Mystery Girl: A Novel (21 page)

I never should have come home. I thought it would save me, ground me, pull me out of my dreams, but it only buried me alive in them. Hollywood is my graveyard, and this hospital, this bed, my grave. It all began that summer, my summer of Fabricio, troubling dreams I couldn’t shake and worse, little cracks in the daytime, in reality, moments when I’d forget where, or even who, I was. Sometimes I’d feel, lying with my eyes closed in the sun, that I’d open them and be by the pool in Laurel Canyon, the old house, with Zed beside me, reading out loud. Sometimes I’d think I was here, in my room at the hospital, hearing the soft step of the nurses in the hall.
Then it got to be I was wide-awake, walking down a street in Paris or stepping into a nightclub in Berlin and suddenly I’d blank out and not know my name or why I was there. It was terrifying. I’d play along, nodding at my companions, laughing at their jokes, letting them put me in a cab, but all the while I’d be screaming inside. Then just as suddenly, it would all come back, and I’d be OK again for weeks. But I lived in constant dread of an attack, and maybe that fear and anxiety even triggered them, which lead me to fear the fear, to become anxious over the anxiety, around and around, in a spiral, headed down into nothingness. Finally, I snapped. I had what the doctors called a psychotic break and ended up in a hospital in Germany. They shipped me here, old friends, people I didn’t even remember, paid for it, and Dr. Parker began to teach me about myself again. I learned who I was, about my childhood, about Zed. He said the trauma of witnessing Zed’s suicide had triggered a breakdown, and I’d tried to control it with drugs and alcohol and reckless sex and that had all made it worse. He said he could help me remember. And I suppose he did, he had the evidence, the passports and newspaper clippings. But I always suspected there was something more to my story. I should have hired you then, my darling Solar, to solve my case. For a crime had been committed. A missing person case. Me. True, I am dead now, as you read my words, but do not mourn, my love. Long before my death, someone had already stolen my life. I was lost. Find me, detective. Save me. Please.

48

LONSKY SET THE PAGES
down on the desk. I could see the sheets covered in a feminine scrawl.

He knit his hands over his belly and set his eyes on me. They were tearless, of course. And pitiless.

“So, now that you have heard her last words, you, the last to see her alive, now that you’ve received this message from beyond the grave, a letter delivered by the dead hand of another, begging for our help, now, Kornberg, what say you?”

His gaze bore down on me like Moses on the Mountain. My phone buzzed relentlessly. Milo 911. Perhaps I was out of beer or there was a Cheech & Chong marathon on TV. My friends were right. I had to seize control of my fate from everyone, including them. And him. And her. And her. Losing my wife, I had begun to lose my mind, letting Mona invade my dreams, and my dreams invade my life: madness lay ahead. Look at Lonsky, thumping his desk with a paw.

“Well, have you fallen mute or have you something to say?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, with a smile of relief. “I quit.”

49

WALKING OUT OF
the Lonsky residence a free man, I did feel a lot better. I’d explained, as best I could, that as far as I was concerned, the background dossier on (Ra)Mona was complete. Without going into specifics, I said it was time I focused on my own career. I knew all I was ever going to about The Subject. I called Milo back from the car, preparing to fire him too, but he wasn’t at my house after all. It was worse.

“Good news. I went ahead and got those movies for you.”

“What movies?”

“From that old queen. I called and said I was your assistant, which she believed no problem, ha, and asked when you could come by for a follow-up interview. The witch said she was going to be out at a soiree or whatnot, probably picking toadstools all night, but you could come by for a tea again tomorrow. So I just waited till she cleared out, hopped in, and got them.”

“Hopped in? How?”

“I remembered what you said about the closet and all.”

“You broke in?”

“What’s the big deal? I break into your house and borrow things all the time. We just watch it, dupe it, and return it before the old bag knows.”

“You break into my house?”

“I have to, you won’t give me a key. Anyway, I’ll close the shop early and get the Beta decks set up. We’ll watch downstairs. Jerry’s not well. But I bet he’d be proud, if I told him. Which I probably won’t.”

“Jesus, Milo, I never told you to do this…”

“This isn’t about you, man. Or me. Or who broke into whose house. This is cinema. Just be here at ten. And don’t worry. No one will ever know.”

50

I HEARD TROUBLE COMING
before I reached the parking lot and sniffed it in the air before I touched the door. It sounded, and smelled, like Led Zeppelin, “Immigrant Song” pounding through the store’s sound system, so loud I felt its galloping rumble in my belly and heard Plant’s cry ring out, even as I turned into the lot, which was packed, despite the closed sign and drawn shades. I squeezed in between a black pickup on monster tires and an old primer-spotted Nova. The dark air around me was thick with roasted meat smoke and the sweet funk of good weed. Either there was a party going on or someone had run over and then incinerated a skunk.

Everything doubled when I opened the door. The music blew my brain back in a blast of reverb. Smoke billowed out. The scene resembled a combination Dungeons & Dragons convention,
High Times
thirtieth-anniversary reunion, and summit between black metal war clans. Grim reapers lurched around with beers in their hands, talking through beards of white, black, green, and red. An albino wraith tottered by in Goth rags and Frankenstein boots, holding hands with a pink haired pinup in fishnets and a crimson corset. Through the smoke, I could make out a chubby tattooed lady, topless and bouncing up and down to the sonic thunder, her tremendous breasts atremble as she shook her fists at heaven. I put a tentative foot inside, but a hairy monster in a leather vest blocked my path with what looked like a real sword.

“Hold! Who goes there? Declare yourself!” The gristled beast faced me with red eyes like boiled beets sunk deep into blackened sockets. He showed stubbly teeth. I stepped back, eyes on the weapon, prepared to flee, but Milo emerged from the clouds.

“That’s OK, Bjorn, this is the guest of honor.”

Immediately, the gatekeeper stood back, his sword raised at attention. “Enter at will.”

“What the fuck, Milo? What is this?” I asked as he guided me toward his command post behind the counter.

He shrugged. “Word must have slipped out about the films. They’re a legend all through the community.”

“What community?” A Satanic dude wandered past with a shaved head, droopy waxed mustache, heavy eyeliner, and a pentagram pendant over a black velvet tunic.

“The underground-art-rock-magic-kink-noise-film-spooky-stoner-occult-metal scene, I guess. Don’t worry. Everyone here is very low profile. They mostly have criminal records.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“And once these copies are run off, we’re going to make a nice little pile. I’m already taking orders.” I was about to raise several objections, but a gaunt graybeard in a pointy hat and a tie-died purple robe appeared and grabbed my hand.

“Thank you, sir, for finding what was lost. I am White Wizard.
If you ever need me, just call.” He raised his furry eyebrows and gleamed. “With your thoughts, I mean. There is no phone in my van.”

“Right, I will think about you. Thanks.”

The topless girl I’d seen before tapped my shoulder. I jumped.

“Hi,” she said, and handed me a beer. Her tattooed boobs jiggled and the creatures inked over her soft skin jumped and shivered. “I’m Bluebell. I love what you’re doing for the community. Thank you so, so much.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Ladies and gentleman, and everyone in between, your attention please!”

Distracted, I hadn’t noticed that the music had stopped. Milo was standing on a chair, brandishing a remote. He went on. “Welcome, cinephiles, Satanists, metal heads, stoners, and sexual deviants of all stripes.” There were scattered cheers and a confused dash of applause as the crowd appraised each other. “Tonight we have gathered for what may be the very first screening of a lost treasure,
Invitation
and
Consummation,
parts one and two of Zed Naught’s legendary Infernal Trilogy.” A roar went up. Bluebell hopped up and down. Her beer foamed. The White Wizard tossed some glitter in the air. I spotted MJ by the door. She waved. Then someone handed her a bottle of tequila and she took a slug. Milo went on: “But first let me introduce you to the man who made it all possible, the hero of our community…”

Spitting beer, I poked at Milo. “No, no that’s fine…”

He pointed the remote at me. “My dear friend, the experimental, nonlinear novelist and junior private eye… Sam Kornberg!”

A roar went up. The gathered tribe shook their various weapons, pipes, and wands. MJ hooted and waved her bottle. A handful of barbarians began to chant and pump their veiny arms. “Korn-berg! Korn-berg! Korn-berg!”

“Let the films begin!” Milo shouted above them. “Lights out!”

51

INVITATION
IS ONLY EIGHTEEN
minutes long, and appears to be shot on 16mm. There is no synch sound, only a lurching, soaring, screaming score attributed to none other than Daemonica herself on synthesizer and church organ and her rock star then-husband on electric guitar, appearing, according to Milo’s quick Internet work, under the pseudonym High Lord Assmore. The film begins with a sunset, in fact the whole thing takes place during a protracted sunset, while an orange lump of fire melts, like a child’s fallen snow cone, into a neon-blue California sea. This slowed footage of the day’s last drops dripping into darkness is intercut with a kind of fast-forward course in Western civilization coming to its conclusion, an apocalypse composed of stock footage, amateur theatricals, and the occasional flight of fugitive beauty snatched from thin air.

As the sun sinks, shrinking and swelling with a diseased organ’s glandular grandeur, the guitars begin to howl and a whole series of creatures seems to answer the summons: An ancient Egyptian pharaoh (who looks a lot like Kevin the warlock, but much younger with black eyeliner and a shaved chest) emerges from a cardboard temple covered in crayon hieroglyphics and throws a spear into the air. A Greek oracle (garlands in her long blond curls, fake boobs under her toga) rises from the smoke of a cave and runs through the woods, pursued by a hairy Pan in plastic horns, tooting on his pipes. An Aztec goddess in gold body paint and a feather mask climbs a plywood pyramid (close shot on the peak only) holding a bloody sword. (Was this the unnamed Mexican chick, third wheel in the Naught Family Triathlon? The credits called her only Rosa Negrita.) The parade continues and some actors reappear in new guises: the milky blond returns in a white wig and a Marie Antoinette bodice with a beauty mark on her cleavage; Kevin pops up in a mustache and full Fascist ensemble. (Continuity, problematic throughout, gets especially
shoddy here. Marie’s beauty mark jumps from right breast to left, and Kevin, when appearing next as Manson, has a seemingly real beard in one shot and an obviously fake one in the next.) Animals leap into action as well, in nature doc footage of bounding stags, soaring bird flocks, and barking wolf packs. Things reach a sort of crescendo when we see these animals dying, falling, bleeding, intercut with zoomy flashes of knives, swords, spears, and arrows being waved around. Night falls. Total darkness fills the screen. Then, in a gorgeous bit of business, a full moon forms like a pearl on the ocean’s silvered tongue. There is a meteor shower, a real one, bright traces like so many scratches raining and dying on film. A flame jumps, we think it is another, brighter comet crossing the heavens, but it is a match tossed into the darkness right before us. It lands, igniting a bonfire. As the flames flare up, apparently in Zed’s backyard, we see the various characters from the film, Greek, Roman, Aztec, Nazi, and so forth kneeling around it, cleverly cut so that the doubled and tripled actors can all be seen. Even the animals seem to be there, though obviously stuffed, a stag, a wolf, a goat. Then, hazily through the flames, two figures emerge in hooded cloaks, holding hands. The assembly cheers, fists raised. The music orgasms. The end. The credits are a bit of a letdown after this, since they are poorly set in shaky letters and the musical score, a bit too short, suddenly begins again, only to end abruptly about thirty seconds later.

The audience, now sprawled on the floor or leaning against the walls, burst into ecstatic applause. “I can see why that is a legend!” Milo shouted into my ear. “Wait till I go online. I will rule the nerdosphere.”

I shouted back, “Don’t forget we’re not supposed to have seen this! We stole it.”

“Borrowed. Art belongs to the people. And I’m charging them like a hundred a copy. You want to run over to 7-Eleven before the next feature? I’m getting hungry.”

“No. It’s short. Let it roll. We better get these back quickly.”

52

IF
INVITATION
WAS AN AMATEUR
production twisted into high art,
Consummation
was homemade avant-garde porn. The film seems to begin where the first one ended, on a fire-lit night at Zed’s, but the cast and props are different. Now there are torches blazing in a large ring, with the trees and ridges of Laurel Canyon outlined in black above. Now the circled participants are all in black hooded robes, with their faces variously masked (demon, gorilla, ghost) or painted (whiskered kitten, red devil, mime white). A giant pentagram is painted on the ground, and in the center of the star stands an altar draped with red velvet and a large upside-down cross that looks like the one in Kevin’s closet. Then, as the music climbs and wails, a kind of royal couple emerges, a man in a purple robe with a goatish mask covering the top of his face, Batman-style, and sprouting small horns, and a woman in a white robe with a white Zorro-type mask revealing pouty red lips and bright eyes blinking through its holes. Zed and Mona. He holds a sword in one hand. Mona cuddles a white rabbit. In their other hands, each holds a chain, and crawling behind them, both bare-bottomed, are a priest and nun, the nun holding an incense burner in her mouth, the priest with a pillow on his back, on which, as a drunken zoom reveals, rests the consecrated host.