Vertical
Page 6
I patted his stomach. “I don’t know if you make the weight limit.”
“Fuck you, short horn. You’re not exactly Charles Atlas these days,” he said.
I laughed. “Hey, help me with these,” I said, turning back into my house.
Jack came inside and saw boxes and boxes stacked up all around. “These your books?”
“No. They’re wine. Artisanal, hard-to-find Pinots from the Willamette Valley. Ever since I committed to being master of ceremonies at this International Pinot Noir Celebration they started sending me wine. Wine and more wine, hoping, of course, I’ll write a sequel to Shameless and that Martin and Jake will make the pilgrimage to the Willamette and bestow a little recognition to their quaff.” I turned to Jack and winked. “Okay, so I admit I told them a little white lie and said there was going to be a sequel and it was coming to their region. They fucking went nuts.”
“Holy shit!” Jack exclaimed.
“I figured why waste money on wine when I’ve got all this awesome stuff.”
“Fucking A.”
“Did you know the Willamette Valley is planted 65% in Pinot Noir?”
“No.”
“Hell, they’re more passionate about my favorite grape variety than any other region in the world. I guess I’m kind of a rock star up there. Anyway, I put together a couple of mixed cases, and I’ve got a cooler over there with some awesome whites.”
“All right,” a financially strapped Jack said excitedly. “You’ve got to unload some of this grape on me.”
“You can have all you want, big guy. When we get back.”
We loaded the cases, Jack’s battered portmanteau–the bamboo one emblazoned with the colorful ports-of-call stickers–locked up and motored off in the Toyota Sienna I had rented for the trip. It was a specially outfitted handicap vehicle with a movable ramp for easy transfering of my mother in and out. Joy would be pleased to see it.
Jack told me, as we started out of Santa Monica in the direction of the I-10, that he had spent the weekend with his three-year-old son and that had rendered him both maudlin and elated, a strange admixture in a man of his size. On an even sunnier note, he admitted, relations had normalized between him and his ex-wife Babs. The more he had come to terms with the fact they were now officially divorced and she was seeing another man, whom Babs had confessed to Jack she might marry, the easier it was becoming for him to adopt the new role of mostly absentee father.
“There is life after divorce,” I said, after he had recounted the salient events in his life since I had last seen him. “We can love again with scars.”
“That’s beautiful,” Jack said, semisarcastically, as I merged onto the 405 and headed south toward San Diego.
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
“Now,” Jack reminded me. “You always had the ten-dollar words, dude.”
“True,” I said. “I’m just milking this little window. I’m sure soon I’ll be back on the skids, dodging slumlords and eating Baja Fresh.”
Jack laughed. He snaked an arm around to the back and flipped open one of the mixed cases. He indiscriminately slid out the first bottle and said, “Do you have a corkscrew, Homes?”
“Jack. We’ve got a lot of driving to do today. Let’s hold off.”
“We’re on vacation, man,” he protested.
“I don’t want to start this trip off with a DUI.”
Sullenly, Jack returned the bottle to the case with the expression of a kid scolded to put the candy back on the counter, folded his arms across his chest and battled the temptation.
“We’ll get a couple of glasses when we get to Carlsbad, okay, big guy?”
“Aye, aye, captain,” he growled.
The first half of the drive from LA to San Diego is one of the most abominable drives on the planet. The five-lane freeway cuts sinuously through a hideous landscape of filthy white-stucco apartment complexes, car dealerships, franchise enterprises, windowless factories and other soul-destroying eyesores for which Southern California is notorious. It reaches its nadir in Long Beach where sprawling oil refineries, belching flames and God knows what else into the atmosphere, lend the impression of an industrial Hell feeding energy to a city starved for oil. Past Long Beach, the drive starts marginally to improve as Orange County gives way to multi-national corporate office complexes where lives are destroyed in a more insidious, less blatant, fashion. Not until you reach San Clemente does the ocean finally show its blue limitless face. The relief is tremendous. It’s as if you had staggered out of a war zone and happened upon a clearing where the fight was no longer being waged. For the next 17 miles there is nothing but ocean and parched brown hills, all of it owned by the military. If the Pentagon ever went bankrupt and decided to sell, pricey gated condominium and housing complexes, interspersed by emerald golf courses, would quickly surge in to fill the void known as Camp Pendleton. LA to San Diego would become one long, butt-ugly contiguous city, the grand alimentary canal of all of Southern California.
Jack wasn’t impressed with my analysis. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear that every time we come down here. Come on, let’s pop a bottle. A little bubbly never hurt.”
“Just hold your horses, Jackson,” I said.
This was our first road trip since the now semi-famous sojourn in Santa Ynez and my writing the novel it inspired, and we both felt buoyant about getting out, wine notwithstanding, and leaving our cares in the wake of the retreating freeway miles. Still, worry corrugated Jack’s brow, and I could palpably feel why he needed a glass or two to obliterate the wreckage he had made of his life.
Halfway down the untrammeled 17-mile stretch of freeway, sensing Jack was growing antsy, I said, “All right, Jackson, there’s an uncorked bottle in the Willamette case. Pour us a couple sippy cups.”
Jack turned to me and beamed. “All right. Now, you’re talking.” Jack pivoted around and rooted in the cooler until he found the bottle I was referring to. He uncorked an ‘08 St. Innocent Freedom Hill Pinot Blanc and filled two plastic cups and handed one to me. He held his up and toasted me. I toasted him back. Wine in hand, alcohol in the belly, he grew more garrulous.
“God, this is nice,” he exclaimed.
“Great weight. Almost glycerin-like. Just a beautiful balance of fruit and acid.”
“Fucking awesome,” he said.
“Willamette’s the next Burgundy,” I hyperbolized.
“So, what’s on the horizon, writing-wise, Homes?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if I want to go back to screenplays. The pay’s good, and I’ve got this gust of wind behind me and all, but they never get made. It’s kind of dispiriting.”
“Well, it’s good that you have the luxury of choices,” he said, a tinge of ruefulness in his voice.
“I guess, yeah,” I said. “I don’t know, Jackson. Shameless took a lot out of me emotionally and creatively. That’s why I’m happy to be getting out, getting away from it all. I hope to come back transformed, fresh with ideas. Road trips can be revivifying.”
“Amen, brother. Amen.” He toasted me and I touched him back. “I’m so glad to be out of LA, man. I cannot tell you.”
The shoreline stretch came to an abrupt end in Oceanside, the first of many seaside hamlets that dot the coast all the way to San Diego proper. By the time we reached Carlsbad we had polished off the bottle and were suffused with that emollient feeling a little wine–for Jack and me, that is–delivers.
When I sped past Las Villas de Muerte, visible from the I-5, Jack turned to me and said, “Isn’t that where your mom lives?”
“We have to make another stop first,” I muttered.
“What’s that? Let’s get this party on the road.”
“I was dating this attorney when I was taking care of my mom,” I tried to explain. “When she had her congestive heart failure and went into Las Villas I stupidly gave Melina–the attorney–my mother’s precious Snapper, the dog we’re taking on the trip.”
&
nbsp; “Yeah, so?”
“Well, I kind of blew her off when fame went to my head and she stopped making visits with Snapper and my mother blames me for it. So, we have to get him back.”
“Okay, so how’re we going to do that?”
I left the freeway at the Leucadia Boulevard off-ramp and steered the Rampvan in the direction of the ocean. Jack stared fixedly at me, looking puzzled, waiting to hear the plan. A mile down the hill, just before the Coast Highway, I turned left at Hermes Ave., a neighborhood street that dead-ended in a cul-de-sac. A couple of houses before Melina’s I pulled the Rampvan over and braked to a halt.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” I began, looking into the perplexed countenance of Jack. “Melina knows we’re coming. In fact, she’s really looking forward to our company. In her world, after all, we’re demigods. Anyway, we’re going to go in, with a nice bottle, act friendly. She took the day off for this visit, in fact. We’re going to get her looped. I’m going to get frisky with her. I’ve already been buttering her up with phone calls and e-mails. Hell, when I was dating her she offered me ten grand for my sperm because she was desperate to have kids.”
“Why would she want your seed?”
“I don’t know. Good point. Anyway, at the appropriate moment, you’re going to offer to take Snapper for a walk so he can relieve himself. She’s not stupid. She’ll get the message. She knows I came down here to give her a thumping. While you’re walking Snapper to the van, I’m going to take her by the hand into the back bedroom, grit my teeth, and give her the fuck of her life.” Jack’s eyes bugged out at me. “After sex she always showers. Always. It’s a Brazilian custom or something.”
“Maybe just with you. Scrub the crabs off.”
I ignored his jab. “While she’s showering I’m going to get dressed and boogie, meet you in the van with Snapper.”
Jack continued to look at me unblinkingly, his mouth now frozen agape. “Let me get this straight. This woman you used to go out with, we’re going to go in there, you’re going to romance her, fuck her brains out, I’m going to kidnap her dog, and you’re going to ditch her?”
I held up both hands, palms open. “On paper I realize it sounds a little cruel. But it’s not her damn dog. It’s my mother’s dog. Of eight years. Melina has only had him a couple years. My mother will not go on this trip without her dog. We’re going to hear about it for ten fucking days if we don’t get that little critter. Comprende?”
“How do you know you’re going to be able to get her into the sack if you blew her off?”
“I told you,” I said in a rising tone, “we’ve been corresponding. I lied and said I might be moving down here to write my next book. It took a few flirtatious e-mails, employing all my literary skills–scant as they may be according to the critics–and a long phone call that almost ended up in phone sex to butter her up, but she extended the olive branch I knew was coming. The chick just turned 40. She hasn’t been with anyone in almost two years. She loves sex. She rarely turns it down, even when she’s menstruating. Plus, now with the success of the movie, she’s re-enamored of me, if you know what I mean.”
“Jesus, Miles!” Jack shook his head in befuddlement. “This is wack, man. Totally fucking wack. This wasn’t in the job description.”
“Well, we’ve done some wacky things. We did some surreal shit on that Santa Ynez trip. Some of it so wacky it couldn’t even make it into an R-rated movie. Shit we don’t need to recount,” I argued.
“No, we do not,” Jack said, flashing back to some wild moments immortalized in Shameless, with a sardonic grimace. But, he still had his doubts. “How’s this chick going to feel, man, when she comes out of the shower?”
“What do you fucking care? It was her kind that caused you to lose your joint-custody battle,” I argued.
Jack pinched his lips thoughtfully, as if rehearsing the plan in his imagination. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m not fond of attorneys.”
“Now, could we just do this? I’m not looking forward to it either. This is the ultimate mercy fuck. I’m doing it for my mother. And for our sanity on the road. Because she’s going to blubber about that little Yorkie the whole fucking way. Trust me. Ever since her stroke, she’s a different person. No Snapper would be the leading edge of a tsunami of crying jags.”
“The attorney’s not going to give up the dog to your poor mom?” Jack asked.
“I didn’t ask her. If I came clean to her about taking my mom to Wisconsin and wanting the dog and she said no, she would be totally suspicious of our visit. So, no mention of this voyage, okay?”
Jack erupted into laughter. “What a way to start this trip!”
“Are you ready to rock and roll?”
Jack shrugged. “I’ll do my best.” He brandished a finger at me. “But don’t blame me if it goes awry.”
“Just follow the cues, okay? Don’t blow it. In an hour we’ll be on the road and tonight we’ll be eating steaks and drinking Highliner at the Hitching Post.”
“I’m down with that. All right, dude. Let’s get it over with.”
I slipped the Rampvan into Drive and crept forward. I executed a cumbrous U-turn and parked so that we could make one of those police squad car exits. I switched off the motor and handed Jack the keys. “Lock and load, dude,” I said.
Jack took the keys from me, closed his fist around them and shook it in mock support of the plan.
Melina greeted us at the door in a black, low-cut dress that showcased her new surgically enhanced breasts. She was a short, full-figured, bespectacled woman with shoulder-length rodent-brown hair. I was gladdened by her appearance because it was blatant what the nasty little zaftig attorney had uppermost in her mind. She was cordial to Jack when I introduced the two, but I sensed she felt a little uncomfortable with his presence, as if I had deliberately brought a third to thwart her amorous advances.
Jack, sensing her mild disappointment upon seeing him, switched on the charm in all his ebullient, erstwhile-actor phoniness. After I had enveloped her in a more-than-friendly hug, he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her up off the ground–no mean feat! Jack! your lumbar disk! I almost shouted–and said, “It’s so nice to meet you, Melina. Miles said you were beautiful, but, my God, look at you!”
Melina giggled. She possessed one of those tittering laughs that started innocently, then rose and rose like a hot air balloon, spiraling upward in volume until you were never sure when it was going to sputter to an end. It had been a contributing factor in my decision to dump her. That and the annoying HPV I had contracted from her, which had me in a urologist’s office getting the damn wart freeze-dried off my member–yet another rationalizing motivation to kidnap Snapper.
Jack uncorked a bottle of another splendiferous Willamette offering, an ‘08 Witness Tree Vintage Select Pinot. Melina didn’t have much of a palate, so anything at all better than Two-Buck Upchuck usually thrilled her to the core. The wine was silky, with beautiful texture, redolent of blackberries and black cherries. It was so good I almost wanted to hide in the closet with the bottle and just conduct a private tête-à-tête with it. But, unfortunately, I had other, even more sordid, things on my mind.
In a festive mood, Melina put one of Enya’s vomitous New Age albums in her CD player as Jack and I, more alt-indie and retro–Hendrix, The Doors, Nick Drake–inclined, exchanged wide-eyed glances. As the music wafted putridly over us I sighed and, with Melina’s spreading ass staring at us, mouthed to Jack, How the hell am I going to fuck to Enya?!
Jack threw a fist to his mouth to stifle a laugh with an eye-watering cough.
I took a seat on her couch and Jack sprawled expansively in a matching wing chair as Melina went to fetch glasses and a cheese-and-cracker-and-charcuterie plate she had thoughtfully prepared for our visit. Seeing me alone on the couch, she parked herself next to me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of her thigh through the nearly diaphanous fabric of her dress. She looked at me with an expectant smile. “Hi, Miles.”
I poured wine all around. We sipped it as Jack and I regaled her with some risqué anecdotes of the Shameless trip and how the movie differed from the book. Melina wanted to know what the Academy Awards were like, which celebrities I had met, who I had slept with that night–ha, ha, ha. Not wanting to gloom the mood with the real story of how I had been relegated to the upper balcony by the insensitive studio heads who develop rapid-onset amnesia when it comes to the inconvenient fact there was a book behind their film, I prevaricated recklessly, employing all my fictive skills, about the celebrities who hugged and kissed me and bought me drinks, how I had stumbled from one after-party to another meeting the likes of Nicholson and Blanchett and other enchanting, ethereal Hollywood personalities. She seemed enthralled by my outrageous fabrications.
“And I remember when you were down here taking care of your mom and were totally broke,” she said, smiling at me. “What’s the secret, Miles?”
“How low can you go and still turn on your laptop? That’s what I tell writers today. Success doesn’t come without pain.” I snapped my fingers, and produced another whopper. “Oh, I’m pretty sure I’m going to accept the visiting professorship that UCSD offered. Fall quarter.”
“That’s nice. You can see your mom and, um….” She blushed to a stop.
“…and take you out to dinner at the finest restaurants. Now that I can afford it,” I finished, rubbing my shoulder against hers, the tacit implication of a regular sex partner not lost on her.
In no time, the first bottle was killed–Jack’s hangover, my anxiety–and I dispatched Jack to the van to fetch a second. As soon as he closed the door, I turned to sex-starved smiling Melina and said, my speech a little hobbled by the powerful Witness Tree Pinot, “You look beautiful, Melina.”