Tonight I look.
Tonight I see only the haze in my eyes.
I spend a long time getting dressed. By which I mean I spend a long time standing in front of the portion of the closet that has been carved out for me. Right next to Pari’s slick business clothes and sophisticated dresses. I touch the sleeve of her wool coat, marveling at its existence in Southern California. She must keep it for traveling.
In the end, I put on a little sundress, because there’s nothing in my clothing that comes close to competing with Pari’s. And I’ve always figured if you can’t beat ’em, knock ’em out with your assets. Supershort minidress it is.
The dress has long sleeves but a loose, open neckline that drapes down over one shoulder and shows off the fact I’m not wearing a bra. My skin is bare and just sun-kissed enough to keep me from looking like the walking dead without flirting with death by skin cancer.
I braid my hair so it looks artfully bohemian and drapes down over my free shoulder. I spend forever on my makeup, considering I end up looking like I don’t have any on. But my eyes are wide, my cheekbones a good inch higher than usual, and my mouth looks dewy.
Or maybe that’s the way I can’t seem to close my lips as I stare slack-jawed in the mirror.
Foolish. Foolish, silly idiot.
Who looks beautiful. I do. I look good. I like how I look.
That never happens.
I can’t help thinking it has something to do with the woman who’s cooling her heels in the living room, waiting on me.
I pick up my clutch and leave the cold safety of the bathroom.
My assumption that Pari would be chilling out in the living room is pretty far from true. She’s set up shop at the dining room table with her laptop open and a handful of legal-sized folders next to her. Another instance of wishful thinking on my behalf. I tell myself that it’s fine she’s doing other stuff. That I didn’t want her waiting on me. I’m the girl who moons, not the other way around.
I stand in the doorway and hold my Target-bought clutch in both hands. “Maybe we should smuggle your laptop out in a big purse. Starbucks is open till ten. I can be bought with a skinny mocha. Throw in a bagel, and I’m practically your slave.”
She blinks as she looks up at me, clearing out whatever thoughts she was chewing through. “What?”
“You seem busy.” And I don’t want to be a burden. “It’s for show for your mom anyway— Oh crap, where is she?” I glanced over my shoulder, but there’s no sight of Niharika around.
“She went to bed.” Pari caps the pen she’s been using to make notes on a legal pad. “Please don’t leave me stuck in piles of work. Rescue me.”
I’m no one’s hero. No one’s rescuer. But I smile and hold out my hands anyway. “Then run away with me.”
She grabs me and we pretend that I have to haul her out of her chair. But then she doesn’t let go of my hand once she’s up. She holds both my arms out to the sides and looks me up and down. “You look … amazing.”
I wait for the squirm of discomfort that so often comes when someone comments on my appearance. It’s like I’m filling in the blanks after what they say. That I look amazing for someone who almost starved herself to death. That I look amazing because I’m skinny.
It never comes. I squeeze her hands. “Why are you single, again?”
“I’m not anymore.” She flashes a bright white smile at me. “Not for the next two years.”
Well now. That’s a thought. It’s enough to daze me for a little while, until we’re in Pari’s car and fifteen minutes down the road already.
I look out my window at the passing traffic. “Where are we going?”
“Do you believe in ghosts, Rachel?”
I slip a glance at her. I can’t tell where she’s coming from. Is she joking? Does she believe in them? “I’ve never seen one.”
“Are you afraid of them?”
“They’re not my top fear, no.”
We’re sliding through Southern California. Cars surround us, but everything moves in the magic way traffic is supposed to, where I get the feeling everyone is cruising along to their favorite happy-place music.
“What is your biggest fear, then?” Pari asks it all casual-like, as if it’s a no-big-deal kind of thing.
So I give her my no-big-deal answer. “Clowns. I’ve heard it means I’m afraid of pedophiles, which seems like a pretty reasonable thing to be scared of.”
“Agreed. It’s small, closed-in spaces for me.”
“Like little closets or like getting buried alive?”
“Neither sounds like a good time, but thanks for those visuals. I suppose the closet would be better than being buried, as long as there was light.”
“No light,” I say in my best imitation of Bela Lugosi, which is actually a pretty shitty imitation of Bela Lugosi. I make wiggly-creepy fingers and everything. “And you are locked in.”
“You’re being mean to me.” She captures my wiggly-creepy jazz hands—one of them at least. She does have to keep hold of the steering wheel after all.
She’s so soft. Her fingers have no calluses, no hangnails. I wonder what they’d feel like touching every part of me.
I wonder what she’d think of touching me. If she’d like it. If she’d want to.
“We’re going to a haunted house,” she tells me, “but only if you promise to behave. No locking me in anywhere, or I’ll hire a clown for your birthday.”
“Do you even know when my birthday is?”
When she lists it off, I’m stunned. And a little guilty feeling, for that matter. I know hers is in September? Toward the second half of the month. And I know she’s 29. I just wouldn’t be able to rattle it off with such confidence. But then, I kind of don’t have her confidence at all.
“I’m sorry. I’ll behave. Just no clowns.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to see the reboot of It either?”
“God, no!”
From there, we launch into a pop-culture-centered conversation. It takes up the rest of the drive, and the next thing I know, we’re in Beverly Hills and pulling past a ten-foot-tall redwood gate and onto a curving drive that’s paved with huge squares of terra cotta with grass springing up between. “What is this? Where are we?”
Pari leans forward and looks up through the windshield. “I promised you a haunted house. I didn’t say what it would be haunted by.”
I’m wordless as I get out of the car and stand before the beautiful grand old dame.
The house is three stories tall. The walls are white stucco. The roof is layered with the beautiful, glowing curved tiles that Spanish-style buildings revel in. The arch over the deeply polished front door is adorned with a glazed mosaic. Dark woodwork accents each window.
But all these are details. The kind of thing that architectural websites drool over and post carefully lit pictures of.
None of them capture the feel of the place.
I turn in a circle in the middle of the courtyard. If it weren’t for Pari’s compact coupe, I could truly believe myself transported to Old Hollywood of nearly a hundred years ago. If I blink, I might miss Theda Bara’s gauzy scarf trailing behind her as she traipses across the pavers on her way to work at the studios.
It’s the ghost of a way of life that’s been put away that haunts this place. “Whose is it?”
“Now? It’s held by a Korean company I’ve been working with.” Pari stands beside me. “It used to belong to Lillian Bosch.”
“I don’t know that name.”
“Most people don’t. She only made three films, all of them silent. But she had the good taste to marry a rich man who also happened to be nice to her, miracle of miracles.”
“Can we go inside?”
Pari holds up a small keychain with only two keys dangling from it. “After you.”
The inside is just as wonderful as the outside. Maybe more so. Everywhere I turn is loaded with architectural detail and furniture that some would kill for. The floor
is made of glossy travertine joined so smoothly that I’d have to get down on all fours and feel for the seams with a fingernail. To the right is a step through an arch and down toward a beautiful parlor. To the left, teak doors soar above us. Directly in front are French doors leading onto a patio that looks unbearably lush, accented with trees and plants.
“Where can I go?”
Pari’s standing slightly behind me, and I don’t look, but I can still hear her smile in her voice. “Anywhere you like. It really is supposed to be haunted, by the way.”
“Was she sad? Lillian?”
“I don’t know. Her husband died early, in 1939, but at least he’d gotten her through the Depression financially sound. She never had kids, but maybe she didn’t want them. She lived here until her death in the eighties.”
“And never changed a thing.” I breathe in the history.
“It doesn’t look like it, no.”
I throw open the tall doors to our left and find a study lined with deep shelves. Cozy wing chairs are gathered around one end of the room. I want nothing more than to peer through the collection and choose something, anything, to curl up with and read.
But it’s not as if I’m going to pass up the opportunity to crawl all over this house. I find stairs in the corner of the room and dash up them, barely conscious of Pari following me.
Lots of people think of the past as being in black and white, but people in the twenties adored color. Lillian Bosch was one of them, and she apparently loved blues and purples best of all. The walls in the upstairs hallway are papered in an outrageous silver-and-purple art deco fan pattern, and things only get better from there.
Pari is my willing accomplice. She’s the one who finds the half-sized door in the middle of a hallway that opens to reveal a cage-style elevator. I toss the lever, and we go up and down twice before using it to come out on the third floor. We fall together laughing, so pleased with ourselves that we’re going to pop with it. I take the chance to smell her neck, the soft and sultry scent of her. I pull free and run down the hallway before I get carried away.
She chases me.
There’s a balcony off yet another bedroom. I slip through the door and shut it behind me, but Pari is close enough on my tail that it’s only moments before the glass opens again. With my hands on the waist-high railing, I turn my face up toward the sky. “You found me.”
“Were you trying to hide?” Pari lifts a single eyebrow. “You didn’t do very well.”
The sky above us is that particular combination of glowing and dark that I’ve only seen in California. The glow is from the breathing, never-sleeping city. The sky absorbs the city’s energy and uses it to keep stars far away. It’s like there’s a shield keeping us in.
“This place is amazing.”
I turn to look over the courtyards. There’s one right below us, but there’s also a second on a lower level, in a portion of the house that’s only two stories tall. The rooms open on a symmetrical loop of stairs that showcase a bubbling fountain as their feature. We’re on the highest level, which means that I can see the four chimneys, all styled to look like small towers.
“How did you know I’d like to come here?” I’m high with giddiness, the excitement of magic coursing through my veins.
“I saw you watching Sunset Boulevard a week ago.”
“And from that you guessed?”
She shrugged. “You were whispering along with every word. I figured that meant something about it appealed to you. Unless you have a crush on William Holden?”
“Audrey Hepburn picked the right brother.” When Pari stares at me blankly, I shake my head. “Sabrina. It stars Holden and Hepburn and Bogart, and she passes on Holden and chooses older brother Linus, played by Bogart.”
Pari grins at me. “If you say so.”
“This is the knowledge that my degree buys. It’s ridiculous, I know.”
“It’s not.” She gets intense all of a sudden. She grabs my forearm, her fingers burning into me. “You lit up when you were talking about it. Don’t discount your knowledge.”
“Everyone and their brother who’s read a review on the internet think they know how to do a close reading of film.” I pull away from Pari and look out over the roofs. “I was such an idiot when I went to school. You’re right, I do love black-and-white movies. I do love Sunset Boulevard. And I didn’t take its message until I got ground up and spit out. Old Hollywood is dead. It’s all corporate now, and I didn’t have a place. I had an expensive piece of paper and a head full of stupid trivia and seizures as a side effect of my anorexia. My student projects were too ‘dreamy’ and ‘unfocused.’ I was docked significantly for never having the guts to submit them to film festivals.”
“Did you like them?”
“What?”
“Your films. Your projects. Did you like what you had made?”
I have to think about it for a second. My four little films had been so left behind and neglected that I hardly remember them anymore, not what they were actually like. I only remember everything else that got wrapped around them. How controlled I was. How I lived in a haze of barely being able to think, but knowing that if I ate anything other than kale smoothies, I’d be making a grave error.
The films had been sweet. Two had been silent, as befitting my devotion to that period of film. They’d probably been overly moody and lit in a too-careful example of my obsession, but as I think about them, I smile. I wrap my arms around my stomach. I’m so much softer than I used to be, but I have to acknowledge that I can feel the line of my ribs beneath my fingers.
“I did. They were like fledgling birds. Not ready to be shoved out of the nest.”
“Then that’s what counts.” Pari is standing close to me. I don’t know how we drifted so near to each other without me noticing. Her eyes are green fire. I think of the emerald she’s wearing. The one that’s supposed to mean that we’re going to be together forever.
But we’re carving our own meaning for the rings, aren’t we? Pari is changing me. Am I changing her? I want to believe I am, that she seems a little less cool and contained. I don’t know for sure.
I don’t know anything except the scent of her skin and the hot breeze of a Southern California summer.
“Not all art is for public consumption.” She touches the end of my braid. I can’t tell if she’s looking at me. Maybe she’s just thinking. “Some things that are in this world can be private. Hollywood, the world you so desperately wanted to be part of … sometimes they seem to forget that. Privacy is not a sin.”
I like that. The films I made were mine. They were part of my struggle to find a place. “I’d have been crushed if they’d been panned.”
“Then it was smartest that you didn’t submit them.” She’s looking at my mouth. I can feel it. “The act of creation sounds like catharsis. I don’t seem to have much creativity in me. I line up numbers and facts and look for the pattern that makes them whole. It makes moviemaking sound like magic, making something from scratch. It’s awe-inspiring.”
She means it. She’s talking to me in a way that makes me almost think that she’s not seeing me. Yet she’s talking about me with such feeling that I’m almost drifting.
“Show me the ghost?” It’s the only way I know to carve out some space for myself. And if I don’t get space, I’m going to forget how to breathe.
“I’ll take you to the room, but I’m not making any guarantees. All I know is what I’ve been told.”
“Good enough for me.” Let’s not talk about how I might follow Pari off the edge of the building if she assured me it would be worth it. As I follow her, I rub the edge of the ring that hides against my palm.
Pari leads me down the long hallway to the elevator. Then through two rooms that open onto a patio terrace, then through another set of glass-walled rooms. If I actually lived here, I’d get lost on my way to breakfast. I would only drink once I was in bed, because I’d never find my bed again.
The rooms get
smaller as we go on, the windows higher up. This is the working end of the mansion. The invisible servants would have retreated to the safety of their territory in order to brace themselves before the next round of orders.
Pari goes up a set of curved stairs similar to the ones in the study in both depth and narrowness. But these have no accent tiles to enliven them. They’re white stucco and brown risers and never the twain shall excite. I trail my fingers over the plaster as I go up, trying to imagine everyone who has touched them before.
Whoever they are, they made it through. Probably with less whining than me too.
The hallway above the stairs is a little narrower than the ones in the main sections of the house, but there’s still sizeable room. I’m not worried about Pari’s claustrophobia or anything, especially since there are wall sconces at each end.
I count six doorways in the small corridor, and we stop at the fourth.
“One of the maids’ rooms,” Pari says when she opens the door. “None of these rooms are used any longer.”
That explains the dusty smell of disuse in the tiny space. We stand hip to hip in the doorway, looking in as if we’re little kids who’ve dared each other to come this far, but can’t manage to go farther. I like having Pari’s calm breathing to reassure me. We twine our arms together.
There’s one bed in the very small room and a dresser at the near wall. A tiny shelf stands bare. There’s a row of pegs across from the bed. I can fill in the blanks all too well, though. The pegs would hold the maid’s best and second-best dresses whenever she was obligated to be in her black-and-white uniform. Perhaps she’d keep her Bible on the shelf. Maybe she’d have a prize from the carnival next to it, from the time she went with a beau. In the thirties, she might have been relieved to have employment and lodgings, but that wouldn’t make the day-to-day drudgery of her work any easier. She’d have looked forward to running away to the movies.
“Why is there supposedly a ghost here? The house is huge, and this room doesn’t feel any freakier than the rest.”
Far From Home Page 8
