Flicker (60 page)

“Is Dunkle out there?” I asked.

“Hell no,” Sharkey said. “Never goes out in public. Kid's practically a hermit, what with being a freak and all.”

“But you've met him.”

“Sure. Private audience.” Sharkey gave me a smug wink.

“How do you mean?”

“I got driven up to this place of his. Classy limousine and all.”

“What place? Where?”

“In the hills behind Zuma Beach. He's got an estate.”

“What kind of an estate?”

“Well, maybe it's not his. Probably belongs to the people he works for or with … or whatever. Actually, I don't know the arrangement. Nobody was handing out much information. Place looked like a school
or maybe a summer camp, I don't know. There were lots of kids over yonder.”

“You went all the way to Zuma Beach to look at some kid's amateur movies? A total stranger?”

“Well, the way it played was like this: I get a call from, I guess, the kid's agent. Guy name of Decker. He tells me how he's interested in this great, important thing I'm doing at the Ritz, the open screenings, you know. In other words, a man of cultural savvy. And blahblah-blah, he thinks I'd be interested in Mr. Dunkle's work. And blah-blah-blah, Mr. Dunkle would be pleased to defray the expenses of showing some of his flicks. It was like that.”

“How much?”

“Couple thou. Worth a ride in a limousine, I figure.”

“So Dunkle is paying you to show his films.”

“Only the first time. Once I saw how he caught on, listen, I was glad to have him aboard. He's a draw, man.”

“And that's the only time you saw him, that first trip?”

“First and last. That's when he asked about you. Did I know you? Could he meet you? Now he just sends his flicks in by limo.”

Finally, the projector kicked in and a patch of light hit the screen, struggling in and out of focus. The house settled into the slightly subdued uproar that passed for quiet. We waited for
Big Stuffer
to begin.

But Simon Dunkle captured my amazed attention before his movie started. Because the first image to appear was that of a blurred bird flapping away into the distance. It was the image that I'd seen at the beginning of the reel Olga Tell had given me, the sole surviving remnant of a Max Castle independent production. Not a close facsimile, but exactly the same image, here too accompanied by the sound of whistling wind. But added to that were some musical notes—four of them teased out of a synthesizer and slowed to the point of a warbling, abysmal bass. Just as the last note died and the bird faded from sight, three words appeared across the screen:

The audience sent up a cheer, the way I remember kids used to burst out when Tom and Jerry announced themselves on the screen.

“What's that?” I asked Sharkey at once.

“Dunky's logo.”

“But where did he get it—that image?”

Of course Sharkey had no way of understanding why I should ask
the question. He shrugged. “Shot it himself, I guess. What's so special? Black Bird Productions. So he uses a black bird.”

“But why Black Bird? What does it mean?”

Again Sharkey was at a loss. “How come the lion at MGM? What should he call himself?”

The four notes of the logo echoed in my mind. Distorted as they were, I identified them at once. I'd been humming the tune to myself since I left Amsterdam. The notes were those of the last four words of the song.

“Sharkey,” I asked in a whisper as the movie began. “This school of Dunkle's … could it be an orphanage?”

“Could be. Like I said there were some kids around.”

After that, it made no difference how bad
Big Stuffer
might be. I had to meet Simon Dunkle.

Sharkey made all the arrangements for my visit to Simon Dunkle, assuming an irritating air of self-importance as he went about the task. It would be a two-hour drive into the hills behind Malibu. He insisted we use his car, a battered old DeSoto station wagon that was bound to have trouble on the steep and not very improved roads we'd be traveling.

“Why not my car?” I asked. Mine was a spiffy MG in top condition to which I'd recently treated myself upon being promoted to Associate Professor of Film Studies.

“Not enough room,” Sharkey answered.

“Holds two,” I reminded him.

“But not three. We got a visitor.”

“Oh? Who?”

“Some hot ticket,” was all he would tell me. “Wait till you see her.”

“Sharkey,” I protested, “this is business. I want the people we meet to take me seriously. They're not going to do that if we bring one of your”—the word “bimbo” trembled on the edge of speech—“lady friends along.”

“Never fear, pal of mine. This is business for her too. You'll like her. She's your kind of chick. Real brainy. She's not my lady friend anyway. Not yet she isn't. Until after I get her a chance to meet Dunkle. Then maybe ha-cha-cha.”

No matter what Sharkey said, the image I had of any woman who would keep company with him was far from encouraging. For as long as I'd known him, his taste in femininity had run to strung-out teenyboppers or giddy carbon copies of Jayne Mansfield. But this time I was wrong. The woman in question was brainy as well as beautiful. I could tell as soon as I laid eyes on her.

“I was planning to look you up,” she said brightly when we met. “And then Don tells me that you are his friend.”

It was Jeanette, Victor Saint-Cyr's comely young disciple, suddenly there before my eyes in the front seat of Sharkey's car, wearing a skintight T-shirt that read “Hooray For Hollywood” across her pert bosom.

“So you two know each other,” Sharkey chimed in, not altogether approvingly, no doubt for fear I might beat his time. Which I had every intention of doing, if I got the chance.

While Jeanette moved into the backseat, I explained. “We met in France. Jeanette is Victor Saint-Cyr's prize pupil.”

“No kidding,” Sharkey said. “Who's he?”

Before I could answer, Jeanette entered a quick correction. “No, no, not so. Victor and I, we are no longer friends.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry,” I sympathized in a tone that clearly meant just the opposite.

Our trip north treated Jeanette to an archetypal California vista. Bright if hazy sunshine, crowded beaches observed too distantly to reveal the tar and oil that blighted them, a wave-furrowed ocean populated by stunting surfers. As we drove, she filled me in on her life since we'd last enjoyed one another's company. Most of the tale had to do with what a stinker Victor had turned out to be. A rat, a louse, a world-class prick. I relished hearing her vilification of the great man. I did all I could to draw out the dirty details, which took up most of our traveling time between Santa Monica and Zuma Beach, finishing with a scorching indictment of Saint-Cyr the lover.

“In bed, he was absolutely a nonentity.” (Better and better, said the voice of unabashed spite inside me. Tell us more. She did.) “Do you know that he lectures on film while he makes love? Film theory. Long dissertations on film theory, like at the Sorbonne.”

“Hey, I know somebody like that,” Sharkey blurted out. I threw him a quick disapproving glance; he didn't catch it. “Maybe there's a whole species of people like that. Sexo-cine-maniacs.”

“Victor says he learned this from one of his previous lovers. A brilliant woman. Together, they would argue about movies all the while they were screwing. Can you imagine this?”

“Yeah,” Sharkey volunteered. “I can imagine it.”

Jeanette drew a deep breath, making ready to unload a heavy sigh. On the intake, “Hooray For Hollywood” stretched tight across her nipples, reminding me of what provocative little breasts she had. What were my chances of getting reacquainted with them, I wondered.

“In any case,” she went on in a tone of casual dismissiveness, “he will soon be superseded.”

“As a boyfriend?” Sharkey asked eagerly.

“As a leading film theorist,” she answered, knitting her brows at him.

“Superseded? By whom? Or what?” I wanted to know.

She donned a face of weary indifference. “Who can say? In France, thinkers exist only to be superseded. So too Victor. You have heard of Vulkolof? From Bulgaria?”

I confessed I hadn't.

“Hideous man. Greasy. Fat. He smells like a goat. But since last summer, he is the rage. In the cafés, everybody is discussing Vulkoloff. Existential Kinematics—this is his system. Something about muscles … ‘muscular intentionality.' You read a poem, you watch a movie, he puts these wires on you, on the chest, the belly, the genitals … like you are a mice. What would you expect from a Bulgarian? They are all wrestlers,
n'est-ce pas?
But perhaps he will supersede Victor. Or”—with an impatient wave of the hand—“Decon textualism. Or Defamiliarization.”

She rattled off a small grocery list of cinematic theories as if I should recognize them. To me they sounded like the names of distant jungle tribes. “I see we have a lot to talk about,” I said. “You'll have to fill me in on Vulkolof… and all the others.”

But she shrugged me off. “No, no, no, please. It was too much for
me to learn another system, after Semiotics, Deconstruction, Neurosemiology. I told Victor, no more theory. Now I want just to enjoy movies.”

“And Victor said?”

“ ‘How very feminine.' This is for him the ultimate condemnation.”

So she'd pulled up her intellectual stakes and left for New York, where her connection with Saint-Cyr had succeeded in opening doors into the avant-garde film community. She bounced around there for a few months, managing by way of contacts made at parties to place a couple of foreign-film reviews with
The Village Voice.
When she felt bold enough to ask for more work and more money, she was given an assignment. Go to the West Coast. Find Simon Dunkle. Interview him. As she described it, the task sounded a little like Stanley being sent to find Livingstone—but on the cheap. One-way air fare via the night plane, but no pay and no expenses until the story was submitted and accepted. Jeanette had arrived with little enough to survive on, but the plane ticket was enough of an excuse to bring her to California, her real destination since leaving Paris. At the
Voice,
her editor had recommended she start out after Dunkle by looking up Sharkey. So she had, just in time to discover that he was bringing me to see the man … or rather boy.

“Do you know anything about Dunkle?” I asked her. She answered that she'd seen several of his films, some in Paris, more in New York, mainly at private screenings or out-of-the-way cult houses. And what did she think of them?

She fretted over her answer like the serious film student she was. “They are saying such good things about him in New York. In Paris too. How daring he is, how apocalyptic. It is true that he is only a child?”

“About eighteen,” I answered, “by Sharkey's calculation.”

“Victor says he is a genius, years ahead of his time… .”

“Right on!” Sharkey trumpeted. “What'd I tell you? And, hey, I'm the dude who discovered him.”

“… but myself,” Jeanette went on, ignoring Sharkey, “I find him frightening, especially if he is so young.”

“Well, sure,” Sharkey agreed. “But also damn funny. Did you see
Fast Food Massacre?”

She had, but she insisted, “No, he is never funny to me. Only frightening. Not like Hitchcock. Not like Clouzot. Not like vampires or monsters. Something else is there. Something very negative.”

“You're right,” I agreed.

“Well, what's wrong with negative?” Sharkey wanted to know. “Negative's the new frontier. Just ask the kids.”

I had a question for Jeanette. “Do you associate that quality with anything or anybody else in film?”

“You mean your Max Castle?” She nodded gravely. “Yes, I can see that. There is a connection between Castle and Dunkle?”

“Castle is Dunkle's favorite director,” Sharkey told her.

“But it could go deeper than that,” I added. “That's what I hope to find out today.”

As we passed through Zuma Beach, Sharkey gave out a “Whoa!” and pulled off at a convenience store. “Gimme a minute,” he asked as he left the car. I assumed he was after a six-pack, his usual traveling companion. When he returned he had the six-pack, but there was also a package for me. “A little gift for Simon,” he explained.

I glanced into the paper bag. It contained several boxes of Milk Duds. “Come on, Sharkey,” I protested, “that's pretty tacky.”

“Maybe so,” Sharkey answered, “but Simon'll love you for it. Kid eats ‘em by the ton. Sort of therapeutic.”

“How do you mean?”

“He's got this speech thing. Sometimes he gets stalled. You'll see. If he glitches, just slip him a Milk Dud. Probably it's got something to do with his condition, being an albino.”

“Albinos eat Milk Duds?”

Sharkey shrugged. “I don't make these rules.”

A few miles out of town, we turned off into the hills on a rough, blacktop road whose surface was liberally littered with debris from the eternally crumbling coastal hills. Golden California, forever sliding into the blue Pacific. As Sharkey started the steep climb, I raised a delicate issue with Jeanette. “You do realize that Dunkle's invitation today is for me? He may not wish to be interviewed by you.”

“But perhaps I can just listen …?”

“Even so, I don't think you should attempt to publish anything without permission.”

“No, no. Of course not.”

I suggested that I introduce her as my lady friend and let Dunkle get to know her in that capacity before requesting the interview. She agreed. But there was one more, even touchier, point I felt I must raise. “Do you have anything else to wear?” I asked. “On the top?” She gave me a puzzled look.” ‘Hooray For Hollywood'” I pointed
out. “It might seem a bit frivolous. You see, this orphanage we're visiting—it's a religious institution. A church, in fact. A very sober, very puritanical church.”