by Todd Grimson
“He would have had the surgery sooner, but he couldn’t bring himself to mess with his portfolio. He’s in love with his brother, he worships him, I swear to God.”
Moving on, draining this glass of champagne and putting it down, she heard, “The body was found in a citrus grove. Didn’t you hear about it?”
Then: “What’s more nude than nude?”
Heather Malone smiled at Christine, not knowing her, and turned back to her conversation with Severin Reed.
A film editor named Toshiko, unbuttoned lime green blouse and black bra, said, “Are you still working on that thing with Jim?”
Christine shook her head. The band was starting to play again. It was easy to pick out Taft’s little brother. He looked just the same, only shorter, with longer hair. More spoiled.
Deftly picking her way through the crowd, Christine made her way upstairs to the gallery, where it was quieter, you could admire the paintings and shiny metal sculptures picked out by some interior designer, some consultant, certainly not by Heather or Taft.
An experienced sound man Christine knew, Bill something, in glasses, somehow giving the impression of being an undercover Marxist, a son of the proletariat, probably actually enjoying the paintings—yeah, when she showed an interest, he told her something about each one, each artist, James Bishop to Carroll Dunham to Jane Hammond. It was enjoyable, though she didn’t know how much she’d remember later on. Bill had a muscle in the big dimple right next to his mouth. When Bill’s wife came up looking for him, Christine was sorry to see him go. They were better friends now. No sign of Oriole. No, as she scanned the whole entourage from above, leaning on the railing, she saw him for a few moments, in his drawstring acid-print Bermudas. He was going outside, out onto the terrace, listening avidly to Peter Ferrari.
Ah, and there was Lisa. As promised, wearing the gold dress. It had spaghetti straps and showed a good deal of bosom. Lisa was sexy, in this dress a perfect femme fatale. Why did people obsess over her? Christine studied her, knowing at the same time that it was more than anything physical, more than her body, eyebrows, lips … it had something to do with the way she had of not appearing to be aware she was being looked at, a way of holding her body that was unlike, say, the Kimberly Chase or Supermodel of the World electrical Frankensteinian charged-up way of being a body, a form, that knowledge of being seen. Lisa seemed, right now for instance, holding her purse in both hands, shadows of the tight metallic gold sheen changing as she shifted her weight, absorbed in something unseen, yet not in self— elsewhere, unaware of herself, it wasn’t innocence, but it brought out, inspired … a desire to find her, bring her back, ground her, make her recognize you.
Christine caught her eye when Lisa finally looked up with one of her childlike smiles, and Christine forgave everything. It was bad for women that Lisa and others still made it in the business by using their bodies, fucking a Lou or … well, there was probably some reason why Jules Brandenberg had done her such a favor at this point, Christine didn’t want to ask.
As she came up the stairs—apparently the good-looking Mexican guy was actually her date—Christine saw again that, yes, Lisa did have an erotic investment in having people stare at her, she liked it, she might be more art-damaged and complex about it, more vulnerable, yet she wanted this….
“Christine!”
“You made it, great.”
“This is Miguel Casablanca. He’s a welterweight boxer, ranked number four by the IBF.”
“I’m very glad to meet you,” he said, frowning, not looking around. Shy, but not scared to death. A boxer! Jesus. Christine’s eyes raced over him. Then back to Lisa, the tattoos on her upper arms.
“I’ve been thinking about the script for Cassandra, ” Christine said, not really what she’d been going to say, but then as they talked about it they both got really enthused. They went downstairs, and Lisa got some champagne. Christine tried to help make Casablanca feel at ease. He couldn’t have any alcohol, drugs, or rich foods.
Now they ran into Code and Lauren Devoto. Christine, sensing their interest in Lisa, took Miguel, who was somewhat unwilling at first, for a tour of the grounds, perhaps thinking on an ulterior level that they might run into Oriole, this guy would read her mind and knock Oriole down, right on his ass, one effortless swift punch. The hand quicker than the eye.
Back inside, meanwhile, Lisa was sending out unconsciously fetching signals to the close scrutiny given her by ur-domme Lauren: palest ice blue eyes and white-blond mane of perfect hair, wearing an impossibly expensive white designer gown, while Code had on wraparound shades, his bleached platinum hair slicked back, the wet look, wearing a rubber scuba diver’s top in black with a thin yellow line at the side. Leather Jim Morrison pants, with a low-slung gigantic ornamental Helios the Sun God belt buckle. He looked good.
“You’re in Confidential Weekly,” Lauren said. “Selwyn Popcorn in Berlin with his young tattooed love goddess. They have his quote about your ‘original vision,’ and then it says, ‘Guess we know what’s in his line of vision, don’t we?’ They have a picture of you two together, laughing unselfconsciously, and a still … from LA. Ripper. You’re nude, but because it’s a family paper they’ve put a black bar over your nipples.”
Lisa listened unhappily. Code seemed nervous, fidgety, even without it being possible to see his eyes.
“Selwyn’s gonna hate it,” Lisa said.
“Why don’t you come over to see me one of these evenings? I’d love to get to know you better.” And Lauren, cold as a halibut on ice, touched Lisa’s throat, lightly, so that Lisa looked up into her face. Satisfied, Lauren smiled, her TV smile, and then turned to have court paid to her by Larry Planet and Jerry Dolphin. Lisa heard someone, maybe not one of them, say, “Imagine if Hitler had had CNN!”
A neo-Bratpacker who’d been in five or six bombs in a row, a dopey smile on his face, wearing cowboy /biker drag with a red kerchief around his neck, was trying to eat everything he could, systematically, it looked dangerously like he’d eat until he puked. Code put his hand on Lisa’s arm, they moved away, Lisa saying, “What does she want from me?” in a kind of stunned, very young tone of voice.
“She wants to do things to you,” Code said. “I’m supposed to use my influence to get you to come. The tattoos, you know … they’re provocative. They make people think about seeing you in weird scenes.”
“Is that what you have to do? Be in her weird scenes?”
Code shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Why not feel something intense? You might really dig it.”
Lisa was speechless, imagining all kinds of gross S&M stuff. Jesus. She knew that on one level Code was doing her a favor by speaking so frankly, but this shit still shook her up. She couldn’t tell if he meant to warn her off or if he thought she would actually do it out of a spirit of adventure or something. He mentioned tax-free cash, but she wasn’t really listening by now.
In a few minutes they were separated, and Lisa walked in the other direction, looking for Christine and the boxer. As she went out onto the terrace she ran into the megasuperstar Chuck Suede, who noticed her. He was wearing a red jacket like James Dean, white T-shirt, spanking new blue jeans, unfaded, with cuffs rolled up above brown penny loafers and white socks. He said, “Excuse me, I don’t know you—if no one’s told you yet tonight, it works, believe me: You’re a beautiful pose.”
The smooth hum of the party’s apparatus all around them cleared out a little space, a shimmering vacancy. Everyone was aware of anything Chuck Suede did. He was the hottest young star these days. His face was everywhere. Chuck Suede, Chuck Suede.
“Thank you,” she said, soothed somewhat by the incandescence of his Higher Cool.
“No Means Yes, Yes Means No. That’s how you look in that dress. I love the way your spaghetti strap keeps slipping down. You’re unconscious. Are these real?” he said, touching her, putting both hands over the cross and jaguar tattoos.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to be photograph
ed with me?”
“Thanks, but I’m looking for some friends of mine.”
“Tell me your name. I’m Chuck Suede.”
“Lisa Nova.”
He walked with her, down past the fountain, his entourage diminishing or knowing enough to hang back, and he nodded. “I’ve heard of you. You made a film just recently with my old pal Roy Hardway. Nobody knows where he is these days—I worshiped him, I studied him in Dieability. He was almost past it, but you’ve revived him, definitely a new twist, a new flavor for old Roy. Is he coming back? I hope not.”
“I don’t think so.”
“And you know, don’t you? You’re the one who’d know. Outstanding. You should try to understand and shape your own myth, if you know what you’re doing, and I don’t think Roy did.”
“You talk a lot.”
“Man of action, right,” Chuck said, and decisively kissed her, putting his hand irresistibly onto her proffered soft upheld left breast, in the semidarkness there Lisa found the otherness deceptively dissolved. It was like he had to be an imposter because she had such a strong image of Chuck Suede. In the theater, on the big screen, a certain physical grace, a natural radiance of gesture, of expression, the music of his voice, perfect, godlike, what else was he but a god, no one would doubt it, yes this was him, his human manifestation, she loved the kiss and wanted to offer herself, he could tell, he stopped kissing her and said, “Seven films. Then up in flames. Five down, two to go. Let’s see if my unauthorized biographer finds you. Are you sure you don’t wanna be photographed with me?”
“Does Roy Hardway really mean something to you? If I gave you something of his, would you take care of it, treat it with love and respect?”
“I told you: I have worshiped him. I think you understand me.”
“Do you have your car here?”
“Yeah, a Lamborghini. Do you wanna shoot up the Pacific Coast Highway? I’ll do it. Road to ruin. What do you have for me?”
“It’s just for you; I don’t want other people to see. If you had a suitcase or something…”
“Let’s go in here. I know Taft’s place pretty well.”
Around the other side of a well-trimmed hedge, past the pool into a small building, dark. Chuck turned on the light. There was a billiards table in there, and a large-scale map of the world. Lisa, sure that no one was around, took out of her purse—Roy Hardway’s shrunken head.
“It’s Roy all right,” Chuck said, leaning down to view it just over the edge of the table, emotional, one hand grasping Lisa’s wrist.
“A thousand-year-old Indian made Roy a sacrifice,” Lisa said. It was sort of good just to be able to say something like this.
“Yeah … it’s Roy. I see what you mean.” He seemed shaken. He looked at her expressively, earnestly. He started to speak, then just stopped, knocked out of his ultracoolness for a sec.
He put the shrunken head in a brown paper bag. “I’ll leave right now,out the back way,” he said softly, “so that no one will even know I have anything. Goodbye.”
Lisa walked back to the party and located Miguel Casablanca and Christine. Miguel was ready to leave. He was in training, he needed his sleep. Sucker was just starting to play another set; it sounded like they’d done some MC2.
FIFTEEN
On Sunday Lisa slept in almost until noon and then lay in bed for another two hours, teasing Caz, inciting him to leap upon and bite her hand, which was concealed under the sheet. His tail whipped back and forth, and she adjusted herself to his sense of time. He could wait for a long time before deciding to pounce; she judged by his eyes whether he was still interested or not, and when he got bored she would try something new.
She didn’t want to do anything. Yesterday had exhausted her. She didn’t think about the fact that she had kissed Chuck Suede and given him Roy Hardway’s shrunken head.
Last night she had called Raelyn in London as soon as she got home, it was three A.M. here and so was some appropriate time in Europe—she asked Raelyn to come to L.A., to work as her assistant on LA. Ripper II. Always, whenever it had come up before, without saying too much, by her expressions, her tonality, Raelyn had expressed some reservations about this project, despite the opportunity for Lisa to do a studio feature, to handle a multimillion-dollar budget, get her DGA card—because of the violence-to-women issue, even if in this script the tables are turned and the sex industry workers castrate and kill the murderer, etcetera … but Raelyn agreed to come.
On the drive home last night, Lisa had tried to be friendlier to Casablanca, she’d felt bad, like she’d shunned him, treated him like he was retarded. And something about him, the more she was around him, told her that, however different his world, even if being a boxer seemed crazy to her, he had his intelligence within this world, and on the ride home she’d tried to get him to talk to her. They did have in common, after all, that each was Boro’s creature, he had some claim on both of their souls.
So as they proceeded through the L.A. night, in a low-key manner Miguel told her about the boxer he most admired, whom he’d
admired as a child. Salvador Sanchez, a featherweight, who’d died in an automobile accident after one of his fights.
“I don’t fight like him, either, man … but when he got into the ring, he put it all out there. He was ready to die. And you could see that.”
If Miguel had become sentimental, he wasn’t embarrassed, nor did he seem to expect her to sympathize or understand.
“Ariel told me … about your rematch with some guy who beat you once, he said it was a big fight for you.”
“Yeah. Linton Minniefield,” he said slowly, as if seeing it in his mind. Lisa was remembering something very different the scene at Boro’s where Ariel had been speaking to her—the disassembled parts of Lou nailed to the wall. “I hit him with an uppercut.” Then, as she parked and he looked around for and spotted Ariel’s car, he said, “Look, would you like to see a tape of that fight?”
It was something important to him, and he was being straight with her, she could not sense any games, any hidden agendas, not even sexual ambition, so she said, “Yeah, sure. Drop it by.”
“OK, I will. Goodbye.”
Today she tried to read. She read a few pages in several different books, putting in bookmarks … she called back Joey, and Paul Bancroft, and Marcia Abrahams. She arranged to have lunch with Bancroft at Spoleto’s the next day. Joey was going to come by tomorrow evening, briefly, with samples of some wares.
Lisa felt like drinking some champagne, for the taste, the effervescence, the refreshment factor, and to get high a little, and she retroactively wished that she had drunk more at the party, where it had been all over the place. Her taste buds were not acute enough to differentiate, except very crudely, between expensive and cheap champagne. That slightly woozy feeling of exhilaration, with the taste in one’s mouth, down one’s throat … that’s what she would have liked.
Wanda had sought to tempt her with the notion of some Aztec princess ritual. To dare her … but what was in it for Wanda? That was the real question, Lisa thought.
The next time she went to the bathroom she picked up the ring she had been given at Boro’s, which she had taken off last night. She brought it out to examine it for hidden compartments or spring-fired barbs. She drank sparkling apple cider and listened to some classical piano music, not too dramatic or romantic: John Field. She ate a banana—offering it to Casimir, who smelled it and then turned away, he didn’t recognize it as food, not for carnivores—and an orange.
A knock on the door. Lisa sort of welcomed the interruption, even though she was wary, thinking it might be Duane Moyer, mad about the wild goose chase with the automobile bug. But she wasn’t scared, so she opened the door. It was Sunday afternoon. She was wearing a wine red leotard and jeans.
A skinhead kind of guy stood there, his shaved head just starting to grow out, like a shadow, wearing jeans and Doc Martens, a black leather jacket much more weathered than Lisa’s own, this one
with ancient silver studs. He had a toothpick in his mouth. He wasn’t bad-looking, somehow.
“Lisa Nova?”
“Yes?”
“My name’s Jonathan. You knew my father … I’d like to ask you some questions about him. Can I come in?”
“You’re Jonathan?”
“Yes. I know I’ve changed, but it’s me.”
“What made you come to see me? Why me?”
“Come on. We all knew about you and Dad. It was a game for him, to make sure we knew about his little affairs, yet on the surface act like nothing was happening. Are you scared of me because I shaved my head?”
“Uh-huh.”
He smiled a civilized smile.
“I’m in disguise. I’ve been hiding out … may I enter, please? You’re embarrassing me.”
“I’m involved with some strange people,” Lisa said, and then let him in and closed the door. She motioned to him to sit down—when he picked the chair, she lay down on the couch, stretching out her legs, her bare feet. Her purse with the gun was under the glass coffee table, under an open Cindy Sherman catalog.
“A few months ago,” Jonathan began, “something happened to my family. Within a week, everything changed. All kinds of weird stuff started happening … I’ve been trying to figure out why.”
He stared at Lisa. She saw no reason to comment. If she looked sullen or pouty, so be it. For some reason, she felt very little sympathy for this guy. He had on his face the expression of a loser who will never give up.