A jolly threesome waved some bills at the piano man and asked for an encore of those bluebirds. The tuxedoed gent, old as the Earth’s crust pressed the piano keys with his nicotine-stained fingers. Andy said, “Fuck her. Ah, you know, you gotta love her. Who does she think she is? Sorry if I didn’t. Well, screw her, then.”
The buxom middle-aged brunette waitress came over to his table. “Can I get you…?”
Andy talked to his empty glass. “And then you know what she did? She made me take my clothes off. Huh. And then she took pictures of me.”
“Sir, can I get you another Knockando?”
Andy looked up at her, regaining some poise. “You can, ma’am.” Then, slipping back, “I believe it’s time to go.”
“Sir, was there anything wrong with your drink? I can…”
“Fine, then have it your way. And you know what else? I liked it. That’s the fuck of it all. I liked it. She was the enemy and I liked it.” He looked at the waitress as if he had just seen her. “Ma’am, thank you very much. You know you could really hide some serious weaponry in those glass flowers. Yeah, fine if you want. Sure. Another Knockando. I’m in Iraq tomorrow.”
“Thank you for your service,” the waitress said.
She went away. Andy got up and moved the three vacant chairs closer, tipping them forward onto the table. He rubbed his left arm above the elbow. He rubbed his jaw on the left side. He held himself. He closed his eyes. He rocked himself, humming “Over the Rainbow.” He reached into his Levi’s for his wallet, took out a hundred dollar bill, put it on the table, got up, came back to the table, left another fifty dollars and drifted left along the carpeted promenade, buoyed along by the casino crowds in their forced holiday chatter. He did not appear to notice that Val Gold was sitting in one of the chairs, reading a newspaper. Andy went through the doors to a balustrade lookout over a green dusk garden.
9
CHEMICAL DONNY
THE BELLAGIO GARDEN was a lush Mediterranean oasis. Orange trees and lemon trees, tall cypress spires, cold pools, hot pools, whirlpools, chaises. In the last rags of sundown, hotel guests lay in their sunglasses, sleeping. A woman using a long lynx coat as a blanket lay on a chaise with sunglasses almost as big as her face, bare feet with blue toenails, her hair grey and blond like another fur animal tumbling down into the fur coat. Beside her, a man in an ochre field coat, his bent legs covered by white towels wrapped mummy-style, was asleep with his mouth open, a hardcover book held aloft in his hands. Hollywood Station, Joseph Wambaugh.
A man you’d identify to police as average-looking, average height, dark hair, mid-thirties, slid down the side of a big empty swimming pool. He held out a small camera, and with a bright smile he waved at the lens. He put the camera down on the poolside, and he stared across the garden. A lonely traveller with that sad holiday feeling coming over his private face. The civic twilight was disappearing the mountains.
Andy went back through the glass doors. Opposite sat the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art. Exhibit on today: Ansel Adams: America. Andy crossed the lobby. Inside the gallery gift shop, Val watched him from behind the glass walls. Val browsed the art cards and bought one by Matisse, Pineapple and Anemones. After Andy had paid and gone inside to see the Ansel Adams exhibit, Val bought a ticket, came to the door of the small exhibit space, looked at Andy’s back, the walls of black-and-white photos and the equipment, and left.
Andy stood beside a camera as tall as Michael Jordan. The legend said Ansel Adams carried this very camera up into the Eastern Sierra, into Yosemite, into Death Valley on his photographing trips there. A camera with one of those old-timey capes, a tent you got under to look out on the world.
There was a letter from the great Georgia O’Keeffe to Ansel Adams, handwritten, dated December 22, 1938.
Would you drive down and spend two or three days in Death Valley with me on my way west?...a week or two… It seems this is the time of year for Death Valley… Hastily Georgia.
Georgia and Ansel in Death Valley. December.
Andy came close to Georgia O’Keeffe’s handwriting: she wrote the word two with such a long crossbar through the t that the stroke across was ten or twelve times longer than the height of the t. And all her t’s were written that way with that extraordinarily long stroke line, flourished across the tiny vertical stick. Like the land where she was living. And what did Georgia and Ansel do when they went to Death Valley? There was nothing on the wall to say. Were they just art pals, visual colleagues or more? Georgia the painter, age fifty-one, invited Ansel the photographer, age thirty-six, to come on an art trip to Death Valley, before the Second World War.
A photograph that looked like whales’ backs in a light and dark sea, as Andy came closer, turned out to be: Sand Dunes, Sunrise, Death Valley National Monument, California, c. 1948. Ansel Adams climbing like a pack mule with a camera as big as a man, a camera Sherpa with his heavy load climbing sand like mountains, a camera soldier with his painter comrade, two masters of reduction and the holy in the wild, creeping in the dark desert to set up for the approaching adversary: the first light of day.
Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams…Dunes...Death Valley...1948…
Vivienne said she was going to Death Valley tomorrow. Back in ancient days at the coffee shop, she had leaned across him to point the way there on the weather map. Death Valley and Mosul, Iraq, were on the same latitude.
Andy came to another photograph.
A road shining in the late day or early morning, a wide curve, a white road in the middle of outback trees and cliffs. Andy got close: the road had black tire marks in the middle of the white shine; those herringbone marks of a crime scene. Andy stepped to the side and the road became water, the tire marks became ripples in the water. Which was it? Road or river? A canoe could paddle that road, a truck ride that river.
“There are no people,” a voice behind Andy said. A piping voice, a bit nasal.
“Liebe,” a second voice said. Lower, more guttural. “The people are behind the photographs, they have the security watching you. Komm, let’s eat.”
Andy did not turn around. He rocked back and forth in front of the black-and-white photograph of river or road; he felt elevated by his agitation. How did someone make a thing to make a stranger feel so much? Was Ansel Adams courting him from the grave?
ANDY WALKED UP the Strip, trying to turn the night into Somewhere Town.
Out on the dry washes of the metropolis, old boxing champs in striped pyjamas sparred with dust at the corner of spare change and concussion. Bent to unknown music, the street figures bowed to the hidden gods of the pavement. Flightless angels flapped their armpits as if to rise to the night clouds. Who knew that the real margin of America existed right in its dry centre? Who knew that when you enter a plane, they are preparing you for the desert environs, where those dry hands will peel on peeling sidewalks, where your palms will become exfoliated by sunny drought, where your lips will ache in dry furrows and your epidermis will slough off like parchment? Andy felt like paint, like someone was painting him right now, a white sketch on a chalkboard. Vivienne had made him feel like a paradise inhabitant. The kings of empire walked dethroned in tin foil coronas; they wore barbed wire belts; they wore vests of old war headlines. Even the night stars had to peek through the hotel towers; even starlight was homeless these days.
Behold, the jugglers did dismantle sanity.
A man in a rickety wheelchair sat under a green glow by a closed Hertz rental. He wore a piece of rope around his waist. He wore a cardboard apron that announced in block letters: JUNGLE ROT. NO LOOKING. An arrow pointed to his crotch. He had wooden arms, a rough olive-brown pullover, leg stumps. The night was as dry as the inside of a plane.
Andy walked on, past yellow and red discount liquor lettering, past a short building saying ALARMCO SINCE 1950, the time 5:51 beside an iconic Marlboro man. Andy slid down a wall and slept. The underbelly alley was never far from the dark limo windows.
Andy opened his eyes.
Why had this Vivienne chosen him? She had tricked him with her camera. She had made him want more of it. She had dark secrets.
High beams came at him.
An indigo Buick Riviera stopped in front of him. A severely white man sat at the wheel. “Son, do me a favour. Get off the street. There’s murder police in the vicinity. You’ll be safe with me. Climb in.”
Andy got in.
They rose up out of the glittering desert valley and left behind the settlement called Las Vegas, glitter in a dark valley. They rose in elevation, coming up through the narrow canyon to reach level ground, flatter, higher and empty as Europe in a long, dark night in wartime.
The severely white man said he was heading up to fix some munitions at Hawthorne Army Depot. He had a job to do regarding decommissioning some of the weapons of mass destruction that had been tested, the mustard gases were his specialization.
“There’s Cold Creek,” he said, waving over to the west. “Did a long latte there, myself.”
The man’s cheeks caved in. His fingers were long and yellow. They held on to the wheel at four and eight o’clock. The wheel was glowing. The man wore a shirt in yellow, two sizes too big for his body. His face hung in folds, too. His eyes were set back so far you saw only sockets when he turned to look at you. He had on a brown dusty cowboy hat that he promptly took off: his hair was black and white, a salt-and-pepper wetness, laid stringily on a scaly scalp. It was desert cold, that desert night drop in temperatures. The severely white man had no heat on in the car, but he was breathing heavy and sweating.
“We’re heading down, hold on,” he said to Andy. They pitched down an incline, Andy holding the dashboard with his right hand. The glove compartment swung open: inside was a grenade.
Andy said, “You’re kidding me.”
“Don’t worry, it’s harmless.” The car tipped forward on a deeper angle. It was black pitch on black void, the beams lit nothing. An amber dot in the sky came snaking towards them. The light got tall and squeezed-in, flew right at them and passed. A car. Even at night, the bent optics of the desert ruled you. “There’s the sand dunes out there if you’re interested,” the severely white man said, taking his right hand off the wheel and pointing across Andy’s body, veering with his left hand around a quick curve in the road. “You’re in Death Valley now. Feel like a bite?”
The headlights shone on a green sign with white lettering: SEA LEVEL.
Andy looked at his watch. Liar: it said 8:27. They pulled up beside a double gas pump. It was a couple feet from STOVEPIPE WELLS GENERAL STORE. A tall man in black leather came out, letting the screen door slam. Six more leathered individuals came out. They got on their Harleys and rode off, making a gold-lit chain into the night.
Andy and the severely white man went into the store. “You want an Eskimo Pie?” the man asked, putting his head into a big freezer by a big coffee urn.
“Sure,” Andy said. Why not? Down to freezing, no coat, why not get an Eskimo Pie?
“Hey, well if it isn’t Chemical Donny,” a round woman at the cash said. “You finished getting rid of those WMDs, Don?”
“Not yet, Charlene. I’ve still got two thousand igloos to dispose of. Today’s paper come in?”
“No paper from LA ’til next week. Monday is a holiday, didn’t you hear, due to President Ford being buried. So if you want today’s news, Don, wait until next Tuesday.”
“Fine with me. No news is the same as – news. Take care, Charlene. See you at the next igloo inauguration. You coming up?”
“Not on your life, Don. I got way too sick last time. I think I inhaled what they’re hunting down Saddam for.”
“I hear he’s going to get all hung up on New Year’s. Now that’s something worth toasting. Have one on me. Tell them Don sent you.”
“Thanks, Don. This one of yours?”
“No, this is... What did you say your name was, son?”
“Andy.” Why lie?
“Andy, meet Charlene, anything you need, right, sister?”
“My pleasure,” she said, extending her hand across the counter. His hand had Eskimo Pie on it, bits of chocolate and wet vanilla transferring to her palm. “See you Don, Happy 2007.”
“I’ll be up in Deseret come January. There’s a ton of nerve gas to burn. It’s slow going in Rush Valley.”
Andy and Chemical Donny got into the car by the general store and drove across the gravel and the narrow highway road a five second journey and up an incline and parked. RECEPTION said a sign at a storefront-looking spot. To the left up a short incline was a timbered Western-style eatery: WAGON WHEEL. “Come on,” Don said. “I could eat a horse.”
Inside, benches lined the entry where future eaters, hopeful, sat. Don walked to the podium. A shiny-headed smiling round man stood behind the podium. “Here he is. I thought you forgot me. Hey, Louise, trouble’s back in town.”
Everybody seemed to know the severely white man called Don or Chemical Donny, congenial in his lankiness, still sweating, but a popular figure in a dark remote night stopover place.
“Eugene, it’s been dogs’ years,” Don said. “How’s the husband?”
“Elliot? Elliot’s good, Elliot’s fine, he’s over in Pomona with Mom. He put his back out, she put her back out, I’m supposed to go down Friday and get them. How’s by you?”
“The same. Got to go to Utah and light a fire under some of those men there, get that chemical junk burned off before some of those kids blow themselves up. Gene, how’s about a table for me and my friend Andy here?”
“In twenty minutes cook is closing the kitchen, we’ll call it half an hour.” Eugene led them to a curved banquette in a corner. Andy slid in. It was 8:40 p.m. He had met Vivienne only seven hours ago. Don handed Andy a menu.
Here he was in another restaurant with another stranger, in another desert, original desert with a small way station. What was he going to do about tomorrow? Did he even know the loopholes as to AWOL status? Did he care? He had thirty days until he was classified deserter. Did he have a determined intent not to return? What was his intention? Once upon a time he might have been classified undistinguished, but now they had made a new deserter category, accomplished, for those who had suffered a trauma.
“How far is it back to Vegas?” Andy asked Don.
“Back to Vegas so soon, son? I barely got you to Death Valley.”
“I don’t know. I was wondering.”
“I am going over the mountain tonight, I might change my mind and go over in the morning. I was due up to burn off those weapons of mass destruction, but I might go see some guys I know looking into putting some of that mustard gas into cellphones; you sell them to the terrorists, they try and set off the bomb, the phone gases them. Well, anyways, I got some people to see over in Lone Pine, consult about explosive devices. They’re doing a movie on the big kerfuffle back there in the ’20s, you might have heard of it, when the locals, well when LA stole the Owens Valley water. I used to rope a bit you know with Rex Allen. I was the bad hombre you saw pushing that horse to gallop like the dickens away from that sheriff ’s posse, then they went back and shot the posse, and it was us, the same guys. They’d shoot us in different hats running after ourselves from the last footage, oh it was fun. Course it was no fun when they kidnapped that water. Those were shoot-’em-ups for real, I’ll tell you that.”
“Chinatown,” Andy said. “My favourite movie.”
“Mine too. What do you know? I bet you say that to all the girls.”
Andy put his palms flat on the table. He pushed his body up. He sat down. Chemical Donny kept talking.
“They came up from Los Angeles, those sons of bitches. They came in, you know, posing as surveyors and guesstimators working in the locals’ interest. They cheesed them out of their homes and their water rights. They sucked the valley dry. You talk to anybody there, it began in 1902. Son, it might as well have begun in 2002. That water wound is ever fresh in the Owens Valley.” Thin white Don sat back into the leatherette h
alf-booth. “They need me to consult, about how you blow things up without blowing yourself up in the process. They’re calling this movie they’re making Water War.”
“Kind of like drought noir, you might say,” said Andy.
10
KING UBU
“AND I WILL tell you something,” Don said, “the people of the Owens Valley, they fought the good fight in that water war, and it was one, it was a war for survival. Those crooks from LA bought the land and abducted all the goodness out of her. Years of plentiful water flowed down to LA. The year was 1924. The men of the Owens Valley had had enough. Down they came from Independence; they veered west into the Alabama Hills. There lay the water gates, the Alabama Gates as they were known there. The men walked to the gates and basically opened them, turning the wheels to let the water return to the desert, the Owens River water, like prodigal water returned over land to Owens Lake. They repatriated their own damn water.
“And up from Los Angeles Mayor Mulholland sent armed police to take back the water gates from the Owens Valley men. The local sheriff stood the LA police down.
“Now this,” Don said, motioning for the waiter with a head move, his chin up, then a brief hail salute. “This was after the locals had dynamited the aqueduct just to make a point, and after the near-lynching of an LA official the locals had kidnapped from a restaurant and put in a noose. What did they think was going to happen? You steal the water from under a farmer, you steal that farmer’s life.”
A small man at a far corner table was holding a cardboard sign up to their waiter. Don shook his head, and went on with the water war story. “What these Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bums are doing today with their fancy loan packages and promises? Why they’re just following suit from their daddies and their great-granddaddies from a hundred years ago. Fabricating real estate lies, dangling cash money, hurting families, closing businesses.”
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