Numb

by Sean Ferrell

  “People will play themselves?”

  “Yes. They’re casting some of it, approaching some of the actuals for the rest.”

  “What about Hiko?”

  Michael, stuttering as he sought a lie, gave a professional laugh. “I—I don’t know. Think they might be, you know, approaching her.”

  The driver munched on his chow mein breakfast. Another truck rumbled by and for a minute I couldn’t hear Michael over the roar. He swore and asked where I was.

  I ignored him. “Who are these people?”

  “Come to the dinner tonight and you’ll meet them.”

  “Dinner?”

  “The meal after lunch.” He paused to laugh at himself. “Steven, the head man, is having a nice-to-meet-ya at his place in the Hills. You, me, a couple of the producers, Steven, a few of the other, um…actors doesn’t seem like the right word.”

  “Actors like who?”

  “Come see.”

  I hung up and handed the driver his phone. He pocketed it without looking at it. He was my best friend in LA. “Where to?”

  I told him my hotel. I needed to sleep. He pulled back into traffic, raising horrified horns from several trucks in the process, and hummed under his breath as he tossed the empty Chinese container onto the passenger seat. I watched the morning light reach out over the roads, touch broad bands of clouds over the ocean. In New York it would be midmorning. Hiko would be up and beginning her day, preparing to work in her studio or finding her way to a gallery or a teaching gig, and possibly stewing over the audacity of movie producers asking for her not due to beauty or talent but because she had the bad luck to have allowed me into her home.

  twelve

  AS I HAD prayed for on the drive to the hotel, I fell asleep easily and slept most of the day undisturbed. As late-afternoon light fell across the bed through a gap in the curtains I woke, blinked at the orange rays, and wondered for a full minute where I was before the pile of mail on the coffee table reminded me.

  I dressed and headed to the lobby. Michael sat in the bar. I waited for him while he finished his drink, then he walked from the bar to me by way of the main desk to check for messages I’m sure he knew were not there. I walked past him and he fell into my wake. We climbed into a cab.

  Michael talked for most of the trip, on his phone and to me, sometimes at the same time. Words fell from him like rocks into water, disappeared and forgotten after the initial splash. I watched the sides of the road, the barricades and guard rails. I hunted for scratches, dents, any sign of collision. I counted them on my fingers, like a collector. I didn’t know what purpose they served, but even when I realized what I was doing I continued and felt a small glimmer when I saw broken glass at a corner or black rubber skid marks end far too suddenly in an intersection.

  We reached the house within thirty minutes and Michael, cell phone off and in his pocket, gazed up at the three-story Spanish villa. “Look at that.”

  I looked, unsure whether he meant the house or something particular. Lit with spotlights hidden by landscaping, it radiated an artificial quality. Every detail of the architecture stood out, despite the fact that the sun was setting behind it and it should have been backlit, dark and hard to see instead of full and fresh and looking like dawn touched nowhere else. I followed Michael to the front door. Before he could knock, it swung open and a middle-aged man in a white cotton shirt and khakis held his hands out to me and Michael. He was bearded, pale across his face and neck, tanned from elbow to wrist. I guessed he spent his time behind the wheel of a car, stuck in traffic, making deals on a cell phone.

  “You’re here,” he said. Michael held his right hand and I gripped the left, both of us one step lower than our host, penitents to a saint. His smile bordered on beatific. “I’m so excited you made it.”

  Michael introduced me to Steven. We continued our awkward left-hand-right-hand shake. Steven said, “Feeling better, I hope?” It seemed genuine sympathy for my faked illness, and so I mumbled thanks and looked away, which I’m sure gave the impression that we all knew it was a lie.

  He wouldn’t release me, somehow even spinning his grip so that I now held his hand as children do their parents’, and pulled me into the house across an ornate, tiled floor. Looking down I saw he wore no shoes or socks. Michael walked behind me, trapped in a grin I couldn’t understand. From the entryway Steven guided us to an expansive living room bordered by windows along one side. Beyond the windows shimmered a lighted and heated pool. Vapors rose from it in the cool evening air. Its too-blue water rippled from a single swimmer, a woman, as she glided along the perimeter.

  In the room, barely furnished except for three low chairs and a twelve-foot table covered with white cloth and food and drink, a dozen people swirled around one another. Conversation stopped for a breath when we entered, but most everyone seemed accustomed to ignoring the famous and didn’t give any sign of recognizing me beyond darted eyes. Artwork adorned the walls. Made from lightbulbs, all on and generating enough heat and light for four rooms this size, the pieces overlit the room, and I looked through the group of people, expecting to see Bernie. One light box had nine bulbs arranged in a square. Another a circle. I didn’t see, but wasn’t surprised later to hear about, a triangle. I stared at the square, squinting as I wondered how many bulbs I would meet while in LA.

  Steven followed my eyes and leaned toward me. “Great, aren’t they? I found an artist downtown who’s working exclusively in light.”

  I nodded and tried to pull my hand away. Steven wouldn’t let me. He turned and pulled me into a hug, pressed me chest to chest, stomach to stomach, his beard and breath tickling my ear. “Tell me something, and be honest. I can smell lies. Do you do what you do because of drugs? Are you on something?”

  “Uh, no.” His breath rolled across my neck. “No drugs.”

  The hug grew tighter for an instant and then he let go. He leaned back and smiled at me, close enough to know that I’d brushed my teeth, and said, “Good to hear it. Good to know your talent is genuine.”

  Michael clapped me on the back. They treated me as if I’d just won a prize.

  Steven said, “Let’s go meet the others.”

  I circled the crowd with Steven and Michael and was introduced to people whose names meant as little to me as they did to Steven. He’d forgotten half of them and searched for names, awkward, eyes to the ceiling, until the mysterious guests took pity and introduced themselves. Some of them were producers. One woman, a casting agent, was the only one to ask if I might be hungry and kindly offered me a small plate of cheese. Three others were actors being considered for the movie. I couldn’t look at them. What was there to see other than strangers?

  As if reading my thoughts, the casting agent said, “You’ll be glad to know that not all of them are strangers.”

  “Meaning?”

  She pointed toward the pool where the swimmer climbed from the water to be wrapped in a towel held for her by one of the male actors. She rubbed the towel against her sides and pulled it over her head as she headed through a door into a small bathhouse. The actor followed.

  “Who was that?” I said.

  The agent looked at Michael, a small blush on her cheeks. “I thought you were going to tell him.”

  Michael leaned over my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “It’s Emilia. She’ll be playing herself in the film.”

  I felt as if I’d stepped in something slippery. The door of the bathhouse closed and I watched it for a breath, then turned to Michael and wondered aloud if he’d lost his mind. The guests around us looked at one another, obvious in their avoidance of my gaze, and I held nothing against them as they drifted away from me.

  Michael, Steven beside him, stood his ground. “She was integral to the story. It’s you, but it’s not all you.”

  I nodded. A flash inside my head as I looked back to the bathhouse. “You represent her, don’t you?”

  Michael waved a hand at me. “I make no apologies for doing cross pro
motion that helps everyone.” He said cross promotion as if it held religious meaning in our situation. Now even Steven looked uncomfortable.

  “I thought we’d agreed to have all our cards on the table before proceeding.” This was aimed at Michael even as he looked at me. I didn’t sense any protective urge for me as much as anger at the discomfort of the “talent” being cantankerous. That was me, I realized, the tempestuous star.

  Another few minutes and Emilia emerged from the bathhouse, actor in tow, radiant but not at all how she had been in New York. She was calm, her face softer, and her eyes smiled at me when she walked into the room. She had bare feet and wore a simple white dress that glowed in the heavy lighting from the incandescent artwork. I’d seen her on the cover of some men’s magazine and she’d had this look. I’d thought it was makeup and a good art director forcing a change to her style. Turns out it was just her.

  She walked straight to me, said, “Hi.” A broad grin broke through and she reached for my hand. The Emilia I knew in New York had had a sharp, dangerous edge, and if you wore it down, you would discover the threat of a dull razor. How could she have softened so much to reveal this laid-back spirit?

  She walked me to a corner framed on either side by bulb fixtures in the shapes of an X and a plus sign. She walked in slow motion, like a film had been taken of the woman in New York and slowed just slightly to make her more fluid. Beneath the dress a softer energy flowed, and when it pressed out subtly it was even more exciting than the jagged high energy she’d barely contained three months earlier. An entirely new image of her opened in my head, one that blended this Emilia with the one I’d known. This Emilia was deeper, more emotionally grounded, and I realized, seeing the tranquility in her face, how haunted and afraid she had always looked in New York. Maybe I looked the same way.

  “You look great,” she said. “California does good things for you.”

  I looked at the plus-sign lights and did some hurried calculations. “I’ve been here for forty hours.”

  She laughed. “Guess it just works fast.”

  She seemed a ghost of someone I hadn’t known. Behind me the actor lurked, far enough behind me to not be too present, close enough to remind me I was being watched.

  I said, “You look nice.”

  “Thanks. Southern California agrees with me.” She ran her hands over her dress, smoothed the unwrinkled fabric. I could see through it, I thought, see some of the pale scars I knew I’d left behind. She said, “You’ve really made a name for yourself. No more sideshows. Your own movie.”

  “Yeah, sort of.” I was about to ask for her to help me figure out how a fictional story about a guy like me could be “my” story when a man’s voice rose from behind me.

  It said, “Who wants wine?”

  Rather than introduce me to the lurker, Emilia repeated the question to me as if I hadn’t heard. “Would you like some wine?”

  I looked over my shoulder at the tall, very fit man with dark hair and features sculptors dream of uncovering. I said, “Wine?”

  I must have nodded because Emilia answered, “That’s two for wine.”

  The sculpture disappeared for too brief a time and when he came back he carried three glasses of wine in one hand as if the hand had been made for nothing else.

  Emilia took a glass and smiled at him. To me she said, “This is Ray.”

  Ray said something about being glad to finally meet me. I watched as he moved between me and the X light, became nothing more than a shimmering silhouette, a cutout of a perfect man, complete and happy in his own presence, removed from the room by light and dark. He was at home anywhere, and anywhere he stood became home. I smelled his musk in the air, watched his girlfriend in the white dress, tasted his wine. I looked at what he wanted as his life, and at what he had, and they were the same thing. Emilia was part of it.

  One or the other, I cannot remember now who, began to talk about the wonder of the house and the beauty of the artwork. From there the monologue was shared by both as they spoke without a hint of needing me to contribute or even pretending that I mattered in the conversation. They shared details of their lives that they both already knew with, if not me, as I had asked for none of it, then some unseen audience I felt hidden just behind me, watching from rows of seats trapped in the dark corners away from the lights. I longed to look and see someone in the audience at whom I could raise an eyebrow and ask if there was a need to repeat a line or two.

  The two of them smiled at each other every two minutes for reasons invisible to me. They grinned at each other while describing how they’d found their home. When I told them where I was staying they shared a knowing look that went unexplained. And there was definitely a giggle when Emilia mentioned they were going out later that evening. I bumped up against secrets they shared and I felt like I was only there to view them, like animals in a cage. Why had I come? Better yet, why had I been invited?

  “So,” Ray said, “what exactly was it like, going into that lion’s cage?” He said this as if interviewing me, as if the unseen audience had just quieted. I looked around. It wouldn’t be the first time that Emilia had put me in a position to be unexpectedly filmed.

  “It was a little odd, like it was happening in slow motion.” I rubbed the leg with the scar.

  Ray nodded. His eyes wide, he turned to face me, pivoting on the sofa. His face caught too much light and he looked manic and pale.

  “And when your friend died, you must have been—”

  “Ray.” Emilia threw a cracker at him. “This isn’t one of your workshops.” She smiled and shook her head at me. “He’s in an acting workshop. He tries to get inside others’ experiences and Mal’s death is—”

  “Unique.” Ray took a cube of cheese from his plate and threw it into his mouth.

  I thought of a stupid joke that Mal had told me: How do you catch a unique rabbit? Unique up on him.

  “Losing Mal was one of the worst things to ever happen to me.” I watched a piece of cork float around in my wine. It clung to the side of the glass. Grabbed and carried away by the wine, it stuck somewhere else and hung there for a moment before swirling away again. I knew how the cork felt. I swirled the glass, to give it a chance to get away.

  “Worse than your affliction?” Ray leaned forward, eyes locked on mine. He should be taking notes, I thought.

  “What affliction?” Of course I knew. I wanted to hear him say it. I wanted to hear how he would describe me and what I could do or couldn’t do. I wanted to know how Emilia could stand being in the same room with him for more than five minutes, with his incessant need to own everyone else’s emotions, to drain them out for his own use, for his research. I was like a dissected frog, legs splayed, and he was wiring me up to a battery, hoping to make me dance.

  “Your nerve damage.” He said this as if remarking on someone’s hair color. “And your amnesia. You know nothing of your past. How does all that compare to—”

  “I don’t think of it as an affliction. It’s how I am.”

  “Well, it’s not, you know”—he glanced at Emilia for support—“normal.”

  I can’t recall anyone else ever referring to me as “afflicted” to my face. Even The It, who hated me, had never made me feel like I wasn’t human. He’d called me a freak, but so was he, and a fake one at that, so it had never made me feel like Ray made me feel. This is how I was. I had no other point of reference. How could it make me feel like anything? It was me.

  “Normal?” I put down my wineglass and stood. “You mean, normal like you? With a girlfriend who’s got a self-destructive streak and enjoys tormenting former lovers? That kind of normal? Why don’t you tell me how you feel knowing that she held forks stuck in my back while she screamed beneath me?”

  Emilia shouted at me, “Hey, listen, he’s only interested in your relationship to Mal, not—”

  “Why?” I yelled. I stood in the middle of the room, my fists tight at my sides, my temples throbbing. Other conversations in the room di
ed as my voice rose. “Why the fuck do you care about him?”

  Ray and Emilia shared another private look. No smiles this time, no giggles. Ray’s eyes pleaded with Emilia and she turned away and quietly said, “I thought he knew.”

  “Knew what?” I startled myself with the command in my voice.

  Emilia leaned back. She looked thin again. Around her the light fixtures dimmed from some fluctuation in the lines; the air conditioner’s hum dipped a half step for a moment or two. Shadows cut her face back to its old self. Voice as iced as she could muster, she said, “Ray is trying to get the role of Mal in the movie.”

  Vile words fell from my lips and a woman behind me gasped. I stepped away from fingers that had begun to pull at my shirt buttons, looked down and discovered that the assaulting fingers were my own. I realized what they were up to and looked to see what my words might have done to Emilia. She didn’t respond, but Ray blushed. I lowered my shirt and turned my back to Ray.

  “I want to show you something, Ray. Does she ever talk about these? These scars, the ones near my waist and the middle of my back. Some are her fingernails, some are pins. Or forks. There’s a can opener scar near the small of my back. She used to do this to me while we screwed. Does she do this to you? She got so she couldn’t or, more likely, wouldn’t do it without cutting as foreplay.”

  They stood silent, silent as the crowd behind me. The bulbs buzzed at the warm air around us, but I felt cool, my shirt, still tucked in, now hanging at my waist. Emilia, reddened by the lights or anger, seethed, unable to look up from the floor in front of her. Ray looked everywhere but at her. Michael called to me. I ignored him.

  I pulled my shirt back on. “I wanted to show you that because it’s something Mal knew about. He didn’t understand it, but he knew about it. He knew that she tried to peel skin off me while we had sex, and he wondered why I broke the heart of an amazing woman just so I could fool around with Emilia. Mal liked this other woman, my girlfriend Hiko, and he didn’t get why I did what I did, but he was my friend and he stood by me while I made my mistakes.”