“Charisse and Evelyn are as you remember them. Only better. Evelyn had herself a showdown with a muckety-muck at Universal over violent sexist advertising.”
“For or against?”
“Against. But it wasn’t what you think—not that censorship rap, not the Bible belt’s definition of pornography. The VP she had it out with was Derek Windhover.”
“Oh, Jesus…” Lucas recalled an earlier run-in with the estimable Mr. Windhover, an executive infamous for forcing oral sex on demand from actresses who came in to read for bit parts. Mr. Windhover was history, Universal was blameless, but the stench of memory lingered. “What a guy. Winner of Mister Congeniality, three years running.”
“Evelyn shouted him down. Oh, boy, it was embarrassing. We lost the account. We got it back after Windhover left. Guess who marched into Universal and sold it?”
“Here’s to Evelyn. The sprite with the sword.” They clinked mostly empty glasses. Evelyn had always been painfully polite to Lucas and everyone in the office, as though straining not to offend. She was the facet of the ad pool that never understood Burt’s grotesque jokes. But it seemed she had found a cause and erupted from her chrysalis. Good old Evelyn, at the advanced age of thirty-three, had finally loosened up.
“Charisse concocted the campaigns for The Nam and The Interloper.”
“I saw the papers,” affirmed Lucas. “Yes, indeed.” The Nam was a surrealistic film about the Vietnam War—not the real war, but the fantasy version presented to the American viewing public throughout the 1960s and 1970s on television. It walked off with a wagonload of Oscars. The Interloper had been a science-fiction thrill ride about a horny alien trapped aboard an interstellar freighter. The creature spent ninety percent of the film’s running time raping the female crew members and eating the males. The kicker was that once the ship was completely subjugated, it charted a course for Earth, piloted by a new crew of insectile alien monsters and the final woman survivor turned hunter and bumped off the aliens, ten-little-Indians style. What made The Interloper notable was, largely, the promotion cooked up by Charisse Hope. The film grossed $3 million every two days during its first three weeks of release and secured a prime position on Variety’s “Top Ten Moneymakers for the Year.”
The fifth member of the pool was Gustavo de la Luces. Gustavo of the Lights, as he often signed his name—an energetic and volatile man Burt had signed on after incorporating as Kroeger Concepts, Ltd. Lucas had expected him to burst forth at the office, with his dark, twinkling eyes and generous, fraternal smile. Burt was obviously holding the news on Gustavo back for last. He and Lucas had been close co-workers and fair social buddies…before.
“Gustavo’s out there in the smogscape, ram-rodding with the Randell and Kochner boys.”
Lucas whistled. “The billboard mafia?” Randell and Kochner owned half the billboard space in Los Angeles County. Kroeger Concepts dealt with them not through choice, but through necessity. “I take it from your tone that Gustavo is not absent from this party because he is dickering over cost per foot on ad space.”
“Nope. He’s in court with a platoon of lawyers from Marina Del Rey. Randell and Kochner pulled a little game of hide the financial salami with us. Gustavo found out, and he’s sinking some finger holds into about a quarter of a million bucks that should be ours.”
“When you want to claw something out of the hole, you send in a badger. Those suckers haven’t got a chance. But like I said, I saw the papers. How’d I miss that one?”
“Ha, ha—are you serious? You’ll never see this case covered in any paper.” Burt let it hang until Lucas caught on.
Lucas banged his temple with the heel of his hand. “Right. I got it now. They got deep hooks in newspaper advertising. Right.”
“You can bet the Times is gonna look for something else to cover, rather posthaste.” He picked out a cold nacho chip from the appetizer basket and nibbled, more out of frustration than culinary interest. His hands needed something to do beside hoist his pilsner glass. He’d tried tracing patterns on its foggy surface, but that was unfulfilling. “You want anything else?”
“A Coke, maybe. All that beer makes me thirsty —it’s the alcohol, dehydrating away.”
“Caffeine will do the same thing.”
“Don’t chide me or I’ll tell you you’re too old to play my dad.”
Burt beamed crookedly. “Me, I think I’ll have a straight shot and blast it down with another brew. You?”
Lucas shook his head. The thought of swallowing a shot of Black Jack (which was what Burt would demand, he knew) was chased by the unexpected thought of vomit. “No hard booze for me. I’m such a sicko that liquor unleashes my bête noire. One whiff of booze turns me into an instant werewolf.”
“Smartass. Knock that shit off.” Pause. “Beta what?”
“Bête noire. The ‘black beast’ that croucheth behind the revolving hotel door, or some such biblical hoohah. Kind of like a rampant force of id. Your basic, uh, primitive hostility, as opposed to your rational, civilized mind. Well…mine, anyway.”
Burt repeated “Smartass” in a low, sardonic growl. “Just the same. You sure you’re any different?”
“Just being an asshole, at your expense. You react so readily; it’s hard to resist. At least you’ve stopped apologizing. But, Burton my lad, I can read your deceitful eyes. I tell you again not to worry. Your reaction to me is cautious. It is natural. I’ve got several centuries of clichés to buck against, and yes, it’s made me a little sullen.”
“Cliché busting is our business.”
“I am the guy who’s just gotten out of what you normal folks call the ‘fruit bin,’ after all…”
“You mean the nut hatch,” amended Burt, deadpan. “Now you’re apologizing.”
After Lucas got his fizzy Coke inside himself and Burt chased his shot, Lucas said with mock astonishment, “What? We’re not staying for coffee?”
“Urp. No way. I’m sloshing as it is. And the coffee here would take the paint off a tank. They make one pot at ten A.M. and keep it at the boiling point all day.” He looked around at the nearly empty interior of the restaurant, as if seeking someone to blame.
“I’m supposed to break the news to you,” said Lucas.
Burt’s eyebrows went up. “What news?”
“That you will not see me bright and early tomorrow morning, on the job. I’m not dashing back to my desk to get gung ho with the new dawn. My first official act is going to be taking time off.”
“A characteristic Los Angeles affliction.” Burt’s words indicated mild surprise, but no objections. “Where, when? You have ETA and coordinates?”
“Remember my cabin?”
Burt furrowed his brow. “Cabin …” Then his eyes lit. “I didn’t think you were serious about buying that cabin. Geez, Lucas—that’s going back a ways.”
“Oh, I bought it all right, and the plot of land under it. I was serious about investing some money because the IRS was serious about taking it away if I didn’t.”
Burt inspected his empty shot glass. “I don’t even remember where…” His voice trailed away. Losing this memory clearly upset him. Or maybe his emotions had been exaggerated by the drinks.
“It’s up around Point Pitt, below San Francisco. It’s backed up into a mountainside, and there’s a half-hour stroll down to a natural rock jetty. It’s very pleasant; isolated and nice. Very private.” His gaze defocused as he imagined the setting.
“You sure it’s still there? That it wasn’t razed or turned into an unofficial hog farm by squatters?” Burt placed his American Express Gold Card on the check tray.
“I’ll know when I get there. The rangers visit periodically and are supposed to report violations. The property is posted. If anything was awry, they would’ve phoned Randy the Accountant and I’d’ve heard by now.”
“How is the financial sorcerer? Seen him yet?” Burt knew of Lucas’ habit of christening his fellows in odd ways. Randy Carpenter was Randy the Acco
untant. He made a complete set when added to Simon the Broker, Ace the Legal Chickenhawk (Rolif A. Nikol, Lucas’s attorney), and Stephen Zallinger, the Duke of Liability.
“I’m happy to report that my stock portfolio juggled well, and there’s interest as icing. I’ve got a formidable nut now. Besides, Burt, you know I wouldn’t take time off unless I could afford it three times over. And there’s only me to support.” An eyeblink-quick memory of Cory’s outrageous alimony dashed painlessly past. He did not stop to reminisce about money spent on Kristen.
“My man. The complete capitalist. Uh—” Burt seemed hesitant, as though dancing around an unsavory topic, trying to figure out a direct attack line.
“Um…so where is it, exactly, I mean. Your cabin. In case I have to get in touch.” He petered out, lamely.
“Nearest phones are north, in Half Moon Bay. Don’t worry, Burt, I’ll be in touch.” He tipped a wedge of melting ice from his glass into his mouth and sucked coolness from it.
Now Burt looked positively uncomfortable. “Well. Uh…I guess you don’t want to go back to the office, then, or…” He held up his hands helplessly. “Or…?”
“Au contraire. I need to blow the decay off everything in my corner. Say a few more hellos. Run an inspection on my desk. I’d like to borrow some of the equipment, too. One of the portable videotape rigs, if you don’t mind.”
It was a tiny favor. “We got a whole closet full. You want VHS or Beta? We traded some of the bulkier stuff for self-contained porta-packs no bigger than a phone book. With cameras—everything’s built in.”
“Don’t need the camera. Just playback.”
“No prob. Say—are you meeting, uh, Sara at this secluded mountain aerie of yours? That why you don’t want to tell me where it is?”
“Now, don’t pry. You’re not my mommy.” Lucas shook his head. “Sara I’ll deal with once I reengage with the real urban world. This is just for me.” He laughed. “What do you think I’m up to, you old fart? I’m going to get bagged and watch pornies.”
“Very funny,” Burt snorted. “Watch that ‘old fart’ crap or you’ll get fed your teeth. Listen, Lucas, if you—”
“I know, don’t tell me,” he cut in. “If there’s anything you can do, doo-dah, doo-dah, and so on and etcetera and so forth. You’ve already done plenty, my pal. And you’ve got my sincere thanks for everything you’ve done, now and during my absence. Hey, you want blood? Or worse, a percentage?”
“Lucas, you know the thanks are as unnecessary as the apologies.” To Burt, loyalty was fundamental, automatic. He did not know just how rare he was. “You need a car?”
“That’s taken care of I’ve been shopping. Simon the Broker told me it was okay. But I am glad you saved me the social discomfiture of climbing out the restroom window to avoid picking up the tab.”
“They have iron bars for people like that.” Recalling his entrance at the Kroeger Building, he added, “You crafty son of a bitch.”
“Probably. Cheers.” Lucas drank down slushy ice water.
They sauntered out in good spirits. Burt felt his duty had been done and was out of touchy questions. Several times, though, Lucas had caught him peeking, regarding him as if he might be an imposter hiding behind Lucas Ellington’s name, a fake or clever surrogate. The sensation was mildly irritating, but not wholly unjustified, given the circumstances.
He would just have to prove to everyone how sane he really was.
But that would be after he got back from the mountains, the beach, the quiet.
3
To the west the Pacific Ocean shone a weighty, industrial steel color—massy, substantial, permanent. The road ahead of Lucas unwound in smooth gray curves, following the close topography dictated by the sea.
Again Lucas thought of the crate. It was buried, like a casket holding ghosts from the past sealed within. Whatever the condition of his cabin, the crate would be intact, protected by the embrace of the soil.
Around him, the vehicle, a dense mechanical buffalo some Detroit genius had decided to call a Bronco, all indestructible chassis and knobby tires and flagrantly shitty gas mileage, thrummed to the tune of a steady eighty-five miles per hour, northbound, a solitary locomotive of bronze-finished power highballing up the Pacific Coast Highway with no competition. The last real traffic Lucas had noticed was a flock of roller-skate-sized Nipponese deathtraps, trickling down toward Malibu. The sun spray on the calm ocean was magnificent, hot on the back of his neck. He cracked the pilot’s window, and the sharp salt tang flared his nostrils and trued up his sinuses. The showroom smell of the brand-new Bronco blew out in a rush of sea air.
The vinyl slipcover on the portable video gear reflected a white gash of sunlight in the rearview. It had taken audiocassette recorders a decade to hit a state-of-the-art stride; home video technology had taken about half that time. Things were accelerating geometrically. Who would have thought that painters and writers and rock stars would one day be writing the damned things off as business tax deductions? A reference tool for the creative. Lucas thought it was a nice sentiment, but probably hogwash in most cases; most purchasers probably had a motive no more complex than the desire to suck up movies nine hours per day. Then came home computers. The brilliance of the home computer boom was that people bought them without any real knowledge of what they were going to do with them. Cable TV had wired the country together in a little less than a decade. And now everyone was so terrified of venturing out into the city streets that it made perfect survival sense to hole up in front of the glowing altar screen, processing words rather than writing them, communicating via modem, switching to twenty-four-hour sports and religion channels when the all-day, all-night movies paled, handing off from those to moronic video games. Firms like Kroeger Concepts had abetted the manufacturers of each of these new toys and would soon be responsible for insuring there was an endless flow of “product” to keep the video zombies in sopor and out of mischief on a long-term basis. A lifetime basis. True video acolytes could be talked into anything. Their attention spans could be molded, their lives programmed via advertising. MTV had managed the mind-numbing feat of convincing viewers to watch programming that was all commercials.
Lucas wondered whether he was a neophobe, bitching into his beer at progress. On the other hand, any hive mind that could be gulled into believing there was no difference between seeing a film in a movie theater, in seventy-millimeter Super-Panavision with six-track Dolby sound, rolling off a $10,000 projection system and through a $12,000 audio system, and seeing the same film on a crappy beam-screen blowup with half the picture cropped away for TV aspect ratio, and calling both of these experiences “seeing movies” … why, such a mind could be conned into buying anything.
And what of the people who could not afford all this glittery, hypnotic hardware and software? Not that welfare families had ever lacked for television sets. Burt had come up with an intriguing answer for that, sometime between lunch and the bow-in back at Kroeger.
“Most people, I think, believe if they stay flush during a given business year, then nobody really gives a good goddamn what the unemployment stats are or aren’t,” Burt had said. “Not if they’re working. And honest. So, what of the unemployed? Who the hell are they? A lot of nerds who believed that college would hand them a career. Ex-housewives, seeking life beyond marriage. Ditch-digger types. Peter principle dummies who were shocked when somebody wised up and laid them off. Career industrial workers who find it beyond their capacity to believe that there is no longer a need for what they’ve been doing for forty years straight. A vast work pool has been driven to welfare, unemployment, loss of dignity. Now, consider this in light of the current administration.”
Uh-oh, Lucas thought. Burt rarely refused an opportunity to pontificate on matters political. Time to grit the teeth.
“It’s so big, so obvious, that no one sees it. A huge number of the unemployed are unskilled, urban minorities and poor white trash. They’re on TV every time some politicians o
r celebrities do a fund-raiser, like that Hands Across America thing. ‘Give us jobs, not food,’ they say. And what happens when they get frustrated enough at not having jobs?”
Lucas took the bait. There was no other way out. He was not normally a political person. “They liberate a few K-Marts, break bank windows, open fire hydrants, and kill a cop or two.”
“And the government is sitting back with folded hands, waiting for that day, waiting for the riots to commence. Because when they do, the Guard can be rolled in with plenty of justification. In one fell swoop, our urban centers can be put under martial law. That freezes the country. Without the connection between the cities and the manufacturing locuses, we’re pretty goddamn helpless, aren’t we? Then we’ll just have to wait for our orders.”
During his tour, Lucas had spent several days in Qui Nhon, watching the aluminum capsules full of dead Americans come and go. Waiting for orders. It was not pleasant. The orders were too long in coming.
“I almost said that was pretty farfetched, Burt. But then I stopped and thought about it. Nuts. But not so nuts.”
“You’re dealing here with major-league lunatics. Guys for whom wars are fiscal solutions, manufactured to pull us out of equally manufactured economic ‘depressions.’ They’re locked into the 1940s and can’t escape. They hew to this good-guy-versus-bad-guy mentality, and if they point their fingers at their chosen bad guys long enough, with enough propaganda, they’ll find they’ve got a whole country full of unemployed, largely illiterate cannon fodder—people who are just pissed and frustrated and emasculated enough to go for a violent cure-all.”
“I never pegged you as a sociologist.”
“I dropped out of college, remember? By the time the idiots in business administration had their degrees, I had a business.”
“And you were hurting.” Burt’s dedication had ultimately reversed that snag, however. “Maybe violence is the only solution—sometimes. Not TV violence; not a baseball bat in the face as a responsible editorial reply, not a contest of firepower and escalation. I mean violence as a final, horrible last resort. When no avenue yields satisfaction. When the drones and robots and nine-to-five mannequins lurch through one more day of colorless life by fucking you over.”
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