by Todd Grimson
He’s sort of talkative, though he’s not talking fast, but by asking him about different bands on the radio, “Do you like these guys?” Michelle has got him to let out a few opinions here and there.
“Most bands, no matter how long they go on as entertainers, they only have—at most—ten or twelve good songs. One greatest hits album, and that’s usually stretching it. Look at the Kinks. Thirty years, twenty-five albums or so, maybe five, six good songs. One or two for ZZ Top. None for the Dead. It’s really hard. Because the form is so simple, you have to be naive, so the first stuff you do is always your best. As soon as you begin really learning how to play you start to lose it.”
Michelle passes him a length of raspberry rope, rubbery candy from her purse. She’s chewing on some, red against her white teeth. She thinks of the names of bands, and they argue or agree about how many good songs, if any, the band in question ever did.
Neil Young and the Rolling Stones did quite a few.
It’s 7:30. Keith realizes he wants something to eat. Hamburgers? Sure. They stop and invade this kind of fifties retro pink-and-black Elvis Presley and Gene Vincent rockabilly café, with meat loaf and mashed potatoes and gravy on the menu, home cooking that Keith never had at home. He asks Michelle. No. Her mom was into wheatgrass tea and sprouts, tofu and carrot juice, she’s a vegetarian—”I’m not,” Michelle says, and brushes some atmospheric grit or ground glass from her nose. They order hamburgers, and Cokes, and split a side order of fries. Michelle puts catsup all over the fries. Red. The fries look yellow in this light.
Keith has explained (more lies, sort of) that he lives with this rich woman who takes care of him, she’s very jealous but the main thing is that she just doesn’t wanna know, as long as she’s not directly confronted with someone else it can stay cool. She comes home late, Keith says. Michelle doesn’t seem to judge him on this, or think less of him; it doesn’t seem to cross her mind.
She lives in a house, she tells him, along with Jason, Tiff, and Brian. Brian is a student, with a part-time job at the library. Jason works in a record store, Tiff in a computer dungeon. Michelle had a job in an office, answering the phone, but she was fired for tardiness. Then she got her mohawk. So she’s unemployed.
“Do you want to borrow some money?” Keith says, as she sucks Coke through a straw. It’s funny that he should bring it up, because it occurred to him earlier that she might ask him for some; in fact, when he first saw her today, that’s what he imagined was her goal.
“If it’s okay,” she says. She’s a little hostile, perhaps out of shame.
“Here,” he says. “Don’t think about it. It doesn’t mean anything,” he says.
Nevertheless, infected by the exchange of money, they’re not as free with each other the rest of the way.
In front of the pink stucco house, Michelle starts kissing him, at first just to say goodbye. Then as if she’s trying to tell him something. Or just to do it.
As they sit side by side, she says, “Oh God. Do you see those guys there, sitting on the porch? I didn’t notice them before. That’s Fred, the bass player for Saint Agatha. The other one is Ken. I better go. I’ll see you.”
THIRTY-ONE
“Who is that guy you were making out with in the front of the Benz?” Jason asks, with a smirk.
The speakers are blasting rather frantic industrial Brit rap. “Strap down! Get ready! Be refreshed!”
“Why, is Fred really jealous?” asks Michelle, with a certain amount of pleasure, putting on fresh lipstick. She has changed her dress, and put on spiked heels and mesh tights. They’re all going to the Invisible Club.
“You know he is. You choose to make him suffer,” Jason says, like he’s quoting something, putting his hand on her shoulder in the garish orange light.
“Where’s Tiff?”
“She’ll be there. Who is he?”
Strap down! Get ready! Be refreshed!
“Why doesn’t Fred ask me himself?”
Jason leaves, and goes to find the extremely thin Fred, who suddenly tonight is tormented by love. Ordinarily morose, with a hyphenated last name, he believes in the music of Saint Agatha body and soul, it expresses all that he has never been able to say. Right now, he is out back with Ken, listening to Ken tell him some story about ass fucking, meant to shock and show off, that’s just making him more unhappy. Fred is stunned, on vodka and MDA. He’s not bad looking. Jason says something to him, and he comes back inside. When he sees Michelle, she ignores him, then gives him a demonic, infinitely knowing, mocking look that cuts through him like a laser beam. He’s totally smitten. He’d like to beat her up with love. To be transfigured with pity and forgiveness while she crawled and wept, wept with all her heart. They all pile into cars, and whether or not by design he ends up next to Michelle in the backseat, pressed close to her thigh. Last weekend, he wasn’t even thinking about her. She didn’t seem that special. Now … she’s an enigma. He has no idea at all what she thinks. She liked him once, but that seems a mirage.
THIRTY-TWO
Patrick doesn’t understand exactly what’s wrong with Tamara. She was sick this week, and she’s been moody ever since. It’s Friday night, and they’re at a dinner party at the Malibu house of Orlando Newman, the head of the New Economic Policy Studies Institute, where it seems as though Patrick is going to be offered a job. He wants it, too. Although he’s been a stock analyst and market strategist for several years, at heart he is a wonk. He truly believes that he is capable of formulating something new, something that might impact the entire globe in a positive way. What was it Thorstein Veblen said? “To theorize with all the abandon that comes from a complete disregard for the facts.”
Carrying his glass of Liebfraumilch, Patrick slips away from the others, going back up the twisting, freestanding staircase, up into the “tower” room where their host has said he goes to think, to look at the sky. As he feared, he finds Tamara there. It’s even worse than he imagined. She’s been crying. She’s sitting on the floor, face in her hands.
“What’s wrong?” he asks her, sitting down next to her, speaking very softly, with real concern. If she wants to go home, he’ll take her home. People understand these things, these human frailties, or they ought to. Patrick rubs Tamara’s back, between her shoulder blades, trying to reassure.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know what’s going on. I had such a nightmare last night. It really scared me. I don’t seem to be able to get over the impression it made. Patrick, I don’t feel like being a doctor anymore. I’m tired of seeing patients, I can’t face them….”
“Maybe you should take a leave,” he says. “You’ve worked too hard, you’re emotionally exhausted. You identify with their problems—you’re too hard on yourself.”
“I don’t know, Patrick. Maybe you’re right.” Anticipating her needs, he passes her a handkerchief, and she smiles, then uses it to blow her nose. “I’m sorry about this,” she says.
“Don’t be. I’ll take you home.”
“No, you don’t have to. We have to eat, and I don’t mind these people, they’re all right. I’ll put some makeup on.”
Patrick’s appearance is one of composure and reasonableness, not inelegant in his wire-rimmed glasses and short hair. He always appears serene, even a bit slow to react. At the moment, he probably shows nothing, but he’s alarmed. He’s paying attention, and he senses that Tamara is not telling him everything. She is so naturally candid, when there’s a difference, he can detect it. And so he’s torn. His inclination is to be direct, perhaps playful—sometimes it’s a game of theirs, him asking questions, give him just a little bit of data and context and he’s a good guesser—but in this case, somehow this is not the right move. He must be subtle, and watchful, patient, until she gives him some cues. They’ve been above this sort of deception—or kidding themselves.
They eat salad, asparagus, and red snapper, downstairs with the others, watch the sunset and listen to this German fellow discourse on manufactur
ing and changing investment opportunities in southern China. The German has been there. He speaks slowly, provisionally; one can’t tell just what it is that he really thinks. He no sooner suggests a possibility than he postulates the downside, all the bad variables that might occur. A Japanese theorist named Hiroshi interjects.
Tamara gives Patrick a little smile, as if to say the stormy weather has passed, and he smiles back. He doesn’t know what to do. A problem exists, but just what it is remains obscure. He’s helpless before the revelation of his tenderness.
THIRTY-THREE
There is no one in the house. The doors to Justine’s chambers are open. Keith can feel that she is not in here. It’s dark out. He is drawn to her. He misses her. He wants to see her, out in the dark. It doesn’t cross his mind for a second that she won’t know Michelle was here, that they fucked.
His eyes get used to the darkness. There are outdoor lights, but of course she hasn’t turned them on. They aren’t necessary. She can see in the dark very well.
It takes a while, but he finds her. Justine is sitting, in a devout attitude, legs crossed in a half-lotus, under the bougainvillea and bamboo, in the dirt. Keith sits down facing her. Their clothes will be soiled, but that’s not a concern. For the first time in a while, noticing what she is wearing, Keith experiences a pang as if she is his child. It’s totally nonsense, but this emotion passes through him, he is protective, in wonderment… she looks at him, and he touches her cool hand. The air smells like flowers and moist, dark earth. Justine wears this short, light-colored print dress, with a white collar and short sleeves. It’s like a child’s dress. And then she has on tights, navy or black, and her shoes, shoes she can run in. There’s this particular look she has, when she seems to look up, up, and up for no reason, her dark pupils run out of room, Keith has seen this occur when she’s been very blank, or after she has fed, or when she’s trying to remember something and cannot.
“I didn’t know if you would come back,” she says, and he can hear, as one can sometimes, a touch of her lost French.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Keith says, after a few beats.
Justine seems to sigh then, and she turns sideways, to lie down in the dirt. There are traffic noises, hushed, over the hill.
“How could I leave you?” he says.
“I don’t know,” she answers after a while. “I wouldn’t stop you.” She watches her hand, close to her face, in the dirt. “There was a little boy I used to play with, Yves, we all played with him, I was no more than six or seven, he was younger, smaller… slow-witted. He didn’t talk much, just smiled, and yet, when we were in the forest, he didn’t seem so dumb. We caught birds.” Justine picks up some of the dirt, smells it, seems to be contemplating it. “His older sister was ravished by the brigands, when they came through … Gascons, Bretons, Walloons. They robbed us. His sister gave birth to a bastard, and then went deep into the forest … she became a witch. She lived with Mother Jeanne, and then when Mother Jeanne died, she took her place. I saw her burned, tied to a ladder, on a rainy day. I remember how she screamed. It was as though she really did not expect it, and yet, as though she expected nothing else, she more than any of us perhaps understood that the world is merciless and cruel. Afterwards … little brother, Yves, ate dirt. That’s all he would do, so sadly, I saw him … until he died.”
Obeying some inchoate urge Keith pushes Justine over onto her side, onto her back. She does not resist. His hands are so clumsy, he needs two hands at once to unbutton her dress, but he fumbles and then slows down, he unbuttons it almost down to the waist, slides his right hand in, to feel the sleek, soft white skin, the small breasts.
“Your wounds are healed.”
“That is because I am not really flesh. I am made of night-flesh, or dream-flesh … I am not real.”
He lies down next to her. She shows her chaste pleasure in this by touching him, caressing him, running her hand over his back and up over his neck, resting her hand on his cheek.
“In those days, the forests were vast, they stretched forever … and I preyed on vagabonds, or brigands, travelers … during the day I took shelter in a cave.”
“How were you … you’ve never told me anything about how you were bitten.”
“I’m not sure,” she says. “I think it was someone from the chateau. Someone of noble blood. The family was cursed.”
Is she remembering more? Everything is so dark. Keith wishes he could see these memories through her eyes. But then, it is somehow familiar, as though he has had some glimpses in his dreams.
“I knew what was happening,” she says now, “today, when you were with that girl.”
“I thought of you while I did it to her.”
“Don’t say that. What are you trying to do to me?”
“I don’t know,” he says. Lying in the dirt with her, he moves so that his arms are around her, so that he can kiss her face.
“If you want me to, I can bring Tamara here,” Justine says. “You could have her too.”
“No,” Keith says. “You’re the only person I know anymore, in the whole world. A bad idea, isn’t it?”
She sighs, trembling. “You are so painful, you cause me so much pain. I’m constantly—filled with you.”
“Your breath is sweet,” he says, and kisses her, lightly, on the cheek and then the lips. She embraces him all at once, very hard. She holds on, and breathes.
“You make me forget what I am. But then … I have to return, and it hurts.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No,” she says. “It’s all right. It’s good.”
They roll around together, kissing, embracing, there in the darkness, in the dirt.
After a while they both get up. Justine yawns and stretches out her arms. There are so many colors of blackness in the night. She smiles at Keith, a naive smile he’s never seen.
Inside the house, she spins around, arms out, softly singing to herself as she proceeds down the hall. The lights swim together in Keith’s eyes, red prisms and drifting, gold, liquescent, decomposing frames. Does Justine have wings? Does she have scars on her back, where they were cut off? She sings an old song in French, one she may remember from when she was a peasant child, so long ago, before concrete, electric lights, and cars.
PART TWO
THIRTY-FOUR
Sabrina is supposedly more practical than Chase, and she sees this house more in terms of what is wrong with it, what will need to be fixed, than in terms of its history and alleged romance.
Located in the Hollywood Hills, it’s quite old by local standards, having been built in 1923. It combines Pueblo, Mission, and Italian motifs in a structure roofed in red tile and covered with pebbledash gray cement. The house has a rear-garden orientation. The kitchen is on the street side, near the entrance. The rear of the house, by contrast, looks out through oversized windows to the gardens, which are immediately accessible to the rear living room.
The gardens have gone to hell. All the fruit and nut trees, the flowering shrubs, the palms … everything is in sad shape. However, this is the sort of project, indeed, that Sabrina likes to oversee. She speaks Spanish fluently, having spent a great deal of time in Mexico and Latin America, and having lived in Costa Rica at one period for three years. So she can communicate with gardeners, and with the household staff. She’s a benevolent tyrant, or so she believes.
Chase is more of a dreamer, and you can tell him anything, anything might take his fancy for a couple of days. He has at various times been quite taken with the notion of extraterrestrial visitations, or with deep hypnosis to explore past lives. He’s an enthusiast, and not all of his enthusiasms just pass away with a “poof.” One tends not to bring up these seemingly disavowed and forcefully forgotten crazes to him, but he still maintains the conviction, albeit only in private, that he was an adventurous merchant, traveling all over the world in a former life, maybe in 1200 or so. He has had certain dreams which have convinced him this is true.
For all hi
s imagination and even seeming flakiness, Chase is a very hardheaded businessman, and secretive about his affairs. On first acquaintance, it may seem easy to get money out of him. But it is not. Some lawsuit is always pending, and he generally settles out of court, on his terms. His three children from his two former wives are all unhappy about this secrecy and tightfistedness. And yet, they don’t find it wise to burn any bridges, for he may suddenly, out of nowhere, be extraordinarily generous, on a whim.
Sabrina is his third wife, and he is her third husband. She is a professional beauty, more or less. At forty-three, ten years younger than Chase, she looks wonderful. Maybe slightly overtrained, but she has an enigmatic, sensual face. It promises no end of interesting thought, or at least, interesting-looking poses to be struck. She deflates Chase’s sudden enthusiasms. It’s a game both of them enjoy.
The history of this house is as follows: it was built in 1923, for the real estate magnate William Howard Sturdevant (as distinct from the other William Sturdevant), who was a friend of Harry Culver, that is, a subdivider, much given to such sales gimmicks as free lunches, boys’ boxcar races, beautiful baby contests, and a searchlight visible at night for more than thirty miles. Sturdevant had his army of salesmen doing calisthenics and chanting positive-thinking maxims before the busloads of prospective customers arrived, to be greeted by an all-female marching band. Sturdevant was also associated with Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, and of the Tarzana development. But Harriet, Mrs. Sturdevant, fell in love with a World War I veteran with a wooden leg, and Sturdevant, whether or not as a direct consequence, suffered a heart attack and died.
In 1928, the house was acquired by Lawrence “Cosmo” Wheeler, the pilot and aeronautical engineer who founded Aurora Aviation, which manufactured airplane motors and attempted to compete with Lockheed and Douglas in building monoplanes to carry the mail. Cosmo Wheeler married the silent film actress, Daphne Phoenix, and for a short period of time led a very active social life. But his airplane had wing design problems, and repeatedly crashed. Cosmo went broke, Daphne Phoenix left him, and he sold the house in 1932.