Radiance

Oh, I’m not famous. Don’t laugh! I’m not being disingenuous. I have money, and my father is famous, but that’s not the same thing as being famous, and that isn’t the same thing as being good, or being good at anything. That’s just people knowing your name and what you wore on Tuesday. I didn’t deserve any of that. It was pure chance that I was born in that place and at that certain time—and, unbelievable! Really, all those mothers! I think it needs a rewrite or two to make it relatable. I’ve tried to make good on that wholly unfair premise. But I haven’t yet. Famine Queen, you say—sure—and The Sea. Yes, those are certainly films I made. But they’re nothing. Journeyman stuff. I took a camera along while I saw the solar system. No better than half the lens freaks are doing, and worse than some. This one, though. When I think about Radiant Car, my heart hurts. Like the movie is already done and showing inside me, projecting onto the inside of my skin, flickering on the white screens of my bones. As long as I don’t fuck it up. As long as I don’t, then maybe, when I’ve come back and we all know what happened out there in Adonis, when I can sit in this chair and tell you about everything I saw, everything I felt, what the seas of Venus smelled like—well, then maybe we can talk about fame. Because to me, famous is only worth shit if you’ve earned it through the work of your hands, and I haven’t earned anything yet. I feel like I can almost touch the edge of goodness. But not yet, not yet. Come find me in two years. Maybe then I’ll be worthy of you.

I loved to hear her say those words. Come find me in two years. Half a year’s shooting, plus transit to and from and post-production back home. I watched with my face so close to hers, waiting for her to say she’s nothing yet. She’s nothing yet because she hasn’t met me. Just a rich, beautiful girl—and there she is, saying flat out that she’s not worthy of me or even good. Her words taste like whiskey and oh, how the bouquet improves when you play them back over a long shot of her rocket disappearing in the sky, becoming a punctuation mark in that last, sad sentence.

Her flicks packed the nickelodeons and wrapped the streets three times round. Weeks before her movies opened, buskers and salesmen would camp out on the thoroughfares beside every theatre, selling genuine cells she touched with her own hand and replica spangled cages from Self-Portrait, sized just right to hold a gravity-challenged male of Saturnine extraction. Why? Why all that crass excitement? I still can’t figure it out. Her father was Percival Unck, a brooding, notorious director in his time. Made a heap of sweaty gothic dramas full of wraith-like heroines with black, bruised eyes and mouths hanging open in horror or orgiastic transcendence or both. Her mother was probably one of those ever-transcendent actresses, though which one it was, the man kept to himself. Each Unck leading lady became, by association and binding contract, the poor kid’s mother. You can see in her flickering, dust-scratched face the echoes of a half-dozen fleeting, hopeful actresses, some still famous, some easily forgotten except in the odd mood flashing across their daughter’s lean features, her cryptic glances, her scornful, knowing grin.