by Iyer, Pico
“Now I know why Alex has been so busy,” he said, though nothing came back from his friend but a tight smile.
“This must be the friend you’ve been telling me about,” said Sophie, not ready to be deterred by her companion’s silence. “The one who keeps you sane.”
“Of course,” said Alex strangely. The pressed jeans, the cashmere scarf, the leather jacket were all as they always were; but the figure inside them seemed fraudulent somehow, as if he’d got into the wrong self today.
“You’re just visiting?” he asked the girl.
“For my vacations. Six weeks.”
“And you’re friends from France, I take it.”
“From USC,” she said, looking sharply up at Alex as if he’d let her down. “Alejandro must have told you.”
“He did, of course,” he said, recovering too late, as always. “The European girl who was keeping him from his studies.”
“No,” she said. “That was the one before me.” She skipped around misunderstandings as gaily as a girl in a sunlit meadow. “What was her name, Alejandro? The one before?”
Their friend said nothing.
“From Denmark. Catrina. Candida.”
“Camilla?” he tried, and she rewarded him with a smile, poking Alex in the ribs for his silence. “Camilla, yes. She was the one before me.”
“It looks like John is busy,” said Alex. “I think we should let him go.”
“Of course,” she said, popping forwards, and kissing him lightly on each cheek.
“I hope you enjoy your stay here.”
“I will,” she said. “Ciao.” And, hooking Alex by the arm, led him off to their next adventure.
He walked towards Chaucer’s and then, when they were out of sight, turned back and went to the car. But when he got in, he went nowhere. Whenever they’d talked about her, Alex had seemed to know everything: the Latin philosopher of love, as he’d implied. “You sound like you’re in love with her poignancy, not her.” “You can’t make yourself weak for a picture of a tiger.” But he’d never mentioned the picture of the tiger, he thought now; he’d never betray her in that way.
He drove home, hardly watching for the police as he accelerated, and, as soon as he got in, went to the desk and began making notes. It was like the time Sefadhi had said something about how he couldn’t explain the poems until he’d decided whether they were addressing a “mystery” or a “Mystery,” and suddenly he’d seen everything he thought he knew transformed. Now, going back over their conversations, he wondered what Alex had really been talking about when he spoke of the “sad and lonely victim of New World possibility.” Or the time when he’d suddenly asked him what he thought of the coming star Gwyneth Paltrow, in the new Jane Austen movie.
“It’s nothing,” his friend had said on Halloween—it must have been two years before, the waitresses at Houlihan’s dressed like Marilyn Monroe, with red tails on their backs, while the men who were drinking were got up like vampires or ghouls. “I thought I saw something there, but I was wrong.” And yet the way he’d said it suggested that he hadn’t been wrong so much as wronged; he’d given up the opportunity only once it had passed him by.
Every time she’d said she was on her way back to Los Angeles, he thought now, she might have been driving only a few blocks away, to Embarcadero; and the time Alex had called to invite him to a movie— the first night she was due to visit: maybe it had been a test of some kind (devised by him, or her, or both of them?). In private, he decided crazily, they discussed their common English friend in Spanish.
After a long while, he picked up the phone, and began to dial his friend’s number, and then he saw Sophie on the couch, reaching out a long, tanned, slender arm to answer, and put the phone down again. He picked up a piece of paper and began writing a letter to her, and then wondered what it was he was really saying. “You can’t take a leap of faith by degrees.” It had been he who had said that to her (over and over).
He picked up the phone again, to call her, and then, without planning to, or knowing what he was doing, he dialed a somewhat longer number, one he hadn’t known he had by heart, and was rewarded with a strange, old-fashioned jingle, and then a bleary voice, clearly not happy to be disturbed.
“Hello,” said a woman’s voice, and he saw eyes closed, a darkened room.
“Hello,” he said. “I realize it’s the middle of the night there, and this is probably the last voice you expected to hear. . . .”
“What time is it? Where are you?”
“It’s late afternoon; I’m here in California. I’m sorry to wake you; I was sure your answering machine would be getting rid of me.”
“Then why call in the middle of the night? Some of us have jobs to go to, you know.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll call back later if you like.”
“I’d not like, frankly. Having been got up in the dead of night, I’d much rather you didn’t.”
He felt reassured in some way: the almost instantaneous alertness, the empty bed beside her, the refusal to let him off too easily. “Anyway, what is it? Why are you calling?”
“I wanted to wish you a happy New Year. And to thank you for your letter; it meant a lot to me. I tried to call from Heathrow, a couple of times, but both times I wasn’t sure you’d be happy to hear from me.”
“What makes you think differently now?”
“Nothing. In fact, I have good reason to think I was right. I suppose—I suppose I just wanted to hear your voice again. And I wanted to tell you: I did go to the Taj, just as you told me to. You were right.”
“You did? You went there?” Something softened in her voice, and he came closer to the person he knew, as if she’d opened the door at least, and let him into the hallway.
“A few days ago. It was amazing.”
“You saw the vault, the place down the steps?”
“I saw it all. Just as you told me to.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d remember.”
“I always did remember the wrong things.”
“Yes. I do seem to recall that.” It felt now as if he were back in the living room, though for a moment she’d thought of leading him down the hall. “How’s California after all this time?”
“I don’t know,” he said, thinking of the person who’d come to stand for the orphaned state around her. “Complicated, I suppose.”
“But that’s what you wanted!”
“I suppose so. But it’s easier to imagine than actually to meet.” There was no sound at the other end. “You get to Paradise, and you begin to think it’s probably the last place in the world where humans can actually live.”
“I see.” She’d never been very impressed by his moments of wisdom. “You’re not getting all religious, are you? Nicki was a bit concerned.”
“The opposite.”
“What’s the opposite of religious?”
“More sure of what I don’t know. More clueless.”
“I see.” She was wide awake now, and he remembered the person who’d always told him he had to break free of England if he was ever going to put his family behind him. “Is there a significant other in this ambiguous Paradise?”
“I think there is.”
“ ‘Think there is.’ Surely you can do better than that, Johno?”
“Yes. There is, for now.”
“This isn’t some poet who’s been dead for a million years?”
“Hardly. It’d probably be easier if it were.”
“I’m sure.” And then something tender came into her voice again, and he felt her on the verge of cracking: one more sentence, and she’d cry. “Well, do wish her well for me. And tell her she’s got her work cut out for her.”
“I think she knows that.”
“And, Johno”—very close again, somehow—“don’t let her go, will you?” So close now that she was at his side, and they didn’t know what to do. “Set the double negatives aside for a moment, and hang on to her as if your life depende
d on it. Or hers did, at any rate.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.” He stopped talking, but she said nothing to fill the silence.
“How about you? Who’s suffering in your life?”
“Me, mostly. Nothing ever changes; I just get better at whingeing about it.”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
“Myself, in the mirror, for the most part. Not a very pretty sight. I’m thinking of putting myself out to pasture one of these days.”
“Don’t do that.”
“I’ll try not to. But—I wish you had called, whenever it was you were going to. It would probably have been the only call I got that day.” She stopped, as if she’d stepped too close, and he heard nothing else; she’d never be as undefended as Camilla was—England didn’t work like that. But the pageant that kept on playing out in public, in the streets, wasn’t always much help when you were alone at night in your room.
“Anyway, give me a call now and then, if you’re so moved. Preferably not at one a.m.”
“I will.”
“And don’t turn into Christopher Isherwood, if you can help it.”
“I think it’s Aldous Huxley you mean. He’s the one who was partially blind.
She broke into a quick, unexpected laugh, and he was reminded of how it had always been the ultimate reward with her: she lived so far from politeness with him that every rough guffaw felt earned.
“I hope Miss Right can remain Miss All Right for a while.”
“Thank you. I hope you can find the happiness you deserve. Truly.”
“That’s sweet of you. Thanks.”
Then the awkward goodbyes and he was alone again, the disorientations of the day seeming, for the moment, to be part of another universe.
He worked late into the night, and did what he’d always done when he’d felt thrown off: treated his life as if it were an assignment, which he could put right as he might the next day’s homework. He pulled out the star chart he’d drawn before, after the unexpected drink on the beach with Sefadhi, and tried to revise it to match what he knew now. Alex ought to be in the diagram, too, he thought, though he didn’t know whether to put him in the part that was linked to Kristina, and so Khalil and all the others. And then he tried to remember whether Alex had ever said anything about Sefadhi, or Sefadhi about Alex. How did this begin to account for her sudden appearances in Santa Barbara—at the lecture, originally, and in Kristina’s house the first day? And why had Alex asked so searchingly about Kristina after the stray meeting in the seminar?
It was long after eleven o’clock by the time he’d summoned the resolve to pick up the phone again, and, not knowing what moved him—was he expecting her to be there, or not to be?—he dialed the number that, months before, had led to the sleepy man, apparently lying by her side. “Hello,” said the wary voice at the other end, small and distant, and when she heard his voice, she lit up in a moment, as if she’d thrown the windows open to celebrate a new year.
“It’s you! I was hoping and hoping you would call. I wanted to call myself, but then I thought it might be too late.”
He was chastened. “What’s up?”
“I’m plotting. But I can’t tell you, because you’re the victim!”
“The victim?”
“Tomorrow. For your birthday. I’ve been working on a surprise for you. Not a complete surprise, now that you know about it, but I’m planning to abduct you.”
“My birthday,” he said foolishly: he’d stepped so far outside of time, or anything that was real, that he’d lost track of the day. It was almost a reassurance now, that he could forget not just other people’s milestones but his own.
“You get to be my slave,” she said. She’d heard the wariness in his voice, and decided not to be cowed by it. In fact, she was doing what he’d been telling her to all along—throw her reservations to the wind.
“So what do I do? How long does the abduction last?”
“As long as you’ll let it. If I told you any more, it wouldn’t be a surprise.” Then, obviously realizing that if she didn’t tell him more he’d bring along Sefadhi and the poems, she said, “Just pack enough to last you two or three days. I’ll be there at three o’clock.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“Thank you,” she said, more quietly at the other end, “for giving me the chance.”
He put a few things in his carry-on, and waited for her the next day on the couch. He still had the sense of having come loose, somehow, so he was weightless: heady and off the ground, unable to make out distances or have any sense of solid earth beneath his feet. He’d talked and talked about the “empty room” that lies at the heart of Sufi thinking, the place outside of time and space where something deeper than the personal comes forth; but he’d never expected to step into even a facsimile of it. He’d meant to be meeting Dick this morning, for coffee, and he, the one who always planned things so meticulously, had forgotten to show up: bits of his life were flying away like papers on the desk on a blustery morning when the window was left open.
It was just before four when she finally knocked, but he hadn’t noticed the time; when he opened the door, it was to see a figure ready for a Brontë novel: a high-collared black coat he’d never seen on her before, a black dress that showed off the gold hair she’d loosened, high black suede boots, and hoop earrings so unlike what she usually wore, it was like a costume from onstage. He thought of the strange meeting with Alejandro, and then remembered: “Sorry: it’s been a long time since I was intimate with anyone.”
“I thought you’d never come.”
“And I thought I’d be here on time. So we’re even.” Nothing would unsettle her today, she was saying. “Compromised, in fact.” And the play on words was a way of saying she’d try to be her most guileless and unguarded self today.
“I wish you’d given me a call.”
“Then I’d have been even later.” As if she were the one with the logic. “Anyway, I’m in charge, remember? Anything I say, you’ve got to do.” She looked back at him, and he saw something pleading, just behind the bravado. The girl he loved was standing on his doorstep before him, begging to be given a last chance; the girl he distrusted was only in his head. He followed her out to the lumbering white vehicle and she wrestled for a few moments with the ignition, turning the key back and forth until the great animal sputtered into reluctant life. No hands on the odometer, he noticed; the gas tank could be empty or it could be full.
They took the coastal road south, the colors flamboyant above the gusty ocean, and the light began to fail by the time they passed into Malibu. The “magic hour” was always the bittersweet time in California: a last great flare of gold, and then the darkness fell around them.
She cut across the mountains to the clotted, choking freeway, and they joined the great procession of cars shuddering towards the bowl of lights coming to life in the brownish air. The lights almost infernal through the haze—before it was truly night—so one could imagine oneself’s entering some Dantean procession.
“You’re taking me to the place you’re most afraid of in the world.”
“I’ve been waiting for this forever.”
“It can’t be for . . .” and then he stopped, because it could.
“I really hope you’ve never seen this before.” He imagined, for some reason, someone stringing her house with Christmas lights and setting up a small tree with an angel on the top, for a holiday she’d be celebrating alone. It wasn’t the poignancy, he’d told Alex months before; it was the hope that sat in the middle of it, refusing to go away. To turn away from hope is to commit a kind of sin.
She turned off the main road again, to get away from the congestion, and they followed a winding canyon, past hippie shacks and secessionist stores, rainbow flags flying from little grocery stores and strings of fairy lights coming to them through the trees, until they descended into Beverly Hills. Even in the near dark the quiet residential streets were immaculate, their flowerbeds laid
out in front of mock-Arabian castles, and reindeer gallivanting across perfect lawns. People told themselves they could stage any drama they liked here, if they had the money, but the brown earth, the constant droughts, suggested something different.
She made a sharp left—they were very close to where the Iranian bookdealers were—and they found themselves in a small, neglected parking lot.
“Where are we?”
“We’re here,” she said. “We’ve arrived.”
“Wonderful,” he said, looking around in the dark. “Just what I’ve always wanted for my birthday.”
There were only a few cars around them on the asphalt—the overall impression was of emptiness—and at the far end was what looked to be a church. One of the large, serious Californian places of worship that he could never imagine being used for its original purpose. Brick, with stained-glass windows, a red door at the side, and, at the top of a few steps, in front, a ceremonial black door.
“You still won’t tell me where we are?”
“You’ll see soon enough. I really hope you like it.” He thought, as she pulled at the handle and pushed her weight against the door to open it, of the time he’d asked her to read him something—he wanted to see what she looked like as an actress—and she’d chosen a play about a woman in World War I telling her young daughter that the little girl’s father would be back soon, though he wouldn’t. All she needed, he’d thought then, was someone to take care of, and she’d emerge from her dark maze without even knowing she’d left home.
“I hope there’s still room in the front. They said that’s where it’s best.”
He followed her up to the entrance, and saw that it was a Unitarian church they were entering. On a black bulletin board, which faced the street, someone had put up a quote in white letters: “Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. —Rainer Maria Rilke.”
Inside the hall, they were on the far side of the world. Although there was nothing outside to suggest it, the interior, faintly lit, was done up like a Moorish castle, gold and blue and silver. Inscriptions from the Quran ran up and down the pillars between the chairs and covered the majority of the walls, so that it felt as if the whole building were pulsing with prayer. At the top of what must once have been the space above the altar, someone had painted a high blue vault, with gold stars on it, so one could imagine oneself looking up into desert skies. A fountain played unceasingly on one side of the aisle, and on the other, black curtains had been set up, perhaps to veil whatever had been there before.