Suzerain: a ghost story

by Adrian John Smith

  "I want you to wear it," Moira says.

  "Okay," Melanie says, acquiescent, submissive. Slightly freaked.

  "I think it'll look good on you. Why don't you put it on? Hey, let me." She takes back the locket, moves behind Melanie, brings the chain around her throat, fastens the clasp. She steps back around in front of Melanie, smiling down at her. "Yes," she says, "it does look good on you. You like it?"

  "It's cool," Melanie manages.

  "Okay Mel," Moira says, kneeling, pouring wine. "we're going to play a game. We'll take it in turns. But tonight - lucky Melanie - you get to play the lady of the house. You get to play Alicia. And can you guess who that would make me? Yes. Cheers," she says, clinking glasses. She reaches out to touch the locket. She lifts it and lets it fall. "Why don't you open it?" she says.

  Melanie sets her glass on the floor boards. She exerts pressure with her thumb, gingerly increasing it by increments. The lid throws a glint of light when it flips open. Inside are two pills. Pale and blue. Sitting on a bed of amber which holds a stone chip, as told.

  "One each," Moira says. "Don't worry Mel. It's cool. Really. Just something to help ease you into the part. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  Melanie holds the pill in her mouth. Then, with a sip of wine, she swallows it.

  "Glad you came?" Moira says, running a finger lightly down Melanie's cheek.

  Melanie takes her by the wrist, kisses her fingers, licks at her nails. "Yes," she says, wondering if she's doing it right, behaving in the way expected of her. Kneeling, they kiss. Endlessly it seems, Melanie's eyes closing, opening, closing, until she can feel the pill working. A little fear, and then no fear at all. She traces the course of Moira's spine with her fingertips. She feels the incipience of her own gushing moisture blossom inside.

  "Say my name," Moira whispers, close and warm. She starts to unbutton Melanie's shirt.

  "Moira," Melanie says. The candlelight is tinged with blue and the corners of the room pulse with blue light. Beneath them, the river whispers through the spiles.

  "Uh-uh. No. Try again," Moira says, working her way slowly down the buttons.

  "Martha," Melanie says.

  "Yes. That's right. I'm Martha. And soon, you'll be Martha too," and, without another word, she presses her face to Melanie's breast. Her teeth click briefly around the locket and then her mouth is sucking at Melanie's right nipple. Melanie's face throws ceiling-ward, cracking wide in a smile. Her eyes close, flutter open, close again. And then Melanie, sweet, sweet Melanie, begins to articulate the thrill, the sheer blueness of being. Martha, she whispers, groaning. Martha, she whispers, sighing.

  Frank Tells (May 2003)

  ……So. Time moves on. LA. Frank and Moira; man and wife - Moira extracted from her past like a pulled tooth. They're renting a place in the hills, a single storey faux-Spanish villa. It's above the smog and there are trees for shade and it's pretty quiet, which is how Frank has grown to like it as he's gotten older. This is temporary accommodation, and though, thanks to Trams, Frank's now got some money, he isn't about to blow it on superfluous luxury. But there's a pool, a patio, a brick barbecue - all of that. In the mornings - assuming she's made it home the night before - Moira snorts her two lines of breakfast coke, with toast and coffee on the side, and then gets into her red BMW convertible. Every morning Frank waves her off and watches her drive down the switch-back road into town, to do what she calls her "research" - which Frank thinks is a euphemism. This is when Frank usually sits out in the sunshine, drinking coffee and smoking a couple of cigarettes - which is something he's either trying to quit or doesn't give a shit about, depending on the day - while he makes his calls or reads over scripts, or maybe takes a squint at some story boards. Other times he just enjoys the sun before it gets too hot (which is when he seeks the shade of an acacia tree) waiting for cheaply film-able stories to come to him - stories which, more often than not, fail to arrive. Not even a fucking post-card.

  And Moira? We're now in the company of a woman a million light years away from that pathetic creature with the tangled mess of hair and the piss-stained pants that Frank dragged out of the cabin in Canada. She's had her hair cut short for one thing. Developed a taste in expensive casual-wear to go along with her coke habit, for another. Which is also something recently acquired. She's sleeping around a lot too. She's sleeping with men and she's sleeping with women. She's sleeping with both at the same time. This is something which Frank does his best to ignore. Frank's got his pride just like any man. Frank's also got mirrors in the house. When he catches sight of himself coming out of the shower - with his sagging belly and the veins in his legs all roped-up under his skin and his hair all plastered down so it's barely there at all - he knows exactly why his wife - his young wife - is sleeping around. Well… the way Frank sees it is this: the scripts are getting written. The films are getting made. Moira's books are getting written - and, by the way, she came out of that cabin a better writer than she went into it. Plus, call it mercenary, but Frank feels he's got a moral claim to first dibs on the rights to her books. These are things which Frank puts a high value on. Call it a trade-off.

  And part of the trade-off is that Frank has to put up with a lot of rumour-mongering on account of Moira - rumours which are sly and vicious and probably true. Apart from a guy called Baxter - a real sweet-heart, a real fucking cry-baby - that Frank had slapped around a little behind the bins out back of a restaurant, this is something else which Frank chooses to ignore. Except for the suicides. These are events which are harder to ignore, harder to simply file under Don't Fucking Go There. One man, one woman. You don't need the particulars, the names. Enough to say that both were Moira's lovers. Not ex, but current. The guy - in the time-honoured tradition - blew his brains all over the ceiling of an out-of-town motel room. The woman - the girl, eighteen fucking years old, insurance clerk with a head full of Hollywood - she took a long, long swim. That was down near Chula Vista, on a border run with some of Moira's biker buddies - the same guys who'd pitch her off the back of a Harley in Frank's drive some nights if she was too wrecked to drive home and too bored to stay out. The details don't matter all that much. The association though, that matters. Because these are events which are to haunt Frank later, in another place, another country. It's that kind of town, he tells himself at the time. There are always casualties. In LA, in this business, there are always casualties. Nevertheless, like I say, these deaths come back to haunt him.

  One more thing you need to know is this. Frank's got a maid. A Spanish maid. Frank speaks some Spanish - which is something he's taken the trouble to learn, something he's picked up, from his connections with the porn guys here in Madrid. Which helps them get along, Frank and Juanita. She's a good woman, a decent woman. She's a hard worker too, and she knows how to work without distracting Frank from his work. I guess you'd want to know if she's attractive, and the answer to that would be, yes. She's kind of on the skinny side with small breasts, but she's got nice hair, good skin, good teeth. Okay, she's got hard little eyes - kind of judgmental - but they light up when she smiles, which is a lot. But Frank - believe it or not - is not the kind of guy who'd fuck his own maid. Not at his time of life anyhow. Christ, he can't even keep up with his wife. Don't forget, Frank's in his fifties now. He'd kept a close eye on Moira for a while though. You could never tell with Moira.

  Is any of this important? Maybe. For what comes next, maybe it is. But the most important thing about Juanita is that she's got a couple of kids - a boy, Paco - a robust kid with a birthmark on his face - and a girl, Luisa - kind of quiet some of the time, but knows how to get her own way (and I mean that as a positive thing). Seven and eight respectively. Sometimes, Juanita brings the kids to work. This is not something that Frank minds because, like I say, most of the time she lets him work in peace. Again, call it a trade-off. In fact, forget the trade-off, let's be fucking honest here. The truth is that Frank actually enjoys the days Juanita brings her kids to work. His wife is sleeping arou
nd all over town (leaving, don't forget, a couple of suicides in her wake). He's got the usual bullshit with finance, schedules, availability of actors - trying to get that goddamned Canada picture to fly. Which it won't. But with the sun shining and those lively, brown-skinned kids laughing and splashing around in the pool, life doesn't seem so bad. So, sometimes Frank sets aside his work to keep an eye on the kids, making sure they don't drown, making sure they stay in the shallow end of the pool, while their mother makes the beds, pulls Frank's scalp and pubic hair out of the plug-hole, scrapes the black off the pan where he's burnt the fucking bacon (again), wrestles with the goddamned useless, pile-of-shit vacuum-cleaner that Moira bought off the web just because she liked the fucking colour of it. (And when you put it like that it sounds kind of shitty doesn't it? But hey, fuck it, c’est la vie, and no use weeping. Frank pays well, if that helps.) Sometimes, catching sight of her scrubbing the floor in her tight jeans, her ass sticking in the air, Frank hears a voice from the ghost of his younger self, and what it says is, Why not fuck your maid Frank? But like I say, this is not something that interests Frank. Not really. And where the hell was I? The pool. Yes, the pool. So the kids play in the pool and sometimes Frank even gets in the water himself, and they play a kind of half-assed water polo with a basket ball. He plays them ten cents a point and lets them win every time. (Listen, you think back to Frank's relationship with his own kids, you can make a lot of this. You don't have to, but you can.) Anyhow, at lunch time, Frank will pull the patio furniture into the shade, set out a bowl of potato chips, some salad, cheese and bread and salami. A pitcher of Kool-Aid. A weak gin and tonic for the grown-ups. And so they'll have lunch, and it's almost like a family thing - so much so that the kids start calling Frank, "Uncle" Frank. (This is something which breaks Frank's goddamned heart when he thinks about it now, but we'll get to that.) They count and jangle their winnings from the half-assed water polo and they laugh about how bad Uncle Frank is at the game. They point at Frank's gut and they call him La ballena - the whale. Juanita doesn't mention Moira, but she has a way of not mentioning Moira which tells Frank everything he needs to know about what she thinks on the subject. Mostly, they talk about local news, sport. Cars. There's a lot of talk about cars. She's got a hankering for an SUV and it's Chrysler this and Toyota that. This is Juanita learning to be an American, which Frank is happy to help with. Occasionally, if the kids wander out of earshot or get back in the pool, she might mention some incident from her wet-back days, or make a dismissive reference to her husband - how he split for Detroit with his cousin Antonio and never came back. This is something which amounts to this: life is tough; tougher for some than for others. It's also something which says: Senor Costigan, I really fucking need this job. Which is when her eyes are at their hardest. Which is when Frank is at his most reassuring. One thing she doesn't say is this: Frank, how do I get into movies? And God bless her for that, is how Frank feels. Even so, Frank doesn't know quite just how much he likes Juanita and the kids until Moira comes home early one day, before lunch, a little high, probably fresh from some buffed-up, pec-and-bicep, muscle-head's bed. What are those fucking brats doing in the pool, she says.

  Swimming, Frank says, and lets it go at that. He should maybe have knocked the teeth right out of her ugly fucking mouth. He doesn't though. If you discount the stuff Frank did in Nam - which was a hell of a lot more than hitting, which was a place with different rules, which are things Frank isn't proud of, which are things he never talks about - he's never struck a woman in his life, and though he feels like doing it, he's not going to start now. Frank knows what that damn town, what that goddamned coke can do to your head - and Moira's been taking heavy hits of both just lately. Plus, what's been lost in this so far is that Frank still loves his wife - you'll have to trust me on this, but she isn't always this way. Which is the long way of saying that Frank is prepared to make allowances. Hell, who doesn't spit out a tasty gobbet of spite now and then?

  But Moira? Hell no, she won't drop it. They've probably got fucking scabies, or herpes, or some damn thing, she says. You want to waste time and money draining the fucking pool and starting over?

  The kids, meanwhile, have stopped batting the ball around in the pool. They've quit laughing too. They may or may not have heard every word she's said, but they can feel a storm coming alright. So there they are, waist-high in water, their dark eyes looking from Frank to Moira and back to Frank, then settling on Frank - on Uncle Frank - to see what he's going to do about the situation. Luisa is kind of nervous, but Paco, there's mischief in his eyes, like he can't wait for the storm to start howling and tearing up the trees, just to put a little spice in his day.

  Well, here's what Uncle Frank does. He'd been kneeling by the pool, testing the water with his hand (which is habit - all summer, the same temperature, the same blue sky, the same goddamned traffic droning down there on the highway - which, apart from the times his nearest neighbour is drunk enough to play his stereo too loud - and always the same fucking album - is the only thing disturbs the tranquillity). So, testing the water, wondering whether or not to get in, when Moira had arrived, scattering the gravel with her braking, slamming the door on the BMW, striding up over the patio - blue jeans, white T-shirt, black motorcycle jacket - all the time searching in her shoulder bag for something which had most likely already disappeared up her nostrils via a ten buck bill; that look on her face - a kind of agitated frown you can see bunched between her eyes even with her shades on - a look which says, Why is everybody in the world a goddamned asshole save me? He stands up very slowly, shaking the water from his hand. He's calm - he's not a man easily thrown, this is one thing you can say about Frank - but he suddenly feels very old, very tired in the face of this unexpected and, more to the point, unwarranted, vitriol. As he stands he's going through his options, which include, by the way, throwing the bitch into the pool and to hell with the couple of hundred bucks worth of coke she's probably got stashed in the pocket of her jeans by way of back-up. But when he turns he sees that Juanita is standing just inside the patio doors. There's a pillowcase in her hands which she was about to shake out and the look on her face - and you don't need a fucking master’s degree in facial expression to read it - the look in those hard little eyes, is a look which tells Frank that she's heard every damn, honey-like word which had just dripped from his wife's lips.

  Hey kids, Frank says, a buck for the first one can swim me five widths. What do you say? Okay, make sure you stay up this end. Okay? Then he turns back to Moira. He speaks quietly, so that she's the only one can hear him. Gritted teeth, is the expression springs to mind. Let me tell you what's going to happen in the next couple of minutes, he says. No, just shut your fucking mouth and listen. Okay? What's going to happen is this: you're going to turn around with a smile on your face. You're going to walk over to Juanita. You're going to tell her what a shitty day you've had - you know how it is, all of that - and then you're going to apologise to her, for what you said about her kids. You think you can do that for me, Moira?

  Fuck you Frank, she says. Fuck the brats and fuck her too.

  I mean it Moira, Frank says. I'm not fucking around here.

  Okay, she says, so Frank's not fucking around. Big fucking deal. But what, I'd like to know, is Frank going to do about it if I don't?

  Frank's got nothing of course. Nothing except anger and attitude. Which he uses. What will Frank do, he says. Frank might just have to take you back to where he found you, and this time he might just nail the fucking door shut. (Which sounds as dumb and empty a threat as has ever been made, but only if you don't know Frank, the way he says it.)

  Frank, Honey, Moira says, I admire the hyperbole. But really, I'm going to be honest with you now; you don't scared me. And what's more, you never will. Then she gives him a nice warm smile.

  No? Frank says. We'll see. And now there's something else on Frank's face that he can feel from the inside, something which he knows makes him look suddenly a hell of a lot bigger
and more dangerous than he did just a second ago, something which swells his chest and broadens his shoulders. Again, call it the war.

  Moira's smile doesn't falter, but Frank's succeeded in wiping the gloss off of it. Oh, what the hell, she says. She turns quickly, and crosses the patio. Frank listens. She says she's had a hard morning, professional disappointments, her fucking agent blah blah, and look what that asshole Guillam's done to my fucking hair (and she had just had it trimmed and touched and teased); lost her fucking credit card too if you can believe it, and so on and so forth. Frank can see Juanita melting - thawing - a little. No laughter ensues, nothing like that. But the situation ends a good deal less ugly than it had begun.

  Moira, she's a natural-born actor, and she can be one conciliatory bitch when she wants to be. Which is why this. It's true that later, after Juanita had left (Frank had let her off early and put a little extra in her pay packet) Moira had said to Frank: I'm going to make you pay for that, you squat little bastard; but after, the next day … Well, I've already told you that Frank loves her. I've also told you that she can be one conciliatory bitch. She tells Frank she's sorry. Tells him she's been doing too much of the goddamned Bolivian marching powder - and hell, Frank, you know how that is. Tells him she's going to straighten out, get back to work, toe the old straight and narrow. I've never forgotten that you saved my life Frank, she says. No matter what. I've never forgotten that. On top of this, they make love for the first time in weeks. And Frank? Frank swallows the whole act. He swallows it because he wants to swallow it. And for a while, all is as tolerable as hell.