"Pretty cool," Melanie says. "How was yours?"
"Interesting," Moira says, the word riding on a sigh. "So, shall I see you downstairs?"
"Why not," Melanie says, deciding that she's neither hung-over nor drunk enough.
Moira lingers for a moment in the doorway. Then she's gone.
Melanie finds the combat pants that Moira had given her so that she won't scratch her legs when she strims the banks either side of the gravel drive next week. Still giddy from the wine, she almost falls, one leg in and one leg out of the pants, but then she rights her balance and gets her other foot in. The pants fit snug and intimately.
When she enters the living room Moira is sitting on one of the two sofas which are either side of the hearth, her legs folded beneath her. Melanie is pleased to see the fire burning in the grate. The house is cold on these clear nights.
"Sorry Honey," Moira says, pouring a huge glass of white wine and handing it to Melanie. "The truth is it's me who's lonely. Why don't you sit by the fire? You want some free advice? Never marry anyone in the movie business. Not if you don't want to be lonely. Frank was seldom here when he was alive. Jesus. It was like conducting an affair with a ghost. And now, of course, he's never coming back. I guess you could say he's been exorcised from my life."
"How did he die?" Melanie says, feeling uncomfortable.
"The short answer? He shot himself."
"Like Hemingway," Melanie blurts. “My dad says -”
Moira rolls her eyes. Jesus! "Yes Melanie, just like fucking Hemingway."
Melanie, slightly stung, not knowing what to say, takes the wine to the other sofa and sits by the fire. She takes a sip. Then a gulp. Then another. She feels kind of sorry for Moira but she can't stand the eye-rolling thing. She has a tutor - Dr Shackleton who looks like Ned Flanders from the Simpsons - who rolls his eyes whenever Melanie says anything in one of those boring seminars. When someone does the eye-roll thing, it makes Melanie want to go home to Mum.
Moira lights a cigarette and tosses the pack and the lighter to Melanie. Melanie lights one up. She's not a fan of Marlborough but she's left her own smokes upstairs. Moira smokes distractedly, as if she's forgotten for the moment that Melanie is even there. Then she catches Melanie's gaze.
"Sorry," she says. "To tell you the truth I'm a little high. Sometimes it makes me fractious."
"That's cool," Melanie says, wondering what "fractious" means. Wondering if she's going to be offered anything. She thinks she'll probably accept if she is. It might be nice to be fractious. Then she wonders if now is the time to break into her own little hash-stash. She slurps off more wine and Moira refills both glasses.
"I know," Moira says, "why don't you do my horoscope? That might be fun."
"Umm," Melanie says, already feeling the effects (wooosh) of the hastily-quaffed wine, "all my charts and stuff are upstairs."
"You can't fetch them?"
"I'd rather not," Melanie says, because the phrase always seems to work when Mum says it. The truth is, she doesn't trust her legs right now and even if she did she wouldn't want to negotiate that creepy fucking staircase again with its cold spot on the first turn. Of course, that also puts the kibosh on the spliff, because her gear is also upstairs. Maybe now is not the right time.
Moira shrugs. "Okay. Maybe another day. So how did the painting turn out?"
"Oh, you know," Melanie says, "It's coming along." Colours. She can draw well enough. Control a brush. Can divine how the light falls. But fetching up the colours she needs is a skill presently beyond her grasp.
"Practice," Moira says. "It just comes down to practice. Stick with it. You'll be okay."
"Well," Melanie says. "If I can just get the colours right."
"Colours are important. Get the blue right first; the rest will follow."
"Is blue your favourite colour? It looks good on you."
Moira stretches and spreads the long fingers of her left hand. She studies her nail varnish. "You like? I was thinking of changing it. Did you manage to haul your way through my book?"
"That was soo cool. I finished it in bed this morning. It was pretty fucked-up."
"Fucked-up? Jesus. They should've put that on the jacket endorsement. Quote: Melanie Barber: You won't read a more fucked-up book all year."
"Sorry. I meant in a good way. Strange. You know. Kind of…"
"Hey, Mel. Relax. I know what you meant. Not exactly straight from the critical lexicon, but I know what you meant."
"That stuff with the virtual labyrinth. That was great. That was well-creepy. A human zoo. Wow. That really creeped me out."
Moira smiles thoughtfully over her glass. "Look around you," she says, "it's not so far-fetched."
Melanie doesn't understand and then she does understand. What I won't miss, her father told her (moderately drunk and high on Parisian whatever with his French girlfriend - who is just bound to be a fucking whizz with colours - cooing in the background) is all those fucking speed cameras turning everyone into lab rats. And don't think it'll end there. Fucking ID cards. Facial recognition technology. Iris scans. Fucking DNA samples. You'll see. Lab rats. That's you father all over, Mum had said. Melanie is about to convey this anecdotal snippet to Moira but then discovers that she can't be bothered. Sometimes she gets that way when she's drunk.
She waits for Moira to say something else but she doesn't. Which makes her nervous. Her glass is almost empty and she'd quite like another. She's about at the stage where Mum would say: Melanie, what you've imbibed already should be quite sufficient. Mum loves that fucking word. Sufficient. And the other one: imbibe.
"Those pants look good on you by the way," Moira says, which is a relief. Melanie had almost expected her to ask her if she would like coffee, which is how Mum clears the house just when things have started to liven up. Jesus Mum, you're so middle class. And if your father had finished with coffee more often, Mum would say with that pinched, pursed expression that made her look her age, he might be here now instead of living in Paris with that… that… tart! At least he knows how to have fun, Melanie would say, which would hurt Mum and make Melanie feel bad which is just what Mum wanted all along because ….
"Thanks. They fit great," Melanie hears herself say. Then, because she's feeling boldly drunk, she says: "Who's the guy on the Harley?"
"Billy? He's just a guy."
"Are you-?"
"Am I fucking him?"
Melanie feels herself colour.
"No. I'm not fucking him. He works for me. You might say he's my research assistant. The bike's a Triumph, by the way."
Melanie is about to ask "over what?" when she understands. "Oh," she says, "Dad had one of those. The fucker… Oh hey, I'll have to tell you about my dad and his fucking girlfriend some time … but, hey, shall we have one more little drinky? Imbibe some more. Like a night-cap?"
"A night-cap? Sure. But first you have to tell me something. Okay?"
There's an intensity to Moira's gaze that says: don't lie to me. No, Melanie thinks, absurdly, suddenly panicky, I didn't cop off with Kelly. It wasn't like that … "Okay," she says.
"Now that you've settled in a little," Moira says, "what do you think of the house?"
Is that all? "Oh. Um. Yeah, it's pretty neat," Melanie says.
"Is that good neat, or neat neat?"
"Night night," Melanie laughs. "Sorry," she says, wiping her mouth. "It's a beautiful house is what I meant to say." It isn't a lie. Gloomy, film-set cadaver dragged along the floor, cold spot on the stairs or not. Creepy cold dying room or not.
"But you don't like it much at night," Moira guesses.
"It's just so big," Melanie says, pleased with her own tact.
"Now there's an understatement. I've had people say to me: Moira, all those pretty little cottages down by the river and Frank has to buy this pile. This pile of shit? And maybe they've got a point. Jesus. I had to rattle around in here all winter. Sometimes with Frank. Mostly without. And let me tell you - in case you didn't
know - winters here are very dark, and very fucking wet."
"Jesus," Melanie says, "that must be spooky." She regrets saying it at once because what you're supposed to do is what Mum does when she lies to other people about their curtains or carpets or kitchens. Supposed to turn Moira's negative into a positive.
"Spooky?" Moira says. "Maybe. Cosy it ain't. But you know something? There are times when I feel I really belong here. Almost as if the house had been waiting for me for a long time. But I need to be careful. This house is full of stories. And they can be dangerous. Frank … Frank saw something here. He saw something in this house that he didn't like. And it killed him."
"Wow," Melanie says, suddenly uneasy. "That's so …" she starts, grasping around for a suitable adjective … "big," she finishes.
"Isn't it?" Moira smiles. She waggles the empty bottle. "I'll have to fetch more wine if we're going to imbibe some more."
"Then go fetch," Melanie says with drunken audacity, trying not to think of what Frank might have seen that had been bad enough it had killed him.
Moira unfolds herself from the sofa. "Why don't you put another log on the fire?" she says.
"I can do that," Melanie boasts. "Don't think I can't, because I can." She tries to stand and then falls back on the sofa. She giggles. "Maybe in a minute," she says.
"In your own sweet time," Moira says. "I'll get the wine."
"Now you're talking," Melanie says. "You know, you're not like my Mum or any of those other old people I know."
"Really?" Moira says.
"Yeah. In fact, I think you're pretty cool."
"Well, gee, thanks honey," Moira mocks. When she heads for the door Melanie can see two of her crossing the room. Then three. Then just one again.
"Moira?" she says.
Moira turns. There's a look on her face. "Melanie," she says. "Please don't tell me that you love me."
"You don't look like a window - I mean, widow," Melanie says. "That's what I was going to say. That you don't look like a widow."
Melanie wakes on the sofa. She's alone. Head aching. Dead fire. Birds singing. A dim memory of Moira stroking her hair. And Frank. Who had seen something in the house which had killed him.
Frank Tells (May 2003)
Now what the fuck does he do? What he does is this. He skulks in the shadow of the street where the whores line up for display. They come to him one at a time as he chain-smokes cigarettes with a dry throat. He treats it like an audition, which, one by one, they fail. Not that they're fat. Not that they're ugly. Not that he suspects syphilis. He doesn't care about that. He speaks to them in English. He asks them what time the sun sets. He asks them where they can get a bottle of champagne. Where they can score some crystal meth. They answer him right back in English - good English - an English they're proud of, an English which briefly lifts them in their own estimation of themselves. One by one he turns them away. One by one they swear at him, call him a fag. Just like an audition. The fifth whore - who, Frank notes, is a looker: black hair and dark eyes and long legs and good health and sunshine - just shakes her head when he asks her in English what time the sun sets. She laughs, puts her fingers inside his shirt, spreads them against his chest. Tells him in Spanish that she'll fuck him all night, whatever he wants, for a hundred and fifty euros. Frank drops his cigarette, grinds it beneath his shoe. He smiles. He checks that he can't be overheard. He tells her in English that what he really wants to do is gouge out her right eye with a hunting knife and fuck her in the brains. He says he wants to cut out her cunt and eat it for breakfast. He tells her that they'll find what's left of her in that cesspool of a river. Then, just to be sure, he asks her if she takes milk in her tea, if she drinks tea at all, and if it's true that Springsteen is playing Madrid next week. A word she recognises. Her eyes widen. Si, she says. El Jefe, she says. Born in the USA, she says hesitantly, in English. She laughs. She squeezes his balls, tells him what a big man he is, reminds him of the price. All in Spanish. I'm going to fucking kill you, Frank smiles. No reaction. Si, she says. Fuck, she says. Not understanding. Which is to say that she's perfect for the part.
Leaving the street, pressing into the evening throng, skirting a queue outside the cinema where a Tom Cruise movie is playing, Frank bumps shoulders with a guy. The guy turns, walking backwards, looks from Frank to the girl and back to Frank. Then he draws his finger across his throat. Yeah, Frank mutters, whatever.
Climbing the stairs to his room, Frank takes the girl's hand, as if he's afraid that she'll baulk at the door. He can feel his story waiting up there in the room, eating up the last of the light.
He lays three hundred euros on the table, just to set her mind at rest on that score. She looks at it and nods. She doesn't count it. Frank pours whiskey and fetches ice from the little fridge with the chipped paint. When he turns, the girl is already reclining on the bed. She slips her hand beneath the pillow (and there is just the one - those cheap fucks) while she executes a seductive writhing routine which almost works on Frank - her short skirt riding up, eye-full of thigh above stocking. Then a puzzled expression crosses her face and when she sits up she's holding the thirty-eight by the barrel. Frank sets down the whiskey, holds out his hand for the gun. She hands it to him, unfazed. He puts it on the table. She doesn't ask him why there was a gun beneath his pillow but he tells her anyway. CIA he says. Things are going to turn ugly in this town, he says. Listen, he says, handing her the whiskey, I don't want to fuck you. I just want to talk. Is that okay with you? Yes, she says, that's okay with me. Like a priest? she says. That's right, Frank says, just like a priest. I like guys like you, she says. If you change your mind, let me know. Then she says, let me guess, your mother has died. All in Spanish.
No, he says. She died a long time ago. He lights a smoke. Lights one for the girl, hands it to her. They drink. Frank wants a little small talk before he starts. He's got enough Spanish for this kind of thing. He sits in the chair and lets her talk. Father dead. Mother sick. Baby brother in school. Jesus, Frank thinks, there must be a fucking school for whores where they study this fucking story. It's the kind of story he'd invent if he needed a whore in a film. Another bunch of bullshit. Another dramatic convention. He interjects in English occasionally, trying to catch her out. She talks about the government, stepping in and out of Frank's logos. When did your father die, he says. She quits with the political discourse, says she doesn't understand. That's good, Frank says. He pours more whiskey. I'm going to talk in English, he says. Okay? Okay. He lights another smoke. This is a story, he says, which can never be told:
This is a ghost story. There's this guy. Let's call him Frank. Frank Costigan. Where do we start? Let's start here. Frank comes home from the war. Vietnam. Which is a long time ago. Which is a war I guess you've seen in the movies. Which is a war Frank doesn't think about all that much. Sometimes he thinks of a kid on a paddy-field road with the top of his head blown off. And sometimes the sound of rain on leaves - if it's the right kind of rain, the right kind of leaves - will throw a melancholy fear into him, which is not a thing Frank can't handle. Frank keeps busy after all. But this is now. Back then Frank's leaving the jungle behind. Saigon hasn't fallen yet but it's close. Frank doesn't know this, and if he did he wouldn't care. He's a couple of days shy of being back in The World - which is what the boys in the fire-holes call home. So Frank's on a transport plane, a C30 - which is a ride he's had to hitch for one reason or another. There's a guy on the plane. Clarence. Clarence strikes up a conversation with Frank, which is a thing you can manage if you don't mind to yell above the engines. So Clarence, he starts to tell Frank about what he's going to do when he gets back to The World. And Frank, he can feel the inward eye-roll because when guys tell you what they're going to do back in The World it's usually blah blah and so much bullshit. By now Frank's listened to a lot of this stuff. He's heard it in the bush and he's heard it at mess. He's heard it in hospitals, latrines and kitchens. This is a topic which is heavy in the air. He's even heard it on the god
damned radio when they get a random guy on the "So Long" happy hour they used to run on a Sunday night. Frank's listened to guys who are going to be rock musicians. Guys who are going to write novels. Movie scripts. Every other damn grunt who could read and some who couldn't had a movie in his head which Paramount was going to be just burning to produce. Guys who were going to start hamburger chains or run a revolution in South America. Maybe a black revolution from Harlem. Guys who were going to Alaska to hunt bears. A guy who was going to revive a breed of near-extinct Cherokee hunting dogs. All kinds of guys with all kinds of dreams. These dreams, you understand, subordinate to the drinking and fucking and cruising which is also planned and which is a given.
One guy. Guy called Ed Buckley. Frank's on patrol with Buckley. It's raining like a sonofabitch and beating off the ponchos so you have to strain to hear anything at all. And Buckley's speaking real quiet because the VC are active in the area and the VC are out there tonight, which means Frank's platoon have rigged claymores and flare trips all over the damn place. Even the two LA crazies Fairbanks and Adams - last seen shot to death live on TV outside a bank in San Diego - even these two aren't smoking or bullshitting about women like they almost always are. In short, everyone's tense. Everyone's wired. But Buckley can't help himself. He's so short he can smell his mother's cooking. Real quiet, he says he's going back to Michigan - which is where he hails from - and when he gets there he's going to fix the leak in the porch roof and live out the rest of his life right there on the damn porch and he doesn't give a shit if he never has another interesting day in his whole damn life. ("Interesting" being a joke word used for a livelier than average firefight.) He says he's going to patch the leak and tar the seams and sit out there with his dogs and watch the moon rise over the river and drink the beer he picks up at the store on his way home from the boringest damn job he can find - which is probably at the saw-mill. Says he might even get a stove out there for winter nights. Tells Frank that if he ever gets tired of being a movie mogul - Frank being no exception to the rule - then he's welcome to come to Piss-Splash, Michigan, to catch cut-throats and rainbows to cook out on the porch. Which Frank says, Sure, he'll do that, because Michigan and rainbow trout are fine sounding words when you're out in the Boonies hiding from the rain and waiting for a claymore to tear the night apart. Anyhow, things don't turn out for Ed Buckley. No, a silk-worm didn't coming screaming out of the jungle and smoke Buckley's chopper. The VC did not hang Buckley from the rotor blades of the downed bird with his own cock stuffed in his mouth - which is something they'd do whenever they could. No, what happened was Ed Buckley's sister threw a party the night he got home and somehow the house took fire and burned down, porch, Ed Buckley and all. Which is rambling. Which is back-story. Which is something I'm prone to do when I drink.
Suzerain: a ghost story Page 13
