Astonished Dice

by Geoff Cochrane

  I may be only a lousy dialogue coach (whatever one of those is), but Eleanor Coppola confides in me. ‘We’re eating mangoes and swatting mosquitoes. This is the moment I’ve dreamed of being present at. Francis is revealed as the conceptual artist I’ve been longing to know.’

  The director himself takes a different view. ‘This is crazy shit. We’re in the jungle, we’ve access to too much money and too much equipment, and little by fucking little we’re going insane!’

  Our most important set is wrecked by a typhoon. Martin Sheen has a heart attack and his brother is hired to stand in for him. We’re shooting a key battle sequence (a complex aerial ballet) when the government choppers on loan to us are called away abruptly. And when in the fullness of time Brando arrives, he proves to be overweight and underprepared. ‘How can he let me down like this?’ Francis anguishes.

  ‘He’s too fat to play Kurtz?’ I ask.

  ‘Kurtz is supposed to look … like Kurtz is supposed to look.’

  ‘Like tall?’ I suggest.

  ‘Tall we can do. We’ll shoot Pete Cooper from behind. We’ll use Pete Cooper as Marlon’s body double. Perhaps you can teach him that bumpy grindy thing Marlon does with his hip.’

  ‘Bumpy grindy thing?’

  ‘And see what you can do to get Marlon reading. I want him steeped in Conrad’s sombre prose.’

  And thus it comes to pass that I school the great actor in Heart of Darkness. (‘“Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on tile earth and the big trees were kings.”’) We sit at a table outdoors, Brando savours a local risotto, a helium moon of lipstick pink ascends, those violin spiders are everywhere gestating—and I am gravid with the sick suspicion that

  Sin City

  The Yanks were still in Vietnam, killing and being killed. On the streets of Wellington, Ashley Gibb was feeling the need for warmer clothing. Winter had come and he’d donned a pullover. A Nehru shirt and a tatty grey jumper—that was his whack.

  Though he didn’t quite see her as being a woman, Rebecca was the girl he’d always wanted. She wore blouses of a spooky Persil whiteness. She filled her jeans nicely, was careful about the freshness of her tops. And her blue eyes were moist and healthy looking; they photographed you through a coating of bright fluid.

  Dalton had position, clothes, a troubled wife. Never quite at home among the hippies, the older guy had scored this gorgeous hippy chick. ‘We’re drinking in the other bar, Ashley. Perhaps you’d like to join us.’

  It was all the same to Ash. His thoughts were governed by the smug conviction that he could never succeed with Rebecca. When she saw him approaching she seemed to darken, slump into deflation and disgust. It was almost a blush, this murky frown of hers, this swampy look of skirmish and bloodshed. ‘Not you again, you jerk.’

  ‘Dalton asked me over.’

  ‘And you had to come, of course. You’re a fucking ningnong, Gibb.’

  She used an oil or lotion, the scent of which reminded Ash of fennel. Her face was somewhat gaunt, her long cheek a lilac-tinted shadow. And her cheekbones were high and prominent, seeming to lift her face toward you with a tilt, an upward proffering. But though he saw her clearly enough (as if through that enhancing film which bathed her own quick eye), Ash didn’t stand a chance, he hadn’t got a bolter’s.

  College had ended badly. College had ended in failure and shame. He’d already put a couple of jobs behind him (cleaning windows, humping freight), placements in which he’d been of no more use than the next bloke. At present he was living on his wits—cadging, making do. He trudged the wet pavements, read novels in the New Zealand Room. Sometimes he craved a pie, a crumbed sausage, a fried egg. More often than not, he craved alcohol.

  Where did he sleep? It was anything but clear, even to himself. From day to day, a new place emerged as a likely destination for the night ahead. A couch would do, a floor.

  In certain lights, the city looked tenebrous, bat-ridden. On cornices and ledges and the tongues of mild gargoyles, Dickensian soot accumulated. And a single grotty pub was where it was at. Its carpets were sodden, sticky with filth.

  On this particular evening, a cold southerly was keeping folk at home. Ashley, broke, was standing at a leaner. Out of his line of sight, Rebecca was drinking in the adjacent bar. When she passed him on her way to the Ladies, he envied her her glossy yellow parka, the supply of beer to which he had no access.

  She returned from the toilet. She curled her lip. ‘What does it feel like, being such a drongo?’

  ‘I wish you’d change the record.’

  ‘The arse is hanging out of your jeans.’

  ‘Be cool,’ said Ash, ‘and shout us a jug.’

  ‘Your skinny white arse is on display, Ashcan.’

  She was gone for less than a minute. When she returned, she was holding a full glass. ‘“For what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful.”’ Standing on tiptoe, she emptied the contents of the glass all over his head.

  He wore the fizzing, icy stream of ale. ‘Thanks very much. What’s your next trick?’

  They found a taxi at the rank in Bond Street. There were golden saxophones in Shand Miller’s window. Ash was conscious too of Rebecca’s bag, its variously coloured scraps of suede. And when they got to Brooklyn and her flat, he saw that her bedspread was made out of scores of Peggy squares. Pinks and blacks predominated. Among the things she owned were a wee tin of Tiger Balm, a flash Bernina sewing machine and The Third Eye by Lobsang Rampa.

  Her lashes printed shadows on her cheeks, tiny lilac forks. Yes, the tines of her lashes pierced you, hooking you securely. And oh how very major seemed her lavish nudity! ‘Have you had many chicks, Ashley?’

  ‘Never one as pretty as you.’

  ‘I want your baby-seed. Squirt me full of baby-seed, sweetheart.’

  Later she would claim that he’d given her her first proper climax. And that was how they first got together, in the days before young Ash began to drink in earnest.

  Burning

  ‘You haven’t finished your soda pop,’ says Ernest.

  Scott glances out at the airfield. A silver airplane is waiting. Rain billows in across the tarmac, a huge fund of wetness falling from a great height.

  Ernest frowns. ‘This picture you’re working on. What’s it about?’

  ‘It’s a boxing picture for John Garfield.’

  Ernest smiles. ‘What do you know about boxing?’

  ‘Not much. But I sat in a projection room and watched all the boxing pictures ever made.’

  ‘All the boxing pictures ever made?’

  ‘There’s been a few. We’re encouraged to borrow certain elements.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘There are sources and we use ’em. I suppose it’s like the Elizabethan theatre. Think of the London theatre of Shakespeare’s day.’

  ‘Drunkenness and plagiarism rife?’

  Miss Craig returns from the buffet. Her nurse’s uniform is largely hidden by her coat. Scott takes her hand, rubbing it as if to warm it up. ‘Bid farewell,’ he says, ‘to Mister Hemingway.’

  ‘It’s been a pleasure,’ says Ernest.

  Scott dons his hat. A press photographer with a Speed-Graphic captures the moment, pop. ‘Any message for your public, Mister Fitzgerald?’

  In brown fedora and coat of beaver cloth, the scribe looks like a thinnish rodent begging. ‘Miami’s a swell town. I hope I’m able to drop by again.’

  The props of the DC-3 are spinning, grinding the rain to a slipstream of mist. Fitzgerald and his nurse board the aircraft. ‘You’re acting kind of fishy,’ says Miss Craig.

  ‘The inside of a plane is very like a church.’

  ‘I’ll bet that damned beard slipped you a bottle.’

  ‘I can almost see portholes of stained glass, little vases like stoups.’

  The DC-3 takes off. The bottle of bourbon emerges from the coat. He’s quiet at first, but soon a lea
den malice clouds his eye. The difficulty is, it’s nearly time to give him his injection. ‘You’ve been so good of late,’ the nurse ventures.

  ‘Pressures build. I’m having a little slip.’

  ‘Put that hooch away and try to get some sleep.’

  ‘You won’t want to give me my jab?’

  ‘It’s all right to skip it if you’re resting.’

  Anything to avoid a fuss. But the lightning and turbulence begin. She knew it would come to this. She watches him swig at his juice, the cunning Mister F, his eye gone as queer as an oyster. ‘You’re a good kid,’ he says.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You may be as glamorous as hell, but you’re more than just another pretty face.’

  ‘You sure are a charmer.’

  ‘Why, certain women you meet, they’re like a record with a blank on one side.’

  ‘Really?’

  The porthole is black—and then the incandescence of sheet lightning.

  ‘I’m like a broken phonograph,’ says Scott. ‘From time to time I leak a scratchy tune.’

  ‘Keep drinking and it’s death. Death or insanity.’

  ‘Before that comes a little mild success, a little mild failure. In Hollywood you get to see what real success buys you.’

  The turbulence worsens. Scott struggles to get up, stands at last in the aisle with his bottle in his fist. ‘I’d like a word with the pilot,’ he tells the stewardess.

  ‘The captain’s got enough on his plate right now.’

  ‘Sit down before you fall down,’ says the nurse.

  Scott changes colour now, a newt turning albino. The blood drains from his head—in an instant, utterly. ‘Indulge me, honey. I want to see the cockpit.’

  The plane bucks. Then plunges. Scott Fitzgerald comes a mighty cropper. The women pick him up, restore him to his seat. ‘Don’t chide me, please, Miss Craig.’

  ‘I won’t if you’ll behave.’

  ‘I once had capital. I once knew a great many stories, but I’ve told them all and now I’m just like you.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself, buster.’

  Scott leans back in his seat and closes his eyes. His girlish lip is moist, a violet Cupid’s bow. It’s rumoured that his wife’s a troubled woman, passing her days in a leafy asylum. When God’s lightning flares, it’s almost like a mad face at the porthole. The nurse thinks she can smell something burning, fancies a lethal fire is somewhere being kindled.

  Liberty

  Commander Byrd had just flown over the South Pole. The Graf Zeppelin was crossing the Atlantic regularly. As to Wall Street, well …

  Paco’s chief concern was to keep his grey suit pressed. He stood in the kitchen sans his jacket, waiting for the iron to get nice and hot. ‘Steam from an iron. Who would have thought it?’

  Rudolph was tuning his guitar. ‘This impresses you?’

  ‘This goes very deep,’ the Spaniard told the busker. ‘In all of Andalusia is nothing like this hissing appliance.’

  A further cascade of junk mail hit the floor in the hall. Rudolph returned to the kitchen with his arms full of sticky-leaved brochures, mentholated chewing gum, sachets of hair conditioner. ‘Of shit like this, embarrassing surfeit. While guys queue for soup and sleep in cardboard boxes!’

  The Spaniard had begun to ply the iron. ‘The lily have sleeves in which she hide her young.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’’

  But Paco had said what Paco had said. And the moon he saw that night on his way to work was a horse’s skull chalkily drawn. It made him want to cram his mouth with chilled pebbles. For love of a Russian busker with blond hairs on his legs, I have abandoned much. But for the love of the blond hairs on the legs, I might have become a sign-writer. A virtuoso of the brush. In the great tradition (no?) of Velázquez and Goya.

  At Brooklyn Wesleyan, his first job was to trolley a stiff to the morgue. (Going in there earned you a few extra cents.) By the time he got back to Emergency, things were hotting up. Here you had it all, from burns and broken bones to strokes and heart attacks. Childbirth and dementia. Dog bites and the punctures made by human teeth. The bullet wounds came in two calibres: .38 and .45.

  Clauson wore pink scrubs. Clauson did Demerol and clocked off on the dot. For the duration of his shift, however, Clauson worked with skill and compassion. ‘Stand by to get ready, Paco. Some guy’s on the loose in a McDonald’s.’

  ‘A disgruntled former employee?’

  ‘They took back his dinky tie maybe.’

  2 a.m. Into the gloomy bay downstairs, green-and-white ambulances began to roll. Such was the number of casualties, triage was attempted right there in the basement. Paco saw an injured cop from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, a settler with an arrow through his sleeve, a brown charioteer all galled and spurned, his body a single messy wound. And Clauson was like: ‘Can we make it snappy with that fucking plasma?’

  The one just getting in and the other going out, Paco and Rudolph met at breakfast. Rudolph was wearing a skimpy towel bathrobe. How numerous and golden were the hairs on his legs! The shy Spaniard hoped to cop himself a feel, but the Russian seemed intent on continence.

  Over bagels and coffee, they watched the television. Venting a blizzard of fluttering debris, a rocket climbed a tower. ‘I’m expecting a call from Hollywood,’ said Rudolph.

  ‘From Hollywood. Of course.’

  ‘You have some sort of problem with that?’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘Disney are making the next James Bond. They dig the theme I wrote, they’ll fly me to their Burbank studios.’

  ‘Maybe they like your demo tape, maybe. But in Hollywood is avarice and cunning. Sipping at their green cigarettes, the mild demons gloat.’

  ‘What’s eating you, my sorrowful Paquito?’

  ‘My heart trembles like the injured sea horse. America boasts docks and avenues and skyscrapers. America shows to the world nickel and tin foil, jazz and cocktails, but America is poor. New York is Senegal with machines. At bottom is only so much slime and wire. I make no allusion for the moment to those sinister boroughs in which living poets are jinxed by Chinamen and caterpillars.’

  ‘You long for Asquerosa? Romilla?’

  ‘Verily.’

  On his way to work that night (snow had begun to totter down), Paco bought a copy of the Saturday Evening Post. Was Norman Rockwell greater than Velázquez? I’ve fallen for Mr Rockwell’s pictures. Perhaps if I enrol again in classes …

  To the hospital there came civilians deafened by bombs. Innocents afflicted by necrotising fasciitis. Citizens fleeing lambent piles of waste and fizzing pools of chemicals. An astronaut checked in who confessed to having a small plastic Superman lodged in his rectum. ‘Merry Christmas, Paco,’ said Clauson.

  ‘And to you the same, I’m sure.’

  ‘Coming to the staff bash?’

  ‘I’m holding this carotid closed at present.’

  ‘New Year’s Eve it is. There’ll be lakes of ethanol. Stick with me and I’ll get you hanged, kiddo.’

  Not till 3 a.m. did Paco get a break. He drank a Coca-Cola and gazed out of a second-storey window. The slow snow of Brooklyn was puffed against hoardings, wafted through fake Gothic arches. Out there somewhere was Rudolph, busking for dimes even at this hour, waiting for Disney to ring him on his yellow Motorola. How glittery and blond the hairs on his legs, alas. And oh how Paco’s heart pulsed like some transparent marine creature, some frilly, floaty thing made of jelly.

  Running the Cutter

  The house buckles and shrinks. No landlord ever visits.

  Clint rises early. Using the mauve he found under the sink, he paints a bit more of the kitchen. Runs out of paint and goes out the back. Dabbles about at the tap in the yard, rinsing the brush and washing his hands.

  He leaves the brush to soak in the ice-cream container. Makes a mug of coffee and takes it through to the bedroom. ‘I’m off out, Kylie.’

  She’s feeding the baby. It’s a funny
little baby with tiny fingernails.

  ‘We need more nappies, yes?’

  ‘You’ll notice I’ve left the Zip. The Zip and the doors I’ll do a different colour.’

  ‘Whatever,’ says Kylie.

  It’s a humid sort of morning, brightly overcast. He never tucks his shirt in, not Clint. In baggy pants with pockets on the thighs, he’s off to town and the house of Father Ambrose.

  A fence of grey timber. Cabbage whites and monarchs duck and dive. And here’s the spot where the other kid was murdered, stomped because he had the purple hair and the green fingernails.

  The presbytery is full of Russian seamen. They sniff the sweet air of the harbour and jump ship. One inhabits a cupboard under the stairs. ‘Help yourself to porridge,’ says Father Ambrose.

  ‘Where will your ministry take you today, Father?’

  The good priest is Greek Orthodox. He was once an electrician from Petone. ‘I have to take Yuri to the dentist. Also, there are voles in my beard. And I say unto you, Clinton—Would that these sad facts were otherwise.’

  ‘Alvays the sod focts,’ says Vlad, rolling the kid a cigarette.

  Clint would like a job as an extra in a film. Quiet on the set. That’s lovely, Keanu. Cut and Check the gate and Print it, Melanie.

  Tim does the dishes at Fidel’s. Aaron washes cop cars in the basement at Central. In a room at the back of a house on Walnut Street, Ho is building himself a time machine.

  There’s a rubble of electronic junk. From braided wires to pulse modulators, klystrons to cathode-ray oscilloscopes. Nothing is housed, you understand. And Ho’s use of duct tape is famously promiscuous.

  ‘How’s it hangin, Ho?’

  ‘I’m reconfiguring the joystick.’

  ‘Trust me to barge right in.’

  ‘I’ve begun to get a little sympathetic resonance. A wee touch of shiver in that second hemisphere.’

  ‘Sounds gross.’