Scar Flowers (3 page)

Simon
followed Hollywood Avenue past the bleached stone façade of the Kodak Theatre, still under construction. Couples slowed past the pagoda of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre—still so-called though it has been renamed Mann’s—and pointed at the stars’ handprints in the cement. Young tourists headed toward the revolving restaurant at the top of the Renaissance or the bordello-chic Chateau Marmont, hoping to see rock stars. Bodies and voices blurred by, as his mind crowded with the faces of people he had met that day. The painted red mouth of the woman in the back seat. Angela’s brimming eyes. Jorg turning to show off his profile.

If the woman with the olive had been a man, his response would have been simple. A fist to the jaw, and work it out from there.

Revenge or identity? If the aristocratic redhead were the female lead in
Babylon
and he were the hero, Blake—but no. This thing had not been about identity.

What had she wanted to prove? Like something Kim might have pulled, such as the screaming fight on their honeymoon, when the only way to stop her from kicking and punching him was to lock her out of their hotel room. She’d come at him naked except for a pair of designer panties and yesterday’s smeared makeup, her toothbrush clenched in her hand. Angry over his ex-girlfriend calling their room. He couldn’t hit her, so he
had folded her over his shoulder, set her down in the hall, and turned the bolt while she cried and swore. It had to be in the hallway, not the balcony, where she could have put on a show for the entire town. By then he had started to learn his lesson. A year later they were divorced.

He
halted under a streetlamp and pulled the photo from his wallet. Kim wore her favorite red turtleneck, her fingers buried in his parka collar to pull their faces close. Both of them smiling. From 1992, when they had just finished a movie together.

A photo of someone else’s trophy life, like an amusement
park souvenir customized with his face. Stupid thing to carry around. Stupid thing to still be asked about.
St. Sebastian.
Again. Still. The only one of his films he had ever taken a role in, because he had not been able to find an actor to play Sebastian: a con-demned man who survived being shot by archers only to return and be beaten to death by his former comrades. A man both arrogant and selfless in his zeal, caught between the Romans and the Christians yet ultimately of neither tribe.

Saint or narcissist? Maybe both.

He tucked the photo back. This Nadia woman was simply one in a long string of intrusions. Why had he answered her question about Angela? No matter; he would go to his room and work, or find a movie theater and forget everything for a few hours. Simon turned from Wilcox onto Yucca Street, with its industrial truck rental and storage facilities, apartment buildings, and a peeling, yellow building called the Goldfinger Dancehall. A black man in a Raiders jersey, pants sagging from his hips, shuffled by with a paper-bag-shrouded bottle. Stairwells reeked of piss and malt liquor.

In
Babylon
, if someone took everything in the hero’s life and tried to keep his memories from him . . . what would he do? Which things would he want back first?

What would
I
want?

He ran his hand across his cheek, where the pressure of the redhead’s fingernails lingered. Nadia, curious about him one moment, dismissive the next. His pulse thrummed. From a door
-way on Orange Street, a woman thrust one hip at him and cooed some fast patter under her breath, her painted mouth flowing with vowels. He passed by. When he looked up, the Roosevelt loomed, its doors flung open like a pair of arms, the underwater lights of the courtyard pool glowing. He had walked in a circle.

The
lobby stood empty, all potted palm trees and tiled arches. If he went right, he would reach the elevators. Simon turned left at the reception desk and melted into the darkness of the bar. He found a seat that faced the door and ordered a beer. He would not be able to concentrate on work with all the ghosts in his head.

In keeping with the brass and wicker jungle décor, the bartender who delivered his drink wore her hair held back by an elastic loop of leopard-print fabric. Couples and groups clustered at the tables along the wall, but he had the bar counter to himself.

A ride on his bike would relax him, but he had sold his motorcycle to pay rent. He craved something visceral and immed-iate. Just helmet and leather to shield him from the wind, the swoop and crest of the road, the immersing vibrations. He thought of the Ducati gift certificate from the gift basket, enough for a new bike, and regretted giving it away to the teens.

Simon
had set a twenty down to settle his tab when a young white woman sauntered up to the bar. Burgundy lipstick, Betty Page bangs, a silver stud in her nose. Voluptuous, with a bitter-sweet mouth. The sort of girl who might want to play at having her hands pinned over her head or her panties ripped off. “But only if it’s righteous—not done half-assed,” a white college girlfriend had said to him once. “I mean, just
do it
already!” He smiled into his glass.

With a half-finished drink in one hand
, the girl set her purse next to him, her pelvis pressed against the stool. The bag gapped open: Disneyland keychain, flaking gold tubes of lipstick, a well-thumbed paperback anthology of short stories by Latin American authors. A hazel mole peered out from under the hem of her top. She raised her head as if to scan the room and watched him through her lashes.

“I hope I’m not intruding,” she said, “but aren’t you in film?”

They talked about movies. She had seen his picture in the paper. She said she was a librarian, that she went to see live music on weekends with her friends. No story of a life scarred by illness or abuse, no dream of stardom—lately those were the only types of women who approached him.

At least people only recognized him at
industry events. Soon he would be back in the semi-anonymity of the set. He should not have given out his post-office box today when a hand-shake would have done. “Giving yourself away,” Kim would say, “so there’s nothing left for me. To you, obscurity is worse than death.”

Not quite right. Obscurity
was
death.

The
young woman found reasons to brush his arm, to shift closer, to laugh. A laugh that made the little cross she wore tremble on its chain. This girl said her name was Lisa. She smiled when she said it, drew out the “a” at the end with a little laugh, and tugged at her earring.

You see, i
t’s what she wants. Don’t worry that you don’t give a damn about the rest of her life. Don’t interfere with the intoxication. No other drug will do right now.

Identity
or revenge?
The right choice was crucial.

Thinking about work again. He must have stopped talking minutes ago. His skill in dealing with people deserted him unless he was on the set or out lobbying investors.

The young woman poked her straw at the lime wedge in her glass and traced the scalloped edge of the paper coaster under-neath. She smoothed her hair behind one ear, then gave him a look that said he could invite her back to his room. As they left the bar and entered the elevator, he heard Kim’s voice: “These women aren’t forcing you into bed. You can say no to them once in a while.” But he never wanted to, which begged the question: Was he granting this woman’s wish, or was she saving him from a night alone?

11:54 p.m. 

From the neck down he was a man, but his long brown hair hung over the face of a dog, his black lips peeled back from his teeth in a grimace of pain. Iron hooks tore his flesh, and his muzzle pointed heavenward, tears falling from eyes that held sorrow and wisdom. A soldier leered nearby, ready to burn him with a pair of oil lamps.

A young virgin stood in a whorehouse, palms out at her sides, as potential defilers slunk away in shame. Golden light shone from her.

Paul Jonas ran his finger over the captions.
Saint Christopher Cynocephalus. Saint Agnes.
He leafed back a page, to woodcuts of the newly converted Caillica crumbling the statues of the gods, of her agony with iron spikes driven through her body from her soles to her neck, a punishment ordered by the king in return for her disobedience. Each saint was a knot of meaning, as concentrated as a haiku. He studied the image with the spikes. Hours of suffering drawn in crude black lines, with so little detail that without captions you might not know what you were seeing. Voices roused him. There, crossing the hotel lobby—Simon Mercer and a young woman with dark hair. He slipped his book of saints inside a magazine.

When Simon and his companion had passed, Paul flipped his cell phone open.

“Nadia? It’s Paul. I’m in the lobby.”

“Not now, Paul.”

“Wait! It’s about Simon. He just left the bar downstairs with some girl. They went into the elevator together.” He could hear the television in the background. “Nadia, are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

“They’re probably going back to his room.”

“You gave him my room number, didn’t you?”

He scowled. “Yes. Do you think they’re coming up to see you?”

“Don’t be
ridiculous. That’s not why I asked,” she said, but he did not believe her.

“Should I follow them?”

“Suit yourself. And you can tell me all about it.”

“I’ll’ve earned something then, don’t you think?”

She hung up.

At the elevators, he pushed the button for the seventh floor.

11:57 p.m.
 

Simon noted that he was practiced at this ritual, did not fumble in his pockets for the
room key or forget where the light switch was. His suitcase and laptop sat on the overstuffed hotel chair, so he and the girl took the couch. A bottle of Cristal with a soggy towel around its neck sweated in an ice bucket next to a StarBorn gift card:
To a successful venture!
–Fran
. He opened the mini bar and made two gin and tonics.

“
Why’re you here, Lisa?” He sounded like a narrator or an actor. Must be drunk.

This was the sort of scene
the character Julia would engineer: luring a stranger to her room.

“Because of you.”

Because of you.
He had heard that phrase somewhere before, or maybe he had seen it scrawled on a bathroom wall.

“You must be an actress.” But he would not have asked her up if she were.

“You really think so?” She reached for her drink and settled back, scraped one side of her mouth with her nail to erase any smudged lipstick.

“Don’t you want to ask me if I’m here because of you?” The beginning of a headache chiseled at the inside of his skull.

She folded her top lip inward, then picked up the script that lay spread facedown on the coffee table and ran her finger along the page. “What’s it about?” she said.

“A man who loses everything.” He reached for the cross at her neck and held it between his fingers. Her thin knit top, fur
-rowed where her bra dug into her ribs, dipped low in front. She had the kind of uptilted breasts whose nipples would point forward if she were naked on her hands and knees. “But there’s a scene that needs work. At the beginning of the story, in a future very much like our current reality, the man wakes up in an alley with a needle in his arm. He doesn’t know who he is or how he got there, just that he used to have something better. Then he finds the woman he thinks put him there. D’you want to help me with that part?”

“What do I do?”

He let her cross and gold chain slide through his fingers. What would it be like, to have faith? To have that refuge from fear, from a hundred questions every day?

The ghost of Julia, a smile on her lips, whispered in his ear. Simon nodded, took the script from Lisa’s hands, and set it back on the table.

“Open your mouth,” he said.

She watched his eyes, flicked her gaze at the door.
She drew in air with a flinch and opened her mouth as he pushed his fingers past her lips and the sharp wall of her teeth. Her pupils expanded, her breath warmed the back of his hand. Inside she was hot, soft against the pads of his fingers. Wet. Her hands curled around the drink in her lap. Ice clinked against the glass. She made a faint sound, one he felt more than heard.

He could smell her already: warm, afraid. She would taste like metal. Like rust, or blood, or a key you’ve gripped so long that its flavor stains your skin. Her waist would be soft under his hands, her ass lush against his groin.

“That’s good,” he said and took his fingers out of her mouth. “Lisa.”

He touched her face with the back of his hand. Smooth, warm. What sort of a word was it, her name? She was connected to it, contained in it, but it told him nothing.

“Take off your top.”

As she crossed her arms at her waist
and raised them over her head, he knew.
Names.
That’s it—identity. The throughline, the theme. How could I have not seen it before?