Will Baer - Hell's Half Acre

It’s too bad you didn’t come yesterday, says Miller.

Why is that?

It was feeding day, he says. The boa put on quite a show.

Does he have a name?

I’m sure he does, says Miller. But I don’t know it.

There are two black leather chairs at the far end of the room. Miller sits in one of them, his legs stretched out and his feet up on a round coffee table of solid, roughly cut glass that looks like a block of ice. The wood floor is stained the color of black cherries and down the middle of the room runs a narrow Turkish rug, green and gold. The rug comes to an end under the glass table and the colors melt and magnify. The walls are painted a dark, faintly metallic green.

Miller tells me to sit down. He doesn’t sound like he’s asking.

I take a sip of whiskey and suddenly feel strange, almost happy. This place smells of Dr. Moreau’s island and there may be much mischief in store for me, but I don’t care. Miller is an excellent host and I like it here. I am wary of telling him so, however, and I have to remind myself who he is and what he did to Jude. I have to steel myself against his charm. The house feels empty but for the reptiles and ourselves. The house has been utterly silent since we entered but now I imagine that I hear music, the soft lament of a solitary cello. The same few notes over and over, stretched and groaning. They stop and start, as if there is someone practicing upstairs. It’s a mournful tune and the only explanation for this sort of thing is that my brain is full of poison. I sink into the chair across from Miller and put my feet up.

He smiles at me and promptly the cello resumes, urgent now.

Okay, I say. Do I hear music? Or am I fucking nuts.

The cello stops. Miller lights a cigarette.

Beethoven, he says. Piano Trio number 4, in D Major. The love song for Anna Marie.

Who is playing, though?

I don’t hear anything, he says. Perhaps you’re nuts.

Uh huh. Give me a cigarette, please?

Miller pushes a pack of Dunhills across the glass table. I light one and we blow smoke and stare at each other. I wait for the cello to resume but it never does. The player is self-conscious, maybe. He heard us talking about him.

I feel like I’ve seen you before, says Miller.

I have that kind of face.

It’s a good face, he says. Not too handsome, but interesting.

Thanks, I guess.

Miller leans forward, pours two fingers of whiskey into my glass.

Have you ever tried acting? he says.

The whiskey burns my tongue. I light another cigarette, vaguely uneasy. Miller smiles at me and I wait for him to tell me what I’m thinking. But he doesn’t.

I can become someone else, I say. If that’s what you mean.

Interesting, he says. I’m talking about regular drama, however.

Only as a child, I say. In the fourth grade I had a non-speaking role in Great Expectations. I was beggar number nine. And one Christmas I was an anonymous shepherd in the nativity scene.

Miller laughs.

Why do you ask?

I’m interested in making a film, says Miller.

I am a thousand miles from home and once in a while I have to remind myself that I have no home. This is California and on any given Thursday there could be a nuclear sunset. And it’s earthquake country. The earth could come apart beneath my feet, any day now. Jude is waiting for me in a hotel room but I am prepared for the possibility that she may not be there when I return.

I won’t like it.

But I will sit down on the bed and take off my shoes. I will breathe the recycled air that may or may not smell of her hair. I will read the newspaper and smoke a few cigarettes and eventually I might take a nap. There will be no one to hear me if I speak in my sleep.

What sort of film? I say.

I finish off my bourbon and consider shooting Miller.

Do you know anything about snuff films? he says.

Urban legend, I say. But probably true.

Why do you say that?

Anything you can imagine is probably true. And the worst you can imagine is probably worth money.

How philosophical, he says.

Fuck you. People tend to kill people. And they do it every twenty-nine seconds. In the time it takes me to smoke this cigarette, eleven people will be murdered in this country.

Where do you get these statistics?

I make them up.

Excellent, he says. What else?

Everything is on videotape. Vacations, weddings, birthdays, dogs and cats doing tricks. Every time you go to a cash machine or mail a letter or purchase a quart of milk, you’re on tape. If you get murdered, you’re probably on tape and somebody somewhere on the Internet is going to masturbate while watching it. Reality is in the business of killing off fiction.

I like you, says Miller.

Okay.

There is a brief silence. Miller picks up a remote control and aims it at what I thought was a giant mirror on the wall behind me. The mirror flickers to life, a television. He mutes the sound and flips through the channels until he finds a baseball game, the Mariners and A’s.

Why do you ask? I say.

Because I want to make one, he says.

A snuff film?

Yes.

I take the gun out of my jacket pocket and point it at him, politely.

Take off your fucking ring, I say.

Why?

I’m leaving now. And I need proof that I killed you.

Art, he says. It’s going to be a quality piece of film, a masterpiece of blood porn. Literary, mysterious. The kind of thing you can screen at Sundance.

Mysterious? I say.

Miller smiles richly. That’s the beauty of it, the suspense factor. Because I have not yet finished the script, the victim will be uncertain until the end. It could turn out to be me or you. Or someone else. Perhaps an innocent will die. It will be called The Velvet.

Oh, fuck you, I say. You’ve been talking to Jude.

Miller picks up the remote control and my eyes go to the television, where the Oakland game rolls silently. Ichiro has just stolen third base for the Mariners and the cameras cut away to the crowd for reaction shots. The fans are not pleased. They boo and hiss. They bang drums. There is a close-up of a bearded man with a massive naked belly and a plastic jug of beer sloshing in each hand, dancing like a drunken god. The camera zooms on his face, then cuts to a luxury box where the fans are a bit more sedate. Miller pushes a button and the picture goes to slow-motion. And there is a lingering shot of MacDonald Cody, senator and tapped to be president one day, sitting next to a small blond-haired boy with the same dark eyes. The boy looks to be about five years old. He laughs and claps his hands with the kind of glee that most adults can barely remember and now someone who sits outside the frame leans over and gently touches his hair. The shot widens and I see that the man who touched the kid’s hair is Miller.

Motherfucker, I say. This is a tape?

Sort of a home movie, says Miller. His voice has slipped into that narcotic tone.

What the hell does that mean?

Miller presses another button, freezing the tape. The kid with dark eyes stares out at me. He is no longer smiling and like his eyes, his lips are dark and just slightly too big for his face and now they are pressed together and he looks very serious, almost somber. He looks sleepy.

Beautiful kid, isn’t he? says Miller. Those eyes could break your heart.

Yeah, I say. He looks just like his father.

I suppose you recognize him? says Miller.

MacDonald Cody, I say. The senator.

Miller stares at the TV, then looks at me.

But you’ve met him, am I right? He says.

Turn it off, I say.

Look at the kid, he says. The camera loves him.

I’m gone, I say. I’m fucking gone. It was a real thrill to meet you and everything.

Look at the kid, he says. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to him, would you?