«Chaplin did, Langdon did, Harold Lloyd, sure.»
«Laurel and Hardy?»
«What?»
«Laurel and Hardy, did they use lots of locations?»
«Palms, they used Palms lots, Culver City Main Street,' Effie Street.»
»Effie Street!»
«Don't yell, Bella.»
«Did you say Effie Street?»
«Sure, and God, it's three in the morning!»
«Right at the top of Effie Street!?»
«Hey, yeah, the stairs. Everyone knows them. That's where the music box chased Hardy downhill and ran over Him.»
«Sure, Zelda, sure! Oh, God, Zelda, if you could see, hear, what I hear! «
Zelda was suddenly wide awake on the line. «What's going on? You serious?»
«oh, God, yes. On the steps just now, and last night and the night before maybe, I heard, I hear-two men hauling a-a piano up the hill.»
«Someone's pulling your leg!»
«No, no, they're there. I go out and there's nothing. But the steps are haunted, Zelda! One voice says: 'Here's another fine mess you've got us in.' You got to hear that man's voice!»
«You're drunk and doing this because you know I'm a nut for them.»
«No, no. Come, Zelda. Listen. Tell!»
Maybe half an hour later, Bella heard the old tin lizzie rattle up the alley behind the apartments. It was a car Zelda, in her joy at visiting silent-movie theaters, had bought to lug herself around in while she wrote about the past, always the past, and steaming into Cecil B. DeMille's old place or circling Harold Lloyd's nation-state, or cranking and banging around the Universal backlot, paying her respects to the Phantom's opera stage, or sitting on Ma and Pa Kettle's porch chewing a sandwich lunch. That was Zelda, who once wrote in a silent country in a silent time for Silver Screen.
Zelda lumbered across the front porch, a huge body with legs as big as the Bernini columns in front of St. Peter's in Rome, and a face like a harvest moon.
On that round face now was suspicion, cynicism, skepticisms, in equal pie-parts. But when she saw Bella's pale stare she cried:
«Belle! «
«You see I'm not lying!» said Bella.
«I see!»
«Keep your voice down, Zelda. Oh, it's scary and strange, terrible and nice. So come on.»
And the two women edged along the walk to the rim of the old hill near the old steps in old Hollywood, and suddenly as they moved they felt time take a half turn around them and it was another year, because nothing had changed all the buildings were the way they were in 1928 and the hills beyond like they were in 1926 and the steps, just the, way they were when the cement was poured in 1921.
«Listen, Zelda. There!»
And Zelda listened and at first there was only a creaking of wheels down in the dark, like crickets, and then a moan of wood and a hum of piano strings, and then one voice lamenting about this job, and the other voice claiming he had nothing to do with it, and then the thumps as two derby hats fell, and an exasperated voice announced:
«Here's another fine mess you've got us in.»
Zelda, stunned, almost toppled off the hill. She held tight to Bella's arm as tears brimmed in her eyes.
«It's a trick. Someone's got a tape recorder or-«
«No, I checked. Nothing but the steps, Zelda, the steps!»
Tears rolled down Zelda's plump cheeks.
«Oh, God, that is his voice! I'm the expert, I'm the mad, fanatic, Bella. That's Ollie. And that other voice, Stan! And you're not nuts after all!»
The voices below rose and fell and one cried: «Why don't you do something to help me?»
Zelda moaned. «Oh, God, it's so beautiful.»
«What does it mean?» asked Bella. «Why are they here? Are they really ghosts, and why would ghosts climb this hill every night, pushing that music box, night after night, tell me, Zelda, why?»
Zelda peered down the hill and shut her eyes for a moment to think. «Why do any ghosts go anywhere? Retribution? Revenge? No, not those two. Love maybe's the reason, lost loves or something Yes?»
Bella let her heart pound once or twice and then said, «Maybe nobody told them.»
«Told them what?»
«Or maybe they were told a lot but still didn't believe, because maybe in their old years things got bad, I mean they were sick, and sometimes when you're sick you forget.»
«Forget what!?»
«How much we loved them.»
«They knew!»
«Did they? Sure, we told each other, but maybe not enough of us ever wrote or waved when they passed and just yelled 'Love!' you think?»
«Hell, Bella, they're on TV every night!»
«Yeah, but that don't count. Has anyone, since they left us, come here to these steps and said? Maybe those voices down there, ghosts or whatever, have been here every night for years, pushing that music box, and nobody thought, or tried, to just whisper or yell all the love we had all the years. Why not?»
'Why not?» Zelda stared down into the long darkness where perhaps shadows moved and maybe a piano lurched clumsily among the shadows. «You're right.»
If I'm right,» said Bella, «and you say so, there's only one thing to do-«
«You mean you and me?»
«Who else? Quiet. Come on.»
They moved down a step. In the same instant lights came
on around them, in a window here, another there. A screen door opened somewhere and angry words shot out into the night:
«Hey, what's going on?»
«Pipe down!»
«You know what time it is?» «My God,» Bella whispered, «everyone else hears now!»
«No, no.» Zelda looked around wildly. «They'll spoil everything!»
«I'm calling the cops!» A window slammed.
«God,» said Bella, «if the cops come-«
«What?»
«It'll be all wrong. If anyone's going to tell them to take it easy, pipe down, it's gotta be us. We care, don't we?»
«God, yes, but-«
«No buts. Grab on. Here we go.»
The two voices murmured below and the piano tuned itself with hiccups of sound as they edged down another step and another, their mouths dry, hearts hammering, and the night so dark they could see only the faint streetlight at the stair bottom, the single street illumination so far away it was sad being there all by itself, waiting for shadows to move.
More windows slammed up, more screen doors opened. At any moment there would be an avalanche of protest, incredible outcries, perhaps shots fired, and all this gone forever.
Thinking this, the women trembled and held tight, as if to pummel each other to speak against the rage.
«Say something, Zelda, quick.»
«What?»
«Anything! They'll get hurt if we don't-«
» They?»
«You know what I mean. Save them.»
«Okay. Jesus!» Zelda froze, clamped her eyes shut to find the words, then opened her eyes and said, «Hello.»
«Louder. «
`'Hello,» Zelda called softly, then loudly.
Shapes rustled in the dark below. One of the voices rose while the other fell and the piano strummed its hidden harp strings.
«Don't be afraid,» Zelda called
«That's good. Go on.»
«Don't be afraid,» Zelda called, braver now. «Don't listen to those others yelling. We won't hurt you. It's just us. I'm Zelda, you wouldn't remember, and this here is Bella, and we've known you forever, or since we were kids, and we love you. It's late, but we thought you should know. We've loved you ever since you were in the desert or on that boat with ghosts or trying to sell Christmas trees door-to-door or in that traffic where you tore the headlights off cars, and we still love you, right, Bella?»
The night below was darkness, waiting.
Zelda punched Bella's arm.
«Yes!» Bella cried, «what she said. We love you.»
«We can't think of anything else to say.»
/>
«But it's enough, yes?» Bella leaned forward anxiously. «It's enough?»
A night wind stirred the leaves and grass around the stairs and the shadows below that had stopped moving with the music box suspended between them as they looked up and up at the two women, who suddenly began to cry. First tears fell from Bella's cheeks, and when Zelda sensed them, she let fall her own.
So now,'' said Zelda, amazed that she could form words but managed to speak anyway, «we want you to know, you don t have to come back anymore. You don't have to climb
the hill every night, waiting. For what we said just now is it, isn't it? I mean you wanted to hear it here on this hill, with those steps, and that piano, yes, that's the whole thing, it had to be that, didn't it? So now here we are and there you are and it's said. So rest, dear friends.»
«Oh, there, Ollie,»,» added Bella in a sad, sad whisper. «Oh, Stan, Stanley.»
The piano, hidden in the dark, softly hummed its wires and creaked its ancient wood.
And then the most incredible thing happened. There was: a series of shouts and then a huge banging crash as the music box, in the dark, rocketed down the hill, skittering on the steps, playing chords where it hit, swerving, rushing, and ahead of it, running, the two shapes pursued by the musical beast, yelling, tripping, shouting, warning the Fates, crying out to the gods, down and down, forty, sixty, eighty, one hundred steps.
And half down the steps, hearing, feeling, shouting, crying themselves, and now laughing and holding to each other, the two women alone in the night wildly clutching, grasping, trying to see, almost sure that they did see, the three things ricocheting off and away, the two shadows rushing, one fat,, one thin, and the piano blundering after, discordant and mindless, until they reached the street, where, instantly, the one overhead streetlamp died as if struck, and the shadows floundered on, pursued by the musical beast.
And the two women, abandoned, looked down, exhausted with laughing until they wept and weeping until they laughed, until suddenly Zelda got a terrible look on her face as if shot.
«My God!» she shouted in panic, reaching out. «Wait. We didn't mean, we don't want-don't go forever! Sure, go. so the neighbors here sleep. But once a year, you hear? Once a year, one night a year from tonight, and every year after that, come back. It shouldn't bother anyone so much. But we got to tell you all over again, huh? Come back and bring the box with you, and we'll be here waiting, won't we, Bella?»
«Waiting, yes.»
There was a long silence from the steps leading down into an old black-and-white, silent Los Angeles.
«You think they heard?»
They listened.
And from somewhere far off and down, there was the faintest explosion like the engine of an old jalopy knocking itself to life, and then the merest whisper of a lunatic music from a dark theater when they were very young. It faded.
After a long while they climbed back up the steps, dabbing at their eyes with wet Kleenex. Then they turned for a final time to stare down into the night.
«You know something?» said Zelda. «I think they heard.»
The Electrocution
1946 year
She let him tie the black silk over her eyes and he knotted it and jerked it so tight that she gasped and said, «Loosen it, damn you, Johnny, loosen it, or I won't go on!'?
«Sure,» he said easily, and she smelled his sharp breath; while beyond; the crowd rustled against the rope barrier and the carnival tent flapped in the night wind, and off, there was a drift of calliope music and the rattle of a trap drum.
Dimly, through the black silk, she could see the men, the boys, the few women, a good crowd, paying out dimes to see her strapped in this electric chair, the electrodes on her wrists and neck, waiting.
«There.» Johnny's voice whispered through the blindfold. «That better?»
She said nothing, but her hands gripped the ends of the wooden chair. She felt her pulse beating in her arms and neck. Outside the pitchman yelled through his small cardboard megaphone and slapped his cane across the banner where Electra's portrait shivered in the wind: yellow hair, hard blue eyes, sharp chin, seated in her death-chair like Someone come for tea.
With the black silk blinding her, it was easier to let her mind run back to wherever it wanted to go…
The carnival was either setting up in a new town or letting go; its brown tents inhaling by day, exhaling its stale air by night as the canvases slid rustling down along the dark poles. And then?
Last Monday night this young man with the long arms and the eager pink face bought three tickets to the sideshow and stood watching Electra three times as the electricity burned through her like blue fire while this young man strained at the rope barrier, and memorized her every move as she sat high up there on the platform, all fire and pale flesh.
He came four nights in a row.
«You got an audience, Ellie,» said Johnny on the third night.
«So I see,» she said.
«Don't pay no attention,» said Johnny.
«I won't,» she said. «Why should I? Don't worry.»
After all, she'd done the act for years. Johnny slammed on the power, and it filled her from ankle to elbows to ears as he handed her the bright sword and she thrust it out blindly over the audience, smiling under her half mask, to let them tap shoulders and brows as the blue sparks crackled and spat. On the fourth night she shoved the sword far out toward the young man with the sweating pink face, first among the crowd. The young man raised his hand swiftly, eagerly, as if to seize the blade. Blue sparks leaped the gap, but his hand didn't flinch or stop as he grabbed on and took the fire in his fingers and then his fist and then his wrist and his arm into his body.
His eyes, in the light, flared with blue alcohol flame, fed by the sword, whose fire in passing lit her arm and face and body. He stretched his hand still farther out, his waist jammed against the rope, silent and tense. Then Johnny cried, «Everybody touch it! Every one!» And Electra lifted the blade out on the air for others to feel and stroke, while Johnny cursed. Through the blindfold she saw the terrible illumination which would not leave the young man's face.
The fifth night, instead of touching the young man's fingers, she tapped the blazing tip of the sword against the palm of his hand, brushing and burning until he shut his eyes.
That night she walked out on the lake pier after the show and did not look back as she moved, but listened and began to smile. The lake shook against the rotting piles. The carnival lights made wandering, uneasy roads on the black water. The Ferris wheel whirled high and around, with its faint screams, and far away the calliope steamed and sobbed «Beautiful Ohio.» She slowed her walking. She put out her right foot, slowly, then her left, then she stopped and turned her head. And as she turned she saw the shadow, and his arms moved around her. A long time later she leaned back in his arms and stared up into his healthy, excited pink face, and said, «My God, you're more dangerous than my chair!»
«Is your name really Electra?» he said.
The next night as the power leaped through her, she stiffened, shuddered, and clamped her lips in her teeth, moaning. Her legs stirred; her hands groped and scratched the chair arms.
«What's wrong!» Beyond the blindfold, Johnny cried out, «What?»
And cut the power.
«I'm all right,» she gasped. The crowd murmured. «It's nothing Go on! Now!»
And he hit the switch.
The fire crawled through her and again she clenched her teeth and threw her head back against the chair. A face rushed out of the dark, and a body with it, to press against her. The power exploded. The electric chair stopped, then melted.
Johnny, a million miles off in the dark, handed her the sword. Her limp, twitching hand dropped it. He handed it back and instinctively she shoved it far out into the night.
Someone, out there in the roaring darkness, touched the blade. She could imagine his eyes burning there, his lips parted as the power jolted him. He was pressed agains
t the rope, hard, hard against the rope, and could not breathe or cry out or pull back!
The power died. The smell of lightning stayed.
«That's it!» someone cried.
Johnny left her to squirm out of the leather straps, jumped off the low platform, and walked out toward the midway. Convulsively, she tore off the bonds, trembling. She ran from the tent, not looking back to see if the young man was still there against the rope.
She fell upon the cot of the trailer behind the tent, perspiring and shaking, and was still crying when Johnny stepped in to look down at her.
«What's the matter?» he said.
«Nothing, nothing, Johnny.»
«What was that you pulled out there just now?»
«Nothing, nothing.»
«Nothing, nothing,» he said. «Like hell it is.» His face twisted. «Like hell! You haven't done anything like that for years!»
«I was nervous!»
«Years it's been,» he said. «When we were first married you did that. You think I forgot how when I switched the power on this same happened like tonight? You been sitting in that chair for three years like someone listening to a radio. And tonight, and tonight!» he cried, choking, standing over her, his fists tightened. «Damn it, tonight.»
«Please, please, Johnny. I was nervous.»
«What were you thinking there in the chair?» he demanded, leaning down wildly. «What did you think about?»
«Nothing, Johnny, nothing. « He grabbed her hair. «Please!»
He threw her head down, turned, walked out, and stopped outside. «I know what you were thinking,» he said. «I know.» And she heard his footsteps fade away.
And the night passed and the day and another night with another crowd.
But nowhere in the crowd did she see his face. Now, in the blackness, with the blindfold tight to her face, she sat in the electric chair and waited while Johnny described the wonders of the Skeleton Man over on the next platform, and still she waited and stared at everyone who entered the tent. Johnny walked around the Skeleton Man, all stiffness, describing the living skull and the terrible bones, and at last the crowd rustled, turned, led by Johnny, his voice like a battered brass horn as he jumped up onto the platform with her so violently that she jerked aside and licked her red lips.