These Dreams of You

~ ~ ~

When Jasmine returns to the house the next morning, the front door is open. No one answers when she rings the bell. She walks into the house and down the hall, bracing for what she might find, which is Jim sitting in the chair wearing no shirt but owl-rimmed glasses, across from the couch where he passed out the night before. He drinks hot tea and is buried in the Wall Street Journal.

Five televisions are on in the room, three of them on the same channel, all with the sound down. Jasmine never noticed the TVs before and now that she looks closer she sees there are two more, turned off. She’s trying to compute the incongruity of this not to mention the Wall Street Journal when — having in no other way acknowledged her entrance — Jim says from behind the newspaper, “Little doll with gray eyes. What it is.” The only other person who’s ever commented on her eyes was Kelly. “Primordial,” she called them, “from the beginning of time.”

“Everything all right, then?” she says.

“Anna left,” now peering at Jasmine for a moment around the edge of Dow Jones before disappearing back.

“Left? You mean left left?”

“Yes she did.”

Jasmine pokes her head into other rooms. “Why?”

“You’ll have to discuss that with her or, more likely, him. I believe,” Jim says, “they had a falling out.” He adds, “The Communists won an election in Italy.”

“They had a falling out because the Communists won an election in Italy?” Jim looks at her around the newspaper again to see if she’s kidding. “Shots weren’t fired?” she says. “Knives drawn?”

“Oh, worse,” Jim answers, “words were spoken. Everyone’s still alive, though, if that’s what you mean — or she was, anyway, last I saw her. Being the shiny red cockroach of rock and roll who will survive atomic meltdown, he is as well, I assume.”

Jasmine walks down the long hallway to the room in back and knocks on the door. “Hello?” Pressing her ear to the door she can hear music playing, and knocks again more assertively. “Are you all right in there?” The song she heard before begins playing again. “Look here,” she says, “I’m going to have to ring the police if you don’t answer—”

The door opens abruptly. He wears a thin burgundy robe undone at the waist that he ties now; in the dim hall he shields his eyes as if from some blinding light, though she can barely see in front of her. “Oh,” he mutters. He pulls open the door.

“Sorry to bother, just want to make sure you’re all right then. . Mister—”

“No, no, not Mister Anything,” and he has to muster up a tone of insistence, “come in.” There’s the scent of smoked Gitanes, and on the drawn window blinds that allow only a brown light, pentagrams have been scrawled. One is drawn on the floor as well. A row of small stubby candles burn on the shelf perilously near books that age has rendered immediately flammable; a couple of other candles burn on the floor. A guitar resting against the wall doesn’t appear to have been moved in a while, and there’s a small synthesizer keyboard. The music comes from a turntable on a wooden chest beneath the windows, hooked up to two small speakers, the cover to one of which has a gouge administered by something sharp. He says, “Right. Jasmine,” demonstrating a memory more acute than she would have predicted.

“Where’s Anna?” she asks.

“Anna has left.”

“Why?”

“Well, Jasmine,” he almost drawls, “you seem very pleasant but I’m not sure that’s your business, is it?”

“Rather it is and rather it isn’t. Your management has asked—”

“Yes, I just fired them,” and he looks at a dusty telephone that shows no sign of having been disturbed. She can’t be certain if he’s high or exhausted; everything seems to take an effort. “Before you came. I need you to work for me now.”

It’s hard to tell whether he’s thought of this on the spur of the moment or it’s something he’s been considering more than five minutes. “I shall pay you better than whatever they—”

“You fired them?” she says. “What for? And don’t tell me it’s not my business.”

“They were. . ” He shakes his head and looks at the phone with dread. He says, “People. . have been ringing me up. . I don’t know how they found me here. . ”

“The management?”

“Ringing me up. . no, not the management, uh. . need to put a stop to it. Need to stop with. . ” he waves his arm at the pentagrams on the floor and blinds, “. . all this. It’s. . stirring up what should be left unstirred and now they’re ringing. . excuse me,” and at the turntable he puts the stylus back at the beginning of the record he’s been playing. The song begins again. He looks up from the chair. “What were we—”

“You fired—”

“Yes. Well, they really weren’t handling my affairs properly, were they? I believe that they’re stealing my money. It’s happened before, you know. It’s my fault, really. . I signed the contract, knew I shouldn’t. . ”

“That’s why Anna left?”

“Anna. . no, Anna and I. . that’s not why. This is fantastic,” he says, leaning toward the record that’s playing, “I’m thinking of covering this song,” and now there’s a spark of something in his speech, “it’s from an old. . what was his name. . played Zorba the Greek, and Gauguin. Anthony. .” He’s wracking his brain. “God I hate it that I can’t remember anything. Anyway it’s from a movie with him and. . Anna Magnani perhaps? Of course I can never do it like Nina Simone, I wouldn’t bother trying. That’s about as perfect a vocal as anyone is going to sing — no affectation, no posturing, not a false moment. Perhaps I’ll do it like, you know. . Neu! or one of the German bands. . are you familiar with the German bands?”

“No.”

“Most Yanks aren’t. Bloody stupid. Not you, of course, but then you’re a homegirl, aren’t you,” he smiles.

“London.”

“There you go. . but that’s why I need you, you see? There they are, all the reasons. . for your very, very, very, very special combination of, of, of, of, of, of, of. . attributes. . ”

“I’m certain I don’t know what combination that might be,” says Jasmine. “What happened with you and Anna has nothing to do with me, does it?”

He looks at her completely mystified. “Why would it have anything to do with you?” He thinks. “Didn’t you and I just meet?” as though the possibility occurs to him, with some horror, that maybe they’ve known each other for years and he doesn’t remember. “I mean. . ” slightly alarmed, “. . didn’t we?”

“Yesterday.”

“That’s what I thought. At the train station, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

He’s relieved. “Yes.” Then, “So what do you say? I’m leaving Los Angeles, of course.”

“You are?”

“Oh yes. Didn’t I say?”

“No.”

“That was part of it with Anna.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving this very, very vile place full of very, very vile people,” he says. “Vile. Place. Full of. Very. Vile. People.”

“Where are you going?”

“If I stay one more moment, I’ll be very vile too. Perhaps,” his voice falls to a hush, “I already am.”

In the same hush he says, “I’m holding onto reality by a thread, really. Don’t you know? And, and, and sometimes, sometimes I think I’m getting through, I think I’m getting things done, I think the work is happening. . and then,” he says, “then I realize, you know, hours have gone by, hours and hours and hours, and I’ve written, like, three or four or five bars of a melody and that’s all. It’s all I’ve done. It feels like I’ve written an entire song in minutes, when I’ve taken days to write the fragment of a single verse, and then I’ve written the fragment backwards and from the inside out and upside down. Do you know who I met here?”

“Are you going to answer my question?” she says.

“I am answering your question. Wait a minute. What question?”

“Where are you going?”

“Yes, that one. I am answering. Don’t get tough with me, young lady,” he says, half mocking, “I run things around here.” He laughs. “Do you know who I met?” He picks the needle up from the record and begins playing it again. “Can’t get enough of this bloody song,” he mutters. “It was in a movie — perhaps not Nina’s version, I’m not sure. Who was in that movie. .?”

“Who did you meet, then?” trying to keep him on any track at all.

“I said that, didn’t I. About the movie. Sophia Loren. No, Anna Magnani.”

“You met Anna Magnani?”

“No.” Worried. “Did I?”

“Someone vile, you said.”

“Not vile—very vile. Anthony Quinn. Mid-Fifties. No, not everyone here is very vile. Not every single last someone. Christopher Isherwood. Do you know who he is?”

“A writer?”

“My God! Another literate person in the music business, besides Jim and myself, that is.”

“Can’t say I know his work, mind.”

“That’s three literate people in the music business and we’re all in the same house. An aeroplane crashes into this house and the literacy level of Los Angeles plummets. . ” He shakes his head, the math eludes him. “. . plummets. . three hundred percent. By the way, I see that look on your face. Don’t discount Jim,” he nods toward the living room from where Jasmine came, “when he’s not being his iguanan self onstage, he’s better read than the two of us put together. Well, not me.”

“He was deep in the Wall Street Journal when I came in.”

“There you are,” he nods.

“Are you two. .?”

For a moment he’s waiting for her to finish the sentence, then, “What? Oh. No! No, we’re just trying to keep each other out of trouble. When we’re not getting each other in trouble. And he’s a huge talent. Huge influence on me, so if I can, uh, help. . ” He shrugs.

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“Well,” he shrugs again. “Jim is his proper name, of course.”

“Are you going to tell me, then, where you’re going? When you leave L.A.?”

“I was telling you. Christopher Isherwood used to live in Berlin. Back before the war. Wrote some very famous stories.”

“Is he a Nazi too?”