One Day You'll Burn

by Joseph Schneider

  Robert touched Jarsdel’s arm. “I don’t think you’ve ever met Jeff Dinan, have you?”

  “Hmm? No, I don’t think so,” Jarsdel said, extending his hand across the table.

  The giant half rose and gave it a bone-grinding squeeze. “Meetcha,” he said, then sat again. The solid oak chair groaned as Dinan’s weight returned.

  “Jeff curates the USC film vault,” said Robert.

  “Oh,” said Jarsdel. “Cool.”

  “And,” Berman put in, “despite his overall rock-bottom taste in movies, he’s got a hell of a private collection too. Criterion actually borrowed his uncut print of Phase IV when they decided to do the remaster. Dary, didn’t he screen some rare extended cut of Satyricon for one of your ancient studies classes?”

  Darius gave a single nod. “Tried to talk me out of it for weeks beforehand. Assured me Caligula would’ve been a better choice.”

  Robert and Berman laughed, but not Dinan, who studied Jarsdel’s face with naked fascination. “Whoa,” he said, then glanced from Darius to Robert. “He looks like both of you. How the hell’d you guys pull that one off?”

  “Ah,” said Robert. “My…er…seed, I suppose one might say, and Dary’s sister provided the egg.”

  “Sweet.”

  “A surrogate carried Tully to term,” Robert continued. “In fact, our boy here—”

  “Dad.” Jarsdel lifted a hand. “Come on. No one needs to hear all this.”

  “But it’s history! Living history!” He clumsily brushed a forelock from his brow and flashed a wine-stained smile. He’d already had too much, and soon, his bon-vivant routine would take on a forceful, mawkish flavor.

  Robert turned back to Dinan. “So, our own boy was the very first gestational surrogacy in the state of California. The very first. Perfect arrangement too. I’d just come into some money from my father’s passing, and the nice young lady referred to us had a tendency toward an eleemosynary lifestyle—a kind of Valley Girl incarnation of Blanche DuBois.” He chuckled at his joke.

  Jarsdel kept his head down and jabbed at his food. He’d never particularly liked this story, but it had grown even more irritating since his departure from academics. Now, Dad seemed to suggest, Tully’s primary accomplishment in life was being the scientifically engineered progeny of two gay men in the mid ’80s. Everything after that was simply a lead-in to the colossal betrayal of his parents’ most sacred wishes.

  Robert’s facial expressions were always exaggerated when he drank, and now he did a perfect, vaudevillian pantomime of a man remembering something important. He looked over at his husband. “Dary, we need to send her a Christmas card this year. Don’t forget.”

  Darius nodded, his mouth full of food. He was a very thin, severe-looking man, but one whose downturned mouth was capable, occasionally, of the most unexpectedly radiant smiles.

  Not tonight. He swallowed with some effort. “I never do,” he said.

  “What about last year? Did we send her one last year?”

  “Never forgetting is never forgetting.”

  Robert showed his purple teeth again and addressed the group. “Dary is Mnemosyne in the flesh.”

  Dinan perked up. “Hey, I know that one. Wasn’t that the chick who boinked Zeus and gave birth to the Muses? You know, the goddesses of art and stuff?”

  Robert beamed. “Absolutely correct. A well-read young man.” He nudged Jarsdel. “Not the only one at this table who knows his Hesiod, I see.”

  “I actually have no idea who that is,” said Dinan. “Only reason I know about the Muses is from Xanadu. Next to Can’t Stop the Music—oh, and The Apple, can’t forget about the ass-pounding Apple—Xanadu’s the most requested cheeseball musical I’ve had to screen at nostalgia fests.”

  “What…” Robert trailed off, baffled.

  “The movie,” said Darius. While Robert’s speech came out in a sonorous baritone, everything Darius said was hard and clipped. The words themselves were doled out sparingly, as if he only had a limited supply. When he saw Robert still didn’t understand, he exhaled softly. “It’s not important.”

  “Okay.” Robert brightened again. “It’s a movie, I guess. Ooh, Tully, you’ll find this interesting. Jeff moonlights as a projectionist at the Egyptian. Remember when we used to take you there?”

  Jarsdel smiled. “Last time was Ernest Scared Stupid. So I guess it’s been about thirty years.”

  “I remember. You used to love those Ernest movies.”

  Dinan looked at Jarsdel, horrified. “You mean you haven’t been since the renovation? Oh, man. Stop by on Halloween. Me and a friend are doing The Man Who Laughs. One of my own prints. Pristine. Gonna be awesome. You guys should all come.”

  “Got an organist?” asked Berman.

  Dinan looked annoyed. “You don’t use an organist for that one. It’s got a great original score.” He turned his attention back to Jarsdel. “I’ll put your name down.”

  Jarsdel started. “Wait, when is this? Halloween?”

  “Frickin’ yes. Halloween, man. ‘Anything Can Happen on Halloween.’ Remember that song?”

  “It sounds great, but I’m not sure—”

  “I’ll put your name down. You make it, great. If not, no sweat. You got a plus one?”

  “Sorry?”

  Darius looked over at his son, the first time he’d done so all evening. “He’s asking if you’d be bringing a date.”

  “Oh,” said Jarsdel. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Darius, “I ran into Maureen at the faculty brunch today.”

  “Okay.”

  “Asked after you. Wanted to know how you were doing.”

  “Okay,” Jarsdel said again, sensing a trap. He hadn’t seen his ex-fiancée in two years, and that had been an accidental encounter at a Trader Joe’s. Jarsdel wasn’t in the mood to talk about her, but Darius went on.

  “Wasn’t sure what to say.”

  “I’m all right, Baba.”

  “Glad to hear it. I see her again, I’ll tell her. She’s married now. Theater arts professor.”

  “Well,” said Jarsdel, “I guess you can’t have everything.”

  Darius smiled wanly.

  “Tell you what,” Dinan cut in. “I’ll put down two just in case. Maybe you’ll bring a friend. No one should go solo on Halloween.”

  “I really doubt I’ll be able to make it,” said Jarsdel. “But—”

  Darius interrupted. “How’s work?”

  “Ooh, I don’t know if we want to talk about work,” said Robert.

  Dinan, grinning, glanced from Jarsdel to his parents. “I’m not in on the joke. What is he, like, an undertaker or something?”

  Jarsdel looked straight at Darius. “I’m in law enforcement.”

  Robert sighed. Berman bowed his head, as though Jarsdel had mentioned someone who’d recently died.

  Dinan’s eyes widened with interest. “You’re a cop?”

  “Detective.”

  “No way. Really?”

  “Sexy, huh?” said Darius. “No life as a dusty, luftmensch academic. Not for our boy. He’s out there making a difference.”

  Jarsdel’s mouth dropped open a little. Even he was surprised at the hostility behind the sarcasm.

  Dinan went on as though Darius hadn’t spoken. “Always wanted to be a detective growing up. What guy doesn’t, right? What are you in—narcotics? Vice?”

  “Homicide.”

  Dinan slapped the table with two hands, making Robert jump, then leaned back in his chair, shaking his head in awe. “Wow. Seriously wow. You working any cases right now? Probably can’t talk about ’em, right?”

  “Yeah, I don’t think it’s the best dinner conversation,” Jarsdel said.

  “No, please,” said Darius. “Give us a taste. What’d you do today, for
instance?”

  “Baba, c’mon. Dad hates it when I talk about work.”

  “He can handle it. And our guest is interested.”

  Jarsdel sighed. “It was nothing. Lots of paperwork, and then I went to a funeral.”

  “A fellow officer of the peace?”

  Jarsdel was taken aback. “No.”

  “Oh,” said Robert. “I really—”

  “To provide solace?” asked Darius. “Or to root out a suspect, like Columbo?”

  Jarsdel took a measured breath. “Both, I guess. My partner and I thought there might be a chance that the kill—the…uh…perpetrator might show up.”

  “And was your supposition borne out? Did the dastardly villain show himself?”

  “No.”

  Darius nodded. “So glad my son is making the most of himself. You know Marty called me from CSUN. They have a spot opening up in their history department this spring.”

  “Great,” said Jarsdel. “I assume you told him I already have a job.”

  “I referred to you as a liminal figure—a seeker, poised between worlds.”

  “I’m not poised between anything. I assure you, I’m fully present in what I do.”

  “Tully speaks four languages,” Darius said to the rest of the table. “English, of course. Farsi from very young—it’s what I spoke to him as a baby. Fluent Latin by the time he was fifteen. Ancient Greek as an undergrad. He also knows how to read Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew.” He glanced at his son. “Did I leave one out?”

  Jarsdel didn’t answer.

  “I’m curious how often those skills aid you in your work. Perhaps a killer writes an incriminating note in cuneiform, and thank goodness, you’re on scene to decipher it.”

  He’d gone too far. Jarsdel cleared his throat. “Actually, Baba, a guy was burned to death and dumped naked in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. That’s my current assignment, anyway.”

  Darius, smirking, shook his head. “Épater le bourgeois. But I think you’ll find I’m a difficult man to shock. Even if you could, it wouldn’t change my mind.”

  “About what?”

  “What do you think? Your career.”

  “Wait, wait,” said Dinan. “I heard about that. You’re seriously working that case? Do you know who the guy is yet? The victim?”

  “Dary,” Robert broke in, “let’s table this, huh?”

  Darius gave an exaggerated shrug and stabbed a cube of lamb with his fork. A silence of several seconds followed. It was broken when Dinan swatted the table again, this time with just the meaty fingers of one hand. Even so, it was enough to rattle the dessert forks.

  “You know what, though? Let’s be real. You gotta love a good murder.”

  “Jesus, Jeff,” said Berman. “C’mon.”

  “I’m serious. That’s what Hollywood is, man. That’s what we love about it. The toxic beauty. It ain’t—you know—Singin’ in the Rain Hollywood. It’s Swimming with Sharks, it’s The Player, it’s L.A. Confidential. I mean, back in the ’90s, there was this big push to clean it up, you know? Let’s close down this, let’s scrub up that, let’s put in the metro, and all that other jazz. The whole Times Square thing. But it didn’t work, because it wasn’t the Pussycat Theater or—you know—unregulated food vendors that were the problem. How naive, right? You can’t stop it from being Hollywood. It’s like all the ferocity of the industry just feeds into everything else. The town’s frickin’ alive with resentment and suffering. I mean, New Yorkers think they’re tough, right?” He clapped Berman on the shoulder. “Like this guy. I say live in LA for a while. New York kills you fast. Out here, it’s slow. We eat people’s dreams for breakfast. You work retail, do some cattle calls, get a half-assed degree in filmmaking or whatever, and before you know it, ten years have gone by, and you’re out of options. Futureless. Every actor who couldn’t get a break—and this isn’t some small subset of the population. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people, and then every PA who gets shit on every day by the line producer and every writer’s assistant who just can’t get that pitch meeting. And they go a little crazy. Because it makes you crazy to be that close to something and not have it happen. Whether you’re in the biz or not, it touches you. It’s this fury, this storm, always raging just below the surface, but every now and then, it breaks out, you know? That’s Hollywood, man.”

  “Well.” Darius plucked his glass from the table and held it out. In the low light, the wine looked more like ink. Or blood. “Hooray for Hollywood. And for amateur philosophers.”

  If Dinan noticed the dig, he showed no sign. He looked directly at Jarsdel. “We like it, you know. On some level. Our patron saints have always been dead celebrities. We like being reminded every now and then what the stakes really are. Keeps it real, knowing this shit can kill you.”

  Robert was about to speak, probably to suggest a change of subject, but Dinan steamrolled on. “And I guarantee: the place you guys found that body? The burn guy? It’ll be just another tour stop in a couple years. Because if there’s anything we’re good at, it’s not letting suffering go to waste.”

  * * *

  After the guests left, Robert began clearing dishes. When Jarsdel offered to help, he was waved away. “Sit and relax. Talk to your baba.”

  “Okay, but I better hit the road in a little bit. Long way back.”

  “You could always spend the night here.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got an early start tomorrow, and my place is closer to the station.”

  “Whatever you like.” Robert left the room with a stack of dishes and some precariously gripped stemware.

  Jarsdel looked over at Darius, who had leaned back in his chair, fingers interlaced behind his head. He appeared to be staring at the ceiling. Jarsdel wasn’t going to get suckered into whatever game Baba was playing and resolved he wouldn’t be the one to talk first.

  He turned his attention instead to a small, freestanding bookshelf in the far corner. The top and middle rows were occupied with family photos, but the bottom held his parents’ coffee-table book collection. The spines were a little blurry to him now, but Jarsdel had read them from where he sat so many times that he could probably name them all without looking. He was curious if one volume in particular was still there. Straining his eyes, he spotted it right where it had always been—sandwiched between a ten-pound Edward Hopper compendium and a copy of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. It was intended as a sober examination of how social mores affected art, but Sex on the Screen: Eroticism in Film had interested the twelve-year-old Jarsdel for a more basic reason. After a month of sneaking it up to his room, he’d been doing his homework at his desk one night when Baba appeared in the doorway and leaned against the jamb. It was meant to look casual, but the man was incapable of nonchalance. Jarsdel’s defenses went up immediately.

  “What you working on?” asked Darius.

  “Reading comprehension,” said Jarsdel. “For O Pioneers!”

  Darius watched him in silence another moment, sighed, and was about to leave when a thought seemed to occur to him.

  “Oh. By the way.”

  Jarsdel looked up, bracing himself.

  “Around your age, a few things start to change for a boy.” Darius shrugged. “All good things, but you might feel overwhelmed at times. There’s an added responsibility too. A serious one. Young as you are, you have the capability now of being a father. You understand?”

  Speechless, Jarsdel nodded.

  “Good. And I want you to know you can ask us anything. Okay?”

  Jarsdel nodded again and saw a hint of a smile on his father’s lips.

  “Okay,” said Darius before turning to go. As he left, he spoke a line in Farsi, just loud enough for Jarsdel to hear. Its meaning escaped him at the time, but he understood it soon enough. It translated to something like A dirty book is seldom a dusty one.

&nbs
p; It had been so long since Baba had looked at him with any real affection, and as Jarsdel regarded him now, he felt a sudden, desperate need to connect with him. To have nothing in the way and just be with him, like they used to be. Forgetting his resolution not to be the one to break the silence, Jarsdel spoke up.

  “Please, Baba. I really wish you wouldn’t get like this.”

  He didn’t think his father was going to answer, but then Darius asked, “Like what?”

  “You know. The whole ‘my son is a disgrace’ routine. It’s tiresome.”

  “I would never think of you that way. As a disgrace.”

  “Ah, we’re into semantics. A disappointment, then.”

  Darius turned to him. “You want me to lie to you? Of course I’m disappointed.”

  “Did you know,” said Jarsdel, “that in my line of work, I’m actually considered a success? Five years in, and I’m already a homicide detective in one of the best departments in the world. That doesn’t happen for everyone.”

  “Imagine a great pianist breaking his own fingers. How can you not be disappointed in that?”

  “You see, I really, really don’t like it when you do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “You don’t actually respond to me. You don’t engage in conversation. You just keep on with the thread of what you’re talking about regardless of what I say.”

  Robert had reappeared, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. “May I say something?” Neither Jarsdel nor Darius answered, so Robert continued. “It’s hard on your baba and me when something like this CSUN job comes along, something we know you’d be good for, but you don’t take it. It reminds us of what could have been.”

  “But see, that’s always been your vision, not mine. You’re both basically punishing me for doing my own thing.”

  “Your baba and I—”

  “Your baba and I, your baba and I. Can’t we have a single conversation where you don’t say that?”

  “What did we do to make you so angry with us?” Darius asked.

  “I’m not angry at all.”

  “Then why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you doing this, if it’s not just a ‘fuck you’ to everything we’ve raised you to be?”