The Mirror Thief

by Martin Seay

  Maybe so.

  Well, the guard says, if you find out what building he’s in, and then you have him phone me and put your name on the cleared list, I can let you through.

  Stanley has been trying to figure out what he’ll say if the guard asks if he’s got an appointment, but now it’s clear he isn’t even going to ask that. You can always tell a man who’s been to war, Stanley’s dad used to say, although he never said exactly how to do it. Stanley’s pretty sure this guy has been to war.

  I don’t want to make no hassle for nobody, Stanley says. If you just let me and my pal poke around a little, I’m sure we can hunt him down.

  The guard gives him a tiny smile. Well, he says, I’m not so sure. I got better than two hundred acres of property over my shoulder. I don’t want to have to come looking for you when you get lost.

  Stanley nods, looks down at the concrete. Tiny hairs left by the barber’s electric razor are pricking him around his collar. He looks up again. Listen, he says. I came a long way to see this man. And I’m not going to bullshit you. I know your whole job is to keep people like me out. But I’m giving you my word. If you let us through, we are not gonna be a problem for you. Okay?

  The guard’s expression doesn’t change. You know, he says, your friend’s probably going to be punching the clock soon anyway. Maybe you fellas should just meet him someplace for a drink. The guard’s eyes move from Stanley to Claudio, then back. Or a milkshake, he says.

  Thank you for your time, Stanley says.

  He and Claudio turn and walk. A few hundred yards south along the Hollywood Freeway a road climbs the western edge of Cahuenga Peak; they hike its incline through a eucalyptus glade into a quiet neighborhood of narrow streets and widely spaced houses. One house that backs up on a scrubby rise has three days’ newspapers scattered in its weedy lawn; Stanley crosses the flagstone path and opens its wooden gate.

  The backyard is strewn with gnawed tennis balls and dry lumps of dogshit, but there’s no dog. A gap interrupts the picket fence—two boards wide, worn on both sides, tufted with black hair in its rough spots—and Stanley slips through while Claudio vaults over. A short scramble among yucca and needlegrass brings them to a wedge-shaped cliff over a small arroyo, a vantage from which they can watch the sun nestling into the mountains, the Los Angeles River in its concrete channel, and the great oval of the Universal property just below. A chattering swarm of bushtits bursts from a sumac, disappears down the slope. Swallows streak the air, returning to roost along the freeway. Far below, a pale stretch of cyclone fence peeks between sagebrush and liveoak; Stanley sees a spot a quarter-mile northeast where it’s sagging inward. Scanning the streets between the studio’s lots and buildings, he sees nothing moving at all.

  They sit for a while, eating bruised apples as the shadows of the mountains creep over them. Then they throw the cores into the arroyo and start their descent.

  For another half-hour they hide in the bushes, watching the studio property through the fence until the sky goes deep blue and the streetlamps inside glow. Aside from a single sweep of headlights against a faraway building there are no signs of life. Stanley and Claudio take off their jackets. Stanley puts one inside the other, pulling the sleeves of Claudio’s through the sleeves of his own. Beach sand left over from their first night in town trickles from the pockets, and he thinks for a moment about places he’s been, distances he’s crossed. Then he hands the jackets to Claudio and runs hard at the fence, hitting it square on its leaning post.

  Claudio catches his foot, boosts him upwards. The concrete plug at the linepost’s base shifts in the dirt, and Stanley tips forward. When he’s reached the four strands of barbed wire over the toprail, Claudio hands up the jackets; Stanley drapes them over the three lower strands, pulls himself over the topmost, and drops, rolling on the dusty incline. By the time he’s upright and brushing himself off, Claudio is over too, jumping to pluck the jackets from the wire.

  They pass a courthouse’s imposing façade—no building behind it—and detour around a paved lakebed, its sides slick with black algae. A breeze blows through Cahuenga Pass, swaying the crowns of trees; the screen of their leaves sieves the light of scattered streetlamps. More façades emerge as Stanley and Claudio head west: thatched jungle huts, a decrepit mining town, a rustic Mexican village. Here and there they find scatterings of cigarette butts, slashes of black graffiti: they’re not the first ones to hop the fence. Headlights wash over them from somewhere in the distance—the double-tap of a slow pulse—and they freeze for a moment before moving on.

  A rushing hum is everywhere around them; it seems to come from falling water, or the rumble of hidden machines, or just the wind, though they’re never able to decide which. They pick up their pace, crashing through a ribbon of trees to discover more fake buildings, more elaborate now: the hulk of a steam locomotive, the parapets of a medieval fortress, a quaint city street. Hey, Stanley whispers as he hurries over the cobblestones. Is this supposed to be Paris?

  Yes, Claudio says, glancing around nervously. Europe. I believe Paris.

  You ever been to Paris?

  I have never.

  Well, then how do you know it’s supposed to be Paris? There ain’t no Eiffel Tower. There ain’t no whaddya-call-it.

  Claudio doesn’t look at him. You said Paris, he says. I said Paris only after you.

  Do we think it’s Paris just because it looks like Paris does in the movies? Maybe the Paris in the movies has got nothing to do with the real Paris. Maybe the real Paris looks like China. How’d we ever know?

  There’s a circular fountain ahead, decorated with four winged lions, its dry basin filled with stray tumbleweeds from the fake mining town nearby. The wind wavers, shifts, and a charred smell comes from somewhere in front of them, stinging Stanley’s nose. It all seems deserted, he says.

  No one lives here. Everything is not real.

  Yeah, no shit. I know. That ain’t what I mean. I mean it’s like nobody’s been using this stuff. Like everything’s shut down.

  Claudio looks around, preoccupied. The films of today often shoot on location, he says. To seem more true. Do you smell a burning?

  Around the next bend they find themselves in front of a mountain of scorched plasterboard and twisted girders: a fake city block, recently up in flames. The street and its gutters are silted with black mounds of ash and soot; it hisses around their ankles when the wind blows. The air is painful to breathe. Stanley looks at the adjacent structures to figure out what this used to be—what it was supposed to be—and sees department stores, theaters, the granite bases of skyscrapers. New York.

  Stanley and Claudio push ahead to get past the burn. They come to a block of brownstones with black banisters and barred windows and crooknecked streetlamps lining their sidewalks: a looking-glass Brooklyn. It’s nothing like the city he grew up in, not really, but Stanley knows that if he saw this place on a movie screen he’d buy it as New York, no questions asked. He thinks of movies he’s seen that were supposed to happen on streets he knows well. Some of them were probably shot right here. Looking back, they always looked fake, every time, but he never questioned it. It makes him feel like a sap.

  Stanley! Claudio hisses, motioning him toward the stoop he’s crouched behind, but it’s too late: headlights catch him. They pass over, leaving him in darkness again, but then jerk to a halt with a squeak of brakes.

  He and Claudio dash around the corner, across a street, and hide in the bushes beside a fake New England church. Behind them a car door slams, then another. Did they see you? Claudio asks.

  Oh, they saw me, all right.

  What will we do?

  Stanley doesn’t answer. The cyclone fence isn’t far, but he doubts they could clear it in time; anyway, they’d have to drop straight into the sloped channel of the LA River to get away, and he doesn’t want to try that in the dark. But moving farther into the backlot is no good, either: they’re apt to get tripped up or boxed in if they can’t see where they’re
going. And now the way they came from is blocked.

  Two white beams are moving down the street of brownstones: heavy flashlights, the kind with big square batteries slung beneath. The two studio guards are moving like cops move—keeping plenty of space between them, holding their lights away from their bodies—and Stanley can tell they’ll be tough to shake. He didn’t see whether the guard at the gate was wearing a pistol, but he’d bet that these two are. They’re coming through the darkness like men with guns.

  We have to run away, Claudio whispers. They will find us.

  Just sit tight. We ain’t done here yet.

  It is no good to sit tight. We can’t see where to hide. They know this place.

  They damn well will see us if we run. That’s what they want, is to flush us out and shoot us. I didn’t come all the way out here to get rousted by these clowns.

  Stanley, Claudio says. Your man is not here. No one is here but them. It is stupid for us to stay.

  The guards are close enough now to make out their faces: handsome, cold-eyed, unworried. Each has what looks like a thirtyeight special revolver in his right hand. Off-duty cops, Stanley figures, moonlighting for extra cash. They won’t be slow to pull the trigger. He could use Claudio as a decoy, split them up, ambush one, take his gun away. If he can circle back to the mound of debris, there’s bound to be something there he could crack a skull with. A piece of rebar, maybe.

  I will go to them, Claudio says.

  Huh?

  I will go to them. When they take me away, you will go back through the fence. I will meet you on the road. Where the bus dropped us.

  Stanley unglues his eyes from the moving lights and looks at Claudio. Have you flipped your wig? he hisses. Whaddya mean, you’ll go to them? And do what?

  Claudio’s still watching the guards; Stanley can see his dark irises click from one to the other. His right hand is firm and warm on Stanley’s shoulder. His expression is calm, alert. I will talk to them, he says.

  Stanley takes a deep breath. Kid, he says, if they call in the cops, you’re done for. They’ll ship you back to Mexico. If you’re lucky. Is that what you want?

  They will not call any cops.

  Yeah? How do you figure that, smart guy?

  I will be very sorry to them. It will be no problem. He turns to Stanley and grins. I have a nice front, he says.

  Stanley opens his mouth to speak, but Claudio is already standing up, stepping from the bushes. If you do not see me in one hour, he says, go back to the ocean. I will meet you at our headquarters.

  He’s walking down the middle of the street now, his arms above his head, his toes turned out in a slow saunter. Stanley watches him go. The flashlight beams rake the pavement and converge on him, and in their light his black perfect shape is trimmed by a white corona. Hello, my friends, he calls out. I think that I have become lost.

  Stanley’s pulse scolds him in his throat and in his temples. He keeps very still. The guards draw close to Claudio; they vanish at the edges of the light he’s stopping. Stanley can’t hear what anybody says. One of the beams sweeps his way, tracing Claudio’s path back toward the bushes, and Stanley lies flat and buries his face in the redwood mulch.

  The light flashes over him: once, twice, three times. When he hasn’t seen it in a solid thirty seconds he looks up again. The guards have put their pistols away; one holds his flashlight at Claudio’s back, while the other stands in front, a hand alongside his neck. He seems to be pinching Claudio’s ear like a schoolmaster, though the gesture could also be a caress. His light is aimed at Claudio’s throat, making his face unreadable, his eyes and mouth into black voids. After a moment, the three of them turn, walk, and vanish around the corner.

  Stanley waits for the guards’ engine to start, for the crunch of their wheels, for the spillover from their headlights to fade from the canyons of façades. This seems to take a long time. When everything is dark and silent again, he jogs toward the burn, retracing his steps as best he can.

  He’s back to the spot where they jumped the fence in what seems like no time at all, but after a couple of tries he realizes he’ll never clear it on his own: it’s bowed badly inward, and he’s neither strong nor heavy enough to bend it back without Claudio’s help. There are too many lights to the south, too many houses, so he heads toward the river instead, looking for a spot where he can slither under. This is hopeless—there’s a tension wire strung along the base, an inch above the ground—but eventually he comes to a tight corner with an endpost he can climb. He throws his jacket over, throws the combat pack after it, and winces as it clatters on the dry ground. Then he grabs the rough loops of wire, digs in with the toes of his shoes. Scared and impatient, he catches his leg on a barb as he’s coming over the top; his jeans tear, a gash opens in his calf, and for a bad moment he’s tangled, tipping forward, about to be flayed by his own weight, slammed facefirst in the dirt. Then he rights himself, measures out his breaths—staring at the black ridge of Mount Lee, a spillway impounding the lights of the city—frees his leg, and drops.

  He backtracks until he finds streetlamps, pavement, houses with lit windows: old couples playing gin rummy, families gathered around TV sets. The neighborhood streets lead him to the freeway. He’s jogging now, blood drying on his ankle, uncertain of the time; Claudio said to meet in an hour, but of course they have no watches. Stanley feels like it’s been at least that long since they split up.

  When he comes to the bus-stop, Claudio’s not there. Stanley throws the combat pack on a bench and sits and waits. Then he stands up. Beyond the padlocked studio gates he sees no movement, not even the occasional glint of headlights. To the east, the dark form of Cahuenga Peak slowly takes shape against the purple night sky, and after a few minutes a reddish moon bubbles up behind it, not quite full. Stanley watches as it rolls across the sky, going yellow, then white.

  He sits again, opens the pack, takes out The Mirror Thief. A streetlamp overhead gives plenty of light, but Stanley doesn’t read, can’t concentrate. For a second he has the urge to throw the book, as hard as he can, at the studio gates. He imagines it flying from his hand and flaring into a wall of fire that sweeps the whole valley clean—or taking wing, swooping through the dark like a great brown owl, finding Claudio and carrying him to safety. Stanley believes the book to be capable of such feats. He believes it has promised him as much.

  But Stanley doesn’t throw the book. The Mirror Thief stays shut in his lap, inert like a jammed pistol, as Stanley revisits its contents from memory.

  Westward rise the twin oneiric gates, horn

  and ivory, each one skull-sprung from sleep.

  Half-awake, Crivano laughs at the asperity

  of fire. So spake the alchemist, “Calcination

  is the very treasure of a thing; be not you

  weary of calcination!” In this manner only

  can the foul substance by red levels be reduced:

  bot bar bot

  unglimpsed behind the white-hot furnace door,

  made new behind the unfurled cloak of night.

  How would Crivano handle a fix like this? It’s a dumb question, for a bunch of reasons. Crivano would have come alone, for one—or at least he wouldn’t have come with anybody he’d think twice about leaving behind. Stanley may not know all the stuff that Adrian Welles knows—history, alchemy, ancient languages, magic—but he ought to understand this much. He ought to know how to act like a thief.

  The bus has stopped running for the night. Stanley wonders how he’ll get back to the waterfront. He puts away the book and stands up again to pace around the bench, stopping sometimes to scrape crusted blood from his leg. A police cruiser swings by, slows down. The cops stare at him; he stares back. They stop for a moment, then pull away. He curses them aloud as they go. Then he curses Claudio, then himself, muttering obscenities as he makes his tight oval circuit. After a while he folds his arms across his chest and moans, doubled over by a feeling that’s entirely strange to him, less a fear
than an urge, like the need to sneeze or shit.

  Headlights shine from the studio lots. Stanley sinks onto the bench and watches them come. A white sedan, unmarked, draws parallel to the gates. Its rear door opens. Claudio gets out. He leans to talk with the driver for a moment, then raises a palm in goodbye and steps over the low gate. The white car turns back into the studio property, accelerating as it drives away. Claudio walks toward Stanley, his hands in his jacket pockets. Stanley waves to him. Claudio doesn’t wave back.

  When Claudio reaches the edge of the circle of light shed by the bus-stop’s streetlamp, Stanley rushes forward and grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him. Goddamnit, kid! he says.

  Claudio breaks his hold, shoves him away. Stanley backpedals until he’s sitting on the bench again. Claudio’s chin juts; his mouth bunches with rage. Do not touch me, damn you, he says.

  Hey! I’m just glad to see you in one piece, is all. What’s the matter?

  Claudio turns his back, shakes his head. Then he faces Stanley again. The film your man was making by the ocean, he says. What is the name of it?

  I don’t remember, Stanley says. I don’t think the barber told me.

  It had big stars. You said this, yes? Even you knew their names. Now, tell me, Stanley, what stars did it have?

  Ah, shit, kid, I don’t know. That Hollywood stuff doesn’t mean—

  Was Mister Charlton Heston perhaps one of these big stars?

  Stanley thinks about that for a second. Yes! he says. It was Charlton Heston! The barber said he even met him. He came right into his shop. Charlton Heston, and some famous actress, too.

  Marlene Dietrich? Claudio says. Janet Leigh?

  The second one. Janet. I think.

  Claudio steps in very close. His breath is shallow and rapid. He glowers down at Stanley with bottomless eyes. Are you quite certain, he hisses, that the barber said Adrian Welles?

  19

  On foot they work their way back toward the city, navigating by moonlight, the earth’s downgrade, periodic glimpses through the trees of the HOLLYWOOD sign. By the time they reach Santa Monica Boulevard they’re stupid with exhaustion, and they hop the stone wall of a cemetery and break open a mausoleum door and spend what remains of the night half-asleep on its hard marble slab, without so much as a word passed between them.