“I’m sorry,” Cliff says. “I wish I had known.”
“Yes, you would have flown to her side, I’m sure. She often spoke of your generosity.”
“Look, I didn’t know. I can’t be held responsible for something I didn’t know was happening.”
“Is that what it is to you? A matter of whether or not you can be held responsible? Are you afraid I’m going to sue you?”
“No, that’s not…”
“Rest assured, I’m not going to sue you.”
Her voice is so thick with menace, Cliff is momentarily alarmed. They’re within the city limits now, driving in rush hour traffic past fruit stands and motels and souvenir shops, not far from the lot—he can’t wait to get out of the car.
“Isabel, as I told you, was a woman of power,” says Shalin. “In another time, another place, she would have been respected and revered. But ill, buried in the slums, power of the sort she possessed could do her no good.”
“What the hell are you getting at?” he asks.
She flashes a sunny smile and goes on with her narrative. “Isabel loved you until the end. I know she hated you a little, too, but she maintained that you weren’t evil, just profligate and vain. And slight. She said there wasn’t much to you. You were terribly immature, but she had hopes you’d grow out of that, even though you were in your thirties when she knew you. She was basically a decent soul and power was something she used judiciously, only in cases where she could produce a good effect. It was among the last things she transferred to me.” She sighs forlornly. “Taking control of me was the one selfish act she committed in her life. You can’t blame her. The streets had left me damaged beyond repair and she was terrified of death. Of course these transfers are a bit like reincarnation, so it’s not exactly Isabel who’s alive. I mean, she is alive, but she’s a different person now. There are things that are left behind during a transfer, and things added that belonged to the soul who once inhabited this body.”
“You’re out of your tree.” He says this without much conviction. “All you’re doing is screwing with me.”
“Right on both counts.”
She slows and eases into the turning lane across from the lot, waiting for a break in the traffic.
“Now,” she says, “I use my power to get the things I want, to make my family secure. Sometimes I use it on a whim. You might say I use it profligately.”
She edges forward, but brakes when she realizes she can’t make the turn yet. A semi roars past, followed by a string of cars.
“One thing Isabel didn’t transfer to me was her love for you,” she says. “I imagine she wanted to keep that for herself, to warm her final moments. She was almost empty. All that was left was a shell, a few memories. Or maybe she didn’t want me to love you. You know, in case I ever saw you again. Do you suppose that’s it? She wanted me to hate you?”
“You can get by after that red pick-up,” he says.
“I see it.” She makes the turn, pulls into the lot and parks. “If that’s so, if that’s really what Isabel wanted, she got her wish,” she says. “No child should have to endure East Cipinang. You have no idea of the things I was forced to do as a result of your nonchalance, your triviality. Your shallowness.”
She looks as if she’s about to spit on him, climbs out of the SK and then bends to the window, peering in at him. “This car won’t do, I’m afraid,” she says, blithely. “It corners horribly.”
“What’re you trying to pull?” he asks. “You were at my house the other night, weren’t you?”
“If you say so.”
“What the hell do you want from me?”
She straightens, as though preparing to leave, but then leans in the window again, her teeth bared and black eyes bugged. Except for the color of her skin, it’s the face of the witch, vividly insane, without a single human quality, and Cliff recoils from it.
“If you want answers, watch Isabel’s movie,” she says, her face relaxing into that of a teenage girl. “I believe you have a copy.”
Chapter 8
CLIFF SITS IN his office for an hour, hour and a half, not thinking so much as brooding about Shalin’s story. It’s absurd, impossible, yet elements of it ring true, especially the part about him giving Isabel the STD. He digs deep, mining his memories, trying to recall how she was, how he felt about her, and remembers her as a simple girl, not simple in the sense of stupid, but open and unaffected, though it may be he’s prompted by guilt to gild the lily. She didn’t seem at all “a woman of power,” but then he didn’t take the time to know her, to look beneath the surface. His clearest memories relate to her amazing breasts, her dancer’s legs and ass, and to what a great lay she was. He wishes he could remember a moment when he loved her, an instance in which he saw something special about her, but he was a superficial kind of guy in those days, and maybe still is.
Thoughts buzz him like mosquitoes, a cloud of tiny, shrill thoughts that swarms around his head, diving close just long enough to nettle his brain, questions about Shalin’s story, more memories of Isabel (once a trickle, their flow has become a flood, but all relating to how she looked, smelled, felt, tasted), and disparaging thoughts, lots of them, remarking on, as Shalin put it, his triviality, his nonchalance, his shallowness. If he could go an entire day without his life being captioned by this dreary self-commentary…
The phone rings, and he picks it up, grateful for the interruption. His agent’s mellow tenor brings all the infectious banality of SoCal to his ear. After an exchange of pleasantries, his agent says, “Listen, Cliff. I was in New York last week. I had this crazy idea and you know me, what the hell, I pitched it to a couple of publishers. I said, What if Cliff Coria wrote a book, a memoir, about his life in the movies. This guy’s acted all over, I told them. Spain, Southeast Asia, Czechoslovakia. You name it. And he’s smart. And he’s seen celebrities in unguarded moments. He’s kind of an insider-slash-outsider. He can give you a view from the fringes of Hollywood, and maybe that’s the clearest view of all.”
“I don’t know, Mark.”
“Don’t you want to hear how they reacted?”
“Yeah.”
“They were excited, Cliff. There could be serious money for you in this. And if the book does what I think it will, it’ll generate significant heat out here.”
The Celeste’s Vacancy sign switches on in the twilight, seeming like a glowing blue accusation. Cliff lowers the Venetian blinds.
“I believe there’ll be interest in you as a character actor,” Mark goes on. “Not just cheesy parts. I think I’d be able to get you serious work. I know you can do this, Cliff. Remember those letters you used to send me? Like the one about Nicholson’s ass hanging out of the car when he was banging that bit player? That was fucking hilarious! Come on! All I need is a few chapters and a rough outline.”
Cliff assures his agent that he’ll give it a try. He leaves a note for Jerry, saying he’s going to take a few days off to deal with some personal problems, and then heads for Marley’s place. Crossing the Main Street Bridge over the Halifax River, which bisects Daytona, he sees several old men fishing off the bridge, half in silhouette, motionless, with buckets at their feet, the corpses of blowfish and sting rays bloodily strewn along the walkway, and thinks that if he were ever to take up fishing, this is where he’d like to drop his line. The idea of joining those sentinel figures appeals to him, as does the thought of hauling up little monsters from the deep.