Suzerain: a ghost story

by Adrian John Smith

  "Yeah Fernando, every damn year. Wasn't that Spielberg I passed coming up?"

  Fernando waves a meaty arm dismissively, showing the sweat stain beneath his armpit. "Spielberg? You think I waste my time with the second rank? Come. Sit."

  Frank sits. He lights a cigarette.

  "You want a drink?" Fernando says. "Scotch?"

  "Scotch is good. Paperwork keeping you busy?"

  "Tax. I tell them, I use your phrase, I tell them: you get no blood from this stone. Every morning, nine o' clock, I speak to them. Still they send me this bullshit papers." He taps the sheaf of bullshit papers with his pen and then he picks them up and tosses them over his shoulder for them to flutter to the carpet. "Ah de nada," he says. "Bullshit." He opens a drawer in the desk and retrieves a half-full bottle of Glenmorangie. Two glasses which he holds to the light to check their cleanliness. He wipes inside one of them with his shirt, pours out two fingers of whiskey in each glass, slides the wiped one across the desk.

  "How's business Fernando?" Frank says. He hits into the whiskey, which is good whiskey.

  "Business? Many troubles. My films, I can no longer sell in your country. Politics. They watch for politics now. In my films? What? The politics of fucking? And then there is that one-legged sonofabitch Senor Marcos. El perro. You remember Senor Marcos?"

  Frank grunts and empties his glass. "I remember his wife," he says.

  "Si. For you amigo, a lucky escape. No?" Fernando smiles, recharges Frank's glass.

  Some luck. Some escape. "You want me to do something about him?" Frank says. "Because I can. We could dangle him out of a window. I never liked that sonofabitch anyhow and I'm up for something reckless."

  "No. Thank you my friend, but is all right. Just a small - listen, I send him good girl. A hard worker. He make complain. Is it my fault she is - how you phrase? - epileptic. How should I know they fuck-fuck with the flash-flash - the what? The strobe light. Marcos, he says, listen, he says: Fernando you fat fuck, The Exorcist, it has been made already."

  Frank hasn't come here for laughter but he's glad to find it anyway.

  "You still working with Sidney?" he says. "I hear Sidney's on the up and up."

  "No. Sidney I cut loose. Sidney is nowhere. Sidney is out. Sidney does not understand - how you say with your big American brain? Narrative structure - Sidney no understand narrative structure. I tell him: you go to audience with this film they leave cinema; turn off video, fucking DVD. Our money? Our money does not come home. But you Frank. How are things with you?"

  "Bad," Frank says.

  "And business?"

  "Worse."

  "A birdy comes, tells me that the deal you make with the Walker brothers is like…" Fernando says, finishing the sentence by creating a downward spiral with his finger which hits the desk with an accompanying fart from his fleshy lips.

  "You heard that?"

  "Si. Even Cine Fernando is part of new global village revolution. I get E-mail; says Frank Costigan fucked big-time by sons of bitches Bert and Ed Walker. I respond, I say Frank, fucking Frank Costigan give those bastards their start in this fucking business. How can they sleep when they treat people this way? I hear they waste six months of time plus several tens of thousands." Fernando whistles. "Grande dinero no?" he says.

  "Well. You heard correctly. Except it was nine months and twenty K. It doesn't matter. It would have been a lousy film anyway."

  "It no matter? Ed I would let live. Bert: I cut off his balls."

  "Hell it's all water and bridges Fernando."

  "Si, a much high bridge and much shallow water. Si? Listen Frank, you should stay away from LA. LA was not meant for you and me. You and me, we are not meant for LA. Our films are no good there. You should work in Europe. In Spain. In Madrid. Cine Fernando is looking for an assistant producer. A director we can also make use."

  "What happened to Carlos, you disloyal bastard? You fire him?"

  "No. Carlos, he got himself shot in the stomach. An unlucky man Carlos. For you it would be different. You would be more careful. No Oscars for us; no Palme d'or. But no bullets either. We fly straight, we make money, have some girls, parties. But we no get shot," Fernando says. He takes a drink and a good long look at Frank. "Why for you need a gun, Frank?"

  "I got a few … irritations to iron out. That's all. Did you get like I asked you to get?"

  "Si. Of course. My friend asks favour I do favour," Fernando says. With a heave and a sigh he pushes against the desk to piston his bulk upright and then waddles over to his safe which is secreted behind a picture of Fay Wray. When he returns he's breathing heavily. He places a revolver on the desk without looking at it. Spins it as he sits. The butt grips are scratched and chipped but it looks like a reliable enough weapon. "The bullets; they are inside. You take them out before you leave Frank si? You no walk through Madrid with a loaded gun. Not this hour in history. The police, they are much nervous."

  "What is that? A thirty-eight?"

  "I have to tell an old soldier which gun this is? Si, it's a thirty-eight. It makes very big hole Frank. Bang bang. I hope you no do something you can no come back from."

  Yes a thirty-eight makes a very big fucking hole. Frank suddenly feels a little queasy. He picks up the revolver. Back in the eighties he'd found himself in a situation he had to wave a shotgun around but apart from props he hasn't actually fired a gun since before the fall of Saigon. He flips out the cylinder, takes out the bullets and drops them into his shirt pocket. Then he sets the gun carefully back on the desk.

  "This problem. This irritation. I can help. Si?"

  "No. I appreciate it Fernando but you no can help. Not this time."

  In this business things bounce around. They come back. Fernando's worried now. Nervous. Frank can tell because he takes a finger of cake from a tray at the end of the desk and bites it in two. The second bite follows hard on the first and then he's licking brown sugar from his fingers.

  "How in the hell can you do that? How can you eat cake while you're drinking whiskey?"

  "You worry about my weight," Fernando says, "my pressure of blood?"

  "No. I just don't know how you can eat cake and drink whiskey at the same damn time."

  Fernando shrugs. "Okay. You will not tell me about your trouble. So, we change subject, yes? We talk some more. Otherwise you go off into the night like Charles Bronson with a gun in your pocket and Fernando cannot sleep with worry. How is England? You can make no film in England?"

  "England? Forget about it. Damn soggy little place. Except, listen, they've got this insane money-making machine called the property market. You buy. You wait. You sell. Any idiot with enough capital can make millions that way."

  "Si. This is what I understand. But not everyone has capital."

  "That's true. Not everyone has a place to live either."

  "The same everywhere my friend. We do not worry about this. We just make movies. Films. We put no politics in our films. Politics is much dangerous now."

  "Shit, everything is much dangerous now. Listen Fernando, I want you to promise me something-"

  "This trouble. This problems. These are very serious. Yes?"

  "These are very serious, yes. Are you going to let me speak or what?"

  "Please."

  "I want you to promise me that if you hear something about me … if you hear something so damn shocking that you don't believe it then I'd like for you to do just that; don't believe it."

  "You think I believe lies about my friends?"

  "That's the problem. It isn't exactly a lie either."

  "I see. This lie which is not a lie. This truth which is not true. This is a financial matter. Si?"

  "Hell no. You think I'd be worrying about that? A financial irregularity? You don't make movies with goodwill and fresh air. Jesus, you don't need me to tell you that."

  "But you prefer to no say."

  "Si. I prefer to no say. Listen Fernando, did you expect to still be making skin-flicks at your age? I know I didn
't expect to be making a bunch of bullshit horror flicks."

  "You would rather sell insurance? Drive a truck? Teach high-school mathematics? This business, it is much tough. There is no failures here. How much gross your last film make? I wish I should have such a big, fat, fucking failure."

  "Shit. That money? Goddamned monkey's paw. Listen, I've got to run. I got some things I need to do which I can't put off. Thanks for the drink. And thanks for this too," Frank says, rising and jamming the gun in the pocket of his coat which he drapes over his arm. "By the way," he says, "you know if Maria's in town?"

  "Frank. Why for you want to visit again that time? You have new wife now. A beautiful new wife. Big sail boat to sail her in. Why you no let the past go?"

  "This is business Fernando. That's all. Strictly business."

  "Si, she is in town. I write number. But Frank, she is out of the movie business."

  "I know."

  "Except," Fernando says with a fleshy grin, folding the paper and handing it to Frank, "except there is one script she is working on. You know the title?"

  "I can guess."

  "Si. It is called Bring me the Head of Frank Costigan."

  "Snappy," Frank says.

  At the door Fernando squeezes Frank's shoulder, says: "Frank. I see you again soon. Yes? Bueno."

  Frank turns. "Sure Fernando. Sure. Say hello to Sidney for me."

  "Hasta leugo"

  "Hasta leugo."

  But Frank knows that he'll see neither Sidney nor Fernando again.

  It's as if the skin, the thin pad of flesh isn't there. As if the cold hard steel of the muzzle actually rests against the bone of his skull. Rosary beads dressed in sweat rolling through the fingers of his other hand. Too much whiskey and a Spanish-dubbed western with Jimmy Stewart on the TV - the title of which would come to Frank if he gave it some thought. Which he doesn't. A dry click on an empty chamber which any damn fool can tell you will ruin a good fire-arm. But longevity is the last thing on Frank's mind. He hides the thirty-eight beneath his pillow and takes a shower. The water comes in fits and starts of hot and cold, steam and air. Meditatively, Frank lifts the sag of his belly. Soaps himself. Watches a few strands of his thinning hair swirl around the shower tray. Frank doesn’t do poetry. If the word crosses his lips it's usually to describe a certain look, a mood, in a film. Elegiac is often what he means. Nevertheless he's been visited by Coleridge, which is a guy he hasn't heard from since high school. It is an ancient mariner, and he stopeth one of three. By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, now wherefore stoppest me?

  It's how he's been. Since he picked up the gun it's how he's been. Thinking to tell it to strangers. Just to tell it. To unburden himself. Two days of drinking in bars. Drinking too much. Talking to strangers. Haunting the metro like a zombie. Out into the sunshine and into a different bar. He's got a ten ride ticket and when it's gone he'll go back to the hotel and drink in solitude, for there is no wedding guest for this ancient mariner; no one who cares to listen to this gibbering American drunk; no one who gives a fuck about Frank's particular albatross. There's a funeral cortege though and he tags along, cools himself in the shade of the church. A dozen rows up a man in a black fedora turns, draws his finger across his throat. I know, Frank says, I know. Back to the bars, talking to strangers. English. Spanish. Two Dutch students who spell out their antipathy to his country. Frank shrugs. Makes it to the rest-room in time. Splashes vomit on his shoes and the cuffs of his pants where he won't kneel on the piss-wet floor.

  He shuts off the shower with the kind of handle you'd expect to find in a Russian space-craft. A clunk in the pipes. He wraps a towel around his shoulder and lets the early evening heat bake him dry. A verbal firestorm whips up in the next room. A woman shouting at a man, who shouts back. He turns on the TV. They've got Fox News, which features a hagiography of a front-line grunt - which is a word that hasn't passed through Frank's mind in a long time. Corporal Beaufort, a shoe salesman in less desperate times, has carried a broken comrade for six miles on his back in the scorching desert heat. Two fire-fights with the Fedayeen. Intervention from a B52. Rescue by Kiowa chopper. Tentative negotiations for movie rights. I guess you could say, Beaufort says, that God smiled on us yesterday. God bless us all, says the studio hair-piece. And God bless America. When Frank thinks of this war, he hears a sound at the far edge of thinking; an all-pervasive renting, a mashing and grinding of metal. Which isn't metal. Which is human flesh. Human bones. A meat grinder. Which is none of Frank's business. Not today. A thirty-eight - bang bang - makes a big fucking hole. He pours more whiskey, takes ice from the little fridge with the chipped paint. Then he picks up the phone.

  Next day he sobers. Buys a new shirt. A new towel. Showers. Shaves. Eats well. Shaky in the morning but strengthened from the food. Steak with scallions. Roast peppers. A cheese board and a little wine. Back at the hotel he showers again, puts on his Frank face which makes him feel like Frank. Which is what he knows. Coleridge has fled the scene.

  It's time. Frank takes flowers. Yellow flowers. Doesn't know what kind because, beyond roses and lilies - which he knows to avoid - this is not the sort of information he retains. There's life, there's quick in Frank's step. This is partly because he's nervous, partly because there's a fullness which is like the fullness he feels when he's full of a script. Full of a story.

  Frank pushes open the iron gate and enters the little courtyard. There are tubs of flowers and flower baskets hanging in the shade. Brick columns and a long balcony above the door, which is painted green with that kind of paint they don't seem to use outside mainland Europe. Which is a paint Frank likes. He rings the bell and stands holding the flowers to his chest, ready to give. Then he takes a smell of them, which is just nerves. He hears an internal door slam closed and then the door opens.

  Maria Ramirez.

  She's got her black hair tied back and he can see that there's some grey in it. On top of this she looks a little jowly, a little puffy around the eyes, but she's helped out by a skin colour which is the only good thing she ever got from her Spanish father. She's wearing a flower-print kimono tied around the waist which shows the cleft of her bust and the width and slope of her hips, which is a place Frank used to like to rest his hands. She leans against the door post. Ice chinks in the swirl of a tall glass. Gin and tonic probably. Frank's almost forgotten how tall she is, which is one of the many good things she got from her American mother. She runs her brown eyes over Frank with cool appraisal while she takes a drink and then she smiles. She looks at the flowers.

  "Oh Frank," she says, "you shouldn't have. Here, hold this." She gives Frank the glass and she smells at the flowers and then, with barely an indication that's it's coming, she uses them to lash a red welt into Frank's cheek. There's an explosion of petals and pollen and the heady smell of the flowers raised to the power ten and Frank jumps a step back. Jesus. He lets the glass slip and it smashes on the patio flags. The tonic foams around the shards of glass and the ice and a lonely slice of lemon. Frank shakes one foot and then the other.

  "You little sonofabitch, Costigan," she says. "You think you can smooth things over with flowers? Why didn't you bring something useful like a bottle I could break over your fucking head?"

  Frank rubs at his face. Which stings. "Are you done?" he says. He's got his right arm half-way up to ward off further blows.

  "Yeah, I'm done. For now. Go on Frank. I dare you: tell me you didn't deserve that you … … you fucking snake!"

  "Oh I'm sure I did," Frank says. He's still rubbing his face and he looks off to his left and sees two steamer chairs with an empty glass beside each. Beer suds sun-baked to both glasses. "Are you alone?" he says. Peers around her shoulders as he says it, trying to penetrate the background but finding only a closed door.

  "Yes Frank, I'm alone. Which means absolutely nothing vis-à-vis your presence here. You try anything - you lay one hand on me I'll run it through the goddamned blender."

  "Which I expect is a superior m
odel, can chop three onions and two pounds of tomatoes in less than six seconds. You still make that soup you used to make? What was that? One with all the herbs. Used to put those little -"

  "Shut-up Frank. Just stop with the memory-lane bullshit. Okay? I know you're in some kind of trouble or else you wouldn't be here. What I'm asking myself? I'm asking myself do I want to help, or do I just revel in the satisfaction of knowing you're in deep shit. Which believe me will be gratifying."

  Frank sighs, kicks away a piece of glass like a shy school boy. "You're still a goddamned attractive woman Maria," he says; can't stop himself. A temper always looked good on Maria.

  "Oh cut that fucking line Frank," she says. "I'm forty-eight fucking years old and your glamorous, fucked-in-the-head writer wife is what? No, spare me the detail. Listen, let's reach an understanding here. Okay? I'm going to let you in. Hey, back off. I'm even going to fix you a drink. I'll let you put your fat ass on my new couch, stink up my freshly-decorated apartment with your cigarettes. I may even let you comment on my paintings and tell me all over again about the cadre of bastards who've sabotaged your career over the years. But listen, save the flattery. You don't treat me like an asshole and I won't - I'll try not to - treat you like the duplicitous, cheating, scheming, venal and treacherous little prick that you are. Sound good?"

  Frank shrugs. He knows enough about himself to know whatever he says next is going to be the wrong thing so he says nothing. Jesus, he hadn't realised that Maria thought of him as a guy with a fat ass. He almost literally has to shake away an image - he's face down on one of those morgue trolleys. One technician to the other: Jesus, look at the ass on this guy. When he pokes Frank's buttock it leaves a dimple, as if his ass is made of soft wax.

  Back in the present one thing is certain: that soup? - the one with the herbs and the croutons floating around on top that they used to eat with thick bread and light rose wine in the little apartment that Maria used to have off that plaza with the pigeons and the old bums begging change and the kids doing tricks on bicycles and the guy next door who had a monkey that stole women's earrings and snatched the toupee from Sidney's head to show the scar where his wife hit him with a garden hoe and the bed where the slats came loose when they loved too hard and the table in the sunny kitchen which was all burned-orange paint and Matisse prints and a signed photo of Dennis Hopper watching them drink coffee and smoke like fiends while they went over the final script for Caged Animals. That soup? That soup was most definitely off the menu.