Interfictions 2 (42 page)

While I wait for my fourth take ("Let's try it a little bigger this time, Hunter"), I work with Phil on our script. Mostly it's Phil's script, but he tells me we're partners. It's about these three former caliphs—al-Qahir, al-Muttaqi, and al-Mustakfi—who lived as beggars on the streets of Baghdad back in the tenth century. They'd all been deposed and had their eyes put out in pretty quick succession, and by 946 they were all three on the streets at the same time. Phil's idea is that they hate each other but end up working together to solve a murder. It's kind of a buddy picture. He wants to set it in L.A., with the ruined buildings and the paranoia and the starvation and all, but he knows that'll never happen. The three caliphs are supposed to echo the Trinity, see? Only they're blind, which is Phil's comment about Justice, I guess.

The film where I was born, that was a lot different. It was an adaptation of one of Holly Martinez's books. Holly wrote pulpy lesbian science fiction erotica about a spaceship captain named Carolina Dakota; books that sold ridiculously well and had been made into a half-dozen softcore features. None of the 121 had read any of her books, but I've seen some of them. They have taglines like “SHE WAS A SMUGGLER OUT FOR JUSTICE—AND LOVE!” and painted covers of a woman in a skintight black bodysuit. They were a little outside the propaganda guidelines, but Justice kept making them because they made money on the outside.

Holly and I don't talk much. About the only thing we have in common is that I killed her, and I don't even remember that. All I remember of being born is confusion. I didn't know who I was or what I was, just that I was growing and knocking things down and burning people. I think I knew I was killing them, but not what they were or what that meant. My insides got to 800 degrees Fahrenheit, which means they died pretty much instantly. I think that's supposed to be a comforting thought.

My core burns about that hot, still; hotter when I shrink down, like I have to do to in order to get into Marty's office. I can get down to about the size of a volleyball; any smaller, and I'm afraid I'd collapse. Or explode again. Or both. I worry about that a lot. I worry that all the anger inside me will overwhelm me and I'll take out the entire city. I'd have to change my name, then. Two-Point-Five Million just doesn't have the same ring to it.

No, I know it's not funny.

We wrap for the day, and my own personal Three Stooges meet me at the studio gates. I guess I better explain: after I was born and didn't die, the Trinity shot at me for a couple of days. The bullets didn't do much, but I didn't like the hoses. I was preoccupied with all the angry souls inside me, but I ended up flying up out of reach, which was when someone picked up a bullhorn and started talking to me. Until then I hadn't realized I could speak English.

After I made my deal with Justice—I do film work for them, and they don't bother me with hoses—protestors started following me. They thought I was a sign of the end times, I guess. They carried signs that talked about a sixth bowl and something called the “Mountain of Megiddo.” I don't know what any of it means. Anyway, after the world didn't end, a few of them changed their minds and decided I was actually sent by God. There were some fistfights then, and the Trinity locked some of them up, and I guess most of the rest of them got tired of waiting. By the time I was two months old, there were only three of them still following me around.

They don't really talk to me, and I don't know their names, but I've overheard them talking, so I know where they stand. The one I call Moe is convinced that I'm a harbinger of the Antichrist. Once he threw a bucket of holy water at me; that scared me, but it wasn't enough to put me out or anything. The Trinity warned him, and now he carries a Super Soaker and sprays the ground when he loses his temper. Larry, on the other hand, thinks I'm a messenger of the Lord, like the Burning Bush. Sometimes he tosses fast food wrappers and other flammables from a safe distance. I swear he's just getting rid of his trash. Then there's Curly, who's undecided. He thinks I'm important, and he follows me around because he thinks Something Big will happen eventually. He just hasn't decided if he thinks that something is going to be good or bad.

The three of them argue a lot, but I think they're actually friends by now. They follow me around in an old VW Bug. Larry's skinny, so he usually sits in the back. Phil thinks they're Trinity spies, but then Phil thinks everyone is a spy.

Sometimes when it's just me and the Stooges, I can listen to them argue and pretend I'm not even there. It's like the turmoil outside matches the turmoil in, and they cancel each other out. I like that, feeling like I'm just part of the scenery, something people don't even notice. Like a ghost, or a painting. But after a day on set I have a lot of trouble getting to that place, so I head down to Grand Avenue Beach and out over the ocean, leaving the Stooges behind.

I float out past the swimmers and the patrol boats and just hang there looking at the sun, the only other sustained explosion I know. I wonder sometimes if anyone dies when a star is born.

I have another job lined up for tomorrow, an ATF training video. Training videos are kind of my bread and butter. Not that I need money, but I like working, and it's part of the deal. The Trinity propagandists like to use explosions as exclamation points, and with me around they don't actually have to spend money destroying anything.

I stay out until sunset and echo the colors back at the sky while the surf echoes us both. I stare down at the fragmented colors and wonder if I could still burn beneath the waves.

Al-Qahir was the earliest of the three blind caliphs to rule. By the time of his reign the caliphate was in decline, and he did what he could to accelerate that. He tortured the mother and sons of his predecessor (who also happened to be his brother) in order to gain their fortunes. He had his nephew and heir walled up alive, Cask-of-Amontillado style. Finally the courtiers got him drunk, put out his eyes, and threw him in prison for eleven years.

In our script—Phil's script—al-Qahir is the eldest of the caliphs, with a long gray beard and a beige suit with too-long pants and sleeves, who used to be head of Columbia Studios before Justice captured L.A. The script begins with al-Qahir speaking over shots of the city's ruins:

AL-QAHIR (V.O.)

You must know by now that the United States of America never existed. It was a fraud perpetrated by idealists and idolaters, storytellers and slogan writers. Even the dream of it would have collapsed long ago, if not for the movies. Hollywood told comforting lies about the imagined country, assuring citizens that crime didn't pay, that lust was love, that the government was doing its best. What is
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
but a consolatory fiction? Once we gave them the dream, it was a simple matter to splinter it, to divide them by the lies they believed. We appealed to sexual depravity, naked greed, and godless humor; at the same time, we indulged fears and doubts in order to allay them with fairy tales of law and order and crime scene investigations. The America of the mind disintegrated into 300 million separate nations, and all we had to do was give the infidels what they wanted.

Sometimes when Phil and I are working, Holly starts criticizing. She wants to know why al-Qahir sounds like the attorney general, or what the idea is behind having tenth-century Muslim caliphs running Hollywood Studios. Phil and Holly met in a creative writing course in college, and as far as I can tell they've been arguing ever since.

"For twelve weeks we argued about everything we read,” Holly says, “and then he asked me out. I told him I was a dyke, and he said OK. We went out anyway, just to hang out. Our politics and our sense of humor were just about identical. It was our aesthetics that differed."

I still haven't figured out why Holly doesn't hate me like the others. Phil thinks she just appreciates the dramatics of it all.

"So why did you ask him to work on your films?” I ask her.

"Because he's good."

"I think so, too,” I tell her.

"You're a little sweet on him, aren't you?"

I have to think about that, so I don't answer.

Nights are long when I'm not working. Sometimes Phil wants to go to Westwood to check out Marilyn Monroe's grave or climb to the ruins of the Griffith Park Observatory. The thing is that I've been to all of those places a hundred times before, or at least my ghosts have.

A little before curfew, the Stooges take off for the night, and I head up the 101 to the Hollywood Reservoir. The guards at the checkpoint between the reservoir and what's left of the Hollywood Bowl get nervous when I hang out there. I'm supposed to inform Justice of all my movements—Marty always lets them know where I'm going to be working—but at night I don't bother. It's not like they could stop me from leaving if I wanted to, and leaving is something I've been thinking about lately. I probably won't, though. The 121 are like psychic anchors; sometimes it's like I'm just a vessel for their nostalgia.

Hanging over the depleted reservoir I fall into a meditation of things the 121 recall: a yellow prom dress, a golden retriever, the face of a child. I find myself reproducing the images of these things on my surface. I am drawn to my own reflection on the low water, and without realizing it I drop close enough to raise steam. Through the haze I stare at the buttery orchid a key grip has conjured out of me. I hover a moment, and then fly high over the hills to wait for sunrise.

Before dawn arrives, a dark sedan drives up to the reservoir, and a man in a dark suit gets out. He walks to the edge of the water, lights a cigarette, and waves. I move closer.

"Mr. 121?"

"Just 121,” I say. “I'm not a Mister or a Miss."

"Right,” he says. “Sorry about that. My name is Howard Callaghan. Special Agent Callaghan. Can we talk?"

"We're talking now."

"Yes.” He takes a long drag off his cigarette and then picks something off his tongue. “We've learned something about the bomb,” he says. “A man named Phil Lima built it. We believe it detonated accidentally—"

I guess I flare up a little, because he takes a step back and shades his eyes. Inside me the 121 are rioting. If they had bodies, Phil's would be torn to shreds.

Callaghan holds up a manila folder. “We have evidence that he intended to use it—"

I lash the folder with a tentacle of flame, setting it ablaze. Callaghan drops it and steps back, his hand going to his pistol. After a moment he must realize how foolish that is.

"I have other copies.” His hands shake as he replaces the pistol in its holster.

I expand to my full size and hang over Callaghan, so close that I see my reflection in the sweat on his forehead. I know I would burn him if there was no other way to shut him up. I hang there, rotating, breathing black and orange gouts. I can't tell my rage from that of the dead inside me. I'm not sure I want to keep it under control.

He spreads his hands and takes a step back; the cigarette falls from his lips. He gets in the sedan and drives away.

Phil hasn't said a word.

I spend the night wandering the city, blazing up at the stars, wondering if they burn rage as well as helium. At some point I realize I'm moving down Highland Avenue. It's morning, although I can't see the sun. The Stooges are walking behind me, arguing.

"Here's what I don't get,” says Moe. “Muslims don't allow their dead to be cremated, right? They consider it a desecration."

"I didn't know that,” says Larry.

"It's true. So how do the people who train suicide bombers convince them that it's OK to vaporize themselves like that? It's the same thing, isn't it?"

"They're fanatics,” says Larry. “The Quran doesn't condone religious violence, either, but it still happens."

"That isn't the reason,” says Curly. “It's very simple—it's the difference between life and death. The bombers are alive when they're blown apart. No one is desecrating them; it's their final act, their choice."

An unmarked black sedan is following us, creeping along the curb about twenty feet behind the Stooges. No lights, no siren. I turn off Highland onto Santa Monica, heading west toward the mountains and the Pacific. Two more squad cars turn to join the first.

Lots parked with rusted weed-catchers, caved-in strip malls picked clean. A red-and-yellow Shakey's Pizza blazes on the right, a shredded “GRAND RE-OPENING” banner in front. There's not enough water to fight all the fires. The ATF Studio Lot is on the left; Phil told me it used to be United Artists, back in the day. Not so long ago. Sometimes I have to remind myself how young I am.

I asked Phil once if he missed the way things were before Justice won the war. He said he missed the way things never were. The way he said it, I could tell it was something he'd started saying a long time before, maybe back when he first met Holly. I'd like to ask him about it now, but I'm too angry.

Phil was right about L.A. and Baghdad, though. This is just a desert town surrounded by enemies, trying to keep up appearances.

AL-MUSTAKFI

This will be the end of the Abassids.

AL-QAHIR

Idiot. You equate your own fortunes with those of the caliphate?
L'?tat, ce n'est-pas toi.

AL-MUTTAQI

Now that the Turks are gone from the city, the Shi'a will rise. I have seen it.

AL-MUSTAKFI

You see nothing. You are blind, have you forgotten?

He laughs, and al-Qahir joins in. Al-Muttaqi throws a punch in the direction of al-Mustakfi's voice, and the three of them begin scuffling. Behind them, a parade of conquerors marches: the Bayids, the Seljuks, Ayyubids, Mongols, Jalayirids, Quyunlu, Safavid, Ottomans, British, on and on and on, grinding the great city into ruins beneath their feet.

West Hollywood. Sex and hamburgers. Inside me, Phil is talking to Holly, while 119 other voices shriek a backing soundtrack.

"It was an accident,” says Phil. “I was going to put it in the administration offices."