Steve Erickson - Zeroville

“The General who?”

“Pull that cap down over your head, because one look at you and the officials might get irritable. The Generalissimo may not be a George Stevens man.”

133.

Four days later, a limo is parked outside the Paramount Gate with the back door open. Sitting on the black leather backseat is a plane ticket, passport and shooting script, the MGM lion roaring in the upper left hand corner of the envelope. From the radio comes a song— What are they doing in the Hyacinth House? — by an old Los Angeles band whose singer died in Paris; perhaps he lived in a bell tower, in pursuit of the world’s greatest satanist, the right-hand man of Joan of Arc. Between the limo and the gate, Soledad Palladin sits on the edge of the fountain, arms folded, as though Vikar conjured her.

134.

Four years have passed since she left him on Sunset Boulevard, but she looks at him as if they’ve seen each other every day since.

Her auburn hair is sun-bleached and she wears a simple black dress, slightly low cut, that seems more like a slip. Perhaps she’s more beautiful than when he last saw her, the small cleft in her chin more perfect and irresistible. She nods hello to him more than she says it; across the street, not far from where it was that day in the rain when he last saw Zazi, is the black Mustang. Vikar leans into the limo and says to the driver, “Just a minute.”

“This is for you?” Soledad says. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Spain.”

She looks at the car. “Right now?”

“Viking Man is making a movie there.”

“Oh yes,” she smiles, “pirates or something. A boy’s adventure.”

“They’re shooting outside Seville.”

“My hometown.”

“I’ll be in Madrid. I’m cutting a rough from dailies. Do you still see the people at the beach?”

“Everyone is busy now,” she says. “I get a small role now and then.”

“I saw you in The Long Goodbye ,” Vikar says. He looks across Melrose at the Mustang and the girl in the backseat. “She’s gotten big,” he says.

“They do that.” Soledad says, “I have been wanting to talk to you for a while, but …” She’s lost a bit more of her accent. “About that night.”

“It’s all right.”

“What?”

“I vex people.”

Her eyes look away and she tilts her head slightly. She takes hold of her hair and wraps it around her fist distractedly. “I wonder if I know what you mean.”

“But I would never hurt her.”

“Who?”

“Your little girl. Or … do anything bad.”

She looks back at him. “I wonder if I know what you mean,” she says again, except this time she sounds like she really does.

“That night.”

“Which night?”

“In the car. When you drove me home from the beach house.” She stares at him blankly; he believes she may be most beautiful when she’s blank. “When she was in the front and I said you should put her in the back.” He adds, “You left me on Sunset.”

“Oh,” she says. “I had forgotten that. I know you wouldn’t hurt her. It had more …” She stops. “It had more to do with … other things … experiences of my own … than with you. I was not speaking of that night. I was speaking of the other night.”

“The other night?”

“The night,” she says, “in the cemetery.”

135.

The limo driver says, “Mr. Jerome?”

Stunned, Vikar nods at the driver and turns back to the woman. “Did they hurt you?” he says finally.

She chooses her words carefully. “What matters,” she says, “is that you tried to help me. So I have been wanting to thank you …

Vikar says in a low voice, “Did I kill that man?”

She draws herself up when she says, “I never saw them before and have not seen them since.”

“I waited for the police to come to my apartment. I’m not one of the singing family that killed those people.” He gazes at the Mustang across the street. “Was Zazi all right?”

“Of course.”

“I mean from that night.”

“Sometimes I’m certain she’s tougher than I. That she’s not as beautiful, for which I’m grateful, so the men won’t get the same look in their eyes. Perhaps,” she shifts from the fountain, “she will not spend her teenage years in and out of institutions like her mother.”

“But that night—”

“She was with friends,” says Soledad. “With her father.” She shrugs. “You don’t want to miss your plane,” and she turns to cross the street to the Mustang, where Vikar can barely make out Zazi in the back, watching her mother and watching him.

136.

From the liquor cart going up and down the aisle of the airplane, Vikar orders three vodka tonics. Notwithstanding Viking Man’s assurance that Vikar would have thirteen hours to read Là-Bas five more times, Vikar makes it through only once before pulling the script for Viking Man’s movie from the MGM envelope.

He reads the script twice and the third time begins breaking the story into sequences and numbering them as he would identify the parts of an architectural structure. When the sun is behind him, he puts the script away and watches a Spanish movie he doesn’t understand; the actress in it navigates between relationships with two men and Vikar keeps seeing Soledad in the part of the woman. At one point he closes his eyes.

In the dark of his lids, the Spanish movie intercuts with the open horizontal rock of his dream and its white ancient writing and the mysterious figure lying on top. Vikar sits up with a start.

When he finally dozes again, it’s to the dull roar of the engines and the pitch black of the night above the Atlantic. Upon landing at Barrajas Airport in the late afternoon Vikar remembers only at the last minute, as he steps through the door, to pull the cap from his coat pocket and down over his head.

137.

The customs officials make him take the cap off. In the waiting area beyond the customs control Vikar can see a driver holding a cardboard sign that reads VICAR, with a C. When Vikar takes off the cap, everyone around him — customs officials, police, passengers — stops and a hush falls on the room.

138.

As Vikar is ushered into a smaller room, he looks back over his shoulder at the driver in the distance with the sign. In the room, one of the officials takes Vikar’s passport and motions for him to sit at a table. On the wall hangs a portrait of a mild looking man in a uniform, wearing small round spectacles to go with his small trimmed moustache; Vikar realizes this is the General person of whom Viking Man spoke. He doesn’t appear fearsome.

Several of the officials lean over Vikar to study his head. “ Anarquista ?” one asks. The official with Vikar’s passport vanishes and for a while no one says or does anything. The official finally returns ten minutes later with another who’s studying the passport as he walks in the door; he looks at Vikar and says, “Señor Jerome?”

I should have stayed in Hollywood where nothing bad happens except singing families that slaughter people. “Yes.”

“Welcome to our country.”

“Thank you.”

“How long do you plan to be with us, Señor Jerome?” the official asks.

“I’m not sure.”

“Is your purpose here business or holiday?”

“Business.”

“What is the name of your company?”

I don’t have a company, Vikar almost answers, but says, “MGM.”

“The hotel,” says the official.

“The movies,” Vikar says. “I believe there is a hotel as well.”

“Las Vegas. Dean Martin.”

“ Rio Bravo ,” Vikar nods.