Violet & Claire Page 3

  Just perfect! I’d really have to coach her.

  “Poetry!” Esmeralda was in rapture at the mere mention of the word. “Poetry is the food of the soul. Would you like to hear some of my poetry? ‘The dark withered angel turned prophetic eyes to the horizon. In that flash of cinder and rubble my body was transformed…’”

  “I think she’s a faerie,” Claire whispered to me.

  Suddenly I was swept up in the glittery arms of Elvis. His black pompadour smelled of Aquanet (familiar from my Goth phase). Shadows and disco lights were playing on his face, giving him an ominous expression, like the real King returned from the dead with tidings.

  “Do you like Spent Pleasure?” he asked me.

  Was he kidding? “Am I female and under the age of thirty?” I replied. Who didn’t love Spent Pleasure, the hottest band of life? Even I, Miss independent loner not-into-what-you’re-into, had succumbed many times to the devastating charms of their lead singer, Flint Cassidy. I even harbored a poster of him in the dark depths of my black closet. He was nihilistic yet a romantic, post-postmodern and pure classicism blended into an ageless icon. A demon Eros for our time. I hated to admit it, but Flint Cassidy awakened in me all the desires I so longed to sublimate into film.

  “My sources tell me they’re playing at the Raunch Room tomorrow night,” Elvis said.

  “The Raunch Room!” It was a teeny tiny venue. I knew that Flint and his flunkies had sold out the Forum already, which was why I hadn’t even attempted to get tickets.

  “It’s a special top secret gig,” Elvis informed me. “And there are plenty of tickets still.”

  “Oh my God! That’s awesome! Thank you!”

  But Elvis had something else on his big-haired mind. “Make sure they meet cute.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a Hollywood expression. It’s when the boy meets the girl in this really cute way. Like she faints, and he’s the one who catches her?”

  I was so caught up with the idea of seeing Flint Cassidy up close at the Raunch Room (close enough to feel his sweat, close enough to see his nose hairs) that I had forgotten about my movie for once. I didn’t know what Elvis was referring to.

  “In your script,” he said impatiently. He had tiny, sharp teeth. “Make them meet cute.”

  Meet cute. I wrote a note on the script when I got in that night. Of course, if I was going to employ this concept I’d have to have a love interest. And so far, there wasn’t any on the horizon. This point was hammered in painfully when I got to school the next day and looked around. The science nerds—what is that thing with pants pulled up too high and tight and flood-ankles; I just don’t get it. It’s almost like it goes with the I.Q.—very strange. Surfers—now they look all right with their hair bleached out and their tans, but when you talk to them, it’s always this drawl like the sun fried their brains or something. Hippies—I’m sorry, it’s just about thirty years too late for peace and love. But they’re better than the asshole jocks—they scare me. And why does everybody have to fit into some category? Even generic boys like Steve, they all have to wear those baggy-ass pantaloons and backwards baseball caps and Nikes. Occasionally I’d eye some punk rocker or grungster or techno boy or Mr. Indie, but there weren’t too many of them and besides, I was seeking an original with whom to meet cute. An original—and someone over the age of twenty. Otherwise, how could I expect them to share my passion for film noir, cinema verité and dada?

  In English class I was trying to work on the script, but Steve was looking over my shoulder, sticking his schnoz in, reminding me further of the lack of potential love interests in my life. He didn’t really care about what I was writing; of course it was more about my mini dress and vinyl go-go boots. My teacher, Miss Henderson, did not have such a fondness for my fashion sense; in fact I think she hated it. Plus, she knew I didn’t give a shit about her class—I’d read everything three years ago, anyway.

  “Violet!” she was saying. “Violet!”

  I emerged, startled, from my dream of meeting cute. If Miss Henderson were to appear in my film, she would most certainly be treated as the “Waaa-waaa voice thing” that Claire had conceived of so brilliantly. She was Miss Waaa-waaa voice thing. There was nothing else impressive enough about her to make it to the screen. Film was precious.

  But Miss Henderson’s voice could stay; she provided the conflict that I needed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “What was the question”

  “Macbeth, Violet. Your schoolwork?”

  “Yes, I read it” (when I was eight). “I just didn’t hear the question.”

  “You need to start paying attention,” waaa-waaaed the voice. “Anyone?”

  There was a long silence. Finally the Waaa-waaa spoke, and if you did see her face, you would have noticed that she was glaring at me venomously. “Lady Macbeth’s fatal flaw was ambition!”

  Ambition. Well, sometimes I got something out of school. I typed the word in at lunch that day. Ambition. I wondered, had I been born with it? Where did it come from? Where did Lady MacB’s fatal ambition come from? And why did ambition have to be a flaw? Let alone fatal?

  While I typed, hawk eyed, the A word on my screen, my innocent counterpart slept peacefully on the bench, recovering from our adventure of the night before, her head resting on my backpack. Her eyelids fluttered pixieishly.

  “I’m glad you’re resting,” I said. “Because we have to go out again tonight.”

  She opened her eyes and yawned. “Where we going?”

  “We definitely need another adventure,” I informed her. “We need a love interest. Esmeralda was right. You won’t believe who’s doing an undercover show at the Raunch Room.”

  INT. RAUNCH ROOM: NIGHT

  A sexy, pale-skinned rock god, a post-punk Eros, FLINT CASSIDY, is stalking and flaunting on the stage of a small, packed club. Kids are moshing wildly to his band, Spent Pleasure, trying to touch him. You can almost see the steam rising off of bare skin.

  Our heroines stand near the stage, crushed by moshers, transfixed.

  FLINT

  (singing)

  Girl Jesus you’re so thin

  Sleep on my cross for your sins

  When you ever gonna let me in?

  I guess this has to be a kind of redemption

  Girl Vampire you’re so red

  Sleep in a box like you were dead

  Just another demon in my head

  I wish you’d bite me and then we’d go to bed

  Girl Angel you blind my eyes

  I sleep on the cloud of your thighs

  When you touch me you make me rise

  Are you wearing just another disguise

  Girl Satan you love me the most

  I am your father son and holy ghost

  Will you betray me if you can’t get close

  Or within the circle of your flames I will roast

  Thus came to me a perfect scene for my film. I stood there in my vinyl pants, achieving ecstasy. Perhaps it was less about the dude and more about the void he filled in my project. No matter, I had found my love interest. I only needed one thing—to be able to cutely meet him.

  “How did you hear about this?” Claire hollered into my ear, her voice chiming painfully through my head.

  I rubbed the sore orifice. “I have my ways,” I said.

  Suddenly, Flint Cassidy’s whole body tensed like a panther and he sprang off the stage into the crowd. It caught and held him like the ocean as he kept singing. And then it happened. His eyes met mine. He was supported just above me. I could have almost reached out and licked the sweat from his face. There was a tantric charge that I had read about but never felt before. It started in my groin and went shooting up my belly, through my heart, my throat, exploding out the top of my head like a burning lotus blossom. I knew that Flint was a natural, the real thing. A constellation, comet, supernova star. His image would burn a hole through the screen when it was projected there.

  Using every trick I had ever le
arned from the lambent orbs of the great goddesses of screen, I kept eye contact with Flint Cassidy as I pulled Claire along behind me toward the backstage door.

  I showed the bouncer my screenplay and gave some discourse on the perfect part for Flint, but I have to admit my diatribe did not impress him. He was, however, interested in my pants and corset. Sometimes, in this world of ours, vinyl speaks louder than words. No matter. It worked. Claire and I were admitted into the lair.

  And there he was, lying back in a chair wearing only torn black jeans, worn thin at the crotch (!), and thinner at the knees, both of which (the knees) stuck out nakedly; combat boots on his size thirteen feet. He was pouring Jack Daniel’s into a bottle of Gatorade and guzzling it down.

  There were pretty girls everywhere, but it was to me whom he turned and at me whom he pointed one Flint finger. I was able to maintain but of course my dear young Claire was practically levitating with excitement. I noticed Flint whispering something to his bass player, who, like all the band members, resembled a smaller clone of the lead-god.

  The bass player swaggered over to us, with that too-tight-pant rock-star walk, and summoned us to meet his leader. I paused to light a cigarette as if contemplating the pros and cons of this proposition. Then, as cooly as if I were approaching the produce section of the supermarket to purchase apples, I followed the bass player over to Flint.

  “So, how’s it going?” he asked me.

  He had a kind of crackling speaking voice.

  “It’s going great,” I crackled back.

  “Enjoy the show?” He lit up too and squinted through the smoke at me.

  “You have a lot of charisma,” I told him. I was not one to give compliments and I suddenly wished I hadn’t said it, especially when he didn’t reply, just kept staring at me.

  “That’s a good thing,” I said, perhaps a little ’tudey.

  He didn’t like condescension. “Yes, babe, I know what charisma is, believe me.”

  “Then why don’t you say thank you? I thought you weren’t sure if I was giving you a compliment.”

  My face was getting warm and I prayed I wasn’t blushing. I fanned myself with the script.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “It’s my screenplay,” I said, glad to have reconnected with my intention for being here. My power would return if I concentrated on the project, I was sure. It always worked for me. I was surprised I had let myself get so off track.

  He asked me what it was about and I replied, “It could be about you if you learn to say thank you when someone compliments you.”

  “You’re a feisty chicky,” Flint retorted. “Why don’t you and your friend hang out a while and we’ll go party later.”

  I suddenly remembered Claire and felt a pang of guilt. It wasn’t a good sign that I had forgotten about my screenplay and my friend after just moments in the presence of Mr. Hotshit Rockstar.

  I looked for Tinker Bell and saw her hovering behind me like a sprite bestowing blessings. Moments later we were dancing wildly together. There is nothing so good almost as dancing with a great girl dancer. It seems so much more natural than dancing with some stiff guy who won’t look you in the eye. If he’s shy he’ll watch the walls and if he’s an asshole he’ll ogle your tits, but a great girlfriend dancer will look at you with the knowledge that between you, you are weaving a magic circle where music and beauty live. She will not be afraid of any expression of power. She will say to you with her eyes, “This is our spell we are casting.” That is what Claire and I did. Cool as I try to remain, when I hear a great song, I just go ballistic. I’m jumping off the ground and shaking orgasmically. It was great. Flint thought so, too, I could tell. He watched us the whole time, even when those chicks came to sit on his lap and fondle his obscenely naked knees.

  After a while Flint removed the latest girl from his lap and came over to me. I danced around him, trying to seem oblivious, until he seized my hand and pulled me toward him.

  “I’m heading back to the hotel. Do you want to come with me and show me your script?”

  He had chosen the perfect line. I couldn’t think of how to resist. I stopped dancing. Claire did, too; she’d heard him. A big smile twinkled on her face.

  “I have to take my friend home,” I said.

  “I can get my driver to take her if you want.”

  “That’s cool!” Claire reassured me.

  I asked her if she was positive. She nodded so that her ponytail bopped around. I kissed her cheek and whispered my gratitude into her ear.

  INT. LIMO: NIGHT

  In Flint’s limo I decided, I could live here! It was the perfect apartment with a wet bar and deep plush seats, tiny stars of light studding the ceiling around the moon roof. An endless supply of the best champagne. Flint poured me a glass and we clinked as the car sped down Sunset. Then I asked if I could interview him—for the film, I said, pulling out my tape recorder. He seemed pleased.

  “Most people are chickenshit,” he intoned when I asked him his philosophy of life. “They’re afraid of their own dark natures. But that’s what life is about, man. It’s about darkness as well as light. If you don’t acknowledge the one, you are thoroughly fucked. You will never know the other.”

  To tell you the truth, I was impressed. In spite of his hipper-than-thou attitude and rock star posturing, the words made a lot of sense to me. In fact, they were words I tried to live by.

  “Carpe noctum! Seize the night, you know what I mean? Take what you can get. Even if it seems wicked. I mean, what’s the alternative? Rot. Death.”

  I imagined the scene in the movie. Girl cynic gliding through the neon-glossed night in the perfect bachelor pad on wheels while rock god extraordinaire becomes increasingly beautiful in the motion-and-champagne-charged atmosphere. By the time we arrived at the hotel I had fully succumbed. There is a strange thing about certain celebrities—a heat or radiance that magnetizes. All you want is to be close to them. And that wasn’t like me. But it was as if I might be able to absorb some of his power. I wondered where it resided in him. There was a luster to his eyes and hair and a depth to his musculature that was seeming more and more supernatural. I was, however, just doing research. Love interest and all that.

  But later, when he had me on the vast golden bed in the hotel room and was unleashing my breasts from the vinyl corset, I forgot the movie entirely. Around us the room spun—a merry-go-round of champagne bottles, champagne grapes on silver platters, boxes of chocolates, arrangements of flowers like small trees. The sheets were stiff starched white cool linen and Flint’s skin was sleek and warm. I was surprised by the freckles on his shoulders. I pressed my head to his chest and heard the watery thud of his heart.

  Still, I am not a complete fool. When he was hard against me I reached for my purse, without missing a kissing beat, and felt around for the small crispy packet.

  “Use this.”

  Flint pushed my hand away.

  “It’s not my size,” he said, without even looking (what did he think he was, extra-large jumbo or something?).

  “I am so serious, use it or get the fuck off me,” was my reply. Unsafe sex is one thing I was not going to mess around with.

  This comment must have surprised him, because he stopped and looked at me for the first time. We both had the same determined pissed-off expression on our faces, and then his shifted, softened somehow and he just said, “You remind me of me, Violet.”

  Once in a while a good line comes to me spur-of-the-moment, out-of-the-blue. Maybe good enough for the script, although I must admit at the time I was not thinking about art.

  “No I don’t,” I told him. “I have a much bigger supply of condoms than you do.”

  Not only did it sound all right but it worked well, too, because he took the rubber then.

  Sex is such the weird thing. I mean, I love it, actually, but I decided a few years ago that I’d try to be circumspect. I was born a sensuality addict; anything that stimulates my senses pleasurably
is enough for me to do heroic deeds to obtain, and sex combined all senses at once when it was good. Or at least I imagined it could combine them all at once though I had to admit I hadn’t had the experience I was seeking yet. With Flint it came kind of close. He seemed to know my body so well; probably because he’d been with so many others, but still. He whispered my name in my ear like an incantation; I was glad he even remembered it after all the drugs he’d probably consumed. His tongue probed the ridges on the roof of my mouth and his teeth gently bit at my lips. I was balanced above him like flying, held by my hipbones in his palms, my hair and his blending together black and shiny on the feathery pillows, our mouths exchanging silent secrets. That was the way I liked to think of it, anyway. That’s how it would be in my movie.

  And then afterward we were smoking and eating expensive chocolates and he was flipping through the script and I was trying to be cool but thinking, Flint Cassidy is holding my movie in his hands.

  “You’re pretty young to be such a serious writer,” Flint said, narrowing his eyes at me over the pages.

  “I used to be into politics when I was little,” I told him. “I wanted to be president and change the world, end injustice and everything. But then I hit puberty and it seemed too difficult. I decided I’d try to change the world through art. And film reaches a lot of people.”

  Flint stopped mid-chocolate to listen. When I was done he swallowed and said, “I told you you reminded me of me.”

  That was when I knew I had to get out of there. Fast. But by trying to escape the feelings of vulnerability I made it worse; I was naked in front of him, sinking into the deep soft carpet, woozy on the smell of the flowers. To hide myself I grabbed the first thing I could reach—his leather jacket with “Spent Pleasure” painted on the back—and held it in front of me as I backed toward the bathroom.

  “Where you going? Come back here.”