Brand New Cherry Flavor

by Todd Grimson

  And indeed it was. If the unique vine grew only in this one perfect ambush-spot where there were uncounted skeletons, preconquest and after, along with broken swords and pieces of armor, arrowheads and lances and even some jewels and gold ornaments, but mostly the signs of repeated massacres … it was conceivable that some of the memories from pieces of brain, blended with what she’d been reading of El Dorado, her cinematic view of this material, the characteristic cropping and framing and moving camera, her own memories, paintings she’d seen, or illustrations in art books … whatever bizarre alchemy had taken place, all this had somehow fused together, no doubt through a manifestation of hitherto unknown or unconscious powers incited by Boro’s magic, there was no other word for it, no concept, it was magic … and here was the physical result. A documentary on ants had become a brand-new film-somewhat rough with fade-outs into black, a soundtrack that was often no more than amplified murmurs, weird shadows of half-remembered music, sounding as though it had been recorded backward, muddy, fading out for long stretches at a time (and of course there were no titles or anything like that)—a weird film about conquistadors, Indians, and El Dorado. It “starred” Roy Hardway, and Lisa was in it too, plus a huge cast, fantastic scenes that seemed to be memories of medieval Spain, slaughters and tortures and rapes, Roy there through it all….

  The second reel opened with an eerie, bronze-to-copper-to-dull brick-red-tinted time-lapse scene of Indians in a hut getting smallpox, the disease growing on their flesh, while some bass-heavy, garbled, Gregorian-type chant intoned and decayed.

  People were going to have questions about the special effects and the realistic gore—but she couldn’t imagine not wanting to show it. It was her product, it came out of her. The very notion of not showing it, and her immediate inner rejection of this option, brought home to her how exhibitionistic she was, how exhibitionistic in fact was all of art: the desire to show your insides, the inside of your head, to impose your vision on others, try to make them see through your eyes.

  It was in 16 mm; it would have to be blown up to 35. And since she didn’t have a negative, there’d have to be an internegative cut. She wouldn’t fuck with it much, just some editing, cut out that big black empty section, do some work on the soundtrack, and that would be it. Maybe here and there some subtitles for the speech of the Indians. God, some of this was so alien, like the scenes up in Manoa itself, the city of gold.

  PART 3

  Is this the gift that I wanted to give?

  Forgive and forget’s what they teach.

  Or pass through the deserts and

  wastelands once more,

  And watch as they drop by the beach.

  IAN CURTIS

  ONE

  It was funny how nervous it made Lisa to return to the U.S. It wasn’t like she was safe in Brazil, Boro had demonstrated that, but it just made her very uneasy … yet, with this strange film she’d been presented with, starring Roy Hardway no less, it seemed the time had definitely come for her to pop up her head.

  She was also already late, she’d been supposed to be in St. Petersburg, Florida, a week ago, to visit Jules Brandenberg on the location of My Evil Twin. She was to appear in a bit part, really a walk-on, and to show him the draft of the LA. Ripper II script.

  Lisa found herself unwilling to leave her father, maybe that was it, the sense of safety his presence provided, however spurious this might be. She had shown him the film—which she’d entitled Manoa, City of Gold—and instead of being mad that she’d surreptitiously taken the alkaloid, or overly interested in making her part of the experiment or something, he’d been extremely interested and pleased, delighted with the phenomenon revealed. He was more curious than ever about Boro … and Lisa finally told her father how Roy Hardway had died. How Boro had thanked her for bringing him along, as though he were a sacrificial animal.

  Or a meal, Dr. Nova hypothesized, something Lisa had never imagined. The point was, he said, ordinary assumptions of psychology did not apply. “He may be fond of you. He hasn’t hurt you, and obviously, I think, he could if he wanted to.”

  And the tattoos might be some kind of symbolic gift, meaning more than mere decoration.

  “But don’t tempt fate, please,” Dr. Nova implored. Lisa said she would not. They talked more about the substance of the film. It was perhaps a map of her dreaming mind, given that the vine had allowed her access to some out-of-her-body, collective memories, filtered then through her imagination, which had been catalyzed by the inflammation of the spell.

  Before she left (for Rio and then up to the States), a letter had arrived, from Errol Mwangi.

  Dear Lisa,

  I’m sorry for what happened, for my carelessness. I would like to see you sometime again, if that’s ever possible.

  I am leaving Rio. I will be in Paris, visiting my brother, and then I may return to London for some time.

  I am enclosing my brother’s address and phone number. He will always know where I may be found.

  Errol

  Lisa kept the letter in her purse and reread it a few times on the plane, not so much looking for hidden nuances as just holding on to it as a fetish, still having a crush on him, remembering their fuck, the expressions on his face in the nightclub or that day on the beach, the sound of his voice. His dazzling smile.

  She felt like Errol Mwangi was too much of a womanizer to be trusted. Maybe Tavinho was a different story. She had so loved him when he had shown up unexpectedly at the ceremony … that circumstance had changed all her feelings for him. He had been so sweet, and she hadn’t been able to detect any machao jealousy in him, which was so cool in a Brazilian male.

  Florida worked out better than she could have hoped. Jules didn’t seem at all annoyed that she’d arrived late to shoot her scene—a demon for his schedule, he’d simply done a version with local talent, and that took care of that. Lisa hadn’t wanted to do it anyway, not at this point.

  As soon as she said that she’d been secretly doing a film, and that Roy Hardway was in it, and that everyone had worked for deferred salaries and shares, Jules became intensely interested. He wanted to see the rough cut right away. He didn’t care if it was in 16 mm.

  Seeing it again, for the seventh or eighth time, Lisa was shy, and it seemed too weird and arty a cinematic experience to appeal to Jules—but she was wrong. He sat silently throughout the entire screening, abandoning himself to it, and then: “I love it,” he said.

  “Congratulations. I didn’t realize you were so close to Roy. People have been extremely curious about him, what happened to him. I think his agent even hired a private eye. Roy looks great.”

  “This might be his last film,” Lisa said.

  Jules wanted to know how she had done some of the special effects. The wonderful matte stuff, and those incredible models, and the amputations, the best amputated limbs and severed heads he’d ever seen. Jules was so deferential Lisa hardly knew how to react. Then the thought hit her: This is how men treat other men.

  And so Jules offered to help with postproduction, and they arranged a schedule to start having meetings in L.A. for the Ripper project. Meanwhile she would try to get Manoa, City of Gold into a festival or two; she knew some people, she thought she could at least get it into the Berlin.

  TWO

  Lisa and Track talked on the phone (he was still in L.A.) while she was in Florida, before she flew to New York, where she would stay at his apartment on the Lower East Side while working on Manoa’s sound. He was very unhappy that both Ariel Mendoza and the Los Angeles-based detective (whose name Track had never gotten, and he blamed himself for this oversight) seemed to have disappeared.

  “It’s disturbing,” Track said. “They let me claim Mendoza’s stuff when I settled his bill—nothing. No clues. Assuming I would know one if one bit me on the ass.”

  “But he said he’d traced the couch to L.A.?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then Boro has it,” Lisa said. She knew.

  “Jes
us.”

  Lisa told Track about the corpsevine and how the film Manoa, City of Gold had miraculously come about.

  He was fascinated.

  “This isn’t even something you personally dreamed, I mean, all of it? Some of it, if I’m reading you … must have, possibly, bled into your consciousness from the dead brains, which we assume are somehow synthesized by the vine….”

  “That’s what Dad thinks.”

  “What kind of music do you need?” Track and she were close now, they understood each other well.

  “Just mostly percussion, I think. The music that’s already present is like … stuff played backward, or through filters, some of it’s like weird samples of orchestras playing on the other side of a hill in a storm.”

  “And Roy Hardway’s in it?”

  “Yes,” Lisa said. “I’m going to list him as executive producer, even though he’s dead. That’s typical of executive producers, anyway.”

  Track laughed. He said he’d see her in a few days, in New York.

  THREE

  Code wasn’t at his old number. It was disconnected. So she called (from Track’s apartment) directory assistance and then Alvin Sender. She left a message on Sender’s machine, and he called her back almost immediately, as though he might simply be screening his calls. From his manner, someone on Mars listening in on an interplanetary frequency might have imagined that they were good friends, that they’d been good friends all along.

  “Where have you been?” he asked. “Everybody’s been wondering about you.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been in Brazil.”

  “Somebody said something about you and Roy Hardway … and no one’s seen him around here.”

  “He was with me part of the time. We shot a film.”

  “That’s great. Wow.”

  “Listen, do you know where Code is? His old number doesn’t work.”

  “That’s right, you’ve been out of touch. I’ll give you his new one— he’s moved in with Lauren Devoto. You know, Vincent Garbo’s ex-wife. They’re in love.”

  Lisa didn’t like his sarcasm, but it was pretty amazing news. Just what Code had always said he wanted: to be “discovered” by some rich, older, still-beautiful babe. Vincent Garbo had been at one time a successful schlockmeister—producing films of a mediocre tackiness without a cult. His tall, big-breasted, white-blond widow had allegedly become addicted to the knife—that is, cosmetic surgery—so

  she looked a tad weird. In her forties, she was perfect for what Code had said he wanted out of life. To be taken care of. In luxury. To be a hood ornament, basically.

  “Is he still doing music?”

  “Sure.”

  Sender said it with such assurance that she didn’t want to ask anything more. She said she had to go.

  “Call me anytime,” he said, again with this knowing attitude. “If you ever have a temporary cash flow situation, or just want to do something, I can always find you work. Believe me, you’re in demand.”

  She didn’t know if Alvin Sender was an agent, a casting director, or some kind of pimp. She was dismayed by the conversation in several ways. She had talked to Christine the other day, and Christine had been friendly on the surface but indifferent, Lisa supposed she deserved it but it had left her feeling bad. Adrian had told her that Christine and Oriole had split up again, that Christine was now living with this guy with whom she was doing a documentary for PBS on animals living in zoos, how they differ from their brothers and sisters in the wild, what adaptations were taking place … a subject they could have discussed if Christine had cared to, but Adrian had volunteered more secondhand info than Christine had, she had been sort of unfriendly and vague. So Lisa felt like her two best friends, Christine and Code, had abandoned her. Even if she was the one who had left. She had had to. Emotionally, they were leaving her first. Fuckers.

  Motherfuckers.

  She went to the movies, by herself, and watched a Selwyn Popcorn double feature: Thin Skin and The Kiss of the Sphinx. Because she was in a troubled mood, her loneliness, which seemed to have come from out of nowhere, and the pressure of perpetrating this weird, colossal fraud … the psychic film … it took a while for the ritualistic magic of the film experience to begin to work for her, but early on in Thin Skin, sitting there in the dark, eating popcorn, drinking Dr Pepper, the rhythmic images on the screen and the subliminal-to-dynamic soundtrack began to manipulate her, hypnotized her, willingly she received the twenty-four-frames-per-second hieroglyph into the malleable chemistry and electricity of her mind, so that by the end of the second feature she was essentially exhilarated and redeemed.

  Walking home (to Track’s), some of this feeling was dissipated in the darkness just by the fact that she had to be aware of her surroundings. Two guys looked at her with too much attention. She didn’t feel safe. You always had to think about maybe being raped or murdered, attacked as easy and magnetic prey

  The phone rang. It was Code in L.A.

  “Lisa, you’re finally back in the country. I heard that you got my number this afternoon. Why didn’t you call?”

  “You’re at Lauren Devoto’s house, right? In Beverly Hills?”

  “Bel Air.”

  “OK, Bel Air. Where in the house are you calling from?”

  “I’m in my room. Oh, you were afraid it might be awkward? Don’t worry. Lauren knows all about you. When you come out here again, she’s looking forward to meeting you. Really.”

  “That’s wonderful. I don’t know when I’ll be there; I’m probably going to Europe first.”

  “Sure, I understand. Film festivals. Make sure, by the way, when you put the credits together, that you list Mr. Boro as coproducer. I think he’s done a lot for you.”

  “Code, what the fuck are you talking about?” Lisa said, just to gain time, because she was shocked.

  “You know. I’m the last person you should play cherry with, so give it a rest. He wants to see you. I get the impression there’s some unfinished business. You should be happy to know, even though I guess you haven’t paid for it, that your vengeance on Lou is complete.”

  “How did you meet Boro?” Lisa asked, suffused with horror but managing to sound reasonably composed. Code just sounded like Code.

  “I hardly know him. I’m just relaying a message. Oh yeah … another thing. Check your right ankle tonight. That’s all I know.”

  And he hung up.

  On Lisa’s right ankle there was now an apparent tattoo … of what first looked like barbed wire but then resolved into a kind of crown of thorns, all around the slender ankle in an intricate design.

  So the grand total was: fiery cross on right bicep, jaguar on left bicep, dagger-in-heart on left buttock, L-O-V-E on right fingers, H-A-T-E on left fingers—and now a crown of thorns around her right ankle.

  Was it worthwhile trying to analyze what Code had said, that her vengeance on Lou was complete? Did that mean he was dead? She shuddered a bit, though for the most part she was numb. She’d been trying not to think about Lou Greenwood, Lou Adolph, Lou Burke. All that seemed so far away

  Lisa took a bath. The tattoo did not wash off. She felt wounded, exposed—as though Boro could see her, read her mind, no matter what she might decide to do.

  Most experiments fail, her father had once told her. You had to keep trying. She rose up, dripping, reaching over for a fluffy towel. Track favored surprisingly luxurious big towels.

  The mirror on the back of the door wasn’t fogged, so she studied her reflection, mistrustfully searching for any other fresh markings or tattoos. Ritual scarification or piercing might be next. Though maybe not. Boro liked her, Code had said.

  Lisa looked at her upper arms, turned to check her naked shoulder blades and back, twisting to see her ass. She looked like a criminal. A prostitute? What did it mean to be a prostitute, anyway? She felt more like a witch.

  FOUR

  Maybe it was some kind of a demonstration. Lisa tried to avoid it. At the same time, she wanted to get clo
se enough to see. She met a steady stream of people coming the other way, talking … it came to seem like there were a lot of lesbians in the disintegrating crowd. Many gay men also. College kids.

  Somebody said, “Lisa Nova!” and came over to her, a young woman, and in a moment or two—a definite long hold of a moment—Lisa came to recognize Raelyn, the girl from Seattle. Raelyn changed direction and walked with her, and Lisa asked her what was going on.

  “There was a bashing down here, and one of the women is in intensive care. She’s got a fractured skull. There are witnesses, but the cops haven’t done anything.” She shrugged. “What are you doing in New York? You look great.”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing. Are you going this way? I’m staying at my brother’s.”

  “I moved here. I’m going to see if I can get into the NYU film program. You went, let’s see—to the School of Visual Arts. Which one do you recommend?”

  “NYU,” Lisa said, because it was the more obvious answer, the school of Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee. Raelyn looked confident, her hair cut like an innocent preadolescent boy’s. She wore a dark brown corduroy jacket over a man’s dress shirt, and light brown baggy slacks. She looked, at first glance, like an effeminate young male, surely the intended effect. She was attractive, in her way.

  Lisa said, “Do you want to have dinner with me? I’d like to talk.” She liked Raelyn, she wanted to find out if she had any real organizational skills. Raelyn might imagine that this was all a prelude to lesbian sex, but it was not. It was a job interview. She needed to start accumulating people she could trust.