A Child across the Sky

by Jonathan Carroll

  "You mean does he look like Bloodstone? No, he's sort of middle size and balding."

  "But it's so violent, Weber! I've seen horror films before, but that was the worst. How about that part where the dogs eat the child?"

  "That's from Hieronymus Bosch, 'The Garden of Earthly Delights.' Most of his worst scenes come from famous paintings or books he reads. Did I tell you Phil graduated summa with a double major in Physics and Art History? For years the only thing he wanted to do was restore paintings."

  "How did he end up in horror films?"

  "A month before we graduated he decided he wanted to make movies."

  He thought she was too good to be true.

  "Phil, please go out there and talk to her!"

  "I'm making the salad." He wouldn't look at me.

  "You're not making salad, you're hiding. Don't forget I was your roommate for four years."

  "That's true, Weber, she's pretty, she's rich, and kind? Bullshit."

  "She is. Word of honor."

  "She knows I make the Midnight films? That I play Bloodstone? You told her?"

  "I told her everything. You write 'em, direct 'em, act in 'em. . . . Now give me the fucking salad and go talk to her!"

  They fell in love over the dog, I think. A black Chinese Shar-Pei named Flea. Phil called them "sharpies."

  On their first formal date, he took Sasha to Beverly Center to see the new film by the Taviani brothers. While they were riding the escalator up to that monstrous beehive of a mall, a bunch of teenage girls recognized "Bloodstone" and mobbed him for autographs. He was always nice about that, but they got pushy and demanding. It reached the point where, grabbing Sasha's hand, he just ran. The kids followed until Phil pulled a few quick moves and ducked them into a pet shop.

  I know the store because a hamster there costs about as much as dinner at Spago. But one of them (they later disagreed over who) saw the little black pile of wrinkles in a corner cage.

  One of the oldest homilies I know is don't buy a dog from a pet store because they're inevitably sick. But Phil said he'd never seen anything like that and wasn't it great? Sasha said it looked like a piece of dehydrated fruit: drop water on it and it'd blow up to full size. Phil didn't laugh. It was the most peculiar animal he'd ever seen. He paid with a credit card and picked the creature up after the film.

  It sat on the back seat of the car as regal and still as a Bugatti hood ornament – until it threw up on Sasha's suede purse. When they got back to Phil's, the puppy continued vomiting – for hours. They took it to an all-night veterinarian who said it was only nerves: getting used to a new life.

  Home again, they ended up singing quietly any song they thought might calm it. Sasha said in the middle of "Yesterday" Phil came up with the name Flea.

  When do people cross the line to love? Wake one morning not only with the full taste of it on the tongue, but the sureness the flavor will stay as long as we work to keep and appreciate it?

  Phil said it differently. To him, you opened your mouth one astounding moment and, with the first unexpected word, realized you were suddenly able to speak and understand an entirely new language, one you'd had no previous knowledge of.

  "You know when you travel in another country how you pick up some words or phrases to get by? 'Donnez-moi le pain,' things like that. This language doesn't work that way. You either know it completely in an instant or you never know it at all. There aren't any Berlitz phrase books, and you can't pick it up on the streets. There are no streets where these words are used.

  "But even if you know the language well, that doesn't mean you can write poems in it."

  "What do you mean?"

  "When I realized Sasha and I were in love, that we both spoke and understood this new language, I got excited as hell. It was our language and we could do anything we wanted with it. Pass your A. P. exam in Italian and you think you're pretty hot stuff, right? But then read Dante or Pavese and you realize you understand Italian, which is great, but you can't sing to the gods with those same words the way they did."

  "You mean your love wasn't enough?"

  "You know me, Weber, I always want more. As soon as I knew about this new language, I wanted us to move up to the next level and communicate without words. ESP or something. Maybe life is only greed."

  The dog puked for three days. Sasha came home once to change her clothes and give me a full report. When we talked again it was over the phone, when she called to say the dog was still sick and she was going to sleep on Phil's couch.

  She did. From our time together in Vienna I knew she was willing to go to bed fast, but her relationship with Phil went differently. For a long time he didn't make any gestures in that direction and neither did she. He slept in his bedroom and she slept on the couch. They spent four straight days together talking and nursing Flea back to health. He cooked for them and never stopped asking questions about her life. Sometimes she told him the truth, sometimes she lied.

  "That's when I knew I was coming close to loving him: When I started telling so many lies. I was afraid he wouldn't like me. I wanted to say all the right things."

  "Did you lie to me when we met?"

  "No, because I think I knew right away you and I weren't meant to love each other that way, Weber. Partly because you pitied me in the beginning. Pity is bad stuff to build your foundation with.

  "Phil listened so carefully to me. I found myself talking less and less because I sensed he was really thinking about whatever I said.

  "In Vienna, in that cafй? Your face had so much concern on it that I felt demented or handicapped. Grateful you were listening but convinced you did it because you're a nice guy, not 'cause I was an interesting person.

  "Phil was intrigued."

  She watched the first two Midnight films in silence, holding his hand the whole time. She made him turn off the set when he got up to go to the toilet.

  She gave him a back massage. He made her Yugoslavian cevapcici. Flea felt good enough to go out on the patio and sniff around. The dog had to whine to come back in because they were kissing for the first time.

  The man she'd lived with in Vienna was a rock musician who used her and her money unthinkingly but felt no compunction about treating her badly.

  Phil was gallant and shy. He wasn't a good-looking man and wasn't sure his talent or intelligence was enough to hold her. He'd spent so much of his young life alone, or worrying about how to impress any girl, that even in his successful thirties when he was a movie star and a wealthy man, he wanted to be loved for what he was, not what he'd become. But Hollywood is not a good town to find that kind of understanding person. The actor Stephen Abbey was purported to have said, "You come to Hollywood to get famous, not laid. The greatest fuck in the world is seeing your name first on the screen. Period."

  Their love grew tentatively and genuinely. They both wanted to believe, but were both smart and hurt enough to be careful of false love's Northern Lights.

  One morning she called from a phone booth and said he'd asked her to move in: What should she do? That afternoon, Phil called from another phone booth and announced he'd asked her to move in. Did I think that was a good idea?

  They took a trip together to Japan. When they returned they spoke with the exaggeration and intimacy of excited newlyweds. I was sure they'd get married, but they continued to live together and seemed pleased enough with that.

  Sasha became involved in Phil's production company, Fast Forward, and showed herself to be a shrewd and sometimes innovative businesswoman who was largely responsible for the company's involvement in a couple of successful projects outside the Midnight series. She told me Phil had so much confidence in both her and their relationship that it naturally spilled over into other things. I told her she'd just never found the right spot to land before, but that didn't mean she wasn't capable.

  She shook her head. "I know I'm capable, Weber, I've never had any reason to apply it to anything. Using your analogy, it was always easier flying around
from place to place. Landing takes effort: constantly checking your dials and taking the plane off automatic pilot."

  I moved to New York at the height of their happiness. My last picture of them was standing together in the driveway of Phil's house in Laurel Canyon, Flea investigating the rosebushes nearby. They had their hands behind their backs. As I was driving away, they turned around and quickly back again, both wearing those gruesome Bloodstone masks that were in the novelty stores then. They waved. Flea looked up from the bushes, saw two monsters where his friends had just been, and barked.

  Later they came to New York for a visit. Over dinner, Phil sheepishly admitted they were thinking about either getting married or having a child.

  "Can't you do both?"

  Sasha said, "One thing at a time."

  Whenever they called from California, things sounded better than ever.

  Until three weeks before he killed himself, when I got this letter from Sasha.

  Weber.

  Phil and I aren't living together anymore. The whole thing is still tentative and not worked out, so neither of us wants to talk about it yet. You'll be the first to know when we make whatever decisions. Please tell Cullen and Danny. We'll be in touch. We promise.

  I called many times to hear what was going on, but the only thing that said hello was Bloodstone's voice on their answering machine. I told it I was around if they wanted to talk or visit or whatever might help. I heard nothing more until Sasha called to tell me he was dead.

  "Sasha?"

  "Weber? Hi. I was expecting your call." She sounded so old and dry.

  "I – uh – I had to call again, Sasha."

  "I know. You got Phil's tapes?"

  "You know?"

  "Yes. I got one too in the mail right after we talked this morning."

  "Can you tell me what was on it?"

  "It was a video of Phil. Phil and Flea sitting on the couch. It's hard to . . . I –" Silence.

  "Sasha?"

  A long intake of breath, then: "He said he was going to show me my future.

  "The next shot is of me in a hospital bed. Weber, I'm very pregnant. I thought I was there to have a child, but it's not that; I'm in the hospital because I have cancer and they're going to try and cut it out of me."

  "Are you pregnant?"

  "I can't be. Phil and I hadn't slept together in months. I just had my period, too.

  "Weber, Phil came on after it was over and said everything depends on you. What was he talking about?" She began crying. "What's going on, Weber? Damn it! Where is he? My God. My God, where is he?"

  "Wait. Sasha, sh-h-h. Wait a minute, honey. Was there anything else on the tape?"

  "No. Just the tape and a Xerox copy of 'Mr. Fiddlehead.'"

  "What's that?"

  "A short story. It was going to be his next project."

  "All right. Do me a favor: Hang up and go plug the tape back in. See if there's anything else on it."

  "Okay." She didn't ask even why – hung up and called back a few minutes later. "There's nothing else. Just me pregnant in a hospital with cancer. Are you coming out?"

  "Yes. I'll be there sometime tomorrow."

  "I called his parents. You know what his father said? 'All right. When is the funeral?' Only that, completely calm. 'When is the funeral?'"

  "Did you call his sister, Jackie?"

  "The father said she can't be reached. Off studying bugs in Nigeria or something. They'll send her a telegram. I can't get over that. 'All right. When is the funeral?' That's it. Only that. 'Hey, mister, your son's dead!' 'All right. When is the funeral?'"

  An hour later I'd packed a bag and was sitting by the window thinking about everything that had happened.

  When Sasha asked what was on the tapes Phil had sent me, I said only a short goodbye from him and some goof-around silliness we'd filmed with a video camera when I was last there.

  After getting off the phone I put the first casette in the machine again, but there was nothing new to see. Nothing on the other two either.

  I'd turned off the lights in the room because I wanted to think in the dark. After a while I realized I'd been looking across at the naked woman's unlit place without being aware of it. When both my eyes and mind came back into focus, I realized someone was sitting near the window of her dark apartment too. Was she looking over without being aware of me? I smiled. That would have made a nice scene in a movie.

  The phone rang. I picked it up but kept looking at my dark neighbor.

  "Weber? It's Cullen."

  "Hi."

  "That's all you have to say? 'Hi'? What was on the tapes?"

  After I explained it to her in a very quiet voice, almost a whisper, there was a long silence. Then she said, "You poor man. Home movies of the apocalypse, huh? I can't imagine what it would be like to watch that. But you know something? It reminds me of what Phil said once when I asked him about a new Midnight film that was about to come out. I wanted to know if it was as gross as the others. Know what he said? 'I behaved very well in it. You'll be utterly ashamed of me.'"

  The next morning the doorbell rang at seven: a postman with an express letter from California, mailed the day before. Signing for it, I looked at the red, white, and blue envelope addressed to me in Strayhorn's handwriting.

  Inside was the short story Sasha had mentioned earlier, "Mr. Fiddlehead." Neatly typed. Nothing else – no note from Phil or notations on the story itself. There was no author's name anywhere, so I assumed it had been written by Phil.

  MR. FIDDLEHEAD

  On my fortieth birthday Lenna Rhodes invited me over for lunch. That's the tradition – when one of us has a birthday there's lunch, a nice present, and a good laughing afternoon to cover the fact we've moved one more step down the staircase.

  We met years ago when we happened to marry into the same family. Six months after I said yes to Eric Rhodes, she said it to his brother Michael.

  Lenna got the better end of that wishbone: She and Michael are still delighted with each other, while Eric and I fought about everything and nothing and then got divorced.

  But to my surprise and relief, they were a great help to me during the divorce, even though there were obvious difficulties climbing over some of the thornbushes of family and blood allegiance.

  They live in a big apartment up on 100th Street with long halls and not much light. But the gloom of the place is offset by their kids' toys everywhere, colorful jackets stacked on top of one another, coffee cups with WORLD'S GREATEST MOM and DARTMOUTH written on the side. Theirs is a home full of love and hurry, children's drawings on the fridge alongside reminders to buy La Stampa. Michael owns an elegant vintage fountain pen store, while Lenna freelances for Newsweek. Their apartment is like their life: high-ceilinged, thought-out, overflowing with interesting combinations and possibilities. It's always nice to go there and share it awhile.

  I felt pretty good about forty years old. Finally there was some money in the bank and someone I liked talking about a trip together to Egypt in the spring. Forty was a milestone, but one that didn't mean much at the moment. I already thought of myself as being slightly middle-aged anyway, but I was healthy and had good prospects, so – So what! to the beginning of my fifth decade.

  "You cut your hair!"

  "Do you like it?"

  "You look very French."

  "Yes, but do you like it?"

  "I think so. I have to get used to it. Come on in."

  We sat in the living room and ate. Elbow, their bull terrier, rested his head on my knee and never took his eye off the table. After the meal was over, we cleared the plates and then she handed me a small red box.

  "I hope you like it. I made them myself."

  Inside the box were a pair of the most beautiful gold earrings I have ever seen.

  "My God, Lenna, they're exquisite! You made these? I didn't know you made jewelry."

  She looked happily embarrassed. "You like them? They're real gold, believe it or not."

  "I bel
ieve it. They're art! You made them, Lenna? I can't get over it. They're really works of art: They look like something by Klimt." I took them carefully out of the box and put them on.

  She clapped her hands like a girl. "Oh, Juliet, they really do look good!"

  Our friendship is important and goes back a long way, but this was a lifetime present – one you gave a spouse or someone who saved your life.

  Before I could say that (or anything else), the lights went out. Her two young sons brought in the birthday cake, forty candles strong.

  A few days later I was walking down Madison Avenue, proudly wearing my new present, when, caught by something there, looked in a jewelry store window. There they were – my birthday earrings. The exact ones. Looking closer, open-mouthed, I saw the price tag: five thousand dollars! I stood and gaped for what must have been minutes. Either way, it was shocking. Had she lied about making them? Spent five thousand dollars for my birthday present? Lenna wasn't a liar and she wasn't rich. All right, so had she copied them in brass or something and just said they were gold to make me feel good? That wasn't her way either. What the hell was going on?

  The confusion emboldened me to walk right into the store. Or rather, walk right up and press the buzzer. After a short wait, someone rang me in. The saleswoman who appeared from behind a curtain looked like a Radcliffe graduate with a degree in bluestocking. Maybe you had to to work in this place.

  "May I help you?"

  "Yes. I'd like to see the pair of these earrings you have in the window."

  She looked at my ears as I touched them, and it was as if a curtain rose from in front of her regard. When I first entered I was only another nobody in a plaid skirt asking for a moment's sniff of their palace air. But realizing I had a familiar five grand hanging on my lobes changed everything: She would be my slave – or friend – for life, I only had to say which.

  "Of course, the Dixies."

  "The what?"

  She smiled, as if to say I was being very funny. It quickly dawned on me that she must have thought I knew very well what "Dixies" were since I was wearing some.