Steve Erickson - Zeroville

“No.”

“Who is your favorite French actress? You may call me that.” She looks at the TV.

“Falconetti,” he says.

She’s slightly taken aback. “I supposed you should say something predictable like Brigitte Bardot.”

“I like Brigitte Bardot,” he says.

“You are a man, you are allowed.” She watches the movie on the TV. “When they asked Simone Signoret how she felt about her husband Yves Montand fucking Marilyn Monroe, Signoret replied, ‘But it was Marilyn Monroe .’ So I might have said as well, had you said Brigitte Bardot. But I am content you did not.” She says to the movie on the TV, “I adore this part.”

203.

In the movie on the TV, Jean Harlow, who’s living in the jungle with Clark Gable, climbs out of a barrel of rain water.

“When they shot this,” the woman says, “Harlow came out of the barrel with nothing on. It was her idea. Immediately the director seized all the film so the frames of Harlow naked could be removed from the film and destroyed.”

“I saw where Jean Harlow is buried,” says Vikar.

“Her husband murdered her,” the woman says, “he was an associate of Irving Thalberg. He committed suicide while she was making this film. When he married Harlow he found he was impotent, perhaps he was impotent before but now he was married to the great, what would you say, sex god … sex goddess , and he was impotent. He beat her all the time and then …” she puts two fingers to her temple with her thumb as the trigger, “… boom, while she was making this picture with Gable who, bien sûr , was the great male sex god. Perhaps Harlow’s husband believed she and Gable were sleeping together. He might have said, ‘But it is Clark Gable ’ … but men do not know how to think in such a way. In fact Gable and Harlow were not sleeping together at all, or not that anyone knows. She died four, five years later.”

“How did her husband murder her if he already killed himself?”

“He beat her so much that her kidneys failed but took years to do so, after he was gone.” She turns to him; he’s looking at her body. She says, “Falconetti seems, what is the American? a mouthful,” and laughs at some private joke. “You could call me Maria or Renée, I believe Falconetti went by both. Or perhaps you should call me Joan,” she laughs again.

“Not that,” he says.

“ Non , I do not think so either.” She sips her wine, “Besides I am Jewish, a bad Jewish oui but still I do not think one can be a Jewish Joan.” She says, “I saw Passion de Jeanne d’Arc only once, nine years ago … or some version of it.”

“That’s when I saw it.”

“It was the greatest film I’ve ever seen and I do not think I could stand to see it again.”

“Did somebody send you?”

“Pardon?”

“Did somebody send you here tonight?” Of course it was Rondell; it had to have been Rondell. So Cooper Léon must have meant the older blonde.

“ Chéri , what do you suppose? I am strolling the Croisette and look up at this hotel and see a light in one window out of hundreds and say the mystery tattoo-man Vikar is up there alone and needs company?”

“But you weren’t strolling the Croisette, you were in the lounge.”

“Then you noticed me.”

“Then you weren’t sent by the man I was sitting with?”

“It is not an interesting question, and the answer is neither interesting nor difficult if you think about it. Can you imagine what it was like to actually act in a film so powerful that no one can stand to see it twice? No wonder it drove Falconetti mad, no wonder she never made anything else.”

“Perhaps I’ll call you Maria. The actress in Last Tango in Paris and The Passenger was named Maria.”

She ponders it a moment. “I am not so much like her. But we can call me Maria anyway.”

202.

She reaches over and rubs his bald head. “Monty,” she says.

“Many people believe it’s James Dean.”

“ Pftt ,” she says. Vikar has the feeling Maria says things like pftt and chéri because she believes he expects it.

“Do you live in Cannes?” If she actually lives in Cannes, then it must have been the older blonde.

“I live in Paris.”

“Everyone in Cannes must know about movies.”

She laughs. “You mean even the escorts in Cannes know about movies. Actually, not everyone in Cannes knows so much of movies, even at the festival. I know this because I meet quite a few. The young boys from the studios, the new ones, know nothing of movies, the new young producers know nothing of movies and even the actors know little of movies. I know more of movies than any of these people. The critics know something of movies, bien sûr , and the new young directors know.”

“Have you been with famous directors?”

“Now chéri, would you want me to tell others that I had been with you?”

“It would be all right.”

“That’s sweet but others might not think so.”

He tries to look at the clock discreetly.

“It is just past midnight,” she says. “I have been engaged as your companion until your press conference at half past nine tomorrow morning. Unless you would prefer me to leave sooner. I can leave any time you prefer. For me it is the same, the donation is the same.”

“The donation?” Vikar says.

“It has been taken care of.”

“I hope it’s a good donation.”

“ Dix mille .”

“How much is that?”

“Ten thousand.”

“Ten thousand dollars?” he says.

“That would be very nice,” she says, “ mais non . Francs.”

“How much is that?”

“Perhaps two thousand American dollars.”

“That’s still a good donation.”

Lying on the bed, she turns her head upside down to look at him sitting behind her. She says, “Are you going to ask now why I do it?”

“Does everyone ask?”

“Actually, almost no one asks. The question is there but not asked.”

“Why do you do it?”

“I do it only at Cannes, once a year, because I love cinema. I am … what is the American? ‘moonlighting’? This is my sixth festival. Now why,” she says back to the TV, “would Gable give up Harlow for Mary Astor?”

“Moonlighting?”

“It is another life, different from my real life.”

“Like Belle de Jour ,” he says.

“ Non , not like Belle de Jour ,” she says a bit impatiently. “In Belle de Jour Deneuve has no other life, that is why she sells herself to men, in order to have a life, any life, a life of the senses, a life that is not dead or suffocated. I have entirely another life.”

“What do you do in your other life?”

“I am, what is the American?” still watching the movie, “a barrister? … or is that British? ‘Attorney’?”

“You’re a lawyer?”

“A lawyer,” she nods.

“Really?”

“Then at the end,” she says, “Gable goes back to Harlow because he does not want to take Mary Astor away from her husband, who is his business partner, so because he does not have the heart to break her husband’s heart, he finds it easier to humiliate Mary Astor and break her heart so she will hate him and leave him. And he tells Harlow he is being noble for once and she is content with that even though he has given up Mary Astor not out of love for Harlow but out of love for his own nobility, his masculine code.”

“Press conference?” Vikar says.

“Gable,” she says, “should just forget the two women and fuck the partner, that is what he truly wants, that is what this film truly is about.” She says, “Certainly this is a film made by men .”