“Leave my vehicle. The military police will pick you up pronto,” the lady in the pink Thunderbird said.
“I was put in charge of the safety and security of countries.”
“In that?” She put her shades back on. “Come on, old man, get out of my car.”
“They gave me a summer job when I was nineteen, at a listening post in Labrador.”
“Did you find anything?”
“I found I liked it.” Danny closed his eyes, rested his head back on the seat and smiled. “Can you take me to the next town?”
“I could take you to Hell’s Gate. There’s a nice view from Hell’s Gate. You can see all the way down to the Devil’s Golf Course. You ever see the movie Greed?”
“Can’t say as I ever heard of it.” Now the big bird was trying on an old-coot Walter Brennan voice.
“It’s silent,” she said. “Unlike some passengers in this car I could name. If they had a name.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Greed? Erich von Stroheim? The great silent director? Ring any bells?” She looked at him like he was nuts. Cinema was the true international language, after mangled English. How could a modern spy not know how to talk movies? The weather, sports, movies: you pass.
The bird was in a stew, looking out the side of his suicide seat. He did not know how to be at his ease, unknowing.
“Greed. Death Valley,” she said. “The Devil’s Golf Course. The great part in Greed, when the two men and the mule are stuck out in the desert. There is this sandstorm and the mule walks off with their water and the one guy hits the other one with the shovel – I think it was the dentist – and they die of thirst in Death Valley. Made in 1924, if I’m not mistaken. From Greed to Sunset Boulevard, now there’s a trip.”
“Who the hell cares? You people and your movies, you arty people, you make me sick, you remind me of my brother.”
She reached across him and clicked open the glove compartment, taking out a pack of cigarettes: KOCMOC. Dark blue with a sleek white rocket and a red star under it. “Have a Kosmos?”
“You smoke Russian?” Danny said.
“I found them in an old briefcase this morning,” she said. “Got them from an old work husband at the UN, the day Khrushchev banged his shoe. October 12, 1960. You know how it is, old-timer. Some days you feel like your Sputnik doesn’t fly like it used to. Take one,” she said. She lit two. She gave one to Danny. He stuck it in his mouth.
“I never knew what others were bringing to the party,” he said.
“Just turn up. Just open the door and walk in. Just have yourself appear.”
“Some things seemed of an advantage, others not.”
“So you became a spy, because you did not know what to do?”
“I did not know what others were doing.”
“Hang on a minute,” she said, pressing a button on the radio, pulling a small phone out by its cord. She turned away from Danny. “Yeah, he’s here. Apparently he got out of Vegas. Sure, I know, Rocky, you’ve got the tapes of them walking around the bomb site. Good for the jackrabbit; the wire worked… Fine. I don’t know. He was in the scope on the Strip, he seemed okay, at least…” The green-eyed woman pulled the cord further and got out of the car, walking up and down the highway shoulder. “Look: that’s what Val told me. Gold; yes. He had him in the trunk. We have verification that Betty Coma was the one. He told that story so many times, yeah, I know, Rocky. I believed him. Now we have the evidence; the bird was Betty’s assistant. I know. The girl, Pink, she was the one, Betty came after her. Yes, I just told you. Gold has it on tape, Pink accusing the bird. They’re calling him Ambassador. But, we have proof now that ‘Mrs. Coma’ existed. Yes, Rocky, yes I remember what happened with SAVAK. Okay, fine, look I’ll turn around and leave the bird dead on the road. Yes, I do recall DINA, the Chileans, Condor, come on, Rocky, please. The Night of the Pencils, don’t remind me. It wasn’t me, Rocky, who said go kidnap students. We cleaned that up. No, I don’t know if he is still a threat. He is off the leash, that’s for sure. They’re on their way to Death Valley; they’ve got rooms reserved at Stovepipe. I’ll take him there. Val Gold is definitely on the case. Yes, Rocky. I am fully aware. If he keeps talking, he may eventually say something.” She wound the black cord around her wrist, got back in the driver’s seat, pushed the slim phone back into its hidden spot and zoomed back on the highway going north.
“Timing, schedules, directions, others seem to have the knowledge,” Danny said. “I thought if I studied the protocols, I could get by.”
“You didn’t know what the hell to do. So they put you in charge of the security of nations?”
She turned west on to the bumpy road past Daylight Pass, and on to Hell’s Gate. She asked him to pose for a quick photo.
A pale man in his sixties, big deep blue circles under his gaunt eyes, slightly pointed ears, half balding with dark hair and some salt in the pepper on his pate. The bird suit was cheap enough that it was moulting in the dry air on to the dirt at Hell’s Gate. They stood and looked down the magnificent fjord-like basin of Death Valley to Salt Creek, down to Badwater, across and up to Dante’s View, back down to the river water sparkling white with blue sky in it, travelling in a long meander to its pools of white showing blue sky and grey mountains with their snow peaks in the water, and all of it a mirage. Every fjord river of Death Valley was salt.
She drove the big bird in her beautifully angled pink T-Bird down the incline into the shadows as they approached Stovepipe Wells, dipping down fast to sea level, into the shadows. When they got to the shadow level, the shadows were sand. They drove alongside the Death Valley Sand Dunes, and the walls of light were the Panamint Range. What was negative space from a distance had proven to be positive space up close. This was a kind of poetic physics, much better than science or poetry. This was the animal that science studied, the look that poets bowed their heads in shame to.
SHE TOOK HIM to Stovepipe Wells, right up to the hitching post at reception. “See if they have a room,” she said. “I’ll wait.”
He went up the couple of steps to the tiny one room check-in, with his little suitcase of H-bomb dirt.
A burly guy, bigger than the small man in the big bird suit came to the counter. “Help you? Got your down on? You’re going to need it, well below zero tonight. Room for two?” he asked, nodding to the car. These old-school reception guys could spot a blond in a convertible at fifty paces through a half-slit venetian blind any day of the week.
The birdman was mystified. He did not know what she was bringing to the party. Was she bringing him to the party? Was there a party? He was on his own. “Ah, room for one?”
“Dunes view?”
The big bird was further confused. He had been driven past the dunes, but he was unsure what the reception man could mean. All his life it had been laid out for him: travel department, per diem, flights arranged. He had never checked into a hotel by himself. He had never made his own arrangements. He had never just turned up. What did you do?
“Ah, okay.”
“I can put you in the 49ers, no wait. Independence cancelled. I can put you in the Roadrunners. Dunes view. How’s that?”
“Sounds about right,” Danny the bird said.
“I will need to see some ID. A major credit card works.”
The big bird had never shown ID in his life. That is, regular person ID. He had shown his special get-out-of-jail-free laissez-passer papers, and he had always had special treatment after they saw his papers. Did he have ID? And if so, which one would he use, who would he be?
Did he happen to have anything on him that said Daniel Coma? Daniel Coma, economic and trade consultant? He fished down inside his feathers, saying, “Moreover I said unto the king, If it please the king, let letters be given me to the governors beyond the river.”
The reception man came around the counter, and took the coffee pot and went into a back room and refilled it with water and came back and put a new filter and grounds in. “Ha
ve a nice nap?” he asked, coming around the counter.
Danny the birdman was still fishing down in his nether feathers. “That they may convey me over ’til I come into Judah.”
“Any major plastic works,” the man said.
“I used to advise the president,” Danny said.
The reception man sipped on his coffee. “Got no phone in the room if that’s a problem. I have to go to dinner in an hour, just letting you know. You got a security pocket in that rig, just in case you forgot? Driver’s licence works.”
“I don’t drive,” Danny said, smoothing feathers. “I am driven.”
The reception man picked up the phone. “What did you say the number at the White House was? I’ll call George W., and tell him you don’t drive. Sir, when you want a room, you come back and see me.”
The birdman found something hard down in his crotch feathers. He pulled out a passport. Michael Towne, American, born Detroit, Michigan, 1931, passport issued Bogotá, Columbia, September 9, 2001. The photo was of Daniel Coma in 1967 with a dark beard. The passport was three and a half months expired. “Fine,” the reception man said. “Here’s the key to 204. If the sand walls you in, just holler. Room enough for two in that king, if you’re inclined.”
The birdman went out to the pink convertible to report back.
The pink convertible was not there.
He walked across the highway, which had become as narrow as a residential street, to the general store. No T-bird. No T-bird at the gas pump beside the store. No pink T-bird in sight when he made the trek through open ground, on pale brush, soft gravel, to the rooms. Across the scrub there were tall picturesque palm trees, each one with its own water tap attached at the bottom. You could indeed see the Death Valley Dunes from inside room 204, in the Roadrunners section.
Daniel Coma took off the bird suit, opened the door of the room, sat on a yellow fabric chair at the open doorway and watched the sun turn the sand dunes into a gauzy emerald city.
Night came fast. The room was a beacon light. Daniel Coma opened his suitcase, pushing aside the bag of nuked dirt. He grabbed the too-big grey sweatshirt, put it on. He pulled the baggy grey sweatpants over his boots. He walked the walkway, turned the corner at the drinks machine, walked past the swimming pool – deserted behind a high fence, it being night and winter – and climbed the wide western stairs to the dining place.
He had never before eaten in a public restaurant alone.
21
WALK, AMBLE, TROT, GALLOP AND LOPE
VIVIENNE PINK GOT up in the dark. Her hiking clothes were draped over a chair, prepared. She put on wool leggings, two pairs of wool socks, a long-sleeved navy-and-white striped nautical jersey, her olive green pants and a bright orange boiled wool jacket she zipped to its high neck. Johnny was dead to the world in the double bed closest to the door. Val was asleep in the one nearer the loo. Vivienne slipped her feet into walking shoes, fastened their Velcro orange straps and opened the door. The dark was a form of quiet. She could feel starlight sharpen as it began to die out. She turned left, walked down the walkway, turned left and took the hillside dip to the reception office, shining in the darkness. It was freezing out. Vivienne pulled the slim black silk glove liners out of her jacket pocket and slipped them on her hands, even as she got to the door of the motel office.
The man behind the counter and his sidekick from yesterday afternoon were back on the job. It was 05:29 hours. Vivienne’s mission was to be deep into the dunes and set up with all the needed equipment well in advance of her 07:07 deadline. The sun rising from the west hit a particular notch between two particular mountains from the viewpoint of one particular sand dune between five minutes and ten minutes after seven, although ten after was probably too late. If all went well, her day’s work would be done by nine a.m. The clerk said, “Well, good morning. Lucky you, I got your coffee for you, just the way you like it, but better hurry, our friends from Moscow look ready for a second cup, they might beat you to it.”
Vivienne had not seen the three older gents in the corner, one of them more sparkly and bald, looking like he was from the TV show Lost. Maybe they were lost in Death Valley. Vivienne stepped to the coffee pot as the two Russian speakers from yesterday came in the door and, being tall, either did not see her in her shortness or did not give a morning damn. They wedged through and starting pouring coffee into two neat cups of ever-faithful Styrofoam, which they lifted in a toast and drank down, oblivious to Vivienne’s hand in mid-air and now without any coffee. The clerk said, “Well, now, José, will you take a look at that, and I was just telling you last night, chivalry is alive and well in Death Valley.” He then said something to the man and the woman in Russian, which made the man smile and the woman sulk. The Russian man said something right back to the clerk and they left.
“Better get that coffee going, Pepe, the lady is waiting. She’s got a hot camera on the go.”
“What did they say?” Vivienne asked, leaning on the counter. Men told her things. Johnny was amazed how often this happened. She leaned in and smiled full face at the older clerk. He gave her a good smile with lots of eye crinkles. Oh, he had seen his day, and the ladies had been there all the way with him, you could see that – another one with great blue eyes.
“They’re making the big movie,” he said.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, “I will just bet they are.”
José-Pepe had the coffee coming through the filter to the Pyrex already. “Don’t you boys go touching that. That is the little lady’s. Good luck, ma’am, out there, it’s a morning for the light.”
She poured hers black, put two little oil products into Johnny’s with a sweetener and walked the coffees back, thinking, It turned out that the big threat to America from the Russians was that they would be big coffee buttinskys in the morning at the motel carafe. The warheads were all lined up, and NATO was all lined up, all in the name of getting those Russians to learn to line up like a mensch and not butt in for the coffee.
She rounded the bend to the Roadrunners walkway. Well, she was Russian, too. It was just that she knew it as an adjective, as she had told Andy. Russian Jew, ignoring her own word, Russian. When she was a blond pigtailed pitzel, doing duck and cover from the phantom attacking Russians, maybe she was being taught to be paranoid, a child afraid of herself.
Back at the room, Johnny was sitting up in bed. Vivienne gave him his coffee. He moved quickly, getting ready. They got in the white vehicle, driving in darkness under stars.
They sipped coffee for five miles down the road going east. Johnny stopped the car and turned off the headlights. The road was empty, the world and all its night stars were their stage. Up in the exploding black, infinity danced its stellar equations.
They got out of the car, entering the dark, the rich resource that darkness was. We pollute the dark kingdom with too much light, debasing it by shining artificial light upwards into its onyx secrets. And they entered the dune fields of Death Valley. The first low glow of light came from a curved mystery in the dried-sea horizon. First the early gravel under their feet, then the small resinated bushes brushed their shins, then the sand filled their shoes as they sank into it up to their knees and the dunes looking like warrior encampments became lit in more golden light, low on their tips.
The cold empire of wonder, Death Valley, was all theirs.
They came to a small dune, about six or seven feet high. There were no human footprints. Overnight, the wind had erased all clues. Every desert hiker wants to be the first person on the moon.
It was 06:12 hours.
Vivienne and Johnny walked without talking. The vibrating silence between them was the second language of their marriage. Marriage takes on a life of its own. Marriage is like a desert. Even when it looks like nothing is going on, or nothing is alive, you hunker down, you listen, you close your eyes, you walk in the dark with your eyes open, and what appeared dead and quiet is thrumming with its own live tracks, its beetle herringbone lines, its coyote footpad
markings, its holes in the shade, the scant rustling of the midden, where all the precious things have been stored away, hidden and piled up, and the next dune is even higher as the world becomes dusted with the pre-light before the official sunrise.
They walked in the dark desert past ghost trees dry as the petrified gnarled limbs of corpses. The wind blew harder, drying out the largest organ on their bodies, their skin, as the ground lost its trees and its squat bushes. Vivienne reached over to Johnny, touching his face, feeling the lack of moisture on his skin. It was icy. She lifted the hood of his puffy parka up. He squeezed her gloved hand. He had black smudges under his eyes she did not recognize as belonging to him. His face was greyer.
She touched her own face: too smooth, raw, the early days after an atomic burn. Her aching dried fingertips felt something beside her left eye: a blister. It released black matter. Vivienne held it out on her fingers. Johnny took some on his fingers, wiped it on his own cheek. A black lip blister spontaneously exploded on Johnny’s lower lip. Vivienne shot a picture of it, a thousand miles of sand behind him. Their faces were layered with grey dust, and the wind sand veil swirling.
They understood that their adventuring time was work time. Art labour is mysterious even to those who do it. The light began to seep from all the curved desert spaces. An intense sense of mutating came over Vivienne. It made her joyful. Who said we had to be smooth, symmetrical, all hairs in place? The world was a wonder we never asked for, yet it wakes us in desert spaces with its grace. Rimy in our abodes, we are the mutant nomads called human. Even on Earth, we miss being earthlings. They were ploughing through a sea of sand. There was sand, and there were mountains, and you could see the immense lack of being told what you were seeing go on and on as one long evolutionary take moving at its own incremental inching. That radiant glow on the top of a dune when you drive by on the road could be the bebop of the saltating grains, a sunstruck flurry like sand fur above the crescent dune. Sand migrates, the minuscule cigar-shaped grains, spheres, disks chipped at the edges bouncing and hopping in the wind.
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