by Todd Grimson
In the old days, she might have played an assigned part on the synthesizer, but right now it was better just with guitar. Code had been in a band called Lepers Sing and played guitar and sang, but things were different now. If Wendy’s lawyers kicked him out of the Painkillers, though, maybe he’d put on another style.
About twenty minutes later, after fooling around with feedback for a while, Code ceased.
“Hey, that was fun,” he said, and this might have been a joke, since the song he’d jammed on for so long was “No Fun.”
Freak, without either of them noticing, had put on some clothes aqd left. She was gone, anyway.
“What does Alvin Sender do?” Lisa asked as they shared a can of Coke.
“He does business. Sells shit. Lies. Runs scams. Why?”
“He left a message on my machine.”
Code said, “Let me guess. There’s this rumor going around—that there’s this bootleg porno video of Nastassja Kinski that Roman Polanski once did, for kicks. Now, I doubt it. But I heard that there’s this fabulous whorehouse where they can come up with Madonna look-alikes—”
“That’s easy.”
“—or blasts from the past, from Lauren Bacall to Veronica Lake. Boys, too. James Dean. Montgomery Clift. Fuck the stars. Now, I’ve seen, like, Cat People, and Exposed, with Rudolf Nureyev, which is really awful … except there’s this MTV three-minute thing where Nasti dances around. There /5 a resemblance, as you know. The early Kinski. So I wonder what you’ve been up to. Does that answer your question about what Alvin does?”
“Shit.”
“He probably wants to give you some money. Take it. You’re already fucked, so you might as well get your licensing fees, or royalties, whatever.”
“I didn’t give anybody a blowjob or anything. Nobody touched me.”
“You were just supposed to be, what, like a model?”
“Yeah. I’m kind of sworn to silence, but yeah. I thought I saw, uh, Roy Hardway—I caught just a glimpse of him.”
“So?”
“He’s been calling me, leaving messages. He wants me, I guess, to sit on his face.”
“Do it,” Code said. “He can probably help your career. A lot of people never get a chance to lay down on the old casting couch—but you seem to really be in demand.”
“Shit,” Lisa said. “You think I’m a total prostitute.”
“We’re all prostitutes. The only difference is in how shameless you are.”
Before Lisa could digest this or respond, the phone rang—Code made a motion for her to answer it, so she did. It was Adrian, who said, “I thought you might be there. You know Lou’s wife’s art gallery? The Horizon? It’s on the news, but here’s what really happened: Some guy came in while everyone was occupied, or anyway no one noticed, but whoever it was left a life-sized figure. Sort of, I guess, like a Duane Hanson, remember those? Or some of those guys by Charles Ray. Anyway, so after a few minutes the figure started spinning around, I mean rotating three hundred and sixty degrees at the waist, spraying out black indelible ink. All over the walls and the paintings on the walls—it was a mixed show, with new faces, that kind of shit. Then a voice comes out of a tape recorder, warning them that the figure’s going to explode. Some kind of warning siren, and a countdown, and then blaml It wasn’t kidding, the thing blew the fuck up. Veronica and some other woman were slightly injured in the blast. Duck and cover, you know? An LAPD spokesman’s saying it might be some kind of art terrorist stunt that got out of hand. Or some disgruntled artist they wouldn’t represent. I thought of you— Lisa, are you still there?”
“Yeah, Adrian, I’m here.”
“Do you know anything about this? I’m not doing a story, I’m not going to turn you in or anything, but I thought you seemed different this morning. Like maybe something was going on. I shouldn’t even ask you, should I? I’m sorry. I could hear the explosion from my window, though. Turn on the television.”
“I will. Thanks. It’s not me, Adrian.”
“OK. Sure. Goodbye.”
“Bye.”
Lisa and Code watched the coverage of the incident on TV. The weird thing was Lou’s nosebleed last night, and now this—could be some artist, it probably was, there was no reason to feel sure it was the spell. Seeing the rubble, though, the firemen, suddenly it was like clouds clearing and no longer disguising the sun, and Lisa started to smile. It was, she knew, a wicked smile. Veronica was hardly hurt at all. Scratches and cuts.
FOURTEEN
There are times in your career as a person when you just start fucking up, and even fuck up on purpose. When Lisa Nova got home and saw that there were tiny crimson buds on the vine growing in her piano, she was shaken, the more so because she was already somewhat fazed by Code’s attitude—before she’d left his place, he’d said, “You’re up
to your ass in something. You found that guy didn’t you? You think you can handle it?”
“Yeah, sure,” she’d said defiantly “look,” and out of false bravado she’d picked up a publicity photo of Code, Wendy Right, and Sterling Music: the Painkillers. Lisa drew a black felt-pen X over Wendy’s face. “There; pretty soon your troubles will be over.” It was on this note that she’d left.
After a shower—her skin was not so tender now, though it still felt warm and tight—the ritual petting of her cat served to relax her; Casimir’s expression made her laugh. After a trip to the kitchen, she just climbed into her unmade bed. It was only seven-thirty. Lisa told Caz, with her hand on him, that she didn’t know what to do. He was real, a member of the animal kingdom: Lisa had the feeling that the things he knew, his philosophy as an animal … this was more how she should strive to be.
Her usual ambitions and desires seemed misguided, sordid, a bore. She sighed. The love she experienced for Casimir, by this point in their relationship pretty much unconditional, made her realize, or gave her an inkling, of what it must be like to have a baby, flesh of her flesh … the responsibility might be huge, but it was a bullet that at some point had to be bitten if one was to participate in the full range of human experience. She didn’t want to wait too long.
She recalled, suddenly and unwelcomely, maybe suggested by a half-second shot of a perfume ad on TV—she had been disgusted by Freak, and hadn’t wanted to consider it, but now couldn’t help wondering what she herself looked like, God, if this story of the video was true. Lisa had done the thing for money, there was no other way to look at it. At the time it had seemed as though once it was done, it was done, and she could forget about it; if she had no recollection, then it didn’t happen … she could train herself that way. At the same time, something about the illicitness of it had appealed to her—she simply hadn’t thought it through. She hadn’t, in some emotional sense, “thought” about it at all. Not at the time. And she really didn’t want to now. Out of nowhere, she was absolutely certain that if there was a video, Lou had seen it, he might even have commissioned it—she was glad now, again, that she had gone to Boro, the shit that had happened seemed unplanned and unpredictable, but cumulatively, perhaps he’d feel the full measure of her willed revenge. She needed to behave like Casimir would behave. Fuck with me and you die. It was a power she had often aspired to; maybe now, even if indirectly, she could strike back like a panther, without mercy or regret.
The traditional means of feminine violence and payback were poison and witchcraft. Since she had been compared again to Kinski, Lisa indulged herself in thinking ultrabriefly about Cat People (the graphic remake), in which the best part is when Nastassja, nude, chases down a rabbit at night, a predator in the woods. But Lisa didn’t like to dwell too much on her appearance … the unlovely, round fourteen-year-old was still within her, however sleek and nearly beautiful she might have become.
Lou had told her once, after watching her walk naked to look out the window, “I like your breasts the way they are, they’re perfect, but if you want them to really jump out of the screen, you should maybe have just a little augmentation jo
b—I would pay for it, as an investment.” He’d smiled then. “Producers are morons, baby, they’re fixated on big tits. They’re like twelve-year-old boys.” Lisa had frowned at this—just because she’d been in one sleazy exploitation film, Lou always seemed to think she harbored secret dreams of becoming a big star.
Madonna had tried so hard to look like Marilyn Monroe, to invoke that dead star’s luster and add it to her own, like Hitler constantly comparing himself to Frederick the Great, or Prince finding his image in an amalgam of Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix, and Sly Stone. One of Lisa’s professors at art school had written a book on something like this, on fame and the use of images—the first half of the book had been absorbing, until he started trying to fit it all within the confines of his ideology. Then it got too “deep.”
The professor had barely passed her. She heard later that he didn’t like her film.
FIFTEEN
More and more hot sauce, red salsa, and diced green chiles. Boro and Lisa sat at a yellow-painted picnic table, shaded slightly by two palm trees and a billboard with an elaborate Virgin Mary with child. The sun was very warm. Lisa wondered how Boro could stand so much peppery fire on his tongue and in his stomach; she liked hot things too, but Boro’s predilection was extreme.
She took another bite of her burrito. It pleased Boro to see her eat.
He had shown up at her home while she was making some phone calls; there seemed no reasonable alternative to accompanying him to lunch. She hadn’t realized that he’d lead her so far into the barrio, but a little sense of danger was OK. No cholo would bother her when she was with Boro, in this she felt sure.
One funny thing he had done, before they left her apartment, he was smiling but insistent, so she let him: With an ink pen, he drew a cross on her right bicep, a cross with short little lines radiating out from it, like rays of power …
while on her left bicep (now tan, the sunburn had worn off and she now had an allover tan) he drew a simple jaguar, shading it in.
“This will help,” he said, and then added, “I’ve been very busy. They’re a nice family. You’ll see more shit is happening to them today.”
The ink marks were dark blue, like pure tattoos, and being here in a lavender print, cotton halter dress with Boro did not feel very innocent. She slipped her thongs on and off her feet, as Boro, while smoking a cigarette, saying, “We’ll rest a while before having some flan,” began telling her his life story, or some version of it, his “legend,” as they sipped at cold Tecate beer. Lisa had on turquoise-and-gold dangling earrings and a loose skirt, no doubt already dirty, and as she watched children and local citizens go by, low-riders with their custom paint jobs, children on bicycle or foot, an old guy with a cane and a Panama hat, she realized that she didn’t seem to be drawing special attention; the new tan perhaps made her pass, at a glance, for Latin. She listened to Boro without really concentrating, there in the heat, the beer’s effects slowing her mind.
Some workers arrived in a pickup, laughing and talking in swift Spanish, in gunmetal blue clothing, sleeves rolled up or not, some wearing beat-up Day-Glo orange hard hats. They noticed Lisa, sure, but they seemed more interested in her parked, dusty car. They went to the restaurant’s take-out window and ordered, then ate while hanging around the bed of the pickup. With the tailgate down Lisa could see shovels and lengths of shiny new pipe.
At a certain point, as Boro spoke, she found herself, while still hearing him, staring up with wide eyes at the sky and this one large formation of clouds. The clouds were gleaming white on top, where the sunlight hit, the lower halves shaded, white merging into gray, difficult to distinguish from the neighboring pale blue of the naked sky.
“I was born the son of a stonecutter, and in those days that was it. There was no way to become anything else. It wasn’t such a bad job, but I was ambitious, I had all kinds of crazy ideas. See, I had heard this story about a white jaguar way off in the jungle, on the other side of the mountain—if you could ride this magic white jaguar, she’d give you all these powers, you see, man … what made me do it was this one time, this big ceremony, I saw the princess Xtah and I just couldn’t believe it, I was mesmerized by her. She looked so perfect, so calm. Like she knew everything. Nothing could bother her, ever.” Boro laughed, shaking his head. “I wanted to get next to that. So I went to this wizard, and he checked out my birth date—and then he wanted to give me my money back, he didn’t want to tell me anything. Well, I was just a kid, but I knew I’d never get anywhere if I didn’t find out what he knew, so I jumped on him, I cut his throat a little, and he finally talked. He said that if I rode the white jaguar, I could rule our people, I could lead them in war against the Imtecs, I would never lose. I could change a seven into a three. But if you try to cheat the jaguar, he said, you’ll come to a bad end.”
Boro paused, cupping his cigarette as though it might blow out in the wind, though there wasn’t much of a wind, while Lisa, looking beyond him at a graffiti-covered wall across the street, heard the sounds of traffic as if from far away, she was trying to remember something, or understand, when he continued, “I was taking a big risk by going. Nobody who had ever gone out to seek this jaguar had ever come back. And once I left, I couldn’t change my mind and return after a couple of days—the overseer would punish me, it would be better to be eaten by the wild animals or bitten by a snake. So I waited, I was thinking it over. The wizard, to keep me from cutting him, might have lied to me, told me anything. Then there was another special number day, and when I saw Xtah this time, after the sacrifice, as she gave the stiff-armed blessing to the young girls carrying the flowers, I was smitten, that is the only word … I left that night.”
“How long did it take you to find the jaguar?”
“I don’t know,” Boro said, seeming pleased that Lisa was listening, “maybe a couple of weeks. I saw other jaguars—I had to sleep in a tree at night, to keep from being eaten. Jaguars are the worst cats in the world at climbing trees. I just had to fight with the monkeys.”
He took another drink of beer. It occurred to Lisa that she didn’t know a single one of her friends who would come into the barrio like this, just as no one white and sane would venture into Compton or Watts.
“The white jaguar was on the prowl around the Big Lake,” Boro said. “That was what we called it. I didn’t know anybody who’d actually been there, though you heard rumors—merchants and warriors, from time to time—anyway, I saw her, oh, such a beautiful animal, and big! A huge albino, soft as silk, the most dangerous animal in the jungle. I told myself that I mustn’t act afraid. If it tore me apart, I didn’t want to die cowering like a Mec.
“She probably caught my scent before she saw me, but it was daylight, a sunny day like today. The blue waters of the lake were beautiful too. I was hungry and tired, but suddenly none of that mattered— I was filled with radiant joy.”
“Why didn’t she eat you?” Lisa asked after a few moments, to prod him on.
“I had a very musical voice in those days, and I was handsome and young—I just kept on telling her how beautiful she was, I was so honored to be in her presence, I kept talking, approaching her very slowly, with my hands held out to my sides to show that I had no weapon. I don’t really know. Later I had it figured out that this was a lucky number day for me, all the signs and influences were perfect… when I tried the first time, she snarled and swiped at me with her paw, but I was unafraid, in fact I laughed. She liked that, I think. It was all preordained.”
“So you rode her?” Lisa said uncertainly, when his pause stretched on and on.
“I fucked the white jaguar,” he said, “and lay with her; we hunted together and tore apart the prey—I thought I was turning into a jaguar myself.”
Lisa flashed on Cat People again; the association struck her as disturbing. She shifted her seat on the wooden bench and scratched her left calf with her right big toenail, which was painted red.
“Using her claws,” Boro said, “she delicately scarr
ed me, giving me powers and knowledge—which, except for one day, I’ll never forget … well, a few days there, bad days—other than that, I still have everything Zaqui Nima Balam ever gave me.”
“The white jaguar? That’s her name?”
Boro said, “That’s not really what she was called. I change all the names.” He sounded apologetic but playful, hard to read.
“What happened next?” Lisa asked. “You must have returned to your people?”
“Yes, I did. Zaqui was somewhat jealous, but she let me go on the condition that once every month—we had thirty-day months, with five unlucky days at the end of the year—I had to bring a young, healthy sacrifice to her, at a prearranged spot, tied to a tree. She said she preferred female flesh, because of the fatty breasts and buttocks and thighs.”
“How did she communicate with you?”
“Through the eyes. We’d look at each other, for a long time, and then I would know. Do you want some flan? It’s very good here.”
“Sure.”
“OK. Good.”
With the first taste of the rich custard upon her tongue, Lisa heard Boro explain, “I was changed when I returned home. I wasn’t unrecognizable, but I looked very different than before. To be brief, I made a spectacular impression, never mind how, and I took over. I made everyone afraid. I announced that I had been sent to deliver us from all wickedness, and the priesthood proclaimed that my coming fulfilled the prophecies. It was inevitable. Whenever anyone thought about it, they realized they’d been expecting me for a long time.”
“Sort of like Jesus.”
“Yes. A killer Christ. People were happy, and I was soon engaged to marry the princess Xtah, and we were making preparations—happily, with great patriotic joy—to conquer our neighbors and take over their wealth. But… there was one thing very wrong. The princess I had fallen so in love with, seeing her at a distance … she existed, but she was so different, she had no tranquility, she was not placid. She accepted our engagement as a political necessity, but she could tell from my manners, from certain things I said, that I was poorly born, and she hated me for this. And I discovered that the being I had viewed was her double, a perfect double whom they used for ceremonial occasions. Because such occasions were tiring and boring, and Xtah was a bitch. This double—I never did find out if she was Xtah’s twin or a girl they’d snatched away because of the resemblance—this twin was retarded and mute, she could hear but she could not speak. Even so … it was Xtah I wanted, the more she despised me the more I was determined to impress her, I was sure I’d win her over in the end. She was just spoiled, but basically good. This was what I told myself. The qualities I had seen in the other, they were in Xtah too, eventually they had to win out. I would show off my powers. So I led us into war. Against the Bird House People.”
