Steve Erickson - Zeroville

186.

Vikar says, “I didn’t understand about the note.” Viking Man doesn’t answer. “The part in Variety about the note.”

Viking Man nods.

“Did you understand about the note?”

“Well, vicar,” says Viking Man and stops, suspended for a moment, “just briefly, as a matter of fact, I saw the note, such as it was. Barely a note at all, really, some half-baked haiku on a cocktail napkin about sore throats and broken hearts — isn’t it just like Dot to leave a ‘suicide note’ on a cocktail napkin, to be read in a bar?”

“She was in love with an actor once.”

“Whose daughter died of strep … yeah, I know that story. That poor bastard had a shitstorm of a life, his last five or six years. The fucking patron saint of Hollywood martyrs.”

“God kills children in many ways,” says Vikar.

“She wasn’t a child.”

“I meant the little girl with the sore throat.”

“Does not caring if you wake up the next morning constitute suicide?”

“Sometimes God has help. A mother leaves her daughter in a car.”

“Vicar, are we having the same conversation?”

“Where is she now?”

“Hollywood Memorial, there behind Paramount. I tried to get word to you.”

“I know. I don’t have a telephone.”

“That constitutes aberrant behavior in Hollywood. They take away your Hollywood passport if you don’t have a telephone.”

“Cecil B. De Mille is buried there. Jayne Mansfield.” Vikar says, “I believe I may have killed a man there once.”

“Did this homicidal spree take place recently?”

“Three or four years ago. Perhaps five.”

“Jayne Mansfield isn’t buried there. She has a tombstone there, but she’s buried in Pennsylvania.”

“I’m from Pennsylvania.”

“I see your movie opens next week.”

“It’s not really my movie.”

“I gather the DGA sorted out the credit. Friedkin must have had an aneurysm,” Viking Man chortles. “You going to direct that French novel of yours?”

“I don’t know.”

“You might make more headway with a telephone. Just tempestuous wild-hair-up-the-ass speculation on my part.”

“It’s about God’s greatest disciple, the right hand of Joan of Arc.”

“I imagine Hollywood gets a hard-on thinking about that.”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought Siamese-twin sisters,” shrugs Viking Man, “was the stupidest idea in the history of cinema, so what do I know? But I would move if it’s something you want to do, vicar. Get yourself a phone and then get yourself an agent. Because it’s all changing, and not in our favor. We’ve run it into the ground. That egomaniacal wop in the Philippines is spending thirty million or whatever it is on a Vietnam movie no one understands, and that includes me and I wrote the bastard, or thought I did, with all apologies to Conrad, and you have that hermaphrodite up in Montana trying to follow up his Vietnam movie with some prairie Gone With the Wind or whatever it is he thinks he’s making. Oil companies own the studios now, vicar. Schmuck though Louis B. Mayer may have been, he knew the difference between movies and unleaded.”

“If God makes us bury our children,” says Vikar, “who makes us bury our parents?”

“We do that on our own.”

185.

Seen from the bus, the shimmering black limos on La Cienega reflect the city as pieces of a jigsaw night rearranging themselves. I am the passenger , the radio plays, I ride and I ride , and it isn’t the soundtrack for an Antonioni movie but Vikar’s life, and he doesn’t even know it’s by the same man who sang the song about the dog.

184.

In the waning days of winter, Vikar sits on the top floor of his house watching a serviceman install a telephone on his kitchen wall, next to a cork bulletin board. The man finishes, walks out the front door, and ninety seconds later the phone rings. Vikar runs after the serviceman to take the phone out, just as the truck is pulling away.

The truck disappears down the road that eventually empties onto Sunset Boulevard in one direction and Laurel Canyon in the other. Vikar watches it the whole way and then walks back into the house where the ringing has stopped. He looks at the phone and it begins ringing again.

183.

He picks up the phone on the ninth ring. “Hello.”

“Hello?” The woman on the other end is about to hang up.

“Yes.”

“Is this Mr. Vikar Jerome?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Jerome, my name is Molly Fairbanks. How are you?”

“I’m all right.”

“May I call you Vikar?”

“Yes.”

“Vikar, I’m with Creative Artists.” Vikar doesn’t say anything. “CAA. We’re a talent agency. Have you heard of us?”

“I don’t know.”

She laughs. “Well, we’re still a little new, but we’re doing very well. Do you have a moment to talk?”

“All right.”

“Congratulations, first of all.”

“Thank you.” He says, “For what?”

There’s a pause. “The nomination.”

“Oh. Thank you,” Vikar says. “What nomination?”

“This is Vikar Jerome the motion-picture editor, is that correct?”

“I’ve edited motion pictures.”

“You edited Your Pale Blue Eyes , is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Have you been answering your phone, Vikar? Or read any newspapers?”

“I just got the phone.”

“You mean you just had a telephone installed?”

“Yes.”

“You just had a telephone installed this morning?”

“I couldn’t catch the phone man as he was driving away. I would have had him take it out, if I could have caught him.”

“Have you heard of the Academy Awards?”

“Of course.”

“The nominations were yesterday.”

“Oh.”

“Your picture received two, including for editing.” She says, “That’s you.”

“Oh.” He says, “Will they make me go like they made me go to Cannes?”

“Did you like Cannes?”

“No. But I met a nice woman who knew a lot about cinema.”

“I see.”

“I believe she wasn’t the woman who used to be a man. She knew what I wanted.”

There’s another pause. “I see. Do you want to go to the Academy Awards?”

“No.”

“Well, then, I think you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“They might try to make me.”

“Would you be relieved or disappointed if I told you that you probably won’t win?”

“Relieved.”

“Well, there you are. But as I understand it, there’s a project you’ve been wanting to direct, and if that’s the case, then this is a good time to pursue that.”

“The company hasn’t called me.”

“Well, they’ve been going through some changes.”

“I haven’t had a telephone, either.”

“There’s that as well.”

“Perhaps the company doesn’t want to make the movie.”

“They may be more interested, Vikar, if other studios are interested. Studios tend to be like that. Also, these days distributors are trying to figure out just how involved they want to be on the production side of things. The business has gotten a little unsettled the last few years.” That was a word, “unsettled,” that Rondell used. “But as to this project, I believe you had some sort of informal understanding with UA, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Normally, informal understandings don’t mean a great deal in this business. But you’ve just been nominated for the Academy Award.”

“I probably won’t win.”

“No, but the nomination is not a small thing and there’s a general feeling that, if not for you, UA might not have had a releasable picture, let alone an Academy Award nominee.”