One Day You'll Burn

by Joseph Schneider

  Aleena waved as they passed. “So cute.”

  They made it onto Los Feliz and headed west, passing the entrance to Griffith Park and the statue of its curiously named benefactor, industrialist Griffith J. Griffith. When they turned onto Hollywood Boulevard, Jarsdel saw they’d be in for a long drive. Halloween always brought the street its worst annual traffic jam. There was no way around it, he knew. Franklin and Sunset would be just as bad.

  “Sorry about this,” he said.

  Aleena watched a small parade of sparely clothed teenage girls in goth makeup waiting outside an eighteen-and-over club. A man in a devil costume lunged at them, threatening them with his plastic pitchfork. “No prob. It’s kinda what we signed up for, living in this city. What part of town you in?”

  “The other end, pretty much. You know Park La Brea?”

  “By the Farmers Market? Wow, how long’d it take you to get over here?”

  Jarsdel smiled. “Wasn’t that bad. Had this to keep me company.” He turned up the music, one of his favorite Sonny Chillingworth albums. It made for a queer juxtaposition with the scene unfolding around them on the boulevard. A club security guard approached the man in the devil costume, shaking his head gravely.

  “What is this?” asked Aleena. “Hawaiian music?”

  “Authentic Hawaiian music. None of that ‘Mele Kalikimaka’ crap. Do you like it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s different.”

  “I can put on something else.”

  “No, it’s okay. Kinda relaxing.” She thought for a moment, then added, “I woulda pegged you for a classic rock guy.”

  “Yeah, why’s that? My rugged good looks? John Mellencamp olive jacket?”

  “Ah, he was still just John Cougar on that album cover. No, I don’t know. You just seem like the kind of guy who’d really appreciate a mean guitar solo. You know, really get into the technicalities of what makes a song great. I can see you giving a lecture on Frank Zappa or something.”

  Jarsdel laughed. “I promise I’ll never give you any lectures.”

  “Oh, don’t say that. I bet I’d love to hear some of the stuff you used to teach.”

  They sat in silence for a while, inching forward in the long stretch of traffic. The cars moved so slowly that pedestrians crossed the street at will, weaving through the cars and grinning made-up faces at the drivers. Some wore masks. A man dressed as Leatherface glanced in at Jarsdel and Aleena and shook a small sledgehammer at them before moving on.

  “Ugh,” said Aleena. “I hate Halloween. What about you?”

  Jarsdel shrugged. “I kinda love it. Get to be someone else for an entire day.”

  “Is that why you became a cop? To be someone else?”

  “Hey, therapy territory here.”

  “Just curious. Can’t say I’ve met many cops. And I’ve definitely never been out on a date with one before.”

  “What do you call the other night?”

  “Well, we didn’t go out, did we?”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “I guess we didn’t.”

  It took them another half hour to reach the Egyptian. Jarsdel offered to drop Aleena in front while he hunted for a parking spot, but she said she’d rather stay with him. They spotted a pay lot on Selma that was charging an astounding thirty dollars to get in, but Jarsdel didn’t think he’d be able to find anyplace else. He grudgingly paid the attendant and they headed toward the theater.

  “Wanna go into business together and open a parking lot?” asked Aleena. She slipped her arm through his, and again, Jarsdel felt a galvanic charge in being with this woman. She was lovely and strong and beautiful, and he felt he could fall in love with her if given the time.

  The theater’s exterior was done in the Egyptian Revival style, a product of the surging fascination with all things Egyptian when it was built in 1922. Hieroglyphs—linguistically nonsensical, Jarsdel quickly determined—along with paintings of the gods Horus and Seth adorned the courtyard walls. A crowd of people milled between the four large columns at the entrance, most of them costumed, waiting to get inside.

  By the time they made it to the door, Jarsdel was afraid he’d made a mistake. So far, this date had consisted of sitting in traffic, looking for parking, then more waiting to get into a silent film Aleena didn’t even want to see.

  “Tickets?” asked the doorman. He was about twenty and wore plastic press-on fangs and a black turtleneck. Twin streaks of fake blood had been applied on either side of his mouth, but they made him look more like a ventriloquist dummy than a vampire.

  “I think we’re on the list,” said Jarsdel.

  The doorman consulted a clipboard on a nearby lectern. “Name?”

  “Jarsdel.”

  The man nodded and made a note. “Reserved section, right in the middle. Hands, please?”

  Jarsdel and Aleena held out their right hands, and the doorman stamped the backs of them with a blood-red crescent moon. Red like the quarter, it occurred to Jarsdel. He pushed the thought away.

  The doorman waved them in. “Enjoy the show.”

  “VIP, huh?” said Aleena, squeezing Jarsdel’s arm. “I thought police officers weren’t supposed to use their position for preferential treatment.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with me. The guy who runs this thing’s a friend of a friend of my folks.”

  They followed the crowd into the largest of the two theaters, where they showed their hand stamps to an usher. She directed them to a section of seats cordoned off with painter’s tape. Jarsdel was about to head toward the middle of the row when Aleena stopped him.

  “Can we sit on the aisle? In case we decide to leave?”

  “Sure.” He lifted the tape, and they took their seats. “Shit, I’m sorry,” Jarsdel said. “Did you want any popcorn or anything?”

  “You’re sweet. No, I’m good.”

  “Yeah? It’s no trouble at all.”

  “I’m fine, really.”

  The room hummed with conversation. Someone shouted something and was answered with a raucous laugh. Jarsdel glanced at Aleena, but her head was turned away. He tried to think of something funny to say, but everything that came into his head fell flat.

  Then the lights dimmed, and there was a smattering of applause. The screen’s footlights came on, and a man stepped out of the shadows and moved center stage. He wore a tail suit, complete with white tie, cummerbund, top hat, and white gloves. It took Jarsdel a moment to recognize him as Raymond Stevens, proprietor of the Cinema Legacy Museum.

  “I actually know that guy,” Jarsdel said to Aleena.

  “Who?” she asked. “Count Dracula up there?”

  Stevens raised a cordless mic and smiled broadly. “Good evening.” A few people in the crowd returned the greeting, but not many. Stevens didn’t seem to mind. “I’m immensely gratified that so many have decided to join me on this most special of nights. I won’t talk long, but as a confirmed pedant, I can’t resist providing you with a brief introduction to tonight’s presentation. I hope you’ll forgive me this bit of indulgence. The film you’re about to see is very dear to me, and in sharing it with you, I feel as if I’m making a roomful of friends.”

  Aleena leaned close to Jarsdel. “Ze children of za night,” she said in a Lugosi accent, “vhat beautiful music zey make. Vine? I never drink…vine.”

  Stevens closed his eyes and held up his free hand in the manner of a revivalist preacher. “The Comprachicos traded in children. And what did they make of these children? Monsters. Why monsters? To laugh at. The populace must needs laugh, and kings too. What are we sketching in these few preliminary pages? A chapter in the most terrible of books; a book which might be titled The farming of the unhappy by the happy.”

  Stevens opened his eyes. The room was quiet now, waiting for him to continue. “So writes Victor Hugo in his 1869 novel, L’Homme qui rit, T
he Man Who Laughs.” He began to pace the stage slowly as he spoke, directing his attention to any part of the room that wasn’t yet with him. “The master writes with great insight, mocking our drive to impose ourselves, to thrust our will upon the world. The loathed Comprachico mutilators are merely a symptom, a product of our amusement seeking. Consider the man who docks his Doberman’s tail. He does not do it himself but hires it out to one who is experienced in those matters. Is such a thing horrible? If not, when does horror enter into it? By what degree does the shaping of the world according to power and privilege become repellent, become abominable?

  “And so, what makes this a horror film is not the chain-rattling ghost, nor the hand creeping from behind a curtain to squeeze the life from a nubile throat.” Stevens extended his hand and mimed the gesture, then went on. “The horror lies in the poisonous wake of an ego given to whim and caprice and possessed of the power to indulge itself. And it echoes in the eyes of the king’s political enemy, Lord Clancharlie—Gwynplaine’s father—as the door of the iron maiden closes upon him. For it is not his own fate that torments him but that of his young son, whom he’s just learned has been handed over to the Comprachicos. What that band of mercenary surgeons has done to his dear Gwynplaine is left to Clancharlie’s imagination, producing an agony far in excess of the embrace of the maiden. That”—Stevens held up a finger—“is horror. The horror of a father’s love turned against him, made into a weapon of exquisite torment. Pay attention to his eyes! My God, those haunted eyes.

  “But the king’s vengeance is still not complete, for Gwynplaine, our unlikely hero, must live out his life marked with the ghastly work of the Comprachicos: a rictus of a grin carved across his face.” Here, Stevens swept a finger from one cheek to the other. “All because a king thought it might be amusing. To force the boy, as a title card from the film reads, ‘to laugh forever at his fool of a father.’” He stared out at the crowd, letting a long few seconds go by.

  “Before we begin, put your hands together please for our marvelous projectionist, Jeff Dinan, who was so kind to lend his own print for tonight’s screening.” Stevens gestured to the projection booth.

  The crowd turned as one, applauding lustily. Jarsdel looked too and, from his angle, caught a flash of Dinan’s bright-red hair and a wave of his hand.

  “And now,” said Stevens, once again drawing the crowd to him, “I urge you to think of Gwynplaine—now, and later on, as you make your way home safely to your beds. On this night of masks, consider the fate of one who wears a mask not of his own choosing and that can never be removed. That, too, is horror. My most gracious ladies and gentlemen, happy Halloween.”

  * * *

  Jarsdel and Aleena stayed for the whole movie, holding hands through most of it. It was more a tragic love story than anything else, despite Stevens’s macabre speech, which suited Jarsdel just fine. Aleena even applauded as the lights came up.

  “Amazing,” she said, turning to him. “Conrad Veidt is my new hero.”

  “Wish I could take more credit,” said Jarsdel, “but it was the only semicool thing I could think to do tonight. And the guy who—” A thought occurred to him. “Hey, I want you to meet someone. He’ll love it that we showed up.” He led her past the throng streaming out the exits and to a stairway marked by a sign reading Projection Room—Employees Only Please. He glanced around but didn’t see the vampire doorman.

  “Up there?” asked Aleena.

  Jarsdel took her hand. “It’ll round out the evening nicely. You’ll see. That way, you can say you met a real live berserker.”

  “What? Like a crazy man?”

  “No, Viking warrior. S’what he looks like anyway. C’mon. You’ll love this guy. He’s a real LA character.”

  They climbed the staircase, which ended in a pocket of darkness. To their left was an open doorway. Faint light spilled out, and they could also hear voices, low and resonant. There was a hitching, snorting chuckle, and someone said, “That was the worst.”

  They approached, and Jarsdel was amazed by what he saw. The theater they’d just left had been immaculate, slick, the benefit of a multimillion-dollar renovation—ergonomic seats, a flawless, bone-white screen, and a state-of-the-art speaker system. But the similarities in here stopped at the shiny twin projectors. The rest could’ve been mistaken for someone’s basement rec room.

  Finish your beer—there’s sober kids in India, advised one poster, but the rest were all for horror films. In one, a bikinied teenager was shown reflected, screaming, in the blade of a butcher’s knife. Another—this one more stylized—featured a giant, cruel-looking hand cradling a girl in a nightgown. The caption above read, To avoid fainting, keep repeating: it’s only a movie, only a movie, only a movie…

  A collection of empty liquor bottles lined one shelf. Another held action figures—mostly big-breasted fantasy heroines wielding broadswords. One—Jarsdel squinted to make sure—was of a wide-eyed manga schoolgirl, ass arched high, being taken from behind by a tentacled, winged demon.

  Jeff Dinan sat splayed on a battered, threadbare sofa, his massive figure making it appear abnormally small, like something to be found in a child’s room. In his lap, he cradled a twenty-four-ounce can of Murphy’s Irish Stout. A few feet away, Raymond Stevens was studying several dozen reels of film arranged on a low shelf, his pendant swaying below his chin as he went.

  “You actually have the trailer for The Stuff,” he said in a tone somewhere between awe and disgust.

  “You have no idea how popular that one is,” said Dinan. “Gets laughs every time I play it. Probably worth five-hundred dollars, maybe more.”

  Stevens made a sour face. “Something is only worth what people are willing to pay. I have trouble believing you’d find a buyer with just the right blend of base desires and fiscal profligacy.”

  “Dude, first of all, it’s not for sale. Second, it’s ironic. Postmodern. That’s the whole point.”

  Jarsdel rapped softly on the doorjamb. “Hey, sorry to interrupt. We just wanted to come by and say hi.”

  Dinan looked up, his expression confused. Stevens threw a glance over his shoulder, then went back to flipping through the reels.

  “My name’s Tully. We met a couple weeks ago. My folks—”

  “You came! Awesome!” Dinan’s face was alight with joy. His smile broadened even further when he saw Aleena. “And this must be the ‘plus one’ you told me not to bother putting on the list.”

  Aleena gave Jarsdel a quizzical look.

  “Before we started dating,” he assured her. “I didn’t have anyone to bring, so—”

  “Detective Jarsdel?” Stevens had by now recognized him. He stood uncertainly, holding a reel in one hand and a bottle of Strongbow cider in the other.

  “You guys know each other?” Dinan turned to Stevens. “How does a guy like you know a badass LA homicide cop?”

  “Long story,” said Jarsdel, changing the subject. “Anyway, we just wanted to say thanks for the movie. It was—”

  “Perfect,” finished Aleena.

  Both Dinan and Stevens looked at her in astonishment.

  “Ray,” said Dinan, “you seein’ this?”

  “I am,” said Stevens.

  Dinan grandly lifted a hand, indicating a mini fridge in the corner. “We are well met, Lady of Jarsdel. I offer you full use of my stores. A flagon of mead, perhaps?”

  “He really does have mead,” said Stevens.

  Aleena nodded in the direction of Dinan’s beer. “Any more of those?”

  “Tully,” said the giant, beaming. “She doesn’t by any chance have a sister, does she?”

  “I do, actually,” said Aleena, crossing the room to the fridge. She took out a can of Murphy’s, flicked its side a couple of times, then cracked the top. “She’s got the Serenity Prayer tattooed on her hip, looks like our dad, and hates me. Oh, and her favorite movie
is Crash. Want her number?” She took a long pull of the stout.

  “I retract the question,” said Dinan, bowing his head. “All the same, please join us.”

  Aleena sat in a squeaky black swivel chair facing the sofa, and Jarsdel leaned against a worktable piled high with strips of film and splicing tape. “We don’t want to take up a ton of your time,” he said. “Just wanted to thank you for the movie and everything.”

  “Stay long as you want. Every minute you’re here is one less I gotta spend alone with Comrade Eurotrash. Guy’s actually more of a snob than I am.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah,” said Stevens. He’d again gone back to perusing the shelf of trailers. “Just because I said Scorsese was sometimes a bit pushed.”

  “That’s not what you said. You said he was unchallenging—the go-to director for people who want to pretend they’re film buffs. Then you went on to slam Tim Burton.”

  “I also said Stripes isn’t all that funny. Don’t forget that.”

  “I don’t forget. I don’t.”

  “Good.”

  Dinan leaned close to Aleena. “You know what it is? These ex-Stasi guys just have no sense of humor. Get it beat out of them in basic training.”

  Stevens didn’t bother turning around. “I’m from Montenegro, you ignorant, beer-swilling oaf.”

  Dinan threw back his head, and there again came that porcine laugh. He gradually recovered, sighing loudly, and clapped his hands. The sound was startling in the tiny room, like the crack of a whip.

  A silence followed. Aleena took another long swallow of beer. Stevens continued his perusal, pausing occasionally to hiss and shake his head. Only once did he find something that interested him enough to take out for inspection, but this too he returned to the rack with a sad little grunt.

  Jarsdel’s gaze drifted to the wall opposite, on which hung an inflatable moose head. Beneath it, in identical cheap black frames, were tacked perhaps thirty autographed headshots. Jarsdel recognized a couple of names, but the rest were a total mystery. One image was a close-up of a man grinning evilly and drawing a straight razor across his tongue. To Jeff, read the caption. You’re next! The signature was illegible. Dinan followed Jarsdel’s gaze.