We listened to half of Tower’s set, and they played songs from the time when Devlin and I knew one another best, the early seventies’ summers in Sagrada and the late seventies in The City and Refugio, when he and Miranda and Vera and I all spent time together, us visiting them in San Francisco, and them, or sometimes Dev alone, coming to spend time with us. Weekends in Stinson Beach or Bolinas or Mendocino, concerts and who played where with whom and night-long blow fests with real or would-be rock stars.
An image glided before me. John ducking the plate of spaghetti Vera tossed at him at the Mission Street house. I laughed out loud and shook my head. Devlin asked me what it was and I recalled the scene for him. “Oh,” he said. “I remember that. Then you went out looking for her, and I went to that bar downtown and got drunk and took the Greyhound bus back to San Francisco the next morning. What was the name of that bar anyway?”
“The Oak Room,” I said. “That was the Oak Room, John.”
Then Devlin saw that I was checking into that time and into those memories and growing far away, about to start my own monologue. He got up, brushed himself off, and said, “Let’s walk to the ocean. It’s good out on the beach.” We passed around the fringe of the crowd, moving westward, trailed by the trumpet and flute as Tower sailed into "Sparkling in the Sand."
We walked the trail past the lily ponds, through glades of eucalyptus and cypress and redwood, past the windmill, the sun vanishing into the mist. By the time we got to the beach, the world was cold, gray, and wet. We sat on the seawall, looking out on waves folding on the sand. A flock of pelicans twenty feet above the water were heading south in formation. John lit a joint and handed it to me. I looked at it a long moment, considering whether or not to partake. Finally, I declined and passed it back to him.
“Parole violation, I can’t, John.”
As the sun fell, I thought I heard a keening and felt my moorings slip from the moment and watch my body sail out of itself…
…in the near distance, the headlands drifted gradually downwards to the invisible white cliffs and the chalky gray-green of the channel, choppy in the early November winds. The opposite shore and the town and its clock tower were still in the mist, a light patrol of seabirds, barely visible, flitted through the lenses and passed out of sight. Horns sounded from undistinguishable ships and bells caroled brightly from the church in town, four miles distant along the cliffs. Directly below, curls of smoke from the burning leaves and vines formed oblique lines rising through the binocular lenses and the sound of laughter, rounded and mixed in the balance by the moisture, was counterpoint to the carillon marking the hours a day.
Scanning along the cliff path, Monica’s red sweater and the blue smudge that was her mother, bobbed into view like berries against the gray and green background, Devlin, striding laconically, trailed behind like an anchor. The binocular revealed him making silent comment, which brought forth emotional responses from his companions—mock serious blows against his chest by Monica, arm and hand gesticulations from her mother.
“What time is it, Ram?”
Hillary, her hands in mittens, pea-jacketed and Birkenstock-shod—this despite the weather, despite my protective pleadings—stood hand to brow, shielding her face from the still sealed sun, regarding me quizzically at my post in the glassed-in veranda.
“Not clear enough to see the clock face.”
“Well, go up to the bedroom and see then.”
“Too easy. Just listen to the bells. Count the strokes and subtract one.”
The hymn was unfamiliar and receded on a resonating chord. Eleven muffled strokes trailed across the channel and migrated northwest up the headlands. Juan Altavista was late.
“We won’t make the matinee, Ram,” Hillary hollered from the floor below.
“Isn’t there an evening show?”
“It’s way more expensive.”
“There’s always 1789.”
“You promise, one or the other?”
“Sure, unless we get hung up, I promise.”
“I’m coming up… I want to talk to you,” Hillary said.
‘I’ll have to lie,’ I thought.
We made the trip up to London twice a month—four to six of us shoehorned into a Ford Marina 1.4… fetching mail and going to movies and museums and discount matinees in the West End.
…Blake at the Tate, Dürer at the British, Lawrence’s pistols at the Imperial War , Maggie Smith and Robert Powell in ‘Private Lives,’ Alan Bates as ‘Butley,’ Bunuel’s ‘Viridiana,’ Losey’s ‘Go-Between,’ Joan Armatrading or McGinniss Flynt at the Hundred Club… But lately, it was ‘1789,’ a favorite of ours like ‘Dolly Dagger’ or ‘White Light White Heat’ was on the late-night weekend nights with the air pistol contests… I remembered waiting quietly in the bushes by the side of the house while the constellations of Pisces and Orion and invisible Eridanus wheeled overhead… Evenings gathered in the second floor reception room, all of us reading books, while John Lennon and his plain white grand piano presided over us, hanging on the wall above our own black grand, where, inside it, we kept the hash in an Old Holborn tin until I, invariably the last straggler standing, would load the last body into the lift and work the pulleys to haul them up to their appropriate floor of residence. It was for us, during those languorous days at Atcliffe, an almost diurnal ritual as regular as my binocular time-telling from the tower clock at Calais. Below me, the song would follow me up the lift as I pulled those bodies homeward, and I’d load up the pipe once more before ascending the final flight to sleep, nodding to it, drawling in affirmation:
"There in the valley of Scorpio,
Beneath the cross of jade,
Smoking in the seashell pipe
The gypsies had made
We sat, and we dreamed a while.
Of smugglers bringing wine
In that crystal-fraught time in Mexico."
…Hillary whispered from behind. “You’re not going off with Quentin, are you, Ram?”
The silly grin, the paper-thin deceit of the face that I molded into sympathy and said, “No, I’m done with that.”
Hillary smiled.
“Take it easy, babe. Don’t worry…”
I felt my spine tingle from the welcome pressure of her palm against the bare of my back. It was warm and pulse-like, and I’d always imagined something like it but never known it until then, or knew it during those times when I was sufficiently sensate to notice anything outside my cocoon of wax.
Hillary threw a glove at my face.
“Guess this means we duel,” I said.
She glared at me momentarily,
“Here comes Juan now,” I said, watching a slate-blue Marina nose through the wrought-iron gate and up the drive to Atcliffe. We gathered our things along and packed into the car, heading for London…
…the rest of that day and night telescoped in and collapsed down on itself: Juan getting back with the car and all of us piling in; the scoot north to London on the A-2; mail at American Express; ‘Straw Dogs’ in Leicester Square; an early dinner at Wing-On’s; the unsuccessful search for hash; the equally fruitless trip down on Garrard with Quentin looking for junk; pulling into the driveway at Atcliffe where men in suits and ties were gathered in the downstairs reception room. Juan pulling the car to a stop and us looking at one another and sagging collectively. When Juan turned the engine off, the lights in the house went off. When the door opened, they went on again, and the Canterbury Narc squad chief said, “This is a drug raid.”
…the freighter vanished over the horizon and the mist and drizzle were dissolving as a clearing broke in from the northwest. It was piercing blue, the rims of the cumulous surrounding it salmon-tinged from the descending sun. Dev and I sat smoking cigarettes along the wall facing out at sea. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s walk up the beach and have a drink at The Cliff House.”
We walked to the water’s edge where the footing was surer and harder and moved north toward the restaurant on the bluff a q
uarter mile away. A group of wet-suited surfers bobbed a bit, waiting for waves on Ocean Beach. None came, but still I watched them and Devlin took notice.
“Reminds me of Refugio,” I said.
“Yeah,” Devlin nodded. “You surfed back then, didn’t you?”
“A long time before that, I did. Then I was sort of like I am now, an observer.”
“Never could see it myself.”
“Ever try it?”
“Nah, the water’s too fucking cold,” said Devlin. “And besides, what’s so great about standing on a board for five seconds riding on water?”
I looked at him as he stood beside me, the two of us walking the edge of the continent. I thought of telling him what made surfing attractive to me and why I admired the surfers and esteemed the simple lives they led, followings swells, sharing an experience that was fundamentally a physical one but one that transcended it through an acceleration into the spiritual ethers. Then I looked at him and apprehended that it was Devlin I was speaking to. He finished his can, tipping it up to drain it, and tossed it onto the sand. The castle-like structure up on the cliff ahead twinkled and beckoned us forward…
…sitting on the ottoman, pistol resting on my knees, trying to focus on the plastic target balanced on a box and stacked atop the grand. The plastic target was a deep round red bucket, about 2 feet wide, with concentric circles painted on it marking the scoring areas. Fives were on the outside edge, tens at the next ring, and twenty-fives at the yellow one inside it, fifties at the outer blue, and hundreds at the black center. It was a competition that went on a few times a week and I had never won one yet. I wouldn’t win tonight’s contest either as I could barely keep my eyes open.
The dynamics at the house had shifted in the past weeks—ever since the drug raid and what happened after it. Devlin and Miranda and Monica were gone now, moved on to Morocco after the Canterbury Narc Squad incident—and now Jaime, recently arrived from Sagrada, had their room. And my old habits, on hiatus since coming to Europe, were returning.
“Come on, Le Doir. Wake up and shoot,” said Altavista, who, like me, was nodding but not nearly as badly as Jaime was, who waited his turn, open-mouthed and near cyanotic in color with a cigarette about to burn into his fingers. Juan motioned and Kathy came over and took it…
Juan fetched the remaining bottles of plum wine from the cellar and glasses were poured for everyone but Quentin, who drifted off into his room. I put ‘Moments’ on the stereo and the music filled the room while Hillary built a fire. Juan rolled a fat spliff, lit it, and passed it to Kathy, who passed it to Jaime, who passed and gave it to me…
… I opened the front doors of the Cliff House and followed Devlin up the steps into the lounge. On the television set, the San Francisco 49ers were matched against the Dallas Cowboys. We took a table near the window, and I watched the surfers still left while we ordered drinks and a plate of nachos.
“Now it’s like the old days when the Cowboys always killed the 49ers. No more Joe Montana, Ram,” said Devlin and laughed.
“I guess so, John.”
“I thought you were a big Forty Niners fan?”
“At one time. But I lost interest when I was inside.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You ever get to Sagrada, Ram?”
“I go there from time to time to see my doctor.”
“A shrink?”
“Yep.”
“So, does he think you’re still crazy?” Devlin laughed.
“He never uses that term with me but he thinks I’m doing okay.”
“So are you?”
“I seem to get along and get through life on a daily basis.”
“Uh-huh… You notice that I haven’t asked you yet about any of what happened. I read about it in all the newspapers, and some of the people we both knew would ask me, ‘Isn’t this that same guy who used to come down to The Saloon with you, John?’ And I’d say yeah, but don’t ask me about it. I don’t know anything, and I didn’t wanna know.”
Devlin shook his head slowly and smiled, but he wasn’t laughing. I was unsure whether or not he felt that his reticence to discuss me with friends was somehow some indicator of loyalty, some measure of friendship. But I was sure what the intent of his gambit was: he wanted me to share with him the story of my recent courtroom and prison-inscribed time, the essential all and everything of what this was truly was. I took a sip from my ginger ale, looked out the window, and searched for the lone surfer, while I considered it. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Devlin’s glance flitting to me from time to time, wondering whether or not I’d let it out. When he saw I wasn’t going to, he asked if I ran into Miranda on any of my trips to Sagrada.
“Never.”
“So, you don’t know what she’s doing now, do you?”
I said that I didn’t.
“She’s a lawyer for the state of California,” he said laughing. Can you believe it, Ram? A fucking attorney for the fucking state of California."
I smiled back at him noncommittally. I didn’t know what kind of reaction he wanted or expected out of me with this revelation, and, in fact, I had none. He shook his head, took a gulp out of his drink, and motioned to a passing waitress for another. A moment passed and I summoned Devlin back to the present by asking him about his job.
“It’s okay,” he said, nodding. “I mean, come on, Ram. I run a floor polisher all night long in the fucking post office. How much do you really wanna know about that? It pays my rent, buys me food and beer, and it’ll give me a decent retirement in five years or so.”
“That’s five years from now, John. What about now? How are you doing now?”
“I’m here in San Francisco, warm and in a bar, and we’ve got the 49ers on the Goddamn television station. We’re in Paradise, Ram. This is fucking Paradise!” he said, raising his glass and draining it as a new one arrived. I ordered another ginger ale and drained the last of mine down to the slush in the ice cubes. I could see we’d be here awhile.
…it was maybe nine when the taxi came to transport us back to Devlin’s house. After the game, he had insisted on buying me dinner in the fancy restaurant upstairs… It was a morose affair of steak and lobster, with Devlin running monologues on Miranda and Monica and Monica’s realtor husband and their baby on the way, and a long meandering spiel on the office politics of post office custodial work. Then he sailed into a diatribe about San Francisco politics. It offered me an opening to ask the question I’d always wanted to pose to him during the Vera years when the four of us spent time together. Devlin’s monologue had something to do with developers and Hong Kong money pouring in. The Chinese were taking control of The City again.
“Tell me, John, did you ever read any of my stories about politics?”
I asked the question in the most disinterested way that I could, and in some way, I felt this. I was disinterested because what I was then was no longer the person I was now. Though we were friends during those days, when I had a career that had something to do with creation before destruction overtook it and propelled me down a path to murder, we had begun going our separate ways. And he and Miranda were no longer close by the end of those years. She and I were both on the rise in the 1980s, while Devlin was slowly sinking. I remembered having lunch with Miranda one day when I was covering the Capitol and asking her about him. She rolled her eyes and shuddered. “I don’t like discussing him,” she said. She shook her head and, with perfect equanimity, said, “The people who dropped out have to realize that society has dropped them.”
Devlin looked at me quizzically for a moment, then the shield descended. He started to chuckle and shook his head.
“No, Ram, I can’t say that I did… Miranda used to tell me about it though, and I heard you on the radio once. But I never read any of your stories.”
“Nothing?”
“No.”
“Not even that Louie Verde story?”
“Nah.”
“You never read it?”
“Hey, Ram, what do you want? I said no, I never did.”
“…hardly anyone did. It came and went without a whisper when I was inside, the biggest story I ever broke, and it broke while I was in prison and nobody paid any attention to it anyway, given the fact that it came out in a tabloid… Is that true? I think so, but it’s hard for me to remember, because that happened right at the same time… at the same time as… Vera.”
“Ah,” said Devlin, leaning in, thinking I was about to let loose with the torrent of my memory of the double murder. I knew he was twisting slowly, and I let him dangle.
“…but you want me to listen to some story about some picayune developer and a scrawny million dollars scam, when you didn’t even have the courtesy of reading a story that chronicled something a hundred times bigger than that written by a friend of yours? Tell me, John, what’s that about?”
He pushed his chair back from the table and seemed to be pondering some kind of action. Whether it was physical or verbal, I couldn’t say and didn’t feel. I wondered if he was thinking about hitting me. Or was he just going to stalk out and leave me with the check for dinner, like he used to do sometimes when the four of us rode together and he took offense at something? But he did nothing; he just sat there with his chair pushed back, looking at me hard. He was about to say something, and then I saw him reconsider it. Instead, he smiled coldly, and then excused himself to use the toilet. When he returned, he had an air of bonhomie about him again. The conversation was back to the 49ers and the missing magic of Joe Montana. Devlin went on with that monologue for some time, almost enough time to make me forget that the previous incident happened and that I had feelings about it, which, in some sense—the one sense of staying fixed in the present—wasn’t altogether a bad thing. I let go and turned my attention back to the here and now of the Cliff House and the company of my one-time comrade in arms, John Kevin Devlin.
Windwhistle Bone Page 59