Inexpressible Island

by Paullina Simons

  Julian kept a straight face. “What’s the film called?”

  “The Dungeon of the Haunted Warlord!”

  “Now that’s great.”

  “Isn’t it?” She took a sip of his drink, their own invention—or so they thought—in honor of the Pink Palace, gin and tonic with angostura bitters, making the gin pink, hence their moniker for it: Pink Gin. “And get this, the film shoots right in the hills at Warner! Both soundstage and backlot. It’s a block away from the Treasure Box. You could come visit me on my lunch break. If you’re good, I’ll let you be my fluffer.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “I don’t think that means what you think it means,” Julian said, pulling her on top of him. “But how about if we go upstairs and I’ll let you be my fluffer.”

  “What, again?”

  “Yes, I believe they call this part the honeymoon. Did they email you the script? We can kill two birds with one stone. Ask the front desk to print two copies for us.”

  “Don’t use my coveted film script to lure me into your dungeon, Haunted Warlord,” Mia said.

  Post love and lunch, they returned to their cabana by the water in the late afternoon to drink Pink Gins and read the script. She sat on the sand, propped up by big cushions, and he lay on his back with his head in her lap.

  “Okay, so it’s not going to win any Oscars,” Mia said, when they were finished, “but it’s my first leading role.”

  “It’s awesome,” said Julian. “You can do a lot with this Josephine.”

  “Josephine, the poor doomed maiden! I love how the killer is so obsessed with her, he stalks her everywhere, and no matter where she hides, he finds her and carries her off to his dungeon.” Running her fingers through his hair, she leaned down to kiss him. “In my first scene, I get hit by a bus! Isn’t that tremendous? You think it’s an accident, but who’s driving the bus, in disguise?”

  “The Haunted Warlord!”

  “Yes! Shall I call them back and tell them I’ll do it?”

  “Like it’s even a question.”

  Mia managed to get a signal on the beach. He lay in her lap, gazing up at her as she spoke to Marty Springer, her agent. When she got off the phone, she was even more excited. She eased out from under him and jumped to her feet. “Apparently, rehearsals are next week and shooting begins the week after, can you believe it? Life is really looking up.”

  Giving him her hand, she pulled him into the water.

  The early evening was Julian’s favorite time on the beach. The crowds thinned out, the high tide increased the size and frequency of the waves, and the entire half-moon coast from Diamond Head to Kahanamoku shimmered and dazzled like an animated postcard. They dived in, cooled off, slicked back their hair and bobbed in the waves.

  “Here’s another kicker,” she said. “Marty said they need an extra to sit and watch me in the first scene as I get whacked, and he suggested you.”

  “What? No, not me. I’m not an extra.”

  Mia rubbed his hard shoulders with her soft hands. “You’re so extra.” She kissed his chest. “What’s the big deal? You sit at a table like a passer-by, I walk and then BAM! A bus comes out of nowhere, and—”

  “No, I get what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Come on. I’ll introduce you to Florence, the casting director. You’ll be up and running in no time. And you’ll get to go to wardrobe and pick out your costume. You know how much you like cosplay.” Grinning, she splashed him.

  He splashed her back. “A costume for sitting at a table? Isn’t that called wearing clothes?”

  “Hardy-har-har. And you’ll get paid. $150 big ones.”

  “Well, they named my price.”

  She jumped him in the water, trying to knock him under. It was her favorite game, next to him tackling her and actually knocking her under. She flung herself on him, wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, rubbed her cheek against his stubble, kissed his face with her wet lips. In Hawaii, Julian shaved only before dressing for dinner. “Come on, say yes.” She rocked back and forth, trying to unbalance him. “Say yes so they can say of us, look at those two. They’re unstoppable. Everything they do, they do together.”

  “How about if we find out what we can actually do by living together,” he said, “and we’ll see about the rest.” Their love affair had been so whirlwind that her stuff was still at her apartment on Lyman. Since they met, they’d been a week apart, a week at the Marmont, a week shuffling from his to hers, a week in Vegas, now a week here. Five weeks and not even a drawer for each other in his place or hers.

  “Can you believe we’re married, Jules?” she said. “Sometimes I can’t even.”

  “Me neither. But I carried you over the threshold of our Vegas suite, so I know it must be real.”

  “Go us, right?”

  “Go us,” said Julian.

  48

  Big Ben

  BACK IN L.A., ASHTON THOUGHT IT WAS THE GREATEST THING he’d ever heard, Julian being an extra in a horror movie. Though he wanted to know why Julian couldn’t audition for the part of the haunted warlord.

  “Because I already have a day job.”

  “Dayjob shmayjob,” said Ashton. “On the one hand Mr. Know-it-All, on the other—HAUNTED WARLORD. Like it’s even a choice, Jules, you lucky bastard.”

  While Julian and Mia were in Hawaii, Ashton had ended things with Riley. Julian had a commiserating lunch with her at the Whole Foods café in Beverly Hills after Mia started rehearsals. They chatted about the wedding, the honeymoon, the Haunted Warlord. Toward the end, Riley finally brought up Ashton. “Did you know anything about it?” she asked. She was composed if shell-shocked. “Did you have anything to do with it?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Because this has you written all over it. First you and Gwen break up, not five minutes later you’re marrying some chick you barely know, and five minutes after that, Ashton is sayonara. It’s not his MO. He is not the type to make a decision like that, he is such a go with the flow guy. That’s one of the things I loved about him.”

  “Riles, who are you kidding?” Julian said. “That’s what you hated about him.”

  “I know,” she said. “But why does his wandering nature seem so appealing to me now?”

  Julian took her hand. “You deserve better,” he said. “You will have better.”

  “Is there anything better than him?” Riley’s elegant, fine-featured face had sadness etched on it as if she didn’t think so.

  “Yes—me for one.” Julian smiled.

  “You’re taken. And not for nothing, but why does Mirabelle get to have you? Who the hell is she? The rest of us have put our time into you. Years. She bats her eyes at you in a coffee shop and suddenly she’s Mrs. Know-it-All? How is that fair?”

  “I’m saying,” Julian said, “plenty of other fish in the sea. For instance, did you notice how Mia’s mother’s companion, Devi Something, was smitten with you in Vegas? You stand a real chance with him.”

  “I’ve had enough of your jokes,” Riley said, but she was smiling. “But, you know who does keep texting me from the wedding? Liam.”

  “Liam Shaw? From Freddie’s?” Liam was a good guy, a tall welterweight.

  “Yeah, he was pretty drunk at the Wynn. Kept asking me to dance. Got a little handsy. Now won’t stop texting me.”

  “Riley, you can’t hook up with him,” Julian said. “Both your last names are Shaw!”

  “I know! He told me he’s a thoroughly modern man and if I marry him, I can keep my name.”

  “So he’s funny, too?”

  “All you men think you’re damn comedians.” Riley glanced at her watch. It was time for her to get back to work. She walked Julian through the sliding exit doors and before he left, said, tearing up, “Are we still going to be friends, Jules? If you were a girl, you’d be one of my best friends. I think that’s another reason I’m mad.”

  “Come here, Riles,” Julian said. “Come in for a therapeutic
lean.” He embraced her. “You and I are not breaking up. We’ll always be friends. Who else is going to regale me with the benefits of a colonic cleanse?”

  “Not to mention the benefits of coconut oil,” Riley said, giving him a kiss. “Or have you already discovered those?” She grinned into his grin and strolled back inside Whole Foods in her high heels and pencil skirt, her silky blonde hair swinging.

  * * *

  Julian’s dreams had lessened in their viciousness, but not in their murky vividness. There was less of her melting in fires or being shelled with empty bottles, less of his helplessness, but more of the heaviness. She kept appearing to him on a stage. She stood high in red lights or low on some door. Sometimes this door would open like a trap and she’d vanish. She wore headscarves and bonnets. Sometimes she was a boy. All her hair was cut off. Once she was in La Traviata, dying of a wasting disease. And sometimes she looked like a Russian babushka, in black clothes, with a kerchief tied under her chin, standing on a stage that froze under ice floes, reciting words he couldn’t hear.

  In recent days, the dreams had become less about Mia and more about something else troubling and indefinable. He kept hearing a dull distant toll of ringing bells. He walked, trying to get closer to the sound. The tolling was constant, ringing every few seconds. He felt a man’s mangled hand on him. It was Devi, the Asian man Mia’s mother had brought to their wedding. In real life, shaking the man’s half-hand on the receiving line after the ceremony had flooded Julian with the oddest sensation, like stinging salt water filling up his body from his feet to his head. And the way Devi had stared at him . . . Julian didn’t know what that was about. In the dream, the man gave Julian something to drink. It was sweet. After Julian drank it, the tolling got louder.

  He looked up. It was Big Ben. London again. It kept ringing and ringing.

  49

  Everything Forever

  JULIAN KNEW WHY HE NEVER WANTED TO BECOME AN ACTOR. All the waiting around on sets made him want to drive off a bridge. It was no way to live.

  The one-minute scene of Mia wordlessly walking down the street before getting hit by the bus was taking days to set up. They were still building the sets. They kept telling Julian to come back, that they weren’t ready for him. Maybe the next day. Or the day after. Finally, they promised him that tomorrow would definitely be the day.

  The night before the shoot, Julian dreamed of Big Ben again. He stood, looking up at the Great Clock, trying to see the time. He turned his head to see if he was alone in the street. But no, a crowd of people, familiar and strange, had gathered around him. The armless man, the fingerless man, tall men and dwarfs, prostitutes, thieves, men with Bibles and manuscripts, in suits and bandages, albinos and giants, they all stood, and, like him, everyone was looking up at the Tower. The bell kept tolling. He heard someone say, start over, Swedish. He wasn’t Swedish. Why did he think that was meant for him? The bell stopped tolling. They stood in the silence. No one spoke. Then it began again. This time Julian counted.

  The bell tolled 49 times.

  When Julian woke up, around four in the morning, he couldn’t get back to sleep. He began the day with a feeling of dread so heavy he could barely get out of bed. He tried to chalk it up to exhaustion, wishing he could take four sleeping pills and pass out until the day was over.

  But it wasn’t exhaustion. When Mia woke up, she looked pale. She wasn’t her bubbly self. She was dragging and running late. She added cream and sugar to his normally black coffee. She called to him from the bedroom. “Jules,” she said, “how much time do I have?”

  He stood in the door. “What did you say?” He spoke in a shaken voice. Why did he remember her saying that to him?

  “How much time do I have? When is the absolute last second we can leave so I’m not late?”

  Why did so many things with her—things they said, they felt, they did, they looked at—fill him with such a relentless sense of déjà vu?

  His anxiety would not abate. He drove them to Warner’s, braking for every yellow light. When another driver cut him off, Julian actually jumped out of the car and started screaming at the guy. “Hey, buddy, what the hell is your problem? Watch where you’re going! You nearly crashed into us!”

  Inside the car, Mia was staring at him. “Is the bloom off the rose?” she said. “Was that the real you you’ve been hiding? Or is there something else going on?”

  Julian wouldn’t answer her. Both options condemned him. Either he was a jerk, or there was something else going on.

  He was glad he was on set with her today, because, boy, did she need to be watched over. As she got out of the car, her silk scarf got caught in the door. “Just like Isadora Duncan,” she said as a joke, but it wasn’t funny. She tripped going up the stairs to her trailer and hit her shin on the metal step. As she was walking across the soundstage, she didn’t see a thick wire coiled in her way. She would’ve fallen had Julian not caught her. She took a sip of coffee, scalded her tongue, and dropped the cup, spilling it over her wrist and hand. She got a small burn. A corner of a desk ripped her stockings and left a bruise. With mounting unease, Julian watched it all.

  Just when things couldn’t get any worse, the AD sent Julian home. They couldn’t shoot today after all, despite the promises. The weather was terrible. Miserable windy gray clouds swirled overhead. There were even a few drops of rain. In Los Angeles. No one knew what to do. If there was one thing you could count on in L.A., it was clear skies. It’s why the film industry moved out west in the first place instead of to a rain hub like Florida. Yet today, when they needed full sun to shoot, there was this.

  As they said goodbye, Julian begged Mia to be careful.

  “Of course, but what an odd thing to say. Why wouldn’t I be careful?”

  “Odd, really? You’ve been spilling, burning, tripping, falling the whole morning.” He brushed the hair strands away from her eyes.

  “Jules, nothing bad can happen to me today.” Mirabelle gave him a marital hug and a mistress kiss. “Don’t you know that today is my lucky day?”

  “Why is that?”

  “Today is exactly 49 days since we met! Remember I told you 49 is my lucky number?”

  “No, and I didn’t know you were counting.”

  She smiled at him full of love, but Julian didn’t think it was possible to feel worse. Big Ben tolling 49 times in his dream was as vivid as she was in his arms. To get rid of his pulsing anxiety, Julian drove to Freddie Roach’s and pounded the speed bag until it was a blur, until he could barely lift his hands. He pummeled the heavy bag, turning into it with his whole body over and over until he thrashed every fucking Big Ben thought from his mind. He took a Comedy Central meeting with Ashton, for which he was physically present but mentally a million miles away and spent the rest of the day at the Treasure Box, finally driving to pick up Mirabelle at seven.

  She was in one piece, but quiet as a struck bird. She said everything was fine, she was just tired. She wasn’t hungry. She wasn’t thirsty. She didn’t want to go for a drink, she didn’t even want dinner. She just wanted to go home. He asked if she wanted to go look at some furniture. A month ago, after they had climbed down from their Elysian outpost at the Marmont and returned to the world, Mia requested new sheets before she would stay at his place. She said she didn’t want to sleep on sheets, even laundered ones, on which a parade of other women had been entertained. Julian did one better. He took her to Cantoni on La Brea and they picked out a whole new bed, a leather pampas king-sized beauty with an adjustable base and a plush headboard you could sit up against when necessary and grab on to when necessary.

  But now a full spousal remodeling was in order. They were planning to repaint the house, redo the floors, get new kitchen cabinets, and a wine fridge. She wanted to get a 75-inch flatscreen TV. He offered to take her shopping for it.

  She said no. “Maybe tomorrow, my love,” she said, taking his hand as they drove. “I don’t feel up to it today, even though it’s my lucky day and ever
ything, I’m sorry.” She tried to smile.

  At home Zakiyyah had made buttermilk chicken and a summer salad, but Mia had no appetite. Ashton invited them to go swimming. Mia didn’t want to. Zakiyyah wanted to go dancing; not Mia. They brought out Taboo, Mia’s favorite game, and she didn’t want to play. She asked for a cup of tea, but when Julian brought it to her, she had fallen asleep on top of their bed. He couldn’t watch TV or work on his website.

  Mirabelle slept, and Julian sat in the chair by the open French doors and listened for any change to her breathing, and to the laughter and guitar-playing and arguing and singing coming from Ashton’s house.

  Eventually the joy died down, and Julian lay down by Mirabelle’s side. Rhythmically, deeply, completely asleep, she continued to breathe and live.

  He fought his own sleep all night, searching her body for signs of destruction. How could he defend her from threats both mystical and mundane when he didn’t know what his dreams meant? Were they what had been, or what was yet to be? Were they memories or premonitions? Were they nothing but irrational fears? Though that was a fuckload of some pretty specific fears. He’d never been on a ship, or in a fire, had never seen bombs fall, or watched anyone stoned or choked to death. He had never killed a man. Had never been to London, yet London was so clear in his dreams like his mind’s eye had drawn a map of the city, with every well-defined street etched in bold.

  Why London?

  And why Big Ben?

  What did 49 mean?

  Nothing made sense, nothing.

  Julian stayed awake, afraid of things he couldn’t express. He covered Mirabelle with the black cashmere throw from the Marmont and left his hand on her until dawn. His eventual sleep was brief but not dreamless. He saw Mirabelle as when he first met her. But it wasn’t at Coffee Plus Food. He saw her bathed in red lights, in a garden, naked in a house, in a crowded square, next to a field gun in a room with no ceiling, in a tavern, and on top of the horizontal door. Different stage, different life, but it was always Mia’s face and Mia’s eyes and Mia’s shining smile.