The cutting room, p.6
The Cutting Room, page 6
He looked over her head and savored the scene. The setting was made to order. Now the morning was officially beginning; a young Latino with a Walkman dangling from one white pocket entered the enclosure. Wintner watched him walk to the bar, carrying a tray loaded with cocktail napkins and swizzle sticks. He didn’t need to bring the telephone; it was already plugged in by the cash register. Wintner stood.
It was time.
She raised her head. Her eyes were deep and shining. Drops of water evaporated from her complexion in the rising heat, leaving tracks of chlorination on her cheeks. Suddenly he was reluctant to leave her. What is it she wants from me? he wondered. Most likely nothing more than a few minutes of companionship before fleeing all the golden strangers. She’s new to this, too, he thought. Like me, she’s as pale as milk-fed veal. It takes one to know one. But for both of us all that will change in the next few hours.
He checked his watch. I can let her have a few more minutes, he thought. Besides, it will be better if I give Gillis a chance to call first.
He considered stripping down to his trunks and joining her for a brief swim. But he was not quite ready. His body, trim though it was, might blind her with its Eastern pallor. Feeling the first uncomfortable pangs of self-doubt since he had arrived, he flashed her an uneasy smile and knelt once more, gripping the lip of cement with his sandals.
“Did you hurt yourself?” he said casually, to compensate for the empty pause, and instantly regretted it.
Her eyes reluctantly followed his to her legs. There on the inner surface of her thigh was a glistening birthmark a few inches wide. It formed a rough outline of the North American continent. He looked away.
“It’s all right,” she said quickly. “It’s nothing.”
But she inched forward and dropped feet-first into the pool, moving out into the deeper water, covering herself to the neck.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
She bobbed closer. “Did you say something? I can’t hear you.”
“I said, I think I’ll make that call now.” He showed her an all-purpose grin, unbent his legs and stood.
She treaded water, painfully alone in the pool.
“Look,” he said on a last reckless impulse, “maybe we could have some lunch. Together.” When she did not flinch he pressed it. “Let me see how long this takes. He probably won’t be by till this afternoon. I’m going to try to get back to the room and catch a nap. You could meet me there later. Or I’ll give you a call. My name’s Stu Wintner, by the way.”
“Maybe,” she said uncertainly. She kicked and drifted closer. “It depends.”
Here it comes, he thought. I should have known. “Are you here with someone?” He felt the compleat fool. “If you are,” he added expansively, forced into playing it out, “I’d be pleased if you’d both join me.”
“It’s not that. But I don’t know if I can get away.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
He backed off awkwardly and headed for the bar, where the young man in the white jacket was polishing a highball glass. “Nice talking to you,” he called over his shoulder, and waved. “See you.”
Good luck, he thought.
The young bartender took up a stainless-steel tool and began curling the rind off a lemon. Wintner sidled up and exchanged nods with him, as if they were old friends. He ordered a margarita and asked to use the telephone.
The answering machine was still on.
The world-weary voice on the other end had not changed. Like Gillis’s films it would never change, at least not until the oxide wore away on the millionth playing, around the time his photographic image, equally unchanged and locked in the amber of celluloid, finally disintegrated and burned away with the last remaining frame of his last preserved film. With any luck that film would be Is Anybody There? His greatest, most memorable performance and his legacy for generations yet unborn. When he was gone, who could take his place? A kind of immortality. Wintner was jealous.
He left another message, reminding Gillis that he was waiting at the hotel. He contemplated leaving word with Gillis’s agent in case the actor was out and called there first. But it was still early. He started on his drink and turned back to the overexposed brightness of the pool.
The girl was no longer in the water. Neither was she anywhere else that he could see. Somehow she had stolen away while he was on the phone. He hadn’t heard a sound. If she had left wet footprints on her way out they were dry by now. There was no clue. He caught the bartender’s attention. “Did you see . . . ?” he began.
The young man glanced up, munching on something round and white. As he bit down Wintner saw that it was hollow, like a shell.
“Never mind.” For all Wintner knew she might be the daughter of an important guest. There was no need to make a total idiot of himself. He paid for the drink, laying down a nice tip.
Before he left the bar his curiosity got the better of him. “Can I ask you a question?”
The young man disengaged the tape player headphones from one ear. A faint cacophony of insect music hissed on the air.
“Where did you get that?” Wintner indicated the crisp snack. “At the restaurant? I’ve seen people walking around with them all morning. I guess I must be getting hungry.”
The young man offered him a piece.
“No, no. I only want to know what it is.”
“Día de los Muertos.”
“I beg your pardon?” Does he speak English? Wintner wondered. He’s not from around here; probably substituting for the regular man. He doesn’t know—
Then he got a clear look at the object. It was a miniature skull, what remained of one, apparently made of spun candy. Most of the face had been eaten away, and the inner surface glimmered with loose granules of sugar.
“The Day of the Dead,” explained the bartender. “You know, the second of November. It’s a big celebration in Mexico. I have one more, sir, if you’d care to—”
Wintner held up his hand. “No, thanks.”
The bartender shrugged, an expression of bemusement in his polished brown eyes.
California, thought Wintner, shaking his head.
Balancing the drink, he sauntered back to the deck chair. On the way he became aware of a muffled rustling. It was the cabana in the corner of the enclosure. The top billowed as the interior filled like an air sock. Then the breeze died and it collapsed inward and hung limp, nothing more than empty canvas, like the umbrellas over the white enameled tables. But the cabana was not anchored securely; when the wind came up again the pole creaked and the striped cloth puffed out in a simulation of breathing. At this angle the sun backlighted the upper half, transforming it into a glowing, translucent orange. Was that a distorted profile inside? Probably only a shadow of the fence rear-projected against the material. Still, it made him uneasy. He ignored it and returned to the chaise.
There, inserted between the plastic weave of the seat: a small square of paper. A cocktail napkin. He reached down to remove it, and noticed that it contained a handwritten note.
PLEASE HELP ME, read the shaky black letters.
He looked around.
Behind the bar, the attendant emptied his hands of the candy skull and resumed stripping the skin off a pungent lemon.
Now he was convinced that there was someone in the tent. Holding his drink in one hand and the flimsy note in the other, he walked back along the edge of the pool.
Wind ballooned the tent once more and moved on, leaving the sides sunken as empty cheeks. In the interval that followed he heard the rustling quite clearly.
It definitely came from inside.
He approached the structure, aware of the bartender’s watchful eyes. He fought down a compulsion to peek directly into the opening and get it over with. Instead he stood there stiffly and shifted his feet.
A groaning.
Was it only the supports? He couldn’t be sure.
Just inside the orange slit, two eyes locked on him. Startled, he stepped backward and almost fell. The eyes rose higher and the tent opened. A large woman lunged out, glaring at him. Before she drew the flap shut behind her he got a glimpse of something bathed in the unnaturally warm glow of the interior, something pale and nearly shapeless laid out on a white towel.
“Yes?”
He cleared his throat. “Can I be of any help?”
The woman stood guard at the entrance. Her bathing suit stretched to enclose her massive form, rolled black straps cutting into her doughy shoulders.
“You’re new,” she said. Though her protruding eyes did not move he knew that every detail, every inch of his body was being examined.
“Forgive me for bothering you,” he said evenly. “But I didn’t know . . .” He looked to the note as though it would explain everything. Unaccountably his hand shook. Already sweat ran from his wrists and blurred the lettering. He crumpled it and tossed it away.
Behind her something groaned.
“He gets cramps when I leave him in one position too long.” She regarded Wintner warily for another moment, then abruptly stood aside. “He says he’d like to meet you.”
“Are you sure?” Wintner was at a complete loss. He felt like he had stepped into a nudist colony without his papers.
The woman held out a wattled arm. The canvas curled open.
A man lay sweltering in the livid interior. Essentially he had no legs. One grew to the knee, one was a mere flipper. Ignoring Wintner, the woman sat and took the man’s great grey head into her lap.
She proceeded to massage his temples. She wiped his forehead with a cloth. She took up a cotton swab and then, after she had painstakingly cleaned the whorls of one ear, used manicure scissors to snip at the salt-and-pepper hairs growing there. Wintner stood by, a spy observing a private ritual.
“We always come here this time of year,” she said. “For the weather. We don’t like the cold, do we, honey?” She kneaded his speckled shoulders, his jutting breastbone.
The old man rolled his head to the side, a mighty effort. His eyes were black as beads but with a tinge of blue-grey around the frayed pupils. His shortened body was scarred, folded in on itself at every joint and orifice. The stump-ends where his hands should have been were sucked in like navels, as though sewn to a point inside. His eyes searched Wintner’s vicinity.
“Can I bring you something?” Wintner offered. “A cold drink? A glass of water? Anything?”
The grey head lolled in a swoon. The interior was sweltering; the sun transformed the walls of the tent into incandescent screens, the stripes a pattern of bars. Wintner itched to be gone.
He backstepped, feeling for the opening.
As if on cue the woman recentered the head on the towel, put down her tools and followed Wintner out.
He was instantly cooler. It was a sweatbox in there. Didn’t she realize that? With his circulation so drastically shortened, the poor man’s natural body temperature would be abnormally high to begin with; such confinement would become unbearable by midday. Was the tent a last resort to shield his condition from prying eyes? But wouldn’t they do better in their air-conditioned room? Surely the man didn’t care that there was a pool a few feet away, on the other side of the canvas barrier.
“Such a beautiful day!” she said. She inhaled deeply and shook her hair free. Moist curls flung jewels of perspiration into the glare. “I dream about this place all year long.”
“Yes,” said Wintner. He found his voice. “I was just on my way—”
“But you can’t go. I won’t let you.” Her mood became generous, her lumpy face girlishly animated. “We must talk.”
Wintner did not know whether he should feel flattered or threatened. Either attitude seemed absurd.
“Sure,” he said. “But right now I’m expecting a call. I’ll be back later, though. I—” and here he foundered, “I hope your husband feels better.” How else to put it?
Her face sagged, the mere mention dragging her down like gravity. “It’s Tachs-Meisner Syndrome,” she said, her voice coarse again. “We thought he was safe from the bloodline. But since his fortieth birthday . . . One can only try to be as comfortable as possible, until the end.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t be. We are almost free.”
He nodded and stared at the cement. His feet were as pale as they had been the first day of summer on the sidewalks of the town where he grew up. He had never before felt grateful for his strong arches, his well-shaped toes. But now he noticed that his fourth and fifth toes were no longer perfect; distorted by years of proper shoes, they had grown inward—now they were mere knobs, the nails squeezed down to slivers and all but vanished, suggesting evolution to a lower form. How could he not have noticed until now? He was aware of a tightening. The concrete heated under his delicate soles, which had been pampered for so long that they were hypersensitive, less able to protect him from the real world. The taut skin covering his insteps wavered in a rising heat mirage. He detected a smell that was dangerously like burning meat. He needed to get away, back to his sandals and a patch of shade. But there was no shade here except in the tent.
“I’ll stop by later,” he suggested. “Do you take your meals in the dining room? Perhaps I’ll see you this evening. I won’t be alone, but you might enjoy meeting a friend of mine.”
She shook her head. “There’s no time. He needs me. Always.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Every hour, every minute, every second!” she said with shocking bitterness, almost spitting the words. She gazed longingly at the pool as though it were an impossible distance away.
He moved off. “Well, I’m sure I’ll see you later. This afternoon, probably. Good luck, Mrs. . . . ?”
“I was like my mother. I believed the dream. Young girls always do. We marry, thinking what a joy it will be. But somehow it changes.” Her eyes distended above her puffy cheeks. “And now, God help me, it’s too much!”
She lumbered toward Wintner to prevent his leaving, but too late. She stood there sadly, her fat bosom heaving, then wheeled around wearily and stooped to reenter the tent. Wintner could not avoid seeing the shapeless mass inside struggling to turn onto its side, the misshapen features, the ruined arms batting out for leverage. Resigned, the woman returned to her duties. She took up cotton and alcohol and began cleansing the pores on his neck.
Wintner retrieved his sandals and beat a hasty retreat.
The path was harder to follow than he remembered, but he hurried back faster than ever through the lush vegetation. Blood-red bougainvillaea dripped over arbors, huge ivy choked off plots of delphinium and quivered at the borders of the walk, eager to overgrow and split the painted cement. The table setting next to the hidden cottages remained immaculate and untouched. Below, in the botanical gardens, variegated plants were locked in a stalemate of symbiosis. He came to the gazebo, white as a lattice of crossed bones, and finally saw that the hole in the roof had been cut out to make room for a rapidly maturing tree; as he passed, heavily pruned limbs were already thrusting upward to fill the empty circle.
He realized that he could not call the girl from the pool even if he wanted to; he had forgotten to ask her name.
Now he would never know.
He remembered the last image of the man in the cabana, face crawling with sweat, mouth open on darkness in a desperate rictus. Wintner lay sprawled on the bed in his room and tried to put the memory out of his mind, but could not.
The morning lagged, the afternoon slackened until the sun came to a standstill above a blanket of smog. He made the call twice in the first hour, then every twenty minutes, then every ten. Each time Joe Gillis’s voice droned the same prerecorded message. The actor’s presence projected through the telephone to an extraordinary degree; even on tape his dark power was immediately recognizable. By midafternoon Wintner gave up leaving any word at all on the machine.
He pitied the man in the tent, but soon felt nearly as confined himself. The walls of his room narrowed in the lengthening shadows. He rode the elevator down to the lobby, which now seemed nothing more than a fey decorator’s wet dream, hand-rubbed and unlivable. When he returned with a newspaper and a sandwich, the ceiling had closed in even more dramatically.
He considered renting a car. He had Gillis’s address. He could simply drive over.
Why not?
He picked up the phone directory.
There was a knock on the door.
At first he didn’t recognize her. She had put on a blouse and skirt; the lapels of the blouse, slightly too large, hung wide over the bathing suit so that she appeared childishly small, half-hidden in her loose clothes. She kept a reasonable distance and blinked at him from beneath dark curls.
“Were you sleeping? I can come back.”
“No! No, please. I’m glad to see you. Come in.”
“I got your room number from the desk.” The young woman sidled in, visibly ill at ease. Did she notice what had happened to the walls and ceiling? “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. I could use some company.” He moved his suitcase, pushed aside the unopened newspaper so she could sit on the bed.
“Have you heard from your friend yet?”
“I’ll talk to him later. You know how it is in this business—hurry up and wait.”
“Oh.”
“Can I get you anything? I think there’s a room service menu somewhere.”
She tossed her curls, inexplicably amused. “No, but I’ll be glad to get you something.” She eyed the bottle of MacAllan Single Malt in his open suitcase. He had brought it to celebrate with Gillis. She reached for it. Before he could stop her she twisted off the seal with a flourish, an exaggerated bit of business she might have seen in a movie once. If she went to the movies. “Do you like it plain or with water?” she asked sweetly.
