Эндрю Миллер - Oxygen

Ranch unlocked the padlock on a steel side door into the garage. The air inside was surprisingly chilly. There were no windows. He flicked the light switches. ‘We like to keep it simple,’ he said.

The space ahead of Larry, illuminated now by six quietly fizzing fluorescent tubes, looked as though it were used for storing the salvaged remnants of a house fire, objects retained only until someone had the will to do away with them. A dozen spare and improbable costumes hung from a mobile wardrobe rail next to two mattresses covered with the type of plastic sheeting found on the beds of incontinent children. Other props included a square of mulberry-coloured carpet, an office desk and chair, a six-foot plastic palm tree and a hat-stand from which dangled, suspended by one of its eye sockets, a latex gorilla head. It was hard to imagine a space less conducive to the performance of a sex act, and the skin of Larry’s balls tightened at the thought of it.

‘We got lights and multi-track sound in the back. All the dubbing and post-production’s done on site. Al’s our man behind the camera. You’ll like him. Nadine’s the sound girl. Her sister’s the fluffer. That’s where TB sits.’ He gestured to the obligatory folding director’s chair. ‘Fellini’s his big influence.’

‘And yours?’ asked Larry, fingering the inside of the gorilla head and feeling a slight tackiness as though it had recently been sweated in.

‘Marky Mark. Schwarzenegger. Sir Olivier of course. TB’s taught me to admire a lot of English stuff. Muffins and Shakespeare and all that shit. Can’t get my head around cricketing, though.’ He laughed.

‘Cricketing’s hard to get your head around,’ said Larry. ‘Have you ever been to England?’

‘Been to Mexico,’ said Ranch. ‘Hablas español, amigo ?

‘ Un poco ,’ said Larry. Then on a whim he asked: ‘What’s T. Bone’s real name?’

Ranch studied him with an expression of mock amazement. ‘This is LA, Larry. Who gives a fuck about his real name? C’mon. I’ll show you my place. Get you fixed up.’

Ranch’s place was a single-storey annexe at the back of the main house. A sprinkler near by made the grass shine. On the doorstep of the annexe two girls sat in the shade of a bougainvillaea sharing a can of cherry Coke and a joint.

‘Yo!’ said Ranch.

The girls got to their feet.

‘Cool suit,’ said the one with the ring through her eyebrow.

‘This is Rosinne,’ said Ranch. ‘And this is Jo-babe. Say hi to Larry, girls. He used to be on TV more often than the weather.’

The girls shifted their gaze from Ranch to Larry, shamelessly assessing the magnitude of his celebrity. He knew already there would be no repeat of Betty’s transports.

‘I kinda recognize you,’ said Rosinne. ‘I think, like, my mom used to watch you. You going to make a movie here?’

‘It looks that way,’ he said.

‘Hey! You’re English,’ cried Jo-babe, approvingly. ‘Sick!’ She offered him the joint. He grinned at her, the lovely violet blankness of her eyes. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘Jo-babe.’

‘You’re welcome,’ she answered, in the voice of a cartoon character he was not familiar with. The others laughed. Then they all went into Ranch’s place.

The annexe, one-time hideout of Harold and John before they had gone to make their way in the Sunshine State, consisted of a single large bedroom and adjoining bathroom. There were three televisions of different sizes in the bedroom, a Burt Reynolds poster, a stringless Fender guitar, and a big soapstone Buddha whose lap served as an ashtray. The floor was littered with CD covers and magazines, a mix of comics and pom and fashion. Jo-babe aimed the remote at the music system in the corner. There was a pause, then the room filled with Nirvana, and she began to dance, free-form, stringy arms, stringy legs, sometimes hopping nimbly over Rosinne, who had flopped on to the floor to pool through the latest issue of PLEASE!.

Ranch sat cross-legged on the rumpled bed, a mirror on his lap with a picture of Bogart on it and the legend ‘Here’s looking at you, kid!’.

‘Don’t mention this to T. Bone,’ he said, dividing a little heap of powder into four lines, then leaning over his reflection to snort energetically through a length of McDonald’s milk-shake straw.

‘Not a word,’ promised Larry, hoovering up his line from Bogart’s hat and passing the mirror to Rosinne, who thanked him as mildly as if he had handed her a glass of milk.

‘Are these girls in the film?’ asked Larry.

‘These girls? They’re way too skinny,’ said Ranch. ‘We only use professionals. Cindy X. Selina D’Amour. Sasha Martinez before she went to rehab. A Chinese called Patty Wang. Maybe she’s Filipina. Then there’s Scarletta Scarr, who’s kinda my godmother. We use her if there’s any S&M stuff.’

Larry thought briefly of his own godmother, a woman called Penny who had been at teacher training college with Alice in the sixties. He asked: ‘Were you nervous the first time you did it in front of the cameras?’

‘No way,’ said Ranch. The mirror had come back and he had immediately begun to cut up another four lines, scooping the drug out of a plastic envelope with the corner of the razor. ‘I was born to do this kind of work.’

‘You never had an occasion when you couldn’t do it? Couldn’t perform?’

‘You’ve just gotta be professional,’ said Ranch. ‘Stay focused.’

‘Focused,’ repeated Larry, nodding.

‘Think of the money,’ said Ranch.

‘Money turns you on?’

‘Dumb question,’ replied Ranch, grinning. ‘Hey, didn’t Dr Barry fuck everyone at Sun Valley?’

‘Not on camera,’ said Larry.

‘You’ll be great,’ said Ranch. They paused to take the coke. When Larry had given the mirror to Rosinne, Ranch put a finger to his lips, winked, and said quietly: ‘C’mon, I’m gonna show you something. Put your mind at ease.’

For the second time that day Larry followed Ranch into a bathroom. This one had bulbs around the mirror. Unflushed pee glittered in the toilet bowl, and the air smelt of patchouli oil and smoke. Ranch turned to the wall-mounted medicine cabinet behind the door, opened it, and took from among the array of vitamins and painkillers, a small carved wooden box of the kind you could buy in any Chinatown.

‘My little box of tricks,’ he said, unhooking the catch to show two compartments containing small coloured capsules, a dozen or so on one side, perhaps half as many on the other.

‘Sex and death,’ he added, cheerfully. But his face, as he gazed into the box, was no longer boyish. There was a haze of fatigue, like a sediment suspended in his skin, suggesting to Larry for the first time what it cost Ranch to go on being Ranch.

‘Wow,’ said Larry, looking at the capsules. ‘Which is which? They look the same.’

‘Now that would be too crazy,’ said Ranch. ‘These ones with the red at the bottom and blue at the top will give you a hard-on you could swing a piano from. And these little critters with the blue at the bottom, they put the lights out. I mean, for ever. Kaput. Hasta nunca. Leaves no trace in the body. Nothing anyone could find.’

‘You’re kidding,’ said Larry. ‘That’s bullshit.’ He found himself laughing, a little drunkenly.

Ranch shook his head. ‘More things in heaven and earth, Larry, than you ever fuckin’ dreamed of. I got them from a doctor in Vegas who wanted to do some voodoo with a girl I was seeing. You know what doctors are like.’

‘Have you tried one?’ asked Larry. ‘I mean one of the sex ones.’

‘Never needed to,’ said Ranch. ‘It’s just nice to know they’re here. Insurance.’