Steve Erickson - Zeroville

“All right.”

“I’m also sending something over to your suite this afternoon. Depending on what I see next week, there will be more where that comes from.” Is it illicit narcotics? Vikar wonders. “You’ll find it when you get back to the hotel. You are going back to the hotel these nights, aren’t you?”

“Sooner or later.”

“They’re your nights, as long as it’s not hurting the picture.”

“All right.”

“We understand and accept that a certain amount of mystery is part of your personality, Vikar. You do understand that sometimes it unsettles people?”

“Yes.”

“Do you ever get unsettled?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“I guess that’s good.”

“I get other things.” Looking at the face in the viewer before him, Vikar says, “But I called about something else.”

182.

When Vikar returns to his suite that evening, a large stack of film canisters waits for him on the table in the front room. The Long Goodbye, Kiss Me Deadly, Sweet Smell of Success, Body and Soul, Monsieur Verdoux, To Be or Not to Be, A Hard Day’s Night, One Million B.C. (the final movie D. W. Griffith produced, and part of which he may have directed). When I get back to Hollywood, Vikar thinks, I’m going to need a bigger place.

183.

He doesn’t go to the club that night, and the next day he leaves the cutting room early and returns to the suite. He waits for a phone call, or a knock on the door.

184.

She holds her hair, wrapping her hand in it. She wears a black dress like the last time he saw her. “Hello,” he says.

“You are editing my film.” She smiles. “ My film.”

“Come in.”

“I can’t. But perhaps we can go out Friday night.”

“Do you want to give me your phone number?”

“I will just come over, O.K.?”

“Yes.”

“We can go out and have a drink or go dancing or go to a club.”

Vikar says, “I know a very good club.”

185.

Until the last second, some part of him believes she’ll disappear again. When he answers the door Friday night, she wears a shorter, sexier dress and her lips glisten; she’s slightly flushed, and across her eyes is a mysterious veil, as though the eyes and lips are each of a different face. “I have to make one stop,” she says breezily in the taxi on its way down Fifth Avenue.

186.

The streetlights ripple across her face. A full moon hangs over Grand Central Station. “Is it waxing or waning?” she says. “I’ve been on the set so many nights I don’t know.”

“Which is which?” he says. “Which is becoming and which is begoing?”

“Waxing is becoming.”

“It’s waxing.” He says, “I didn’t know you were in this movie until I saw your face in the viewer.”

“I didn’t know you were on it,” she says, “until they told me.”

“What did they tell you?”

“They told me you were cutting the movie.” She half laughs, “I play the model’s friend.”

“I know.”

“It’s not a big part. I tried out for the part of the model.”

“I saw you in The Long Goodbye .”

“Yes, you told me.”

“I did?”

“That afternoon at Paramount. There was a limousine for you and you were going to Spain.” She says, “I was supposed to play the gangster’s girlfriend.”

“The scene with the Coke bottle.”

“At the last minute, the director decided no one would smash my face with a Coke bottle. They needed a more … disposable actress with a more disposable face. I lost the lead in L’Avventura for the same reason.”

“The woman who disappears on the island.”

“She was the second lead,” Soledad corrects herself, “she was a disposable character too. As with Altman, Antonioni said, ‘No one would lose you on an island.’ Driver, turn left here please.”

187.

The taxi turns on Thirty-Fourth Street. “Another block and a half,” Soledad says to the driver.

The taxi crosses Park Avenue.

“Pull over here please.” The taxi pulls in front of a parking structure. “I will be right back,” she says to Vikar, opening the door.

“Where are you going?” Vikar says.

“I will be right back.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Stay and hold the taxi. I will be back.”

188.

Inside the club, Soledad says, “What is this?”

“Why did we stop at that parking structure?” asks Vikar.

She gazes around her. “I thought we were going to a club.”

“I believe this is a very good club.”

“I thought we were going to a disco, I thought we were going dancing.” She’s stricken by the spectacle; for a moment, her accent flares. “Everyone is looking at me,” in her short sexy dress, there among the ripped jeans and leather.

“They’re looking at me,” Vikar says. They’re both right.

“I don’t like this club.”

“I believe it’s a very good—”

“I hate this music. It’s not even music.”

“No,” Vikar agrees, “it’s the Sound.”

“It’s …” she thinks, “ bárbaro . Barbaric.”

“Yes,” he says, “that’s it, barbaric,” and throws himself into the roiling pit of the audience.

189.

Outside, he tries to hail a cab while she waits under the awning. Standing in the empty street he turns to see Soledad gazing down at the sidewalk and the dirty barefooted woman in the hospital gown who always sleeps in the club doorway.

To Vikar’s astonishment, Soledad pulls off over her head her flimsy black dress, laying it over the woman as though it could keep her warm, and stands on the freezing New York sidewalk in nothing but her panties, high heels and a glimmer of recognition rooted seven years before and three thousand miles away, on Pacific Coast Highway.

Vikar looks around to see if anyone is watching. Some people stop to stare at the nearly naked woman but others just pass by; finally flagging the attention of a distant taxi, Vikar dashes to Soledad and removes his coat, draping it around her shoulders.

190.

“As we get older,” Soledad says in the cab back to the hotel, shivering in Vikar’s coat, “does the wall between youth and madness become higher? Or do we just learn how to … better stay on our side of the wall?”

“I don’t know,” Vikar answers.

“That club,” she says softly. “There was no wall.”

“No.”

“The bathroom was a cesspool.”

After a while Vikar says, “How is Zazi?” Soledad turns to him in the backseat; her breasts fall out of his open coat and press against his sweat-soaked shirt. “I wonder if I know what you mean, Mister Film Editor,” she says, and this time he knows she doesn’t wonder at all. “I wonder why you ask about that. She’s in L.A. With friends. With her father.” She whispers, “You want to get bárbaro , Mister Film Editor?” inches from his mouth, the passing lights from the street outside rolling across her face. She pulls his belt out of the loops of his pants and unbuttons the front and takes him in her hand.

191.

Back at his suite in the hotel, she says, “What’s this?” She holds it up before her eyes. In her other hand she still has his belt, carried defiantly through the hotel lobby.

“Something I made,” he says, “a long time ago.”

She examines it. “A toy house?”

“It’s not a toy, it’s not a house.” Vikar takes two small bottles of vodka and red wine from the mini-bar. Is this the moment for such autobiography? Is there any moment for such autobiography? “It’s a model of a church.”