‘We made a pact,’ the Devil says. He’s here in black and white, like a young Cary Grant. Top hat and tails. Tombstone teeth.
Tommy, rat-arsed on Wild Turkey on a pool lounger, shades his eyes and squints into the unrelenting LA sun. Wishes he had fallen asleep wearing something more dignified than orange Speedo’s.
‘I didn’t mean—‘
‘Not my problem, what you meant, Devil’s in the detail, dontcha know?’ The Devil twirls his walking stick. Smirks.
‘You can’t have Delia,’ Tommy’s daughter, seventeen. A hot mess because having a hellraiser daddy will do that to a kid. She’s seen too much, too young, but she’ll come good, he knows she will, if she has more time. Tommy struggles upright. The shards of reflected swimming pool light assault his brain. Briefly, there are two devils. Tommy reaches for the whisky bottle wedged between his thighs. Empty.
‘You signed the form,’ the Devil sings. A pleasing Tenor, it turns out.
‘You can’t have her.’
‘What is this Tommy? A third-act redemption? Please. You signed the contract.’
‘You can have it all back,’ Tommy feels a pang at the idea of letting the Oscars go, though he keeps them in the downstairs loo in his London flat as if they were trinkets.
‘Even your face, Tommy, can I have that?’
Tommy pauses. The moneymaker: dimpled chin, smouldering eyes, chiselled cheekbones. He never tires of the mirror. How could he when he’s been guaranteed a perfect view for the last forty years?
‘Yes,’ he says. Noble. Like the time he played Henry Vth. Sell-out run, as he recalls. ‘Even the face.’
The devil looms above him.
‘I don’t want your face,’ the devil hisses. He’s not debonair now. Teeth sharp. Eyes hungry. ‘I want Delia. Plump and juicy. Like you promised.’
‘I promised you my first-born but I didn’t know—‘
‘That you could have children. I get so bored, Tommy,’ the Devil’s breath is old meat, boiled eggs, stale marzipan. He grips Tommy’s cheeks with icy fingers. Tommy can’t avoid the Devil’s blood-black glare, ‘so very bored of people who think they can trick me. Give me your daughter.’
This is the part of the film where the hero rallies, finds his inner strength, fights his demons, saves the girl and walks off into the sunset. Tommy’s played this scene a thousand times, to great acclaim. But there’s always been a director to make sure Tommy looked good, someone to feed him his lines.
‘She’s inside,’ Tommy says. His face is salt-wet: sweat and tears. His crotch piss-damp. That’s how they’ll find him, an hour or two from now. Baked on a sun lounger, empty bottle smashed beside him, soiled. And Delia, his much-loved only child, gone. It makes headlines for weeks which, his agent points out at the memorial service, is what Tommy would have wanted.
Commentaires