by Gwen Davis
He would have liked very much to be able to Walden it, hearing a different drummer. Be venerated when he was old for being a free spirit by students who sat at his feet and just listened to his words, or even to his silence. Live long after his life in the annals of thinkers who respected thinkers. Hang out with Reddy in the afterlife and have him tell Tyler he had done it exactly right. Then maybe introduce Algernon to his genetic father and have him straighten him out. But maybe his father knew now what a waste it was to struggle and have only earthly ambitions. Maybe his father had evolved on the next level to what he hadn’t even attempted to be on this one. Or maybe his father was exactly where he had been, and would be pissed at Tyler for still not having a job.
“What class are you?” the driver asked, as they drove up the ramp to American Airlines.
Tyler looked at his ticket. “First,” he said. There was a layover of several hours at the airport in L.A. before he boarded the flight to Singapore and Denpasar. During that time Norman had arranged for his passport to be delivered to him. His old one, dating from the time he still traveled with his parents, had lapsed, but Norman had handled it, had his office staff organize a new one, getting around the usual procedures. Tyler remembered a maxim from when he was considering being a philosophy major: “The wheels of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.” In Hollywood, it was rewritten that they ground quickly, even when all the wrong people were gods.
But what the hell. Or what the heaven. He was getting to take Algernon to Bali. What joys there would be in that transcendent finale, the box had no idea. Or maybe it did. Maybe it even knew what joys were waiting for him.
For a moment, as he boarded the plane, he thought he could hear a laugh coming out of the box.
Paradise East
Singapore Airlines, Flight 143, arrived in Denpasar, Bali, at four-forty in the afternoon. In Tyler’s head it was two o’clock in the morning the night before. Crossing the international date line meant the loss of more than just one day. He had dreamed fitfully on and off through the journey, and was totally out of synch with himself. For one of the few times since he’d studied Jung, he had no idea what his dreams meant. They had been of goddesses and dancing gods, all wearing frightening masks. He was not sure if the images came from looking at brochures of Bali or having lived in Hollywood.
He was not stopped at customs, an escape that flooded him with relief. He hadn’t known if there were regulations about bringing in the foreign dead. Still wearing his backpack, he clutched the teakwood box, but let the driver from the hotel who had greeted him with his name on a chalkboard carry his leather bag outside to the van.
Relief turned to wonder. Wet, warm breezes fingered Tyler’s hair. The mellow, moist air grazed the inside of his nostrils, a palpable sweetness touched his tongue. Paradise. For once, Norman Jessup had been absolutely straight with him.
* * *
A gold-scripted sign held by little stone gods with oversized grins, invitingly grotesque, stood at the edge of the hotel driveway. A towering shrine rose from a lotus pond on the right. In the rice paddies left of the entryway, kerchiefs on sticks waved in the heavy breeze, wind-driven wooden batons drummed against gongs to frighten away the birds. Impervious, the birds fluttered and swooped between and above and below the racket, diving for food, singing fearless songs.
Men in creamy white jackets and dark red sarongs helped Tyler from the van. They greeted him, setting his bag on the ground. Added to his joy at the beauty of the place was his clear perception that the people here, unlike so many in the place he’d come from, were happy.
Salmon and pink and gold bougainvillea clumped over thatched roofs. “Alright!” Tyler exclaimed.
“Welcome to the Oberoi,” said a smiling, tiny woman, placing a garland of white, fragrant frangipani over his head, resting it around his neck. He could feel the cool of the blossoms against the heat on his skin, the sun already having toasted the base of his yellow-gold curls, where the barber had been allowed to clean it just a little.
* * *
“The Presidential Villa.” The white-jacketed bellman pulled a brass ring on the heavy wooden double doors, and they opened. Walls of gray and white limestone surrounded the gateway. Hibiscus bunched between palm leaves, and lacy balls of bright red Japanese ixora bordered the spitting dragon fountain in the courtyard, brightened the dark sculpted Balinese lamps.
Beneath the main roof lay the villa itself. Tyler entered the bedroom. Alang alang poles, bamboo threaded with dried elephant grass, angled upwards on the cathedral ceiling, where it crested at a carved, floral center square. A teakwood four-poster, vines and flowers etched in its headboard, was built into the wall. A carved, cushioned step stool beside it, a freshly laundered white linen mat set on top.
Tyler handed the bellman some singles, part of the wad that Norman had stuffed in his hand when he said good-bye.
“That way bat-room,” the bellman said, indicating another wooden door. He grinned. “Enjoy yourself.”
“I think I can manage that,” said Tyler, taking a piece of fruit from the bowl on a table by the couch. It seemed less a bowl of fruit than an offering, arranged like the pyramids of flowers that blessed the entryway. There were miniature pineapples, passion fruit, a fuzzy, spiked, round red ball that, he learned from the guide to Indonesian fruits beside the bowl, was called rambutan. Broken open—not easy—it yielded a soft, tasty center like a lichee nut.
Outside the glass double doors from the bedroom lay a second, inner courtyard with a private pool, turquoise in the sunlight. Beyond it, over a sequestering wall, was the sea. Even with the doors shut, Tyler could hear it gently roiling.
Stepping outside, he stood quiet, letting the sound of the ocean crash soft against his eardrums. Jungle colors splashed on his eyes. The fragrance of salt mixed with the sweet, heavy scent of tuberose. “Paradise,” he said aloud, lifting the box. “Take a gander.”
Sudden sorrow seized him, that his friend wasn’t there in the flesh. Such beauty needed to be felt. Humanly shared.
He stepped back inside, set the box on a sideboard, and opened the door to the bath. There were two sinks of pale gray marble, one on either side, the space airily illumined by sun on a glassed-in atrium. By a circular pond in the center of the atrium stood a gray stone mermaid, fuchsia bougainvillea blossoms falling on her carven hair. In the gray marble floor was set a sunken bath, angled, reclining at its head. And in it, lovely breasts bobbing, lay Helen Manning.
“Hello, my darling,” she said.
“Oh, well,” said Tyler, and got in with her.
* * *
There was a ferocity now to Sarah’s writing, beyond the biting humor that so much of America had enjoyed with her first book. She was worse than a woman scorned. She sat at her computer breathing fire. And just to keep the dragon stoked, she decided to resume freebasing.
In the old days, before she’d cooled out and mended her ways, she’d been profligate with the cash she had, so she had someone come in and do her dirty work for her. That is, they’d taken care of all the preparations, brought her the rock cocaine, torch, glass pipe with bulb base, and some kind of alcohol. Then they’d start the whole thing going, cook the rock till the vapor gathered in the base, so all she had to do was suck it in and enjoy the ride. A very mellow high.
She’d freebased in hotels and on the road when she’d still been producing movies, in places where the problem was the vent in the room. Her ever-present fear was that someone would smell it. Usually she’d used the bathroom, with the water running, to hide the sound. Mellow as the high was, there was always paranoia lurking that someone might turn her in.
In her own house though, isolated, with so few people knowing where she lived, Sarah felt fearless. Especially since she was really going to get Norman. His wedding to Carina was only a few weeks off. It was her intention to make a deal with her publisher for the book, and then leak a chapter to the press the morning of the ceremony. So what the bride
would wear, besides her veil, was a heavy layer of humiliation. The groom would be the center of a sensational scandal, what reputation he had tried mendaciously to salvage as a recovering gay destroyed. The perfect wedding gift.
But intrepid as she felt, she was under a time constraint. The pressure on her, and that she put on herself, was enormous. She really needed the coke. But she’d been out of touch with the druggies who, for some bucks and a shot at the smoke, had always handled the preparation.
So she called Wilton Spenser.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m not in the freebase business. And even though we are not exactly close, I don’t care to aid and abet you in your return to self-destruction.”
“For Christ’s sake, Wilton. You can’t be a moralist and a drug dealer at the same time.”
“Why? Is there a law?”
“You must know someone who’s desperate enough to do this shit for me.”
“Sarah,” he said, “I don’t like to look a gift user in the mouth. But the only really desperate person I know is you.”
She hung up the phone.
Well, when she was finished with Norman, she’d find some way of getting even with Wilton. Right now she had to devote her concentration to the task at hand.
It took a while to round up everything she needed. She could no longer afford a full-time flunky to hold the torch, etc., for her. She was awkward, clumsy, the first few times she did it. But the beauty of cocaine was, once she’d done it, she thought she’d gotten it absolutely right. It was the same with her writing.
“I have about fifty sensational pages, plus an outline, and documentation,” she had told her agent, Lori with a heart over the i, at lunch. She’d had her fly out, telling her it was too sensitive to talk about over the phone.
Sarah had set the lunch at the Hotel Bel-Air, where Lori was staying and Norman Jessup was to be married: the perfect irony. The glory of the day, the bright bougainvillea cascading around their balcony table, the fact that they were overlooking the gazebo under which the happy, bogus couple would be wed, added to the juiciness of the occasion. Sarah had no appetite. She’d done a little cocaine just before leaving her house. She was no longer afraid to get in her car when high, because like the writing, her driving seemed enhanced by the drug use. She put out of her mind that her long-ago friend Mama Cass had been convinced that she could eat and not gain weight when she used cocaine. She had died alone in a hotel room, choking on a ham sandwich. Self-delusion, Sarah was sure, was purely the domain of fat girls.
“Documentation?” Lori had asked. She was dressed in her New York-literary-agent-kicking-back-for-L.A. gear, jeans and an Ungaro sweater that the locals would have known better than to wear except in the evening, for no matter how together it looked, the day made it uncomfortably warm. She had also kicked back on her makeup, wearing it only on her bright blue eyes, because Helmut Newton was staying at the hotel and you never knew when he might consider taking a photo.
“Well, the publisher will want to feel safe, won’t they?”
“Are we going to bring down another lawsuit on our heads?”
“I don’t think this time he’ll dare.”
“Then it is Norman Jessup.” Lori put down her spoon, held on to the sides of her tortilla soup as if it would give her ballast.
“No point in keeping you in the dark. I brought the pages.” She handed Lori a folder.
“I can’t wait.”
“Only your eyes. You understand? No one else.”
“What about Sean?” she said, naming Sarah’s publisher.
“You’re shrewd enough to make the deal with just a tantalizing pitch, aren’t you? He doesn’t have to see it.”
“But for the money you’d want—”
“Are you losing your touch?”
“No, but—”
“No butts here but Norman’s and his once and future beloved. I want his ass in a sling. And there’s no way to do that but to keep this a secret till I’m absolutely ready.”
“And when will that be?”
“May eleventh.” The date of the wedding had been written about by several columnists, joining the struggle to get an invitation. Studio heads, agents, lawyers, stars, retired past masters of the deal now ranked their clout by whether or not they were part of what was fast becoming the industry’s second biggest day. Maybe the first, if you didn’t count the Academy Awards, which were past history for the year. Besides, an invitation to the Oscars could be maneuvered if you knew the right people: the Norman Jessup–Carina event couldn’t. Maximum capacity for a wedding at the hotel was a hundred and fifty people. Invitations had been sent, and answered, nearly all acceptances. Usually there was a twenty-five to forty percent refusal, which Norman’s social secretary had counted on. But that hadn’t happened. So the event was already overbooked. Norman had again offered to build an annex for the hotel, but the new owner had again declined, since he was one of the richest men in the world and displays of wealth did not impress him. So there were still those who were waiting for a cancellation. Bigwigs were trying to set up movies that would put stars with invitations on other continents.
“That reminds me.” Sarah lifted her hand, signaling for the restaurant manager.
The woman, a slender blond European of uncertain years, saw, smiled, and came over to the table. “May I help you?”
“Karla, I want to reserve this table for four o’clock on the eleventh of next month.” The wedding was set for five. Sarah imagined that since the story would break in the papers that morning, she would need to hold court for a few reporters before the ceremony. And then she could look down on it, literally. She could watch the radiant bride stagger down the aisle created in the garden with white folding chairs, her/his dancer’s legs buckling under her/him from the chagrin. That is, if she/he could walk at all. And Sarah could have a clear view of Norman’s face, as he waited to receive his ha-ha bride. Bilious, it would be, or bright red, or maybe even black.
“I’m sorry, Miss Nash, but the terrace is completely booked that evening for a private party.”
“They’re not going to hold the reception inside?”
“They are. But they’re anticipating an overflow.”
“I see. Thank you, anyway.”
“Another time, I hope.” Karla smiled, and moved away.
“An overflow, huh,” said Sarah, and smiled. “That’s a new word for what they’re going to get.”
“Why don’t you have a rival party at the Beverly Hills Hotel?” Lori asked.
“Don’t be creative,” said Sarah. “Just make the deal.”
* * *
Tyler made made love to Helen the first time in the sunken tub. They made love on the floor, in the bed. They made love in the butler’s pantry, the stall shower, the sitting room, on the courtyard balcony, and countless times in the pool. “That lousy Norman,” Tyler said, about two weeks into the affair, when he and Helen were locked together in warm water. “I’ll get him for this.”
* * *
They went horseback riding on the beach, in spite of Tyler’s reluctance. “I didn’t have your privileged childhood,” he said. “I never learned to ride a horse.”
“I didn’t have a privileged childhood,” she said. “I made a Western.”
* * *
They flew giant kites on the beach over Helen’s objections. “I didn’t have your underprivileged childhood,” she said. “I never learned how to fly a kite.”
“It wasn’t underprivileged,” he said, showing her. “We just didn’t have horses.”
* * *
Everywhere in Bali there were kites in the sky, already aloft as the stars disappeared into dawn. Tyler knew that because he was having trouble sleeping, so he often went outside and lay on the chaise and studied the stars. He told himself the wakefulness was because of the difference in time zones. But they had been there many weeks now, and their bodies had adjusted. It was his mind that wouldn’t get quiet. His mind and maybe his
soul.
* * *
“I love you,” Helen said to him every time they made love.
“Sure,” he would say.
“You think I would go through all this if I didn’t love you?”
“You mean the terrible ordeal of being in Bali?”
“I mean humiliating myself. Throwing myself at you. Making a deal to make a movie I don’t want to make to get you here.”
“That doesn’t mean you love me. That just means you like getting your way.”
“Can’t I love you and like to get my way both?”
“It’s a Scorpio island, Bali. Everything is sexy, intense, and self-absorbed.”
“Including me?” she said.
“Especially you. It’s the perfect place for you.”
“Then let’s stay here forever,” she said, her tone suddenly wistful, melancholy.
* * *
They went white-water rafting on the Ayung River.
“Are you afraid?” Tyler asked her, as they braced and bumped and held on.
“Not of this,” she shouted. “At least I’ll have a glorious death. ‘She died white-water rafting in Indonesia,’ they’ll say. Better than ‘She died shopping in Bloomingdale’s.’”
One of the Japanese in another raft took her picture. “He knows who I am,” she said. “We should have bought sunglasses with a funny nose.”
“You have a funny nose,” Tyler said.
* * *
He went alone on the mission he’d come there for, to send Algernon on his final earth journey. Tyler had observed some local Hindu cremation ceremonies, discovered the best place to go. He put the ashes from the teakwood box in a golden coconut, as he’d seen the Balinese do, and carried it to the Yeh Ho, the most sacred river on the island.
He took off his clothes as the natives had done, and got into the river to swim with the coconut, sending it downstream. “See you.” He waved.
Then in spite of all he knew, or thought he knew, and dreamed and imagined and hoped, he started to cry. Because ritual was so beautiful, and she was so beautiful, and life was so beautiful, and death, in its way, was so beautiful, you just couldn’t help being moved to tears.