The Grin of the Dark

TWENTY-SEVEN - SIRENS

I have the impression that faces are moving over me, and when I leave the dream behind I'm tied up. I can't move a limb. The sight of pudgy pallid faces crawling over one another clings to my mind as my eyes bulge open and I bare my teeth, which doesn't help me to utter a sound. I'm tangled in a nylon sheet and clawing at the one beneath me on the double bed. All this would be more reassuring if I weren't adorned with an erection. Once it subsides beneath the weight of my dismay with the nightmare, I fling off the clammy sheet and drain the glass of water that I can't recall pouring. Also on the bedside table is my watch, showing ten past eleven for a moment before the digits grow identical.

Is it late morning or nearly midnight? I pad across the tiled floor to part the slats of the blind. Outside are the other extended half of the V-shaped house and an unlit building beyond the dim outlines of cacti, and that's all except featureless darkness. I've slept through the day, and I still haven't told Natalie that I've arrived. I would have if I hadn't been overwhelmed by Willie Hart's identity and my lack of sleep.

I hurry to my bathroom, which is as thoroughly stocked with toiletries and towels as any in a hotel. I have a quick fierce shower and grab clothes from my suitcase. Buttoning my shirt, I step out of the room. The house is quiet except for a faint sound of lapping. The corridor ends at a tiled lobby across which the outer door faces a dining area occupied by a heavy table and twelve chairs, and beyond them an extensive open kitchen. A further corridor leads to the rest of the house, where the noise is coming from. It's the sound of simulated waves on a computer inside the first room on the left. I knock on the door and look in.

The office is deserted. Grey filing cabinets flank a white desk. The walls are full of posters, or rather flattened sleeves from videocassettes and DVDs. Guy Hard, Star Prick: The Search for Cock, Rumpy Young Women, Fun with Dick, A Dong to Remember, Guy Hard with a Vengeance, Good Day at Black Cock, Star Whores: A New Grope... I venture to the desk and touch the mouse, and the screensaver vanishes to reveal that the computer is online. I'm sure Willie won't mind if I email Natalie. I log onto my account and find a message from her.

Are you landed yet, Simon? Is everything as you expected? Let us know you're safe. Mark sends a big grin.

I type so fast that my fingernails twinge.

Couldn't be safer. Sorry I didn't get back to you as soon as I arrived. No sooner in my room than I fell asleep until just now. It's breakfast time in London, isn't it? If you read this in the next few minutes I'll probably still be at the computer if you want to let me know you have. Meanwhile I'm being well looked after by my host and hoping to start what I'm here for very soon. Love to you both and a bigger grin back to Mark.

I'm not sure about the last comment, but I send the email before I can change my mind about withholding the gender of my host – I think the revelation is best kept until I'm home. I bring up the Internet Movie Database, but it doesn't lack the information I was convinced it did. Willie Hart's page shows her birth name as Wilhelmina.

Has it been added since I looked? At least there's nothing unfamiliar on Tubby's pages. The newsgroups have been busy with me while I was asleep, however. To begin with, Colin intervened on my behalf.

Reverting to baby talk now, are we? Not much of a regression when you've been flinging the contents of your nappy at anyone you disagree with. Just because people read you on the Internet doesn't mean you're worth anyone's attention. It's the biggest slush pile in creation. A slush pile is where writers like you that are never going to see print end up. Real writers like Simon have real editors like me who haven't time to waste with illiterate unpublishable ignoramuses like you. Have you caught on yet that the last thing we are is jealous of you? I see your name spells I'm Slime, Me. Good to see you writing the truth for once even if you didn't know you were.

I can't help grinning at Colin's discovery, but my amusement doesn't last.

No, it spells Me, I'm Miles. That's miles abbove you nipping at my heels, except it's more like treading on an innsect. Don't bother wonderring if it's my name any more than yours is Collin Vernon. Do you really think you'll connvince anyboddy you're an edditor by talking to us all like that? Real edditors help people, they don't try to make us think we're no good and just you are. We all know you wouldn't make such a fuss trying to deffend yourself if you bellieved in yourself.

Other posters on the newsgroups have joined in the argument or tried to end it.

What's any of this got to do with this group?...

Can't the three of you take your row outside?...

I don't know who any of you losers are and I'm sure nobody here wants to...

However many of them there are, they're all as bad as each other...

I think the last comment is especially unfair, but I'm not going to be diverted. I address my reply to Smilemime.

I absolutely agree with everyone who's tried to stop this. Just hush and we will.

Though I'm tempted to advise him to depart propelled by a jet of his own urine, I post the message I've typed instead. I hope there will be no answer, and there's none from Natalie. As I log off I become aware of a sound at the end of the corridor. It's the rhythmic moaning of a female voice.

It must be in a film. If it weren't amplified it would hardly penetrate the door in the wall that terminates the corridor. It seems to intensify as I venture closer. I ease the door halfway open, and then my arm continues the action as if the spectacle ahead has taken control of my brain. The room beyond the door is as wide as the house, and much brighter. The subject of the brightness is an unclothed double bed occupied by two slim naked girls. The one whose face is visible looks dauntingly young. She continues to moan, such an exaggerated sound I'm not surprised it was audible through the door. The handle drifts out of my distracted grasp, and the movement catches her attention. She lowers her head, which was thrown back, and rests silver fingernails on her friend's shoulder. The other girl lifts her face from between her friend's thighs and licks her glistening lips. She appears to be even younger. For that reason among others I'm hesitating in the doorway when both girls produce smiles that age them several years – at least, I'd like to think so – and stretch out a hand each to me.

How impolite would it be to refuse? I'm unable to look away. As I pace forward they turn their supine bodies to me. I feel as if the entire naked lengths of both of them are aware of me, a notion so intensely stimulating that there's no question my no doubt foolish grin originates in my crotch. I follow the swelling into the room, or at least that's my excuse. I've no idea how many steps I take before noticing the arc-lights and, already behind me, the camera. I'm in a film until I grin sheepishly at the camerawoman. 'Cut,' Willie Hart shouts beside her, twice.

The repetition is so clearly a rebuke that the embodiment of my libido sags at once. 'Sorry,' I mumble.

'Okay.' It audibly isn't, and she adds 'For what?'

'For ruining your take.'

'And how do you figure you did that?'

I'm not sure even of the question. 'By being here?'

Each of the girls on the bed gives a sigh that Willie puts into words. 'By looking at the camera.'

'I'm not a professional. I mean, I am, but not that kind.'

'Amateur is good too. Just be yourself. Mona and Julia would show you how.'

'I know perfectly well who I am.'

'Then let's find out,' either Mona or Julia says.

'Looked like there was plenty of you before,' says Julia with as wide a smile, unless she's Mona.

'Don't be offended, but I'm just here to write a book,' I say and face Willie. 'And I'll be correcting all the errors on the net about your grandfather.'

'Take a break, everyone. Which errors?'

The performers swing their legs off the bed, and I see that one girl is wearing a ring through her right labium. As they catch me watching, her friend gives the ring a gentle tug. I wince, not least at the responsive pang that travels along my penis, and manage to pronounce 'The descriptions of his films.'

'How do you know they're wrong if you haven't seen the movies?'

'I think this character specialises in writing rubbish.'

'Show me.'

I linger to ask 'You won't be including me in the film, will you?'

It's the camerawoman who answers. Her hair is cropped even shorter than the other women's. 'What,' she says, 'as a joke?'

'Not even as that if you don't mind.'

The girls send a final sigh, mocking or otherwise, after me as Willie ushers me out of the room. 'Don't mind Marilyn,' she murmurs. 'She has quite a tongue when she uses it.'

I'm tempted to rejoin that the same is true of the performers. Instead I say 'Don't think I'm prying, but how old are the girls?'

'Legal. Proof on file. Want to see?'

'Good heavens no. Of course not.'

As I open the door to her office she says 'Well, you seem to know your way around.'

'I heard the screensaver before.'

'Really? I'll have to cancel the repairman. The sound card must have fixed itself.'

The waves have fallen silent. Before they can prove me truthful, Willie rouses the mouse. 'Where do I need to look?'

'The IMDb.'

'I'm not familiar with it.'

I lean over her to bring up the site. She's wearing the thinnest of T-shirts, and the V of the neck is even more revealing. The heat of her body seems to surge at me as I use the mouse to pull down the list of recent online visits and click on the reference. At once I feel as if the computer has tricked me into betraying myself. 'Sorry,' I blurt. 'I was on here earlier. I couldn't find you and I wanted to let my partner know where I was.'

'Hey, don't worry. Were you feeling lonely?'

I'm distracted by Mona and Julia, who are strolling naked past the office. 'Not at all,' I say hastily. 'Just making sure she wasn't.'

'In case she was looking for company, you mean?'

'Not at all,' I repeat as a memory of Nicholas barring the way to her flares up in my head. 'We don't do that kind of thing.'

'Gee, you Brits. You can have too much control, you know.' Willie types her grandfather's name in the search box on the database. 'Okay, what's the son of a bitch been saying?'

I let Smilemime's comments speak for themselves. Willie gazes longest at the claim that Fool for a Day helped destroy Charley Chase's career, and I reflect that an administrator must have edited the comments somewhat, since they aren't misspelled. Willie is silent until she has read back as far as Crazy Capaldi, Orville Hart's first sound film, and then she says 'So what am I meant to be seeing?'

'Inaccuracies, I should think.'

'I don't see any. Where are they?'

'You aren't saying you can confirm everything this person wrote.'

'Sure, that's what I'm saying.'

The mirth I was affecting dies in my throat and deserts my face, leaving it almost too stiff for me to ask 'How could he know about your grandfather's last film when it was never released?'

'Read about it, I guess. There's always advance publicity. I don't understand what your problem is with this guy.'

I mustn't treat her as a spokeswoman for Smilemime. 'Take a look at the other titles.'

She checks the next three, starting with the unreleased Tubby Tells the Truth. 'I'm still not seeing it.'

'The clown's making it up. I promise you the one I've watched is nothing like his description.'

'Maybe you should see some more,' she says and stands up. 'Whenever you're ready.'

When I smile eagerly she motions me towards the middle of the house. 'Unless you'd like something else first,' she says.

I could imagine that the girls are giggling at her suggestion or in anticipation of its outcome. 'We're making sandwiches,' one of them tells me.

'We can make you,' says her colleague, 'anything you fancy if we have it.'

They're standing by a monumental white refrigerator, and both have turned to me. Each torso puts me in mind of an amused face, an impression hardly counteracted by the memory of one girl tugging her friend ajar. I feel as if they've linked too many of my appetites – as if my brain is close to overloading with them. 'Thanks,' I say, 'but I'd better start work.'

'Don't you like our sandwiches?' Julia says, if she isn't Mona.

How would I know? Are we talking about food, or have they a different arrangement in mind? I'm not here to prove myself. Even if Natalie never knew what I'd done, that would only aggravate my guilt. I won't use Nicholas as an excuse. Nevertheless I'm absurdly abashed to admit 'I couldn't say.'

'Never tasted an American sandwich?'

'You don't know what you're missing.'

Perhaps we're discussing food after all. I'm distracted from reading the girls' faces by the rest of them, and Willie's is unhelpfully neutral. I have to gaze at her to make her say 'It can be sent out if you're raring to get started.'

'Whatever you're having will be fine. There isn't much I won't put in my mouth.'

This earns me a disconcerting burst of applause from the girls. 'And a drink?' Willie says.

'Something soft.' When the girls sigh at this I feel bound to explain 'I don't want to risk nodding off in a film.'

'I've left you the fixings if you need to take notes.' Willie unlocks the back door beside a granite kitchen counter and pauses with her hand on the doorknob. 'Can you operate a projector?'

'I'd better not try.'

'You bet if you don't know what you're doing with these films. I'll send Guillermo.' Willie hands me a key from a hook beside the door. 'Don't catch cold,' she says and shuts the door behind me at once.

Is the desert always so cold at night? It makes me feel as if I wasn't previously awake. A bare dusty path leads to the solitary other building, a long brick shed about a hundred yards away. As far as I can see, it's windowless. I glance back to see the naked girls selecting items from the refrigerator, a sight that seems close to impossibly unreal. Am I hearing a low vibration in the air? It intensifies, fluttering against my eardrums, as I hurry between cacti ashen with dimness to the shed. When I unlock the door the pulsation seems to lurch to meet me. I could feel that my senses aren't to be trusted – that I can't see two bulky shapes waiting for me in the dark.

I grope around the doorframe, over the chilly bricks, and locate a switch. The harsh light of an unshaded bulb shows me two projectors, which are trained on apertures in the far wall of a room about half the length of the shed. Both side walls are occupied by shelves full of film canisters. A clipboard fat with paper and dangling a pen on a string leans against the foot of the left-hand shelves. ORVILLE HART MOVIES, the topmost sheet announces in large enthusiastic capitals.

My first thought is that Willie doesn't write the way she emails. I shut the door and pick up the clipboard. The canisters aren't labelled, and there are far too many of them even if the shelves contain Orville's entire filmography. I take a can at random and lay it on the table next to the projectors. The reel inside it bears a peeling yellowed label with a title in a vintage typescript: Tubby's Tremendous Teeth.

I'm so overwhelmed to be looking at an actual film of his, and perhaps distracted by the well-nigh subsonic throbbing of the hidden generator, that I've no idea how long I fail to notice someone else is in the room. When he sets down his burden on the table, my start almost knocks the canister onto the floor. I don't know how he managed to stay unheard as he entered the shed and closed the door, especially since he's at least twice my width. His round swarthy face, which is topped with oily black curls, appears to protrude from his poncho without the intervention of a neck. 'You'll be Guillermo,' I tell him.

The nostrils of his broad nose flare, but his disproportionately small eyes and little mouth don't stir. 'I'll take this in the screening room,' I decide, picking up the tray that's loaded with a plastic litre bottle of water and a crusty ham and avocado roll too big for its plate. 'Could you run this film for me?'

I have to leave the tray on the table while I open the inner door. Three rows of three extravagantly padded cinema seats, all black, face a screen not much bigger than the largest television monitor. Behind it the generator continues to throb. I prop the tray on the arms of the rightmost seat in the back row and sit next to it just as the lights, which the projectionist turned on, go down. At least he seems efficient, but he's as silent as a Tubby film.