“Somehow, that doesn’t figure.”
“Well, he didn’t strike it rich as a gold miner, although he tried to. No, Ram, his fortune came from being a butcher.”
“Was there anything else he might have been involved in?”
His aunt drank. She looked up and shot her nephew a cold look.
“I don’t have any more time for this.”
“I just have a few more questions.”
Hazel raised her hand up and shook her head in the negative.
“No, that’s enough. I have a bridge game at the country club. Let yourself out,” she said, retreating toward the back of the house without saying goodbye.
He remained in the living room for another fifteen minutes, looking at the pictures and hoping they’d reveal something greater, something deeper below their surfaces. They didn’t. They were reflections that remained mute, alluding to nothing other than their antiquity. He left his aunt’s house thirty minutes later, after again paying another visit to Yick’s grave. There was no one else he could talk to who knew more about his family than Hazel, now that Fran was gone, and what Ram was feeling was how little he knew other than the accepted history his dad and Hazel and the documents he collected had conveyed to him. And that history was porous, crumbling, and incomplete.
Ram had time to kill—almost a day-and-a-half before his plane departed Sagrada for Los Angeles—and so he drove in the hope that the motion through the land he knew and loved so well might provide some answer, that the history lodged hidden within its landscape might seep out from its unseen consciousness. He pointed the car north, up to Mount Shasta, drifting aimlessly, seemingly without purpose, trying to digest what he learned from his aunt, trying to form the facts he’d accumulated into a coherency, a history, a story, a publishable commodity, operating the car by blind reckoning, changing tapes—from Don Henley to Bonnie Raitt; from Bach to Strauss; Dinah Washington to Frank Sinatra—searching for the proper soundtrack that might provide a key for him to unlock and decipher the codex. But like Pierre in War and Peace, the longer he studied it, the less he seemed to know: Californios with a land grant on one wing of his father’s family, butchers who became wealthy ranchers on the other; the Gold Rush that brought on the latter wing’s ascendancy and the former wing’s decline; the subsequent litany of dissolution and loss; the trails that disappeared into a thicket illuminated only by the light of memory; but nothing yet definite, a puzzle with too many pieces missing for Ram to supply the parts to anneal them into a whole. He played The Brandenburg concertos—the Fourth—in the hope that the precision of its aural geometry might somehow suggest the remainder of the as yet unformed picture. But it was useless in that regard, and so he dropped the issue to look out on the landscape and see what was there.
The land was blindingly green, the white massif of Mount Shasta pasted against a cerulean backdrop of sky, Ram remembering the story he’d written about Mount Shasta for Sagrada Magazine, one of his first published features. As he looked toward it, remembering that story about the Magic Mountain and the legends of giant Lemurians that he first heard from his brother Fran, he remembered that summer after graduating high school when he visited Fran in McLeod.
Before he realized how far north he had driven, Ram saw the sign reading Fort Jones, unlocking another memory of Fran when he and Ram drove there with Yick to visit their Aunt Babe, a woman who was no more their aunt than Uncle Fred was their Uncle, leaving Yick to visit with her while Ram and Fran went off exploring, finding an old lunch bucket they buried with assorted items like baseball cards and Kennedy campaign buttons and newspaper clippings, a time capsule they promised to return and unearth someday but never did. For a moment after he turned off, Ram thought of trying to find where Aunt Babe’s house was, but he quickly abandoned the idea as ridiculous. He could barely remember the day, much less the location of where her place might be or whether or not Aunt Babe was still alive, much less what her last name was.
He turned around and drove south, back down I-5 until he was in Red Bluff, then headed east on 36 toward Mount Lassen, passing through Payne’s Creek and the lava-rock-strewn landscape, unlocking another memory of his brother Fran from another distant but more recent summer, that summer when he and Ram and Sandy built the spec home in Red Bluff and came out to Payne’s Creek every Saturday to fish and attend the all-you-can-eat crab feeds at the local tavern.
At the junction near Quincy, Ram turned south on 89, Lassen hulking over him on the left as he drove south past the Feather River until he reached Graeagle, stopping just north of town at River Pines where Ram and his family went for their annual two-week summer vacations in the early 1960s, remembering his brother Peter’s almost religious devotion to fly fishing, which he did daily, while Ram tagged along after Fran horseback riding into the tall mountains to the west where there were crystal clear mountain lakes where they would swim.
Past Graeagle, Ram pulled into a motel and checked in. The next morning, he headed out, driving past the development where the Le Gris family lived and where Ram and Phil and Jill and Vera would go for weekends during Ram’s early days back in Sagrada. He turned west on Highway 20 and drove downhill through the narrow canyons, almost into the valley before he reached Wheatland, driving past the marker before he doubled back and found it, indicating where Johnson’s Ranch once stood.
He was back in the flats of the valley, south of the Sutter Buttes, driving on Highway 70, when he saw the tan marker sign that he’d looked for many times but had never found until then. The sign was next to a large almond orchard, its blossoms an explosion of white in the sun. Ram pulled his car off the road and walked back to the marker. Hock Farm, it said; John Sutter’s last address.
All that was left of the farm were two metal doors from the barn, propped up by metal braces supporting it from the back. The grand house, like the rest of Hock Farm, had gone up in flames in 1855, leaving the old Swiss grandee who first settled Sagrada a pauper. The rumor was that rustlers had set the torch to it; they’d been rustling his herds for years, thinning the stock of thousands down to the hundreds. Ram walked up and put his hand on one of the yellow painted doors. His ears began ringing and didn’t stop until he boarded his plane for Los Angeles three hours later.
He called Vera’s room at the hotel. There was no answer and no message had been left for him. Ram called Phil next, reaching him on his mobile.
“You’re in town then?”
“I am.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Vera’s at the Marquis. I’m going there to have a hot bath and rest for a while. What time is it now?”
“4:30.”
“I’ll call you back at six. We can meet for drinks at the China Club around 6:30, if Jill can make it by then.”
“That’ll work. How did the rest of the trip go?”
“Not well. Sort of dead, then I locked horns with my aunt.”
“Over Yick you mean?”
“No, not really, but family shit all the same.”
“She doesn’t like you very much, does she?”
“Not really, even less so now than the last I remembered.”
“What’s her problem?”
“I’m not Le Doir enough. Too much my mama’s boy, not enough Le Doir man, whatever that is.”
“I gotta run. We have a presentation here in twenty minutes and I still haven’t looked at the material.”
“Call me at The Marquis if there’s a change in plan.”
“What’s the name listed under?”
“Ms. Morningstar.”
“That’s Vera good,” Phil laughed.
“Tell me. Listen, I’ll see you around 6:30 at the China.”
“Is Vera coming?”
“Who knows? She’s not there now and I won’t know until I talk to her.”
“All right dude, later.”
Ram boarded an Airporter and told the driver to take him to The Sunset Marquis. He relaxed as they headed north on La Cienega and lo
oked at the clippings one more time, then put the file away. He pulled out the Barry Bailey file and perused it briefly, then settled back and enjoyed the ride. The sky was bright with puffy white spring clouds and a warm breeze; the Santa Monica’s were hard-edged and bright green, bathed in sunlight, but the San Gabriel’s further east were half in shadow and further east were smudged with black, almost disappearing in the darker horizon where rain seemed to be falling.
At the Marquis, he paid the driver with a fifty-dollar bill and walked to the front desk where his key and a message from Vera were waiting. “We’re looping all day. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll call you later, Love, V.” Ram walked toward the back of the hotel where the bungalows were located on an estate once owned by Lionel Barrymore. He mounted the stairs to the suite and let himself in. The refrigerator was stocked with bottles of Crystal and Martinelli’s. Ram opened a bottle of the latter and poured himself a tall glass as he ran the bath water. A moment later, the phone rang. It was Vera.
“Good. You’re in,” she summarized.
“I am, got here around 4:30.”
“We’re still looping.”
“I’m meeting Jill and Phil at the China Club at 6:30. Can you join us?”
“I don’t think I’ll be done by then, but I’ll try.”
“We’ll be there until eight. Then we’re going to Musso’s.”
“I’ll be done by then for sure, I’ll see you at Musso’s, if not the China.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, just tired. This is interminable, and so tedious.”
“Break a leg, baby.”
“I’m about to break this director’s leg.”
“Who is this guy?”
“Remy Folie, a protégé of Sabine’s, some 28-year-old Cinemathèque wizard who doesn’t know his Wilder from his Wyler and thinks Cocteau was overrated and off his rocker,” she sniffed.
Ram said nothing for fear of angering Vera. He agreed with the director she dismissed for his assessment of Cocteau. Saying so would only precipitate an argument that might go for days and possibly spark violence like their arguments over Antonioni had, leading to a bar-clearing, chair-throwing melee at the Café Tivoli in North Beach.
“Geez, how about that?” Ram replied.
“Do you miss me, baby?”
“Of course, I do.”
“Do you have any surprises for me?”
Ram was taken aback. “No, I don’t.”
“Too bad. I’ve got a big one for you. Gotta go now, baby,” she said, hanging up before he could reply. He walked into the bathroom, peeled off his clothes, and laid down in the warm bubble bath, waking when it was lukewarm to the phone ringing.
“We’re on our way to the China. Is Vera with you or at work?” asked Jill at the other end of the line.
“She’s still looping. Then she’ll join us.”
“I hope she comes. It’s been ages since we’ve all spent time together.”
“What can I say? She’s still working.”
“That’s okay. It will be good to see you again. We’ll be there in an hour,” said Jill, ringing off before Ram had a chance to talk to Phil.
Ram towel-dried his hair and threw on fresh clothes—black trousers, white shirt, and a gray Armani jacket. He put on the pearl-gray fedora and walked outside into the gathering twilight, hailing a cab at the poplar-ringed concourse and directing the cabbie to take him to The China Club.
It was dusk when he got there, the sky was a waxy orange with paler orange-streaked cirrus clouds overhead. He gave the cabbie a twenty. A doorman dressed in a Chinese tunic opened the door for Ram, ushering him into the large noisy interior. He heard Phil’s voice above the din.
“Over here, Le Doir.”
Ram moved toward the sound and saw Phil Le Gris pushing his way through the crowd. They hugged, then Phil grabbed Ram by the arm, escorting him back to their table where Jill sat with Eric and Emmy, two of their friends who also worked in the film business.
“You look fabulous,” said Jill, rising to give Ram a kiss on the cheek.
“Thanks, Jill, you too.” Then Ram leaned over to kiss Emmy on the cheek and reached down to shake Eric’s hand.
“We’re drinking champagne, Ram—” Eric said, his voice trailing off catching Phil’s look.
“You don’t need to do that, Phil. I can handle myself.”
“Sorry, Ram,” said Eric.
“For what? No harm.”
“What’ll you have?” asked Phil when the waitress arrived.
“Ginger ale, rocks.”
“And another bottle of Crystal,” Jill and Emmy said at the same time.
“How long are you down for, Ram?” asked Eric when the drinks arrived.
“I’m not exactly sure, four days, maybe five. As soon as I get everything done,” said Ram, noticing Emmy looking away.
“Ram’s writing a story on Barry Bailey for Golden State,” explained Phil.
“You could really tell some stories,” Jill said loudly, her mad eyes dancing. “Remember that story I told you about him when I worked in Emile’s?”
“The one with the TV producer in the bathroom?”
Phil and Jill and Ram laughed. Jill leaned over and whispered something to Eric and Emmy. Jill’s whisper was audible, intentionally so. She told the story of the TV producer giving the bartender, the janitor, and Emile Donner blow-jobs while she recorded the action on her state-of-the-art video cam, smiling at the camera after each cum shot which she took in the face. They raised their eyes in shock; then exploded in laughter.
“And Jill walked in on it,” cackled Phil.
“That was a wild time,” giggled Jill. “You never knew what you were gonna see when Emile’s was really rocking, and we saw quite a lot. Remember the time that we stumbled onto the weather lady giving the janitor a blow job in the kitchen?” Jill squealed, eliciting a shriek from Emmy.
“The cop groupie, who used to take them on two at a time,” said Ram.
“Sweaty Sandy Santiago,” the three said at the same time.
For the next hour, Ram and Phil and Jill caught up, sharing reminiscences of the gone days in Sagrada and discussing their current projects.
“How’s Vera?” asked Jill, dislodging Ram from where he was drifting.
“She seems fine. We don’t see each other that much anymore.”
“Why don’t you spend more time here? Then we could all spend time together. You can get work here can’t you?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Well, why not then?”
“I’d get swallowed up down here. It’d be okay for Vera, but I’d become an ornament, an accessory to drag out on special occasions, a prop.”
“But you could still work here though. Doing stories for that film magazine?”
“Sure, it might start out that way if I con myself into doing it, but pretty soon, I’d just be answering the phone or the front door or sent to fetch things and bring them back to Vera on the set.”
“I think you’re being unfair and selfish, Ram—”
“Oh, am I?”
“Well, I think you are. You probably just want to stay in Sagrada where you’re the big shot. You know, sometimes, Ram, you can be really selfish—”
“Jill, leave it alone. Ram knows what he’s doing,” Phil said quickly. He popped the cork on the Crystal and filled four flutes while Ram sipped his ginger ale, thinking about Jill’s suggestion…
…He’d considered it countless times before, and had once nearly convinced himself to do just that before rejecting it. Maybe in the beginning it might’ve worked, before Vera had her success, had they both come to Hollywood at the same time and struggled together. But separate destinies intervened and divided their career trajectories and though they were married it was more like their fates were linked, rather than joined by marriage. In these past few years, their marriage had become something almost nominal, a shell of a tastefully decorated and architecturally correct shelter gi
ving both Ram and Vera convenient tax and corporate protections. Ram no longer paid much attention to Vera’s affairs with her costars and directors. They seemed to happen on every picture she made and were all reported in the trades. There seemed no point in getting angry or arguing with her about it anymore. He had come to the point where he accepted it as part of the linked landscape they occupied together and in the past few years Ram had begun taking lovers of his own, casual one night affairs or weeks-long flirtations with women he met in politics who accompanied him to professional functions, an occasional female fan who brought him home to show him off around the neighborhood, sometimes escorts in out-of-town hotel rooms, never anything lasting or serious or much less recollected by Ram a month, much less a week after they ended, never anything Vera need be concerned about although she was curious and would sometimes ask him questions about what she’d heard, to which Ram’s standard reply was, “I don’t ask you, so don’t ask me.”
Usually she’d laugh or shake her head, but sometimes, if she was feeling particularly vulnerable—usually when a movie veered off course or a publicity tour had proven especially stressful—she would persist and hound Ram about an affair, real or imagined, until he reacted, sometimes saying things he wished he hadn’t, or breaking something expensive in frustration or tearing off in his car until his temper cooled. It pleased Vera whenever she produced this effect, for it was evidence that the spell she had cast long ago over Ram still held.
Now there was little left to mystery; the relationship had become predictable; the amount of time they were separate from each other grew each year and was greater than the time they spent together. The volatile scenes of their first years together, when they were most passionate about each other and most passionate about pursuing the purest forms of their respective endeavors—Ram with poetry and Vera with live theater—had been shouldered aside by what their careers had become and what they required to further them. For Ram, it was profiles of people like Barry Bailey, not villanelles or Italian sonnets; for Vera, it was vampires and prostitutes and other dwellers of the demimondaine, not the passions of Joan of Arc, much less the drama of Durrenmatt or David Mamet. Once when they were preparing to go to one of Vera’s premieres, Ram stopped to examine himself in the mirror as he stood half dressed in a stiff white shirt, bow tie, boxer shorts, and black socks held up with garters. He regarded himself in the full-length mirror and burst into laughter that gave way to deeper reflection. “My God, what the hell is this anyway?” he wondered aloud. When Vera came in, she found him on the bed, smoking a cigarette, still half-dressed.
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