Screenplay

by MacDonald Harris

  BONDAGE & DOMINATION

  MIXED WRESTLING

  SPANKING

  GROUP LOVE

  GAY

  The whole thing took about an hour and forty minutes, and then it would start all over again:

  BONDAGE & DOMINATION

  MIXED WRESTLING

  …and so on. There was a fascination to it, mainly because the images that passed across the screen were so unreal. Writhing and ghostly shapes twisted themselves into improbable concatenations, separated, merged into clusters, and oozed in pink tentacles from one side of the screen to the other. Everything was in color, and the intensity of the colors seemed too bright, even when I got up to adjust the set. Before our eyes appeared organs that gave the appearance of having been taken from the inside of a human body by a surgeon rather than attached to the outside of it. I was surprised at the poor quality of the photography. You would think that something so attractive, and so illegal, would be more profitable.

  After a while I found that the chair was uncomfortable, and I took my clothes off again and got back in bed with Moira. We sat there propped against the headboard watching the films for most of the night. She didn’t seem to be sleepy; she kept her eyes fixed on the screen with a watchful, slightly amused expression. After the films had run through their sequence three or four times I glanced at my watch and was surprised to find it was three o’clock in the morning. I got out of bed and reached for my clothing again.

  “Get dressed,” I told her.

  “Why?”

  “We’re going out.”

  “I only have this to wear,” she said primly, getting out of bed stark naked and holding up the riding breeches by one leg.

  Everything was dark outside and the office was locked up. The motel manager had given up trying to rent the rest of his rooms, even to casual fornicators like us, and he had turned on the neon “No” in his No Vacancy sign and gone to bed. We went out to the front and stood on the curb waiting for a taxi. In the orange glare of the streetlight in front of the motel she seemed very tired and drawn. A fine network of lines was visible around her eyes, even though she had her face lifted up into a semblance of cheerfulness. I was familiar enough with the feminine temperament to realize that she would probably like to put on some makeup, and also to change her clothes. There was nothing I could do about this and I said nothing. I saw a taxi coming around the curve on Sunset and I stepped out and nagged it down.

  The driver had a Chicago accent, and he was wearing a cloth cap with a button on it that said, “Nuke the Ayatollah.” I told him to take us to Olympic between Crenshaw and Arlington.

  “Where exactly, buddy?”

  “I’ll show you when we get there.”

  We went off, not quite so violently as we had with the black driver. “Sunset Boulevard is my favorite street,” said Moira. “All these beautiful signs.”

  Slabs of tin with bright polychrome letters glaring from them flashed by the car in endless succession. She went on looking at them with her happy expression, and seemed a little disappointed when we turned onto La Brea and left most of the signs behind. Olympic, on the part of it where the taxi stopped, was almost entirely residential and it was quite dark. The nearest streetlight was several hundred yards away. There was no moon and a thin starlight shone on the pavement, glittering here and there on a pebble imbedded in the asphalt.

  “This all right?”

  “Fine.”

  I gave him a bill that I couldn’t see very well in the dim light, but evidently it was a five because he took it and drove off without a word. We were about a block away from the chained entrance to St. Albans Place, I hadn’t wanted the taxi to stop too close to the gate. There wasn’t much traffic here on Olympic; an occasional car went by with its headlights boring into the darkness. We set off down the sidewalk. Moira kept lagging behind me, and I had to slow down a little so that she could keep up. At the gate I got out my keys, which I had carefully transferred from pocket to pocket each time that I had changed costume in the past few weeks, and unlocked the rusty iron door. We slipped through it and I locked it again. Then we made our way through the deep shadows under the trees toward the house.

  “What a nice street,” she whispered.

  “Shhh.”

  She went on turning to look at the houses, on one side of the street and the other, as I led her along by the hand. She whispered again, “If you have to have a key to get in, they can’t find us here.”

  “There’s another entrance.”

  She hardly seemed to pay attention to what I was saying. She seemed lost in her own thoughts, as though entranced, and yet as far as I could tell perfectly content.

  When we arrived at a point a hundred yards or so from the house I stopped and inspected it carefully. The windows were dark and there were no cars parked anywhere near it. That didn’t mean much; they wouldn’t park their car in front of the house. Leaving the sidewalk, I crossed the lawn of the house next door and approached cautiously under the shrubbery, drawing Moira after me. From a position behind the hedge I could see there was no one on the porch. There might be someone waiting inside but that was a chance we would have to take. We stole on tiptoe across the lawn and up the wooden stairs of the porch. Moira suppressed a smile, as though it were all a game. I didn’t need a key here because I had left the door unlocked when I had dashed out after Nesselrode—it seemed an eternity ago. I stood there for a few moments on the porch. There was no sound from inside.

  We went in. The rooms were dimly visible in the starlight that came in through the windows. I knew the house so well that I could move through it in the dark, but Moira was helpless and I had to draw her after me wherever I went.

  “Stay here. I’m going upstairs to look for the car keys.”

  “The car keys?”

  “We have to get out of here.”

  “You have a car?” she said in her usual bright and casual tone.

  “I have two.”

  “How nice.’

  I went up the stairs, stepping over the ones that creaked, and made my way to the upstairs study where I kept the keys in a bowl on the desk. I had to decide between the Hudson and the Invicta. Both of them were conspicuous, and I realized now the disadvantages of owning classic cars, as exquisite and elegant as they were. I took the Hudson keys, identifying them by feel as the ones in the oblong leather holder with a miniature Hudson emblem on it. I had just slipped them into my pocket when the telephone on the desk in front of me jangled, so loudly that I jumped like a scalded cat.

  I stood there with my nerves leaping every time the thing went off. It rang only three or four times and then it stopped. Standing there in the darkness, I tried to calm myself. The blood was still pounding in my head; I could almost hear it thumping in the darkness. After a while I took a breath and my pulse slowed down.

  I went back down the stairs into the living room. The large windows facing to the west were open, and in the starlight I could see Moira standing by the sofa holding the phone to her ear. She was nodding as though she understood something. She said, “Yes.”

  She turned to me and held out the phone. “It’s for you.”

  “Why did you …” I mouthed at her silently. She only went on holding out the phone to me. I exchanged a look with her. Then slowly I reached out and took it from her.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Lieutenant Donner of Wilshire Division homicide.”

  It was a crisp bureaucratic voice, with an unconvincing politeness laid on over the top of it. I didn’t care for the tone of it at all. Moira was watching me expectantly with a little smile hovering at the corners of her mouth. I said nothing and the voice went on.

  “Are you acquainted with a person named Julius Nesselrode?”

  I hesitated for only a few seconds. Then I said, “What about him?”

  I exchanged another look with Moira. I wasn’t sure whether she could hear the voice on the other end of the wire or not.

  “We’re just
checking the case out. It looks like a death from natural causes.”

  “A what?”

  “They found him on a bus stop bench near La Cienega and Pico. Because it’s in our division the coroner notified us, and we’re doing a routine on the identity.”

  “What … what was the …”

  “Well, he was quite an old gentleman. We don’t know yet what the autopsy will show, but I imagine his heart just quit running. Are you still there?” he inquired when I didn’t say anything.

  “When you said homicide I was afraid somebody might have hurt him. A mugger or somebody.”

  “No. There’s not a scratch on him. He had an address in his pocket that checks out to a house owned by you in St. Albans Place. Is that right?”

  “Yes. He lived with me.”

  “A relative?”

  “No, just a roomer.”

  “I see. Well, we’re just trying to identify him and close the file. Does he have a next of kin?”

  “I don’t know. You’re calling me at four in the morning about this?”

  “We’ve been trying to reach you for some time.”

  “Come in the morning and take his stuff away if you like” I said. I hung up.

  “We don’t have to go away after all,” I told Moira.

  “That’s nice.”

  “We can stay here.”

  “It’s a lovely house, Alys. It’s the kind of house I’ve always wanted.”

  “Are you sleepy?”

  “Yes, a little.”

  “Shall we go upstairs?”

  She trailed her hand over the sofa, and then sat down on it. “No, I’ll just lie down here.”

  I didn’t ask her why. I could barely make out her face in the gloom. After she spoke she turned away from me. I had the impression that it was not that she didn’t want to make love, but that she thought I might turn a light on upstairs and she didn’t want me to look at her now. I went up to the bedroom, lay down on the double bed, and pulled the spread over me. After a while I fell into a sleep so deep and dreamless that I might have been on another planet, or anesthetized.

  18.

  When I woke up a bright sun was shining through the window. It was ten in the morning. I got out of bed, finding that I was fully clothed except for my shoes, and I put these on. Out of a kind of reflex, just as though it were any other ordinary day in my life, I went into the bathroom, shaved, washed myself, and came back out and changed into a clean shirt. Then, still behaving more or less mechanically, I went downstairs to see about some breakfast.

  To reach the kitchen I had to walk through the living room. At first I didn’t recognize Moira and wondered who the person lying on the sofa was. Evidently she was not asleep but only lying with her eyes closed, because when she heard me she opened her eyes and sat up slowly, smiling.

  Her face was a mass of wrinkles which covered it from her brow to the base of her throat where they disappeared into her blouse. Her hands too were strangely convoluted, as though someone had criss-crossed them with pencil marks, and the backs of the hands were covered with brown liver spots. Her hair was white, a halo so fine and fragile that it looked as though it could have been blown away with a puff. When she raised her chin there were two little white pouches at the corners of it, like the wattles of some exotic albino bird. Only her eyes were the same: dark, shadowy and expressive, watching me with a faintly uneasy expression that nevertheless contained an admixture of irony. The wrinkles were deepest around the eyes, forming an intricate lacework that radiated out from them in all directions over the face.

  For some moments I stared at her without speaking. I felt chill and my skin prickled; it was a sensation as though insects were slowly working their way up my back under the shirt. I didn’t know what to say or do and I could only stand there examining every detail of her face, her hair, and her hands, the parts of her that protruded from her clothing. She remained motionless and said nothing, allowing me to examine her. After the first moment of shock was over, I examined my deepest and most private thoughts and realized that I was not really surprised. I reflected that what had happened to Moira was no more horrible than what happened to every human being, except that it had taken place more abruptly and therefore struck the senses with a greater shock. If the reactions it provoked in me were unpleasant, it was simply because it was an analogue of my own eventual fate. If this was so it might be salubrious to my own mental health or help me to a better understanding of the human condition, perhaps. Still something inside me felt heavy, as though some organ had died or I were carrying a small dead animal in my chest.

  The hunting jacket and breeches were still immaculate, even though she had slept in them. Unlike me she had gone to sleep without taking off her shoes, stout British walking boots. When I said nothing she got up slowly from the sofa, pushing herself with one hand. She came up to me and folded me in her arms.

  “You will be faithful to me, won’t you, Alys?”

  She made a kind of parody of her former fascinating smile. The wrinkles around her mouth gathered into a curve and then settled again. I allowed her to embrace me for a few moments, and then I drew away.

  “Would you like some breakfast?”

  “That would be nice.”

  I went into the kitchen and made some coffee. There was some bread in the freezer and I toasted two pieces of it by holding them over the gas flame with a fork, since I still hadn’t replaced the toaster. I never expected to get the old one back now. I found butter and some jam. We sat down at the small breakfast table.

  “I’m sorry there’s no cream.”

  “I always take it black.”

  We went on for the rest of the breakfast making banal remarks like an old married pair. When she had finished her second cup of coffee she went off to the bathroom, and after a while I heard a thin tinkling through the door, an odd and secret feminine sound that I hadn’t heard since the days when Astreé lived in the house. There followed the little Niagara of the old-fashioned apparatus—the patent for which, I had almost forgotten, had brought all the money into the family. Then she turned the water on and off several times. Evidently she was washing. For a moment there was a silence, and then the door opened. Through it I could see her standing before the mirror combing her white hair with a slightly palsied hand. She turned to me and smiled.

  “Alys dear, I do have to buy some clothes.”

  “All right.”

  “I usually go to Robinson’s,” she said. “They have the nicest things.”

  I decided to take the Invicta instead of the Hudson, since it was an authentic artifact from Moira’s epoch. I backed it out of the garage, then I got out and opened the right-hand door for her. She settled into the leather seat with a little sigh, lowering herself with one hand. I got in and we drove away, the well-adjusted engine making a steady chucking sound. At the exit from the park on Wilshire I turned left, deciding not to take her to the old Robinson’s at Seventh and Grand downtown but to the branch in Beverly Hills. She didn’t seem to notice. She gazed out placidly through the windshield at the long hood with its shiny persimmon enamel, the nickel-plated radiator, and the round dial of the temperature gauge on top of it.

  “What a nice car,” she said.

  It was possible that she couldn’t see very well at a distance and so commented mostly on things that were closest to her eyes. She asked no questions and had nothing to say about the jungle of flashy stores and offices along the Miracle Mile, or about the sleek modern cars streaming past on the boulevard in both directions. But then I was interested in cars and she wasn’t. The remark about the Invicta had been merely polite conversation. She was quite cheerful and after a while told me, with the impulsive candor of a child, “It’s such fun going out to buy clothes.”

  We stopped for the light at Beverly Drive and a cluster of pedestrians crossed in front of the car, most of them shoppers. One of them turned to look at the Invicta with its persimmon paint and its nickel-plated goggle headlights. It wa
s a blond girl with a khaki bag on a strap over her shoulder, and after a moment I realized it was Belinda. I failed to recognize her at first because she had adopted a new style of clothing: designer jeans, a raw-cotton Mexican shirt which she left hanging out, and silver jewelry. Our eyes met through the windshield. It was clear that she recognized me, and in any case the car was unmistakable. She took in the octogenarian at my side, and for an instant her lips tightened in a quite contrived smile, one with more than a trace of irony in it. Then she disappeared in the crowd. The light changed and I drove on.

  Moira sat straight in the seat, looking out through the glass. She had never turned her head. “Who was that young woman, dear?”

  “A radio announcer.”

  “How odd,” she said placidly.

  I hurriedly parked the car in the Robinson’s lot and went around to open the door for Moira. She got out only very slowly, while I waited. Finally she took my arm. “You know, Alys, as you get on, your joints start to creak a little,” she told me, still cheerful.

  I pushed open the glass door of the store for her. Inside everything was air-conditioned, expensive, and elegant. The racks were full of bright-colored clothes. She looked around with a pleased smile. “Robinson’s is the best,” she said.

  “You’ll be all right here for awhile?”

  “What’s that, Alys dear?”

  “I have something … I’ll only be a few minutes.”

  She hardly paid attention. “You go ahead, dear, I’ll just look around for a bit and see what I need.”

  She had already turned away to take a dress from a rack and hold it up against her at a mirror. I pushed out through the glass door onto Wilshire and hurried the four or five blocks back to Rodeo. I knew where I would find her: in a specialty record shop called the Hautboy & Sackbut where we had often gone to look for records together. It was just around the corner on Charleville. As soon as I came in I saw her going through the Deutsche Grammophon records at the rear of the shop. I went back slowly until I was standing at her elbow.