“Location scouting for Starsky and Hutch.”
“Starsky and Hutch don’t live in Buenas Yerbas.”
“Starsky gets kidnapped by the West Coast Triad. There’s a gunfight on Buenas Yerbas Bay Bridge, and we’ve got a chase scene scripted with David and Paul running over car roofs at rush hour. It’ll be a headache to okay it with the traffic cops, but we need to do it on location or we’ll lose any semblance of artistic integrity.”
“Hey. You’re not taking Blood on the Tracks.”
“It’s mine.”
“Not anymore.” Luisa is not joking.
With ironic deference, Brodie takes out the record from the gym bag. “Look, I was sorry to hear about your dad.”
Luisa nods, feels grief rise and her defenses stiffen. “Yeah.”
“I guess it was . . . a release, of sorts.”
True, but only the bereaved can actually say so. Luisa resists the temptation to say something acidic. She remembers her father ribbing Hal, “the TV Kid.” I am not going to start crying. “So, you’re doing okay?”
“I’m doing fine. And you?”
“Fine.” Luisa looks at the new gaps in her old shelves.
“Work’s good?”
“Work’s fine.” Put us both out of our misery. “I believe you have a key that belongs to me.”
Hal zips up his gym bag, fishes in his pocket, and drops the door key onto her palm. With a flourish, to underline the symbolism of the act. Luisa smells an alien aftershave and imagines Her splashing it on him this morning. He didn’t own that shirt eight weeks ago, either. The cowboy boots they’d bought together the day of the Segovia concert. Hal steps over a pair of Javier’s filthy sneakers, and Luisa watches him think better of making a funny about her new man. Instead, he just says, “So long, then.”
Shake hands? Hug him? “Yeah.”
The door closes.
Luisa puts the chain on and replays the encounter. She turns on the shower and undresses. Her bathroom mirror is half-hidden by a shelf of shampoos, conditioners, a box of sanitary napkins, skin creams, and gift soaps. Luisa shunts these aside to get a clearer view of a birthmark between her shoulder blade and collarbone. Her encounter with Hal is displaced. Coincidences happen all the time. But it is undeniably shaped like a comet. The mirror mists over. Facts are your bread and butter. Birthmarks can look like anything you choose, not only comets. You’re still upset by Dad’s death, that’s all. The journalist steps into the shower, but her mind walks the passageways of Zedelghem château.
25
The Swannekke Island protesters’ camp lies on the mainland between a beach and a marshy lagoon. Behind the lagoon, acres of citrus orchards rise inland to arid hills. Tatty tents, rainbow-sprayed camper vans, and trailer homes look like unwanted gifts the Pacific dumped here. A strung banner declares: PLANET AGAINST SEABOARD. On the far side of the bridge sits Swannekke A, quivering like Utopia in a noon mirage. White toddlers tanned brown as leather paddle in the lazy shallows; a bearded apostle washes clothes in a tub; a couple of snaky teenagers kiss in the dune grass.
Luisa locks her VW and crosses the scrub to the encampment. Seagulls float in the joyless heat. Agricultural machinery drones in the distance. Several inhabitants approach but not in a friendly manner. “Yeah?” challenges a man, with a hawkish Native American complexion.
“I presumed this was a public park.”
“You presumed wrong. It’s private.”
“I’m a journalist. I was hoping to interview a few of you.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Spyglass magazine.”
The bad weather lightens a little. “Shouldn’t you be writing about the latest adventures of Barbra Streisand’s nose?” says the Native American, adding a sardonic “No disrespect.”
“Well, sorry, I’m not the Herald Tribune, but why not give me a chance? You could use a little positive coverage, unless you’re seriously planning to dismantle that atomic time bomb across the water by waving placards and strumming protest songs. No disrespect.”
A southerner growls: “Lady, you’re full of it.”
“The interview’s over,” says the Native American. “Get off this land.”
“Don’t worry, Milton”—an elderly, white-haired, russet-faced woman stands on her trailer’s step—“I’ll see this one.” An aristocratic mongrel watches from beside his mistress. Clearly, her word carries weight, for the crowd disperses with no further protest.
Luisa approaches the trailer. “The love and peace generation?”
“Nineteen seventy-five is nowhere near 1968. Seaboard has informers in our network. Last weekend the authorities wanted to clear the site for the VIPs, and blood was spilled. That gave the cops an excuse for a round of arrests. I’m afraid paranoia pays. Come in. I’m Hester Van Zandt.”
“I was very much hoping to meet you, Doctor,” says Luisa.
26
An hour later Luisa feeds her apple core to Hester Van Zandt’s genteel dog. Van Zandt’s bookshelf-lined office is as neat as Grelsch’s is chaotic. Luisa’s host is finishing up. “The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power, and influence. Our sole weapon is public outrage. Outrage blocked the Yuccan Dam, ousted Nixon, and in part, terminated the monstrosities in Vietnam. But outrage is unwieldy to manufacture and handle. First, you need scrutiny; second, widespread awareness; only when this reaches a critical mass does public outrage explode into being. Any stage may be sabotaged. The world’s Alberto Grimaldis can fight scrutiny by burying truth in committees, dullness, and misinformation, or by intimidating the scrutinizers. They can extinguish awareness by dumbing down education, owning TV stations, paying ‘guest fees’ to leader writers, or just buying the media up. The media—and not just The Washington Post—is where democracies conduct their civil wars.”
“That’s why you rescued me from Milton and his compatriots.”
“I wanted to give you the truth as we see it, so you can at least make an informed choice about which side you’ll back. Write a satire about GreenFront New Waldenites in their mini-Woodstock and you’ll confirm every Republican Party prejudice and bury truth a little deeper. Write about radiation levels in seafood, ‘safe’ pollution limits set by polluters, government policy auctioned for campaign donations, and Seaboard’s private police force, and you’ll raise the temperature of public awareness, fractionally, toward its ignition point.”
Luisa asks, “Did you know Rufus Sixsmith?”
“I certainly did, God rest his soul.”
“I’d have put you on opposing sides . . . or no?”
Van Zandt nods at Luisa’s tactics. “I met Rufus in the early sixties at a think tank in D.C., connected with the Federal Power Commission. I was in awe of him! Nobel laureate, veteran of the Manhattan Project.”
“Might you know anything about a report he wrote condemning the HYDRA-Zero and demanding Swannekke B be taken off-line?”
“Dr. Sixsmith? Are you totally sure?”
“ ‘Totally sure’? No. ‘Pretty damn sure’? Yes.”
Van Zandt looks edgy. “My God, if GreenFront could get its hands on a copy . . .” Her face clouds over. “If the Dr. Rufus Sixsmith wrote a hatchet job on the HYDRA-Zero, and if he threatened to go public, well, I no longer believe he shot himself.”