When Laura answered the bell, Josie knew her immediately, a Roman-nosed girl with hair so pink you could hear it. Josie had seen her around at the clubs, she worked at Fiorucci in Beverly Hills, a boutique that sold rich kids punk clothing. Josie sold some of her bottle-cap chandelier earrings there, and bracelets and pins she made from dominoes. “Hey,” Laura said, letting her in, letting her drip all over the hardwood floors. “Great boots. You must be Elena.”
Elena, her character in the movie. Jeremy’s characters all had names like Elena and Chloe and Regine, Marie Claire, the kind of girl you’d never meet in your life. Josie thought to correct her, but decided against it.
Laura took Josie’s dripping slicker and hung it on a coat tree by the little telephone nook, brought her down into the living room. Josie admired the place, a real Joan Crawford apartment with a beamed ceiling, hardwood floors, wrought-iron chandelier, and little balconies off the French doors. Michael would have loved this. Maybe if there had been no hillside, no Bosch to stare out at, if they’d had something more solid than a cliffside shack, things might have seemed more real for him, less precarious.
The two girls sat together on the cat-hair-covered red-velvet couch. Dresses and petticoats festooned the walls like paintings. A gray Persian prowled amid stacks of fashion magazines. Laura poured champagne. “They do this at Vogue,” she said. They drank and Josie shared her cigarettes, and Laura showed her brill ideas for Elena’s character. She worked at Fiorucci but she was costuming student films and ninety-nine-seat Equity-waiver theater, getting credits under her belt—not the run-of-the-mill camp follower. “I loved the script, don’t you think it’s fabulous?”
Josie hadn’t even read the script until two days ago. Where Antonioni was supposed to be meeting Buñuel in this thing was anybody’s guess. Probably in shots taken from weird angles, and some sort of heavy-handed symbology. And of course, Elena dies in the end. They always died in the end.
“In a car accident, Josie. Don’t you see? It’s Fate . . . like, Destiny,” Jeremy had said. But just what the hell did Jeremy Scott know about destiny? A grandfather who blew his brains out in the house your mother still lived in, that was some fucking destiny. Not some ridiculous story about a filmmaker and a Girl and the Girl’s ex-boyfriend she thought she had killed, dreamed up one night between bong hits, bits and pieces of other people’s genius tacked together with chewing gum.
Out the casement windows, the rain sighed, beaded, rattled in the downspouts. It was cold in Laura’s apartment. Josie shivered, pulled the sleeves of her turtleneck sweater down over her hands, as the pink-haired girl turned the pages of her old Vogues. “I had something like this in mind,” Laura said, pointing at a bony-hipped model in a white cutaway dress with clear plastic inserts. “That’s Courrèges. Elena’s a slick person, slick surfaces. That’s how I see her, don’t you?”
The slick heiress, glamorously haunted. Well, she could be Elena now. There was certainly nothing slick about Josie, she was just paper, like brown paper bags in the rain. Water beaded up on Elena, it shed right off, like those old sixties clear-plastic umbrellas. She was happy to sit talking about Elena’s wardrobe for this ridiculous movie, grateful Jeremy had made her come. She and Laura got smashed on Spanish champagne, and talked about the mod era, Laura knew a lot about it. She knew about Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol’s Factory—all that Mylar and tinfoil, false eyelashes and vitamin shots with speed. The Velvet Underground played there, Lou Reed and Nico. It was the center of everything cool. Laura showed her a Nehru jacket that once belonged to Ray Davies, a yellow brocade.
Josie liked the simplicity of Laura’s mind. Laura wasn’t thinking about God or the true world or whether each man killed the thing he loved. She wasn’t thinking about the absurd or what the soul did after it died. She was thinking about clothing, about accessories, about shoes and earrings and hair. The subtle difference between Yves Saint Laurent and Mary Quant. It was good, Josie thought, finishing the champagne, to spend time with strangers. They had no well-meaning advice, what she should do, how she should cope, no one examining her to see how she was holding up. Soothing not to have to think of anything besides eyelashes—two sets, spiky like Veruschka—and trying on a black-plastic halter dress, a bubble hat à la Courrèges, a patent-leather hatbox purse. And talking about whether she was going to touch up her roots, whether she would recut her hair.
If she could only stay right here, wearing Laura’s huge plastic disc earrings, a feather top and a Mylar miniskirt, drunk and warm and light on the surface of the world. She remembered Shirley K. telling her once about the light masters of China, who could walk across a sheet of rice paper stretched between two chairs. She felt that was worth working toward. Laura put her in a blue-green fringed go-go dress that had nothing to do with Elena, and they danced to the soundtrack from To Sir, with Love and Laura worked the topic around to Sergio, how long had Josie known him, what kind of girls did he like? She heard he had a friend with a place in Rosarito Beach, right on the water, maybe they would all go when the movie was over.
Josie was feeling good when she opened the side gate to the house on Lemoyne, carrying a takeout bag from Canton Express inside her slicker, drunk, splashing in her red cowboy boots. Feeling like she just might get through this, an aspiring light master. Edging down the stairs in the dark, the roughness of the wood, the wet railing, she put her key in the door. It was unlocked. She was surprised to find it open, though these days, she was always forgetting things, leaving her keys in the lock, her purse in the john. She came in and threw the key in the red bowl, turned on the light.
She stood in her own living room, but it was all gone. Blank walls, the empty picture hooks. The piano was gone, the bookcase bare. The toys on the tables, the old flatirons. The pipe-cleaner circus. All his books and journals, his sketchpads. Their records. Everything. She leaned against one of the rough wood four-by-sixes that held up the wooden ceiling of the shack, feeling like a section of her torso had been removed, like one of Laura’s cutout dresses. She could not believe this was happening. She moved into the bedroom. The closet was open, empty hangers. The dresser they had painted, gone. Her clothes in piles on the bed. This, and this . . . and oh, the dresser, that’s his. She’d had a crew, had just come in and taken it all.
She could call the cops, but she hated cops and anyway, what would she say? I’ve just been robbed by my ex-future-mother-in-law. That would be something to laugh about over donuts at Winchells. Yeah, and what would a world-famous pianist be doing with a hundred dollars’ worth of your old crap? But she could not get over the idea, somehow that woman had walked into her house and taken everything. She had to do something. She would do something. But what?
Josie went into the bathroom. The medicine-cabinet door was hanging open. Michael’s badger-hair shaving brush, the Lightfoot’s shaving soap in its white mug, his grandfather’s razor. Even his tooth powder. It was too much to take in all at once. With the empty walls, the place seemed smaller. Not one painting left. Not the one of her at the piano, or as little Jeanne of France. No Civilization and Its Discontents. Even the ones she hated were gone, the ugly ones, the crazy ones, but she’d grown used to them, they were part of her life, they were special windows in the walls. And now there were walls with no windows, only nubs of nails and picture hooks. She had even taken the music, all the records and tapes, not just Michael’s but the ones that were hers, and theirs together.
She stood in the center of the raped room, letting the slow stunned jumble of feelings roll down inside her, sorting themselves out like fruit falling into holes on a sizing board in a co-op warehouse. It was not enough that Michael was dead. Now all the things that would help her remember were gone too. You’ll have to remember for both of us. She ran her hands on the shelf of the empty bookcase. She should have read those journals when she’d had the chance. What was she doing, protecting a dead boy’s privacy? Now she would never get another chance. She tried to breathe, but air would not fill her
lungs. It was like trying to breathe on the moon.
Josie sat heavily on the fuzzy blue couch. Her stomach growled but now the Chinese food smelled disgusting. She shivered with cold and sudden nausea. The woman had seemed so resigned, so quiet during the ride back to her Jaguar. Josie thought that would be the last they would ever see of one another. While Meredith was probably planning this already. She had never felt so stupid, so naive.
She didn’t want to go back out into the rain, but she couldn’t stand the look of the bare walls and anyway, she was down to her last three cigarettes, they would never last until morning. So she climbed the wet stairs and drove over to Gala’s, bought two packs of Gauloises and a bottle of Smirny. When she returned she stopped at the door, picturing herself opening it and it was all just a dream. She often did this, focusing on a vision of Michael sitting on the blue couch reading a book, he was just inside, when she opened the door, there he would be.
She opened the door slowly, but nothing had changed, there were the empty picture hooks, the gaping bookcase. She sat in Michael’s chair and cracked the Smirny, drank a little, and then a little more. She had a sudden, gut-sinking thought and dashed back to the bedroom, pawed through the pile of clothes—her clothes—on the bed, through the underwear, which was where she kept it. Even the blood-spattered note was gone. Everything, everything.
She stormed back into the living room, grabbed the phone. That bitch. That fucking bitch. She dialed the number she knew by heart, the only thing she did know anymore, and the phone in Los Feliz rang and rang but nobody answered it, not even the sour-faced Spanish maid. She slammed the receiver down, and picked it up and slammed it down again, over and over.
But even in her rage, she knew she was partway to blame. Cruel, stupid, greedy. She had wanted to keep everything. She should have given Meredith the painting she’d asked for, given up some of the books. And deep down, she knew she had done wrong to tell her about what happened at Meadowlands, out of sheer spite. It was a long time ago, and what could Meredith do about it now?
Out the kitchen door, she stood breathing in the night air, the cold and the rain, the chairs dripping against the warped wood of the deck, the lights muted and hazy. There was no end to the Bosch. She raised the voddy to her lips, spilled most of it down her chin. Served her right for having a good day, she had gone almost a whole afternoon without thinking of him every moment. Thinking she was doing well, making progress. There was never going to be an end to this. Whenever she thought she could not feel more alone, the universe peeled back another layer of darkness.
She watched a single car, its blurry headlights, threading its way up the hill across the glen. How precarious life seemed. You were only tethered to it by a hair, and all these people sawing away at it. She thought of Cal Faraday, his energy to go on, to start over. How did he find the heart to do it again, again and again? She missed her father, she wanted someone to take care of her, someone who knew what to do.
She lay on the blue couch in the cold, wrapped the granny afghan around her, and listened to the voices of the rain. Where once she might have imagined them speaking to her, or for her, now they were mocking, full of derision and laughter. Even the rain was Bosch. She should go down to Gardena, find that old guy, Morty, play pan until the sun came up. Get Pen to go with her. But she didn’t want to play pan. She wanted to talk to someone who could understand what had happened, who knew all the players. She dialed the New York number Cal had given her.
“Hello?” Numbah Foah. She had a high, girlish voice, she sounded about Josie’s age.
“This is Josie Tyrell. Michael’s girlfriend?”
“Oh!” Mrs. Cal took a short breath. “Of course. How are you doing? You all right? I’m just so sorry, what a terrible thing. I would have come out for the funeral, but Becky had a fever. . . . We just loved him so much —”
She knew it wasn’t true. Numbah Foah saw Michael as a threat to her little ones, the leftover child. In the days of kings, Michael said, the elder children would poison the younger ones, not to have the competition for the throne. “Is Cal in?”
Cal’s wife paused, as if trying to be sure it was worth bothering him. Josie knew she sounded drunk and depressed. “Well, you know it’s very late, Josie,” Harmony said in her high, funny voice, she sounded like a cartoon character.
“He said to call whenever I needed to.”
Then there was no sound at all, she must have caught them in bed, she pictured the wife’s hand over the receiver. “Josie.” Calvin sounded hearty, as if she had not awakened him, or caught him in some stage of lovemaking. “How’s it going, kiddo?”
Josie told him everything, the break-in, that Meredith took everything she thought was Michael’s, including things he had given to her. Even the suicide note. Leaving out the part about her not letting Meredith have the painting, leaving out the part about Michael in Meadowlands and how she told Meredith as payback. The partial truth and nothing but. Just as she left out every other thing she had done to deserve this. She struggled not to cry, but the booze, instead of numbing her, which was what it was supposed to do, just made her feel more lost. She hated weepy drunks, and here she was, being exactly that.
“She’s obviously lost it,” Calvin said. “Jesus. Well, this kind of thing brings out the worst in people.”
Where’d he read that, in a magazine in the globe-trotter lounge of British Airways? Cal Faraday, spiritual adviser. He probably couldn’t remember the names of all his children, their ages, what grade they were in at school. “She can’t just walk into my house, Cal.”
“Listen, honey. I know it’s outrageous, but, look what she’s been through. Did you lose anything important?”
“His books, his art, all kinds of things. The fucking note, Cal.”
Josie heard Numbah Foah say something to Calvin, probably to get that drunk off the phone. She pictured them in bed, a bedroom set that all matched, fairly new because they hadn’t been married that long, just a few years, done in Mrs. Cal’s style, because after all those marriages, Cal was probably used to the idea it would end up belonging to her anyway, and he was gone most of the time at that. She imagined he wore pajamas, as she thought East Coast people would, slippers and robes.
“Maybe I should call the cops.”
“Christ, don’t do that,” he said quickly. More muffled talk between him and Mrs. Cal, she guessed he had his hand over the receiver but not tight enough. “Listen, you’re not going to like what I’m about to say, but listen, Josie, you ask me, really? It might be the best thing that could’ve happened.”
“You dick.” Josie couldn’t believe he’d have the guts to say that. Easy for him to say in New York with his wife and his new kids and his best-selling fucking life.
“No, listen, remember what you said that day, about the note? Remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“You said, ‘What do you do with this? Carry it around all your life?’ So now someone’s made it easy. No, don’t say anything, just listen to me. I know you’re upset, but just stop and think. You’re very young, Josie, and at some point you’re going to need to get on with your life. This could be a huge blessing, though I know you can’t see it right now.”
She could hear he was winding it down, getting ready to hang up. Getting on with his own fucking life.
“She’s still in love with you,” Josie said, desperately. “She’ll listen to you. Can’t you call her for me?”
“Didn’t you see how she kicked me out of the mourners’ box that day? I’m sorry, I can’t do anything with her. And not to put too fine a point on it, under the law, well . . . she is his mother.” She heard the finality in his voice, like someone closing a gate in front of a store. “Now, Josie, it’s very late, we’re three hours ahead. Can you call me in the morning?” Impersonal as the man on a movie-theater recording. She was afraid he was going to say “Have a nice day.”
“Hey, Cal? You fucking get some sleep, okay? Get some nice sleep. An
d fuck you very much.”
She lay in bed, drunk, moving in and out of sleep. She dreamed she was walking through an enormous hall full of Chinese people at tables playing cards, throwing dice on green tabletops, money and chips, green and red, looking for the old Jewish man from the cemetery. Floppy-breasted waitresses on unicycles passed by with trays loaded with flowery drinks. Chinese people gathered around a pit, yelling, with money in their fists, like in The Deer Hunter when Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken played Russian roulette. But it was her at the table with Meredith, the gun between them, and Michael in a lifeguard’s chair up above them. He didn’t seem to realize it was her, just watching from behind his blue glasses, and the avidity of his face as he watched reminded her of the way he stared while the dog spun in the street. Meredith wore the same blue glasses. She spun the gun.
Josie glanced around, desperately, wondering how she could get out of this game, she didn’t want to play, but they were surrounded, not just by Asian people but by Cal and the old men from the funeral, even Daddy Jack, and Gommer Ida, making bets, their eyes glittering greedily, but she could not tell how they were betting. She started to cry at the idea that they were betting against her. The game was fixed, she remembered. The house always won. The gun’s barrel pointed at Josie. Her turn.
“Go on,” Meredith said. “You wanted it.”
She had no choice but to pick up the gun. She held it to her head. It was cold, and she knew there was a bullet in the chamber. The game was fixed, there was always a bullet. So what were they even betting on? She struggled to think of another way, so that she didn’t have to pull the trigger—she was too young. The crowd shouted angrily for her to do it, the money in all those fists. She closed her eyes tight and squeezed.