by Lynn Crosbie
I could do better.
* * *
“You look fucking sick,” Krishna says grudgingly when he picks me up at the airport.
I make him stop at LAX 24/7 Locker Rentals, and a gas station.
I bring my bag with me.
When I am fastened into his Lexus, he angrily demands his cut from Fan Expo.
I look him over, thinking of all the disgraceful auditions he sent me to, of the money he swindled me out of when I was drunk and depressed, of the Twitter page he set up to make a fool of me.
Sample tweet:
Sad to hear of the death of my good friend #RichardBurbage. Heaven shall be on fire tonight, my excellent peer!
And:
After consuming twenty capsules of #Senokot I’ll be live-tweeting the arrival of some exceptionally soft stool. Join me, friends.
In a rare moment of concern, Pudge succeeded in having the page taken down after complaining militantly about several appalling jokes about “a Mexican gal and her burro.”
I stare at Krishna intently. He is a little weasel, nothing more. Holding out a jittery hand — he has been doing fat lines off the dashboard as he drives — he says, “Fifty percent,” and snaps his fingers.
“How about zero percent and you’re fucking fired.”
He starts yelling and I tap my jacket, clearly holstered. I checked the gun on my way out of town: I have been looking forward to this.
“Goddamn, you’re full of surprises,” he says, and then shuts up until I am home, where I punch him in the throat. “Tweet that,” I say, slamming the car door.
I call William Morris and ask for Jerry Gallo, who is not there.
“Have him call me,” I say, strip naked, and strut around.
An email arrives and when I click on the link in the message, a film starts. It’s a WRATH production and it’s gathering likes by the second. Jumpy and dark, it is set to an industrial punk soundtrack Annabel has produced and played on, using flash-scenes from Ultraviolence. In one, she saws a violin as I pistol-whip a cop to the ground.
My life is changing, I think, and hum like a splendid insect in mid-flight.
* * *
Jerry calls back.
This is huge.
I tell him I am looking for new representation, and he agrees to meet me at the Chateau Marmont to talk.
He is my former agent, one of the many people who worked for me and decamped after my disastrous falling-out with Kray.
He has not retired because he makes too much fucking money and is supporting four ex-wives, a new one, and ten kids that he knows of.
I go and bang on Rabi’s door.
The boy answers: he is smoking a cheroot and wearing a long black velvet robe.
“What you want, abbu?”
“I need clothes. You always look chic. Strange, yes, but chic. Would you — ”
“Hang on.”
I peer through the latched door and see a number of boxes overflowing with fabric, plaster figurines, model ships, sea glass, diadems, and more. A swarm of pale-blue budgies drifts by, and Rabi hands me an old bumblebee-striped I. Magnin bag.
“Had this stuff a while now, doesn’t fit me,” he says, downplaying his largesse.
I thank him and go back to my apartment: put on a white linen shirt, black peg-legs, black suspenders — which I wear loose — and blue suede brothel creepers. Everything fits.
Anxiously I approach the long mirror on my closet door and see Sid looking back at me. Well, Sid’s father, I suppose, but just as mean and cool.
“That witch got you moving,” Rabi says from the landing when I step into the hall. “Don’t fuck this up,” he says, feeding one of the birds on his shoulder a cherry from his lips.
They kiss.
* * *
I stop by the bodega and Angel is fully agitated.
“My man, Parnell,” he says loudly, so the nodding junkies and lottery fiends can hear him.
He hands me the National Enquirer. An old shot of me with Pudge, then a little girl, walking through Griffith Park, occupies a square in the bottom-right corner of the front cover.
The headline reads, “Movie Star Parnell Wilde Caught Cheating with Will Harford’s Girlfriend!”
I rifle through the pages and find a shot of Harford spitting at the photographer, and another of Annabel kissing me at Fan Expo.
Oh, so this is why Jerry is meeting me.
Regardless, the story is extremely flattering. Never mind they call me “elderly” in the caption; I look virile and deadly.
Annabel looks sublime.
“Chupa mi pinga, mamacita!” is what Angel says about her, frowning when I hand him a bottle of Perrier.
“Don’t talk about her that way,” I say, staring him down. I win and he rolls the water in a few copies of the tabloid.
“My man, the coño magnet!” he says, holding his hand up for a slap.
I leave him hanging, and the atmosphere charges in a way I have never felt in this store.
I feel envy, and respect.
* * *
Annabel calls me one night, obviously drunk, the line crackling as she moves from branch to branch of the Chandelier Tree, an infamous, garish beauty on West Silver Lake.
She is back from I have no idea where.
“Have you trespassed?” I ask, and she tells me she is a good friend of the makeup artist who owns the property.
I drive over and pick her out above the lambent eyes and shining mouth of a reclining tabby.
I climb to her.
Her face is a Turner of purple storms cut with black ships, with a sluice of red dawn; Ruskin scurrying to write it, in the distance.
She says, abruptly, “Will thinks I’m a dumb cunt who can’t fuck.”
I fold my hatred into my heart and let it take deep, rapacious root.
“And I can’t,” she says, crying now. “I can’t.”
She is glowing among the golden branches.
I carry her home and, after rapidly changing the sheets, pillowcases, and coverlet, put her in bed. Using a small comb, I untangle her hair and tell her, “Of course you can, you can do anything.”
She smiles as she drifts off and I throw myself against her side, and sleep too.
Annabel is gone in the morning; my room is filled with tiny Chinese lanterns.
The note, brief as usual, says, “Soon.” It is written on my hand, the hand that lay on her hip as we slept and still tingles.
What splendid shocks await you!
* * *
“Parnell, darling,” Jerry says, standing to greet me.
It is early spring and hot as hell: we sit outside.
“I may have something for you,” he says, covertly eyeing my outfit as if trying to decide if I am absurd.
When the young waitress touches me repeatedly as we order and stammers when speaking to me, Jerry tells me I look sensational.
“Kray wants to film a sequel to Ultraviolence with you and Lana Del Rey,” he says. “The working title is Deadly Nightshade. You would play Sid again. He’s old and ravaged, hell-bent on revenge against the younger players who have crowded him out.”
I nod coolly. This is my big shot.
“Let me think about it.”
Excusing myself, I go to the washroom, kneel in one of the stalls, and vomit lacy bile. After I get up and wash my tear-stained face, I swallow some mints from a dish by the sink. They taste bitter, like — like what?
The attendant brushes my shoulders and I turn and hold him, sobbing soundlessly.
“There, there,” the warm, wintry man says. “Try to remember that this is your life and no one else’s.”
I thank him and offer him cash that he waves off.
The problem is, I can’t.
I can’t remember a single time my life was min
e, barring several brief encounters with an elusive girl likely just toying with me like a spoiled, fleshy cat.
“I’ll do it,” I say, approaching the table to sit down. Jerry’s unctuous smile makes me sick all over again.
* * *
“But what about my movie?”
Annabel has returned, banging at my door at 3 a.m. and wanting a drink. So I have one with her — my first in days.
She is unhappy and tense.
“Will broke up with me when he saw the Enquirer,” she says. “He was angry enough about me asking you to feed me truffles in bed.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, although I am not. I am filled with joy.
“He smashed all the plates. He called me a — ”
I hold up my hand; I cannot listen to this.
“I can’t blame him, I guess. I wanted to fuck you that day at the convention center, in front of everyone. I fantasized about you the whole time I was in Italy, even in those awful overalls.”
I keep a straight face but my heart is doing backflips.
Annabel is sitting cross-legged on my bed: a sunbeam, moiling with dust motes, glances her face.
I am in white pajamas; she is wearing a sheer magenta-colored sari and sandals. Her hair is a perfumed mass of helices pierced with a yellow pencil.
“I missed this place,” she says. “The sadness emanating from everything is so wrenching.”
“That note you handed me. You made me a palace.”
She smiles, remembering.
I watch, afraid to move or talk in case she flies off again.
She does not. She pats the bed beside her and beckons me with a crooked finger.
“I have to warn you,” she says. “I don’t like sex, I mean, it doesn’t get me off.”
I join her, shake my head, and think of myself as I was, once.
Which leads me to pounce on her and open her dress with a firm rip. Her smile disappears and her pupils dilate. I undress, hand her the switchblade from the end table, and flip her on top of me.
Her hands tremble.
She presses the knife open and holds its sharp edge to my throat, drawing a few beads of blood.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“You aren’t. Don’t stop.”
She holds the knife more firmly, and uses her other hand to squeeze my balls.
I lie perfectly still and tell her, “Say it.”
“No,” she says, letting her hair cover her face.
“Say it.”
“Fuck me,” she says in an orange, then black streak, moving with me, slowing down to slap or scratch me. “Fuck me hard.”
She fits herself over my cock’s wicked curve, the curve that hits the cross drawn deep inside her, that hits and hits it until she is soaking wet and radiant: she makes high-pitched, unreal noises that the birds answer, with songs of love and pain.
I am sleeping when she leaves but I catch a glimpse of her face, alight with something muscular, but soft.
FIRST TIME, she has written on the bathroom mirror in plum-black lipstick.
I read her exultant words and feel her closing around me, strangling me in short, brute intervals.
* * *
Annabel uploads a film to Vimeo and then, spreading her bet, to the rest of her sites after midnight.
Blessed with Beauty and Rage is a Super 8 of her and me moving languidly beneath my blankets. It is set to Pretty Yende singing “Violetta Aria,” run through Appalachian mandolins and what sounds like a cement mixer. At the end of it, she raises the blade victoriously and spectral O’s pour from her mouth.
Within an hour, I hear from everyone I know and many I don’t, mostly on the Twitter page she has set up for me, its banner reading simply, “Parnell Wilde: Actor, Killer.”
“He’s still so hot,” writes @Gina69, using up her character limit with heart-eyed emojis.
This is the general tenor of the responses, leaving aside the occasional troll — such as my own daughter, who writes, “This is FAKE,” only to be attacked by a geek-genius who says he can prove it isn’t and does.
I get thousands of followers that night, and in the morning Jerry calls with offer after offer.
If you could see what she looked like, when she bent back and the light hit the knife —
I say yes to every interview, every party, every script-read. Jerry advances me some money and expedites an AmEx Platinum Card: I spend a fair bit on a good suit and shoes, buttery shirts and ties, and fine hosiery.
And a shining surprise.
I wear my new clothes to Little Tart and hold my hand up when cameras start clattering.
I pick up and discard handbags, perfume, and shoes for Annabel. I want to give her something remarkable.
My Briar Rose will wonder all day, as it turns out, whether just one branch will appear at the hotel she stays at anonymously when she and Harford have split.
Where she will look at herself in the mirror and be consumed with fear and revulsion.
I almost ruin everything.
Then I am inspired.
* * *
When I revisit our wild night, the thought of my sagging chest, tassels of fleecy hair, and uncut, shanty-mick cock torment me.
I am scared she is remembering me with disgust. I need to remind her that I have far more to offer than he does.
Thinking of him provides my inspiration.
I shop for a few items and get into my car.
On my way to the Hills, I get a text from Annabel.
A cute baby bird flaps around the words “miss u.”
When I park, I see she has sent me an email, and attached to it is another short film, this one called Verity.
I decide to watch it later. Quickly, I text back:
Miss you more super-busy talk soon.
There. I am certain I sound desirable: aloof and confident.
I arrive at the luxury condo building wearing a thick stick-on mustache and plaid cap, and walk into the foyer holding a bouquet of flowers.
“Delivery for Mr. Harford,” I say to the porcelain doll behind the desk. She waves me forward and keeps waving: she is drying her jewel-encrusted claws.
When he answers the door, I shove the bouquet in his face and knee him in the balls.
As he lies on the floor groaning, I jump up and land on his chest, kneeling there while punching his face savagely.
“Parnell Wilde,” he says, before passing out.
I wash up in his sink, rinsing my bloody hands under a gold dolphin faucet.
I kick him, and when he opens one limp eye I say, “Leave her alone or I’ll kill you.”
His eye leaks and I kick him again.
“Understand?”
He nods. His cuts are firegold, leaking sticky shiraz. I lick my lips, wanting to taste what I have done.
“She wanted it,” he says, and when I once again aim my foot at his face, he pulls out his phone and scrabbles for a video.
“Look,” he says. “Look.”
On the screen, Annabel is being slapped by a repulsively nude Harford. She starts to undress, her face a stone.
“More,” she says. “Harder.”
He hits her with a frying pan and she laughs.
“Yes,” she says. “Make me feel something. Anything.”
He stops the video. “Psycho,” he says. “Take her.”
“I will,” I say.
I am pleased by my beloved’s coldness, and I laugh in a new way — that is, the old way. The sound Kray seized on, having heard my amusement after decimating someone in a bar fight.
I rifle through Harford’s things as he lies unconscious, then sail down the stairs whistling a different song.
“Me and Jesus the Pimp in a ’79 Granada Last Night.”
* * *
When I ge
t home, I look around for a minute and grab my envelope of valuables now containing a Roman postcard and floriferous bits and pieces of Annabel. I book it with the few good clothes I have, jammed into two WinCo shopping bags.
I check into the Roosevelt and try calling Annabel.
Then I text her.
And email her.
I am feeling fine in my terry robe and slippers, with my slicked-back hair and lightly browned skin.
I click on the TV: Harford is everywhere.
As is Annabel, crying and saying, “Who would do this?” as the reporter — a black woman with dreads and a power suit — holds her hand and murmurs to her.
I cycle through the channels faster and faster. News of “this senseless beating” is everywhere.
A reporter accosts Harford as he is being wheeled into an ambulance on a stretcher.
“Who did this to you?”
He looks afraid.
“Sid,” he says. “Some motherfucker named Sid.”
I feel so good! My knuckles sing; from the rocks they sing each to each. I change into a black sweater and jeans I took from Harford’s closet, along with a pair of his meticulously distressed engineer’s boots. I comb my darker-brown hair back, slick, and call Annabel. She answers so demurely, I feel desperate for her.
“Come to me,” I say.
I pace the room drinking Bollinger from the bottle. I tilt my head, remembering, and feel Harford’s blood warm on my flesh as if I have savaged the sun. I am picking at one or two stray, dried drops when Annabel knocks. I open the door and, exquisitely dishevelled and frail, she falls into my arms.
“Daddy,” she says, and I like it.
* * *
“It’s my fault,” she says.
Annabel is enclosed in a black cashmere wrap, deep in a red wingback chair like a perfect gemstone shining from its velvet-draped box.
“I’m all tangled up,” she says, morosely.
This is intolerable. I thought she would be grateful, that she would look at me and know my rough kindness.
“Get up,” I say, and she does, dropping the wrap to the floor. “Now get the ropes and the gun.”