A Child across the Sky

by Jonathan Carroll

  "Hey, did you see that? The bird on my back?"

  "Did you see your tattoo? Take a look."

  It was gone, of course. My tattoo had flown away.

  "Weber's still got his, Phil, in case you're interested."

  "What does it mean?"

  "It means you know who you are. You just said it – you're all right."

  If only it had been that simple.

  Time passed. Midnight was a hit. Weber met and fell in love with Cullen fames. She said no. He dreamt of Rondua. She still said no. He came back to California to prepare Wonderful but couldn't stop talking about this woman. When I met her she was very nice and in some ways special, but not the end of the rainbow. I liked her tall husband and child more.

  Venasque died during the filming of Wonderful. A stroke in a motel room outside Santa Barbara. The last time I saw him we'd watched Miami Vice on television, his favorite show, and then taken the animals for a long walk. I already knew he was going away for a week of training with one of his students. He had no school and never taught classes as such, but there were students, and I assumed they learned from him the same way I did.

  "Are you going to the ocean?"

  "First to the ocean and then the mountains. Maybe just the ocean. Maybe it won't take that long. I don't know yet."

  "Have you ever failed with a student? Not given them what they needed?"

  "Sure. I wanted to work with Weber but he wasn't interested."

  "Will he be all right?"

  "I don't know, Phil. He's still got a bird on his back."

  He was dead a couple of days later. One strange thing was the pig died very soon after Venasque. Harry Radcliffe kept Big Top at his house in Santa Barbara afterward because there was a yard for the dog to enjoy. I guess it's still there, the last living magic of the great Venasque.

  Have I ever seen the man here? No.

  The earthquake came, Weber finished Wonderful, I began Midnight Always Comes. He left for Europe as soon as post-production was done, saying he'd be back when there was reason to come back. That turned out to be over a year later and only long enough to pack boxes for his move east.

  You've heard the rest. You've heard most of this story from Weber, but as you can see, there were small details to be filled in. And what of Pinsleepe, vis a vis the gospel according to Strayhorn? Or Sasha? Even little Flea? Later.

  I will tell you one thing – I didn't kill the dog.

  "Yes, you did!"

  "The fuck I did!"

  "Okay, Sean, James, that's enough. B.D., you wanted to say something?"

  "I wanted to say this discussion is bullshit and boring."

  I don't know what it was about the man, but whenever he said anything, the room went silent for a few beats before the noise picked up again. Maybe it was his reputation. Or else all of us kept sizing him up. This was the strongest thing he'd said since we began work.

  "Go on."

  "There's nothing else. All this about what is the 'real evil.' You sound like Jehovah's Witnesses. We've been here two days bullshitting around and getting nowhere. You want to know what evil is? Evil's a gun. Evil's a creep who puts bullets in it. Evil's a tree that's been split in half by lightning.

  "It isn't some thing. It's everything, turned bad. A kid's bicycle is okay, but when you see it turned over and blood on the ground nearby then it's something else."

  Sean, angry at having been interrupted in her yelling bout with James, asked aggressively, "What was the worst thing you ever did?"

  B.D. sneered. "I wouldn't tell you, even if I knew you. Because something that bad, I don't want anyone to know."

  Wyatt leaned over and said quietly in my ear, "This is going nowhere fast."

  I nodded and stood up. "Let's break for the day."

  No one needed urging. The room emptied in about twenty-five seconds.

  "What am I doing wrong, Finky Linky?"

  "B.D. is right – we are boring ourselves with so much talk. It sounds like kids sitting around a campfire telling their best gross-out stories. 'What's the worst thing you ever did?' Who cares? I'm sure Blow Dry has the most hideous tale, but even if he does, we'd react to it like kids, say 'That's really gross,' and wait for someone else to one-up him."

  Walking out of the rehearsal room, I thought for the hundredth time of what I was trying to do. Was our purpose to make a couple of frightening, black scenes which, when slipped cleverly into the greater context of Midnight Kills, would finish the picture satisfactorily? Or did "they" want a clearly moral statement, something saying Bloodstone and anything he stood for was sick and rotten?

  What Phil had succeeded in doing in three films was to make a monster into a kind of perverse antihero. Kids loved Bloodstone. They wore T-shirts of him holding a magnifying glass. Over a hundred thousand posters were sold. People magazine did a cover story on him. According to the article, Midnight was one of the most popular films in Beirut. Soldiers on both sides would go into theaters with their guns and, when favorite parts came on, wave them and shout his name.

  Cullen believed we should make an anti-Bloodstone, anti-Midnight statement.

  Wyatt was convinced that if Phil had touched some heart of darkness, it was by lucky mistake. Whatever he'd created to do, it had since been destroyed. As a result, our job was to finish a film that, without those special Strayhorn scenes, would just be another silly horror film destined to go nowhere a few months after it came out and thus effectively defused.

  There were other possibilities that only added to the confusion. One of them, which was seductive, came from a literary critic I'd recently been reading. According to him, "The genre to which a story belongs can be changed just by adding or subtracting a few lines." Before leaving for New York, I'd told Wyatt to try taking Midnight Kills in a humorous direction, just to see what he'd do with it. What he came up with was funny and surreal, but inappropriate and too much like his old television show. Yet the idea of changing the whole direction by "adding or subtracting a few lines" stayed with me and kept coming up in my thoughts.

  I still believed that by sitting around and throwing out ideas with the people who'd be involved in the scenes, we'd find something important. So far, we'd come up with nothing.

  Wyatt asked if I wanted to go to dinner, but the worthless afternoon had taken away any appetite I might have had.

  "Then let's go to a movie. What do you want to see?"

  "No, thanks."

  "You want to go dancing? We can go to Jack Nicholson's –"

  "Wyatt, don't worry about me. I'm all right. Discouraged, but all right. Thank you for your concern."

  He dropped me off at the house and took the car to visit a friend. I let myself in and, without thinking, walked to the kitchen for something to eat. Not that I wanted it, but it was something to do until I could come up with something better.

  "Weber? Is that you?"

  "Hi, Sash. Yeah."

  She came in smiling widely. "The results of some of my tests came back today, and the doctors were really positive."

  "That's good news! Oh, Sash, I'm glad to hear it."

  "Something else, too! I guess I should let Wyatt tell you, but he keeps saying he will and then he doesn't. He went to the lab and had a blood test when you were in New York. His blood count is the best it's been in almost two years!"

  Ever try looking happy when you were suddenly scared shitless? Good luck trying. Sasha's news sent a hundred ants crawling over me. Their better health had to be linked to what we were doing. But what happened if we failed? What happened if the new scenes were lousy, or 'only' good, and didn't reach the level that had been prescribed?

  "You know, the strangest memory came to me today. After I got back from the doctor's, I felt like seeing a film, something positive and hopeful. First I put on Fellini's Amarcord but then realized I wasn't in the mood for that. So I put on your film Babyskin. I forgot how funny and generous it is, Weber.

  "The scene at the end when the two old people go sw
imming naked in the moonlight? God, that went straight through me! But you don't feel sorry for them. You know why they're there and that it was inevitable, but you just want them to be happy swimming and face what has to come later.

  "But that's not what I wanted to tell you. About halfway through, you have a scene where they put the party hat on the old man's dog –"

  "That was Nicholas Sylvian's idea. The one where he goes into the man's room and wakes him up with licks?"

  "Yes, but you know what it reminded me of? When my father was dying he told me one day that the sicker he got, the more his breath smelled like our dog's. When I remembered that, it was like someone threw a rock through a window in my head. It's always so crazy what sets off memories."

  The same thing happened to me a few hours later. I don't look at my films very often. If I do, I see only mistakes and missed chances. But Babyskin was my first "European" film and had all the glamour and excitement that goes with that phrase. I worked with a superb team; my life was heavenly.

  That night I'd planned to look at all the Midnight films yet again (Finky Linky refused to do it anymore and Sasha fled to the other side of the house when she heard the first notes of the Steve Reich score), but it had been such a down day that I decided to put on Babyskin and watch that fortunate part of my history instead.

  I couldn't have watched more than fifteen minutes before I saw something that made me jump up, eject the film, and slide in Midnight Always Comes in its place.

  After searching, I found that clever scene where Bloodstone walks into the young couple's bedroom with a small tape recorder. Turning it on, we hear the very loud, unmistakable sound of people having a great time fucking.

  "He took that from me!"

  Out came the Strayhorn tape, in went the Gregston.

  The night of the old woman's birthday. Her husband goes outside to piss, or so he tells her. He's given her no present that day and she's heartbroken. Suddenly from out there we hear very faintly the sound of Bix Beiderbecke's orchestra playing "That's My Secret Now." The woman, scared but curious, gets up and goes to the window. Her husband is outside on the lawn, kneeling next to the gramophone he's bought for her birthday.

  "He took that from Babyskin! I'll be damned."

  I put his film back in and watched the tape recorder scene again. Same blue and blinding white lighting, Paul Delvaux shadows, room set up exactly the same way. . . . It was the whole look and mood of my scene.

  "I'll be damned."

  What else had he snitched? Was that the right word, or was I only miffed at myself for not having realized it till now? Filmmakers steal from each other like pirates, but this rubbed me the wrong way somehow.

  It was one in the morning. When Finky Linky came in at four, I was still watching Midnight movies and taking notes.

  "Why didn't you tell me about your blood test?"

  "Because I don't know what it means. I've had more remissions than Loretta Young's had face lifts."

  "But you heard about Sasha's results?"

  "Yes. I know there's probably a connection, Weber, but I didn't want to start thinking about it because it might be nothing and then I'll have gotten excited for nothing.

  "Listen, I was with a friend tonight who has AIDS. You know what's most pathetic about him? His hope.

  "He's heard they've found a cure in Czechoslovakia using carrots. Laetrile is back in if you have the money to go to Mexico for the quack treatments; he's considering it. And he has a friend who's considering getting injections of Interferon in his brain because he heard that's how they cure rabies sometimes. Can you imagine making that kind of insane connection?

  "I don't want to be like this guy, crazy with hope and strange possibilities. I was like that when I first got cancer, but they're not good friends to have in this situation. That's what I've been telling Sasha: You can be optimistic, but don't be hopeful."

  "What's the difference?"

  "Optimists know they're going to die, but they look everywhere for a cure right up until the end. People who're hopeful are convinced there's a remedy; they just have to find it. That's why they're so bitter when they realize it isn't always true."

  "You mean you're a realist?"

  "Hell, no. A realist knows when he gets leukemia he's going to die."

  I told him about the similarities between Phil's films and my own and showed him some samples. He was amused.

  "So? He knew a good thing when he saw it."

  Early the next morning Sasha woke me because there was an urgent phone call from the police. It was Dominic Scanlan asking if I'd seen Charlie Peet.

  I might have slept two hours. "Dominic, who the fuck is Charlie Peet?"

  "Blow Dry, asshole. That's his real name. Have you seen him?"

  "No, why?"

  "Because he didn't go home last night and didn't report for duty this morning. He doesn't do things like that."

  "He was at rehearsal yesterday afternoon."

  "We know, but that's the last anyone saw him. All right, Weber, I'll get back to you if anything comes up. Hey, how is he as an actor, anyway?"

  "He's playing Bloodstone, you know. He'll probably be perfect."

  "You ain't kidding! He's the real thing. Take it easy."

  Trying to go back to sleep was impossible. I lay there thinking about the dead actor who'd gone around impersonating Strayhorn until he ended up looking like a French fry left in the microwave too long. Then I thought about the psychopath at the graveyard the day of Phil's funeral who got his fifteen minutes of fame doing Bloodstone with a blank pistol. Next came the kid in Florida who'd killed two kids a la Bloodstone in one of the films. Now the disappearance of Charlie Peet.

  Can evil be created, or does it always grow alongside the road like some poisonous mushroom, waiting to be picked and eaten?

  Had Phil created evil by inventing Bloodstone?

  I got out of bed again and went back to the television room. The windows there faced onto the small backyard where a redwood picnic table and two benches sat under a palm tree. I heard quiet voices and recognized Sasha's and Wyatt's.

  She was asking him why we were so concerned about finishing Midnight Kills. Wyatt said because all artists want their work completed, even if it's a horror film.

  Even.

  2

  A strange yet sure sign that my work is going well is that I often forget to pray at night. Since childhood, I have always tried to say the Lord's Prayer, with a few postscripts added at the end. I pray every night but I don't ask for much. I just say thank you. Sometimes it's habitual, like having to get in a certain position before being able to fall asleep, but that's rare. I thank Him for giving me a good life and for keeping the animals at bay.

  Whatever was happening with Strayhorn and Pinsleepe was only further proof to me that there are other "animals," yet life and death are the only domesticated ones we know and will touch.

  It was about a week after we'd started filming that I realized I hadn't been saying my nightly thanks. It had happened before when I was working and I didn't like it; didn't like myself for being ungrateful.

  But the neglect meant a blindness toward everything but the work. I'd be staggeringly hungry because of forgetting to eat, unusually grateful to sit down because I'd been standing for six hours.

  When Blow Dry still didn't show up, I decided to try something else until he returned. Along with the cameraman for my other films, Wyatt and I went around shooting what I call "object scenes": the sun over an alley at six in the afternoon, an empty gas station at three in the morning. We were looking for a variety of moods – the open-air loneliness of a used car lot, the excitement of a woman taking three dresses with her into a try-on room in a department store.

  We didn't specifically know where we'd use these shots when we were finished, only that some of them would be in our scenes and it was important to have them. Then, as we moved around town filming bus stops and gun stores or people passing out flyers for massage parlors on Holly
wood Boulevard, the three of us fell into a kind of unspoken understanding and enthusiasm for what we were doing. Once while having lunch at a hotdog stand, Wyatt said "Griffith Park!" and we finished as fast as we could so we could get over to the park and start looking immediately.

  When we weren't out filming, I was either working with the people who'd come from New York or looking through art books in the library, particularly photography of the 1930s.

  The New York group lived in adjoining rooms at a hotel in Westwood and spent most of their time together, which meant when Wyatt and I joined them, they'd already come up with some intriguing possibilities. We'd shown them Midnight Kills and, although their initial reactions were disgust and disappointment, they'd since taken it upon themselves to come up with something that they hoped would raise the level of the film via their contributions.

  There were Sean and James, and the third was the amazing Max Hampson. Max was probably the best actor in our group, but the reason Wyatt and I hadn't first considered him was because of his physical condition. He was about forty but had had cancer for over ten years and at least as many operations in that time. One of his legs had been amputated and he usually had to use a wheelchair because neither his arms nor his "good" leg had the strength to support him.

  When you heard his story, you knew here was one of those human beings whose lives are one long bruise. His twin sister contracted meningitis when they were children and became little more than a vegetable. Max's parents were alcoholics who found a way of blaming him for the girl's hopeless condition. Somehow he survived this environment and went to college, where he studied business. On graduating, he started a small travel agency that specialized in trips to exotic places. It did well, and he opened a second office. It succeeded too, and he was considering opening a third when a broken leg from a skiing trip didn't heal and it was discovered he had cancer.