Black Light

into three parts,
And ever since then,
every three years,
men will offer you
perfect hecatombs.”

At the front of the room Axel stopped. He lifted his head, shadows spilling upon him so that his face looked ravaged, no longer the golden death mask but the split skull beneath. His voice sounded cracked and hoarse.

“We, the poets,
begin
and end our singing
through You—
it is impossible without You,
without our memory of You
we cannot voice our sacred song, and
Your children, the poets, perish.”

He fell silent. The screen behind him went white, covered with balloons of magnified dust. From the back of the chapel came the insistent flapping of loose film on the projector.

“Don’t move a muscle,” commanded Axel. His head snapped forward and he raised his arm dramatically, like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

“Page!” he bellowed. His eyes narrowed as he reached into a hidden pocket of his kimono, withdrew a box of Sobranies and lit one, frowning. All of a sudden he looked like the imperious director who had punched out a Time magazine photographer on the set of You Come, Too. “Get the fucking reel, Page!”

From behind the second-to-last pew a head popped up.

“Got it, got it—” the man yelled in a raspy Bronx accent. “I’m gettin’ it for chrissakes, keep your panties on…”

He clambered over the pew, heading for the alcove where the projector was, its spool of film spinning maniacally. He wore black jeans and a ratty black-and-white striped sailor shirt. From behind he could have been one of my friends, rangy and stoop-shouldered.

But when he reached the projector light splashed across his face and I recognized him. The same man I had seen at Axel Kern’s holiday party when I was twelve, filming an orgy; the same man who had looked at me then, perplexed, and said You’re early. Thirtyish, with thinning black hair and a swarthily handsome face, broad cheekbones scarred by acne and a thin remorseless mouth: Page Franchini. Sometime NYU film student, he was Axel’s chief cameraman and general Nursery flunky. He’d followed Axel to Hollywood but had never been able to find work there—he wasn’t union, he wasn’t reliable, he wasn’t even a very good cameraman. I knew him from “Cities of Night” and also from one of his solo efforts, an “experimental” film called Gravity Train which was notorious for a thirty-four minute blow-job sequence involving Precious Bane and a man dressed as an Apollo astronaut.

“Well. I’ll see you later, Lit—”

I turned as Axel smiled at me absently. He lifted his hand in farewell, turned and strode toward the door at the front of the chapel. I watched in disbelief as he left, not even bothering to close the door behind him.

“Hey, you.” It was a minute before I realized Page Franchini was yelling at me. “Sweetheart, jailbait, whoever you are—c’mere and give me a hand, huh?”

I swore beneath my breath, stared resentfully at the man fiddling with the projector. He looked up and glared, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. “Come on! I’m not gonna tell your parents you’re making out with their friends—”

“Asshole,” I muttered, but I walked over. The projector was sitting on an upended stereo speaker, surrounded by silver film canisters and cigarette butts and a battered paperback copy of Sanctuary.

“Okay, you hold this piece of leader here, it’s torn, see, just hold it so I can get the rest of this crap where it belongs—”

He shoved a ragged tail of loose film at me, yanked the reel from the projector and slid it into a can. Then he took the leader, threading it between his fingers as he held it up to the light.

“It’s shot,” he said regretfully. “Ruined. I duped that for him ten years ago. Juliet of the Spirits. He wanted a few of the frames for Saragossa. That scene when they burn the girl at the stake? There’s, like, six frames of Giulietta Masina in there, totally subliminal, I guess it’s supposed to secretly make you think Axel is Fellini.” He dragged at his cigarette, exhaled and rolled his eyes. “Sure, Axel.”

I picked up one of the opened cans, breathed in the sweetish scent of new film stock. When I looked up, Page was watching me, brow furrowed.

“I remember you,” he said at last. “That party. You were the little girl in the black velvet dress. I was tripping my tits off, I thought you were a hallucination.”

“Maybe I was.”

“Ha ha. No, it’s crazy, I thought you were—” He stopped. “Well, never mind what I thought. What are you, sixteen?”

“Seventeen. I’ll be eighteen next March.”

He dropped his cigarette on the floor and ground it out. “I was your age when I met Axel. First time a guy ever fucked me. Why don’t you be a good kid and go on home, huh?” He reached over and roughly took the film can from my hands. “It just gets old after a while, you know?”

I watched as he began sorting through a box alongside the projector. I felt defensive of Axel, and humiliated that this guy had seen us together. I tried to come up with some retort, finally said, “He’s my godfather.”

“Always a godfather, never a god.”

“He’s just like a really good friend—”

“Oh, please, spare me.” Page put the last of the film cans into the carton, straightened and shook his head. “Look, I don’t know who you are and I really don’t give a flying fuck what you do, sweetheart. But if you’d seen as many pretty little girls as I have, lying on the floor with a spike in their arm or drinking so much they walk out a sixth-floor window—”

He laughed bitterly. “Well, you’d turn right around and go on home to momma.”

“Oh, yeah? Then what are you doing here?”

“Me? I’m part of the floor show, sweetheart. I couldn’t leave if I wanted to. He’d kill me.” He reached out, took my chin between two fingers and looked straight into my face. I stared defiantly back at him. “But maybe you’re different.”

He gazed at me, then laughed. “Maybe you’re really a tough cookie, huh? ‘Voutes etes vraiment une deguelasse.’”

“What does that mean?”

“Forget it.” He hefted the box of film and cocked a thumb at the back of the chapel. “That your boyfriend?”

I turned to see Hillary standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets and looking hangdog. When he saw me his face lit up.

“Lit!”

I walked over to him. “Hey, where’d you go?”

“Me? You were the one who—”