothing without the fuckin kick-ass one hundred percent genuine celery stick.” Drame stirred the ingredients in the glass around with the celery stick and then sat down at the table. “Now, John, what brings you to my table, Kemo Sabe?”
“I want you to fund a trip I am making to the Bay of Honduras to find the Fountain of Youth.”
“I’m in,” said Drame, nonchalantly. There was a pause, as Morse was speechless.
“Wait. What?” asked Morse.
“I’m in.”
Morse hesitated a few seconds before speaking. “I haven’t told you anything about it yet.”
“Don’t need to know. I love this Indiana Jones shit, Johnny. And, as you know, I just got fired from Paramount so I don’t have anything to do for a while. If we don’t find anything, then I get a good tan. If we do find something, I will be on the cover of People Magazine. What’s not to love?”
“OK, but you know it is extremely unlikely that we will find anything?”
“That’s what you said about Nostradamus, John. I’m in. Now, of course, I have a few quid pro quo’s.”
“OK,” said Morse, anticipating trouble.
“First, I’m coming on the trip with you, of course. Second, I get to bring two dates, so I don’t get lonely. Third, you don’t give me shit about any drugs that I might do on the trip. Oh, and Mountain Man is coming.”
“Who is Mountain Man?”
“He is a friend of mine. This guy is totally League of Shadows, man, knows rappelling off mountains, bow hunting, and all that shit. And he’s totally MacGyver, you know? Put him in the middle of the woods with twenty grizzly bears, and he will fashion a rocket ship out of a pine cone, know what I mean? He’s a good man. Oh, and one other thing.”
“Yes?” asked Morse.
“If we find the Fountain of Youth, I get to use it first and I go 80-20 with you on the patent.”
“How about 50-50?” asked Morse, smiling.
“60-40,” said Drame.
“Done,” said Morse, and shook Drame’s hand.
Drame got excited. “Man, this is going to be kick-ass! I’m going to R.E.I. today and getting’ some Hunger Games shit. I’m gonna be Katniss Everdeen! OK, well, she’s a girl. Whatever that fuckin’ guy’s name in Hunger Games was, the guy who shot rabbits with a bow and arrow, the good lookin’ dude, you know. Thor’s brother. That’s who I am gonna be. Oh, man, this is goin’ to kick ass! I gotta call Mountain Man!”
Atlanta, Georgia
After Morse called Charlie Winston and told him that Morse had secured funding for the voyage, Winston was tempted. He had rejected the idea when he knew the University would not approve the funding, but now that obstacle was cleared. He could probably get a substitute teacher for a week or two. He had tenure, after all, so if he only missed a week or two, that should not create too many waves. He just had to get the idea past his wife. He just had to convince her to let him leave their wheelchair-bound son with his mother while he boarded a yacht with an insane, crack-addicted actor and his two scantily-clad girlfriends in search of a mythological ancient relic. Winston silently groaned. This was not going to be easy.
“Honey,” he said as he snuggled with his wife in bed that night. “I got an interesting call today.”
Murielle Winston sat up in bed, suspicious. “Call? From whom?”
“From John Morse, that UCLA Professor. Turns out, he was able to get that whole voyage to search for the Fountain of Youth paid for by an actor in Hollywood.”
“Actor? What actor?”
“Skip Drame,” said Charlie Winston sheepishly.
“Skip Drame? The crackhead? That guy is totally insane. Why would he agree to pay for the trip?”
“I don’t know. But he said as long as he gets to go along, he will pay for everything—the boat, the supplies, the crew, the whole deal.”
Murielle Winston looked at her husband suspiciously. “Oh, no,” she said. “You told him you were going, didn’t you?”
“No, absolutely not, honey. I said I would talk about it with you.”
“But you didn’t say you couldn’t go?”
“Well, no, I didn’t say that. I wanted to talk to you about it.”
Murielle Winston looked at her husband with a tight, dissatisfied look. “Well, you’ve obviously already made up your mind, so go.”
“I haven’t already made up my mind, that’s why I am talking to you, honey.”
“How are you going to miss that much time from classes?”
“I have a Teaching Assistant who can cover for me for a week, and I think a week is all it will take.”
“A week? What if it lasts longer? And where would you stay?”
“Well, we would stay on the boat. Drame is getting a big yacht, there is plenty of room for all of us.”
“All of us? Who’s all of us?”
“Well, there would be me, and John Morse, and his son Zach Morse, who is a student in my class. Then we have a captain of the boat. And then John Morse is bringing along a local Mayan guide to help us with any strange terrain or Mayan languages. And then there would be Skip Drame’s friends.”
“How many friends?”
Winston looked suspiciously innocent. “Um, I think he said he was bringing three people.”
“Who are these three people?”
“Um, I think there is a guy called Mountain Man Pete, who is kind of a survival expert.
And then Skip has two girlfriends, as I understand it.”
Murielle Winston stood up and turned on the light. “Girlfriends?”
“Well, honey, Skip Drame is financing this whole thing, right? So I do not have a lot of say in what goes down, baby, because he can just pull out at any time, right?"
"Who are these girlfriends?"
"Not sure exactly.”
"Wait a minute! I've seen those women on E! The blonde with the big boobs and the eight-foot tall black woman?!"
"Honey, I have no idea what their bodies look like. All I know is…"
"The hell you don’t!" she yelled. "So you are planning to shack up with two strippers while I stay here and clean up Teddy's bowel movements, clean the house, go to work, and save the world from Level 4 viruses? Come on, Charlie!"
"Um, well, when you put it that way, I see what you mean, but I am pretty sure it is a pretty big boat, so I can stay pretty far away from them most of the time."
"Hell no!"
"Honey, this thing is all planned! I can't back out now."
"I am not having you surround yourself with whores for two weeks while I am here by myself. No way!"
"Murielle, the only reason I am doing this is if we find this Fountain, you never know, it might cure Teddy's paralysis." Murielle snarled.
"Now, that is as low as it gets. You are not doing this for Teddy. You are doing it for your own ego, so you can write another book."
"That's not true. But think of it, Murielle. What if there was something that could cure him. Wouldn’t that be worth it?" Charlie Winston knew he was stooping very low, throwing the guilt of their son’s condition and a possible cure as a reason for letting him go on his excursion.
Murielle Winston hesitated. All she wanted in life was a cure for her son. But this was ridiculous.
"Look, I did not want you to go to England and you went there. And now you are going to traipse off with these whores and spend more money. We have bills here, you know?"
"I know. Everything is paid up. My advance for my book is coming soon. We won't owe bills for another few weeks, and before you know it, I will be home and can pay them then. On this trip, Skip is paying for everything."
Murielle said nothing.
Winston put his hand on her chin and lifted it up, as he looked in her eyes.
"Murielle, the minute I saw you, I knew I would always love you. You are the only woman I think about, baby. I am not lookin' at any white girl half my age or any black woman twice your size. I just want to do this for Teddy. It might turn out to be a wild goose chase. In fact, the chance of that is almost 99%. But what if it doesn't? What if there is some kind of cure there? I would always regret it if I did not take the chance. We have a brief window to do this before other people find out. Will you trust me?"
Murielle looked at her husband with trusting eyes.
"OK, I will trust you. But I am doing this for Teddy, not you. And if you don't come home with a cure, you better be bearin' jewelry!"
"You got it baby. You are the best!" He kissed her.
"Uk! You still have hot dog breath."