by Craig Nova
The place was a couple of miles up from the turn, and as Farrell got out, a bank of misty air moved over the sun, and while dusk would come sooner, it meant something else, too. Snakes hated direct sunlight, since it kills them. They liked spotted shade, half overcast days, warmth but not the hard-hitting sunlight.
The direction Farrell had come from showed no signs of dust. Just that frank, empty air. This was another reason he had driven up here, since the dust would show, with at least fifteen minutes warning that someone was coming this way, but then, as far as Farrell knew, some jackass with an instinct for a thrill was backpacking here, in the hills or close to the willows.
He stood at the side of the car. No breeze, no movement, nothing but that forbidding landscape, which, of course, seemed worse than usual.
His watch showed 1:00 p.m. Somehow it had taken a lot longer to get out here than he thought, but that was all right. If he did this quickly he could be back in LA before dusk.
The odor wasn’t as bad as it could have been if she’d been out in the brush this whole time, but it was there. It wasn’t something smelled, but felt in the chest.
He took the shovel from the trunk. He didn’t want to give a chance to the coyotes, small mammals, even wild dogs that had escaped from Fontana and other towns out here, not to mention carrion eating birds. He didn’t want that. The identification had to be complete. Farrell, after all, was going to leave proof.
The wind of that dead language, that native dialect with the hiss of air over sand said, “Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors . . .” And what could he hear now that he watched the landscape for any movement, and what would give a blessing? He kneeled in the shade of the car, closed his eyes, and thought, Oh, if I could only hear you. If I could only have listened to what you wanted when you got on that plane from London. The usual sad dreams, he guessed. Is that what he heard? It must have been a vision of beauty, of power, of success.
Farrell put on the latex gloves and picked up the bag by its knotted end, the edges bound together in a sloppy, but still tight, knot. He wanted to drag it, but that would just leave marks, even out here, and so he carried the bag like a grotesque pietà. The more devious, the worse, said Shirushi. “Blessed is the man that heareth me . . .” He shook his head, and as the weight, which was really not much, got heavier, as though the bag had a moral weight that was far, far heavier than any object subject to the earth’s gravity, he went on walking although he glanced at the sun, just to make sure he knew how he would get back. Oh, he thought, I hear you, but it is too late. Far too late. But, he thought, I can make you a promise now.
If he could have only found her before this mess, before this miasma of LA got her. God knows it wasn’t her fault that the lies assholes tell were beginning to seem like truth. I hear you, he thought, but he knew the truth was her weight in his arms, and not just the physical part.
He untied the top of the bag, stepped back, and pulled the corners at the bottom so that she was exposed. The buzzing began then, and so he stood still, hands on the bag. That was one of the difficulties of this particular sound. It was hard to tell precisely where it was coming from, and he wondered if that was part of its viciousness, that you would try to get away, but instead stepped on the snake you wanted to avoid. The clouds spread their darkness, and the gray shadow now covered him, the bag and the snake.
The immensities of the instant, and the scale of the malignant that existed here was evident to no one but him: What moral purity, what chance for the most profound decency had been squandered in all this?
He dug a quick, shallow trench, the perfect example of what Shirushi would have thought was the worst. The desire to conceal, but with a keen clumsiness.
The snake didn’t bite him. For Farrell its presence, its curious sense of observing, was worse than a bite, even though Farrell had seen what a bite did. If someone was bitten, the venom digested the flesh, and in doing so it left patches that appeared to be encrusted with rubies in a clear but drying secretion. Lymph fluid, dissolving tissue? Something like that.
A bite, at least, was a definite action. The horror of the snake’s constant, sliding presence was an accumulation of all those items that lurked in the shadows, the murder, cruelty, deviousness, corruption, everything that now seemed to exist as an invisible, inescapable cloud. The snake was a reminder of folly, of the gravity of the worst of events, of the things that had seeped into Farrell’s awareness of himself and from which he was almost panicky in his desire to escape.
The beauty of the time the snakes had spent here was in how difficult it was to spot one, but after fifteen minutes, the thing was obviously curled in the dusty shrub. The markings on the back were regular, almost like a fractal, one segmented pattern, oval and yet edged with marks like the teeth of a saw, one after another, and while it was curled, as though to strike, it had stopped making that noise. He guessed the bag, warmed by the sun, would attract the snake. They hunted by the little pits beneath their eyes, which were sensitive to heat. Its head went first, flowing away from the coil of its body, and then the entire thing moved along, not undulating from side to side like a sidewinder, but got along with a locomotion that was almost otherworldly. It made no noise. It hardly left much of a track, and as it turned its head toward Farrell, it seemed to dismiss him with such contempt as to leave him doubting whether he existed, or maybe he was so filled with self-loathing and the desire to be someplace else that it was indistinguishable from fear. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. Can you hear me, Catherine? Am I doing the right thing?
She had slipped out of the bag, which he had discarded as though it was the flag of the worst thing imaginable. Her clothes were a little more dirty, but still the same: a tank top, a vest, dark jeans, and those running shoes with the holes along the side of the sole. The snake flowed along, as though keeping him company. The pale light left him with more of that sense of not existing at all, and he wondered if, after all these years, he had finally gotten in over his head, not in the ability to fix things, but in the ability to still exist.
He had come to a sort of vaporization of what he thought he had been, which was a competent man who took care of hypocritical nonsense, and who meant well in a tough world. But it always led somewhere to that ultimate darkness. Always. Now, for an instant, he had a yearning for some clean, infinitely suffering, infinitely loving thing.
The shadows of the clouds were like smoke from the underworld, at once gray and filled with menace. And that gray presence had something new, or something he had to face. How, for instance, does it play out? How do you see into the future, and just how will justice be done? Or will vengeance devour its own? Was he one of justice’s own?
The Italian toothbrush was still in the ziplock bag, and Farrell brought it from the glove box of the car. The British girl had stolen it, he guessed, as an elegant souvenir. Here, thought Farrell, as he put the brush, bristles first, into the side of her running shoes, Here’s a souvenir. When she was found, the question would be, What was she trying to say? Why did she have this stylish item, this thing that could appear in an advertisement in Vogue? He pushed the toothbrush down so it appeared she was hiding it, or so that no one would know she had it.
Above him were three stones, about ten feet tall, each shaped like a football on end, and on each side there were three Joshua trees. And, to his surprise, someone had left a Willys Jeep, blistered with rust, the windows cracked like an infinite number of spider webs. Those stones, he thought, were good enough landmarks, along with the Jeep.
“Blessed is the man that heareth me . . .”
At the car he found a piece of tumbleweed, the brushy globe of it about the size of a beach balloon. It was handy to wipe out where he had walked, and as much of the tire tracks as possible, although there wasn’t much of that. The surface here, for a short distance, was hard as a dry lake. Then he brushed back to
the side of the car and threw it away. Yes, he could depend on that harshness.
He considered that snake as it had flowed along, as it had glanced at him, and then slid away. He’d be back in LA before dark.
21
THE SHADOWS OF EARLY EVENING in front of Farrell’s house were soft, a little gray, the color of a sweatshirt. As he waited at the wheel of the car, the dirt on his hands, the scent of the desert constant, like a dust storm, his fatigue now a pressure, too, as in an airplane that is going down a runway for takeoff. Farrell wanted to open the door of the car, to go into his house and take a bath, but he sat there instead. Maybe, he thought, I am dehydrated. Yeah, sure.
Rose Marie tapped on the window of the driver’s side. She stood in a light that makes for a dreamy quality, always seductive, no matter what you have seen.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” she said.
“I had to take a drive,” he said.
“A drive?” she said. “It must have been one hell of a drive.”
“I’ll snap out of it,” he said.
“You’ll snap out of it,” she said. “I hope.”
The leaves of the hedge that made a wall between the two houses and the road had that golden look, as though each leaf had been dipped in gilt, and the effect was a charm that mesmerized Farrell, since he was so tired as to want to take something from the light.
“How much trouble are you really in?” she said. “No lies.”
No lies.
“You remember my talk with Catherine?”
“Yes,” she said. “And so now you’re like this. Angry. No, infuriated.”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Well, I do. Look. Look in the rearview mirror.”
If only I could, he thought. And I’m not even done. Not yet.
A green Morgan car, with a belt to hold the hood shut, pulled up and parked in front of Rose Marie’s house.
“That’s my ex-boyfriend. He’ll say he came to get the snake,” she said.
Farrell finally got out of the car.
“A handsome guy,” he said. “He should be in the movies. But you say he’s an academic.”
A man got out of the green car. He was in his late thirties with dark hair in which there was some gray, a widow’s peak, and a thin build. For all his good looks, he had a chameleon quality, though his expression wasn’t a blank. He looked like he smelled something he didn’t like or as if he had stepped in dog shit. Irritated, but not knowing what to do.
“So,” he said to Rose Marie. “This is where you ended up?”
“That’s right,” she said.
“You threatened to go, but I never believed you,” he said. “So, I’m going to give you one more chance.”
“Excuse me,” Farrell said to Rose Marie. “Maybe I better go . . . I’ve got to make a call.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t have any secrets. This is Andris Dolman. We used to live together. When he wasn’t in Timbuktu.”
“So, that’s the problem?” Andris said.
“No,” she said. “That’s not the problem.”
“So what is? And don’t say you wouldn’t understand.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” she said.
“Oh, fuck, you’re doing that thing again,” he said. “Stop it. You can come home if you want.”
“This is home,” she said.
“Well, well,” he said. He had the perfect air of a man who had never been dumped and was trying to understand what it really felt like. The transformation from exquisite vanity to injured pride was perfect. He put his hands on his hips and looked at Rose Marie.
“All right,” he said. “Give me the key to our apartment.”
She took her key ring from her pocket, the keys making a domestic jingle as she looked for the right one, but Andris grabbed the ring, his hands shaking. She reached for it and he pushed her arm away.
With a jerk that even surprised Farrell, he took the key ring from Andris’s hands.
“Which one is it?” said Farrell.
The hedge, the house, the cars all seemed to be getting brighter. Is that fury? thought Farrell. Is that why objects appeared bright to him, as though covered with a sheen? Does fury arrive like a chrome-tinted cloud?
“The one with Yale on it,” said Rose Marie.
Farrell handed over the key from the Yale lock.
“So, who’s this?” said Andris Dolman.
“A friend,” she said.
Andris stepped closer to her.
“A friend,” he said. “Looks like a very good friend.”
He stepped a little closer yet.
“Where did you dig this one up?” said Andris Dolman.
“You don’t have to be that way,” said Rose Marie.
“Look,” Farrell said to Rose Marie. “Maybe you want to talk this over without me around.”
“No,” she said. “I’m asking you to stay.”
“What is this guy?” Dolman said.
“I wouldn’t talk that way if I were you,” Farrell said.
“Is that a warning?” he said. “It sounds like a warning.”
“Let’s be grown up,” Farrell said. “Get in your car, take your key, and leave . . .”
“I bet you are some sort of cheap Hollywood parasite,” he said.
“If I were you, I’d get in my car and go home . . .” Farrell said.
“Jesus,” said Andris Dolman to Rose Marie. “I thought you had taste. And you end up with this?”
“What did you say?” said Farrell.
They were close enough so that the stuff Andris used on his hair, some kind of mousse, made a sickly perfume fog that Farrell stood in. It clashed with that lingering scent of the desert.
“Go home,” said Rose Marie to Andris.
“And leave you with this bum?” he said.
“Don’t call me that,” Farrell said. “Don’t . . .”
“Oh. I hit home. I see,” he said.
“Don’t call me a bum,” Farrell said.
They stood in that fading light, which should have been soothing but now was tainted, ugly, and oppressive. A car went down the street, its tires hissing.
Rose Marie turned to Farrell, her expression now one of curiosity and the first awareness of fear. Not because of the presence of her ex-boyfriend, but because of something else here, some hint of violence on Farrell’s part that left her hesitant, or just waiting in the way someone does when a fuse has been lighted. Farrell glanced at her.
“Don’t,” she said to Farrell. She shook her head.
He guessed she knew something was happening, but did she know what it really was? Did she know, or suspect, that Farrell had been able to keep everything under control? That he had been able to behave with restraint, but that now he was losing that? Did she know that, for him, for an instant, it was elation?
Did Rose Marie know that the British girl, the time spent searching along Mulholland, the resistance to the mess Farrell had found himself in was crystallizing into precisely what he had wanted to avoid? Is that what made her hesitate, the air of approaching violence? Or was it more than just the violence, which was a symptom, but the anger behind it, which now hung in the air like an invisible gas that changed everything?
Rose Marie put her hand to her mouth, as though surprised.
“Riffraff, low-rent scum,” said Andris.
Maybe he had never had his nose broken, or his throat closed, so he didn’t know what he was dealing with, thought Farrell. Farrell was letting go, and he knew it. What would be better than to break Andris’s injured vanity?
Andris nodded, looked around, glanced at Rose Marie, and said, “Too bad. You were a nice piece.”
Then he was sitting on the ground, on his rear end, his head against the side of his car. When Farrell hit Andris’s throat, Andris had gasped and put his hands to his neck. He wasn’t really hurt, or if so, it was that his vanity that had been injured.
Rose Marie’s trembling hand was on Farr
ell’s.
“That’s enough,” she said. “Please.”
It was Andris’s smirk, his simpering condescension that charged everything. Andris’s hair was thick, and a handful of it made it easy for Farrell to turn him over. Andris tried to speak, but when he opened his mouth, Farrell shoved Andris’s teeth against a wheel rim of that stupid car. Farrell stood on one foot, about to do it, to break the teeth by kicking Andris in the back of the head.
Even then, in the midst of it, Farrell sensed Rose Marie’s horror. He wondered if she really understood the extent of his fury, or the fact that he might not be able to control it as he had before. Is that what left her with that expression of mystification and terror? Did she really understand just by the mood, the air of threat and violence?
Rose Marie kept her eyes on Farrell.
“No, no,” she said.
“For two cents, I’d . . .” said Farrell. “I’d . . .”
His hands were trembling as though he had been in an automobile accident.
Farrell stepped back, still trembling, aware that he was confusing one thing with another. What about the British girl? What about her? Wasn’t that the problem?
Rose Marie went on staring, amazed, at Farrell. Andris Dolman stood up, not bothering to brush himself off, and as he stood, he wobbled a little.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said Andris Dolman.
“D-d-don’t come back,” said Farrell.
“I’m sorry,” Andris Dolman said.
“Get in your car and get out of here,” said Rose Marie. “What a stupid car.”
“All right,” he said. “I’m going to go.”
“No, you aren’t,” said Rose Marie. “You’re going to take your snake so you have no reason to come back.”
She turned and went into the house. Andris Dolman and Farrell stood opposite each other, just staring, considering what could be done. Andris held his throat and made a sound when he tried to breathe like water first spurting out of a hose that has just been turned on. A wet, fast hush. Then Rose Marie came out of the house, carrying the habitat. The snake inside was coiled as always like a pile of small inner tubes.