VELVET
Squeeze me. Who do you love most in the world?
DAVIE
Velcro Chenille.
VELVET
How do I know for sure?
DAVIE
Have I fucked you lately?
VELVET
No.
DAVIE
There you go. I don’t fuck people I love.
VELVET
So that leaves how many?
DAVIE
You and . . . you.
(laughs)
Love is highly overrated.
VELVET
It’s natural. Part of life.
DAVIE
Ah yes, but life is the most unnatural of states. It offends the very core of being!
VELVET
What dead Germanic philosopher are you channelling?
DAVIE
I only speak the truth—the cosmic truth. So if life is unnatural then love, as a part of life, must also be deemed unnatural, or, rather, severely out of place.
VELVET
But you love me.
DAVIE
Did I say that? Yeah, well. A performance, darling, it’s all a performance. God’s a recidivist. He likes to watch reruns.
(screams at the ceiling)
Time for a hiatus! I’m fucking sick of this! I want a new trailer!
Several moments of silence.
DAVIE
(to Velvet)
He’s in a production meeting.
(yells at the ceiling)
I know how this movie ends!
Again, silence.
VELVET
I thought you were an atheist.
DAVIE
Depends on my mood. Which depends on my blood sugar. So really my entire spiritual ethos is based around insulin.
Velvet rolls off the bed and begins perusing the selection of takeout menus pinned to the walls.
VELVET
So are we ordering in? Agnostic pizza, reincarnated Pad Thai, Godless sashimi?
DAVIE
You can if you want. I’m going out. Save some for me.
VELVET
Where’re you going?
DAVIE
The witching hour nears. I’m off to get myself a little warlock for my birthday.
He moves to get off the bed. Velvet sets a new land-speed record charging from a menu to Davie’s feet. She grabs his arm.
VELVET
Stay. Stay. Stay. Stay. Stay.
DAVIE
Five stays. Not enough for a corset, my dear, though you’re starting to need one.
VELVET
Cruel.
DAVIE
Yeah.
VELVET
Stay.
DAVIE
No.
Velvet continues to cling to his arm. He tries to shake her off. They end up wrestling on the floor.
VELVET
(crying)
You promised! You promised! Don’t go!
DAVIE
Fuck off! Fuck you! Get off me!
He manages to pin her to the floor.
DAVIE
(screams into her face)
Stop it! Stop! Stop!
Velvet’s struggles chameleon into limp surrender, and a moment ices over in stillness between them.
DAVIE
(speaks slowly)
I will be back late. If you’re here, you better not be alone. You better be in the company of cold egg rolls. Nod if you understand me.
She nods. He slips his tongue into her mouth, a silky probe that mines deep. Her body buckles and shakes.
INT. BRINKLEY’S HELL—MIRROR—
DAVIE’S APARTMENT—BATHROOM—LATER
Velvet stands before the toothpaste-speckled mirror. Shy, uncertain fingers discover the skin of her face. She does not see her reflection.
INT. BRINKLEY’S HELL—MIRROR—
DAVIE’S BATHROOM—MIRROR—CONTINUOUS
The Shadowman appears. He is styled as a Gene Kelly look-alike, a lá Singin’ in the Rain, and his yellow raincoat is painfully shiny. A smile, like the ripples from a plunged stone, radiates across his face. He opens a bright yellow umbrella.
SHADOWMAN
Is it rainin’? Are you sad? Did the motherfucker leave you again? There, there, pet. I’ll cheer you up in a jiffy. Shall we sing a song? Can you tap dance? Take my hand. I’ll show you how.
He extends his hand to her while twirling the umbrella over his head. His eyes gleam and his teeth twinkle.
INT. BRINKLEY’S HELL—MIRROR—
DAVIE’S BATHROOM—CONTINUOUS
Velvet’s eyes shoot joyful sparklers of recognition into the movie star gaze in the mirror. She shrieks and giggles like a child sprayed by a hose on a hot day, and begins to belt out “Singin’ in the Rain.”
INT. BRINKLEY’S HELL—MIRROR—
DAVIE’S BATHROOM—MIRROR—CONTINUOUS
The Shadowman—as Gene Kelly—is tap dancing as though he’s got hot coals in his shoes. Wild acrobatic leaps and twirls of his umbrella fill up his silvery stage. His eyes glitter, splintered with diamond chips of mischief. He pauses and steps to the fore, not in the least out of breath. The yellow umbrella gives his face a jaundiced look.
SHADOWMAN
Did you put your dancing shoes on?
He tosses the umbrella and holds out his arms.
SHADOWMAN
(urgently)
Jump into my arms! Jump into my arms! Dance with me!
INT. BRINKLEY’S HELL—MIRROR—
DAVIE’S BATHROOM—CONTINUOUS
Shattered glass covers the bathroom and Velvet like lethal, oversized snowflakes. She is on the floor, a tassel of blood streaming from a small gash near her eye. Her fingers smudge the crimson into sponge art. The canvas of her face is dazed, unable to comprehend the colour it has been splashed with, or why.
The Shadowman steps from the corner of the room. He no longer looks like Gene Kelly. His face is painted white, with two red streaks running down from his coal-black eyes. He is dressed all in black, but his feet are bare. His nails are painted black, and long and pointed as fangs.
SHADOWMAN
Oopsie-daisy! What happened, my pet? Not much of a dancer, are you?
Glass crunches beneath his feet like eggshells, but he does not bleed. Spears of clarity and comprehension shoot through Velvet’s daze; she trembles. A whimper escapes her throat, sirens into a keening scream. A black-nailed hand smacks her face silent. Then that same hand picks up a large shard of glass, places it with great ceremony on Velvet’s crimsoned palm.
SHADOWMAN
Here you go, little girl. Here you go.
INT. BRINKLEY’S HELL—MIRROR—
DAVIE’S APARTMENT—BATHROOM—DAWN
Davie pushes open the bathroom door, rubbing his face. For a moment he freezes at the sight of bloody Velvet on the floor, her body surrounded by the jagged remains of the mirror. Then he is with her, cradling her head.
DAVIE
Velvet! Velvet! Fuck . . .
Velvet opens her eyes, focuses and smiles. Her smile is shoved aside by deep lines of worry.
VELVET
What’s wrong? What happened?
DAVIE
Fuck me.
He helps her sit up and she looks around with wide, baffled eyes.
VELVET
What? Did you? I . . .
Davie examines her left wrist, which is covered in dried blood.
DAVIE
Look at you. Oh, Vee.
He rummages through the cabinet, tossing nail polish remover, a makeup kit, a blonde wig, box of condoms and a screwdriver onto the floor. He unearths a towel and soaks it under the faucet. Velvet continues to slump against the side of the bathtub, eyes glossy with bewilderment. Davie crouches b
eside her and wipes at her wrist, hurried but gentle.
DAVIE
Goddamn it. I must’ve been Florence Fucking Nightingale in a former life. Hmmm . . . that could be an idea for a new drag act. You’re my inspiration, Velcro Chenille.
VELVET
Florence Nightingale?
Davie’s eyes are lush with tears.
DAVIE
Oh, babe. Well, it’s not too deep. You missed all the big veins. Your aim is for shit.
He begins to wipe the dried blood from her face and hands.
DAVIE
Scared the hell outta me.
VELVET
Sorry.
DAVIE
My fast food-fed heart can’t take it.
INT. BRINKLEY’S HELL—MIRROR—
DAVIE’S BEDROOM—A SHORT TIME LATER
Velvet and Davie are on his bed. He is wrapping her wrist in an entire roll of gauze. Her hands are covered in “Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ Band-Aids.”
VELVET
Sorry about your mirror.
DAVIE
(winks)
That’s okay. Now I don’t have to clean it! Not that I was going to.
VELVET
I don’t really remember. He was dancing . . .
Davie places his hand over her mouth.
DAVIE
Miss Florence is in the building! She’d probably sing a lullaby, wouldn’t she? I don’t know any. Oh wait, yes I do.
(sings)
“Twinkle twinkle, little star . . .”
“Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town, upstairs and downstairs in his nightgown . . .” That’s more like a rhyme.
VELVET
It’s okay. Don’t sing.
DAVIE
Or you’ll slice up your other wrist?
VELVET
(chuckles)
Something like that.
DAVIE
Velvet, don’t ever do that again. Or I’ll have to kill you.
VELVET
Promise?
DAVIE
You wanna go back to the Cracker Farm?
VELVET
No. But you’ll come visit me, right? You always do. He’s gone now . . . the Shadowman. Skedaddled. But he’ll be back. He always comes back. I’m so tired.
(pause)
Did you find a warlock?
DAVIE
Two. Ha ha! Happy Birthday to me.
VELVET
Yeah. Happy Birthday. It’s official. Davie?
DAVIE
Yeah?
They stare at one another for a long time, as though waiting for something to break the surface of the gaze. Velvet shrugs. Davie nods.
VELVET
I’m hungry.
DAVIE
Me too.
He touches her face, near the gash by her eye.
DAVIE
Guess there’s no cold egg rolls, huh?
Dear Velvet,
No, I was not a drag queen. (Pity, that. Who can deny that they are the best performers in the world?) Nor did I own a doll collection. (I am afraid of dolls. They have empty eyes.) I am not gay. (Does sexual orientation still exist in Hell? One would assume so, since it makes much of life Hell—why not continue the torment? And if phone sex is possible, then letter sex must be possible, too. Not that I am thinking we are going to have letter sex. Ignore that. Freudian slip. Someone should really have killed Freud sooner.) It is just that I have always admired the bias-cut dress. So I owned a few. My mother had a marvellous sense of style. And there is nothing quite like peach angora. Indeed, I do feel a real kinship with the film director Ed Wood. It’s like you already know everything about me. I find your understanding of me very touching.
My mirror has gone fuzzy and staticky, like a broken television set, or one whose power source is in doubt. It crackles, full of black and white electronic-type snow. But then a channel will come in quite suddenly, so to speak, as though a Great Plug has been adjusted and the show goes on. I believe . . . how do I say this . . . that the movie I have glimpsed is comprised of scenes from your life. I saw a little girl, a pale, lissome version of the beautiful woman—you—I first saw in my mirror. You were with your mother (?)—I was given only snatches—at any rate, the little girl was with a woman who looks like Mae West, a dark-haired Mae West. And then there was a man, a Greek-looking man, and he and Mae were together, and then he fled in an angry flurry . . . and the child saw everything. I am sorry. Help me understand what I see. More electronic blizzard obscured all images, and then I saw you—it could not have been a picture from all that long ago—with a young man: curly-haired, sensual, irregular features. Your paramour? There was a fight and he left. And then you were alone in a bathroom staring into the mirror. I caught a glimpse of a man in a yellow raincoat who looked like Gene Kelly—though there was something menacing about him. Static broke the scene again and when the picture returned you were on the bathroom floor, covered in glass and blood. You screamed in terror and then went silent as a shadow. You picked up a shard of glass and sliced at your wrist. More static. And then the young man walked into the bathroom and cradled your head. Am I watching your life, or are my eyes watching some devilish invention? If it be the truth—or even if not—I am compelled now to confess to you all of myself as it existed, with no embellishment, and to undo untruths, including minor ones.
I have lied to you. I am sorry. I promise I will not lie to you anymore. I admit I feel ridiculous to have lied, and I do not possess the requisite suave to gracefully—or satisfactorily—explain why. I am not sure that I know why. The truth seems rather bendable in here, or it did until I bent it and was wracked by terrible remorse. Fibbing (such a harmless-sounding word, isn’t it?) to you makes it feel as though the walls are closing in on me. I had never associated guilt with claustrophobia before. If there is further Judgment awaiting us, I hope this does not affect my case. I guess you think I am kind of pathetic, lying in Hell? But old habits die hard. And I have found that if you tell yourself something enough times, it becomes a reasonable approximation of the truth.
I am not a banker. I am a file clerk at a plastics company. But had I not been run over, I might have been a banker: in the moments before I died, I was on my way to apply for a job as a Customer Service Representative at a very large bank. Normally, I have a problem with touching money, but my doctor had given me some pills that seemed to help and I was excited about trying this new thing. You know, facing fears.
There was nothing drastically wrong with my job as a file clerk. It was mindless enough to let me think about whatever I wanted. Intellectual freedom is found in odd places. I have a talent for organizing and I think I improved on their system quite a bit. Really, the company would not have run so smoothly without me. I was the nuts and bolts of that operation. But nobody ever realized, much less said thank you. Credit never goes where credit is due, does it?
The thing that I liked about my job, other than the fact that it came with dental, was the sense of calm the act of filing brought me. I was very tense when I first started, of course, but once I had mastered—in fact, developed—the system, I was free to think about other things. I liked to recite poetry to myself as I filed, especially “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” A flawless lyric. I love Marlowe. Literature is full of romantic figures, but to me he is unsurpassed. I used to have fantasies about dying in a tavern brawl. But if you are not leaving anything brilliant behind, what is the point? There is something very disconcerting about outliving your idol—turning thirty was depressing, to say the least. Once I was older than he was when he died—Marlowe having achieved immortality as a great writer—I felt like a dusty relic, and the years stretched out flat and endless while my capacity for greatness seemed to shrink to the point of invisibility. It certainly did not help that Rudolph Valentino—another idol of mine—died at thirty-one. I must say I foun
d that my thirties in general were nothing to write home about.
I do not know if I would have been very good in a bank. To be honest, even if I had gotten an interview, I do not think I would have tried for it. Sometimes receiving the invitation is enough—actually attending the party is like one too many icing roses on an already sweet cake. It is very stressful to be on your feet talking to people all day, and as I mentioned, handling money is difficult for me. There are a lot of germs on the faces of those dead Prime Ministers, not to mention the Queen.
Anyway, as I walked along that day, on my way to submit my resumé, I was feeling bolder and happier than usual. It was a Friday, and I had called in sick. I always go to the same café at 8:43 a.m. Punctuality is a virtue. Everyone there knows me, and they let me bring my own mug, since I prefer not to use drinking vessels belonging to others, even if they are single-use paper cups. Who knows, I may have landed an interview! But I guess that information will be forever kept from me.
Again, I am sorry I lied.
While I am apologizing, I feel that I must also say that I am sorry about my appearance, in case it disappointed you. Perhaps this sounds strange, but I was initially terrified that you saw me, terrified and disappointed. Somehow it seemed easier to write to you knowing that you had no idea what I looked like. But now I want you to see me. Although I cannot stop myself from writing apologetic rambles like this one. So: sorry that my nose and chin are unevenly distributed. And it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, as you saw, that I will not develop shoulders before I die. I know that—unless things have altered in your room—you have no one else to correspond with. Nevertheless, I hope that my person did not disappoint. No one likes to be chosen by default.
Shut up, Brinkley. Is that what you are thinking? Once one embarks on a tangent rife with worries, it is difficult to reset the course. Next topic: I suppose the fact that I am not actually a banker has rearranged your ideas about what kind of place I lived in. It was a very nice, thoroughly disinfected basement suite, in an older but very nice house. Actually, my mother lived in the house; I rented the basement from her. She has been sick the last few years and I was trying to take care of her. It was a brown house with large hedges in front, and two prominent upstairs windows that looked like eyes. My suite was small, but it had hardwood floors, like yours, and bright warm yellow walls, just like Monet’s dining room at Giverny. I did not have any Monet poster prints, but I had a Matisse, the one with the wild dancers that caused a critic to label him a Fauve. (What do critics know, anyway?) I also had a Chagall, “Bouquet with Flying Lovers.” And three de Lempickas. I loved Degas, too. All that tulle is beautiful to me. And of course, I had lots of pictures of Clara Bow, my favourite actress. Do you have favourite artists?
The Delphi Room Page 6