He pulls a beautiful turn, backing almost into one of the listing buildings, and then veering back onto the road behind us.
“Something I do remember,” he said. “I was bad at it. I guess you were, too. But we also took care of each other. You and I, how we could. We took care of each other, until we couldn’t.”
We lurch down the road, rain sheeting the windshield.
“Which way?” He says. “You know.”
I know where the ghosts want to take me, and I know I want him to have what he wants. We reach the place in the road where my mind forks. “There,” I say. “Just there.”
“I think this is it, Amelia,” he says.
The only sign from the road is an incongruous thinning in the tree cover, a place where branches have grown into an arch, but our wheels find the memory of a route; we careen in saplings, bounce as we hit rocks. And then, an entry or gate, rusted ironwork, barred entrance hanging on hinges. As we near it, I make out a six-pointed star at the apex. Kif-Vesely’e. Around us, the unmistakable topography of summer camp: a cluster of cabins, flag circle, playing field with netless, sagging goals. A circle of towering pines. In the distance, a lake. The right lake, all of it deserted. He brakes, and we both survey the scene. A mob of birds shrieks alarm and otherwise everything is still. It is as Judah had said. The place has become a blank, overmapped until it has emptied. Nothing and no one remains.
“This is as far as I can go,” I say. “I don’t think we can get there.”
I look at him. I can’t read his expression, but determination is carried elsewhere in the body. He has it in his posture, in his grip on the wheel, in the tension of his musculature. Pack up, go home, live with the consequences. Leave the bad dog to wander in its own direction: these things are not possible for him. One way, or another, this day will see an ending.
“I’ll tell you something else I remember,” says the man, and now he is reaching into my bag, extracting a tab of cloud. Fresh, it glistens with moisture. He places it on my fingertip. “Something I’m sure of. You were a genius of this stuff. It loved you.”
Lemon and sharpness. My throat opens. Through the rain, I make out an unnatural color between the towering pines. Pink, I think, but once red. It stretches around the camp, a barrier or a wall.
“It loved you,” he says again. “And you love it more than you ever loved anyone.” He moves his hand to beneath my hand, and begins to lift. There is such tenderness in his gesture. I think of the old couple, the ones dying on the park bench. This is who we might become. I just need another moment to decide, and as I shift away from him, I brush against the diaper bag, its mustard and yeast.
Some will is left in me, some me still in me, a filament pulling at the base of my breast bone; Mama. It isn’t true, I think. It isn’t true. There’s one person. There are two.
Now, reflexively, I shift my weight toward him. Startled, he releases the brake, and then I bring my foot down on the gas.
We are accelerating. I think of my baby, the tiny filament. I think of Emily, loping into the woods. Ahead of us is the red wall. I hold my foot on the gas. Faster, and faster. There is a crash, a splintering, the scrape of metal. Impact. The man beside me collides with the windshield. I see the imprint of blood, his body going still as my door flies open and I am thrown from the car, my glasses lost on impact. Stunned, I lie before the gap in the red wall. Everything is blurry. From the other side, two figures approach.
Five
Los Angeles, California
2008
Even in love, there are whole lives you live apart, entire narratives you miss. Paul for a time hid his needle marks between his toes, but eventually the veins there gave out, and the strange bruises began to migrate up his body. Nine months on, Paul’s incendario ritual is no longer furtive. I wake on what will turn out to be our last morning together, and through my blurry, uncorrected vision, I mistake the tilt of his head for another kind of concentration, think he is already calling Frank, already beginning the next part of our lives. But then I put on my glasses. Bare-chested, he sits in front of the mirror with his eyes closed. He wears the OneLife headset, and on the edge of the ashtray rests a syringe, its plunger depressed, a dab of blood visible on the needle tip. His skin is waxen, his expression molded—neither flat nor fixed. I understand this as some form of preparation, like a vocal exercise or visualization, for Lew’s shoot today, some deliberate thing that he is doing. But that understanding doesn’t render this vision of Paul any less alien. I close my eyes and pretend to sleep until I hear him replace the headset in the warming case and begin to move about. Then, I move conspicuously and reach for the already-ringing phone.
So Shoot Me, Lew’s production company, is housed in a down-market studio between Silver Lake and Northeast Los Angeles. The empty sets are pool party, sophisticated loft, high-rise apartment, and nightclub. But these narrative films are already a thing of the past. No one wants fiction anymore. They want teenagers, shot through the window of the family SUV. They want college girls getting gangbanged by fraternity brothers, your slutty ex’s masturbation selfie. Lew’s recent hits have all been productions that don’t look like productions.
As we cross the parking lot, Paul’s father still rants on the phone, the crookedness of contractors, the unrealistic expectations of buyers on the Brookline markets. Making his offer, Paul had favored euphemisms, and I’m still not entirely sure Frank understands, but it’s good enough for now.
“As-is,” says Frank, “means as-is.”
“We know,” says Paul.
“Forty-eight hours,” he says. “Then, I’m taking the other offer.”
Paul disconnects, and looks at me.
“We could do this,” he says.
“We are doing this,” I tell him.
And then, for some reason, we’re smiling at each other; our smiles are scratch-ticket smiles, the smiles of the bump-up to first class, of the unexpected celebrity sighting. It’s like we’ve walked accidentally into one of those parallel worlds where everything turns out right. The feeling comforts me, banks me against the strange vision of the morning, and the anxieties about the day to come. If the feeling falters, well, then, I have cloud. Cloud will see me through.
At the door to the studio, Lew meets us, followed by the muscular doorman from the previous night and a PA with a clipboard.
“You got the chip?” he asks.
I pat my pocket. He points to one of the cameras, from which a similar device emerges.
“You’ll watch from the editing suite on the live feed,” he says to me. “The angles will be different, but it’ll give you the sense. Then, we’ll run you the chip as we finish each one. If we’re going to get this in the can before our competitors, we have to do simultaneous post and production.”
For just an instant, the incendario look crosses Paul’s face, a blinkering out.
“Mr. Greene?” says the PA. “You’re with me.”
Then he shakes it off and follows after the girl.
“And PS,” Lew tells me, grabbing my arm. “You’re in lockdown. Even for you, my rule holds. No wives on the set. There’s pressure, here. I need no variables.”
“I’m not his wife,” I say.
“I am well aware, Mellie. It’s a term of courtesy. It’s an honorific. You are wife-like.”
Paul, when I look for him, has vanished, absorbed into the human noise of a production about to go live.
Muscle trails us as we walk the length of the hangar, but Lew lopes along at my side.
I had made it through only a portion of the first scene last night, the pop star’s headless torso pacing in a condominium bathroom, before the video cut to static. Whoever Paul was to play, he hadn’t appeared. The husband, Guy DeLauris, was in it, obviously, behind the camera, his hand occasionally straying into the frame. From the tabloids, I had him as a villain-type, South-of-France tan, with a perpetual brushstroke of facial hair. He was too Anglo, too old, to be played by Paul. I imagined some pi
zza boy cameo for my boyfriend, later, the walk-on for the neighbor. The rest of the night, between my departure from the party and Paul’s return, I’d spent investigating the code on the microchip. The modifications Lew had wanted were a simple cut-and-paste job, one routing number for another, but the work required precision and exactness. Even a tiny error might sink the whole project. The classes Trudi had paid for gave me a focused skill set, enough that I could admire the trickiness of this new program, but never replicate it. Of the pop star’s video, I’d formed less of an impression.
On one sound stage, the carpenters are putting the final touches on a bland bedroom with a familiar painting. It’s one of Westie’s, I realize, her Kitten Rothko. To the left is a finished set which I recognize as the bathroom from last night’s corrupted file. Several cameras are already in position as one of the assistants hangs a shower curtain.
“Do you know,” says Lew, “fucking Westie pulled down a bigger profit than I did last quarter?”
“So, you’re switching to fine art?”
“She doesn’t make money on the paintings. It’s all on the mystique, the little origamis and the souvenirs and the licensing. That’s how Disney does it, too. It’s all on aftermarket shit, on princess merchandising.”
“Action figures,” I say.
“Moneywise,” says Lew, “legality-wise, what has limited us in the past is basically a problem of infrastructure. You need a certain infrastructure to hide the trail, or you need the time to get yourself to a place where the trail goes cold. The infrastructure, I lack. But on this project, I get time.” Lew is rich for a reason. This plan of his, I’m sure, will make him a pile. I look up. Somehow, Paul’s gotten ahead of us, and I see him, flanked by Legal and Makeup, stepping into the dressing room. Muscle’s walkie crackles behind us and he falls back to confer with Lew.
The two men in front of Paul’s door close ranks, as if guarding.
“Hey,” says Makeup. “The girl’s in there with him.”
“I have a new scent,” a female voice can be heard to say. “It’s pretty masculine. Close to sandalwood, but with a kind of bright note at the back of it?”
The girl is the enema girl, I realize. She’s famous, among us, for her expert cleansing skills. Her services are coveted, like those of an excellent hairdresser.
Legal leans into me: “Do you know how recently he’s updated his testing?”
“Breathe out,” says the girl.
On the other side of the wall, Paul yelps in surprise or pain. There is a scent, which is not masculine, not sandalwood, and the sound of rubber gloves snapping. The actresses I have known say you get used to it, but I think of Caty’s face, when I covered her mouth in the video. Yes, I say, though the moment has passed. Yes, this is a thing to be scared of.
Lew and Muscle have caught up to me.
“That’s not the set,” I say. “I’m not interfering.”
“Everything is the set. We start filming in forty minutes.”
“Just, it’s a small role, right?”
“The actress does all the work. I could do the boy part, even with my diabetes. But I doubt casting would approve.”
“Right,” I say.
“You, of all people. Have been in this business for fifteen years. It’s a little late to get prudish.”
Lew peels off, to deal with whatever’s come over the walkie, but Muscle sticks with me. When we get close to the editing suite, I decide to ditch. I send him to get me a coffee and then I duck through the hidden door beneath stairs.
The editing booth and Lew’s office sit on the second story at the far end of the hangar. Beneath, there is plywood wall painted a peculiar shade of dusky purple. This is Valerie Weston’s studio, which Lew lets to her rent-free. Lew likes her work, is a fan, and she’ll step in as camera operator in a pinch. Still, there’s more in it for him than the occasional collaboration and an infrequent wall decoration. Having a working artist provides cover at the level of just how interested or basically bored the cops feel about this particular edifice. Lew and Westie’s work, their traffic in weird copies, is simpatico, of course, and Lew and Valerie both enjoy a certain defiance where the letter of the law is concerned.
On the other side of the door, Valerie is wielding a small implement with a rapidly oscillating spring called an EpiLady which is designed to pull multiple body hairs out at their roots. Westie is covered in a fine layer of peach paint dust. Behind her, the vast windows are partially covered. No great loss: the view shows a vast parking lot with nothing in it but an idling Dodge. Two images are projected on the walls. I recognize them as stills from the pop star video.
“Lew’s assigned me a minder so I don’t talk to Paul.”
I hoist myself onto a countertop, pull out six Lucite boxes. For me, too, Valerie’s studio provides me cover because, obviously, she knows I use, and she lets me retreat here when the need comes on.
“He’s on Pop Star?” she says, nodding at the stills. “You want to pull him off? Interesting.”
“Paul wants to do it. But, look.”
“You’ve seen the film?”
I shake my head.
“It’s amazing.” She nods her head at the two slides. “That’s her in minute one. She’s perfect, right? A doll of herself, totally her own creation. That’s minute thirty-seven. I think it’s utter, the destruction. Everything from that first shot is gone. So, now we know: thirty-seven minutes of oral sex is how you take a person apart.”
“You think it was forced?”
Valerie shakes her head. “By vanity, maybe. By the camera. Anyway, it rivets me. I feel a total kinship with it. But you were saying, about Paul.”
“He’s been shaky. I don’t know. I’m nervous.”
Valerie smiles. “Don’t you have something you take for that?”
“One, maybe,” I say. “I’ll just take one.” The burring of the epilator silences. Valerie stands back from her canvas to consider, then she walks to the studio door.
Valerie’s forgery project has been her artistic focus for several years now. She’s an amazing technician, a craftsperson of staggering skill, but after the work is meticulously copied, period canvases, authentic pigments, she does the thing where she fucks it up by sketching in some bit of modern kitsch—the internet cat, the talking vegetable. There’s a web site, a virtual environment where users can collect cryptic clues about the originals and fakes, which all accrue toward some unclear goal. Now, apparently, she is making Romantic portraits of shitty home video stars. It’s a fuzzy set, with her, scam and joke and art.
Paul, for the record, has an interesting online existence, too. He did a dub, several years ago, of a fairly bawdy Japanese import animation. That’s where Apollo Blue came in, the name assigned him in the credits. Eventually, it transpired that this was a generic pseudonym that film people use when they’re dodging Equity, or when a project isn’t going to appear on their resume. Anyway, the series has rabid fans, and Paul’s voice was deemed a poor substitute for the original actor. Some lunatic fangirl developed a wiki dedicated to documenting and mocking all of the pseudonym’s work. The funny thing, though, is that since the name was so widely used, they misattributed a fairly impressive body of work to Paul’s alter ego—he is a collage of a dozen men—and as Apollo, he’s a success. I will catch him looking at images of these other men, these men who are not him, studying them.
One. I wedge a tab into my cheek, then on second thought, add second and then a third for good measure. I slide off the counter.
“Also: Lew wanted me to tell you he’s using your name with that Christian supplier; he claims you’re doing a documentary.”
“I hate documentary,” says Valerie. “There’s so much wasted effort in it, waiting for your subject to tell you a story. I prefer it when the drama is induced, like how rich ladies have babies when they don’t want to ruin their snatches.”
I swallow.
—pop—
A light blinks at me from the wall. Proje
cted on either side of it are images of a woman, one in ecstasy and one in some combination of horror and suffering. It is the same woman, the same bed, but in the second slide, she is utterly transformed. And then, she is alive, standing at the sink, vigorously washing her hands. It is not the pop star. It is Valerie Weston.
The light is blinking on the wall, and next to it, a lens glints. “Are you filming?” I ask Valerie. “Are you filming me?”
“Sorry,” she says, shaking her wet hands and turning off the faucet. “Forgot about that.” She drops the straps of her overalls, steps out of them, and then, standing in her underpants, approaches the camera.
“You know what would never happen in a documentary?” she asks me.
“Turn off the camera, Valerie. I hate being filmed.”
“I’m just saying I like contrivance.” She nods to the square of uncovered window, where there is nothing but a black Dodge. “Surveillance,” she says, “is the opposite of documentary.” Then, she depresses the button on the camera and extinguishes the light.
Someone knocks at the studio door.
“That’ll be for you,” says Valerie.
I pack full my lip gloss case, and return the Lucite boxes to the drawer. Then I deposit the little sticky tabs of paper into the garbage, place a balled piece of paper on top to hide the evidence. To be a dedicated and secret user like myself requires a constant, sure supply, a handful of allies and a vigilant mind.
“Thank you,” I tell Valerie. “And help yourself, obviously.”
“I would,” she says, “if you ever left me any.”
“There’s plenty,” I say.
“Then I’ll expect another visit.”
It is nearly ten in the morning. Trudi’s forearm grips my arm; her hip is locked against my hip and she steers me between a teamster with a two-by-four and a stylist with a flatiron toward the post-production suite. Muscle follows along behind us, clipboard under one arm.
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