for F.
This is the first installment of the Palace series.
He sighed again. Not for my benefit, I thought. Just thinking too much.
"I don't understand what the big deal is, Deck. I told you it was an accident."
He stared off into space for a couple more seconds, and finally shook himself, reached back and curled his hand around my thigh. "It's okay, Vi. Really -"
"No, I don't think so. You know, stud, the next time I hit one of these time bombs you got in ya, I hope you won't hold it against me." He just looked away again and smoked. "It isn't like I was trying something really kinky, whips and chains or an-"
But I quit talking, because he shuddered. Big. It was, I dunno... really sad. "I wish you'd tell me what hap-"
"No," he snapped, "You don't."
I just let that one ride, instinct or something... And sure enough, within a few seconds he'd sighed again and finished his smoke, and snuggled up against me. He kissed my forehead, then my cheek... "It isn't fair," he mumbled.
"To who?"
And that stopped him. "Uh. Yeah. I was thinking, all the stuff that happened... But you too. This is impossible." He thought for a few more seconds, and I gave his arm a squeeze. "You gotta know, sooner or later. I don't know why you put up with me -"
"Chopping wood, changing the oil, programming the VCR."
"Of course. How could I forget." Then he just sat there again.
"So... Are you going to tell me a story, or should I just start nibbling on your ear again, 'cause we can always do that instead."
"Lemme get a beer. You want one?" Stalling for time.
Men. Cripes.But eventually he'd done all his foraging, and then he took a leak (without putting the seat back down). Finally, there was no putting it off any longer. So he crawled back in bed, took a long pull of Rainier, smacked around some more smokes and opened 'em, and lit one for me. He started one and sighed again, real shakily, and ran his hands through his hair. Then, in a quiet, hesitant voice, he started to talk.
He started it. Walked up from behind one day, pulled my cigarettes out of my shirt pocket and helped himself to one. I just stared back at him.
We started calling each other "D". Hey D, howyadoin. I took his measure right away, and gave back as good as I got. Most people were afraid of him. Yessir Mr. Doran, nossir Mr. Doran. I just knew, without even thinking about it, how to bullshit with him. This was after Janey took off, but before the divorce.
Do the Deal. Totally stupid picture, but it made a lot of money. You see it? Shit. We'd wrap each day, and he was about the only one who didn't take off like a shot. Our days, they'd start at like five in the morning. Everybody'd either drag themselves off to bed, or do enormous quantities of blow just to be able to stay up past nine. But I thought coke was stupid. Whiskey for me. Anyway, it was a Thursday night and Shon, he was lookin' down in the mouth, no particular place to be, so I slid up to him and just grinned. And that was all it took. We hit about eight bars - the advantage of having a driver, whaahooo - and I had a hell of a time waking up the next morning...
He was mostly relieved that she was gone and the fighting was over. Out to get some tongues wagging. Get seen at every hot club in town. So I had a new drinking buddy. Right place, right time, I guess. He'd told a bunch of hangers-on to take a hike, a week or so before. And these Major Stars, most of 'em don't make new friends easily. The industry's full of people who are easily intimidated, but damn near kill themselves trying not to show it. I was full of myself back then, he was too, and he knew how to make people squirm. But I didn't give a rip. I knew there was always another job around the corner. Actors live in mortal fear that every job is their last, but he still needed to get brought back to earth every now and then. Tell him when he was acting like a two-year-old, being a major pain in the ass. "D! Say it ain't like dat, D!" he'd yell across the set.
The whispering started up right on schedule, oh yeah they're gay. Nothing exotic about that in Westwood. But they didn't get any ammo, so they got bored and found somebody else to shred. Biz.
I'd broken up with a obsessive-compulsive makeup artist right before Deal started shooting, and Janey made a lot of noise to the gossip rags, he is not gay, no he isn't. She didn't need that dogging her career, ha ha. But it was simpler than that - even big stars are on the rebound, sometimes. In his lower moments, and there weren't many of those, D was making jokes about joining a monastery. Not a good sign. So we'd party, make up Janey jokes and rate the women who were so obviously not looking at him... and I'd call him at four the next morning just to hear him groan, so I could laugh into the phone. He'd return the favor, usually on a Saturday or Sunday. I had a lot of rare baseball cards, which pissed him off 'cause he didn't have as many, but the ones he had were worth a fuckin' fortune.
Anyway, here's what I'm gettin' at. Despite the Oscar nomination and the Golden Globes and the Sexiest Man Alive crap, all the hype, there was a regular Jax guy in there. Uh... Jacksonville. He'd quit doing coke long before it was fashionable, because his first fiancé had made such an ass of herself on it. He rebuilt his motorcycles himself. His mom would go to his movies and cover her eyes, peeking between her fingers. She told me over the phone that I sounded too thin.
Average, everyday stuff.
So his next flick was On the Fence. He made 'em get me, and I didn't want to do it. Soft-focus pastoral stuff isn't my strong suit. But D came pounding on my door, Saturday morning again, like six o'clock, with a big ol' shit-eating grin, and a dime bag of incredible Maui, and a near-mint Al Kaline doublestruck - that's a rare baseball card, Vi, printed badly. And the damn script, which he read, out loud, with this really cheesy German accent until I said okay, alright, anything, just shut the hell up. Then he grinned again and raced off to do this singer he'd just started seeing...
And he missed the first day of shooting. He could get away with that, it was pretty much expected. I gave him a call at three-thirty the next morning, woke 'em both up, laughed, hung up.
Have you seen that one? On the Fence? Pretty amazing. Who knew he had it in him. He didn't. The divorce, he milked it - I mean, he steered all the insane raging emotions right into those scenes, especially the ones with his stepmother. Incredible. He was one high pup.
And then he met Ciuna.
I'd never worked with her, but it's a small town. She was competent enough, spooky as hell. Me, I always thought it was a bit overdone. But who knows. I think the third AD introduced her to Shon. Wish I knew for sure... I've hated that bastard ever since -
And she hooked him. Man, was he whipped... Well, he was. He was like a lust... furnace. His usual horndog self, times ten. Creepy. Much as I hate to admit it, though, that probably showed up in his dailies, too. Shit. Within a week I was getting summoned to his trailer at lunchtime, where he'd ramble on like a fourteen-year-old. They were inseparable off the set, so the only time he and I could hang out was at lunch, when Ciuna was having to get extras dressed for the afternoon shots.
My ex had just lured me back into her box, so he and I both thought the world was a terrific place. But Ciuna gave me the creeps, and I warned him a whole lotta times. And he'd usually throw something at me, then go into great detail about how absolutely perfect her nipples were.
We're suckers for the hormones, Vi, we really are.
The day after the wrap party - no, make that two days after, he called me and told me to move my ass, he'd be there in ten...
So we were toolin' along the 15, and he tells me hey, if Ciuna asks, to say we went to a card swap in Oceanside. I started to make a lame joke about taking the long way through San Berdo, and he said something about it not mattering anyway. Then his face changed, and he says to me, I remember it like it was yesterday, he says, "D, I think she's a witch."
And he talked all the way to Vegas. We got a bottle and more smokes and trucked on. A face as well-known as D's, you don't just walk up to a craps table at the Tropicana, it'd be a mob scene. And he was still talking by the time we hit Mesquite. There were the usual post-wrap jitters... everybody was on edge about "Fence" 'cause the director was an absolute moron, way over budget, no eye at all. So that was contributing to his mood. But mostly, of course, he talked about Ciuna.
He said she had a hotline to his 'nads. Vi, you might not believe this but a guy knows - after the fact, anyway - if he's been led around by his dick. It can be impossible to tell in the heat of the moment, but by, hmmm, our late twenties or so we do learn a little somethin' here and there. D was all undone by her. Not every time, but whenever she wanted him, in the palm of her hand. And he'd sure been with enough chicks - er, women - to know. There was something unnatural there, it wasn't right. He wondered if he was losing his mind. This, right after I'd seen him give the performance of his life...
The hunger came out of nowhere, even when he was positive he wasn't horny, irresistible, it just felt "external", blah blah blah. I told him, well shit, just tell her you need a break. Too geeked up from doing Fence. And I remember, clear as anything, the desert whizzing by, and D turning to look at me soulfully, saying, "Aw, but the sex, Deck. It's, it's... Ohhhh."
There was more.
Seems she had this "little leaning" toward domination.
"No shit," I said. And he looked over, eyes narrowing, and - bam! - popped me on the arm. I almost dropped the bottle, and he grinned that famous psycho-leer.
No, she didn't walk on him in heels, or anything. She liked to "do things". Such as, I ask. No answer. What, tie you up? He thought real hard again, and stammered vaguely for about forty miles. But eventually I got the picture.
When he asked, she laughed and told him no, she wasn't a witch. Shon never found any evidence - no real reason not to believe her. Yeah, like we'd know what to look for. She just had always been able to do "neat stuff".
She wasn't possessed, or anything. That woman didn't have a tense bone in her body. You know, last year I finally found a priest - what do you call 'em, reverend?... Pastor, that's it - who didn't write it off, with a nice pat answer. There are some things we don't understand yet, he said. Any gift, any ability can be used for good or for bad. That made sense to me. It helped...
D was telling me Ciuna could, uh, touch him from across the room. He'd be microwaving something, and a hand would slide down his belly - and he'd jump, and turn, and she'd be watching him over her shoulder while she was drying her hair, forty feet away. And after he hemmed and hawed some more, he 'fessed up that there were times when he'd sorta snap out of a daze and realize he was flat on his back, stretched out... and he couldn't move. No ropes, no nothing. She'd be standing over him, or sitting on the end of the bed, or standing in the doorway, and she had him spread-eagled. Without even breaking a sweat.
Then he eventually said that was happening more often. Like, almost daily.
She could lift him up in the air. Straight up, as if he was laying on a sheet of glass or something. Five, six feet above the bed, limbs stretched out tight. She'd stare at his reaction, his struggles... and turn him on, without a word or a movement - so he'd be stuck there, dying to come, unable to move. And she never said anything, wouldn't even smirk. Just watched, and watched.
And then, after a few more beers in the bar of a tiny old casino, he told me the rest. She'd hold him down on the bed for a while, without laying a finger on him. Watching the lust rise, and fall, and rise... And then she'd set the magic hands to work.
"You mean, like a massage?" I asked him.
Head down, he shook his head immediately, and drunkenly, shooting me this dark look, and then looking away. So I st-
What? Oh. Sorry, Vi, babe. It's a guy thing. This glance-thing, it means... ah... "worse, much worse, that and then some". So I thought, worse than a massage?
And a possible answer came to me.
"Not -"
His eyes got big. "Fuck! You, too?"
Just hang with me, here. I've never told anybody this. Not all of it. This is really hard to talk ab- Gotta let it come out the way it wants to, I guess.
From the way the blood all drained out of my face, he knew. Not that we had Ciuna in common. Hell, no. But... fear, and dread, of what she liked to do to him. All I could figure was, that must've been some great sex. I couldn't imagine going through what he had. And it was probably waitin' for him, more of the same, when he got home.
He was baffled. Maybe it's too much to say Ciuna was messing with his head, scrambling him a little bit. To look at Fence you'd never know it. I remember thinking that one night of what D had been going through, and my circuits would be well and truly fried.
And I knew he was tellin' the truth. Gotta trust me on this one, Vi, but there's a certain number of hours and bottles you spend with a guy, and dammit but you know if he's talkin' shit or not. Many times, since then, I really wanted to persuade myself he was pullin' my leg, or he was just off his nut. It doesn't work. Either he was goin' through hell, there, or it was all in his head. Either way, the man was one hundred percent convinced it was happening.
We blew a couple hundred on blackjack and headed west again. Not in the mood to stay there, or to go on... I drove, and he sat there smokin' like a freight train while we tried to come up with a solution.
Well, call Berry - that was D's agent - hire some muscle, have her thrown out. He considered that and shook his head. She had his number. He remembered some vague remark about wherever he went, she'd be watching. It wasn't like we're dealing with a schizophrenic here, he said. She can be reasoned with. Not by you, I shot back. Silence.
After a lot of coffee, we were back in his driveway. We figured if I crashed on his couch that night, he'd be able to get some sleep for a change. Then he'd sit her down in the morning, while I rewired the ignition switch on his knucklehead. Attached garage - within shouting distance, so to speak. Yeah, maybe it was juvenile, a chickenshit plan. But with what we were up against...
Anyway, we went inside. Creeping, guilty - but it was dark and quiet. She was asleep, apparently. He gave me a high-five, but a silent one, you know. Went into his bedroom, and closed the door. I pulled my shoes off...
The next thing I knew, D was shaking me and I was flat on the couch. "Wake up! You asshole! She did it again!"
And I'm going, "What are you -"
"Deck!" he says, "She got me, again, Deck! Dammit. And I thought she got y- wait a minute, wait a minute here. Stand up. Just do it, c'mon, oh shit -"
So I did. And that's when I noticed my feet. They were killin' me. The, uh, soles especially. Shon grabbed my shirt, pulled it up to my chin -
Red. Fiery red, all up and down my sides, my belly...
Shon looked at me like he wanted to break my neck.
And I stood there, shifting from one sore foot to another, and blurted out something like, "Driving a wedge. That's how it works. Isolate you. Nobody finds out, nobody believes, she's really got you. Solid. I mean, forget me, well okay, throw me out, but don't you let her wall you in..." I didn't know what I was saying, wasn't sure if it was even true.
His eyes filled with tears.
So I hauled him toward the kitchen with something like, "Aw, hell, I need some coffee. Buck up. C'mon..."
He caught up with her, on the phone. "Babe? When ya comin' home?" He bit a fingernail, and ate smoke, and nodded. "I need to talk to you. With Deck there. 'cause he's involved now... Yeah. Yes." I flipped him off, and he took a half-hearted swing at my hand.
Finally, he hung up and turned to me. "About three, three-thirty. You got anywhere to be?" Standard actorspeak. I-just-assumed-you-were-available-'cause-I-want-you-to-be...
I told him again that I didn't remember a damn thing. That's okay, he says. I do. I know. We're gonna find out.
She walked in and looked right at Shon, and then at the table - beer cans, full ashtray. She did have deep and serious eyes. She smiled at me and nodded slightly, and I heard Shon... groan. Her pupils were enormous.
But D, he roused himself. "No. Please, baby. Just talk. Let's just get everything out in the open. For me." Stuff like that.
She stood there, weaving a little from side to side, calm and triumphant. Then her expression changed, just a little... then, a lot. Moist eyes, trembling lip. It was a Moment. She closed her eyes, and sat down heavily, and started to cry. "I can't... it's so hard, Shon. Stronger. I can't control it."
We looked at each other, D and I. He mouthed the same word I was thinking: "It?"
I mean, we'd been trying to get ready for one bizarre confrontation... but this was another real weird turn.
She'd always had a weakness for psychedelics, Ciuna had. Her dealer had found her a brand new one, a designer hallucinogen, real hush-hush. Her little psychic "gift" and this drug were made for each other. Before, she'd been able to move stuff without touching it, sometimes. Or so she said. Now, thanks to her little pharmaceutical helper... And, as luck would have it, that's right about when she started on Fence.
Quite a trophy. The hunk the whole world was drooling over... so responsive to her augmented abilities, what she called her "neat stuff". So easy to control - and he had this little quirk, a very secret weakness, that was oh so much fun to exploit. And he had this buddy who had the same quirk...
I think - I try to believe - she was caught up in things she didn't understand. Power corrupts.
Well, what she finally got across to us was, the neat stuff didn't stop as soon as she'd quit concentrating on it. No, it kept on going sometimes, despite her. Hit and miss. And then things just started happening, impossible magic... starting with D.
I'm botching this. What I'm trying to say is her power got away from her. Became a free agent. Don't ask me how.
And she finally came out and said Shon was its first and favorite key. Its rehearsal space, if you will...
Of course, we didn't believe it. Oh, she was so sorry, Shon honey. Nothing she could do, she'd tried, he had to believe her -
And he was pissed. Whoa. Then why, he says, why did she just sit there, on the daybed, just sat there and watched last night, huh? Watched like you always do, while we were getting fucked with?
She straight-up denied this. Of course not, baby, I was in bed from eleven o'clock on, slept like a r-
Her eyes flew open. Her hand flew to her mouth. She looked at him, then at me... and she seemed to be thinking real hard.
And I remembered.
Hanging in midair, feet first. D behind me, back-to-back. Held there, by nothing. Held tight. And there were hands, oh my fuc-
Shon looked at her, and at me, and then he seemed to figure it out. "See? See? Uh huh. That's right."
"But I didn't - why couldn't I remember?" and so on from Ciuna.
D started to describe last night, sorta looking for confirmation or something. We were straight up in the air, as in vertical... and I said back to him that we kept banging heads, at first, until it moved us a little further apart.
Yeah, he said, real relieved. If he was crazy, he wasn't the only one...
I felt weak, suddenly. I called him a dickhead extraordinaire. Yeah, I remembered. Okay.
So we all sat there, smoking. Thinking like crazy. At some point I said hey, maybe Mexico. D shot me a look, and glanced quickly at Ciuna and back again - shut up, not in front of her. She saw that, and was about to cry again, so he pulled her to her feet and walked her to the bedroom, talking all the while. Came out five minutes later with a bag packed, and said something like, well, D, she's packing, at least it got her out of here. Now, you and me, we need a plan.
And a code, I said to him. He blinked. Huh? As in a cipher, for sending messages -
Then Ciuna ran back in, right into Shon's arms. Hit her mark dead-on, just as if they'd rehearsed it for an hour. And there's another memory I'll never lose. She said, real tightly, "It's coming. Run. You don't have much time."
We were peeling out of the driveway twenty seconds later.
Turns out the old saying is true sometimes - you can run, but you can't hide.
It caught up with us before we even got on the freeway. Caused a tire to go flat somehow, and hauled us up to a vacant house way off Coldwater Canyon. Set up shop...
We spent a while there.
It was intense.
And somehow the fucker learned to multiply itself, by working D over. And me - but it really was tuned to Shon. We were just gettin' pushed to the limit, howling like banshees, and - well, we could just feel 'em, as they formed, like another presence in the room. They wore us out, and let us go...
Definitely not for the last time.
Didn't dare go home, either of us. He put his house up for sale. Set up some arrangement with his agent, which included me. Cash, for running. I don't like to tap into it all that much, but it's saved my ass a couple times. I had a friend box up the stuff I cared most about and stick it in storage...
We figured he was a lightning rod, of sorts. And I was a way to get to him... So we worked out our code, and made a plan, over a week of criss-crossing the interstates. He had his motorcycles shipped to a bike shop in Winston-Salem - giving his agent one part of the phone number at a time, all scrambled up, a quick cell phone call here, a fax there, and the key to unscramble it by messenger.
He's always viewed this as a game. Outthinking it. Well, make that "them." If his life was gonna be turned inside out, at least he was gonna be smart prey.
So we made it to Carolina, and he sold me his old Sportster for a pack of smokes. And we tied one on that night, got royally shitfaced...
He headed for Europe. I made it to Vancouver. Not without getting caught - I knew better than to take 80 over the Sierras, something in my gut said California was trouble for me, the whole state, but noooooo. Every time I was healed up enough to travel, hands or gloves or trick rope were latching on to me again. It took me like two months to get to Portland.
They wanted to know where he was at. I didn't know for sure. I don't think they believed me. Holding up a picture of D from a magazine, and a bunch of feathers, or brushes. Waggle the photo, waggle their "tools", saying, pick. They've gotten real expressive, the more practice they get...
He had to skip the Oscars, which bummed him out real bad. But he did a picture in Italy, and one in England. Got bagged south of London, though. Get this - he even snuck back into San Diego to do four days on a friend's first project. They're smaller parts, 'cause he's always dodging a bullet - well, more of an unseen feather. Hit-and-run acting. Weird, edgier. The critics love him. A modern nomad, mobile seclusion... All the mystery just adds to the hype. He gets twice as much per picture now, for smaller parts.
We meet up pretty often. All over the place. Last spring it was in Maine, somewhere. We're both lookin' older, more haggard, but we're still in it up to our necks. It's harder for him, of course. Almost nonstop. But he treats it like a game. I don't know how he does that. I been to the point lately where if I see one more motel room, I'm gonna kill something. The thing that's made it bearable, for both of us, is knowing the other guy was in the same boat - no, no. What I mean is, I don't know where I'd be if there hadn't been somebody I can talk to who knows what it's like, first-hand, gettin' caught over and over again, really fucked with...
His money makes it so we can get messages back and forth, set up another meet, trade stories and ideas - such as, dude, stay way far away from Taos - do some serious drinkin' and move on. Crazy fucker.
Oh, and get this - he talked to some egghead at Stanford, and then he got caught - on purpose - in San Francisco, of all places. Just so the researchers could take all kinds of readings and shit. Insane. They've got some idea about broadband transmitters, you wear it like a pager or something. A little force-field, except it's sound waves, for the hunted... keep the ticklers away. We'll see.
And ol' D, he's fairly upbeat, rolling with the changes. He can't believe they'll fail to find some way to, uh, put the genie back in the bottle.
I hope so. This running, it gets old, Vi. I got no illusions, though. If I just up and disappear on ya, you can't take it personally. I'm not like that. I don't just cut out on people without a word... When it happens, it's because one of the bastards caught up with me again. I'll be okay. Too valuable. I'm the second pet they ever got a-hold of... and I'm in tight with the master print.
So there you have it. That's why tickling's out, honey. Anything but that. I've spent like four months out of the last year tied down, in one state or another. Volunteering for more of it is just about the last thing I wanna do.
"Wow... you really know Shon Doran."
Next installment: The Bunker
23dec98