The Afterlife of Emerson Tang

by Paula Champa

  “Ridiculous,” Emerson said when I pointed it out.

  “I want those shoes,” I told him, trying as I said it to reconcile a passing erotic thought about Miguel with the hunched, wasted shape of my employer poking around my hotel suite. He was in the sitting area, testing the soil of a bonsai tree that was lazing on a bureau like a contented housecat.

  “It’s an old movie set in here,” he said, surveying the vintage furnishings, the small kitchen and dining room, and a walk-in closet large enough to be a starlet’s dressing room.

  “I love it,” I decided, trying to picture Miguel lounging on the old velvet sofa with me, this time not seductively, not like the brooding, oiled pharaoh, but doing what couples did every day: watching TV, talking, waiting for dinner to cook in the little kitchen . . .

  As much as I loved my room, I hated Emerson’s, across the hall—what must have once been a maid’s room for the penthouse. The stale notes of a jazz number were coughing out of the radio when we let ourselves in. Immediately, I felt the refrigerated air pumping from a wall unit, and when he shut the door I nearly tripped over the single bed inside. The view onto Sunset Boulevard was screened off by sheer curtains. When I pulled back the curtain in his bathroom, I got the disturbing impression that the whole room was about to slide down the hillside.

  I came out and found Emerson seated on the bed.

  “The suites are a little nicer,” I said encouragingly, lowering myself into the single chair next to him. “This must have been some kind of mistake. Why don’t I ask the front desk to put you in a room like mine, or Tisa’s, downstairs?”

  “No,” he protested, lying back on the pillow. “I want to be on this floor, across from you. I prefer a small room.”

  The space was so narrow, Tisa had to do a little dance to get by me when I let her in.

  “Am I pale, Beth?” Emerson asked.

  “A little.”

  “I can’t go out,” he said hopelessly.

  I sensed he was going to cry.

  “You need to recover from the flight,” I said, silently cursing his aggressive schedule. “Why don’t I switch your house visit to tomorrow?”

  “No! No, it’s like you said, I just need to rest. Just give me a few hours . . .”

  Tisa worked around us in the little room to hook up his nutrition pack, and then we left him there to sleep while I took her downstairs to the garden terrace to get some lunch. Afterward, we ended up falling asleep by the pool, and by the time we changed and got back to his room Emerson was sitting on the edge of the bed, trying unsuccessfully to stuff his feet into his sneakers. No sooner had I said hello than he insisted I drive him to the Case Study House immediately.

  “’Stime to go,” he urged, slurring a little but full of renewed energy. “Theresaways traffic. Havtaget there by sunset.”

  I disliked chauffeuring him, because I knew he would have preferred to be the one behind the wheel, even in a rental car. And I was conscious that I drove without flair, as I had been instructed to do in driver’s ed class, my only objective being to get where I was going without incident. Emerson couldn’t help making cracks about the “lameness” of our car, particularly when we came shoulder to shoulder with fancier models, but to my relief he did not critique my performance as we shuttled from one traffic light to the next on Sunset. He seemed focused on his own thoughts, smiling to himself as we wound our way through the hot brown hills. I had to admit, glancing over at him, that Dr. Albas was right: He was rallying.

  “You still haven’t explained what we’re doing here,” I said as I followed the location scout’s directions to an address that turned out to be nearly invisible from the road. “Are we meeting someone with photographs of this house at the house? Because that would be a first.”

  “No,” he said, springing up and down in the passenger seat.

  “Are you thinking of photographing the house yourself?”

  That would be another first. I had never known him to commission photography, let alone shoot any pictures.

  “No. But I am doing research, sort of.”

  “For?”

  He inhaled audibly, irritated by my uncharacteristic nosiness.

  I tried again. “What do you need me to do at this meeting?”

  “Oh, I don’t need you to do anything. I want to look at this house because I’m thinking of changing the kitchen in the loft.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Renovating.”

  The extent of his ambition astounded me. Until I remembered that he had been listening in on the extension the week before when I told Miguel that the upstairs neighbors were remodeling their kitchen. I’d never explained that they were only putting in new countertops and a ventilation fan. I considered telling Emerson this now, but I was afraid of giving him any more ideas. As ill as he was, he could not stand being outdone.

  “The kitchen we’re going to see has freestanding wooden cabinets,” he explained. “They’re like sculptures.”

  “I could have gotten you some books.”

  “I have all the books! I have the best photo ever taken of this house. And I’ll get the interior shots I want, eventually.”

  I cringed at the reminder of my failure to obtain them.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “You did me a favor. Because at first I just wanted the pictures. But coming here is much, much better.”

  We never used his kitchen, except to reheat things that he could barely eat. And given the intricacies of planning a construction project in a historic building in Greenwich Village, it was unlikely he would live to see a renovation completed. But it was clear that the plan had lit a fire in him.

  The location scout had been inside the place enough times to be our de facto tour guide through what turned out to be a series of glass-walled rooms pitched dramatically over the hillside. In the kitchen, the scout pointed to a concrete slab under my sandals. “This floor radiates heat from the hot-water pipes underneath.” His finger arched upward. “And on the roof there are solar panels. These kinds of ideas were being modeled in 1960—and way before that, even. You’d think they would have caught on by now.” He shook his head. “In terms of cooling, this house has a couple of different strategies for natural ventilation.”

  Emerson had claimed to want to study the kitchen, so I was surprised when he barely glanced at it. Immediately after we arrived, he slipped behind me and limped off to another part of the house, leaving me to take the tour. But since the place had an open floor plan, I could see him the whole time. With evident determination, he cowboy-walked to the far end of the lounge area, to a vast opening where a glass wall was slid back, like an immense patio door, framing an endless stretch of evening. The sun was setting through the smog, and the view of Los Angeles was like outer space turned upside down, with a million twinkling galaxies floating in an endless grid.

  Emerson was circling a spot in front of the glass as if he were looking for something he had lost. Measuring something?

  The film scout and I stood watching him.

  I could swear Emerson was acting out a stage play. There was another actor with him in the scene—in his mind, at least—and they seemed to be having a conversation. One he was clearly enjoying. As their imaginary talk grew more intense, I could see Emerson’s face beaming with pleasure, his cheeks glowing with sweat. He was having the time of his life, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet as he took in the view.

  The scout called to him: “We’re heading out to look at the pool. Coming?”

  Emerson straightened his posture at the glass. The city was blooming to light at his feet. In that instant, the silhouette of his wasted form before that slice of infinity was the most gorgeous thing I could imagine. He had brought himself here to reenact some memory, I was certain. It stretched before him like an endless runway of lights promising to guide his ascent to the heavens. His contentment was absolute—I felt it in myself through the strange connection we had, sensed the relief washing over him in
his quiet poise. If anything was missing, it was only the knowledge that it could last.

  I turned to the scout. “I feel like I’ve been here before.”

  “This house? You have. In about ten different movies.”

  “Wait—”

  “Should I list them?” he asked. “Wanna test me?”

  “No, it’s not a movie. It’s the Julius Shulman photograph. Of the man in a white dinner jacket. Looking out at—this.”

  “Ah. A classic.”

  “He owns a print of that photograph,” I explained, tilting my head in Emerson’s direction.

  “A rare color print!” Emerson called back. He turned toward us with a beatific smile, then placed his hand against the glass and resumed his meditation.

  At the evidence of his happiness, I practically floated around the pool area, around the virtual borderlands of an image that I’d walked past every day outside Emerson’s office without taking much notice, surveying the scene now from different angles with as much satisfaction as my employer appeared to be experiencing, judging by his posture at the glass. He had brought himself there not for the kitchen at all, but for some private triumph—a victory over the difficulties of his degraded circumstances that he’d invited me not only to witness, but to share with him. We had come west to find an old hunk of metal, and now, through the workings of his eccentric life, I was standing inside a house of the future. Not logging photographs of it, or stalking a poster of it in his shrunken indoor neighborhood, but feeling for myself how it was to experience such a thing at full scale. It was infinitely more satisfying, I decided, to be inside the picture. It made me hungry for a future, for other new things.

  I was standing by the pool, examining the wide, flat roof extending over the terrace, when Emerson hobbled out to join me.

  “Cool, huh?” he said, staring up at a slice of the overhanging roof. “From this angle, it kinda looks like a dove.” He held his hand out from his shoulder, imitating a wing, to demonstrate.

  Shocked, I searched his face for a sign that he might know the significance of the words he had just spoken—words that had come from my mother’s lips at the unexpected sight of the newly built TWA terminal when he was a baby, words his own mother had responded to. But I detected no recognition in his face, and without thinking, I found myself answering as his mother had done: “But the architect—he didn’t live to see it.”

  This earned me a wistful smile from him, a smile that I thought cemented our bond at last as friends, not merely as employee and employer—until I realized he was only preparing to correct me.

  “No, the architect of this house is still alive, though it’s what, 1996? He’s probably pretty old. I wonder if he comes swimming up here.” He glanced longingly at the pool.

  “Right,” I replied, embarrassed. “I was thinking of another building.”

  “These houses—they’re like the architects’ brains. Pure ideas.” He turned to me. “There’s so much I wish I could do . . .”

  “What would you do?” I asked gently, remembering how unhappy the conversation had made him the last time the subject had come up.

  “What they did. Make something new. Think of a new way to make a house, and you can think of a new way to live. Brain becomes idea. Ideas become houses, cities, cars—wheels of progress. I don’t have to be an architect. There are other ways.” Far from sounding discouraged, he was reeling off the tenets of his own manifesto. “We’re prisoners of old ideas, Beth. If we can make things new again, start with no idea of a house. Or a car. Or a city. It’s like Eileen Gray said: We have to get rid of the old oppression in order to be conscious again of freedom.”

  He was looking at me, but his mind was somewhere else.

  “People were ready to do that, once. What happened? What’s changed since then?” He reached out for the doorframe to steady himself and then started to walk away, lifting each foot with great effort.

  “Hey, Emerson.”

  He was out of breath. “Hey,” he answered.

  “Are you planning to visit more of the houses in your collection?” I was a little afraid to know the extent of his ambition.

  “I wish.” He hung his head. “I’ll be in there,” he said, shuffling off to resume his vigil at the glass.

  It was during those hours of ragged glory when the temporary peace he had forged with his body gave way. After carrying him for thousands of miles to the splendor of that sunset world, the blood he had absorbed during his last transfusion began to leak from his intestines like an overfilled sponge. By 9 P.M., he was curled into himself in his hotel bed while Tisa took a taxi to buy diapers. At 9:15, the hotel sent a doctor who proceeded to consult with Dr. Albas by phone. The blood loss was slow, he reported to her in that way doctors have of making things that look terrifying sound utterly matter-of-fact. Emerson would need another transfusion within a few days, but he preferred to have this done in New York. The hotel doctor advised against taking the red-eye that night, arguing that Emerson needed to regain his strength. Dr. Albas insisted he fly out no later than the next morning. As far as Miguel knew, my employer was coming to see the Beacon engine that night. I was trying to figure out if I should prepare him for the sight of Emerson when Miguel called to tell me he was running late. And by then, Emerson refused to venture even so far as the lobby downstairs.

  “You’ve done this for me before, Beth. You know how to make an offer.”

  “But you wanted to be the one to find the engine.”

  He was right, of course. There was no way he should attempt to leave his room. Still, I cursed him silently for insisting on seeing the Case Study House when he could have been saving his energy for the main event of our trip. “It’s just that you came all this way,” I complained, arguing uselessly from disappointment. “You should be there. Not me.”

  “I’ve had my field trip,” he said placidly.

  He had sabotaged his own mission with an indulgence, and now he was calmly lying in his hotel bed with no trace of regret. He sounded much more concerned about the specifics of my meeting with Miguel.

  “He’s bringing you dinner here?” Emerson asked when I hung up the phone.

  “Just some take-out,” I said, wondering if he was trying to push me and Miguel together like some kind of matchmaker before I dismissed the thought as absurd. “He’s still at work. He said he’s starving. I assume it’s so we can leave sooner to see the car.”

  “He’s coming up to your room?”

  I nodded.

  “Call me when he’s on the way up.”

  I moved to leave.

  “Beth—”

  I turned in the doorway. His expression was forlorn.

  “Just get it.”

  It was after 10:30 P.M. when Miguel arrived at my room with an apology, a bottle of wine and two take-out orders of steak frites. In place of his green-cinnamon scent, I was greeted by a medley of cooking odors escaping from the bags in his hands.

  “That smells delicious.”

  I moved aside to let him in. As he passed, I heard an almost imperceptible, plaintive groan from out in the corridor. When I looked back I was startled to see a pair of eyes peering out from the shadows across the hall. Eyes surrounded by the faint silvery glimmer of eyeglass frames. It was Emerson, not Tisa, peeking through the crack in his door, watching us.

  At the sight of him lurking there, I felt guilty about the tempting odors of the food he couldn’t eat, about having dinner with Miguel when I had sworn I would find the engine, and about the thought that had jabbed at me ever since I’d accepted Hélène’s invitation to lunch: I was going to accompany Emerson to the end of his life—there was no question of that—but when the end came, I would go on, when he couldn’t. I would outlive him, a prospect that felt as empty as the knowledge that I had already outlived myself. I looked to him across the expanse of hallway that marked our separateness, but the eyes peering back were no longer concerned with me. They were looking past me, intently studying Miguel, who was p
ulling his hair distractedly into spikes with one hand as he crossed the suite, swinging the bags of food in the other. Emerson’s eyes softened as he watched Miguel unpacking the food onto the dining table, then widened in horror when I waved across the corridor to him. I mouthed the words I’ll get it, to reassure him, but in response the eyes retreated, downcast, and the door clicked shut.

  “I usually end up eating rubbish when I work late. This is actually pretty good,” Miguel promised as we sat down in the little dining room. “My apologies about the hour. There’s something we’re working on . . .”

  “It’s all right. I needed the extra time. There was a problem earlier.”

  “A problem?”

  “Just that my employer isn’t going to be able to come with us tonight, to look at the engine.”

  “Oh, we’re not going to make it out to the hangar tonight, Beth,” he said, cutting intently into his steak.

  “But—wait—” I pushed my food aside. “I’m not that hungry. I’d rather see the car. I’m probably going to have to fly back to New York in the morning. Everything’s changed. Please, could we go now?”

  He went on hungrily slicing off another forkful of meat. “It’s pretty late, you know? I told the guy we’d be there by nine. I’ll go if you want, as soon as we eat this. We can give it a shot. But I seriously doubt the guy’s still going to be there at this hour.”

  He put down his fork and held out his arm to me, revealing a wristwatch nearly as big as my dinner plate. I could not deny it was legitimately too late. But knowing that didn’t help.

  “Tomorrow night we’ll go,” he offered. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  Then, with a meditative frown, he realized he had not poured the wine. He disappeared with the bottle into the kitchen to find a corkscrew. I desperately wanted to walk across the hall and consult with Emerson about what to do, but my hunger for the food and Miguel’s company kept me in my seat.