Zeroville

by Steve Erickson

  “He’s never been laid?” says Margie.

  “—but absolutely unschooled, his knowledge and opinions absolutely unmediated … he doesn’t know from Pauline Kael let alone Andrew Sarris let alone James Fucking Agee. I’m not sure he knows who D. W. Griffith is, but he could probably run down for you the entire filmography of John Cromwell.”

  “Who?”

  Since You Went Away, Vikar’s mind races. The Prisoner of Zenda. Dead Reckoning with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. “This guy,” Viking Man continues, “has never been to USC or UCLA or Columbia or any fancy school …” Not Lauren Bacall. Liz Scott. “… for this guy, Film 101 is whatever theater he’s randomly walked into that’s playing whatever movie is randomly playing. An obsession that’s still pure, untouched by cultural cant or preconceptions or—”

  Of course I know who D. W. Griffith is. I used to ride the elevator with him at the Roosevelt Hotel.

  “You mean he’s a virgin?” says Margie.

  82.

  The next time Vikar wakes, it’s in the middle of what he believes is a wet dream. He’s hard and it’s a moment before he realizes that the hair falling across his belly isn’t a dream and that his cock is somewhere it’s never been. He starts to sit up.

  “Relax,” he hears her command in the dark, “lie down,” and he lies back down and Margie puts him back in her mouth. He panics when he feels himself begin to come and she sucks all the more furiously. Do all the women on the beach give blowjobs channeled from the netherworld? “O.K., superman,” she says a few minutes later, kissing him hard, “just wanted to see what you’re made of.”

  83.

  By the third day, everyone calls him vicar. He never liked “Ike” anyway. He’ll replace the c with a k around the time people start dropping the k from Amerika.

  He gets a ride back into the city only when Margie Ruth talks Soledad into it. Vikar overhears the conversation. “For God’s sake, Sol,” Margie says, “he’s not one of the Manson Family. He’s harmless. I promise you,” she says knowingly.

  “He is not harmless,” Vikar hears Soledad answer. “He may not be one of the Manson Family,” she concedes, “but he’s not harmless.”

  84.

  They leave around eight, driving south on Pacific Coast Highway. The road is eerily empty except for the single figure of a young woman stumbling barefoot along the side in what looks like a hospital gown. From the top of the colony, between the dark gray highway and gun-metal sea, in the twilight Vikar can see the brown thread of the beach, like the string of a gyroscope pulled by God. In the front seat of the car, the little girl says to her mother, “I’m hungry.”

  “We will eat when we get home,” Soledad says quietly. She looks at Vikar in the rear-view mirror.

  “I’m really hungry.”

  “In a bit,” Soledad says.

  “I’m hungry now.”

  The woman checks the rear-view mirror again. “We are going to stop and get something to eat.”

  “All right,” says Vikar.

  85.

  They stop at a taco stand and order fish tacos. They sit at a table outside; although it’s February, it’s warm. Vikar and Soledad drink sangria in plastic cups and for a while no one talks. “Do they have tacos in Spain?” Vikar finally says.

  “Tacos are Mexican,” Soledad answers. “They have tacos in Mexico. Mexico is not the same as Spain.”

  “Have I been to Spain?” asks the five-year-old.

  “No,” Soledad says.

  “Was I born in Spain?”

  “You were born here in Los Angeles.”

  They’re on the canyon side of the highway. Although it’s not dark yet, they already can see, on the other side of the highway, the moonlight on the ocean. On the other side of the highway, from the direction they came, approaches the barefooted young woman in the hospital gown. An aftershock of the quake is followed by a gust as though it’s blown from the earth: and suddenly there’s no one else in the world but the three of them eating tacos and the woman in the hospital gown on the other side of the road. No one else sits at the tables, no one is behind the counter of the taco stand, no other cars are on the highway. “I believed they were alike, Spain and Mexico,” Vikar says.

  “Spain is European,” Soledad says.

  “Did you make movies there?”

  Soledad absently takes her hair and wraps her fist in it. “Yes.” It would be rude, Vikar believes, to ask if Buñuel really is her father. “Art films,” she says. She glances at her daughter, then says to Vikar, “Lesbian vampires.”

  “What’s that,” says Zazi.

  “Do you want some of my other taco?” Soledad answers her.

  “Can I see your movies?” Zazi says.

  “No.”

  “Can I see them when I’m older?”

  “No.”

  “She can have more of my taco if she wants,” says Vikar.

  “Can I ever see your movies?” says Zazi.

  “No,” Soledad says. She says to Vikar: “I’m up for a part in a private-eye film. It doesn’t shoot until later this year.”

  Vikar nods.

  “I would play a gangster’s girlfriend.”

  “What’s a gangster?” says Zazi.

  “A bad man.” Soledad says to Vikar, “She gets a soda bottle smashed in her face. It is violent but a good scene.”

  “Can I see that movie?” says Zazi.

  “No. If I don’t get that part,” Soledad says to Vikar, “they would give me another part.”

  “I’ve worked on an Otto Preminger movie and a Vincente Minnelli movie,” Vikar says.

  “You build sets.”

  “Yes.”

  “Someone told me you studied architecture.”

  “Yes.”

  “You should work on grand buildings.”

  “I do work on grand buildings. I worked on an Otto Preminger movie and a Vincente Minnelli movie.”

  “I wonder if I know what you mean,” Soledad says softly, but Vikar wonders if she wonders. Gazing toward the beach, Soledad wraps her fist in her hair as though she’s binding herself, like she would if she were tying herself to something or someone. Across the highway, the barefooted woman in the hospital gown has stopped and stands staring at them; it’s not clear to Vikar if she’s considering crossing the road. Soledad stares back; it’s not clear to Vikar if she sees the woman or just watches the sea. “Are you a gangster?” Zazi asks Vikar.

  “Zazi,” says Soledad.

  “No,” Vikar says to Zazi.

  “Are you a serial killer?” Zazi says.

  “Zazi,” says Soledad.

  Zazi says, “I don’t even know what it is. Serial like corn flakes?”

  “I’m not a serial killer,” says Vikar.

  “Did the police take you away that time because you have a picture on your head?”

  “Do you remember that?”

  “Sort of. Mommy reminded me.”

  “I’m certain,” Vikar says, “the police wouldn’t arrest someone for that.”

  “Did you do something bad?”

  “Zazi,” Soledad says.

  “No. I believe the police thought I was someone else.” Two people ran off a hillside, he thinks, but I didn’t mean to.

  “I saw a movie about gangsters,” says Zazi.

  “Which one?” says Vikar.

  “The man and woman who rob banks and shoot people.”

  “You saw that movie?”

  “I didn’t know,” Soledad protests feebly.

  “The cartoon deer one was worse,” says Zazi.

  “What deer one?” says Vikar.

  “The little deer whose mom gets shot.”

  “There,” says Soledad to Vikar, “you see? That one was worse.”

  “Did you like the one about the gangsters?” Zazi says to Vikar.

  “The man and woman who rob banks?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand comedies,” says Vikar.

  “Wh
at’s a comedy?”

  “A funny movie.”

  “That movie was funny?” says Zazi. “I think maybe I don’t really like movies that much.” She looks at Vikar. “I want a picture on my head.”

  86.

  In the car on the way into the city, Zazi sits in front again. She’s turned in her seat studying Vikar. “Zazi,” Soledad says, “turn around in the seat.” She drives irregularly.

  “She should be in the back,” Vikar finally says. Soledad looks at him in the rear-view mirror and Vikar can see her cool smile, like the way she smiled the first time he saw her. She says something so quietly he can’t understand her. “What?” he says.

  “I said, Would you like that?”

  “It’s not safe in the front for a little girl.”

  “You would like that, wouldn’t you?” Soledad says, nodding. The car comes to a screeching stop. “Get out,” she says.

  Vikar looks around him. It’s ten o’clock and they’re on one of the long stretches of Sunset where there’s no sidewalk. “Here?” he says. Zazi looks at her mother.

  “Do you think I am going to let her sit in back with you?” Soledad says calmly in her accented English. “Get out.”

  Vikar continues to look around at the dark boulevard and then slowly opens the door and gets out. He watches the dance between the Mustang’s white taillights and red brake lights until they’ve vanished in the distance.

  87.

  He goes to the movies all the time, new and old. He sees Performance, The French Connection, Preminger’s Laura (for the third time), Murmur of the Heart, Gilda, Disney’s Pinocchio, The Battle of Algiers (with Viking Man, who’s seeing it for the sixth time), Dirty Harry (for which Viking Man is writing a sequel), an old forties movie called Criss Cross where Burt Lancaster and Yvonne De Carlo drive each other mad across what seems to Vikar a fantastical downtown Los Angeles with trolley cars that glide through the air. In Buñuel’s Belle de Jour Vikar imagines Soledad Palladin, as directed by her father, in Catherine Deneuve’s role of the housewife turned prostitute who, in one scene, is splattered with mud. At night he dreams about Margie lying between his legs, her naked breasts pressed against his thighs, and then in the dream she transforms into Soledad—at which point Vikar wakes with a start, unspent.

  88.

  He buys another television. He almost never reads the newspaper, but one afternoon he sees a headline on the front page of the Herald-Examiner that several members of the singing family who murdered the pregnant woman, her unborn child and four others in the canyon have been sentenced to die in the state gas chamber.

  89.

  Vikar telephones Margie Ruth at the beach house. “Not here,” a male voice on the other end of the line says, “she’s gone to New York to make Brian’s movie. Who’s this?” and Vikar hangs up.

  90.

  Vikar has been working in production and set design at Paramount nearly a year, and is freelancing on a job at United Artists, when the art director of a Don Quixote musical comes to see him.

  “I’ve been looking at some of your sketches,” the art director says in a heavily accented English that reminds Vikar of Soledad. He’s an Italian in his late forties with a background in opera. “You have mixed several elements in this set,” he points at the draft.

  “Yes,” Vikar agrees.

  “It …” The art director thinks. “It is an interesting effect but these elements do not go well. They are taken from different time periods.”

  “Yes.”

  91.

  The art director looks at Vikar. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

  “Yes,” Vikar says, pointing at the design, “this arch doesn’t go with the time period of the façade in back.”

  “That’s it,” the other man nods, relieved.

  “This arch is from twenty-three years later,” Vikar says.

  The art director looks at the draft and back at Vikar. “Twenty-three years?”

  “Yes.”

  The two men look at each other. “But you see the problem, yes?” the art director finally asks.

  “No.”

  “You do not see the problem.”

  “No.”

  “You do not see the problem with the same building, uh,” he gropes for the language, “from different time periods.”

  “No. This arch is from twenty-three years later, when the character of the prostitute Dulcinea will die here from consumption.”

  “Excuse?” says the art director.

  “The prostitute will die here of consumption in twenty-three years.”

  Some panic seems to take hold of the art director. “There has been a change in the script?” He grabs a nearby telephone and dials. After a moment he says, “Elvira, it is Luciano. Have I received the, uh, last changes in the La Mancha script?”

  “It’s not in the script,” says Vikar.

  “Perhaps I should speak with Arthur,” Luciano says to Elvira on the other end of the phone.

  “It’s not in the script,” Vikar repeats.

  “Excuse,” Luciano says to Elvira, then to Vikar, “what?”

  “I don’t believe it’s a very good movie,” Vikar says.

  “Elvira, I will call you back.” Luciano hangs up the phone. “It is not in the script?”

  “It’s twenty-three years after the script ends,” says Vikar, “she dies of consumption …” He taps the drawing. “… here.”

  “Who says this?”

  “Under this arch.”

  “Who says she dies of consumption?”

  “Every building has a back story and future story,” Vikar says. “Like an actor’s character.”

  “This building is in the present.”

  “The building is in all times. Every building is in all times and all times are in the building.”

  92.

  Dotty Langer says, “I hear you’re vexing them in set design over at UA.”

  “I vex people,” Vikar acknowledges. “Have you ever heard of someone named Trane?”

  They’re in an editing room on the Paramount lot. Dotty has about her a slightly boozy air, and a Jack Daniels bottle sits next to the moviola as before. “Is he in set design?” Dotty says. She opens a canister of film and begins spooling it through the moviola; she starts a cigarette. “Cut the light, will you?”

  Vikar reaches over and turns out the light. In a moment, Montgomery Clift is on the small screen of the moviola, standing by the road trying to hitch a ride. Franz Waxman’s music rises up behind him over the moviola’s rattle.

  93.

  Montgomery Clift comes to town, the poor relation of a rich family that finds him a job at the local factory, where he meets and sleeps with Shelley Winters despite stern orders not to fraternize with the other workers. At a party he sees Elizabeth Taylor, the most beautiful of the local rich girls.

  After twenty minutes, Dotty finally speaks. “Now watch this here,” she says. In the scene, Taylor and Clift dance. “Do you know what an editor does on a picture?” she turns to Vikar.

  “Puts the scenes in order because they’ve been shot out of order.”

  “That’s the first thing,” says Dotty. She stops the camera, Taylor and Clift mid-dance. “The editor also chooses which shot to use. In this scene here,” she waves her cigarette at Taylor and Clift, “something is happening that hasn’t happened in this picture until now.”

  Vikar stares at the image. “A close-up,” he says.

  “Very good.”

  “I had to think about it awhile.”

  She says, “It’s not something most people are aware of no matter how long they think about it—when the camera is close and when it’s far away. Those are the kinds of choices an editor makes.”

  “Doesn’t the director make them?”

  “It depends on the director. Most directors in pictures, up until the last ten or fifteen years, started off as writers or in the theater, so they concentrated on the actors and story. Your Mr. Preminger started in thea
ter, Lubitsch and Welles started in theater. Sturges and Wilder started as writers—they really became directors just so they could protect their scripts from idiots. But Hitchcock was an art director early on, so he knew what he wanted his pictures to look like, and Von Sternberg and David Lean were, guess what, editors, so the same thing. Kubrick was a magazine photographer. Mr. Stevens started as a photographer too—though his parents were actors—then he was a cinematographer. He shot a lot of early Laurel and Hardy, of all things. You see what’s unusual here?”

  “They’re dancing and we’re not seeing their bodies.”

  “I’m impressed. The audience may not know it, but this picture’s been keeping them at arm’s length all this time. Monty has even slept with Shelley Winters from a distance. But as soon as Monty and Liz lay eyes on each other, the camera is pulling at the leash, it wants to get close. And now they’re dancing and we’re going crazy with the liquid dissolves, one image dissolving into the next. We’re getting tighter and tighter on their faces. No picture ever used close-ups like this one.”

  “The first movie I saw in Los Angeles was a silent movie that’s all close-ups. An actress named Falconetti played Joan who’s burned at the stake.”

  “O.K., smart guy,” she rolls her eyes, “no Hollywood picture.” She looks at him and says, “What happens next here?”

  “Elizabeth Taylor stops and says they’re being watched.”

  “And looks right at us when she says it. That’s how close we’ve gotten. The picture has crossed a line it hasn’t crossed before now—we’ve intruded. So Liz and Monty run out onto the terrace to get away from us. But they don’t get away from us, do they?”

  Taylor and Clift are on the terrace in each other’s arms. In the background, all the other dancers and partygoers seem to fall away. The camera moves in so close on the lovers it can’t get all of their heads in the frame. “I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you,” Clift says. “I guess maybe I loved you before I saw you.”