Free Men by Marie Darrieussecq

the city, for the night. She liked his car, a Mercedes Coupé from the eighties. It smelled of him. Incense and tobacco. It was like huddling inside his embrace. Assimilated. Integrated. With a solid chassis, her seatbelt tight, and the luxury of letting her hair blow in the wind. And if they missed a turn, they would die together.
    The voice of the GPS spoke for them. Beverly Glen Boulevard. Mulholland Drive. Ventura Freeway. Pronouncing names, names of places for which they had crossed the world. The ghosts for which they had emigrated. The city, way down there, glittering like a sky. And the letters of HOLLYWOOD in one direction, DOOWYLLOH in the other. The further they drove, the further they went back in time. The Observatory from Rebel Without a Cause. Silhouettes in the mist, palm trees from the fifties against a sky from the fifties. In the glow from the lighthouses, the mist rolled back over and over, the night welcomed them with every spin of their wheels. They were sinking into the Californian dream, and it was inexhaustible.
    She remembered the interview with Cassavetes, in black and white, right here on Mulholland. Cassavetes so cool and sexy in his convertible under the bright light, Cassavetes who wanted to film Crime and Punishment as a musical comedy, Cassavetes saying of this town, ‘People never meet here’, and ‘California Girls’ starts up on the radio, starts right at the moment when the camera is filming Cassavetes. Start there, in life itself, in the present, forever, the Beach Boys foreveras a soundtrack to Cassavetes direct from Hollywood time.
    She looked at him side-on, at the wheel, in the hills at night. Yes, you could see it…the resemblance…the same mouth, the same forehead. Cassavetes as a black guy: without the dreadlocks, okay…but that irresistible feeling of déjà vu, that devastating motion blur where she kept on seeing faces she knew…The Cassavetes night had just fallen; Cassavetes was going home while they continued to drive, from that day to that night where she was here, in the canyons, with this man who looked so much like someone.
    ‘ Crime and Punishment as a musical comedy?’ Kouhouesso shook his head. ‘What a stupid idea.’ According to him, it would have been a disaster: microphones in the fields, drunken actors, a hysterical Gena Rowlands, the place on Mulholland made up as a Russian log house. Once he had finished Heart of Darkness , he planned to shoot a musical—a serious project, about Miriam Makeba.
    She assumed her knowing look. Fatigue hovered around them again; they would have to drive faster, leave behind this strange burden. He kept exceeding the speed limit (he hated automatic cars), he conceded that Cassavetes was probably brilliant, okay; but what about Polanski; what about Kubrick. Even Sydney Pollack. Professionals. Truly great filmmakers. The framework of cinema was a combination of genius and technical mastery. The New Wave had done a lot of damage to cinema.
    She sniggered. ‘Sydney Pollack!’ He protested: he’dmentioned Polanski first. Cassavetes’ films were all over the shop, scraps of films, trial films. She praised the passion of his hysterical women, extolled the virtues of the unsuccessful films, films all the more brilliant for the flaws that illuminated them. He lit another cigarette, blew hard: he despised shoddy workmanship—the more he scorned the idea the more he rolled his r s—he would be the first filmmaker born in Africa to have the necessary resources, serious resources, professional resources!
    She had never disagreed! The mist had dispersed. The night was sparkling, sharp and dry. He accelerated. Faster and faster, the GPS rattled off the list of places that were hastening her home. Wilshire, South Beverly Glen, Copa de Oro, Bellagio, end of the road. He parked in front of the metal gates of the apartment block, got out to open the door, but didn’t turn off the engine. He was tired.
    She begged him. She didn’t