Violet & Claire

by Francesca Lia Block

  At that moment, right on cue—she did have dramatic timing, I’d say that for Judy—we heard my name being called.

  “Oh shit,” I said.

  Tinker Bell reflexively hid her star.

  “Is that you?” Judy said, opening the door that I had forgotten to lock. “You scared me to death!”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “I thought we were being burglarized.”

  I repeated that I was sorry and that we’d been let out early. She proceeded to repeat that she had thought I was a burglar and that I should be more careful because one of these times she might get really scared and find my father’s gun. As you can see, she is really out of her mind. I used to worry that it might run in the family.

  “Who’s this?” she asked, sizing up my new friend.

  I didn’t want to say Tinker Bell, so I was glad that Tink spoke up and told us. “Claire.”

  It was the right name for her, I thought. Almost as fitting as her nickname.

  My mother lost interest in Claire even before she’d said her name. She walked out, complaining about burglars.

  “It’s like we’re not even the same species or something,” I said.

  “Like Peanuts.” Claire fastened her star onto the end of a ruler from her backpack.

  What was she talking about?

  She explained: the cartoon. “Where the parents are just this waaa-waaa-waaa voice thing.”

  “That’s brilliant,” I said. “Can I use it?”

  She nodded. I made a note on my tape recorder: “Parents. Waaa-waaa-waaa voice thing. Peanuts.”

  Claire touched her star wand to the top of my head and grinned like a slightly deranged young fairy godmother.

  The thing that was so frustrating about my parents the Waaa-waaas was that they didn’t even give me the standard sitcom parent/teen conflict, let alone high drama. It was so boring. (Well, the line about the gun wasn’t totally without merit). Not that I envied children who had been abused, but I had to admit that sometimes I wanted something more, something to explain why I felt so alienated and depressed, except for the times I was living inside the movies. My parents knew nothing about me. They had no interest in cinema. I really did feel as if I was someone else’s child. Maybe the great Italian genius director, Federico Fellini, and his brilliant muse/collaborator/wife, Giulietta Masina, had had a secret baby and, sensing her truculent nature, put her in a tiny boat sailing to America. Maybe someone had found her on the shore and taken her to an orphanage where a rich couple had adopted her. Then, when they brought her home, they realized she was not what they wanted at all. She did not like pastels. She liked only black. She did not make friends with the other children. She began to develop earlier than the other girls. She cut herself with razor blades just to see her own blood. Only the movies saved her, but the Waaa-waaas couldn’t understand this. It was as if they spoke another language. Waaa-waaa-waaa.

  All this would have made fairly interesting material for my script, but not scintillating. And I wanted scintillating. I wanted to scintillate, titillate, mesmerize, hypnotize. I needed, in short, an adventure to remove my writer’s block.

  When I told Claire about it at school the next day she said, “Maybe we could go hiking or something.”

  “An urban adventure,” I explained. I had to get out into the world. The high school Fast Times at Ridgemont High comedy had had its day. Even Clueless, although I had to admit I agreed with Claire about finding Alicia rather sweet in it. But the world was looking for more action. Tarentinoesque. A kind of female Pulp Fiction but with more soul.

  When I told that to Claire she pretended to stab her chest, a la Uma in the Pulp. “I hated that scene with the…” she said.

  It wasn’t a bad impression. “I knew you’d be a good actress,” I told her.

  Just then Steve slogged over. Slogged because of those big pants.

  “How’s the movie going, Violet?” he asked prickishly.

  I answered politely.

  “Is that your new leading lady?”

  We ignored him.

  “She looks just like Sharon Stone. Especially the hair.”

  “And you’re Johnny Depp, aren’t you?” was my retort.

  I guess someone had been helping Steve with his dialogue because he came back with, “I could look like him and you still wouldn’t go out with me. I didn’t know you liked girls.”

  I closed my laptop and we started to leave.

  “I knew it. Dykes.”

  Claire said, “What’s your problem? Why are you so mean?”

  “Why are you so rank?” was Steve’s clever response.

  I told him to fuck off. He said, “Fuck me.”

  We walked away. Claire told me that I should just ignore him.

  “He’s an asshole,” I said. “But he just gave me some great material.”

  When you look at pain as material it makes all the difference in the world. I thought, the pain that is too big to be eased by its use as material would be a pain I couldn’t (and wouldn’t want to) even imagine.

  EXT. CLAIRE’S HOUSE: NIGHT

  Claire and her mother were living in a small stucco bungalow behind a jungle of bamboo and banana trees. I honked the horn and she came racing out with her ponytail bopping around on her head. She was wearing a polka-dot thrift shop dress.

  I used to come to the silent movie theater on Fairfax all the time when I was a kid. Once I ran away from home and tried to live there, but the manager caught me and called the authorities.

  Claire stood in front of the black-and-white mural of Charlie, Buster and Mary Pickford with their deep sad eyes. She did a little imitation of the Tramp. It wasn’t bad. I got the tickets for us and she tried to pay me, but I could tell she was grateful when I wouldn’t accept. Also, she said she didn’t want anything from the concession stand, but I got an extra-large Diet Coke and popcorn anyway, and she asked for two straws and for them to put extra butter on the popcorn.

  The thing about silent films, Claire had told me, is that she couldn’t help talking during them and she hoped I didn’t mind. I’d seen City Lights so often that I figured it would be okay, although usually I didn’t like to be disturbed while contemplating, deconstructing and exploring the semiotics of a piece.

  “Well, at least the talk with your parents will make a good scene,” Claire said when she had gotten me to reveal, after a lot of prodding, what was pissing me off so much. The Waaa-waaas were refusing to send me to film school. They thought I should attend a regular college and go into law.

  “It’ll make a sucky scene,” I said. “That’s not feature-quality drama. It’s 90210 at best.”

  “You could put fairies in the movie,” she said.

  I turned to look at her. What?

  “Fairies,” she said again, “you know.”

  She said it too loud and the couple of guys next to us leaned over and glared. They obviously thought it was a personal dis of some kind.

  “That’s not radical enough anymore,” I informed her. “I mean, that’s prime time now. That’s Melrose Place.”

  “I mean the real fairies,” she insisted, making delicate flapping motions with her arms. She really was on this Tinker Bell kick for some reason.

  “The real fairies?” Yeah right. “What is a real fairy? That sounds very intense.”

  I realized then that Miss Claire was serious about this stuff.

  “Actually, it is, Violet.” (She was miffed.) “Faeries—and that’s a-e-r-i-e, not a-i-r-y—were a race of people who were exterminated. Just like they tried to do in Germany. They were incredibly powerful. The patriarchy turned them into little insects.”

  Her eyes took on a cricket-green glow in the darkness. “That’s pretty cool,” I had to admit.

  The gentlemen beside us had a different opinion. They must have been offended by the fairy thing. Make that faerie.

  “Could you please shutup,” one of them hissed.

  Claire realized the misunderstanding
and started to turn around to explain it to them, but I grabbed her wrist.

  When the movie was over we walked outside, and I told her about how I had run away when I was little, about coming to the theater and wanting to move in there.

  “I figured I could hide out in the bathrooms until they closed and then sneak out and live on popcorn and candy for the rest of my life. Get to know those movies by heart, too.”

  I took a long drag on my cigarette and imagined the smoke turning into winged creatures.

  “That sounds fun,” she said. “Maybe you could write about a faerie who’s caught in this world and she doesn’t belong. It’s so corrupt and all ugly and she wants to be this true-love thing. So she runs away and lives in a movie theatre.”

  It wasn’t bad but it lacked something. “I need more conflict,” I said.

  At that moment we came to a ladder, which I blithely cruised under. Claire pulled me away.

  “I wish you’d stop saying that. It seems like bad luck or something.”

  As she spoke a black cat jumped down onto the ladder, knocking a can of paint off a rung. The red paint splattered down in the place where I would have been standing if she hadn’t grabbed me. I wondered if Claire was my good luck charm, somehow. I felt fearless.

  “Let’s have an adventure!” I said.

  When I was thirteen I went through this whole Goth phase. Death rock. Skulls and crossbones. That’s when I first dyed my hair black, although it was much shorter than it is now, and started smoking cigarettes. I called myself Vile. That was when I cut my arms with a razor blade as a means of creative expression. I only did it lightly, just grazing the skin, to see the way the blood would bleed out, to make myself look tougher. Not like some of those kids who keep going deeper and deeper, wondering what they look like down to the bone, because it’s a world that’s so close and yet so far and so dangerous and so much their own. The only world that is their own. I wasn’t that gone. But it did get pretty bad. The worst part was when things started to blur and stir in my head and I thought I might be becoming like Judy. I thought there were men trying to get in the house or watching me when I walked to school. I had headaches and trouble breathing, and once I got sent home for talking to myself in homeroom; I don’t remember it, though.

  Movies literally saved my life then. I had briefly entertained the notion of becoming president when I grew up. This was in sixth grade. I wanted to change the world. I was disgusted by what I saw on the news, but not defeated by it. I believed in myself.

  It’s weird what happens to girls at a certain point in their lives. One moment they’re these tough little things, racing around, jabbering, excited about just waking up to see what else is new in the world. Everything just opening for them, it seems like. That was how I felt. And then suddenly I was Vile. I hated everyone. I never spoke in class. I gave up wanting to be president.

  Actually, I wanted to die. It came right around when I had my first period. No one explained to me about PMS or anything. My mother gave me Midol for the cramps and said, “Congratulations, welcome to the Curse.” Once she got mad at me for not wrapping up my used tampons carefully enough when I threw them in the garbage. Vile, you see.

  That was when I started smoking and stopped talking and just changed completely. That was when the only thing that soothed me was the movies. I began to believe in them more than in the world. Now Claire made me feel the way they did.

  I hit PLAY, and the PJ Harvey CD started up. Claire and I jolting with music as we drive through the air that was so sweet with jasmine and honeysuckle it could have been golden or silver.

  I didn’t feel afraid of anything. I felt like when I was twelve years old. I had this best friend, Mandy Appleman. She was a real character. She thought I was the cat’s p.j.s. “You’re going to be the next Antonioni, Violet,” she’d say. “Unless of course you decide to be president.” We wore boys’ boxer shorts and insisted we would never shave our legs when we got older. We made huge batches of cookie dough, half of which we consumed raw, the other half of which we baked and then gorged upon. We discovered old punk rock albums from the eighties and played them as loud as possible, slamming around my room until we collapsed with exhaustion, having burned off all the cookie dough. She was even skinnier than I was. We were proud of our boyish bodies, our flat chests. It was like we had wheels on our feet and psychic antennae for each other. Supernatural rolling girl aliens. Until she moved to New York. I was devastated, I exaggerate not. Suddenly I was in junior high, I was Vile, I was smoking cigarettes every day. Really, since Mandy Appleman I hadn’t even had any friends. I had breasts which gave me power and made me endangered simultaneously. I had no friends. Until Claire. My insta-friend. Claire made me feel brave.

  With PJ still wailing and the air still glinting with fragrance, we drove to the Red Cherry, which was this transvestite bar in Hollywood that I’d always wanted to check out. A red neon cherry was flashing on and off inside a neon cocktail glass over the door. I donned my shades and lit a cigarette before we went in. Claire looked a little nervous. I reassured her that our fake i.d.s (I’d gotten her one, too) would work.

  The girls in the Red Cherry were tremendous. Emerging from clouds of red smoke, they looked like superfreak goddesses with the longest legs and manes of synthetic hair. I was just wondering if any of them would be interested in sharing their stories with us when ESMERALDA (here I want to capitalize her name as in a film script—it was that kind of entrance, very dramatic) rolled up to us in her wheelchair. Her makeup looked like cake frosting applied with a spatula, and she wore a cherry-red bubble wig. Her emaciated, twisted body was sheathed in a revealing black cocktail dress and there were spike heels on her gnarled feet.

  “Hello, ladies,” Esmeralda intoned, in a voice that was both growling and shrill, somehow.

  I said hello and she asked, “What, pray tell, are you doing at La Maraschino?”

  I tried not to miss a beat. “We’re going to be making a movie.”

  Esmeralda’s eyes lit up like neon cherries. “Oh really! Well I’ll have you know that you are speaking to a full-fledged film star. Really! I’ve done everything! I’m brilliant if I do say so myself.”

  “I think you’d be perfect for my film,” I assured her. You didn’t find a girl like her around everyday. I thought about Claire’s faerie theory. Esmeralda could have easily been part of some other race, banished underground and now emerging in disguise to reclaim her birth rite.

  “Bless your heart,” she said, extending one gnarled and perfectly manicured hand adorned with a serious rock. “Want to see my wedding ring?”

  Claire took the hand gently in her own and examined the ring. “That’s pretty.”

  Esmeralda batted the false eyelashes that looked so heavy I wondered how she kept her eyes open under their weight.

  “Thank you, sweetheart. I’m engaged to a man named Elvis. He’s a real hound dog. What’s your movie going to be about?”

  “We’re not sure yet,” said Claire.

  I gave her a look, but she didn’t seem to get it. I realized that I’d have to make sure she didn’t talk about the project too much without my coaching.

  “Sounds fascinating!” Esmeralda said with a growling but somehow shrill snort. “Why don’t you make it be about this absolutely stunning young lady who once had a very silly willy wonka. A very bothersome diddley dee. But then she meets this dashing gentleman and he finances the operation and presto! No more flippery flap!”

  We were both trying to take this all in when MATILDA (I cannot resist the caps), a hugely muscled six foot tall bleach blond African American trans, slunk over on sinewy espresso legs in shimmery sheer cream stockings.

  Esmeralda introduced her to us and Matilda said, “Girlfriend, are you saying shocking things to these ladies?”

  “She’s very interesting,” I assured Matilda. “We’re making a movie.”

  “Really?” Matilda’s primping was an automatic reaction to this. She was, after al
l, a Hollywood girl. “What’s it about?”

  Before Claire could spoil things I told her. “Well, it’s going to be kind of an allegory utilizing very poetic imagery but with a gritty edge of realism.”

  Esmeralda and Matilda frowned. “Hmmm,” Matilda hummed. “Why not make something about us! We’re very popular in Hollywood these days. They made like two movies about girls with the very same plot! And one of them had big stars in it.”

  Esmeralda looked as if she were going to spit. “You would have been better than that one actor, though!” she exclaimed. “I mean, who would ever cast him? No style, whatsoever. Like a football player on Halloweenie.”

  Claire was cracking up, but I tried to be professional. “Well if I were going to make a movie about girls like you I’d cast girls like you,” I assured them.

  Matilda grinned at me. “Would you ladies care for a drink? We can discuss the biz.”

  I could see Claire hesitating, about to excuse us, so I elbowed her (adventure!) and told Matilda we’d be delighted.

  After a few drinks we were dancing like maniacs with Esmeralda and Matilda. Claire had loosened up and was pushing Esmeralda’s wheelchair around and around a man whom we will call ELVIS (definite caps) here. Esmeralda blew him kisses as she passed, which he deftly caught and inserted into the breast of his blue and silver spangled suit.

  “Love interest!” Esmeralda shouted as Claire spun her around me.

  “What?”

  “You need a love interest,” she hollered above the Donna Summer song. “Every good script has love interest!”

  She was right. So did every good life. Therefore, neither my script nor my life would qualify.

  I was cheered by the thought that if I found love interest I would most certainly also find the conflict that I was so adamantly pursuing.

  Later, as we were about to leave, I overheard Esmeralda talking to Claire. “And what do you do on this film, Missy?”

  “Violet wants me to be in it.”

  “Another actress!” Esmeralda exclaimed.

  “Not really.” Claire shuffled her feet. I realized we’d have to work on her reply. She added, “What I really like to do is write poetry.”