To keep readers up on crucial secondary players in Justin Robinson’s noir monsterverse, here’s a bonus story that’s particularly à propos in the era of #MeToo. And if you haven’t yet delved into Justin’s inspired noir/pulp monster mash, City of Devils and Fifty Feet of Trouble is with us, with Wolfman Confidential loping ever nearer to its Halloween launch.
***
The Couch
by Justin Robinson
– a City of Devils Series Companion Story-
Her appointment! She nearly pinched herself. But this was no dream. She’d checked and everything.
The siren directed her to the heavy chairs against the wall, where countless jittery starlets had no doubt waited before, desperate to know if this truly was the fabled Big Break. Mira’s eyes went past the siren, now filing her nails, to the door beyond. And most importantly, the heavy gold plate in the center, emblazoned with a single name.
RETINAX.
He was the new head of Visionary Pictures, after that thing with Oculon. Serendipity had mentioned something about the whole fiasco being connected with her dreamboat of a boss, but refused to say more. It just showed that sweet, adorable Nicky looked after Mira even when he wasn’t trying to. Without any conscious prompting, she felt her skin beginning to run, struggling to shape itself into something he might like more. She still wasn’t quite sure what that was, but she’d get it eventually. Turn all of Nick’s nos into a very happy yes.
She clamped down on her form. It had taken hours to put on her face. She had to impress but not look like she was trying, which took a lot more effort than either option alone. She’d read in Look that Retinax was trying to wrest Celeste LaVie out of the claws of Pyramid Pictures, and so Mira settled on a look like LaVie had used in Fangs for the Memories, with the milky complexion and raven hair of a vampire. The eyes she kept sapphire blue, and a bit larger than she might normally.
She figured a crawling eye might like eyes. It was worth a shot.
If this really was that Big Break every chorus girl whispered about, she’d be signed. She’d have her own picture deal. She could move out of the apartment she shared with Ser and Llorona into one of those swanky places in the hills. Not that she didn’t like living with the girls, but it was getting old. They were career girls without careers. Old maids in training.
But the bigger issue was that she couldn’t turn Nick and raise him right with two roommates underfoot, no matter how much she was willing to try. And then there was all the awkwardness. Nick was still Ser’s boss. But the thought of Nick coming home to her every night, especially what with how he was likely a tiger in the boudoir…
She was getting too hot under the collar. She had to focus on what she was doing. Her meeting with Retinax. If this went well, her life would open up in front of her. She could take the rest as it came.
The telephone buzzed and the secretary picked it up. “She’s right here, sir.” The secretary listened for a moment, then hung up.
She looked up at Mira, her eyes huge behind the goggles all sirens needed to wear to see out of water. Mira felt a surge of validation in her decision to enlarge her own. “Mr. Retinax will see you now.”
Mira gave the siren a smile, stood, and smoothed her dress. She gave herself a final mental inspection. The thought of a mirror filled her with the heebies, but she could easily picture precisely what she looked like in her mind’s eye. Her flesh softened ever so slightly, her nose came to a more delicate point, her lips swelled a bit fuller. Satisfied, she stepped into the office of the head of Visionary Pictures.
The room was spacious, and though the walls were aged and darkly stained wood, the furniture was all modern, giving the impression of a transition between old and new. The sofa was a pastel geometry in one corner of the room, smooth and antiseptic, an enemy of comfort. The corners of the armrests were sharp enough to shave on. Mira couldn’t imagine a more uncomfortable seat that didn’t have spikes. The bar matched the walls, though the lines of the cart itself held a distinctly modern swoop. As usual for a crawling eye bar, all the liquor bottles featured eyedroppers rather than spouts.
Retinax sat behind the desk, his tentacles neatly cornering a selection of scripts. The enormous red eye didn’t acknowledge Mira’s presence. Behind her, the door shut with finality. She jumped, and resisted the urge to look. Stay focused, she told herself.
“Mira Mirra?” Retinax said.
“Yes, sir. You wanted to see me?”
Finally, the crawling eye fixed her with a stare. A chill slithered up her back, and she couldn’t figure out why. “I did,” Retinax said. His voice was pleasant, at least. He sounded like he could be selling soap flakes on the radio. “Would you like a drink?”
“Oh no, sir. I’m at work.”
“It’s all right, Mira. I was going to ask you to mix me one of whatever you were going to have.”
“No kidding?” With one blood-red tentacle, he gestured to the bar. Mira gave a little curtsy and scampered to the bar. “I can make a halfway decent martini,” she said.
“Make two halfway decent martinis.”
She smiled again. This was going well. Very well. He seemed to like her, and that was half of what being a star was. The audience had to like her. Find her charming. Winning. Retinax was her first audience. She tried to decide how she was going to do this. Would she mix the drinks like a dutiful housewife? Like a playful party girl? Or like a femme fatale?
She decided to keep up the mask of youth. Hollywood was a young town, always chasing the vanishing years. Her movements were ever-so-slightly tentative as she combined the gin and vermouth.
“How long have you been working for the studio?”
“Not long,” she said. Which was true, depending on one’s definition of the word.
“I can’t imagine so. You couldn’t remain unnoticed for long.”
“I was noticed,” she pointed out, but gently to avoid treading on his ego. She continued to build the drinks, passing the correction off into the background, no more lingered on than a sneeze. She poured the martinis, one into a proper glass, the other into a bottle, into which she placed an eyedropper. She brought both over to the desk and sat his down in front of him. Retinax removed the dropper with a clink and carefully placed a single drop of the martini into his eye. The drop of alcohol vanished against the fat orb, and for a moment, the pupil contracted, then expanded to its former size.
“Better than promised,” he said. She gave him another curtsy. “We have a full development slate, but what we’re missing here at Visionary is a leading lady.” One tentacle tapped the mountain of scripts.
“Oh?”
“Oh yes. Visionary has yet to find that one woman with it. A face that can launch a thousand pictures. Well, faces, plural.”
“I have a variety of faces. Any one you could want, I can do.”
“Is that so?” The crawling eye gestured with another tentacle, a go on if ever there was one.
“Well, this is just the face I put on to leave the house. Nothing special, really. But if you wanted, say, a blonde…” Her hair shimmered, replacing raven black with cornsilk.
“Always been partial to redheads myself,” said the eye. “We’ve more than one picture that calls for a witch coven, and the maidens always need a bit of va-voom. Before they become mothers, of course.”
Mira didn’t allow the frown she felt to crease her forehead. No, she was going to stay as smooth as she could. Smooth as the couch behind her, but none of the sharp edges. Soft and welcoming as she could be. She did change her hair, red blooming over the blonde like a sunrise.
“Better,” said Retinax.
Something in his silky voice had changed. She no longer thought of soap flakes. Now he sounded like he was hosting a quiz show, baiting her into risking her winnings. But she hadn’t won anything yet.
“My eyes can be green instead,” she said, and showed him.
“I’m less worried about your eyes. They can’t tell on the screen, and we can color them as we like on the posters. What I’m worried about is your shape.”
Retinax slunk out from behind his desk. He didn’t get up, really, so much as just flow off the chair; he was a crawling eye, after all. Naturally, he crawled, tentacles at once everywhere. Mira had the sensation that they would be on the walls and ceiling as well, if she looked.
“My shape?”
“Sure. There’s a style. Fuller is better. I suspect it was those lean years the meatsticks put us through in the Night War. Everyone wants a plump paramour, whether it’s a wife or someone to turn.”
“There’s the sidhe, though,” Mira pointed out, thinking of a few sidhe starlets setting the world on fire with their ethereal figures.
“Sure, sure, sometimes you want one of them, no question. But most roles call for curves. Something to draw the eye.”
She suppressed a shiver. “I can do that, certainly. Any doppelganger can.”
“Show me.”
Mira swallowed. She thought of the house in the hills she could buy once the ink on the contract was dry. Then she thought of living there with Nick. Sweet and shy Nick, with that wild side that only she knew about. Then she nodded, more to herself than to Retinax, and willed her body to change. The sensation, even after four years, was strange. Weight bloomed, then distributed, her skeleton even adjusting to better bear her new assets. Her bust and hips expanded, and by the end, all that was missing from her perfect hourglass shape was sand, running from her crown to her toes.
“Yes,” said Retinax. “That’s more like it. Turn around. Let me see the rest of you.” She turned, the summery dress that had once been carefree now hugging her expanded form. “With a look like that, you could be the face of Visionary Pictures. You could be the…” he paused, the insinuation dripping from his disembodied voice. “…lots of things of Visionary Pictures.”
“It’s all I’ve ever wanted.” It was a true statement, but even as she said it, something felt false. Because she did want something else slightly more in that moment. She wanted to be anywhere else, somewhere Retinax couldn’t see her.
“Good,” he said. “It’s what I want for you as well.”
She let out a chuckle, but relief was curdling in her. “Where do I sign?” she asked.
“Oh, we’ll have the contracts drawn up. I just need to make certain you’re really who the studio needs. The kind of woman who can launch our pictures.”
“I showed you my faces,” she said.
“I don’t need to see your faces,” said Retinax.
She swallowed, knowing exactly what he wanted to see, what he wanted to do. But she could pretend. Play dumb. Maybe if she did that, this whole thing would end and she could go back outside, where the sun shone and she didn’t have to think about what went on inside dark offices on studio streets.
“Oh, you,” she said with a little half-smile, playing the innocent ingenue for all she was worth. “I could spin again.”
“Why don’t you have a seat?” Retinax indicated the couch with a pelagic wave of the tentacles. “We can finish our drinks and talk about your future.”
Mira swallowed hard. The couch was her future. Hard and uninviting. One moment, and she could forget one moment, couldn’t she? She could go somewhere else in her mind. Think about what the moment would buy, rather than the moment itself. Then she would have everything she wanted. Her name in lights, the house on the hill, the parties, everything.
No. It wasn’t enough.
“I wish I could, Mr. Retinax, but I’m afraid I’m late for an appointment.”
“There can’t be an appointment more important than this one. Go on—sit down and we can talk about your first starring role. I have some ideas.”
She wanted to say yes, but that yes was covered in something dark and stinking. She knew that yes would weigh her down. A yes would poison those same dreams.
“I couldn’t possibly,” she stammered, glancing at the closed door.
“Why not? I want to give you everything you ever wanted. All I’m asking is the pleasure of your company. You wouldn’t deny me that, would you?”
“I wish I could, Mr. Retinax.” The words tumbled from her, too fast even to understand. “But like I said, I have an appointment.”
She was at the door, and she couldn’t remember crossing the space between. The doorknob was as heavy as all the days between that one and her end.
“If you leave this room, you’ll never headline any picture,” Retinax said. His voice was even, slow. The quiz show host seeing if she would wager what she’d won on the last question. “I’ll see to that.”
Her head hung. She stared at the doorknob in her hand. One turn, and she was out. She would also be a chorus girl for the rest of her life. If she was lucky; he might deny her even that. Or she could let go and lay down on the couch. Give up the piece of herself who had dreamed the dreams that were so close to being in her grasp.
“Mira,” Retinax said, patting the cruel couch with his tentacles, “come now. All I want to do is help you. Let me help you.”
Her mind spun with horrid images of what would happen next. In every one, her stomach revolted at the sight of herself. She never had to look at herself in the mirror, but she could always see herself whenever she closed her eyes. And she couldn’t bear it.
“Your name in lights, Mira. Tall as Pilar O’Heaven. Your pick of roles.”
She tried to swallow, but her throat was dry. The yes would have been so easy. She couldn’t even pronounce the no.
She turned the doorknob.
“Don’t be a stupid girl,” Retinax said.
She burst out of the room, fighting the tears welling up in the back of her throat. It was over. All of it. She would never be anything. All the luck in the world to be made a doppelganger, but when the time came to be a star, she ran away.
***
She cried the rest of the afternoon, muffling her sobs on her pillow. Only when it neared dark did she get up and put herself together. She wore the same face she had worn for Retinax, the raven-haired beauty. That was the face she wanted to see, not the redheaded harlot the crawling eye demanded. She took the redcar to Watts, walking the few remaining blocks to a small, dirty blue house on Juniper Street.
The object of her affection was inside, visible through a picture window. He sat on his old and battered sofa, his face lit by the television screen, eating a baloney sandwich and potato chips. A cat slept in an angry ball at the other end of the couch. A couch that was old and dirty, but worn soft as a cloud. A rumpled, inviting place to sit, or sleep, or hold someone sweet. The house was covered in wards of all shapes and sizes, including—she shuddered—several mirrors.
She breathed in relief at the sight of Nick Moss. He wouldn’t have said those awful things. He was a gentleman, one who only showed his wild side to a single special lady. She ignored the other monsters arriving in cars, swooping down from the sky, slinking out from the shadows. She fixed her hair and strode up to Nick’s window, wincing slightly whenever she caught sight of a mirror.
“Nick!” she called, waving to him.
“Go home, Mira,” he said, not looking up from the television.
“Oh, Nick. Don’t be silly,” she said.
“I said no, Mira. I don’t want to be a doppelganger,” he said, his voice bone-weary.
“Come on, Nick. I just want to help you,” she said with a smile as sweet as honey. “All I’m asking for is the pleasure of your company.”
Image: Imogene Verity, a doppelganger protagonist in City of Devils (portrait by Fernando Caire)
