Film students swarmed the set, drinking coffee, dropping cigarette ash, dragging lights, and setting up reflectors. The blonde in zebra pants knelt, taping cords. Her ass looked like a traffic island. Josie wished she had gotten some sleep. Her eyes kept catching on patterns, edges and corners, unpredictably threatening. She picked her way down the hall, found the master suite, blessedly all white. In the center, a white-leather-edged waterbed sat, plump as a fat bride. She lay down on its fur spread, let the water roll out from under her, slapping the far edge to recoil beneath her again. Suddenly, she remembered a boy from school who’d had a waterbed, what was his name? Steve something. They’d met at the Circle K, he took her home on his bike, a piece-of-crap Honda. She could picture his room, the AC/DC poster, the cheap tapestry of a bighorn sheep, but she couldn’t recall his face. Just the feel of the waterbed and his monotonous thrusts, and that stately ram.
She got up and changed into the Pucci dress, pinning the front closed—Elena was not the type for walking around with her black bra showing. Elena had never been to a Circle K, never lain down under a bighorn sheep rug. Josie examined her face in the mirror. After four hours in Palos Verdes and an hour-and-a-half drive into town, she needed to wash and start over. In the sparkly Formica bathroom, she taped the picture of Veruschka to the mirror under the space-satellite fixture, trying to remember how the face was created. Too bad Laura had quit the night of the sombreros, when Sergio had gone home with the blonde. Jeremy told her all about it. He had no personal life but he relished the dramas of others.
Josie opened her makeup kit, her bag of tricks, and began the slow transformation into Elena. Base, like gesso on a canvas, erasing the traces of her own personality, her dark eyes staring through the mask of her face. Then layer upon layer, building up another face, brown in the hollows, dark under the jaw, white on every bone. The two sets of eyelashes, giving Elena that Sixties look of pampered ennui. White shadow, black in the crease. Two broad bands of liquid liner, the spiky mascara. Pink lipstick, and a pale one over it. She brushed out her new-dyed hair, ratted it up, then swept the top layer over it, twisting it into a tiny chignon, no bigger than a silver dollar. She pinned and sprayed, then threaded plastic disc earrings through her earlobes.
And there was Elena.
She stared at her, this girl she had created. Who are you? What do you know that I don’t? Elena gazed back, that sweep of remarkable eyelash, a Jeanne Moreau smile on her downturned lips, and said nothing. She was a magician ready for the show, every ace in place. She didn’t let herself hang out, raw and ragged as a torn hem. Michael should have been with a girl like that. Someone smart, sophisticated, who would have loved him less but understood him better, anticipated his needs, handled him with dexterity. He thought he wanted Josie Tyrell, her scruffy innocence, to impregnate with his dreams. But he was mistaken.
The lights blazed in the living room now, generator outside humming like a fifty-foot hornet, a sound she knew would give Gil hemorrhoids. Jeremy hovered over the camera with Sergio and the Bobs, gesturing scene movement. Then he saw her. He straightened, and came to her on his storky long legs. “Josie!” He peered into her face. “My God, how did you do that?”
A small man with a strawberry birthmark on his cheek sat nervously on the white couch, his tiny feet in polished loafers that barely touched the floor.
“Who’s that?” Josie asked.
“My bank teller,” he confided, in his version of sotto voce which could be heard across the room, he had only two levels of volume, loud and louder. “Don’t you just love him?” Jeremy couldn’t resist the deformity. “So Mr. Cairo.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
Jeremy shrugged. “I’ll think of something.”
Poor Tellerman. He had no idea Jeremy was using him because he looked like Peter Lorre and had that thing on his face, and a toupee. He wasn’t in the script, but Jeremy would find a use for him. The potential for cruelty here was too painful to contemplate, so she walked outside, past the generator and the pool. It was damp and cold. She wrapped herself in her skinny arms, her thin poly dress no protection from the night. Down below, car lights snaked along the Strip with its hookers and dazed tourists and excited kids, too young for the clubs, but not too young to want to come down and be part of the scene, maybe catch sight of Debbie Harry or Joey Ramone. Josie had never hung out in front of the Whiskey, watching for the band. She might have been a hick from Bakersfield, but she always knew how to get past the box office.
One broad band below Sunset ran the double slashes of Santa Monica Boulevard, with its handsome, hungry boys watching the river of cars, hopeful thumbs ready, their cocks and asses. You could have anything for twenty-five bucks. So many lost boys and girls, even more lost than she. She’d given them rides, knew their stories, even pressed a few bucks into grubby hands. And above them all, the giant Marlboro man squinted down from his billboard with testosterone scorn, like God sneering down on Creation.
And where was the true world? Hiding its face behind this one like stars behind clouds. If it had ever existed. She didn’t know anymore. You’ll have to remember for both of us . . . But she couldn’t hang on. She pulled the half-pint of Smirny from her modeling bag, felt the hot burn of it in her throat, in her nose. She hadn’t slept in who knew how long, she felt like a puppet with somebody else’s face. From the lawn she could look down on God, be even more indifferent than He.
“Hi, you.”
Wade, standing beside her, his arms crossed, wearing his character’s costume, his suave Movie Director dark turtleneck and leather sport coat. “Saw you out here.”
Josie put the voddy away, didn’t offer him any. Serious actors didn’t get loaded while Working. Tant pis, as Michael would say.
“That was great,” he said, taking in the view. “The other night.”
Josie tasted vodka on her lips, rummaged in her bag for a ciggie, wondering what this would look like on film. She could almost see the script he was reading from, It was great, the other night . . .
“I know that we’re working together,” he said, coming closer. She could smell his aftershave, Jovan Musk for Men. “I usually believe in waiting until things wrap. But you know, we’ve got a lot of chemistry, you and me.”
“There is no chemistry, Wade,” she said. She found the box, put a Gauloise in her mouth, and lit it with her father’s Ronson. Maybe she could light her breath on fire. That would make him think twice. “I drank half my body weight in tequila, that’s all.”
“We should try sometime without that.” He grinned. “Nobody’s ever complained.” She was afraid he was going to adjust himself in his pants. Thank God all he did was brush his hair back with his hand.
Nobody ever complained? Girls were kind. No one ever told him, I could barely stay awake. If only you’d come faster, I could have ignored it altogether. Girls were born knowing how destructive the truth could be. They learned to hold it in, tamp it down, like gunpowder in an old-fashioned gun. Then it exploded in your face, on a November day in the rain.
Conrad, the Famous Movie Director, comes home to perfect Sixties house and his girlfriend, Elena. He’s upset about problems on the film he’s working on, and she listens, saying nothing, mysterious and haunted. It was even in the script. Mysterious and haunted. “Think Belle de Jour, Josie,” was how Jeremy described it. “Like Blow-Up meets Belle de Jour.” She saw it perfectly. Antonioni buttfucking Buñuel in Hitchcock’s basement apartment.
They blocked the scene, and then shot it. She liked being Elena, it was interesting, she could play with it—she’d never bothered much about one of her characters before. She’d just been the Girl. But Elena had little rooms you could walk into, the coldness behind the mask of her beauty, the edginess behind that. Blah blah blah, the Conrad character ranted, about his adversaries at the studio and how they were trying to take his film away from him, as Elena watched, pretending to listen. Josie could feel her, watching, not like a lover, but like a leopa
rd contemplating its next meal. She could feel Elena’s remove. Elena was the star of a very private movie, herself as director, actor, and sole audience. All Elena’s admiration was for herself. She knew that’s how Elena got off in bed—she would watch herself getting laid in the mirrors of a man’s eyes.
Suddenly Wade was on her, his smell of leather and musk, his fat tongue in her mouth. She gagged, struggled, pushed him away. The feel of his tongue, the foreign taste. She wanted to spit.
“Cut!” Jeremy yelled. “What? What was that?”
Her face was red, she could feel it hot and prickly under her makeup. She’d fucked up the whole scene. But her mouth still knew Michael’s kiss. The way he would run his tongue along the inside of her downturned upper lip, or just brush her mouth with his. This was like eating garbage. Since when did you mind eating garbage? But she did. Surprisingly, something or someone in her did not want to anymore. She thought furiously. “Listen, she’s not really in love with this guy. It’s the other guy, what’s his name, Franco, that she wants. She can fake it until he kisses her.”
“Oh, Gawd . . . now you’re having ideas?” Jeremy looked at his watch. “Listen, Josie, I appreciate the insight, it’s terribly important to me and all, but we’ve got a long night. Can you just do it?”
Of course she could do it. It was only a movie, just a goddamn movie, what difference did it make if fucking Wade stuck his tongue down her throat or up her ass, she’d already slept with him. What did she think she was betraying that hadn’t already been betrayed? It was just a body. It was just a body. She had always had such a sense of that. But not now. It wasn’t just a body anymore. It had once been loved. Her body. Hers.
“She’s forgotten about Franco. This scene is about her being totally into Conrad,” Wade said. The actor was pouting, like any man whose kisses hadn’t been received with ardor and gratitude.
Jeremy looked from Josie to Wade, she could tell he was weighing who it would be easier to blow off, her or the actor. Jeremy sighed and turned to Wade. “Look, maybe a little more romanza, yeah? That’ll set Conrad off from Franco. Not so much full-frontal attack. I think that’s legitimate, don’t you?”
Wade struggled to contain his masculine ego, to pretend it was only artistic differences, not a girl who obviously wanted to vomit because he’d kissed her. “I was only doing it the way it’s written.”
“Okay, let’s be a little flexible, people. Take two.”
She still had to eat garbage, but at least it wasn’t being forced down her throat. She thought it wasn’t so bad being Elena, people listening to her for a change, being in possession—of her body, of a certain power. She didn’t know what else Elena had that she didn’t have, she was looking forward to finding out.
They broke around two for dinner. Just the look of the pizzas made her ill, their red splatter and stringy white cheese, grease pooling at the top. Gil and the Bobs scarfed down their slices like grinning hyenas. The little tellerman, Mr. Cairo, had brought a carton of yogurt from home. He ate meticulously, scraping his underlip with the spoon, like a mother feeding a good baby, glowing with excitement about being on a real movie set. Wade lectured her about the difference between Conrad and the dangerous Franco, whom he also played, while Jeremy went over a blocking with Sergio, dripping grease on the pages. Sergio glanced across the table, ignoring the blonde in the zebra pants and the willowy brunette, both bristling with the stress of romantic contention, sending Josie sexual messages with his bedroom-soulful eyes. She wanted to go over there and kick the crap out of him. Sergio was a man in a candy store who was never hungry. She wanted to tell him that love was something people lived for, even died for. It wasn’t a chocolate cherry you ate half of and put the rest back in the box.
Wade wouldn’t shut up, and her head hurt. She went out into the living room, got her bag, and swallowed three aspirin with a swig from her can of Seven Up. Outside, she glimpsed a coyote trotting onto the grass from the wild part of the slope onto the brightly lit dichondra. She held the cold soda can to the knots in her forehead. The gray long-legged beast stopped and gazed right at her. A small head, pointed muzzle. Its gold eyes were crazy and fearless. Hunting up its midnight meal of Chihuahuas and overfed cats. It frightened her, how boldly it stared. What was wrong with it that it wasn’t afraid?
She waited, and so did the coyote. What did it want? Why was it staring at her like that? She felt a chill. Was she supposed to lope off with it, off on four legs, into the wild, like in one of Shirley K.’s Castaneda books? Maybe it was a witch. Maybe it was Fate. Like Elena’s destiny, meeting her out on Old Topanga Road. Maybe it was the message she’d been waiting for. All this time, some sign he was near. “Michael?” she whispered. “Michael?”
She cracked the door, slowly, afraid it would come right into the house. The glass slid easily on its tracks. “Michael?”
She stepped out onto the grass, just a few yards from the doglike creature. It wanted to tell her something. She could feel it. “What is it?” For the longest time, they stood in the misty cold, staring at each other, like a whisper of the true world.
Then Jeremy came crashing into the living room behind her, his booming voice. “You’re going to love this, Josie, it’s totally brill.”
The coyote broke its gaze, started, and trotted away.
“No,” she called out, but it was leaving, out past the irradiated blue of the pool and down into the brush on the far side. “Come back.” Its tail disappearing into the night.
“Josie, come hear this,” Jeremy yelled.
The last of him. She’d finally had a sign, and then fucking Jeremy had to fuck it up. She turned back mechanically into the room. She wanted to die.
“Rick?”
“Yes, I’m here.” The neat little man with his small hands and feet, the gold chain around his wrist.
Jeremy held up a sheet of paper, scrawled over with notes and spotted with grease, a dream sequence he’d concocted, she couldn’t follow a word he said.
“He’s Death, come to settle her account. Get it?” He made quotation marks with his fingers in case she didn’t. “‘Settle her account’? God, I’m such a genius. No no, hold the applause.” He shoved the shaggy blond hair from his eyes. It fell right back in.
They used the same setup as for the Conrad shot, the same blocking. He pushed the little tellerman into position. “Stand right here.” He tapped the spot with his foot, Conrad’s mark, noted with duct tape. “Give Elena the envelope. All you have to say is, ‘I’m from the head office.’ Got it?”
“‘I’m from the head office, I’m from the head office.’ Oh, I know I’m going to mess this up, I just know it.” Mr. Cairo’s birthmark flamed even redder. Poor little tellerman. Rick the bank teller had no idea why this was all happening, as Bob One measured the distance from the lens to his birthmark. He was shaking his hands in panic.
“It’ll be fine, you’ll see,” Josie finally said, the way Michael used to say it when she started feeling sad. When she was afraid, he could always calm her when he wanted to. How good that had felt. When he still wanted to. She gazed at this poor little man, the bank teller, visiting this cold woman in the cold glass house. “Her account’s overdrawn. She thought she had plenty of money, but she’d spent it all and more. You’re cutting her off.”
Mr. Cairo nodded gravely. He knew about that, all right. “Shouldn’t he have a briefcase?” he asked. “He would have a briefcase if he went to see her in person, wouldn’t he?”
Of course he would have a briefcase. Of course he would. What was scary was how this movie was starting to make sense. She’d gone beyond tired, she was in the Zone, where everything made sense, in a surrealistic way. Coyotes, and the Bank Teller of Death and his Briefcase of Destiny. “Gordo has a briefcase. Gordo, can Tellerman use the Samsonite?”
Gordo looked up from the couch where he sat on the phone, scribbling some figures, the ashtray overflowing with butts. “Just don’t mess with it, okay?”
Once
the prop was in his hand, Mr. Cairo seemed to find himself. The Great Teller, coming to Settle Her Account. Get it? Like goddamn Fellini. The zebra-pants blonde put a piece of paper in a big envelope for him to hand her, and once the Bobs cut some of the lights and Sergio changed the filter on the lens to blue, Jeremy walked them through the scene once more. “And if there’s something you’re not sure about,” Jeremy stooped over the teller, his arm around the small man’s shoulder, “just stay in character. Don’t stop. And for God’s sake don’t look into the camera.”
Rick nodded, holding his envelope, putting it into the briefcase and taking it out, balancing the open hardsider on his knee, practicing saying his line and then handing her the deadly notice.
They took their places, Josie on the couch, the little man by the front door, ready to enter her dreams. Jeremy called, “Action,” and the teller moved to his mark, clinging to Gordo’s battered briefcase. He stared at Josie with his bulgy brown eyes, sweating in great rolling drops, counted to five as Jeremy told him to do. Then he whispered his line. “I’m from the head office.”
Serious, and so nervous, this little Death in his tasseled loafers. She could feel Elena, watching him through her eyes. He looked like a bug to her. So far beneath her she couldn’t be bothered to crush him. “I’m sorry, you must be mistaken,” she said, in a tone so much like Meredith’s. Melodious, icy. Yet at the same time, she knew, under the curtain of her certainty, there was no mistake. She became even haughtier when she knew she was wrong.