Let the Dark Flower Blossom by Norah Labiner Page B

good looks. And he wanted to make it big in Hollywood.
    Eloise was bone-skinny. She chain-smoked. Her fingernails were painted black. She had gone from naïf to nihilist. She had been lonely in Paris, so she hid in the darkness of the cinema. She saw The Amityville Horror eight times. That was where she met Zigouiller—he ran the projector—or rather, to use his unfortunate and entirely real name: Herman Munster. He had grown up in some snow-globe perfect little mountain town, which was in the news awhile back, when a mass grave was discovered there. That has nothing to do with the story. Neither does this: Zigouiller means “to murder,” or rather, “to do in,” in French.
    Harlow Jamison was living with us; she was the actress starring in the movie adaptation of Babylon Must Fall . She had been discovered as a teenager in a shopping mall in Lincoln, Nebraska. She had white-blonde hair, a baby-doll face, and a disconcertingly weary voice. She thought that Ro was in love with her. She thought of lifeas a movie; fate was nothing more than a plot twist. We shared a habit of insomnia. Late at night, in the kitchen, while the clock ticked, and my fingers did not move on keys, she found me at the typewriter.
    I used to say that her voice sounded like a graham cracker crumbling into a glass of gin. Back when I said such things.
    It too was a long time ago.
    Harlow had Ro.
    And El had Zig. Sure, he wasn’t a big star, but he did all right for himself in the movies. He had a quality, somewhere between menacing and brooding, that lent itself to the role of the sympathetic sadist. He was in such B-screen erotic thrillers as Nightfall, King Me, Girl in a Maze , and the soft-core cult classic Ava and Eva . In the epic Fatherland he played a tortured writer. It’s true: he ended up playing one tortured sadist after another. He played sadistic spies, the occasional sadistic cyborg, terrorist, morally bankrupt cat burglar, or in the disturbing and utterly unerotic case of Ava and Eva , a sadistic sadist. Zig grew despondent; in France he could have been a hero, but in America he was a villain. He didn’t want to be relegated to a lifetime in a black turtleneck and ski mask. He was typecast. He was disillusioned. Zig had El. And El had Ro. Ro did what he wanted. I had my typewriter. And the sun shined every day. It was only right that Zigouiller and Roman became pals: drinking Pernod, swimming in the ocean, getting coked up and ranting about Cahiers du Cinéma .
    When I left for graduate school in Wisconsin, Ro and Harlow and El and Zig were living together in that house on the beach.

    â€œIs it true?” Beatrice asks.
    â€œDid all these things happen the way you say they did?” she says.
    â€œDoes it matter?” I say.
    She gets her wide-eyed lost look.
    As though she is retreating into some deep feminine hideout in her heart.
    And she won’t argue the finer irritating points of semantics.
    Not tonight anyway.
    She wants to finish reading.
    Beatrice in the lamplight.
    She rests her head on the arm of the sofa.
    She reads on.
    One by one the pages fall to the floor.

C HAPTER 10
Eloise turns toward an undeniable conclusion
    L OUIS S ARASINE, IN CORDUROY AND TWEED , in the car on the drive back from Lake Forest to the city in the darkness of almost winter told his wife Eloise how well she had done, how absolutely beautifully she had soldiered through it. He asked if she needed another one? She said yes. Always answer yes as there is no such word as no in the unconscious. He doled out a pill into her gloved hand. The leather seats were heated; the evening was cold. The day had been cold and bright. If it had snowed, they could have gotten out of it. Thanks giving at his brother’s house? Oh, how could she bear it? The spoiled children, the gossip, the limp crudités and blood-orange cranberry jelly, the electric carving knife, and that sacrificial bird browning in the oven. Even