177.
Vikar returns to the club the next night and the next, and the next five after that. There’s never a moment when he says God I hate this music before he admits God I love this Sound. By his third night, when he steps over the woman in the hospital gown sleeping in the doorway and walks into the club, everyone turns to look and in the din he catches stray fragments of buzz, “He’s here …” and people part before him. When the audience begins its tribal smash-ups, the thing in him wells up and he lurches into the crowd, slamming into everything and everyone, toppling over the edge of the stage. He feels people’s hands on Liz and Monty. Later behind the club, a feline Asian named Tanya and her “slave” Damitra take turns putting him in their mouths, and as he leans back against the wall he can feel the vibration, like the vibration he felt when he went to the silent-movie theater one night on Fairfax, and Chauncey played the organ to the ride of the Klan in The Birth of a Nation. Returning to the editing room in the mornings he glows with a bruised blue, and the secretaries and assistants regard him even more strangely than usual.
178.
For a while he realizes he’s come to care more about the Sound than the Movies, and in his infidelity he’s ashamed, memories washing over him of his first days in Los Angeles when no one seemed to love the movies. I would never betray you, he promises the bathroom mirror, caressing his head. I might cheat on you for Kim or Natalie or Tuesday, but I would never betray you for any sound or music.
179.
One early morning in the dark after returning to the hotel, Vikar sits looking out the window at the park. It’s turned cold again. Christmas decorations go up all over the city. The heat of his night at the club, however, makes him unlatch the window and push it open. The park reflects off the glass of the window in the light from his suite. He keeps pushing the window in and out, the image of the park shifting with its reflection in the glass.
180.
I would never betray you, one lover might say to another in a scene, but by choosing one profile over the other, Vikar can lay bare either credibility or mendacity in the character, irrespective of the actor’s intention or the writer’s or director’s.
As people have right profiles and lefts, so places and moments have them. Vikar looks back and forth from the park below to its image in the window, listening to the image’s stereo. In a movie, every shot is a profile of something. By cutting from rights to lefts or vice versa, or from rights to other rights or from lefts to other lefts, Vikar reinforces or sabotages the audience’s perceptions, not to mention the film’s. He sets free from within the false film the true film.
He’s been working on Your Pale Blue Eyes for two months when, going over the previous day’s rushes, he hits the stop button and looks at the face in the frame before him.
181.
He picks up the phone and puts a call through to Mitch Rondell.
“I hear you’re a busy man these nights, Vikar,” Rondell says. The tone of concern is unmistakable. “At some point soon, it would be helpful if we took a look at what you’re doing.”
“It’s better if you trust me,” Vikar says.
“I’ll be honest — that makes us nervous. Why is it better?”
“Because otherwise it would be hard for someone to understand or for me to explain.” There’s silence on the other end of the phone. “Let me finish a little more.” Vikar adds, “Hiring another editor now would be bad.”
“We’ll be the judge of that,” Rondell says. “I didn’t say anything about hiring another editor.”
Vikar doesn’t answer.
“Tell me honestly how you feel it’s going.”
“I don’t know yet. That doesn’t mean,” Vikar says, “it’s not going well.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means I have to finish to know. It’s a matter of faith.”
“The faith feels a bit blind.”
“In one eye, perhaps.”
“This is all very poetic, Vikar, but both eyes would like to see what you’re doing. Take until the end of next week and then you need to show us something.”
“All right.”
“I’m also sending something over to your suite this afternoon. Depending on what I see next week, there will be more where that comes from.” Is it illicit narcotics? Vikar wonders. “You’ll find it when you get back to the hotel. You are going back to the hotel these nights, aren’t you?”
“Sooner or later.”
“They’re your nights, as long as it’s not hurting the picture.”
“All right.”
“We understand and accept that a certain amount of mystery is part of your personality, Vikar. You do understand that sometimes it unsettles people?”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever get unsettled?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“I guess that’s good.”
“I get other things.” Looking at the face in the viewer before him, Vikar says, “But I called about something else.”
182.
When Vikar returns to his suite that evening, a large stack of film canisters waits for him on the table in the front room. The Long Goodbye, Kiss Me Deadly, Sweet Smell of Success, Body and Soul, Monsieur Verdoux, To Be or Not to Be, A Hard Day’s Night, One Million B.C. (the final movie D. W. Griffith produced, and part of which he may have directed). When I get back to Hollywood, Vikar thinks, I’m going to need a bigger place.
183.
He doesn’t go to the club that night, and the next day he leaves the cutting room early and returns to the suite. He waits for a phone call, or a knock on the door.
184.
She holds her hair, wrapping her hand in it. She wears a black dress like the last time he saw her. “Hello,” he says.
“You are editing my film.” She smiles. “My film.”
“Come in.”
“I can’t. But perhaps we can go out Friday night.”
“Do you want to give me your phone number?”
“I will just come over, O.K.?”
“Yes.”
“We can go out and have a drink or go dancing or go to a club.”
Vikar says, “I know a very good club.”
185.
Until the last second, some part of him believes she’ll disappear again. When he answers the door Friday night, she wears a shorter, sexier dress and her lips glisten; she’s slightly flushed, and across her eyes is a mysterious veil, as though the eyes and lips are each of a different face. “I have to make one stop,” she says breezily in the taxi on its way down Fifth Avenue.
186.
The streetlights ripple across her face. A full moon hangs over Grand Central Station. “Is it waxing or waning?” she says. “I’ve been on the set so many nights I don’t know.”
“Which is which?” he says. “Which is becoming and which is begoing?”
“Waxing is becoming.”
“It’s waxing.” He says, “I didn’t know you were in this movie until I saw your face in the viewer.”
“I didn’t know you were on it,” she says, “until they told me.”
“What did they tell you?”
“They told me you were cutting the movie.” She half laughs, “I play the model’s friend.”
“I know.”
“It’s not a big part. I tried out for the part of the model.”
“I saw you in The Long Goodbye.”