“And yet, when push comes to shove, even the mighty Todd is grasping at something he doesn’t believe.” Her voice rings with contempt. “If you’ve somehow found your faith again, let’s call a priest to hear your confession.”
The sight of Jasmine transfixes Todd. Her unbruised and wan unblemished face radiates a pale glow. A tight-fitting sweater, clinging jeans and high-heel blue shoes add to her unearthly sexiness.
“You talked to me. It’s the first time since...”
“Since you killed me?”
“I did not kill you!”
“You lie.” With the force of a rocket launcher, she hurls the knife at him. Todd ducks and it implants into the wall. The thud echoes through the room.
Todd rushes to the dagger. He uses all his might but cannot pull the dagger out. He directs his gaze to Jasmine. Todd is unable to say anything but he watches… yes, he watches.
Jasmine, eyes fixed on Todd all the time, slowly takes off her shoes, one at a time, placing then in front of Todd as he cowers against the wall.
Wary eyes on him all the time, Jasmine takes off her sweater, revealing a shapely, sensual body whose arms are covered in ghastly contusions. A thin string-like bruising surrounds her neck.
“Jasmine, the script called for a man to be out of control. I became that person. That was me.”
Ignoring him, Jasmine seductively takes off her jeans.
“When I play Chopin, I become George Sands’ lover on the island of Majorca. When I play jazz, I’m Herbie Hancock at Carnegie Hall.”
Jasmine strokes her long, lithe legs that are horribly covered with purple contusions.
“Jasmine, stop it.”
Jasmine finally responds, speaking in the tone of the tortured. “Stop it. Stop. I beg you. Stop.”
She continues taking off her clothes until she is fully unclothed. Her body is the dream of a sexual sadist—marvelous perky breasts, svelte, lean body, slender, strong, sensual legs, a face that belongs to an A-list movie star. But it is a beauty poisoned by hideous bruises, scarring and wounds.
Jasmine kisses the melting, terrified pianist, gently pushing her tongue down his mouth, moaning gently. “Do you really want me to stop?”
Todd, unable to speak, shakes his head. “No.”
She takes Todd’s hands and cups them under her breasts.
“You told me that these were your fruits and that I was your Garden of Eden…” She kisses him again. “Paradise was lost… but is found again.”
An irregular tick tock catches Todd’s attention. He looks to the piano and sees the metronome that he used to beat her with sitting on the piano’s music stand. Blood drips from the metronome.
“I kept it for you. So you can use it again.”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“But it did. I witnessed you smiling when you did it.”
Jasmine’s eyes soften with hurt, a love gone so wrong. “Was it just an act, Todd?”
The metronome ticking gets louder and more spasmodic.
Jasmine takes his right hand, taking his fingertips and sliding it onto one of her open wounds.
“Feel it, Todd. Feel me.”
Emotions surging, Todd grabs Jasmine and throws her on the piano. He throws himself onto her but she’s no longer there but...
Todd is lying flat on top of the grand piano at the Double Stars Theater stage.
Jasmine is beside the piano putting on her clothes. “Your turn to do something for me.”
Todd gets off the piano. “What do you mean by ‘do something for me.’ You didn’t like that? Come on. Admit it. It was great, wasn’t it?”
“If we ever got caught doing this, that would be the end of it for me.”
“Or they might want you to do more.”
“You white guys have only one thing on your mind.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s the same thing as Chinese women… What do you want me to do?”
“You know what.”
“I told you already. “No. I just can’t do it.”
“Todd, you must. Acting is not much different than music. Musicians play music, actors play the role.”
“But to be real, you have to do more than play.”
“Then be real.”
Jasmine piles a huge number of sheets of paper into a flowerpot in the middle of the stage.
Todd shakes his head. “This is such a bad idea. Let’s just do another read-through.”
“We’ve read through it forty-seven times. Reading isn’t going to help. I’ve got to act it out.”
“Forty-eight is going to make it better.”
“You don’t know what I’m up against. This is the best role I have ever seen. Every actress in China wants it. If you love me, you must do it.”
“It’s insanity.”
“It’s the real world. I need it and I can’t take it any further just with a read.”
Jasmine lights the paper with a match and the fire begins to flame.
Todd is freaked as the flames leap up. “The theater is going to burn down.”
“It will not. My father taught me what to do.”
“Yeah, but your dad is a million miles away.”
“We must set the mood. Nothing will go wrong if we are careful.”
“It’ll hurt you, Jasmine. Really hurt.”
“Haven’t you learned anything?”
“There is a fine line between reality and illusion and the boundary gets crossed all the time.”
“That’s right and if it doesn’t, it won’t be authentic.”
She partially smothers the fire with a rag and the smoldering flames begin to fill the stage with smoke.
“We’re not going to do this, Jasmine.”
“You don’t want to help me because of Vicky. You want her to get the role. I’m just your sex toy.” She starts crying.
“Jasmine, Vicky and I are just friends. I forgot about her when I met you. Friends?”
“Men cannot be friends with Vicky. You of all people should know that.”
Todd holds her. “There’s nobody but you, Jasmine.”
“You think I’m stupid? How many women have you used that line on?”
Jasmine breaks off from Todd. She folds her arms and taps her foot. “I’ll tell you a secret if you do as I ask.”
“What do you mean? We don’t have secrets between each other.”
Jasmine mocks Todd in a cutesy girly voice. “What do you mean? What do you mean?”
Todd looks at Jasmine, then loses it. He picks up a metronome off the piano and takes a swing at Jasmine, knocking her down.
Jasmine, now fully clothed, bleeds from her mouth, lies on the floor. Todd is still on top of the piano.
“You were alive when I left.”
“I was dying and you ran away.”
Todd speaks in a half-whisper. “The memories of the dead are not infallible. Your memories are not infallible. I did not run away. I went for help. Don’t you remember?”
Todd and Jasmine are in passionate embrace when Jasmine stops and pulls out her cell phone. She is about to punch in a number when Todd grabs it from her.
“Why do you want to call anybody now? Things are just getting interesting.”
“I am an actress but there are certain things I don’t want an audience for. I want Catherine and Vicky to come a little later.”
She kisses the air flirtatiously. “Don’t you?”
Todd hands back the phone. “Call.”
Todd starts taking Jasmine’s jeans off as Jasmine punches in a number. She listens intently but there’s no signal.
“There’s no reception here. It’s a dead spot.”
She puts down the phone. “What if I need to call someone or if someone needs to call me? Or what if they show up early?”
“I’d say we better be quick then, shouldn’t we?”
Todd unbuttons Jasmine’s blouse.
Jasmine is stunned by this remembrance and sits down.
“I had no
other choice but to leave because as you yourself said, the stage was a dead spot for cell phone coverage. Otherwise I would have stayed to help you. That’s the only reason I left. Don’t you believe me?”
Jasmine is silent.
“Don’t you believe me?”
“I just don’t know. I had forgotten about that.”
“You have followed me around the world. Every time you appeared, you were silent. I never knew whether it was you or my imagination wanting it to be you.”
Todd, troubled yet searching, gazes into her eyes. “After all these years, why are you talking to me now, Jasmine? Why?”
A tear rolls down Jasmine’s face. “I am haunted without answers. Shadows, vagaries, feelings, inconsistent memory are all I have.”
Now Todd’s surprised. This goes against anything he’s ever read or thought about. “You’re a ghost. The spirits know everything. You have access to all information. You’ve got to know.”
Jasmine shakes her head. “No, that is a myth made up by those who can never know. Once you cross the river, you can never go back. You are never the same.”
Todd stands silent, then sits beside Jasmine. This is a sensitive topic. “Jasmine, I know you don’t want to hear it but it has to be Catherine or Vicky.”
Jasmine lashes at him. “Catherine’s my stepsister. She adored me.”
“But Jasmine, others can see what you can’t. You’re blinded by family loyalty. Jealousy’s a powerful motive. You were everything she wasn’t. Two hundred pounds, oily hair, Coke-bottle glasses. Zero personality.”
“She was an insecure teenager who needed her parents. That does not make her a murderer.”
“Let’s say you’re right then. There’s no other conclusion than that it’s Vicky. It would have to be her.”
“She’s my best friend. Vicky and I went through everything together ever since we were children in kindergarten. And if she was so wanting to hurt me, if she was so wanting of what I had, why was she the one who helped get me into theater school?”
Todd wipes the tear from her face. “But then I came along. You stole me from her. Do friends do that to friends?”
An upscale coffee shop in Beijing. Contemporary fusion Chinese/Western art is on the walls, Kenny G’s sax is heard in the background and the price for a latte is twice what the robbers at Starbucks charge. Beautiful people hanging in a place to be seen.
Jasmine and Catherine walk in on Todd and actress Vicky Zheng. With her blouse tied to show off her midriff, and exquisite make-up, Vicky looks every bit the star that she wants to be, complete with a touch of scandal with promiscuity.
“Hi, Catherine, hi, Jasmine. Welcome back. What was Vancouver like?”
Jasmine nudges the awkward fourteen-year-old. “Um, Vancouver, well, it’s better than here but it sucks too.”
“What Catherine means to say is that Vancouver has changed since she moved here and it’s hard to recognize anything there.” Jasmine notices Todd noticing her. “Who’s your friend?”
The handsome pianist oozes charm. “Sorry for the bad manners. I’m Todd Mathers. I’m a piano scholarship student at the Beijing Academy.”
“Good to meet you.”
“What did you think of Vancouver, Jasmine? Was it as rainy as everyone says it is?”
“Vancouver was like a small town. Quiet, polite and not a whole lot to do. And yes, it rained the whole time we were there.”
Catherine interjects. “It’s good weather if you’re a duck or a fish.”
Jasmine can’t help but notice Todd still noticing her. Vicky notes that too. Catherine tries to hide an attraction for Todd but she’s a kid—nobody’s paying attention to her.
Jasmine asks coyly, “How do you like China, Todd?”
Todd focuses his attention to Vicky. “I don’t know. How do I like China?”
Vicky wraps her arm around Todd’s torso. “He loves it.”
“There you are. I love it. Great culture, fabulous food.” He kisses Vicky. “Not to mention the hottest chick in Asia. I could live here forever.”
Vicky wrinkles her nose. “Oh, we might have other plans. Forever is too long to ponder about.”
“We? Presumptuous, don’t you think?” Todd gives Vicky a kiss.
“I don’t know. Am I?”
Todd winks. “We might have other plans.”
Todd strokes Jasmine’s arm in a way that neither has ever forgotten. She shudders but does not resist.
“I did not steal you. Vicky left. Your ego was fractured. I caught you on the rebound.”
“No, I left her and she went crazy. Force Vicky to tell you.”
“I have no idea where she is.”
“I do. She is performing at the Rialto Theater, six blocks from here.”
“How do you know that?”
“I have followed her from city to city ever since you died but she has always refused to see me.
Jasmine pushes away from Todd, confused. “You didn’t follow her. I chased you.”
“No, Jasmine. I was going after Vicky.”
“You’re still in love with her? I should have thought of that. Or maybe now that I’m dead, you want some of your old action back.”
“I am going after Vicky because she’s gotta know something that she’s not saying.”
“You never said anything to me.”
“How could I? For the last five years, you haven’t said a word to me. You didn’t know because you never gave me a chance to tell you. You were always quiet.”
“How could I say anything? There’s nothing to say because actions spoke everything.” Jasmine speaks in a tiny, tender voice. “You never even said goodbye. You just ran away and left me alone to die… Why?”
“I didn’t go away. I came back.”
“What?”
On the stage, there’s a crowd of theater types around Jasmine’s corpse, wrapped in a body bag. Even with that, the stench of a violent death pervades, casting an ugly pall. Catherine and Vicky cry hysterically as a policeman interrogates them.
“He killed her. He murdered my sister.”
“Why do you suppose he did it?”
Vicky cries out. “Did you see what he did to her? Only an animal would do something like that.”
“I understand you dated him for a while.”
“He forced himself on me. I was too scared to go against him. Underneath his charm was a volcano, always on the verge of explosion.”
“Where do you think he went? He was not at his apartment. And he was not at the Music Academy.”
“He could be anywhere by now. He must be hiding far from here.”
“You have got to catch him. You will, won’t you? Jasmine was all I had.”
“We will do our very best.”
Hidden in the shadows of the rows of seats, Todd stoops hidden, watching the accusations onstage. “Jasmine, none of that is true. You know that I’m not that kind of person. You know I would never hurt you… I love you, Jasmine. Goodbye.”
Sweating profusely, he inaudibly crawls away.
Todd fondles Jasmine’s few loose strands of her hair on her forehead, staring at her eyes. “Jasmine, I was there. I knew that I could never prove that I didn’t do it so I ran. It was wrong but I didn’t know what else to do. Vicky means nothing to me except that I think she knows something. I would have chased Catherine as well but she’s vanished. I want answers too and Vicky is the only one I can find... is Catherine even alive?”
“Yes... no....”
“Can’t you give me a straight answer?”
Jasmine runs from the room. Todd shouts after her. “You never told me what your secret was!”
Chapter 17
Angela has joined Cam and Liang in the gallery. They focus sight and thoughts uneasily at the flat-screen television, watching Jasmine and Todd argue.
Liang bites hard on his teeth. “He’s still controlling her.” Liang’s eyes anger as he clicks the remote control to turn off the television.
&nbs
p; “Now that’s one idea I can use in a book. Ghost stays in love with guy who made her drink the Kool-Aid. I can see title now—Affairs of the Invisible.”
Angela restrains Liang from smacking the author.
“Keep your panties on, Liang. Just telling it like it is.” Cam turns to Liang, filled with disdain. “You know the drill. Deflect attention from yourself. Obscure and obfuscate. Blame two people; it can’t be yet make it seem as if it must be. Piano Man’s no dummy.”
“It makes perfect sense to blame Vicky. When she won the audition, her career was made. But blaming me for being a troubled teenager… that makes me want to kill him myself.”
“Nobody’s killing anybody.” Jasmine floats into the room. “Todd says he’s innocent.”
Liang speaks sharply. “If you visit a prison, none of the inmates will ever admit that they had committed a crime. They tell that lie so often that they genuinely believe that it was not them.”
Angela singsongs mockingly, twirling her index finger to the side of her head. “Psycho. Psycho. Toddy is a psycho.” She gets serious. “He’s playing you, Jasmine. Everybody can see that but you.”
“Todd raised questions. I pushed and pushed some more. He may not have killed me. It’s a reasonable doubt.”
“His reasonable doubt is to blame me. Oh, all right, it was me. Yes, it was me.” Angela shakes her head in anger. “Todd always knew how to manipulate you. It’s me, no it’s not me, now it’s Vicky and if it’s not Vicky, he’ll say you did it yourself, that you provoked him to kill you because you weren’t brave enough to commit suicide.”
Angela speaks with confident conviction. “Of course he did it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You may not want to trust what I say but you as much admitted that yourself.”
“What?”
“Jasmine. Jasmine. I’m here. Where are you?” Fourteen-year-old Catherine, carrying the single red rose and eyes stinging, struggles to find her way through the shifting smoke on the stage.
An erratic tick tock of a metronome clearly sounds as Catherine coughs out, “Jasmine! Jasmine! Stop playing games.”
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