Steve Erickson - Zeroville

149.

Letting himself in, Viking Man says, “Vicar?”

“Yes,” Vikar says from the couch.

“You O.K.?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t seem O.K.”

Vikar stares at the sky.

“Hell, vicar. She was a fuck-up.”

“Stop.”

“You going to the service?”

“What service?”

148.

Viking Man says, “There’s a memorial service at Rondell’s house.”

“What about Zazi?”

“What about her?”

“Is she all right?”

“As all right as she can be, so far as I know. I think she and Sol had a complicated fucking relationship, to say the least, but you would know better than I …”

“I don’t …”

“… the kid was raising the mother when she wasn’t raising herself … now half the time she runs wild in the city, nobody knows where she is or what she’s doing, twelve years old or …”

“Fourteen,” Vikar says, “almost fifteen …”

“No one can keep up with her.”

“Me neither.”

“Nothing reminds you of time’s passage like a kid.”

“No.”

“Would hate to see her get so fucked up too, forgive me for saying it. But she’s always been smarter than her mom, even if,” Viking Man snorts, “she does wear a ring in her nose now.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve started calling her Zulu.” Viking Man sighs. “You want to go with me to this service or not?”

“No.”

147.

But after Viking Man leaves, Vikar stirs from the couch and dresses and starts up the labyrinthine path that leads to Sunset Drive, which he then follows to the canyon top. Mitch Rondell’s house on Lookout Mountain is all glass and pylon and tension cable, its decks and patios dropping off into Laurel Canyon; by the time Vikar gets there, the memorial is nearly over. The crowd is a mix of Eurotrash, unfamiliar faces, former UA associates of Rondell’s whom Vikar recognizes. Molly Fairbanks stands alongside the room and waves sympathetically to Vikar but doesn’t come over; there are remnants of the old Nichols Beach gang. Margie Ruth in black, whom he hasn’t seen in years, embraces him. “Hey, superman,” she smiles sadly, “the ‘crazy one with the tits,’ huh?”

The white carpet of Rondell’s house reminds Vikar of his suite at the Carlton in Cannes, where Maria’s white coat dropped to the floor. At the back, Rondell wears black and a sense of oppression, distractedly mumbling to the stream of condolences. Vikar catches his eye and then goes out onto the deck.

146.

He circles around the back of the house and finds her leaning against a post, gazing out at the sea that hides ten miles behind the haze. She’s wearing black jeans and a man’s black shirt, her hair dyed black, and from a distance she might appear unmoved by the occasion, until he gets closer; her eyeliner is smeared. He says nothing about her cigarette.

She turns and looks at him, drops the cigarette and steps on it. “Figured you weren’t coming,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” Vikar says.

Zazi shrugs. “She was running out the clock as a scumball’s accessory.”

“Stop.”

“I know,” she says, “it’s a cliché, the damaged Hollywood thing. The precociously bitter teenager thing.”

“When did you get the ring?”

She touches her nose. “Couple months ago. I’m working up to the tattooed head,” she nods at him, “maybe now that I won’t have to fight with Mom about it — that would have been the deal breaker, though I’m not sure what my end of the deal was supposed to be or what deal was getting broken … maybe,” she pulls back her dyed black hair with her hands, “well, all along I’ve been thinking Lora Logic,” Vikar doesn’t know who that is or what movie she’s in, “but I guess it’s one of those things you should be sure about if you’re going to tattoo it to your head, though if it’s a mistake I suppose you can just grow your hair back, anyway I haven’t seen you around, how’s your movie coming, don’t you start shooting next week or something—?” and suddenly the outburst drops off into space like the house drops off into the city.

“Are you all right?” Vikar says, and Zazi throws herself into his chest crying.

145.

She composes herself and says, “Can I stay at your place, Vikar? I’ll sleep on the couch or the floor. But please don’t leave me here.”

“There’s an extra room,” he says, “you don’t have to sleep on the floor.”

“Can we leave now? None of this,” says Zazi, waving at the people in the house behind her, “is really about Mom anyway.”

“All right.”

Vikar and Zazi walk through the house and reach the front door before Rondell, at the other end of the room, says, “Isadora?”

It’s been so long since Vikar heard her called this that at first he isn’t sure who Rondell means.

“Isadora?” Rondell crosses the room and the talking around them fades. “What are you doing?”

“She’s coming with me,” says Vikar.

“Vikar?” says Rondell, inches from the other man. “I’m speaking to Zazi. Isadora, where do you think you’re going?”

“That’s not my name,” Zazi says.

“She’s coming with me,” Vikar says.

“Vikar, don’t say that again. Zazi?” and Rondell grabs the girl by the arm.

144.

Later there will be some discussion between De Palma and Schrader as to the cinematic nature of the moment, and as to the exact sound, perhaps for the purpose of how to replicate it in a sound edit; there’s agreement about the crunching. No one disputes the sound of crunching. With the same hand that once smashed a car window with an eleven-year-old behind it, Vikar shatters one profile of Rondell or another — lately he’s become confused about the profiles — and in any case, what’s also indisputable is the bloody streak across the white carpet. No one argues about the cinematic nature of that, either. Rondell sprawls across the floor in the center of the room with blood running from his nose, everyone watching passively except Molly, who looks at Vikar ashen, as if two years of some determined and focused effort have just disappeared in an instant. Vikar walks over to deliver a swift kick to Rondell’s other profile. “Whoa there, Shane,” someone pulls Vikar back, and Vikar turns to land another blow but sees it’s Viking Man. He turns back to Rondell on the floor. “She’s coming with me,” he says.

143.

Zazi walks over to Rondell, who lies in a daze; she leans over and whispers something in his ear. She looks him in the eye and whispers it again, as though to make sure it’s registered. Then she strides from the house and Vikar follows.

142.

“That’s not my name, what he called me,” she says. By the time they’re out to the street, Viking Man has run after them.

“Vicar,” he says, “you got a ride?”

“I walked here,” Vikar says.

“Let me give you a ride.” Viking Man indicates a Toyota with a surfboard on top. “I don’t think it makes sense to wait for the cops.”

“They won’t come,” Zazi says.

“The police never come,” agrees Vikar.

“You fucked him up pretty good,” Viking Man says.

“He’s not,” Zazi answers calmly, “going to call the police.”

141.

The last time Vikar saw his father was the night the divinity student mortified the review committee with the model church that had no door. He returned home to find the house dark: “Oh, Mother?” he called to no answer. At the top of the darkened stairs, at the edge of the bed where he lay as a small boy the night his father came into his room, Vikar now found his father sitting and holding a long knife. It gleamed in the light of the tiny lamp that stood on the night stand for as long as Vikar could remember. “Where’s Mother?” said Vikar, and turned and went into his mother’s room; the closet and drawers were cleaned out. He went back into his own room, and his father, face distorted and wet, looked at his son with the newly shaved head as though the son had become exactly what the father always knew and feared. The father turned the blade over and over in the palm of his hand, contemplating its destiny. But the blade was not for Vikar’s mother, and it was not for Vikar; and that was the moment Vikar hated God most.