Sacred Monster

Flashback 6

The limousine rolling northeastward through the dusk on the New England Thruway, that strip of high-speed road between New York City and the Connecticut state line, was a gleaming tasteful black, with New York plates indicating it had been either leased or rented. The chauffeur was a serious-looking white man of close to sixty, in a black suit, white shirt, narrow black tie, and black uniform cap. The glass partition between him and the spacious rear compartment of the limousine was closed, and from the point of view of the front seat the rear seemed to be empty.

It was nearly eight in the evening of a midweek day in spring. The air outside was soft, the sky pearlescent, the traffic not at all bad, considering the realities of the BosWash Corridor. The driver was accomplished, the limousine in excellent condition, the voyage smooth and tension-free.

A sign passed on the right. The driver, noting it, lifted the telephone from near his right knee on the dashboard and spoke into it: “We are entering Connecticut, madam.”

Immediately, Jack’s head rose into view on the other side of the partition. He was laughing, his eyes manic. He gazed in the rearview mirror at the reflection of the driver’s face — the driver’s eyes remained fixed on the road ahead — then groped for the rear seat telephone and spoke into it.

The metallic voice sounded in the driver’s ear: “And that ain’t all we’re entering, James. We’ll need fifteen minutes.”

Not a flicker of expression touched the driver’s face. Correct, unflappable, he said, “Yes, sir.”

Jack, laughing, extended the phone down out of sight toward the floor in back. More faintly, his metallic voice sounded from the phone the driver held to his ear: “Do you wish to speak to James, madam?”

Another voice sounded, equally metallic, but identifiable as that of Miriam Croft. At first she was merely laughing, but then she said, “Halliwell, just keep driving, dear, until we tell you otherwise.”

“Yes, madam.”

Less distinct, too far from the phone, Jack said, “How about me, madam? Should I keep driving?”

Miriam’s laughter was loud, then farther away, as Jack took the phone from her and spoke into it again, grinning through the glass at the driver “We’ll just keep driving, James, you and me, right through Connecticut! Can we do that?”

Miriam’s laughter sputtered and struggled as she fought for breath, trying to talk and laugh and inhale all at once, crying out, “Oh, no! Oh, don’t! Oh, poor Halliwell!” but then the laughter broke into pieces, into choking and gasping, into wheezing and terrible retching sounds.

Jack stared downward, suddenly concerned, then frightened, the phone in his hand obviously forgotten. Through it, the driver heard him cry, “Miriam? Miriam! Jesus God, put your tongue in! Miriam! Not you, too!”

Dropping the phone, Jack poked and prodded at the out-of-sight Miriam, while the chokes and gasps weakened. Then he turned to the driver, panicky, pounding on the glass, yelling, his words barely audible at all until he remembered the phone and dived for it. The driver, unsure what was going on and knowing that practical jokes were not impossible with these people, at last frowned at the rearview mirror, in which the wild-eyed and terrified Jack suddenly reappeared, phone mashed to his ear as he yelled, “Help! She’s having a fit or something! Find a hospital!”

This was no practical joke. “Yes, sir!” answered the driver, and pressed the accelerator to the floor.

And so the limousine tore through the sweet-scented Connecticut night, trailing Jack’s screams, Jack’s moans, Jack’s brokenhearted cry: “Miriam! Please! Pull yourself together!” And across the empty lanes his final, fatal scream: “Not agaaiiinnn!”

There are things I shall not tell this interviewer. Wild torsos could not drag them out of me, though they’re invited to try.

On the other hand — is it the other hand, or another part of the same hand? A different finger? — on the other finger, then, there are things I shall not even tell myself. In fact, so clever am I, perched atop this other finger, that I shall not even tell myself what the things are that I shall not tell myself. And to think people say drugs affect the brain; not my brain, Pops.

Between the things I shall not tell myself and the things I shall not tell the interviewer are those incidents, those memories that can still cause pain but not to an unbearable degree. Such as, to take the example that slots neatly into its chronological space at this juncture, the funeral of Miriam. Facing the patient silent interviewer with my blandest and most untroubled smile, I relive that troubled time.

A lot of people blamed me for what happened to Miriam, but my doctors said it wasn’t my fault. She’d already had two minor strokes, which she hadn’t told anybody (including me) about, and it could have happened at any time. And, as far as I was concerned, Miriam had checked out just exactly the way she would have wanted, coming and going at the same glorious moment. But you couldn’t explain that to a lot of thin-lipped nieces and nephews.

Miriam had found me an agent — her own, of course, Jack Schullmann — and Jack phoned to say if I went to the funeral he’d drop me as a client and do his best to blackball me in the theater. He was an important man in that bitchy world, but I told him to go fuck himself. If he and the rest of them wanted to take away everything that Miriam had given me, that was all right, too. Bury me with her like an Egyptian servant, I didn’t care.

So I did go to the funeral, and a hard-eyed usher made me sit in the back row. No one spoke to me or acknowledged my presence in any way, but that was the first time my picture ran in the National Enquirer. Is that funny, or what?

Jack Schullmann was as good as his word; after Miriam’s funeral, when I finally came out again, I too was dead. But really dead. I made the rounds the same as ever, hit the auditions, sent my resume to every other agent in town (none of them wanted me, not then), but nothing happened, and in truth my heart just wasn’t in it. But then one night...

But this is something I can report aloud, a spot where I can bring the interviewer aboard again, give him a little whadayacallit — frisson. That’s it. Got a frisson for you, pal. “After Miriam’s death,” I begin, but then I cloud over briefly, and when my internal sky once more is clear the interviewer is still there, politely waiting, pen poised, eyebrows lifted in respectful attention. “Yes,” I say. “After... that, I was lost for a while. I didn’t know where to go, what to do, who I should try to be. I still had my friends from the classes and all that, we still all hung out together, went to parties, but I felt distant, not really a part of the scene. I knew that no matter how it might look from outside, I didn’t care for anybody else, and nobody else cared for me. And without the acting, without using myself, with nobody to be but me, I was empty, I was nothing. I guess that’s about as alone as I ever got.”

The interviewer nods, viewing me with faint (possibly professional) sympathy. “How long did that go on?” he asks. “That sense of... separateness?”

“Separateness?” I laugh, hurting my throat. “That’s permanent,” I say. “But the trouble after Miriam died? Almost a year, all in all. Until the following summer, when one night at a party I ran into Harry Robelieu, the director of the play where I’d met Miriam, and he asked me what I was doing that weekend, was I free or what, there was somebody he wanted me to meet. So I told him I was free, and God knows that was true, and that was how I first went to Fire Island Pines and met George Castleberry.”