Scar Flowers (2 page)

Simon watched the crowd cluster around the bar, where most people ordered mineral water. He should follow their example, the way his agent urged him. “
That’s the way to stay sharp, make deals!” In the men’s room before the party, one of these sharp dealmakers had gulped Xanax with a friendly “Want one? No calories.”

When he booked this trip, before the StarBorn deal went through, it looked like a bus ticket and a few nights on a friend’s sofa. Now he was staying in the hotel proper and flying on the studio’s dime. The compromise he worked out with Fran had him doing a press junket for
Critical Mass
plus a film panel tomorrow and reserving the festival’s closing-night media gauntlet for men-tions of
Babylon
. Tonight he would do a few minutes of meet-and-greet and then finish his
Babylon
notes in his room.

Simon set his empty shot glass down and paused as alcohol coursed down to his guts like a curtain descending. He couldn’t argue with free booze. A platinum blond
e in a blue dress shouldered her way toward him. Angela. Too late to hide; she had seen him. Well, he would know one person here. And she looked better than he remembered.

“Simon!” She pulled a young man with yellow curls and a dimpled chin along with her. “Simon, this is Jorg Johansen. Jorg, this is my director. You know,
Critical Mass
.”

“Angela.” Simon held out his hand.

She looked at his fingers, then back up at him.

“I’ve already gone from ex to zero with you, is that it? I never was lucky with algebra.”
She crinkled her eyes in imitation of a smile and stroked Jorg’s neck. “Jorg’s the next big thing. The Roselli picture, and an action film in another month. Simon’s the man with the plan. Like his plan to always come to parties alone, so he can leave with someone. Jorg, did you know I met Simon at a party?”

Jorg focused on a spot over Simon’s right shoulder. “Good to meet you, man.”

“Simon used to be an incorruptible indie man who was going to bring surrealism to the masses,” said Angela. “Now he’s master of the Hollywood parody.
Critical Mass
, the parody. Only no one’s laughing.”

She brushed past them into the crowd.

“I hear you do some acting,” said Jorg. “Didn’t it freak you out, playing a white guy in
St. Sebastian
? You know, a religious symbol and everything?”

Little
gigolo. Where did Angela find him?
“No worries, man. I’m just a director now. We’re the ones who hire white guys to play brown people.”

Jorg squared his shoulders, tugged the hem of his shirt, and surveyed the crowd.

“Well, I should go.” As he followed after Angela, Jorg placed his hand on Simon’s shoulder. “I really loved
St. Sebastian
.”

Angela.
She could drink most people under the table and charm anyone—or cut them down in three words or less. When he cast her in
Critical Mass
two years ago, she had been sleeping on couches, in friends’ band vans, or at the apartment he shared with crew members while filming here in L.A. A roof-whore, she had called herself with a laugh: “Anything for a roof over my head.” Thrift-store purses, combat boots, a worn bus pass. No traces of these things were left in her life.

Had he changed too since a StarBorn Studios exec read the interview where he said he had always wanted to make
Babylon
but could never put together the financing? The studio’s offer had come soon afterward: to direct
Babylon
with any cast and crew he wanted, within budget. He had gone from pauper to studio man. A film-whore.

Two drinks and several handshakes after his conversation with Angela and Jorg, Simon felt someone staring. A girl with long red hair
stood against the windows. No, not a girl. Her size gave the impression of youth, but the way she carried herself held nothing gawky. A gymnast or a dancer, though she was dressed like a schoolmistress, in a long skirt and a high-necked blouse. An unlikely costume for someone in this crowd, except that she had nothing on underneath the blouse; her nipples made two sharp points under the thin satin. The woman held his gaze as she spoke to her companion, a balding man in a tweedy sport shirt, then she cocked an eyebrow at Simon as if to question his brazenness in looking at her, or his right to be here.

He had earned the right, and not by wearing a waiter’s uniform and carrying a tray. Not that her opinion made
a dif-ference, but he had had enough of the festival for one night. Principal photography on
Babylon
started in three weeks. How could he finish the shot list until he knew the throughline, the whole point of the story? Did the film’s protagonist, stripped of his past and his sanity by his obsessed admirer Julia, want to answer the riddle of his lost identity or to revenge himself on her, the woman who took his memories? Julia, rejected by society, felt forced to steal her way into hearts. Simon had proposed looking for a black actress to fill the role, to underscore Julia’s status as a pariah, but the studio balked. Maybe the rule was one minority per film.

Which
is the stronger drive in
Babylon
, revenge or identity? What drives the hero before and after the events covered in the script? The trauma of thinking he’d killed his parents as a boy? The search for his prized “rational perfection”?

A familiar laugh jolted him. It was Angela’s high-pitched cackle, the one she used when she was drunk or about to cry or both. She hugged her waist with one arm, her hand hovering at her collarbone, as she chatted with a group of women. Her eyes shone, red-rimmed. Jorg was nowhere in sight.

It would not hurt to try and make nice. Tonight was the first time they had spoken in the six months since filming on
Critical
had wrapped.

“Where’s your nascent friend?” he asked.

Angela bared her teeth at him. “Well, if it isn’t the only man in film who never mixes his career with his personal life. As you can see, I’m all alone, a sitting target, and no one’s begging me for a quote. Must be the charisma of your film clinging to me.”

“Maybe if you found yourself a decent date, they’d know you were a movie star.”

To his surprise, she took the hit without resistance, her skin ashen. “Fuck you, Simon,” she whispered. “Sincerely.” There were tracks in her makeup where tears had washed away the powder. Angela cocked her head and fluttered her lashes. “Don’t worry, swinger. Saying that doesn’t mean I want anything from you. God forbid.”

“I’m not the one who came here with a prop.”

“What makes you so sure I’m not serious about Jorg?”

“I give you more credit than that, Angela. Don’t disappoint me.”

“If you had just once tried to talk to me—”

For
a moment, he saw her as he had when they had first met. The woman who illuminated the screen, made you love her. The woman who hissed in his ear in the dark. But his reply was already out, the rehash of weeks’ worth of arguments and blame: “Did you have to talk about us in that interview?”

She closed her mouth, sudden as a door slamming, and walked away.

There were eyes on him again—the child-woman by the windows. Annoyance prickled him, and adrenaline shot through his belly. A faint smile curved the woman’s lips, and in the end, he was the one who averted his gaze.

He made it halfway to the door, where he had to wait for the crush of people to part, next to the red-haired woman. A tendril of her hair curved down the front of
her blouse. It was a new-penny copper color, glinting orange and gas-flame blue in the dim glow of the wall sconces. What had looked from a distance to be a cheap black skirt turned out to be silk, gathered at one hip and draped in a train in back.

“They don’t mix, do they?” she asked. “Sex and civilization.”

He raised his eyes. Her face was angular and disproportion-ate, like a room with the windows spaced too far apart, but her bearing suggested that no one ever told her she was anything but beautiful. Beautiful and owner of all she surveyed—the sort who considered people to be a subset of real estate. Her body hung poised like a twist of rope, both hipshot and reserved, as if to ask whether he were capable of holding her interest.

“How’s that?”

“We’re not supposed to stare, for one.” Her voice was smoky but cold: liquor poured over ice.

“Are you an actress?”

“No. I’ve followed your career. I’ve wondered what you were like.”

He had heard those words before
—or close enough. Usual-ly his cue to say, “Well, nice meeting you” and walk away.

He suppressed a thrill of—anger? Interest? He said, “Do I live up to what I’m supposed to be?”

“That’s what I hope to find out.” Her voice softened, so that he expected her to reach for his face, his arm, to draw him close and whisper in his ear. Some chemical change in the atmosphere held him. The kind that causes glowing eyes to open in the darkness around a campfire.

She pulled an olive out of her glass.

“Would you hold this for me?” Her thumb and index finger pushed into his mouth, and the rest of her hand held his face. Bitter, something cold and waxy, her knuckles between his teeth. Fingers on his tongue.

The moment sharpened into slow motion, her eyes beginning to close, her mouth poised to smile as she turned her head,
already intent on something else. Dismissed. She was finished with him, her point made.

He spit the olive out
and grasped her wrist as she turned away.

“Don’t go yet.” He held out the small fruit. “You forgot this.”

It was not much, just a tensing of her shoulders and a tilt to the back of her head, but he suspected that her expression just then would have curdled milk.

“Favorite party trick of yours?” He dropped the olive on the carpet when she made no move to accept it.

“Not quite. Favorite party of yours?” She inclined her head toward the retreating Angela. The woman’s demeanor had trans-formed. He’d seen cats lick their paws after a failed rush at a bird with the same studied nonchalance.

“She and I are just friends. What d
o you want?”

“
I’m not selling anything. That’s your domain.” She did not try to free herself from his grip, only directed her gaze at his offending hand. Regretful yet resolved, as though refusing a diamond bracelet from an admirer. He let her go, then watched her walk away—a pleasant enough exercise, though his palms were sweating.

Someone laughed. The sound of conversation burst back into his ears.

“Met Nadia, have you?” The man in the tweedy sport shirt addressed him. Late forties, short and slight, with a gold coin on a chain around his neck, no socks with his Gucci loafers. He brushed his hand on his pants leg, then held it out. “She’s a friend of mine, staying up in Room 714. I’m Paul, Paul Jonas, with StarBorn Studios. Nice to meet you. As a matter of fact—”

Paul smiled and cleared his throat. Bright-eyed, ready to start up a conversation.

StarBorn? It could wait. Simon pushed his way out the door.

It was warmer in the hall, with the clamoring chill of the ballroom shut away behind him. Simon headed toward the glow of an exit sign, past a pony-tailed white waiter carrying a pile of linens.

“Hey. It’s you, isn’t it? The director.” The waiter smelled of sautéed onions and laundry starch. “You’re the guy who filmed those kids. The ones who cut themselves. I saw you on the news once, showing your scars.”

Adrenaline still tingled in Simon’s limbs, but he
quelled the impulse to keep walking. The woman who had hidden in his car—she must have had to walk through the airport crying, naked under her coat, after he’d had her dumped on the street.

Some
idol you are.

“You’re the
Sebastian
guy, the saint with the arrows, right? That film’s a classic.” The waiter shifted the bundle of linen in his arms. “I applied for some grants after I read your interview where you talked about guerilla promotion and financing. I’ve been mak-ing films, you know, digital video and animation stuff.”

“The new Valenz film is the one you should see if you want to learn how to make films.” Simon felt in his pocket.
No business cards left. He opened his wallet, with its spicy-stale smell of leath-er and money. Not even a laundry claim check or a ticket stub, just a taxi receipt and a dog-eared picture, hidden behind the credit cards and cash machine slips, of himself and a blond woman on the side of a glacier. His ex-wife, Kim.

“
Stay in touch.” He wrote on the back of the taxi receipt. “My PO box. Let me know how you’re doing.”

“Hey, thanks!” The man held the receipt up to the light. “Man, thank you!”

Why does that waiter pursue his own “rational perfec-tion”—as
Babylon
’s hero would call it? Not for revenge. Isn’t revenge a weaker choice than identity as a theme—because it’s a reaction, not an intention or goal? Without a sense of self, a child would die. But how many people risk their lives by not seeking revenge?