by Todd Grimson
“They haven’t started them yet, but it’s this, uh, computerized psychiatric program. You dial it up on your touch-tone phone, and it asks you questions, with one of those mechanical voices … it’s being offered, you see, as an entertainment service. An understanding voice in the night, at a few dollars a minute. No one says that it’s really therapy—there’s a big disclaimer at the end—but there really are a lot of options, it’s not just Mickey Mouse.”
“You played a patient?”
“Yeah. My girlfriend just broke up with me, and I’m depressed. I call up the computer. It tells me to cheer up, let’s see, to get more exercise and some other stuff … I just remember it said to try walking two miles a day.”
“It’s not for L.A., in other words.”
“Well, that particular suggestion isn’t, but the service, I don’t know, I think it might catch on. ‘Let’s talk about me.’ And we personify these machines pretty easily; in no time at all you wonder if it likes you or not, what it really thinks of you.”
“It’s probably sort of like being with Freak,” Lisa said, making fun of the supermodel, a little catty, and Code replied, “It’s like being with anyone.” He was pensive, sort of, drinking an iced coffee with condensed milk. “I talked to Adrian ” he said. “He told me that Alison Hand got your job.”
“Adrian should keep his big mouth shut,” Lisa remarked.
“He told me about a lawyer, incidentally, if Wendy’s serious about this stuff. It doesn’t seem like she should be able to force me out of my own band. The Painkillers were my idea, I put the band together, but Sterling’s not talking to me, so I’m sure she’s fucking him, she can get him to sign anything. I was hoping we might get to do the soundtrack for an orange juice commercial.”
Lisa considered giving him the phone number she’d been given by Lou Greenwood, Lou Adolph, Lou Burke. Code was certainly good-looking enough, they’d find some use for him, the techno-whorehouse atmosphere would probably really turn him on. The only thing was, he might go in and never come out. She wouldn’t go back herself, though she could see how one might rationalize it to oneself.
The funny thing was, she had really liked Lou; usually it had been enjoyable to spend time with him. He knew things, he was informative, he had one of those warm, gravelly, intelligent western voices like they use as voice-overs for giant multinational PR. The sex had been ordinary but no worse. He was considerate and had gentle hands.
It was hot outside. Sunglasses went back on. There was a hum that turned circling faraway birds into police helicopters making a daylight assault; at a distance the pops of gunfire were harmless and indistinct.
TEN
The sun was going down in ultraviolet flamy orange, a spectrum of unnatural, vivid colors and a sucking wind, the streets near the address blowing torn newspapers and rolling an empty red Coke can past shards of polychromatic, brightly reflective broken glass. Lisa had stopped at a drive-in and gotten a double chocolate milk shake; as she drove she suctioned up the sweet coldness through a straw.
At first no one seemed to be around. There were a few choppers parked over by the artificial leaves of the fake hedge. Lisa carried her big leather purse, the strap over her shoulder—she felt dirty and fatalistic,
both somewhat frightened and ready for the worst, for the big ugly to kiss her on the mouth. Taste of ashes, that was OK.
One of the zombies (for that’s all they could be) came around from the side of the garish green and red house. He moved slowly, and slowly raised his arm to her, motioning, so Lisa followed him as he turned and walked away along a crunching gravel path. Shadows were lengthening quickly now, purplish and dark reddish brown, extinguishing the lurid vermilion light. Sweat ran down Lisa’s face. She was sticky, the dress stuck to her. She was thirsty again. It seemed more humid than before.
Some distance away, she could hear voices speaking Spanish, laughter, an accordion, a dog barking—here there was silence. She and the zombie came to a greenhouse and went inside, the perfume of the flowers having an immediate, mildly intoxicating effect. There was hardly any light, so she couldn’t see the plants very clearly, the colors were dimmed…. At the end of the long passage between exotic blossoms and vines there was a clearing, and here sat Boro, surrounded by his gang. The zombie who had led her in took his place in the line. Boro sat on a director’s chair, and Lisa was glad he was not adorned with feathers or anything strange, a bone through his nose or something like that.
“It’s good to see you,” he said. “Why don’t we get on with it? I promise, nothing will hurt.”
She handed him the envelope from her purse containing the gray pubic hairs.
“Good. These will be fine. But now you must undress. Give me your necklace.”
She started to protest, but said nothing. She had to fight against involuntarily showing her powerlessness and fear.
Boro, meanwhile, revealed the possession of a male figure, some kind of red wax with a skeleton perhaps made of wire, maybe twelve inches tall, with its cock sticking straight out like a broom handle. Boro kneaded some of the pubic hairs into the figure, saying some indistinguishable syllables under his breath. He draped Lisa’s wooden bead necklace over his own head, and she sensed that he intended to wear it from now on, she would never be getting it back.
Reluctantly she took off her clothes. The zombies didn’t really even seem to be aware of her.
“Who are they?” she asked. Boro chuckled and pointed at each one in turn.
“This is Chris. Pierre. Brian. Sean. Alvaro. And Greg.” They all looked both ancient and no older than twenty-five, some maybe having expired still in their teens. Brian was particularly muscular, like a big surfer.
“Where did you find them?”
“I reanimated them,” Boro said. “I’m just borrowing them for a while. They can talk and follow instructions … I just have to keep them supplied with a certain substance, or they fall apart. Here, rub this ointment over your body. It doesn’t haven’t to cover every inch, but be generous with it. Smells good, doesn’t it?”
Lisa nodded. It was like before: Being naked like this, she became dissociative. The conversion of personal nakedness into impersonal nudity. A removal, a split.
Boro lit a little fire with a small bundle of kindling and sticks, adding some dried leaves and a resin that burned green-white, flaring and hissing. He pricked his finger with a sharp knife, the drops of blood falling into the flames; then he handed the knife to Lisa, without speaking, and bade her do the same. She did, cutting her left index finger more deeply than she intended, the blade was so sharp.
“I must write on you,” he said, and he was so relaxed that it seemed easy, she felt languid and curious, he held her face up by the chin and began drawing, with a soft crayon, on her cheek. On her forehead. Lisa closed her eyes. Then he daubed blue paint on each of her breasts, her belly, and into her sex.
“We’re almost done,” he said, making a motion with his hand that caused the zombies to begin chanting a repetitive, low verse. They gently swayed back and forth. Boro handed Lisa the wax figure of Lou. “Hold him over the fire until he’s just beginning to get soft. You must spit on him, and then pee on him, and then toss him into the flames. After that, you can get dressed. We’ll do the rest.”
Lisa followed his instructions, finding it difficult, however, after spitting, to initiate the stream of urine—only a few straw-colored droplets spattered out, but they fell onto the voodoo doll’s head, and Boro nodded, smiling, one of his false teeth completely gold, an earring visible beneath a dreadlock, and he said, “That’s good. Now throw him down.”
As soon as she tossed the figurine into the fire, Boro, with almost inhuman quickness, plucked it out of the flames, so that it was only partly melted and distorted; apparently he did not burn his hands. Then Boro spat on the tiny man and placed him in the jaws of what looked like a Venus flytrap.
Lisa had on her underwear, and was putting on her dress, when Boro said, rather in
differently, “When you see some results, then we can negotiate the fee. Don’t worry about it. I don’t have the conquistador’s insatiable greed. Besides, I like you. Go home and take a bath, and don’t drink any milk for a couple of days. The signs on your face … they disappear by the time you are home. Pierre, walk with her out.”
Lisa didn’t thank him, common empty politeness seemed stupid, she just looked at him, and looked at the figure, stuck upside down in the wide-open lips of the man-eating plant, glistening droplets of secretion on the slippery, brilliantly colored inner leaves.
ELEVEN
Dr. Nova was known, within his field, for having discovered (or invented) an infinitesimally tiny molecule without any conceivable medical, military, commercial, or popular implications. Other researchers continued playing around with it, under the aegis of the company for which Nova had worked, trying to find some conventional application for the heretofore useless but “beautiful” product of his unfettered imaginings.
Lisa, at nine: Her father stood in a white lab jacket as Track, the child prodigy at twelve, violently played the violin. Right there in the lab. Lisa adored her big brother then. Dr. Nova glanced over at his assistants, who were giving the music their entire attention. The place was bugged, Track told her later, and some of the assistants worked for the FBI. Track didn’t like the way he looked with a violin tucked under his chin.
There was another sister, Andrea, two years younger than Lisa. She was their mother’s favorite and was now in a modern-dance company, following the path that Lisa had not. Lisa had been too clumsy, injury-prone, and, by her mother’s stringent standards, too fat.
At sixteen, Lisa discovered an acute natural prowess in the backstroke and joined the swim team, winning some exciting races, quitting the team the next year when the coach would not stop pushing her to develop the butterfly kick.
Suddenly Dr. Nova was in Brazil. There was a divorce. Lisa’s father
called her from Sao Paulo and invited her to come take a look at a local species of ant. In Mato Grosso.
Lisa attended the School of Visual Arts. She went from painting to photography to film. She met Christine.
Track was not on good terms with his father; they just never seemed able to talk. He treated his mother rudely but they basically understood each other. Track had gone to Rio once, for a concert, and spent a weekend with his father and his new wife, but he’d told Lisa he hadn’t had a good time. At that time he was a member of the Berlin String Quartet.
Lisa had been down there twice. She had in fact observed, with interest, the activities of those highly conspicuous ants. Her father had surprised her on the second visit, not too long ago, by having in his possession a video of Girl, 10, Murders Boys, which he must have gone to some expense and trouble to obtain.
Isabel, his second wife, was very nice. For some reason it had crossed Lisa’s mind that Isabel had been provided by the company to care for Dr. Nova. It was not out of the question that he would accept such an arrangement as a perfectly natural, neutral-to-positive phenomenon, never giving it another thought.
TWELVE
In the morning Lisa had something like a mild sunburn all over her body. Her first thought was that it was from the ointment, but the slightly painful redness was general, not limited to the areas where the ointment had actually been spread. In the shower, the hot water stung, so she turned it down to lukewarm, and then all the way to cold, which felt pretty good.
She was tired, with an unfocused headache somewhere behind her eyes. The time spent with Boro seemed like a dream, but what memory ever really did not?
There were slim green tendrils in the bed of the grand piano, she noticed. They were connected, coming up from the soundboard, between the tautly strung wires, and she could not see where it all began.
Casimir meowed at her, a question mark, and she picked him up as an answer, cradling him in her arms, one hand under his back feet so
he would feel secure. He purred. Perhaps he could sense her disquiet-nevertheless he continued to purr.
“Oh, Caz.”
There were messages on her machine.
An unknown voice, female: “This is Daphne Stern.” She went on to say she was from an advertising agency: Lisa’s name had been recommended to them as “a young director with energy and flash.” She said she’d be in a meeting most of the morning; if Lisa was interested, please call sometime in the afternoon. 822-4552.
Then, again, Roy Hardway. “I hope you understand that I don’t do things like this. But I can’t stop seeing your face. Your face is a sexual organ, I want to see it in a close-up. Your skin … mmm. I want to be there with your naked face.” A long silence before he hung up.
Lastly: “Lisa Nova, Alvin Sender. We met the other night at Code’s. Whether you know it or not, you’ve come into my sphere of influence. I think we should talk. 858-6522.”
What was it that he did? She couldn’t remember. She dressed hurriedly—she was going to be late for breakfast with Adrian and Christine.
This was something they tried to do every two weeks or so. Today Christine was accompanied by her boyfriend, Oriole, an actor whom Lisa didn’t much like. His mood swings tormented Chris, and of course Lisa usually heard about it, so her impression of him wasn’t very good. He was critical of how Christine dressed, critical of her forays into “the business” … though he himself wasn’t exactly yet in demand. He was quirky-looking. He could seem ugly or handsome according to the light and his mood.
Adrian Gee was often (though not today) accompanied by his longtime lover, Brad, a curiously unambitious but intense fellow who worked at a cutting-edge architectural firm. The two lived together in Long Beach. Adrian, born in San Jose, was half Chinese.
He was wearing, this morning, a white canvas sailor shirt that set off his golden complexion and the perfect teeth of his generous smile. Christine had on a unitard with a sarong-style miniskirt, while Oriole was dressed all in black.
There was sliced fruit on a platter: kiwi, mango, papaya, strawberries, orange sections, and pineapple. A pot of Sumatran coffee and some fresh croissants.
Adrian, who treated Lisa most of the time like an adorable child, tpld her that last night, at some awards dinner, her old friend Lou had been stricken by an unstoppable nosebleed and forced to leave the event. Cocaine was out of fashion in favor of the more exotic chemical compounds now on the scene, but the swift rumor was that Lou had stuck with the white powder, wearing out the mucous membranes of his nose until they just broke down.
Lisa stopped herself from putting cream in her coffee, remembering what Boro had said about milk. Somebody mentioned that it looked as though she’d been out on the beach. She smiled and said something noncommittal, thinking instead of Lou with a big red stain down his front.
Oriole was talking about the usual pretentious things—he had gone to Yale, though he’d never gotten a degree—and today Lisa found him more insufferable than usual, maybe because her sunburn stung.
Somebody was waving at her. Adrian nudged Lisa’s arm. She looked across the room and saw Jules Brandenberg, who’d directed her in The L.A. Ripper. Fast on his way to becoming another Wes Craven, Jules’s latest hit was Abra-Cadaver. Lisa waved back, wondering if he actually remembered her name. He was leaving money, preparing to go. Standing up, with his companion. Since Brandenberg was still gazing over, smiling, Lisa decided to go see if he had anything particular in mind.
“It’s Lisa, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yeah, it is.”
“I’m casting for a new project … do you think you might be free?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “What is it, LA. Ripper II? Can I be killed again?”
“This is something different. It’s called My Evil Twin. Ripper His still way back in preproduction—I haven’t got a director nailed down yet. It needs a script doctor something bad.” He laughed. He had wire-rimmed glasses, a receding hairline, a barely grown beard. He looked OK.
“So you
’re just producing it, is all, the sequel?”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you consider a woman director? I’ve done a film in New York, with no budget, that people didn’t hate.”
“You’re serious. Cool. Sure, I’ll be happy to take a look—now, what about My Evil Twin? You say yes right now, Monica’ll pencil you in. That’s completely separate from if I like your other work.”
“OK. How do I die?”
“You really care?”
THIRTEEN
At Code’s, Lisa couldn’t believe it, Freak was in the bed, masturbating with some dildolike device. How gross. If it was attention-seeking behavior, it was stupid, because Code couldn’t even see her. He was playing his electric guitar for a change, the monster riff for “No Fun” over and over again, altering a foot pedal here and there. A minimalist all-day sucker of a song. Freak’s pubic hair was dark brown, in contrast to her platinum blond head; she had on a peach-colored lacy half slip up over her pelvis. Lisa was fairly certain Freak was trying to prove some point to Code, something was going on between them; maybe this was why he kept on playing the guitar.
It sounded good to her. Lisa went to his amp and took off her jacket, dark brown flannel with golden stars, she used to wear it a lot when she went out with him in New York. She smiled at him; he barely acknowledged her, but she could tell he was glad she’d come by. She wanted to use his phone, but that could wait.
In the meantime, she played a game that they used to play—he kept playing the riff, varying an emphasis here and there, a dynamic, while she slowly altered the sound by turning the tone knobs or messing with the effects box, adding echo and distortion, turning the midrange down to three and boosting the bass and treble to nine. Adding some superflange. A bite of fuzz.
