Steve Erickson - Zeroville

30.

touch her face.

29.

Oh, daughter.

28.

Zazi doesn’t return. I’ve become father to the sacrificial child . In his delirium, he has lapses; he finds himself riding a bus into Hollywood with no recollection of how long he’s been on it. There’s a song from a source he can’t identify or find

To the center of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you

To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sink,

searching for you

and at some point he’s in the Chinese Theatre. He has no idea if, outside, it’s day or night.

27.

An L.A. private eye of the future executes robots who believe they’re human because they remember . The movie takes place in a Los Angeles where everything is reset at zero. The future is reset at zero. Memory is reset at zero, prophecies are reset at zero. All latitudes and longitudes are reset at zero; everything that one believes about oneself is reset at zero. There’s no sunlight in this Los Angeles; every day is reset at zero. There’s no starchild in this movie because childhood has been reset at zero. In this Los Angeles, there is no Hollywood; in this movie, the Movies have been reset at zero …

26.

… and somewhere in this movie he knows he’s seen the frame of the sacrificial rock, he knows it’s there just like in all the movies

25.

and the lights in the theater rise and Vikar stirs. He wonders if he fell asleep; he’s now entered a fever where it’s impossible to know anymore. He sits up in his seat, watches the people file up the aisles. Then his heart rises to his throat.

Coming up the other aisle of the huge Chinese Theatre, he sees him.

24.

Vikar is frozen, trying to think. It can’t be him. I was sure he was dead, reset at zero like everything else; and what would he be doing here even if he were alive, all the way from Pennsylvania?

At first he can’t decide what to do, but then Vikar jumps from his seat and runs into the lobby, only to see him again in the distance through the theater doors, outside among the throngs milling around the concrete footprints of stars. Vikar pushes his way outside.

23.

Outside, Vikar stands in front of the Chinese Theatre. People run into him as his eyes search up and down Hollywood Boulevard.

It couldn’t have been him. Even if he were alive, is it possible he would have come to Los Angeles after all this time? Why would he have been in the theater? Did he know I was there? Vikar begins walking up and down the block until, to his astonishment, at the corner of Orange Avenue, he sees him crossing the street to the Roosevelt Hotel.

22.

The lobby hasn’t changed since thirteen years before. Vikar strides past the front desk, through the sitting area with the bar beyond: “Sir?” says the concierge behind the front desk. Vikar wishes he were wearing his cap. The concierge calls again and again Vikar doesn’t answer, taking two or three at a time the steps that lead to the elevators, slipping into one just as the door slides closed.

21.

Like a private eye eluding pursuit in the ongoing movie of Los Angeles, Vikar gets off at the seventh floor and takes the stairs the rest of the way to the ninth.

20.

On the ninth floor, he heads down the long hall. The door of suite 928 is half ajar. Vikar pushes it open slightly, steps inside.

19.

To the left, in the corner of the living room, are a sofa and chair. A small table sits in the middle of the living room, a small bar behind it. The man stands in the middle of the suite gazing out the window, and turns to look at Vikar; his eyes glance to Vikar’s head and his mouth curls into a smile Vikar has seen a thousand times. “Hello!” the man says. “Come in.”

18.

He says to Vikar, “Have a seat.”

Vikar appraises the suite again, tentatively stepping into the living room and the rising lights of Hollywood through the window.

“Can I … get you something to drink?” the man says. “Vodka tonic?”

“All right.”

“Have a seat?” the man says again.

“All right.” Vikar lowers himself into the sofa in the middle of the living room. The man hands Vikar the vodka tonic but doesn’t pour himself anything. He sits in the chair across from Vikar, smiles and nods; he leans forward and folds his hands, unblinking dark eyes on Vikar with a familiar intensity. Vikar says, “For some reason, from a distance I believed you were my father.”

“Common mistake,” the man laughs.

17.

The man says in his slightly high, cracked voice, “Well, of course, I know all about you .” He gestures at Vikar’s head and laughs again. “I guess I’ve known about you since … well, since before I knew you.”

On anyone else, his smile might be a sneer. But it’s without insolence; rather it’s half serene, half ironic, the smile that rejects doom or accepts it — it’s hard to be sure. It’s the same smile with which he confronts John Wayne at the end of Red River , when Wayne says he’s going to kill him. It’s the same smile with which he refuses to be bullied by Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity , and then befriends him. It’s the same smile when he sees Elizabeth Taylor for the last time at the end of A Place in the Sun , on his way to the gas chamber.

“Fathers, huh?” he says, his faraway gaze from under his predominant eyebrows floating over Vikar’s face, before fixing on something somewhere just beyond him. “Nuts. Back home in Omaha, I didn’t get on with mine, especially after the Crash …” He shrugs, “He was a … narrow man. Rigid man. Sound familiar?”

“Yes.”

“Of course,” the man nods, “my Ma, uh, she wasn’t exactly easy for him to live with. She wasn’t easy for any of us to live with, with all the … lies … But nobody ever lies about being lonely.”

“I realize now,” Vikar says, “how lonely my mother was.”

“It helped in the acting, though — the thing with Pa. Never thought of motion pictures as a hiding place but … thought of my Pa when I went up against Wayne in Red River . Thought of him when I went up against Lancaster in Eternity . Pa and I, we patched things up after the accident … about the only thing after the accident that … got better.”

“Your face,” says Vikar.

The man touches his face. “Yeah.”

“It’s better now.”

He nods. “It’s better.”

“I get the right profiles and left profiles mixed up.”

“Another common mistake.” He stares at Vikar. “You got trust in your eyes, like you were just born.” He smiles the smile. “You know I was a twin?”

“No.”

“Had a twin sister. So when you’re a twin, you got four profiles in a way, right? Or maybe … one right profile cancels out the other left, and one left cancels out the other right …”

“Was it bad?”

“How’s that?”

“The accident. Did it hurt?”

“It was bad,” he nods, “can’t pretend it wasn’t. Bad outside and …” he taps his head, “… inside. Pretty much lost half my face. Bessie Mae — that’s what I call Elizabeth — she saved my life. Reached into my mouth and … pulled my teeth out of my throat, which is the only reason I didn’t choke to death. I gave her the teeth later,” he laughs, “as a sort of keepsake. The nose … never got fixed … jaw was cracked … all the nerves on the left side … Lots of pills for the pain. A lot of drink. You know, I’ll never forget the gesture of it, Elizabeth saving my life, but—” He laughs again. “I would have been Jimmy Dean if I’d died then. Hollywood is full of people who would trade their lives in a heartbeat just to be legends. Would have traded mine in a heartbeat not to go through the next nine years.” He says matter-of-factly, “Before the accident, I always was arrogant about my face. Felt a little guilty about it too, I realize now. Went to enlist in the War, before they turned me down for dysentery, and I was scared not that I’d get killed but that … something would happen to my face. Got away with a lot, because of this face. So it figures,” he smiles, “life would get me there .”