Brand New Cherry Flavor

by Todd Grimson

  This left him in a wonderful mood.

  After showering, brushing her teeth, Lisa saw that he was having a big breakfast in his room: pancakes and coffee and orange juice, slices of ham. All she wanted was coffee and a croissant. Journalists were coming over to interview him, Premiere in the morning, American Film in the afternoon.

  What she needed was to alter her physical state by some vigorous swimming. Raelyn came in to see her, and Lisa asked her about Cannes. Despite whatever misgivings she might have had, her eyes flicking away and then coming back, Raelyn said sure, she’d come along.

  The blow job had been educational. At breakfast, with studied casu-alness, Popcorn had said he’d marry her if she wanted, he just put the idea out … in a different situation, Lisa could see how this would make sense. Her jaw was sore, her lips felt bruised. Some men saw a blowjob as complete only when you swallowed. Aesthetically, this made it beautiful to them.

  THIRTY

  At lunch Lisa had a salad of leeks and fennel dotted with roasted garlic, while Jules Brandenberg had grilled yellowtail with wild hijiki. She was very glad that he had called her up.

  “I like your necklace,” he said, relaxing more and more as he realized that no, she wasn’t mad at him, she didn’t blame him for her having been fired. He seemed nervous and drank more wine with his meal than she expected.

  “I’ve become excellent friends with this chimpanzee I’m working with,” he said—seeing that she didn’t follow, he revealed that he’d been shooting a commercial for MasterCard.

  “I’d like to do commercials,” Lisa said. “Fox Quigley comes out of commercials, doesn’t he?” referring to the guy who’d taken over on Ripper II, and Jules acknowledged this was true.

  He asked her if she knew of any good art to buy, flattering her about her art-world background; she liked hearing this, and told him about Andrea Goodweather, a woman in New York she’d gone to school with, giving him the name of the gallery at which Andrea should very soon be having her show.

  “I’d really like to get in on the ground floor of somebody” Jules said, as if he’d been missing this all his life.

  Lisa felt a little pauperish, wearing just another print minidress, black tights—she really mourned all the clothes she had lost in her apartment explosion, the gold dress she had kissed Chuck Suede in, for one … she had driven by the wreckage on the way over to the restaurant. There had really been nothing left, just pipes and burned pieces of wood, the hulk of the piano lying one floor down, on its side … a chicken-wire fence separating the ruins from the street.

  The day was bleached out by the sun. There were mountains you could see today that you hadn’t been able to see yesterday

  “You had some good drugs once, didn’t you?” Jules said, and she had to nod. He was spacy.

  Plainclothes police were following her around. Right now someone was sitting down the street, across from the restaurant, in an overly anonymous small Plymouth. The police always had to drive Detroit iron, it was a rule.

  “I’m in a slump,” Jules said. “People are pushing me around.”

  “I’m not doing too well either,” said Lisa. “I’ve got a lot of stuff hanging over my head.”

  “Well, one thing … you’re going to Cannes, aren’t you? Don’t just send one of your friends. I probably said this to you before, but… for you, the art-film kind of thing you want to do, given the way distribution is, your image, and the idea of your personality … you need that. Popcorn doesn’t really need it. He can more or less stand back, trimming his nails, giving interviews about yellow filters and light meters, it doesn’t matter, he already has his mystique. In your case, the more you’re photographed, the more people see of you, the better.”

  Lisa thought about it. About how much certain women artists— artists whom she admired—had been helped by what they looked like, the visual image helping to get them attention … for instance, in the case of Eva Hesse, photogenic, who’d died in 1970 at the age of thirty-four. Maybe the attention gained in this way was shallow, mere publicity and nothing more. The cult of personality might lead one— surprise!—to the actual work.

  Is this what I want? Lisa asked herself. Is this the only way it can be done? Also, it occurred to her, the dark side of such possible myth-making was Boro’s tabloid spectacular of her as sacrificial whore. The whore transformed into a madonna by ritual murder, the bloodiness of childbirth visited in reverse.

  Jules talked more about how close he now was with this chimp, whose name was Merlin. Lisa, thinking of Caz, agreed there was a lot to be learned from the animal bond. Somehow at this moment the jaguar presence came back to her, just a taste, and she looked around for a mirror.

  That night she and Selwyn Popcorn went out to dinner with Nicholas Davies and Dana Ricks, the actors. They were very cordial and refined. Selwyn recaptured some of Lisa’s affection and talked about his likely next project, a biopic of Upton Sinclair. The story of how he was almost elected governor of California in 1934. One of the craziest elections anytime, anywhere.

  Listening to Selwyn tell the story animatedly, Lisa saw where the passion might join the cool reflective student of composition and camera angles, the calculating pro, and she liked him more. And she’d never known about Upton Sinclair.

  Dana Ricks wanted dessert. Nicholas Davies laughed about something, decided to have a dark chocolate truffle, and said, looking into Lisa’s eyes, using his great nuanced voice, “We’re going to Vegas this weekend, to see Madonna. It’s supposed to be quite a show.”

  Lisa ate a truffle too. She loved dark chocolate. She gave half of it to Selwyn, who had it with his cappuccino. She could have put out the candles on all the tables, but she did not. Yet it might have been worth doing. Pierre Wella Balsam was here, with a model, and the new rising executive woman of the moment, Roxanne Phelps, with her date. Sudden darkness might have been good for them all.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Adrian was curious about where Christine was, and Lisa felt that he thought she was being too vague, that she knew more than she would tell. Which was correct. He was too tactful to say it, but he thought she was irresponsible. And Lisa felt she owed him something (a lot) for taking care of Caz while she was in Brazil.

  Lisa had tried the number several times, but no one was answering anymore. It seemed likely it was unplugged. She knew she should go see what was happening, but she was scared. The way things were going, she was afraid Boro really did mean to kill her, and she didn’t see how she could resist.

  Adrian told her that a Latin male had come looking for her, having gone to her apartment and seen that it was blown up. Adrian hadn’t talked to him, he hadn’t been home. Brad had dealt with him, and because of the explosion he’d been very wary, he wouldn’t tell the guy anything. Brad had been unhappy that the fellow had somehow made the connection and come to their address.

  “What was his name?” Lisa asked on the phone in Popcorn’s big living room, classical music (that, and jazz, was all Selwyn had) punctuating the silences in the luxurious decor.

  “I don’t know. Just a second. Brad!” and, when Brad evidently came back in, Adrian asked him if the guy had told him his name.

  “Ask him if it was Tavinho,” Lisa said, excited by the possibility, but Brad said, “I just wanted him to go away.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Adrian was sort of interested, even though he had obviously decided to distance himself, to quietly disapprove. But Brad wouldn’t say very much. He didn’t want to have anything to do with Lisa’s crazy life, she could hear him say.

  She was really having doubts about herself and about doing films. She wondered if her reasons for doing them, or wanting to do them, were all wrong. The need for recognition, praise, acceptance … this seemed so childish to her, so narcissistic or something, the need to be confirmed from outside … she felt so inadequate, she needed to find something stable and peaceful inside of herself and it was never there. For Girl, 10, Murders Boys sh
e had used Christine to help fake some stability, while very basic and conceptual aims were still unclear.

  It had seemed so natural, going from painting through photography to film. Compared to all of the others, cinema was the newest, most popular art. But then, doing an independent film hadn’t been enough. The hypermodern, inevitable course was to go to Hollywood, to dive into the world of legend and cliche. What else was there? Fuck.

  Lisa was actually perversely pleased to have Bluestone come over once again. Let him arrest her, it was OK, it would take matters out of her hands.

  “Come in,” Lisa said, though her laughter did not reassure Rosa, the maid, who’d let Bluestone into the front hall. Who knew what kind of a relationship people in the Philippines had to the police there, how frightened they might be? Lisa sat down on the couch, crossing her ankles, a loose semi-lotus, bare feet, as Caz meowed and jumped lightly into the newly created open space, surrounded by her legs, a space he seemed to regard as created just for him.

  “What have I done now?” she asked, with what was undoubtedly an inappropriate semblance of a what-the-fuck attitude.

  Bluestone smiled without showing his teeth. Maybe he thought he had her at his mercy, or would soon. He was tanned, not handsome. He didn’t look like he’d win a fight with any tough young gangsters, but then there was a sense about him that no one would fight dirtier or with less hesitation. He turned down the volume of his walkie-talkie, there on his hip.

  “You’ve said you know Nehi Laughton. Have you ever met his wife?”

  “I saw him with a woman in a restaurant, a week or so ago. As far as I know, that could have been his wife. Why?”

  “She was beaten up yesterday evening in a parking lot in Westwood. Some bikers, it sounds like. There were a couple of witnesses, saw the whole thing.”

  “What do you mean, they beat her up?”

  “Do you care?”

  “I don’t know her.” Lisa was remembering now that he was the enemy, he wanted to fuck her up. Sitting on the edge of his seat, flipping through the pages of Popcorn’s expensive art book, looking at the color reproductions of Richard Diebenkorn’s abstract Ocean Park series, blue, sometimes yellow, sometimes white paint thinly applied, suggesting memories of beach and sun and sea.

  “Nehi Laughton thinks you had it done.” This said quietly, ironically, again with the wide but thin-lipped smile.

  The bad part was that Lisa reacted, she tried to look dumb and indifferent but she felt something register—because she immediately thought of Boro, he would have done it just to have another suspect… although …

  “I don’t understand,” Lisa said. “I don’t understand this shit about my apartment blowing up and Duane Moyer’s bones, and I don’t get this part at all, I really don’t. Something weird is going on, and I don’t think it has anything to do with me. Laughton and Moyer—I think they must have had something else going on. Maybe Roy Hardway’s back in town, hideously disfigured, something like that. Some strange factor no one knows anything about yet.”

  Bluestone continued looking at the pictures, seemingly absorbed.

  Then he said, “‘Hideously disfigured.’ I like that. Sort of a Phantom of the Opera-type thing, right? You’re pretty good.”

  Lisa knew not to say a word. He hadn’t asked her where she’d been at the time of the attack, but she was reasonably sure they’d been following her, making note of who she saw and where she went.

  Bluestone took out a pack of spearmint gum, unwrapped a stick, and folded it into his mouth. He mutely offered her one, and she wanted to take it, out of natural friendliness, but after hesitating she shook her head.

  He looked at his watch and said, “Oops, I’m running late. I’ll keep your Roy Hardway theory in mind, let you know how it comes out.”

  It was hot outside. Although she felt like just lying down, hiding, sucking her thumb, Lisa changed into her swimsuit and went out and jumped into the pool. It was a way both of not thinking and of clearing her mind for making serious plans.

  Then she sat by the pool and had a Coke.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Having plainclothes police shadow you was quite a bit like starring in a movie: She was self-consciously aware of being seen at every moment, it gave significance even to minor, random acts.

  She went into a store and bought Hershey’s syrup, Snickers bars, peanut butter, butterscotch chips, two bags of shredded coconut, Oreos, cheese popcorn, the magazines Spin, Elle, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Newsweek, Time, and Rolling Stone. She ate a Snickers, slowly, as other shoppers brought out bags of groceries to the parking lot.

  The guy following her was in a bronze Ford Taurus. If he began vomiting, if he vomited up the contents of his stomach—she could sort of smell the take-out window Quarter Pounder, and in this context it made her a little sick—he wouldn’t be able to follow her for a while. He would lose her. It was against the law, she thought, for the local police to plant electronic devices without dire cause.

  She saw the guy hunch over, and she drove away, letting the last bite of the Snickers melt in her mouth.

  By the time she reached Boro’s gate, it was maybe seven-thirty in the evening. The gate swung open as she slowed, as if it knew who she was. A flock of red birds flew up from the other side of the house.

  As she left her car no one seemed to be outside. The spooky vibes made her go slowly and deliberately, looking around so she could not

  be taken by surprise. She had no weapon, nothing to protect herself with. If Boro wanted her, it wouldn’t matter, but if Jonathan or one of the other zombies came after her for some reason, maybe just from the scent of flesh, it would have been nice to try shooting them in the head.

  The door was open. She went inside. The dimly lit hall increased her sense of foreboding, at a distance she could hear some music, like an industrial dance band played through an air conditioner. Instead of going down, as before, she went up.

  Up here there was a sound like a hundred wind chimes, a rushing, something high-pitched behind it all—Lisa went right to that door, up another half flight, at the end of this hall.

  Yes, this was the room where Christine was. Lisa entered the room and shut the door behind her, and then did nothing, immobilized by the weirdness. The room—which was pretty big—was radiant with pinkish, goldish, flesh-colored, then back to pale white light. Hundreds of glass wind chimes hung from the high ceiling around a central skylight, which seemed to somehow create the shifting, eerie light.

  There was a mass of vines—both real and fake—and small pieces of white pseudomarble statuary, almost all of them broken, of varying size, angels and Corinthian columns and indistinguishable pieces, more or less in rubble….

  Two fairly intact white angels stood as if at attendance upon a pool of what appeared to be diluted, gleaming milk … in which Christine floated, on her back. She was not naked, but her white dress, or angel’s robe, was in disarray, soaked, baring one breast. Her eyes were shut, mouth open, definitely breathing—she seemed plumper and paler, her blond hair dark gold in the milky fluid … the noise of the chimes, or the music (there was music in here somewhere), was very loud, drowning out thought.

  Lisa cautiously approached the pool. The vines slithered a bit, trying to grab at her ankles. She put a hand on one of the standing plaster angels, to steady herself, and said, “Christine?”

  Nothing happened for a few moments. Then there was a stirring in the milky water, in the area of Christine’s ankles—there must have been oil on it, to make it so reflective—and the coils of a very large glittery snake broke the surface, just as Christine looked over, opening her eyes—all white, frighteningly, wet milky white, with hints of red.

  Wanda came in, dressed up like a headwaiter, her carmine hair slicked down and parted the middle.

  “She’s a moon goddess,” Wanda said. “She’s accumulating knowledge and gravity… she’ll be an oracle when the process is complete.”

  “How long has she been like this?” Lis
a asked in a thin voice.

  “She comes out to eat, to grow fat.” Wanda motioned over to some cushions and a low table stocked with baklava and other sweets, cookies, and cakes. “And to sleep, and dream.”

  Wanda spoke in a somewhat theatrical voice, tinged with mockery, and Lisa hated her—this all seemed like a cruel joke. She waited and didn’t ask any more questions, walking around and examining the room. Wanda tagged after her, anticipating the questions that never came.

  “The neurochemistry of her brain will be permanently altered,” Wanda said. “But she needs to become much fatter.”

  “I want to see Boro,” Lisa said. Wanda tried not to let it be seen, but she was pleased, Lisa could tell. The trick had worked. Lisa wanted to rescue her friend, to get them to release her from the spell. She already felt like she’d waited too many days.

  The atmosphere was very different up in Boro’s austere, quiet room. One of the Aztec wooden figures, all dressed up, stood outside the open door, as if on guard. Was this one alive?

  “My dear Lisa,” Boro said, standing up from his cot inside, “I’ve just been thinking about you.”

  “Yeah, I can tell. You blew up my apartment with that detective’s bones in there … and you had somebody beat up Nehi Laughton’s wife.”

  “What a tangled web we weave,” he said with satisfaction, yawning a bit, as if he had not been awake very long.