Her Name Was Lola

by Russell Hoban

  ‘But what if you’re not ready for the journey?’

  ‘I think maybe nobody’s ever ready for the big ones,’ says Max.

  Lola says nothing, she presses closer to him.

  ‘What a memory,’ says Max’s mind. ‘But those razor blades!’

  ‘She’s in London,’ says Max. ‘I can feel it.’

  ‘What year are you in?’

  ‘This one, right now.’ He turns on his heel and heads for Trafalgar Square.

  9

  Flashes, Flutters, Expectations

  November 2001. Vibrating like a caesium clock, Max makes his way southeast through Soho. The years from 1996 onwards print his footsteps as he goes. From Berwick Street to Broadwick, Broadwick to Wardour, then across Shaftesbury to Whitcomb and Pall Mall East. Lola-and-Max phantasms beckon and lure as he passes places where they ate, drank, and dawdled. Max’s thoughts pop like camera flashes and flutter like the pigeons of, here it is: Trafalgar Square.

  England expects! shouts Nelson from his column.

  ‘Me too,’ says Max. So many footsteps, faces, seconds, minutes, hours, pigeons. Is she here? If not, why not? Multitudes of voices, wings, cameras. Was that Trafalgar Square memory a message from Lola or was it not? His chest feels wet. ‘You pissed on me!’ he says to Apasmara.

  ‘It’s all in your mind,’ says the dwarf.

  ‘I have no control over him,’ says Max’s mind.

  ‘Why not?’ says Max.

  ‘Don’t get heavy with me,’ says his mind. ‘We’ve got to stick together to get through this.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Maybe you’re trying too hard. Maybe if you ease up a little …’

  ‘If I ease up a little, what? Suddenly she’ll appear and everything will be the way it was before it stopped being that way?’

  ‘Stop straining for special effects, Max. Just go for ordinary memories with no frills.’

  ‘Can we do straight memories now?’ says Max, ‘like regular people?’

  ‘Let’s try,’ says his mind.

  10

  Frank Sinatra, Doris Day

  February 1997. The lights of the Albert Bridge are beads of hope strung across the night. Max and Lola both have songs in their heads: Max’s song is the Frank Sinatra version of ‘My One and Only Love’. Lola’s is the Doris Day ‘If I Give My Heart to You’. They’re both thinking a lot and not talking much as they walk along the Embankment towards the Chelsea Bridge. After a while Lola says, ‘I think I should tell you about Basil Meissen-Potts.’

  ‘Fragile, is he?’ says Max. In his mind stamping heavily upon the Meissen-Pottsery of the unknown Basil.

  ‘Not at all,’ says Lola. ‘He’s a black belt and a demon cricketer. His main thing is being a QC.’

  ‘Why do you need to tell me about him?’

  ‘Well, Daddy and Mummy rather expect me to marry him. Not that I want to.’

  ‘I should hope not.’

  ‘All the same, he’s part of a kind of life that I’m accustomed to, and it isn’t something one walks away from lightly. I’ll follow my heart wherever it takes me but it’s got to be the real thing.’ She and Max have so far used the word love only in connection with spooky stories, Monteverdi, rain, the Albert Bridge, and so on.

  ‘Are you the real thing?’ says Max’s mind.

  ‘How real can I be, for Christ’s sake?’ says Max. ‘Some mornings when I wake up I’m not even there.’

  ‘I wonder how long the light bulbs on the Albert Bridge last,’ says Lola.

  ‘They can always get new ones as the old ones burn out,’ says Max. ‘It’ll never go dark.’

  11

  Blighter’s Rock No

  February 1997. When Max isn’t with Lola and also when he is, he’s looking for Page One. This is a bit like trying to retrieve a coin that’s fallen down a grating. Is that it, that faint gleam in the darkness? Not sure. He lowers weighted strings and chewing gum and brings up bottle caps.

  ‘Blighter’s rock?’ says Max’s mind.

  ‘I am not rocked,’ says Max. He avoids the proper name of that condition in which writers are unable to write. ‘My ideas aren’t the usual thing and they don’t come easy.’ His last novel, Any That You Can Not Put Downe, published in 1993, was about a man’s pursuit of the ghost of a woman who put a curse on him. His two previous novels, Turn Down An Empty Glass and Ten Thousand Several Doors, were published five and seven years ago respectively. For each of these Max received a twenty-thousand-pound advance. None of the three has yet earned back that advance. Fortunately Charlotte Prickles, Lollipop Lady was a commercial success when it came out in 1994, and his juvenile backlist is healthy. So Max can afford to write another novel. If he can think of one.

  ‘I’m starting to get a kind of flavour,’ says his mind.

  ‘What kind of flavour?’

  ‘Dark, shadowy, sad, full of loss.’

  ‘I’m tasting it,’ says Max. ‘It’s very disturbing.’

  ‘But it’s your kind of thing, no?’

  ‘Yes, but it scares me.’

  ‘Scared is good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not this kind,’ says Max. ‘It’s not the normal kind of writing panic. It’s full of regret.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I don’t know and I’m afraid to find out.’

  12

  When Claude Met Lula Mae

  February 1997. A Sunday afternoon. Max and Lola in the National Gallery, standing in front of Claude’s Landscape with Psyche outside of the Palace of Cupid. ‘Poor Psyche!’ says Lola.

  ‘If she hadn’t lit that lamp to sneak a peek at Cupid he wouldn’t have flown away,’ says Max. ‘But she wasn’t content to be kept in the dark.’

  ‘No one likes to be kept in the dark,’ says Lola. ‘Now she’s lost her love and there’s darkness all around her.’

  ‘Consequences of…’ says Max. He’s picking up a scent, a fragrance.

  ‘Of what?’ says Lola.

  ‘Magnolia blossoms?’ says Max. He turns to see a young woman looking at the same picture. A homecoming-queen kind of beauty and he can tell by the hang of her face that she’s American.

  ‘Clawed!’ she says. ‘You can’t beat him for atmosphere.’

  ‘Clowed,’ says Max.

  ‘But in Casablanca it’s Clawed Rains who says, “Round up the usual suspects,”’ says the homecoming queen.

  ‘In the National Gallery it’s Clowed,’ says Max.

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind. I’m Lula Mae Flowers.’

  ‘Max Lesser.’ Handshake. ‘This is Lola Bessington.’

  ‘Hi,’ says Lula Mae to Lola. To Max she says, ‘You here for a visit?’

  ‘I live here. You?’

  ‘I work here as of last week, Everest Technology Sales, transferred from Austin. What do you do?’

  ‘Write,’ says Max. ‘Novels.’

  ‘What have you written?’

  ‘Any That You Can Not Put Downe was the most recent. Not published in the States.’

  ‘You’re an H. P. Lovecraft fan! How about that! So far from home!’ She speaks with exclamation marks.

  ‘I think I’ve seen enough of this one,’ says Lola to Max. ‘I’ll move on to the next room.’ To Lula Mae she says, ‘Nice meeting you.’

  ‘Likewise,’ says Lula Mae.

  ‘I hope you enjoy London,’ says Max to her as he follows Lola.

  ‘Do my best. Maybe our paths will cross again.’

  ‘You never know,’ says Max as he watches the sweet primeval motion of her going-away view.

  ‘I never noticed till now that your eyes are on stalks,’ says Lola.

  ‘Retractable,’ says Max.

  ‘I think Lula Mae Magnolia Blossom has gone,’ says Lola, ‘and I want to get back to the Claweds.’ She leads the way to A Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba. ‘There’s the ship waiting to take her away into the early morning with fair weather and favouring winds. It looks as if it’s happening on a stage, I
can almost hear the rollers creaking as the waves lap at the shore. How many filters of unreality are there between the real Queen of Sheba and this one!’

  ‘Unreality is part of reality,’ says Max.

  13

  When Max’s Mind Met Lula Mae

  February 1997. Still that Sunday. ‘No,’ says Max’s mind.

  ‘What no?’ says Max.

  ‘You’re not going to have a go at that sweet primeval motion.’

  ‘You sound as if I have a go at anything that moves,’ says Max.

  ‘So you won’t be looking up Everest Technology in the phone book?’

  ‘Give me a break. She’s a little bit of home, and naturally if I bump into her we’ll have a coffee or something.’

  ‘A little bit of home! What, now you’re from Texas?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I certainly do. Coffee or something! You’ve got a real thing going with Lola, so what do you want with Lula Mae? As if I didn’t know.’

  ‘Maybe I’m not ready for This-Is-It.’

  ‘Well, if this isn’t it you sure as hell better do something pretty soon because Lola’s not someone you can fool around with.’

  ‘I’m not fooling around.’

  ‘What else would you call it if you don’t mean what you say?’

  ‘I do mean what I say.’

  ‘Wonderful, and the things you’ve said to Lola don’t leave any room for side trips, do they.’

  ‘Feelings aren’t that simple,’ says Max.

  ‘Gee whiz!’ says his mind. ‘I never knew that. It’s good that I have you to explain these things to me.’

  ‘You and I,’ says Max, ‘don’t seem to be getting along too well right now.’

  ‘That’s because I’m right and you’re wrong. There are times when you know you’ll be sorry for what you’re going to do but you do it anyhow and then you’re sorry.’

  ‘William Blake said, “If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise,”’ says Max.

  ‘Wise and all alone,’ says his mind.

  14

  Research

  February 1997. Lula Mae Flowers is a man-puller. That’s what she does. She should really have that on her passport as her occupation: men are drawn to her as iron filings to a magnet. Max is somewhat off her beaten track but in the National Gallery she felt his eyes on her as she walked away and she’s confident that he’ll make contact soon.

  The offices of Everest Technology are in Holborn, and two days after meeting Lula Mae, Max needs to research that part of town for a scene he might write in the novel for which he hasn’t yet written Page One.

  ‘I’m not going to ring her up,’ he says to himself. ‘I’ll just stop by her office and probably she won’t even be there. I’m leaving this entirely to chance.’

  ‘What do you want,’ says his mind, ‘applause?’

  Max enters the majestic glass tower of Everest Technology, goes to Reception, and says, ‘Would you ring Lula Mae Flowers in Sales, please, and tell her that Max Lesser is here.’

  ‘Is she expecting you?’ says the receptionist.

  ‘I think so,’ says Max.

  The receptionist rings up Lula Mae, then says to Max, ‘Have a seat, she’ll be right down.’

  Max sinks into some expensive black leather and picks up a copy of Fortune. THE FUTURE IS NOW, says the cover as Lula Mae steps out of the lift and he feels a rush of blood to his head. He’s read that the Sultan of Morocco once cited Virginia Mayo as tangible proof of the existence of God. Lula Mae is actually better looking than Virginia Mayo was.

  ‘I had to do some research in this part of town,’ says Max, ‘so I thought I’d stop by and ask you to lunch.’

  ‘I thought so too,’ says Lula Mae, ‘but I insist on taking you because you’re my first writer.’

  ‘That’s surprising,’ says Max, ‘because there are a whole lot more of us than there are of you.’

  Lula Mae flashes him a smile that makes him dizzy, takes his arm, and marches him off to The Garibaldi, her favourite lunchtime spot. There are lots of male pedestrians on the way, and when she passes, each one she passes says, ‘Ah!’

  The Garibaldi has a red signboard and a small statue of the hero of the Risorgimento in its window. ‘Avanti, populo,’ says Max.

  ‘Remember the Alamo,’ says Lula Mae.

  When they’re seated and holding menus almost as big as the signboard, Lula Mae says, ‘Do you like Chianti, Max? Say yes.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Max.

  Lula Mae almost nods and a red-shirted waiter appears with a bottle, opens it, pours a taster, and offers it to Max. ‘The lady will taste it,’ says Max. Lula Mae gives him an approving look, tastes the wine, almost nods again, and the waiter pours. Lula Mae and Max raise their glasses to each other.

  ‘“There never was a horse that couldn’t be rode; there never was a cowboy that couldn’t be throwed,”’ says Lula Mae.

  ‘“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,”’ says Max. Clink.

  ‘So,’ says Lula Mae, ‘this girl you were with in the National Gallery, she’s your girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Max.

  ‘But here you are,’ says Lula Mae.

  ‘I didn’t know how not to be here,’ says Max. ‘You’re a man-puller and you pulled me. If I’m too small you can throw me back.’

  ‘Actually,’ says Lula Mae, ‘I like your non-Euclidean geometry.’

  ‘I like yours too,’ says Max.

  ‘My flat is just a short walk from here,’ says Lula Mae. ‘A good place for research, quiet and out of the crush.’

  ‘My kind of place,’ says Max. By now they seem to have eaten something and finished the Chianti and off they go. Lula Mae’s flat is tasteful and expensive. Among the books on her shelves Max sees George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant, Elmore Leonard, Buddhist Wisdom Books, Ortega y Gasset, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Aickman, and Lafcadio Hearn.

  ‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘You’re a dark horse.’

  ‘There’s more to me than my going-away view, Cowboy,’ says Lula Mae.

  ‘When I was in high school,’ says Max, ‘girls like you only hung out with football heroes. If we’d been in the same school at the same time you wouldn’t have looked at me.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ says Lula Mae, ‘but I’m looking at you now.’ There’s music: Dusty Springfield singing, ‘If you go away on this summer day, then you might as well take the sun away …’ The song stops and is followed by some muted bossa nova. ‘Grappa?’ says Lula Mae.

  ‘Yes, please,’ says Max. ‘How insensitive …’ sings Astrud Gilberto, and is cut off short by Lula Mae.

  ‘I like it better without music,’ says Max.

  ‘Me too,’ says Lula Mae. She seems different now and Max is touched by the change. He kisses her gently, one thing leads to another, and here he is a little later, shaking his head on the Piccadilly Line.

  Max’s mind is silent for a while, riffling through the afternoon’s action. Then it sings, ‘But if you stay, I’ll make you a day like no day has been or will be again …’

  ‘What’s this?’ says Max.

  ‘Just trying to remember the rest of that song,’ says his mind. ‘Are you wiser now, Cowboy?’

  ‘Too soon to say,’ says Max.

  15

  The Scent of Lula Mae Flowers

  February 1997. Another Sunday, Hyde Park. Max and Lola at the Round Pond, watching the model boatmen and their model boats. ‘Models are mysterious things,’ says Lola.

  ‘How so?’ says Max. He enjoys the sight of the sail models tacking, the steam models chugging.

  ‘Look at that Thames sailing barge,’ says Lola. ‘Totally realistic, and because it believes in itself there comes into being a model Thames running down to a model sea bounded by model continents on a whole model planet. Are you a model, Max?’

  ‘What do you mean, Lola?’

  ‘Is there a model Max-world extending outward from the re
alistic details of you?’

  ‘Lola, I don’t know what you’re getting at.’

  ‘No matter. Sometimes I talk crazy.’ Her profile is needle-sharp in the lens of the chilly afternoon.

  ‘Are you OK?’ says Max.

  ‘Do you mean, am I an OK person or are things OK with me?’ She’s looking past the boats and boatmen into the distance. The wind is blowing her hair in a way that goes to Max’s heart.

  ‘Are things OK with you?’ he says.

  ‘I don’t know, Max. I can’t help noticing that you’re different today.’

  ‘How am I different?’

  ‘Do I smell Lula Mae on you?’

  ‘You can’t,’ says Max. ‘There’s nothing to smell on me but me.’ It’s been a couple of days since he was with Lula Mae and he’s had a shower this morning.

  ‘I can smell her on your mind,’ says Lola. ‘It’s something I wasn’t expecting. I suppose I flattered myself that you’d have no interest left over for anyone else. When you came into the shop that December evening and said out loud that I was your destiny woman it was embarrassing but not dishonourable. It never occurred to me that you’d have a wandering eye.’

  ‘Lola,’ says Max, ‘most men have a wandering eye. It’s part of a genetic urge to spread one’s seed as widely as possible. We’re programmed that way.’

  ‘Men are programmed to leave the toilet seat up too,’ says Lola, ‘but they can remember not to.’

  Silence. Max and Lola both watching the model boats and noticing that the Round Pond has become as deep and wide as an ocean. The wind is raising little wavelets. The Thames barge, approaching a lee shore, comes about and bears away. The model boatmen are intent on their radio controls. Some of them have full-size wives and children with them. The sky grows darker, the afternoon is gathering in.

  ‘It’s getting colder,’ says Lola. Max puts his arm around her but she doesn’t press against him. She turns to look directly at him. Her eyes are unfathomable. Max waits for what she’ll say next but she doesn’t say anything.