Claire Watkins - Gold Fame Citrus

“She was mad, probably,” said Levi. “The documentary had one recording of her performance and in it she played a doll — a jewelry box ballerina, and I thought she was one come to life. Freaky makeup and these jerky movements. It scared the hell out of me. I wonder what happened to her.”

How sad he was, all of a sudden, how hunched and timid, how he leaned on his own idea of himself. The theatergoers all saw it, through their pearl-embellished binoculars or with their own unaided eyes. The gossiping priest and the decorous king and queen, the busty ladies and their randy suitor, the tardy couple from far away, even the Oriental juggler saw it, distracted as he was — even the listening lord with his eyes closed. How could Luz have missed it?

“I need to tell you something,” she said. Luz approached the apron and sat beside a coffee can footlight. “It’s Ray and me. I wanted you to know that. It’s not that I don’t care about you…”

“I get it,” said Levi, his hand waving languid in the musty air. “You love me but you love him more. It’s all so damn adult.”

“Yes,” she allowed. “I do care about you, deeply—”

A beaky scrape came from the rear of the theater as its doors were pried wide open. Some colony scavengers wandered in, seeking shade. Luz watched them and they her. She would have liked Ray to be there with her, but he was unwelcome just about everywhere now.

“You care about me,” Levi prompted. “Deeply.”

Luz dropped her voice. “Yes. And there’s — there’s something else.”

More people filed into the unlit theater. Luz looked to Levi to dismiss them, but he waved them down the aisle. Dallas and Cass were among them. Nico, too. “Have a seat,” Levi said. “Welcome to dress rehearsals at the Lovelorn Theater. Luz was just practicing her heartbreaker monologue. You were right,” he told her. “You’re not very good at this. Very wooden, if I may offer a note.”

Luz looked at her lap. “Should we talk later?” she whispered.

“Why? We have no secrets here. Come,” he called to the people in the back. “Plenty of room up front. Up,” he said to Luz. He popped up, some mystic vim animating him all of a sudden. “Stand up! You’re collapsing your diaphragm. Up, up!”

Luz stood. There were more people in the audience than she thought.

Levi waited until their velvet-covered chairs stopped creaking. “Now, again, with the whole body. Take it from, ‘There’s something else.’”

“There’s something else,” Luz said, a reflex. “I–I can’t go through with it. The plan. I can’t make her into a symbol. I thought I could — I wanted to be able to — but I can’t.”

“She can’t!” he called to the back wall.

“I have to think about what’s best for Ig,” she whispered.

“What’s that? You must project .”

“Levi,” she said, reaching for him.

“Never turn your back to the audience,” he said, pointing her shoulders forward. “Very basic.”

Luz hesitated.

“Go on,” he said. “The show must go on.”

She said nothing.

Levi said, “This affects all of them. They have a right to hear you say it. Just as I do.”

“I have to think about what’s best for Ig,” she said.

“What’s best for her.” He smiled. “The plan is what’s best for her.” The others nodded. “What’s best for us is best for her.”

“It’s just — all the exposure, Levi. It scares me.”

Levi took her face and held it. “Of course it does, Luz. Everything worth doing is done in the shadow of death.”

Someone moaned in assent.

“But I’ll be right beside you,” he said, squeezing. “‘Do not fear, for I am with you.’ ‘I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.’”

Luz had heard these lines before. “‘What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.’”

He flung her free. “Exactly! Think about what brought you here, about all that was sacrificed so you would come to this place at this moment!”

Luz did. She saw Ray’s flat feet carrying him down the road, his prophet eyes watering above the cobalt scarf, the bloated bighorn floating in that golden pool of poison. She saw her mother submerged beneath gray waves at Point Dume, her pretty dress aswirl in the current. Perhaps it had all been arranged with a purpose in mind. Perhaps the prairie dog had marched through the starlet’s front door intending to be their chaperone and spirit guide. She wanted to believe in these things still. To believe in cause and purpose.

“Levi,” Luz said, “she’s my daughter.” She had never called Ig this, and hoped it did not sound so false as it felt.

“ Your daughter?” Levi wheeled away, bewildered. “She belongs to all of us.”

The crowd agreed.

“She is a child of the dune sea!”

Luz stood still while the crowd erupted. This seemed somehow her stage direction. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I won’t allow it.”

The two were silent for a moment, then Levi stepped downstage. “Here is where I ask what happened to you. When did you become so possessive? Were you always this way? Was I blind to it? Have I led us down a wayward path?”

No, said the crowd. No.

“You used to be so…” He sighed. “Open.”

“No I didn’t,” she said. “I never was.”

She wanted him to be right, even still. She wanted to be the person he once mistook her for: open and purposeful all at once. But she was meager, shut. That was, after all this supposed transformation, all this movement and light, her rotten way.

“Levi, even if we did it, it wouldn’t work.” The crowd mumbled its disagreement. “It won’t,” Luz said to them. “The range will be on us any day now. You all know that. No video will stop that. No campaign. No one will care about me — a Mojav — a kidnapper. It won’t stop anything.” She turned back to Levi. “You found me and Ig. You know that no one else was coming for us. No one cares about Baby Dunn.”

“Did I ever tell you how we found you?” he said.

“Yes,” she said, “the bighorn.”

“You were all but dead. Dehydrated, hyperthermic, full-blown sunstroke. Completely unresponsive. But Ig? Ig was wide awake. Conscious. Alert. Calm. She was taking everything in. Watching you go. She was at home there, witnessing.”

Luz shook her head.

“You see?” he asked his audience. “You see how clarity can melt into suspicion? Without mindfulness? Without vigilance? You used to be among us, Luz. You were once with us, of us.” He was using her name but no longer addressing her. “But something has contaminated you. Some vexation, some poisonous, nihilistic seed. I’ve seen all this, in the sweat lodge and beyond. So clearly. The range, your withdrawal into the self, allowing harm to befall our Ig. They’re all connected.”

The crowd sat rapt.

“My loves, there are contaminants among us. We have allowed negativity to propagate, a toxic yeast rising in our midst, and we have done nothing. I count myself among the complacent. But no more! The time has come to purge ourselves of these toxicities, cleanse our community of doubt, hesitation, misgiving, skepticism. Reinvigorate our cause from within and without!”

Yes! many said.

“We all want to know, ‘What next?’ First let us purify our intent. Reinvigorate our purpose. Each of us must rid our spirits of their innermost burdens and transgressions. We must expel the poison from our singular body. Do this and the path will be made plain. Do this and we will endure. We will thrive. Forever and ever. We will meet this range and meet our fate there!”

Luz tried to flee, but there were only walls at the wings. She turned around and tried to find an opening in the curtain behind her. Feeling their eyes on her, hearing their snickers and jeers, she clawed at the velvet. She could not find the opening. Finally she turned, faced them, stepped off the apron and pushed herself up the aisle and out the open door.