Steve Erickson - Zeroville

“Yes.”

“From the French masterpiece Emmanuelle ?”

“Yes.”

“And Emmanuelle 2 ?”

“I guess.”

“And Emmanuelle ’77 ?”

“Uh.”

“And Goodbye, Emmanuelle ?”

“I don’t know about those last ones.”

“So then. ‘Now I know what you are thinking,’ Buñuel went on in my dream. ‘You are thinking that you will fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel and it will be over in the usual forty-five seconds and that is hardly worth it. No,’ Buñuel said in my dream, ‘if you choose to fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel, I will give you an erection not as in real life but a cinematic erection, as men have in films. It will last as long as you want, it will last hours, days if you want. But,’ and Buñuel was emphatic about this, Monsieur Vicar, ‘but once you have reached climax and the fucking is over, then … no more.’ And as soon as Buñuel said this, I woke.” Cooper Léon sighs heavily. “I woke, monsieur, to the truth that I would trade the freedom and justice of all the world’s oppressed masses for one chance to fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel. And of course the tragedy, monsieur, is that I woke to this truth that I have to live with forever without ever having actually fucked Miss Sylvia Kristel . So it is as though I made the choice in my soul without ever having received the benefit of that choice. Do you understand?”

“I believe so.”

“I believed that you would,” Cooper Léon nodded. “I believed that you of all people would understand that this is the exquisite cruelty of cinema, confronting men with truths about themselves that they must live with without ever actually getting to fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel.”

“I’ve cheated on Elizabeth Taylor,” Vikar says, patting his own head.

“Yes, monsieur,” the other man says dismissively. “But Elizabeth Taylor has cheated on you far more often.”

209.

“ Mon dieu ,” Cooper Léon says, looking across the room.

“What?” says Vikar.

“Do you know who that is?” He’s looking at the two women on the other side of the room, the older blonde in the wide-brimmed fedora and sunglasses, and the younger one with dark curls in the long white coat. Vikar isn’t certain which one he means.

“Which one do you mean?”

“That one.”

Vikar believes Cooper Léon means the older blonde but he still isn’t certain.

“That, Monsieur Vicar, is Christine Jorgensen.”

A worrisome recollection flickers across Vikar’s mind.

“She is here for the Irving Rapper retrospective. Monsieur Rapper filmed the story of her life eight or nine years ago. You know of Christine Jorgensen, of course.”

Vikar doesn’t say anything. He looks back and forth from the older blonde to the younger woman in the white coat.

“You know of the story of her life. She was a man. She was an American soldier who—”

“I know the story.”

“—had herself, how would you say, altered surgically—”

“I know the story.” It has to be the older blonde.

“Allow me to introduce you.”

“No, thank you.”

“It is no trouble.”

“I believe my room is ready now.” Vikar stands up from the cocktail table.

“Are you sure you would not like to …?”

“I’m going to check on my room.”

“Very well,” says Cooper Léon, standing as well. The two men shake hands. “Felicitations again, Monsieur Vicar.”

“Yes.”

“I am very pleased to have seen you in Cannes,” he calls as Vikar rushes from the lounge.

208.

Forty-five minutes later, Vikar is in his small suite on the fourth floor of the Carlton. It’s eleven-thirty. From the small balcony onto which the suite’s French doors open, the Mediterranean is to the left; getting underway along the waterfront are the many parties of the festival’s closing night. Party yachts line the harbor. Vikar can’t see the fireworks but can hear them.

207.

He lies on the bed in his unbuttoned shirt watching the TV. He flicks around the channels; the news is in French so he doesn’t understand much. There’s a story about an Italian president or prime minister who appears to have been assassinated. Grace Kelly’s daughter is getting married; both are princesses now. The granddaughter of Charles Foster Kane has been sent to jail for being kidnapped, which Vikar didn’t realize was a crime. The coffin and body of Charlie Chaplin have been recovered, not far from where they were stolen; Vikar didn’t know they had been stolen. When were they stolen? Soon Vikar finds on the TV an old American black-and-white movie.

Vikar’s award sits in a furious ball of mangled parchment and red ribbon on a table next to a basket of fruit, cheese and red wine. The suite is all white and reminds him of the room at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey that he saw his first afternoon in Los Angeles. In another corner of the all-white suite is a small writing table. Vikar is trying not to think about anything. When someone knocks at the door, he doesn’t answer because he assumes it’s Rondell and he doesn’t want to talk to him.

The knocking continues and Vikar ignores it, until finally the door opens and she walks in.

206.

The younger woman from the lounge, with the dark curls and the long white coat, closes the door behind her. In the light she appears in her early thirties; she’s tall, just under six feet. “ Bonsoir , Vikar,” she says, slipping off her long white coat that falls to the matching floor, and except for her jewelry and high heels, she’s perfectly naked.

205.

Her face is pleasantly attractive, not beautiful, but her long body verges on the preposterous, the most extraordinary body Vikar has seen. He hasn’t seen many naked female bodies in person but he’s seen them in magazines and in the movies and he’s never seen one like this. When she drops the coat, she doesn’t pose. It barely occurs to him that she’s not simply being straightforward but making a point of getting his name right.

204.

She takes a plum from the fruit basket and bites into it, then puts it back. She wipes the juice on her chin precisely with a single finger and picks up the bottle of wine. “May I?” she says, holding up the corkscrew.

Vikar says, “I can open it for you.”

“ Merci ,” she says, bringing the bottle over to the bed. Two wine glasses dangle lightly by their stems from her other fingers. She sits on the edge of the bed looking around as he works the corkscrew; in her nakedness she’s entirely casual. “Do you like the hotel?”

Oh, mother, it has to have been the older blonde, Vikar assures himself. “Buñuel stayed here.”

“ Oui, bien sûr . Cary Grant stays here, Orson Welles. Olivier, Sophia Loren, Alain Delon. Mussolini was thrown out, I believe before the First World War, when he was a journalist.”

“He slept on the floor as a revolutionary act.”

“Mussolini?”

“Buñuel.”

“ Non, chéri, ” the woman says, “Buñuel slept on the floor because the bed was not comfortable enough for him.” She looks around the suite. “It is a bit, what is the American? nose in the air,” and she brings her finger to the tip of her nose and pushes it up. “After the First World War, it was a hospital. Blaise Cendrars was a patient.”

“I like the poem about Little Jeanne and the train,” Vikar says, distracted, sweat on his brow.

“I am impressed. Almost no Americans know of this poem.”

“Is your name Christine?” Vikar blurts.

She shrugs. “Would you like it to be Christine?”