Zeroville (24 page)

“It sounds confusing,” Vikar says.

“He’s in L.A. now.”

“Is he on vacation?”

“He’s living with someone and has moved his work here.”

“I haven’t heard from him.”

“Your situation with the telephone, maybe.”

“Maybe.”

She says, “I’m sure he would have called otherwise.”

We bury our parents on our own, said Viking Man, and one afternoon Vikar picks up the telephone and dials the entire number and doesn’t hang up until it rings on the other end. He has no idea if his father or mother are alive or dead. He puts the phone back before anyone answers. This is why I should have the phone taken out.

He came to Los Angeles as a Traveler hurtling through space toward infinity, vestiges of childhood falling away like dimensions.

One morning he walks down the hill to Sunset and takes the bus heading west. It continues along the boulevard through Beverly Hills to UCLA. Vikar crosses the street and through the film school and into the Structure Garden; slightly overwhelmed, he finally stumbles into the campus art gallery which directs him elsewhere. For an hour he wanders from one school to the other until he winds up in a large flat black building everyone calls the Waffle that looks more to Vikar like the monolith in
2001: A Space Odyssey
, except bigger and with windows. On the eighth floor is the School for the Study of Biblical Languages.

The man in the office behind the desk doesn’t look like a professor of Biblical languages. He’s in his early forties and wears a black T-shirt and his head is shaved; looking at Vikar, he says, “I have to get me one of those.”

Vikar puts his hand on his head like he does sometimes, as if he’s just finding it. “Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift,” he nods, “
A Place in the Sun
. Are you Professor Cohen?”

“Cohn, without the e.”

“I’m Vikar, with a k.”

“Vikar with a k,” he says, putting things in a briefcase, “what can I do for you?”

Vikar takes from his back pocket a piece of paper and unfolds it on the desk.

Standing up behind the desk, the professor looks at the paper and frowns. “May I?” he says, picking it up and examining it more closely. “Can I ask where you got this?”

“I would rather not tell you yet,” Vikar says. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. It just would help me to know where you got it.”

“I don’t believe it would help you. Do you know what it says?”

“Not really. It’s a kind of Hebraic.”

“Does that mean it’s Hebrew?”

“Yeah …” The professor sits back down in his chair still looking at the piece of paper from the Carlton Hotel. “It’s like, there’s Chaucer’s English and late twentieth-century American English. They’re the same language but they’re not.”

“So, it’s an old language.”

“It’s a very old language, maybe pre-Aramaic. Carrying out the analogy, it’s not Chaucer, it’s, I don’t know, early Celtic Dark Ages, for all I know about the Celtic Dark Ages, which should teach me not to make analogies. It may be the oldest form of Hebraic I’ve seen, but at this point I can’t even be sure about that. Can you leave it with me?” Vikar hesitates. “Let me make a xerox.”

“All right.”

Making the xerox, the professor examines Vikar’s head again. “What movie did you say again?”

“
A Place in the Sun
.”

He nods and rubs his own head. “I’m thinking maybe Dylan in
Don’t Look Back
.”

Your Pale Blue Eyes
loses the Academy Award for editing. Vikar regrets not attending when he learns the presenter—though he would not have been the one presented to—is Kim Novak, with whom he cheated on Elizabeth Taylor long ago.

Variety
, May 25, 1979: “NEW YORK—Following protracted negotiations, Mirron Productions has signed Academy Award-nominated editor Vikar Jerome to direct
God’s Worst Nightmare
, based on the 19th-century French novel
Là-Bas
, for possible release in fall 1980 by United Artists.

“Jerome received an Oscar nod this year for his work on UA’s
Your Pale Blue Eyes
, under the supervision of Mitchell Rondell, who recently left his position as a production executive at UA to launch Mirron. Insiders say the budget of
God’s Worst Nightmare
has been set at $3.75 million, with the stipulation that a lead with box-office draw is attached.

“‘At that cost,’ says one unnamed participant in brokering the deal, ‘which may not be blockbuster but isn’t paltry for a feature by a first-time director, UA must be planning to spend close to a million on a star—maybe not a Redford or Eastwood or Nicholson, who are out of that price range, but someone of the next rank.’ Names mentioned include Robert De Niro, Richard Dreyfuss and Kris Kristofferson (provided a speedy completion of UA’s
Heaven’s Gate
, which began shooting in Montana last month).

“Written by Belgian author J. K. Huysmans,
Là-Bas
(Down There) is the story of a writer who becomes obsessed with the possibly historical figure of Gilles de Rais, a trusted lieutenant of Joan of Arc who may have massacred hundreds or even thousands of children. Over the course of the writer’s investigations, he becomes involved with a mysterious, perhaps demonic woman. It’s not clear whether Huysmans’ story will be updated for
God’s Worst Nightmare
or remain a period piece.

“Mirron’s announcement is taking some by surprise in the industry, where there are concerns about the experience and even stability of the untested director, particularly following behavior at last year’s Cannes festival—where
Your Pale Blue Eyes
received a special jury award—that varying reports characterized as ‘unhinged’ and ‘retarded.’

“Responds Molly Fairbanks, Jerome’s agent at CAA: ‘Everyone understands Vikar Jerome is an unusual individual but also an original, perhaps singular talent.’ Denying rumors that Mirron and UA resisted the deal until other companies such as the newly formed Orion indicated interest, Rondell personally issued a statement expressing ‘extraordinary enthusiasm and passion’ for the project and calling Jerome ‘potentially the most interesting American director since Scorsese, if not Welles.’ When contacted about Jerome’s alleged eccentricities, Rondell answered, ‘We’ll make them work for us.’

“Rondell offered no comment on widely circulating stories of contingency plans that include a back-up director such as Alan Pakula, William Friedkin or John Milius.”

From the windows on the top level of his house, he believes he sees her on the hillside below. The first time, she’s near the bottom where the road that eventually leads to him begins to wind its way upward. He believes he sees her standing there looking up and then the next moment she’s gone; the next time he sees her, at dusk several days later, she’s moved up the hill but stands motionless as before. It’s like
Last Year at Marienbad
where people are statues on a vast terrace, except Soledad plays all the statues, posed against chaparral. Each time Vikar believes he sees her, she moves up the hill a little further, advancing in frozen
Marienbad
poses.

By the time the Sound has seeped west to all the Los Angeles clubs—the Whisky and the Roxy on the Strip, the Masque in a cellar off a sidestreet in Hollywood and Al’s Bar downtown, Madame Wong’s and the Hong Kong Café in Chinatown—it’s grown in desperation with the sunlight; having swallowed itself alive as the city in which it now lives has swallowed itself. At the Starwood on the corner of Santa Monica and Crescent Heights, Vikar hears a local band that plays songs about riding the bus in Los Angeles. They have a blond rockabilly guitarist and the lead vocalists are a married couple:
A thousand kids
, they sing,
bury their parents
; and as though he’s tracking down De Rais, child killer of the Middle Ages, Vikar wanders from room to room among the children of the Starwood, searching the Punk Ages for pedocidal monsters, hurling himself into audiences and slam-dancing to ward the monsters off, dancing so maniacally as to clear the floor. Soon he’s alone in the middle of the room, the band to one side, everyone else centrifugally compelled to the perimeters. On two occasions he’s removed by security guards, mild carnage in his wake.

Mitch Rondell says, “That’s not half bad.” Vikar is sitting with him in an office in Culver City; it’s more than a year since Cannes, when the last thing Rondell said to him was, “You’re late,” before fleeing the press conference that followed. Vikar isn’t entirely clear whether he’s actually proposed updating
Là-Bas
to a punk milieu, but Rondell goes on, “It’s an interesting idea. I think we do need to nail down a screenwriter ASAP, then have a story conference and hash out the possibilities, so you can convey your vision of the picture. Of course, most America hates this punk shit.”

Rondell strikes Vikar as less cordial than before. Vikar wishes Molly Fairbanks was here; he likes the way she talks and completely understands everything she says, except when he doesn’t, such as recently. “You’re not writing the script,” she tried to explain in their last conversation, “so although the deal memo stipulates the property belongs to you, we need to get you a story credit even if the Writers Guild squawks …” Vikar isn’t certain what this means. Molly also talks faster than she used to. “We don’t want to get into a situation where Mirron or UA can take away the project later.” There seems to be some urgency on everyone’s part to “get a star attached,” Molly says, “and they’re expecting someone in the eight-hundred-thousand range, which is why the budget is set at what it is, including your one-eighty-five K as director …” This last part Vikar finds particularly incomprehensible.

“So it makes a difference,” Rondell says now, “if this is a contemporary or period piece. If it’s contemporary, a Richard Dreyfuss, for instance, might make sense, but not if it’s set in the nineteenth century. And, uh,” he swivels his chair away from Vikar slightly, “the role of the woman—”

“Hyacinthe.”

“Hyacinthe. It’s not a leading role but an important one, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe she’s a figment of the main character’s dreams, maybe not.”

“Maybe not.”

“Comes to him in the middle of the night, an erotic presence … she needs to make the right sort of impression. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes.”

“An erotic presence.”

“Yes, you said that.”

Swiveling the chair away from Vikar further: “What would you think of Soledad Palladin?”

“What?” says Vikar.

“Soledad Palladin? From New Y—?”

“I know who—”

“I don’t think nudity or explicit sexuality would be a problem. I mean, only if you see it as an integral part of the picture, of course.”

Cylinders click into place, like the night he found Zazi sleeping in the car on Thirty-Fourth Street. “You know where she is.”

Rondell moves his head from side to side, in a way that’s neither a nod nor shake. “It’s an idea. But this is what casting directors are for.”

“What about Zazi?”

Rondell is confused. “Zazi?”

“Do you know if she’s all right?”

“It was just an idea.” Rondell waves it away.

“You know where they are.”

“They’re fine. You’re getting off track here.”

“I’m getting off track?”

“The picture …”

“You said, ‘What about Soledad.’”

“Vikar, forget it.”

“I just want to know the little girl is all right.”

“She’s getting to be not so little,” Rondell says irritably, “except a little too smart beyond her years. She’s with friends. She’s with her father.”

Vikar takes the Sunset bus as far east as it will go, then walks north to Chinatown’s central plaza not far from Philippe’s where, barely an hour in Los Angeles a decade before, he swatted a hippie with a lunch tray.

The night-black central plaza is gashed with neon, and the opium dens and gambling joints of the early twentieth century have given way to the punk clubs. In Madame Wong’s off Gin Sing Way, when she touches his arm between the Alley Cats’ set and the Germs’, he doesn’t recognize her. “It’s me,” she says.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he finally answers.

“That’s what you said the last time, at CBGB’s.”

“You’re nine.”

“I haven’t been nine in almost five years,” Zazi says. “Do I look nine? I’ve been trying to find you.”

He says, “How did you know I would be here?”

“I didn’t,” she says. “But word is out, and it was a matter of time before you and I wound up in the same place.”

“What word? You shouldn’t be drinking that.”

“The word about the freak with James Dean on his head.”

“Nobody knows me,” he says.

“Are you serious? Everybody knows you. I just missed you at the Masque last week.”

“It’s not James Dean. I’ve been looking for you as well.”

“Really?”

“For your black Mustang.”

“Mom doesn’t have that anymore. That never made it back from New York. Now Mom has the Jag that Mitch gave her.”

“Rondell gave her a car?”

“You didn’t know about Mom and Mitch?”

After a moment Vikar says, “Is he your father?”

Even in the dark, something of her seems to wither a bit. “God, no,” she says. Recovering her teenage poise she says, “First he completely cut her out of that movie you were working on, then offered to ‘take care’ of her when we had no place else to go. Very smooth. She’s been living with him awhile.” She adds emphatically, “
I
don’t live there.”

“Where do you live?”

“I like to think Jim Morrison is my dad. But probably not.”

The band comes on. The last thing he says that either of them can hear is, “Do you want to go to a movie?”

Vikar finally meets Molly Fairbanks in person for dinner at Martoni’s on Cahuenga, along with the prospective screenwriter. Molly is in her early thirties, a slightly less pretty and less pixilated Diane Keaton; in person, she’s a bit shyer than on the telephone. The screenwriter is the grandson of a famous French filmmaker who made a lost silent epic more than half a century before about the French Revolution. The young writer wears an eye patch that he moves from one eye to the other; the waiter doesn’t know whether to look at the writer’s eye patch or Vikar’s head. The writer says even less than Vikar but does seem to have read
Là-Bas.
Molly does most of the talking while Vikar drinks cappuccinos heavily dosed with kahlúa.