The sun was bright and high and the Pacific was a glistening green, twinkling in the light. For a moment, I thought about how many times I had driven this coastline—back and forth and down. The Vancouver trips, the regular daily commute between Refugio and Camp Steffani, the trips to LA during the Golden State years, and the days of hiding during the Verde affair. I knew this coast like the back of my hand, every sweeping turn and change in camber of Highway One, every rock outcropping and island chain and mountain range; every slough, lagoon, and estuary, and now, my period of isolation having ended with Shaughn’s phone call about the exploding toilet, I saw it all again, as though for the first time.
At the turnout above Fort Baker, I pulled off onto the shoulder and looked across the Golden Gate to the gleaming city along the bay. In the near foreground, the dark green swath of Golden Gate Park marched uphill, and I remembered my school days when Shaughn and Earl and Jaime and I would cut class and take my Mom’s Le Mans and drive down to The City, dropping acid along the way and coming on to it by the time we hit Sausalito, where we’d loon around the shops of the Village Fair for an hour or two before crossing the Golden Gate Bridge where we’d veer right and come in through the north end of Golden Gate Park.
The white spires of downtown San Francisco reached for the sky, and that too brought memories of the days of Endymion, then Golden State Magazine when I was beginning my career… Then Vera, film festivals and premieres, and the paparazzi incursions upon The Arbor, then the rotting core of ashes and intertwined bodies. Then courtrooms and lawyers, judges and bailiffs, prisons and prison guards, parole boards; rehabs and halfway houses; repatriation and rebirth, such as it was, such as it is.
Then that fell away and it was here and now and simple; a beautiful city gleaming in the sun. A few rags of fog still hung from the copper colored bridge towers as I drove across it. When I emerged on the other side, the sun was beating down and the sky was an impossibly clear cerulean color. It exhilarated me to the depth of my marrow and I grinned widely as I drove on Lombard, heading toward North Beach, The Isley Brothers blasting, Ernie on fire through "Who’s that Lady?" In the Broadway Tunnel, I honked the horn like I used to do when I was a 16 year-old kid, and fell apart and laughed while the motorist in the car next to me looked at me like I was nuts. And at this moment, I was. I was crazy about being alive again, and crazy grateful to Shaughn and Aragon and Katz and Bardens for having brought me to the point where I was willing to confront the who and what of what I was and the why of what I had done.
At an outside table of the Café Puccini, the exhilaration left as the spirit of Vera crept in to haunt me. ‘What am I doing here?’ I thought. ‘Why did I risk such a fool’s venture as this? Why did I come down here to a city that is little more than a hall of mirrors and bad memories? Whatever possessed me to do such a thing?’ I thought. There was nothing for it now; no remedy suggested itself but go through with it. I called Shaughn.
“Well, well. The living Le Doir,” said Shaughn. “The Human Le Doir.”
“Or a reasonable facsimile,” I said.
“Get your ass over here.”
“I don’t know where that is.”
“125 Silver Ave. Take the Paul Street exit off 101 South.”
Twenty minutes later, I stood on the doorstep of the address. There was loud music and voices and laughter. I hesitated a moment before knocking loudly enough to for them to hear me. A moment later, the door opened and Tim Shaughnessy was grinning that silly grin with two drinks in his hands.
“Le Doir. Fucking Ram Le Doir,” said Shaughn, bending down to hug me, then ushering me in with a nod of his head.
He steered us into the living room. On a corner of the couch, sat Jonas Allen. We had all known one another for 35 years now, most of that time from what you could charitably call our youth. Although Vera and I had spent some time with Shaughn and his wife Laurel when I guess you could call us adults, we spoke only rarely during those years when our careers were in flower. As for Jonas, half the time nobody knew where he was or what he was doing. When he returned from Canada, he spent six months in the stockade then was given a dishonorable discharge. He tried Hollywood for a heartbeat before giving up on acting entirely and going into radio ad sales. From there, he took other sales positions, then he became a corporate headhunter. I saw him but once during those years. He had looked me up trying to get a job selling ads for Golden State Magazine. When nothing came of it, he dropped from sight again and he had remained off my map from then until now. He never married. So really, all we were when it came right down to it was three men who knew one another when we were young, before we became what we had become. Jonas didn’t seem to have aged much, still wearing his blond hair in that modified shag, still clean-shaven and trim and fit-looking, except for the black eyes. But the bruised bands beneath them only underlined his youthful appearance, making him look like the baseball prodigy he once was, the Pittsburgh Pirates first-round draft pick right out of high school, whose career was cut short by being caught in bed with the wife of his manager. It was almost like Jonas was in costume, I thought, and I burst into laughter.
“You look like a raccoon,” I said. “How’d you get the shiners?”
Jonas shook his head.
Shaughnessy waited a moment and then supplied the detail.
“Well, he didn’t walk into a door. He got pulled off a city bus by a couple of black kids, and when they found out he didn’t have anything in his wallet, they jumped him. That’s what he told me anyway. I don’t know if I believe him but I let it stand.”
Shaughn laughed, deposited himself in a recliner, and adjusted it back. Picking up the remote, he turned the volume down and gestured toward the drink on the table.
“Have a snort, Le Doir. You’re among friends.”
I weighed the option for a moment, considering Shaughn’s proposal and characterization of where I was. I mulled the idea, then responded.
“I think not. But you guys go ahead and party.”
“You’re beyond that now, huh? You got religion or something?”
Shaughn laughed and Jonas joined him. They raised their glasses and drank. I felt awkwardly out of place, then started laughing as well. Jonas got up and left the room to refill his ice.
“Something like that,” I finally said.
“What about this then?” said Shaughn, reaching in his pocket and producing a brown vial and shaking it. “You beyond this too?”
“That would be a parole violation. Two years inside. I had enough inside.”
“So what was it like then?”
“What was what like, prison or murder?”
“Both. Tell us the whole story.”
I shook out a cigarette and lit it, looking to buy time, inhaled deeply, exhaled, and then drew fresh breath. I was about to answer when Jonas came back in the room.
“What’s going on then, Ram?”
“Shaughn was just asking me what it was like to murder and do time in prison.”
“Fucking Shaughnessy. Let him cool out, hey? Leave him alone. He’ll tell us what he wants to tell us and maybe he doesn’t want tell us anything. You ever think about that?”
“I was just making conversation,” laughed Shaughn.
“Make some other conversation,” said Jonas. “Why don’t you tell Ram about why Laurel left you? You like shit, try spreading some of your own, Shaughnessy.”
Shaughn glared at Jonas, refilled the Scotch, went to the stereo, and pulled out some records.
“I have a better idea. Let’s listen to some sounds from the Southside Mafia days. You’ll like this one,” said Shaughn, queuing up “Tell Me,” from the Stones first album.
For the next few hours, that’s what we did, let the music play, triggering recollection of events we’d all been present at, scenes we’d been party to, crimes, real or imagined, we’d partaken in, substances we’d partaken, comrades from the past, dead and gone but not forgotten. The Nichols brothers and the poison shop knoc
koffs in Sagrada; Little Danny and the dealing that financed the Vancouver exile days; Earl and the Marcel brothers in the days of heroin, the litany of name-naming and place-calling from that now-dead time that was somehow still alive for them still… all of it issuing out from Shaughn’s speakers, unraveling images inside my head. And all this while, Shaughn and Jonas poured the Scotch down, punctuated by sallies at the brown vial, and somewhere near the end of it, before we left the house and headed to the bar, I was back on Queen Street again…
I refilled my cup with tea and looked out the window. The inlet and the city were invisible now. The vista was a smudged and rain-streaked gray. The Cohen tune that brought on the recollection of the scene at SFO was a conspiratorial whisper, and in those days, conspiracy was everywhere… a general malaise, a national condition…
…down the hill, the city was turning black. Night was falling, full and heavy, upon Vancouver, and it was growing bitter cold. I put three oak splits atop the dying embers and stirred them until the logs leaped into flame. Those Deerville days of exile’s promise were faint and long ago, had been faint and long ago for some time now, and I knew that almost as soon as they’d made it through customs from that San Francisco flight and arrived at Jonas’s house on Queen Street.
We were the last passengers to clear customs, Earl and Shaughn and I. We walked to the naturalization and immigration desk and a sick feeling overcame me. They separated the three of us upon our arrival, keeping me in one room and questioning Earl and Shaughn in two other interrogation rooms. For forty-five minutes, the agents tried to rattle me, saying that my story didn’t jibe with the ones being told by my friends. But I wouldn’t budge. We were here in Vancouver on holiday, staying with friends at 1570 Queen Street. It was a two-week visit and I showed the agent my money, more than enough to cover the time I would be here. Finally, they allowed us to proceed to customs. When I got to the desk, the agent asked me if I had anything to declare.
“What do you mean?” I asked, feigning stupidity.
“Anything you might be bringing in that you’ll be leaving here in Canada. Any gifts?”
“I’m bringing up some records that I’m going to leave as gifts.”
“Show me,” said the agent. I opened up the blue suitcase filled with records and the agent thumbed through them. When the agent was satisfied, he closed the suitcase and made a notation on the claim attached to it.
“Anything else?”
I looked across the table at the agent with as much innocence as I could muster.
“No, that’s it,” I said. The agent made the notation on the baggage ticket and waved me through. I picked up the two suitcases—the little blue one with the records as gifts, and the bigger plaid one with the mescaline inside and walked to the next station. They stamped my passport valid for six months.
Jonas had sent a couple of girls to meet our plane and drive us back to the house in West Van. As we motored north through Vancouver and then across the Lion’s Gate, I fell silent while Earl told the girls the tale of how close a call it had been and how I managed to pull it together after Earl panicked and told customs they were staying at a hotel.
“Man, I thought we were done for, over, cooked,” said Earl nervously. “I’m sorry, man. I forget the address you said to say.”
“It’s alright. It’s over now. We made it.” I said.
“So are all of you old friends of Jonas’?” asked one of the girls to no one in particular.
“We went to the same high school together,” said Earl.
“In Sagrada, right?”
“Yeah,” said Earl. “Sagrada, California, Sam Brannan High School.”
In the silence now filling the full car, I noted Earl’s nervous tone. Like our other classmate Jonas Allen, Earl McHugh had also deserted and found himself on the doorstep of my Deerville apartment one late spring night a couple months after Jonas’s arrival. I put Earl up for a couple of weeks until it became obvious to the apartment manager that the buzz cut arrivals were not Deerville students. I found a place for Earl in a commune in Mendocino and kept him there for five months, sending an occasional check to help cover his food and other expenses.
The car turned north off Marine Drive and began a long incline toward the bulk of a mountain crest where a few lights shined. After a mile or so, we turned right and then left, almost immediately, into the driveway of a giant two-story house. There was music booming and the sounds of voices and laughter. Removing our bags from the trunk, we approached the door and prepared to ring the bell. At that precise moment, it was flung open and there stood Jonas Allen.
He looked different from Deerville now, thinner, less bulked up with muscle, and his hair was nearly to his shoulders. He dressed differently too than I remembered, with a long white scarf hanging about his neck and a stylish red suit and black shirt. The flush in his cheeks matched his suit color, and there was black eyeliner around his eyes. He was smiling broadly and a beautiful girl was standing alongside him.
“The Human Le Doir and the Human Shaughnessy and Earl McHugh, as I live and breathe. Fucking Ram Le Doir!”
…when I woke up, it was late. It was cold in the house and somebody had thrown a blanket over me. I’d fallen asleep on the floor in front of the fireplace. An occasional flame still sputtered and the embers were cherry red, so I threw another log atop them and stirred until the flames leaped to life again. I went to the stereo and put on Elton John and turned down the volume so as not to wake anybody:
“Who will walk me down to church, when I’m 60 years of age?”
I put on another kettle and lit a cigarette, waiting for it to boil, turning back to those days in October after we first got back to Vancouver, when Earl decided it was more than he could handle and bailed, leaving me alone in a house full of strangers, and with a Jonas Allen who was so changed that I sometimes wondered if he was even the same person.
Jonas was in demand, with plays and touring companies pitching him for parts and production companies wanting him for TV commercials. He had an offer to play a lead in a Canadian TV sitcom. Jonas had it going on. I was happy for him too, because he could support himself through his acting if he managed himself properly. But he was doing a bad job at that and it was beginning to show. It was what I wanted to talk to him about when he got home. I pulled the recliner close to the fire and put on headphones…
Shaughn leaned out the bathroom doorway, naked and dripping wet, and called down the hallway. “Ram, fix me a scotch.” It shook me out of my drift and I came back to the apartment on Silver Avenue in San Francisco. Four hours of songs and scenes and do you remembers and where’s so and so now, and all such like, and from which I could make nothing other than that none of it seemed to matter to me anymore, although it wasn’t like Shaughn surmised—that I was somehow above it or something—it was just that it no longer pealed as sweetly for me as it did for Shaughn and Jonas. I thought about that, and there was some irony in it, for they were doing better than I was. Shaughn was senior commodities trader for his company and Jonas was a six-figure a year headhunter. I was an hourly wage ape in Sonoma County assembling electronics for rockets and missiles.
They let me know it all afternoon, that I was living below my station, that I too could be a six-figure man, and they’d help me find a position that was worthy of me. Part of me was tempted to take them up on it, until I dialed back in time to remember the days when I was a personage of power and influence and a conspicuous consumer. I remembered clearly what I’d done with it when I had it and how I felt about it. I was content with my life now and what little I had and how I felt about it, but still, I told Shaughn and Jonas that I’d consider it. There was less hassle that way. Besides, I knew that nothing would come of it. I sat there on the couch, considering all this, and waiting for them to get ready. We were going out to dinner—Shaughn’s treat—but first we’d stop at a nearby bar for the afternoon final. As Shaughn said, “We’ve got the whole night in front of us.”
Tw
enty minutes later, we were ready, dressed casually for a night on the town, showered and shaved, although the smell of alcohol seeped out from the two of them. Shaughn produced his brown vial, refilled it from a larger one, and took three snorts before passing it to Jonas, who did likewise. “You sure, Ram?” said Shaughn showing it to me. I turned and he put it in his pocket. “Let’s get it on then, gentlemen,” he said, steering us out the door and locking it behind him. “You drive, Le Doir,” said Shaughn, handing me the keys to his Volvo.
It was starting to rain now—one of those gossamer mists of silver drizzle and drifting fog that are a trademark of San Francisco. For a moment, I heard Vera say my name, heard her laugh next to my ear and smelled her Je Reviens. Shaughn brought me back by telling me to turn right into the supermarket parking lot across the street from the bar. They were bringing out the vial again when I got out of the car and tossed the keys back to them. “I’ll meet you inside,” I said. “I’ll find a table.” Shaughn nodded and I walked across the street to the tavern.
It was an old neighborhood bar—a dying animal now from what I’d seen of The City in the few hours I’d been here. There were two pool tables and a number of pinball machines inside near the front. I found an empty table, sat down, and ordered hot tea. A couple minutes later, Shaughn and Jonas entered. I waved to them, but they didn’t see me and took two stools at the bar. Shaughn ordered drinks and started talking to a man seated alongside him. I was walking over to join them when an exodus occurred. People were moving outside with Shaughn in the lead. I asked the bartender what was going on. “Fight,” he said.
I followed the crowd onto the sidewalk down the building to an alley alongside. By the time I got there, it was over. The blond guy in the 49ers jacket, that Shaughn had been talking to, was standing over Shaughn with his fists clenched. Shaughn was on the ground. His lip was bleeding and he had a cut over his left eye. He was holding his right hand with his left hand. “That’s it. I’ve had enough,” he said. I burrowed my way to the front where a small knot of people was gathered around him. “Let me through. I’m his friend,” I said and kneeled down next to him.
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