"But even if you know the language well, that doesn't mean you can write poems in it."
"What do you mean?"
"When I realized Sasha and I were in love, that we both spoke and understood this new language, I got excited as hell. It was our language and we could do anything we wanted with it. Pass your A. P. exam in Italian and you think you're pretty hot stuff, right? But then read Dante or Pavese and you realize you understand Italian, which is great, but you can't sing to the gods with those same words the way they did."
"You mean your love wasn't enough?"
"You know me, Weber, I always want more. As soon as I knew about this new language, I wanted us to move up to the next level and communicate without words. ESP or something. Maybe life is only greed."
The dog puked for three days. Sasha came home once to change her clothes and give me a full report. When we talked again it was over the phone, when she called to say the dog was still sick and she was going to sleep on Phil's couch.
She did. From our time together in Vienna I knew she was willing to go to bed fast, but her relationship with Phil went differently. For a long time he didn't make any gestures in that direction and neither did she. He slept in his bedroom and she slept on the couch. They spent four straight days together talking and nursing Flea back to health. He cooked for them and never stopped asking questions about her life. Sometimes she told him the truth, sometimes she lied.
"That's when I knew I was coming close to loving him: When I started telling so many lies. I was afraid he wouldn't like me. I wanted to say all the right things."
"Did you lie to me when we met?"
"No, because I think I knew right away you and I weren't meant to love each other that way, Weber. Partly because you pitied me in the beginning. Pity is bad stuff to build your foundation with.
"Phil listened so carefully to me. I found myself talking less and less because I sensed he was really thinking about whatever I said.
"In Vienna, in that cafй? Your face had so much concern on it that I felt demented or handicapped. Grateful you were listening but convinced you did it because you're a nice guy, not 'cause I was an interesting person.
"Phil was intrigued."
She watched the first two Midnight films in silence, holding his hand the whole time. She made him turn off the set when he got up to go to the toilet.
She gave him a back massage. He made her Yugoslavian cevapcici. Flea felt good enough to go out on the patio and sniff around. The dog had to whine to come back in because they were kissing for the first time.
The man she'd lived with in Vienna was a rock musician who used her and her money unthinkingly but felt no compunction about treating her badly.
Phil was gallant and shy. He wasn't a good-looking man and wasn't sure his talent or intelligence was enough to hold her. He'd spent so much of his young life alone, or worrying about how to impress any girl, that even in his successful thirties when he was a movie star and a wealthy man, he wanted to be loved for what he was, not what he'd become. But Hollywood is not a good town to find that kind of understanding person. The actor Stephen Abbey was purported to have said, "You come to Hollywood to get famous, not laid. The greatest fuck in the world is seeing your name first on the screen. Period."
Their love grew tentatively and genuinely. They both wanted to believe, but were both smart and hurt enough to be careful of false love's Northern Lights.
One morning she called from a phone booth and said he'd asked her to move in: What should she do? That afternoon, Phil called from another phone booth and announced he'd asked her to move in. Did I think that was a good idea?
They took a trip together to Japan. When they returned they spoke with the exaggeration and intimacy of excited newlyweds. I was sure they'd get married, but they continued to live together and seemed pleased enough with that.
Sasha became involved in Phil's production company, Fast Forward, and showed herself to be a shrewd and sometimes innovative businesswoman who was largely responsible for the company's involvement in a couple of successful projects outside the Midnight series. She told me Phil had so much confidence in both her and their relationship that it naturally spilled over into other things. I told her she'd just never found the right spot to land before, but that didn't mean she wasn't capable.
She shook her head. "I know I'm capable, Weber, I've never had any reason to apply it to anything. Using your analogy, it was always easier flying around from place to place. Landing takes effort: constantly checking your dials and taking the plane off automatic pilot."
I moved to New York at the height of their happiness. My last picture of them was standing together in the driveway of Phil's house in Laurel Canyon, Flea investigating the rosebushes nearby. They had their hands behind their backs. As I was driving away, they turned around and quickly back again, both wearing those gruesome Bloodstone masks that were in the novelty stores then. They waved. Flea looked up from the bushes, saw two monsters where his friends had just been, and barked.
Later they came to New York for a visit. Over dinner, Phil sheepishly admitted they were thinking about either getting married or having a child.
"Can't you do both?"
Sasha said, "One thing at a time."
Whenever they called from California, things sounded better than ever.
Until three weeks before he killed himself, when I got this letter from Sasha.
Weber.
Phil and I aren't living together anymore. The whole thing is still tentative and not worked out, so neither of us wants to talk about it yet. You'll be the first to know when we make whatever decisions. Please tell Cullen and Danny. We'll be in touch. We promise.
I called many times to hear what was going on, but the only thing that said hello was Bloodstone's voice on their answering machine. I told it I was around if they wanted to talk or visit or whatever might help. I heard nothing more until Sasha called to tell me he was dead.
"Sasha?"
"Weber? Hi. I was expecting your call." She sounded so old and dry.
"I – uh – I had to call again, Sasha."
"I know. You got Phil's tapes?"
"You know?"
"Yes. I got one too in the mail right after we talked this morning."
"Can you tell me what was on it?"
"It was a video of Phil. Phil and Flea sitting on the couch. It's hard to . . . I –" Silence.
"Sasha?"
A long intake of breath, then: "He said he was going to show me my future.
"The next shot is of me in a hospital bed. Weber, I'm very pregnant. I thought I was there to have a child, but it's not that; I'm in the hospital because I have cancer and they're going to try and cut it out of me."
"Are you pregnant?"
"I can't be. Phil and I hadn't slept together in months. I just had my period, too.
"Weber, Phil came on after it was over and said everything depends on you. What was he talking about?" She began crying. "What's going on, Weber? Damn it! Where is he? My God. My God, where is he?"
"Wait. Sasha, sh-h-h. Wait a minute, honey. Was there anything else on the tape?"
"No. Just the tape and a Xerox copy of 'Mr. Fiddlehead.'"
"What's that?"