by Rex Baron
She was glad that she had made herself invaluable to everyone in the last few days. Lucy had come to rely on her for advice in little subtle things, what perfume to wear, or the best way to avoid skin discoloration from the sun. David had allowed her to fill his pipe for him, a small act of possession and intimacy that had been denied her for countless years. He was beginning to see her as she was when they met, lovely and strong-willed. He liked that about her. He had said so.
It was just as he said it was. He was too busy generally to attend to her needs, but now that they were together on this trip, she had no fear of being left for another. Even these young girls could not turn his head from his morning paper. It was her “hello” that brought his face smiling above the newsprint. What a great fool she had been to worry.
A white linen suit lay across the seat of Lucy's compartment when she returned from breakfast. Celia had obviously decided it would be nice to see her wearing it for the press meeting when the train arrived in Los Angeles. She let out a long sigh of frustrated annoyance and laughed aloud. “Why not,” she thought, “if it pleases the poor meddling soul, no harm done.”
She dropped down in the seat next to the neatly arranged folds of linen, and tried to muster the energy it would take to be Lucy for the next few hours. Idleness had been the order of the last four days, a luxury that she was seldom allowed or even acknowledged in herself. The devil’s workshop, her grandmother would have said.
Her family had always been concerned about the balance of good and evil, the primeval duality, which, when pitted against one another, caused nations to fall and conquerors to rise out of the rabble of ordinary humanity. She had always been warned by the old matriarch to keep an eye on the balance of things. When either side got out of control, no good came of it. All things had their roots in goodness, because God created only goodness in the beginning. But goodness was corruptible, her grandmother had told her. An evil thing is simply a good thing that has been held onto too long. But she had long stopped questioning the good and evil in the affairs of her life. She could no longer think of a universe in which a God allowed the faithless to be lured into sin and acts of treason, only to show his beneficence and rescue those very sinners from the jaws of Hell in the final reel, like a photoplay serial.
It seemed a pointless melodrama, this conflict of good and evil, and if God was truly all-powerful, why did he indulge his villainous little underling, Lucifer, allowing him his acts of mischief in the first place. Satan was clearly the harder working of the two, or so it seemed most people think. They could see his workings behind every divorce or scandal. They feared his revenge in every illness and prayed for deliverance from his dominion.
This was not the world that Lucy inhabited. When she chose her voice over initiation into the Kraft, she relinquished the burden of keeping the balance of powers. She never thought of Satan or of a threatening omnipresent evil that could seep through the cracks in windows and under locked doors like a deadly draught, bringing with it contamination and despair. She was impervious to the sin of idleness. In this day and age they called it relaxation... and she deserved it. She welcomed it in preparation for what lay ahead.
Lucy sat in the closed compartment, dressed in her linen suit, awaiting instructions from David. The train had arrived at the station in Los Angeles a half an hour earlier, but they waited in blaring sunlight until all of the newspapers and the Lasky Studio were represented in the crowd gathering on the platform of the quaint little tile-roofed station.
Lucy pulled back the corner of the window shade and peered out at the odd collection of travelers, going about their business amidst a tide of schoolgirls and curiosity seekers, waiting for a glimpse of the celebrated pair. She noticed a number of young girls wearing smocks, fashioned from pillowslips pulled over their heads, each displaying a large initial letter. She gathered from a small mustering of them that the letters were meant to spell out Paulo's name, when the girls stood together in the correct sequence. Suddenly, the girls scrambled from everywhere in the mayhem, skidding into place in the line, before a shout went up from the crowd and Paulo appeared on the platform.
He too was dressed in white linen, and Lucy wondered about Celia’s influence. He made his way easily through the crowd, signing autograph books and the sleeves of girl's blouses. Perpetually smiling, he parted the crowd like a prophet in a sea of faithful. He presented himself as the silvery god Lucy had seen on the theater screen. It was not so noticeable that one would question it, but he had subtly accented his eyes with kohl and bronzed his skin to be even and perfect. He could not run the risk of disappointing his fans or, worse yet, of not being recognized.
It had not been planned that Paulo would make this impromptu and premature entrance. In fact, it went completely against the established plan that he and Lucy were to be introduced together. Lucy admitted to herself a feeling of annoyance, that her appearance before the press would now be substantially dampened by his grandstanding.
David rushed into her cabin and without a word, she was whisked onto her feet and out of the compartment.
“We certainly can't say our friend Paulo doesn't know the value of publicity and timing,” David said, as he dragged Lucy down the narrow corridor toward the blinding sunlight of the open door. “While he's got them heated up, it's our time to strike.”
Paulo was answering a question for a member of the Herald when a second cheer went up from the crowd. Lucy appeared in the doorway of the train, and slowly drifted down two steps and waited on the landing. She waved and bent down to accept a bouquet of roses from a group of trembling boys. Paulo leaped up next to her on the stairs and posed with her for a photograph.
A burly little man approached and removed his Panama hat, in what Lucy judged to be a gesture of courtesy, until he wiped the sweat from his forehead with his hand and unceremoniously plopped it back on his head.
“This is Mr. Lasky,” Paulo explained for her benefit.
The little man unplugged the cigar from his mouth and let out a beaming smile. He wagged the smoking Havana in Lucy's face.
“At last I get to meet the shrewd little businesswoman who snagged me into that hours-of-sunlight clause in her contract.” He leaned toward her conspiratorially and half whispered in sincere admiration. “I couldn't have thought up a better publicity angle myself. The papers are making a big deal out of it.”
He stepped back from the carriage of the train and waved his arms over his head as a signal to the photographers and cameramen. “Okay boys, you can roll’ em now.”
He removed his hat and took Lucy's hand. He angled his face toward the ramshackle bank of cameras and clearly mouthed the words of a prepared speech as he spoke to her.
“Although I am paying a king’s ransom for the privilege of having you appear in my photoplays, I sincerely hope that the Californian sun never sets on Lucy von Dorfen... the moving pictures, and Lasky Famous Players’s newest discovery.”
Lucy smiled an awkward smile and thanked him. She was about to make a comment, when Mr. Lasky, once again, waved his arm and signaled the end of the photographic onslaught. Within a second, all of the activity and shuffling of plates had come to a standstill and Mr. Lasky simply walked away.
Lucy did not know whether to laugh or be offended.
“I think your California is going to take some getting used to,” she whispered to Paulo from behind her bouquet of flowers.
They endured the usual crush of young fans, signing their names countless times on phonograph record labels, dog-eared photographs and even across the forehead of a young girl who confided that she had been locked up for a week by her mother for daring to cut her hair in honor of her idol Lucy. They were rescued from further similar confidences by the welcome hand of one of Paulo's friends on his shoulder. Lucy shaded her eyes against the glaring morning sun and turned to see a tall, haunted-looking man, who Paulo introduced with three names.
William Desmond Taylor nodded and took Luc
y's hand. A small smile spread across his face without warning, as if some unseen voice had shouted the order to his unconscious. He said that he had a picture idea for Paulo, and nodding again in Lucy's direction, headed off toward his car. Without explanation, Paulo followed.
Lucy stood in the hot sun, staring down in bewilderment at the overheated, withering flowers in her arms.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1921 Los Angeles
“Charm is a quality that has obviously not been cultivated in these people,” Celia complained from the back seat of the automobile.
“Now Celia, don't get upset,” David said, patting her leg. “I warned you that you and I would be likely to spend the better part of the welcoming party standing in the shadows, trying to get out of the way of the cameras.”
Celia considered. “Yes, I suppose so, but I thought you were just saying that so that I wouldn't have high expectations.”
Lucy was inclined to agree. She had been buffeted about, pushed from one corner of the station platform to the other, until she had been photographed with everyone associated with the picture business who deemed themselves to be important.
As the elegant Daimler, double-cowl touring car climbed the winding road into the hills, lush with palms and bougainvillea, the air felt cooler and carried within its playful currents the delicate scent of oranges and a hint of the sea. Each turn in the road brought the beauty that Paulo had promised, a patch of sunlight or a brilliant flower that now, without him, seemed to Lucy like a gift without the giver.
The driver said that above the tree line was the best view of the valley. That was where the villa had been built. It was not in the style of any she had seen in Rome or outside Paris. It was more a farmhouse, a hacienda in the Spanish style, with long verandahs on two sides that overlooked a clear and sparkling view of the fruit-filled valley below. A garden path, overgrown with spiraling twists of morning glories and wisteria, grudgingly gave way to their arrival.
“I just need to get out of these New York shoes,” Celia said grimacing. “This heat has my feet swelling to the size of melons. I'll probably have to buy all new shoes three sizes larger.”
Lucy slipped out of the motor and started down a covered trail at the side of the house, overgrown with tropical plants that had no knowledge that the house had been rented. She opened a set of French doors, painted blue, in jarring contrast to the placid surface of the stuccoed walls. She stepped through what she realized was a window, down into a beautifully tiled room, vast and echoing with its emptiness. Overhead, the vaulted ceiling displayed the company of heaven. Angels and Seraphim, blowing trumpets to announce the judgment of mankind were painted amidst the swirling planets of a shattered universe.
At the end of the room, a door led out into the sunlight. The driver, Jesus, was unloading the bags from the auto, while Miss Auriel instructed him as to which bag went into which bedroom.
“It's a lovely room,” Lucy said, imagining that she caught the faint smell of devotional candle wax in her nostrils.
“It's the music room,” Jesus said, without looking up.
Lucy stared back into the room. It seemed to resonate with a feeling, a frequency of sound not unlike what Ellen had described was experienced by the pilgrims in the great cathedrals. It spoke to her and told her about the place, a catechism of the past, revealing the people and events that brought this magnificently tiled room to its present incarnation.
“It isn't,” Lucy said flatly, “... a music room I mean. In spite of the trumpeting angels on the ceiling, it was never just that. It was a chapel of some kind. There is something religious about it. I can feel it.”
Miss Auriel stopped her inventory and watched as Lucy approached. Jesus looked up from his work.
“This was the church of the Sisters of Dominica,” he said.
“But we were told the house is new. I don't understand,” the young dresser questioned.
“The house was built around an existing church wasn't it?” Lucy asked. “And the church itself is centuries old.”
The driver nodded.
“But why are you keeping it a secret?” Miss Auriel asked, standing in the doorway. “I should think it would be a terrific selling point to the place.”
“It isn't a secret. Everyone knows of it,” the driver answered. “The convent of the holy Sisters was in this place for centuries... and before that...” He let the sentence trail away and shrugged his shoulders, as he piled the last bag on the stack and slammed down the lid of the trunk.
“They simply built the new house around the chapel. What a lovely idea,” the youngster mused aloud.
“And before that?” Lucy took up his words. “What was it before that?”
“We are told that it was an ancient burial ground, a holy place for other worship, by the people who were here in the beginning, long before the Sisters chose this hill as a sacred place. That is why the church could not be torn down, but had to be left in the house. It lay on the earth where the currents of power cross. It is the invisible light that must not be defiled.”
“But how? What currents of power?” asked Miss Auriel.
The driver continued his explanation.
“There are currents of power that run through the earth, carrying energy, like the veins in your arm carry blood. Where they cross, an invisible explosion, a pulse is created. It is a light, a sound, like the sound of the heart beating. That place becomes the heart, a well of power from which to drink, to nourish oneself, to find wisdom, to talk to God or the ancient ones. It is a place for magic and ritual. It is a holy place.”
Lucy's attention was drawn to Ellen, who stood wide-eyed, listening, her fingers pale and bloodless as they clutched a traveling case to her chest. She had read in one of the books in the convent’s library about these circuits of energy that were referred to in Europe, in earlier centuries, as “Ley Lines”. Areas in Gloucestershire and Salisbury, in England, and many other sites had recorded a form of magnetic energy below the surface of the earth that moved as a current, like a large slowly slithering serpent, that could be tangibly felt and was said to have supernatural or even healing powers. These were the lines of power, upon which the ancient peoples had built their holy temples and churches, in order to make use of the powerful energies. She had read that humans and even some animals could tune into and follow these lines of magnetic energy, because of a part of the front of the brain that governs the electrical system of the body, and might follow them for miles, thereby creating trade routes and avenues of commerce.
Suddenly, all the famous paintings she had seen of Saint George, the patron saint of England, flooded her brain. She could picture him, astride his white horse, piercing a serpent or a dragon with his lance, and understood, now, at this moment, that the idea of killing the serpent, as depicted in the paintings, was a metaphor for the Knight of the Christian church conquering and having dominion over the powers and beliefs of the old pagan religions.
The nuns at the convent had taught Miss Auriel to put her faith and trust in that spear of righteousness because it would save her from the godlessness of evil. But she had read many of the arcane and suppressed books that the library had to offer and knew that although the valiant Saint George was just one of the many saviors of the church, one must never rely on a savior that comes from without. The true evil that every man must be constantly vigilant against was the evil of the corrupted self and the evil that dwelt within each of us as a natural part of our god-given duality.
•••
After dinner, Lucy stole away from a tiresome conversation with the Montagues and stood in the doorway to the music room, surveying the dark little valley that rustled with the sound of sleeping fruit trees.
What an odd feeling it was to be halfway around the world, alone in a foreign night, standing on ground that had soaked in rituals and magic for countless centuries. She closed her eyes and felt the power of the place, dark and comforting as it enfolded her i
n the scent of exotic tropical plants and the hush of a thousand whispered benedictions on the warm night air.
It was her destiny, it seemed, to be drawn to such places, on the periphery of great knowledge, which bled through her dreams in images that she knew were familiar. She knew it was her birthright to feel a power coursing through her body into her hands, but somehow she was incapable of releasing it through her fingertips. She once dreamt of snipping the ends of her fingers with shears and watching the power flow out like electricity, crackling from exposed wires. She felt that surge of power now, moving up her legs, as if it came from the earth itself.
Her body ached in the joints, like a dangerous influenza. But she was not ill, of that she was certain. She felt the pain and swelling in her hands and imagined a light, the color of the moon, emanating from her palms.
“This is a place of magic,” she whispered aloud, as she turned her face to the round moon overhead. It was the moon of her grandmother's lunarium. It was the power source from which all things came, that female polarity that combined with the vibrating earth beneath her feet to explode into limitless power. Just as her kind little father had been the male polarity and the grounding point needed for her mother’s magic, so the dark richness of the earth in this place of ritual, mingled with the ghostly light from above to produce its own offspring.
She thought of Paulo and wondered if he were fertile ground. He should be here with me, she thought. She wanted him there, to honor his promise of showing her the night.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1921 Los Angeles
Paulo stared back at the haunting eyes of the desperado pointing the pistol. They were the eyes of his friend William Desmond Taylor in a publicity photo for the film Alvarez that hung above the lamp on the corner table. He needed to isolate his attentions away from the uncomfortable intimacy of the conversation in the bungalow sitting room.
