Lost Angels: 10

“White Heat,” Lisa said coolly when Jesse, shirtless and soaked with sweat and exhilaration, returned to the car. Orin had waited for him outside in the whipping wind over the entangled freeways. “You were trying to do White Heat, Jesse. That's easy to guess because that's about the only movie you ever talk about.” She took advantage of the fact that Jesse couldn't answer her because he was panting so heavily. They had frightened her, with all that yelling and laughing in the wind over the howling freeways.

Crashing from the soaring elation of the earlier moments of aimless defiance, Jesse lay back in the seat of the car and closed his eyes as Orin drove away from the area.

Cody Jarrett! Cagney! Jesse could see the bulldog face, tough and sad; yes, even Cody was sad sometimes. Clinging to the rusting ladder earlier, Jesse had felt an invasion of sharp memories of that favorite film: scenes of dark wind outside the motel where the gang stayed—like them, in a motel—and the money—hundreds of thousands in a suitcase—was in the trunk of the car! And Cody had this “red-hot buzz saw” inside his head—because as a kid he'd faked headaches to get attention from his father, who soothed him, the only one who could until he died, or stopped, or Cody's mother took over, tried, but— … The events of the film began to blur. When they told Cody his father died, he went crazy, in prison—no, that was later when Ma was killed by Big Ed and sexy Verna, the two-timers. And most of it happened in Los Angeles! Here, in this city! They might be on the very same street Cody drove on, on his way to that plant they went to rob: Huge metallic spheres and columns, and Cody climbed a steel ladder. All the others in his gang abandoned him, of course, surrendered. Not Cody!—he wouldn't surrender even when the cop said he didn't have a chance. Cody said— … shouted— … ‘Top of— …!” No, that was when he talked to his dead Ma on a black, windy night.

Now they were driving past an area of Wilshire Boulevard that had once been glamorous—like so many now seedy sections of the city: Mac Arthur Park was dying, the cultivated lilies gone from its ponds, unruly grass inviting weeds; and Lafayette Park with its colorful rows of flowers still holding on, stared ominously at the intruding waste and poverty; carelessly aging houses, now separated into apartments, rooms.

Farther on, Wilshire Boulevard glittered as it prepared itself for Beverly Hills.

After dinner at a Sizzler Steak House—and Jesse's mood lifted when Orin encouraged him to have the steak and lobster combination—Orin told Lisa she could choose a movie from the newspaper listings.

“Casablanca!” she drooled, not believing the good luck. “And Now, Voyager!”

They were playing in the old Warner's Theater in Beverly Hills, an enormous, lavish shell of a theater, being allowed to disintegrate in cruel humiliation: worn faded carpets; chunks of walls unrepaired; broken mirrors removed, squares left gray. And yet the remnants of its resplendent Art Deco excesses shine through defiantly: prisms, arcs, layers of once-bright colors, geometric bursts of glass. It flaunts its tattered presence—knowing it will soon be crushed, replaced by the sinister levels of still another parking lot, or the concrete slabs of a rectangular building.

Lisa cried, again, through Casablanca. But an intrusive, unformed thought pushed her away for moments from the story: Ingrid Bergman looked very much like that woman in that odd movie Orin had chosen that other night—The Conformist, that was the name. She startled herself when she realized her mind had wandered away while Ingrid Bergman was crying in the man's hotel room. So mean to her, so mean.

Jesse liked Bogart a lot—but not all that much in this movie; he wasn't really tough in this one.

Orin sat as if he was scrutinizing the movie.

Lisa pled to stay for Now, Voyager. Jesse hated it immediately and fell asleep. Lisa cried through it again, too—and this time her mind didn't wander from Bette Davis. Orin sat stiffly, as if deep inside himself.

In the lobby Lisa caught an unexpected reflection of herself in a long mirror. She paused. “Here's looking at you, kid,” she repeated from the first movie. “Don't ask for the stars, we got the moon,” she mixed from the second.

“Awright, kid,” Jesse asserted his own line. “Cody said that: ’Awright, kid.’ “

Lisa continued to study her reflection. Yes, she could have been a movie star—but only then; the very time her mother had been young. She thought of Pearl; fading. Makeup. She'd use some makeup on her when they got back.

Outside, the heat waited. Orin brought his watch to his ear.

Making certain he has the right time, Jesse felt sure, as they walked toward the car. That meant they would watch Sister Woman tonight; they hadn't last night—too late when they returned from the park, or was Orin making her wait now? Last night had been so full of turbulence that Jesse realized only now that, no, Orin had not even turned the television on!

Although it was out of the way, Orin took the Hollywood Freeway; traffic was fast and smooth. He always slowed down when they approached a giant mural beyond a grassed slope and on a tall wall. It was an enormous painting of an old woman, graying, beautiful, with brilliant eyes. There were murals all over the city. Another painting, on a long wall off Santa Monica Boulevard, showed Los Angeles crumbling under water released by a giant earthquake, a freeway toppling into raging water.

“Movieland Wax Museum!” Lisa read aloud. Signs on bus benches all over the city advertise it, almost as often as they advertise mortuaries Each time she had seen it before, Lisa forced herself into silence. The Movieland Museum was too precious a venture to risk wrong timing. She had waited for the right moment, which she decided impulsively was now. “Please, Orin, we've got to go to the Movieland Wax Museum!”

“Sure,” Orin said.

So quickly. He kept acquiescing to Lisa, or so it seemed to Jesse. But then, Orin seemed to be acquiescing to them both, perhaps because of Lisa's—their—anger after the journey into the park. “Sure,” he echoed Orin, as if his approval were required equally.

They were becoming alike—no, similar—in a way she didn't understand, Lisa thought, hearing Jesse echo Orin.

On Western Avenue, Lisa was relieved when Orin took Sunset to the motel. There was still the implicit hint that at any moment he might want to return to the park.

In the motel room Lisa insisted Ingrid Bergman should have been allowed to stay with Bogart. “She loved him, and he only pretended to love her—she sacrificed so much for him; he was mean to let her go—and”—this occurred to her for the first time, with doubled horror—“he forced her to go with the same man who left Bette Davis in the other movie. Oh!” She went immediately to Pearl Chavez on the bed; she would make her beautiful again.

In the bathroom with the door open, Orin was washing his hands, slowly, methodically; he did this often after a long day.

“I bet your favorite movie is The Wizard of Oz” Jesse teased Lisa, paying her back for deriding him earlier about White Heat.

“The Wizard of Oz!” she blurted in indignant disbelief. She had begun to apply makeup to Pearl. Rouge first. That really helped, she told herself. After all, the real Pearl Chavez had been a half-breed. “No, that is not one of my all-times, not even a half-favorite. It's too real.”

“Real!” Jesse couldn't believe her. “Real?”

“Yes,” Lisa said. The makeup was working. She applied lipstick to the tiny lips of the doll; more, thicker, more— … Her finger moved unsteadily and it smeared the doll's lips; they looked bloody. With a tissue, she cleaned the smudges. She added more of the waxy makeup.

“Hey, Orin,” Jesse called into the bathroom. “Can you believe Lisa thinks The Wizard of Oz is too real?”

“The reason it's real,” Lisa said with conviction, “is that it's too much like life would look like if you looked inside.” She paused, reasoning it out carefully. “Not the singing and the funny parts—although I'm not so sure there really were any. All those scared people— …” She outlined Pearl's eyes darkly.

“You're not making sense,” Jesse derided.

“I know exactly what I mean,” Lisa said firmly. “And sometimes Orin doesn't make sense either,” she said tentatively; then boldly: “But you sure do listen to him, yes sir. And I bet you liked those ugly evil flying monkeys in that Oz movie and the— …”

“I don't make sense?” Orin stood calmly wiping his hands as carefully as he washed them.

Jesse marveled: Orin wasn't angry; he was smiling!

“I guess you do make sense,” Lisa retreated somewhat, but only because it was true. Even when he didn't make strict sense, she understood. But not always. And she was beginning to listen much more carefully. “I take it back, Orin,” she said faithfully. “At first I didn't understand you, but now, when you talk such beautiful words, I do understand. Sometimes,” she heard herself add. With scissors, she cut the doll's dress, making it jagged, short; she lopped off the sleeves, formed a V at the bosom. With her finger, she forced a rip into the dress, near the thigh. “And sometimes, Orin,” Lisa went on, “you look like an angel, you really do, with that beautiful reddish hair and blue eyes; other times, even though you're so fair, you get that dark stare— …”

“How do I look now?” Orin distorted his face at all angles.

“Ugly!” she said. She stared at the doll.

Jesse laughed at the faces Orin was making. So happy. But in another moment he might become all solemn.

Orin turned on the television.

“… —attributed to the purported damaging effects of Agent Orange, a chemical used by the army in jungle warfare.” Kenneth Manning finished. Now Eleanor Cavendish was saying, “Sporadic brush fires continue to cause grave concern among firefighters and citizens of threatened areas. Winds up to fifty miles an hour in the canyons are fanning fires at— …”

Lisa dabbed rouge on Pearl Chavez's cheeks, pushing the color up and back toward her ears.

Orin shifted channels.

Brother Man faced Sister Woman on her throne against the imitation sky. The telephone number to call for witnessing and pledging was on the screen. “Fire burns on the lips of sinners—and only he can quench it. Come.” Sister Woman's hand beckoned, the chiffon sleeve a blue ghost. “Surrender to the Lord, let Him unburden you of the weight of your grievous sins—and the sins of those departed!—sins which are not buried with them but which extend deep down into hell and out— …” Her hands burst open, fingers thrust outward. “… —to you, who have the power to bring them peace.”

With the edge of her comb, Lisa frizzled Pearl's hair, thickening it into a bushy halo. She was forcing herself not to listen to that woman. She threatened her—them; aroused intrusive doubts, like last night's.

The sighing chiffon flowed to Sister Woman's shoulders as she raised her hands as if to bring down heaven to purify hell. Her exposed arms were white. Her soft voice stumbled on a sob, resumed in anger: “But! If you wait too long, the beast will grow stronger, roaring out of the abyss—strengthened by sins captive in hell!” Her head turned away as if from a vision of the burning holocaust of perdition. The colorless eyes faced ahead now. “And then the beast will rise to lure you into the flames of hell, heated beyond comprehension by sin—the tinderwood of hell!” The arms and hands crushed down. “And I have known him in hell!” Her eyes closed. “I see four lost angels,” she barely whispered, as if to herself.

Lisa heard, “… —four lost angels.” She looked at Orin, who nodded.

Sister Woman's voice purled again. “Escape, now, oh, the deceiver is powerful, so powerful and cunning that at times it is difficult to tell the demonic angels from those of the Lord.”

“Then how shall we know the difference?” asked Brother Man.

Sister Woman's lips smiled.

Jesse's eyes shifted to Orin, who watched, watched.

Sister Woman reached out with her hand. “How shall we know the good from the deceiving evil? you ask. By calling on the Lord. And he— …” The wings of chiffon spread outward, up. Then her hands fainted into delicate crucifixion on her lap. “And He will tell us! He will give us the radiant proof of His righteousness!”

“No,” Orin said softly to the figure on the screen. “You will tell us, just like you promised her.” He turned off the television.

He reached for the telephone, pressed it tightly to his ear, his fingers on the dial.

Lisa looked in surprise at the doll, what she had converted her into. The doll looked savage, cruel, brutal, grotesquely sexual. I made you that way! she thought triumphantly and heard similar words aimed at her from her past: You made me ugly! … When she heard Orin dialing, she looked up in fear.

Holding the receiver so tightly to his ear—Jesse noticed—to drown the sounds that would reveal no one would be on the other end? He'll put down the phone, Jesse thought, and then his face will be the little-boy one and he'll laugh and make us laugh at his playacting and for letting him fool us into thinking— …”

“This is Orin! … I called, left a message— …” He repeated the identifying details he had left the earlier time. He reached for a piece of paper, wrote down a number. “No, not tonight. Tell her tomorrow—after I hear her sermon.” He repeated the telephone number. He hung up.

“Stop pretending, Orin!” Lisa was desperately washing Pearl's face with a moist towel. “You know you weren't speaking to anyone!”