“Tonight’s the last night. He’s in. . Denver? How he’s managed to pull it off this long nobody can figure. Gets back day after tomorrow.”
“Mind if I go meet his flight?”
“Flight?” Anna laughs again. “My dear, Mister Twenty-First Century travels by good old fashioned train.”
~ ~ ~
Two nights later at Union Station, Jasmine waits at the end of the long amber tunnel beneath the tracks that funnel from the trains to the lobby. Disgorged passengers flood the exits. Only when everyone else is gone do two men appear, one small and wiry, cropped dark hair with a cap, the other emaciated in a black overcoat. The ends of his flaming crimson hair stick out from under a wide-brimmed black fedora; the last time Jasmine felt a man’s handshake so weak, he changed her life. At first he calls her Anna, then stops with a slight start. “You’re not Anna,” he mutters.
“Anna’s at home,” she answers.
“Home?” he says, perplexed.
“The house. I’m Jasmine.”
“From the record company?” and then, “This is Jim,” introducing the other man. “Charmed,” says Jim, kissing her hand, not exactly elegant but courtly. On the way back to Doheny the singer with the red hair announces sweepingly that Jim is “the greatest rock and roll singer in the world,” but the only Jim that Jasmine has heard of flashed his willy at a concert years ago and is now dead. “Sings back-up,” Anna snorts dismissively at the house after the two travelers have collapsed, one in the mysterious backroom and the other on the same couch where Jasmine sat a couple of days before. “I seem to remember that was my job before I started sleeping with the star. Jim made a couple of albums with his own band a few years back — lunatics. . I won’t even go into the fucked up shit that man did on stage. His raggedy junkie ass,” she confirms, “is crazier than the other one,” nodding at the room down the hall. “Was locked up in a mental ward over at UCLA before we sprang him.”
“You,” Jim announces from the couch without twitching a finger, startling Jasmine who thought he was unconscious, “didn’t spring anyone. He did.”
~ ~ ~
When Jasmine returns to the house the next morning, the front door is open. No one answers when she rings the bell. She walks into the house and down the hall, bracing for what she might find, which is Jim sitting in the chair wearing no shirt but owl-rimmed glasses, across from the couch where he passed out the night before. He drinks hot tea and is buried in the Wall Street Journal.
Five televisions are on in the room, three of them on the same channel, all with the sound down. Jasmine never noticed the TVs before and now that she looks closer she sees there are two more, turned off. She’s trying to compute the incongruity of this not to mention the Wall Street Journal when — having in no other way acknowledged her entrance — Jim says from behind the newspaper, “Little doll with gray eyes. What it is.” The only other person who’s ever commented on her eyes was Kelly. “Primordial,” she called them, “from the beginning of time.”
“Everything all right, then?” she says.
“Anna left,” now peering at Jasmine for a moment around the edge of Dow Jones before disappearing back.
“Left? You mean left left?”
“Yes she did.”
Jasmine pokes her head into other rooms. “Why?”
“You’ll have to discuss that with her or, more likely, him. I believe,” Jim says, “they had a falling out.” He adds, “The Communists won an election in Italy.”
“They had a falling out because the Communists won an election in Italy?” Jim looks at her around the newspaper again to see if she’s kidding. “Shots weren’t fired?” she says. “Knives drawn?”
“Oh, worse,” Jim answers, “words were spoken. Everyone’s still alive, though, if that’s what you mean — or she was, anyway, last I saw her. Being the shiny red cockroach of rock and roll who will survive atomic meltdown, he is as well, I assume.”
Jasmine walks down the long hallway to the room in back and knocks on the door. “Hello?” Pressing her ear to the door she can hear music playing, and knocks again more assertively. “Are you all right in there?” The song she heard before begins playing again. “Look here,” she says, “I’m going to have to ring the police if you don’t answer—”
The door opens abruptly. He wears a thin burgundy robe undone at the waist that he ties now; in the dim hall he shields his eyes as if from some blinding light, though she can barely see in front of her. “Oh,” he mutters. He pulls open the door.
“Sorry to bother, just want to make sure you’re all right then. . Mister—”
“No, no, not Mister Anything,” and he has to muster up a tone of insistence, “come in.” There’s the scent of smoked Gitanes, and on the drawn window blinds that allow only a brown light, pentagrams have been scrawled. One is drawn on the floor as well. A row of small stubby candles burn on the shelf perilously near books that age has rendered immediately flammable; a couple of other candles burn on the floor. A guitar resting against the wall doesn’t appear to have been moved in a while, and there’s a small synthesizer keyboard. The music comes from a turntable on a wooden chest beneath the windows, hooked up to two small speakers, the cover to one of which has a gouge administered by something sharp. He says, “Right. Jasmine,” demonstrating a memory more acute than she would have predicted.
“Where’s Anna?” she asks.
“Anna has left.”
“Why?”
“Well, Jasmine,” he almost drawls, “you seem very pleasant but I’m not sure that’s your business, is it?”
“Rather it is and rather it isn’t. Your management has asked—”
“Yes, I just fired them,” and he looks at a dusty telephone that shows no sign of having been disturbed. She can’t be certain if he’s high or exhausted; everything seems to take an effort. “Before you came. I need you to work for me now.”
It’s hard to tell whether he’s thought of this on the spur of the moment or it’s something he’s been considering more than five minutes. “I shall pay you better than whatever they—”
“You fired them?” she says. “What for? And don’t tell me it’s not my business.”
“They were. . ” He shakes his head and looks at the phone with dread. He says, “People. . have been ringing me up. . I don’t know how they found me here. . ”
“The management?”
“Ringing me up. . no, not the management, uh. . need to put a stop to it. Need to stop with. . ” he waves his arm at the pentagrams on the floor and blinds, “. . all this. It’s. . stirring up what should be left unstirred and now they’re ringing. . excuse me,” and at the turntable he puts the stylus back at the beginning of the record he’s been playing. The song begins again. He looks up from the chair. “What were we—”
“You fired—”
“Yes. Well, they really weren’t handling my affairs properly, were they? I believe that they’re stealing my money. It’s happened before, you know. It’s my fault, really. . I signed the contract, knew I shouldn’t. . ”
“That’s why Anna left?”
“Anna. . no, Anna and I. . that’s not why. This is fantastic,” he says, leaning toward the record that’s playing, “I’m thinking of covering this song,” and now there’s a spark of something in his speech, “it’s from an old. . what was his name. . played Zorba the Greek, and Gauguin. Anthony. .” He’s wracking his brain. “God I hate it that I can’t remember anything. Anyway it’s from a movie with him and. . Anna Magnani perhaps? Of course I can never do it like Nina Simone, I wouldn’t bother trying. That’s about as perfect a vocal as anyone is going to sing — no affectation, no posturing, not a false moment. Perhaps I’ll do it like, you know. . Neu! or one of the German bands. . are you familiar with the German bands?”