Mystery Girl: A Novel (34 page)

The second reel turns darker, in color and mood. The characters can be seen drinking from wine and whiskey bottles, smoking joints and taking what looks like acid, little white confetti flakes melting on the tongue. Behind them the sun begins its slow decline, and the desert light show turns on. There is sex, couples and groups, cavorting about the rocks and grappling in the dust, nude but for masks and climbing boots, as well as some gloves and capes. The women are unshaven, pits and groins.

“Wow, that’s some serious bush,” Milo called out, then turned to Nic, as if placating her, “I dig it.”

“I don’t,” she said.

“No, me neither,” he said. “I was just saying that to see if you shaved. And you do.”

“Waxed, sucker.”

“OK, shush,” I said, smiling proudly at the way she’d handled him. “Check this out.”

The women now stand triumphant-like, nude and with their arms spread, atop a narrow peak, crowned by the rays of the bloodred sun and calling for sacrifice. They keep sliding down the crumbling rock face and then clambering back up, raising their fists, and screaming, blood, blood, give us blood. Then one of the masked men, a schlubby guy with pale skin, a round belly and thin hairy legs, grabs Zed and pushes him over a cliff. A moment later someone yells cut, and he pops back up. As the camera wanders, we see that really he has only jumped down a few feet to a ridge. They reset and do it again. Again. The guy, the pusher, takes off his mask and wipes the grit and sweat from his eyes. Someone hands him a hanky. I recognized him from the other films, where he’d appeared as an ass kisser and a spear holder. Next they do a variation where he and Zed pretend to fight and both fall screaming, and then one where the pale guy just jumps. Zed looked pretty good naked, tan and lean with a big metal star on a chain around his neck. In the next shot Zed is alone, closer in, naked and unmasked, with a pistol. He holds it to his head, takes a deep breath, howls and then pulls the trigger. Nothing. He laughs and says, “How was that?” An offscreen voice says, “OK, but don’t scream.” He does it again, calmly. Someone yells, Bang! and he falls. He does it again. Again.

Now it is getting dark and they have a fire going. The third man, broad and strong, still masked and costumed, is kneeling behind the pale guy, pressing a dagger to his throat, and giggling. Their eyes are crazy in the flame light, gleaming dark and wet, pupils wide as saucers.
We hear Zed offscreen, “OK, stop fucking around. We’re going to lose the light in a second. Say the line.”

“Hee, hee…” The masked fellow presses the blade. “You want clean shaven or mustache?”

“Cut!” Zed yells. “Fuck you. Seriously.”

They do it again. The knife holder takes a deep breath, swallows his giggles, and booms: “I am the dark lord. I offer blood. I will rule here on earth and in hell.”

“Good! Again!” They do it again.

“Good! Again!” They do it again.

“Good! Again!” He does it again. Then he cuts the schlubby guy’s throat.

For a second no one else does anything. You can feel the shock. The victim himself looks confused, still smiling, as another red smile spreads across his neck. Then it flaps open like a busted lip and the blood pours. The killer laughs, high and fast. It sounded familiar.

“What the fuck!” Zed runs on camera, pushing the guy with the knife away, and tries to stanch the blood with a tie-dyed scarf. Both naked men are soaked. The women scream and scream. The killer’s mask is knocked askew. He is still giggling. It is Buck Norman.

“See, I really am the dark king!” he chortles.

Zed pushes him back, screaming. “What did you fucking do? What did you fucking do?”

“See Zed, I really am!” Buck rambles on. “Not the king I mean, the dark prince! I really am.” He grabs Zed, still waving the knife. “I rule! Not you! I rule!”

Zed flings the knife away and punches him in the face. The women rush over, crying, screaming. Their masks are off. The first girl I had not seen before, though she does look similar to the way Nic had: curvy, tan, dark-haired, green-eyed.

“Mona,” Lonsky said, from the back. No one else spoke.

The next girl looks like she could be her cousin. She is maybe a bit younger and thinner than she would be now, but still I know her immediately. She is my wife.

86

THERE WAS A LONG
silence, as in a real movie when the credits roll and everyone waits for the lights or music, as if for permission to get up. The film ran through the gate and started flapping. A white square like an empty window opened in the wall. A breeze rippled the sheet. Then I realized Nic was quietly crying. I wanted to take her hand but something held down my arm. Milo got up to stop the projector. The white window shut and it was dark. Lonksy turned on a lamp. A yellow umbrella spread. He said, “Kornberg, kindly get Mister Norman’s man, Russ, I believe, on the phone for me, if you please.”

I didn’t move. “That was my wife, Solar.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You know?”

“Please, the phone first. Then we’ll talk.”

I got up. Now, in the soft lamplight, I could see that Nic was weeping into her palms but I dug in my pockets for my phone. I found Russ’s number and pressed it.

“Here,” I said. “It’s ringing.”

“Excuse me,” Nic said and hurried out. I let her go.

Lonksy spoke into the phone. “Good evening. My name is Solar Lonsky. May I please speak to Mr. Buck Norman? It is regarding a film. Yes, I’ll hold.” He called after Nic: “We’ll have dinner after this call,” he said, “I booked a table,” but she didn’t turn. He frowned, then turned away as someone came on the phone. “Yes, Mr. Norman, good evening. Yes, I do, I just watched it. I don’t know your other films, I admit, but your performance in this one is riveting. Yes. And the woman, Mona, she is alive? Put her on please.” There was a pause. “Hello? Yes. Are you all right? I…” He frowned again. “Yes. Yes, I can get a map. Eight tomorrow then. No, I won’t. Very good. Good night.”

He turned off the phone and handed it back to me. “The exchange
will be tomorrow on a high cliff a few miles inside the park, where it will be easy to see who’s approaching, so we can’t rely on the police. He put Mona on the phone, though of course all she said was yes. It could all be fakery. We will have to wait and hope. Milo, thank you, you’ve been most helpful indeed. We won’t need you tomorrow but perhaps right now you could ask for a map in the office, then meet us in the dining room for dinner. I’d like a moment with Samuel.”

“Sure.” Milo put the film in the can, smiled sadly at me, and left.

“You said no cops,” I told Lonsky. “But these people are killers. It will be very risky tomorrow.”

“No doubt,” he said. “You are walking proof of their ruthlessness. I’ve come prepared.” He reached into his jacket and pulled a pistol from a shoulder holster. It was huge, a monstrous black Magnum.

“My God, don’t wave that thing around.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not loaded. Tomorrow it will be. It was my father’s.” He set it on the table. I didn’t feel any safer.

I said, “Tell me about my wife.”

“Please, sit,” he said. I did, and he spoke, evenly and without pauses, as though he were reading from a book.

“A few months after I first met Mona in the hospital, she received a visit. I took special note, of course. I was in love with her already and fascinated with every aspect of her life, but also because she had never to my knowledge received a visitor, or for that matter any mail or phone calls at all. In fact, this was the one and only visit she ever had. Her guest was a young dark-haired woman, beautiful and very well dressed. They could have passed for cousins or even sisters, though of course the visitor looked healthier, stronger, and tanner than Mona, who’d been in a locked ward for six months. I don’t know what they spoke about, they retired to Mona’s room alone, but I pretended to nap in a chair in the lobby, and when the guest left, I noticed that she was crying. I peeked at the nurse’s log. The visitor’s name was Natalia Montes. Your wife to be.

“Since, as I said, she was the only visitor Mona ever had, the only connection to the outside world, I took an interest in Ms. Montes
and kept track of her from a distance. I knew that she was from Mexico, that she worked at a local fashion shop, that she soon married and bought a house. I knew your name too and your address. Again these were mere facts in my file. I gave them no special attention, I was simply curious about anything to do with Mona. And so the years passed, until a week ago, when Dr. Parker called. Mona was missing, possibly in danger, and he asked for my help. Suddenly, I had a case. I needed an assistant of course, someone local to do the legwork, so I visited the jobseekers website and saw your résumé. Well you know how I feel about coincidences. There are none. I called you in immediately. When, during our initial meeting, I realized that your wife had left you, I knew my intuition was correct: the two events were somehow connected. And when you reported your wife’s disappearance, I realized that by solving your own mystery, you would in the end help solve mine.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what? I had no answers to give. I had to let you lead me. But when Ms. Flynn called this morning with the information about your wife’s photo, I understood, and now that theory has been confirmed: it seems your wife was Mona’s Mexican friend, as mentioned by your informants, the third in the threesome with Zed, the other performer in the films. Probably your wife assisted the couple in their deception, the fake death, the escape, and then kept their secret safe all this time. Perhaps she even obtained that false ID to reenter the country safely. She met you, got married, went on with her own life. Then years later, when, Zed, realizing he was dying, attempted to reconnect with Mona, she was drawn back in. I am sorry to say this, but I think it is highly likely that she is dead, buried under another name in Mexico, and that Mr. Norman has used his great influence to cover his tracks and falsify the records. I have to surmise that it was her body all along, that it was she who was thrown from the balcony that night.

“My condolences. I know that due to my own psychological and emotional difficulties I do not process or demonstrate sentiment in
the culturally prescribed manner, and I am further emotionally insulated from my fellow humans by this excess of fat, but please accept my sympathies nevertheless.”

“Thanks,” I said. I hadn’t moved. I didn’t know what to do next.

“No doubt you are in shock. Would you like an alcoholic drink to soothe your nerves? Or a whole roast chicken with new potatoes? I find that helpful sometimes. They are juiciest when roasted whole.”

“No thanks.”

“I will leave you then, to grieve. It is nearly time for dinner. I’m told the meeting spot is about twenty minutes’ drive from here. Let’s convene for breakfast at seven.”

He left for dinner. I grieved. Or I tried to. I stepped outside into the soft dark and tried, but really I felt not much. Or to be honest, nothing. But maybe that was right. That was it: the big nothing, opening within me, vast as the nothing all around me. It was always there, of course, but now I noticed it, felt it, sounded it, each thought like an echo bouncing back to tell me of that emptiness, like a stone dropped into a well. I took a last breath of sage-scented night and went into the glowing cabin where Nic was waiting, to tell her my wife was dead.

PART VII

ASCENSION

87

MY NAME IS EULALIA NATALIA
Santoya de Marías de Montes, but I have had other names. I was Ramona to my mother. And I became Mrs. Mona Naught. But to you I was always Lala. Who knows which of these names I will be remembered by, if any? None will be written on my grave, because, my dear husband, if you are reading this, then I am already dead. Do you miss me? Would you be sad if you knew I had died? Do you hate me for leaving you? Or, worse yet, have you already forgotten me, grown indifferent, moved on? Am I just your ex-wife, your first wife, an old story? Do you even want to know the truth anymore, or is it better if I just rest in peace, buried along with my lies and secrets? Or would you hate me even more if you knew who I really was, besides your Lala? I was born Ramona Noon. Yes, I am one quarter Asian on my mother’s side, Chinese and Pacific Islander, her own mother was from Malaysia, and her father was Portuguese, though she was illegitimate and never knew him, a tradition in my family. My father was white, they said, Black Irish, and so my mixed colors, my tan skin, green eyes, black hair, the standard human look, the look that to a white person especially makes me seem vaguely from anywhere except the lands of blond and blue. I could be Israeli or Arab, Greek or Turk, Ecuadorian or Chilean or Argentine. Or Mexican. Sorry, darling. Another lie. I never met my father, or rather my one meeting with him, a surprise and gift-laden visit on my fifth birthday, was so steeped in misty legend that it might as well have been a fairy tale. It sure felt like one. He was a famous movie star, according to my mom, though
she was sworn to secrecy, supposedly because of his evil wife, whom he didn’t really love, and the deadly effect that the scandal would have on his career. The story seems dubious now, I know, but as a little girl with no daddy getting teased at school, I was comforted by the thought that my father was a great actor, not a random one-night stand, or worse, maybe, a married sugar daddy. My mother was a glamorous, brave, but tragic beauty, or a frustrated artist who’d sacrificed it all for love, but definitely not a kept woman, or a lazy welfare mom, or a
puta
as the other kids suggested. I guess that’s how I first fell in love with movies (and how I fell for you, my movie lover, those quadruple features under the covers when we first met, those long weekends cooking and fucking with Godard and Lynch and Hawks). My mother was addicted of course. On Saturdays she’d pack a lunch and take me to the multiplex, let me buy a coke, and then we’d sneak from movie to movie, spending six or eight hours in the air-conditioned darkness, a magical cave far from the glare of reality. At home we’d sit on the couch and cry or laugh in front of the TV, and she’d teach me, the way other parents taught religion or family history, about the trials and struggles, the marriages and divorces of the gods. Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, each of these magical heroes appeared before me as a symbolic father, a fantasy that was only inflamed by my mother’s coy denials: “No, Clint Eastwood is not your dad, though of course if he was I could never tell you.” Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, Kate Hepburn, each was an idealized version of my mother, who spoke as if she were one of them. “See that lipstick Marilyn has on there, the deep pink? I used to use that exact shade.” Who knows what the truth was? The money arrived from somewhere. God knows my mother never worked. It was a bohemian household I suppose. She had a lot of artsy friends who came and went. Dancers, male and female and undecided, came by in the morning to stretch and do yoga on our deck. Actors came for tea in the afternoon, to cry after auditions or to practice lines with my mom, whom they somehow considered an expert based on
nothing but her supposed affairs with famous men and, in one particularly scandalous case, a famous actress whose marriage to a secretly gay movie star was just a front. Painters came for the potluck dinners. A guy with a huge belly and huge beard ran the grill, a painter she knew named Gus who lived in a school bus that he sometimes parked in our driveway. Others turned up, their torn jeans covered in paint but driving shiny Mercedes convertibles with bowls of salad in the back and heaps of pink hamburger wrapped in brown paper from Chalet Gourmet, the fancy shop. Two gay boys in matching red jumpsuits brought a case of beer. Then late at night the musicians would arrive, after their gigs or recording sessions, dressed in black, instrument cases slung over their shoulders, to play old records and smoke pot and fall asleep on the couch or sometimes slip off to bed, in silence, with my mom. I remember meeting Tom Waits when he showed up at our house for a party with a carful of people, though he didn’t say much, just flipped through our books and records. Once Leonard Cohen was sipping tea with brandy on the porch. Another night Siouxsie Sioux rang the doorbell, asking directions. She was at the wrong party but she came in for a drink anyway. Johnny Rotten got into a big argument in the kitchen over how to make a proper gazpacho. Lux and Ivy from the Cramps came to a barbecue but instead of drinking and dancing with the grown-ups in the yard, Lux ended up watching TV with me,
Scooby-Doo
and
Thunderbirds Are Go.
Joseph Beuys came with some art people and someone spilled ketchup on his shirt and he sat just in his vest and hat while my mom washed it. Dennis Hopper showed up late and wouldn’t leave. He talked to my mom all night until she crashed and was still there in the living room watching movies when I got up for school and I made Pop-Tarts for us both. Coppola and Scorsese had a long, passionate debate beside the fire, and now I wish I’d listened, but back then I didn’t know who they were, just two madmen with beards and wild eyes, waving their arms and yelling. William Burroughs sat in an armchair saying nothing and I was scared. Rich and powerful
men would come to see my mother or take her away for weekends when I’d be left with a series of sketchy teenage babysitters. Often I’d get a present when she returned, or new clothes. Sometimes her date would enter my room awkwardly, and while my mom watched in the doorway, he’d pat my head and stiffly, formally, hand me a toy, which I would confusedly thank him for, with only my mother seeming happy about it, all smiles. I wonder now if more than one of them thought he was my father. I remember the first time I ate a hash brownie, thinking it was just a desert and laughed hysterically and then freaked out and had nightmares and the old lady from next door, she was a retired TV writer, took care of me because my mom wasn’t home and my babysitter who’d baked the brownies had panicked and split. My mom was furious at the sitter, but of course didn’t feel responsible herself. I remember her all dressed up, in her high heels and jewelry and her hair piled high. Some tall man in a suit carried me upstairs and put me to bed. At nine I swiped pot from her underwear drawer and smoked it with a friend. At ten I got drunk for the first time, sneaking sips at a party. By twelve I was tagging along to shows to see bands. At thirteen I tried ecstasy and coke with school friends, girls and boys who lived in parentless mansions in Beverly Hills, getting wasted and playing in their pools, watching movies in their screening rooms while the maids made us food. At fourteen I lost my virginity in the back of a car to the drummer from Spork, a noise band that was passing through, after a show. At fifteen I was on the party circuit, beach houses in Malibu, downtown lofts, sometimes turning up with my date at the same parties where my mom was with hers. My mother wasn’t embarrassed by this, though often our dates were, since they sometimes knew each other, mine too old for me, hers too young for her. It was at one of those parties that summer, at a movie producer’s house in Benedict Canyon, that I met my husband. My first husband, that is. Zed Naught. He actually asked me to marry him that night right there in the hot tub. What a nut, I hadn’t even seen his face in the light. I had no idea what he looked like. I turned him
down, of course, but he got my attention, that’s for sure. It was pretty romantic. A crazy artist. A glamorous European. Of course I gravitated toward older men, being dadless and all. But we didn’t sleep with each other that night. He didn’t even try. I think he was too nervous. He came over the next night and talked to my mom, then took me out. She was thrilled. I know that sounds weird, but from her point of view it was perfect. Since my birth, she’d been obsessed with turning me into an actress. I barely went to school, but she hauled me to ballet lessons, piano lessons, singing lessons, all of which I sucked at. She dragged me to auditions and actually got me in several commercials and ads. As a toddler there was one for baby powder where I run around the house with an open thing of powder, spraying it everywhere, until the mom follows the trail and finds me and laughs. Years later, she was still bitter about how she should have played the mom, but I think the residuals from that commercial bought her car. Then I was in a local bank commercial, pretending, with a boy and two grown-ups I didn’t know, to be a family in our new house. I remember fantasizing about how this supernormal family and house really were mine, and that the curly haired actor with the kind eyes was my dad. Finally, I am standing around in the background in an episode of
T. J. Hooker
when they go to a school gym. You see why it was so easy for my mom to accept my future husband when we first met. A famous filmmaker, a director, an artist and intellectual who spoke several languages, had read all those books, who painted, wrote, knew a million people. He was handsome too. Long hair, fair skin, beautiful hands. I felt dizzy looking in his eyes. We drove out to the beach to eat and after dinner took our shoes off and walked and walked and talked. He kissed me. We went back to his place and spent the night. We saw each other every day after that. I pretty much moved right in. It was like another world, just around the corner. His house was full of books and he told me I didn’t have to bother finishing high school if I just read, so I’d read all day by the pool. He had a ton of art books too and we went through those together, looking at the
images, pulling down book after book from the shelves as one thing reminded him of another. Music too. We’d see punk shows at night and he loved slam dancing but he’d blast opera and classical at home. Not that life was fancy. Not at all. The house was at the top of a steep hill and the driveway was just dirt. You couldn’t get up there without a four-wheel drive. The yard was a jungle. When it rained everything would flood and we walked around the property in boots along with our bathing suits. But it felt glamorous to me. I’d stomp out to the jeep with rubber boots under my dress, cruise into town, then change into high heels before we went into the restaurant. It was an education, just living there. I didn’t miss out on sex ed either. At first, I was shy and inexperienced. But as soon as I felt comfortable, I started to do research. While he was out I’d watch all the porn flicks in the house and then when he came home I’d be like, let’s try that or I want you to do that to me. He was thrilled, of course—who wouldn’t be? A young cute girl saying I want to be tied up or spanked, coming home to find me in the sauna with another girl. We’d pick girls up at a club or whatever, they’d stay a night or two and move on. Boys too, Zed didn’t mind, as long as they looked like girls. Other times it was just me and him alone in the house and yard together for days. We’d go around naked, eating, cooking, sleeping outside on a futon we’d drag out under the stars, swimming at night, waking up to hear him typing, reaching for a book and reading till breakfast. We got married. My mother had to sign a form. Then we drove to Vegas, just the two of us, with the top down on the jeep, at night. Passing through Death Valley was so black and still and hot it was like being inside an oven or driving through outer space. And then you see Vegas blazing up ahead, like a planet. Zed had never been before. It attracted and repelled him. The tourists freaked him out, that side of America he’d never seen. Even fatter than the Germans, he kept saying, but dressed like giant drunken kids. We got married and hit the casino, and won a bunch of money playing craps and blackjack. Little did I know that was the last time he’d win. He totally got bit by the gambling
bug, would start driving to Vegas on weekends and also gambling at the underground clubs in Chinatown until he owed way too much. But that was later. That first night it was all just magic. Getting married then rolling dice in my white silk slip dress and his black vintage suit, outfits we’d bought in a thrift store, winning big. He bought me a ring in a pawn shop, a sapphire, and then we spent our wedding night in a cabin out in the desert alone, cooking steaks and lobsters on a grill over a campfire. My mother of course had assumed that Zed would turn me into a movie star in no time and we’d all be living in a huge mansion, but it didn’t work out quite like that. In fact it was a difficult time for Zed. He’d come to LA enticed by offers from producers and agents but nothing ever worked out. Project after project would fall through and meanwhile whatever heat there was around him cooled off. We had money, or we seemed too. We lived like we did. He’d option scripts or get attached to projects and they’d pay something up front and we got by on that, but the big payoff never came. There was this sense of frustration building all the time, a manic depressive cycle with each project, where this was going to be the one and it was all going to be so great and Zed being Zed they were all so ambitious and there’d be scripts and drawings and models and renting office space and big meetings and dinners and then it would all fall apart and he’d be like totally shocked and devastated. He was naive that way. He still just thought, every time, this is it, my big shot, and then he’d be heartbroken. Then he’d go on a rampage, drinking and waving his gun around and threatening to kill them all, whoever. He’d shoot at bottles in the yard. Then he’d fall into depression and talk about killing himself. He’d researched it thoroughly, knew the best ways, the least pain, how he could rig a camera to film it. I was the one who talked him into doing the horror film. At first it didn’t sound grandiose enough for Zed. But I was like, hey it’s a job, and if you actually get a film made here, even low-budget, it will attract more investors and build confidence with money people, and a lot of cult movies and horror movies are better than the mainstream