Steve Erickson - Zeroville

“What’s that,” says Zazi.

“Do you want some of my other taco?” Soledad answers her.

“Can I see your movies?” Zazi says.

“No.”

“Can I see them when I’m older?”

“No.”

“She can have more of my taco if she wants,” says Vikar.

“Can I ever see your movies?” says Zazi.

“No,” Soledad says. She says to Vikar: “I’m up for a part in a private-eye film. It doesn’t shoot until later this year.”

Vikar nods.

“I would play a gangster’s girlfriend.”

“What’s a gangster?” says Zazi.

“A bad man.” Soledad says to Vikar, “She gets a soda bottle smashed in her face. It is violent but a good scene.”

“Can I see that movie?” says Zazi.

“No. If I don’t get that part,” Soledad says to Vikar, “they would give me another part.”

“I’ve worked on an Otto Preminger movie and a Vincente Minnelli movie,” Vikar says.

“You build sets.”

“Yes.”

“Someone told me you studied architecture.”

“Yes.”

“You should work on grand buildings.”

“I do work on grand buildings. I worked on an Otto Preminger movie and a Vincente Minnelli movie.”

“I wonder if I know what you mean,” Soledad says softly, but Vikar wonders if she wonders. Gazing toward the beach, Soledad wraps her fist in her hair as though she’s binding herself, like she would if she were tying herself to something or someone. Across the highway, the barefooted woman in the hospital gown has stopped and stands staring at them; it’s not clear to Vikar if she’s considering crossing the road. Soledad stares back; it’s not clear to Vikar if she sees the woman or just watches the sea. “Are you a gangster?” Zazi asks Vikar.

“Zazi,” says Soledad.

“No,” Vikar says to Zazi.

“Are you a serial killer?” Zazi says.

“Zazi,” says Soledad.

Zazi says, “I don’t even know what it is. Serial like corn flakes?”

“I’m not a serial killer,” says Vikar.

“Did the police take you away that time because you have a picture on your head?”

“Do you remember that?”

“Sort of. Mommy reminded me.”

“I’m certain,” Vikar says, “the police wouldn’t arrest someone for that.”

“Did you do something bad?”

“Zazi,” Soledad says.

“No. I believe the police thought I was someone else.” Two people ran off a hillside, he thinks, but I didn’t mean to.

“I saw a movie about gangsters,” says Zazi.

“Which one?” says Vikar.

“The man and woman who rob banks and shoot people.”

“You saw that movie?”

“I didn’t know,” Soledad protests feebly.

“The cartoon deer one was worse,” says Zazi.

“What deer one?” says Vikar.

“The little deer whose mom gets shot.”

“There,” says Soledad to Vikar, “you see? That one was worse.”

“Did you like the one about the gangsters?” Zazi says to Vikar.

“The man and woman who rob banks?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand comedies,” says Vikar.

“What’s a comedy?”

“A funny movie.”

“That movie was funny?” says Zazi. “I think maybe I don’t really like movies that much.” She looks at Vikar. “I want a picture on my head.”

86.

In the car on the way into the city, Zazi sits in front again. She’s turned in her seat studying Vikar. “Zazi,” Soledad says, “turn around in the seat.” She drives irregularly.

“She should be in the back,” Vikar finally says. Soledad looks at him in the rear-view mirror and Vikar can see her cool smile, like the way she smiled the first time he saw her. She says something so quietly he can’t understand her. “What?” he says.

“I said, Would you like that?”

“It’s not safe in the front for a little girl.”

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” Soledad says, nodding. The car comes to a screeching stop. “Get out,” she says.

Vikar looks around him. It’s ten o’clock and they’re on one of the long stretches of Sunset where there’s no sidewalk. “Here?” he says. Zazi looks at her mother.

“Do you think I am going to let her sit in back with you?” Soledad says calmly in her accented English. “Get out.”

Vikar continues to look around at the dark boulevard and then slowly opens the door and gets out. He watches the dance between the Mustang’s white taillights and red brake lights until they’ve vanished in the distance.

87.

He goes to the movies all the time, new and old. He sees Performance, The French Connection , Preminger’s Laura (for the third time), Murmur of the Heart, Gilda , Disney’s Pinocchio, The Battle of Algiers (with Viking Man, who’s seeing it for the sixth time), Dirty Harry (for which Viking Man is writing a sequel), an old forties movie called Criss Cross where Burt Lancaster and Yvonne De Carlo drive each other mad across what seems to Vikar a fantastical downtown Los Angeles with trolley cars that glide through the air. In Buñuel’s Belle de Jour Vikar imagines Soledad Palladin, as directed by her father, in Catherine Deneuve’s role of the housewife turned prostitute who, in one scene, is splattered with mud. At night he dreams about Margie lying between his legs, her naked breasts pressed against his thighs, and then in the dream she transforms into Soledad — at which point Vikar wakes with a start, unspent.

88.

He buys another television. He almost never reads the newspaper, but one afternoon he sees a headline on the front page of the Herald-Examiner that several members of the singing family who murdered the pregnant woman, her unborn child and four others in the canyon have been sentenced to die in the state gas chamber.

89.

Vikar telephones Margie Ruth at the beach house. “Not here,” a male voice on the other end of the line says, “she’s gone to New York to make Brian’s movie. Who’s this?” and Vikar hangs up.

90.

Vikar has been working in production and set design at Paramount nearly a year, and is freelancing on a job at United Artists, when the art director of a Don Quixote musical comes to see him.

“I’ve been looking at some of your sketches,” the art director says in a heavily accented English that reminds Vikar of Soledad. He’s an Italian in his late forties with a background in opera. “You have mixed several elements in this set,” he points at the draft.

“Yes,” Vikar agrees.

“It …” The art director thinks. “It is an interesting effect but these elements do not go well. They are taken from different time periods.”

“Yes.”

91.

The art director looks at Vikar. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

“Yes,” Vikar says, pointing at the design, “this arch doesn’t go with the time period of the façade in back.”

“That’s it,” the other man nods, relieved.

“This arch is from twenty-three years later,” Vikar says.

The art director looks at the draft and back at Vikar. “Twenty-three years?”

“Yes.”

The two men look at each other. “But you see the problem, yes?” the art director finally asks.

“No.”

“You do not see the problem.”

“No.”

“You do not see the problem with the same building, uh,” he gropes for the language, “from different time periods.”

“No. This arch is from twenty-three years later, when the character of the prostitute Dulcinea will die here from consumption.”

“Excuse?” says the art director.

“The prostitute will die here of consumption in twenty-three years.”