Paint It Black (33 page)

She wanted him to make her stop but he didn’t, he could never give her what she needed and she knew she should stop, but now it was coming out, hot and bitter and it felt hellishly good.

“Don’t, Josie. Please.” He straightened so she couldn’t see behind his Ben Franklins, but his mouth was trembling.

“Don’t fucking what? You don’t want a woman, you want a goddamn nurse. Why didn’t you just say you were in love with your mother? Maybe you ought to fuck her. Maybe you did, some lonely night in Sweden or somewhere.”

It made her dizzy, she laid her head on her knees. Of all things. She started to cry. She had not even known. But if she had, she would have said it anyway. She was going for broke then, she was giving it every evil thing that she had, she had reached her own heart of darkness. “You were right, you know? I am sleeping with someone. But it’s not Jeremy, it’s Nick, what do you think of that? He fucks me standing up out with the garbage, which is just what I like. I’m so sick of you I could puke.”

He was shaking like eucalyptus in the wind, staring at her, the way he stared at the dog. “Josie, don’t.” He was begging her, not to kill their love, not to do it, they had problems but she didn’t need to pummel it into the ground with a brick like the dead dog. But she was every rat-faced Tyrell woman who’d ever screamed at a man, holding her face up to be punched, waiting for the blow, but defiant, because she was getting hers in for once. But Michael wouldn’t hit back, he just kept retreating, she needed someone to stop her but nobody would. “Yeah, sometimes I need a good screw, I can’t live on poems and silver lilies and shit. Sometimes I just need a good fuck, Michael. And where have you been for me? Nowhere.” She felt like a blacksmith hammering a horseshoe on an anvil, hammering that thing for all it was worth. “You don’t want a woman. You want someone creeping around going, ‘What’s Michael gonna think? What’s Michael gonna do? Is Michael going off the deep end today?’ Well you know what, Michael. I don’t give a shit.”

It was in her blood after all, how to wound and belittle, she’d grown up with it and now here it was, streaming out of her like gasoline, scalding the person she loved most in the world, and yet unable to stop herself. “Guess I’m just not some silver lily, huh? I’m just po’ white trash like your mama told you. Why don’t you just go on back to her, then, and if you happen to grow a set of balls, you let me know.”

She’d done it right then and there, killed the thing she loved.

She was only trying to get him to wake up, wanting him to see what he had driven her to. She got in the car and drove home, letting him hoof it, fuck him.

And now, in the dark above the pool, her moon face on her knees, weeping, rocking back and forth, she remembered it all. He should have hit her. He should have stopped her. That’s all she wanted, for him to stop her, to say she was wrong, to put his arms around her like a man and say that he loved her. When she got home the silence in the apartment reproached her, his art on the walls, the girl at the piano, Blaise and Jeanne together on the blue train seat, staring at her . . .
don’t you remember?

She wept into her hands, slow racking sobs made slower by the booze, but no less painful. Why hadn’t she stopped that day, why couldn’t she have just driven home, they could have had tea, she could have tried to cheer him, ask him something, God, he loved to teach her things . . . She just hadn’t realized how angry she was, hadn’t known she could do something so horrible to the boy she loved.
Registered as Oscar Wilde.
Wilde knew what he was talking about, all right.

And when he’d finally gotten home, dripping wet from the rain, she got down on her knees and begged him to forgive her, but it was too late. He couldn’t hear her anymore. He slept out on the couch, cold and rigid, staring up at the ceiling. “Don’t even try,” he said. She tried to make him understand, she was crazy mad, she would have said anything, what could she do to make it up to him? She knelt by the couch and begged him. “I was just mad, I didn’t mean any of it.”

“You meant every word,” Michael said.

“I wanted you to stop me. I wanted you to tell me you loved me.”

And he laughed then, a tear-filled laugh. “When I grow some balls, I’ll think about it.”

It was a mistake you could never recover from. Though he pretended he had, he never did.

And now she was going to Europe with his mother. It was like murdering someone and then moving into his house, taking his job, his lover, eating his food, sleeping in his bed.

She reached down for her voddy and then it was like a series of photos, a film in slow motion. The chair tipping, her falling, she could see it, like stop-action, the dark water coming closer, her own bright reflection. Her head hit first, shockingly cold, her shoulders, her chest,
this is it,
she found herself thinking. She assumed she would float but no, her coat filled with water, pulling her down, surprisingly heavy, and the water closed over her, like a book.

Swim,
the thought came, but from very far away. She could see the moon through the water, shimmering high overhead, she knew she should swim, but she was too heavy, the moon was too far. She was so tired, it was simpler just to sink. It made sense. At last, she could stop fighting, it could just end.

31

Sofía

G
et off me,
she said, or thought she said. She took a deep breath and vomited. Lying in the wet and the cold, she started to cry. She didn’t know why, only that it was deep and sad, it felt like it was coming up from the bottom of the sea. Shivering on the bricks. Cold and wet.

“Why you no go? You say you were leave and then you stay.” Someone had her by the hair. “Why you stay?”

She curled on the bricks. Fucking Sofía. She should have left her down there. She was ready to die. “Where’s my fucking coat?”

Sofía hissed an exasperated sigh, standing, wringing out her long hair, water raining down on the bricks. Josie looked up at her. How tall she looked from down here. Furious. So fucking what. Fuck her. Suddenly, the woman was jerking her. Pulling her up. Her legs buckled, but the woman held her up, keeping her from falling. The bright pool was dappled with clouds. Darkness under the bright. Waiting for her. Peaceful. She had no problems there. Where was her guitar? Her little guitar. There. She bent down to get it, lurching forward, and Sofía grabbed her, wrenching her arm as she started to lose her balance again. God, she was fucked up.

She clung to the little guitar tight, tight, as Sofía hauled her toward the house. Yanking, shoving. Why was everybody pushing her around? Nobody would just leave her the fuck alone. If she wanted to curl up and sleep at the bottom of the pool, what the fuck did this bitch care? Sofía just didn’t want her croaking on the property. It’d look bad for the boss. Josie felt her putrid life inside her, heavy, like a bad meal. She wanted to vomit it up. Her evil, foulmouthed, ignorant life. What had Michael ever done to anybody, compared with her?

The Spaniard pushed her into a chair on the checkerboard kitchen floor, went out, the door swinging back and forth, back and forth. Her eyes skittered over the checkerboard pattern, the tiles. Maybe it was a message. Checkers, chess.
Marcel Duchamp played
. . . But what was she? What kind of chess piece, and what was the game? She shivered spasmodically, though she felt nothing. She needed a cigarette. She pressed the tuning pegs to her cheek. She was crying again.
Oh God, oh God.
Though there was no God. No rest, no beauty, no truth.

After a minute, Sofía came back with clothes in her arms. She pulled Josie into a room she’d never seen before, small and yellow, with high windows, giving the impression of being taller than wide. A single bedstead in silvery nickel sat demure in one corner. A crucifix. And on the dresser, Michael gazed out from the bricks of Harvard. She’d surrounded him with candles in tall glass holders, a single pink rose.

It was a shrine. Josie hadn’t thought to do that. She had no shrine, no candles. She didn’t know how to do these things. She only knew how to kill the thing she loved. The expression on his face—as if he’d already known what she was going to do, how it would all end up.
Ming.
“Why’d you save me?” she said. “You should have left me there.” Sofía shook her head, yanking off Josie’s wet clothes, rubbing her hard with the towels. “Hey,” she said. “Ow.” The woman worked fast, shoving a sweater over Josie’s lolling head, jerking on a pair of underwear, jeans, her old leather jacket. No pony-skin coat from Saks.

Sofía sat her on the bed, where she lay down and watched Sofía turn her back and take off her own clothes, towel herself dry. She wore a crucifix around her neck. Her body was thin and her tits sagged and her butt was flat as a frying pan. She dried herself in the same rough way and hurriedly dressed in an ugly white bra and panties. A dress of black wool. Slid her feet into a pair of flesh-tone knee-high stockings and then into pumps. She propped Josie up again and hung her schoolbag purse from its strap around Josie’s neck. Like a fucking Saint Bernard dog’s cask of brandy. Josie was impressed by the efficiency with which Sofía pulled off Josie’s remaining wet boot, then shoved her feet into her Docs.

She got Josie under the armpit, hustled her out like a cop. Josie wanted to go back to the yellow room, where the shrine was. But she was moving despite herself. Stumbling out of the house, into the dark, the garage, the musty oily pine smell, strong and dark. Wet wood. Sofía leaned her against the fender of a station wagon. There was an old Chrysler, and a little sports car, and the Jag. The station wagon’s door came open and the woman pushed her inside. Josie lay on the bench seat, the cloth was warm, it smelled like the couch at home, a comfortable smell, she felt she might even be able to sleep. Sofía got in behind the steering wheel and backed out, through the courtyard, the bump of the bricks, back through the opened gate, out into the night.

“Hey,” Josie said, and it took a long time to say it. She didn’t want to leave the house. Where was this woman taking her? She didn’t want to go back down there. Josie sat up, tried to open the car door.

Sofía reached across and slammed the door closed. Josie tried to open it again. The Spaniard leaned over and grabbed the handle, and they struggled. The older woman slapped her face. “Sit still, bad girl!”

Josie let go of the door handle. She could feel it but only just.

We’ll go and never come back.

Josie leaned against the window and gazed muddily at the glow of the lights as they wove down the empty streets of Los Feliz, past all the pretty mansions lit up like dollhouses, Sofía’s long hair curling and wet on her plain black dress. Her Spanish eyes glittering with determination as if she was fleeing a fire.

“Why do you hate me so much?” Josie asked.

“You fool. You are confuse,” Sofía said. “Who hate you.”

The big houses, going away, the bright windows, the unnaturally green lawns under the streetlamps. The woman’s mouth was set in a line of pure contempt.

“She’s taking me with her. To Paris.”

Sofía hissed like a teakettle. Josie watched the houses. A big Great Gatsby one, with a rubber tree in the sloping front lawn, striped awnings over the windows and all the lights on.

The night sky was thickening, the tufts of clouds coming together in a sad blanket across the moon, forgetting how beautiful it had just been, smearing itself all together. The old ficus trees planted in the parkway glowed yellow in the light from the short, old-fashioned streetlights, and the monstrous entwining roots rose two feet out of the ground.

They came off the hill, down to wide Los Feliz Boulevard, lined with its immense deodars. Sofía flicked on her turn signal, watched the traffic for a break. It was painful for Josie, even fucked up as she was, to watch the Spaniard drive. Sofía was one of those drivers who put the seat all the way forward, and hunched over the wheel, clutching it hard.

“Did she fuck him, Sofía?” Josie asked. She pointed at the Spaniard’s sharp nose, the only thing in focus. “You know.”

A big space opened in traffic, but Sofía didn’t take it. She just kept sitting there watching the oncoming lights, the corners of her lips severe. She shook her head. “Poor Miguel. He hate he love her that way.”

The blinker ticked.
Tick, tick,
as they sat looking through the windshield at the empty street, the big houses, once decorated with thousands of lights, now dark and silent. Had he loved Josie at all, had he ever loved her? “I loved him, Sofía. So much.”

“
Sí,
I know.” She sighed. “Miguel, he have too much
alma.
You know what is
alma?
”

Alma. Just a name. “No.”

“It mean soul. You take care your own soul, Djossie.” It was the first time she’d ever heard the woman say her name. “Have more respect yourself.” Sofía made her careful left turn.

“You think I have a soul?” Sagging down in her seat, finally resigned to being driven away. “Maybe I just borrowed one.”

“Poor fool.”

They drove down Los Feliz and turned at the big fountain on Riverside Drive, sitting inside its giant ring. The fountain, rainbow colors inside its crown of shooting water, was built in honor of William Mulholland. The one from
Chinatown,
who got killed in the runoff.
Drowned.
He didn’t really drown though. Not in real life. The dam burst and he died from the guilt.
Fuck,
she could understand that. Fuck yeah.

So many memorials. The whole city filled with them. Bridges and statues and buildings. Michael was the only one who ever gave a crap. He was the one who remembered.
You’ll have to remember for both of us
. . . But how could she, she didn’t know anything, how was she supposed to do it, all on her own? When she had killed the thing she loved.

The long silent blocks, the last bit of Griffith Park. The World War I bridge, the lightless stretch by the 5 where the homeless lived. Their old vans and trucks, a tent city in the bushes, the hillside melted all down into the street, creeping in on Riverside Drive. Sofía’s headlights caught a ghostly, fuzzy-haired homeless man crossing the street in too-short pants, his dog tied to his waist by a rope. Sofía had to swerve to avoid them. Josie watched them through the back window. Was that Death? Somewhere along the line he had lost his toupee and his birthmark, his tasseled loafers and his job at the bank.

The turn on Allesandro. She wasn’t going to help Sofía find it, fuck her. If she didn’t know the way, they would have to go back. But the woman turned right at the school, the pictures of children along the vast cement wall, the silent tractors under the overpass. She knew the way exactly.

“Were you there? When she ripped me off? Why’d you let her do that?” Her eyes kept closing.

Sofía gave that teakettle sound and just kept driving.
You fool.
The houses seemed worse than ever, tumbledown things clinging to the steep hillsides, the rank vegetation.

She felt drearier than ever, drowned and then dredged up again. She couldn’t even do that right. Sofía should have just left her in the water. Her and what was left of her
alma.
What good was it to have a soul when you did the things that she had done? “Why do you even bother with me?”

“You are like a . . . one who walk in sleep. After you say you leave and then not, I think, something happen to that girl. So I watch for you.”

A good-sized skunk shambled along the side of the road, in the sick light cast by the orange sodium crime lights. Garbage and abandoned cars. Back home again.

“Does she have
alma?
Meredith?”

Sofía made that hissing sound again. “She have music.
Es todo.
”

Josie pictured a scene from a horror movie, the vampire that looks in the mirror and sees no reflection. “So why work for her, if she’s got no soul?”

Sofía shrugged again. She was a handsome woman. Her hair down, curling as it dried, the sharp nose with its high bridge, narrow tip, the fine dark eyes. “I work to her a long time. I know very well. She suffer many thing. Her life very sad. Sometime she does bad thing, I know. But I know to her. No good for you.”

They pulled up in front of the house. It looked small and overgrown and run-down, the fence leaning from the weight of the plants. Sofía parked behind César’s white Riv, pulled Josie from the wagon. She half walked her, half carried her through the gate and down the long flight of stairs, the air smelled of water. The door wasn’t locked. They staggered through the living room like a four-legged beast, edging their way to the bedroom. The woman dropped her down on the bed, tried to pull her guitar away, but Josie fought her for it. She gave up and took off the Docs and pants, pulled the covers over her. “You sleep. And hold on your
alma.
She is what you have now.” She closed the felt curtains, turned out the lights, shut the door.