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.
ten.
THERE ARE FOUR CHAMBERS IN THE HEART, four rooms. I stumble through the house of Miller and my chest is full of terrible echoes.
Through the kitchen and a woman is there. Blue jeans and a white tank-top. Pale blond hair, wispy. She stands with her back to me, staring into the open refrigerator. Her shoulders are narrow and bare and I don’t want to frighten her.
Excuse me, I say.
The woman turns around, slow. Honey brown eyes with dark circles. Thin lips, silent and moving. As if she is whispering to herself. Or praying.
I thought I heard voices, she says. She shrugs. I wondered if we had company.
Exhale. Sorry if I startled you, I say.
Molly, she says. My name is Molly Jones.
Phineas, I say.
Her lips begin to move again and I think of Franny Glass. Her mouth silent and ever moving to form the words Jesus Christ have mercy on me in not quite perfect time with her heartbeat as she slowly came to pieces in a snotty restaurant while the ivy league boyfriend yawned and explained that Flaubert was ultimately a mediocre talent because he had no testicles. Franny Glass was my first love. Hopeless and somehow appropriate that at the age of sixteen I was in love with a fictional woman.
Your lips are moving, I say.
Oh, she says. I’m sorry.
Prayer?
It’s a short monologue that I’m having trouble with.
What do you mean?
I’m sort of an actor, she says. I’m a theater major at Berkeley.
And the monologue?
I’m playing May in a production of Fool for Love, she says.
Sam Shepard, I say.
Do you know the play?
Hell, it’s the story of my life. Do you want to practice on me?
Molly smiles, takes a breath.
I don’t understand my feelings, she says softly. Her face goes pale, as if she’s banished the blood from her skin. I really don’t, she says. I just don’t understand how I could hate you so much after so much time. How… No matter how much I’d like to not hate you, I hate you even more. It grows. All I see is a picture of you. Of you and her. I don’t even know if the picture is real anymore. I don’t even care. It’s make believe. It invades my head. The two of you. And this picture stings even more than if I’d actually seen you with her. It cuts me. It cuts me so deep. I will never get over it, never. And I can’t get rid of the picture. It just comes, uninvited. Like a little uninvited
