Sacred Monster

Lude

O’Connor watches the movie star seated on his gray slate patio in his pale blue terry-cloth robe, vaguely smiling, ignoring the sounds from the swimming pool right nearby. He’s good at ignoring things, O’Connor thinks.

The reminiscence of the introduction to Irwin Sandstone floats in the lambent air, dissipates like opium smoke in the sun. After a little silence, the famous Jack Pine sleepily says, “Irwin was the genius, not me, and we both knew it.” Slowly he is arching backward, body collapsing gradually onto the slates. Lying there, blind-looking eyes gazing skyward, voice fading more and more, “But Irwin came thruuuuuuuuuu,” Pine murmurs. “Ahh-hhhhh, I’ll give himmmmmm...”

The eyes close. He has drifted off, his breathing deep and even. O’Connor waits a moment, memo pad in left hand, pencil in right, but the actor doesn’t alter in any way. At last, O’Connor leans forward from his chair, extends his right arm forward, taps the sleeping star on the knee with the eraser end of his pencil. “Mister Pine?” he says. “Sir?”

No response.

Abruptly, the stone-faced butler, Hoskins, appears with a silver tray bearing a glass full of oily black muck. “Allow me to help, sir,” he says.

“He’s all yours,” O’Connor says, and leans back in his canvas chair again to watch.

Hoskins goes to one knee, places the silver tray on the slate beside himself, props the actor up against his raised knee with practiced ease, pinches the actor’s nose between thumb and forefinger of left hand, and with the right hand pours the glassful of oily black muck down Jack Pine’s throat.

O’Connor winces, empathizing despite himself. He says, “Does this happen a lot, Hoskins?”

Still pouring, the viscous fluid slowly oozing from the glass into the unconscious man’s mouth, Hoskins says, “We have an amazing amount and variety of chemicals in our body, sir. Maintaining the balance is not at all easy.”

“I can see that,” O’Connor says.

The glass is now mostly empty, only an oily metallic coating still staining its sides. Hoskins puts the glass back on the tray, and lowers the body to the slate. Then he picks up the tray, stands, and says, “We should be coming around any instant, sir.”

With which, the actor pops upright, sitting at attention, legs straight out in front, arms stretched out and back behind him like flying buttresses. His eyes are wide open. “Hoskins!” he cries.

Hoskins bows a deferential head in his direction. “Sir?”

Speaking at incredible speed, Pine says, “I’ve got it! We’ll put white pillars every seven feet all around the side, and put the lawn on top, and then we can go underneath when it’s too sunny!”

“Interesting, sir,” Hoskins says. As Pine’s head twitches back and forth, his wide eyes staring here and there like a demented bird, Hoskins stoops, picks up the empty glass that once contained the fuzzy drink, puts it beside the black muck glass on the tray, nods at O’Connor, and departs, walking ramrod-stiff toward the house.

Pine’s darting head and staring eyes find O’Connor, gawk at him. Pine giggles. He points at O’Connor, teetering on only one buttress, giggling with accomplishment, with his own discovery. “People!” he cries.

O’Connor, bewildered, looks around and then points the pencil at himself, saying, “No, sir, it’s just me. Like before.”

“People magazine,” Jack Pine says, nodding, smiling, cackling. “The cover again!”

How much longer can the actor possibly believe this is a press interview? O’Connor sighs, and waits.

Hello, hello, here I am again, just fine, doing just fine, everything’s just—

Hello, here I am again. I’m back with it now, it’s back with me now, my with now is it—

Hello. There’s something terribly wrong here, call a priest. No, wait. Maybe better not.

Hello?

Here I am. Lost myself for a while, fell down some rabbit hole — “I’m late, I’m late,” as my girlfriends used to say — fell down some black nasty... Dead? Who’s dead?

Hello?

I gaze about me, and the interviewer sits patiently, sits watching me, sits patiently watching me. “Hello,” I say.

“Hello,” he says. “Are you all right?”

“Jes fine,” I say.

“And you remember—”

“The story of my life,” I tell him, “in its endlessly unreeling permutations. I remember now. Where exactly were we in the sequence of events?”

“Your new agent,” he says, reading from his notes, “had told you to start with a biker picture.”

“Precisely so!” I say, delighted to be on track again. So inconvenient to fade in and out like that, I really must talk to my doctors about it, find some different formulation— No; they’ll all just use those dread words:

Cut.

Down.

And the hell you say, doc. I didn’t come this far to cut down. Not me. “Shit!” I cry, staring at the interviewer, who looks more and more like a fish in a sports jacket. “I’ve lost it again,” I confess.

“Biker picture,” he says.

“That’s it! Okay! All right, the biker was shot in the studio, came out exactly the way we wanted. I mean exactly the way we wanted: a crowd churner but a stomach pleaser as well, good gross, good reviews, good first step.”

“Sounds good,” the interviewer says.

Is he trying to be funny? I peer sharply at him, but he’s as deadpan as ever, dead fish in a pan. “Right,” I say. “Anyway, next was the pathologic killer, and that involved six weeks’ location in Mexico. My first time out of the country. Marcia had another picture then, up here, so down there I went, all on my own. Money in my pocket. Fame starting. Travel in foreign lands. Starring in a movie! I told Buddy, up here, before I got on the plane, I said, “My dreams are coming true before I dream them.”

The interviewer actually brightens up; he looks actually pleased for me. “That must be terrific,” he says.

“That’s just what it is. That’s just what it is. But then, what happened next...”

“Mr. Pine?

“Mr. Pine?”

“Nuhh?

“You were in Mexico. What happened next, you said.”

“Oh, what happened next. Yeah.” I make a smile. “Midway through, down there, my leading lady got laryngitis, couldn’t scream at all for five days. I took the opportunity to rush home and see my darling Marcia.”