M. Rogoff rose from the desk, his height not changing all that noticeably. He flexed his hands into a pair of white linen evening gloves and fetched down the brushed top hat from its wicker roost. He directed Peter to pick up a large Gladstone bag in brown leather.
Peter's toes were almost touching the bag. He had rehearsed a lot of angry things to say - good, raw, punchy stuff— but could bring none of it to the surface. He remained speechless, as though dubbed into silence. It all seemed to follow some predetermined course no matter what he did.
M. Rogoff indicated the room's only door. "Come along, Mr. Deutsch. We are going to attend a party. Don't worry - we shan't stay long."
Maurice had screwed around on the barstool to locate the brandy that had been shelved right behind him the whole time. As Peter and M. Rogoff picked their way to the door that once belonged to Morris Butts, P.I., Maurice said, "Just behind me! You are too crafty, Monsieur! To change the scent of the bottle so that my seasoned nose could not inform me of its presence, that is wickedly clever, Monsieur, bordering almost on cruelty" At the threshold of the door Peter heard a cork pop. The dwarf's final words to him stopped him short. "Be wary of the Monsieur," he told Peter. "He is a sly one. He could sell the Devil's own lost soul back to him, with interest!"
Night colors flowed across the streets like liquid neon; the air smelled vaguely of impending rain, giving the cold a sharper edge. Alea had blended into the blue-on-blue juncture of L.A. sea and sky, embraced the velvet black of the city's night, and tilted herself seamlessly into invisibility. Peter's flesh tingled with her presence, as if she had become a chameleon, and all he had to do was look hard enough to see her again, there against the vapor lamps and slick tarmac and the heavy, wet air.
By this time of night, everything was closed, and that impression summed up Peter's state of mind. He felt locked out. Her loss was like a scalpel sewn up inside of him, and he craved her the way a battlefield craves silence and sanity. He knew defeat. This is how it ends, always. Alone, wearied, never quite brave enough to finish it all.
M. Rogoff pointed; Peter drove, keeping his eyes on the road until he could think of something to say.
"Maurice," he said after a few more northbound miles.
"Hm?" M. Rogoff was bestirred from some private reverie. He was doing just fine watching the sights and sounds from Peter's big, fancy motor car.
"He was terrified you were going to cashier him for leading me to you."
"Oh. Mr. Deutsch, Maurice's instructions were explicit. Specifically, he was to be caught by you, and he was to reel you in by whatever avenue best suited your mental state. Maurice is a talented chap though to tell him so goes straight to his head. Unlike spirits. If he used his intoxicated-dwarf ploy on you, be sure it was a sham. He drinks constantly, but I've never seen him drunk. I have seen him drink five longshoremen-types under the proverbial table with virtually no deleterious effect."
"You mean he's like that all the time?"
"Mm, yes, give or take."
They caught the Hollywood Freeway. All of Peter's roads in life seemed to lead inexorably back to Studio City. He was about to ask again where Alea had gone when the little man interrupted.
"You seem on the brink of giving up. Please don't. Not sportsmanlike. Tonight shall be quite an educational night for you, Mr. Deutsch. All you shall experience, even my seeming inattention, has vast relevance to your problem, which centers on the woman you have named Alea." He sounded like a low-budget swami.
"I have named— ?"
"No explanation I could offer, here, in traffic, would make any sense to you right now. It is better to just show you. Dwell on this, in the interim: You never would have met her, if not for me. Nor lost her. She is no longer a part of your life because her core purpose has been served."
An angry stab of feeling in Peter's gut, perhaps the scalpel, slicing away, told him a desecration was being enacted. His eyes steeled and would not admit the image of the little man in the next seat. "So this is all your fault, is that what you're telling me?"
"No, no, no, Mr. Deutsch. It's my job."
He wanted to scream, to slow the Mazda to a tire-rending halt and pummel the little man in fury, to jump the curb and paste a pedestrian, to somehow vent all the frustration and defeat, to cut to the chase. To terminate this two-bit melodrama and end Rogoff's bloody endless narrative. But his passenger cut in ahead of him again.
"Oh. Look. Look!"
They flashed past a three-dimensional billboard the size of a parking lot turned on-end. It presented to the world - noisily - the latest live-action spectacular attraction of the Universal Studios Tour. See it now. It was not a request.
Monsieur Rogoff is a master of misdirection, Peter's brain advised, oddly, in Maurice's raspy voice.
See it. Now.
The freeway sloped down, lane upon lane of racing red taillights and bright speedbump reflectors and green signs offering choice exits. You couldn't see the Black Tower from the freeway as easily as a few years before; it had been dwarfed by more imposing monoliths. Peter's eyes sought it from habit - a monarch now deposed, yet still more intimidating than the bigger boys. It was a ruler-straight dark rectangle cropped into the postcard shimmer of the electric skyline, a box of black metal windowed by black glass, which absorbed all surrounding light. To question the Tower with your eyes was to peer into the plunging uncertainty of a mine shaft or abandoned well, and wonder what testy things hungered there, night vision ready to fox you if you were reckless enough to go groping in the dark.
Peter's Mazda had a sticker; it was waved through the main gate by the night guard. One of the studio's vintage jokes was that a corporate presidency automatically opened for the person who could provide more parking. Peter now saw the trick - simply clock in at three in the morning.
M. Rogoff was probably waiting for him to ask what in Satan's butt-hot Hell they were doing here. Peter decided to deny the little man the satisfaction of being so goddamned right. Familiar aches began to roost in his shoulders and spine; crossing the studio lot's threshold brought all the fatigue and frustration of Sinner home to his bones. He shrugged, felt them slide away. It was amazingly easy to shuck any sense of obligation to Sinner; it had become trivial, disposable.
Above, the Tower reached to blot out the stars. M. Rogoff was looking reverently up one broad black flank. Lights nicotined the tinted panes at the very top. Elsewhere in the building, and throughout the backlot, workers were braced against the predawn cold and getting eyestrain in cubicles, attending to what the moguls, in their exquisite simplemindedness, called product.
As they approached, another man in security livery unlocked the big lobby doors from within.
"Wasting time," said Peter. He was so tired he was leaving words out of his sentences. "Can't get in without a pass."
"You mean an invitation," said M. Rogoff. By means of elementary prestidigitation he produced a stiff white card. The guard grinned at the trick, nodded toward the card, and admitted them.
M. Rogoff stopped, made room for himself, and bowed formally. Then he led Peter. "I believe the lifts are this way."
Peter knew bloody well where the fornicating elevators were, thank you very goddamn much.
"You're about to ask one of those questions again," M. Rogoff said, punching the up panel. "Just wait. Wait and see."
Anodized doors parted with a ding. Peter thought of big, nasty single-edge razor blades sliding wide. He held fast, worrying his lower lip.
M. Rogoff browsed him, bottom to top. Then he smiled and went first.
The door gofer looked at Peter quizzically. Suspiciously. "Excuse me, sir," he said, "but that is hardly the proper attire for this -"
"It's fine, Dolph" M. Rogoff interposed. "He's with me." The gofer retreated. "This evening's soiree is a masque, Mr. Deutsch," said Rogoff.
Peter stared as though consulted about particle theory or recombinant DNA.
"A masque. As in Ba! Masque. Yes? Or the grand masque of
the Red Death, as recounted by Poe?"
Peter closed his eyes as slowly as a turtle, to try to keep more headache from leaking in. It did not work.
"A masque. A masquerade. Where people wear masks."
For some goofball reason all Peter could think of was music. Mahler's lush Symphony #10; the Adagio. The "Bus Station" theme from Tangerine Dream's score for Near Dark. Gabriel croaking about red rain; Exene Cervenka crooning on hungry wolves. Thirty seconds elapsed and his double-crossing memory reminded him to think of Alea once more. The abrupt, scary ending of "She's So Heavy;" as unpredictable as the slamming cell door at the finish of Eurythmics' "Room 101." If you donned your mask - your masque - backwards, did the devil get you with his subliminals?
No mask. No costume. Peter mumbled "Hammer murderer" to the gofer as he entered.
Three interconnecting suites commanded a westward panorama of the Valley, the middle room the one with the bar - opening onto an Astro-Turfed rooftop patio. Peter could smell dance sweat and Turkish cigarette smoke. Ice clinked. Strangers laughed; the sound was piercing and harsh. A spider-like disc jock deftly puppeteered a five-turntable spread, spot-lobbing random tape spikes into the gutters between tunes, a different flavor for each room. Butthole Surfers howled through "Sweat Loaf" in the chamber containing the bar. Further back, E. Power Biggs did his Bach thing on Harvard's Flentrop pipe organ. 'Gasm rollicked to the end of "Cock Knock" and was supplanted by the Ramones bellowing "Beat on the Brat." M. Rogoff and Peter were standing in the Big Chill chamber. Etta James wrapped up "The Blues Don't Care About You" and the jock set the Temptations to spinning. A CD unit waited its turn while the rotating vinyl discs broadcast soft petroleum rainbows.
"Wondrous!" said M. Rogoff as the intro to "Psychedelic Shack" hit speed.
Grotesques and arabesques whirled; the dancers spilling through the door and engulfing part of the patio. Easier breathing there, amidst the frenzy. Typically Hollywood. They were all trying to out-Herod one another. Tonight the predominant peer-clique brag of choice manifested in the preponderance of masks crafted by an ex-Las Vegas fashion designer named Russell Zanoza. Killer momentum, gathered around midnight, was still peaking.
"So colorful and alive!" M. Rogoff, again.
A worthy in a jeweled frog mask and leather tuxedo blundered into Peter, drenching his shirtfront with fresh pina colada. He did not ribbet. He said, "Sorry, love," and bobbed off, leaving Peter to swab himself with cocktail linens. His garments were three days stale. He found himself queerly grateful that their odor had just been neatly masked by a socially permissible accident.
When he saw M. Rogoff again, the little man was holding a straight double scotch toward him. He expected a bon mot about quenching the inner man now that the outer man was drenched. Mick Jagger began to sing of chainsaws on the Bois de Boulogne a room away.
Peter killed the scotch with a grimace, fortifying himself against what promised to be a long charade. Ahh. M. Rogoff took his free hand and led him, like Fred before Ginger, cutting through the throng to home in on the bar. Long tables supported the savaged remnants of chips, dips, cheeses, rumaki, jumbo shrimps, chicken in Chinese mustard, assorted fondues (now cold) and crumb-strewn hors d'oeuvre trays. An Iranian with a mole near his mouth drew endless espressos and cappuccinos from a steaming brass faiyima. Milk hissed into froth.
M. Rogoff located a high stool. "We shall - how should I say? - hang out here, until we fade from notice. Until new faces obtrude. Finished with your drink? Hm, perhaps you could give Maurice a manly contest. No matter. Do have another. It might render you less hostile toward what I shall reveal to you."
The noise quotient was jarring, yet despite all the aural competition, Peter could capture every syllable. M. Rogoff paused a lot when he talked, enunciating like a scholar who knows the camera is on.
"Wasn't she beautiful?" he said clearly.
Peter began to smell the slant. This was like dialogue. He was supposed to say, wasn't WHO beautiful? He sipped his scotch. It was good, aged, the real stuff, not like the bogus Chivas at Shepard Bonnard's party, where he had met the who woman. It seemed centuries distant, but it was easy for him to replay that party now. Here were music and dancers and an available patio.
"I thought she was a party whore. In fact, I think I called her one?"
"Yes. Your hostility was returned with understanding and love. Beautiful. I really cannot conjure a superlative for her, Peter; she was so superior. And there was the benefit of excellent timing. Timing is everything, is it not? You could not have met her at a more opportune time. You were thrillingly ripe; as vulnerable as a safe-cracker's sanded fingertip."
"Misdirected. I fell for a con. Sue me."
"Peter." M. Rogoff had become familiar, easily shifting from the formal Mr. Deutsch. Peter lent it no notice. "I do not take my work lightly. It was not merely a charade, as you think."
"No, it was your job?" Peter mocked.
"Am I correct in saying that when you met Alea, you were - I believe the common parlance is: 'Going down for the third time?' You were being thoroughly abused by shallow and predatory people, yes? And you were lucky enough to receive exactly the reinforcement you required at just that precise moment. You were not deceived."
"Just fucked." Sour.
M. Rogoff considered his own small, fine hands in their white gloves. "Sexual compatibility is my forte."
"Not what I meant." Peter said. He was annoyed enough to speak while not looking at the little man. "I demonstrated one last jog of faith and got shucked and hung out to dry. I wanted not just anyone, but her. I wanted -"
"Mr. Deutsch." Mannered, again. It had the desired effect - it got Peter's attention. Time for serious goods. "Do you always get what you want?"
The caperers beyond, the dancers and laughers, had melted into an abstract living artwork of flashing colors and crude motion. The noise seemed to fade back further still, to die a small death. Peter watched for a very long minute.
"No," he said. "Never. When I did get what I wanted, for once, I could hardly believe it. I doubted."
"Ah. Ahum! Now we're back on track. Nobody can recognize perfection right off the beam. You can't. I can, rarely, but only because I do the planning. It took time for you to learn that she was perfect for you. Just what you wanted. That matured into just what you needed. Correct me if I err?"
"Great timing. Perfect," Peter's voice was losing inflection, lifeblood leaking from an uncoagulated wound.
M. Rogoff was excited now, prodding the thought chain ever-forward. "And when she began to seem just a tiny bit too perfect to you?"
"She displayed weakness. She admitted self-doubt to me. Showed me a crack in her armor of perfection." He ran playback in his head, then shook his head ruefully. "I didn't fall for it. I swan dove. And hit like an anvil into a duck pond."
"But all because of me, Peter. It was all my doing. I love art a great deal."
Peter had fought hard to loathe the image of her face, to summon aversion-therapy at its most brutal. Alea was evil; she had been the destroyer; hers was the fault. Despise her that you might cleanse her from your mind.
It didn't work. It was a patchwork membrane of rationalization too fragile, too transparent for his anger to sustain. Even if Melvin Belli and Perry Mason slapped him with irrefutable documentation that she was a berserker, right here right now, Peter knew that he would never be able to talk himself into hating her.
"Peter?" The repetition of his name had a succoring effect. Peter might have used the same technique to hold the attention of a happy dog. "Peter it simply could not be permitted to last. There was the work to consider, after all. You had Objet d'Art and your friend awaiting you in Canada - a definite first step down the path you've craved for so long. The path that leads to the artistic recognition you need as fundamentally as love. But for you to venture there an easy cynic, embittered, walled away from honest feeling, glib and shallow... ," M. Rogoff sighed. "At the point I injected Alea into your life, you had
been working too long, too hard. You had been through too much. Your divorce. The courts. The psychic decay. Unfulfilling labor. No end in sight. You had inured yourself to pain so heavily that no honest emotion could ever shine through your work. Not even the pain itself. Can you see it now, comprehend it?"
"Bullshit." He hated perceiving only edges. Outlines. And he hated the idea of being outgunned by a little old lunatic who lived in a Bekins warehouse. He drew scant solace from the fact that this wasn't the most humiliating thing that had happened to him recently.
"You're trying to get me to believe that if I'd taken Alea with me to Vancouver, I would've turned into a romantic klutz on Objet d'Art?"
"If you had gone without meeting her, the film would have been too dark. Too unforgiving of humanity. If you had taken her there, it would have become worthless hackwork. It would have been a very - ah - cute film."
The scalpel stirred, slicing Peter's stomach into strip steak. Cute was a word that had been mated with his directorial output twenty times too many. The Curse of "Cute" was on his head. VARIETY - Cute concept; pedestrian execution. Cute characters. Cute enough to matinee for one week. HOLLYWOOD REPORTER - No depth; fails dismally. But cute idea nevertheless.
Peter to Damon Fletcher, a week before the party at Bonnard's: "Cute! Fucking cute! I would put my left nut in a garlic press and give it a mighty squash for the paparazzi if I could just evade that goddamn four-letter word just once!"
Damon to Peter: "Nahh. You’d be down one huevo and they'd just look up a synonym." They'd both laughed.
M. Rogoff's voice assumed a lectorial hue. "If you protect yourself from feeling intense pain, you also erect an equally impenetrable shield against being intoxicated by pleasure. Tipping the balance became ... ah paramount. How could you be expected to produce anything of honest artistic significance?"
The little man had in his mind a sepia-toned picture of Maurice, at work sculpting his monsters. Talking to himself, but also vocally coaxing the blood-colored clay into behaving. Investing tears, first the spicy salt ones of anger, then the honeysuckle tears of joy. Sacrificing a mouthful of his precious brandy to knead into his creation. M. Rogoff knew these emotions, and his speech to Peter was born of rough experience.
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