Certainly some possessiveness might be permitted in his case, if he kept it to himself. She was fascinatingly enigmatic. She told him things about himself that were unnerving because they were so dead on and cut around so much sweet, meaningless badinage. A misty eyed portrait she was not. Yet she could exude vulnerability while remaining aloof; she could be direct and artfully ethereal at the same time. Sometimes her sheer control made him feel like an unruly adolescent. It was not so much his ineptitude as her mystique - as though she was capable of instructing her pheromones specifically where to go, and what to do.
Alea, simply, seemed more comfortable with the idea of love. Peter had always considered it beyond his reach, de facto... which was how their conversation had drifted around to it in the first place.
Kathryn had dismissed Peter as a man whose need for a psychological aspirin could always be solved by a bed-slamming, blindingly good fuck. Damon on the other hand, had always suspected there might be room in Peter's life for another human being. But after Damon had met Kathryn, he decided that capacity for friendship would never get a chance to emerge. Or escape.
Friends never actually understood, thought Peter. If they did, they could not help. If they did help, they could only go so far - never far enough. Before, he would have felt stupid attempting to explain to Damon how someone like Alea could draw the will to love back out of its dungeon. Now he thought that he should at least try to explain it to his friend, because he felt sure it had happened. The old Peter, the one pouting at the party, would not have even tried.
He had done her feet and shoulders; now she was doing his. "So - is caring so inadmissible in your life?"
His knotted muscles loosened up under her strong, steady fingers. "No. Just infrequent, that's all. You can't be good at something you've only tried once?"
"Sometimes, Peter, you act as though you're waiting for me to get to the part where I finally reveal just what it is I want from you. The hidden agenda that will permit you to revert to your old walled-in self and justify fire-bombing another relationship ... because nobody will ever truly be good enough for you."
He shifted, suddenly uncomfortable, revealed again. "Wow, I'm sorry if I gave you that—"
"I know, I know," she overrode. "Let me finish. I want you to know something. You are good, Mister Deutsch - very good. At everything you apply yourself to. You stimulate me intellectually, excite me physically, please me generally, and -" she picked at her words, trying for meaning and hitting a difficult patch " - and sometimes I worry that there will come a time when I fail to keep up with you. You're what I want. You're what I think I need in my life. I have freedom and I can count on you if I need stability. Don't sell yourself short. You've fooled yourself into believing that I have no problems or worries and that I'm the rock you can hang onto. You need a great deal of attention and devotion ... but that's okay, you deserve it. You deserve everything good in the world, and I want to be everything I can for you. But don't ever think that what you and I have makes one of us superior, especially not me. If you're leaning on me, understand that it's mutual. As long as we both lean against each other, neither one of us will fall down and go boom."
She tilted his head back, and he saw the imploring expression on her face, a shade of their future together, and it squeezed his heart. She was not invulnerable either. She had been hurt too, sometime, far back. It showed in the way her hands stopped stroking him, in the shininess of her eyes as she spoke.
All his previous desire for her was outshone by the way he wanted her now. And thought he needed her.
"Oh yeah. One more thing. I love you, too."
It was a word he still tripped over. If he had run across the word joyous in a screenplay, he would have sneered at it. Now it described precisely how he felt. He was hooked. Joyously hooked. You could never anticipate the snare that would get you. That was how it got you.
"You can't know how long this has taken me," he said in a diminished voice, thinking perhaps she had known all along. The moment was gem-perfect between them. It radiated. Another night lay ahead, and another beyond that...
He felt content at last. Another silly word to pin down the warmth inside him, too long absent.
The next time Peter saw Alea, she was enthusiastically fucking someone else - or something else, since it probably was not even human.
"I love you! Why do you treat me in this abusive way?"
The little man's bulb nose was red. After slamming the door to his office he slapped his thick-coated arms vigorously, doing a dance in place.
"God! Pueblo de Nuestra Senora Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula! My darling City of the Angels, my goddess, tell me why you are so unseasonably cold this time of year!" He doffed a gray stovepipe hat whose crown was canted forward with age and abuse and unwound himself from a thick crocheted muffler. "Humph! No answers as usual. Only subzero torment!"
A response issued from the darkness behind the big desk. "Indian winter. Who can say?"
The voice was not warm, either. It was a reedy buzz from a crooked-lipped mouth that hated to squander, in speech, time better spent drinking. It pronounced words off-center, with an accent. A stranger might be left with the impression that a huge French cockroach had journeyed far just to scare the little man by addressing him from behind his own desk. But the little man's startlement was momentary.
"Very funny, Maurice." He tossed his hat toward the tarnished rack. He never missed. The visitor flinched, anticipating something heavy and deadly.
"Wah!" The dwarf's feet flashed in the air as the top-heavy desk chair upended and dumped him on his butt. Moths fled toward the ceiling and jostled paper floated like big cartoon snowflakes.
The little man would never let the dwarf see the hint of a leprechaun smile on his face. He had to keep a tone of disdain in his voice. "You know, Maurice, it annoys me beyond mere words when you burgle your way into my office. My office is my sanctuary, my cathedral and here you are, using the font for your toilette." He tugged off thin gloves a finger at a time.
The dwarf, in the light now, shook his head and walked around the desk with his peculiar rolling gait. His head barely cleared the desktop. He lifted a stack of ancient manila file folders from the seat of a bar stool that rose from the chaos, placed it on the floor, clapped his hands of dust, and scampered aboard. "Sorry," was all he said.
The little man sniffed. "I did ask you not to, you know."
"But ... Monsieur Rogoff ... I ..."
"Yes, yes," The little man waved a dismissive hand and used his muffler to rub his nose back to warmth. "You wish to impress me with your stealth and expertise in all things. Fine, good. I am suitably dazzled. I would not summon you at all if I lacked for faith in your multifarious talents, yes?" No need to stroke the dwarf's ego more than necessary, he thought. His brow wrinkled. "And should you do it one more time, I shall find myself forced to engage equivalent talents elsewhere, yes?" It hung in the air. The dwarf was silent. The little man took this as an acceptance of terms, and terminated the topic by saying, "Ah. Good."
The dwarf sanded his stubby sculptor's hands against each other. "To the task at hand, then?"
"Mm. Yes. Once more into the breach, and all that, yes? But on the way over here, Maurice, I was thinking ... a few changes, a few variations on the normal theme. This time I want something for myself. On this case, we get a little extra, I think."
It was clear to the dwarf that his employer was still doping out what his intended deviations from the norm might be. This was stimulating; almost as good as a full flask of cognac. "There is danger, perhaps?" he said, eyes a glint.
"No. As a matter of fact, I want spice, not salt."
"But ... improvements on your classic procedure, Monsieur?" The dwarf checked the grandfather clock. A lot of theoretical time had been lost. The clock was always wrong. So they had never possessed the time to lose in the first place. To Maurice, if it was ten past anything, he deemed himself late for his metronomically recurrent cockt
ail hour.
"Improvements? No?" The little man picked out a careful pathway toward his desk and draped the muffler beside the hat. "As I said - seasoning. A good cut of meat is delicious without seasoning. Sometimes, with the right spices, it can become even better, yes? Not that I wish to equate my work with meat, especially dead meat. Did you bring the death mask?"
"At your feet. You nearly made me crush it."
"Mm." The little man reached into the carpetbag he found next to the desk chair and lifted out a hemispherical plaster bust. He turned it in the light, admiring the strong, archetypally masculine peak of the nose, the brainy forehead, the almost ruthless cut of the mouth. The eyes were blank white convex surfaces. They always were, on a death mask casting. The featureless chalk-toned eyes seemed sealed, locked, mortared up from the inside. On the masque of flawless cyan glass the little man had utilized earlier, the eyes had been holes - equally devoid of detail, yet ingresses, permitting passage in either direction. The glass had been polished, glossy, seductively cool to the touch. By comparison, the plaster half-face was a riot of rough texture; from it still ebbed the heat of its injection and hardening.
That, thought the little man, was a small but apt illustration of the difference between his own work, and that of Maurice - the littler man.
M. Rogoff laid the death mask next to his Rolodex. "And the body?"
The dwarf palpitated excitedly. "Oh, Monsieur! A true work of art. I have outdone myself. Only the most exotic raw materials, coupled with my secret formulae! By my watch, three entire days of curing the medium. I nursed it, yes, I baby-sat it. I think this one may last five, even six entire hours!"
That brought the little man's eyes up. Six! Unprecedented, even for Maurice. The dwarf sitting high across from him had a face like a baked apple, bad teeth, and darting black seeds for eyes. He wore threadbare rags, coat upon sweater upon shirts. Sometimes he smelled unpleasant. Nothing exterior hinted at the ability within that compact and eccentric package. His newest monster was good for six hours. Someday Maurice would reach the little man's own level of craft and skill. Someday he might become capable of making them the way M. Rogoff himself made them. But that would be all - Maurice, sadly, would never cultivate the other talents that the little man wielded with the same measures of care and adroitness.
That was exactly why the little man needed, on this job, to vary his technique somewhat. Thus, spice.
Now that the monster was ready, and he approved - even of the too-perfect nostrils - it was time to click on the switch and watch the whole vast machine go up and down.
Today's cockfight over Sinner had been postponed due to the line producer's dental appointment. Stupid.
Peter strolled down two offices, nodding and smiling at the receptionists and scurrying workers. The xerox machine was down, and a panic was simmering. In places like this, the xerox machines were always down.
Finding a vacant office was easy. Someone had gotten promoted or cashiered. He put his feet up on the desktop, empty except for a blotter, an in-out box with a broken strut and no papers, and a digital clock. The telephone was a given. If there had been no desk in the vacated cubicle, there would still have been a phone.
Peter punched in Damon's number in Vancouver.
Damon laughed out loud for a full thirty seconds before catching his wind. The revenge was tasty. Make those studio munchkins pay, pay, pay. "Still with me, Damon?"
"Jesus, yeah. You're a beautiful man, Peter. Let's talk for a couple of hours."
Peter couldn't damp down the huge, loony grin on his face. Even if nothing had happened, it made him feel good to talk to Damon. "Five-to-ten odds that that club of lawyers and doctors you corralled together are still sitting around trying to equate you with the movin' pitcher biz."
"Au contrai re, ace," Damon said. "A bank account was born yesterday, and you and I are the proud daddies. Five hundred large. You see, it's that time of year again, and those lawyers and doctors discovered a sudden burning urge to invest. The point-five gets us the loan for the rest we'll need. Is the name Flying A-Hole Productions okay by you?"
Peter was glad for a hearty laugh, because the news had otherwise struck him speechless.
"You and I are set, captain. You have but to plonk your ass on a redeye and make an x on some contracts. Of course, I've gotten pretty good at forging your signature, so you don't really have to -"
"This is going to knock her out," Peter whispered.
"Oh - by the way, guess who's interested in the part of the smuggler? Lawrence Banks."
"I have to tie off this mess here, first, and -"
"Banks got interested as soon as I told him you were involved, and that you were the guy who wrote and directed The Big Casino -"
"I haven't even told her about Objet d'Art yet. I wonder if—"
Neither was receiving the other, and their conversation sounded like the madly overlapping dialogue in a Howard Hawks or Robert Altman movie. They both clammed up as if by telepathic agreement. Then each said, "Hold it!" in chorus. They wasted the next few seconds of prime phone time giggling madly.
Peter would have to re-read the Objet d'Art script for the hundredth time. Maybe on the plane. More crucially, he would have to review his contract for Sinner to find whether it would be easier to dump it or do it fast. Nothing in a contract was non-negotiable. You could even change the date on top if you used the right kind of baksheesh. Like brandy into coffee, his thoughts gradually sank into priority order and were assimilated.
Alea floated to the top.
"Peter? This is gonna knock who out?"
"Oh, christ. That's right. You don't know yet."
"Who her? I mean, which her is 'who'? You know what I mean."
Peter chuckled, then sighed. "That's some question, really." His brain filled up with her. "Her name is Alea. I don't really know how to begin this ... listen, Damon, you've got to meet her; she's ... I mean, let me tell you about her!"
"Aha - my friend, your overpowering verbal ineptitude clues me that this is no couch-versus-starlet routine. Unlike the cheap, sleazy affairs littering your past, as perverted, disgusting, and downright illegal as they were. So how're you doing?"
"You don't know how good I feel, buddy. With Kathryn I was never such a wonderful person."
Damon's ready sarcasm was blotted out by the silence of growing awe. "Peter. Dear Peter. All of a sudden this sounds like something that is very real for you."
All the things he wanted to say funneled down to a telling smile. "Yeah. God help me, Damon, she's important to me. She pulled me up out of the quicksand. A friend and a lover."
"Whew." Long-distance static crackled. Damon knew what this meant without having it spelled out. "I thought you were in an emotional nosedive you'd never pull out of, ace. I gave you about two more months, max, before you tied one of those GI Joe plastic parachutes around your wang and leaped off the top of the Black Tower. Nude Director With Uzi Hoses MCA Execs During Death Plunge. But you sound one hundred percent. You actually sound happy. I don't think I've ever seen you do happy before..."
"I'm a fucking rocket. With you and her both, I'm on the verge of the highest high you've ever seen in your chemically enhanced life. I've got to tell her the news!"
"Hang back. First tell me where you met this angel."
"It was - " He felt the jump-start jolt of memory. "It was at that party you roped me into attending. The one at Shepard Bonnard's little hedonist villa in the Hills."
"There were dozens of women there; if I saw her I probably forgot her immediately."
"No, Damon, you'd remember Alea if you saw her even for a second, and she was with me nearly the whole time. You knew everybody on the guest list. Are you positive you didn't see her?"
"Whoa, boy. I know where you're headed. Listen. I was in hustle mode. I probably saw her, didn't track, and moved on. Next case. That party was like a subway car at rush hour, and a lot of pretty kiddies were on the carousel, and nothing personal. Okay?"
<
br /> "Yeah, right. Sorry."
"Trot her along if you can. Scenic Vancouver. Use a gun if she needs convincing."
They both laughed. For a while they repeated themselves, more to run up the phone tab than to insure memory of particulars they already knew inside out.
Peter sped down Cahuenga West, leaving the sunroof on his Mazda open in defiance of the cold snap. The bracing rush of air made him cocky, exuberant. These were sensations that were too long in coming home. For someone like Alea, Damon's news flash could not be contained by another phone call. Peter marveled. What had not been real an hour ago he was now going to deliver in person.
Out of the garage, up the elevator, double-timing down the corridor, he rehearsed, whispering to himself as he dredged up keys and unlocked his apartment deadbolt.
He shut up as soon as he was in. It was as if the very timbre of the air inside his home had tripped sensory alarms planted in his flesh. The door swung quietly back and the very ambience of the room hit him as sour, skewed. Something was wrong here.
His face crinkled the way it normally did when he smelled something offensive. It was not unlikely that he was walking in on a burglary in progress; an innate and nonspecific caution deep in the pit of his stomach warned him that if he was going to proceed, he should do so without a sound. He walked heel-and-toe, circumventing the sunken living room, sticking to the carpeted areas, breathing with jailbreak shallowness and not feeling a bit ridiculous.
In an insane fit of humor his persona vacated his body in order to observe the action through the eye of a director. Here is the ominous establishing shot of the hallway, shrouded in darkness; here, the Arriflex shot, jerky and hand-held, traversing the hall with that oddly cocked point of view that tips what we're seeing as being through the eyes of the butcher-knife wacko as he creeps up on the bedroom door. It is ajar by inches. Of course. More cinematic that way.
Alea made a noise.
It was like a gasp for breath, hard, distinct, perhaps cutting pain loose. A flashbulb image of Alea in jeopardy welled up but Peter suppressed it. The thudding of his heart was making his throat and temples pulsate. It became difficult for him to inhale.
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