22. When All Is Said and Done It Always Ends in Flames
WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE IT ALWAYS ENDS IN FLAMES
MY FINAL DRIVE TO the villa was eerily smooth, as if all obstructions had been cleared away as a sort of last meal.
The indignity of sitting through traffic while I prepared to meet my fate could have been enough to make me turn around, or maybe not.
I’d passed Tita Linda on my way to the car and she’d taken hold of my arm, pausing me for a moment before releasing me.
I considered asking her about the devil, whether it was still clawing on, but I knew that if I spoke at all I’d have to confess aloud what I was doing, and any version of the truth would be unbearable to voice.
Because while I knew what the cameras meant, and what it suggested that everyone in my life had now been threatened by the insult I’d caused to William de Witt, I couldn’t honestly say I was doing this for anyone else.
I wasn’t doing this bravely or sacrificially; I wasn’t trying to protect my mother or my cousin or any of the vulnerable people in my life.
I was doing it because my opponent had moved his piece in the game, and now it was my turn. By then I had simply removed the possibility that I could ever, or would ever, lose.
The nights were getting longer now, and I drove with a backdrop of sunset, streaks of pink in a sky stained with red, a glowing tint along the buildings like molten candle flame.
The landscape itself, scorched and lifeless amber, was quiet, solemn, indifferent.
As I wound my way up through the hills I felt surrounded on all sides by secrets, by the possibility that every house I passed had its own uncanniness to contend with.
Who could even say how many demons lived along that canyon road, all of them part of someone else’s story. Just not mine.
The weathered fire safety sign was red, as always. Once again, I traversed the hills only to descend the inferno, making my way deeper into hell.
I parked my car in the usual place, overlooking the greenhouse, that crumbling old garage.
I could see a bright shock of fluorescent lights, reflectors, various equipment that obscured my view of what could only be the set.
The front door was open, the house quiet and empty.
I wound my way down the side path without looking back at the house, no longer checking for the whisper of white curtains through an open window.
There didn’t seem any point to it anymore, since I couldn’t imagine that anyone could still have something left to hide.
As I got closer, the details came into focus.
There was a body left behind on the courtyard floor already, as if I’d arrived fashionably late to the denouement.
Hodel’s eyes were open and glassy, his head wrenched toward me, a hole where his heart should have been.
A gunshot wound; interesting. A quick death seemed clinical, maybe even merciful.
After another moment I noticed the feet sticking out from below a pool chaise—Atticus, and beside him, Fred.
Dead, too, both face down at an angle with a trail of blood leading to where they lay, as if they had been dragged for the sake of production, out of the way of the set.
I wondered what had happened; what they had been asked or told to do that they could no longer stomach, what final blows had been dealt.
I thought of Fred’s barely restrained mutiny, Atticus’s frail bravado, and wondered what the tipping point had been, the thing that had rendered all the sycophancy untenable.
Had it been Emmanuelle’s loss that drove them here?
Or just plain luck of the draw, the inevitable ending.
Either way, it meant that some break in inertia had changed everything for everyone, and that was either reason for optimism or proof that everything had gone unpredictably off the rails.
The proverbial stage was the broken fountain beside the greenhouse, still empty, still visibly crumbling and in need of repair.
The director’s chair sat directly before me, overlooking the scene, and just beyond that, Jude stood there, waiting.
His eyes met mine and he shook his head with long-suffering disappointment. Amiably, I shrugged.
From the director’s chair, William de Witt turned to look at me. “Ah, Anya.” He rose to his feet and held out a hand, which I looked at but didn’t take. “You’ll need to get into costume.”
I looked at Jude, who had looked away from me. I didn’t say anything for a very long time because I was trying to figure out how to not tell William de Witt to go fuck himself. I was mostly unsurprised by the time I felt the muzzle of a pistol pressing into my temple.
“Genesis,” said William, to the woman who held me hostage. “Please see that Anya has her costume.”
I hadn’t noticed Genesis’s presence up to that point.
I suppose Genesis had never really interested me, which might have been part of the problem.
With the gun still steadily trained on my head, she handed me an article of clothing, the same dress I’d once seen in Jude’s drawings, the white farm girl frock I’d assumed to be some strange product of his imaginings.
The dress was far too long for me, but I slipped it on obligingly, as the woman with the gun had requested.
I left my jeans on underneath—I didn’t think production was terribly concerned with details at that particular moment.
Then the nose of the gun nudged me in the small of my back, directing me over to the fountain, to stand opposite Jude.
I looked him up and down, a flick of surveyance. “Nice suit,” I said. He was wearing some moth-eaten thing made for a far meatier man than he was. We looked ridiculous, and Jude glared at me. I had to stifle a laugh.
“Quiet,” said William sharply. He was out of the director’s chair, operating the cameras.
He had one trained on my face, the other on Jude’s, and then a third to capture the scene as a whole.
The lighting made a misery of what was already stagnant heat.
A bead of sweat dripped down the side of Jude’s cheek like a tear, and I wiped it away with my thumb.
Jude caught my hand. He gave me a warning glance.
I thought about the gun and the madman directing it, the unpredictable monster who lived inside a person I had no meaningful reason to trust. Jude touched the inside of my wrist, stroking it once with his thumb.
Was it goodbye? I didn’t think so. It felt more like when I say run, you run.
“Scripts!” William barked it and I jumped, though he was talking to Genesis.
She handed me two scripts and I passed one obediently to Jude.
I’d never noticed before how afraid Genesis was of Jude, or maybe it was deference.
I wondered what Jude’s monster had done to her, and whether it would make a difference to her character—if my understanding of her motivation could shift somehow.
Was any tyrant really complete without some underling’s devotion?
So, it seemed she’d do anything William asked and in turn it gave her power, her safety secured by her willingness to put others at risk.
Except for Jude. She was afraid of him and that meant William was, too.
I was playing the game again: Could I Survive It?
Old prayers floated through my head, the folded corner of the devil in my grandmother’s cards.
To call the devil “evil” was a lazy shorthand, Grandma always said.
The truth was less straightforward, something closer to the presence of a primal urge.
Jude took his copy of the script from my hand and I looked down, reading the lines.
There were two characters, Killian and Emmanuelle, and it was a love scene.
Abysmal. It was obvious that William had written it, probably in a stupor of some sort, which explained the manic glint in his eye.
The dialogue was saccharine, impossible to say aloud without the visceral accompaniment of cringe.
“Action,” said William, buzzing at far too high a frequency.
He had taken the gun from Genesis and was holding it loosely in one hand.
After a few moments, while I was still reading the script to myself, he shot a bullet into the light right behind where I was standing.
It pinged off the metal frame and I ducked, pointlessly.
“Action,” William repeated coolly. Disoriented, I tried to focus on the line.
THE GOTHIC HEROINE
I feel our souls are tied together. Hand in hand we will transcend everything, even the raging fires of hell. For our love is so much stronger than any evil.
I looked up at Jude, who was looking at me. The script was in his hand, which hung at his side. When he spoke, it was with the rote delivery of someone who already knew the words and was reciting them from memory.
THE DEMON
My love will last an eternity. For you, my heart will beat forevermore.
I scanned the page, trying to craft something out of the trite clichés William de Witt had scripted while he shifted impatiently in his chair.
The gun rested on the inner length of his thigh, his finger hooked carelessly around the trigger.
I thought briefly about what I would do if I could reach it.
THE GOTHIC HEROINE
Oh, Killian, we must take our love into a different time, a brighter future! We must go to a world where people will understand us!
THE DEMON
None can understand that which the stars themselves have destined.
Jude’s voice was soft and measured, carefully nondescript.
THE DEMON
But let the gods do what they will to part us. For you, my love, I’d walk into the flames.
In the script there was an action:
THEY KISS.
I looked at Jude and he looked at me. Impossible to unknow: the existence of an ending. This story was one of obsession, of hubris, and so the landing could only be tragedy, by necessity. There were moral demands, and narrative ones, too.