Lomita For Ever

by Trevor Eve

  ‘It is to do with being broken and the need to be mended, which I recognise in you.’

  She said in a matter-of-fact way.

  ‘Maybe if you want a bare-bones answer that is why I am doing this. As I think I told you when we first met, I get unhappy and this makes me happy, my sweet. It’s selfish.’

  She smiled.

  ‘Give me a good reason as to why I shouldn’t, anyway, as a compassionate human being.’

  The throat murmured again. Her laugh on the point of arrival.

  ‘I came here and wanted to fulfil my dreams like everybody who comes here. But you want to change the course of history. To make something out of someone else’s shattered dreams. I don’t think that is possible.’

  She changed her thought.

  ‘I don’t think that has any basis in sanity and reality.’

  ‘My father you are talking about? Why not? He was ruined.’

  ‘Was he? Was he really? When I came here, I can’t remember if I told you, I went to see a man who had given me his card, back in Pittsburgh, my home town, when I was sixteen, you know, to get me into motion pictures, and I got photographs done. Head shots, as they call them for audition purposes. And they did get me auditions, but no work. No work resulted from me schlepping around town, except I got to know my way around. I got nothing in the world I dreamt of being in, the world of motion pictures. And I became what was known as a glamour model. I had to earn money, and gradually the movies were slipping further from my grasp. I got taken to clubs and asked to strip, which I never did. The Whisky was the club I remember the most. Not the A Go Go, that was later. And there I met a man, Roberto dePirizone.

  ‘You did tell me this.’

  ‘Did I? I must be getting old. How embarrassing. It’s the Vicodin.’

  ‘But go on, it’s OK.’

  Ever said, rather distantly, as the third spoon of soup was fed into his mouth.

  ‘The boss of the Cosa Nostra in Los Angeles. The mob.’

  ‘I get it. I remember, you have told me this.’

  ‘Well it’ll take repetition, believe me. I was—’

  She said, holding the spoon, steadily, in mid-air between bowl and mouth.

  ‘A gangster’s moll.’

  That laugh, again, started in the back of her throat: she was amused at this description of herself.

  ‘And I had a certain profile, I was exceedingly beautiful, although I say so myself.’

  Ever needed no effort of imagination to support the belief.

  ‘Then I got a screen test for a movie, at least that is what I thought it was going to be, and I was excited to have something on film that I could show people. I didn’t tell you this bit?’

  ‘No,’

  Ever, uncertain himself.

  ‘You know, something to show people what I could do. I arrived and was given something, a coffee or whatever to drink, but they had drugged it. What followed was the lowest point in my life. It was a stag movie, fifteen minutes long, and those kinds of movies were only allowed to be shown in private clubs. I had the thought once, I think, and I don’t know why, of showing it to you, but I watched it again recently and realised it was an impossible idea. Out of the question.’

  She had returned the half-full bowl of soup to the tray that rested on the bed between them.

  ‘I was living at the time at the Hacienda Hotel and that cost, not a lot, but it cost. So I was desperate to work. But in this, which was not a screen test, I was raped by two men. And that is all I can tell you. The point of what I am saying is that Roberto heard about this and paid money for the film, well that’s what he said, anyway, and I have it in my possession to this day, the one copy. But what I am talking about, is the revenge, the attempt to change my status, to eradicate what was the truth in my case. That I had no talent. And I am getting to that.’

  Ever had started to speak, he wasn’t sure what he was a going to say but felt the moment demanded a comment and was relieved when she said,

  ‘Let me finish.’

  And then, after a brief pause, acknowledging the abruptness of her command, a please followed.

  ‘He had a saviour complex, I imagine, and asked me to marry him. My only condition was already dealt with, that he get hold of the film, you know, buy it or whatever. I was relieved at the time to be rescued, as that is what it felt like. I was by now, in my mind at least, just a whore. The next part I did not want to happen.’

  Lomita again shifted in her chair, this time more to alleviate her doubt at continuing.

  ‘He had the legs of the producer and the director and the cameraman smashed to splinters with baseball bats and the two actors were shot. Killed. Those three men spent the rest of their lives in a state of terror in wheelchairs. Did I feel better? Did it make things any better? Was my talent or status altered?’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me my father has no talent?’

  Ever presented this with no aggression, but with an empathy to her story, and strangely an ironic smile.

  Lomita didn’t take it negatively, but she took a calming breath to regain any composure that might have been lost by Ever’s question.

  ‘No, I have no idea if he does or not.’

  She put herself back on the tracks.

  ‘I have had this feeling only once before in my life, do you have any idea what it is like to be with someone who has done that kind of thing, in your name, in your name, for you, does it help? No, it causes a pain, a disturbance that kills something, deadens your soul, it is unbearable to be around someone who is capable of doing that. Would your father want to be around you if you took revenge like that for him? When you are in the presence of that, that degree of imbalance, of mania, disturbance, don’t you understand, anybody of sane and sensitive mind cannot be around that kind of person. You become helpless in that situation, you do not want to be in the presence of that person, because that person, by going there and doing that, even if, like you, it’s just in their mind, they’re still corrupted, it becomes impossible to be with that person.’

  Lomita twisted in her seat, stretched a little, exhaled and shook her head at the memory.

  ‘I feel drawn to you in the way I was drawn to Roberto and it scares me to think that it happened once and could happen again. What does that say about me? I then could not love him because of what he did, I couldn’t help, I had no power, but now I can and do and then we can remain in each others’ lives.’

  She stopped and shook her head again, this time momentarily embarrassed at what she had just said.

  ‘If not with me,’

  Another pause.

  ‘You can at least remain in someone’s life, your wife, your child, otherwise you can’t, don’t you understand? You remove yourself from the possibility of being loved by decency, by decent human beings. I don’t want that for you; please, never never, don’t let it happen, not twice in my life, this time I can help, I can have control. I beg you.’

  During her increase in passion her voice had not risen in volume and she could see that Ever was drifting now in and out of a sleep. She threw in the words now as a ball tossed to a disinterested dog.

  ‘Oh God, I am, first off, not trying to tell you anything, just everything, really.’

  The emphasis was on the word, trying.

  ‘I am saying that actions do not change the internal mechanism of a person, of a feeling. When they are done like that, for them. It doesn’t alter the outcome. The reality. They are merely actions, but they are performed with a consequence.’

  She didn’t know whether to continue or not.

  ‘I am listening,’

  Ever sensed her dispirit.

  ‘We had only been married six months, Roberto and me. Would you like more soup?’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll do it if I want more. You talk.’

  Ever didn’t move, he was struggling through his drowsiness to stay awake. It was like driving a car in the rain at night: forcing his eyes to stay open and losing the fight.
/>   ‘It was after six months of marriage, when Roberto raped his underboss’s wife. I am not in any way condoning his action, but you can imagine sex was not a favourite pastime of mine. But you see I was not capable of being with him; he had done it all for me, done it, but it was an act of cruel insanity and who wants to be with that, that is what you live with. Nothing else, you are alone for all time if you do that.’

  She decided to lighten her story as she was most definitely losing him to sleep and introversion.

  ‘My name in the film, by the way, my credit, if you could call it that, was the name Sunny Rose Ray, funny eh? No sun was shining that day or ever again for Sunny Rose Ray. Are you with my story?’

  There was no reply. She continued regardless. Sunny Rose Ray, the name, had dropped him off into, maybe, a happy doze. No rain now at least.

  ‘Anyways the underboss, Diego Vialli, as a result of the rape, shot his wife and then himself. After that my husband, God I can’t believe I called him that, I’ve erased that connection for so long, strange feeling, anyway his leadership of the mob was questioned, they had lost confidence in him, and the police got hold of him and for two years they had him in court for everything they could think of, but in the end, in 1970, the only thing they managed to pin on him was that he was an illegal immigrant and he was deported back to Italy.’

  Lomita was now surveying the room while talking, as if she might never see it again. With a disbelief, probably, that she had come this far.

  ‘He had enormous difficulty, as you can imagine, getting any of his money out of the US and during the trials we were transporting the money, can you believe it, all of it in about eighteen trips to our house in Palm Springs. He buried it in a vault that he and my second husband-to-be – he was the accountant – had built underneath the terrace. When Roberto got back to Italy, obviously with the intention of returning eventually, to claim the money, he was shot by Vialli’s family. And yes, you’ve guessed it.’

  Ever was fading from exhaustion and showed no reaction to the statement. He was not capable of taking in any more. He was asleep.

  ‘I was left with all that money. Twenty million dollars. Which was why I remarried.’

  Lomita looked into the middle distance and with the option of stopping, carried on, talking to herself.

  ‘The accountant, it was a perfect political partnership, with his knowledge we cleaned the money through venture capital investments, start-ups, property and offshore investments, mainly in the Cayman Islands – it became virtually impossible to trace it back to me. We were clever, weren’t we? We most certainly were.’

  The last remark was addressed not to Ever, but to her second dead husband, with a smile and an affection.

  Ever was not responding now, he was in the first stages of a deep sleep. Lomita got up to plump the pillows; to bed him down for the night. Talking, while perfecting the lie of the bed.

  ‘My favourite house being in Mexico. I adore Mexico. We must go sometime. But the law didn’t leave me alone, I spent two million of those dollars defending myself in the courts. Can you believe this? Eventually they found four-fifths of an ounce of marijuana in my underwear drawer – I had never smoked the stuff in my life.’

  She knew she had lost him completely now, the diazepam as well as being a relaxant is an anti-anxiety pill; she could see the tension drifting off his face like a passing cloud over the sun, revealing the brightness after the period of gloom.

  ‘The mob were after me, and the IRS, and eventually I owned up to three and a half million dollars. I just threw my hands in the air and said that was all I had, all I knew about.’

  She had known he wasn’t listening but this was for her: she realised she had never recounted this story, and it gave her a sense of catharsis. She continued. It felt like an invitation to talk. To talk to herself. It gave her a sense of pride that she had survived.

  ‘Their real anger, from the authorities towards me, I think, was because I had fraternised with Jack Ruby who shot Lee Harvey Oswald and you know who he shot. They thought I knew something about it all. I didn’t. I was sentenced to fifteen years in jail, in the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, for some strange reason, the location I mean. My lawyers continued to fight my cause and eventually proved the drug was planted. That and the fact that the police had no warrant to enter my home got me cleared. But I spent two years in prison. Two years. Can you imagine that, two years?’

  She was now almost enjoying addressing an unconscious audience. It was her reflection and consideration of her own life. She had no self-pity, just triumph.

  ‘But when I came out I was a lot wealthier than when I went in. They never checked the house in Palm Springs as it was owned by an offshore company and untraceable to me, anyways my husband had been working away on our investments. A criminal bond, if you like, bound by marriage. Clever, eh? In the end, I felt I had won, achieved something, after the depths of shit I had swum in.’

  As if to bring her story to a close in her own mind, at least, she summed up with –

  ‘So you see Ever…’

  That was the first time she had called him by his name.

  ‘I had quite a time of it.’

  There was a long silence, Ever’s closed eyes made her realise that she had probably lost him even earlier than she thought, and she wondered if in fact he would remember anything at all by morning.

  Then out of the blue as if he had been with the whole process, in the true state of a manic depressive anxiety crash, his egocentricity produced words.

  ‘I must go to the doctor.’

  She thought she had done some good, imagining his desire to visit a doctor to be the result of a responsible decision to deal with his own mental state. She wasn’t aware of his real reason, that it was about the time for his test – his STI test.

  Maybe he was aware, in his half-dream, of his desire to return to the land of the male again. And that had turned into concern still active through sleep.

  Along with the gun. That and the Basquiat exhibition.

  ‘Will you come with me? Please. To the Basquiat exhibition?’

  She realised her life story had held no significance for Ever, in this mode of self-centredness that had dragged him out of his sleep; but she wondered if it might implant itself at a later date.

  It was dark now. She suggested he rest. He asked if he could have one of those calmers, as he called them. On her return with the medication, feeling truly like a nurse, she asked if he wanted her to turn off the light.

  ‘The main light, yes please, but I would like to leave the bedside one on. If that’s OK?’

  Thinking of the pale blue swollen hand.

  *

  Before she closed the door, although his eyes were closed, she said,

  ‘I’ll come, but you’ll have to wheel me around, I can’t walk around an exhibition. And we’ll have to have an agreement. I’ll tell you tomorrow. I’m tired.’

  The agreement was not something she was sure how to propose.

  She stood outside the closed door and now felt disappointed that she had told her story, she should have known his brain was in no state to take it in, or even remotely comprehend what she was trying to get across. But on moving slowly away, across the big brown room, her feeling changed: that is why she’d told her story, because he wasn’t listening. She didn’t want anyone to know, really. Maybe bits had sunk in, she conceded, walking into the kitchen, now fully comfortable in her reasoning. Manita had left her a piece of the roast chicken and some salad. She poured herself a large glass of sauvignon, the one from Australia, and reflected on whether she was being Mother Teresa and doing this for herself, not curing, just enjoying the process.

  She was relieved to see Manita had retrieved his Land Rover Discovery key, attached to the Sixt rental tag, from his chinos, and also his phone. She put both in a drawer and before she went to bed, she made sure all the alarms were on.

  She didn’t want her patient escaping. She didn’
t think she would bother to propose the agreement.

  No point.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  ‘He is not yours, I’m telling you. Why don’t you fucking believe me? How many times? I am sorry, of course I am, how does apologising change anything? But don’t you understand in your fucked-up brain?’

  He always felt that recurring accusation was a cruel blow too.

  ‘I wanted a child, I wanted us to have a child. Together, but, well you know, fuck it, stop looking at me like that.’

  ‘But how are you so convinced he is not my child?’

  This is what he never wanted to hear, and it was at this point, at this question, that he usually woke in a sweat. And, on cue, Ever awoke, and was indeed covered in a thin coat of sweat; heaviest over his chest, where he could feel the sheet was also wet.

  He sat up not knowing for a while where he was, in that moment of disconnect that sleep gives you when it stops, before the realisation of life kicks in. Something Ever rarely wanted to kick in, his life, although the dream that woke him was as bad as life. It was life.

  He sat up in bed and looked around for the clock, which was on the other side of the bed, standing digitally red on its own bedside table. He didn’t really need to look at the time, it would be five minutes past four: it always was, and 4.05 turned to 4.06 while he was confirming what he already knew. A waste of a head-turn, except it also revealed the television remote that he hoped would control the flat screen on the wall opposite the bed. And turn its darkness into light.

  In a very short time he had figured out how to turn it on; everybody’s television seemed to have a different process, but this was simple, as the power button illuminated itself when the remote was moved from its resting place, he pressed it and that seemed to produce an almost immediate picture, but no sound, which he didn’t want anyway; it revealed itself to be a shopping channel.

  Had the previous occupant really watched a shopping channel?

  A shopping channel, the perfect visual delight for the brain that can take nothing in, although that is exactly what they wanted you to do. Take it all in. A woman was massaging another woman’s neck with a cream, obviously claiming it worked tightening wonders, and he watched expecting the miracle to happen as his dream came back to him in the form of waking reality. Clarissa and Jacob, the son wasn’t his, playing around in his mind like the nightmare of hearing a stupid song that you can’t clear from whichever part of your brain is insisting on keeping it going and going, till you have to try really hard to think of another annoying song to replace it with, and then the two songs compete. One jealous of the other’s dominance. Or was that just his brain? For Ever it was usually Kate Bush and ‘Wuthering Heights’. As a kid he remembered his mother playing it on repeat. Or was it Withering? He moved off the subject quickly, in case his brain put the disc on the turntable. Oh God, he could hear her, wailing. Focus on the television. There was a woman presenting a large jar of cream to the camera with the price on the left-hand side of the screen dropping every thirty or so seconds. Would they eventually give it away? The Jacob dream had started to have same repetitiveness as the pale blue swollen hand and to be honest he would rather have that waking, sleeping nightmare.