A Child across the Sky

by Jonathan Carroll

  The lights in the theater were already dim, so it was almost impossible to make out anything besides the fact there were others in the audience, seated in different places around the room.

  "Where do you like to sit? How about in the middle?"

  "Fine."

  We walked past a woman sitting in an aisle seat. I looked at her as carefully as I could but she was unfamiliar.

  "Here. Yeah, go in here, to the middle."

  We sidled our way into the middle of a middle row. I was trying to count the number of heads in there and could make out maybe twenty.

  There was music playing, the theme song to Midnight.

  When we were seated, the music stopped immediately and the curtains parted in front of the movie screen.

  The lights came up on a familiar setting: Phil Strayhorn and his dog sitting on the couch in his living room, looking at the camera.

  Oddly, what was most disturbing about it, in the midst of all these other disturbances, was seeing Phil large like this. I'd watched him again and again on the video screen and grown accustomed to his face TV size, not a face that covered a wall, a hand as big as the chair I was sitting on.

  "Hi, Weber. Here we are, and today you get the whole story." Hearing something off-camera, he turned to it. A moment later, Pinsleepe appeared and sat down beside him on the couch. They smiled at each other. She handed him a dog biscuit, which he gave to Flea. They both watched the Shar-Pei for a few seconds, then looked back at the camera. Phil smiled.

  "I lost a bet because of you, Gregston. What do you think of that? Poor old Flea just ate his last dog biscuit." He scratched the dog's head. "Pinsleepe and I thought about making a big production of this, but then I remembered how much you hate Dimitri Tiomkin music and credits that go on forever, so we cut it right to the bone. If you want, after I'm finished telling you this, we have movies of everything and'll be happy to show you things as they actually happened. The last home movie, sort of.

  "Okay." He took a deep breath and sat forward. "A long time ago, Venasque told me in his oblique way this would happen. The only thing I could do was prepare for it, so when it did come, I'd at least be ready. I did what I could, but as you know yourself, who can ever can be prepared for the miraculous?

  "He told me to make the films and see what I'd find there. The only thing I found making Midnight was money and fame for the wrong reasons."

  One of the kids in a row behind us whistled and screamed out "Bo-ring!" Strayhorn smiled and nodded.

  "You're right. What do you think of those little shits who brought you here, Weber? Figure out who they are yet?"

  Gambado gave the screen a big raspberry. "You were better as Bloodstone, man! Nobody's gonna give you an Oscar!"

  "Do me a favor, Weber. Reach over and touch him on the arm or someplace. Anywhere'll do."

  I looked at Gambado. His face in the theater dark was close enough to see he was very frightened.

  "Should I do what he says?"

  The boy licked his lips and tried to smile. "You have to. We're out of it now. Do it, huh? Just do it, man!" The last sentence came out trying to sound tough, but it was a scared boy sounding tough which didn't work. "Do it!"

  I put my hand out and touched his face.

  Remember what you see in the theater when you turn around and look toward the projector while the film is running? Pure white light like a laser flipping up and down energetically, with perhaps some cigarette smoke or dust bits hanging lazily in it. That's what Gambado became when I touched him: sheer white movie light for a moment and then gone. Nothing.

  "It's never like you expected. Even angels! You'd think they'd have a little class. Not necessarily wings or harps, but at least well-behaved and innocuous. But what do you get? Little shits on racing bikes who don't know when to keep their mouths shut!"

  To soothe him, Pinsleepe put her hand around his shoulder and hugged him to her. He paid no attention.

  "'God is subtle, but not cruel.' Do you agree with that now, Weber? On your last, last chance to turn back, God sends out his legions to warn you, only they turn out to be prepubescent rats on orange bicycles! Today's version of the flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz.

  "And weren't his warnings effective? An actor gets murdered. Blow Dry disappears. Bike flips in the air and you're told a few times to photograph only them? Didn't you recognize all his CAUTION signs? I'm not surprised. Who would?"

  Phil stood and, picking up the now-lifeless body of the dog, put it gently in its basket next to the couch. "Things change when you're here. Time, sequence. Different rules.

  "Think of it as a moving sidewalk in an airport next to a normal one. On mine you can go twice as fast if you walk while it's moving. Or I can just stand here and be whisked along while people next to me have to walk. Another possibility is to turn around and run as hard as I can against the flow of my sidewalk.

  "What I'm saying is Flea just died now, but we'll put him back in time so Sasha sees him when she finds me. This is off the subject. I want to talk about you and me, Weber.

  "You never realized I stole from you because you were always too busy being original to notice. But I did, and so did a lot of others. You were always so sure of what you did, and you were inevitably right.

  "Even leaving town was right! You win an Oscar and you leave town! Do you know how much I hated myself watching you go? Feeling like such a fool staying here to play Bloodstone, while you drank wine in Portofino and then came back to work with dying people?

  "So at least I could try to change a little, right? Do something artistic and redeem at least a few inches of myself.

  "First I wanted to do 'Mr. Fiddlehead,' but no one was interested. So I made that fucking video which everyone hated. Two for two. What else was left? You tell me. What else could I do besides play a ridiculous monster for the rest of my life?" He was enraged: jerking his head, throwing his hands in the air, shoving them deep in his pockets.

  Without being aware of it, I said, "Pinsleepe."

  He stopped, turned, and pointed at me. "Exactly. Pinsleepe. There she was in that run-down church, and I knew right off the bat what was up. My old friend come to help.

  "She said the only way I was ever going to do it – make a piece of art that'd mean something and last longer than five minutes – was through Midnight Kills. I'd come close with the first one, but no banana. What I had to do now was pull together every inner resource and strength and use them all. Give this film a vision like nothing ever done before. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Freaks, Psycho. That kind of phantom and illusion.

  "But I couldn't do it! None of what I did worked. Not even the fucking Bloodstone monologue that took so long to write!"

  "What about Portland? What about the people who died when those cars fell? It must have worked!"

  On screen the two of them shared a smile. Pinsleepe spoke for the first time. "That's what you were supposed to think, Weber, but that accident at the shopping center had nothing to do with this. Nothing at all.

  "I told Phil I'd help him however I could. But if he wasn't successful, he had to agree to do two things: kill the dog and help me get you here to make the scenes."

  "Why the dog? Why me?"

  Strayhorn made a nasty face. I'd seen it before when he was at the end of his rope. "Because she knew you could do it, roommate. Because we all know you're the only real contender around. I was just the lightweight who wanted to try and go a round with you in the ring."

  "Why the dog? Why'd you kill Flea?"

  "It was waving the white flag: I give up. I was even wrong about you, pal. No offense."

  Pinsleepe pursed her lips. "Phil was sure you'd never do this because there's too much good in you. I said art and virtue live on different sides of town and you'd do it because, when you got interested, you wouldn't be able to resist."

  "Do what? Make the scenes for the movie? What?" I had an idea but was afraid. How could they know, even them? How could anyone know? It hadn't been done yet. Only w
ords on yellow sheets of paper.

  The screen went dark, then grew light again: four women in black bathing suits chatting together.

  Despite my growing apprehension, it was fascinating to see, because before leaving the house that evening I'd only made notes on what I wanted to do with the tapes when I could get into the cutting room again. But here it was in front of me on a full movie screen: a perfectly finished version of the two scenes I'd visualized.

  Finky Linky's ideas were there, as well as the other parts of my films, Max's attack, even three brief glimpses of Sean and James acting out their own version of "A Quarter Past You."

  How beautifully the disparate pieces fit together! How they enhanced each other, once assembled in that particular order. It was as sure and balanced as I'd envisioned – darks and lights playing off each other, humor, pain, surprise. No more than seven minutes in all – or, rather, seven minutes not including the last scene.

  When that was about to come on, the picture stopped. Pinsleepe and Strayhorn reappeared.

  She spoke. "Do you want to see the last part? We don't have to show it."

  "Of course I want to see the last part, damn it! Why did you interrupt? You have to show it all together. It's of a piece, or –" I looked at Strayhorn and saw him mouth the words "You asshole" before the screen went dark.

  They showed it again from the beginning, but this time continued to the end.

  Only, then, seeing it on a giant movie screen for the first time, did I realize what I had done – what I'd been willing to do – in the name of Art. In the name of Gregston.

  If I'd been making a film of this, I might have had the Weber Gregston character stand up at this point and run out of the theater. Or at least shout at the screen, something like Don't do it! or Take it off! I was wrong! I'm sorry! But that would be kitschy, and we're here to make Great Art, no matter the cost.

  In real life, I sat there and watched the last scene I'd chosen to include: the crucial scene. The one that made it all work. The smartest touch.

  I watched my good mother look out the window of the airplane that would kill her in the next five minutes. I'd used the entire tape Strayhorn had given me to reassure me she hadn't died in agony. Mama's last act. I used every second of it.

  Coming where it did in the film, it was brilliant.

  Sasha's child is due to be born about the same time Midnight Kills is due to be released.

  Pinsleepe said it is my child from the one night (so recently past) Sasha and I spent together. When I said that was absurd, Strayhorn said to remember his moving sidewalk analogy. The child is their gift to me. I didn't mention that Pinsleepe was no longer pregnant when I saw her for the last time on the movie screen.

  So there will be a child, and it will be born when the film is born. Is that supposed to be symbolic? Am I again being told something I must decipher, like the haruspex in Rome? When I think of children now, all I can see is that retarded boy rising off the street and up through the trees: Walter, the mongoloid angel.

  When I asked why it was so important that I work on Strayhorn's film, he said, "There's no human beauty in evil. You were the only one who could give it that."

  Pinsleepe said, "It will make people cry. That's the beginning. Remember 'binary weapons'?"

  Strayhorn said, "There's a line from Rilke: 'Works of art are of an infinite loneliness. . . . Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them."

  "You mean seeing Midnight Kills will make people love evil?"

  "Yes. Because of your art."

  At the end of every Finky Linky Show, Wyatt always read a fable or myth or something wise from long ago that had a moral or meaning to it way beyond the typical kid's story. It was one of my favorite parts of the show. When we were flying to California, Finky told me he'd recently heard one that he loved. Was it a Sufi tale? I can't remember.

  A scorpion and a turtle were best friends. One day the two of them came to the edge of a very wide and deep river they had to cross. The scorpion looked and shook his head. "I can't do it – it's too wide."

  The turtle smiled at his friend and said, "Don't worry, just ride on my back. I'll take us both across." So the scorpion got on the turtle's back, and in no time at all they were safely on the other side.

  But once there, the scorpion immediately stung the turtle.

  Horrified, the turtle looked at the other and asked with his last breath, "How could you do that to me? We were friends and I just saved your life!"

  The scorpion nodded and said sadly, "You're right, but what can I do? I'm a scorpion!"

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