Like People in History

by Felice Picano

  The Chrysler arrived at a longer though not straighter road—Laurel Canyon Boulevard—and after driving a few miles, we turned off again and commenced to wind around the city and valley until we reached a second wide road, which she assured me was Coldwater Canyon, though it looked the same to me. A dozen turns later, we were on a long dirt road ascending deep into dry chaparral.

  "I hate this part," Cousin Diana said as we approached and bumped hard over a rough apex of dirt road. Ahead I saw that our route suddenly dropped onto a wide apron of peninsula high above its surroundings, stripped bare of foliage, upon which a dozen long irregular foundations and three halfway completed houses perched, arranged more or less around a splayed semicircle of dirt lane evidently later to be paved. Tractors, steam shovels, dump trucks, flatbeds, and pickups littered the area. At least twenty workmen were in sight, busy at various tasks. I assumed this was the "project" she'd mentioned as we'd left the airport, but I was most struck by how very high and isolated it all was, overlooking the surrounding land the way a medieval castle lorded it over its demesne.

  I was drawn to the spectacular view. While Cousin Diana parked and strode about looking for someone—Alfred? Dario?—I walked as close to the edge of the butte as I could, bypassing a gigantic hole which I supposed had been dug for a future swimming pool. From where I stood on the cliff, it must have been close to six hundred feet down. Far below, a double-lane road unfurled aimlessly through more dry, wooded hills, which seemed to go on and on in gnarled humps to the horizon in every direction.

  "I wager you don't have anything like this back east," a man's voice said in a British accent.

  Astonishing really that Oxonian voice, given that the person containing it looked like another of the laborers on the property, by now finishing work for the day and beginning to drive off. Tall, shambling, wearing filthy overalls and no shirt to hide his dirt-streaked, potbellied, straggly-haired torso, but a crushed and tar-stained, overwashed powder-blue baseball cap that shadowed his shaggy eyebrows and deep-set eyes, the man smiled crookedly through an unkempt mustache and beard, and when I didn't answer, he asked, "I'm not mistaken? You are the cousin?"

  I stood up to say yes and introduce myself and to shake his hand, but it was so dirty he wouldn't and I couldn't.

  "Alfred Descoyne at your service, sir!" He gestured what might have been a bow at me. "Named after the old Poet Laureate. Or the West Saxon king who let the old lady's corn cakes burn to a crisp. Never quite sure which. Al to my friends and the men here. But Alfred at the house, what with Alfred and Alistair and too many Al's altogether, if you get my drift."

  Behind us we heard Cousin Diana's throaty shout.

  "Her Grace," Alfred said, indifferently nodding back to where Cousin Diana was picking her way toward us through various pieces of equipment. Looking me up and down, Alfred said, "You look fit enough. If ever you want to get your hands blackened, you're welcome to give a hand here. We're behind schedule and always short of help and we pay a good wage." He pronounced schedule as though it had no c, which surprised me. "But as you're on holiday," he went on, "I suspect you'll prefer laying about and all that other la-di-da His Nibs has made into an art."

  "There you are, Alfred." Cousin Diana reached us. "Stop!" she commanded uselessly as he grabbed her with one muscular begrimed arm and pulled her over for a rough kiss. "You two have met, I see," she said, pulling herself away from him and continuing to slap at his exploring hands.

  "What is this?" I asked.

  "Our development," she replied. "Fourteen homes with pools and views."

  I wondered who the "our" referred to.

  "Creosote Crescent," Alfred said, smiling crookedly at his own joke.

  "It's called Chaparral Point!" she corrected.

  "Alistair bought the land and hired the architect, and they worked up the plans," Cousin Diana explained. "But, as usual, once it got going, he left me with all the hard work."

  "She's a regular devil behind that earth mover!" Alfred joked.

  "Don't listen to him!" she said to me. To Alfred: "I couldn't reach him on the phone. Has he been here today?"

  "Rang up once. Didn't have the honor myself."

  They moved away to have a more private conversation, from which I gathered problems existed. Still, I was impressed. My cousin, the troublemaker, was a land development entrepreneur!

  Within minutes of our arrival, the place was emptied of workers. We left too, Diana and I in the station wagon, Alfred—with a torn T-shirt on—following in a pickup. Off the mesa, the setting sun was more apparent. For another fifteen minutes, we drove through patches of low-angled, almost woundingly intense orange sunlight alternating with deep, chilled shadow. It was dark when at length we drove in through a gateway and parked. The sky had turned that electrical blue it sometimes does, which only served to throw into greater relief the thick slabs of front walls draped with unknown blooms, which was all I could make out of the house.

  I was shown to my room—a suite really—off one long corridor, with glass doors opening onto a balcony overlooking the huge backyard, terrace, and pool. I showered, changed, and after wandering about the oddly split-level house, found my way to the large space-age kitchen, where a rotund ink-haired woman—Inez, I gathered—was holding court, simultaneously talking quickly in a thick accent, cooking four or five dishes, and mixing drinks for Cousin Diana, Alfred (somewhat cleaned up if no less scruffy), and to my surprise, me. The three of us dined about an hour later, with candles on the table, in the glass-enclosed dining room overlooking the by now bluely lighted pool, and I was so overexcited and exhausted I began to fall asleep sometime during "Gun-smoke" and allowed myself to be led to bed.

  All in all, I thought in the few seconds before I conked out completely, my visit had begun auspiciously. I liked Cousin Diana, Alfred, Inez, and above all I liked California. But then, I hadn't seen Alistair yet. Nor had I met Dario.

  My eyes flashed open. Russian-green shades allowed slashes of morning sun to slide in. Redwood beams crossed the ceiling. I was in a strange room. Then I remembered: California.

  Outside my window—all sounds seemed mere inches away—I heard a sudden and very loud splash of water.

  I jumped out of bed and leapt to the window—in time to see a slender figure slide underwater through the pool to the other side. It bunched up, then slid underwater in the opposite direction. At that end a head rose out of the water briefly then dunked back in as the youth continued his below-surface laps back and forth, again and again, coming up for air sometimes after one lap, more often after two. I was so enthralled by the rhythm I almost missed seeing the other figure, kneeling among the wide shelf of plants under the dining room, where sneering birds of paradise jostled one another. From my angle all I could make out of the second person was strong, tanned knees in beige shorts, a wide-brimmed sunhat, and large, dirty brown-gloved hands working trowels and shears. I suppose what made me look at the second figure was the fact that instead of working, he was looking so much at the first figure. I decided that the man in the hat and shorts was Dario, the delphinid-boy in the pool my second cousin Alistair.

  Downstairs, Inez waved a big earthenware mug at me.

  "Coffee!" she said. "But stay off my floor. I just washed."

  I was sent out to the terrace, where she handed me the coffee through a little window then leaned on the sill and took my breakfast order as though she were a waitress working one of the new takeout burger stands Cousin Diana and I had passed the day before. I settled myself at the outside table and sipped my coffee, trying to get my bearings.

  Not the easiest task. Like the rest of the house, the terrace was on several not completely distinctive levels, set amid a lush growth of the oddest assortment of flowers and trees: candleflower bushes dwarfed by cypress trees, next to screw cacti, next to stands of tall nearly black iris, next to what looked like giant powder puffs on long stems. Their camouflage, as well as my difficulty in telling one long, almost identical glass-and
-cedar-walled wing from another, or in guessing what each sudden outcropping of granitic wall contained, kept me from ever really discovering the complete plan of the house, even when it was later shown to me.

  I'd been sitting with my coffee for maybe five minutes when the swimmer came up the steps, shaking his wet head like a great dog.

  "Hey! Watch it!" I jumped out of my chair.

  "Sorry!"

  He didn't sound or look sorry. What he looked was tall and tan and confused.

  "Hand me that terry robe, will you."

  It was clear he had no idea who I was. This, strangely enough, pleased me. I sat down. He pulled a pack of Tareytons out and lit one. After exhaling, he was about to say something, then thought better of it and instead inhaled again, looking away.

  I followed his glance down to the nearest level beyond the pool, where the man in shorts and gloves and sunhat was now working in a bed of tubular orange flowers. As his head was down, I couldn't see his face.

  Inez came out of the house with my breakfast on a tray, and with it a second, prescient, mug of coffee for him.

  "Oh!" He suddenly seemed to understand. "I thought you were here to see Mother."

  "This is your cousin from Nueva York," Inez said. "Eat all!" she commanded. "Him!" referring to Alistair, with a Latin shrug, "he eats who knows what? The air, I think."

  When she'd gone, I ate. Alistair smoked and looked away.

  "I remember you differently," he mused. "Smaller or... different!" he concluded vaguely.

  I said we'd both changed, physically at least, and while we could no longer be taken for twins, sitting next to each other, we still shared some features. "Of course, you're taller," I assured him. I noticed a half-moon scar over one eyebrow. "How did you get that?"

  "This?" touching it gently, as though it were still fresh. "Diving off a cliff in Acapulco. Mexico." He added, "Twelve stitches. I needed something anyway. You know, to put on my passport where it says any scars or distinguishing features. A rather high cliff at that," he mused again, puffing distractedly. "You're here for how long?"

  "Don't have a clue."

  "I see. Well, it's a pretty drab scene, as you can tell, what with the Mexican Mama and Alfred Engels and Mother Courage all rushing about trying to be busier and more virtuous than Saint Agatha. Still, I suppose," he said, looking at me directly for the first time, "you're presentable enough to take around. You don't surf, do you?"

  I'd surfed some at Gilgo Beach and told him.

  "Well, that's a point in your favor," he said and was once more distracted, looking at the gardener. Who, surprisingly, in those few minutes of our chat, had managed somehow to move much closer to us, perhaps by leaping the way frogs do, as I hadn't seen him rise once. "Don't pay any attention to Dario. He's sort of brain-damaged. Not to mention fixated upon me!"

  Alistair stubbed out his cigarette determinedly, grabbed a bottle of tanning lotion from the pocket of his robe, and walked down to the lower level of the terrace, a scant few feet away from the gardener. There, he dropped himself facedown onto the warm flagstones and held the bottle out, directly into a stand of gigantic cannas where the gardener had last been seen. He had to shake it and gesture a few more times before a gloved hand reached out through the stalks for the bottle.

  "Pronto, pronto," I heard Alistair mumble.

  The gloves came off, and now two bare, tanned, strong hands emerged from the cannas and began to slather the greasy liquid over Alistair's shoulders and back.

  "Anche le gambe," Alistair said, and the hands moved slightly to smear the backs of Alistair's long legs.

  "Anche cui," Alistair said, pulling down his trunks to expose his buttocks, pinkly white against the otherwise tan back. The hands pulled back as though burnt. I saw the sunhat bob away into the deepest part of the garden.

  "You jerk!" Alistair sang out after him.

  At that instant, the glass doors slid open and a pretty, petite dark-haired girl my age stepped onto the terrace and shouted, "You lose!" She was wearing Ray-Bans, a pale blue sunsuit, and white ankle socks under ivory-colored high-heeled espadrilles.

  Alistair's head popped up. "Park your twat, Judy. I'm busy," he said in a bored tone of voice.

  She seemed unoffended, even amused. She lifted her Ray-Bans to gaze seductively at me, made kissy-mouth, then slinked over and sat so close our legs touched.

  "You must be Mr. Gorgeous Cousin," she cooed, revealing startlingly gray eyes. "I hope you're not a complete pervert like Stairs."

  "That's Judas," Alistair said. "Ignore it and it goes away."

  "Not today, Pooch," she said. "We've got serious slumming to do. Do pull up your bloomers. Everyone's seen that tired old moon!"

  "What slumming?" Alistair asked.

  "You promised to buy me something expensive today."

  "Not an engagement ring, however," he said, standing up and joining us on the terrace. To me he said in a tone of complete incredulity, "She refuses to perform fellatio. She'll die an old maid!"

  "I thought taunting the Dim Sicilian put you in a good mood," she mused. She suddenly screamed at me—I'd stood up with the tray— "Drop it!" I did. "Look at yourself!" I did, expecting to see my fly opened or half the huevos rancheros in my lap. Nothing.

  "Stairs!" she cried in alarm. "Look at the apparel!"

  "The shirt offends the eyes," he agreed darkly. "The trousers cry out betrayal! Don't you have shorts? And those sneakers! Complete pigs! Cannot be destroyed quickly enough!"

  "Cousin-kins," she said and cuddled up to me, "you'll never attract an anilinguist dressed like an aging concierge. Stairs, we simply can't let him out in public like this!"

  They each grabbed an arm and dragged me up to my room where, over my protests, Alistair stripped me down to my BVDs while they hunted though my clothing for something suitable. Only one T-shirt— "White and honest," Alistair declared—and a pair of close-fitting swim trunks were deemed "at all usable"; the rest were dropped in a corner.

  "Put on the suit," Judy said. "Oh, don't be gauche, darling. I've seen more dick than you've got ingrown hair. Nice butt," she concluded. "Must be genetic. Stairs swears great and binding oaths on his buttocks."

  I was dragged to Alistair's suite and into his dressing room, where they rummaged through his castaways—most of the clothing looking unworn to me—until an outfit was put together for me that wouldn't too much offend their sensibilities. Alistair then dressed, and in minutes we were outside, headed for her sky-blue Corvette, when I remembered my wallet in my room.

  Coming downstairs, I saw Inez talking on the phone and wondered whether I should tell her I was going out. She seemed busy, so I headed for the front door. I opened it directly into the approaching figure of the mysterious gardener. He stopped. I stopped.

  I'd seen so little of him before that I must have gaped openmouthed a long time. I was amazed that he wasn't the gargoyle I'd expected from all of Alistair's talk about him, but instead strikingly handsome, with a face as perfect as though it had been sculpted, with an unblemished tan, long, almond-shaped gray eyes, the entire astonishment framed by exquisite ringlets of jet-black curls.

  "Signore," he finally said, bowing slightly.

  Confounded by the unexpected sight of him, moved and stirred in some way I didn't at all understand, simultaneously frightened by my confusion, completely unable to reply, I managed to edge my way around him and stumble out to the gravel driveway, where Alistair gestured for me to hop on the back.

  "Ciao, Dario," he yelled blithely as we tore off through a squall of flying gravel.

  Alistair never did buy Judy anything expensive that day. As we charged onto Beverly Drive, headed toward Sunset, she spotted two convertibles filled with teenagers, parked side by side blocking traffic. Their occupants confabbed excitedly with Judy and Alistair, and it was decided that we should all go to the beach. Judy turned right and began a long chase through Westwood and Bel Air, across the San Diego Freeway—still not yet fully planted—to where Su
nset Boulevard became higher and ever more twisting, through a section named Pacific Palisades, from which I could finally see the surf, then down to the ocean itself and along the shore, through towns with odd names like Malibu, until we'd lost the other cars, then found them together, parked at a decrepit open-window restaurant hangout that looked more like a gas station.

  "We're this close," Alistair shouted at Judy. "Might as well!"

  Without asking what he meant, Judy gunned the Vette past the restaurant, despite shouts from the others who'd seen us. Five minutes later, we were coasting around the immense curve of beach hugging the exposed yellow flank of mountain cliff, passing little but an occasional fishing-tackle-and-bait shop. The omnipresent mountain cliffs gave way suddenly, and I could see a dry valley widen diagonally to the road and sand. A few shops and several cottages were scattered throughout the dale; more cluttered the beach. Tiny road signs successively announced that rock slides, mud slides, and another twenty miles of curving road lay ahead.

  "Topanga," Alistair shouted over the rush of wind.

  Driving past the cottages, Judy slowed down unaccountably and stopped.

  "Last stop! All out!" she shouted. "No transfers!"

  I followed as they slogged through the sand toward a distant edifice, a barely standing shack nearest the tide line of all the houses on the beach, its unevenly formed roof shaded by trellises that looked as though they supported not only surprisingly large blooms of purple morning glory but the house itself. As we came closer, Alistair and Judy veered toward the ocean side, where we were greeted by an almost solid fence composed of a score of used surfboards roughly roped together, with an occasional rubber raft stuffed between. A large, sand-and wind-whittled sign had been hung across two boards, hand-painted to read "Keep Out!—Danger!—Mad Woman Within!"

  As though in instant confirmation, as we reached the only open side of the place, we heard a female voice shouting—or was it singing?—over loud pop music inside.