the list. It'll be fun. That's assuming, of course, that the winds today
don't blow all of our houses to bits. Jesus, listen to them."T H E T E N S: The first "So, Dag, what about the Skipper?"decade of a new century.
"What about him?"
"Think he'll narc on you?"
"If he does, I'll deny it. You'll deny it, too. Two versus one. I'm not into being prosecuted for felonies."
The thought of anything legal or prison oriented petrifies me. Dag can read this on my face: "Don't sweat it, sport. It'll never come to that. I promise. And guess what. You won't believe whose car it was ..."
"Whose?"
"Bunny Hollander's. The guy whose party we're catering tonight."
"Oh, Lord."
*****
Fickle dove-gray klieg light spots twitch and dart underneath tonight's overcast clouds, like the recently released contents of Pandora's box.
I'm in Las Palmas, behind the elaborate wet bar of Bunny Hollander's sequin -enhanced New Year's gala. Nouveaux riches faces are pushing themselves into mine, simultaneously bullying me for drinks (parvenu wealth always treats the help like dirt) and seeking my approval—and possibly my sexual favor.
It's a B-list crowd: TV money versus film money; too much attention given to bodies too late in life. Better looking but a bit too flash; the deceiving pseudohealth of sunburned fat people; the facial anonymity found only among babies, the elderly, and the overly face-lifted. There is a hint of celebrities, but none are actually present; too much money and not enough famous people can be a deadly mix. And while the party most definitely roars, the lack of famed mortals vexes the host, Bunny Hollander.
Bunny is a local celebrity. He produced a hit Broadway show in 1956, Kiss Me, Mirror or some such nonsense, and has been coasting on it for almost thirty-five years. He has glossy gray hair, like a newspaper left out in the rain, and a permanent leer that makes him resemble a child molester, the result of chain face-lifts since the nineteen sixties. But then Bunny knows lots of disgusting jokes and he treats staff well —the best combo going —so that makes up for his defects.
METAPHASIA: An inability to perceive metaphor.
DORIAN GRAYING: The
unwillingness to gracefully allow one's body to show signs of aging.
Dag opens a bottle of white: "Bunny looks like he's got dismembered Cub Scouts buried under his front porch."
"We've all got dismembered Cub Scouts under our front porches, Honey," says Bunny, slinking (in spite of his corpulence) up from behind and passing Dag his glass. "Ice for the drinky-winky, please." He winks, wags his bum, and leaves.
For once, Dag blushes. "I don't think I've ever seen a human being with so many secrets. Too bad about his car. Wish it was someone I didn't like."
Later on I obliquely raise the subject of the burned car to Bunny, trying to answer a question in my mind: "Saw your car in the paper, Bunny. Didn't it used to have an Ask Me About My Grandchildren bumper sticker?"
"Oh that. A little prank from my Vegas buddies. Charming lads. We don't talk about them." Discussion closed.
The Hollander estate was built in the era of the first moon launches and resembles the fantasy lair of an extremely vain and terribly wicked international jewel thief of that era. Platforms and mirrors abound. There are Noguchi sculptures and Calder mobiles; the wrought iron work is all of an atomic orbital motif. The bar, covered in teak, might well be identical to one in, say, a successful London advertising agency in the era of Twiggy. The lighting and architecture is designed primarily to make everyone look/a-bulous.
In spite of the celebrity shortage, the party is /a-bulous, as just about everybody keeps reminding each other. Social creature that Bunny is, he knows what makes a joint hop. "A party is simply not a party without bikers, transvestites, and fashion models," he sings from beside the chafing dishes loaded with skinless duck in Chilean blueberry sauce. He says this, of course, fully confident that all of these types (and more) are present. Only the disenfranchised can party with abandon— the young, the genuinely rich elderly, the freakishly beautiful, the kinked, the outlawed. . . . Hence, the soiree is pleasingly devoid of yuppies, an observation I pass on to Bunny on his nineteenth round of vodka tonics. "You might as well invite trees to a party as invite yupplings, Dear," he says. "Oh, look—there's the hot air balloon!" He disappears.
Dag is in his element tonight, with bartending a mere aside to his own personal agenda of cocktail consumption (he has lousy bartender's ethics)
and intense chats and fevered arguments with guests. Most of the time he's not even at the bar and is off roaming the house and the starkly lit cactus garden grounds, coming back only intermittently with reports.
"Andy —I just had the best time. I was helping the Filipino guy toss deboned chicken carcasses to the rottweilers. They've been caged for the evening. And that Swedish lady with the bionic -looking nylon leg splint was getting it all on 16mm. Says she fell into an excavation site in Lesotho that almost turned her legs into osso buco."
"That's great, Dag. Now could you pass me two bottles of red please."
"Sure." He passes me the wine, then lights up a cigarette—not even the most cursory gesture toward tending bar. "I was talking to that Van Klijk lady, too—the super-old one with the muumuu and the fox pelts who owns half the newspapers in the west. She told me that her brother Cliff seduced her in Monterey at the beginning of World War II, and then somehow got himself drowned in a submarine off of Helgoland. Ever since then she can only live in a hot, dry climate—the opposite of doomed and crippled submarines. But the way she told the story, I think she tells it to everyone."
How does Dag extract these things from strangers? Way over by the main extrance, where some seventeen-year-old girls from the Valley with detexturized mermaid hair are frugging with a record producer, I see some police officers enter. Such is the party that I'm not sure if they're simply more "types" carted in by Bunny to boost the atmosphere. Bunny is talking and laughing with the officers, none of whom Dag sees. Bunny toddles over.
"Herr Bellinghausen—If I'd known you were a desperate criminal, I would have given you an invitation instead of employment. The forces of respectability are asking for you at the door. I don't know what they want, Dear, but if you make a scene, do a favor and be visual." Bunny again flits off, and Dag's face blanches. He grimaces at me and then walks through an open set of glass doors, away from the police, and down toward the end of the yard.
"Pietro," I say, "can you cover for me a moment? I have to go do something. Ten minutes."
"Bring me a sample," says Pietro, assuming that I'm off to the parking lot to check out the substance scene. But of course, I go to follow Dag.
OBSCURISM: The practice of peppering daily life with obscure references [forgotten films, dead TV stars, unpopular books, defunct countries, etc.] as a subliminal means of showcasing both one's
education and one's wish to disassociate from the world of mass culture.
*****
"I've been wondering what this moment would feel like for a long time," says Dag—"this moment of finally getting caught. I actually feel relieved. Like I've just quit a job. Did I ever tell you the story about the guy from the suburbs who was terrified of getting VD?" Dag is drunk enough to be revealing, but not drunk enough to be stupid. His legs are dangling off the end of a cement flash-flood pipe in the wash next to Bunny's house where I find him.
"Ten years he spent pestering his doctor for blood samples and Wassermann tests, until finally (after doing what I'm not sure) he actually did end up getting a dose. So then he says to his doctor, 'Oh—well I'd better get some penicillin then.' He took his treatment and he never thought about the disease ever again. He just wanted to get caught. That's all."
I can't conceive of a less wise place to be sitting at the moment. Flash floods really are flash floods. One moment everything's hunkydory, the next there's this foaming white broth of sagebrush, abandoned sofas, and drowned coyotes.
/> Standing below the pipe, I can only see his legs. Such are the acoustics that his voice is resonating and baritone. I climb up and sit next to him. There's moonlight but no moon visible and a single point of light comes from the tip of his cigarette. He throws a rock out into the dark.
"You'd better go back up to the party, Dag. I mean, before the cops start pistol-whipping Bunny's guests, making them reveal your hiding spot, or something."
"Soon enough. Give me a moment—looks like the days of Dag the Vandal are over, Andy. Cigarette?" "Not right now."
"Tell you what. I'm a little bit freaked out at the moment. Why don't you tell me a short story—anything will do—and then I'll go up." "Dag, this really isn't the time ..." "Just one story, Andy, and yes, it is the time." I'm on the spot, but curiously, a small story comes to mind. "Fair enough. Here goes. When I was in Japan years ago— on a student exchange program—I was once living with this family and they had a daughter, maybe four years old. Cute little thing.
"So anyway, after I moved in (I was there for maybe a half year), she refused to acknowledge my presence within the household. Things I said to her at the dinner table were ignored. She'd walk right by me in the hall. I mean I did not exist at all in her universe. This was, of course, very insulting; everyone likes to think of themselves as the sort of charmed human being whom animals and small children instinctively adore.
"The situation was also annoying, but then there was nothing really to be done about it; no efforts on my part could get her to say my name or respond to my presence.
"So then one day I came home to find that papers in my room had been cut up into bits—letters and drawings I had been working on for some time—cut and drawn on with obvious small child malicious finesse. I was furious. And as she sauntered by my room shortly thereafter, I couldn't help myself and began to scold her rather loudly for what she had done, in both English and Japanese.
"Of course, I felt bad right away. She walked away and I wondered if I had gone too far. But a few minutes later she brought me her pet beetle in its little cage (a popular Asian children's amusement), grabbed me by the arm, and led me out into the garden. There, she began to tell stories of her insect's secret life. The point was that she had to get punished for something before she could open communication. She must be twelve years old now. I got a postcard from her about a month ago." I don't think Dag was listening. He should have been. But he just wanted to hear a voice. We throw more rocks. Then, out of the blue, Dag asks me if I know how I'm going to die.
"Bellinghausen, don't get morbid on me, okay. Just go up there and deal with the police. They've probably only got questions. That's all."
"Fermez la bouche, Andy. It was rhetorical. Let me tell you how I think I'm going to die. It's like this. I'll be seventy and be sitting out here in the desert, no dentures —all of my own teeth—wearing gray tweed. I'll be planting flowers—thin, fragile flowers that are lost causes in a desert—like those little cartoon flowers that clowns wear on top of their heads —in little clown's hat pots. There'll be no sound save for the hum of heat, and my body will cast no shadow, hunched over with a spade clinking against the stony soil. The sun will be right overhead and behind me there'll be this terrific flapping of wings—-louder than the flapping any bird can make.
"Turning slowly around, I will almost be blinded as I see that an angel has landed, gold and unclothed, taller than me by a head. I will put down the small flowerpot I'm holding—somehow it seems sort of embarrassing. And I will take one more breath, my last.
"From there, the angel will reach under my flimsy bones and take me into its arms, and from there it is only a matter of time before I am carried, soundlessly and with absolute affection, directly into the sun."
Dag tosses his cigarette and refocuses his hearing to the sounds of the party, faint over the gully. "Well, Andy. Wish me luck," he says, hopping down off of the cement pipe, then taking a few steps, stopping, turning around then saying to me, "Here, bend over to me a second." I comply, whereupon he kisses me, triggering films in my mind of liquefied supermarket ceilings cascading upward toward heaven. "There. I've always wanted to do that."
He returns to the big shiny party.
New Years Day HI can already smell the methane of Mexico, a stone's throw away, while I bake in a Calexico, California traffic jam, waiting to cross the border while embroiled in wavering emphysemic mirages of diesel spew. My car rests on a braiding and decomposing six-lane cor ridor lit by a tired winter sunset. Inching along with me in this linear space is a true gift -sampler of humanity and its vehicles: three-abreast tattooed farm workers in pickup trucks, enthusiastically showcasing a variety of country and windowed sedan loads of yuppies (a faint misting Glass); local hausfraus in cheaper Mexicali grocerOpera Digest within cheerretired look-alike Canawestern tunes; mirrorchilled and Ray-Banned of Handel and Philip hair curlers, off to get ies while inhaling Soap fully stickered Hyundais; dian couples bickering over maps falling apart from having been folded and unfolded so many times. To the side, peso brokers with Japanese names inhabit booths painted the bright colors of sugar candies. I hear dogs. And if I want a spurious fast food hamburger or Mexican car insurance papers, any number of nearby merchants will all too easily cater to this whim. Under the hood of the Volkswagen are two dozen bottles of Evian water and a flask of Immodium antidiarrheal—certain bourgeois habits die hard.
Last night I got in at five, exhausted from closing down the bar myself. Pietro and the other bartender split early to go trolling for babes at the Pompeii night club; Dag left with the police to go do somethin g down at the station. When I got home, all of the lights were out in the bungalows and I went right to bed—news of Dag's brush with the law and a welcome home for Claire would have to wait.
What I found when I got up the next morning around eleven was a note taped to my front door. Claire's handwriting:
hunny bunny,
we're off to san felipe! mexico beckons, dag and I talked over the holidays and he convinced me that now's the time, so we're going to buy a little hotel . . . why not join us? I mean, what els e were we going to do? and imagine, us hoteliers? the brain boggles.
we've kidnapped the doggies but we'll let you come of your own free will, it gets cold at night so bring blankies. and books, and pencils, the town is supertiny, so to find us just look for dag's wagoon. we're waiting for you tres impatiently, expect to see you tonight
luv, claire
At the bottom Dag had written:
CLEAN OUT YOUR SAVINGS ACCOUNT, PALMER. GET DOWN HERE. WE NEED YOU. P.S.: CHECK YOUR ANSWERING MACHINE
On the answer machine I found the following message:
"Greetings Palmer. See you got the note. Excuse my speech, but I'm totally fried. Got in last night at four and I haven't bothered to sleep—/ can do that in the car on the way to Mexico. / told you we had a surprise for you. Claire said, and she's right, that if we let you think about the hotel idea too much, you'd never come. You analyze things too much. So don't think about this—just come, okay? We'll talk about it when you get here.
"As for the law, guess what? The Skipper got brained by a GTO driven by global teens from Orange County yesterday, just outside the Liquor Barn. Quelle good fortune! In his pockets they found all of these demented letters written to me telling about how he was going to make me burn just like that car, and so forth. Moil I mean, talk about terror. So I told the police (not untruly, I might add) that I'd seen the Skipper at the scene of the crime and I figured the Skipper was worried that I might report him. Talk about neat. So it's case closed, but I t hink this little funster's had enough vandalism for nine lives.
"Anyhow, we'll see you in San Felipe. Drive safely (God, what a geriatric comment to make) and we'll see you toni . . .
"Hey, dickface, move your butt!" hectors the short -fused Romeo to the rear, tailgating me in his chartreuse rust-bucket flatbed.
Back to real life. Time to get snappy. Time to get a life. But it's hard.
D
isengaging the clutch, I lurch forward, one car's length closer to the border—one unit closer to a newer, less-monied world, where a different food chain carves its host landscape in alien ways I can scarcely comprehend. Once I cross that border, for example, automobile models will mysteriously end around the decidedly Texlahoman year of 1974, the year after which engine technologies became overcomplex and nontinkerable—uncannibalizable. I will find a landscape punctuated by oxidized, spray painted and shot-at "half-cars"—demi-wagons cut lengthwise, widthwise, and heightwise, stripped of parts and culturally invisible, like the black-hooded Bunraku puppet masters of Japan.
Further along, in San Felipe where my —our—hotel may some day exist, I will find fences built of whalebones, chromed Toyota bumpers, and cactus spines woven into barbed wire. And down the town's delir
TERMINAL
WANDERLUST: A condition common to people of transient middle-class upbringings. Unable to feel rooted in any one
environment, they move
continually in the hopes of finding an idealized sense of community in the next location.
CRYPTOTECHNO-PHOBIA: The secret belief that technology is more of a menace than a boon.
VIRGIN RUNWAY: A travel destination chosen in the hopes that no one else has chosen it.
NATIVE APING:
Pretending to be a native when visiting a foreign destination.
EXPATRIATE
SOLIPSISM: When arriving in a foreign travel destination one had hoped was undiscovered, only to find many people just like
oneself; the peeved refusal to talk to said people because they have ruined one's elitist travel fantasy.
iously white beaches there will be spare figures of street urchins, their faces obscured and overexposed by the brightness of the sun, hopelessly vending cakey ropes of false pearls and lobular chains of fool's gold. This will be my new landscape.
From my driver's seat in Calexico I see sweating mobs ahead of me, crossing the border on foot, toting straw bags chockablock with anticancer drugs, tequila, two-dollar violins, and Corn Flakes. And I see the fence on the border, the chain link border fence that reminds me of certain photos of Australia—photos in which anti-rabbit fencing has cleaved the landscape in two: one side of the fence nutritious, food secreting, and bursting with green; the other side lunar, granular, parched, and desperate. I think of Dag and Claire when I think of this split—and the way they chose by free will to inhabit that lunar side of the fence—enacting their difficult destinies: Dag doomed forever to gaze longingly at his sun; Claire forever traversing her sands with her dowsing rod, praying to find water below. And me . . . Yes, well, what about me?
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