"Don't fear the Reaper."
--Blue Oyster Cult
In many ways it was just like any other party in Hollywood: full of glitz and glamour, of sparkle and shine, and of very little substance. Celebrities of varying magnitude drifted through the cosmos of cigarette smoke, drawing their constellations of hangers-on with them, and leaving a wake of paparazzi, flashbulb supernovae fading into the background.
Uniform tuxes and ties formed a backdrop for the display of superficial grins and superficial skins, recently moulded into place: this year's latest models. In so many ways, the typical Hollywood party. Such affairs blend easily into one another, and considerable effort has to be expended to provide distinguishing characteristics.
This one happened to be in Copenhagen.
The cognoscenti tutted to themselves, of course. While the city was charming, honestly, quite delightful in its own way, really, darling, you'd think that a production company with enough money to ship the whole shebang five and a half thousand miles to Denmark could at least spring the extra dough to host it in a better hotel.
Jeremy jostled through the crowd carrying a couple of Martinis, trying to contrive the impression that he was obtaining much-needed refreshment for some besotted siren. Sadly, he merely looked like a flunky. He paused briefly to down the first glass, dumped it on a passing tray, and looked for a face he knew. No, actually, he knew almost every face in the room; what he wanted was a face that knew him. Or was willing to get to know him.
On the descent into Copenhagen airport he'd stared out of the window, guiltily nursing his early-afternoon complimentary glass of wine, and tried to think about his screenplay. Really, today was a work day, and he should be working on official projects, but somehow, travelling time didn't seem like real work time. Jeremy was having a hard time concentrating, though, since the dream kept coming back to haunt him.
At least with these short European flights you don't get a film, he reflected. He was finding it harder and harder to simply enjoy the drivel that Hollywood pumped out: since he'd been working on screenplays, he'd become increasingly aware of the mechanics of the trade, and the big movies employed little in the way of surprising cinematography or direction. But he was only beginning to write screenplays; he'd been writing stories for years, and found few worthwhile tales reflected in the mirror of the silver screen. Instead, he saw ghosts, pale memories of characterisation flayed into non-existence by the demon of mediocrity.
At least his private projects had real depth. Characters with emotional issues to solve, not megalomaniacs or menacing murderers to deal with. His male leads thought about what his female leads said to them, and listened to it, instead of losing their temper, being abusive, and yet remaining bizarrely attractive to their partners.
His commercial projects were another matter, he reflected sourly. Lately, when inspiration was elusive, he'd taken to sitting in front of a movie channel, watching the dross, and calling out the plot, the direction, the production. "She'll die, fifteen minutes in." "Cut to close-up on face." "Rousing music now!" It was driving his wife Susan to distraction. Last night, she'd left him to it, and gone to bed in disgust. He'd finished his apple juice, and followed much later. And then he'd had the dream.
It had been one of those conceptual ones. Not the sort of dream where anything takes place, as such. Not that he could remember. It was just a single image: he was holding someone achingly beautiful, and he loved her deeply. She loved him too, and was gaining support from him. He'd woken to fall from contentment to desolating loss, as the purity and strength of the image drained rapidly away. Now he couldn't remember her face, or even if he'd seen what she looked like (dreams are weird like that), but the feeling of loss kept coming back to him through the day.
He stared glumly out of the window as the plane descended. Beneath him, the clouds offered partial glances of the spinning propeller farms on the Danish coastline below, the rotors turning lazily round and round, monotonous in their unchanging cycle. Like his marriage. The feeling of love in the dream was unlike anything he could remember feeling with Susan, and he couldn't help but wonder what his subconscious was trying to tell him. He knew that they had settled into a routine long ago, the spice of life long since lacking from their emotional kitchen.
He glanced up at the stewardess as she leaned across him to collect the plastic wine cup, her body close, and it crystallised. What he missed was the excitement at the start of a relationship, the novelty of exploration. What he wanted was casual sex.
After passing through customs, Jeremy wimped out. He'd been planning to demonstrate his savior faire and general competence by figuring out how to get to the hotel from the airport, but his bottle went as he stared at the bus and train timetables, wondering what the hell they meant. He didn't have the nerve to ask someone for help, demonstrating his utter worthlessness. Instead, he joined a queue for a taxi, and pointed at the hotel's address on his invitation paperwork.
"Okay," the driver said, and put his bags in the boot of the big Mercedes. Jeremy hoped that meant that the guy knew where he was going.
Jeremy didn't know what the speed limit was in Copenhagen, and he had a feeling that the driver didn't either. The traffic around the airport wasn't anything like British cities, but then British drivers don't approach snarl-ups at 120kph, which in Jeremy's book translated into miles-per-hour as "too many." Glancing left, he saw the expression of someone trundling blissfully through sun-drenched country lanes, not cutting up trucks with a leisurely single-handed sweep of the wheel.
Bizarrely, Jeremy was reminded of Vincent Vega, Travolta's hitman character from Pulp Fiction. He smiled: now that was an example real human behaviour. Not the film, but Jeremy's own reaction. Vega shoots up, and then is seen driving through L.A., so high he might as well have been flying, and Jeremy had been shocked: driving in that condition was careless; someone might get hurt. Jeremy hadn't been phased by the use of heroin, or even that the character killed people for a living, but driving under the influence hit home. Jeremy did drive, and didn't drink when he did so, but the other two were just unreal, acceptable in the world of fiction but beyond his comprehension in real life.
The party was turning out to be an amazingly hard place in which to pull. For the industry that coined the term "casting couch", it was surprisingly difficult to engage any attractive women in conversation. He couldn't even catch their eye, as their glances slid disinterestedly from his face. Any chance of making visual contact wasn't helped because Jeremy's gaze was climbing its way up to theirs. It was like being in a high street of shops with enticing storefronts brimming with desirable goods, but where the assistants were not offering, so to speak, any service.
He caught a glimpse of someone as the sequinned sea ebbed briefly. It was strange, disconcerting: not deja vu, more the remembrance of a past recognition. He drained the second glass, and edged closer for a look.
The thin, young man seated at the round table was immediately notable for his white tie outfit, a departure from the de rigeur of the evening, and for his mop of wild hair, which was similarly coloured. Looking closer, Jeremy could see that the whiteness of the hair disguised the paleness of his skin. Jeremy could not see the man's eyes, since they were masked by sunglasses (a common affectation this evening), but he was willing to bet they were pink.
However, it was not the man that Jeremy had glimpsed, but his companion, a young woman -- or possibly girl, considering her age -- who was currently whispering into his ear and giggling. If the albino was breaking with convention, he was not alone: instead of the elegant and expensive gowns which most of the female contingent of the hotel were sporting, she appeared to be dressed in a simple black sleeveless T-shirt. Like a black queen to his white king, her hair was an unruly shock of night.
She looked...familiar, but Jeremy was sure that she wasn't a celebrity. It wasn't her face he recognised, it was---
It flittered, was gone. He shrugged, and headed back to the bar, hoping for a friendly face on the way.
The brief journey wasn't deeply concerned with faces, however, friendly or otherwise. Lycra appeared to be in short supply this year, he decided, although many of the women seemed to have been stumped for alternative fabrics. Jeremy had to take a somewhat indirect route to the bar, due to the various obstructions (tables, small knots of people, large knots of minders), although he was honest enough with himself to admit that some of his meanderings were, strictly speaking, unnecessary. However, they did improve his view: much as Jeremy wandered, his eyes wandered further still.
Distracted by the rolling (and sometimes wobbling) scenery of the landscape, he was surprised when he found his way barred by what could only be described as a starlet: blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and hand-drawn eyebrows. Her unnaturally full lips parted in a smile to reveal extensive, expensive workmanship inside, much as her white dress did.
"Excuse me," she squeaked, "I hope you don't, like, mind, but I just wanted to say that I think your stuff's, like, really cool, you know?"
Jeremy stared in panic, caught like imminent roadkill in the glare of her dental work. He tried to recall some fragment which would give him a clue to her name, although a recurring image of a power sander and a welding mask was the nearest he could come.
"I, uh, thanks." he ranconteured in response. What was her damn name?
"You know, I always say that the writers don't get enough...attention." She was wringing her hands now, in an adorable way. Jeremy was mentally doing the same. He was struggling for a suitable response when another man approached the woman.
"Hey, Bobby," she said as he put an arm around her waist in a possessive fashion.
"Hey, Sharlene, babe. Can I have a quick word? 'Scuse me, pal."
"Uh, sure," Jeremy said, but the pair were turning away, engaged in a low, quick argument. He was beginning to feel the usual lack of self-worth, when he heard the man say, "Ferchrissake, Sharlene, Richard Curtis wears glasses."
Jeremy decided it was time to take drunkenness seriously.
He leant on the bar, staring at the crowd without seeing it, following conversations in his head. He hadn't been in a chat-up situation for a long time, and was amazed to find that his heart -- and more -- wasn't in it. In his college days, there hadn't been a problem. He'd just smiled, and talked, saying anything, really. It hadn't mattered what he'd said, more the way he'd said it, and the only purpose of the conversation had been to get the girl's knickers off. Now his imagination balked, skipping the seduction to move swiftly to the dialogue as the knickers went back on. Melodrama loomed.
"Hi, great party, isn't it?"
Jeremy gulped his drink and turned, leaning back against the bar. It was the young woman again, the one in black. Lots of black. Even her lipstick. Her eyes were heavily outlined, he noticed, with a weird sigil marked under one eye.
"Great? That depends. Are you referring to this one, or are you just passing through en route to something worthwhile?"
"No, I mean this party. So many people having fun!"
"Really? I thought it was a room full of two-faced sycophants bitching and stabbing each other in the back."
"True. But they're enjoying it so much."
"They're welcome to it," he muttered, and drained his glass again. Up close, something about her bothered him. "What happened to your boyfriend?"
"My boyfriend?"
"The guy in white."
"Oh, him. He's not my boyfriend, silly" --- Jeremy couldn't remember the last time someone called him silly--- "he's my brother."
Yeah, right, he thought. This world gets weirder every day.
"So what happened to him, then?"
"Oh, he's just talking to people. At least, I hope he's talking," she added, partly to herself. "He doesn't get out much, and all this is new to him. I thought it would be good for him to meet some of the people here. There's so many people here interested in stories."
"He's a fan, huh?"
"Oh yes. Stories are his entire existence."
At this point, Jeremy twigged what was bothering him about the woman: she was possibly the only female in the entire building with a nearly flat chest. This could have been due to her youth, but that would have implied an ethical LA plastic surgeon, and he considered that an oxymoron.
"So what's your story? You've got a, a brother who's a writer. You're not an actress, and you're too young to be a director."
"No," she giggled. "I'm not a player on the stage. I'm more what you could call editing. I've got another brother who's more in the direction line of work, though. You're a writer, then?"
"Do I look like one?"
"Yep. Actually, you look like a grumpy writer to me."
"Grumpy?"
"Yep. You know: miffed; peeved; out of sorts."
She shrugged. "Grumpy. I assumed that was the reason you were being so rude, even though I'm being perfectly friendly." She sipped her drink, dark eyes observing him from beneath her untidy fringe, like a lioness resting in the Serengeti grasses.
Her comment stopped Jeremy's train of annoyed thoughts dead in their tracks. He shook his head, and dumped the empty glass on a nearby surface.
"I'm sorry, you're right. You caught me at a bad moment. Um. I'm Jeremy." He offered the now-empty hand. She shook it, beaming a warm smile at him. Her hand was pale and cool to his touch.
"Pleased to meet you, Jeremy," she said.
"And you are?" he prompted.
"Curious. Are you writing this new movie?"
"Some of it," he laughed. "A little. You wouldn't believe how many writers they have on a job like this."
She sat down at a nearby table, and stretched her legs out to another chair, crossing her ankles. "Is that good or bad?"
"Hard to say," he answered, also sitting. "Good in that we all get jobs. Bad in that there's no better way of guaranteeing a mediocre film. "
"Piffle," she said. "I liked the mermaid one. It was fun."
"I wouldn't know," Jeremy answered darkly. "I wasn't involved with that one, and I haven't been able to bring myself to see it, ever since I discovered they changed the ending. Ruined a classic story."
She dropped her feet to the floor and leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin on hands.
"You," she said, "should definitely talk to my brother. That's just the sort of thing he'd say."
"Yeah, well, I shouldn't really say such things," he sighed. "Not the way things are going with this new one. I mean, the original Little Match Girl was about two pages long, and we're basing a 90-minute film on it. In the loosest sense of the world. Christ knows how we managed to turn her into a Princess." He shook his head, then looked up. "By the way, were you deliberately avoiding telling me your name?"
A wicked answering grin: "Yep."
"Why?"
"Because names carry impressions; you should form your own."
"What shall I call you, then?"
"What do you want to call me?"
He sat back, thinking for a moment.
"Rachel," he declared. "You look like a Rachel to me. But not a grumpy one."
She laughed again.
"Want to get out of here?"
"Pardon?"
"Do you want to go someplace else? Somewhere...quieter."
Jeremy's heartbeat was suddenly loud in his ears, but his blood was running cold.
"You and me?"
"Uh-huh. Just the two of us. Hi, bro. How's it going?" This last comment was directed over Jeremy's shoulder. He turned to see her previous companion approaching. Jeremy was surprised to realise that he was relieved by the interruption.
"Greetings, my sister. It is an....interesting place. Would you object to my company?"
"Not at all,"
Jeremy said pulling out a chair. "Park yourself down. You're Rachel's brother, then?"
The tall, thin man paused in the act of seating himself. "Rachel?"
"Oh, yeah. She didn't want to tell me her name, so I gave her one. Name, that is."
"Indeed? Well. my sister. I have known you carry many appellations in your time, but Rachel is a....departure."
Rachel smiled around her hands. "I like it. It's different."
She nodded towards Jeremy. "Speaking of names, this is Jeremy."
"Indeed?" her brother said. "I had a raven once, called Jessamy."
"That's Jeremy,"
Jeremy said clearly, offering his hand. "Pleased to meet you. Do you have a name?"
"You could be Daniel," Rachel suggested, but her brother shook his head.
"No, not Daniel. Not any more. I am Dream."
"Pardon?"
"Dream," the man repeated.
"As in sleep," Rachel clarified.
Jeremy reminded himself that despite the European location, this was still a Hollywood party, and decided to take this in his stride.
Rachel leaned over to Dream, and stage-whispered conspiratorily.
"Jeremy was telling me he doesn't like the way The Little Mermaid finishes."
"Hey," Jeremy interrupted. "That's not what I said. I haven't seen it, remember? I just don't think they should have messed with it."
"You prefer Andersen's original?" Dream enquired.
"Probably, although I'm not that fond of the whole thing, to tell you the truth. It's got a good life-sucks reality kick in it that you don't get in today's media-friendly versions, but I'm not that hot on the actual ending, either. She doesn't marry him, she's suffering, she resists temptation and she's really nice to him, and she still has to work off a non-existent debt in a pseudo-purgatory. Basically, she gets punished for having bad timing. What're you supposed to learn from that?"
"Look before you leap?" suggested Rachel.
Dream seemed amused by Jeremy's tirade. For his part, Jeremy felt he had, perhaps, gone a little far.
"Ah, I can't really talk," he apologised, contrary to available evidence. "I'm not exactly going to set the audience of The Little Matchgirl up for a life of harsh reality. And that's another story with a dubious tale. She's cold and poor, she dies, she goes to heaven. That's it." He gave a small laugh. "Cried my eyes out as a kid, first time I read that. Moped around the house for hours. It still gives me a kick in the gut."
"One's first encounter with mortality is an unsettling experience,"
Dream noted. "It is difficult to emerge unchanged."
"Still,"
Jeremy added, wagging a finger at the white man. "That doesn't alter the fact that it doesn't have much of a message for the reader. There's the emotional hook, but I didn't learn a lot, did I?"
"Not all stories give their lessons in plain language."
Jeremy waved his hand, arrogantly dismissive.
"Yeah, subtexts, I know. That's not the same. The match girl doesn't have a reason for dying; not one that's significant to the story. There isn't anything she could have done to alter the outcome. She just got dumped upon by fate. It's a random death, and it's sad."
"You see no subtext?" asked Dream.
"Well, yes, obviously there's some social commentary. It's terrible what child labour can do, and evidently someone should have helped her. But that's asking for deus ex machina. She couldn't help herself, not in that setting."
"Is this not a valuable lesson to learn?" said Dream curiously. "That we should be of service to our peers?"
"It's a nice idea," Jeremy snorted, "But a feel-good cartoon's not the place for it. It's like saving the world through socially-conscious pop songs. It appeases the guilt of the producer without the general public giving a damn." Jeremy ticked off a couple of points on his fingers.
"First off, child labour. Now, China's full of sweat shops full of kids, and so are many other countries. But this is going to a western audience, most of which don't care, 'cos it's someone else's kids, and the rest couldn't even find their own country on an atlas, let alone China."
"Is education a prerequisite for charity nowadays?" Dream interjected.
"Irrelevant," Jeremy declared, moving to his next finger. "Second, people are gits. They don't help beggars in the streets out of the goodness of their hearts. Just doesn't happen. Look, in England, homeless people sell a magazine called the Big Issue, right?
They get a cut from the proceeds. More dignity than begging, yeah?" He waved a finger again. building to his devastating point. "Well, now people dishing out advertising leaflets say, 'It's not a Big Issue', in the hope that fewer people will ignore them."
He glanced over to Rachel for her agreement with this sparkling display of discoursive talent; triumph turned to dismay when he saw the empty chair.
"Where did she go?" he demanded. There was no sign of her in the crowd. But then again, she wasn't too tall, unlike her aloof brother.
"My sister?" said Dream. "I expect she has business elsewhere in the city."
Jeremy turned to look back at him.
"Mebbe she just went up to her room?"
Dream was impassive. "We have not taken lodgings in this establishment."
Jeremy was appalled. "And you just leave her to wander around a strange city at night?" He got to his feet, and started heading for the hotel foyer.
On the street, he felt despair: Copenhagen at night is a colourful place, and he was positioned on the fringes between the city centre and the red light district; the flow of people was considerable. Picking a direction at random, Jeremy headed along Vesterbrogade, past the railway station and the Hard Rock Cafe, trying to look at all the faces at once. Scanning for her all-black clothing, straining for a hint of her laugh, a glimpse of her smile.
He reached a cross-roads. To the left, steel-and-glass reared high, swathed in neon logos which pulled the eyes from street level. To the right, Tivoli's walls were picked out in a dotted line of yellow light bulbs. In front of him, over the road, was a large paved square which served as a frontage for an immense building, ominous in the traditional dark-brown brick and pale green roofing that is Copenhagen's livery.
There were people everywhere.
"I am surprised that you do not see the parallel," said Dream, startling him. The tall man was standing just behind him, mostly motionless, although Jeremy had not seen him following.
"What parallel is that, then?"
"Between the story of the mermaid and the story of the matchgirl."
"Right now, I'm not too concerned with metaphors," Jeremy complained, turning back towards the hotel. The weirdo still had his shades on, he noticed, the neon and the streetlights reflecting in their lenses. "I have other things on my mind." Dream appeared not to notice his comment.
"They are love stories. Life is often a harsh and painful experience, but love can make this bearable."
"A bleeding heart. Wonderful. Aren't you worried about your sister?"
"As it happens, yes. It is a...novel experience. I do not believe I have encountered it before." There was an uncertainty in his voice which hadn't been there earlier.
"So forget about the bloody matchmaids, will you?"
"The stories also tell us something else, Jeremy." Dream stopped him in the street. Jeremy turned to bark at him, and noticed for the first time that he wasn't wearing the sunglasses any more. His eyes were...not eyes. They were caverns, dark and cold, and they went on for ever, endless. In each, instead of a pupil, a bright star burned, impossibly far away.
"The stories tell us about life," Dream was saying, "but they also tell us about death. Sometimes, love isn't enough. Sometimes, Death can be your truest friend."
Jeremy was mentally scrabbling for a foothold. "Your --- your sister?"
"My sister brought me here so that I could learn more about humanity. It was not just yourselves that I have been observing, though."
And the stars in their silent vaults flared, drawing Jeremy into their light, showing him the dream again. He saw her clearly this time. Not just her face. with the pale, cold skin and her warm smile and melting eyes, but also who she was. What she was. Where he had seen her before. Why he loved her.
She was standing at the waterfront, looking at the statue. She was wearing a biker's jacket over the sleeveless t-shirt, similar to the one Marlon Brando wore in The Wild One. Surprisingly enough, that didn't clash with the top hat she was sporting.
The top hat was, naturally, black.
He walked up beside her, and examined the statue. Denmark is a country of islands, with the mainland of Zealand being separated from the more industrialised Amager by a narrow channel. Here, the bank had been built up by boulders, set into place to form a sloping platform. Several larger stones made a plinth, supporting a much bigger rock that is the mermaid's seat. Across the channel, cranes stood sentry over oil storage tanks. Sitting on her rock with her back to commerce, the mermaid also turned away from the mainland to look down the channel, to the open sea.
"It's not the original one, is it?" he said. "I seem to recall that it's been nicked a few times. Or did they get it back?"
"Depends who you ask." Her voice was clipped. He didn't think it would be because of the cold. Not her.
He looked around, reflecting on the variance of imagination and reality. In Paris, the Eiffel Tower is merely an expected landmark until you get up close, and you realise how damn big it is. The glory and majesty of St. Mark's cathedral in Venice, with its gold-leaf ceiling, is ostentatious, almost obscenely affluent, when confronted face-to-face. Denmark, the setting for Hamlet and with one of the few remaining Royal families of the world, has a capital almost stuffed with memories and ages, hewn of stone and brick and glass.
And the statue of the little mermaid is all the way out here, on the waterfront.
The oil tanks dampened the occasion, he felt.
"Look, um."
He paused. "What do I call you?"
She turned her head towards him. "I still like Rachel. I haven't been a Rachel before."
"Ok. Rachel. Um. Are you mad at me?"
"Mad? No. No, I don't think so. Have you done anything I should be mad at?"
"Offended, then?" Jeremy hazarded.
"Not really."
"And you're not miffed?"
She giggled, in spite of herself. "No, I'm not miffed either."
"You're disappointed because I
turned you down."
"Hey. People don't turn me down, buster." She poked him in the chest, but she was smiling as she did.
"Not normally, no. But I was going to, you know."
"Yes, Jeremy. I know. You were the one who didn't know, and you had to find out for yourself."
It was his turn to poke her. "You're avoiding my questions again."
"Me?"
"You were disappointed.
Admit it."
"Just a minute, mister
" she started, hands on hips, but Jeremy put his fingers to her lips.
"That's not what I mean. I'm not being egotistical about this. You had your own motives, too. Look," he said, gesturing to the benches provided for tourists. "Siddown. I'll see if I can explain."
He took a seat next to her, and looked up at the stars for a minute, trying to gather the words. She didn't wait.
"I was curious," she said. "Actually, more envious. Not about the physical side, I mean. I've been involved with that more than you can ever know. I mean with the relationships. Look at you: you couldn't cheat on your wife, any more than you could deal smack or kill people. It's just not you. You're bored with the way things are going, perhaps, but that's about it. You'll sort it out somehow, now you know. I, well, I haven't had anything like that."
Jeremy turned to her. "Someone once said --- I can't remember who --- that everyone dies alone, but that's never true, is it? No-one ever dies alone, because you're always with them. When they need you, as a friend. That's why you came to me tonight: because I was alone.
"But who do you go to when you're alone?"
She jumped up off the bench. "I don't need this. I don't need your pity, and I don't need patronising by someone who doesn't understand what they're saying."
She started to walk down the path.
"Not need, perhaps,"
Jeremy said. "but do you want a friend?"
She kept going.
"Doesn't matter," Jeremy called. "You've got me anyway."
She stopped, turned, and looked at him for a moment before walking back. She stood in front of him, very close. He noticed, inconsequentially, that he couldn't feel her breath.
"And what happens," she asked quietly, "when I come for you?"
Jeremy shrugged. "One day, I'll need you to. I hate to think you'd let me down."
"Not you," she said. "What about me?
I don't want to lose friends, while I just go on and on."
"Your brother said something about this to me. He said --- not that I understand this, mind you --- 'How's Hob?'"
Her shoulders drooped. "All right. We'll give it a go. But on one condition."
He looked at her enquiringly.
"You watch The Little Mermaid with me."
ENDS
Copyright (C) 1998, 2005 Stephen Kilbane