I sat up in bed. “Are you sure I didn’t fail to do something you asked me to do? You can tell me if I did.”
“That’s not it. You spilled the beans. You told me about your amnesia.”
“I did?” I cocked my head and looked at him quizzically.
“And you told me how your mother died.”
“She died of lung cancer, didn’t she?”
“You were there at her bed when she died. You told me what happened. Do you remember?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t go see her the day she died.”
Harper poured himself a glass of Jack Daniels, neat, from the bottle that was on the nightstand. He took a Marlboro out of the pack, ripped the filter off, put it in his mouth, and lit it. He took a long draw on the cigarette, blew the smoke away from me, and then took a sip of Jack Daniels. He stared at the television for a minute. While I watched him I thought to myself, This isn’t real. I’m in a movie. I’m in a goddamn movie.
“You were sitting at her bedside. She reached out for your hand and you gave it to her. She was rigged up to one of those breathing machines. You said they make an eerie whirring noise. Anyway, she asked the doctor to take it off her face for a moment so she could ask you a question.”
I pulled the covers up, looked at Harper as if to say, Why are you doing this to me, then burrowed into him, resting my face on his shoulder and wrapping my arms around him.
“Hold me,” I said.
He put the Jack Daniels down and held me.
“Do you remember what she asked you?” He took another drag on the Marlboro and flicked the ashes into the ashtray on the nightstand.
“No,” I said. “I don’t. I don’t remember.”
Harper rested the cigarette in the ashtray, blew the smoke away, and then tried to lift my head up with his hand so he could look at me, but I kept it against his chest, and would not move. “Look me in the eye,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“Your mother asked you to forgive her for something. Do you remember what it was?” He took another sip of bourbon.
“Did she ask me to forgive her for dying?”
“No, don’t guess. Try to remember.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You can’t remember?”
“I can’t remember,” I repeated.
Harper emptied his glass of Jack Daniels, then lifted the bottle and poured himself another. From my position with my head lying against his chest, I watched his hands move, and tried to imagine the expression on his face —stubborn maybe, or grave, or just resigned. I felt him swallow the whiskey. I could hear his heart beating underneath his ribs. I lay my face down against his chest, where it was warm, and thought how nice it was to be this close to another human being. Not being able to remember intimacy, skin against skin, was like not having the intimacy, as if I had been deprived of human contact, of all touch, of all love.
“Do you remember now, what she asked you to forgive her for?”
I felt how warm his skin was against my face, listened to his heartbeat, and said, “No.”
He put his whiskey and cigarette down, and gripped my arms with his hands. He tried to lift my head again, but I resisted. “You have to look at me, babe,” he said.
“No,” I said, and shook my head so it rubbed against his chest.
“She asked you,” he said, and stopped to take another swig of whiskey. I put my hand on his arm and gripped it as hard as I could. It’s not real, I kept telling myself. It’s not really happening. It’s a movie.
“She asked me if I would forgive her — ” I said, finally.
He sighed and my head rode up and down on his chest, like swimming with the dolphin.
“She asked me to forgive her for not loving me.” There. I had said it.
He tried to look at me again but I still would not let him. He poured himself another drink, and then held on to me with both hands, while I started to shake, and then buck and convulse, like someone going through withdrawals, and then finally started to cry.
“I’m sorry, babe,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
He held me and rubbed my head, and pushed my hair out of my face, and wiped the tears off my chin with the back of his hand. Finally, when I had been crying quite a long time, I let him lift my face up, and look at it.
***
Tuesday, Malibu California
The entire Temple of the Jaguars exhibit was closed to the public until the mural could be completed and the Xipe Totec figurine recovered, but Harper had left my name with the Getty Museum officials, so one of the guards had provided me with a map, walked me to the gate of the Mayan metropolis, unlocked it, and let me inside.
The Temple of the Jaguars facsimile had been constructed on a hill overlooking the ocean. But instead of simply building the one temple that was required, and displaying an artist’s rendering of the other buildings to show what the Mayan metropolis would have looked like, the Getty Museum had reconstructed the entire cluster of buildings, including the House of Governors, the Nunnery, the Pyramid of the Magician, the High Priest’s Grave, the Hieroglyphic Stairway leading to the Temple of the Jaguars, the Skull Rack Platform, the Steam Bath and Ball Court, and even the Well of Sacrifice.
The Getty designers intended that the Temple of the Jaguars should be the most elaborate and spectacular of the buildings in the Mayan metropolis. The Hieroglyphic Stairway that led up the pyramid platform to the temple had been decorated with relief carvings of costumed men with feathered headdresses and trapezoidal wings emerging from their hips who carried long-handled fans. The pyramid platform supporting the Temple of the Jaguars had been built so high that it provided a vista from which you could see the entire metropolis. The entrance to the Temple of the Jaguars faced west, and from the doorway, visitors could see the sunset over the Pacific.
The serpent mask doorframe, with its teeth lining the sill, fangs protruding from the jambs, and serpent’s nose and eyes above, had been installed around the entrance to the Temple of the Jaguars, so that, when you walked inside the temple, you were actually walking into the serpent’s mouth. In the outer chamber of the temple, the Getty curators had displayed some of the figurines from the confiscated crate: the skeleton man, the two faced woman, the whistling couple. They had left one glass case empty for Xipe Totec — the skin-suit man.
Inside the inner chamber of the Temple of the Jaguars, Harper and our painter friends worked on the mural. Canvas had been laid down on the floor of the room, and a huge table stood in the middle of it, cluttered with plans and drawings. Along the walls the battle and ritual scenes had been sketched in, and each painter had been assigned one to fill in with colors.
Joe worked on the south wall, painting a picture of siege operations during a battle. Warriors in profile wearing feathered headdresses brandished round shields against a frenzy of flying lances. Getz painted the east wall, which depicted a ruler performing penance with his family. Cedric was at work on the north wall, painting in a landscape of a seacoast village. At the front of this mural the sea was represented by a stack of wavy lines, and in it were warriors in canoes, paddling to the left, while crabs, octopus and fish lurked in the squiggly lines underneath their boats. On shore, women with receding hairlines ground corn, carried baskets on their backs and walked with sticks, or sat complacently in the huts watching snakes dance. Huge birds shaped like geese flew toward the ground, as if they would crash. Between the huts were thick trees with forked branches and a ball of leaves on each side.
Harper painted the west wall, which showed a human sacrifice by heart excision. Above the door, Gabe sketched in a god impersonator, lying on his back across the lintel, with serpents rising from his belt.
When they finally noticed me, I was standing in the entryway to the inner chamber with an empty pillowcase slung over my shoulder, listening to Joe tell the rest of them about the new gay bar Raphael Souza planned to open with the profits from his investment in Maniac Drifter Inc. “Hi guys,” I
said.
“Asheva, asheva, asheva,” Cedric said in greeting, and jutted his elbows at me. Then he began to grind his teeth together.
“Hey, babe,” Joe said. “I knew you’d come. I knew you couldn’t live without us. You’re addicted.”
“It’s Kate,” Gabe said, as if he had not known I was coming.
Getz brushed his hair out of his eyes and smiled at me. “Yo, Kate,” he said.
I began to wander around and look at the different scenes in the mural. “I can’t believe this place,” I said. “I thought they were just going to build the one temple.”
“Isn’t it outrageous?” Joe said.
“So why’d they do it?” I said.
“They have two million a month to spend in acquisition money,” Cedric explained. “And the Temple of the Jaguars exhibit seemed so promising, it was getting such good press and attracting so many visitors to the museum before the exhibit had even opened, that they figured, why build just one temple? Why not thrill the public and build the whole Mayan city?”
“Isn’t it amazing?” Harper said.
“It’s incredible,” I said. “It’s enormous. First, I thought they were just fake fronts, like a stage set at the movie studios, or you couldn’t walk on them, or there wasn’t anything inside, but they’re real buildings. It’s outrageous. It’s like Disneyland.”
“Disneyland for the art set,” Cedric said. “I used to think Provincetown was like Disneyland gone haywire. But now it’s been outdone.”
“I think it’s wonderful,” Gabe said quietly. “I really do.”
Harper pulled me aside where no one else could hear us. He slipped the pillowcase off my shoulder, unfurled it, looked at both sides, waving it like a matador taunting a bull, and then returned it to my shoulder. He whispered: “Can you remember everything?” I shook my head. “Can you remember what we discussed?”
“Of course. I told you that my mother asked me to forgive her for before she died.”
“What did she ask you to forgive her for?”
“For not loving me.”
“And you can’t remember everything? You can’t remember what happens at night?”
“No,” I said.
Harper put his arm around me. “What a dope,” he said, roughing up my hair. “What a pal. What a sucker.” He gripped my shoulders. “Maybe you’ll remember from now on. What do you think?” I shrugged underneath the weight of his hands.
I looked at Cedric and his seacoast village, Getz and his ruler performing penance, Joe and his siege operations, Gabe and his god impersonator, Harper and his heart excision — which one of them loved me? I did not know, I could not remember. That was the bliss and the glory of it. I did not know if they loved me. I did not know if I wanted them to love me. I did not know if they had failed to love me.
I could not remember these men. Did I love one of them? How could I? After all, weren’t the memories of past intimacies what love was? If I could not remember I could not love. And I could not know who loved me back.
Cedric did not want me — he had left me a year before. That was easy enough. Gabe did not want me — he had told me I would hurt his feelings too much and it was too late. Getz and Joe did not want me. They had never indicated as much; they had never asked me for any exclusivity or commitment. So that left Harper.
I looked at Harper. “The babe’s in love with me,” he said. “You know what I mean?” He hugged me.
“We’ll be at Harry’s Bar,” Joe said.
Gabe let out one of his world-weary sighs.
“You can always change your mind!” Joe yelled as they were going out the door, and waved goodbye with his gloved hand.
“Asheva Asheva!” Cedric called.
When they were gone, Harper said, “What are you thinking about?”
I had been thinking that my amnesia was like dreams or intuition, I knew something, but I did not know how. Harper took my hand and led me into the outer chamber where the figurines were displayed. He went over to the glass case reserved for the skin-suit man, opened it, and took him out.
“I was thinking that failing to love someone is not a crime.”
Harper turned the skin-suit man around in his hands. With his finger he stroked his chest where the stitches were. He poked his finger into the mouth of the mask, and felt for the mouth underneath. “Then what’s the crime?”
“The crime is not forgiving.”
Harper handed me the skin-suit man. “I was the one who took him,” I said. “Well, you must know now. I always intended to bring him back.”
“You know when I fell in love with you?” He took the skin suit back and held him in his hands. “At the White Sands Costume Ball, when I saw you in my clothes. It’s not narcissism. You’d found a way inside me, and occupied this same space with me. The same way this little guy does.” He handed the skin-suit man back to me.
“Letting the god inside you.”
“What do you think of him?”
“I think he’s revolting. And I think he’s sublime.” I put him back into the glass case.
I longed for the intimacy of whispering and touching, the accumulated repertoire of gestures and signs.
We stepped through the serpent’s mouth to the outside, and watched the red sun sink down into the ocean. “Love is like that sometimes,” he said, pointing at it.
“I wouldn’t know,” I said, and leaned the full weight of my body against him.
Acknowledgements
This novel was written with the assistance of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, a Grace Foundation Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center Provincetown, and artist residencies at Yaddo, Millay and Montalvo Center for the Arts. Special thanks to Paul Nelson and Michael Mirolla.
About The Author
Laura Marello is the author of Claiming Kin, The Tenants of the Hotel Biron, Balzac’s Robe, The Gender of Inanimate Objects and Other Stories, and several other books. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, a Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, a Vogelstein Grant and a Deming grant. She has enjoyed writer’s residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony, Montalvo Center for the Arts, and the Djerassi Foundation.
Copyright © 2016, Laura Marello and Guernica Editions Inc.
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.
Michael Mirolla, editor
Cover design and interior layout: David Moratto
Guernica Editions Inc.
1569 Heritage Way, Oakville, (ON), Canada L6M 2Z7
2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, N.Y. 14150-6000 U.S.A.
www.guernicaeditions.com
Distributors:
University of Toronto Press Distribution,
5201 Dufferin Street, Toronto (ON), Canada M3H 5T8
Gazelle Book Services, White Cross Mills, High Town,
Lancaster LA1 4XS U.K.
First edition.
Legal Deposit—Third Quarter
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2016938890
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Marello, Laura, author
Maniac drifter [electronic resource] / Laura Marello. -- First edition.
(Essential prose series ; 125)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77183-065-2 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-77183-066-9 (epub).
--ISBN 978-1-77183-067-6 (mobi)
I. Title. II. Series: Essential prose series ; 125
PS3613.A7397M36 2016 813’.6 C2016-902166-1 C2016-902167-X
Maniac Drifter Page 20