Authors: Francesca Lia Block
T
he film my father put me in was called
Narcissus
He saw that I was broken
and he thought it might work well for his next project
I went to the set without any makeup
The ladies frowned at my skin
turned my face this way and that
in the harsh lights
“What are you eating?” they asked me
“Dairy? Sugar?”
“Do you get any sleep?”
“Supplements? Facials?”
“You’ve got to start taking care of yourself”
I shrugged
I said I was okay
I had just inherited my father’s complexion
And now of course
I didn’t have the benefit of sex with a god every night
At least in this film no one gets raped, mutilated
or murdered
Unless you count vanishing as murder
It’s what you assume in this world these days
when someone
disappears
I was supposed to vanish
turn into a voice
Narcissus came to the first reading late
He didn’t apologize
My father didn’t say anything
Anyone else
he’d have fired on the spot
Instead he just scowled
at me
I turned away so he couldn’t see
Narcissus had long, gold ringlets
chiseled features
and a body like a temple
Don’t look too deeply into his eyes, though
You will never find your reflection
I’ll probably be fine if he doesn’t touch me
I told myself
But that was not my father’s plan
Narcissus and I went out for dinner
My father set it up
There was a bar of red-veined marble
with spigots spurting wine like blood
Stargazer lilies stained the white linen tablecloths
with their rusty powder
A woman was covertly nibbling the petals
The food had no scent
Beautiful people sat staring at themselves in the mirrors
Their twins emerged out of glass pools
to have sex with them on the tabletops
In the candlelight I wondered
if Narcissus might find me attractive
Not that I cared
Love had already left me
I had on makeup and a blue satin chinoiserie dress
my mother’s jewels—
a double strand of pearls and her sapphire ring
I imagined her teeth, her eyes
I asked Narcissus about himself
I didn’t expect him to say anything interesting
but when he started talking I fell
under his spell
Instead of touching parts of my mother
I watched Narcissus’s full lips move over
his
white teeth
His eyes were pools shattered by sunlight
and his lashes brushed his cheekbones
If he was looking at his reflection
I couldn’t see
N
arcissus lived with his mother in an apartment on a street lined with other apartments that looked just like it—a cottage cheese stucco-and-glass building with a pool in the center.
Narcissus swam alone late at night with his reflection. The pool made everything blue, including Narcissus’s skin. The air always smelled of chlorine. When Narcissus swam it got into his hair so he washed carefully with his mother’s expensive shampoo before he went to sleep.
After school, Narcissus took the bus to the beach where he went surfing or perfected his tan. When he got home his mother was never there. He defrosted his dinner and went into the
bathroom paneled with mirrors. He took off his clothes and admired his abdominal muscles, his skin, his cock.
Narcissus’s father had left before he could remember. His mother was not there. She said she was an actress but Narcissus suspected something else because there were never any roles he knew of but always enough money, heavy makeup, tight dresses, the stink of men. Narcissus never wanted to smell like that.
When he talked to her she looked right through him if she looked his way at all. But suddenly he had discovered, in those mirrors, someone even more beautiful. Someone completely devoted. Someone who would never look away.
A lot of people didn’t look away. There were women and men wanting sexual favors. But Narcissus stopped caring about them. It was easier to stand in front of the mirrors, caressing himself.
Sometimes his twin would materialize. Cold as glass and without a smell but so beautiful that it didn’t matter. They could fuck all night, tireless, insatiable, exactly the same.
One day on the boardwalk a tall, thin man with pale skin, a hat and dark glasses approached Narcissus. The man seemed out of place and spoke with a thick accent. He handed Narcissus
his card and said, “Have you ever acted before?”
Narcissus smiled because in some ways that was all he had ever done. “Why?” he asked.
“I am making a film,” the man said. “I need someone to help make my daughter disappear.”
“D
o you know what I like about you, Echo?”
Narcissus said
“You know how to listen
Most of these actresses I know
just want to go on and on about themselves”
Perhaps this, too, was a test
Narcissus did not taste of the spray
that spurts from the skin of ripe oranges
When we touched it was for the cameras
His pupils were blank
empty
My reflection was never there
The lights were bright, revealing the monsters
He watched himself the whole time
“Who are you?” Narcissus’s character asked
“You…you…you”
Those were my lines
I went home and looked in the giant tarnished mirror
with the frame of silver roses
I had not vanished
I had not faded
away to just a voice
Maybe I wish I had
It was my voice that had been stolen away
S
tray dogs followed Orpheus through the streets
feral cats crawled onto his lap
wild parrots flew down to light
upon his shoulders
rolling their eyes in ecstasy
eucalyptus trees swooned when he passed them
jacarandas did a striptease of purple petals
Orpheus tapped the mike
and squinted out into the audience
shifting the weight of his narrow hips
He cleared his throat
but it still sounded like he’d just had a cigarette
He ran his hand through his hair, slicking it back
sang a cappella
with his hands in the back pockets of his jeans
leaning into the microphone as if he were going to go
down on it
then played his guitar
Music can make a man a demigod
especially to a girl who has seen Love
up close
and burned
and lost him
especially to a girl without a voice
I had never understood the expression
about your heart being in your mouth
It beat there, choking me with blood
After the last song he came off the stage
and someone introduced us
I could see the dark roots of his bleached hair
The insomniac circles under his eyes
He had the irises of a mystic
Pale, almost fanatical
His voice was gravelly
His hands were warm with large blue veins
I could hear incantations in his blood
“I’ve seen your films,” he said
“I’d like to talk with you more some time”
The next night we ate avocados, oranges and honey
in Orpheus’s candlelit cavern deep in the canyon
I wore strapless pale lace and tulle and lilies in my hair
“Tell me,” he said
“Tell me a story”
This in itself was an aphrodisiac
My throat opened like a flower
He listened to the myths
The ones my love once gave me
Orpheus liked their darkness and the violence
and the truth
For me it is the transformation
I was restless, sweating in my dress
“Let’s go,” I said “Let’s go, O”
We ran out into the canyon
Up the hillsides to the street
The sky was bright, hallucinatory, pink
We ran into the neighborhood of rotting mansions
When the sun set we roamed their damp lawns
kissed under the purple trees
There was a pink restaurant with a green awning
We broke inside and explored the shadowy booths
the cobwebs draping the bar
We waltzed on the dance floor with ghosts of dead stars
When the sun rose we ate waffles with whipped cream
in an all-night coffee shop
Sunshine burned through the glass
searing the night off our skins
Back in his cavern, Orpheus sang my myths to me
I imagined that I would stop telling stories
stop acting in my father’s films
I would give up my aspirations
I do not need to be an artist, I told myself
I do not need to be a goddess
I will be a woman, a wife, a muse
But this is what I could not give up:
I could not give up myself
And my self had become
the memory of the god who once visited me each night
I could not give up the chance to win him back
How could I win him back if I were happy with another?
It would never happen.
I would need to prove myself, suffer
I would need the god
of hell
O
rpheus was a musical prodigy. What else, with a name like that? In another place and time his mother might have been a muse of epic poetry, but in this world of separation she was only a woman afraid of poverty and growing old. She took all the money her son made from his first album and bought a small mansion with etched-glass windows, gold columns and a spiked gate. She bought a car and furs and jewels for herself, new breasts. In another place and time, Orpheus’s father might have been the sun god, or at least a king, but instead he was a frightened, bankrupt man who never told Orpheus’s mother to stop what she was doing.
Orpheus refused to play music for anyone. He locked himself in his room and wrote silent poetry in his journals. He could hear the song of it, his secret. Orpheus’s mother knocked on the door, wanting another album, more money for new skin—on her face, another fur coat. That was when he left the fancy house that he had paid for with music. He never spoke to either of his parents again.
Orpheus went wandering through the canyons. He found secret underground passageways, crumbling caverns where he hid, got high, smoked packs of cigarettes. One night he ventured out and played his guitar for the birch trees. They danced in the moonlight, their many dark eyes watching, pale silver skin quivering. In the morning the avocado and citrus trees filled his open palms with fruit. Overblown orange poppies with opiate seeds grew out of the parched dirt. Bees let him reach his bare hands into their hives, scooping out gobs of honey, unstung. Rabbits, squirrels and doves gathered to listen to this new Orpheus, the magician, the mystic, realizing his truth, even in a time without muses, kings or sun gods.
It was hard to live on avocados and oranges, and when the tobacco and pot ran out Orpheus got a job as a bartender in a
seedy strip club and sang onstage after hours. The strippers were like birch trees, he found—that silvery and wide-eyed, that susceptible to his charms. He slept with a lot of them. But when he met Eurydice he knew he wanted more. Alone in his cavern, with the insatiable dancing trees awaiting him, he wanted a wife.
When Eurydice left him the maenad came. She wanted more than a husband.
A
fter Orpheus began to doubt
he could not reclaim me
If you are to love, never look back
I should have told him
But what do I know?
I am just as filled with doubt
I am only Eurydice
I am known as Orpheus’s
I was never a goddess
My father didn’t argue with me when I said I had to leave
He smiled to himself
“Whatever you want, princess
You’ll be back in time”
I went away to a new city
and half waited for Orpheus to come for me
To lead me back with his poetry
Dear Orpheus, why did you doubt?
You are an artist
When you sing your words
all the women want your child in their bellies
All the men want to stand where you stand
The god of hell should not intimidate you
Orpheus did not come
Days and days passed
I lived in the tall, cold building
I put on the stray pieces I had brought
from my mother’s wardrobe
and walked to school bent under the weight of my books
I sat in the echoing lecture halls
and listened for the poetry hidden
in the professors’ words
But I couldn’t hear it
I ate but the food had no taste
I drank the alcohol
that was given out every night at the parties
I watched my belly bloat and my face break out
Someone offered me acid
but when I looked out my window
eight flights to the ground below
I knew I couldn’t take it
It would have been too easy to jump
I wondered if Orpheus was writing about me
I wondered if I was getting closer to hell
My sister called me and said
“Did you hear? Are you okay?”
“Hear what?” I asked
but I knew it was bad
“You know he was dating that crazy singer?
They were doing heroin.
Something happened. Orpheus is dead.”
Love had left again
I had no doubts about hell now
I was all the way there