Mystery Girl: A Novel (16 page)

“Sorry,” I said. “I could come back later.”

“But I’ve been waiting for you, darling. You’re one of the few men alive who’ve seen it in its heyday and have the brain cells left to remember.” She shook her bottom a little.

“It looks great, actually,” I said, and it did. The skin tone was different, a tobacco brown now instead of that crème fraîche white, but it nevertheless remained a top bottom.

“Thank you, my dear.” She exhaled heavily, and the man helped turn her right side up. Her face was flushed, and her cleavage, squeezed tight in the spandex, was sheened with sweat. Her nipples declared themselves, pressing out through damp rings of moisture, like thirsty little kitten tongues. Her hair, up in a bun, was still white-blond as in the film, and the rest of her body, though stained darker as I said, was still impressively close to that ideal. Her face was a different
story: heavily lined, overly tanned, saggy jowled, slashed with lipstick. She laughed wetly, showing teeth nearly as brown as her face.

“Hear that, Reg?” she croaked at her yogi. “Says my bum’s still buggerable.”

He smiled and nodded rapidly. She winked at me and picked up a bottle of Evian. “Guess I can hold off on the lipo for a bit. The third round, I mean.” She laughed her juicy laugh again and guzzled from the bottle. Sweat coursed down her breasts, which heaved and trembled as she drank. She shook her hair out and it fell down her back. “Fucking hell, I’m sweating like a horse!” she shouted, and Reg handed her a towel. She swabbed her pits and wiped under her boobs, lifting each and letting it fall, then sawed the towel between her thighs, still eyeing me all the while, before handing it back, soaked, to Reg.

“Miss me,” she said, more as a command than a question.

“Um… a little?” I tried, thinking maybe she had me confused with someone else, but Reg produced a spray bottle and moistened her face and chest, then his own. He aimed it toward me with a querulous expression.

“No, thanks. I’m fine.”

“Let’s have a drink,” Daemonica said, “before I bloody faint.”

Her accent was Bride of Dracula goes to Carnaby Street, just what you’d expect from a part-Hungarian, part-Romanian, part-Ukrainian ex-model raised in Madrid and Monaco, who married and divorced a few Brit rockers and sang for a couple of deathcore sludge-rock bands. I followed her back inside, where the housekeeper met her with some kind of thick green shake in a glass. She handed one to me as well.

“Oh,” I said, “thanks, but…”

She quaffed deeply. “It’s organic kelp. With protein powder, spirulina, parsley, ginseng—” I took a polite taste. It wasn’t too bad. Kind of like a malted with no ice cream or syrup or malt. I drank more.

“—and whale semen,” she added, smacking her lips.

“What?” I coughed.

“Very expensive. Good for the blood, organs, skin, and stamina. I have it flown from Japan.”

“Hmm…” I managed to nod, holding a rich swallow in my mouth.

“Drink that once a day and you’ll be hard as a rock,” she said. “Right, Reg?” He giggled as she chugged, leaving a thick mustache over her lip.

I discreetly spit into my glass while pretending to sip. “Mmmm,” I said. “Filling. Too bad I ate such a big breakfast.”

“I live on it. Haven’t touched alcohol or sugar in twenty years.” She lit a Marlboro and then, while the housekeeper and Reg both stood by, she stripped off the uni. Her body was impressive, if you like blond goddesses. Her nipples stood triumphant. The hair between her legs was a wild mane, white as snow.

“I hope you are not one of those men who are terrified by the female bush,” she announced, exhaling smoke through her nose.

“Not so far,” I said.

“Good, then the sight of my cunt shan’t disturb you.” She drew smoke and released it through dilated nostrils, while frankly sizing me up. “But don’t get the wrong idea, darling. I only like them young, hung, and dumb, like Reg here.” She laughed hard, gargling with her head back, as Reg blushed and blinked his big brown eyes at me.

“Now I need a soak,” she went on. “Reg wrings me out like a dishrag.” Reg giggled as we followed her down a few steps to the pool, where a Jacuzzi bubbled and steamed. She stepped in carefully, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, and descended till she was covered up to her shoulders. “Sit,” she demanded. I sat on a beach chair nearby.

“Now then.” The Marlboro dangled from her red mouth. Ashes dropped into the bubbling froth that seethed around her boobs. “You are writing a book about Zed?”

“Kind of.” I supposed that was a convenient lie of Jerry’s, or Milo’s maybe. “I’m doing some background for now.”

“Well I knew him as long as anyone, I guess,” she said. “Anyone alive. He was a pretty boy then, so funny and charming, with his scarves and tight pants, and these gigantic sloppy paintings he made in his awful garret, they looked rather like great wet nightmarish vaginas to me. Now I can’t imagine getting nude in a cold dirty place like that but then believe me the girls were lined up around the block. They quite liked it I suppose, being ravished on a chaise among the rags.”

“Yourself included?”

“Of course, darling. It was the seventies. It wasn’t polite to decline a shag or a drug, from boy or girl. And like I said, he was quite the dish. He slept with everyone.” Her fangs bent her U’s and W’s into V’s and sharpened
the
into
zee.
“But of course I was married to the Baron, and the other girl in the film, Maxi, was more his type. He liked the dark meat. But don’t we all?
Grrr.
” She growled at Reg, who giggled. His slender form was nut-brown and hairless.

“Can you tell me about the movie?”

“Making the film was rather like posing for him, I’d say. One felt him seducing one, manipulating one, dominating one, but also beseeching one. One felt needed. It was damp and cold in that house and he kept us all there, Maxi, Garreth, and me and his crew members, who were all really artists and musicians he’d picked up someplace. All living together and shooting for several months. That was his idea, this experiment. He’d cook big meals. Wonderful earthy stews. We’d play music and sing and dance. And of course everyone slept with everybody. But he would also rage and yell or make us sit and wait in strict silence while he just stared into space, you know, deep thinking. We were so besotted, we didn’t mind. Plus he locked the door to keep us from leaving. It was my husband’s aunt’s house and he took the keys and locked me in it. Extraordinary! You couldn’t do that now, could you? Just the insurance is unthinkable.” She sipped her drink and her long, pointy tongue flicked extra whale sauce from her chin.

“After that we lost touch for awhile. He was in Paris or somewhere
and I was mainly on tour in South America, where we were always a smash for some reason, they couldn’t even understand the lyrics, or else we were staying up at my husband’s castle.”

“The Baron?”

“No, darling the Baron was quite penniless. This was my second husband, Manfred. His record went quintuple platinum or something absurd like this and he bought a small island off the coast of Scotland. Technically he was the king of it I suppose. Quite fun really. We had our own money printed that we’d hand out to visitors, though of course you couldn’t do much with it but buy a pint at the pub we set up in the basement. Zed came once to visit, brought along these two Chinese girls, I believe. The rumor was they were sisters but I don’t think so. Cousins, maybe. Anyway, he was the perfect guest, the only one there who could actually ride and shoot and all that. Giant feasts at that long table, a boar stuffed with pigeons and wine in five-hundred-year-old goblets. Terribly decadent. Though far too chilly for a proper orgy. We played cards mostly. And drank Scotch of course. This was ages before I got sober. Then, much later, I met his wife, the widow, in Cannes. I was there with my husband, a different one, a record producer, and she was just there I suppose. Bit of a mess, I’m afraid. Always drunk or high on something and crying for no reason in the loo. But a lovely girl. Just his sort, I saw immediately. Small, dark, with spooky eyes. She reminded me of poor Maxi. He always had marvelous taste in girls.”

39

DAEMONICA PUT ME IN TOUCH
with Garreth Barke, the male lead from
Ladbroke Grove,
and we met at the Slug & Sword, a pub in Santa Monica that catered to the UK expat community. That afternoon, there was a knot of angry red-faced men in shorts and one scary drunk woman crowded at the end of the bar, watching rugby from
some former colony. I found Garreth in the back as he’d said, but I wouldn’t have known him. The slender, pretty lad from Ladbroke had grown into a head-butting barroom baritone, slow-roasted into mellow middle age. His hands were scarred lumps. His nose bore a delicate filigree of fine red tendrils, blooming over his cheeks. His faded blond glory receded over a sun-scorched dome. His eyes were small and icy blue.

“He was a clever old bastard, I’ll give him that. Saw that right off when I met him, back in London, in another age. Had a way with the ladies, too. Of course, back then we thought it was grand to prance about like Tinkerbell in a scarf, pink trousers, and pointy boots. I’d see him round the pubs. A great drinker and great talker, so he was all right by me. A lot of real talkers don’t like anyone else to share the limelight, but I say, a man’s got to drink sometime, hasn’t he? Plus he was the type to spend his last quid on a pint for himself and a friend, then put the change in the fruit machine and let it spin. I saw him pull that trick and win in the Drowned Fox, a scalawag’s pub in Earl’s Court, catering to the finest pimps, pushers, and pickpockets. He spent the whole takings right then, standing the house to drinks. Every villain in the place loved him. Pure class! He was untouchable from then on, safe anywhere in London.

“He was a painter when we met and I hung about more in the music world, played a bit of guitar and sang, but we chased the same girls, and so when he asked me to be in his movie, I said, why the fuck not? I had the idea I was playing a secret assassin like, and it turned into I know not what, but no bother, I had a grand time. Free rent and whiskey in a house with two pretty, mostly nude girls, right? Still, the movie never came out, some trouble with the taxman I recall, and it all came to dust in the end. Then I heard he left town, and the next time our paths crossed was when fortune brought me to this sunny shore, where a poor lad with a golden voice and the gift of gab could eke out a pittance playing gangsters and drunks on cop shows and in the movies.”

He hoisted his glass and gazed through the amber into the distance.
“LA, you’re a bitch goddess. Half slut, half princess, and all whore.” I wanted to ask about the finer differences between the various terms, but you don’t stop a true bullshit artist on a roll. “Mate, I’ve played paupers, princes, pirates, and poets. I tangled wits with Columbo and got kicked in the nuts by Rockford. In my sweetest memory, the one I’ll savor on me deathbed, Angie Dickinson herself kissed me and slapped me, the first on camera, the second later on in her trailer. But still, even the golden calf’s tits run out of milk and honey sometimes, and around nineteen hundred and ninety-five, I found myself on the bum, trying to buy a sandwich at Mrs. Gooch’s, that overpriced bloody grocery in Beverly Hills. Now, old Zed was a cocksman of note, and…” He smacked his lips, as if tasting his own spicy tale, and thirsty at the memory of his dry days, raised his glass, only to find it empty. He looked at in surprise, then at me.

“Please, allow me,” I said. On cue, the waiter brought him a lager and took my money. “God bless,” he said and took a deep swallow. “Now where was I?”

“You were telling me about Zed in LA.”

“Ah, yes. Exactly. O cruel bandit time! First it takes your friends, then your enemies, and at last your memories of them all.” He drank again. “As I was saying, old Zed was a cocksman of note, and just as I was scraping up my last pennies, along he comes swooping like Errol Flynn in a jeep, dressed in khakis like the great white hunter himself, and on each arm a dark young beauty. I tell you the girls were finer, and younger, than some bottles of Scotch I’ve known.”

“‘Zed,’ I said, ‘me long lost brother!’ Well, he recognized me right off, gave me a great hug. I told him my troubles and, Bob’s your uncle, I was in that contraption of his, bouncing up the hill. Now in those days old Zed had a big place up Laurel Canyon, built by who knows, some porn merchant, a real plaster castle with the works, grand dining hall, black-bottom pool, snooker parlor. He’d acquired it cheaply because a mudslide took the road out and the land was too steep for city pipes. But what does a man want with civilization when he’s got a sweet young Mrs. and a concubine to boot? He had
his own water tank and septic, a generator for light. And you needed a four-wheel drive. I felt like Indy Jones heading around those turns or over the plank bridge. Now and again a drunk visitor would roll into the woods and they’d haul him out with a winch.” He poured most of the glass down his gullet and blinked at me as if he’d just woken up. “Where was I?”

“You were going to tell me about his wife,” I prompted, worried he’d get too drunk to remember.

“Ah yes, sweet Mona. The child bride, Princess of Castle Naught! A soul like a wishing well, over which one longed to yearn, casting one’s heart into the deeps of those eyes. Her mother was a great courtesan. An actress-singer-dancer, scorchingly sexy but without a drop of talent. Lucky for her, she got pregnant by a famous man, and in exchange for not bugging him, he set her up with a house and enough to get by.”

“Who was the father?”

“Good question. As far as I know, Mother kept shtum, even with her daughter. Meanwhile, she was determined to make a star of little Mona, music lessons, dance, elocution. She was smart as whip, too smart, actually. By fourteen she’d had it. Told mom to stuff it and went on a tear with the other Hollywood brats of the day. That’s when Zed met her. She moved into the castle with Mum’s blessing, I heard. She could’ve done worse. Zed made her read, at least, since she dropped school, serious books he piled up by the pool. He took her to museums and showed films in the house. I remember, he made both girls study, and quizzed them over dinner. It was rather sweet really, in a depraved sort of way.”