by Nick Cole
“I—” began Kip simultaneously.
Kip admonished Parker with a stern look, reminding him that he, Kip, was no longer himself. He had Jay Jameson work to do now.
“I have come to speak with Edvar Goreitsky,” announced Kip.
“And who exactly are you?” The small voice again, now attempting its best imitation of a deep and resonant voice.
“We are movie producers from Hollywood. We need to talk to Mr. Goreitsky.” There was a long pause. Moments passed. An unseen bird called out somewhere in the fog, and then all was silent.
“You can come up. But you have to walk. The road is too dangerous to be driven on.”
“Through the gate?” asked Kip.
“Yes. Just push it open. We are to see you shortly. Goodbye.” (Pause.) “I don’t know what they want.”
A woman’s voice now. “Maybe a job perhaps?”
“Silence! I will not speak of things to which I do not know the answers,” said the formerly small and cautious voice that now seemed annoyed and rising.
“It’s a possibility,” interjected the woman.
“Yes, you and your possibilities. Always with the making of the possibilities. If we had cable up here, all day long you would be watching The Possibilities Show, starring Joe Possibilities. Today’s topic is… possibilities. You are driving me crazy with the—”
“Are you still pushing the button?” interrupted the woman’s voice.
“Damn!”
Parker and Kip stared at each other in disbelief.
They locked the car and pushed open the gate. Beyond a small clearing a massive flagstone road wound its way up into the fog, back and forth across the side of the mountain. In the clearing, beyond the gate, a 1974 orange Jeep Cherokee with its hood raised in the air was parked off to one side, crates and trash bags stacked near the back of it.
The road that led up the mountain and into the fog was the creation of giants. The flagstones were monolithic in nature, easily eight feet wide and stretching broadly across the width of the winding thoroughfare. Two humongous carved, pitted and chipped Chow dogs gazed sightlessly upon the intruders. On the cliff side of the road, a small raised abutment began. It was carved and set with squat, sturdy, scalloped pillars and a low, thick railing.
Saying nothing, they began their climb up the road and into the cotton stillness of the mist. After thirty yards, an ominous shape rose tall and fat out of the fog above them. At any other time the shape would have been alien to the natural surroundings of fog and shrub, but not now. Not with the gate and the statues.
Anything was possible.
As they neared the shape, after a moment’s hesitation, it revealed itself to be a large stone urn, embossed with Eastern patterns and markings. From the top sprang a vibrant yellow wash of banana palm. It was like no hotel or planned-community palm ever seen. It was the kind of palm one might find in the setting of an Emilio Salgari book. Strange and unfamiliar, unknowable to Western eyes, often guarding something sinister.
On the mountain side of the road, tall, tea green bamboo shot up into the drifting mist. Gone were the pine trees. Willowy stands of resilient bamboo climbed upward. The road continued its ascent, winding and disappearing into the fog above.
Every forty yards they passed another monumental stone vase, filled and brimming with a similar yet strikingly different breed of palm. The road curved tightly around the side of the mountain and then rose sharply up at a steep angle.
With the altitude and the exertion, Kip began to remove layer after layer of his standard multi-layer dress. A coat and sweater, at first tied about his body, finally dropped to the ground, marking the trail of some escaped convict from a cell at an Urban Outfitters. They were both tired, breathing heavily, and sweating profusely. Each step became a half-hearted rocket launch against the embrace of gravity.
Rounding a bend, they came to a dead halt.
The road dropped off into a yawning chasm.
A small bridge had once crossed the twenty or so feet to the other side, but all that was left of it now was a little on the left, a little on the right, and a vast spoonful of yawning chasm right down the middle.
Without concern for the obstacle they’d encountered, Kip collapsed into a dripping mass of hair and flesh. He fell to his knees, hung like a seagull in an updraft for a moment, then continued down, his face soon resting on the cool flagstones. After a few deep, raspy breaths, he rolled over onto his back and bellowed like a beached whale. Parker, on the other hand, fully aware he was having the adventure of his life, remained standing, staring into the abyss of certain doom that lay below even if they dared cross this new barrier.
“I need a smoke!” wailed Kip.
Without a word, Parker fished one from his coat pocket, eyes fixed on the yawning gap below the broken pieces of the bridge, and tossed the cigarette to Kip.
“I need a light!” bellowed Kip.
Again Parker fished and then flung his lighter at Kip, who managed, through the fatigue and utter helplessness with which he lay prone, to delicately snatch the lighter from mid-air.
“Maybe this could be the one for me,” announced Kip into the fog above. He took a deep drag on the tiny cigarette.
“What could be the one?” mumbled Parker, staring intently over the precarious edge.
“Maybe being a movie producer could be me. What I was made to do. Born to do. Maybe this is what I’ve been looking for all along.”
“Maybe.” Parker spit into the void, watching it disappear into the mist below. “But I doubt it.”
“Thanks,” whispered Kip.
“Archeologist, firefighter, lawyer, psychologist, sea captain, painter, stockbroker, scuba diver, and matador. Is that right? Didn’t you try to become a matador one time, or am I just adding that to the list?” taunted Parker.
“No, it’s true. I toyed with the idea of becoming a matador. Or at least that’s what I told a bunch of sorority girls at Chico. It was a phase.”
“But that’s basically it, right? I mean, that’s the whole list.”
“No, you’re right. I mean there are a few others, but yes, for all practical purposes that is the list. Give or take a few that were really just fantasies now that I think about it.”
“No, Kip, as your best friend I know you. And to know you is to expect nothing from you. This will end as they all do. Badly. You know it. I know it. It is known. But no matter what happens I will be there for you. It’s just that my optimism for you finding your purpose in life isn’t what it used to be. It’s been around the block. A few times.”
“Maybe this time, if I get Goreitsky, it could be the start of something?”
“Sure, Kip. It could be.”
Parker kicked a pebble over the edge and watched it fall into the swell and heave of the silent fog below. Once there had been a complete bridge here. But at some point in the past, the center of the bridge had collapsed, forming a neat oval hole through most of the passable space. The remaining skeleton did little to inspire confidence.
“We could jump,” announced Parker.
Kip, beached sea creature that he was, inhaling nicotine and carrying an extra eighty pounds around his middle, censured further discourse on this proposal.
“Or not,” mumbled Parker.
After a moment Kip stood, not bothering to brush himself off. He inhaled the end of his cigarette as if it were the last muddy remnant of water at a forgotten oasis in the middle of the Sahara. Then he started out across the cliff side of the bridge.
“I wouldn’t go that way. It’s the least supported,” cautioned Parker. But Kip had already worked himself out onto the narrowing strip of concrete.
“Fine! I’m going this way!” Parker headed for the mountain side of the hole, reasoning he could always cling to the side of the slope if the bridge unexpectedly gave way.
Halfway acros
s the span, in the center of the bridge, Kip slowly inched his way around so that he faced out into the swirling, misty void.
“Are you talkin’ to me?” he screamed.
“Kip, don’t.” Parker’s voice broke. “This bridge looks like it wouldn’t take much to give up calling itself a bridge.”
“ARE YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?” Kip screamed louder.
“Kip, stop!” demanded Parker in stage whisper. “You’re going to kill us.”
“WELL I’M THE ONLY ONE HERE!” bellowed a defiant Kip.
“Kip, cut it out!”
High above, the anguished wail of a young child erupted down the mountainside. It wasn’t the cry of a baby, but the cry of an adolescent, clearly in some sort of distress.
Kip and Parker remained frozen at the lip of the void. For a moment each separately wanted to make a joke about the spookiness of the cry and their current situation. But nothing seemed funny. They continued their crossing. Kip reached the far end first.
When they were both on the other side of the once-bridge, Kip asked, “Do you want to go on?”
“Yeah,” mumbled Parker.
“That was kinda creepy,” whispered Kip.
“Yeah.”
***
The road continued to wind steeply up the side of the mountain. They passed more gigantic urns erupting in explosions of palms. Always there was the subtle bamboo, swaying and watching, blocking any direct assault on the peak. Whispering its breathy hush as they passed along the crumbling road.
They talked little as they climbed higher. Each waited for the strange cry to break the deathly silence again. Ahead, the clouds began to brighten and then break up. They were nearing the summit.
The mountain road leveled out and they entered a thick growth of bamboo. Moments later, as if the plant had been grown as a shelter against the wind, or a wall to keep people out, it gave way to a large clearing.
The clearing was wide and long with a small depression off to one side. Two prefabricated Quonset huts made up the only permanent structures. A large army surplus tent with its flaps open was by far the biggest structure dominating the back of the small depression atop the mountain. Within it, two shadowy figures seemed to be hurriedly arranging some stacked crates and bundles. In front of the tent, a large pit had been dug, and from the embers within a smoky fire rose upward around a spit-roasting carcass. The smell of cumin permeated the clearing. There was no mansion.
“Where’s the mansion?” asked Kip.
“There weren’t any pictures in the article. Just photographs of the road,” offered Parker.
“I thought this dude was supposed to be building some sort of intense castle so he could watch life go by.”
“The end of the world,” corrected Parker.
“Yeah, whatever. I still don’t see any castle. Or… any restroom for that matter,” stated Kip ominously.
The small figure of an old man appeared from under the tent. He wore a maroon wool sweater and baggy tan pants. His hair was gray and shaved close to stubble. From a distance he waved them over, and soon they were crossing the top of the mountain, stepping gingerly through the wet grass and avoiding piles of dung. As they neared the old man, they were struck by his arctic blue eyes, seeming to burn like tiny living sapphires. Maybe it was the green of the clearing, or the soft white of the atmosphere, but the blue within those orbs was startlingly alive. Almost electrically alive. His face was tanned and tight, the result of many years at high altitude.
He started a nervous little dance, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Edvar Goreitsky,” said the stern little elf, holding out his wrinkled hand.
“Jay Jameson,” lied Kip.
Parker mumbled his introduction, and then there was a long and awkward pause, each staring at the other, back and forth, one to the next, waiting for something to happen.
“Oh yes, my wife! Yes, Summer, come out,” snapped Goreitsky.
From within the darkened tent, back among the crates, a middle-aged woman emerged. She was thickset with brown hair pulled back in a tight bun from which rebellious strands attempted to escape. Her face, though sooty, apple-cheeked, and lined, was beautiful. She had large blue eyes, even more striking than Goreitsky’s. Her face still displayed the perfect bone structure of a model, including her once famous chin.
She was abruptly bashful and self-conscious, casting her face down and folding her arms across a body the years had made ample. Goreitsky wished again, inside his head, that he had not been born, if only because he loved his wife so much and himself so little.
It was Parker who saved the day by speaking.
“You are even more beautiful than your pictures.” He moved forward to kiss her hand. “No offense to your incomparable skills as a photographer, sir, but you never truly captured her beauty.” He said this to Goreitsky as his boy’s lips caressed her once beautiful hand.
“No. No. None to be taken,” said the nervous old man. Then, “I have always thought the very same thing. My skills to capture her were… not… not ever enough.” He beamed with pleasure at his wife, and again her eyes met his.
Summer draped wool blankets over them, as the sweat from the long hike had already begun to chill their bodies.
“We are to be having goat and potatoes,” announced Goreitsky, his stern manner quickly returning, daring them to ask for something different than what was to be served.
“Wonderful,” said Kip, rubbing his hands together and completely forgetting the purpose of the journey.
“Good. Now excuse me, for I am not good with the small talking, but in more plain speech… what do you want?”
For a long moment Kip looked at Goreitsky, thinking only of roast goat meat. He sincerely hoped there would be some sort of gravy accompanied by a yogurt and chive dipping sauce. Maybe even flatbread basted with olive oil and rosemary. Goreitsky and the others mistook Kip’s intense concentration on his goat fantasy menu for something else. As if he were weighing the situation and the man before him, deciding carefully his response.
Suddenly Kip remembered everything, slapped his knee and blurted out, “I want you to shoot a movie for me!”
“Aha. I was to think so! See, I told you they would be asking,” Goreitsky said to Summer. Then the old elf sat down with a “harrumph” next to the fire and began to annoy it with a stick.
“What my husband will tell you,” began Summer quietly in her alto whisper of a voice, “is that he no longer makes movies. He feels his style is no longer appreciated.” She paused to look at Goreitsky, who seemed intent on the depths of the fire. “We are very happy in retirement,” she said finally.
“Exile!” shouted Goreitsky.
“Exile,” continued Summer. “We are building a house here. On top of this mountain.”
“I am to start next spring. First the guest house, which will then to be becoming a garden house for my wife, once the main house is to be built.”
“It’s going to be beautiful,” added Summer, as if reading from a script. A tragedian in the park playing the line for the thousandth time too many.
“The main house is to have… I will show you the plans after dinner… a large eye-shaped window and we can look at the whole world from it and say we are happy to be watching it and not to… how do you say? Not to… monkey cages… you know with the hamster wheels… Summer?”
“Rat race, dear.” She was busy getting the plates ready.
“Ah yes, rat race. Exactly! We will not be rat racing. So, no. I do not think I can shoot movie. I am to be busy so that I may not live like rat.” When Goreitsky said this, he looked at his wife for a desperate second. Searching for some sign only he knew to find. He turned away from her, and it was not known if he’d found what he was looking for.
“But I read an old article in Architectural Digest, you were starting on your house then,�
� blurted out Parker in a voice pitched with worry.
“That’s really important to you, isn’t it?” said Kip, staring at Parker contemptuously.
“It is,” mumbled Parker.
“Do you ever wonder what’s wrong with you?” asked Kip.
“Sometimes,” said Parker, staring into the dirt.
“Well, as you saw on way up, road cost lots of money,” interrupted Goreitsky glumly, his enthusiasm for the plans of building his dream home now completely gone, hopped over the fence like some runaway groom. Summer came and stood behind him, placing her long hands on his shoulders and working his ropy muscles with her strong fingers. They were silent.
Kip began to think of his needs concerning a restroom now that there was no mansion.
“Maybe this movie is good?” asked Goreitsky.
“I don’t know,” said Kip, answering the unspoken question of what to do about a restroom in the near future. “I really just don’t know.”
For an anxious moment, Parker could feel Kip gathering like a storm, preparing for one of his long, half-thought-through motivational diatribes in which he would both inevitably, and terribly, Parker suspected, end with an attempt to laud the regrettable Goin’ For It! Thankfully Kip remained silent.
After a long pause, Goreitsky spoke again. “You are very smart. Maybe you say that thing so I will say this other thing.” He turned and looked away, seeing something off in the distance that no one else noticed. Then he wheeled about quickly. “No one, ever, in all times I work in pictures, ever says, ‘I don’t know.’ Always is great. Is wonderful. Is the best. All lies. Some good, most are to be bad. Always!”
Summer gave each of them a plate of boiled potatoes and cabbage. Then taking a large knife, she began to cut roasting hunks of flesh from the haunches of the goat. As she cut, fat dropped into the fire with a sizzling shriek, dying among the ashen embers of the forest wood, now turned gray, glowing orange within.
They began to eat. After a moment, through mouthfuls of food, Goreitsky spoke again.
“Maybe, smart guy,” he said, mistaking Kip for someone who was, “I am not to be caring whether movie is good or bad? What is good and bad? Maybe I just want paycheck?” He gave Kip a defiant look, sneering at him in challenge, daring him to refute what he had just said.