Kalifornia

by Marc Laidlaw

  The newscaster was saying: “ . . . followers of the popular program, ‘Poppy on the Run,’ will get an unexpected surprise when they tune in for their regular feature tomorrow. The crew was recording a special bicentennial episode in the building behind me, when trouble struck the set tonight. We’ve known for some months that the newest Figueroa has been growing in the womb of Poppy Figueroa, but not even industry tattlers knew until now that the baby’s birth was timed to coincide with California’s bicentennial.”

  “I knew it was a bad idea,” Alfredo growled.

  “It wasn’t your choice,” Miranda said. “She carried the twerp. Her contract ruled.”

  The camera pulled back to show the exterior of an ancient hotel. Lights glowed in some of the windows. People crowded the upper ramps of a rickety fire escape. Below, children bounced on the padded sidewalk.

  Newsbody 90 went on: “The session went as expected, according to the crew, with young Poppy pursued down this fire escape by actors playing the henchmen of President McBeth. But something went wrong when she dropped the newborn daredevil into a passing wagon.”

  “She did what?” Alfredo leaped to his feet. “What kind of stunt is that? I never heard—We never allowed anything so stupid on our show, so dangerous! The baby’s injured, isn’t she? God, this new vaudeville is monstrous. . . .”

  “There’s more, sir,” said Cornelius.

  “The baby Figueroa landed safely, as far as we know. Unfortunately, no one knows much. The unidentified wagon vanished, along with the child. Until she’s found, the story of the Figueroa baby, like the plot of ‘Poppy on the Run,’ will be shrouded in mystery.”

  No one in Alfredo’s office spoke.

  “Is this a publicity stunt dreamed up by Poppy’s producers?” the newscaster asked. “Another plot twist awaiting resolution in a future episode? No one is saying at this time, particularly not the program’s creator, hot new wirist Clarence Starko. Starko is busy tonight, apparently coordinating search efforts and comforting the infant’s mother, glamorous Poppy Figueroa.”

  And here an insert appeared, a wall-sized image of Poppy slumped with shut eyes against a dirty brick wall, her head lolling sideways as two halves of a silver vial fell out of her palms onto slimy asphalt.

  “My God,” Sandy whispered. “All this going on and she’s twisted?”

  “This is Newsbody Ninety, ‘Facing the Facts’ live from Snozay.”

  The image switched to another live report, a male Newsbody in a party hat covering the bicentennial opening of a databank or yet another habimall.

  “Whoa,” said Ferdinand. “Way tawdry. Hella dramatic.”

  Alfredo shut off the picture. Waves crashed against the wall. In all this time, the moon had hardly moved. Yep, I’m behind this, it seemed to say. This and every other sad, sour development.

  Alfredo turned on his sealman. “You knew and didn’t tell me?”

  Cornelius trembled visibly. Sandy moved closer and put a hand on his shoulder. “Dad . . .”

  “I assure you, sir, I knew next to nothing. I’m as amazed as you are to learn the details. It . . . it seems impossible.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Alfredo asked them all. “Why won’t she come home even now? She needs our help more than ever.”

  Ferdinand stood up, lit a kelpie, and blew yellow iodinic smoke across the room. “Maybe she’s afraid to face you, Pop. After all, she just wazzed your investment.”

  Alfredo slumped over his desk. “I never should have listened to her. Giving birth in the middle of a thriller. It just isn’t done! She has the tropes of the grand tragedians. She’s a dramatic actress, not . . . not a human target! This, children, is what the industry does to you when you go up against it alone. Oh, Chevy Chase was right. Hollywood eats its young. We were so good together; we kept each other safe and sane. That’s all Poppy knows. She can’t handle independence. She grew up in a troupe, with a whole company to cushion her. I tried to warn her how hard it is alone.”

  “Who listens to you?” said Miranda. “Look at yourself, skulking around, afraid any moment someone’ll find you out and boot you out of the boss’s chair. Are you really happy sitting here in a seascraper? Are any of us happy since we got out of the wires?”

  “Is that what we were?” Sandy said. “Happy?”

  She sneered at him. “You were only happy when you were ozoned or twisted, or popping your peenie in a Dyadic duo. Which was most of the time.”

  “That only happened once!” he shouted, making himself hoarse.

  Alfredo’s overdramatic sobs cut through their argument. He hung over the desk with his face in his hands.

  “I thought Calafia would bring us back together. She was your mother’s last project before . . . I thought it would be like having a little bit of Marjorie here with us again.”

  “Oh, wonderful idea,” Miranda said. “A born S/R. Just the sort of thing to take our minds off the wires. What good is that baby anyway, except to star in her own show? How’s that gonna help us? She’s just competition. You think anyone listened to the Beatles once they heard Ringo work solo?”

  “We . . . we have to educate her. She’ll grow up in the company of fine actors. Just think of what she might do.”

  “She might hate us all, for starters. Excuse me, Alf, but I don’t see you as any great paternal programmer.”

  But Alfredo was deep in a trance of delusion and hope. “She’ll be such a beautiful child. We’ll find her, wherever she is. If there’s a kidnapper, we’ll pay the ransom. It’s just a matter of time till she’s back with us. Marjorie’s little angel . . . ”

  “My God,” said Miranda with unveiled disgust. “You haven’t even seen her and already you love her more than you love us. She’s the perfect star you always wanted—or will be till she gets too close, too real. God forbid she should turn out to have a mind of her own—”

  “Leave him alone, Mir,” Sandy said, unexpectedly stirred by his father’s grief; though perhaps more moved by the sight of Poppy in the alley, twisted and in a state of despair he knew was no advertising gimmick, no hypnotropic act. “Pop, we’ll find her. We’ll find that baby. Miranda doesn’t know what she’s saying; she’s all spun out on her own smell.”

  “You’re going to find her?” said Ferdinand, crushing his kelpie on the orange carpet. “Is this Santiago speaking? What was your old motto, Sandy? ‘Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop In’?”

  “You little spaz. I’m not the reason we folded.”

  “Oh, sure, blame it on Mom now that she can’t defend herself. Do you really believe that?”

  Sandy’s cheeks burned. He looked away, his lip twitching. But he wouldn’t show his humiliation; he wouldn’t show a thing.

  “The fact is,” Ferdinand went on in his squeaky voice, “we could have carried on without her. It was a tragedy, but hey, that’s what pulls the ratings. Five of us was plenty enough—and you, too, Corny. Dad could have remarried once things cooled down. There’s plenty of babes out there who could’ve been as pop as Marjorie. Maybe popper.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Alfredo moaned.

  “But we couldn’t do it without you, Sandy. You deliberately blew it apart. Mom would have wanted us to carry on. She was into the wires. But you, you stupid druggie wimp, you took her death as the excuse you’d been looking for. You turned it into a cheap and easy chance to grab your freedom. You make me sick, Sandy, offering to find the baby. You pulled out years ago. Left Alf with the responsibility of raising us. So you can just stay out of it now.”

  “That’s being slightly cruel, Ferdi,” Miranda said. “Slightly.”

  “No,” said Ferdinand. “If anything, it’s too soft. What do you say, Sandy?”

  “I’m afraid to open my mouth. I don’t want to get your flying bullshit in it.”

  “All right, that’s enough!” Alfredo cried. “Shut up, all of you!”

  The children fell silent, uncomfortably aware that they had been slipping into the old situational trope
s again: cruel banter, character assassination, spurious motive plumbing, crude comebacks. Ah, the good old days were here again, without the broadcasting to make it all pay for itself. It dawned on him that they were all RO now. For all Ferdi’s talk, he left the airwaves to Poppy alone.

  Alfredo pursed his lips and gazed at the surface of his desk. “We’ve all made mistakes. The biggest I made was getting into this business. You’re right, Miranda, I’ve never been happy here, playing executive. Once I thought . . . well, it was hard for me to keep on without your mother. But I think maybe now’s the time to try again. I’ve still got some power in Hollywood. I can use it to make the world safer for my granddaughter—as soon as I find her, I mean.”

  “So who’s going to take care of the business, Dad?” asked Ferdinand. “You’ve got a seascraper to look after now. You can’t just drop it.”

  Alfredo gave Sandy a questioning look.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I’ve got my own business. The plantation takes all my time.”

  Lies.

  “Can’t you help out here for a little while, Sandy? So I can devote myself to looking for Calafia? I pray to God it won’t take long. I could use you here, son, if you’re willing. I’ll teach you what I know, though it’s not much.”

  “Let me find her,” Sandy said.

  Ferdinand scoffed. “You’re hopeless.”

  Sandy turned away, as he had in the past, cursing them for the way they made him feel. They didn’t appreciate his talents and never had. Wrapped up in themselves, groping at old roles, each of them grabbing for star billing, stealing the scene even when no one was watching. His father was the aging hero, striking out through dangerous territory to rescue a baby girl. Sandy supposed he might have been guilty of the same motivations. He told himself he genuinely wanted to help, but he didn’t think that was possible here. Too many egos in the way.

  “Talk about babies,” he heard Ferdinand say as he walked out and closed the door behind him. The party sounds, the smell of osmodelics beckoned. He needed to get lost in the crowd; he needed a heavy-duty mind change.

  He needed Dyad.

  Dancers moved with erratic grace on a circular floor of patterned marble. The Reverend Governor occupied a dais in the center of the floor, sanctifying the crowd with a swinging gold censer, sipping champagne. Where Thaxter smiled down with particular emphasis, Sandy saw Dyad’s hair and tiara. He headed toward her, stumbling over heels. He hadn’t danced in several years, but even recent knowledge of the archaic steps was useless for finding a passage through the intricate, unpredictably whirling crush. They were doing the Chaotic Attraction.

  Dyad hopped, backslid, then rushed, spinning, toward him, one hand joined with that of a tall, sepulchral young man with unfashionably pale skin, jet black hair, and thin lips cosmetically crimsoned. Sandy, backing off, collided with a bejeweled old woman and her adolescent partner. By the time he’d worked himself free with apologies, the dance had ended and he heard Dyad calling his name.

  “Sandy!” she cried. “Over here!”

  No avoiding them now. He put on a smile and faced her partner, submitting to an old rush of jealousy.

  “Sandy, you remember Raimundo Navarro-Valdez?”

  Raimundo’s eyes flashed, and not with amusement. He kept the same expression, keen as ever, his lips like twin razors grown sharper with the years. His eyes bespoke a mind even narrower than his mouth.

  “Yo,” said Sandy, putting out his hand.

  Raimundo refused the gesture, instead bending slightly at the waist, tapping the heels of his polished black boots sharply together, then returning his full attention to Dyad. One of his hands remained around her waist, in a touch that was light yet possessive.

  Dyad said cheerfully, “Raimundo and I are getting married next month. That’s why I’m not sending anymore.” She shrugged. “Actually, I’m not even receiving. Raimundo’s family doesn’t believe in any wires.”

  Sandy felt a cold surge in his stomach. Undertow. “Married?”

  Raimundo smiled for the first time in Sandy’s memory. “An antiquated tradition, but one that still finds followers in the Old World.”

  “Which old world is that, dude? And what’s wrong with the new one?”

  Raimundo ignored him, still smiling at Dyad.

  “We’re not totally old-fashioned,” said Dyad with a wink at Sandy. “I mean, it is an open marriage.”

  Raimundo’s smile vanished. “Open? In what way?”

  “I think you two’d better talk that one over,” said Sandy, the words scalding his mouth. He backed off as though wading from a riptide. This was why he’d fled to Humbo, wasn’t it? People got so weird on you; situations kept inventing themselves, even without a board of paid consultants. “Later, kids. ‘Grats to you both.”

  “But Sandy,” Dyad called, “we were supposed to get together tonight. Just like old times.”

  This was too much for him. He fled through the crowd as fast as he could and finally found a couch in a relatively quiet corner, near a dark window sheltered from the brunt of the waves. There he sat, staring at his reflection in the dark glass, becalmed in a mental Sargasso.

  He felt a light tap on his shoulder. “Mister Santiago?”

  In the black glass, Cornelius’s reflection swam up suddenly.

  “Hey, Corny.”

  “I came to see how you were feeling, sir.”

  “I’m fine, Corny, fine. I’ve been thinking.”

  “Thinking, sir?”

  “I know I don’t have much of a reputation for it, but sometimes it’s hard to avoid. Maybe I will take over here for a while. I mean, I might as well learn an honest trade, right? I’d make a pretty good executive. Dark suit, conservative tie, Aramis. A new image. Let Dad go look for Calafia. It might be good for him.”

  He turned from the glass, expecting the news to please Cornelius. But the sealman looked dejected; his thoughts were elsewhere.

  “What’s wrong, Corny?”

  “Nothing, really. It’s just that, well, being with all of you this evening has made me nostalgic. I remember the days when we were together, living out the show. It must be the tropes.”

  Sandy sighed, then clapped Cornelius on the shoulder. “Guess memories aren’t part of a seal’s natural state, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir, but they can be painful at times. Unnaturally so.”

  “You’re telling me?”

  Cornelius stared at him, blinking back tears.

  “Come with me, Corny, okay? While I talk to Dad? Remember, you owe me one.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “And don’t call me sir. You’re not our butler anymore, remember? You’re a self-employed man—or seal, or whatever. You’re my friend.”

  “Your friend? Do you really mean that?”

  “Why would I say it if I didn’t?”

  Cornelius looked puzzled for a moment, then shrugged. “I’m sorry, it’s the tropes again. I forget that you’re not acting.”

  “No way, dude, this is real. More or less.”

  S01E03. A Hag-Ridden Coach with No Wood on the Sides

  A black sawed-off station wagon rattled through thinning crowds and progressively emptier streets. It was not that dawn grew near and the revelers sought their beds, nor had the celebrants wearied of their activities, for this was an occasion that came but once and most Californians were anxious to prolong the novelty of the bicentennial while it felt like something more than another reason for sales spectaculars. No, there were better reasons for the growing silence and the infrequency of humans where the wagon went.

  The streets grew steadily fouler; damper and darker the decay on all sides. Buildings had fallen here, but souls had lofted high.

  The driver of the wagon was a thin old woman, so frail and bird-boned that she would have banged against the dashboard every second if she hadn’t been strapped to her seat. Her ancient fingers, thin and tenacious as ivy creepers, clutched the steering wheel with desperate vigor; her
arms, protruding from the depths of a billowing black robe, were scarcely thicker. She drove at full speed, although it seemed impossible in the cluttered streets. Sometimes she swerved to avoid black patches, unsure if they were puddles or bottomless tarns; more often she relied on ferocious speed to plow her over or through a variety of obstacles. Pieces of barbed wire, rusty rubble, broken tubes of phosphor-powdered glass, the occasional sluggard rat, such tokens could always be found in the wagon’s radiator grill at the end of her wild midnight rides. Once a sister mechanic had found a human foot in the spoked hubcaps, severed just beneath the ankle. Its advanced putrefaction had been a relief to all, offering assurance that the Official Crone had not yet struck down an innocent being. Her license was in perpetual danger of being revoked. Yet, for all her frenzied speed and demonic, gutter-spanning leaps, she was at heart a gentle soul who always wept at the sight of a rat tail in the wiper blades. Nothing, however, certainly no tender sentiment, could slow her down.

  Which was why she of all the Daughters had been chosen for this errand.

  Over the unmufflered din of the old gas engine and through the perpetual ringing in her ears, she heard the infant wailing among the sacks of grain and kibble in the wagon’s bed. It sounded like a siren, a noise foreign to these sacred precincts, since police never enforced profane laws within the boundaries of the Holy City.

  She glanced over her shoulder to make sure the jolting ride hadn’t thrown the child from its nest. The babe appeared safe, but it made her uncomfortable to leave such things to fate, especially after the trouble she’d endured to catch the little dear.

  Before long, she was forced to slow the wagon. The street had narrowed until it was no better than a track for feral dogs. It was wide enough for the wagon in most places, but there had been some slippage during the day (or perhaps the Valis sect had slyly rearranged it), and rubble thicker than usual posed a hazard. She shut off the motor, dismounted, and peered into the back of the wagon, after first checking to make sure that no one was lurking about, waiting to fire pink light beams in her direction.