River Under the Road

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River Under the Road Page 12

by Scott Spencer


  “You have a lot of friends.”

  “No. I don’t know really anyone. I’m not from around here.”

  “Me neither,” said the girl. “California. I came here with my cousin and her boyfriend.”

  “What about your boyfriend?” asked Jennings. It was a familiar move and he regretted it.

  “Bakersfield,” she said. “Sometimes I say California and people think L.A. or San Fran.”

  “Me too. I say New York and they think I live on top of the Empire State Building.”

  She unclasped her knees and scooted around so she was facing him. She suddenly moved her legs and a moment or two later was sitting in a lotus position, her spine straight, her hands resting in her lap with the palms upturned. “So’s that your house?”

  “No. Me and my friend are painting it. Making a few repairs. Just kind of tightening things up.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. We go home. Maybe do a road trip. I have to swap out the carburetor on my buddy’s Datsun. Maybe come out to Bakersfield and visit you.”

  She laughed. “Better be careful if you do. My father’s a cop there.”

  “Whoa.”

  She straightened her stick-figure arm, extended her narrow bejeweled hand. “My name’s Muriel Sanchez.”

  “Jennings Stratton.” He held on to her hand for an extra moment or two. He couldn’t help flirting. It was like being in a lake and treading water. “You can sit like that?”

  “Like this? Sure. It relaxes me.”

  “I could never.”

  “Someone would have to teach you.”

  Jennings smiled. It was not a smile that lacked sincerity, though he did know exactly what it looked like. “That’s friendly of you,” he said.

  “Everyone I could ever be friends with back home never liked me because of my father.”

  “Because he’s the law?”

  “Yeah, and he’s so angry. Day and night. He hates the hippies, anyone young, anyone with long hair. And anyone Mexican.”

  “I heard Sanchez was a Mexican name.”

  “Sick, right?” Muriel said. “His father was from Mexico City so he has to prove it to the world that he’s super white. And I’m his daughter and everyone thinks I might be a narc. Meanwhile my stupid father thinks I’m some kind of drug-crazed hippie earth mother slut or something.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, Jennings thinking, Don’t go back there. Fuck Bakersfield. Let’s go somewhere together. But there was no way he could say that. If he met the most beautiful girl in the world and right off the bat she said something like that, he’d run like hell.

  A breeze was picking up, cooling the evening, carrying the scent of pine and eucalyptus. “So,” he said. “It’s just you and your cousin?”

  “And her boyfriend,” said Muriel.

  “And they’re back at the house?”

  “They love parties. They love people.” This she said as if it were a weird quirk, like a love for marching bands or paper bags.

  “So where’s your boyfriend?”

  “You already asked me that.”

  “I know. I guess I can’t help it.”

  She regarded him for a moment, and then he could see her deciding. He had always felt there was something stirring about a woman deciding, it was like seeing nature at work, a glacier calving, a red-tailed hawk riding the thermals.

  “I don’t really get attached to people. But since you’re so curious—my boyfriend’s in the Marines.”

  “He joined?”

  “Yep. And now he’s going to Lebanon.” Her voice trailed off and she suddenly unfolded her legs and stood up. “You have to get back to your party? Or do you want to take a walk?”

  “I can do that,” he said. “You want to walk around the neighborhood? Or we can take our chances on this old horse farm. Probably full of snakes, though.”

  “I want to walk someplace beautiful,” she said. “I want to do something I won’t forget.”

  They walked back to the house to pick up the Datsun. They could smell the weed from the driveway. Music poured out of the open windows: Pablo Cruise singing “Whatcha Gonna Do?” When the chorus played, the guests sang along: Whatcha gonna do when she says goodbye / whatcha gonna do when she is gone. Despite the fatalistic nature of the lyric, the voices were exuberant, maybe just a little bit crazy, as if they all knew that soon it would all be over, the fun, the hope. Life had them over its knee, and it was just a matter of time before they were snapped in two. The dancing was so energetic that Ward’s bungalow seemed to rock like a houseboat in choppy waters.

  Jennings drove through the middle of town, along Washington, past the insane pink Masonic temple and out onto Artist Road, and kept on it until it turned into 475. He was in no hurry. Once they were beyond the city limits, Friday night disappeared and it could have been any time.

  Muriel scratched at the back of her right leg with her left foot. A livestock truck was behind them, bearing down. Jennings rolled down his window and waved for the driver to pass him. The cows pressed their pink-and-black muzzles against the slats of the truck. Their eyes were enormous and limpid; it was hard to believe that on some level they didn’t know they were screwed. Muriel made the sign of the cross over her heart, and Jennings felt his blood rush to his face, embarrassed, thrilled, feeling at once out of his element and finally home.

  “Those poor cows,” Muriel said. “I bet they know where they’re going.”

  She was thinking the same thing he was. “I guess we all do,” Jennings managed to say.

  AT THE SANTA FE NATIONAL Forest he pulled the car off onto the side of the road. The night had a chill in it now. He looked up at the stars, seeing the same things she saw when she looked up. She seemed so familiar to him yet he felt he had never met anyone like her.

  “Ready?” she said.

  “We’re going to fall on our faces.”

  “Not if we carry the light.”

  “I don’t have a light,” he said, to which she just smiled, and before he knew it he was walking through the scrub, somehow avoiding furrows and holes and tangles of vine or anything else that could trip him up.

  “Close your eyes,” Muriel said.

  The idea seemed half crazy but he shut his eyes and saw himself digging a hole in the orchard back home.

  “May ALL be happy,” Muriel said. “May ALL be free from diseases. May ALL see things auspicious. May NONE be subjected to misery.” They walked faster and faster as if they were actually going somewhere. Jennings had a vision of himself falling forward, but soon that vision was gone and in its place was a kind of soft nothingness, warm and pliable and pleasantly scented like the fuzz scraped out of the filter in a clothes dryer. Minutes passed.

  “Are your eyes closed, too?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “But I can see.”

  “What can you see?”

  “Everything,” she said. She squeezed his hand. “May WE protect each other,” she said, almost singing it. “May WE nourish each other. May WE work together with great energy. May OUR study be enlightening and fruitful. May WE never hate each other.”

  “We’re never going to hate each other,” Jennings said. He opened his eyes for a moment. The landscape was unfamiliar, a little scary in its oddness. The smell of piñon trees. The jagged mountains etched darkly against the night sky.

  “Om, shanti shanti,” Muriel said, over and over.

  Jennings felt immense, infallible. How could this be happening? Here was a stranger he had known all his life.

  “O dear Lord,” Muriel said, “we humbly beseech you. Let us be of service. Give us peace. Give us wisdom. Give us courage. Let us know above all other things that we are part of the universe as each wave is part of the ocean.”

  It was too much for him. He stopped, opened his eyes, took her by the shoulders, and turned her so they were facing. Yet something prevented him from kissing her. Her breaths were deep and regular.

  “Where are we?
” he was finally able to say.

  “Here,” she said, solemnly, but she was beaming, her face full of color, as if it were not the moon shining down on her but the sun.

  Chapter 5

  Wedding in White

  JANUARY 14, 1979

  * * *

  GRACE CORNELL AND THADDEUS KAUFMAN

  request the honor of your presence

  January 14, 1979

  1 P.M.

  3__ Park Avenue South, #2

  in the home of Christopher “Kip” Wood as they are joined together in marriage.

  That’s right! Marriage!

  * * *

  THADDEUS AND GRACE WERE GETTING MARRIED, AND IN its own quasi-catastrophic way it was a perfect afternoon for a wedding, if only the bride’s mother had not gone missing. As far as anyone could surmise, Maureen Cornell was wandering out there alone in the snow-shocked world, making her way on foot or by taxi or—who knew—mush-mushing along by dogsled from the Hotel Edison on West Forty-Sixth Street to Kip Woods’s newly purchased loft on Nineteenth Street and Park Avenue South. The question came down to this: was Maureen delayed or was she truly lost? What was the exact nature of the foul-up? Had she lost track of time? Had she slipped on some slick snow or some congealed slush or black ice and landed, as she would have put it, in a phrase learned from the most Irish of her grandmothers, ass over teacup, or teakettle, or whatever-the-hell little saying had been fashioned out of centuries of humiliation? Was the city so paralyzed by the snow that travel of any kind was next to impossible? Or was Maureen in a gin-soaked stupor flat on her back in bed, and one not necessarily her own.

  The storm had crippled the city, brought it to its glass and iron knees. The beauty of it, however, was undeniable, and for those without anything pressing, it was a welcome respite from murders and bankruptcies and arson and abandoned buildings, whores, junkies, newsstands festooned with pornographic magazines, and every parked car with a sign on the dashboard claiming No Radio, and a lock on the steering wheel, steel-bar locks that were so suddenly ubiquitous that it seemed a factory somewhere was working day and night manufacturing them. The snow sorted things out, at least for a while, unlike furious editorials in the newspapers or on TV did, unlike prayer, unlike the police. No one was going to steal a car or even a car radio on a day like this. Fire hydrants had disappeared in the drifts. Phone booths were transformed into snowy little warming stations on an Alpine trail. Manic, antic dogs cavorted in zoomy circles. Cross-country skiers went uptown and downtown, and wherever there was a rise in the road red-faced shrieking children launched their sleds, kicking their brightly booted feet, red red red black black black yellow yellow yellow.

  It seemed holy. So pure, so full of justice, and forgiveness, a reminder that humans are merely—and gloriously!—a part of nature. A man on a corner in a leather jacket and a Soviet army hat stood with his arms raised high, shouting, Thank you thank you thank you.

  Sam Kaufman was unimpressed. “What a bunch of sissies,” he exclaimed, watching the New Yorkers on the street below. “What kind of person puts up an umbrella in the snow? What the hell are they worried about? Their hair?”

  “It’s drafty in here,” Libby said. She wore a dark brown suit, with black stockings and a chunky onyx necklace. “What is this place?”

  “It’s Kip’s,” Thaddeus said, watching his sister along with a few other fun-loving souls on their cross-country skis, heading north on Park. He wanted to bang his knuckles against the glass, somehow gain her attention, but she swirled into white. He turned away from the window, faced his mother with a nervous smile.

  “I know who lives here,” Libby said. “But what is it?”

  “It’s a loft.”

  “A loft?”

  “It used to be a factory.”

  “So it’s a bargain?”

  “I don’t think so. You’ve got to fix them up. You get a lot of space, but it’s not cheap.”

  “At least that’s what Kip says,” Libby said, if for no other reason than to have the last word.

  Kip was paying for everything. He’d seen to the invitations, bought the food and the champagne, and hired two waiters to keep everything moving efficiently, men who worked at the Hutton executive dining room and who were glad to make extra cash on a Saturday. The waiters were also quite useful when one of the floorboards in the front of the loft popped off like a bottle cap succumbing to pent-up carbonation. Was it contraction or expansion, the cold of the day, or the heat of the apartment? Whatever the cause, one long strip of brand-new white ash flooring was suddenly dislodged, exposing a dark, worn patch of industrial flooring beneath. The old oak floor was installed in 1890 by Irish carpenters when the loft was owned by Sylvester Shirt Makers, and there were black steel bolts everywhere, each one the size of an apple, which once had secured the long lines of sewing machines at which generations of textile workers had labored. The building’s new owners had chosen to have new floors put on top of the old floors, but now the loft’s previous life asserted itself in a way that was not only dangerous but also curiously depressing. How were you supposed to look at those bolts and not think of the rows of women in long dresses, their hair pinned up, their exhausted eyes fixed on the sewing machine and the needle’s deadly dance.

  The two E.F. Hutton waiters, ascertaining that Kip owned neither hammer nor nails, pounded the floorboard back into place with the Cuban heels of their brightly shined shoes. The noise was terrific but the two men seemed to enjoy it. Thaddeus stood at the windows, watching the snow. He tried to direct his thoughts to something positive. Well, here was something: this storm would be even more alarming if he and Grace had planned a honeymoon! First of all, honeymoons were lame, even the word was saccharine, and suggestive of virginity finally surrendered, the magic moment on a heart-shaped bed, and second, they couldn’t afford one anyhow.

  Their wedding was largely about things they omitted. They weren’t having a priest or a rabbi but split the difference with an Ethical Culture minister for hire. Grace wasn’t wearing a white gown or anything else elaborate because they could not afford to spend hundreds of dollars on a dress. Hundreds of dollars was what they spent in a year on clothing, for both of them. Thaddeus could have rented formal wear, but standing next to Grace in a tuxedo while she was wearing something she could have worn to a cocktail party would have looked weird. They didn’t have bridesmaids because it never crossed their minds, and they did not have a best man because it just seemed silly—and Thaddeus would have wanted it to be Kip and Grace would have lobbied for Liam. They did not have ushers because there was no place to usher anyone, no aisle to walk down, no bride’s side, no groom’s. There were no children to be adorable, holding rings or dropping petals.

  But what if their guests were unable to make it because of the storm? According to the local news radio station—You give us fifteen minutes, we’ll give you an anxiety attack—the subways were barely running, the busses were not running at all, and the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges were open only to emergency vehicles. They were already missing Grace’s mother—what if others succumbed to the storm, as well? Already Gene Woodard would not be here, since he was up (as in locked up) in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, having been checked in to Austen Riggs after a drunken weekend in which he phoned his father and called him a worthless lying penny-pinching palsied old cocksucker. But what about the members of the Celluloid Collective, the playful name given to itself by the screenwriting group Thaddeus had been a part of over the past year? He’d been privately wondering if any of them would bother to show up.

  The Collective met for three hours every Thursday evening in a large apartment on West End Avenue, the home of the Collective’s oldest member, Jerry Dropkin, who was fifty-five and divorced. Dropkin was barrel-chested, with skinny arms and legs, and he was losing his hair in a kind of random patchwork way that made it seem as if he might actually be pulling it out. He was the only member of the group to have had a screenplay filmed, and shown in theaters. It was
called Indian Killer, a French-Italian coproduction, filmed in Spain, with Navarre representing South Dakota. Jerry had been fired and replaced, but the basically bitter experience gave him the right to the last word when someone’s script was being workshopped in his living room, where bridge chairs had replaced the upholstered sofas and love seats of his married days, and framed family photos had been replaced by flowcharts of the five scripts he had going.

  The people in the Collective seemed to think they were Thaddeus’s intellectual superiors, and Thaddeus tended to agree. Most of them spoke two or three languages. They had gone to Ivy League schools and, before that, had been prepared at New England boarding schools whose names he had pretended to recognize. (He first thought Rosemary Hall was a singer, but was able to self-correct before discovery.) He shared the Collective’s ambitions but not their tastes. He loved Jaws, The French Connection, Bonnie and Clyde, Rosemary’s Baby, and a French movie none of them had ever heard of, The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob. His taste was not only suspect but just the kind of mindless bullshit the others were writing to overthrow.

  The evening his script was up, Thaddeus waited in the lobby of Jerry’s massive old building, ringing the buzzer every few minutes for half an hour before giving up and heading home. Several days later, he happened to run into Ace Disend, who was furtively shopping for women’s undergarments at B. Altman, and learned that Jerry had had a heart attack and gone through open-heart surgery. When Thaddeus said he would visit Dropkin as soon as possible, perhaps after work that very day, Disend shook his head and said the doctors were recommending that visits be kept to a minimum. Only family and the very closest of friends were visiting Jerry, who was dopey from Dilaudid. Nevertheless, Thaddeus paid Jerry a visit a couple of days later and brought Grace along, too, on the theory that every man’s recuperation is aided by the sight of a nice-looking woman.

  “They split me open like a lobster,” Jerry said. He was in a shared room at Roosevelt Hospital. A curtain divided the two beds. Thaddeus saw the silhouettes of the other guy’s visitors, moving like puppets in a shadow play.

 

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