Karoo

by Steve Tesich

  Saul’s entire body was suddenly made of knee joints that one by one began to buckle.

  He had made no contingency plan for this possibility and didn’t know what to do next.

  The people in the room could not help overhearing what the woman had told him and now they turned their heads and looked at him, wondering who he was and what it was that he had done.

  “Please,” the woman said, gesturing toward the door.

  Taking the yellow manila envelope from her hand, he somehow made his way downstairs and out of the house.

  Inside the envelope was the letter he had written to Mr. Houseman, pleading for forgiveness.

  His need for forgiveness had been so great that it had never occurred to him that transgressions existed that were unforgivable.

  The Old Man’s house was located in Topanga Canyon, and Saul sped down the canyon, with drought-dry trees on both sides of the road rising high above him, their branches knitted together to form a tunnel of trees. And then suddenly, hurtling out of the tunnel, he saw the Pacific Ocean. Its vastness, reminding him of human vastness and of his inability to measure up to it as a man, caused his heart to ache and his cheeks to burn with shame.

  5

  He stopped at the gate and cracked open the window.

  “Saul Karoo,” he told the uniformed guard guarding the entrance to Burbank Studios. “I’m here to see Jay Cromwell.”

  The massive guard responded with monumental lethargy. He checked the list of names on his clipboard and, finding Saul’s name there, told him where to park.

  The lot was almost deserted, but he parked his car in the visitors’ lot where he had been told to park.

  He was in no particular hurry anymore. It was almost three thirty. Too late for haste since he was late already.

  Getting out of the air-conditioned car, he was unprepared for the equatorial heat that awaited him. Heat rose up from the pavement and heat fell down from the sky. A heat-induced vertigo caused his head to spin, forcing him to hold on to the frame of the car door for support. With hands draped over the top of the door frame and his head bowed, he waited for the vertigo to pass.

  He wondered if he was having a stroke or something, or if maybe it was just his blood sugar dropping like a rock.

  The pain in his lower back was killing him. His lower back seemed to be located six or seven feet lower than usual. And somewhere far below his lower back was the pavement on which he stood, which spun like a pinwheel when he looked down at it.

  Shutting his eyes didn’t help. If anything, it made things worse. Made it seem that his mind was orbiting around him, like the earth around the sun.

  The Topanga Canyon loop came back to him and looped around and around. He saw himself coming and going. Saw himself driving up toward the Old Man’s house, anticipating forgiveness, and then, on the same loop, driving back down, unforgiven.

  It seemed unfair to have to relive that pain at the same time that his lower back was hurting so.

  One pain at a time, please, he pleaded, but there was no help for it. Both continued.

  His mind continued to reel.

  Instead of feeling the shame caused by the Old Man’s refusal to forgive him, he now felt something much worse. He saw the smallness of his motive in seeking that forgiveness in the first place.

  All he had really wanted was a convenient sense of closure to the whole episode. He had desecrated another man’s masterpiece, but the dying artist would forgive him on his deathbed and that would be that. And then he would be on to something else.

  It now seemed to him that seeking to be forgiven was even more vile than the crime he had committed.

  He wondered if he had ever loved anything in his life. If he had ever really loved Billy or Leila. If what he had loved all along was only the motive behind loving them.

  A motive that promised a personal payoff.

  The grand consummation he had planned for the three of them in Pittsburgh was now revealed to him for what it really was. A cheap way of justifying all the aborted and dead-end story lines of his life by wrapping them up with a happy ending. As if there was an ending that could make up for the life he had lived.

  His motive had murdered everything.

  What else was love with a motive but the murder of love itself and those he had claimed to love?

  The reeling slowed.

  His vertigo began to fade.

  One by one, the loops and reels in his mind began to wobble in their orbits and finally, like so many psychic hula hoops whose momentum was fading, to collapse in a heap somewhere in the back of his head.

  There only remained the problem of the terrible ache in his lower back.

  Holding on with both hands to the top of the door frame, he bent his knees to an almost full squatting position, trying to stretch the pain away.

  Hanging from the car door frame seemed to have no effect on his back pain, but it did cause a sudden and completely unexpected loosening of his bowels. Before he could tighten his sphincter muscle, he felt a squirt of waste dampen his underwear.

  What next? he thought.

  He pulled himself up, hoping that the stain had not soaked through his trousers.

  6

  The building in which Cromwell’s office was located was a long rectangle four stories high. The dingy yellow stuccoed walls were cracked and peeling. All along the length of the building were chips of stucco of various sizes and shapes, fallen from the walls and gathering there in the exposed earth in ever greater accumulations over the years.

  The whole building brought to mind some downtown community college in a town that no longer had a downtown or a community. One of those forlorn places where night students went to learn new skills that were out of date when they began.

  Judged on appearance alone, it was the last place you expected to house the headquarters of the single most powerful producer in the movie-making world.

  But then, Saul thought, the buildings and the offices and the private residences at Los Alamos, where the A-bomb was made, were even more unimposing in appearance.

  There were three entrances, one at each end of the rectangle and one in the middle.

  Saul took the middle one.

  There were two sets of doors. When Saul opened the second of the two and stepped inside, it was like going directly into a walk-in fridge.

  He shuddered.

  He was used to these exterior-interior extremes in temperature when he was in LA, but this felt more extreme than usual. He wondered if the bone-cold he was experiencing was the result of his own body’s faulty thermostat or the building’s. But how was one to tell?

  The lobby floor, usually peppered with people walking in and out of offices at this time of the week and at this time of the day, was completely deserted. Perhaps the start of the long weekend had swept through the premises and carried everyone away.

  Walking slowly toward the elevator (with that wad of damp waste in his shorts), he could hear the sound of telephones ringing in deserted offices being answered by the sound of answering machines.

  Down at the far end of the corridor, he noticed the maintenance man mopping the floor. Moving backwards, the man swung the mop from side to side in sweeping but precise scythelike strokes. Something about the man, in the mood Saul was in, struck him as mythic.

  He took the elevator to the third floor, got out, and took a left. For a split second, and for a split second only, the getting-out-of-yet-another-elevator syndrome got the better of him. He didn’t know where he was or where he was going.

  Then he remembered, as if the name Cromwell were an answer to all his questions.

  It was almost four o’clock. He wondered if perhaps Cromwell had given up on him and gone home like everyone else.

  If he was still in his office, then Saul was going to be a full hour late for their meeting. And although it had not been his idea to be so late, still he felt pleased, as if he had done it on purpose.

  A full fucking hour late, he thoug
ht.

  Despite his backache, despite his soiled underwear, Saul put a little rebellious swagger in his walk.

  Through the opaque glass door, he saw that all the lights were still on inside Cromwell’s office, putting to rest all hope that he had gone.

  So what? Saul thought.

  Feeling downright insurrectionary, he meant to open the door and swagger inside, but just as he was reaching for the knob, the door opened and the momentum of his inward-bound body was met and equaled by the outward-bound body of Cromwell’s black Brad, resulting in an intimate collision worthy of two tango dancers.

  Startled by the collision, lost momentarily in post-collision confusion, they both recovered quickly and then they both leaned back and laughed at what had happened.

  “Mr. Karoo,” the black Brad said.

  “Brad,” Saul replied.

  The large and the once-beautiful eyes of the young black man, which had reminded Saul,-the first time he had seen him, of the eyes of Byzantine saints, were still large, but were now lemur-like. Large and round and drained of something, as if something private and essential had been fucked out of them, which the eyes refused to acknowledge.

  “Jay’s still here and he’ll be thrilled to see you,” black Brad explained. He was very animated when he talked. “We were sure you were trapped in some nightmarish traffic jam. Jay forgot all about the start of the long weekend when he made the appointment. We tried to reach you at the hotel to tell you not to come today, but you had left already.”

  Saul’s spirit sagged a little when he realized that if he had only not left so early, he could have avoided being here.

  They traded places and stopped again, this time Saul on the inside and Brad on the outside.

  “Have a nice weekend,” Brad told him.

  “You too,” Saul replied.

  Brad walked away down the corridor and Saul lingered in the doorway to watch him go.

  Debating with himself whether to close the open door or leave it open, Saul resolved the issue by leaving it open, as if to assert that he didn’t intend to stay long.

  The door connecting Brad’s antechamber to Cromwell’s office was open as well, but not all the way. It was as silent in one room as in the other. He waited for Cromwell to come out and greet him or to call him inside, but neither occurred.

  He considered leaving, sneaking away.

  Then he reconsidered.

  Another involuntary discharge from his bowels dampened further his already damp underwear.

  Tightening his sphincter muscle, he pushed open the door to Cromwell’s office just wide enough to peek inside.

  Cromwell was on the telephone, for the moment listening to someone talk instead of talking himself. Just sitting there behind his desk and listening.

  His whole face lit up when he saw Saul peeking around the door.

  Great to see you, Doc, he seemed to be saying without saying a word. The wink of his eye, that little smile of his said it.

  Saul acknowledged the silent greeting with a silent greeting of his own, nodding as if to say, Great to see you too, Jay.

  But since Cromwell was on the telephone and since Saul didn’t want to intrude on some confidential conversation, he smiled apologetically and made as if to withdraw back to Brad’s side of the border.

  Cromwell, the host of hosts, would not hear of it.

  No, no, no. Come in. Come in. Come right in, Doc. This is nothing. Nothing at all. Just some jerk on the phone that I have to listen to. Won’t take a minute. Come on in. Great to see you, Doc, it really is.

  All this was said in complete silence. With little winks. Little shrugs. The raising or lowering of his eyebrows.

  Gesturing with the point of his chin, he instructed Saul where to sit, and Saul did as he was told and sat down in the designated chair directly across from Cromwell.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1

  LEGS CROSSED, BACK straight, arms tightly folded across his chest, he sits in his chair and waits for Cromwell to get off the phone.

  He has assumed as tightassed a sitting position as possible in order to prevent any further leakage of waste into his underwear.

  Contracting his sphincter for all he’s worth.

  His back is killing him, but the ache is the least of his problems now.

  Cromwell is still on the telephone. Still listening for the most part. Every now and then he says, “Mmm,” or, “I see, I do, but …” or, “I know, I know, but …” and then he listens again to someone pleading with him for something.

  The whole time that he’s listening, he’s keeping up a silent but lively banter with Saul. Chatting him up. Conveying what he wants to convey to him with an endless variety of winks and looks and facial semaphores.

  It’s so damn good to see you, Doc, he tells him.

  It’s been a while, that’s for sure.

  I’m glad to see that you’ve recovered from that terrible tragedy, he tells him.

  I was really worried about you. I mean, for a while there, you really had me worried. I didn’t think you were going to pull out of it.

  Some people never do, you know.

  But you’re looking good, Doc. You really are. Lost a little weight, didn’t you?

  “I know, I know, but …” he says with sympathy to whoever he’s talking to on the telephone.

  What a fucking bore this guy is, he conveys to Saul with a simple little roll of his eyes. He looks at his watch and mimes a sigh of someone desperate for the call to end.

  But it’s clear to Saul that Cromwell is having a wonderful time.

  Such a good time, in fact, that he’s letting the man on the other end of the line continue, as if the chance exists that whatever desperate plea the man is making to Cromwell might meet with success. Cromwell’s silence (while the man talks) only encourages this interpretation. Makes it seem (to the man on the other end of the line) that his words are swaying Cromwell. That Cromwell’s silence is one of rapt attention and serious reconsideration.

  Saul knows all this because he knows Cromwell.

  He feels that he’s known Cromwell all his life.

  He has no idea who the man or woman is on the other end of the line, but he knows that whoever it is, man or woman, black or white, young or old, that Cromwell is fucking the person on the phone. Fucking them out of something. Or fucking them into something.

  That’s why Cromwell was so eager to have Saul come inside.

  To observe.

  Saul also knows that he’s the next in line. He doesn’t know the details of Cromwell’s agenda, but he knows that as soon as Cromwell gets off the phone, he will fuck him into or out of something.

  2

  To help pass the time while he sits and waits for Cromwell to conclude, Saul tries to figure out how long it has been since the last time he saw Cromwell in person.

  Last November, Saul manages to nail down the month if not the date.

  Over breakfast.

  In Pittsburgh.

  In that hotel restaurant.

  Cromwell and his young black friend.

  It was a Saturday.

  The same Saturday in November when Leila and Billy died.

  His mind starts to reel. Oh, Billy. Oh, Leila. Oh, Mother. To keep it from reeling, he counts the intervening months.

  Starting in mid-November of last year and ending in July of this.

  November, December, January, February …

  He can’t do the arithmetic in his head and has to start again. This time he resorts to counting on his fingers, which are tucked inside the armpits of the opposing arms folded across his chest.

  Five months in one armpit. Three in the other. Maybe not quite three, since it was mid-November.

  But over seven months, in any case.

  Seven months is a long time, Saul thinks.

  A very long time.

  Until he entered this office and sat down in this chair, it seemed like a very long time since the last time he saw Cromwell.

&nbs
p; But it no longer seems that way.

  In a matter of minutes, Cromwell has managed to reduce that seven-month interval of separation between them to next to nothing.

  To make him feel, as he is feeling now, that he was never really away from him at all.

  Cromwell winks at him, raising one finger in the air to indicate that he’s getting off any second. He smiles. He mimes some messages his way. Saul counters with a mime of his own. No rush, Jay, I’m fine. Or something to that effect.

  But the smiling monster he’s looking at, whom he thought he knew so well, appears to him now in a new, even more monstrous shape.

  Behind that vast, monolithic forehead Saul sees the maw of a mind of such power that it can break the bones of time at will.

  Not bend time, as has been theorized to occur in deep space, but actually break it and compress it into nothingness.

  What Saul sees are the eyes of the Millennium Man winking back at him.

  Maybe, Saul thinks, it’s here already.

  The Millennium.

  Maybe, he thinks, the Millennium came earlier than expected.

  In 1991. The last year you’ll ever need to know.

  3

  He’s off the phone and up on his feet. The conversation begun with Saul in pantomime now ratchets into speech.

  “Damn, Doc,” he says, “it’s so good to see you, you old bastard. It really is. Don’t ask me to explain why I’m so damn fond of you, but …

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he says, “for dragging you out here in all that traffic. It completely slipped my mind what day it was.

  “And I’m truly sorry,” he says, “for having to stay on the phone so long. I’ll tell you honestly, Doc, sometimes I wish I could be the merciless sonovabitch everyone says I am. It would be a lot easier on me if I could.

  “How are you?” he asks Saul. “Sorry if I seem a little tired. Listening to that guy simply wore me out.”

  He’s not just lying to Saul. He wants Saul to know he’s lying to him.

  It becomes a truth of sorts, this manner of lying. A Cromwellian truth.