When he opened his eyes again, Vance was inside the tent, and the campfire had died down to embers. The kid had covered him with a blanket before going to sleep. He sat up drinking the last of his whiskey and shivering in the wind. Going back to sleep seemed unlikely, given the cold and the strangeness of the surroundings. He watched the dark water, half expecting some terrible, slavering monster to rise out of it.
In the sparse woods to the right of their little campground, something moved. The sound of the ocean did not quite mask the crackling of branches. Before he had a chance to get properly terrified or wake Vance up to see what it was, something ambled out of the woods into the moonlight. In his misty, smoked-glass vision, he could only tell that it had four legs, but that was enough to reassure him they weren’t about to be murdered. Likely a deer, of course. Could he shoot it now? he wondered, seeing the doe from his youth—bob-tailed, with walnut spots on the white ruff of her chest—chewing a leaf with a look of nervous distraction. Probably not. He wasn’t that different now than he’d been then; so much time and energy spent going nowhere. From inside the tent Vance snored innocently, a soft glottal sigh. Whatever it was out there moved away, grew fainter and fainter, at some point melting back into the smudged darkness of the trees. It had sensed his presence and moved away—embarrassed and unsettled. You are the monster, he thought. It’s you.
Tycho Brahe.
CHAPTER SEVEN
They woke with the break of day, as well as an infestation of some kind of sand flea. Swatting themselves like penitent Sufi mystics, they unpitched the tent and clambered back up to the road. Climbing into the car, Richard looked down at his arms, swollen with little red bites. “This is why I never do anything,” he said. “Doing something is always a mistake.”
Vance scratched his long neck, leaving red trails from ear to collarbone. He U-turned and pointed them south in the gray light, the rising sun still obscured by the eastern forest’s edge. Richard burrowed into the crook of seat and door and was just feeling the first welcome tendrils of reclaimed sleep when the car coasted onto the shoulder and stopped. Smoke billowed from the hood in thick, healthy plumes. “Shit,” the kid said.
“What happened?”
“Something’s wrong.”
“Oh really? It’s not supposed to be doing that?”
Vance got out and opened the hood, releasing a gust of black smoke directly into his face that bent him double in hacking convulsions. Richard waved at a passing car, which accelerated. But after three more tries, someone with a sufficient shred of conscience, or else nowhere important to be, pulled over. A very fat man—fatter than Richard, an increasingly rare and gratifying occurrence—got out and stood by his car. “You fellas need a lift?”
“Thanks,” said Richard. Vance was still bent over the car, as though he might be able to fix what was wrong by sheer force of concentration. “Come on, Vance.”
The man dropped them off at a service station a few miles down the road, in a town named Eureka, an unfortunate name for a place that no one would ever be happily surprised to find. It was a gray, dismal village, like a patch of Ohio rustbelt transplanted to the Pacific coast. A surly guy in coveralls gave them the once-over, as though he suspected they were somehow up to no good, then ferried Vance away in his tow truck. Richard waited in a plastic chair in the lobby, soaking in the atmosphere—wood paneling, linoleum, grease, a Samantha Fox calendar on the wall from 1988, two mechanics in terse conversation aggressively ignoring him. Why did all auto mechanics hate non–auto mechanics, he wondered. Hadn’t they been nonmechanics first?
The truck reappeared, Explorer in tow. Coveralls told them it was something to do with oil pressure, or maybe something else, and that he could go ahead and fix it, but it wouldn’t be cheap.
“What a surprise,” Richard said.
“Well, you want me to or not,” said Coveralls.
“I don’t have much money,” offered Vance.
“What a surprise,” Richard said. “Yeah, go ahead. We’ll take in the sights.”
At eight in the morning, Eureka seemed to be mostly inoperative, as though the entire town was sleeping off a miserable hangover, which it probably was. They walked down to a rusting industrial harbor overrun by seagulls. The birds stood together on concrete stanchions out in the water, fluttering their wings in what seemed a lot like anticipatory glee. A small boat called the Big Sir bobbed in the unhealthy, greenish tide, its bow very close to the waterline. They turned around.
On the walk back through the middle of town, things improved somewhat. A quaint little strip with candy-colored storefronts featured a row of hopeful businesses that it was hard to imagine succeeding here: a first-edition bookseller, a gourmet wine store. And a small café, just turning its sign to OPEN. They entered, surprising a young waitress who seated them by the window. After waiting for her to stammer out the specials, Richard ordered a black coffee and eggs and bacon and also sausage, and Vance ordered the quiche of the day.
“Real men don’t eat quiche,” said Richard.
“Sure they do,” said the waitress, taking their menus with a fetchingly inadvertent smile that revealed braces. She returned, still smiling, with their drinks, reentered the kitchen, and Richard said, “She likes you.”
“Not this again.”
“You should ask her out.”
“We’re leaving town in an hour.”
“Ask her if she wants to come with us. She’d probably jump at any opportunity to get out of this dump. I’ll ask her for you.”
“Don’t,” said Vance, looking genuinely frightened.
“I’m just kidding, loosen up.”
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t know.” He took a drink of his coffee and thought about it. “I guess it’s just you’d be surprised how fast it goes. A pretty girl smiling at you happens like twelve times in your life.”
Vance shook his head and addressed himself to his phone. In a few minutes, the waitress returned with food, and Richard appended a Bloody Mary to his order. Mouth full of quiche, Vance said, “It’s nine in the morning.”
Richard sighed. “Not this again. And nine in the morning is exactly when you’re supposed to drink Bloody Marys.”
After breakfast and further desultory rambling, they were summoned back to the garage. The comical total was $678.85 for a new oil filter, replacement t-rings, and the towing. Richard retrieved his billfold, un-Velcroed it, and pulled out a personal check. The guy at the register waited until he’d filled it out, then chortled. “No checks.”
“That’s all I have.”
The guy looked backward at one of the mechanics and gestured toward the door, saying, “There’s an ATM somewhere down the road, down there.”
“I don’t want to go somewhere down the road, down there. I’m right here. And I’m pretty sure you’re overcharging us by about three hundred dollars, okay? Just take the damn thing.” The guy seemed like he was trying to decide between calling the cops, tearing up the check, and vaulting over the counter to beat in Richard’s face. “Listen,” Richard went on, “it’ll cash. I’m famous, look me up.”
The guy took the check and grudgingly made his way to an ancient desktop computer in the corner, into which he laboriously pecked Richard’s name with one hand while holding the check three inches from his face. He eventually nodded, and they were on their way. In the car, Vance said, “Thanks. I’ll pay you back.”
“No, you won’t,” Richard said, again burrowing into the door. “It really doesn’t matter.”
———
They made San Francisco in the early afternoon. It spread out in front of them, reclined and made up in bright colors like a beautiful but slovenly whore. Vance gaped at it with awe as they crossed the Golden Gate. “Amazing.”
“Just wait until you see a hippie taking a shit in the street.”
“How long did you live here?”
“Not long. I got here summer of 1971. I had met this guy in Vietnam who was fro
m California and talked nonstop about how great it was here. I thought the second I got across the Bay Bridge, I’d be getting a mescaline-flavored tongue bath from some chick named Rainbow. Talk about disappointing. I spent three months living over a Chinese place in the Tenderloin, walked around smelling like egg foo yong and not getting laid. Closest I came was at a bar on Valencia where I got beaten up and rolled by a drag queen. There’s a reason people talk about the summer of ’sixty-seven and not the summer of ’seventy-one. I missed the party.”
“That bothered you?”
“Hell yes, it bothered me. I grew up outside of Knoxville on a turd ranch. Maryville, Tennessee.”
“I read the book.”
“Yeah. In 1967, I was sixteen. Spent my nights drinking RC Cola at the Kiwanis Club, where they had square-dancing, just on the off chance of kissing this bucktoothed redhead who I’d heard was loose.”
“That sounds nice, actually.”
“It wasn’t the Summer of Love, I’ll tell you that much. And by the time I got here, it was all junkies and burnouts. I got on with a construction crew in Oakland as soon as I could, did bids all the way down the Central Valley.”
Still, Richard couldn’t help but feel a wistful pleasure as they drove through the Presidio, as postcardish in real life as it was in his memory—emerald grass and white-bone villas with red-tiled Spanish roofs. He and Eileen had picnicked there twice, on day trips to the city, during the early time in their relationship when he could be convinced or bothered to do things like go on picnics. He thought he could see the exact spot from the car, an old tree—birch? maple?—which stood alone in the middle of a shadowed field. Of course, he knew he was probably imagining it, remembering what he wanted to remember.
They arrived at the Providence, a chichi place in the financial district near the Transamerica Building. Outside, the hotel was a ten-story sheath of dark glass. Inside, it felt as though it had been built five minutes before they arrived, and they were the first people to stay in it. It was a decided improvement on the Comfort Suites and Quality Inn, and Richard made a mental note to thank Stan the next time they talked. The only arena in which it lagged was the absence of an Andes mint on his pillow.
“It really is the little things,” he said.
“What,” called Vance over the sound of his own pee in the bathroom.
“Nothing.”
They lay on the plush beds, and Richard turned on the TV, clicking zestlessly from one channel to the next. Vance was reading a book that it took Richard a minute to recognize as his own.
“I thought you’d already read it,” he said.
“I did. I’m rereading it.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think? I like it.”
“Yeah, but why?”
Vance tented the book on his chest and said, “I don’t know. I guess I feel like you used to be like me. You came from nowhere, you didn’t know what you were doing. And you made it through, somehow.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
“Says the guy who rescued me from Snoopy’s Lounge a night ago.”
The kid untented the book and resumed reading, and Richard closed his eyes. Perhaps, he thought, for once in his life, he could stay very still and behave like an adult. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and as it could only be two people, he pulled it out and took a blind guess.
“Stan.”
“It’s Dana.”
“Hi, Dana.”
“You make it to San Francisco?”
“Yeah.”
“You remember the interview at five?”
“What interview?”
“Public radio.” She sighed. “Cool Breeze, with Mary Koestler.”
“Shit.” Dana gave him an address, which, turning on his side, Richard jotted down using the hotel stationery and pen on the nightstand. “I’ll cab it down there in a little while.”
She perfunctorily scolded him about a couple of things and then signed off. Richard pulled himself up and sighingly thumbed his orthopedic old-man shoes back on. His feet, having become accustomed over the last year to near immobility, were outraged at his recent dynamic lifestyle leap to the realm of mere inactivity. He waved backward to Vance and slumped down the hall to the elevator.
The hotel lounge was a sleek affair, all brushed steel and dim track lights and monochromatic color fields behind the bar. The only other people there were a couple sitting in the corner with hands clasped on top of the table. A slinky, digital bossa nova emanated from invisible speakers. Richard hoisted himself onto a stool. On his own petard. By? The bartender approached, an unsmiling bald man who looked like an East German villain in a 1980s movie adaptation of a John le Carré novel. Richard ordered a martini, which was delicious and very cold, with a field of ice crystals on top.
“That’s twenty-two,” said the bartender.
“Jesus Christ. Charge it to room three thirteen. How do people live in this city?”
“You got me. I’m up in Sausalito.”
The bartender went into the back, and Richard allowed himself to enjoy or to try to enjoy, for a little while, a feeling of achievement. Here he was, a not-entirely-unknown author on a book tour, put up in a snazzy hotel, drinking an exorbitantly expensive drink. The imagined generic version of this moment had been, for many years, the pulpy grist for his fantasy mill. Of course, in his fantasies, there had been a woman with him (beside him, below him, on top of him), but this was close enough. He wondered, then, why the moment felt so thin and false, why it seemed he could poke his finger through the papier-mâché wall of the hotel, push the entire edifice over like the flimsy scene dressing it was.
He drank his drink and ordered another—not as delicious as the first, though equally expensive. It wasn’t only that he felt he didn’t deserve success, though he didn’t. It was the feeling that it had all happened too late—like his first time around in this city, he’d gotten there after the fact. The party wasn’t just over; the party had been over so long that the food left on the table reeked, and the punch bowl crawled with flies, and the hostess was passed out in the corner, her face smeared rosy red with clownish lipstick. What remained were the dregs and remnants of the life he’d always wanted and never had. Getting it now felt, in a way, like cosmic punishment for his bitter, selfish resentment over not getting it the first time around. Of course, he’d already been punished with the loss of his wife and child, but then when has God ever passed up a heavy-handed joke? Maybe he should have just stopped writing altogether. Maybe he should have been a sailor.
“You don’t choose your life, Rich, it chooses you.” He could still see his father saying that, the morning he’d received his draft notice. Standing there in his boxer shorts on a cold Saturday morning, running his finger over the embossed eagle at the top of the paper. He’d failed out of college and allowed it to happen, thinking it might please the old man, too chickenshit to just enlist. He wasn’t sure if his father was right about your life choosing you, but the first part had been spot-on—his entire life had been reaction, fleeting spasms of need, desire, and shame.
Vance slouched through the lobby, hands in pockets, looking fearful of being thrown out for trespassing. He noticed Richard and stopped beside the bar. “I thought you were going to that interview.”
“I am.”
“After how many of those? You have to do the reading later, remember?”
“Don’t worry about it.” He pulled out his wallet and handed five twenties to Vance. “Here’s some walking-around money. Go check out the city. Make sure you call it ‘Frisco,’ locals love that. I’ll see you back here in the lobby at seven.”
Vance looked at the money and said, “What’s this for?”
“Just take it. Go have an adventure.”
The kid reluctantly took the cash and walked away. He pushed into the wrong side of the hotel’s revolving front door and got halfway out, before being repelled back into the lobby by a stampede of Asian businessmen. He glanced
abashed over his shoulder, then tilted out the right way and was gone from sight. Richard asked the bartender to call him a cab and ordered one more drink, in the hope that it might reverse the maudlin tide of his mood or, failing that, get him drunk.
———
Vance walked down Sansome Street in no particular direction. The windbreaker he wore failed to break the wind gusting jaggedly up the hill. The clear sky and white, crystalline sun—and the fact that he was in the state of California—had deceived him into thinking the afternoon would be temperate. He debated returning to the hotel to put on a sweater, but he had already walked for ten minutes down the steep grade and decided to tough it out.
He was happy to get away from the hotel, and from Richard. The old man’s refusal to take care of himself was infuriating and frustrating; he seemed to sense Vance’s aggravation and delight in making it clear how little of a shit he gave. Well, if Richard didn’t give a shit, neither did he. He was just along for the ride, anyway, and this was probably the last stop. He didn’t know why he ever tried to help anyone—you never could, and he should know better by now, having grown up in the family he’d grown up in. His father and mother both seemed determined, in their own ways, to repeat the same mistakes forever. Thinking of the small picture of the four of them that leaned on the upstairs mantel—Vance and John sitting stupidly in front; their furtive father behind them, craning sideways as though just having noticed the latest woman or bottle or pile of drugs into which he would disappear for the next six months; his mother smiling intently at the camera, as though, through the sheer force and depth of her denial, she might keep his father from bolting out of the frame—his mood darkened further.
He pulled out his cell and dialed. “Hello?”
“It’s me,” he said.
“Where are you,” his mother said.
“I called yesterday. I left a message.”
“I haven’t checked my messages.”
The Grand Tour Page 10