Double Solitaire

by Craig Nova

  “Look,” said Amy Branshaw. “Jesus, what am I going to do?”

  Her breasts, or rather the balloons under them, were swelling and her blouse was taut at the buttons. They were getting bigger. She put her arms over them, but she looked like a running back carrying an enormous football. The other passengers turned to look.

  “Are you going to do something or not?” said Amy. “Have you got a knife?”

  “When was the last time you took a knife on an airplane?” Farrell said.

  “Do something,” she said.

  Farrell had a cup of coffee, with a plastic stick to stir the powdered creamer. He bit the tip of the stick to make a point. The button on her blouse was easy to push out of the button hole, and then his hand went into the warmth beneath the balloon. The heat was keenly intimate, oddly soothing, and suggested the fragrance of her skin. A steward stood in the aisle and stared. The first balloon sighed as air came out, and the breast went down. But the other required some pressure to pierce it. The steward said, “Passengers are not allowed intimate embraces when in the air.”

  When Farrell ran into her again, at Sotto on Pico Boulevard, she had taken a moment to recognize him, but then she blew up her cheeks and winked.

  Today, Braumberg no longer had the energy to consider a disguise. No faux carpenter outfit. He arrived in his black Armani sweater, his dark pants, his snakeskin cowboy boots. His eyes were set on the temple of the Vedanta Society across Highland.

  Braumberg sat down next to Farrell and said, “What’s in your box?”

  The lid of the pillbox had a picture of The Birth of Venus on it, and Farrell took it out of his pocket, opened it, and offered it to Braumberg. It had three sections: one for Ativan, one for Xanax, and one for Klonopin. Braumberg took a Klonopin. Panic. The effect of Terry Peregrine all over.

  The scale of trouble worked by itself, as a natural law. The increasing budgets for the pictures Sam Braumberg was making gave him a producing fee right off the top, and as the budgets increased, so did the pieces of it that people making it received, that is if they were lucky enough to get paid a percentage of what it all cost. But as everyone knew, more money meant more risk, and a lot more money meant a lot more risk.

  This collided, as far as Farrell was concerned, with the fact that the trouble people got into was worse than even a few years before, since people faced a downward spiral, whether it was jobs going to China, robots replacing people on assembly lines, or the excesses that fame seemed to license with its larger, more intense scandals. A little while ago, a scandal could have involved drugs. That was child’s play. Just consider, Farrell thought. Gerbiling. Or what kind of trouble was available in a world where, online, a man could advertise or at least suggest that he wanted to be killed and eaten? Farrell felt this as if being on a ride at an amusement park that left him a little dizzy, although he walked around as though he was taking a sobriety test. A sensation that was hidden, but still keen for all that.

  “Are you seeing someone about that stutter . . .” said Braumberg.

  “I do exercises,” said Farrell. “Words that catch me.”

  “What’s a hard word?” said Braumberg.

  “F-f-f-fury . . .” said Farrell.

  But it’s not the words, thought Farrell. It’s the things I can’t say.

  “Yeah,” said Braumberg. He bit his lip. “So, tell me. Have the girls gone to the cops?”

  “Not yet,” said Farrell.

  “Ambition,” said Braumberg. “They start young out here.”

  “The girls are threatening to talk to the cops, but I don’t think they will. You’ve got another problem.”

  “Explain it to me,” said Braumberg.

  “Something else happened. The girls are scared. Terry is lying.”

  “Goddamn it,” said Braumberg.

  “A girl from England was there. Probably sixteen, too.”

  “And?”

  “She had a bad reaction to something Terry gave her. He says he took her to the doctor, but no one knows where she is,” said Farrell.

  “So, if she’s gone, there’s no problem,” said Braumberg. “Right?”

  No, thought Farrell. Not by a long shot.

  “You better get ready for something else. The girls want a couple of lines a piece. In this new picture. So, you better set that up,” said Farrell.

  The fountain continued to splash.

  “The director is Derek Profonde,” said Braumberg. “Comes from central Europe. He’s an asshole. They’re artists. If I ask, he will think I’m off my meds. And interfering.”

  “Did you tell him about Peregrine?” Farrell said.

  “Do you think I was born yesterday?” said Braumberg. “Of course not. That’s why I came to you, right?”

  Braumberg was sweating and he had a sheen on his forehead. It looked almost icy.

  “Shit,” said Braumberg. “Why the fuck did I ever hire this prick?”

  “Which one?” Farrell said.

  Braumberg put both hands up in the air, as though to say, all of them.

  “I’ve got deals in almost all the territories for distribution,” said Braumberg. “And with a little luck we will break even on production costs before the shooting is done. The first weekend will cover distribution costs. If it’s done right. The rest is pure gravy. Now, you see how close I am?”

  “Yeah,” Farrell said. “Profonde has got to add two parts, just a couple of lines for each character. Two sultry teenage girls. Four lines altogether. Two for each.”

  “The writer isn’t going to like it,” said Braumberg. “She’s got this, you know, edge to her.”

  “Tell her it’s from the marketing people. They’ve seen the dailies and want some teen item. Tell her they think they’ve got to have a couple of sulky teens in it.”

  “Shit,” said Braumberg.

  “Is that a yes?” Farrell said.

  “Okay,” he said. “And if I can’t swing it here we will get something else that is shooting now.”

  Braumberg put his hand in the greenish water of the fountain.

  At the light in front of the fountain, a pickup truck with a rusted bed and what looked like recap tires rear-ended a Porsche with a crushing thump. Braumberg and Farrell had a moment of euphoria at the recognition of someone else’s trouble. Like having a tooth suddenly stop aching. The driver of the silver Porsche got out. She was a blond woman with dark glasses, who wore tight blue jeans, a tight tank top. Her beautiful lips were probably swollen with a shot from her plastic surgeon. Farrell stared at her shoes.

  “You see those?” Farrell to Braumberg.

  “What?”

  “Her shoes. Snakeskin. Python, I think.”

  “How do you know what a python skin looks like?”

  “Trust me,” he said.

  The woman put her hands on her hips and leaned into the window of the pickup truck, where a Latino man stared straight ahead. No, he didn’t have an insurance card. The cops arrived and one of them, in a perfectly pressed uniform, the black pants having an edge like an envelope, got out and looked around as though he wasn’t ready for another one of these. The woman yelled and gestured at her car. Wasn’t that evidence enough? Did anyone know what she had gone through to get that fucking car? The driver of the pickup truck sat behind the wheel. The woman in the snakeskin boots sulked in the middle of the road.

  “Jesus,” said Braumberg. “LA.”

  Honking in the street. The woman screamed. The man behind the wheel of the truck said nothing.

  “When are you going to see them again?”

  “As soon as I find the British girl,” said Farrell.

  “Why don’t you leave that alone?” said Braumberg.

  “I don’t see it that way,” said Farrell.

  “So when are you going to start looking?” said Braumberg.

  “As soon as this fog burns off,” said Farrell.

  They sat in the burbling of the fountain and in the stench of exhaust from the cars on H
ighland.

  “So, how did it go with the vending machine business?” said Braumberg.

  “Some lowlifes are s-s-shaking me down,” said Farrell.

  “It figures. You can’t even try to pay taxes in this town,” said Braumberg.

  “Russians,” said Farrell.

  “Let me tell you something,” Braumberg said. “I tried to make a picture in Moscow and the thugs were so bad, so threatening for every day we tried to shoot, we had to give it up. And in India where we tried to shoot a movie it was even worse.”

  Farrell shrugged.

  “I’d be careful around them,” said Braumberg.

  “That’s my problem,” said Farrell.

  The fountain made a burble, which had a hint of a death rattle.

  “Here’s your hope,” said Farrell. “The only way the girls can get what they want is to be quiet. If they go to the cops, it’s over for them. Once they start talking, it’s over. Do you have their last names?”

  “Terry told me. Portia Blanchard. Charlene Klauski,” said Braumberg.

  “How do you spell Klauski?” said Farrell.

  “Klauski. K-l-a-u-s-k-i.”

  Farrell kept his eyes on the Vedanta Society temple. How soothing that pink architecture was.

  “Things aren’t as simple as they used to be,” said Braumberg. “The above the line costs are nuts, but then the below the line costs are, too. And that is before distribution costs.”

  “I’ve got to go,” said Farrell.

  “Okay,” said Braumberg. “Jesus, look at the Vedanta Society. Is that a cult?”

  “No, the Vedanta Society is legitimate. You know who used to go there? Aldous Huxley. He used to be a regular.”

  “You mean the Brave New World guy?”

  “Yes,” Farrell said. “The Brave New World. If he had only known.”

  “At least we don’t grow people in bottles,” said Braumberg.

  “It depends on what you mean by bottles,” said Farrell. “Look, I’ve got things to do.”

  Farrell drove that gray Camry up Highland to the Cahuenga Pass, and in the rearview mirror saw that Braumberg was waiting, as though in answer to a prayer, for a fast rate of absorption.

  * * *

  The cold fog of Los Angeles in October got into his bones in a way that left Farrell with the sense that he was chained by it. Just try to get away, it seemed to say. Farrell went home by way of the Cahuenga Pass to Mulholland toward Laurel Canyon. On the way he considered his current circumstances as something out of Dante, where he was at about the Seventh Circle, which meant that he had at least two more levels in the bank. What kind of trouble could eat two entire Circles of hell in one bite? Then he considered that antsy movement of Terry Peregrine’s hands, the look in the eyes of those girls, the uncertainty about the British girl, and the uneasiness he had over the card from Mary Jones.

  Farrell had a pile of copies of the Los Angeles Times, which he kept in a cast iron rack in the hall of his house. Every couple of weeks he bundled them up and took them to the recycling center, where he almost felt like he was wearing a disguise. The good citizen who recycled newspapers, used a shower that saved water, and kept a composter. Now, he found the paper from the day before, took it to the kitchen and put it on the table, glanced at the headlines, and turned to page six. He found the story about a man who had been arrested for sleeping with fourteen-year-old girls. Karicek, Frederick, or Freddy. He had been arrested six times before, but he had still been on the street. The man had come from West Virginia, worked odd jobs, as a gardener’s assistant and a pool man. Terry had been spooked by this article. He hadn’t wanted Farrell to see that his eyes were drawn back to the story in the paper.

  He took out his iPad and turned it on. That little Apple logo appeared, and Farrell wondered about it. A bite of the apple was the myth of death. Then he pulled up Peregrine’s address with Google Maps, Satellite View. Farrell guessed that Peregrine didn’t have the patience or the presence of mind to do a good job, which, of course, meant that he probably didn’t go very far from his house. And, Farrell guessed, Terry had wanted to get back to the girls who were waiting. Maybe Terry had been thinking about what they would do. Maybe he had some new ideas he wanted to try with them.

  The satellite view showed the few places that looked likely . . . not as many as there used to be. The canyons were smaller, too. As difficult as it is to change the landscape, the developers had done just that when they ran out of land. The solution had been to fill the canyons with dirt and build on that. Sometimes after a brush fire and a good rain, the dirt washed away and the houses built on it slid downhill. But, after all, thought Farrell, this was LA, and nothing was certain, not even the place where your house was built.

  How close to Peregrine’s house should he begin to look? Farrell guessed the dirt shoulder on Mulholland would be useful, since it would show if a car had stopped there, but then how many people stopped to look at the view, or how many kids pulled over to smoke a joint and dream about what was coming?

  After lunch was the best time to look when the morning fog was gone, although Farrell liked the fog, too, since the Camry fit so perfectly into the shark-like mist. Still, the mist made it harder to see what was left in a canyon.

  Farrell knew the canyons. At the end of the academic year, when he had come back to LA from Berkeley, he delivered newspapers, the San Fernando Valley Pink Sheet, which was a throwaway. He borrowed a station wagon to do the job. The bales of papers, bound with wire, were delivered by a flatbed truck to the sidewalk next to a strip club. The club had been built to look like a log cabin, on Ventura Boulevard, and its charm, if it had one, was a variety of long-term seediness. Sometimes, in the morning, one of the dancers wobbled out on high-heeled shoes, not too drunk, but not sober, either. Usually, Farrell would give a drunk stripper a paper. One of them, with purple hair, said, “Thanks. I let my puppy crap on it.”

  Farrell made a sort of bench out of a bale of newspapers and a sort of desk out of another bale, and then he put another, open bale on the desk and folded a paper into thirds, put a rubber band around it, and threw it into the back of the station wagon. With the car so full that it was dangerous to drive (with a pile of papers flowing into the passenger seat and a pile right behind), Farrell drove through the streets of Studio City and, steering with his knees, he threw the papers out of two windows, one on the driver’s side and one on the passenger’s side. It looked like a sort of destroyer, shooting depth charges, although it was just pink papers that landed on lawns.

  It didn’t take long for Farrell to realize the facts. The paper was a throwaway, already doomed. Only five people actually subscribed, and also fifty-three people had threatened to sue if the paper was ever thrown on their lawns again. These houses were known as stops. So, after a couple of mornings that started at 5:30 a.m., it was obvious what Farrell should do.

  He folded five papers and then put the untouched bales of papers, still held together with wire, just like a bale of hay, into the station wagon. He drove to the five houses where the subscribers lived, delivered the five copies, and drove into the hills. The problem, of course, was how to get rid of the bales of paper that no one wanted. Farrell drove on Mulholland, west toward the beach, until he found a canyon with a steep edge, and then pushed the bales in. He was back in bed by 8:00 a.m. This landscape, in its details, soon became as familiar as the bed he slept in.

  The trouble began with the distribution manager of the paper and the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Fire Inspector. They showed up one morning when Farrell was folding up the five copies that he actually delivered. Then they drove him into the hills and showed him the slag of bales in the canyon Farrell had chosen. They could have pressed charges, but, instead, the manager just fired Farrell. The canyons were still familiar, although with some more houses.

  Farrell got in his car and turned out of the privet hedge. He guessed he’d start five hundred yards from Terry’s house and work toward the beach, but he tho
ught that a half mile from the house would be as far as Terry would go, high and paranoid and with the girl with the pubic tattoo in the back seat.

  Terry probably drove west on Mulholland toward the beach, since the canyons were less developed that way, although you never knew with people like Terry. All swagger, but when push came to shove, maybe he was tougher than you’d think. That look of murderous rage, so carefully hidden in that faux charm, didn’t come easily to most people, or it came only to a few. And yet Terry had another quality, which was that his toughness was an intermittent item, useful when he had the upper hand, to be avoided at all costs when he was risking something. Still, the distance from Terry’s house was determined by something far beyond courage. No one, thought Farrell, should underestimate what Terry would do to keep what he had. It was possible, too, that Terry could be cunning. Maybe it would occur to him that the best thing was to go a couple of hundred yards and then look for a place. Right there.

  Farrell was sure of one thing. The girl, if Terry had done this, wouldn’t be too far down a canyon. Terry wouldn’t be willing to drag anyone through the brush, especially if it was filled with rattlesnakes. Or could be. A likely possibility. And there were plenty of rattlesnakes in the canyons, as Farrell knew by experience.

  Farrell had a parking permit on the dashboard, a card that said, LOS ANGELES DEPARTMENT OF WATER AND POWER. The first possible place was about two hundred yards away from Terry’s house. There, Farrell pulled over, got out of the car, and stood at the top of the canyon. Brush and manzanita, but he’d have to walk into it, since it would take some looking to find a sixteen-year-old girl who had been shoved under some woody clutter. He pushed into the brush, and as he did so he held the stiff branches back to find a way in. He glanced at the fecal colored dirt, in those shady places under a manzanita. Here and there a handful of soil rolled down the slope with an almost animate quality, as though something was skittering away. No buzzing of a snake, nothing but that mixture of brush scent and exhaust from the freeway.

  He looked in every possible place with a five-hundred-meter radius, but then Terry’s ambition and panic, or his ability to endure, might allow him to go farther, even if he was panicked. If you didn’t mind being a fluffer, what wouldn’t you do? Was being a fluffer a matter of enduring what was necessary?