A Child across the Sky

by Jonathan Carroll

  "Did it have anything to do with this? With Midnight Kills?"

  "No."

  "Pinsleepe, tell me what it is they want. Please."

  "I can't tell you because I don't know. I was told to come talk to Phil and I did. Unsuccessfully. Then I was told to talk to you."

  "Who sent you?"

  "The 'good animals.'"

  I pulled into an abandoned lumberyard and turned off the motor. "You know about that?"

  "The more work is done on the film, the more I know you. The image of animals isn't far from the truth; it's just a lot more complicated than that. Remember what Blow Dry said the other day? About evil? That it's not some thing; it's everything, turned bad? He was right."

  "I don't understand."

  "Midnight Kills. You saw it – it's not very good. Nine tenths of it is a normal Saturday night horror film. But then Phil did something, found a trick or a piece of genius, and wrote a scene that turned everything bad –"

  "He made a work of art."

  "He made three minutes of art, but it was enough."

  "I don't believe that. I don't believe art comes to life."

  "It doesn't. But do you know about binary weapons? Nerve gas is usually built as a binary weapon. You have one chemical here and one over there. Separately they're harmless, but combined they become nerve gas."

  "Those killings in Florida –"

  "That was nothing compared to this."

  She asked me to drop her off at a flower store on Sunset. As I was pulling away from the curb, the first idea came to me. I began talking fast and urgently into a little pocket tape recorder I carry whenever I am working.

  I stopped once on the way at a telephone booth and called the hospital to find out about Max. A Dr. Casey said it was one of the most unbelievable recoveries he'd seen in his entire medical career. He was about to go on when I thanked him and hung up.

  3

  I reached over and started to turn on the light, but Wyatt stopped me.

  "No, don't do that. I want to see it again."

  "What do you think?"

  "I think it's brilliant and sick. It's what those films should have been. But show it to me again." He put a hand on my shoulder. "You really are a director, Weber. Your style is so distinctive. God, I wonder what Phil would have said if he'd seen that."

  "Look again and tell me what else you think." Leaning forward, I pressed the play button.

  For days I'd worked both at the studio and at home cutting and pasting and generally rearranging the three and three quarter Midnight films into one rough Gregston version.

  Why? Because I was sure Pinsleepe was hinting at something important when she'd repeated Blow Dry's "evil is everything, turned bad." Phil may have found the magic to create the lost scene, but who was to say there wasn't another magic in what he'd already made?

  In college, Strayhorn and I took a course together called Ancient Rome. One of the few things I remember about it was the haruspex, a kind of diviner who based his predictions on inspection of the entrails of sacrificial animals. Study the order of the world carefully, and you'll be able to figure out its secrets.

  What if I studied the order of Phil's work? Moved it around like a designer or an architect, giving it new angles and edges. Were the answers there? Enigmas to be solved, or only the corny splatter and glop of horror movies?

  There are two inherent problems with the genre. The first is the moment the monster is shown for the first time. Invariably half the tension of the film is lost right there. Until then, the audience has created their own nightmare images of a monster. So no matter how ghastly or unique you thought yours was, it couldn't possibly be as bad as their individual bogeymen. People are scared of different things – blood, rats, death, night, fire. . . . There is no way of combining them into one all-encompassing creature without being funny or falling flat.

  Bloodstone was good because he was a kind of indistinct blur, despite the silvery face and small child's hands with no fingernails. Yes, you knew something was very wrong with him but the image was so delicately underplayed, he could just as easily have been a man going to a costume party.

  The same was true with what Phil had him do. No heads were torn off or stomachs ripped open with a single long fingernail. Bloodstone was a presence from somewhere else. Like a creature from another planet a thousand times more advanced than ours, he had wondrous ways to make man suffer. That was part of the fun of the Midnight films: What's the son of a bitch going to do next?

  But that was all. The films opened, Bloodstone went around hurting people in interesting, novel ways, and then the story ended. Every time it was the same, and that introduced problem two: the Endings.

  Traditionally, there are two ways to end a horror film – happy or sad. The monster wins, the monster loses. That's it. And the audience knows that when they walk into the theater. They'll be scared, but they know how it will end, always.

  Great films keep you guessing; you don't know who's going to get to the finish line first, if anyone.

  In my version of the film (Wyatt quickly titled it "Midnight's Spills"), we rarely even saw Bloodstone and the end was inconclusive.

  "Hey, that's one of the scenes we shot downtown!"

  "Right. At the shoeshine place on Hollywood Boulevard."

  "I didn't even realize that. Did you put many of those in?"

  "A few."

  "No wonder the film feels tilted, you know what I mean? It's like looking at something you've seen before, a painting or a building, but something's off about it. It's basically the same as before, but now it's better and you don't know why."

  "What about the order of the scenes and the way they're moved around?"

  "Don't even ask me about that, Weber. You know they're wonderful. Don't fish for compliments."

  Halfway through the second run, Finky Linky turned on the lamp and looked at me while the video was still running. "I have a very strange suggestion to make. Before you hate it, think seriously about it.

  "If you're going to put other scenes in here besides Midnight, add some from your own films. I'm thinking specifically of Sorrow and Son and The Night Is Blond.

  "What you've done is redefine the mood of Midnight. It's your mood now, Weber, the one that's in all your work. But if you're going to do that, go all the way. I keep thinking of little sections of your movies and how well they'd fit in here and here and here and here. . . . I can't imagine what you'll end up with, but I'd love to see the result.

  "I just thought of a funny story that reminds me of this. When Billy Wilder made Double Indemnity, he was nominated as Best Director of the Year. He was convinced he should get it, but another director won. Wilder was so pissed off that when this other guy was walking down the aisle to get the Oscar, Wilder stuck out his foot and tripped him. I wonder if Phil would trip you after he saw this.

  "It's damned good, Weber, but I think I'm right about what I said. Midnight's never looked better, but even with your rearranging and the other scenes added, it's still basically Midnight. Make it that, plus Sorrow and Son and The Night Is Blond, and you're going to have something wild."

  Dear Weber,

  I want to tell you this to your face, but I can't because it's still very embarrassing for me. I want to tell you what happened between Phil and me at the end and why we decided it was better that we not live together anymore, at least for a while.

  I know I've told you some things, and you can get an idea of what it was like at the end after you've read his story "A Quarter Past You."

  But this tape tells the rest. Give it back to me when you're done and please don't tell Wyatt about anything you see. I wish I could watch with you to hear what you think, but I can't. Maybe sometime. But maybe I should just let you watch and then throw it away. It's been in my drawer for weeks, and every time I think about it I get jittery. Why did I keep it? I don't know.

  Sasha

  I didn't watch it all. You got the idea in five minutes.

 
; In real life, Strayhorn had not only recreated whole scenes from Midnight to scare Sasha, he filmed them too. An example? She's fast asleep when he brings a tape recorder into their bedroom and turns it on to the sound of people fucking. You can barely see the expression on her face when she comes awake and realizes what's happening, but for the viewer it's embarrassing and provocative at the same time. Her life has suddenly become a movie – how will she react?

  How could he have done it? How could she have put up with it after one experience like that? How could he have shot some of those scenes without her knowing about the camera?

  I put the film back on her bed with a note: "You were right to leave. Get rid of this thing."

  Wouldn't it be easier if life worked that way? Recognize something as wrong or immoral, reject it on the spot, then stop thinking about it. Simple, practical, time-saving. It would be easier, but life likes color, not just black-and-white.

  I was sitting alone in a park watching some kids do tricky things on their bicycles – handstands on the seat, flips, wheelies. Wyatt and I had just had a meeting with the producer of Midnight Kills and told him a few of our ideas. He was so happy to have us both working on his film that I think we could have done anything and he would've accepted it. His only concern was when it would be finished, but we assured him it would be wrapped on time.

  The kids spun and leapt with real bravery and grace as well as keen attention to what the other riders were doing. They were their own best audience. A number of other people were watching them perform, but the kids' blase air said we, their second audience, didn't count.

  Watching them do their stuff, I mulled over what I'd been doing and particularly what I'd done about Sasha's tape.

  On our flight back to California from New York, I'd read an article on nuclear disarmament. It said one of the greatest problems humankind faces is that even if every country that has bombs were to get rid of them, the knowledge of how to build them still exists and someone can always make another. How do you get rid of knowledge?

  The moment I learned what Sasha's secret film was about, it wasn't even necessary to see it because something self-serving and dangerous had already risen in me. I had to use Phil's idea. It was immoral and the utter betrayal of a friend's trust, but the power of his concept was irresistible: Force an "audience" to cross from their familiar world to another one, well known yet impossible. Then film their every reaction . . . for yet another audience!

  After visiting Max in the hospital with Sean and James, I'd explained what I wanted to try. They got very excited, and after an hour in the hospital coffee shop we'd worked out a scene we'd try at our next rehearsal. It wasn't what Phil had done to Sasha, but it was the same geography: the same shock of betrayal, sex through the keyhole, life turned around and inside out until no one knew who held the camera or who was being filmed.

  Later, when they tried it, every time through was better. James and Sean had been lovers for a year, but they had big problems. What evolved when they got into the scene was a blistering candor and maliciousness that made you want to look away because you knew too much of this was the real acid in each face.

  I filmed it all. When they were completely somewhere between their own real world together and the lives of the people they were portraying, the room crackled with a mixture of truth, love, and hurt that flew crazily through the air like Kansas heat lightning.

  When it was over, I asked them not to tell anyone anything about what we were doing, including Wyatt. At home I looked at the tape and knew we'd been mistaken. It wasn't wonderful enough. I called them up and said that. Think about it and we'll start again tomorrow.

  We showed Sasha my Midnight, and afterward Wyatt told her his idea about including scenes from my films in it. She loved that, and the two of them began screening my work to see what they thought should be used.

  It felt as if we were all working on separate projects: Sean and James on their "scene," Wyatt and Sasha editing, me pulling it together and . . . adding.

  I kept a video camera with me constantly. When I wasn't with the others, I was filming. The inside of a comic book store, two bums eating pizza on the curb – I followed a garbage truck one morning and filmed the men at a distance. Joggers, beautiful cars, women coming out of restaurants on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills: these bits and pieces were everywhere, shimmers of life like coins found on a sunny street. I wanted them despite having no firm idea of where they'd go in the final work.

  It reminded me of my first day at the Budapest flea market, thrilled by what was for sale: old pocket watches, alligator briefcases, Nazi radios, and cigarette tins from Egypt with camels and pyramids painted on the lid. I wanted it all, and it was so cheap I could afford it. What I'd ever do with a brass ashtray from a coffee distributor in Trieste was beside the point.

  The bicycle gang was doing tandem tricks now. Arms entwined, two of them rolled backward together, handlebars turned exactly in the same direction. One kid got on the shoulders of another and spread his arms like wings. An old man on a bench nearby clapped for them. The sound was small and alone in the bright blue openness. "You guys should be on TV!"

  I was sleeping less and less, another old habit from my Hollywood years. The more excited I became about a project, the more it felt like a day was trying to cheat me out of interesting things if I let its night side push me toward sleep. Also, the more drained I was, the more unorthodox ideas came to me – usually about two-thirty in the morning with the televisions turned low and a pad full of notes in my lap. The agreeable part was I would awake charged and roaring to go the next morning.

  Whether that energy would continue was another question. I was over forty. I wore glasses more often, and my once-five-mile-a-day walk had been cut to two. Growing older was all right, growing slower and less spry wasn't.

  "Hey, mister! Hey, shoot me with your camera!"

  A black boy swung out from the crowd of bike acrobats and rode over to me.

  "How come?"

  As I said this, a small child came running up to us, screaming and laughing. He went over to the kid on the bike and started hitting him.

  "Cut it out, Walter."

  Walter was seven or eight, and when he turned for a moment I saw he had the unmistakable face of a mongoloid.

  "Take a movie of Walter and me." He hefted the smaller child onto his bike and rode off in a slow wobble. When the other boys saw him coming, they made a big circle around them.

  Walter was having a great time, banging his hands down on the handlebars, shouting and whooping like a bird.

  The others continued circling but did no more tricks. It was hard to tell whether they were being respectful or only waiting for the right moment to begin their next wheel dance.

  "You should only take pictures of us!"

  I waved and brought the camera up to film them. When the kids saw that, they broke their circle and began every show-off routine they knew. Half of them landed on their asses, but the ones who stayed up pulled off some moves that defied gravity. They jumped and bounced around like ponies.

  "Check this gambado, man." The black kid with Walter still aboard did a jump turn in the air that should have won him a prize.

  "What's a gambado?"

  "You just saw it, sucker. You catch it on film?"

  "Caught it."

  "We gotta go now, but we'll be back. Come check us out again, but next time bring a real moviecam, dude, not that little Sony shit!" Leading the pack with hooting Walter, he pedaled off into the sunset.

  The old man nearby got up. "They're here almost every day. I come just to see them. Fabulous, huh? They should be on television, those kids!"

  At home, Sasha and Wyatt were gone but had left a note on the refrigerator.

  Some papers have to be signed down at Fast Forward. Sasha's finally being called back to work. Look at the cassette we left in the first machine. I didn't want to tell the guy about it today because you have to see it first and give the big okay. Both of us
think it is just right and good enough to do the trick.

  Before I did that, I went and found a dictionary.

  The boy had used the word "gambado." At first I thought it was a bastardized Latino word that just sounded good and tough – "Check this gambado, sucker." But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed real, and until I checked it'd drive me crazy with its light tickle.

  Gambado: "The spring of a horse." How'd a ten-year-old kid know a word like that, much less use it in the proper context? I tried to remember what he looked like, then remembered I had him and his gang on film. After Wyatt and Sasha's Midnight Kills scenes, I'd have a second look.

  I made a sandwich that needed horseradish. There was none. I got angry and seriously contemplated going to the store. How could you eat this sandwich without horseradish?

  "Why don't you go watch their film?" I asked my procrastinating self. "Because what if it's bad and you have to tell them?"

  One's own art should be added to the list of things friends shouldn't discuss without hanging a DANGER! sign over the door. Religion, politics, our art. Ninety percent of the time it leads to deep silences or oddly twisted feelings.

  We're all black holes when it comes to compliments anyway – who can ever get enough? And those we do get feel good for too short a time. Black hole is an appropriate image. But then, when it comes to our creations, those delicate children we hatched from our own eggs with no one else's help, watch out!

  I took the sandwich and a drink into the television room and turned the machine on.

  On my first trip to Europe, years before, I spent some time in Dijon. Near my hotel was a small park that was jammed most of the day because it was the only green in the neighborhood. Besides, it was summer and parks are summer – lovers, dog walkers, babies crawling for the first time on the sweet July grass.

  I discovered, though, that for some reason, even on the warmest, friendliest nights the place emptied by around ten. The only ones left, till almost midnight, were four women in black. They ranged in age from about thirty to seventy or eighty, one for each decade or so. I guess they were Arabs because they spoke in a loud, throat-clearing, held-l tongue that always sounded vaguely like singing or a call to prayer.