Paint It Black (20 page)

“Okay,” she said, shifting her weight, digging her spike-heeled boot into the dust. “If you direct it naked. Everybody naked. We’ll all be naked souls on Naked Souls’ Day.”

He looked at the rest of the film students, his ragged crew, the chubby Gil, the probably underendowed Bobs. The helpers were possible, and Sergio, but everyone else was finding something more interesting to look at, like the ground or the pepper tree. Jeremy came close. “Why do you hate me, Josie? Look, we’re losing our light.”

She said nothing, just waited, watching the light become more blue as they spoke. Waiting to see what he would do. She felt like Elena.

“Gordo? We’ve got a little problem here,” Jeremy called out to
My Producer,
a fat boy from Denver whose uncle had coughed up most of the money for the shoot. He owned a chain of discount dental clinics in Arizona and New Mexico. Gordo came over, smoking, a blue cloud matching the black cloud of his brow. They conferred, heads together. Finally, Gordo opened his wallet and counted his money, nodded once.

“A hundred,” Jeremy said very quietly, right over her ear. “An extra hundred.” She was already getting fifty a day, twenty-five more than everyone else who was getting paid.

She wanted to ask for something else. She really wanted everyone to know what it felt like to shed their clothes in front of strangers, be just a body for a few minutes, get real, not just her. She wanted Jeremy to know, but what was the point of wanting Jeremy to know anything? He was as self-involved as a toddler in a sandbox. She’d just have to take the hundred.

“You want me to clear the set?” Jeremy asked, ever the professional.

Josie looked around. She wanted to laugh. Who was there to clear? The ragtag bunch of film students, Sergio’s followers, Gordo? She unzipped the color-block dress, handed it to Laura, added her stockings, her boots, her underwear. Laura was pale with sympathy, thinking her brave, she could tell, but in truth, she always felt more like herself without clothes. She walked down the road to her mark. Everyone was looking at her. Let them. She was a dead girl. Everybody looks at a dead girl’s body, her bush, her naked breasts, poke at them until they harden up. The cops, the mortuary. Some of them might even fuck her corpse, knowing she couldn’t reject them now. But Elena was beyond feeling it. She was free in the way only the dead are free. That was fucking true. She stepped to her mark.

“Okay, Josie, ready?” Jeremy called. Sound came to speed, camera rolled. He pointed to her. “And—action.”

Josie began to walk down the dirt road, past Conrad sitting with his head in his hands, shedding actual tears. The silky cold dirt and sharp pebbles of the road alternately soothed and jabbed the soles of her feet. January, the sun going down, a good day to be dead, she could just forget the living now. Whatever she had wanted from this boy crying in the grass, she didn’t even remember. This was what it was like, you were cold, you didn’t have clothes, you remembered nothing, you just walked on down the road. She imagined Jeremy was disappointed now to have wasted a hundred dollars this way, when he saw how thin she was, how unsexy her body would look on the screen, that her glamour was an illusion now revealed to be thin as a dress. She walked farther and farther from the square-shaded lens of the camera, wondering if for that extra hundred he would make her walk all the way to town. She kept walking until she heard Jeremy yell, “Cut.”

He met her halfway on the road and wrapped her in a blanket, it was sandy and smelled of mold and sea. He put his arm around her as they walked back to the set, kissed her cheek. “Fantastic, Josie. You’ll see. It’s going to make the movie. I’m eternally grateful. People are going to remember you.”

At least they would remember her ass.

A
noisy bar on Sunset near Virgil, the Guadalajara featured Day-Glo sombreros suspended from the ceiling, all bathed in black light. The crew’s teeth and shirts glowed. She didn’t know why she had come, what she was doing with these strangers, only that she didn’t want to go home. She was the Girl in the Movie, a girl whose boyfriend had just killed himself, going out for drinks with the film crew, drinking tequila shooters and not telling anyone about the source of her desperate gaiety. The Girl was glamorous, and the boys crowded around her, trying to amuse her. The Girl in the Movie flirted with the director and played bar games with the camera assistant and the pink-haired wardrobe girl, spinning quarters and drinking a whole beer without taking a breath. The Girl whose boyfriend had just killed himself pretended to listen to the handsome young actor talking about a TV pilot he was going to be in, as she downed tequila until she was really too drunk to know what he was saying and didn’t give a crap anyway. At least he was young and sweet and they danced to “La Bamba” on the jukebox. She could sense the director was unhappy with this turn of events. He was the director, the Girl in the Movie should be his. But the actor was sexier, handsomer, and she wouldn’t see him again after the shoot was over.

He followed her home. They stumbled down the stairs to her house behind a house, so empty, cold as the produce section at a grocery store. The walls with their bare hooks. The artist was gone. She was glad the actor was there, and she screwed him in Montmartre, in the white bed, the very bed where another girl and another boy had made love like gods. Until they didn’t. Was it supposed to be a shrine? Should she be Meredith, put a rope across the doorway, light candles, burn offerings? The actor screwed her and screwed her, he was too drunk to come, and suddenly she came out of the drunk and the role of the Girl and it was just her, being fucked by some stranger when Michael was dead, in their own sacred space, but by then it was too late.

“That was great,” the actor said when he finally came.

What movie was he in, she wondered, wiping herself on the sheet.

20

Sweden

H
er headache wound around her forehead, a crown of tequila thorns. Light inflamed the uncurtained windows she had not had the foresight to cover. The clock said 3:00, but it always said that now. She guessed it was more like seven. The light slashed across her eyes like a belt with a metal buckle. Sombreros, a drinking contest. And there next to her, on Michael’s pillow, lay a glowing reddish blond head.
Oh God.
It had not been a dream. She was fucking strangers in his very own bed.

She staggered into the bathroom, crouched over the rust-stained toilet in which someone had pissed and not flushed, and vomited into the stench. The bitter twice-tasted tequila flooded out in a yellow gush. She waited to vomit again. And then again. She wished she could vomit herself to the bottom, until everything that made her Josie Tyrell came up and there was nothing left but a dried skin, a bug crackle blown by a breath of wind.

She lay on the cold bathroom floor, dragged the bath mat over herself. She could have gotten up, but knew she’d have to vomit again, so she lay on the tiles, shivering, imagining Michael watching her, with that man, that actor, in his bed.
This is how much you cared. This?
She might as well have taken Nick Nitro up on his offer at Lola Lola’s. At least they would have gone back to his place, not done it here. Fucked in an alley standing up in garbage and been done with it.

She crawled to her knees, pulled down the kimono hanging from the back of the door. It wasn’t warm either, but she didn’t want to be naked anymore. There was only so much nakedness a person could stand, and she had had it. She pulled herself up on the doorknob and tied the robe, the ties so long, she was growing thinner, like a refugee. She ran some water and brushed her teeth. The new tube of toothpaste tasted too strong, she had grown used to Michael’s old-fashioned tooth powder, now buried somewhere in his dark childhood room.

She leaned in the bedroom doorway, wanting to go back to bed, but she could not lie down next to the actor. She felt dizzy and sick, hot and cold all over.

“Get up,” she said hoarsely.

The head didn’t move.

“Get up,” she said. “Wakey wakey.” She went to the bed and shook him.

He groaned. “God, what time is it?” Groping on the bedside table for his watch, knocking over the vase of peacock feathers, that fell heavily on the floor and rolled under the bed. He squinted at the watch. “It’s early.” He sank back down to the pillow.

“No, it’s late,” Josie said. “You have to go now.”

He focused, his arm shielding his eyes from the light. A weak smile came over his face. “Hi, you.”

“Get up.”

He opened the covers to show his muscular body, the ripped abs, the morning hard-on. It was a bit of a wonder, considering. “Come on in, it’s early.” Stroking himself, cradling his balls. His pubic hair was red. She hadn’t remembered that.

She picked up his clothes and tossed them onto the bed. He really thought she was going to fuck him again? She struggled not to cry. Wasn’t she being clear enough? “Stop jerking off and get up. I need some time before work.” She didn’t have to be out at Cal Arts until one, the shoot wasn’t until dark, but she found it unbearable for him to still be here, where the ballerina and the artist could see him. She would set that bed on fire before she let him lie there on Michael’s pillow one more minute.

“Fuck and throw the guy out, huh?” He pouted.

What was his name, Conrad? No, Conrad was the character. “Yeah, every guy’s dream, huh?” she said.

“You don’t know me,” he said. “I’ll stick around. I’ll make you pancakes.”

After how many tequilas, he was thinking of food? Even the thought made her belch.

“But first I’ll make you,” he said, turning onto his side, head propped on his hand, a sexy pose, making the most of his distended cock. Christ. Such an obvious move, but it must work or he wouldn’t do it. You do the shtick that gets you approval. She knew that better than anyone. Michael never posed, never. His body completely natural, awkward or at ease.

“Wade,” she said. That was his name, Wade. She hated to play games when all she wanted to do was get rid of him, the better to beat herself up in private, but she was willing to do whatever it took. “Listen, honey, I like you a lot, but I really need to be by myself now. It’s part of my process.” She remembered one girl talking about her process. It seemed like a good way of making demands without admitting it was just a whim, all those rituals and routines. “I have to have time alone. To meditate,” she added for good measure.

Thank God Wade knew nothing about her. She wasn’t even a real actress. She’d never meditated a day in her life. This was the wonderful thing about strangers. They were big blank pieces of paper, you could draw whatever you liked on their impressionable surfaces. Was that what Michael had seen in her too? Yes, of course it was. Yes. She waited until she saw him rise, then retreated to the kitchen.

Out the window over the sink, the panes on the houses across the glen flashed with eastern light, traffic on the 2 and the 5 creeping into downtown. How could people bear it? Waking up every day, living their lives. While God the Chinese grandmother picked them off one by one.
Even my looking at things turns them ugly.

Painting his face in the mirror. Long and misshapen, his eyes too large and set too high in his head. He hadn’t said more than four words to her all that day. Wouldn’t touch her. She sat on the rim of the tub, painting her toenails blue, trying to get him to relent, it had been such a terrible summer. She couldn’t figure out what she’d done to deserve this, how mean he’d become. She wore her blue slip from St. Vincent de Paul, hoping to seduce him, he was still a man, his body could be reached if he’d let her. “Why do you have to make yourself so ugly?” she asked.

“I am ugly,” he said, face inches from the mirror, his voice so matter-of-fact. “Fifty-something kilos of gristle and hair. Not even enough for a lampshade. Look at that.” He gestured to the glass. He was wearing shorts but no shirt, his beautiful arms, his chest with the sunken place in the middle, the square but lean shoulders. But he hadn’t been sleeping well, his skin was more sallow than usual, circles around his eyes. He frightened her when he was like this, staring in the mirror as if it was a freak show.

“Let’s go down to the park, you can paint the lotus. Or the bridge.” Down in Echo Park, they could take a paddleboat under the red Chinese bridge, they could float in the shade of the Canary Island palms, drift through dark pools of shadow. He’d play her little blue guitar and sing her funny songs from the Twenties, imitate Louis Armstrong doing “Big Butter and Egg Man,” or Bing’s version of “Just a Gigolo.” “It’d be cooler there. Can’t we get out a little?”

“It’s cool enough here.” The tiled bathroom, he’d been in here for days. “Anyway, I wouldn’t dare paint anything else. Even my looking at things turns them ugly. I’m a Gorgon, Josie. You shouldn’t be here, you should hold up your shield.”

Trying to get rid of her.

Now, staring out at the traffic, she finally knew just how he felt.

Her eyes blurred with tears. Fuck it. Maybe Cal was right. Everything had a memory of him, maybe it was better for Meredith to have it all, keep it in his old room like death’s junk shop. All the paintings, for better or worse, the beautiful ones and the hideous, his painting of the faucet in the bathtub with its rust stains on the worn enamel that looked like blood, the mad monk with his black cloak and furious eyes. She would never have been able to get rid of them, they would only remind her of how useless she’d been, she hadn’t been able to think of a thing to say when he said he made the world ugly just by looking at it.

The actor finally staggered into the bathroom, she could hear him pissing, like a horse. “Don’t forget to flush,” she called out.

“Come and help me,” he called back.

She went down to the garden, the cracked stones they had placed in sand like a puzzle they’d worked until all the pieces fit. In the days when things came together. She picked a handful of mint. It was quiet down here, even the dog at the bottom of the hill hadn’t begun to bark. Green and fragrant, the morning glories glowing at their margins. Not like last summer, when it had been just filthy hot, the view out the bathroom window shimmering like a dirty mirage, the colors all bleeding to white.

The actor was showering when she came back up. She let the mint steep in the little pan, poured a mug and took it into the living room, where she could watch the traffic crawl, sitting by the window, the pipe-cleaner circus. She picked up the horse and girl rider, straightened the feather on the horse’s head. Why hadn’t she done something? Gotten him some help. The darkness a side of him she hadn’t seen until that summer. His cruelty, his obsessiveness. Though she’d tried. Hadn’t she? “Maybe you might want to see someone —”

“I am seeing someone. You.” He gestured at her in the mirror, over the painting, and she shuddered as she remembered the way he had looked at her, like he didn’t even know her, as if some stranger was glaring out of his eyes. He couldn’t see her anymore, not Josie, not little Jeanne, his lover, not her.

“I mean, like a shrink or something.”

He leaned in close to the canvas, working green into the skin. “There’s no cure for the human condition, Josie. For the condition in which we find ourselves. For instance, did you know there’s a dish they make in Spain, called
cipriones en su tinta.
Ever hear of it?”

Christ, what did this have to do with seeing a goddamn shrink? He was getting so convoluted, it made her head ache. “No, Michael, I haven’t. Do I flunk your little class?”

“It’s squid,” he said. “Cooked in its own ink.”

She waited to see if he would make the connection for her, or just leave her scratching her head, a sentence without a period. “Yeah, and?”

“It’s you, Josie. Don’t you see? Cooked in your own ink.”

She wished she could touch him, shake him, remind him somehow that she was the girl he loved. The one who gave him permission, they had been to Siberia together, all the way to Japan. They had opened all the doors. She wanted to touch him, but she was frightened of what his pale eyes accused. What had she done but love him? “You want to tell me what you’re talking about? I’m sorry I’m so fucking ignorant, but I just don’t get it.”

“Your calling attention to my needing to see someone. When in fact, I am seeing someone very clearly. You, and your boyfriend Jeremy.”

She sighed, put the bottle of blue nail polish on the back of the toilet. “You know, you’re right about one thing. You make everything ugly just by looking at it.” And yet, there was also the thin shudder of fear.

He never considered it might not be Jeremy. Jeremy was someone he despised but secretly envied, someone who could create without worrying whether it wasn’t the finest thing that had ever been done. But Nick Nitro was simply beneath Michael’s field of vision—a screamer, a punk rocker, a broke speed guitarist who rode a junk Japanese bike and looked like the guy who worked on your car.

At the time, she hadn’t considered fucking Nick the same as having an affair. It wasn’t as if she had started something new. She didn’t tremble when she took Nick on his dirty sheets. Having sex with him was more like picking up a jacket or a record album she’d left behind in the hall, or eating cold pizza when she was stoned. Who would know or care what transpired between them? At the time, she thought it was Michael’s fault. If he would only touch her, smile at her. Make love to her the way he could if he wanted to. But that summer all he wanted was to be left alone to make ugly paintings in the mirror and listen to Schoenberg on Deutsche Grammophon, that fragmented, half-mad music.

So she started going around to the Franklin Fuckhouse. Not often, just three or four times, to put off going home. Just somewhere to go to avoid the gathering gloom.

Liar.

It was way, way more than that. She was angry and hurt and it was payback for being treated like garbage. When she would do anything for him. She paid the rent, bought food and did the laundry, paid for his canvas and fucking paints now that he’d quit Señor Reynaldo, up and quit, for no good reason, suddenly he didn’t like the way Reynaldo hovered over him, said he was sick of clumsy infants and playing the same music over and over so many times he was hearing it in his sleep. That’s what he said. Poor Reynaldo probably had no better idea than she did why Señor Music had suddenly grown so sulky and difficult. He hated everyone that summer. Leaving her to bust her butt while he was painting his ugly pictures, guide to his own private Bosch, and then not even kissing her, flinching when she touched him as if it burned. So she would go to the Fuckhouse and get laid hard and good with no questions asked. Honestly, she’d liked Nick better then than in all the time they’d been actually together. He was the ultimate anti-Michael. He had no ideas, he didn’t think their sex meant something. He didn’t wonder if they were getting back together or even ask if she had changed her mind about him being an asshole. The very thing that had been so annoying about him was now his strong point. Didn’t Michael always say your virtue was your vice and vice versa?

Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater.
She had Michael but she couldn’t have him.

Though he could come to life for his mother, oh yes.

When she’d started calling him from Leningrad and Denmark and Sweden. They’d gotten all chummy again. The woman couldn’t leave him alone. And she knew just how to reel him in, calling from her tour, lonely,
missing you.
At the beginning he was short with her, but after a while their conversations lengthened, and the worse he was feeling, the happier those calls made him. He still wouldn’t let her give them any money, oh, he was too proud for that, Josie could work three jobs a day and that was okay. But his mother knew just what to say to him, what he would respond to. By the end of summer, they were thick as thieves.
You know how they were.
Oh yes, she knew.

And when Her Highness called, she wouldn’t even acknowledge Josie with a hello. Treating her like the goddamn answering service, Stepin Fetchit to the Crown Prince.