by Bruce Wagner
He awakened feverish. The cracks of the garage hemorrhaged cold, blinding light. Fitz was gone—nor did his faithful partner lay on the familiar bed of onerous glad rags. Will’m gathered his carpetbag and strode to the courtyard to tell his friend good-bye. No sign of him. The house was peaceful as a grave. Into the drawing room he went, calling the name of his benefactor.
The body was in the parlor, one shoe on, one shoe off, a note pinned to the grimy seersucker lapel. He stooped prayerfully to read.
Will’m—
I’m sorry we parted in such a way but you slept so soundly (I know how upset you were about the girl) I didn’t have the heart to wake you for goodbyes. I didn’t have the heart to tell you over dinner about Half-Dead either. I found him in the river, and know who is the culprit; he will surely get his due but not by my hand. I have run out of time. I buried our fighting friend at the old encampment. There never was nor ever will be a braver, nobler soul. My “better” Half was the best of dogs and I gave him my best, too—and that, you will always have from me: my best. Take my advice, Will’m, and leave this city. You are a gentle, special man and I would wish no harm come your way … Half and I will welcome you, but not before your time has come. And Jesus, man! destroy this note, won’t you? It is incriminating.
Yours,
Geo. Fitzsimmons
A clump of excess rope lay on Fitz’s shoulder like an improbable epaulet. He tenderly pressed a knuckle to a cold cheek—the distended eyes looked straight ahead and would not be closed. Will’m tore the note into bits and stuffed an envelope, also addressed to him, into a pocket without opening, then broke from the house.
He stood from the park bench and walked north on a street called Charleville, past Beverly Drive. He knew this refined village—whence? His feet, propelled by habit or instinct, marched him to a brick building on a tree-strewn avenue called El Camino. He slowed, fixing an eye on the sleek structure’s entrance. There, he saw the symbol——and read with astonishment the legend above the doors:
The William Morris Agency
He gathered his courage and went in.
CHAPTER 22
The Disorderly World
When Tull heard that Boulder had left her manager and was interviewing at various agencies, William Morris among them, he asked if he might tag along. He was, after all, writing a paper about the Industry; Four Winds had already bestowed curricular credits for his field trip to the teen star’s downtown set. Lucy tried to glom on to the Morris outing, but Tull nixed it (three was a crowd). He put her on the investigative trail of the Redlands Weiners instead. Boulder was amused, mistakenly thinking the scion’s intentions were romantic—she wasn’t interested.
But maybe he would make a good boyfriend. Her mom said you could never sneeze at that much money. She said the Trotter family was “dynastic,” so Boulder thought maybe they could just do the quirky dynastic thing—marry, then live apart. She’d keep the hugest loft in New York (like Claire Danes), and have Tull stay in a separate room whenever he came to town. Maybe not so separate; he was kind of cute … though she didn’t see in him what Lucy saw—but oh my God! Claire Danes’s loft! There was a photo spread in one of her mother’s “shelter” rags, and it was amazing! The article said Ms. Danes stayed in the “SoHo aerie” when she wasn’t busy attending Yale—that’s where Jodie used to go, and Boulder was sure Jodie and Claire knew each other and that Jodie probably gave Claire constant shit about keeping up her grades and staying out of trouble … Boulder so wanted to live the bookish, ivied life during hiatuses from film. She had it all planned: during the week, she would sleep at the dorm, but Friday nights she’d take a train to her own private urban palace near the cool people like Christina (Ricci), Benicio and Drew. (She heard Benicio had the biggest cock, bigger even than Tobey Maguire’s.) She’d live in SoHo or Chelsea, like Winona and Selma and Kirsten … she could probably marry Tull and get him to agree to let her even keep dating! Then she’d be a billionaire but still be able to sleep with Spanish boy-singers or anyone she pleased—and go out with famous older girlfriends to movie premieres while getting degrees in linguistics and art history and drama.
Tull’s train of thought was less frivolous. As the Volvo sludged through traffic—it seemed like every street in the city was being torn up—Mrs. Langon’s chitchat ran the gamut from his cousin’s medical problems (“Poor boy! But to everything there is a reason”) to Trinnie’s Carcassone maze (“Katrina has always been a fascinating woman”). She even managed to rope in Dodd and Lucy. The woman loved having this boy in the car; it was like bagging Prince William.
Suddenly, they were at the redbrick citadel—for Tull, less an agency than a monument to a man long lost to the world.
He sat on the couch in a haze. Boulder was shiny and animated and called out “Hi!” to someone who whisked past. “Oh my God, that was Angelina!” The mom returned from reception and Boulder told her it was Angelina and the mom asked where and Boulder said she’d just gone out the door. A young woman appeared and invited them to “come up.” Tull, now queasy and perspiring, said he’d wait. Mrs. Langon put her hand on his shoulder like a do-gooder nun with a dead man walking. “Are you OK?” she asked solicitously. He said he was fine; maybe coming down with a little something, that’s all. Boulder, aloof and anxious to “go up,” told her mom to just leave him alone. As they went to the elevator, Boulder asked the young woman if that in fact was Angelina and she said it absolutely could have been but that she would find out for certain after they “were up.”
Sitting there about to vomit on the oversize Yamamoto jacket Trinnie bought him at Maxfield’s, Tull felt silly and incongruous. He would wait for them outside—he needed air. He stood to get his bearings.
Idly, he took in the oil portraits by the elevators. He assumed they were agency founders, but there was no inscription. The men looked nothing like his father in the photo Trinnie had shown him.
Lost in thought, he felt his nose wrinkle. He smelled something dense, acrid and vinegary, woodsy, foul. He turned his head and saw him—a bear of a man staring straight ahead at a framed patriarch. His great jaw trembled, making the colossal beard jitter, too, and Tull thought of the nimble upside-down rabbi in Bluey’s bedroom Chagall. He smiled at the boy, who for his part could not have moved a millimeter for any reason on earth. The stranger’s eyes lit up with shaggy candor and kindness; a mellifluous accent pierced the decorum.
“No nameplates … most peculiar! Doesn’t say who they are—now, why, son, d’you think that is?”
In short order, a guard in a blue blazer appeared behind Will’m and asked if he could be of help.
“You certainly may! Who are the gentlemen so depicted?”
“This is not a public space, sir—I have to ask you to leave.”
“You don’t have to, but you’re thus compelled and so be it.”
The unforgettable beast winked at the boy and was gone, with blazer shadowing after like bluish smoke.
Such encounters do indeed happen—they have before and will again. Improbable reunions occasionally find their way to newspapers or television tabloids, offering a freakish respite from “reality”; but what of the plethora of random moments, as in our own example of father and son in El Camino lobby, where interested parties are oblivious of what has transpired? Each of us has experienced the garden-variety oddity and omen—the myriad small coincidences that color our days and are usually dismissed out of hand. Yet we persist in believing such close encounters exist only in fiction—as if life itself were too orderly, too sober and practical for the improbable absurdities of mystery.†
By the time Topsy reached the Promenade, it was dusk. He sat by a steel prehistoric creature that spouted water into a basin. There were many of his kind there, those who lived in a roofless world, stoned and flustered, dazed by hardship and the elements, on falling-down wheelchairs and funky benches holding idiot-cards of crude implorement— HUNGRY SICK PLEASE HELP—and there were buskers too, and drummers and
dancers and pantomimists, and fat-cheeked infants, and children riding boards and silver scooters and many more who went arm in arm—whole families bejeweled and exuberant in canvas shorts and clogs, caftans and flip-flops—shameless sisters and wives, mothers half-naked in string-wear and smocks. No class was segregated and the entitled children knew no fear, nor did they disparage: perhaps this was earthly paradise—the alfresco community of man. The great guild’s democracy touched him dearly.
He could smell the sea, but knew the beach would not be safe. Better to find the brush of a hidden highway shoulder. He was glad to be gone from downtown; it had held dominion too long. He was weak and let the crowd carry him like a river, his mind roiled by thoughts of Fitz … and Half Dead … and the lost girl … all paintings in a lobby now, untitled. There were new souls impinging his gallery. He could not make out any of the framed features but was determined to soon know their names.
Since her son’s recent visit to the Withdrawing Room, something had begun to gnaw at her, for she too was undergoing an awakening.
She had always relied on the old man—on his practicality, good sense, fatherliness. But now his mawkish face hung before her like a vintage engraving, mocking. The slight overbite; the foppish collar; the gleam of asperity in conniving, loving eye—each conspired to say that something was quite wrong with this picture. She felt herself move downstage from gauzy darkness toward the footlights, as madwomen do in plays when their monologue has come.
She drove to the eco-industrial park in Azusa, a chain of buildings surrounding a five-hundred-acre quarry—an open pit 275 feet deep. It took more than an hour to get there; all the while his visage loomed outside her windshield like a hologram, baiting with its snarky, sharky kindnesses and muttonchopped sympathies. Mr. Trotter still came and went as she took the off-ramp and surface streets, asserting himself like a carnival barker. Trinnie thought she wouldn’t be able to see the road for him.
The old man was getting his hair cut when she burst in. Having of course been told his daughter was at the gate, he eagerly commanded his minions to escort her to the office forthwith. At first, he was alarmed; he thought something might have happened—to Bluey, or the boy—then apprehension gave way to a hubris of delight at the thought of his dear Katrina wishing after all these years to pay a visit to the workplace.
He saw her twisted features, and was startled and bemused. “What is it?—”
“You found him, didn’t you?”
He looked at her, dumb.
“You found Marcus!”
There was a kind of delirious gaiety to her now, as might befit a minor demon. He chuffed and sighed, glowering at the ground. Mr. Trotter palmed a hundred into the barber’s hand like a card during a magic act, then removed the Art Deco ruby-studded dragonfly clasp that secured the cape around his neck; the cloth slipped off with slinky disconsolation.
“Yes,” he said as everyone crept out.
Again he looked groundward, focusing almost petulantly on the thatched roofs of the huts of his own fallen hair.
“When?”
“Two years after he left you.”
“Where—”
“New York.”
“Where!” demanded the hell-raiser.
“Near Twig House.”
She almost passed out. The old man was looking to brace her fall when a current of energy passed through her and she struck his face. He partially dodged the blow, then groaned, falling against the barber’s chair. The daughter remained pitiless, retreating like a snake from its prey, waiting for the venom to take hold. He rubbed at chin and throat where he’d been hit.
“He was in jail, Katrina,” he said, penitently.
The attack had at least dulled his natural impulse to ease her emotional pain. For a moment, the facts could speak for themselves, uncluttered by his heart.
“He was in jail for hurting a woman.”
Trinnie silently wept. “Samson found him?”
“No—though nearly. He came very close. Was a week or so away from catching up, I’d say.”
“Then how?”
“He … was living in the woods. He assaulted a woman—a prostitute—and they’d been hunting him. I received a call from the authorities, who were already well aware of my interest; Samson had alerted them of Marcus’s flight from Los Angeles and the possibility, however remote it might be, of him showing his face. You know how much he loved the wilderness there. The sheriff knew where to look. He used to work summers at our place.”
“Did you … see him? Did you see Marcus after he was found?”
“I went there with Samson.” The old man actually poured himself a shot; one of the few times in his life he needed one. “He did not know us. What we found was—an unrecognizable man! Filthy, obese. Lice and … feces in matted hair.” Each detail was like a blow to Trinnie’s chest, but her father felt it vital to impart all.
“Did you ask him …” Her voice trailed off, unsure of its own question.
“He spoke nonsense, Katrina! In an English accent … and he was violent. He thought we were the police—but from another time, another century. At one point, he leapt up and tried to strangle Samson—”
“He fucking needed your help!” She collapsed on the floor, muttering, “You—you—”
“Katrina, please!”
“He was my husband!”
“He was not—husbands don’t do what he did! Can’t you remember what happened to you when he left? Won’t you remember? Think about it, please, my darling Katrina! Remember the agony. The hospitals—the ambulances! What it did to your mother and me … what it would do to your son! You were just beginning to mend, Katrina! You were doing so well … putting it behind you. Healing yourself with your gardens—I was not going to be the one to drop that man down in your life again.”
“That wasn’t your decision!”
“It was. As a father, I—”
“Fuck you!”
She looked as if she might strike again, and he backed off. “He would do it again, don’t you see, Katrina?”
“That was not for you to say!”
“He would do it! But the next time, he’d harm you. Physically.”
“How do you know?” she spat, like a witch tied to a stake.
“I could not let that happen—”
“You don’t know anything. He loved me!”
His heart nearly broke, because he saw once and for all, through that pitiable declaration, that Katrina would never—could never—be whole. “Yes, he did. Yes, he did. I believe that.”
“You believe, in your arrogance …”
But she was too exhausted to go on. There was no energy left, not even for contempt.
“Those kind of people do not get better, Katrina. That is medical fact.”
Trinnie stood up. He thought his daughter would leave, but instead she sat in the barber’s chair, ready for the final cut.
“You said he hurt someone.”
“He broke her arm. He picked her up on the road. She told the police that he said she was his wife—”
“His wife—” Pierced again.
“—and that he would punish her for sleeping with his best friend.”
“Oh God.”
“When she tried to leave the car, he struck her and she jumped out. She could have been killed, Katrina.”
“What happened then?”
“He was sent to hospital. I made sure the bills were paid—it was a fine hospital, Katrina. He was there eight weeks with no improvement. I was going to move him to a more permanent place, but he escaped. We searched another year but were never able to find him.”
“I’ll go see his parents. Maybe the Weiners will—”
He knew where she was heading. “It’s no use, Trinnie. There’s been no sign. Don’t you think I’ve been in touch with Harry and Ruth?”
“Don’t I think?” she said poisonously. “Does it matter to the grand puppeteer what I think? Of course you’ve been in touch with the Weiners.
You’re all probably best of friends!”
“There was always the chance he would contact them. They understood that if he returned, I would help them—help keep him from harm’s way.”
“Keep him from me—”
“Yes! I would not have him coming for you! For you or my grandson …” He swigged another shot, then said, more calmly: “I see this fever of Toulouse’s has been communicated to you … Katrina, it would be a miracle if he were alive.”
“Yes it would,” she said heavy-handedly. “Especially if you already killed him.”
He took her comment with utter seriousness, pausing thoughtfully to demonstrate that such an act had not been entirely outside the realm of feasibility. He let the moment pass.
“Katrina,” he said earnestly. “I have lost both sleep and years over this. I knew how much you loved him—how much it would have meant for you to see him again. And I love you more than life! I would not have been able to live with myself had I … had I done what to you was the ‘right thing.’ But I have suffered—”
“You have suffered!”
“Yes,” he said, like a humble peasant. “And the boy should be able to find what he finds. But it’s all over for me soon, don’t you know, and I will not have regrets! I did what I thought was best for you, and would do it again.”
A bony hand shakily went to the skin already purpling under his jaw.
“I would do it again!”
Joyce bathed her son while Dodd slept in the solarium. He was feeling the spacey effects of Neurontin, its dosage upped to 500 milligrams in the wake of a spate of recently acquired ruins—doctor’s orders.
Tull told Grandpa Lou he wanted to stay at Olde CityWalk awhile. School was almost over, and it was convenient to be on Stradella cramming for finals with the cousins (nightly screenings at the Majestyk didn’t hurt). Carcassone felt wrong of late; the scent of his mother’s aromatherapy and perfumes filled him with dread—the scent of his mother herself. Truth be told, he was spooked. He sensed that Trinnie’s latest visit was drawing to a close, and didn’t want to be there when she pulled up stakes.