Roy leaned forward and studied the woman. My God, he said, youre right. Blind.
And the man laughing and the woman picking up and imitating the laughter, like a stunned parrot.
At which moment, Clarence, his back turned, having listened to the laughter and the onrush of words, turned slowly to regard the pair. Eyes half shut, he listened again, intently, and then a look of incredible surprise crossed his face. A word exploded from his mouth.
The Beast stopped his laughter.
Clarence took a step forward and said something to the man. The woman stopped laughing, too. Clarence asked something else. Whereupon the Beast closed his hands into fists, cried out, and lifted his arms into the air as if he might pound Clarence, pile-drive him, into the pavement.
Clarence fell to one knee, bleating.
The Beast towered over him, his fists trembling, his body rocking back and forth, in and out of control.
Clarence cried out and the blind woman, reaching out on the air, wondering, said something, and the Beast shut his eyes and let his arms drop. Instantly, Clarence leaped up and ran off in the dark. I almost jumped to go after him, though for what reason I did not know. The next instant, the Beast helped his blind friend into the taxi, and the taxi roared off.
Roy jumped the starter and we roared after.
The taxi turned right at Hollywood Boulevard, and the red light and some pedestrians stopped us. Roy gunned the engine as if to clear a path, cursed, and finally, when the crosswalk was empty, ran the red light.
Roy!
Stop calling my name. Nobody saw us. We cant lose him! God, I need him! We got to see where he goes! Who he is! There!
Up ahead, we saw the taxi making a right at Gower. Up ahead, also, Clarence was still running but did not see us as we passed.
His hands were empty. He had dropped and left his portfolio behind outside the Derby. How long before he misses it, I wondered. Poor Clarence.
Why poor? said Roy.
Hes in this, too. Otherwise, why was he outside the Brown Derby? Coincidence? Hell, no. Someone told him to come. God, now hes lost all those great portraits. Roy, we got to go back and save them.
We, said Roy, got to go straight on ahead.
I wonder, I said, what kind of note Clarence got? What did it say to him? What did what say? said Roy.
Roy ran another red light at Sunset in order to catch up with the taxi, which was halfway to Santa Monica Boulevard.
Theyre headed for the studio! said Roy. No.
For the taxicab, when at Santa Monica, had turned left past the graveyard.
Until we reached St. Sebastians, just about the least-significant Catholic church in L.A. Suddenly, the taxi swung left down a side street just beyond the church.
The taxicab stopped about a hundred yards down the side street. Roy braked and curbed. We saw the Beast take the woman in toward a small white building obscured by night. He was gone only a moment. A door opened and closed somewhere, and the Beast returned to the taxi, which then glided to the next corner, made a swift U-turn and came back at us. Luckily, our lights were out.
The taxi flashed by. Roy cursed, banged the ignition, revved the car, made a calamitous U-turn of his own, with me yelling, and we were back at Santa Monica Boulevard, in time to see the taxi pull up in front of St. Sebastians and dislodge its passenger, who then fled up the walk into the lit entry of the church, not looking back. The taxi drove away.
Roy glided our car, lights out, into another dark place under a tree. Roy,
whatre you?
Silence! hissed Roy. Hunch. Hunch is everything. That guy no more belongs in a church at midnight than I belong in the burlesque chorus
Minutes passed. The church lights did not go out. Go see, suggested Roy.
Go what? Okay, Ill go!
Roy was out of the car, shucking his shoes. Come back! I yelled.
But Roy was gone, in his stocking feet. I jumped out, got rid of my shoes, and followed. Roy made it to the church door in ten seconds, me after, to flatten ourselves against an outside wall. We listened. We heard a voice, rising, falling, rising.
The Beasts voice! Urgently spelling calamities, terrible commitments, dreadful errors, sins darker than the marble sky above and below.
The priests voice gave brief and just as urgent answers of forgiveness, predictions of some better life, where Beast, if not reborn as Beauty, might find some small sweet joys through penance.
Whisper, whisper, in the deeps of the night. I shut my eyes and ached to hear.
Whisper, whisper. ThenI stiffened in disbelief.
Weeping. A wailing that went on and on and might never stop.
The lonely man inside the church, the man with the dreadful face and the lost soul behind it, let his terrible sadness free to shake the confessional, the church, and me. Weeping, sighing, but to weep again.
My eyelids burst with the sound. Then, silence, anda stir. Footsteps. We broke and ran.
We reached the car, jumped in.
For Christs sake! hissed Roy.
Shoving my head down, he crouched. The Beast was out, running alone across the empty street.
When he reached the graveyard gate, he turned. A passing car fixed him as with a theatres spotlight. He froze, waited, then vanished inside the graveyard.
A long way off, inside the church doors, a shadow moved, the candles went out, the doors shut.
Roy and I looked at each other.
My God, I said. What sins could be so huge that someone confesses them this late at night? And the weepingl Did you hear? Do you thinkhe comes to forgive God, for handing him that face.
That face. Yeah, oh, yeah, said Roy. I got to know what hes up to, I cant lose him!
And Roy was out of the car again. Roy!
Dont you see, dummy? cried Roy. Hes our film, our monster! If he gets away?! God!
And Roy ran across the street. Fool! I thought. Whats he doing?
But I was afraid to yell so long after midnight. Roy vaulted over the graveyard gate and sank down in shadow like someone drowning. I shot up in my seat so hard I hit my head on the car roof and collapsed, cursing: Roy, dammit. Dammit, Roy.
What if a police car comes now, I thought, and asks me, What you up to? My answer? Waiting for Roy. Hes in the graveyard, be out any second. He will, will he? Sure, just you wait!
I waited. Five minutes. Ten.
And then, incredibly, there came Roy back out, but moving as if he had been electroshocked.
He walked slowly, a sleepwalker, across the street. He didnt even see his own hand on the car door handle, turning it to let him in. He sat in the front seat of the car, staring over at the graveyard.
Roy?
He didnt hear.
Whatd you see over there, just now? He didnt answer.
Is he, him, it, coming out? Silence.
Roy! I hit his elbow. Speak! What! He, said Roy.
Yes?
Unbelievable, said Roy. Id believe.
No. Quiet. Hes mine now. And, oh God, what a monster well have, junior. He turned to look at me at last, his eyes flashlights, the soul burning out of his cheeks and coloring his lips. Wont we have a film, pal?
Will we?
Oh, he cried, face blazing with revelation. Yeah!
Is that all you got to say? Not what went on in the graveyard, not what you saw? Just, oh yeah?
Oh, said Roy, turning to gaze back across at the graveyard. Yeah.
The church lights in the tiled patio went out. The church was dark. The street was dark. The lights on the face of my friend were gone. The graveyard was filled with night shadowing toward dawn.
Yeah, whispered Roy.
And drove us toward home.
I can hardly wait to get to my clay, he said. No!
Shocked, Roy turned to look at me. Rivers of street light ran over his face. He looked like someone underwater, not to be touched, reached, saved.
You telling me, positively, I cant use that face for our film?
Its not just the face. I got this feeling if you do it, were dead. God, Roy, Im really scared. Someone wrote you to come find him tonight, dont forget. Someone wanted you to see him. Someone told Clarence to come there tonight, too! Things are running too fast. Pretend we were never at the Brown Derby.
How, asked Roy, could I possibly do that? He drove faster.
The wind ripped in the windows, tore at my hair and my eyelids and my lips.
Shadows ran across Roys brow and down his great hawks nose and over his triumphant mouth. It seemed like Grocs mouth, or The Man Who Laughs.
Roy felt me looking at him and said: Busy hating me?
No. Wondering how I could have known you all these years and still not know you.
Roy lifted his left hand full of the Brown Derby sketches. They flapped and fluttered in the wind outside the window.
Shall I let go?
You know and I know, you got a box-brownie in your head. Let those fly and you got a whole new roll, waiting, behind your left eyeball.
Roy waved them. Yeah. The next set will be ten times better. The pad pages flew off in the night behind us.
Doesnt make me feel any better, I said.
Does me. The Beast is ours now. We own him.
Yeah, who gave him to us? Who sent us to see? Whos watching us watching him?
Roy reached out to draw half a terrible face on the moisture inside the window.
Right now, just my Muse.
Nothing more was said.
