She gave his arm a light tap. ‘Is he firing you?’
Xas sighed. ‘I believe he is thinking of “the simple life” for himself. He sent me to check out the room because he’s used to asking people to do those things for him. At the moment I think he’s worried about how things will turn out, with his planes, his film, his girlfriends. He’s trying to imagine how easy it would be to walk away from everything, like he walked away from the wrecked plane.’
‘So he’s not mad at you?’ She sounded relieved.
‘I don’t know. I have such a lot of trouble figuring him out. He was so proud of himself for keeping his head—and his eye on the nearest road as he was falling. But since he jumped before the plane hit, he still doesn’t really know what it’s like to walk away from a wreck. He hasn’t walked away. He’s scared, so tries to tell himself he could be a motor mechanic instead of Conrad Cole. He could live “the simple life”. And he thinks I’ll show my true colours if he says he wants to stay here and get his hands dirty and do a decent day’s work for a decent day’s wage. He thinks—’ Xas suddenly took a good look at the person he was talking to and shut up.
The woman had pressed her hand under her throat. ‘Me and Bill don’t have to stay here either, you know. We could sell out. Bill could go and work for the oilmen, too. But this is a pretty good business. And our lives aren’t simple. We’re not simple.’ She gave a fierce laugh. ‘Ordinary, yes, but not simple.’ She turned away from Xas and ambled toward the grease pit, kicking her slip-on shoes a little ahead of her toes at every step then stepping into them as though they were footholds, and she was climbing something. ‘We’d better go back,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘Bill might wonder just what I’m showing you.’ She laughed again.
They walked out into the sunlight. She shaded her eyes and peered at her husband and Cole on the porch. ‘Look at them,’ she said. ‘Bill’s happy. He knows your boss is a big shot. Bill doesn’t ever look at my movie magazines—but once I tell him exactly who your boss is he’ll be full for weeks about how he had Conrad Cole give him a hand.’ She pushed her hair back and scowled at Xas. ‘I guess it’s okay for Mr Cole to dream about all the different lives he could look into, but most of us have just the one, and some of us really feel it.’
‘Do you feel that? Your one life?’
‘Yes. Don’t you?’
Xas felt a little dizzy, a little crazy. He said, ‘There’s a question.’
It hadn’t really occurred to Xas that he was as liable to make or avoid choices as any of the people he met. He didn’t like to think about this, so instead he found himself defending Cole. ‘Cole tells stories. It’s natural for him to put himself into other people’s shoes.’
‘You think?’ The woman looked about, at the serrated horizon, the distant Sierras, the scribbles of shade under the creosote bushes, the smoke of dust raised by a car passing on an intersecting road. She looked about at her life.
‘Cole’s only thinking about fame,’ Xas added. ‘Fame is his difficulty.’
The woman looked at him again, with a keen, knowing look. ‘And what’s your difficulty?’ she asked.
He pointed with his chin at Cole, who was head down again in the workings of the car. ‘He is, for now.’
‘Getting you to check out Ed’s room—that wasn’t nice.’
‘He isn’t,’ Xas said.
As they came up to the store Cole took his head out from under the hood. ‘Much obliged, Joan,’ he said. Then to Xas, ‘So, what do you think?’
‘Have you made that phone call yet?’
For a long, silent moment they eyed one another. Then Cole picked up a rag and wiped his hands. ‘We could stay here.’
Bill glanced at his wife, dismay and confusion in his eyes. He coughed loudly.
Cole held up a hand.
The mechanic went pink and subsided.
‘Why stay?’ Xas said.
‘Why not?’
Xas closed his eyes. ‘Con, I did promise not to cause you any trouble.’
‘Can’t you just answer my question?’
‘All right,’ Xas said, he opened his eyes again, feeling combative. ‘You’re playing a game.’
‘With you?’
‘With me, and with possibility. But the plane only cracked up because the engine was too strong for its wings. That’s what happened. The wings couldn’t take a dive at that angle, and that speed. That’s all that happened.’
‘I nearly got us killed,’ Cole said, flatly.
‘And so we should stay here and live over the workshop?’ Xas waited. He rolled his shoulders, troubled by the sense-memory of wings mantled above his head. The pupils of his eyes expanded, reacting to an imaginary shadow. ‘Con,’ he said, ‘if you’d actually take me on as a test pilot you’d be paying me to take risks. That would be more straightforward. Then you wouldn’t have to think, “I nearly got us killed.”’
Cole bridled. ‘I was going to pay you for the work you’ve done. You don’t need to worry about that.’
‘I wasn’t worried about payment, or anything else. I wanted to see for myself whether the wings would hold. And the risks people take aren’t any of my business. I was just there with you.’ Xas studied Cole’s face, trying to see whether the man was calmed or mollified by any of this.
Joan went to her husband, took him by the hand and led him away indoors. Her sense of timing was wonderful, because it was at that moment that Cole lost his temper.
‘You’re like a bloody dog!’ he yelled. ‘I have to read lips! You don’t, but you’re always watching me as if you can’t follow what’s going on. As if you’re a dumb animal!’
Xas pointed at the store, the darkness behind the grey gauze of its screen door. ‘Go make your phone call,’ he said.
Cole’s face was tight and suspicious.
‘Look,’ said Xas, in a gentler tone. ‘You’re having a reaction to a risk you took that went bad. You should call for a car and get yourself somewhere safe and familiar. The bed over the workshop—neither of us would find it very comfortable.’
Cole came up to him and gripped his arm. He said, softly, ‘I’m having a hell of a time getting you into any bed. If you puffed up and talked about your manhood I could say to myself, “Okay, I’ll only make use of this guy’s brains.” But you don’t jump when I touch you.’ He ran his hand down Xas’s arm and curled Xas’s loose fingers within his own tight fist. ‘I don’t understand it,’ he said. ‘I thought maybe you’d get sentimental, like a girl, if I offered to give something up.’
‘Your life?’
Cole shrugged. ‘You’re right—I am just playing.’ He went indoors to make his postponed call.
The sun was so bright that its disc sat in the blue surrounded by a halo of pale grey. A wind came, dropping down between the lonely store and the mountains to stroke the desert. Miles away there was dust on the air, though it was still and silent at the intersection of the two scratch roads.
Xas turned his face up and stared at the sun. He thought, ‘I disturb him. He therefore supposes I’m the cause of his trouble.’
The angel entertained this icy thought, with his face and wide-open eyes turned to the source of the near ninety-degree heat. He considered Cole’s feelings, and put them aside. He put his own feelings aside. He said, to himself (and also to God, to Whom for a moment he forgot he was refusing to speak), ‘All I want from that man is to be allowed to follow his thinking.’ He dropped his gaze, and his eyes found the place, miles off, where a thread of oily smoke was still going up from the wrecked plane. Then, for an instant, he was engulfed in the vivid patience, the impersonal benevolence, and the personal affection of his Father. He was reminded: ‘You followed Lucifer in order to follow his thinking.’
A moment later Cole reappeared and said, ‘What are you doing on the ground?’
‘I’m having a temper tantrum,’ Xas said.
‘A very quiet one.’
‘They’re the worst sort. Did you make that call?�
��
‘Yes. You can stop policing me.’
‘I will. I think policing is pernicious. No one should police anyone.’
Cole came and stood over him, hands on his hips. ‘I reckon I prefer the police to keep on. We don’t want anarchy.’
‘Oh, don’t we?’ said Xas.
‘Come on, get up. Before Joan comes out here and thinks I’ve knocked you down.’ Cole gave Xas his hand and helped him to his feet.
A couple of hours later Cole and Xas said so long to the mechanic and his wife and got into the car Cole had summoned. They rode back to the city. When they were on Van Ness, near Inglewood, Cole turned to Xas and asked, polite and cool, ‘Where can I drop you?’
Burbank and Venice
November, 1929
Flora was leaving the studio at the end of her day. As she came out the gates and turned toward the nearest trolley stop she caught sight of Millie’s car through the usual cluster of autograph hunters. The Buick was parked across the road, Millie sitting in the front seat, her head down on the wheel.
Flora crossed the road.
Millie had a cut on her scalp, under her hair. Her face was striped with blood, and her good linen suit jacket splattered with it.
Flora said, ‘Millie?’ and touched her friend’s back.
Without raising her head Millie shook it, smearing the wheel. Flora walked around the car and got in beside her. She lifted Millie’s head and parted her sticky hair to look for the cut. Cuts—she saw, none of them very long, and all only oozing now.
‘What happened?’ Flora said. She looked about and saw they were being watched; observed and avoided. ‘How long have you been parked here?’ she asked.
Again Millie shook her head.
Flora fished in her pockets for a handkerchief. She found one, and luckily it was clean. She placed it in Millie’s hand and set the hand against the lacerations. ‘You hold that,’ she said. Again she looked around. What was wrong with these people? The autograph hunters were only sometimes glancing their way, mostly they kept their eyes on the road beyond the studio gate guardhouse. As Flora watched they began to stir and huddle forward. The guard came out of his booth and made a positively biblical gesture toward the crowd, as if holding them back by force of will.
The car coming toward the gates was unprepossessing, battered, but Flora recognised it as Cole’s. While spending millions on his film, Cole was too cheap to buy himself a new car.
Xas was behind the wheel, Cole beside him, wearing cheaters and slumped down in the seat.
Flora stood up and began to wave her arms. She saw the men turn her way. Xas stopped Cole’s car between the studio gates. Cole stiffened, turned to him, and barked something. There was a short exchange. Flora watched Cole bristle and become agitated while Xas responded, calmly, patiently. Then Xas flicked his shoulders, an odd expressive gesture of abrupt leave-taking. He got out of the car and, before he’d even closed its door, Cole had slid over to the wheel, freed the brakes and hit the accelerator. He barely missed the gate guard, and did brush one autograph hunter, who reeled, but kept his feet.
Xas came across to Flora and Millie. He got in the driver’s side and eased Millie out from under the wheel. He started the car, pulled out and drove away.
‘Watts?’ he said.
‘No, let’s take her to my place.’ Flora gave Xas directions and then took Millie’s free hand and closed her own about its tacky fingers.
They got Millie home and sat her down in the living room. Flora went to find a clean towel, a bandage, and iodine. She discovered she was out of iodine, which she used to paint her scars when they split.
When she came back to the living room with a towel and bowl of warm water, Xas said to her, ‘It’s money.’
Millie had volunteered this much to him. She was crying now, her hands over her face.
Money didn’t explain the injury, unless Millie had been robbed.
Flora asked Xas if he’d please go out to a drugstore on the shore and get some iodine. Then she called him back when he headed for the front door. ‘No, it’s quickest to go out the back gate and follow the sand track through the waste lot,’ she said. ‘I used to go that way all the time. You can see which way to head once you’ve crossed the stream. The tops of the phoenix palms are visible.’
Xas left.
Flora wet the towel, wrung it out, and began to wipe the blood from Millie’s hair. After a time Millie began to talk.
She said that she’d heard there was trouble at her bank. When she got there the doors were locked. ‘Chained from the inside,’ she said. ‘They were all cowering in there, the cashiers back in the cages, the manager at his office door. A bunch of men with green eyeshades—those bank people who’ve always been so friendly and respectful.’
Millie said that a crowd had collected on the bank’s steps and people began to push. ‘They didn’t mean to break the windows. We couldn’t get in anyway. There were bars. But in the press someone lost their balance and put out an arm and pushed it through the bars and into the glass. The whole window came down mostly in one piece like a guillotine. I caught a few little bits that sprinkled down after.’
Millie had finished crying. She had her head bowed so that Flora could clean the cuts under her hair. Flora couldn’t see her face.
‘The bank people were shouting that our money wasn’t there any more. They’d had all our money, but they went bust. I don’t understand how that works.’
‘I don’t either,’ Flora said. She’d read a little about the bank failures back East, and had only thought, complacently, that all her own money was in her house and car. She still had an old bank account from the time she’d had a mortgage, but she doubted there was anything in it. Having a bank account would be too much like planning a life. For the first time it occurred to Flora that her lack of direction, often a cause of shame, was at times like these something of a blessing. People with aims and dreams were in danger.
‘It’s all gone,’ Millie said. ‘What am I going to tell my friends in Texas?’
Xas returned after thirty minutes. He had a bottle of iodine in his pocket, and a ginger kitten cradled in his arms. The kitten was a very dark red, with definite bands of cream on his tail, big ears, big feet, and an eager, goofy expression.
Flora took the iodine, diluted it, and began to paint Millie’s cuts. She said to Xas, ‘Millie’s bank went bust. There was a disturbance and someone broke a window.’
Xas didn’t say anything. He put the kitten down—a big kitten, or young cat really. It minced over to the doorframe, went on tiptoes and smooched. It was a little unsteady on its feet. Xas said, ‘I found him by the stream. Someone has had a go at his balls. Possibly a tomcat. He has been a mess there, but is getting better already.’
‘I don’t want a cat,’ Flora said. ‘You can take him home with you.’
‘I’m not living anywhere.’
‘What do you do with yourself when you’re not with Cole?’
Xas didn’t answer.
Millie said she’d like to lie down. Flora conducted her friend to the better of her two spare rooms and spread a rug on the bare mattress. She asked Millie if she wanted anything. Millie shook her head, winced, covered her eyes.
Flora went out and pulled the bedroom door to.
Xas was in the kitchen boiling the jug. The kitten was by the back door, hunched over a saucer of milk, his sharp shoulder blades making pale stars in his thick fur.
Flora watched Xas make tea. She repeated Millie’s story in full. Then she said, ‘Cole was in a hurry. I guess he didn’t want to get involved.’
‘He said, “It’s just some shine having the vapours.”’
‘Well,’ said Flora, flatly. ‘And what do you think of that? I mean, doesn’t it make you think something more than what it’s so far been convenient for you to think?’
‘Convenience doesn’t come into it, Flora.’
He sounded sad, and a little disappointed in her, as well as Cole. But s
he liked it when he used her name.
‘I was in love once,’ he said, ‘and it made me feel human.’
He brought the pot to the table and sat down. The cat had finished the milk and polished the saucer. It sniffed all around the plate then looked up at Xas, eyes glowing. It jumped up onto the chair between Xas and Flora, misjudging its leap and bashing its head on the bottom of the table. Flora laughed. Then she patted the cat to apologise for laughing. The cat’s fur was thick and soft, and as she stroked it Flora raised a scent of sage and rosemary, and clean earth. ‘He smells good,’ she said.
‘It was the first thing I noticed. Actually, I smelled him before he spoke to me—that perfume. It’s like a kind of magic he has.’ Xas smiled at the cat, then looked up at Flora. ‘Why should I have to attach myself to a good person, anyway? Why not a bad person?’
‘So you do think Cole’s bad?’
Xas shook his head, then said, ‘He’s not good.’
They watched the cat wash. He was an energetic and fastidious groomer, but his balance wasn’t very good.
‘This cat is clumsy,’ Flora said. She was enchanted. The fur on his spine was a rich auburn. His muzzle was almost round. His eyes were wide, hopeful, good-natured. ‘Okay,’ Flora said to the cat, ‘you can stay.’ She looked up at Xas, who was there, but absenting himself in silence. He seemed to have a trick of making himself difficult to see. She said, ‘You might as well, too, for the time being.’
Venice
November–December, 1929
Xas fixed Flora’s roof, climbed up into the ceiling and lay on his back to settle the wavy rows of tiles back into place by pressing them with his hands and feet. He replaced all the rusted wire that held the tiles in place—then came down after a whole day under the roof, covered in sticky black dust, and with fingers scored by stripes of rust. He spent half an hour at the basin with a scrubbing brush, and even after that his hands looked as though they had been hennaed, like those of the Indian dancers Flora had once seen.
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