Inexpressible Island Read online

  “That’s a lot to ask of a dress,” Ashton said.

  Hitting Ashton on the back with his fist, Julian said they might have something and motioned Mirabelle to follow him to the gown room, leaving Ashton and Zakiyyah alone.

  40

  Free Licks

  THEY STOOD. WITH HER GLARE, ZAKIYYAH QUESTIONED Ashton’s choice of attire. Ashton was wearing his favorite faded vintage T-shirt that said Free Licks. Zakiyyah was having none of it.

  “What?” Ashton glanced at his chest, not one to let anything go. “You don’t like my shirt?”

  “Did I say anything? I’m just standing here, minding my own business. But now that you ask—who would?”

  “It’s a name of a band. I take it you’re not up on indie rock? Shame. They’re very good.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Perhaps you should get your mind out of the gutter. Unless”—and here Ashton raised his eyebrows and razzledazzle smiled—“you prefer it there. In which case . . .” He opened his arms.

  Zakiyyah did a double-take. “Are you kidding me? Are. You. Kidding. Me?”

  “I’m making a joke. Can’t a man joke?” Lowering his arms, he stepped away.

  “What about that did you think was funny?” said Zakiyyah.

  “I’m not going to explain what a joke is,” Ashton said. “That’s like explaining tennis to a Doberman.”

  “So now you’re comparing me to a vicious dog?”

  “Oh my God. I can’t.”

  “No—you can’t,” said Zakiyyah.

  Ashton studied his phone for the time.

  Zakiyyah studied her watch. “Mia! Can we please hurry it up! I gotta go!”

  “Great!” Ashton muttered.

  They were still scowling when Mia emerged, wearing a thousand-watt stage smile and a gorgeous billowing ankle-length purple taffeta gown, Julian walking dazed behind her.

  “I take it back,” Ashton said. “You found the dress Dante would go to hell for. Good job, Jules.”

  Julian mumbled something, averting his eyes from her.

  “Yeah, Mia, that’ll work,” Zakiyyah said brusquely. “Can we leave? Some of us work in the mornings.”

  “Like us,” Ashton said.

  Zakiyyah suppressed a scoff. “Did you ask him how much the rental is going to cost you?”

  Julian waved her off. “It’s on us.”

  “No, no,” Zakiyyah said. “We want to rent it, like everybody else. Right, Mia? We don’t want any favors.”

  “But, Z . . .” Mia began.

  “Zakiyyah is right. Let her rent it, Jules,” Ashton said, turning to Mia. “That’ll be a hundred bucks a day.”

  “Z!”

  “That’s fine,” Zakiyyah said. “Whatever it costs. Full price. No discounts.”

  Julian glared at Ashton.

  Mia glared at Zakiyyah.

  Ashton rolled his eyes.

  Zakiyyah took out her wallet.

  “When’s the audition?” Julian asked Mirabelle.

  “Ten-thirty.”

  “I need to drop you off like right now and jet,” said Zakiyyah. “I’m going to be late.”

  “Mia, if you want,” Julian said carefully, “I could take you. So your friend could get to work on time. And then you can return the dress to me right after, so it won’t cost you anything.”

  “Absolutely not,” Zakiyyah began to say, but Mirabelle cut her off.

  “Yes, please, Julian,” she said, beaming. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble,” said Julian.

  Zakiyyah rolled her eyes. “Mia, no!” she whispered.

  “It’s fine, Z,” Mia said, and louder to the two men, “maybe I can help out, to return the favor. Is there anything I can do for you around here, work the register, sweep the floor?”

  “Mia, we talked about this! It’s not . . .”

  “It’s fine, Z!”

  Zakiyyah could not leave fast enough, slamming the door on her way out.

  “She’s really nice,” Mirabelle said to Julian and Ashton, standing by the counter, watching one woman storm out, one woman stay behind. “She’s just worried about me, that’s all. She’s like a mommy hen.”

  “Yes, she seems super sweet,” Ashton said. “Friendly, too.”

  “What the hell did you do to that poor girl?” Julian said to Ashton when Mirabelle was out of earshot.

  “Nothing! I was an angel like always. She might not have approved of my attire.”

  Julian grinned. “Good thing you didn’t wear your Thunderpussy shirt,” he said, looking Ashton over. “Or she might have killed you.”

  41

  Crystal of Souls

  AFTER HE DROPPED OFF MIRABELLE AT THE GREEK, JULIAN waited for her in the parking lot. The callbacks were closed set.

  She was gone only a few minutes. When she came out, she looked dejected, though stunning in that violet gown—like he couldn’t take a deep breath stunning. The girl was making him inarticulate.

  “Don’t give up,” he said. “They have to think about it.”

  “They thought about it,” she said. “Told me on the spot I wouldn’t make a good Beatrice. Too something or other. I stopped listening when I realized I wasn’t getting the part.”

  “Oh, shame. What about the narrator?”

  “They have someone for that already.” She shrugged. “C’est la vie. I didn’t want this stupid part anyway. I have more auditions tomorrow. Plus, like I said, Abigail Jenkins is flying in from London next week. That’s the gig I really want. Medea. I’m going to London, I feel it.”

  It was a warm sunny late summer morning.

  Julian had Buster Barkley to train before his meeting in Century City with a former propmaster from the Scream movies. “Can I take you home?” He smiled lightly. “To your actual home this time. Because I’ve got a full day . . .”

  “There’s something beautiful in those hills,” Mirabelle blurted, pointing up to the eucalyptus lining the desert mountain. “It’s like a rainbow wishing well. Do you want to come see it with me? We can only catch it at noon, and only for a few seconds. I think you’d like it. I hardly ever get to go up there. I want to make a wish for London. I need all the good karma I can get.”

  What could Julian say but yes to a violet girl asking him to follow her to a wishing well atop a mountain? Where had he seen a girl in a flowing purple dress like this before? For the life of him, he couldn’t remember. She was like a painting.

  A painting of a memory.

  His palm opened up, as if he could almost feel placing his hand on that dress, on the girl’s back. Quickly he clenched the hand into a fist, hoping she didn’t notice. “You’re going to hike in a dress and high heels?”

  “I’ll be careful. But you’re right, the heels are a bit impractical.” Half a minute later, below layers of purple silk, she had her black boots on and laced up. “I’m ready.”

  “Lead the way,” he said, taking a swig from his Japanese thermos filled with lemon ice water and offering her some. He took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He knew he’d get too warm after hiking up a mountain.

  They began to climb through the bush, keeping to the narrow sandy path. After a few minutes she commended his speed. “You’re keeping up nicely.”

  “You mean you’re keeping up nicely.” He raced ahead of her.

  “Hey, you can’t be ahead of me!” She tried to catch up. “You don’t know where you’re going.”

  “Do any of us really know where we’re going, Mia? To the top of the mountain? How hard can that be to find? I go up, right? I stop when I can’t go any farther? Come on, slow poke. I haven’t got all day.”

  By the time they reached the crest, she was flushed. Julian had barely begun to perspire.

  “Not bad,” Mirabelle said, panting. “I didn’t know boxers could fight and hike.”

  “Boxers can do a lot.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She squinted.

  He squinted right back.
>
  “I like your spunk, Julian.” She had the most inviting, genial face. It was a face in a permanent state of smile. “You don’t run in vain, nor labor in vain.”

  “I try. All anyone can do, really.”

  “Yoda says do or do not. There is no try.”

  “Yoda is wrong. He doesn’t know everything.”

  “Oh, yeah? Does Mr. Know-it-All know there’s magic in these hills?”

  “Mr. Know-it-All knows there’s magic everywhere.”

  But when they reached where they were going, and up ahead he saw the stone enclosure on a flat mesa overlooking the valley and the city and the ocean—Julian stopped walking.

  Mirabelle called for him. “A little farther, Jules. Over here.”

  It wasn’t that he couldn’t walk.

  He couldn’t walk because suddenly he found it hard to breathe.

  “I know, it’s the oxygen,” she said, coming back and taking his hand shyly. “It’s thin up here. Harder to fill your lungs.”

  He pulled his hand away from her. He didn’t think that was it. Words for some reason became inadequate. Doggedly he followed her into the center of the stony circle.

  “We’re going to catch us some wishes, Jules.” From her bag she retrieved a jagged crystal on a long leather rope. “Are you ready?”

  The sight of the crystal had a peculiar effect on Julian. He started to shake. Seeing it, seeing her standing in the sun, holding the quartz in her hands, triggered the heaviest sensation in his chest. He became freezing cold. He had not experienced anything like it, except ten years earlier when he was dying in the desert and saw a mirage named Ashton.

  Burning soot filled his throat. She let go of his hand and disappeared into the smoke.

  “Please, no,” he whispered. “Don’t go into the fire.”

  “What fire? Don’t be scared. Watch and see. Prepare to be amazed.”

  “Josephine, no,” he whispered. “Please, Josephine . . .”

  “I’m not Josephine, remember?” she said with good humor. “I’m Mirabelle. Mia.”

  Dumbfounded he stared at the inside of his bare left forearm, as if the hieroglyphs to explain what was happening to him could be found there.

  She positioned herself in front of him, so close she was almost touching him, the stone in her open palm. Julian did not look at her and could not look at her. He did not feel well.

  “You look pale. You okay? Don’t look so glum. What time is it?”

  He showed her. 11:59.

  “Excellent. Almost time. Don’t forget to make a wish.” Her face was enchanted, enchanting, smiling. “At noon, for a brief moment, the stars and the earth and all of creation will be so perfectly aligned that any wish asked for in faith can be granted.”

  He wished he had something to hold on to.

  “Place your hands under my hands,” she said. “That’s it, like that, like Red Hands. Don’t shake. Is the boxer scared of heights? The boxer should’ve told me.”

  “Your heart is a refuge of coiners and thieves,” Julian said. “But I’m the one who has come to steal your life.”

  “What?”

  His heart grew numb, awash with terrible suffering and blinding fear. When the aurora flash of noon light hit her crystal, bouncing off the quartz stones around them and dispersing into a carousel of color, Julian started to choke. His hands fell from her hands and rose to his throat. He felt old love, and pain that swallowed him whole. His lungs were paralyzed. She stood in front of him smiling, and he was crying. He forgot to breathe. His heart forgot to beat.

  She vanished for a moment inside the light, and as she vanished, ugly things reared up to replace her, crowding with Julian inside their intimate seclusion. He fell to his knees, scraping the ground, his palms slamming into the dust to stop himself from plunging face first into the sand.

  Blind and deaf, he swallowed fire and then was under ice. Death was falling out of the sky. Sound was everywhere, life was elsewhere. And then sound was nowhere. He was drowning in a vast ocean of want, of impossible struggle, of bottomless sorrow. Was that him who felt these things for her, getting iced in the liquid grief for all she wanted to be and would never be?

  Julian, he heard dimly. Julian, what’s the matter?

  The bright light receded. His senses came back. He was in the dirt, on his knees, shivering, and she was in front of him holding on to his hands. She wasn’t smiling anymore. She looked very concerned. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

  He stared into her face. She was blue, and she was dying. And as she was dying, she said, come then, take the last warmth from my lips.

  Julian groaned.

  “Anyone can stop a woman’s life,” he said, “but no one her death: a thousand doors open onto it.” He clutched his throbbing right hand to his chest. It felt like blood was pouring out of his missing fingers. Oh my God. What was happening to him?

  “What are you talking about, what doors?” Mirabelle said. “Everything’s okay. It’s just a trick of the light. When the sun is at zenith over the meridian, it sometimes does that, disperses in a kind of rainbow. It’s just a pretty earth science thing. There’s nothing to it.”

  She tried to help him up, but he lurched from her. Grabbing onto the stones, he pulled himself up and without dusting off, still clutching his hooked right hand to his chest, said, “Let’s go.”

  In utter silence he staggered downhill. He didn’t even brush the dust off his knees before climbing inside his spotless car.

  “You want to go grab some lunch?” she said. “I’m starved. My treat.”

  “I can’t. I got . . . things.”

  “You sure? You were so good to me today. I want to return the favor.”

  And for some reason he said, “Today?”

  “What do you mean?” she said. “As opposed to another day?”

  “I don’t know what I mean,” Julian said. He drove her to her house on Lyman.

  “Are you really okay?” said Mirabelle. “You are still so pale. What happened to you up there?”

  “I’m fine. Probably just oxygen deprivation. Not used to it. Well, here we are.”

  “The right place this time, thank goodness,” she said. “One of these days, you’ll have to tell me how you knew about Normandie.” She saw him sitting with the car still in drive, the foot slammed against the brake, his hands on the wheel. “You’re not even going to put the car into park?”

  Reluctantly he shifted gears.

  “Come in for a minute. I have to give you your dress back anyway. Come on, I’ll make you a cup of coffee. You look like you need it.”

  “I’ll wait here, if you don’t mind. I have some calls to make.”

  She came back a few minutes later carrying the dress and laid it carefully in the back seat.

  Julian didn’t look at her. She began to say something, but he cut her off. “Well, so long,” he said. “You’re welcome,” and peeled away before she could open her mouth to respond.

  42

  Inferno

  “JULES?”

  Julian opened his eyes. He was on the floor, in the corner of Ashton’s bedroom, by the sliding glass doors leading to the pool. Ashton was sitting up in bed, having just woken up, staring at Julian.

  Julian’s body was stiff from sleeping coiled on the hard wood. Next time he might consider a pillow and a sleeping bag.

  Next time? Next time he was going to have a nasty piece-of-shit dream and get so shook that he’d have to walk to Ashton’s house, break into his friend’s bedroom and sleep on the floor like a dog?

  “Had a bad dream.” Julian struggled to his feet.

  Ashton appraised him. “Bad enough for you to sneak into my bedroom in the middle of the night?”

  “Worse than that.”

  “Have you considered upping your dosage?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “What was the dream about?”

  Julian waved him off, made a joke, refused to say. But the dream was so awful that before
he lay in the corner, he leaned over Ashton’s bed, and pressed his hand against his friend’s sleeping head to make sure it was still warm.

  He creeps on black ice, slipping and falling and crawling, trying desperately to get to something in the frozen grass. With his hands numb from the cold, he digs through the hard blades and when he looks at his hands he is missing all of his fingers and black blood is pouring out onto the ice. With the mutilated nubs of what’s left he scratches through the grass to get to the ditch underneath. In the trench, dozens of pale babies, sculptures made of ice, crawl on their cracking and breaking limbs. Julian’s blood drips onto their snowy backs. And underneath their crystal knees lies a dead and mangled Ashton.

  * * *

  Mirabelle sauntered into his gym a day later while Julian was training Buster. She was fresh and dewy, wearing a strapless, casual, pull-on milk-chocolate sundress. Her hair was styled half-up, half-down in meticulous cascading waves, and she wore open-toe platform sandals, not boots, and lots of bangles on her wrists, bangles that jingled with her every bouncy step. And that wasn’t the only thing that was bouncy. She wasn’t wearing a bra, her perky breasts bobbing as she sashayed toward him, the nipples eye-popping through the thin cotton fabric.

  When Julian saw her, he forgot to duck and got walloped by the guy getting ready for a title fight.

  “See, this is why you should switch to tennis,” Mirabelle said, coming close to the apron of the ring and peering at him through the ropes as he lay on the floor. “If you screw up in tennis, it’s 15-love. If you screw up in boxing, it’s your ass.”

  “I didn’t screw up,” he said, pulling himself up and moving his sore jaw around. “You distracted me.”

  She smiled like that was the best thing she’d heard all week, that she distracted him. He didn’t smile back. He didn’t, because he couldn’t.

  He leaned over the ropes looking down at her gazing up at him. “What are you doing here?” A boxing gym was no place for beguiling gleaming girls.

  From her bag Mirabelle pulled out his book. “I went to Book Soup last night and picked up a copy. Boy, do they love you there. You have a whole display. Book’s amazing, by the way. I finished it in one sitting.”