Pops open.
A red curtain inside.
It opens a little.
A grey sky . . . plumes of smoke here and there . . . on top of the rectangle stack of brown a birdcage. Antique. The door is open . . . a thin current of smoke in the shape of wings . . .
The seats on the train are boards, they’re really worn. Outside the window the bottom of the clouds are rust colored. Some are black.
It’s a chess game . . .
. . . No sun. Ever. Dead leaves. A woman with a ghostly face and the eyes of a wolf . . . and she’s unbuttoning her blouse. Showing her nipple.
The heat from it caresses my face . . . her fingers flutter . . . the heat from her nipple makes me feel crazy . . .
She’s whispering fast.
But I don’t speak French . . .
All the heat.
Her nipple is like a mandala . . .
its heat is a crown . . .
Her voice is some math or sonata I can’t understand . . .
her nipple is a wave and a church window . . .
I can hear the needle lift from the groove . . .
~*~
Mini-bar was open.
Curtains weren’t.
My function was drenched, chaos had taken my umbrella. I was in disarray, or just distorting.
Babel’s TV was on.
Rear Window was examining the feelings in my hotel room but I won’t lie, my appetite really didn’t care.
The script sat in a chair like an old tramp too tired to walk over to the bed and cry.
I felt clever. Hadn’t let the mirror look at any of my schemes.
As payment for my vigilance mini-bar door said, “Next.”
~*~
Woke up in my clothes. Thought someone was lying beside me. Someone soft and naked.
Felt hungover.
But I hadn’t been drinking.
Not that much. Not really.
No woman there.
Sighed. Told myself I was relieved. No one there.
I’d thought it was Brandi.
Wasn’t.
Part of me wanted it to be.
Showered.
Dressed.
Looked at the bed.
No woman there.
No signs of fire.
Left my hotel room.
Had an appointment with my agent.
Short drive.
Snapped on the radio. “Spill The Wine” on every station.
I could hear the needle set down in the grooves.
On every station.
-Take –That –Girl
“You listening?”
“Huh?”
“Listening?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he ask?”
“Sort of.”
“You call him. Could be your biggest break yet.”
“I will.”
I called Brandi.
Laurence was still out of town.
She said yes.
8 o’clock. FABRICE. Drinks. Something light. She had something to show me.
I wondered if I should go out and get new shoes.
Wondered if she’d wear shoes.
“Yeah. Sandals.”
Knew they’d be new.
Stopped and picked up a new pair of shoes.
Stopped and had a drink.
Took a nap. Might be a late night.
Had an itch.
Wanted it to be.
~*~
Brandi looked just like Brandi. Young. Vibrant. Beautiful.
But she was black.
Spoke.
Something in French.
Her voice. But she was speaking French.
Fast. Not many words.
Can’t say what they were. I don’t know French.
~*~
7:40 FABRICE
Didn’t want to be late.
Not tonight.
I felt the heat coming off the front door.
Red door.
She could be sitting in there right now.
Hoped my suit was ok.
Shoes too.
They were new.
Black man at the door.
Big man.
Times like these I’m happy I carry the gun. Guess it feels empowering. Maybe it’s like I control the fever . . .
~*~
crazy. just spilled there.
like it meant something . . .
it was there
it had to be
~*~
She always wears 6 or 7 necklaces.
Long.
Colorful.
They hang between her breasts.
Her nipples are boudoirs.
Perfumed.
If my tongue could sing, they’d dance.
Waltz.
Ballerinas . . .
~*~
“It’s a spider web. A beautiful, beautiful spider web. And music flows along the web.”
David’s fingers were knitting, thinking. The burst of witnessing. A fever of image uncovering flesh, removing the mask. His face, every naked shift of context, every lark of so, was taking in the dance.
~*~
Ballerina.
There were stories in her hands. Arcs. Wings that had escaped the wasteful paws of the pyramids, sculptured bowls of feathers in search of liberty and berries . . . Graceful, the kind of graceful that hadn’t been frozen by trivial lips. Hadn’t been hurt by snowbird storms or kept low with the salt of yesterday’s ceilings. She cupped her hands like she was carrying water.
She turned. Her back was beautiful . . .
Her shoulder arm outstretched. Leg slowly coming up. That one finger pointing at me. Its words by lamp sigh . . .
Beautiful.
My Apollo could not turn away from the breath of the medium . . .
Beautiful.
The narrative of her torso . . . Maybe she should have been nude—pure.
Her shoulder . . .
Her back . . .
Muscle and flesh, definition suspended in rhythm . . . the delicious spilling of breath and devotion . . . no one could resist . . . Maybe?
Her back as I touch it . . . a horizon of redemption . . .
It would have been beautiful.
Beautiful.
It was so slow.
All, so slow. So slow . . .
~*~
Her nipples seduce me. They’re something between life and death. No. Birth and death. They’re real. Maybe the faces aren’t?
White face.
Black face.
Some are mad, angry. Red.
Color is the devil. Color is a lie. How it laughs. It’s a floor or a mirror. It splits the world. It’s unpredictable and it loses the dreams of darkness.
Her nipples are like that. In color. They make me lose my place in darkness.
~*~
I could have just looked at her eyes for an hour. Could have watched her lips move.
I would have been happy to be an overwhelmed stone existing under the singing stars.
I didn’t need moonlight.
~*~
David: “I know a great little train station up by Bakersfield. Old. Worn. It’s like a dream. Lots of sand. Dust . . . Wind comes up . . . There’s coyotes.”
I lit a smoke.
He lit a smoke.
“Brandi in a red dress. Dead. Sand starting to cover her.’
“Let’s take a drive.”
~*~
Later: Radio losing the signal.
David: “I should have brought my CDs. Ah, something nice that has the fever of September.”
He played with the knob, like he was able and zealous—he was, you could see it. There was no rage to finish. It was like he was preparing it, or tuning in the color. Made the awful noise disappear.
“Spill The Wine” comes on. I can hear the needle settle in the grooves.
Me: “No. A yellow dress. Pale . . . Faded out. Maybe torn?”
David: “Yes. Makes sense. Good. Good.”
&n
bsp; I’m getting a headache. We pull into a gas station. Place looks like something from one of his films but I skip telling him that. I buy aspirin from a cashier that looks like Brandi. She’s on a cell phone hissing about spilled wine on her living room carpet. Red wine. Said the carpet was the color of sand. I don’t laugh.
Wine.
Blood.
“Christ.”
I was slightly pissed they didn’t have any unsweetened green tea.
Came out and got in David’s car.
Saw a coyote across the road by a dumpster the Methodist church didn’t seem to want.
It looked at me. Then looked at the road. Toward where we’d come from. Back that way was Hollywood and civilization.
Eaters of the dead. That’s what I thought.
Back on the highway, black road.
Sign.
Signs.
Sign.
Something that passes for plant life.
Sign.
Sand . . .
Windows open.
Heat don’t want a beer or the wind, enjoying its own gusto.
On the drive we’ve talked about the solar system . . . Bela very briefly . . . Hollywood generally—most not too nice . . . Mexico . . . color, decay, and some trees and a red house we passed . . . even the weather, which was very warm without being overly hot . . . He’s interesting, and sharp-witted. I really like him.
Not having brought his CDs he spoke about sound design a lot too.
David: “Gil has a theme song. Some 3 am, whiskey-laded Brubeck kind-of thing. But no piano. No sax. Bass, drums, oboe, and surf guitar. The oboe is Desmond, everything is shot from a distance at a high angle when it plays. The guitar, haunting single note lines, is Brubeck. Maybe use “Turn Out The Stars.”? Got to have one Bobby Darin tune in the soundtrack and maybe Mel Torme’s “Too Close For Comfort”?
Bit of slow motion and grainy here or there when her theme plays. Call it hued in guilt or shame maybe. A swamp of dream and hallucination that convulses more than unfolds.”
“That shot in black and white?”
“Yeah. Mostly. But I think some bumpy orange coloration, like say neon on the fritz, gets in there too.”
The road was very straight. The hood of the car was very red. For a moment I wondered if I turned away from the machine-gun fire of the broken yellow lines would I see Jim Morrison . . . Would he wave to me? Would he hold up a book of poetry?
Sand.
Desert.
White clouds. Wind pushing them like rootless boats.
I didn’t see an Indian.
I also spent time thinking of Brandi. I’d like to take her to City Lights and show her around.
Knew she’d love the poetry.
I wondered what she’d wear.
~*~
That’s her bed. Big enough. Not for 3 . . .
My gun.
Her nipple. Looks like a mandala . . .
My hand.
Her hand. Near her nipple. Pretty as a mandala . . .
The gun goes off.
The curtains are red.
~*~
the texture of her open mouth. the opening is like a mandala . . .
I’m trying to remember does David like Hitchcock?
Do I?
Was there a mandala in Vertigo?
Was there?
she’s all in white. like a wedding dress.
did David say something about getting married?
did Laurence?
must have.
I think she was laughing . . .
I don’t think she was wearing shoes.
~*~
She’s unbuttoning her blouse.
It’s red.
~*~
The radio is on.
–Take –That –Girl
I want to put my lips on her lips
I want to look into the mandala
the trance
the kisses /werewolf kisses
my tongue twirling /my lips on her throat, burning, conversant
my eternity in her ear
the crest of fingers on her molten heart
~*~
Her hair is yellow –windblown –the hem of her yellow dress is above her knees
There’s water –waves
A balcony
She’s smiling
Her face is black
She must have been dead a long time
She’s wearing a mask of flies
There’s lights around the bed.
A camera.
The sheets are silk. Red silk.
The bellies of the clouds are rust colored
and black
stormy
Her dress looks white in this light
like a cocoon
~*~
I’m naked. Wet.
There’s blood.
Red.
~*~
there was a red curtain
~*~
little brown train station near Bakersfield
she was wearing red shoes
I took her overnight bag
it was red
~*~
red
/
a caress on my face
/
true sight
comes to my naked heart
/
legs—a crazy river
a fire burns
/
my ambition, its flaring spider instincts, sips her shoulders
kisses her tattoo
no reverse in her “not letting you go” she burns
gnaw on her piper skin
“Shearer, deep inside . . .”
yellow, curved and permanent, drags me
~*~
my typewriter sits on the brown desk in my hotel room
I’d stopped typing
/does life spring eternal?
can a still, somnolent heart ink
technicolor lines?/
prey in the mouth of a cave . . . I could see . . . true . . . the shape of the darkness . . . there was a scroll, the image of a character, a face with a point of view, atoms of flesh, I wanted to count her names . . .
~*~
She could laugh
melt you with a smile
break your heart with a sigh
or a tear.
Did to a lot of people.
Moviegoers . . . and real people too.
~*~
her thighs were wrapped around me . . .
I could feel the heat of her nipples on my thigh
if she was being graded for poetry or angles
A
she looked perfect doing it
stroked me until I forgot depressed and what colors the sky came in
her mouth was open
–Take –That –Girl
pretty girl
yellow hair
sweet
her nipple feels like a beautiful knife on my tongue
~*~
she stepped onto the platform
she was not wearing shoes
~*~
she was very pretty
~*~
the light was dangerous
~*~
her eyes were a speech
~*~
her posture was a speech
~*~
there was music
~*~
she was dancing for me
a sumptuous evening sky of honey
I wanted her to slip her bra off and slide into bed
~*~
(Reaction shot) ….her eyes were closed. But she could see.
….her mouth was open. I could smell every flower of its poem.
~*~
David was dead. There was blood in the water.
He was wearing my new shoes.
There was a white moth fluttering above his lips.
I wondered if it had breathed in all his poetry.
~*~
Brandi was from the South. She was young. Pretty. The kind of pretty that occupied you. You’d kil
l for it.
~*~
Nice pool.
Rectangle.
Sand colored.
I wondered if he ever had pretty young girls over.
Did they wear their watch when they went in the water?
Did their eyes sparkle? Did they say yes?
I can’t remember.
I wonder if they understood.
~*~
She had four brown suitcases by the door of her hotel room.
~*~
I had two brown suitcases by the door in my hotel room.
~*~
His pool was the color of my suitcases.
~*~
I was holding on to her wrist. Tightly.
“Just say yes.”
Didn’t add still could be.
~*~
She handed me the script.
“Have you read this?” I asked.
Her mouth was open. Open the way a door’s open.
But this is not my room.
~*~
The moon came down. A parade over the blue of the hotel pool.
She sat on her balcony and read the script.
Dreams and personalities.
Peel away time and deceit.
The moon was fishing on the canvas.
The words were playing with her.
One page said drab, clouds, and fetched.
Daughter said, “Yes, ma’am.”
Made her think of Southern belles, moonlight, flirting, and growing up in the desert outside Vegas.
Made her miss soft afternoons of rain and leisurely whiskey.
The guitar on the radio cried on the shore of isolato.
Looked up.
Didn’t see a ghost ship.
But she expected one.
~*~
Brandi in Gil make-up and wig [sitting there naked in her hotel room on the floor / script in her hands/ some pages are ripped out and on the floor around her / a few are shredded /she’s wearing a black wig / under the wig her real hair is wet – the wig sits unevenly - some of it is flat and sticks out like crow feathers / the make-up she’s applied looks like a drunken freakshow.]
Pan down to her knee on the floor. It’s wet. From dripping water or tears?
DISSOVLE TO: Bare feet. Not much else on. Blue light cobbles. The door –robber –syphilis –dangerous, opens with a calm perversity. There’s a red curtain at the end of the hall . . . She holds out her hand . . . but not even the gaslight will take the stain it echoes . . .
CUT TO:
small [old] train station platform
board flooring says PORTERVILLE [worn/weathered/painted in yellow]
bare feet on it
a dim lagoon of light / dead moths littered on the boards near the wall
camera pans slowly up we see her knees, the hem of her dress is soiled and shredded
and her hand, she’s holding a red hatbox
wind comes up presses her dress tight between her legs –it’s like it’s glued on / the dress is very thin almost see through / camera pans slowly up from her knees, pan slowly closer to where her sex would be, where we see CLOSE UP the impression of a HOWLING tortured FACE under the dress
The King in Yellow Tales: Volume 1 Page 21