Smoke and Mirrors (14 page)

“Why on earth would I do that?” she asked. In my dream she smelled of gin and old celluloid, although I do not remember the last dream I had where anyone smelled of anything. She smiled, a perfect black-and-white smile. “I got out, didn’t I?” Then she stood up and walked around the room.

“I can’t believe this hotel is still standing,” she said. “I used to fuck here.” Her voice was filled with crackles and hisses. She came back to the bed and stared at me, as a cat stares at a hole.

“Do you worship me?” she asked.

I shook my head. She walked over to me and took my flesh hand in her silver one.

“Nobody remembers anything anymore,” she said. “It’s a thirty-minute town.”

There was something I had to ask her. “Where are the stars?” I asked. “I keep looking up in the sky, but they aren’t there.”

She pointed at the floor of the chalet. “You’ve been looking in the wrong places,” she said. I had never before noticed that the floor of the chalet was a sidewalk and each paving stone contained a star and a name—names I didn’t know: Clara Kimball Young, Linda Arvidson, Vivian Martin, Norma Talmadge, Olive Thomas, Mary Miles Minter, Seena Owen . . .

June Lincoln pointed at the chalet window. “And out there.” The window was open, and through it I could see the whole of Hollywood spread out below me—the view from the hills: an infinite spread of twinkling multicolored lights.

“Now, aren’t those better than stars?” she asked.

And they were. I realized I could see constellations in the street lamps and the cars.

I nodded.

Her lips brushed mine.

“Don’t forget me,” she whispered, but she whispered it sadly, as if she knew that I would.

I woke up with the telephone shrilling. I answered it, growled a mumble into the handpiece.

“This is Gerry Quoint, from the studio. We need you for a lunch meeting.

Mumble something mumble.

“We’ll send a car,” he said. “The restaurant’s about half an hour away.”

The restaurant was airy and spacious and green, and they were waiting for me there.

By this point I would have been surprised if I
had
recognized anyone. John Ray, I was told over hors d’oeuvres, had “split over contract disagreements,” and Donna had gone with him, “obviously.”

Both of the men had beards; one had bad skin. The woman was thin and seemed pleasant.

They asked where I was staying, and, when I told them, one of the beards told us (first making us all agree that this would go no further) that a politician named Gary Hart and one of the Eagles were both doing drugs with Belushi when he died.

After that they told me that they were looking forward to the story.

I asked the question. “Is this for
Sons of Man
or
When We Were Badd?
Because,” I told them, “I have a problem with the latter.”

They looked puzzled.

It was, they told me, for
I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll.
Which was, they told me, both High Concept and Feel Good. It was also, they added, Very Now, which was important in a town in which an hour ago was Ancient History.

They told me that they thought it would be a good thing if our hero could rescue the young lady from her loveless marriage, and if they could rock and roll together at the end.

I pointed out that they needed to buy the film rights from Nick Lowe, who wrote the song, and then that, no, I didn’t know who his agent was.

They grinned and assured me that that wouldn’t be a problem.

They suggested I turn over the project in my mind before I started on the treatment, and each of them mentioned a couple of young stars to bear in mind when I was putting together the story.

And I shook hands with all of them and told them that I certainly would.

I mentioned that I thought that I could work on it best back in England.

And they said that that would be fine.

Some days before, I’d asked Pious Dundas whether anyone was with Belushi in the chalet, on the night that he died.

If anyone would know, I figured, he would.

“He died alone,” said Pious Dundas, old as Methuselah, unblinking. “It don’t matter a rat’s ass whether there was anyone with him or not. He died alone.”

It felt strange to be leaving the hotel.

I went up to the front desk.

“I’ll be checking out later this afternoon.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Would it be possible for you to . . . the, uh, the groundkeeper. Mister Dundas. An elderly gentleman. I don’t know. I haven’t seen him around for a couple of days. I wanted to say good-bye.”

“To one of the groundsmen?”

“Yes.”

She stared at me, puzzled. She was very beautiful, and her lipstick was the color of a blackberry bruise. I wondered whether she was waiting to be discovered.

She picked up the phone and spoke into it, quietly.

Then, “I’m sorry, sir. Mister Dundas hasn’t been in for the last few days.”

“Could you give me his phone number?”

“I’m sorry, sir. That’s not our policy.” She stared at me as she said it, letting me know that she
really
was
so
sorry . . .

“How’s your screenplay?” I asked her.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“Well—”

“It’s on Joel Silver’s desk,” she said. “My friend Arnie, he’s my writing partner, and he’s a courier. He dropped it off with Joel Silver’s office, like it came from a regular agent or somewhere.”

“Best of luck,” I told her.

“Thanks,” she said, and smiled with her blackberry lips.

Information had two Dundas, P’s listed, which I thought was both unlikely and said something about America, or at least Los Angeles.

The first turned out to be a Ms. Persephone Dundas. At the second number, when I asked for Pious Dundas, a man’s voice said, “Who is this?” I told him my name, that I was staying in the hotel, and that I had something belonging to Mr. Dundas.

“Mister. My grandfa’s dead. He died last night.”

Shock makes clichés happen for real: I felt the blood drain from my face; I caught my breath.

“I’m sorry. I liked him.”

“Yeah.”

“It must have been pretty sudden.”

“He was old. He got a cough.” Someone asked him who he was talking to, and he said nobody, then he said, “Thanks for calling.”

I felt stunned.

“Look, I have his scrapbook. He left it with me.”

“That old film stuff?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“Keep it. That stuff’s no good to anybody. Listen, mister, I gotta run.” A click, and the line went silent.

I went to pack the scrapbook in my bag and was startled, when a tear splashed on the faded leather cover, to discover that I was crying.

I stopped by the pool for the last time, to say good-bye to Pious Dundas, and to Hollywood.

Three ghost white carp drifted, fins flicking minutely, through the eternal present of the pool.

I remembered their names: Buster, Ghost, and Princess; but there was no longer any way that anyone could have told them apart.

The car was waiting for me, by the hotel lobby. It was a thirty-minute drive to the airport, and already I was starting to forget.

T HE W HITE R OAD

“. . . I wish that you would visit me one day,

in my house.

There are such sights I would show you.”

My intended lowers her eyes, and, yes, she shivers.

Her father and his friends all hoot and cheer.

“
That’s
never a story, Mister Fox,” chides a pale woman

in the corner of the room, her hair corn-fair,

her eyes the gray of cloud, meat on her bones,

she curves, and smiles crooked and amused.

“Madam, I am no storyteller,” and I bow, and ask,

“Perhaps, you have a story for us?” I raise an eyebrow.

Her smile remains.

She nods, then stands, her lips move:

“A girl from the town, a plain girl, was betrayed by her lover,

a scholar. So when her blood stopped flowing,

and her belly swole beyond disguising,

she went to him, and wept hot tears. He stroked her hair,

swore that they would marry, that they would run,

in the night,

together,

to his aunt. She believed him;

even though she had seen the glances in the hall

he gave to his master’s daughter,

who was fair, and rich, she believed him.

Or she believed that she believed.

“There was something sly about his smile,

his eyes so black and sharp, his rufous hair. Something

that sent her early to their trysting place,

beneath the oak, beside the thornbush,

something that made her climb the tree and wait.

Climb a tree, and in her condition.

Her love arrived at dusk, skulking by owl-light,

carrying a bag,

from which he took a mattock, shovel, knife.

He worked with a will, beside the thornbush,

beneath the oaken tree,

he whistled gently, and he sang, as he dug her grave,

that old song . . .

Shall I sing it for you, now, good folk?”

She pauses, and as a one we clap and we holloa

—or almost as a one:

My intended, her hair so dark, her cheeks so pink,

her lips so red,

seems distracted.

The fair girl (Who is she? A guest of the inn, I hazard) sings:

“
A fox went out on a shiny night

And he begged for the moon to give him light

For he’d many miles to go that night

Before he’d reach his den-O!

Den-O! Den-O!

He’d many miles to go that night, before he’d reach his den-O.”

Her voice is sweet and fine, but the voice of my intended is finer.

“And when her grave was dug—

A small hole it was, for she was a little thing,

even big with child she was a little thing—

he walked below her, back and a forth,

rehearsing her hearsing, thus:

— Good evening, my pigsnie, my love,

my, but you look a treat in the moon’s light,

mother of my child-to-be. Come, let me hold you.

And he’d embrace the midnight air with one hand,

and with the other, holding his short but wicked knife,

he’d stab and stab the dark.

“She trembled in her oak above him. Breathed so softly,

but still she shook. And once he looked up and said,

—
Owls, I’ll wager,
and another time,
Fie! Is that a cat

up there? Here, puss . . .
But she was still,

bethought herself a branch, a leaf, a twig. At dawn

he took his mattock, spade, and knife and left

all grumbling and gudgeoned of his prey.

“They found her later wandering, her wits

had left her. There were oak leaves in her hair,

and she sang:

The bough did bend

The bough did break

I saw the hole

The fox did make

We swore to love

We swore to marry

I saw the blade

The fox did carry

“They say that her babe, when it was born,

had a fox’s paw on her and not a hand.

Fear is the sculptress, midwives claim. The scholar fled.”

And she sits down, to general applause.

The smile twitches, hides about her lips: I know it’s there,

it waits in her gray eyes. She stares at me, amused.

“I read that in the Orient foxes follow priests and scholars,

in disguise as women, houses, mountains, gods, processions,

always discovered by their tails—” so I begin,

but my intended’s father intercedes.

“Speaking of tales—my dear, you said you had a tale?”

My intended flushes. There are no rose petals,

save for her cheeks. She nods and says:

“My story, Father? My story is the story of a dream I dreamed.”

Her voice is so quiet and soft, we hush ourselves to hear,

outside the inn just the night sounds: An owl hoots,

but, as the old folk say, I live too near the wood

to be frightened by an owl.

She looks at me.

“You, sir. In my dream you rode to me, and called,

—Come to my house, my sweet, away down the white road.

There are such sights I would show you.

I asked how I would find your house, down the white chalk road,

for it’s a long road, and a dark one, under trees

that make the light all green and gold when the sun is high,

but shade the road at other times. At night

it’s pitch-black; there is no moonlight on the white road . . .

“And you said, Mister Fox—and this is most curious, but dreams

are treacherous and curious and dark—

that you would cut the throat of a sow pig,

and you would walk her home behind your fine black stallion.

You smiled,

smiled, Mister Fox, with your red lips and your green eyes,

eyes that could snare a maiden’s soul, and your yellow teeth,

which could eat her heart—”

“God forbid,” I smiled. All eyes were on me then, not her,

though hers was the story. Eyes, such eyes.

“So, in my dream, it became my fancy to visit your great house,

as you had so often entreated me to do,

to walk its glades and paths, to see the pools,

the statues you had brought from Greece, the yews,

the poplar walk, the grotto, and the bower.

And, as this was but a dream, I did not wish

to take a chaperone

—some withered, juiceless prune

who would not appreciate your house, Mister Fox; who

would not appreciate your pale skin,

nor your green eyes,

nor your engaging ways.

“So I rode the white chalk road, following the red blood path,

on Betsy, my filly. The trees above were green.

A dozen miles straight, and then the blood

led me off across meadows, over ditches, down a gravel path

  (but now I needed sharp eyes to catch the blood—

a drip, a drop: The pig must have been dead as anything),

and I reined my filly in front of a house.

And such a house. A palladian delight, immense,

a landscape of its own, windows, columns,

a white stone monument to verticality, expansive.

“There was a sculpture in the garden, before the house,

A Spartan child, stolen fox half-concealed in its robe,

the fox biting the child’s stomach, gnawing the vitals away,

the stoic child bravely saying nothing—

what could it say, cold marble that it was?

There was pain in its eyes, and it stood,

upon a plinth on which were carved eight words.

I walked around it, and I read:

Be bold,

be bold,

but not too bold.

“I tethered little Betsy in the stables,

between a dozen night black stallions

each with blood and madness in his eyes.

I saw no one.

I walked to the front of the house and up the great steps.

The huge doors were locked fast,

no servants came to greet me when I knocked.

In my dream (for do not forget, Mister Fox, that this was

my dream. You look so pale) the house fascinated me,

the kind of curiosity (you know this,

Mister Fox, I see it in your eyes) that kills

cats.

“I found a door, a small door, off the latch,

and pushed my way inside.

Walked corridors, lined with oak, with shelves,

with busts, with trinkets,

I walked, my feet silent on the scarlet carpet,

until I reached the great hall.

It was there again, in red stones that glittered,

set into the white marble of the floor,

it said:

Be bold,

be bold,

but not too bold.

Or else your life’s blood

shall run cold.”

“There were stairs, wide, carpeted in scarlet,

off the great hall, and I walked up them, silently, silently.

Oak doors: and now

I was in the dining room, or so I am convinced,

for the remnants of a grisly supper

were abandoned, cold and fly-buzzed.

Here was a half-chewed hand, there, crisped and picked,

a face, a woman’s face, who must in life, I fear,

have looked like me.”

“Heavens defend us all from such dark dreams,” her father cried.

“Can such things be?”

“It is not so,” I assured him. The fair woman’s smile

glittered behind her gray eyes. People

need assurances.

“Beyond the supper room was a room,

a huge room, this inn would fit in that room,

piled promiscuously with rings and bracelets,

necklaces, pearl drops, ball gowns, fur wraps,