Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See (9 page)

“I hear that once a week,” Mick said, opening a bottle of prescription pills.

It was a testament to Christie’s talent that this moron hadn’t ruined her career.

“You’ve never heard it from me and you’ve never heard it about a Raymond Scotto project. Angela Glass is producing.”

Mick popped some little pink pills in his mouth and stuck his mouth under the running faucet. He stood up and wiped his mouth with a guest towel.

“Mick, Jesus, she won Best Picture tonight for Chrissake.”

“I know. And no.”

“What? Dad, Raymond Scotto.”

“I’ve heard about this script. We’re not interested.”

“Why? What’s it about?”

“It’s a career-making role, Mick,” I said, “a serious part. She can do this and you know how sensitive Raymond will be with her—with the material. He adapted the book himself. Just give it a read.”

Christie jumped off the counter and tugged on my tux jacket.

“What. Is. It. About?”

I started to answer. “It’s this completely gripping story about a young girl and a—”

But Mick jumped in. “It’s about a ten-year-old heroin addict and a psycho Vietnam vet.”

“It’s about loneliness and isolation—two outsiders. And she’s thirteen.”

“Who’s playing the guy?” Christie asked.

“It’s out to Pacino. Hoffman, De Niro, and Jeff Bridges are also possibilities. But that is all off the record.”

Christie nodded. “Interesting. I want to read it.”

“Great, I’ll get it over to—”

“Don’t waste her fuckin’ time.” Mick picked up the razor blade again.

Christie raised the football game in the air, about to throw it against the wall next to Mick. Then she stopped and gently put it down on the counter.

“Don’t listen to him,” Christie said calmly. “He gets very grouchy when he does too much coke. Send the script to the house. I’ll read it after school tomorrow.”

A couple of barely dressed models somehow managed to unlock the door and push their way in. The bathroom was suddenly very crowded. “Awesome,” one said, as she bent over Mount Fuji and snorted while the second one held her friend’s long blonde hair out of the way.

“Help yourselves, ladies.” Suddenly Mick had become much more generous.

“But Daddy …” Christie pulled at the sleeve that held the arm attached to the hand holding the razor blade. “You promised we could find some food. I’m starving.”

Mick grabbed her by the arm and spoke to her through clenched teeth. “This is business. These are potential clients—”

“Why don’t I take Christie downstairs to the buffet?” I said, stepping between them. “You come meet us there when you’ve wrapped up your work thing here.”

Mick was already face-down in the coke again. “Fine, sure,” he said, without looking up.

Christie and I ate burgers and fries and shakes made to order. I took off my shoes and socks and we ate sitting with our feet dangling in Sydney’s brightly lit pool.

“Is this how you usually woo your clients?” she asked.

“Okay, no, and since when did twelve-year-olds start using the word ‘woo’ in casual conversation? And by the way, I’m not wooing you as a client. Just for this one script. Though I do think we’d make a fabulous team.”

“So why are you being so nice to me?” she asked. “You’re not some creepy pervert, are you?”

“No, I’m not some creepy pervert.” I cleared my throat and looked off across the pool into the anonymous black-tie crowd. “You and I have more in common than you might imagine.”

Christie looked at me, tilting her head from one side to the other. “Hmmm. Well, you’re not an Oscar-winning female child actress,” she said coyly.

I managed half a smile. Still avoiding her eyes.

“As far as I know there’s only one other thing I’m famous for,” she said, putting her burger down.

I didn’t need to ask and she didn’t need to answer. She stared down into the pool and made figure eights in the water with her feet.

“So your father’s a fucking asshole too?” she asked, quietly.

“I—uh—I don’t think he meant to be … means to be,” I said. And it was probably the nicest thing I’d said about Pop in years.

“But that doesn’t really change things, does it?” she asked.

I forced myself to look at her. “No. It is what it is. Just don’t …”

“What?”

“It’s none of my business, but—”

“You’re an agent. I thought it was your business to make everything your business.”

“Funny.”

“Well, I should get home. School night.” She swung her legs out of the water. I stood and helped her up.

“Don’t waste your time trying to please him. He’ll disappoint you,” I said before letting go of her hand. “Over and over.”

She looked at me with a sad smile. “And I deserve better.”

“Yes. Much, much better.”

“Sound advice, Mr. Todd.” She stuffed her socks in her pockets and put her shoes on.

“Should I get … your father?” I asked.

“You’re kidding, right? Like I’d get in a car with him behind the wheel. I have a driver. It was a pleasure meeting you, Greyson,” she said, extending her hand. “I’ll look for that script tomorrow.”

I took the pale little thing and shook it. Her grip was exceptionally firm. I don’t know why I was surprised. As I watched her seek out Sydney and politely say her good-nights with more grace and good manners than most of the guests in attendance, I had no idea what all of this would do to her later in life, but I couldn’t help wishing that I had been as strong at such a young age.

All I remember from that time is the weakness and the naïveté. And the fear. The resentment came later.

New York, 1994
. “Greyson, Mr. Todd,
shhh
, it’s okay.”

I wake up in the middle of the night to see Frankie standing over me. “You were having a nightmare.”

I touch my face. It’s wet and there is a dark, damp circle on my pillow. “Was I—?”

“Crying?” Frankie nods in a gay, sympathetic, nurse-like way that couldn’t be more humiliating, unless perhaps I had actually wet the bed.

“But I don’t remember anything,” I say, genuinely baffled. “Nothing.”

Frankie nods his gay, nursie nod again. “It’s very common. We don’t really know why. The ECT just seems to stir things up.”

I lay on my pillow, nodding, knowing he doesn’t know fuck all about what he is saying but appreciating his concern nonetheless.

“The important thing for you to know is that it’s perfectly normal. Now how about a milligram of Ativan so you can get back to sleep?”

“Two?” I ask

He clucks his gay, nursie tongue at me. “One and a half.”

“Deal,” I say and turn my pillow over, tear side down.

FIFTH

“Okay, hon, ready for another little trip?” Florence whispers in my ear. Her breath is a mix of sour hospital coffee and Licorice Nibs
.

“Where to?” I say with quiet menace. Just the way the character in the movie did
.

“Someplace nice.”

“Florence, Flor … have you ever seen the movie?”

“What movie’s that, hon?”

“Where To?”

“Oh sure, the little heroin addict girl and the disturbed Vietnam veteran. It’s still on cable every once in a while. Now I need you to count backwards from a hundred.”

“The whole point of the movie is that—” and then the warm sensation is in my chest and stomach and arms. I stare into Florence’s eyes, refusing to give in. Willing them open
.

“Come on, hon. Quick trip. Someplace nice.” My eyes close without my permission. I twitch slightly. Just a tiny myoclonic jerk—the kind babies have in their sleep. That sleep-induced feeling of falling left over from when we were monkeys and hung from trees by our tails
.

I am under before I can tell Florence that the point is that there is no someplace nice. There’s just the place. And then the next place and the next. And the motion in between
.

The Negev, 1987
. The road snakes back and forth along the wall of the giant crater without, it seems, any particular goal in mind. One switchback brings me and my rented Peugeot toward the top of Mitzpe Ramon—which in Hebrew translates to something like “huge fuckin’ hole in the ground.” The next leads me down a steep hill into the belly of the beast—splayed open, gasping and arid. Yet a third gives me an unobstructed view of the rusted-out cars that lie at odd angles at the bottom of the canyon. The Israeli Ministry of Transport hasn’t bothered to install guardrails on this desolate desert road. Or reflectors. Obviously, the Israeli MOT believes that God will provide.

No lights, no guardrails, no people—just an endless expanse of purple-brown rock. This road, this desert seems to go on forever. Nice place, but I wouldn’t want to visit. Occasionally a little puff of sand rises suddenly and swirls like a miniature tornado. Then after a minute it collapses and dies. At least the Sahara, with its great drifting dunes, shape-shifts overnight. There I would wake up with a view that resembled the Great Pyramids, and by happy hour the following evening I’d be staring at the back of an impossibly sexy woman, sprawled languidly on her side, the curve of her lower back smiling at me sweetly, her hips and ass jutting out into the desert. I haven’t been to the Gobi, but in the interest of fairness I’ll have to go. For comparison’s sake.

Every ten kilometers or so, there is a yellow sign.
CAMEL CROSSING
, it says, in Hebrew and in Arabic and in English. Under a picture of a camel. Every ten kilometers, another sign. But so far, no camel. Just more desert. More nothing.

The friendly woman at the air-conditioned visitors’ center back in Avdat—a ruin on the spice route, which once did very well in the frankincense and myrrh business—told me this drive was not to be missed. I believed her because she spoke English and because the bathrooms in the visitors’ center were clean and because she used a highlighter on the map when she showed me the route. Next time I’m in Avdat, I’ll have to kick her ass.

My rental car and I finally reach the bottom of the crater, and, as if it were possible, it is even less than I expected. I get out of the car to look around and the heat sucks the air out of my lungs. Chalky rocks give off prodigious amounts of dust punctuated by dry, brown beds of dirt out of which sprout sad, withered growth that aspires to be vegetation. Who the fuck would fight over land like this?

The wind is blowing, which should be a relief, but here just means sand. A lot of it. In your eyes. I can’t see shit. But I can hear. It sounds like a shriek, only not human. Then something nudges me. In the crotch.

“What the fuck?”

I take a step back and bump into the car. It keeps coming. I close my eyes against the blowing sand and swat blindly at whatever it is. I pray they don’t have coyotes in Israel. I feel fur and then a warm, wet tongue and then it bites me. Hard.

“FUCK!”

The wind and sand stop blowing and I see my attacker. A goat. And he has backup. Two others flanking him. They are nibbling at desiccated shrubbery but they clearly have his back. I look down at my hand, which is dripping blood. I seriously doubt these goats have been properly vaccinated.

The girl who comes over the rocky hill in the distance makes me forget about the rabies I may have contracted. She almost makes me forget about the desert. Except that she
is
the desert. She is almost biblical. In a central casting kind of way. Filmy fuchsia cloth winds around her waist and covers her legs like a sarong. The rest of her, including her head and most of her face, is covered in thin black fabric. In one hand she holds a tall, gnarled staff.

Her willowy silhouette standing there, backlit on the top of that hill. I couldn’t have designed the shot better if I’d hired David Lean.

And then come her goats. At least a dozen of them. And my perfect Bedouin princess opens her mouth and makes a noise somewhere between a yodel and a gag and starts knocking the goats in their knees with her staff and they start running straight at me.

She takes her time coming down the hill. From ten feet away I can see her face is as beautiful as the rest of her. Dark-brown skin, huge copper eyes, long eyelashes, full lips, and dark hands with long fingers and pink palms. She walks up to me without hesitation, takes my wounded hand in hers, and gives the guilty goat a nasty whack with her staff. Then she pulls a canteen from underneath the folds of her black scarf and pours a little pool of water onto my wound. The blood washes away and we can see where the goat teeth have punctured my skin. After that, the beautiful Bedouin girl makes a great guttural hacking noise in the back of her throat and launches a giant loogey onto my open wound. She massages it into my hand and I feel slightly light-headed. Until she reaches down and lifts the bottom of her skirt over her knees and halfway up her surprisingly muscular brown thighs, bending her head so she can catch the hem in her teeth and make a rip in the sheer fabric. She tears off a strip of fuchsia and ties it around my slimy, spit-soaked goat wound.

Then she speaks to me quickly in some language that may be Arabic. Or not.

“English,” I say. “Sorry.”

She rolls her eyes, walks around to the passenger side of my car and gets in. I stand there like an idiot until she honks the horn several times. I get in.

Drive, you moron
, she gestures.

I pull onto the road slowly and the goats fall into line behind us. I point out the back window, smiling. She rolls her eyes again.

Bedouins are such cynics.

We putter along the main road for a while until, just as we reach another camel crossing sign, the girl grabs the steering wheel and turns us onto a dirt road that eventually disappears under an arch created by two enormous boulders. Not a road you’d find on any map. The goats follow. And, without warning, a camel.

Clearly not the brightest of species, the thing tries to stick its head into my closed window. I see a flash of teeth—uglier, yellower, and more crooked than I would’ve thought possible—and then the window is smeared with camel spit.