The Association

by Bentley Little

  He'd assumed at first that the offer had been made as a result of Kenny Tolkin putting in that "good word" for him, but further questioning of his agent had revealed that the artistic consultant had not been involved at all, that the impetus had come from the movie studio, where a midlevel executive had read the book on vacation, liked it, and decided to option it.

  Still, he'd wanted to run this by Kenny, who had much more experience dealing with Hollywood than he did and who might be able to offer him some pointers or let him know which minefields to avoid. He'd written down the name of the executive as well as the studio agent in charge, wanting to see if Kenny knew them or could tell him anything about them.

  He'd called Frank to get Kenny's phone number and was shocked when an obviously angry Frank said that the artistic consultant had left Bonita Vista suddenly and would not be coming back. It turned out that he had not owned the house in which he'd been staying, that for the past two years he'd been illegally camping in a home purchased by an out-of-state property owner for investment. Indications were that he had no Hollywood or music industry contacts, that he was a con man who had pulled similar stunts in other states and who had successfully scammed several Bonita Vista residents before disappearing.

  Barry carried his suitcase up to the living room, where Maureen was waiting. She smiled at him and held up crossed fingers. "Good luck."

  "I shouldn't need any. I think it's a done deal."

  "Still." She kissed him, put her arms around his neck. "Drive carefully. Call me from the airport when you get there. And call me when you land."

  "I will." He smiled.

  "You know I worry."

  "Are you sure you don't want to come? It's only overnight."

  She shook her head. "If it was longer, maybe. But just overnight, it's a waste of money."

  "Money?" He grinned. "I don't think that's really a problem anymore."

  "Don't spend it before you get it."

  "Spoken like a true accountant."

  Maureen glanced at the clock. "You'd better get going. It's at least a two-hour drive to Salt Lake."

  Barry put his arms around her, held her close, and kissed her. "I love you," he said.

  She smiled, kissed him back. "I love you, too."

  The drive up to Salt Lake City seemed long. Once he got through the mountains and onto Interstate IS, the landscape remained unchanged for over a hundred miles: farmland to the left, foothills to the right.

  Thank God for tapes. There were no decent radio stations, and he popped in a series of cassettes he'd made from various albums and CDs, keeping awake and alert by listening to tunes.

  He found himself wondering if he could live off the royalties and resales of what he'd already written should it come down to that. He hadn't typed a single word on his new novel for the past two weeks, and he honestly did not see himself meeting the deadline. He wondered if he would be able to finish the book at all. It would be one thing if he was only stuck on this novel, but he had no other ideas either, and he had not even been able to crank out a short story.

  This movie deal was a windfall, and if he could just sell one more book to Hollywood, they'd be able to pay off the house and live quite comfortably here in Utah for the next decade. Particularly if Maureen's client list kept growing.

  The idea that he was dried up, that his creative life was over, scared the living hell out of him. He'd never wanted to do anything other than write, didn't know how to do anything other than write, and if that was taken away from him... He prayed this was just a temporary setback.

  Salt Lake City was nothing like he'd expected. He'd never been there before, had only seen photos in magazines and on postcards, pictures of quaint Victorian homes and a modern downtown backed by snowcapped peaks, but the highway passed by mile after mile of rusty train yards and ugly industrial buildings. The sight depressed him, and he was grateful for the clean, generic modernity of the airport.

  He barely had enough time to make the promised call to Maureen and buy some cheapo flight insurance before the boarding call for his flight.

  He got on the plane, settled into his seat, and pulled out a book to read from his carryon bag. Reading made the time go by faster, kept him from worrying about crashes and accidents and the possibility of a fiery death, and it usually served to stave off unwanted conversations with his aisle mate. Maureen always suggested bringing one of his own books to read, hyping himself that way, but he couldn't bring himself to be so shameless. Besides, the last thing he wanted to do was reread one of his novels. After writing it, proofreading it, going over the typeset version, and checking the galleys, he was pretty well sick of a book by the time it hit the shelves.

  The trip was uneventful, the young woman in the seat next to him seemed to be as loath to talk as he was, and before he knew it the plane was taxiing down the runway at LAX.

  X.

  He'd always wondered where the hell that had come from. The official name was Los Angeles International Airport. How the letter X had come to stand for the word International was a complete mystery to him. Of course, it also seemed to stand for Christ, since a lot of people abbreviated Christmas as Xmas. And the Christ connection held on the highway, where road signs shortened the word Crossing to Xing.

  None of it made any sense.

  The rental car he'd ordered was ready and waiting for him, and he gave Maureen a quick call to let her know he'd landed safely while someone brought the vehicle around. Five minutes later, he was out of the airport and on the street, driving. He cranked up the air-conditioning and turned the radio to his favorite station.

  Despite the smoggy skies, despite the traffic from the airport, despite the homeless guys on the street corners, it felt good to be back, and he was surprised to discover that he actually missed southern California. Next to him at the stoplight, a short-haired blond man in a red convertible had his car stereo up so high that Barry could hear the thumping of bass over the sound of his own air conditioner and radio, the yuppie apparently attempting to impress the drivers around him by playing music loudly.

  Ah, Los Angeles.

  It felt as though he'd been gone for years, not months, and he took the 405 to Wilshire Boulevard, intending to drive surface streets to see what, if anything, had changed in his absence. There was still an hour and a half to go before he was supposed to meet his agent for an early dinner, and although he hadn't planned on it, he stopped off at his favorite used-record store. The vinyl section had shrunk a little, the CD section had grown, but there were aisles and aisles of both, and he happily sorted through the albums, picking up an armful before deciding that it was time to get going.

  He headed east down Wilshire, tried to figure out how long it would take to get from L.A. to Brea. He'd only be here overnight, but he'd arranged to meet his friends for drinks. The dinner with his agent probably wouldn't take more than an hour or so, and there'd be plenty of time remaining to hang and catch up on gossip.

  Lindsay White was waiting for him at Canter's on Fairfax, their traditional rendezvous point. As usual, there were tables full of old men from the neighborhood as well as assorted Hollywood wannabes and use tabes Lindsay was ensconced in a corner booth, and she waved him over as he crossed the room. He'd barely had time to sit down when, in her usual overassertive manner, she motioned for a waitress with an imperial flick of her wrist and snap of her fingers. "The service here is still slow as molasses," she said as the waitress walked up, "so I

  already ordered. Order what you want and then we'll talk."

  He hadn't had time to even look at the menu, but he ordered a pastrami sandwich and an iced tea--the same thing he'd had the last time they'd met here.

  The waitress left and Lindsay leaned across the table, patting his hand. "How are you, Barry? How've you been out there in the heartland?"

  "Fine," he said.

  "That's great," she told him before he could say another word.

  She spent the next fifteen minutes or so trying to impres
s him, as she always did, and he gamely feigned interest in her newest trendy passion. She was what Maureen called a "Miramax intellectual," one of those people who wasn't particularly knowledgeable or well read but who followed the cultural trends generated by art-house films: reading Janet Frame after seeing An Angel at My Table, pretending to be an admirer of Pablo Neruda after viewing Il Postino , referencing Jane Austen in conversation after seeing the movies rather than reading the books. It was a tactic that worked well these days in polite society, this false familiarity with culture, although it never failed to set his teeth on edge, and it annoyed Maureen to the extent that she made a conscious effort to avoid casual conversation with Lindsay.

  When the food came and they finally got around to business, the news was not good.

  "I expected to have contracts for you to sign," Lindsay admitted.

  "But... there've been complications since we last spoke. To be honest, I think the deal might've fallen through. I haven't given up hope,"

  she added quickly. "We still might be able to pull this off. But there's been a changeover at the studio, and you know how these things work. Anything associated with the old regime, the previous administration, is automatically suspect. Right now, that means us.

  But I hope to call a meeting with one of the development execs early next week and see if we can work something out. The Friend is a very salable property, a very shoo table property, and I have no doubt that once I can divorce it from the context in which it was rejected, I'll be able to make them see that."

  Lindsay tried to smile. "Want any dessert?"

  It was still light out when he emerged from the restaurant, and Barry hurried over to his car, driving straight down Fairfax to the freeway in an effort to beat the after work traffic out to Orange County.

  He was ahead of the game for a while, but he got bogged down in rush-hour traffic on the Santa Ana Freeway, and he took surface streets from Santa Fe Springs on, avoiding the areas where he knew they were doing highway construction, the challenges of southern California driving serving to keep his mind off Lindsay's disappointing news.

  Once in Brea, he drove through his old neighborhood on an impulse. The street and sidewalks were carpeted with purple jacaranda flowers, the arching tree branches above having lost their blooms and given themselves over to summer leaves. Sunset had turned the smog a bright orange color, and he felt a slight twinge of nostalgia for California life.

  And for a neighborhood without a homeowners' association.

  Jeremy, Chuck, and Dylan were already waiting for him in the parking lot outside Minderbinder's , a hangout from their college days at UC Brea. Minderbinder's was still a college hangout, and the three of them were greeted with suspicion if not hostility as they commandeered a table near the entrance.

  "Guess we look older than we are," Dylan said.

  "No," Chuck told him. "You feel younger than you are."

  "I know that's supposed to be a dig, but doesn't a youthful attitude help promote longer life?"

  "The benefits of immaturity have yet to be proven."

  A bored-looking waitress showed up, and they ordered beers all around.

  "It's on him," Dylan said, pointing at Barry. "He's a rich and famous writer. Just sold one of his books to Hollywood."

  The waitress suddenly seemed a little less bored. She smiled at Barry.

  "Celebrating?"

  "No."

  "Congratulations anyway." She walked away with an exaggerated swing of her hips, and Dylan burst out laughing He waited until she'd passed out of earshot. "She's yours for the taking, bud."

  "I told you, the movie deal fell through."

  "She doesn't know that. Besides, what good's fame and fortune if you can't use it to get a little strange?"

  "I'll tell Mo you said that."

  "So how's life in the wilds?" Jeremy asked.

  "It's not so wild after all."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah." He started describing the imposed restrictions and regimented rules of the homeowners' association. Halfway through, the waitress returned with their drinks, bending far enough over to show him her breasts as she placed his beer on the table, and he pointedly ignored her.

  "Now they've put up a guard shack and a new gate to keep out the riffraff. I have to check in and out with this uniformed guard if I

  want to leave or enter my own neighborhood."

  Chuck laughed. "No shit?"

  "No shit."

  "Are you supposed to tip him?" Dylan asked. "I mean at Christmastime and stuff. I've heard that about doormen and things in New York. Maybe this is the same situation."

  "I don't know," Barry admitted. "But that's the least of my worries."

  He hadn't intended to say anything more, hadn't planned to talk about the weirdness, the scary things, the things he was really worried about, aware of how ridiculous they would sound to outsiders. But Jeremy's quizzical expression prompted him to keep going, to open up.

  These were his friends--and if he couldn't tell them, who could he tell?

  He took a deep breath. "There's more," Barry said. He told them everything, from Barney's death to Ray's, from Stumpy to Maureen's stalker. He then explained that the new gate had gone up in one night, had appeared fully formed as if by magic.

  The three of them were silent for a moment, obviously unsure of what to say.

  It was Chuck who spoke first. "You're not trying out some new plot idea on us, are you?"

  "I wish I was. But I'm totally serious. This is what went down."

  Barry took a long drink of his beer.

  "/ believe you," Dylan announced. "There are more things, Horatio--"

  Chuck bumped him. "Stop trying to impress the coeds with your misquoted Shakespeare. It's not becoming in a man of your age."

  "A man of my age?"

  "Told you you shouldn't've moved," Jeremy said.

  Barry downed the last of his beer. "Yeah. Thanks."

  "And I knew that dead cat was a bad sign."

  Dylan shook his head. "There's really some freak with no arms or legs or tongue flopping around in the forest between the houses?"

  "There really is," Barry said.

  They had a thousand questions, but they were questions of incredulity, not questions of suspicion, and he realized gratefully that his friends were not trying to rationalize or explain away his interpretation of events but believed him fully.

  Jeremy put a hand on his shoulder. "We're there if you need us, dude.

  The situation gets too hairy and you need some help? Give us a call.

  We're there."

  "I may take you up on that."

  "Hell," Dylan said. "I could use a vacation."

  It was nearly midnight when they parted, and though Jeremy offered to let him stay at his apartment, Barry had already passed the cancellation cutoff time for his hotel. "I'm paying for it anyway," he said. "I might as well use it."

  Jeremy shook his hand, a strangely adult gesture for his friend and one that felt unfamiliar but at the same time re assuring. "I'm serious,"

  he said. "If shit starts to go down, give out a shout. We're there."

  Barry grasped the hand and squeezed it gratefully. "I will," he said.

  "You can count on it."

  He'd opted to book a hotel in Orange County rather than near the airport, and he was glad of that. His plane wasn't scheduled to leave until eleven, and while he would have a long drive tomorrow morning during the tail end of rush hour, at least he didn't have to drive tonight. Fifteen minutes later, he was checked in and sacked out, and he did not stir until the phone next to his bed rang with the seven o'clock wake-up call.

  He grabbed a quick Egg McMuffin for breakfast and headed back to L.A.

  Between the unexpected traffic and having to turn in the rental car, he barely made it onto the plane in time, but once in the air he relaxed and looked out the window at the receding megalopolis below. He realized to his surprise that he was happy to be returning to Utah,
that, despite everything, it felt like home. California was a fun place to visit but he was no longer a part of it. He was glad he'd come, though. He felt better for talking to his friends, for unburdening himself, and he felt stronger on the return flight, as though he now had the strength to stand up to anyone or anything.

  Even the homeowners' association.

  They landed in Salt Lake City shortly after one. A small crappy lunch had been served on the flight, and he was still hungry. It would be after three by the time he finally reached Corban , so Barry stopped at a Subway and bought a sandwich and an extra large Coke before starting off.

  Keeping one hand on the wheel, he sorted through the box of tapes on the seat next to him, finally popping in Jethro Tull's A Passion Play.

  He smiled to himself as the familiar strains of the music filled the car, and he cranked up the volume, feeling good.

  If he had a hero it was lan Anderson. Not only had the Tull leader created consistently good music over the past several decades, he had done so uncompromisingly. Barry admired the undiluted artistic ambition mat had led Anderson to write and record an album such as A

  Passion Play, the willingness to buck the critics and buck the fans and follow his own muse, consequences be damned. It was what he himself aspired to, that sort of freedom and daring, and while he might not have the talent to carry it off, he at least hoped he had the guts and integrity to try.

  An hour and a half later, he was off the interstate and on the two-lane highway that led to Corban . The semi trucks and out-of-state cars that had been whizzing by him disappeared, and only an occasional Jeep or pickup passing in the opposite direction let him know that he was not alone out here.

  Why, he wondered, did television news anchors always refer to semis as "big rigs"? There didn't seem to be any "small rigs" or even just plain "rigs." They were always "big rigs." It sounded like trucker lingo to turn, CB slang, and he wondered how such a phrase had garnered mainstream legitimacy.