The Illusion of Separateness

by Simon Van Booy

  When Danny needed to think, he drove all night through the desert to Las Vegas, stopping to fill his mouth with warm air and to scoop up handfuls of sand. After living in Scotland for so long, it had taken years to warm up. He stopped for meals at roadside diners, chatted with the waitresses, and watched ­people play Lotto machines, drink coffee, smoke quietly, and sweep the pay phones for coins. There were sometimes showers for truck drivers. You could see them in a line at the counter with wet hair, eating eggs.

  Danny’s office took up a suite at the Soho House—­a Hollywood hotel and members-­only club. The management was British, and there were items on the menu like fish ­and chips, and mushy peas. He could host parties without leaving the building, and sit alone on the balcony when it rained. A waiter once sat with him during a heavy shower. He was from Galway, and also felt the pull of a home he would never return to.

  Tell them that we need them to go up to five,” Danny said. Other lines flashed but were taken by his secretary.

  He opened the top drawer of his desk.

  “I just looked for cigarettes,” he said. “Can you believe it?”

  He took an unsharpened pencil and rolled it in his mouth.

  “No, not for a month now.”

  He swiveled in his chair to face the city outside his window.

  “It’s a pencil, I swear,” Danny said. “Anyway, I’m doing it for the dogs, not myself.” He listened for a moment. “Tell Stan that we appreciate his enthusiasm, actually no, that’s patronizing—­tell him we appreciate the relationship we have with him, but can’t move forward for less than what they paid before—­but then they already know this; it’s just what they do, you know that.”

  He listened again. “All right, do that then—­as long as it’s in the contract, it will cost them more in the long run, but if it makes him look good, it’s fine—­if you think it’s a good move. I trust your judgment.”

  He nodded, and wrote a few things down.

  “Before you go, Jack,” Danny said, “I was planning to stop by and see Raquel this afternoon. Let her know for me, would you?”

  It was very hot outside and there were no clouds.

  The sign in the distance once read HOLLYWOODLAND. Mules hauled thick poles up the steep ravine for mounting the letters. In 1932, an actress jumped to her death from the letter H. There were old-­style cars parked along the boulevards. Men wore hats and beige suits. Everybody smoked and rode horses. The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald ate at lunch counters, and sat in a park near the tar pits, writing letters to his daughter, telling her not to spend so much money and to look after her mother.

  Danny’s secretary, Preston, knocked and came in. He was from Youngstown, Ohio. His first job was at a popular brunch place in Echo Park. He wore bow ties. He went to a lot of parties. He called his parents every Sunday when they got home from church. They were encouraging but wanted him back in Ohio. His mother wore slippers with fluff inside. She liked to put her feet up when she watched television. Preston’s father colored her hair once a month. He wore plastic gloves and the kitchen smelled of chemicals. They were both forty years old when he was born. It was their wedding anniversary last week. They had a cookout with ribs, fried chicken, okra, corn bread, collard greens, and homemade pork and beans. Preston’s father e-­mailed pictures. ­People ate off paper plates and held up Dixie cups to the camera.

  Nobody cared when they found out Preston was gay. He told his parents one Sunday night with the television on. He told them it was as natural as breathing.

  How’s the Paramount thing, Preston?” Danny asked without looking up.

  “Great, that new producer is like a Christmas miracle, I should have something for you by tomorrow.”

  “And are you going home for Christmas, Preston?”

  “Yes, if you don’t mind. Are you going to Scotland?”

  “Actually Mum’s coming here—­though I think she’s more excited about seeing the dogs.”

  “It’s much warmer here than Scotland, right?”

  “It’s warmer everywhere, Preston. Do you need anything else from me?”

  “No, I should have something for you to look at tomorrow.”

  “Okay. I’m going to see Jack’s wife this afternoon—­would you call the hospital and make sure everything is fine, ask the nurse if she needs anything?”

  “How is she?”

  “Probably bored more than anything.”

  “I’ve got some magazines on my desk if you want to take them?”

  “I’m glad you have time to read magazines, Preston.”

  The parking garage was bright and always busy. An automatic chime sounded until Danny attached his seat belt. “Thanks, Grandma,” he said.

  There was a rubber bone on the passenger seat, and a dent in the driver’s-­side door that the Soho House parking attendants were always offering to have repaired while Danny was upstairs in his office.

  Occasionally he would insist on parking the car himself and then recline the front seat all the way back for a nap.

  He often daydreamed of childhood and the rain-­swept terrace-house in Manchester where he grew up with his mother. He thought of her often, because he was old enough to understand things, old enough to remember when she was the age he is now. She had loved him but withheld herself from others. The mark of her life was not only what she had done, ­but what she had denied herself.

  Danny felt they were similar. He preferred to be at home with his beagles and a cup of tea. There were so many parties and dinners that they didn’t mean anything anymore. He no longer felt the need to convince anyone of anything. Everything he found interesting went into his films and he had nothing else to say. He had enjoyed a few light relationships over the years, but the men he was attracted to always wanted more than he was willing to give.

  He would not have described himself as lonely, but would have admitted that something was missing. He often sat at his kitchen counter wondering what it could be, watching his dogs sleep, watching them breathe, their small hearts turning and opening like locks.

  II.

  BEFORE JOINING THE freeway that would take him to the hospital, Danny stopped at Lucques on Melrose to buy a package of homemade cookies for Raquel. It was early, and the owner, Jane, was doing paperwork at the end of the bar.

  “Not staying for lunch, Dan?”

  “No, I’m going to visit a friend in hospital—­Jack Miller’s wife.”

  “Oh, I know who you’re talking about—­Jack and Raquel. I can picture her. I hope it’s nothing serious.”

  “She’ll be in very soon for lunch, by which time, Jane—­you’ll have forgotten this conversation.”

  “She doesn’t want anyone to know she’s in the hospital?”

  “Who knows,” Danny said.

  “Jesus, you’re discreet,” Jane said. “Remind me to tell you my secrets sometime.”

  “Preston doesn’t call me the Vault for nothing, you know.”

  When Danny got back to his car, the meter had expired, but there was no ticket on the windshield. In the bag, he found a few extra cookies packed separately from the box. He put three in his pocket for when he got home, then ate the fourth standing up. Opposite the restaurant was a shop that sold vintage watches. Danny looked at them in the window. Such tiny lines and numbers, such delicate springs, all hard at work on something they would never understand.

  Raquel had been sick for months. Her hair fell out during the treatments, but the worst was over, she said.

  When Danny arrived at the hospital, he asked the valet if he could park the car himself. It was a peculiar habit of his that ­people in Los Angeles didn’t understand. One valet accused him of not trusting Spanish ­people. Danny was so offended that he got out of the car and kicked a small dent in the door with the heel of his shoe, but they just thought he was crazy.

  When h
e got to the main desk, there were five women pointing ­people in various directions and placing others on hold with their long nails.

  “Hello, sir, how can I help you?”

  “I’m not sure I’m in the right part—­”

  “Give me the name of the patient, sir, and I’ll look them up in the system.”

  “Crane with a C, and Raquel is her first name.”

  The woman made a few strokes on her keyboard.

  “Mrs. Crane, Raquel Crane. Are you Mr. Crane?”

  “No, I’m Uncle Crane.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m just a close friend . . . no blood relation.”

  “You need Oncology, Building O-­Fourteen. Just go out these doors and take a right and look for the letter O building—­or you can take the elevator here and there’s a floating bridge that will connect you. If you get lost, pick up any phone and dial zero.”

  “Thank you,” Danny said.

  “I hope your friend feels better.”

  Raquel’s ward had its own private receptionist. There were vases of flowers on her desk, and balloons. One of the balloons had come untethered and touched the ceiling at a slight bend. The receptionist walked Danny along the hall. She offered to carry the magazines and cookies he had stuffed into a tote bag that read FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES.

  Raquel was sleeping.

  Her room was bright and luxurious. He stood by the window and looked out at Los Angeles in the distance. An endless stream of cars surged like colorful dots through the canyon. Traffic helicopters hovered over Sunset Boulevard. Danny quietly typed a message to Preston asking him to make sure insurance was covering Raquel’s room.

  Then he sat in a beige leather chair beside the sleeping woman who had brought an immeasurable amount of happiness to his life. She had been married to his agent and best friend for seven years. They were trying for a child when the doctor found a lump.

  Danny took out the magazines and looked at the faces on the covers. Everyone was searching, he thought—­trying to unravel the knot of their lives.

  When Raquel woke up, she reached for his hand.

  “Why aren’t you on set doing something amazing?” she asked quietly.

  “I prefer nursing.”

  “I think Jack does too,” Raquel said, and sat up.

  “I like your hair.”

  Raquel giggled and fingered the thick strands. “It’s a wig.”

  “You can’t tell.”

  She blushed. “It’s bad enough not being allowed makeup.”

  Danny squeezed her hand. “I spoke to Jack this morning.”

  “I know,” she said. “He called to say you were coming.” She paused for a moment. “When he came yesterday, he couldn’t stop crying. Did he mention anything?”

  Danny shook his head.

  “Don’t tell him I told you.”

  Jack had always seemed confident about what was going to happen, even taking classes on the process of treatment and joining an online support group.

  “Keep an eye on him for me, Danny.”

  “I will,” he promised, searching her face for some sign of what was to come. She pointed to the magazines on her bedside table.

  “Are those for me?”

  Danny read the titles. “French Vogue, Italian Vogue, British Vogue, Chinese Elle, World of Interiors, Hello, OK, and Tatler.”

  Raquel laughed, but it seemed painful somehow. “Thank Preston for me, would you, Danny? You know how much I love magazines.”

  “I brought cookies,” he said.

  They talked about her treatments, and how soon she would be allowed home.

  When she closed her eyes, Danny let her sleep.

  He remembered her real hair, and how she tied it up when she came over on hot days to swim in his pool. Jack joined them after work.

  One Saturday, there was so much rain that the three of them stayed inside and had too much to drink. They played Monopoly and watched A Single Man. Jack smoked a joint and pointed to the television, “That’s like you, Danny, but no one’s died.” Danny threw a cushion.

  Raquel ordered food from Greenblatt’s and they watched Sixteen Candles. Jack and Raquel stayed over in a guest bedroom. Danny lay awake, listening to them laugh and move around.

  It rained all night.

  The next day he called his mother and asked about his dad. She was silent for a while and then told him the whole story, not just the note he taped to the television saying he would never come back—­but his childhood in the slums of Manchester, his own father’s savage death on a battlefield in northern France. She told him how they met, how he took her out to nice pubs, and picked flowers for her on the viaduct behind their house where steam trains once swished hotly past. The smell of his aftershave. The gentle rough hands from a decade of factory work, and how quickly those hands became fists when anyone called her a name, or made racist remarks.

  “I knew deep down he’d go,” she said. “I was upset, but not surprised.”

  She told her son that his father was not the love of her life, just someone she loved along the way.

  As Raquel lay sleeping, Danny remembered his life in Scotland, the television studio where it all started and his daily commute through the mouse-­gray morning. Then he imagined himself as a child, and felt the small house of his boyhood in Manchester. Cold white bottles on the doorstep, a fish-­and-­chip shop on the corner run by Bert Echlin, who always gave him an extra sausage. The ­people he had loved along the way.

  But there had also been name-­calling, insults, ­people telling him to go back where he came from. Their words tore into him, because he felt hated, but had done nothing wrong.

  ­People made fun of his neighbor too, an eccentric old man with a deformed head who grew tomatoes and gave them out in small brown bags.

  Raquel opened her eyes and blinked a few times. “How long was I out?”

  “Not long, maybe forty minutes.”

  “You should have woken me up.”

  “Never,” Danny said.

  “What did you do while I was asleep?”

  “I was remembering this neighbor I had growing up.”

  “Your neighbor in Scotland?”

  “No, when I was seven or eight. He was the neighbor in Manchester—­the city where I was born. He seemed old to me then, but was probably only sixty. His head was deformed, and he spoke with a sort of muted voice. The ­people on our street called him the elephant man.”

  “Jesus, that’s unkind.”

  Danny nodded. “I think my mother would remember him, but I hadn’t thought of him in years until lately.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “He grew tomatoes and left them on our doorstep.”

  “But you hate tomatoes.”

  Danny smiled. “I also think he taught me to read.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “I saw some infomercial in the middle of the night last month and it reminded me of some of the things we did together.”

  “An infomercial for what, Danny?”

  “Games for kids who are dyslexic.”

  “Are you dyslexic?”

  Danny looked at her blankly for a few moments. He had always been a slow reader, and remembered the frustration in school when teachers thought he was lazy.

  Raquel handed him a tissue.

  “Jack and now you,” she said with a smirk. “What a pair of crybabies.”

  Raquel asked if Danny was in contact with this old neighbor.

  “He’ll have passed away by now, I’m sure,” Danny said. “And these things always mean more to children, don’t they?”

  “Look him up,” Raquel said. “Ask Preston to make some calls.”

  Danny shrugged. “It was all over thirty years ago, and he was pushing sixty then.”


  “It won’t hurt to try.”

  When it was almost time to go, Danny leaned down and kissed Raquel’s head. “You’re so very special, do you know that?”

  Somebody passed her room with a trolley.

  “If he’s alive, he will remember you,” she whispered. “I guarantee it meant more to him than you think.”

  Then a nurse knocked and came in. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  “No, not at all,” Danny said. “I was going to leave soon.”

  The nurse checked the machines, and chatted to Raquel about tomorrow’s procedures. Danny stood and watched her arrange the sheets. Then she bent down and picked up the empty tote bag.

  “Fox Searchlight Pictures,” she said, reading the side of the bag. “That’s my son’s dream.”

  Raquel leaned forward and the nurse did something to her pillow.

  “He’s got it in his mind,” she went on, “that he’s going to be the next big thing—­a Hollywood director. He’s saving up to go to school for it and everything. My husband told him it’s not practical. He should study business or computers or something.”

  “Danny is a famous film director,” Raquel said brightly.

  “Oh?” the nurse asked, adjusting the shades. “What’s your name? I’ll tell him I met you.”

  When Raquel’s face caught a few rays of sunset, Danny saw just how ill she was.

  On the way out he stopped in to see the nurse. She was drinking soda with a straw and watching something in Spanish.

  “Here’s my card,” Danny said. “Have your son call to set up a meeting at my office.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Just have him call my office.”

  She put her soda can down and stood up.

  “Oh, mister, is there anything I can do for you? That’s so nice of you, I can’t believe it. You’re going to help my son.”

  “Just get her better,” Danny said. “Just get her better, because without her we’re all finished.”

  After feeding the dogs, he stayed up and went through boxes of old photographs. A few of the pictures made him cry, because he remembered how it felt to be a child.

  After eating a sandwich, he made a list of all the ­people who had ever loved him. He put it on the refrigerator and read it out loud.