Chloë Sevigny on Your Conscience

 1. Anna puts on a record. It's Count Basie and His Orchestra, a good record—

2. Anna has forsaken Chloë Sevigny. She has moved across town with a novelist named Philip Wierzba. They live in a Victorian home with a black Acadian maid who speaks only French. The maid is named Mme. Diddette.

3.  Chloë Sevigny pines for Anna, alone in the loft with the lights out. Always out. She has walked off of the current production and no longer bathes; cannot manage to see any reason in any of it. Well, there fuckin' isn't any reason. Chloë Sevigny has quit drinking. Chloë Sevigny cannot even bother to do that. No, even vice seems out of reach—phantomic relic—

4. Sometimes Chloë Sevigny goes to places that remind her of her years with Anna. When they were both still in love. She visits the Italian restaurant where they drank expensive wine, of which Anna spilt a glass on the red and white checkered tablecloth. The waiter smiled and told them not to worry about it. He could see that they were in love. They walked in a nearby park and fed the ducks. They kissed under the overpass adjacent to the college. Chloë Sevigny stands outside the restaurant and cannot be bothered to cry, although she would very much like to. Damn her, she thinks. Damn that bitch to hell.

5. Anna is too busy on the other side of town to bother picking up the last of her personal items from Chloë Sevigny's loft. So Chloë Sevigny must sit alone in that room suffocating on the memories which these objects bring flooding back. Chloë Sevigny sees Anna clearly when she closes her eyes. Go away, Chloë Sevigny thinks. Please leave me alone. Slowly the images of Anna, which drive Chloë Sevigny to an endless distraction, begin to move. It all starts with looking out the windows of passing vehicles. Through foggy glass, her face slightly distorted but possessing that unmistakable look of callous indifference that became more and more the ruling aspect under which Anna cast her own life, up until the point she moved out of the loft. Peculiar visions. They begin to transubstantiate. The face, for example. Now it's Vishnu—a mountain before a sea of flames, grotesque tentacles reaching out into an endless horizon. Chloë Sevigny begins to hear sounds that are too loud to be loud and too quiet to be quiet. These hallucinations shouldn't even be called hallucinations. As meaning, something about the implicit content of the universal vies to vacate itself and it were as though Anna were an obstruction—a veritable  stone in the kidney. Everything, Chloë Sevigny imagines, is disseminated from her, the movie star and forward-thinking trend-setter, and she in turn from everything else. Anna, Chloë Sevigny decides, is a gauntlet unto the infinite. A volatile angel of eternity with a hard, cast-iron shell. This induces panic. There is much frantic, desperate activity in the loft. A felt marker in the desk proves effective at blacking out Anna’s face in all of the remaining photographs, which it then turns out can be burned, except for one especially infernal and persistent one in which Anna is seen clutching a noose made out of a belt in one hand and a toy gun in the other. Chloë Sevigny burns everything else that reminds her of her years with Anna. Finally Chloë Sevigny cries. And returns to drinking.

6. Anna quits her job at a popular magazine in order to stay home with Philip Wierzba who is writing a historical novel about a Cuban sugar plantation run by a brutal aristocrat and his sexually ravenous wife. The novel is narrated from the perspective of two slaves, one of whom is a man seduced by the plantation owner’s wife, and the other a young girl who turns out to be his sister. Anna thinks the novel should be called The Other Cuba. Philip Wierzba is leaning toward Black Blood. His editor dislikes both titles vehemently. Anna and Philip Wierzba do a great deal of cocaine and go to parties. Most days they take Philip Wierzba’s boxer Petrarch for walks in the nearby park where he enjoys chasing sticks into the pond as well as running after children and smaller dogs. One day Anna sees Chloë Sevigny's Agent hanging around outside the front gate. The next day she finds a photograph, packaged in an unmarked envelope, slipped in with the rest of the mail. In the photograph Anna clutches a noose fashioned from a belt in one hand and a toy gun in the other. The head is missing. On the back of the picture, Anna finds a message written only semi-legibly. The only words she can make out with absolute certainty are death and forever. Anna places a non-emergency call to the proper authorities.

7. The police show up at Chloë Sevigny's Agent’s apartment. Chloë Sevigny's Agent is drunk and hallucinating. The police inform the party in question that Anna is going through the motions of filing for a restraining order and that the party in question is to stay five hundred yards away from her and cease all correspondence immediately. Chloë Sevigny's Agent says he doesn’t know anyone named Anna. The police leave.

8. SOMEBODY IN THE SEVIGNY NETWORK buys a cat and names it Anna. Eventually this person drowns the cat in the throes of a binge. Discussions break out on the Deep Web. Rumours persist and they windmill: THERE IS FOOTAGE.

9. Anna leaves Philip Wierzba for his drug dealer. She claims the differences are irreconcilable ones.

10. There are Chloë Sevigny sitings. Some local grifters claim to have seen Chloë Sevigny purchase a black market firearm it is then rumoured she promptly sold, for fear of the foregone. This is odd because obviously Chloë Sevigny originally bought the gun in order to do something she intended to do. One would imagine. The general consensus is that this is all neither here nor there.

11. Anna leaves the drug dealer after he hits her. She takes fourteen grams of cocaine, a Rolex, and assorted household items with her. She briefly contemplates going back to Philip Wierzba, but decides that she would rather ask the editor at the magazine for her job back. She would, in fact, rather chew fucking glass. She is rebuked by the editor, and eventually runs out of money & goes back to the drug dealer.

12. Chloë Sevigny's Agent  begins seeing a psychiatrist who puts him on atypical anti-psychotics. He is unable to quit drinking and ingests much more than the recommended daily pill intake, sometimes using odd combinations. The more he drinks the more pills he takes. He begins having anxiety attacks which his psychiatrist tells him is nothing to be worried about for the time being. During these attacks he has visions that make him feel he has attained satori. He has visions of Anna again. He begins reading books about zazen. Then he has a heart attack. He is broke because he has long since quit his representing anybody. His older brother keeps him company in the hospital and offers him money, listening patiently, the whole while, to stories of Anna.  

13. Anna has another fight with the drug dealer in which she stabs him. The drug dealer is taken to intensive care. When Anna goes to visit the drug dealer at the hospital she bumps into Chloë Sevigny's Agent's Older Brother, who she once met at Thanksgiving. The brother tells her all about Chloë Sevigny's Agent's heart attack and his exceedingly strange behaviour leading up to it. Anna is stunned. She goes home without visiting the drug dealer. She cannot sleep for days. She stays up all night doing lines and thinking about Chloë Sevigny. She wonders if she was unfair in leaving her. The more she thinks about it, the more she believes that it is her actions that set off a chain reaction leading up to Chloë Sevigny's Agent's heart attack. Anna wants to go visit him but is overcome by shame. She falls into a drug-addled despair. One night the drug dealer, who is out of the hospital and staying with friends, calls her up, dead drunk, and threatens to kill her. She packs up all her stuff and rents a room at a rundown motor inn. On the outskirts, naturally.

14. Chloë Sevigny's Agent gets out of the hospital and successfully finds work. The new employer sympathizes with his new hire. The employer also has a bum ticker. Both men are also effectively "in recovery." The flat is redecorated.
    

15. One rainy Sunday afternoon, Anna shows up at the door. She is soaked and shivering; she clutches her bags in her hands. Chloë Sevigny's Dog-Walker and Anna hug one another and exchange tears for the rest of the day and, once they have composed themselves, decide to go to the Italian restaurant where Anna once spilt a glass of wine on the red and white checkered tablecloth. Anna and Chloë Sevigny's Dog-Walker then make love in the park, surrounded by trees.

16. Anna moves back into the loft. She gets a job answering phones so that she can be close to Chloë Sevigny. Most nights Anna and Chloë Sevigny's Dog-Walker walk in the park, arm in arm. They dream about the future. Anna is pregnant, but, ever indecisive, decides not to tell Chloë Sevigny until she is sure about what she wants to do. She is afraid of getting married and feels that it might be wrong to have this child out of wedlock. Anna undergoes a crisis of conscience.

17. Chloë Sevigny's Dog-Walker has forsaken Anna. He has fallen in love with a model from Belgium. He sees her on the sly. He still loves Anna and is confused. He drinks heavily. He decides to keep loving both women until it explodes in his face.

18. Chloë Sevigny's Dog-Walker asks Anna to marry him. Chloë Sevigny bursts into tears.

19. The model from Belgium is pregnant. Chloë Sevigny asks her to have an abortion. She says no. It goes against her moral code. Chloë Sevigny's Dog-Walker feels he is obligated to be there for her and the child. After all, he loves her very much and the baby is his responsibility, too.

20. Chloë Sevigny's Dog-Walker leaves the loft late at night with nothing but an overnight bag. He kisses a sleeping Anna on the forehead and slips out through the front door, evading Chloë Sevigny. He takes a cab to the model’s apartment. They make love and talk about the future. He quits his job over the phone. No more dogs!

21. Chloë Sevigny's Former Dog-Walker and the model have a son named Tyler. He is born slightly premature but quickly becomes healthy and fat. The three of them move into a townhouse in another city. They are very happy.

22. Anna quits her job after the abortion. She takes drugs and drinks too much. Buy she' going places.

23. After a year of marriage, Chloë Sevigny's Former Dog-Walker begins to wonder if he made a mistake. He has reoccurring dreams starring Anna in which she and he make love in the park, Anna's hair caught in the serpentine breeze, her eyes ablaze. He begins to have anxiety attacks—

24. Chloë Sevigny's Agent suffers a fatal heart attack.

25. One morning, Anna, who has pulled herself back together yet again and is working for a local newspaper, reads that the husband of a well-known model of lady’s undergarments has died of a heart attack in a nearby city. She is stunned. She wonders if maybe it was the memory of her, and how he had forsaken her, that brought the heart attack on. She feels partially responsible. But not in a bad way. No. She feels partially responsible in a way that makes her smile. She finishes her coffee and goes back to work. It is a wonderful, sunny day, full of possibilities. Everything seems as it should. She decides not to attend the funeral. After all, she has a whole life ahead of her and a new career to worry about!

26. All agree, Chloë Sevigny's Agent’s funeral is a smashing success—the event of the season—