Chapter 5 - Beatrix
Chapter 5
Beatrix
Monday, December 27, 1999
It’s all darkness first. Thick and dense and all-encompassing.
A faint noise close by, a sharp exhalation, followed by a low rumbling moan.
I gasp loudly, confused and terrified—until I realize my eyes are simply closed. I’m caught in the hazy place between sleeping and waking. I’m not stranded, lost somewhere off the grid in the middle of the night.
Silly Beatrix.Nothing to be alarmed about.
Except . . . my eyelids are impossibly heavy on the first go at lifting them. I pause. Try again. Still futile. On the third push, more frantic now, I manage one slow blink. Two. Three.
The sunlight breaks through in sharp splinters, small fragments of a scene I can’t yet piece together.
Clue one: Delilah’s steering wheel, my hands—fingernails topped in chipped black paint—white-knuckled at ten and two.
Who paints their fingernails black for Christmas, my mother had asked, bewildered, an hour after my plane had landed. A surly LA screenwriter with a checkered past, I’d calmly replied, wishing I’d paid an extra fifty bucks to add a skull-and-crossbones on my thumbs. My mother hadn’t responded, just stepped past me into the kitchen to pop some slice-and-bakes into the oven.
Clue two: An unfamiliar forearm braced in front of me like some kind of shield. A forearm that is tan and taut and highly out of place extending from Delilah’s passenger seat.
Panic sets in again, stranger danger alarms ringing shrilly in the darkness. I force my eyes open, determined to stay alert this time, when—
“Holy shit, you okay, Trixie?”
That forearm has pulled back, and now there’s just a hand, hot and tight as it wraps around my wrist.
It all floods back in then, the dam obliterated with those five words, that forearm that’s too muscular for anyone’s good:
Rocco, the magazine, those devil horns.
He knows.
If I were anywhere else but inside Delilah, I’d throw up. But I refuse to taint Delilah in that way. She’s tainted enough as is, just by the sheer presence of Rocco’s offending molecules. I may never eradicate every last one, no matter how viciously I deep clean, every first Saturday of the month. A sacred ritual.
“It’s Beatrix,” I say through gritted teeth, my lifeforce trickling back in along with the rage. Or thanks to the rage, really. My deep loathing of Rocco Riziero is a preternaturally powerful thing.
“Are we really going to argue about semantics right now? After, you know, crashing the fucking car?”
I turn quickly to scan out the windshield, assess Delilah’s current state. What did happen? I have no clear recollection, I realize with a shock. From what I can see now in front of me, we seem to have come to a stop along Sunset Boulevard—not my finest parallel parking job, but close enough to the curb that the lane of traffic still blurs past my window, albeit with some angry honks along the way. But . . . why did we stop here in the first place? Something had jolted me, hadn’t it? Made me swerve to the side, a kneejerk reaction. And then what? I’d had the wherewithal to brake, at least. I crane my neck to peer out the windshield and can’t detect any visible damage from here, at least not to the hood.
“That’s an impressively large vocabulary word,” I say, relief sharpening my snark. Jabbing at Rocco—it’s the only thing that makes sense right now.
“What?”
“Semantics,” I say, looking over at him for the first time. He seems unscathed by the crash, if it can even be called that, despite the lack of anything visible to crash into. His hair perhaps mussed a bit more than before, but in an infuriatingly artful kind of way. And his cheeks are flushed, like he just went on a light jog. Or perhaps had a pleasant encounter in bed. Or no, reflecting back, somewhere outside of the bed, based on his past proclivities: the sleek marble kitchen counter he rarely used for cooking, his narrow glass-walled shower that was definitely not intended for two adult-sized humans (yet still worked perfectly), the flat part of his roof we could climb up onto from his bedroom window, quickly and breathlessly, before any unsuspecting neighbors could catch us in the act....
Damnit, Beatrix.
I shake my head, a mostly fruitless attempt to clear out the traitorous throwback montage. Only Rocco could come out on the other end of a car accident looking sexier for it. “I’m just surprised to hear you use it competently, that’s all. Who knew those tutors on set did such a good job? Or was it the New Jersey public education you had for half the school year—the ‘Jersey Joe’ months as you called it, right?” Shit. Too much past knowledge to drop. I’m proving just how much he mattered. How deeply the memories rooted. “On second thought, I’m not sure semantics does work in this case, Beatrix vs. Trixie . . .”
Rocco kneads both palms roughly into his forehead, like I’ve accomplished what the accident could not and inflicted actual physical pain. “Dammit, Trixie—Beatrix,” he corrects before I can do it for him, “this is not the moment. I realize our past makes our present together more . . . complicated. But can we talk about that later? When we’re not stranded on the side of Sunset Boulevard?” He waves his hands frantically at the lanes of traffic beside us, and it’s only then I realize exactly where we’ve stopped.
We’re directly in front of the Roxy. The venue for the infamous Y2K New Year’s Eve party. Our last night together. I haven’t been back since.
Rocco follows my gaze. “Shit.”
“The universe has a cruel sense of humor, doesn’t she?”
He turns back toward me. Sighs. “I’m really sorry for the reminder. But I meant what I said. This is a bad place to be stranded in this old car, and—”
“Delilah doesn’t take well to insults.”
“Who the hell is Delilah? That’s the second time you mentioned her.”
I tap my fingers against the steering wheel pointedly. “My beloved chariot. Who, funnily enough, I bought for myself after we filmed Cutie Central. The only good thing to come out of my short-lived stint as an actress.” I let out a shrill laugh, more of a cackle, really, and Rocco reels back a few inches. I was already thrown enough—the confrontation with Rocco, the confession, the crash that wasn’t really a crash—but the Roxy has sent me hurtling into the stratosphere.
“Ah yes, Cutie Central.” He has the decency to glance away, rightfully intimidated by my razor-edged gaze. “That was how it all started, isn’t it?”
“So nice of you to remember.”
“Beatrix, please . . .” He nods again toward the other lanes, throws his hands up in the air. “We can dissect this at length, I promise. I fully acknowledge I owe you an apology. Or more like many assorted apologies. A buffet filled with them. But can we, you know, maybe first acknowledge the pressing situation at hand before we get obliterated by a double-decker tourist wagon looking for the Playboy mansion? If you’d like us to sacrifice ourselves—or me at least, as proper atonement—fine, but let’s wait until after the shooting wraps. That way the movie will be even more of a success. Win-win for you, right?”
“Ha,” I say, genuinely smiling at him for the first time since, oh, 1999. “That’s a genius idea. So noble of you to offer it up. We’d be a critics’ darling if you were to perish in the lead-up to release. Fans would go positively wild for the drama of it, too. Watch the movie on loop to numb the terrible heartache.”
“You look way too delighted at the prospect of my sacrifice. I’m mildly terrified.”
I wink at him, slowly, before turning my focus back to Delilah. She’s turned off, which I have no memory of doing. Huh. I turn the key, and her engine purrs to life. No warning bells, no strange lights flashing on the dashboard. Everything seems as it should be. One minute we were cruising down Sunset, arguing about that stupid tabloid, lighting a match against the gaping gasoline pit of our past, and then the next . . . ?
“What the hell even happened?” I ask, finally feeling what seems like an appropriate level of shock. A feeling I’d chosen to conveniently ignore in favor of frustrating Rocco as much as possible first. Pushing his buttons kept the panic at bay.
“I don’t know?” he says, frowning, deep enough that his dimples show. He’s the only person I ever met whose dimples shine equally for smiles and frowns. I frown now, too, so thoroughly nonplussed by the unnecessary attractiveness of his frown. “I was hoping,” Rocco continues, “you could fill me in. The last thing I remember is reaching out to you, and then it’s all black. Until I woke up and saw you, and I thought . . .” He trails off mid-sentence.
I wait a beat, and when he doesn’t offer more, I press, “Thought what?”
His neck—already thick and muscular, on par with the rest of him—swells more as he swallows. “That something terrible happened to you. You were just so still. Too still. And then you opened your eyes and immediately started chastising me and—”
“Ohh, another—”
“Right, yes, another impressive vocabulary word.” He groans, his eyes fluttering shut. I count as he inhales for five, exhales for another five, three full sets before he opens his eyes again and continues. “As I was saying, in this case at least, your blunt criticisms came as a welcome relief.”
“Mm, yes, I’m most definitely both very alive and very awake,” I say, making a show of pinching my left wrist a few times, “as absurdly nightmarish as it may feel to be trapped in Delilah with you, experiencing the same freak blackout. But as far as I can tell, my trusty ol’ steed is doing just fine, so I’m prepared to accept the inexplicable blip and move on with our days. Maybe that latte was overcaffeinated. Did something funky to our senses.” I shrug, turning away from Rocco to shift the car into drive.
We move smoothly away from the side of the road, nothing catching or crunching under the tires. A look in the rearview mirror confirms there’s nothing left in our wake. Hm. I’d been kidding about the lattes, but now I’m less certain. What else could explain why we were both equally affected? Maybe that goggle-eyed barista added in some kind of botched love potion for Rocco, hocus-pocusing it into both of our matching cups just to be certain it made its way into him.
I cruise neatly back into the lane, no issue. Equal parts relieved that Delilah seems fine and bewildered by whatever happened back there before the lights went out. It’s not as easy as I’d suggested—accepting the blip and moving along.
“The car at least seems fine,” Rocco says. I can feel those cool blue eyes boring into me without turning my gaze from the road. “Which means it’s our brains we need to to worry about.”
“Ha, I’m not worried,” I lie.
“So then you black out behind the wheel all the time? If that’s the case, perhaps you should have issued a warning before inviting me into your car.”
I snort. Defense mechanisms reactivating. My self-preservation tactic of choice, more necessary now than ever. “As if I actually invited you.”
“As if . . .” he mutters. “Why does that feel so familiar coming from you?” He chuckles after a beat, too loudly. I tighten my hands on the wheel, a death vise. Pretend it’s a sensitive part of Rocco’s anatomy. That annoyingly thick neck of his, or maybe that equally annoyingly thick . . . “Right! Your character from Cutie Central. In hindsight, a total Clueless rip-off, right? I’m surprised the producers didn’t get sued.”
“It wasn’t a rip off. It was ’99. Everyone said it.”
“Yeah. Because of Clueless.”
“I’m so not having this argument with you right now.”
“I didn’t realize you’d be so defensive over a bit part in a movie called Cutie Central.”
I turn to serve him a searing glare before focusing back on the road. An irritatingly long red light. “Bit part? That wasn’t condescending of you at all.”
He groans, again. “I didn’t mean it like that. It was still a good role in a movie that was surprisingly decent, considering the name. I just meant—”
“It’s fine.” I release my right hand from its grip to wave him off. “We weren’t all born to be leads. And for the record, I never wanted that life for myself.”
He’s blissfully quiet for, oh, thirty seconds or so, lulling me into a false sense of security as the light goes green, hoping we can pass the rest of the drive to his Palisades palace in silence, and I can then carry on with the rest of my holiday break as if nothing about this morning ever happened. But no. Instead, “Why did you leave?”
“Leave? What do you mean?”
“I get why you left the party. But why LA? I’d called, you know.”
My pulse quickens. “What? When?”
“Sometime after the holiday. You didn’t have a cell phone, right?”
This—this I can respond to. This is easy, familiar terrain. “Not all of us had a cell phone in 1999—or a beeper for that matter. My god, you looked ridiculous with that thing hooked on your belt. You wore it everywhere. I remember being surprised you didn’t find a way to attach it to yourself when we . . . you know.”
“Beatrix.”
“Yes?”
“I’m trying to say that I did call back then—the old landline at your apartment, that is. A roommate picked up, and while I’m afraid I can’t recall the exact words, I believe it was along the lines of, ‘fuck off, fuckwad, Trixie left and went back home and you’re a motherfucker, go jump off the Hollywood sign.’ Pure eloquence.”
“Ah, yes. Sounds about right. That group of roommates was a bit feral.”
“You didn’t bring me around enough for me to know, I suppose.”
Too much. This is all too much. I swear I can actually feel my brain overheating. “What did you want to say to me?”
“I guess I’d wanted to . . . break it off properly? I hadn’t expected things to play out with Piper when they did, and I was an ass for letting it happen before I could talk to you. I might have dated a lot, but I prided myself on not, er . . . overlapping in my pursuits.”
He’d called. To part ways, of course. There was never a world in which we’d have been together if I’d stayed—not in a world where Piper Bell existed. But it feels marginally better to know he hadn’t forgotten me altogether.
“So . . . why did you leave? Not because of me, I hope. What else was . . . ?” I glance over and watch in slow motion as the pieces finally click together. The party, Piper, the day my dad died. What he knows of me from real life, what he’s gleaned from the script. “Oh, shit. Shit, Beatrix. You wrote that you were so consumed with a gig in LA, and yeah, right, you were partying with some dude during the ball drop, but he wasn’t anyone important.... You’re telling me that’s why you didn’t get to say goodbye? To your dad? Because you—”
“Because I chose you.” I spell it out without thinking. The truth that has swallowed me whole these last seventeen years. “You were the dude. A more important one than the script may let on.”
I chose Rocco.
I chose a stupid fucking party.
And because of that, I never got to have a final conversation with my father before he died on New Year’s Day. January 1, 2000. Never got to apologize. To tell him I was horrendously, unforgivably wrong.
“I changed very few details in the script, for the record,” I say quietly. “But I wasn’t going to publicly out our history. So I refused to give the dude any limelight.”
“God, I’m . . . so sorry, Beatrix. For having any role in keeping you away. I didn’t know.” He looks pained—like he might actually tear up. Which I can’t allow, because then I would have to cry, too, and that’s unacceptable. He’s already seen me cry one time too many today.
I shrug. “You couldn’t have.”
We both go silent then. I focus on the road, the sea of shiny bumpers ahead of me. We’re crawling between the traffic lights—when we’re moving at all. More traffic than anticipated during a holiday week, but in this city, traffic is never surprising.
It’s not until we hit the second red light, my eyes drifting from the lane in front of me, that I feel the first prickle of unease.
A gigantic billboard for Girl, Interrupted, with Winona Ryder’s eyeball seeming to stare straight out at me. In Theaters January 14th. Pristine condition, not faded and tattered.
Followed in quick succession by Matt Damon and Jude Law mean-mugging for The Talented Mr. Ripley. Also fresh and glossy.
From there, it’s a sudden flurry of confusing, mismatched images—
Mandy Moore looking like a baby-faced child on a billboard for So Real.
A line stretching out behind a phone booth.
A taxi topped in a Delia’s ad.
And the people themselves on the sidewalks, dressed in bucket hats and denim on denim—mostly acid-washed—ill-fitting logo tees and undersized miniskirts and clunky platforms. It all feels too uniform. Too . . . unironic.
My heart thrums in my chest, coursing blood hot and fast through my veins, a dizzying rush to the head. Was this the goddamn latte, too? A concussion from the accident? I have questions—oh so many of them. But I can’t seem to form basic words.
I see it then, right alongside of us, the most jarring discovery yet. Like a giant yellow-and-red phantom rising up from the sidewalk.
Tower Records.
Doors open, lights on, customers milling around the entrance. Windows plastered in Red Hot Chili Peppers and Destiny’s Child, Moby and TLC.
“What the actual fuck is going on here?” Rocco asks first.
I turn, open mouthed, to face him, but he’s not looking at the storefront. His eyes are on the rows of cars ahead of us. “I’ve known something was off and couldn’t put my finger on it. But it just hit me—I haven’t seen a single car that was built after . . . 2000 or so? I mean, look at that.” He points animatedly at the red sporty-looking car just ahead of us, a make and model I don’t recognize. Which doesn’t say much, because I could pinpoint very few vehicles out of a lineup, aside from Jettas. “Brand new ’99 Mustang.”
“Rocco.” I lift my right hand off the wheel and forcefully take his stubbled chin in my palm, tilting his face toward Tower Records. His skin feels as prickly hot as mine. “Look.”
“What’s . . . ?” He stiffens under my hand. “This place has been closed for what, a decade now?”
“2006. I loved it here so much.” An understatement, really. It had always felt to me like cheap therapy—the best kind of therapy, on the nonexistent budget I had at the time, zero health insurance to my name in my early years here. Strolling through the aisles for hours, losing myself in the racks of nicely priced CDs, scouting out the Ramones, The Clash, The Jam—a nice contrast to all the ’90s fluff I pretended not to love but of course secretly did. “This can’t be some kind of elaborate set, right? We didn’t accidentally stumble into some ‘90s blockbuster shoot?”
“Beatrix,” Rocco says, slowly shaking his head, eyes still pinned on Tower Records. “No. This isn’t a set. It can’t be. For one, we couldn’t just stumble into the filming. There would be checkpoints. And two, I passed by here this morning and can assure you that Tower Records was no more.”
A volley of horns blares from behind us, and I glance up to realize the light’s turned green. I make a split-second decision, veer off to the side of Sunset, again. Slam the brakes.
“What the hell are you doing?” Rocco asks, arms braced against the dashboard.
“I’ve got to ask someone what’s happening.”
“You’re just going to, what, walk right up to—” Before he can finish his question, I’m out of the car, one foot in front of the other, pounding up onto the sidewalk.
I push my way through the glass doors of Tower Records to be greeted by that achingly familiar red-and-yellow interior, rows of albums stretching out ahead. All the old sensations flood me at once: the heady scent of fresh plastic meets old cardboard, gritty rock blaring overhead, every kind of person milling around the floor.
Customers jostle against me from behind as I stand frozen in front of the door. A guy with a gravity-defying jet-black mohawk, wearing flame-covered pipe jeans that could only be JNCOs, swears under his breath as he passes by me. Two teen girls in mesh tops and neon swoosh pants look me up and down under their bedazzled blue sparkly eyelids.
“Can I help you?” A too-chipper sounding clerk steps up beside me, squinting behind his thick Rivers Cuomo-style glasses. There’s a large pin on his shirt for Bad Religion, a bright red slash over a cross.
“Uh, yes? I hope so at least.”
“Okay, what kind of music are you looking for?”
“I’m not. Looking for music, that is.”
“Hm.” His eyes widen—pupils looking unusually large—then roll for a flicker of a second before he seems to catch himself. “You do realize what kind of store this is?”
“What day is today?” I ask. No frills, no lead up.
“Uh.” Another flicker of a roll, longer this time. “December. Twenty-seventh.”
That part syncs. “Okay. But . . .” I take a deep breath, willing myself to ask the most absurd question I’ve ever voiced out loud. “What year?”
He takes a step back, craning his neck as he scans the room around us. “Is this like a bad Candid Camera bit? That show with the dude from Full House?”
“No. Please. I just . . .” My voice cracks, and I press my lips together. I start to turn away, preparing myself to run as fast as I can out of here, to where—and to when—I’m not sure. Any place that’s not here, a store that was once such a happy haven, reduced now to some kind of neon-lit nightmare funhouse mirror, where the only other person I can commiserate with, of all the millions of humans on planet Earth, is Rocco Riziero.
The clerk sighs behind me. “Fine. I’ll play along.”
I pause mid-step, my entire body stiffening.
“But seriously, who could forget the year on the brink of the millennium?” He does a poorly executed spin and hand clap that I take to be his attempt at a Backstreet Boys move.
“The millennium,” I repeat flatly, spinning back to face him.
“Yep.” He points above us now, to a bright sign I didn’t see before, advertising a New Year’s Eve show at the store. “Enjoy your last few days of 1999, lady.”