by Todd Grimson
Having her attention, Lisa slowly stuck out her wounded, swollen tongue. Raelyn thought it looked more like it had been stabbed than bitten, and gave Lisa a hard look, which Lisa seemed to register, to answer in a way, without telling her a damned thing. But Raelyn loved her. She had made a bargain—to accept Lisa with mysteries intact.
Rae had made gazpacho earlier, which was good, because now it was cold. They ate it. Lisa had another note for her: The film is exposed, so please download the mags. It needs to go to the lab tomorrow, OK? Print everything. By means of gesture, Lisa gave her to understand that she would tell her more when she could talk. It didn’t make any sense to Raelyn, because when she looked in the studio, there was tape over the eyepiece and the lens cap was on. When they got the processed film back, what could it possibly show?
Well, she didn’t think Lisa was crazy. So they’d see.
Lisa wrote a note: Ice cream? Rae smiled at her as if Lisa were a child. Yes, there was ice cream.
Then, with the remote, Lisa boosted the volume a little. The tall catatonic black man had escaped. He had been unresponsive, they hadn’t known what to make of him, so he’d been turned over for psychiatric evaluation—and he had suddenly come to life and injured two guards on his way out.
“Uh-oh,” Rae said, speaking for both of them. “Are you afraid of this guy?” she asked, and Lisa shrugged, shook her head. She didn’t know, she wasn’t sure.
When the cops—Detectives Lancaster and Gomez—came by, Lisa and Rae were just finishing their ice cream. Raelyn was torn between feeling hostile to them, like they were persecuting Lisa, and glad, like they ought to come by to warn her in person about the guy who’d escaped.
To show them that she really couldn’t talk, Lisa tried. Raelyn had told them about the tongue injury, but they were skeptical; it seemed demeaning for Lisa to make those semiretarded sounds … Lancaster in particular had an attitude, from Raelyn’s perspective. He thought he was good-looking, and of course he made it clear that he recognized Rae was a dyke. He was curious about what was going on, if they were sleeping together … he didn’t come out and say things, but he had a way of making idle comments, walking around as if he owned the place.
“Nice room,” he said, looking in Lisa’s bedroom, turning on the light.
Gomez, by contrast, seemed all right in her way, as if she saw that her partner was a jerk but was powerless to intervene or cramp his style. She tried to look sympathetic, but she was an ambitious cop. Rae wouldn’t trust her an inch.
Finally they left.
Lisa and Raelyn watched television in silence for a long time, the former continuing her regime of sucking on ice.
“It hurts pretty bad, huh?”
Lisa didn’t nod, but she meant yes.
ELEVEN
In another two days Lisa could talk again, without too much difficulty, and she did in fact explain to Raelyn the magical basis of her art. She had to trust someone, and Rae was willing to believe what she saw without asking pointless questions. They settled into a routine.
Each day Lisa gazed into the mirror and went into a trance, and they shot three mags of film. Then, after Lisa had recovered a bit, they edited what had come back the day before, or at least categorized and
cataloged the material viewed. There was dream stuff, fast little scenes coming from daily life, from memories—often from Lisa’s point of view, but also sometimes in third person, with Lisa herself seen as she did this or that… and these scenes were in color; so far none had come through in black and white. Other, more mysterious scenes, possibly culled from the histories of the mirrors, were sometimes more restricted in viewpoint, frustrating in that one couldn’t necessarily see what one wanted to see. Lisa could induce this sort of experience by merely closing her eyes and concentrating, then opening them and staring into her own dark pupils in the mirror until a different reflection began to appear; if she looked away, it was lost. Only once or twice did she try to catch these glimpses into the past on film, but if the camera was running, the transference worked, quite as though she had developed into an appendage of the machine.
What was hard was trying to control what she saw, to shape it, to direct the visions that would appear. This did seem to be possible, however, to some extent. This was what she wanted to experiment with, as well as with gazing into older, antique mirrors. As many different old mirrors as she could.
Should she keep notes, like her father undoubtedly would? She wasn’t sure, but she thought not. She wasn’t trying to amass evidence or prove anything. Rather, it was still so new, she just wanted to explore. Processing all this film was expensive, but the one positive bit of fallout from the publicity was that, for the moment at least, people wanted to invest in her, and it didn’t seem to matter what sort of product she might turn out. They didn’t care.
Lisa called the “Charles Head” number and, as she had suspected she might, connected with Chuck Suede.
“Why don’t you come over?” she said. She had something in mind.
“Yeah, I’d like to see you. Quietly.”
“Right.” Her tongue was still sore enough that she tried to talk as little as she could. She spoke more slowly, more formally … she gave him the address. It was already eleven o’clock at night. He said he’d be there soon.
Each morning Lisa swam, and she swam again before dinner. She mourned Tavinho, but real sadness or grief for him only hit her at unpredictable moments; already all that felt sealed far away in the past. In a sense this seemed heartless, and she felt guilty, but the new faculty she possessed was so interesting, so exciting, it blotted out everything else.
The most interesting thing she was able to voyeuristically spy on in the mirror was what seemed to be an affair, perhaps back in the fifties, it might even have been the late forties—Lisa couldn’t date the fashions too exactly. The woman’s name was Mona, and she lived in a very different bungalow than this, someplace where you could hear the ocean … the light seemed to be California light. Lisa, watching—and almost none of this was captured on film, she’d watched for several hours, sort of tuning in and tuning out—observed that Mona spent a good deal of time checking herself out before the mirror. She was a kept woman. Her lover, an older guy, just forty or so, though, was married, and they talked a lot about his wife—when they weren’t fucking, enthusiastically, in the bed. Mona really vocalized. “Oh Richard, Richard, oh God, oh God …” At first it was embarrassing, but Lisa was too curious to look away. Actually, she had never before been in a position to so closely observe two people having sex like this, in real time. It was illuminating. When Richard and Mona weren’t considering the character of his wife, Elaine—who evidently had some degree of control over the money in the family, since when Mona asked Richard for money, he sometimes complained about how tight Elaine had become—they talked about plans for an ideal future. Richard was confident he’d have money, and they fantasized about going to Europe, New York, taking a cruise.
“I’ve always wanted to go on a ship,” Mona said. They were both smoking cigarettes, drinking bourbon, lying in bed. Lisa could practically smell the sweat.
None of this was captured on film. It didn’t matter. Lisa was interested in the possibilities. She wanted to know more. Maybe Richard and Mona would end up planning to murder Elaine … she hoped so. The thought quickened her pulse. Maybe this was evil, but … she wouldn’t mind a plot.
Raelyn knew that Chuck Suede was coming over; she went into her room to read a novel while listening to her Walkman. She smiled, fairly benignly, before closing her door.
When Chuck arrived, Lisa offered him a drink. He looked good. His hair was darker now than it had been when he’d been into that total James Dean thing. Now maybe he was trying for a young Montgomery Clift. But he still had James Dean dimples when he smiled.
“When I said that I’d visit you ‘quietly/ I meant without anybody seeing me, without publicity,” he said, sitting near her on the couch.
“That’s what I thought you
meant.”
“Well, it’s hard for me to control myself, control my instincts—I’ve been doing this for twelve years. Since I was fourteen.” He shook his head.
After a drink of Jack Daniel’s, the heat of it down her throat, the low-level intoxication, made Lisa say, “Still, even if you’re sneaking in tonight, it wouldn’t be bad for you if it got out. Another little dark facet to your image, like it’s a diamond, shiny bright.”
He gave her an expression that wasn’t really a smile, but it showed his dimples, he was amused, and he said, “That’s not why I came over here, though. I like that, ‘another dark facet’—it’s true, in a way I wouldn’t mind that—but I’ve been wanting to talk to you about … what to do with old Roy. His shrunken head, man. It seems like it’s gotten pretty hot. I can keep a secret, but I’m going on location in a few weeks, and I’d sort of like to … bury it or burn it or something. Put it to rest. You know about these things, I’m guessing.”
“Bring it over here next time you come,” she said. “Put it in your bowling ball bag.”
“How did you know?” Chuck said, raising his eyebrows. “How did you know that’s where it’s been? My sure-strike bowling ball’s been out of its natural habitat for weeks. I’m letting down my team.”
Lisa found this idea—and that of him being a serious bowler, which he was inventing—very funny, and they laughed together, playfully, like they were kids.
“If you want to use me for publicity,” she said, “go ahead. But don’t think you’re doing me a favor—they’ll just make me out to be more of a witch, or a slut.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he said in a measured way, dreamy-eyed, sincere or not. “Maybe I can do something else for you.”
“Maybe you can,” Lisa said, pushing her hair out of her eyes, waiting … then he leaned over and they kissed. She told him her tongue was sore, and so he was careful, delicate and gentle. Even so, there was pain in it for her. Lisa abandoned herself to Chuck Suede’s embrace, his mouth, his hands. He caressed her and caressed her, her thighs, her stomach, taking a long time to unbutton and open her dress. He seemed to be very interested just in the feel of her skin. They kissed, and it was so expressive … there was no need to speak, to say anything, words were beside the point.
“Why don’t we, uh, go in my room?”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
She unbuttoned his shirt, kissed his chest, lingering, biting his nipples to see if he liked that. In her bed, without transition, they were naked, getting to know each other in the dark. Chuck could go from the play of an eight-year-old to hushed consecration in an instant, and she could too, she felt less socialized with him, it seemed less of a social encounter to be played by those rules … the layer of self-consciousness that, for instance, had certainly always been there when she’d been fucking Selwyn Popcorn. If she couldn’t succeed in forgetting the social game she got nowhere, she had wanted to forget who she was and who Popcorn was, there was only intermittent, fleeting connection beyond these social selves. It was different with Chuck Suede. She didn’t know if it was him, or if she was just in a peculiarly receptive mood. In the dark she didn’t know where her body ended and his began.
She could have been dead. Tomorrowland—and she woke up having an orgasm in her coffin in her grave, a beautiful corpse, melting into the thick, thick air, the air lifting her up like she dwelt on the bottom of the sea. The life in the shook-up solution of shadowy minerals and salts, drifting, floating shapes, not yet ready to form and walk on land. Beating black.
You could forget everything like this. You could forget everything. You could go to sleep and not know who you were, who you were supposed to be.
TWELVE
Chuck was so lovable, Lisa couldn’t help but suspect him a bit— although she was by no means immune to his lovability, no. She knew, though, that he was friends with Taft Flowers, and she could easily imagine him telling Taft how he had fucked Lisa Nova, saying, in a lovable, boyish way, “She’s a great piece of ass,” something like that, or that he went over to see if he could get some pussy, and he wouldn’t mean anything by it, he was too lovable. The canniness he had about his position in the world as a megasuperstar didn’t rule out innocence, he could afford to keep himself innocent, there were many things he probably would never have to see or know, which was why
it was an open question how well he’d age … except, given that he was intense, he’d probably always be intense. Lisa loved him, but somewhat impersonally, sure, not like Tavinho—she knew what it was to be desired, but she had also known the other side, she had felt undesired, awkward, and fat. She knew what it was to go to a private-school dance at thirteen and be a wallflower, to be asked to dance only once. She didn’t think Chuck Suede knew about things like that.
So, in the morning, she set about seeing if she could exploit him. Raelyn took some lovely Polaroids of them having breakfast together. Lisa and Chuck agreed on the best two. These were for Chuck to hold on to or leak as he saw fit.
He said, “Have you ever heard of Darby Crash?” His mouth was full of scone.
“No.”
“See. Proves my point.”
“Yeah. What?”
“Darby Crash was the lead singer of this band called the Germs, in 1978 or something. They were, like, America’s answer to the Sex Pistols. Darby had this plan: He’d make one album, and be in one movie, and then he’d kill himself. The magnificent gesture.”
“Yeah?” Lisa scratched her right breast.
“Well, you know, that’s what he did. The Germs cut their album, which everybody liked, and Darby was pretty much the star of The Decline of Western Civilization, by Penelope Spheeris. You see that?”
Lisa shook her head. “I fell asleep during Part Two: The Metal Years.” She waited for Chuck to go on.
He made a face.
“So, at the peak of his stardom, Darby Crash killed himself. It was big news. Only, the next day, John Lennon got shot.”
“Oh.”
“Right. He was a fool.”
They went into the studio with Raelyn. Chuck seemed interested in Raelyn. Or at least, in a mild way, he put out some lovability rays. They showed him some footage on the console.
“I can look into mirrors,” Lisa said, “and see things that have happened, the history in the mirror. I can sometimes put memories, or dreams, directly onto film.”
“You don’t have to convince me,” Chuck said after a few moments. “Why shouldn’t I believe you? Roy Hardway was never down in Brazil.”
“No, it was all done after he was dead.”
“OK. What do you want to do with me?”
Lisa told him about watching Richard and Mona in the mirror. It had suggested something to her.
She said, ‘Td like to use that situation, but play off it. I’m Mona; you’re Richard. It’s, like, 1954. I want you to kill your wife. We fuck and bicker, and bicker and fuck—not too explicit, not too much nudity, I think too much skin distracts—and in the end you kill me because I’ve threatened you, and you want to stay with your rich wife.”
“You’re talking about shooting real footage, then, I take it—”
“A combination,” she said. “I’d see what I could come up with … but yeah, we’d shoot a lot of it right here, with Raelyn.”
“Off the books,” Chuck said. “Let’s sign a simple paper: fifty-fifty. You take care of expenses and Raelyn out of your half. I’ll buy some film and shit, I’ll pay some cash down at the lab. But we’ll cut and sync as we go, right? I can give you two weeks, but after that…”
“That’s fine.”
“We improvise,” he said. This was the part he loved. “It’ll be sort of like Last Tango in Paris, won’t it?”
“Yeah,” Lisa said. “Two people in a room, basically. The other way to do something like that is My Dinner with Andre, but this is better, it’s more like something I might do.”
More stuff—some of it highly surreal—from Lisa’s inner eye. T
hey discussed Richard and Mona. Raelyn suggested they buy more Jack Daniel’s and start smoking cigarettes.
“That’s good,” Chuck said. “I like to smoke.” He laughed. Method all the way.
THIRTEEN
Rachel Farb leaped at it when Alvin Sender called her and asked if she’d like to collaborate with Lisa Nova’s ex-boyfriend, Code, on a tell-all quickie biography of the voodoo priestess, the kill-crazed down-and-darkest femme fatale …4It was totally cool! What a break! This book would be huge.
Rachel was not pretty, but with a kind of bent big nose and twisted smile, short haircut, hair dyed very dark purplish red, a stud in her
left nostril, multiply pierced ears, and a taut, slender body, she was attractive, relatively speaking, in some punk sort of way Alvin Sender knew her because she’d ground out a series of S&M porno novels, literally masturbating as she wrote them, “no plot to get in the way of the story,” and she’d attempted to go on from there with the inevitable screenplays, but there was always something fucked up or too obviously ripped off about them, anyway she’d also done some secretarial work for Sender a couple of times. She’d also done some music journalism, on a very low-paying level, so maybe Sender figured this would give her something in common with Code, that she’d be familiar with his now defunct band.
Code was still living at Lauren Devoto’s mansion, and the situation there seemed completely different from what Rachel expected. All she had ever heard was that Lauren was a dominatrix, that she liked to do things to young men and women both, that she paid hustlers large sums to be pierced or whatever, marked with her sign.
Evidently Code had flipped her. Lauren waited on them in a sexy French maid’s costume, a red ball gag in her mouth, wearing light little chains, walking on impossibly high spiked fetish heels. It was weird.
There were no servants working here, Code explained, because Lauren’s financial situation was not so wonderful as it had once been.
