Violet & Claire Read online

  “We’re totally different. You have no ambition whatsoever.”

  “But I have desires that mess me up and make me forget about other people’s feelings.”

  Violet had stared at him then, at the planes of his long, bony face, his deep-set eyes, his full, almost clownish mouth. She had wanted to tell him but she couldn’t tell him.

  “I’ve got to go,” she had said.

  He had walked her to the car and then he had leaned over and pressed his lips to her cheek.

  He hadn’t meant to. It was just the side of her face, but still, he shouldn’t have. Violet wasn’t the girl he wanted. None of them were. Except Claire, Claire with her openness, like in spite of being hurt she would let you right into her eyes, right into where it was twinkling and jingling and spinning—merry-go-rounds, windchimes, fireflies. That was where he wanted to go. But she wasn’t ready for him, he had told himself—she’s just a little girl, she needs time, and there was Violet, full of fury at him and love for the girl he loved, too. He kissed her.

  The house was painted with red and white stripes like a giant circus tent. One of those atrocities that rich people build just because they can. But it was perfect for Claire. She wanted to step inside the most brutal of circuses so she could forget everything else. She wanted to be the fire swallower, searing away pain with flames, the disappearing act and the girl on the table who was about to be sliced up with knives.

  She slipped in through the big spear-gate to the pool. It was surrounded by acres of lawn and lit with red lights so that the water looked like blood. People were making out, snorting coke and gulping down booze, sitting or floating in the water.

  Then Claire saw the pig. It was live and fat but small and it was running on its little sharp trotters with a look of terror smeared across its snouty face. No wonder. A man in a blood-spattered apron was chasing it, screaming, “Dinner, come back here!”

  Dinner? she thought. Its name was Dinner? She reached down and caught the wriggly pig in her arms just as it passed by. Then she started to run. A man in the bloody jacuzzi reached out and tried to grab the hem of her dress.

  “Hey, lose that friend of yours and come on in!”

  Barbecue Man fell into the water with an elephantine splash, and Pig and Claire got away. But then Pig did a shimmy-squirm in her arms and he was so well oiled that he slid right out. She saw Barbecue Man flailing around in the water, yelling at her, so she ran into the house.

  The party was wilder than anything in Violet’s script. There were men wearing stubby horns and coarse fur pants, like satyrs, dancing with topless girls. Pigs and chickens were running all over squealing and squawking, chased by bloodthirsty Suits and Starlets. Claire just stood there thinking, maybe I died and went to hell.

  The thought intensified when someone grabbed her shoulder and she turned around and saw the self-proclaimed king of the underworld himself, Flint Cassidy.

  “Looking for something, kitty?” he asked.

  She just stared at him and shrugged. The room seemed to be tilting like a carnival ride. All she could say was, “What are they doing to all those animals?”

  “Don’t freak out.” He steered her from the room.

  They were in a guest bedroom with mirrors everywhere. Flint knelt down on the mirrored floor and spilled a line of coke out.

  “This will make you feel better.”

  When she hesitated he said, “Come on. You want to be able to tell your friends what a wild time you had, don’t you?”

  The king of hell is supposed to know the words to say to get you to do what he wants. The thought of Claire’s “friends” and the wild time they had had or were having was enough to get Claire to want to suck up cocaine with any part of her body that Flint suggested. She got down on the floor beside him, leaned over and held the straw to her nose. The coke shot up there like powdered ice, numbing and stunning. Little diamond snowflakes twinkling in her head. She heard Flint whisper, “Your skin is so perfect, like it’s never been touched,” and she felt his lips on her neck, but she was bolting with coke and so she wasn’t afraid to push him away.

  She headed down the hallway like a suckling pig running from a barbecue, but then she was in a little sitting room and people with depraved faces, all sunken eyes and bitter mouths, were sitting around a table listening to a woman dressed like a gypsy with a black cat perched on top of her head.

  “I sense a restless spirit,” said the woman. “Spirit, what do you want to tell us?”

  There was a loud knocking sound and Claire jumped as if it were coming from inside her chest. The people around the table giggled nervously.

  “What’s it saying?” asked one.

  The gypsy opened her eyes and turned her head toward the doorway where Claire was standing. But she wasn’t looking at Claire, more through her. “This soul is suffering,” she said. “It wishes to share the secret of its tragedy.”

  Claire started to back away and bumped into a tall man, his face hidden by shadows.

  “I sense the energy of evil,” the gypsy said. “Here, in this house.”

  Claire ran through a crowd of people who were simulating sex in the hallway, and out to a glassed-in sun porch where a tan, blond woman in a garter belt and black bra had her head tilted back and was meticulously sliding a sword down her throat. Claire winced. The woman’s eyes were bloodshot and filled with tears and the veins in her neck were bulging out. Finally she removed the sword, trying to conceal the gag as she bowed behind her hair. Claire could feel her own esophagus ripple with disgust. Some people clapped.

  Suddenly a man came up and grabbed the sword away from the woman. It was Barbecue Man. He pointed it at Claire.

  “You took my Dinner!” shouted Barbecue.

  Claire backed away.

  “You’ll have to take his place!”

  He lurched toward her. The sword swallower wiped the tears from her glassy eyes.

  “Off with her head!” She laughed.

  They were all laughing. Claire heard it building and building like a wall of sound—pigs and gypsies and dead spirits and blood-spattered carnivores. Grunts, squeals, wails, knocks, groans, guffaws, wee-hee-hees!

  She was shaking so much that when she bumped into the man in the hallway she couldn’t tell at first that they had collided. He steadied her and looked into her eyes.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. He sounded like a concerned father.

  Then she recognized his almost metallic hair and leather-brown skin. It was Violet’s boss, Richter.

  “Can I take you home?”

  And what was she saying yes to? The kind refined gentleman who would help her escape the freakfest of the party? Or the king freak of all who would help her escape much much more? Part of her felt comforted, part of her felt afraid. Part of Claire felt cradled by the fear.

  He had a white sports car. The valet put Claire’s bike on top and they sped off down the driveway. Inside the car smelled like deep luxury and there was cool air wafting and soft music. She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.

  Violet got to the party just after the BMW had left. She’d been caught in traffic on the Strip and was ready to rip off her skin with anxiety by the time the Hummer pulled up in front of the red and white house. If anything happens to Claire…, she kept saying to herself. But she didn’t have the end of the sentence. All she knew was that Richter was going to be at the party.

  But, of course, she didn’t see Richter or Claire when she arrived. She tripped over terrified hens and pigs as she moved deeper into the house. A satyr grabbed her and started dancing around, his face pointed and devilish in the red lights. She struggled to pull her wrists from his grip, but he held on tighter till her skin burned red as if his fingers were made of coarse rope.

  Finally she got away. But the house was like a labyrinth, and she felt she was getting deeper and deeper toward nothing when she saw Flint Cassidy. He was surrounded by a bevy of beauties and he didn’t notice her, even when
she tried to touch his arm. The Beauties jostled her away. They had eyelashes like silver spiders and lips like overblown poison flowers.

  “Flint!” Violet shouted.

  He turned lazily to her, brushing black hair from coked eyes.

  “Have you seen Claire?” she asked him.

  Flint just stared blankly.

  “I’m asking you something.”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” said Flint, stroking the powder-white cheek of one of the Beauties.

  “What about your agent? Where’s Richter?”

  “He left with some neurotic little blond chick. Probably took her to the office for an audition.”

  And Flint and the Beauties began to laugh hysterically like a pack of hyenas, braying, throwing back their heads, exposing their throats.

  “Have you ever acted?” Richter asked as they headed down through the hills. The residential streets were quiet and empty as usual in L.A. at night. The mansions were ghosty white in the moonlight—mausoleums. There were no people in the windows, no life at all. Just dead cold beauty. The sky was a bruised purple.

  “Not really,” she said. “But you know Alice in Innocent Ambition is based on me.”

  “You’re kidding? You mean you’re the best friend?”

  She nodded, but it was ironic. Not anymore.

  Richter watched her out of the corner of his eye. “You know, we’re still trying to cast that part. Who do you suggest?”

  She told him her idea about the girl from Kids. He thought it was good.

  “You’d make a good agent, Claire.”

  “I’d rather be an actress.” She surprised herself by saying it. Maybe I’ll get my boobs done and wear cleavage dresses and be featured in all the magazines, she thought. I’ll date some hot up-and-coming actor and live in a big mansion and I won’t have to think about Violet or Peter. I’ll send my mother checks but I won’t have to see her all the time and be reminded about what heartbreak can do to a girl who was pretentious enough to think she was winged, a poet.

  “Not a poet like in the script?” Richter asked, as if he were reading her mind.

  She told him how over that she was. How you couldn’t make money that way.

  “Do you have talent? As an actress.”

  She told him she did (she was being bold—the coke) and he said, “How about if you give me a little private audition?”

  So Claire went with Mr. Richter to the office. The way he spoke to her, held the car door open and everything, felt like some kind of date. She wished Violet and Peter could have seen. She didn’t care what Richter’s motives were—it just felt like the only thing she could be doing right then. It was like walking on a tightrope. You can’t stop and run backward or jump down. You just keep taking the little shaky steps while the crowd holds its breath beneath you and the stars laugh hysterically (but with a certain admiration) at your folly, through the peak of the circus tent.

  They took the elevator up to the top floor. An eeriness, being there at night. The ghosts in modern places live in computers and fax machines, so it’s harder to sense who they are, Claire thought. But there were ghosts. She could feel it. Hard, buzzing ghosts with little blinking eyes and crushed dreams of screen triumphs.

  Richter held the door to his office open for her and they went inside. He offered her water, soda, tea, coffee. They both had mineral water from his private bar, then he sat back with his legs crossed and his feet up on the desk and watched her like she was a little animal in a cage. There was a smirk on his mouth.

  “Why don’t we do this scene?” he said.

  He handed Claire Violet’s script. It was the scene where the agent kills the starlet in order to create something for the young screenwriter to write about. Claire started to read it to herself but Richter jumped right in.

  “Now, think about it, this man is going to kill you. How do you feel? Your eye sockets. The place where your tongue attaches to your throat. Now try it again, honey.”

  “‘Oh, please don’t kill me, Jake. Please. I’ll do anything.’”

  “That’s not good enough. You’re not making me feel anything. It’s a tough world out there. And I’ve got to be straight with you. You’re pretty but you’re not drop-dead, you know what I’m saying? So you’ve got to compensate in other areas.”

  “‘Jake! Jake! Please don’t! Oh my God! Jake!’”

  “That’s a little better. But just try to imagine that if you don’t get this audition, that’s the end. Back to waiting tables.”

  She felt a chill go up her spine and clench the nape of her neck. Something was changing in the room and she didn’t want to look up at Richter. The crowd beneath her tightrope opened their mouths like hundreds of ghouls, replicas of the one in Munch’s screaming painting.

  “Oh God,” Claire said.

  Just then the door burst open.

  Violet was a warrior. She was the wrath of death. Her hair was knotted up on top of her head and her body was pumped with adrenaline. Her eyes flashed hard at Richter, her pupils narrow as the blades of knives. Her small hands seemed dangerous, suddenly, the fingers kneading air.

  Maybe the thing she had written had become real. Megalomania, maybe, but part of her believed it then—that her words had that kind of power. Power to hurt what she loved the most. After all, real life had never seemed as real to Violet as her art. Until now.

  Claire had never seen Violet that way before. She looked, simply, as if she would die for her friend. And that was actually what Violet was thinking, standing there in the doorway of the penthouse office overlooking the seething city. She would have died for Claire in a movie and she would have died for her in real life, although neither of them knew exactly what the difference was at that moment. Claire was the symbol of kindness and innocence to Violet then. But she was also much more than that. She is Claire, Violet thought. And she remembered how Claire had shrugged that first day, revealing the wings on her back, surprised that wings and telling people she believed she was part of an ancient lost race would make her vulnerable; Violet remembered how Claire had supported her perverse crush on Flint Cassidy and squealed about it as if it were she, Claire, whom he had made love to. How Claire looked in the desert, dripping stars chasing butterflies, kicking up hot mica-sparked winds, transformed into the faerie being she always knew she was. How Claire had come to Violet crying, just that night (could it be? It seemed like forever ago) and how Violet had held her and how bony and frail she had felt, like a crushed bird and how all Violet had wanted to do was repair everything but it had gotten so much worse. And now, here they were, in a room in life or in a room in her movie, she was hardly sure which, only that the ending would have to be the way she wanted it.

  Richter saw her, looked at Claire. He was standing behind his desk and his sleeves were rolled up and his tie was loosened. He just stood there, for a moment, without any expression on his hard handsome face, and then he started to laugh. He laughed and laughed, almost silently at first, and then it got higher and higher, into a kind of obscene shriek, and then he just walked out, walked past them, and into the hallway, still laughing. And neither girl moved, they couldn’t move, they just looked at each other until they heard the elevator and the sound of the laughter was sucked down the elevator shaft and then Violet went to hug Claire, but she pushed her away.

  “I’m so sorry,” Violet said, trying not to let the waves of regret and relief in her chest explode into sobs.

  Claire looked at Violet’s mouth, twisted and holding in the sobs. “Get away from me,” she said.

  And then she ran out of the office and down the twenty flights of stairs to the parking garage. Richter’s car was gone and so was her bike, so she went out of the garage and started to walk down Sunset with her thumb out. She heard someone honking and turned to see the Hummer.

  “Come on,” Violet said. “I’m not leaving you here. You don’t have to talk to me. I’ll just drop you off.”

  Claire stopped
walking and looked at her. “So you can go home and fuck Brookman?”

  Violet wanted to tell her it wasn’t what she thought, that she had gone to him because she was angry at what he’d done.

  “Claire. I love you. Nothing happened.” It was all she could manage; her voice sounded choked.

  A car sped past them and pulled up at the curb. The driver, a middle-aged man with greasy, scraggly hair in a ponytail, leaned from the window, checking Claire out.

  “She has a ride,” Violet told him, hard, like when she was talking to Flint at the party.

  Claire could feel herself weakening, crashing. It was the feeling she got when she thought of her father, wanting to disappear into someone else, but someone who wasn’t even really there.

  “Get in the car, Tinker Bell,” Violet pleaded.

  She pushed the passenger door open for her, but Claire crawled into the backseat and collapsed, not looking up.

  “Please,” Violet begged. “It was nothing. Please tell me what I can do. Tell me what you want.”

  Before Claire got out of the car she turned and stared into Violet’s eyes. For a moment it was as if they had exchanged souls, Violet thought. Claire looked hard and older. Violet felt weak with relief, like a baby. Too weak, though, like she couldn’t function. Like she’d never write another script again. Who was innocence and who was ambition now, Violet wondered. She remembered Claire winged, holes in the toes of her shoes, making a faerie wand out of paper and glitter. Maybe there had really been a kind of murder that night, Violet thought.

  “Conflict. I want conflict. Conflict sells,” Claire said, slamming the car door.

  She couldn’t go to school. Maybe she’d take the high school equivalency later and enroll at a local college, get a job at a bookstore. But now all she knew was that she couldn’t go to school and she couldn’t stay at home with her mom. Her mom in the next room, wearing soiled sox, shuffling through the same scrapbooks with the pictures of a headless man holding her hand. Her mom who couldn’t protect Claire from the faeries or from the real world. Claire could almost feel herself getting bigger each moment, as if she might burst through the house, her arms flailing out the windows, her neck up the chimney, her head popping above the rooftop. Swelling with pain until she burst. And at the same time she was shrinking, could feel all her bones when she hugged herself. She knew she had to leave. And there was nowhere to go. Not even to the one person she had believed would protect her.