“Couldn’t make it work. Plus USC has offered me a scholarship.”
“That’s wonderful! Congratulations. We should toast it. Julia?”
‘To Magda!’
“To Magda, but here’s the kicker: the scholarship was $50,000; the fees are, wait for it, $58,000.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I should also add, in my wife’s defense, she’s actually training to be a landscape gardener NOT a landscaper: the former dealing with urban planning and environmental issues and so forth, the latter blowing leaves off your lawn.”
“Maybe the four of us should all go into business. A team of artists turned landscape gardeners. We could buy a pickup.”
“Harry, let him finish.”
“Sorry.”
“So, OK, where was I? So we looked at our finances and figured we’d be better off taking the debt and moving out here. Didn’t we, honey?”
“Do you miss New York?”
“Me? Oh sure. Terribly. But Zachary needs to be out here. Tell them about the pilot, Zachary.”
“Oh, a series I was attached to just got green-lit after the pilot. It’s a recurring role.”
“Oh, well done, Zack!”
“Thanks, honey. It’s a pain in the ass though. The network aren’t going to use me until the second episode. Who watches the second episode? And I’m going to miss all that camaraderie of the first day on set.”
“Maybe you should just turn up. Announce yourself: Hi. I’m Zack. I’m not on until episode two but I just wanted to touch base.”
“Harry.”
“What?”
“He’s got a point. What about you, sweetheart? How are things looking?”
“Why do you think I’m here? No one is making movies in London. The industry is on its knees. I mean even when it was going full pelt, at its height, we were still only making five or six a year. There are massive financial constraints now. Financiers are less willing to invest in anything, no matter how commercial the idea is. And of course, on top of that much less, if any, commitment to serious cinema. Government subsidies have dried up. This recession back home looks like it’s going to be a double-dip . . .”
“Would anyone like to go for coffee after the lecture?”
“Notice the silence of our guests, Harry? That wasn’t funny.”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway. Not great is the answer. But we got sidetracked. Where were we?”
“Tartuffe.”
“So it’s been a roller coaster from there. On and off. Off and on. But we’re still riding it, aren’t we, baby?”
“All the way.”
“How old were you when you got married?”
“Twenty-four.”
“That’s young.”
“Yeah well we’d been kinda shilly-shallying back and forth for years. After a year apart—where I badly sowed my wild oats across the lesser repertory theaters of the Eastern seaboard—we’d hooked up again, we were both living in Brooklyn just a few streets apart at the time. Famously, this is the period of our life when Magda looked me straight in the eye one night after making love and told me she could never love me like I loved her.”
“Ouch.”
“I know. Julia would never say that to you, right?”
“She would probably say ‘I could never love you like I love myself.’”
“Harry!”
“Sorry, darling, I was kidding.”
“I want a fag.”
“Baby, we’ve quit.”
“Oh bugger off.”
“So, wait, back to the story: she tells you that and . . .”
“And I say, ‘OK. OK.’ Maybe I’ll call you sometime. I go away, take a job in Boston—playing a workman in Vanya at the Shubert—for a couple of months. And I do a lot of growing up. So when I get back to town I give her a call.”
“I hadn’t heard from him but he was still kind of on my radar. And you know what, when the phone rang, I’d just that minute hung up from a conversation with a girlfriend who’d been asking about him. It was eerie.”
“So I call her. And we talk. And it’s nice. So nice. I say look, it just doesn’t feel as good with anybody else. Simple as that.”
“Wow.”
“However . . .”
“You’ll notice, Harry, that there’s always a however with Zack.”
“However, there’s the small matter of the girl I’m dating at the time. Complicated by the fact she is also my co-lead in a new two-hander I’m doing at the Schoenfeld. You know it, Julia, it used to be the Plymouth.”
“I went along to watch one night. Afterwards when we were sitting together in the empty theater, I said, ‘Zachary, you have to get rid of her.’”
“What, like, bump her off ?”
“I wish, Harry. It was harder than that.”
“We’re out of wine. I’m going to go to 7-Eleven. Harry, do you want to come with?”
“Why don’t we all go? We can’t really leave our guests here alone.”
“Hey, I’m game. We stand more chance of survival if we move in a pack.”
“Yes, let’s all go. Fun!”
“Keys. You got the keys, Harry?”
“Check.”
“Did you see that guy’s face in the elevator! Priceless. He sounded just like my grandpa.”
“And that woman he was with! She looked pissed. Bad date. How old do you think he was?”
“Sixty-four? Sixty-five?”
“He looked like he knew what he was doing.”
“You think, Zack? He reminded me of that extra from our show, after we transferred. What was his name?”
“I know who you mean. Same smile. But hey, at least he’d got her up to his apartment.”
“But they were going down.”
“He’s probably still getting over the divorce. These things take time.”
“Zachary, that’s cruel. Julia! Where did you get that?”
“A bloke in the 7-Eleven.”
“Good work! Need a light?”
“I’ll use the car lighter. Zack, finish your story.”
“Where was I?”
“You were about to murder an actress.”
“Thanks, Harry. Shall we open one of these?”
“I’ll do it. Carry on with the story.”
“Ain’t much to say. I rode out a couple of difficult weeks at the theater. All our friends were like, ‘so when are you guys getting married then?’ And I look at her, and I’m like, so shall we?”
“And I tell him that I don’t see why not.”
“And that was that. Nuptial bliss ever since.”
“And now the big move West.”
“I know, exciting times for Zachary and Magda. Right, honey?”
“You said it.”
“So, Zack, are you moved in yet to the new place?”
“No, sweetheart, we’ve been staying with friends in Eagle Rock. The move proper is next weekend.”
“My mom is driving Zachary’s old car across from Minneapolis.”
“No!”
“Yes. This’ll be Wanda’s first time in LA. Ever.”
“Eighty hours cross-country with only her Isley Brothers cassettes for company.”
“That’s incredible. Has the music stopped? Put something on, Harry.”
“I’m drunk.”
“Hey Harry, you got any M. J. on that thing?”
“Sure.”
“You got Thriller?”
“Yeah, we’ve got Thriller.”
“OH, MY GOD! THAT IS HILARIOUS!”
“Where did you guys learn to do that?”
“Middle school. Her zombie moves are unreal, right?”
“That’s brilliant. You ever hit hard times you can take that on tour.”
“A Thriller Re-Enactment Troupe.”
“You know it, sister. Hey, where’s your restroom? I mean your toy-let.”
“It’s on the left.”
“Is she OK?”
“
I think she’s just stretching, Harry.”
“Maria Callas does that to people.”
“Turn it up a bit. Look . . .”
“Christ, is she, is she doing . . . ballet?”
“Shhhhh! Watch . . .”
“She’s really, really . . .”
“Good.”
“It’s beautiful. Completely . . . beautiful.”
“What I miss? Ah, Magda’s doin’ the ballet.”
“Zack! She’s incredible.”
“I’m completely mesmerized.”
“Harry, give me a hand moving this—what do you call this?”
“A banquette.”
“A bonk-ette. Love it. Help me move it. She needs more space.”
“She’s incredible.”
“Harry, turn it up. OK, Magda, honey, do it again, from the top.”
Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to Sarah Chalfant and Alba Ziegler-Bailey at the Wylie Agency for their continued support. And to Alexandra Pringle at Bloomsbury and Jill Bialosky at W. W. Norton & Company for guiding this book to life. Thanks also to Alice Eve, Heather and Neal Callow, Tom Bannister and Eva Chen for showing me various aspects of California in their time. To early readers and improvers Andrew Motion, Will Goodlad, and Edmund Gordon. And to American friends David Shook and Zinzi Clemmons for casting their scrupulous eyes over these stories. Special thanks are due to William Boyd, who suggested it might be an idea to write a whole book of stories about Los Angeles.
Note on the Author
ADAM O’RIORDAN was born in Manchester in 1982 and read English at Oxford University. In 2008 O’Riordan became the youngest Writer in Residence at The Wordsworth Trust, the center for British Romanticism. His first collection of poetry, In the Flesh, won a Somerset Maugham Award in 2011. He is academic director of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. The Burning Ground is his first collection of short stories.
adamoriordan.com
@oriordanadam
A Note on the Type
The text of the print version of this book is set in Bembo, which was first used in 1495 by the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius for Cardinal Bembo’s De Aetna. The original types were cut for Manutius by Francesco Griffo. Bembo was one of the types used by Claude Garamond (1480–1561) as a model for his Romain de l’Université, and so it was a forerunner of what became the standard European type for the following two centuries. Its modern form follows the original types and was designed for Monotype in 1929.
Copyright © 2017 by Adam O’Riordan
First American Edition 2017
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: O’Riordan, Adam, 1982–, author.
Title: The burning ground / Adam O’Riordan.
Description: First American edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company,
[2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016059314 | ISBN 9780393239553 (hardcover)
Classification: LCC PR6065.R684 A6 2017 | DDC 823/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016059314
ISBN 978-0-393-63457-0 (e-book)
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The Burning Ground Page 13