Hell's Half Acre (18 page)

Morality, he says. It’s a morality play like any other.

My favorite, I say.

Jude stands up and I can tell she’s getting anxious. She thinks I’m fucking with Miller and she doesn’t like it. She walks around to the far side of the sofa. She leans over the red velvet edge and places one hand flat on Molly’s stomach. Molly closes her eyes and begins to rub her feet together in my lap. I pull my hands away and watch Jude’s face, her eyes. She is staring at me, at me. Her eyes are narrow and dark, then slipping away. I know that look. She might be seducing me, she might be threatening me. It’s a familiar and useful look. I begin to touch Molly’s feet again. Molly lies perfectly motionless, as if asleep or dead. But she is obviously not asleep. Her face changes like the ocean at the slightest touch. Jude’s finger trails slowly down to her bellybutton then moves away. She remains standing, though. Jude sways slightly from the hip, staring now at Miller. This pleases me, because she is more menacing when she’s moving. Miller coughs. He
is becoming rather pissed off, it seems to me. Jude smiles at me, a secret smile that the others don’t see.

Please continue, she says.

Well, says Miller. My vision of this film is old world. It has just a touch of
The Turn of the Screw
, very Henry James, but with an edge.

Henry fucking James? I say. With an edge?

Phineas, says Jude. Be nice.

Molly sighs. You still haven’t told us what the film is about, John.

He nods at the stack of papers on the tray. Those rough pages comprise the first act, he says. If anyone wants to have a look.

The room becomes a vacuum and I hold my breath. Everyone wants to have a look at the script, of course. But no one wants to show it. I stroke Molly’s feet and she runs her hand along my thigh in response. I have an erection and I wonder if she notices. I wonder if Jude notices. I wonder if anyone gives a goddamn.

It’s pretty much a Joe Blow story, says Miller.

Joe Blow, says Jude.

That’s right. Joe Blow in a world of shit.

Okay, says Molly.

Think about it, says Miller. The books that really get under your skin and the movies that are worth two hours of your time are always about Joe Blow.

Jude is pacing around as we talk, a nervous beast in strange quarters. She has no doubt heard this Joe Blow theory before and maybe she is less than mesmerized. She stops and does another line and I think maybe we should put that shit away. My hands soon move up Molly’s legs, to her knees. The suede is so soft, it’s like touching her bare flesh.

Give us an example, I say.

Miller shrugs and begins to rattle them off. Odysseus was the
original Joe Blow, he says. Then you have Moses and half the poor fuckers in the Bible. If you think about it, pretty much everybody in the Bible was Joe Blow, they were all walking headfirst into a world of shit, except Jesus. He was the only one who had any idea about what he was getting into. After that, the list is endless. Hamlet. Ishmael. Tom Joad. Huck Finn. Philip Marlowe. Nick Carraway and Holden Caulfield and on down the line. Luke Skywalker is probably the Joe Blow to end all because that boy was dumb as a post and it was really a miracle that he survived.

Molly pulls one foot away from me and curls onto her side, fetal. The other foot remains in my crotch, pressing against my dick as if it lives there.

And what about the world of shit? says Jude.

She drifts in the dark somewhere behind me, as if she doesn’t want to be seen.

The world of shit, says Miller, is composed of three acts. And yes I know Shakespeare did most of his work in five acts but he was fucking Shakespeare. He could do whatever he wanted. But the second and fourth acts were transitional anyway. Are you guys even interested in this?

I shrug. Miller seems calm but I notice a muscle jump in his jaw.

I am, says Molly.

Anyway, says Miller. You introduce Joe Blow in act one and casually let it slip that he’s terrified of heights. Then you encourage him to climb a tree from which he cannot get down. In act two, you surround the tree with dogs and maybe set the woods on fire. Then you start throwing rocks at Joe. And in the third act, Joe either falls from the tree and shatters his spine, or he gets over his fear and climbs down. Maybe his girlfriend or his faithful buddy comes along to help him or maybe he just stays in the tree until he dies of exposure.

Jude moves around the couch, sparks flickering from her body. Her legs are long, curved, and yellow. The dusty yellow of flowers, of butterflies, the yellow that disappears when you touch it. I must be high.

And who is Joe Blow in your movie? I say.

Miller smiles. Any of us could be. But I think your odds are best.

I reach for a cigarette. No doubt. I am certainly in a world of shit.

Let’s talk about the characters, says Jude.

Please, says Miller. This is the fun part.

Don’t tell me, I say. I get to play a dwarf?

Miller takes Jude’s knife from the table, lifts it to his mouth and takes his time licking coke from the blade. I am dying for some of that shit. I look at Jude, and she looks away from me.

No, says Miller. Much better. You will be Molly’s husband.

Molly takes a breath. What?

Miller shrugs. Swing, baby.

Jude does another line of coke, then leans over me with a generous bump on the end of the knife. I think she’s offering it to me but I’m wrong. Molly sits up and presses a finger to the side of her nose and she’s very trusting. I’m not sure I would let Jude hold a knife to my face like that. Miller slips from his chair and crawls across the floor. He removes mirror and knife from the tray and sits crosslegged, arranging lines. He passes the mirror to Jude and she leans over it like an animal bending to drink. I am beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic. I push Molly’s leg away and she makes a soft noise in her throat. I stand up and light a cigarette. I am tempted to light three or four at once.

I look around the room and everyone is sky high.

Jude is crouched on the floor near the wall, twisting her hair into pigtails. Her movements are feverish and precise and I know she knows that I think pigtails are terribly sexy. I am sitting on the sofa, in a low humpbacked position that makes me feel like a troll. Miller is like a dead man. He lies on the floor at my feet, his head cradled in his hands. Molly is on the far side of the room. She is dancing, I think. Molly is floating on air. But there is no music. I am becoming painfully aware of the fact that there is no music in this house, which is just creepy. I am about to say so when Miller beats me to it.

There’s no music, says Miller. Because I want you to get used to functioning without.

What do you mean?

Molly will play the cello over the credit sequences but otherwise there will be no music on the set, no music in the film.

Why not? says Jude.

Because music manipulates the emotions.

And what about silence, I say. Does it not manipulate the emotions?

Maybe. But it’s more organic, says Miller. And I want it to be creepy.

I smile and smile like a madman because I’m tired of talking to John Ransom Miller. I’m tired of listening to him think out loud. I’m tired of him reading my mind like it’s nothing and I am fast coming to the conclusion that, like cab drivers who secretly want to be writers, lawyers who want to be filmmakers are often dangerous assholes.

Excuse me, I say.

What?

Where is the bathroom? I desperately need a bath.

Yes, he says. You do need a bath. But I thought we might have a conversation.

About what?

About sleeping arrangements. About personal philosophies.

The fuck do you mean.

Monogamy, he says.

I reach for the gin. I change my mind and reach for the plate of coke. Monogamy, I say. What about it?

Do you believe in it?

I look at Jude. She’s crouched against the wall, angry. Her arms and legs are pulled close to her body and she looks like a beautiful, yellow spider monkey. I’m not sure what she’s angry about. But I see her as a whole, a composite. I see her ankles and feet. I see the tiny white scar on her left knee, the big scar over her eye that she hates. I see the long shadows of muscle in her bent thighs. I see her dark green torso and I suppose I regard her body as mine in some way, simply because I know it so well. Every curve and hollow. I close my eyes and I can see her fingers, furiously twisting in her hair. I see her face, the long sharp cheekbones. Her lush wet lips. Her dark yellow eyes. I don’t particularly want her to fuck another but I know she will if she wants to and ultimately I don’t care if she does. She is not mine but on some molecular level I feel like I am hers, if only temporarily.

No, I say. I don’t necessarily believe in monogamy.

Excellent, he says.

I like Miller, really. He’s an interesting person. But he is beginning to irritate me. I want him to stop using that word. Excellent. It bugs the fuck out of me.

What about you? he says, looking at Molly.

She stares at him and I get the feeling they have had this discussion before.

Yes, she says. I believe. You know I do. I want to believe and I want love to work. I may be romantic and stupid and puritan but I believe that monogamy is possible. And I expect to find it, with the
right person. I am with you now, but I don’t want to be yours.

That’s enough, says Miller. That’s more than enough.

He turns to Jude but she withers him with such a look that even I feel pale.

Never mind, says Miller.

Where is the bathroom? I say.

The nearest one is upstairs. Down the hall to the left.

T
HE UPSTAIRS BATHROOM IS LARGE
and relatively spartan with a black-and-white tile floor and a white clawfoot bathtub. Toilet and sink and shower with smoky glass door. Black towels. The closet is empty. In the shower are expensive shampoo and conditioner and black soap. I have brought my glass of gin with me. I am smoking a cigarette. I drop my clothes to the floor and consider the bath. I don’t much like baths. I don’t care to sit in a pool of my own filth but I have always loved the clawfoot bathtub, as an abstract concept. And it reminds me of my mother’s house. I stand there, naked and smoking. It is everything I can do to stop from looking in the mirror. The coke is causing a nasty rattle in my skull and I don’t want to descend into any prolonged examination of self. I have an unfortunate tendency to cut my hair in these situations, to somehow mangle myself. There are knife scars on my arms and chest that no one can account for. I drop my cigarette into the toilet and crank up the hot water in the shower.

I scrub myself fiercely with the black soap. It smells of opium, of wormwood. There is something visually disturbing about black soap
and somehow this appeals to me. I wash my genitals with curious fanaticism. I let the water pound down on my head. I am obliterated by needles and I am slowly disappearing into the smoke of irrational shame. If not for the night in jail and a fear of parasites, I’d probably not bother to wash my hair. The shampoo is also black. I dump a small amount of it into my hand and drag it through my hair, then rinse. I sink into the corner of the shower with glass of gin in hand and breathe the hot steam.

Jude opens the shower door and stands there, looking at me. I am crouched in the corner, rubbery and wet and dizzy from the heat and under her gaze I feel like Gollum with my empty glass in hand. I have lost my precious. I want to ask her a riddle. What is the shadow with green skin that is not man and not woman, the shadow that stretches before us and becomes another.

It’s not fair to ask us what it’s got in its nasty pockets.

Jude still wears that green dress.

She mutters something that I can’t hear.

What? I say.

She smiles and steps into the shower with me. The water crashes down on us and soon her hair is wet and hanging like black ribbons in her face. Her dress is soaked, a dark green secondary flesh. Jude kisses my neck, my chest and belly. I am thirsty and I want her. I reach for her but I am clumsy and my muscles are atrophied from the heat. I am briefly detached from my arms and legs. I want to drink her, to eat her wet eucalyptus skin. I want to rip the green dress from her body but I am floating somewhere above her and I have a magnificent almost distended erection. I pull Jude close to me and lift the wet green dress up over her waist and slip inside her and she is so wet and my thoughts are so splintered that it is hard to say where either of us
begins or ends but soon the noise of our breathing is like the rattle and hiss of new fire.

I read somewhere that more than half of all household accidents take place in the shower and I am not surprised. It’s very slippery and dangerous in there, what with your arms and legs wet and twisted into rubber doll parts that don’t quite belong to you. Your mouth is full of hair and you can’t breathe and you can’t talk and within five minutes I come inside her, which is exactly what she wanted. Because I have been unable to come lately. And because it makes her feel pretty when I come inside her, or so she says.

Are you joking? I say.

But she just smiles at me. If I were her shrink, I would probably say it has to do with power. I would speculate that she was anorexic as a girl. I would root around in her skull for some barely remembered incident of childhood fondling or worse. But I’m not her shrink and wouldn’t want to be. I would rather eat my own eyeballs with a spoon than wiggle around in that head for money. As for birth control, well. Jude told me a few nights ago, in bed at the King James, that she doesn’t bother about birth control anymore because she had her tubes tangled sometime after the unwanted pregnancy in New Orleans.

Ten minutes later we sit on the black-and-white floor. The air is white with mist and we pass a damp cigarette back and forth. I’ve put my borrowed pants back on and Jude has wrapped herself in a massive blue towel. She’s wrapped in a chunk of sky and only her feet poke out. Her feet are beautiful, but not so pretty as Molly’s. I shut my eyes. I have a sudden urge to grind the cigarette out on my arm.