Luda, page 31
I’m delighted you’ve managed to lay the blame for months of torture on your Muse!—I said, and I don’t know if it was the strong coffee I’d necked, but the ice on my tongue melted, and the river flowed—and flowed.
It’s always the woman’s fault—I ranted. Which one is she? Terpsichore? Melpomene? No, it has to be Thalia, she’s the only one who’d put up with you!
Dom was beaming, a grin that reminded me of the widening split in a pair of gammon-hued rubber pants.
The last time I saw a face like that was a police photofit after an indecent exposure incident!—I said and put up my hands and pretended to back away from him. I knew it. The real Phantom is the director!—I told him. We’re hundreds of feet above the stage.
Beat. Timing.
You only dragged me up here to toss me off, didn’t you?—I said.
What happened to that sense of humor, Lu?—he came back with a pallid smile and the swift stroke of an ax felling a silly ugly tree. How come this Lu is up here when I need her down there?
I grew up a punk. An anarchist. Rebel without a job—I said. That Lu doesn’t take kindly to anyone telling her what to do over and over again as if she hasn’t spent decades learning her job.
I did it to remind you who you are—he persisted. You’re playing a character who’s filled with passion! Twankey is raw joie de vivre that defies entropy—but you seem spent, burnt out—where’s the Widow?
It came down to this. Why, oh, why couldn’t I slip into character the way I always used to, the way you’d slip into a shimmering baby-doll nightie made to measure? That’s what he wanted to know.
Too much of whatever’s going on with you is showing through Twankey’s front—he kept up. Your worries, Lu, your distractions. I don’t know what you’re going through…
You don’t—I affirmed.
Late nights?—he said. Drink. Drugs. Whatever it is with you and Luda…everyone’s talking…
We’ve already had this conversation and nothing’s going on!—I snapped back, elastic. Everyone can shut the fuck up!
Luda’s killing it! She’s really come through—said Dom, his way of delivering a compliment on the point of a dagger.
All thanks to you know who?—I hissed. Have you any idea what it takes to wrangle worms? To turn raw silk promise into luxury satin talent?
Is that what it’s about?—he honked derisively, a clown car in a traffic jam. You’ve taught your replacement to be better than you, and you can’t stand it? A Star Is Born? You’re better than this—
He wouldn’t let go, just held me in his evil hypnotist gaze, those gray eyes in that face, like two nail heads in a pig’s rump.
I’ll throw myself over the perimeter—I said. Would that be spontaneous enough?
The scrutiny went on and on, but the eyes visibly softened like chocolate buttons left in the sun until they were an accusing puddle. I believe he believed his puppy-dog expression telegraphed the sentiment—“I’m hurt by your behavior, be reasonable”—but seething on the spot, all I was willing to see was a faded cushion sat on by so many arses over the years it had lost the will to maintain its former shape and firmness.
You can’t always bring your A-game to rehearsals—I volleyed, and he came back with a bitter and world-weary death strike.
Well, maybe you could stretch to your X- or Y-game, Lu.
I bit my tongue, held my lip, kept my pride up, and swallowed my pecker. Here in this world bound in a nutshell, this Peking in a cabinet faked up by paint and carpentry, its superficial plausibility upheld by a hidden skeleton infrastructure, Dominick Float was Lord God Almighty. That was the important lesson to be learned and absorbed here. God had lifted me from the bell jar confinement that was the whole of my existence, up into the rigging and the wiring, and asked of me only that I play my simple part as a good, functioning sprocket in the madman’s contraption he had suffered to reveal unto me.
To Mega Therion—his Great Bestial Work. His monsterpiece. His overreaching pathology laid bare! Take your pick.
I will—I said rightfully chastened. I was nunlike. Humbled after a righteous tongue-lashing by the Mother Superior. I will. I might even show you my R’s.
Let up—he urged. Luda’s hard as nails. She can hold her own—
I let that one pass with only a raised eyebrow.
But if it comes down to you, or Luda—he assured me. I need my Twankey. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’ll let Luda go if that’s the only way to put an end to this folie à deux…
The very thought was an ice pick to my aorta. What if she walked away? What if we never saw her again?
Our relationship is platonic, pedagogic. I’m her teacher—I faced him down, going as cold as I could manage without climbing into the freezer cabinet. It’s not what you or anybody else thinks. I’m sorry I can’t be one more identical wedge in your clockwork chocolate orange!
What’s chewing at you, Lu? Honestly. All the occult stuff—he said, shifting the points on his train of thought so we split from the branch line and took a turn for the macabre. I thought maybe you could put an end to this fucking Curse—he said, really spitting out the word “Curse,” as if it was a curse much worse than fuck.
I thought that’s what you were doing—I said. They use pentagrams to bind demons—I reminded him, vague on who “they” might be. Rosicrucians? The Salvation Army? Zookeepers? Accordionists?
I reminded him how not so long before, he’d rashly extended a welcome to the denizens of the Underworld alongside the dregs of the Press, practically handing out free tickets that day to any stray revenant that wandered in off the eighteenth-century ghost of Gargoyle Street.
Come one come all—PhanTom, Dick, and Harriet—I said.
Perhaps an excess of specters, I suggested, drawn to the Ghost Light by Dom’s unrestrained hospitality, now struggled unseen in the theater’s latticework web of iron beams and girders, its cunningly plaited wooden planks.
Impalpable, too weak on the mortal plane to free themselves from the sublime architecture of McCloudie’s ghost trap, lovely mothlike “spirits” cried for help all around us, invisibly tugging against the sticky mortal restraints of crisscrossed cables and chains. Hungry for the distilled passions of the dramatic arts, more of the spooks were sucked in daily, their increasing numbers bloating the guts of the theater as trapped ectoplasmic wind…
All the frustrated energies summoned here, with no way to escape these straight lines and angles. Maybe your Golden Section’s a spirit cage—I said all disingenuous, and if that wasn’t improv, I don’t know what is.
What would I do without your voice of reason, Lu?—he deadpanned. Laugh if you like. We don’t need any more bad luck—
I couldn’t agree more. On this subject of bad luck prevention, I proceeded to tell him of my Good Samaritan visit to the hospital bedside of Gofannon Rhys. Earnestly, I claimed to have revived the elderly thespian’s personal spirits with a bracing dose of good cheer.
Midway through this unlikely admission of charity Dom cut me short with a curt flick of his hand and peered over the rail, listening for unfamiliar voices. The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stiffened into quivering antennae tuned to bad-juju FM.
As we were lowered, unspeaking in the grinding scissor lift that now felt like a coffin inching its way into the grave on folding clotheshorse legs, two ominous figures came into view in a slow suspense shot, shadows at first, unrolled black rugs in the shapes of men. Then sprouting from the shadows’ feet, two boys in blue stood tall like lovely twilight crocii, craning their heads on stalks to track our deus ex machina descent from the dusty, oily workshop of the heavens above.
The police are here to see you—said the prods manager although by that time he was simply stating the obvious.
I said—What’s all this about? Well let’s face it, nobody wants to find the police at the door. It’s not as if they ever turn up to wish you a happy birthday or pose for a selfie, do they? They never deliver pizza. Instead, they deliver lines like this—
It’s about the missing boy.
* * *
—
The missing boy, as it happened, was known to me by another name—Rentboy, we might as well call him, since that’s who he was when we met. Remember Rentboy before he sloughed his skin and took control of the whole narrative?
According to the law, the missing boy’s real name was Kenny Trace. Although even that wasn’t his real name. Kenny Trace was the product label attached to an unbaptized foundling with no name of its own. A mewling, squealing, newborn stranger to this world, a changeling, a fetch left quacking on the orphanage steps in the once-upon-a-time.
Kenneth Trace disappeared ten years ago. Wanted by police.
I do remember him—I said carefully. We’d just started pre-rehearsals. June? I turned to Dom for confirmation.
June it was June—he confirmed on cue. Table read. Feels like forever.
I felt emboldened to give him his money’s worth as the policeman jotted down my freestyle in his little book, eager to keep the story exciting—
He was selling the Homeless Times outside the Rendezvous—the café. I didn’t want to give him money; he’d just spend it on drugs, right? So I offered to buy him a square meal instead—
Do you do a lot of that?—he asked, still scribbling with his pen.
I thought about it and said—Not really—I said. I do my best to bridge the gap between rich and poor but there was something about the boy’s eyes—I said, and the policemen reacted like deer catching wind of a rifle.
His eyes?
They were a very unusual color—I recalled, having my wicked way with the filth. Capri grotto blue. I don’t know. I was moved is the best way I can put it.
I held it there on a tender indrawn breath. I hoped I’d baited my line with enough tasty gobbets of truth to hook them wriggling there until I chose to lob them back in the lake none the wiser.
This kid had brown eyes. Cop two of the two, rising to the challenges of the sidekick role I’d assigned him, frowned, sensing a sure lead turn to ink running through his fingers. You’re certain they were blue?
I said—maybe I mixed him up with someone else—having forgotten about Luda’s brown contacts when we met in the Rendezvous.
I went on to tell them how yes, I’d talked to a boy or rather how I’d talked about myself while he ate and ate and ate. Me, I could gab for two, for a whole string quartet, a football team, a police department. The waif hadn’t seen fit to pass on his name, or any other meaningful details.
I gave him a few notes and made him promise he’d spend the money on accommodation—I assured the policemen. I told him to be careful and I wish I hadn’t now—I said. You try to be a Good Samaritan these days but it’s a minefield.
They asked if we’d left together, she and him. I nodded, delighted to confirm that the homeless boy was gone on his way by the time I hailed a taxi. That much was true in the sense that I’d shared the cab with Luda not Rentboy, or Kenny, or whoever it was she’d been impersonating.
Could I remember what I was doing on the South Side that day? the cops wanted to know. Of course I could!
I’m working on a memoir—I divulged. I know! You must be thinking, She’s way too young to be writing memoirs!
I knew that was the very last thing they were thinking but it was essential to maintain a tight grip on the story line. I twinkled—All joking aside, I had a band, the Troupe, you might remember us from Channel 6, we first met up in the Rendezvous.
I watched as they both misspelled Troupe on their way to the alphabetical pileup that was Rendezvous, before summoning my most solicitous, seductive voice—I wanted to go back. See if I could capture the feel of the place. Trigger some memories.
By now the even, toneless drone of my voice was causing the eyes of the detectives to blur with boredom.
It’s a grim business, Officers, but it’s heartwarming to know somebody cares—I said, as they left. Social services. Police. He didn’t think anyone wanted to know. He’d appreciate all this attention. It was a near-faultless performance, if I say so myself, 9.9 out of 10 for gall.
My elation was short-lived; when I returned to the stage, it was to find Dominick with the separate pieces of a snapped pole in both hands standing like the last survivor of a bloody, pointless battle, clutching his broken lance in the smoking shambles of everything he’d thought worth fighting for. The shattered bulb of the broken Ghost Light lay deconstructed into pale shark-toothy shards.
That doesn’t bode well—was all I could say.
Our lightning rod for grounding dangerous spirit energy was reduced to a fused and melted spar, good for fuck-all now, blown out by who knew what stupendous ethereal discharge.
When did this happen?—Dom said, and his desolate expression was that of a boy who thought they were both special but who’s just found his adventurous little dog dead in the coal cellar. Nobody saw anything.
I wanted to say—Nobody ever sees anything—but I didn’t. It broke my heart to note how Float’s remarkable voice had lost its rich choral congestion. Stripped of the harmonic overtones he relied upon to convey his authority, our esteemed director had nothing to offer but his own first-rate impression of a Microsoft text reader.
You had nothing to do with this boy’s disappearance?—he asked with big sad eyes, become now the innocent wife in a film, coming to terms with the bloody evidence of hubby’s passion for serial murder, hidden beneath the marital bed.
I had nothing to say so I said—Nothing.
Is everything going wrong?—was all he had to offer in return.
Second Law of Thermodynamics says yes—I said, wishing I didn’t have to be so clever and callous all the time.
We can’t let this get out—he resolved, setting his lips in a ruled line.
There was more to come.
As if things weren’t already much worse than bad enough, reports began to trickle in concerning an incident of extreme violence involving Dez Blue.
The story hadn’t made the leap to headline status yet but as far as Dom could glean, the whole seamy subplot began its slouch to Bethlehem when Blue limped into his spare bedroom to face down the primal scene that was his devoted wife Lol in flagrante with an up-and-coming club comic I won’t even name. It wasn’t the betrayal that set Blue’s blood ablaze—God knows he had a reputation as a well-oiled extracurricular fuck machine himself—more the implied stripping of status, the indignity of this blow to his honor and especially his already compromised masculinity.
That Lol, his Lol would choose some penniless, ripped, and gifted young newcomer over her successful, out-of-shape, and currently disabled narcissist of a husband made all Blue’s accomplishments seem worthless.
But what actually happened, Lu?—I hear you asking.
As I had it explained to me, the Fisher King Blue, lamed first, then horn-crowned and cucked, had chosen to refine his recent mastery of support sticks into a new experimental martial art.
Pressed into service as a pair of stabbing blunt spears, the most severe and prolonged application of Blue’s weaponized walking aids had been directed exclusively between the wife’s lover’s legs in a crutch vs. crotch death bout the fork was doomed to lose.
Picture it if you dare!
Front-line bulletins hinted at irreversible injuries to the up-and-coming funnyman’s penis, testicles, and rectum of a kind and in a manner that seemed unlikely to inspire many comedy routines or future affairs.
So far so good, except Dez Blue, ever the consummate pro, could hardly be expected to mount a suicidal defense of his dysfunctional relationship without throwing in a final comedic flourish when he’d overbalanced and clattered downstairs attached to two rigid metal poles. Working in tandem with gravity and torque, they broke everything that hadn’t already been snapped in previous misadventures.
It all seemed too much to take in.
I hope it’s not just me who’s worried about Dee Jayashankar—I said, not entirely taking it seriously in that annoying way I have. She’s allergic to tree pollen and cat dander. Anything can happen…
Dee. Aiysha. May’s in a state of shock since she heard. Everyone thinks they’re next. Dom swabbed his broad brow with a kitchen towel that turned immediately transparent with wet. Thank God she’s only in a few scenes and we can afford to lose her until the last week—he said.
The Twins seem oblivious at least. They’re probably immune to any curse—I pointed out breezily—I saw them playing Ping-Pong earlier and I still have no idea which one’s Ping and which is Pong.
I’m worried about you, Lu. What if it’s you next? All this scandal. Or me.
What scandal?—I shrieked, situating the pitch a little higher than I’d planned. My unfortunate yelp ricocheted off the rigging like the shrill cries for assistance of a seabird mixed up with a fisherman’s net.
It does seem a bit weird—he said, troubled in an uncharacteristic way that troubled me.
I could only agree. What evil twine tied these random incidents together, what dread Prime Mover organized these serial calamities into prearranged conspiracy? What awful thread dyed crimson with Kensington Gore wound its way through all our human affairs?
The police, Lu—Float whimpered, going under despite his optimistic surname.
Assisting with inquiries—I explained without emotion. You can use this, Dominick—I said. You can work with this.
Looking back, I must admit that day may have been my one and only chance to come clean and stop Luda in her tracks, but we’re all prophets and weathermen in hindsight, aren’t we?
