Looking for Przybylski

by K. C. Frederick

  As the silence lengthens, Ziggy feels the need to speak. “Well,” he says, “things worked out for you, though, right?”

  Ted nods, still staring at his hands. “Yeah, they worked out. It wasn’t a sure thing, though, I’ll tell you that. And it’s taken a lot of work. What about you,” he asks, looking up, “do you believe?”

  Ziggy isn’t ready for that question. “Well,” he stalls for time, wishing he weren’t prevented from smoking at the table. Pulling out a cigarette, lighting a match, taking the first puff, all of it would consume time and that first hit of tobacco would probably clear his head. But since that’s not available, he’s going to have to go on unaided. “I don’t know,” he says. “Actually, I try not to think about it much.” He could tell Ted about his mother, who saw God’s hand in the most ordinary events, he could try to convey to him how hard he had to struggle against her fatalism: according to her, mere human beings—she always called them “mere” human beings—were nothing and God was everything. If you bought that, the young Ziggy felt, it robbed you of your power to achieve anything on your own. Though, come to think of it, his mother certainly did believe in the power of prayer. All that might be hard to explain to a stranger, though. He shrugs, but the man sitting across from him is looking at him seriously, waiting for more.

  “I don’t know,” Ted says quietly, as if to himself, “it would be pretty hard to keep from thinking about it all, why we’re here, what’s the point.”

  Yeah, Ziggy wants to say, I’d like to know what the point of it all is. I do think about that, he could say truthfully. He wants to ask the other man, who after all had the benefit of training in the subject, what he really thinks happens to people when they leave you for good? Faces of the dead crowd around him: Vince Nadolnik, Eddie Figlak, Big Al and J.J., his sister Terry. They’re gone, but still. God, does he wish he had a smoke.

  He’s got to say something, though. “Do I think there’s some force out there controlling everything we do?” He laughs. “That would be a crutch, wouldn’t it? All you’d have to do is sit back and wait for things to happen.” He shakes his head. “The thing is, I can’t say, I don’t know what’s out there, I sure as hell don’t know what happens after we die but . . .” He’s suddenly run out of things to say—as usual, he’s come up against a wall. Frustrated, he looks at Ted, who’s nodding helpfully, and finishes, “Well, it’s not like I don’t believe in anything, I’d say I believe in something, maybe not every one of the church’s teachings. I guess I’d say most times I try to be a good guy and not a bad one.” He hopes the last statement is true, though just now it’s a lot easier to remember the times he failed to live up to that goal. Feeling the weight of that failure, he falls silent. The effort has exhausted him.

  Across from him, Ted’s nodding has suddenly become vehement. “Hang on to what you believe, Ziggy,” he says. “Whatever foothold you have on things can slip away in an instant.”

  Ziggy looks at this man he’s gotten to know so much better in the last couple of days than he had in the time when Ted was a priest at St. Connie’s. And still, does he know him at all?

  Abruptly, Ted pulls himself erect, as if to signal he’s come to the end of this particular subject. “Father Bruno was a good priest,” he says, his voice suddenly crisp. “He was no saint, but he did his job, he showed up and performed his duties. I’m sure he was a help to a lot of people. Requiestat in pace,” he mutters, making a quick sign of the cross.

  “Well,” he says after a while, obviously relieved to be off the topic of Father Bruno and all that the news of his death has brought with it, “we’ll have to be going pretty soon. Are you ready?”

  “Sure,” Ziggy assures him.

  Ted’s focused on the present again. “OK,” he says, “the routes I planned out for you should be pretty easy to follow. LA is huge: you could fit two or three Detroits into it and still have room left over. So I thought we’d just concentrate on west LA: Santa Monica, Westwood and Hollywood—there’s plenty to see there. And my route keeps you off the freeways. Take the wrong exit and God knows where you’ll wind up. I wouldn’t try to freelance before I got a sense of how things are laid out.”

  Ziggy nods, acknowledging a little nervousness after hearing Ted’s description. But, hell, he’s been driving all his life. You don’t need a college degree to do that.

  “I’d suggest you come back here to Venice and start your sightseeing a little later,” Ted says. “Wait till the streets clear a little.”

  Ziggy’s looking at the map on the table. “Sounds like a good plan to me.”

  On the way to the bookstore Ted says, “About Przybylski. Don’t give up hope. Linda’s working on it.”

  “You really think she can find him?” Ziggy asks.

  “She’s a very capable woman,” Ted tells him. “She’s really sharp.”

  “Oh, I could see that,” Ziggy says. But it seems to him they’re going to have to be more than just smart to find Przybylski; they’re going to have to get lucky too. If he’s here at all, that is.

  Ziggy follows Ted’s suggestion and returns to the house in Venice, which enables him to get a little more familiar with the streets as well as the car before he really starts his tour. “Wait till the morning rush is over,” Ted advised him. “Let the traffic settle a bit.” Enough time to make another piece of toast, warm up some coffee and read the paper.

  When he does venture forth he already knows that his first stop is going to be nearby Santa Monica, where he parks so that he can explore the pier he glimpsed from the car when he first came here. He steps onto the platform that carries him over the beach and lingers for a while near the amusement park, taking in the clatter of a solitary ride, the repeated pop of a gun firing at paper targets, the rote patter of a barker selling carnival games. There’s not much action at this hour but the surroundings call up an enticing blend of hazy memories.

  After a while, though, he sets off for his real destination, the end of the pier that juts out over the ocean. Leaning against the wooden railing, he stands there feeling the breeze on his face as he stares at the velvety blue Pacific. He closes his eyes and inhales the briny smell of the sea, the shriek of gulls and the noisy flutter of a nearby flag filling the darkness. After a few seconds, he opens his eyes to the endless rows of breakers advancing toward the shore. How far have they come to get here? When he turns back toward the land he follows the wavering line of purple hills to the town behind him, its chalk-white towers rising among the dark green tops of tall palm trees. Jesus, he thinks, Maggie should see this, I’ve got to take her here.

  Back in the car again, he can’t resist the temptation to diverge slightly from Ted’s plan, and he travels north on the Pacific Coast Highway, intending to go a few more blocks with the water on his left before turning away from the ocean. By the time he gets a chance to do so, though, he finds himself climbing a twisting road that carries him away from the built-up shoreline upward through a suddenly wild and rugged countryside—he actually sees a couple of people on horseback. The area is overgrown with trees and bushes, a mixture of greens and browns, the dense vegetation closing in on him in places, then giving way to sudden open spaces where dark twisted trees stand in the tall, waving grass, jogging his memory, even though he’s never been here before. Every now and then a house is visible in the midst of this wild landscape, some of them perched drunkenly over steep ridges. How could you sleep at night when there’s nothing under your floor but air? A cluster of shining glass triangles looms suddenly, like a ship riding tall waves. There’s a brief glimpse of a vivid yellow wall visible among the rustling leaves, a bright blue roof juts out above the trees. Unpainted rustic dwellings are only seconds away from gleaming modern structures. Many more places are hidden away, their presence signaled by wrought-iron gates or wooden barriers. Signs at some of the entrances depict rainbows and stars and even a large eye, an arrangement of colored glass glitters in the sun. Rich hippies, Ziggy thinks. Now and then a sleek Jagua
r or a dust-covered jeep is visible in the driveway. It’s all very picturesque and he has to concentrate to keep his eyes on the road, and for a time he can convince himself he’s never going to get back to civilization; but at last he gets to the top of whatever road he’s been climbing. There, after a sudden, sweeping view of the city, he’s traveling downhill again, the road corkscrewing past entrances that lead to more unseen dwellings.

  When he’s out of the wilds at last, on actual city streets, he has no idea where he is, so he pulls over to a curb. After a lengthy study of his map, he finds that, though he apparently wandered into a canyon, he’s wound up not far off the route Ted outlined for him. He plots his way back, careful to avoid the freeways, and, much to his relief, in a few minutes he’s managed to make his way to Hollywood. The detour into the canyon has been enough adventure for the day. It’s almost time for lunch and he’s close to the Farmer’s Market, which Ted identified as one of the places he ought to see. It couldn’t have worked out better if Ziggy had planned it.

  The farmer’s market in the neighborhood back in Detroit is a dark, damp unheated building that looks like an old airplane hangar; and in the cooler weather the sellers who’ve come in from the farms crowd around fires in trash cans to keep warm. The customers who wander the concrete aisles are just people from the neighborhood who don’t warrant a second look. Here in Hollywood, though, men and women in expensive clothes rub shoulders with hippies—there are blacks and Hispanics and even a woman in a bright red sari moving through the airy cream-colored, green-roofed buildings where nobody has to lean toward a fire for warmth. The network of passageways between the buildings leads to dozens of stalls for butchers and bakers, sellers of seafood, homemade peanut butter and freshly baked doughnuts, and most anything else you could imagine. The buyers could be tourists from anywhere in the world, Ted told him, or they might be movie stars. Ziggy looks around him: there are bright pyramids of oranges, glistening silver fish on beds of ice, dark sausages hanging from racks, dozens of different kinds of mushrooms. The smell of freshly ground coffee and frying onions, of cheese and baking bread fills the air. You couldn’t spend much time wandering through the place before you’d get hungry. Fortunately, as Ted told him, you can get anything from an ice cream cone to a full course meal under those green roofs. In fact, lots of people are walking around eating.

  It isn’t long before Ziggy succumbs and gets himself a hot dog, which he takes with him as he continues his rambling inspection of the Farmer’s Market. He’s standing near an open-air restaurant, chewing on his hot dog, not thinking of anything in particular, when he hears a woman’s laugh that he could swear he’s heard before. Who could it be, though, out here? He looks into the restaurant area and sees a couple embracing no more than fifty feet away. The woman, who’s obviously just come in, is wearing a green pants suit but he can’t see her face. When she and the man sit down at the table she isn’t looking at Ziggy—in fact, the man and woman are looking at each other with the kind of hunger that only belongs to lovers; but he sees enough to make it clear that he’s seeing his daughter-in-law, Gloria. And the man she’s with is certainly not Charlie.

  The sight jolts Ziggy, and he steps back, wary now of being spotted. He puts on his dark glasses though the unlikelihood of his being here would probably make him invisible to Gloria even if she looked right at him. Nevertheless, he’s determined to keep his distance and stay out of sight. Meanwhile, he’s trying to determine whether this is what it looks like—a cheating wife meeting her boyfriend—and what it all might mean. Gloria has apparently just arrived, so they’re likely to stay a while. It gives him time to think and to try to get things straight in his head.

  For one thing, he doesn’t know how he feels about this discovery, if it is what he thinks it is. Gloria’s nowhere near his favorite person, and he and Charlie don’t get along all that well either. Still, it doesn’t please Ziggy to think there’s trouble in his son’s marriage. He’s got to try to be sure about this. But he has to be careful, to stay out of sight. To that end, he buys an LA Times and a cup of coffee and seats himself at a small metal table within sight of the restaurant. He holds the paper up before him like a screen. He has a sudden thought of Linda, who worked for a private eye. She could probably give him some advice about tailing people. Well, he’ll just have to count on common sense. The first thing, his target is pretty stable at the moment and, given that she’s in an open-air restaurant, she can be visible from a distance. Also, he’s in a perfect place. Large numbers of people are passing this spot so he’s not likely to stand out. And, based on his further observation of the couple, they only have eyes for each other.

  By now he has no doubt about the identity of the woman: it’s Gloria, all right. And every indication suggests this isn’t just a casual lunch. Still, Ziggy feels the need to acquire more evidence before coming to any conclusion. Covertly, he tries to size up the man. He’s in his forties, for sure, maybe his fifties. Though he’s a little beefy, it looks as if he tries to keep himself in reasonable shape. He’s expensively dressed and his haircut probably cost him a bundle as well. “Smooth” is the word that comes to his mind, maybe “sleek.” Even from this distance, the way he gestures to the waitress convinces Ziggy that he’s somebody who knows his own importance.

  Jesus, Ziggy thinks, trying to deal with this thunderbolt, I’ve even forgotten about Przybylski. And yet, spying on Gloria this way, trying to collect information, seems somehow part of his quest. Already, though, he’s dealing with complicated questions. If this should turn out to be what it looks like, he’s going to have to keep it to himself. There’s no reason for Ted to know, of course. A tougher call, though, is what to say to Maggie. Maggie’s always been kinder about Gloria than Ziggy’s been, though she’s well aware of her daughter-in-law’s pushiness and her inclination to think she’s the smartest member of the family. But still, this is a development that would cause Maggie a lot of pain. At the moment he’s sure it’s best to keep this thing, if it turns out to be a thing, to himself.

  It isn’t just Maggie whose feelings he has to be careful about. Ziggy’s screwed up enough things in his own life; to think that it passes on to the next generation is a depressing thought. But for the moment he has to stay on the alert. He glances occasionally at the paper, but his eyes keep returning to the couple at the table. Their meal is punctuated by handholding, long, soulful glances and, Ziggy would bet, a certain amount of action under the table. At last, with a sense of haste, they finish their lunch and the man signals the waitress. Ziggy gets ready.

  As they leave the restaurant, he follows them from a distance. What he’s looking for, he doesn’t know, but he feels that in a situation like this you can’t have too much information.

  The man escorts Gloria to her powder blue Buick convertible. She works as a realtor, Ziggy knows, and the snazzy car is probably required for her business. The two of them clinch for a long time before she gets into the car and drives off. Ziggy watches the man cross the street to a parking lot and he follows him, less careful now about being seen. He hopes to learn more about this Romeo when he sees his car. That turns out to be a silver Mercedes. Well, Gloria’s not shopping the bargain basement. Still feeling like a private eye, Ziggy could kick himself for not bringing a pencil and paper. Now he’s going to have to try to memorize the guy’s license. To his immense relief, when he pulls out of the lot, his license plate reads ROGER W.

  Ziggy watches the mystery man pull away. He’s excited, a hunter caught up in the pursuit of his prey, but his feelings are confused. He stands there beside a smooth-barked eucalyptus tree, inhaling its strong menthol scent. Like the palms and the cactus, Ted told him, the eucalyptus is an import, from Australia. Everyone, Ted laughed, and most everything that’s here, comes from somewhere else.

  Yeah, Ziggy thinks. Like me and Ted and Gloria, maybe even Roger W. And Przybylski, if he’s here.

  He’s on time to pick up Ted at the bookstore. Ted, looking a little distracted,
asks him about his day.

  “I saw a lot,” Ziggy says. “I even got lost for a while in the hills. I guess I drove a little too far north before turning back inland.”

  “Oh,” Ted says. “You were in one of the canyons. Wasn’t that something? They can be pretty wild. And then, that’s where they have so many fires, and mudslides. You wonder about why people would even build there, except that it’s so beautiful.”

  “One thing was strange,” Ziggy says, remembering that drive. “There were a couple of places there that looked very familiar to me.”

  “Familiar?” Ted, who’s at the wheel, turns toward him. “What kind of places?”

  “It happened once or twice when I was driving past a field that had long grass and some of those twisted trees.”

  “Live oaks, you mean?” Ted suggests.

  “Yeah, I guess.” Ziggy shakes his head. “I looked at that and I said to myself, ‘I swear I’ve been here before.’ But that’s impossible.”

  Ted’s brow wrinkles. “You know,” he says after a moment, “they used to film a lot of old westerns in those canyons. It’s possible . . .”

  “That’s it,” Ziggy says. “That’s exactly where I saw those places before: the movies.” To think of it: coming all the way here and returning to a scene he first laid eyes on as a kid in the Ritz Theater. Once again, his first thought is that he’s got to tell this to Maggie.

  “Where else did you go?” Ted asks.

  Ziggy tells him about the Santa Monica pier and the Hollywood Farmer’s Market, though he says nothing about what he discovered there.