‘Some,’ I admitted. I pulled out the MSS I had brought of the Len Spurgeon fragments and showed them to Tobermann. ‘If you have doubles of any of these or something of Rowland’s that’s unmarked, that you’re not sure he wrote, say, from 1982 to 1985?’
‘When I sent it to the Timrod Collection, I went through it all. Everything had a byline.’
Tobermann took the papers I had and began to peruse them. I now turned to the Etheridge to De Petrie letters. These were sent from Manhattan to Fire Island Pines, where De Petrie resided all summer. The fifth, dated late June 1982, was pay dirt:
… woke up from a sweet nice little dream only to hear some remarkably odd noises from the living room. When I’d managed to stagger out of bed and get there, I discovered Len in his undershorts with a pan of sudsing hot water and several dish towels, down on his knees. He was washing the carpet in great circles all around the day bed.
I think it’ll be okay,’ he said, continuing to lave it. He wasn’t wearing any kind of top, no undershirt or nightshirt. In the lamplight from the old Tiffany shade, he appeared as white as a ghost. I thought, the boy’s gone loony on me.
‘Get up,’ I insisted, and I grabbed an antimacassar from off the sofa and threw it over his icy shoulders. I could see goosebumps on his skin. ‘Leave all that alone.’
He continued to seem very upset. ‘I don’t know what happened,’ he attempted to explain. ‘I woke up ten minutes ago. I was cold and clammy at the same time. I sat up in bed and my stomach was growling something terrible and then I retched and … it just shot out of me. Up and across the bed and onto the floor. Like in some horror movie. But I think I’ve mopped it all.’
Now I could see that the bedcover was wet, I had to assume from where he’d washed vomit off.
‘I’ll launder it,’ Len said, ‘tomorrow morning, first thing. Or if you want, I’ll take it to the cleaners. Don’t know why that happened.’
He was shivering quite badly. So, I hushed him and turned off the lamp and took him into my bedroom, and put him next to me in bed. He kept on apologizing but I was so beat I’m afraid I dropped off in a few minutes. But when I awakened again, not an hour later, he wasn’t in bed with me. Once again, I got up and went looking for him. It was almost dawn, the sky outside on Washington Street was still thick and wet. I found him in the living room, sitting up in one corner of my big old horsehair couch. He was completely if inexpertly wrapped in a blanket, with several pillows behind and thus holding vertically his head. It turned out he was only half asleep. He woke up instantly and told me that he’d felt it all coming on again, and had become frightened he’d ruin my bed and bedroom carpet and so he’d gotten up and managed to catch it in time. He’d vomited in the bathroom, he told me, and cleaned up as best he could. Then he’d remained out here, afraid it would happen a third time. As he spoke, he picked up a plastic refrigerator bag in which he’d put ice cubes, most of them melted by now. He’d had a pounding headache after he’d upchucked that second time, Len told me. He couldn’t think of taking anything for it since he found out that even sipping water would nauseate him. That’s why, you see, he’d settled on the ice at his temples to help ease the pain. And he’d also discovered that lying down only made him retch. Thus the awkward, uncomfortable, upright position he’d adopted to sleep. After a while, I realized there was nothing I could do to help the poor lad and so I went back to bed. I found him exactly the same way, only not quite so nauseated, when I awakened again at eight thirty.
This, with minor variations, has now occurred three nights running. Finally last night, Len more or less slept through, without incident.
Do you think he could be suffering from something else, worse, than what they say it is? Meningitis or … I dread to even wonder what? I’m terribly worried.
I could picture the scene all too easily. Another few letters, during July and August showed a one-night revival of the projectile vomiting. Then from early September this account:
Len’s diet consists of 1) Rice boiled, with a pat of butter. A pinch of salt. 2) Pastina or Orzo, again boiled, served with a little butter and salt. 3) Bread. White and sourdough. Again with a little butter. Len loves black bread, but the one attempt at pumpernickel failed. He almost fell to the floor with cramps. Even with all the blandness, he continues to belch. But it’s now so quietly I barely hear him. He does, however, complain about belching afterward. Even so, he’s eating, putting on weight again – he was really looking bad. In short, my little patient is on the mend.
Three weeks later, the letters to De Petrie stopped; ostensibly because the addressee moved back to Manhattan. By the following year, when De Petrie once more moved out to the Pines, Len was no longer living with Etheridge, and Etheridge himself was no longer in the Charles Street flat, but instead already beginning his summer term as playwright-in-residence at UMASS, Amherst. Naturally, his letters are all about the school, the personalities in the Drama Department, the students, rehearsals, the premiere of Beauregard. Not a word about Len, who is obviously out of Rowland’s life. Wait! A mention. July 21st, 1983.
I’m enjoying such good health, good spirits, just good everything this year, I can’t help but think that it’s somehow all connected to, even a result of, what happened last summer. With Len, I mean. How, by allowing me to help him regain his physical health, he somehow or other helped me to regain my psychic health again. I have, you know. I’m not depressed at all, ever. I look forward to every evening, every morning. It’s fine now. All of it. Does what I’m saying make any sense at all? Oh, shit! I actually only just now realized what I AM saying! That Len Spurgeon is some kind of … what? Angel?! Dom. Slap my face hard until I come to my senses. Ow! OWW! … Thanks. I needed that.
I was about to turn to Tobermann and ask if he’d read this letter. But I realized he’d already told me he had. He’d read all of the letters. However, he now handed back the MS fragments.
‘Sorry. Never saw any of these before. Not one.’
I located one more Etheridge letter to De Petrie exulting over the ‘week of love’ with Christian Tobermann. Rowland added, ‘Now don’t think me unduly sentimental or spacey, but I really do believe this is Len’s doing. He always told me I deserved love. I’m absolutely certain he did something wonderful for me!’
I finished the coffee, leafed through more letters, none of which mentioned Len, and put aside those I needed copies of. Tobermann had a photocopier in the house, a single page at a time copier attached to an old, circa 1990, fax machine that no longer telemitted. This was good enough, however, and I got copies of what I wanted. What I really wanted, naturally, was a copy of Etheridge’s little poetry MS. But maybe I could get that later. If I spoke of it now, he’d know I’d been sneaking around. But if I said something like that Reuben Weatherbury mentioned it. Or Maureen …
Outdoors, the sky was already streaking gray and pink to the west. Sunset? Was it that late? No, only six. Must be signaling a change of general weather for the area. Maybe a low front moving in. The cat came out of hiding to say goodbye. I thanked Tobermann and he said he’d keep a look out for anything else I might need. As I drove off, I remember thinking, even with fast clean traffic, I won’t get back home till nine at night. But I was wide awake from the caffeine, so my next thought was, since I was going through the San Fernando Valley on my way home anyway, maybe I could try Phoenix’s shop again. I pulled out my Thomas Guide and checked. Sure, easy. And there even appeared to be a short cut from Ventura Boulevard down to Franklin Avenue, not far from the Casa Herrera y Lopez: via Laurel Canyon Avenue. That should save time.
Of course, I kept thinking of what Rowland Etheridge had written about Len Spurgeon. I was half willing to bet that when I looked at my copy of Beauregard in Brooklyn Heights, I’d recognize Len Spurgeon as the title character. Of course, Etheridge’s Beauregard, with that almost ostentatiously antebellum name, had been Southern, which suggested a self-portrait. But he’d also been stunningly good-looking. And he’d been a s
hrewd operator, using his Virginian drawl and extra-fine manners to lure men and women into his varied schemes and scams. The more I came to know of Len, the more he seemed to have been a sort of litmus test for each member of the Purple Circle he’d become involved with. He’d been a passion pit for Mark Dodge, a mind-fucker for Jeff Weber, merely a polite house guest who’d entertained Aaron Axenfeld’s infirm old father, yet amanuensis, goad, indeed a co-author to Cameron Powers. Most extremely, he’d been a little devil to Mitch Leo and now a kind of angel to Rowland Etheridge. Everywhere I turned I found contradictions.
The Harmonious Fist Martial Arts Academy and Meditation Center looked closed at nearly nine-thirty at night as I circled the block. There appeared to be a party going on at what seemed to be a popular Italian restaurant (‘Mamma Laura and Lil’ Joe’ according to the rose-red neon sign) across Burbank Boulevard. I could hear a great deal of party noise only partly blocked and filtered by windows and walls. Cars were still pulling up to the door and dropping off guests, who then gave the keys to two small men in dark blue uniforms: valet parking, I guessed. Whomever they were, they’d already done a pretty complete job of filling up several blocks of Burbank parking space in either direction and on both sides of the street. I had to drive around several times before I at last located a spot inside one of the residential streets.
The Harmonious Fist looked closed and unlighted from up close. Even so, I went to the front door. Knocked. Nothing. Went around, trying to see if the interior shades reached the floor and if not if I could make out any light behind them. I couldn’t. Should I leave a note? In addition to the phone message I’d already left? I decided not.
I got back to where I’d parked the Celica, got in, started it up and decided to make a U-turn back to Burbank, going the other way. Rather than getting on the freeway again, I’d take the Ventura Boulevard route I’d seen on the map. Just as I was pulling away, a small dark-haired young woman in shorts and halter top ran out into the street in front of the Celica’s headlights. I slammed on the brakes and she came to the driver’s-side window. In her hand some kind of paper fluttering. She was shouting, ‘You can’t park there!’ pointing to across the street where I had just been parked ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘The signs said it’s okay.’
‘That’s my spot!’ she said, thrusting the paper into the car window. I could see it was handwritten, though I pushed it back without reading it. ‘I called to have you towed away,’ she added.
‘Your what? Your spot? What are you talking about? This is a public street. I don’t see your name stenciled on the curb. Besides which, I was parked there maybe three minutes, tops!’
‘You can’t park there even one minute! It’s my spot.’ she insisted, stamping her foot in the middle of the street, looking as though she were about eight years old. ‘I park there every day. All the time! I live right there. It’s my parking spot. Everyone on the block knows that.’
‘Well, I’m not from this block. But you know what, I’ll try to remember that fact the very next time I want to park here, lady, Okay? Want to get away from the car now? I’m going,’ I said and gunned it. She was still running after the Celica, waving her piece of paper and yelling when I reached Burbank and turned off.
I found Ventura Boulevard a bit later and as I drove along it, I recognized various parts, especially around the crossing of the 405 as familiar, probably because it was a much cinematographed place in various films and television movies. I almost shot past my turn-off at Laurel Canyon, and all the while I was thinking, Jesus, what lunatics lived around the Harmonious Fist! Maybe Phoenix should keep the place open longer. This young woman seemed paranoiac and or deluded enough to require the benefits allegedly brought about by extensive meditation.
The four-lane road I was driving on ascended smoothly, suddenly veered into a turn left, veered even more suddenly right, then right even more sharply, rising all the while. Despite the hour – nearly ten at night – the traffic was moderately thick around me and surpassingly fast. I could make out Beemers, Vitechs, a Tiburon, a Firebird, Camaros. I hurled ass up and around another turn arriving at a streetlight signed Mulholland Drive, but it was green and I sped across it onto what had now unexpectedly become a narrow, double-lane road with a variable, barely visible, yellow line divider. Furthermore, it was a double-lane road that twisted even more sharply than a minute before, into smaller and smaller Ss, still rising, and at one time startlingly opening out from around a left-side cliff face onto an expanse through which I could see distant lights from what must be the end of a steep and quite high rock gorge. As I completed the turn and immediately had to counter it with a right-hand turn, I realized I was driving on what was essentially a country road, a mountain road, deep in the, rather high up in the, Santa Monica Mountains, at the same time that I was also in the very center of a city of close to nine million people. I didn’t have time to ponder this enigma. The road swung downhill, continuing to curl itself into tighter and tighter S-turns around which the cars in the sometimes far but sometimes amazingly close opposite lane almost hurled themselves directly at me, their headlights shining directly in my eyes one second, flashing along my side windows and vanishing, only to be replaced by another pair of headlights coming at me from an extreme right angle, blinding me, before vanishing. Meanwhile the road spun and twirled, rose briefly up to another stoplight, green flashing red, and since the Beemer was right on my tail I couldn’t even think of stopping or even slowing down but instead leapt through the intersection, picking up even more speed as I flew down in a shallow S that ended suddenly at another stoplight, also green, which I shot through like a bullet, and despite the fact that I’d picked up speed, I could see the line of car headlights behind me beginning only inches from my rear fender spoiler, a whole line of cars behind it, also curving, also speeding up, although I was going maybe fifty miles an hour, while in front of me approaching headlights would flash into existence from around another bend, blind me, swerve across my view as the road continued to drop and curl up on itself, before unfurling into a sudden straightaway and I felt like I was flying down it, until there was another tight curve and as the rental car was a sporty vehicle with good steering and great weight ratios, it just gobbled up the turn, really ate up the road, stroked like a scared cat along the straightaway. I’d never felt anything like it, the exhilaration of having a car this fast, this supple, not merely bend to my will but anticipate it, drive better than I wanted or knew to want to drive. I could feel my adrenalin rising as the road curved yet again, this time extravagantly, opened out into two lanes per side as suddenly as it had closed down into one before, and meanwhile kept swiveling to the right, going straight, curving, straight, corkscrewing down at an incredible angle, and I was in the middle of thick traffic with roads opening out on either side, and I could make out what I knew was my turn-off to Hollywood Boulevard on the left, but how the hell could I get to it from here, so I continued hurtling down, fitting in with all the other fast-moving, tightly spaced cars, around two more bends, wondering where in the hell I would end up, until there, directly in front of me, was the Sunset Strip at the Wolfgang Puck Dining Center, and I was choiceless, moved along as though the car’s wheels were in slots, as I crossed over Sunset, suddenly freed of all that traffic that had turned off either side, gliding along now, having hit the rise and gone over with a deep V view through the side of the street trees of what had to be all of Los Angeles before me, the famous street-pattern-lighted gridwork directly in front as I hurtled down Crescent Heights Boulevard, diving into the city’s yellow-stained, night-lighted heart.
Somewhere around Melrose Boulevard, I regained my wits, turned, turned again and at last found my way toward familiar streets that I knew were heading home. But my pulses were still scudding and my heart was racing from the well-oiled speed, smooth as glass, mechanical yet effortless, the feeling of it as good at least, at least as good, as the best sex I’d ever had, and without having stopped once since I’d turned off Ventura
fifteen minutes of time and what seemed a half-lifetime of experience earlier, I pulled up to the huge gate of the house, thrilled, excited, coming down, spent, utterly exhausted.
BOOK SEVEN
The Leo-McKewens at Tea, Part 2
In fact, the Master is defined by his very acceptance of being finite, and the limits the Master dictates then become the limits of the agreed upon obsession. By setting up rules and acting as constant enforcer, the Master transforms himself from the lowly distinctiveness of person into the world-arcing cruciality of totem, indeed, into a symbol of the Slave’s obsession.
Frankie McKewen,
Switch Hitters
‘I FOUND THIS IN THE GARDEN,’ Conchita said, holding something in her hand. She dropped it on Von Slyke’s desk next to my laptop for me to inspect: a small white Gund teddy bear, maybe ten inches tall, wearing a Dodgers baseball hat, a pair of Virgin Airlines earphones, and RayBan sunglasses. ‘I thought maybe one of your students left it. You know, when they were all here the other night,’ she added.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Thanks! I’ll bring it to class and see.’
‘It’s cute,’ she added.
She was right. It was cute. Adorable. Serious yet warm somehow. And now, looking at the bear and its odd get-up, I immediately thought: Ray Rice. This is his sense of humor. He put it here. Came last night and put it here for me to find. I hadn’t seen it anywhere in the courtyard yesterday when I’d been out there. And only now did I remember that I’d awakened in the middle of the night last night, maybe one or two in the morning, thinking I heard someone out there. Completely fatigued as I’d been from a terrifically busy day of working here at the Casa Herrera, then teaching, then driving up past Cambria, then hiking around with Christian Tobermann, then driving back, I’d been really more asleep than awake as I’d gotten up and gone to the bedroom door leading to the courtyard and checked to make sure it was locked, and to the next bedroom door, and the doors adjoining the breakfast room and kitchen. Satisfied, I’d peered into the empty courtyard, the inexorably splashing fountain, and had almost fallen asleep on my feet before I’d padded back to bed and slept deeply. Ray must have left it as a peace offering? Okay. If he contacted me, I’d be nice to him. Or at least not mean. After all, mean was what he wanted; wasn’t that what he’d told me?
The Book of Lies Page 32