Hell's Half Acre

nine.

I’M GETTING COZY WITH THE IDEA THAT TIME IS CIRCULAR, that lost time will come back.

Behold.

I find myself outside in the final minutes before dark falls over California and I am confronted by an apocalyptic sunset. The odds of this happening today and not tomorrow seem astronomical or anyway too staggering for my small brain to contemplate right now. The hills before me are splattered with some kind of freak sunlight that appears to exist on a physical plane but is forever shifting from one form to another and is therefore impossible to contain. If only I had an instant camera, then I would never need step outside again. I despise cameras, though. They butcher your memories and anyway when you’re an old man drooling yellow shit down the front of your pajamas and your eyes are long gone, what good is a boxful of shitty snapshots that have turned green with age.

Nothing is real to me anymore. The world around me has been systematically reconceived through digital imaging and computer animation until every flower and raindrop is pure and flawless as the flowers and raindrops of the book of Genesis. The new world is brought to life in high-density pixels and is then transferred to human memory. The digital sunset always looks better than the real thing, always. Because a sunset generated by the basic package of yellow sun and blue sky is unreliable. Today it may be stunning, hypnotic. Tomorrow it may be lifeless and dull, a white sky scorched with yellow. Tomorrow the sky will be velvet.

Beautiful or not, it disappears. The sky goes dark and what are you left with.

The image stored in my head suffers rapid decay and within hours I will be unable to describe the sunset that I have just witnessed without accessing the false but technically perfect sunsets that I’ve seen on a thousand television and computer screens. I have no personal memories that are untainted by media and marketing and I often suspect that I am dead but still functioning. My heart is raw and pink, a package of ground beef wrapped in plastic. My body is composed of shatterproof glass and fluoride and vitamins and sheep hormones and recycled copper wires. There is no poetry in such a being but neither is there fear. I tumble easily into the void and I am safe as a kitten in the bony confines of my own skull. If I can afford the proper software, then I can download anything imaginable. The physical world is getting less and less realistic by the minute and eventually I will learn to pay it no mind.

Twilight, now.

John Ransom Miller and I have been walking for nearly an hour, most of the way uphill, not talking. I am chewing a hole in my lip. Miller is much too cool and friendly and unconcerned about my sudden presence in his life. The silence is heavy between us, but not terribly unpleasant.

What’s your name? he says.

First names are dangerous, I say.

Why, he says.

The intimacy, I say.

My legs are heavy and I hope Miller doesn’t try to run away. The BART station is a long, long way down. He won’t run, though. John Ransom Miller could not be any less afraid of me. But he might like to fuck with me. I would probably fuck with him, if our positions were reversed. Miller nods and again I have the sticky feeling that he can hear my thoughts.

Yes, he says. Intimacy is a tricky thing. I would think it’s hard to kill somebody if you are in the habit of calling them by their first name.

I whistle through my teeth, irritated. Why don’t you have a car? I say.

Miller shrugs. I have two cars. Three, actually. I had a driver for a while, a guy who wore one of those fucking sailor hats. I don’t know. I started to hate the cars after a while. I would sit in traffic, listening to Mozart and drinking bottled water and it was like my soul was trapped in a Mason jar.

The hole in my lip is getting bigger. It will bleed, soon.

I like cars, I say. I believe in cars.

What about the soul, he says. Do you believe in the human soul?

No. But I think mine would be perfectly safe in a Mason jar.

Miller stares at me, unblinking. You might want to punch holes in the lid, he says.

Okay, I say. What makes you think I’m going to kill you?

He laughs. You would be wise to kill me, that’s why. You would save a few lives and probably your own sanity. But you won’t kill me.

You won’t even try.

That’s a good answer, I say. Damn good.

By the way, he says. You can call me Miller for now.

His voice trails away from his mouth, exhaled like smoke. There is a narcotic quality about it, as if it comes from inside my head and now a feeble smile drifts unwanted across my face, a polite muscle spasm. Which bugs the shit out of me. This is my face, right. This is my fucking face and I will be one sorry meatpuppet if I ever lose control over who sees me smile. When and where and so on. I keep shining my crippled smile at this man and I may as well piss myself on a crowded bus. I may as well be a whore with a weak bladder. I abruptly take the gun from my pocket and Miller doesn’t blink. I wave the gun at a low stone wall that creeps along the side of the road and tell him to just sit the fuck down. He shrugs and sits down, crossing his legs and fiddling with the crease in his trousers.

Are you okay? he says. You look green.

Miller is one of those rare fuckers with a psychic sense of smell. He takes one sniff and he knows you. He knows things about you, things you might not want him to know. He should have been a cop, probably. The funny thing is I am starting to like him, and this idea makes me feel slightly carsick. I tell him to get up and we keep walking. I put the gun away and try to relax.

Pretty sunset, I say. Don’t you think?

Miller shrugs. I saw a peculiar story on the news the other day. A newspaper in China confessed that they’ve been falsifying their weather reports for the past twenty years.

What do you mean?

They would claim that it was sunny yesterday when in fact it rained.

Revisionist weather, I say. That’s brilliant.

Isn’t it?

What the fuck, I say. It’s nice to meet you, Miller.

Miller yawns. You never know when that person will come along, the person you have been waiting for.

Yeah. What is that supposed to mean, exactly?

Life, he says. It’s often a dull dream.

I scratch my head and suddenly I hear something like the manic hum of locusts but it’s only the drone of rubber tires on blacktop as two boys cruise by on mountain bikes.

They look like brothers, I say.

Miller and I turn to watch as the boys disappear over the next hill.

Poof, says Miller.

Like they just fell off the edge of the earth, I say.

Amazing, says Miller. How easily a child can vanish.

Miller takes a sheaf of mail from a bright metal box on the side of the road. The box looks new. The surface is shiny as a silver dollar and unblemished by bird shit, but there is a nice round bullet hole in the thing’s belly. The hole is black around the edges and I poke two fingers in there without lubrication. It was a big bullet.

You have enemies? I say.

No, he says. The neighborhood kids. I love it, though. I love it when the kids have spirit.

I finger the hole. That’s some fucking spirit.

Miller might be a liar. He might not be. He has the eyes of a sleepy blackjack dealer and why should I care if he wants to lie about a misplaced bullet. I lie all the time, to myself and others. I lie whenever it feels right. I’m a cheap rug. I am not very good at lying, however. Jude can always sniff out a lie before I take another breath. Then again, she’s a woman. Jude says that if a woman has ever fucked a guy and studied the ugly contortions of his face, the face that he wants to hide from sight, then she knows the machinery behind his mouth and eyes and thereafter she always knows when he’s lying.

Anyway.

I shot up a few mailboxes when I was a kid, with a pellet gun and later a.22, a rifle meant for shooting squirrels. This hole came from a big gun, a serious gun. Miller has got Dirty Harry shooting at his mailbox and it’s none of my business.

Not yet, says Miller.

What? I say.

It’s none of your business, he says. Yet.

It is still not quite dark but the air is the color of blue plums. A black Mercedes rolls past with headlights off, eerily silent. It looks like a tank on a night mission. A white moth flickers past my face and I wave it away, distracted.

Do you want to come in? says Miller. Have a drink?

I sigh. Are you going to be doing a lot of that?

What? he says.

Oh, you know. Reading my mind and that sort of thing.

Miller laughs. I can’t read your mind, man. I pretend that I can.

Uh huh.

It’s easy, he says. People aren’t very complex. You take a stab at what somebody is thinking. Then politely spit it out like a piece of gristle. And even if you’re wrong, it makes people nervous. There’s no better way to fuck with a snotty waiter, or a salesman. Try it sometime.

Interesting, I say. Do I look like a salesman to you?

Why, he says. Are you nervous?

Miller pushes open the iron gate that opens onto a downward drive lined with gravel and heavy flat stones the color of cigarette ash. The front yard is a hillside, wild and dark with twisting rose bushes and exposed roots. The house is barely visible from the road. The white moth returns to strafe my face and I wonder if I’m glowing. I try to catch it in my fist, to kill it. But the little bastard is too fast for me and I clutch at the air like a spastic. I lower my head before it decides to fly down my throat. Miller starts down the slope and I follow him.

The house of Miller is bewildering, and much larger than it looks from the outside. He gives me a rapid tour of the lower level, telling me there are nineteen rooms in all. The house is primarily constructed of stone, but some of the walls are made of glass. The house is cold and dark and I imagine it is cold and bright by day. There are three floors, or levels. The house is not vertical, but staggered. It clings to the hillside like a giant spider. Two massive trees come up through the back of it, like twin spines. A complex series of wood platforms is built around these trees, with rope ladders connecting the various levels. The kitchen door opens onto level two. I stand in the doorway, a goofy smile on my face.

It’s like something out of a fairy tale, I say.

Miller is pouring tall glasses of bourbon and soda.

Yeah, he says. I think the guy who designed it was out of his mind, however.

How’s that?

Miller shrugs. You can feel it. There’s madness in the walls.

Ah, yes. Madness in the walls. I hate it when that happens.

Miller stirs our drinks with what appears to be a bright blue chopstick.

Do you live alone? I say.

Not exactly. He hands me a drink, very strong.

The kitchen is black tile and bright steel. Harsh white light. Functional, cold, a surgical theater. I imagine myself laid out on the island with a mask over my face and tubes running in and out of my belly, surrounded by a crew of silent men in dark red gowns. I doubt there’s anything in the refrigerator but olives and French mustard and spare plasma.

Come on, says Miller. Let’s go to the lizard room.

A long, windowless room that glows from the light of twenty-two terrariums. These contain lizards, iguanas, chameleons, and various snakes. Obviously. I walk the perimeter and look them over. I am fond of reptiles, generally. Because they can sit on a rock for two days without moving. Because they are untroubled by the loss of a limb and more than likely will grow another one. Because they methodically seek out sources of heat, but will not necessarily perish without it. Their chances of survival on this planet seem so much better than ours and I think Miller is wise to be friendly with them. The last terrarium along one wall houses a very large boa constrictor, coiled and sleeping. I stare at him for a while and I think I would like to hold him, to close my eyes and wonder at his strength.

It’s too bad you didn’t come yesterday, says Miller.

Why is that?

It was feeding day, he says. The boa put on quite a show.

Does he have a name?

I’m sure he does, says Miller. But I don’t know it.

There are two black leather chairs at the far end of the room. Miller sits in one of them, his legs stretched out and his feet up on a round coffee table of solid, roughly cut glass that looks like a block of ice. The wood floor is stained the color of black cherries and down the middle of the room runs a narrow Turkish rug, green and gold. The rug comes to an end under the glass table and the colors melt and magnify. The walls are painted a dark, faintly metallic green.

Miller tells me to sit down. He doesn’t sound like he’s asking.

I take a sip of whiskey and suddenly feel strange, almost happy. This place smells of Dr. Moreau’s island and there may be much mischief in store for me, but I don’t care. Miller is an excellent host and I like it here. I am wary of telling him so, however, and I have to remind myself who he is and what he did to Jude. I have to steel myself against his charm. The house feels empty but for the reptiles and ourselves. The house has been utterly silent since we entered but now I imagine that I hear music, the soft lament of a solitary cello. The same few notes over and over, stretched and groaning. They stop and start, as if there is someone practicing upstairs. It’s a mournful tune and the only explanation for this sort of thing is that my brain is full of poison. I sink into the chair across from Miller and put my feet up.

He smiles at me and promptly the cello resumes, urgent now.

Okay, I say. Do I hear music? Or am I fucking nuts.

The cello stops. Miller lights a cigarette.

Beethoven, he says. Piano Trio number 4, in D Major. The love song for Anna Marie.

Who is playing, though?

I don’t hear anything, he says. Perhaps you’re nuts.

Uh huh. Give me a cigarette, please?

Miller pushes a pack of Dunhills across the glass table. I light one and we blow smoke and stare at each other. I wait for the cello to resume but it never does. The player is self-conscious, maybe. He heard us talking about him.

I feel like I’ve seen you before, says Miller.

I have that kind of face.

It’s a good face, he says. Not too handsome, but interesting.

Thanks, I guess.

Miller leans forward, pours two fingers of whiskey into my glass.

Have you ever tried acting? he says.

The whiskey burns my tongue. I light another cigarette, vaguely uneasy. Miller smiles at me and I wait for him to tell me what I’m thinking. But he doesn’t.

I can become someone else, I say. If that’s what you mean.

Interesting, he says. I’m talking about regular drama, however.

Only as a child, I say. In the fourth grade I had a non-speaking role in Great Expectations. I was beggar number nine. And one Christmas I was an anonymous shepherd in the nativity scene.

Miller laughs.

Why do you ask?

I’m interested in making a film, says Miller.

I am a thousand miles from home and once in a while I have to remind myself that I have no home. This is California and on any given Thursday there could be a nuclear sunset. And it’s earthquake country. The earth could come apart beneath my feet, any day now. Jude is waiting for me in a hotel room but I am prepared for the possibility that she may not be there when I return.

I won’t like it.

But I will sit down on the bed and take off my shoes. I will breathe the recycled air that may or may not smell of her hair. I will read the newspaper and smoke a few cigarettes and eventually I might take a nap. There will be no one to hear me if I speak in my sleep.

What sort of film? I say.

I finish off my bourbon and consider shooting Miller.

Do you know anything about snuff films? he says.

Urban legend, I say. But probably true.

Why do you say that?

Anything you can imagine is probably true. And the worst you can imagine is probably worth money.

How philosophical, he says.

Fuck you. People tend to kill people. And they do it every twenty-nine seconds. In the time it takes me to smoke this cigarette, eleven people will be murdered in this country.

Where do you get these statistics?

I make them up.

Excellent, he says. What else?

Everything is on videotape. Vacations, weddings, birthdays, dogs and cats doing tricks. Every time you go to a cash machine or mail a letter or purchase a quart of milk, you’re on tape. If you get murdered, you’re probably on tape and somebody somewhere on the Internet is going to masturbate while watching it. Reality is in the business of killing off fiction.

I like you, says Miller.

Okay.

There is a brief silence. Miller picks up a remote control and aims it at what I thought was a giant mirror on the wall behind me. The mirror flickers to life, a television. He mutes the sound and flips through the channels until he finds a baseball game, the Mariners and A’s.

Why do you ask? I say.

Because I want to make one, he says.

A snuff film?

Yes.

I take the gun out of my jacket pocket and point it at him, politely.

Take off your fucking ring, I say.

Why?

I’m leaving now. And I need proof that I killed you.

Art, he says. It’s going to be a quality piece of film, a masterpiece of blood porn. Literary, mysterious. The kind of thing you can screen at Sundance.

Mysterious? I say.

Miller smiles richly. That’s the beauty of it, the suspense factor. Because I have not yet finished the script, the victim will be uncertain until the end. It could turn out to be me or you. Or someone else. Perhaps an innocent will die. It will be called The Velvet.

Oh, fuck you, I say. You’ve been talking to Jude.

Miller picks up the remote control and my eyes go to the television, where the Oakland game rolls silently. Ichiro has just stolen third base for the Mariners and the cameras cut away to the crowd for reaction shots. The fans are not pleased. They boo and hiss. They bang drums. There is a close-up of a bearded man with a massive naked belly and a plastic jug of beer sloshing in each hand, dancing like a drunken god. The camera zooms on his face, then cuts to a luxury box where the fans are a bit more sedate. Miller pushes a button and the picture goes to slow-motion. And there is a lingering shot of MacDonald Cody, senator and tapped to be president one day, sitting next to a small blond-haired boy with the same dark eyes. The boy looks to be about five years old. He laughs and claps his hands with the kind of glee that most adults can barely remember and now someone who sits outside the frame leans over and gently touches his hair. The shot widens and I see that the man who touched the kid’s hair is Miller.

Motherfucker, I say. This is a tape?

Sort of a home movie, says Miller. His voice has slipped into that narcotic tone.

What the hell does that mean?

Miller presses another button, freezing the tape. The kid with dark eyes stares out at me. He is no longer smiling and like his eyes, his lips are dark and just slightly too big for his face and now they are pressed together and he looks very serious, almost somber. He looks sleepy.

Beautiful kid, isn’t he? says Miller. Those eyes could break your heart.

Yeah, I say. He looks just like his father.

I suppose you recognize him? says Miller.

MacDonald Cody, I say. The senator.

Miller stares at the TV, then looks at me.

But you’ve met him, am I right? He says.

Turn it off, I say.

Look at the kid, he says. The camera loves him.

I’m gone, I say. I’m fucking gone. It was a real thrill to meet you and everything.

Look at the kid, he says. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to him, would you?

Fuck you, I say.

Whatever you say.

I stand up and Miller lazily tells me to hang on a minute. He tugs at the big ruby ring, but it won’t come off. He slips his finger into his mouth and sucks on it for a moment. The ring slips off easily and Miller offers it to me, red and wet as a bloody eye. I hesitate, trembling. The gun still in my hand, forgotten. I should just put a bullet in his skull. I should. I should. I should. I should put the motherfucker to sleep forever and maybe Jude and I could rest easy tonight. But I have never killed anyone, outside my dreams. It’s not an easy thing to shoot a man who has done nothing but talk to you, a man who sits in a leather armchair smiling. Miller smiles at me and I take the ring from him. I drop it into my pocket and now it occurs to me that I need cash for cigarettes and the train back to San Francisco. I hit Miller up for fifty dollars and he gives it to me without a word.