The Angel's Cut (18 page)

She put away her last unopened tequila, conserving not just the bottle itself, but also the option of a steep descent into what drink gave her, stimulated self-forgetting, sensual relaxation, sensuous numbness and vertigo. That ongoing twilight could remain an option, a last thing to turn to.

Instead, Flora ate crackers and a withered orange and made a shopping list:

bread

butter

cookies

tomatoes

beans

bacon

—before her imagination failed her.

She went to bed sober.

The next day she noticed that her stomach was flatter—it had been swollen—and that the scarred skin on her belly wasn't pulling so much.

Over the following weeks Flora rediscovered lucidity. Initially there were times when she felt she was eighteen again, fresh and full of energy. But that didn't last. Sobriety wasn't like the promises of the Prohibitionist preachers she remembered hearing when she was a girl in Brawley. She found herself living in relation to a reality no more real than her drunken one. It was just new to her. She missed her old life: the muddle, the self-righteous ire, the pleasurable spite of her drunken self. She missed her own infantile blundering. She had a little less pain, and far more fear of it. She missed never having to choose. Pete had touched her, but she hadn't
had to say, ‘Yes,
you
.' The old life was simple; she was hungry and she drank, she was heated and she drank. There were no better choices, and there was no better time. The world was in soft focus and Flora was surrounded by objects and faces that radiated light. And when she passed out, her bed was made of balloons, and nothing that touched her touched heavily.

Sober for five weeks, lucid, dull, Flora found her focal length had altered. Before her now was a long vista, with a vanishing point. She found herself in her life, in time that had an end to it. Time to get serious.

T
he new, sober Flora found the time to dig out the address of the appraiser to whom she'd sent Xas. She drove to a building on Hollywood Boulevard, and took the elevators to the fourth floor.

The appraiser was a manufacturing jeweller, the best on the coast. Flora spoke to a receptionist behind a steel grille. The receptionist pressed a button and let Flora into the showroom, a room with thick carpet, and very modern, recessed downlighting. There were more lights in glass cases, illuminating diamond necklaces, bracelets, and rings. Among the diamonds were plump and oily pearls.

Flora took a seat in a gilded chair and waited. She picked up a
Photoplay
and flicked through it. She found a portrait of Cole's new star, and stills from
Flights of Angels
. She remembered the scenes of the stills as stopped frames in her editing machine. She had spent so long on the film, and it had receded so quickly. Flora stared and tried to imagine
it all as history, instead of merely last month's news. She found that mattered to her. She felt her life with its new long perspectives might one day feel finished, and
thought through
like Cole's film, rather than just made of moments like the sweepings from the floor beneath her editing bench.

‘Miss McLeod?'

The jeweller was a neat person in a double-breasted suit that made his shoulders too wide for his height. He introduced himself—‘I'm Mr Green'—and took Flora's hand, retaining it as he sat beside her. She could see he was worried because he didn't know who she was. Whose wife, whose girlfriend—though she was unescorted, and not pretty enough.

Flora said, ‘I sent a friend to you several months ago. He wanted to get a valuation on some pearls, and possibly to sell them. Black pearls.'

Flora actually saw the man's hair bristle as his scalp tightened. It was one of those expressions that looked as much like disgust as surprise. She went on, ‘What I want to know is, if my friend did sell the pearls, whether he ever collected his money?'

‘Miss McLeod—this friend of yours, was he a good friend?'

‘Were the pearls stolen?'

‘Why would you say that?'

‘He didn't own anything.'

The man scratched his ear. ‘I still have them,' he said. ‘Your friend, Mr Jodeau, struck me as very confident, very candid in his manner. He didn't act like someone selling stolen
goods. He wasn't in any great hurry either. I did say to him that a pearl rope like that must have some provenance. Each one of those pearls would have been a remarkable find, a once-in-a-lifetime find.' The jeweller waited, watching Flora while this sank in. He said, ‘They're not cultured. I used an X-ray to check the material at their cores. They are wild South Sea Island pearls, perfectly matched, and an extremely rare true black.'

Flora understood that she was being made to appreciate some enormity, some professional miracle.

‘Pieces like that have
names
,' he said.

‘Did it?'

Green shook his head. ‘No. After some research I found that the only pearl rope answering its description was the subject of a disputatious insurance claim, and an old family quarrel. The families involved were French—so I suppose the pearls were originally Tahitian. The family Lettelier made the insurance claim on the death in 1876 of one Baron Lettelier. The Baron's wife, Aurora de Valday, had died the year before. The pearls had belonged to her. The Baron had insured them with Lloyd's of London in 1845, which is actually too early for Tahitian pearls, though they
must
be Tahitian. The insurance claim was made because the pearl rope wasn't found among the Baron's effects. The Baroness Lettelier never wore them, though her daughter-in-law the Comtesse du Vully wore them at court in 1857, where the Empress Eugénie admired them. Vully is a château on the banks of the Saône river, in Burgundy. It makes one of the world's most famous wines. Lettelier was Aurora de Valday's
second husband, the Comte du Vully was her son by her first marriage.' Green paused and shrugged. ‘Anyway, the Comte's and Baron's families fell out over the pearl rope. The Comtesse du Vully insisted that she had returned the rope to her mother-in-law. The Baron's heirs said she hadn't. All I can establish for sure is that the rope hasn't been seen since 1857.'

Flora was a little disgusted by this tale of cupidity—these families squabbling about treasure none of them had seen for twenty years (unless of course the pearls, never worn, were only gloated over in private). She remembered how the rope had looked against her friend's skin, and how he had crossed his arms to close his shirt. She remembered the beauty of the pearls, and his beauty, and the shame in his posture. Thinking of this, Flora wasn't surprised to hear what the jeweller said next.

He said, ‘The pearls were supposed to carry a curse.' He blushed. They had a little laugh together. Then he said, ‘Your friend did offer a vague account of how they came into his possession. He said that a relative of his gave them to a friend of his, who later returned them to him.'

Flora nodded. ‘That's more or less what he said to me, too. So it's his relative who is the thief.'

‘I don't know. The way he said “relative” I felt I was listening to someone refer to London as “a city in England”. Possibly the Jodeaus are related to the Letteliers or de Valdays?' Green touched Flora's gloved hand again and asked. ‘Where is Mr Jodeau now?'

‘I don't know.'

‘He didn't come back to see what I'd offer. Possibly he realised that questions would be asked.'

That was it, of course. Xas had disappeared because he tried to sell something he, or someone he knew, had stolen, then realised later that he couldn't just cash in something so unique and not have to prove ownership. His naivety was staggering.

‘I can't sell the rope,' the jeweller said. ‘If Lloyd's had paid on the claim, Lloyd's would own it. But Lloyd's didn't pay. And I have no idea who owns it.'

‘Dead people,' Flora said, ‘and their dead children and grandchildren.'

‘I'm trying to obtain an address for the present Comte du Vully—if there is such a person.'

‘Good luck with that.'

‘Your friend gave the rope to me wrapped in a rotting shirt.'

‘Did he?' Flora said, darkly amused. Xas hadn't even bothered to conceal the fact the pearls and their packaging had been freshly dug up.

Green blushed from throat to hairline. His mouth worked. He seemed to want to say something more, but was having trouble with it. Flora caught his eye and saw dread there. She waited.

‘I cleaned them,' the jeweller said. ‘Then I thought I should restring them. They were strung without knots between each pearl. Very bad practice. But—' He stopped and silence seemed to arc above them like an unstable stone roof. He finally said, ‘I found I couldn't cut the string.'

Flora was silent.

He went on, his voice shaking. ‘It wouldn't cut, though it was only the thickness of a fine hair—a single strand of black hair. I tried with a sharp knife, and scissors, and using real force. I scratched one of the pearls.' He was pale now, and sweat had started on his forehead. Flora was beginning to worry about the state of his mind, with all this talk of curses and strings that wouldn't cut. But he collected himself with a deep breath and a series of little shudders. ‘That isn't something I can expect you to believe unless you try it yourself. And I suggest you don't.' He was quiet for a moment, then, before Flora had thought what to say, he went on. ‘You'd think that all that was required of a fact was that it be demonstrable. That, if a fact was demonstrable, it would be an honourable fact.'

Flora didn't say anything. She felt lost.

‘It's not true,' the jeweller said, earnest.

‘No,' said Flora. She decided that it was better to agree with him. She glanced away from his moist, unhappy face at all the rich stock glimmering in the glass cases. There was no sign of disorder anywhere, or of any dishonourable facts.

‘What kind of man was your friend?'

Flora thought: hard-working, able, poetic, practical, sad, unworldly, complicated, flighty, speedy, stopped, restless, remote… She shook her head. ‘He was a mass of contradictions. He was a stunt flyer. He talked about Heaven as if he'd been there. Sometimes he liked to quote Huidobro, a Chilean poet. I only remember the line: “A shady bed in the whirlwind of mysteries.”' Flora wanted to
add, ‘I felt safe with him. Safe, and stimulated at the same time.' But strangers didn't say things like that to one another even in the world where one of them supposes he's discovered that some strings can't be cut. Flora got up. ‘Thank you, anyway,' she said.

‘Let me know if he comes back.'

Flora shook her head, meaning that she thought Xas wouldn't, not refusing to pass on any news that he had.

Green said, ‘I won't contact the police, I promise. I'm sure this is all just an old family matter.'

A
letter came for Xas. It was from Madill Brothers funeral home.

‘Dear Mr Jodeau,' it began. ‘Here is our annual report. You will
see that after the initial outlay of fitting the new premises in
Pasadena, and the purchase of another hearse, our earnings now
have a healthy margin
.'

Flora went to visit these Madill Brothers, taking the letter with her. She found Doug Madill behind the premises, wearing a rubber apron and washing his new hearse. Flora stood clear of a froth-edged puddle and held up the letter. ‘I'm sorry I opened it,' she said. ‘He's gone with no forwarding address.'

Doug Madill shut off the hose.

‘I'm his landlady,' Flora said.

Doug Madill looked worried, perhaps thinking he might be liable for rent owing.

‘I only want to know what's happened to him,' Flora said.
‘All I'm able to do is follow any clues I have about what he was doing before he vanished.'

The sun came out. It slowly warmed and dried the man's rubber apron so that, as they stood there and Douglas Madill explained what ‘Mr Jodeau' was to him, the air filled with some sweet chemical scent.

The Madill family had been in the funeral business for seventy years, forty on the coast. Doug and his brother had wanted to open a branch in Pasadena. Mr Jodeau turned up one day at Madill Brothers in Santa Monica, and said he had some money to invest. ‘He said his employer and he had been talking about the Crash and investments and his employer had given him a certain sum of money to invest—and not to lose. Mr Jodeau was very clear about that. He didn't have to have astonishing returns, he said, only a safe investment.'

‘He decided a funeral home was a safe investment?'

‘Yes,' said the funeral director. ‘He said to me, “Business is never slow.”'

Flora laughed, then apologised for laughing.

‘That's quite all right, Miss. That isn't the whole story, of course. There are always times of retrenchment, and plenty of people learn not to pay more for a funeral than they can afford. And there's competition. I told your friend all this.'

‘But the population is growing.'

‘Exactly.'

‘He did have a practical streak.'

‘He has nine thousand five hundred dollars invested. I'm instructed to keep reinvesting his dividends.'

Flora thanked Mr Madill. He asked her whether he should keep sending those reports to her address.

‘Yes. And let me know if you hear from him.'

‘Likewise.'

Flora left him polishing the hearse's black flanks.

F
lora got herself a telephone. But every morning, for weeks after, she would still check the notepad that hung in her porch. She'd given out her number to all her friends and acquaintances, but still imagined there might be some who'd forget and, stopping by, would leave a message out of habit. ‘
Called by at 8 p.m., Pete.' or ‘Darling, where are you?
Avril
.' There were sometimes notes—but not from Pete, who hadn't bothered to pursue Flora's company once her drinking and hand jobs dried up together. And not from Avril, who had her own phones, a black one in her hall that her maid answered, and a white one in her white satin bedroom.

One morning Flora stepped out in her robe to look among the orange tree leaves for any fruit remaining and not too wizened to juice. All the oranges were shrunken and leathery. Flora went back to the house snipping the air in front of her with her scissors as though she were a dignitary
invited to open a succession of bridges. She saw that there was a note on the pad hanging from her door jamb.

The writing was an even and attractive copperplate, but there was something foreign and unpractised about the wording of the note.

Flora took the pencil off its string, carried it inside, sharpened it, reattached it to its string and wrote an answer.

And she left her number.

The following morning there was another note. It had arrived after Flora came home at ten and retired at midnight, but before seven-thirty when she got up. She hadn't heard any footsteps on the tarred tin of the porch flooring.

It annoyed Flora that this correspondent hadn't complied with her instructions and left a name and address, or dropped a dime and made a call. Xas had vanished and she was mourning him and this person wanted something for nothing, it seemed to her.

Flora spitefully removed the pencil and pad from her porch. If this person was so keen to ask her questions they could turn up at a reasonable hour and knock on her door.

The following morning Flora stepped out, dressed, on her way to Culver City and the studio. She put her foot on a large sheet of canvas that had been spread before her door. The canvas was striped, a sun-faded pink and cream, and still had zinc poles at either end of it. It looked like an awning from one of the cafés on Venice Beach. There was writing on the awning, in charcoal.

Once she had recovered enough to move, Flora bundled up the canvas, which smelled of apples, so might once have belonged to a fruit shop. She put it in her car. A mile from her house she pulled up to throw it into a canal.

Flora was rattled. She didn't want to go home. She spent the hours of darkness—too long, because it was winter—in a movie house, then one of Millie's clubs on Central Avenue. She drank a little and came home very tired, her ears buzzing, to find that her unknown correspondent had, this time, come equipped with paper. There was one sheet, apparently the endpaper of a book, because it was marbled on one side, made of linen, and crumpled at the edges as though it had been carried pressed not quite flat. As Flora picked it up she noticed that it, too, smelled of apples—and
the scent washing has when it's been dried in the wind and sun. That smell reminded Flora of something, something other than clean air and laundry, but she couldn't exactly remember what.

The note read:

Flora took the page inside and called Cole. She was told he wasn't taking calls. She left a message, said that someone was asking questions about Xas's whereabouts. ‘Tell Cole I'm frightened for myself,' Flora said to the flunky, then, as soon as she hung up, regretted having added ‘for myself' since Cole would surely be more motivated by fright he could feel as his own. All day she waited for the phone to ring, then, exhausted by anticipation, she finally wrote a note, left it and the pad on her porch, and went out.

Her note read:

Again Flora went out and stayed out—in a hotel room with Pete. She came home the following afternoon, hung over, with two bloody fissures in the thick scarred skin on her hips. She limped up onto her porch and looked blearily at another note, which said:

Flora was astonished. Who the hell would ask ‘Who is Conrad Cole'? Con was famous nationwide, almost worldwide—millionaire, playboy, inventor, and the producer and director of Hollywood's most expensive film to date. Flora stood for a long time staring at the note, then went indoors, climbed into bed fully clothed and fell asleep.

When she woke, O'Brien was smooching her chin and purring his anxious purr, the one that had a kind of soft whistle in it. Flora's head was sore, but clear. She'd woken with a very vivid memory of Xas. Of just one of the inexplicable habits he'd had. He used to leave the house when it was raining heavily, and she'd once seen him standing in the waste ground, maybe a quarter-mile away, his naked body a streak of almost phosphorescent brightness in the rain-smudged, grass-greened dunes. He was washing himself. He'd taken a bar of soap out with him. He never used her bath, her shower with its rust-dimpled rose—no—he went where no one could get a good look at him and let the rain clean him.

Flora lay, patting her cat and promising him food
any
minute now
. She couldn't get the picture out of her head. ‘Why?' she thought. ‘Why did he do that?'

Though there were no more notes, Flora was haunted by what she'd written herself—that, as far as she knew, Cole really was the last person to see Xas. She had a suspicion, not much more than an itch. It was as if something she hadn't fully recognised had managed to find another way to present itself to her.

Late at night, and upon waking, if her mind didn't conjure Xas, out on the paper road in the rain, it mysteriously presented her with Cole, beside her hospital bed, all those years ago. Cole speaking to Avril, in a low, vehement voice, about John Weber, the man who'd set fire to her grass skirt. Flora would remember Cole and Avril standing together over her tented, iodine-stained body, arguing, Cole's voice full of boyish indignation. He kept saying, over and over, that John should be made to pay. That anyone who injures another must be
made to pay
.

Flora would wake in the small hours, disturbed by O'Brien's usual comings and goings, and instead of dropping off again would come fully awake, her heart pounding, her mind fixed on that memory of Cole.

Finally, unable to put it out of her head, Flora went to visit him at Château Marmont.

Flora waited for a time in the hotel bar, before being led into the garden and pointed the way to Cole's door. It was open. Cole was lying on the couch, which seemed afloat in
a sea of paper. The room was dusty, and smelled rancid, but Cole was clean. He was in a robe, his hair wet from the shower. Flora saw he hadn't rinsed all the suds from his ears.

He asked her to close the door, then sat up and made a sweeping gesture over the piled papers. ‘Look at all this. All these people making bids for my attention—finally prepared to acknowledge what I can do.'

Flora took a seat, though she'd not been invited to.

Cole picked up a screenplay and began to tell her about it. She couldn't make out whether he was feeling enthusiastic, or only demonstrating how well he understood the story. She listened and tried not to show too much interest for fear that her own vague intentions would have their legs knocked out from under them by his torrent of talk. Gradually, over a number of hours, and by flattering reminiscence, she managed to get him onto the subject of how he'd saved her life. Then onto the subject of John Weber. And in the course of his reminiscing Flora became inspired. She suddenly understood what she must ask him; where her own secretive mind had been leading her.

‘A while ago I was talking to Avril about Weber,' she said. ‘About how, once I came back to town after my convalescence, I was always a little frightened that I might run into him. But I needn't have worried, since he'd disappeared. Later I got to wondering whether
you
had anything to do with his going away. No matter what other people might have thought
I
always understood that you were capable of extraordinary decisiveness.'

Cole blushed. He looked momentarily smug. Then he seemed to think of something else, and his eyes flickered and their focus moved beyond her.

Flora went on, as if she hadn't had any sign from him she could take as an answer. ‘It wasn't just that I lost sight of John. He seemed to vanish. Did you pay him off, Con?'

The room was silent for a moment, absolutely silent and exclusive, with not a sound from the other rooms, or the street beyond the garden wall. Flora watched as Cole's smugness won out. He began to explain. ‘When you were in hospital we found that Weber had made himself scarce. Avril supposed that you wouldn't notice, or wouldn't want to be reminded of him. But I thought that if it was me, I'd mind very much one day. I do understand that it wasn't as if Weber had you in his power when he did what he did. I understand that he was careless and you were merely combustible. But what he did to you was about as terrible as anything I ever saw. You were lying in that hospital covered in bandages, and the doctors were just waiting for an infection to set in. We could all tell they didn't give much for your chances.' He broke off, then blurted, ‘Did I tell you that my mama died of blood poisoning? That's what your doctors thought would happen to you—blood poisoning, then kidney failure. When you were in hospital it was apparently enough for Avril to put on a mask and gown and
pose herself
at your bedside. But I wasn't about to stand by and watch anything like that again.'

‘You paid for my room and my treatment, Con,' Flora said. ‘You caught me in the curtain. No one would have expected you to stand watch at my sickbed.'

Cole looked at her blankly.

‘So—what about Weber? Did he ever show his face at the hospital?'

‘No. He skipped town. I hired detectives who tracked him to San Francisco. I flew up there to find him and told him what Avril was doing and what he should do. How he should be with you. I offered to fly him back. I'd taken my two-seater Curtiss float plane. It was a favourite of mine back then, when I still thought of true flight as being out in the open air. Anyway, I took my Curtiss, so I guess I knew what I meant to do.'

‘Which was what?'

‘I flew him out over the sea.' Cole took several deep breaths, his eyes went hazy. ‘When we were well out I grabbed the sides of the cockpit, pushed the stick over with my knees, and the plane rolled. The cockpit was open, and the seats had no belts. Weber fell out.'

Flora sat very still. She had a terrible suspicion that this was what had happened to Xas. Cole supposed that Xas had given him clap so he dropped him out of a plane into the sea.

In a moment she'd begin to cry. She could feel the tears coming. It wasn't just her eyes, or the bones of her face that felt the imminence of the tears, it was her whole body, as if she might begin to blister as she had when burned, and, from every inch of her, shed tears.

Cole was still talking. ‘I thought it through,' he said, in a reasonable, explanatory way. ‘When Weber touched his cigarette to your skirt you can bet
he
hadn't thought anything through. I had to do something decisive. I wasn't
going to sit around waiting for you to die—because of what had happened with Mama. When Mama became sick they sent for me at school. My school was in Boston; she was in Houston. I spent two days on a train. She tried to stay alive to see me, but wasn't conscious when I got there. They had tucked her in up to her neck. They presented her to me like that, like a monument of herself. When they left us alone I fished her hand out from under the covers and saw that her fingers were black. She was black and mottled all the way up her arm. The first flying lesson I ever took was because of those two days on the train. So—of course I couldn't wait to see whether you'd die.'

Flora put her fingers to her temples and pressed. She shook her head.

‘I don't expect you to thank me,' Cole said, ‘but I am glad you know now.'

They sat facing each other but with their heads turned like cats paused mid-scrap to measure their respective importances. Then Flora began to sob.

‘Flora?' Cole was astonished.

Flora opened her purse. She took out a handkerchief and then just held it. She glared at Cole through her streaming eyes. She said, ‘He wasn't yours. He was mine.'

‘He was a waster,' Cole said, frowning at her.

‘
He was wonderful!
' she shouted.