Night Film by Marisha Pessl
He paused to take another drag of his cigarette.
“They took me to base camp in Springdale. Zion National Park. You train there for two weeks with your fellow fucked-up campers, making Native American dream catchers and learning how to scrub a toilet with your spit—real vital life skills, you know. Then the group sets off on a ten-week trek through the wilderness, camping at six different lakes. With every lake you’re supposed to be inching closer to God and self-worth, only the reality is you’re inching closer to becoming a psychopath ’cuz of all the mind-fucking shit you’ve been exposed to.”
“And Ashley was one of the campers,” I said.
He nodded.
“Why was she there?”
“No clue. That was the big mystery. She didn’t show up till the day we were setting out on the ten-week hike. The night before, counselors announced there was a last-minute arrival. Everyone was pissed because that meant whoever it was had been able to bypass basic training, which made Full Metal Jacket look like Sesame Street.” He paused, shaking his head, then, eyeing me, he smiled faintly. “When we saw her though, we were down.”
“Why?”
He gazed at the table. “She was hot.”
He seemed on the verge of adding something, but instead leaned forward, ashing the cigarette.
“Who dropped her off?” I asked.
He looked up at me. “Don’t know. Next morning, breakfast, she was just there. Sitting by herself at one of the picnic tables in the corner, eating a piece of cornbread. She was all packed and ready to go, red bandanna in her hair. The rest of us were totally disorganized. Running around like deranged chickens to get ready. Finally we left.”
“And you introduced yourself,” I suggested.
He shook his head, tapping the cigarette on a plate. “Nope. She kept to herself. Obviously, everyone knew who her father was and that she was the little girl from To Breathe with Kings, so people were all over her. But she iced everyone out, said nothing beyond yes, no.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t like she was sulking. She just wasn’t into making friends. Pretty soon there was resentment, especially from the girls, about all the get-outta-jail-free cards she got from the counselors. Every night around the campfire we had to wax poetic about all the shit we’d done to end up there. Burglary. Suicide attempts. Drugs. The rap sheets of some of these kids, longer than War and Peace. Ash never had to say a thing. They’d skip over her, no explanation. The only clue was this ACE bandage on her hand, which she had when she first arrived. Couple of weeks into the hike she took it off and there was a bad burn mark. She never said what it was from.”
I was surprised to hear this. That very burn mark, along with her foot tattoo, were mentioned in the missing-person’s report as her only identifiable markings.
“Two days into the hike we made a bet,” Hopper continued. “First kid to sustain a conversation with Ashley that lasted longer than fifteen minutes would get the two hits of ecstasy one of the kids from L.A., Joshua, had smuggled in taped into the hollow shoelace tip of his hiking boot.” He tilted his head back, quickly exhaling smoke at the ceiling. “I decided to hold back, get my game together, let the others jihad themselves. And they did. Ashley blew them all off. One by one.”
“Until you,” I said.
It was easy to imagine: two gorgeous teenagers finding each other in the wilderness of adolescence, two orchids blooming in a desert.
“Just the opposite, actually,” he said. “She blew me off, too.”
I stared at him. “You’re kidding.”
He shook his head. “About a week after everyone else had crashed and burned, I made my move. Ashley always walked in the back, so I did. I asked where she was from. She said New York. After that it was just one-word replies and a nod. I struck out.”
He stubbed the cigarette out on the coffee table and tossed it on top of the other butts, sitting back against the couch.
“Ashley didn’t say anything to anyone for ten weeks?” I asked.
“Well, she did. But nothing more than the bare bones of conversation. Everyone broke down at some point, had their fifteen-minute Shawshank Redemption where they howled at the sky. The hiking, the counselors, voyeuristic fucks, they made you dredge up all this shit from your past. Everyone broke. Half of it was real and half of it was to get them off your back. Everyone took their Oscar-nominated turn, howling about parents, how all they wanted was to be loved. Except Ashley. She never cried, never complained. Not once.”
“Did she ever mention her family?”
“No.”
“What about her father?”
“Nothing. She was like the Sphinx. That’s what we called her.”
“So that was it?” I asked.
He shook his head, clearing his throat. “Three weeks into the hike, Orlando, the fat Asian kid, was a mess. He was so sunburned he had blisters all over his face, which the counselors dealt with by handing him a bottle of calamine lotion. Crusty pink shit all over his face, crying all the time, he looked like a leper. So one night Joshua slips him one of the pills of X, a gift, you know, to lift his spirits. He must have taken it when we started out the next morning, because at nine A.M. suddenly Orlando was out of his goddamn mind, hugging people, telling them they were beautiful, eyes dilated, shuffling his feet like he was John Travolta in a twist contest. At one point we lost him, had to backtrack, and found him twirling around a field, smiling at the sky. Hawk Feather, the head counselor, went apeshit.”
“Hawk Feather?” I repeated.
He smirked. “The counselors insisted we address each other with Native American tribe names even though most of us were white, fat, and about as of the earth as a Big Mac. Hawk Feather, one a’ these tightly wound Christian assholes, he hauled Orlando away, demanding to know what he was on and where he got the drugs. Orlando was so ripped all he did was laugh and say, ‘It’s just a little Tylenol,’ over and over. ‘It’s just Tylenol.’ ”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Hopper smiled, too, though the amusement quickly left his face.
“That night, everyone was scared shitless,” he went on, brushing his hair out of his eyes. “We didn’t want to know what Hawk Feather was gonna do to Orlando or the rest of us on his mission to find out who’d smuggled in the X. That night, Hawk Feather announces if someone doesn’t come forward to explain who brought the ecstasy he was gonna make our lives hell. Everyone was scared. No one said a word. But I knew it was just a matter of time before someone ratted out Joshua. Suddenly, though, this low voice announces, ‘It was me.’ We all turn around. No one could believe it.”
He fell silent, still amazed, even now.
“It was Ashley,” I said, when he didn’t continue.
He glanced at me, his face solemn. “Yeah. At first, Hawk Feather didn’t believe her. She’d had all this preferential treatment. But then she produces the second pill of X, which somehow she stole from Joshua’s hiking boot. She says she’ll accept whatever punishment he had in mind.” He shook his head. “Hawk Feather went ballistic. He grabbed her, hauled her away from the campsite. He ended up taking her to some far-off site in the middle of nowhere and made her sleep there by herself in just her sleeping bag, totally alone. She wasn’t allowed to come back in the morning till he went and got her.”
“No one challenged this guy?” I asked. “What about the other counselors?”
He shrugged. “They were afraid of him. We were beyond civilization. It was like laws didn’t exist.” He reached forward and snatched the pack of Marlboros off the table, tapping out another cigarette.
“The other part of her punishment was putting up all of our tents and collecting firewood. We weren’t allowed to help. When she was slow, Hawk Feather would scream at her. She’d just stare him down with this look on her face, like she couldn’t care less, like she was so much stronger than him, which only made him more pissed. Finally, he let up. One of the other counselors warned him he was going too far. So, after the seven nights of sleeping on her own, she wa
He smiled, an unreadable look on his face. He then shook his head and lit the cigarette, exhaling.
“The first night she’s back we all wake up at three in the morning because Hawk Feather is screaming like he’s being stabbed. He runs out of his tent in nothing but his underwear, this fat fuck stammering like a child, crying that there’s a rattlesnake in his sleeping bag. Everyone thought it was a joke, that he’d had a nightmare. But one of the female counselors, Four Crows, she went and got it, unzipped it right in front of us, shaking it out. Sure enough, a rattlesnake, five feet long, fell onto the ground and whipped right across the campsite, disappearing into the dark. Hawk Feather, white as a sheet, about to piss his pants, turned and stared right at Ashley. And she stared back. He didn’t say a fuckin’ word, but I know he believed she put it in there. We all did.”
He fell silent for a moment, gazing out into the room.
“After that, he left us alone. And Orlando?” He paused, swallowing. “He made it. His sunburn healed. He stopped crying. He became, like, this hero.” He sniffed, wiping his nose. “When we finally made it back to base camp, we were supposed to have one night all together where we held hands and marveled at our accomplishments—which was more like thanking God we hadn’t died. ’cause that was the thing, the whole time, death was a possibility. Like, it was always waiting for us beyond the rocks. And the person that prevented it was Ashley.”
I couldn’t see his expression—he was now staring at the floor, hair in his eyes. “About an hour before dinner,” he went on, “I looked out the cabin window and saw her climbing into a black SUV. She was leaving early. I was disappointed. I’d wanted to try and talk to her. But it was too late. A driver collected her stuff, put it in the back, and they drove off. It was the last time I saw her.”
He lifted his head, staring at me challengingly, yet saying nothing.
“You never heard from her again?”
He shook his head, pointing the cigarette at the envelope in my hand.
“Not until that.”
“How do you know she sent it?”
“It’s her handwriting. And the return address is where …” He shrugged. “I thought she was messing with my head. I broke in a couple of nights ago, wondering if there was some kind of message or sign in there. But I haven’t found anything.”
I held up the monkey. “What’s the significance?”
“I’ve never seen it before. I told you.” He stubbed out his cigarette.
“You have no theory as to why she’d send it?”
He glared at me. “I was kinda hoping you would. You’re the reporter.”
The red mud encrusting the stuffed animal looked like the kind found out west, certainly throughout Utah, which made me wonder if perhaps it had belonged to one of the kids at the camp—maybe Hopper himself. But he looked more apt to carry around a worn-out copy of On the Road as a security blanket.
It was helpful, his insight into Ashley’s character. It had allowed her to come briefly into focus, revealing her to be a kind of ferocious avenging angel, a persona entirely in keeping with the way she played music. I couldn’t fathom why she mailed Hopper the monkey on the day she died—if it had been she.
Hopper appeared to have fallen into an irritated mood, slumped way down on the couch, arms crossed, his faded white T-shirt—gifford’s famous ice cream, it read—twisted around him. He reminded me of a teenage hitchhiker I’d once met in El Paso; we were the only two at a diner counter at the crack of dawn. After we got to talking, swapping stories, he said goodbye, hitching a ride with the driver of a BP oil truck. Later, I got up to pay my bill only to realize he’d stolen my wallet. Never trust a charismatic drifter.
“Maybe there’s something inside,” I said, turning the stuffed animal over. I took out my switchblade, cutting an incision down the back of the monkey. I pulled out the stuffing, yellowed and crusty, feeling around the inside. There was nothing.
I realized my cell was buzzing, the number a 407 area code.
“Hello?”
“May I please speak to Mr. Scott McGrath?”
It was a woman, her voice crisp and musical.
“This is he.”
“It’s Nora Halliday. From the coat check? I’m at Forty-fifth and Eleventh Avenue. The Pom Pom Diner. Can you come? We need to talk.”
“Forty-fifth and Eleventh. Give me fifteen minutes.”
“Okay.” She hung up. Shaking my head, I stood up.
“Who was that?” Hopper asked me.
“A coat-check girl, last person to see Ashley alive. Yesterday she nearly had me arrested. Today? She wants to talk. I have to go. In the meantime, I’ll hold on to the monkey.”
“That’s okay.” He snatched it back, giving me a wary look, before shoving it back into the envelope and disappearing with the package into the bedroom.
“Thanks for your time,” I called over my shoulder. “I’ll be in touch if I hear anything.” But suddenly Hopper was slipping out into the hall right behind me, shrugging on his gray coat.
“Cool,” he said. He locked the door and took off down the stairs.
“Where are you off to?”
“Forty-fifth and Eleventh. Gotta go meet a coat-check girl.”
As his footsteps echoed through the stairwell, I berated myself for mentioning where I was headed. I worked solo, always had.
But then—I started down the stairs—maybe it wasn’t such a terrible idea to team up with him, this once. There was quantum mechanics, string theory, and then there was the most mind-bending frontier of the natural world, women. And in my experience with that thorny subject—which included decades of trial and error, throwing out countless years’ worth of shoddy results (Cynthia), the sad realization I’d never be a leader in the field, just another middling scientist—they really had only one identifiable constant: Around guys like Hopper, icebergs turned to puddles.
“Fine,” I shouted. “But I’m doing the talking.”
13
The Pom Pom was an old-school diner, narrow as a railroad car.
Nora Halliday sat in the back by a wall-sized photo of Manhattan. She was slumped way, way down on the seat, her skinny legs stretched out in front of her. Yet she wasn’t just sitting in the booth. She looked like she’d put down first and last month’s rent, plus a security deposit, plus an exorbitant broker’s fee, signed a lease, and moved into the booth.
On one side of her were two giant Duane Reade shopping bags, on the other a brown paper Whole Foods bag and a large gray leather purse, unzipped and sagging open like a gutted reef shark, inside of which you could see all it had ingested that morning: Vogue, a green sweater still attached to knitting needles, a sneaker, a pair of white Apple earphones wrapped around not an iPod but a Discman. It might as well have been a gramophone.
She didn’t notice us walking toward her because her eyes were closed and she was whispering to herself—apparently trying to memorize the block of highlighted text from the play in her hands. On the table in front of her was a plate of half-finished French toast floating like a houseboat on the Mississippi in a pool of syrup.
She glanced up at me, then Hopper. Instantly—probably from the jolt of his good looks—she jerked upright.
“This is Hopper,” I said. “Hope it’s okay he joins.”
Hopper said nothing, only slid into the booth across from her.
She was wearing a strange outfit: stonewashed jeans straight from an eighties movie, a wool sweater so hot-pink it scalded the eyes, black wool fingerless gloves, lipstick a livid shade of red. Unlike last night, her pale blond hair was down, parted in the middle and surprisingly long, hanging all the way to her elbows, stringy on the ends.
“So, you’re an actress?” I asked, sliding in beside Hopper.
She smiled, nodding.
“What have you acted in?” Hopper asked.
This caused her eyes to skid confusedly over to him, then swerve back to me. E
“Nothing. Yet. I’ve only been an actress five weeks. That’s how long I’ve been in the city.”
“Where’d you move from?” I asked.
“Saint Cloud. Near Narcoossee.”
I could only nod, as I didn’t know what Narcoossee was. It sounded like an Indian reservation and casino where you could play craps and watch a Crystal Gayle lookalike sing “Brown Eyes Blue.” But Nora smiled without shame, closing the play, touching the cover like it was a sacred Bible—yet it was David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross.
“Sorry I was so rude last night,” she said to me.
“Apology accepted,” I said.
With a tiny frown, she swept her hands officiously over the surface of the table, brushing a few toast crumbs onto the floor. She then turned and opened up the Whole Foods bag, peering inside as if there were something alive in there. She reached in with both hands and gently pulled out a bulky red-and-black bundle, placing it on the table and sliding it toward me.
I recognized it immediately.
It was a woman’s coat. And for a moment, the diner and everything in it dissolved. There was only that article of clothing, so ferociously red, staring me down. It looked like a costume, ornate, faintly Russian—red wool fabric, the cuffs black lamb, black cord embellishing the front.
The woman I’d encountered at the Central Park Reservoir, weeks ago, had been wearing it.
The soaked dark hair, the ambling in and out of lamplight, the coat lighting like a flare, alerting me to—what? Had she simply been toying with me? How the woman had managed to follow me down into the subway as quickly as she had defied logic. The incident had been so odd, when I came home that night I couldn’t sleep, infected by the strangeness of it. I climbed out of bed more than a few times to pull aside the curtains, half expecting her to be there, her slender form like a red incision in the sidewalk, her face turned up to me with hard black eyes. I’d actually questioned my sanity, wondered if this was it: the substandard past few years had finally led to a mental break with reality, and now, floodgates open, there’d be no limit to the fiends I’d encounter. They’d simply crawl out of my head, down into the world.