Night Film by Marisha Pessl
She twisted around, yanking her arm out of the bulky gray wool cardigan to show me a red label sewn into the neck with elaborate black lettering. PROPERTY OF MOE GULAZAR, it read.
So a geriatric Armenian drag queen was behind her flamboyant wardrobe. My first thought was that she had to have made it up: She’d probably found a box full of the clothes at Goodwill, all with the same mysterious label, and invented a fantastic scenario for how she’d come to have them. But as she returned her arm into the sleeve, I noticed her face was flushed.
“I miss him every single day,” she said. “I hate how the people who really get you are the ones you can never hold on to for very long. And the ones who don’t understand you at all stick around. Ever noticed that?”
“Yes.”
Maybe it was true, then. And anyway, I supposed when one was confronted with the choice to believe in the existence of an Armenian drag-queen horse trainer or not to believe, one will believe.
“Is that the reason you wanted to be on this investigation?” I asked. “Because you know so much about Cordova’s films?”
“Of course. It was a sign. Ashley gave me her coat.”
To my amazement, the webpage had actually loaded successfully, reading at the top: YOU MADE IT.
I pulled a wooden chair beside Nora and sat down, noticing as I did she smelled of musky men’s cologne, dramatic as a hint of dark chocolate in the air, and I couldn’t help but imagine that was the proof I needed, a whisper of old Moe Gulazar, always with her.
29
Nora and I stayed up most of the night on the Blackboards.
It was like fumbling through a pitch-black funhouse with trapdoors and tunnels, voices calling out from rooms with no doors, stumbling down rickety staircases that twisted deep into the ground with no end.
Every time I was about to suggest we head to bed, continue sifting through this endless Cordova archive with rested eyes in the morning, there was one more anecdote to click onto, another uncanny incident, rumor, or strange photo.
Freak the ferocious out—there were quite a few pages on the site devoted to Cordova’s supposed life philosophy, which meant, in a nutshell, that to be terrified, to be scared out of your skin, was the beginning of freedom, of opening your eyes to what was graphic and dark and gorgeous about life, thereby conquering the monsters of your mind. This was, in Cordovite speak, to slaughter the lamb, get rid of your meek, fearful self, thereby freeing yourself from the restrictions imposed on you by friends, family, and society at large.
Once you slaughter the lamb, you are capable of everything and anything, and the world is yours, proclaimed the site.
Sovereign. Deadly. Perfect.
These three words, which Cordova had mentioned in his infamous Rolling Stone interview while describing his favorite shot in his films—a close-up of his own eye—was a slogan on the Blackboards and for life itself. Sovereign: the sanctity of the individual, regarding yourself as princely, powerful, self-contained, wrestling authority for yourself away from society. Deadly: constant awareness that your own death is inevitable, which means there is no reason not to be ferocious, now, about your life. Perfect: the understanding that life and wherever you find yourself at the present are absolutely ideal. No regret, no guilt, because even if you were stuck it was only a cocoon to break out of—setting your life loose.
I’d known Cordova’s fans believed him to be an amoral enchanter, a dark acolyte who led them away from what was stale and tedious about their daily lives deep into the world’s moist, tunneled underbelly, where every hour was unexpected. Combing through the Blackboards’ whispers and suspicions, the sheer density of anonymous comments—which veered from reverential to frightened to supremely twisted and depraved—only underscored what I’d long suspected, that Cordova was not just an oddball eccentric along the lines of Lewis Carroll or Howard Hughes, but a man who also inspired devotion and awe in a vast number of people, not unlike a leader of a religious cult.
By 3:45 A.M. Nora and I—blank-eyed and delirious—were in the living room, digging out my pirated copy of Wait for Me Here—purchased for seventy-five bucks from Beckman—watching the terrifying opening scene, which featured Jenny Decanter, played by twenty-two-year-old Tamsin Polk, driving alone down the dirt forest road in the dead of night.
Abruptly, Theo Cordova—cast as John Doe #1—came crashing out of the trees, causing Jenny to scream, slamming on the brakes, sending her car spinning into a ditch, the engine stalling.
I’d always thought Theo Cordova looked like a deranged Puck: strung-out, half naked, eyes glassy, blood and what looked to be human bite marks covering his bare chest. He looked even more horrendous now, given Crowboy123’s anecdote on the Blackboards. As he knocked on the car window, trying the door, and said his only line—“Help me, please,” words barely audible over Jenny’s screams—his voice oozed out like some strange sap.
Nora, standing beside the flat-screen, paused it.
Frame by frame, she inched toward 5:48, where it was possible to see that Theo was missing three fingers.
“There.”
“It’s a movie. It could be special effects, makeup, prosthetics—”
“But the look on his face is real pain. I know it.”
She pressed play, and Theo’s hand dropped out of sight.
Jenny managed to get the car started, and, nearly running over this strung-out, wounded boy, she barreled back into the road, tree branches cracking the windshield, tires squealing. As she blindly took off, petrified, blinking away tears, she watched him in the rearview mirror.
The boy’s half-naked figure glowed red in her taillights, quickly faded to a thin black silhouette, and then—fast as an insect—he darted out of the road, vanishing from view.
Nora scrambled back to the couch, pulling the wool blanket over her legs and reaching down to pick up Septimus from the coffee table, as if that ancient bird would protect her from the horror about to unfold on-screen.
“Want me to make some popcorn?” I asked her.
“Definitely.”
We ended up watching all of Wait for Me Here.
Cordova’s films were addictive opiates; it was impossible to watch just one minute. One craved more and more. Around 5:30 A.M., when my head was soaked with gory imagery and that hellish story—not to mention echoing with whispers of those anonymous voices calling out from the Blackboards—Nora and I called it a day.
30
The next morning I woke up to learn Vanity Fair was reporting that they had “the inside scoop” on Ashley Cordova and the article was due to be published on their website within days. This meant not only that other reporters were hot on the trail, but it was probably just a matter of time before they ended up at Briarwood Hall—and on the doorstep of Morgan Devold. Whatever advantage I’d had, thanks to Sharon Falcone and getting my hands on Ashley’s police file, would be gone.
And unfortunately, my own investigation had stalled.
We’d learned about Ashley’s escape from Briarwood and her diagnosed affliction, nyctophobia, “a severe fear of the dark or night, triggered by the brain’s distorted perception of what would or could happen to the body when it’s exposed to a dark environment,” according to The New England Journal of Medicine. We’d had a small coup by logging successfully on to the Blackboards, able now to ransack through the rumors of his staunchest fans.
Yet there was no new lead to follow.
Ashley had come to the city by train after leaving Morgan Devold, but why, or where she’d gone during the ten days before her death—besides the thirtieth floor of the Waldorf Towers—was still a mystery.
I could bribe an employee at the hotel for a list of every guest staying on that floor within the time frame—September 30 to October 10—but from personal experience I knew I needed something more, a filter for the names. The list would be substantial, many of the guests doubtlessly wealthy tourists who wouldn’t appreciate—or feel any obligation to honestly answer—questions about what
“Maybe we could take Ashley’s picture to businesses around the Waldorf,” Nora said, after I explained some of this to her. “Ask if someone noticed her. She’d stand out with that red coat.”
“I might as well take her picture to Times Square and ask random passersby if they noticed her. It’s too vast. We need specifics.”
She suggested we watch Cordova’s films. “Maybe we’ll spot a hidden detail, like Theo’s three missing fingers.”
With no immediate alternative, I dusted off the box set of the eight films released by Warner Bros.—The Legacy (1966) through Lovechild (1985)—packaged to resemble the infamous Samsonite briefcase in Thumbscrew (1979), and we pulled the living-room shades, made more popcorn, and settled in for a Cordova marathon.
Nora called Hopper, inviting him to join, but he didn’t respond. I actually wouldn’t have been surprised if we never saw him again. I sensed from his restlessness—whatever his relationship with Ashley—his desire to be involved in the investigation would be as erratic as his moods. He seemed to veer between intense interest and a desire to forget the entire thing.
As we settled in to watch Thumbscrew, I was in the kitchen making more popcorn when the buzzer to my apartment rang.
“I’ll get it!” sang Nora.
After a minute, when I noticed nothing but silence, I stuck my head out. To my shock, Cynthia and my daughter, Sam, were in the foyer, staring in bewilderment at Nora.
It was my weekend for custody. I’d forgotten.
Seeing my ex-wife was still a jolt to the system. Jeannie was the designated go-between for Sam. The appearance of Cynthia in my home was akin to a grizzly wandering into my remote campsite: a life-threatening scenario I’d considered, but only as a worst-case disaster.
She looked stunning as usual in a cream-colored wool coat and jeans, a sweep of blown-out ash-blond hair. She was a dealer at an exclusive contemporary art gallery on Madison Avenue and often scrutinized oddly dressed strangers as if they were 99-cent airbrushed Elvis portraits.
“Hi, honey,” I said to Sam. “Mrs. Quincy. To what do we owe this pleasure?”
She turned to me. “You didn’t get my messages? Jeannie’s in the hospital. She’s come down with mono and has to go home to Virginia until she’s better. It’ll be six weeks at least.”
I looked down at Sam, tightly gripping the handle of her Toy Story suitcase and staring, wide-eyed and opened-mouthed, up at Nora.
“Sweetheart, did you meet my new research assistant?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. She tended to become speechless out of pure awe when encountering a stranger. She took a shy step behind my ex-wife.
“Can I talk to you in private?” Cynthia asked me, smiling thinly.
“Certainly.”
“Sam, I want you to stay here. I’ll be right back.”
Cynthia led the way down the hall. We entered my office, and she closed the door behind me.
“Who is that?” she asked.
“Nora. She’s helping me out with a story.”
“How old is she? Sixteen?”
“Nineteen. And extremely mature for her age.” I’d have loved to imagine Cynthia was jealous, seeing me with another woman, but these questions had nothing to do with me. She was worried about Sam.
She looked around, frowning at the papers and notes piled all over the floor, doubtlessly thinking, Some things never change.
She was still beautiful. It was awful. I’d been waiting for Cynthia to venture deeper into her forties so she’d wake up to wrinkles like a maze of molehills screwing up a legendary lawn. But no, her green eyes, those cheekbones, the expressive little mouth that broadcast her every mood with the diligence of a UN translator, were still youthful and bright. Now Bruce woke up every morning to that face. I still couldn’t believe that man—fifty-eight, with a paunch, hairy wrists, and a yacht in Lyford Cay named Dominion II—was allowed to live daily with such beauty. He had a knack for spotting deals in the marketplace, I’d give him that. When Cynthia sold him a Damien Hirst called, rather aptly, Beautiful Bleeding Wound Over the Materialism of Money Painting, Bruce noticed she, too, was a work of art to look at for a lifetime. That she allowed herself to be bought along with the painting—that I didn’t see coming.
When I met Cynthia our sophomore year at the University of Michigan, she was flighty and poor, a French studies major who quoted Simone de Beauvoir. She wiped her runny nose on her coat sleeve when it was snowing, stuck her head out of car windows the way dogs do, the wind fireworking her hair. That woman was gone now. Not that it was her fault. Vast fortunes did that to people. It took them to the cleaners, cruelly starched and steam-pressed them so all their raw edges, all the dirt and hunger and guileless laughter, were ironed out. Few survived real money.
“So, you and that girl are only working together,” Cynthia said, turning back to me.
“Yes. She’s my research assistant.”
“Well, research assistant to you can mean any number of things.”
I let that one hit me square in the gut. It was true, after our divorce I’d ended up in a slight relationship with my last research assistant, Aurelia Feinstein, age thirty-four—though, let me state for the record, it was not as hot as it sounded. Making love to Aurelia was like rummaging through a card catalog in a deserted library, searching for one very obscure, little-read entry on Hungarian poetry. It was dead silent, no one gave me any direction, and nothing was where it was supposed to be.
“It’s all very G-rated around here, so what’s really the problem?”
“You didn’t even remember Sam was coming today.”
“That’s not true. She’ll have a great time. If there’s any trouble, I’ll call you and you can airlift her out by Black Hawk.”
“What about Nancy?”
“Nora. She’ll be out of here by ten.” It wasn’t the time to mention Sam had a roommate.
Cynthia sighed, a familiar look of surrender on her face. “Have her home by six on Sunday. And Bruce and I rescheduled our Santa Barbara trip for next week, so you’ll have Sam for a long weekend.” She eyed me skeptically. “Unless you can’t handle it.”
“I can handle it.”
“We’re going with friends, so you can’t suddenly change your mind.”
“You have my word. I want the extra time with her.”
She seemed to accept this, sweeping her blond hair over her shoulder, staring at me expectantly, waiting for me to say something more.
This had been one of the great enigmas of our marriage. In the sixteen years we were together, Cynthia often waited for me to say something more, as if there were very specific words that would unlock her, state-of-the-art vault that she was. I never came close to deciphering the combination. I love you did not work. Neither did What are you thinking? or Tell me what you want to hear.
She’d wait for a minute, maybe longer, and when she understood she was going to remain locked until further notice, she’d walk away, lost in sealed-tight silence. This was what she did now, opening the door and striding back down the hall.
I was about to head after her, when I felt my cell ringing in my pocket. It was Hopper.
“Come to Fifty-eighth and Broadway,” he shouted as a police siren ripped into the receiver. “Now.”
“What?”
“I found someone who saw Ashley a few days before she died.”
I glanced back down the hall. Cynthia was taking off Sam’s coat.
Shit.
“Give me twenty minutes,” I said and hung up.
So Hopper couldn’t stay away after all. The kid was proving to be quite the trump card.
31
Sam stared sullenly back at me. Even though I’d just explained, crouched down on her level with as much drama as I could muster, that her dad had some top
“Next weekend we’ll be spending four days together,” I said. “Just the two of us, okay?”
Still, the silence. But then, seemingly thinking something quite serious, she reached her right hand way up and patted me on my head. She’d never done that before. Cynthia, her face flushed, shot me a look—Great parenting—but, smiling agreeably for Sam’s sake, she extended the handle of the Toy Story suitcase, handing it off to Sam, who dutifully wheeled it to the door like a tired stewardess learning she had to fly an extra leg to Cincinnati.
“Bye, sweetheart,” I said. “I love you more than—what was it again?”
“The sun plus the moon,” she answered, heading down the hall.
“I’ll make it up to her,” I said to Cynthia.
“Of course.” She swept her hair over her shoulder and smiled, stepping after her. “We’ll put it on your tab.”
I strode to the hall closet, trying to ignore the tsunami of guilt flooding through me.
“Hopper called,” I said to Nora over my shoulder. “We’re meeting him uptown now. He has a lead.” I grabbed my keys, but Nora didn’t move from the living-room doorway. She was staring at me, wide-eyed.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“That was bad.”
“What was bad?”
“That.”
“My ex-wife? Yes, I know. Can you believe that woman used to live to karaoke on a Saturday night? In college, we called her Bangles. You couldn’t pay her to stop singing ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’ in public.”
“She’s not what I’m talking about.”
I was helping Nora into her coat. “Then what are you talking about? And tell me quickly, because we need to get going.”
“You think you’re subtle, but you’re not.”
I was jostling her into the hallway, locking the door. “Subtle about what?”