He still hung his hat at Cañon Manor — though its quietus would never be the same. The Beverly Vista neighborhood had begun to thrive again, as the courts had forced Quincunx to divest its residential holdings. And though Dot discouraged it, sometimes Will’m (or Topsy, if you like; either will do) stayed in a small shed on the edge of the Candlelighters’ plot, one he’d done up in trompe l’oeil so that it looked like a modest Gothic church. (Mr. John Ruskin might have approved.) The gregarious and immensely knowledgeable “Big Will’m” was sought out by those who came to visit the park’s more famous dead, and was given a generous write-up in the Times that did not allude to his provenance. He was especially beloved by children, who found him a rowdy, eccentric delight. In that role alone, Dot found him a terrific asset.
One day he saw a familiar face by the columbaria. It was Winter. He hadn’t seen her in a while and asked how she’d been. Well, said the nanny, she’d done “a bang-up job with my Ketchum,” who now happened to be off raising hell at some Swiss boarding school or other — then she smiled wistfully and said he really had turned out to be a brilliant, considerate, wonderful boy. She said she was going home. She looked older but was still elegant, and the crystal blue of her eyes made one think that most of her had already departed for northern climes. He spoke animatedly of her imminent return to Iceland and of the great sagas born there — how he, William Morris, longed to go back and translate more of its epics. (The first publication, he said, had met with great success.) Aside from those assertions, for which she’d been prepared by Toulouse, she found him eminently sane, if eminently Victorian too.
He wondered what she was doing over by the tall drawers of the dead. The caretaker assumed she was here to see the boy, since her employers had been scattered to the Bel-Air winds. Yet Edward lay some forty yards off from the place that held her attention. Perhaps, he thought, she was meditating and wandering a bit as she did, girding herself for the approach to his grave.
“I’m thinking of selling mine,” she said, out of nowhere.
“Selling? What do you mean, woman?”
“When she died, Mrs. Trotter left me a crypt. I knew about it for years — sort of. She always called it a ‘condominium.’ ” Marcus laughed, without meanness. “ ‘I’ve got a wonderful condo for you!’ she said. And Mr. Trotter — dear man — confirmed it. I thought it was some three-bedroom high-rise in Century City, but it turned out to be something else entirely, didn’t it? Well … that’s what you get when you start thinking grand.” She looked at one of the upper slots. “Dot said someone might give me a hundred and fifty thousand for it.”
“I think it’s a damn fine idea, ma’am — sell it! Otherwise it’s here, waiting on you. Sell it. And when it’s your time, have ’em hurl you into a crevasse in the motherland! That’s what I’d do.”
“Maybe so, Marcus. Maybe so.”
“It’s Will’m,” he said kindly. “If you please.”
They strolled over to the Candlelighters’ land.
“My, look how full it is.”
“Over two hundred babes now,” he said.
She looked down at Edward’s plaque, void of his name. “How did that happen?”
“Something fell on it, years ago. Broke it in two. I told Joyce to leave it be — t’was an omen. I think she felt funny at first, but now she has left it. As she should! A very busy woman, Joyce — a good woman. But I don’t think Edward would have wished to stand out, no? He’d want to be just like the rest. ‘No favored treatment for me!’ he’d say.”
There was indeed a whirligig stuck in the dirt, with Edward brushed upon it in delicate script, along with the names of legions of others.
They walked toward the gate where her car was parked, and stared at Louis Trotter’s former plot. It was wide and green.
“Is it going to stay empty?”
“I’ve been talking to Katrina,” said Will’m. “Had a marvelous thought. What if the Westwood land is simply donated to those Candlelighters? For, God knows, there will never be enough space for the poor kiddies.” A gleam came into his eye. “And then I set to cogitating: wouldn’t it be wondrous to have another little parkland for these babes? If it were up to me, I’d stash the whole lot of ’em up at La Colonne — how many thousands of small souls might we there set at rest! I think it sits pretty well with Mr. Trotter now; I mean, having them here in the Westwood. Wouldn’t spring them on him up there just yet — no, ma’am! Might have ’imself a sore fit … but I do think he wouldn’t begrudge ’em that, not here, anyway. I think all’s forgiven — or is on its way to being — all round!”
She smiled and shook his hand, but he embraced her instead. He smelled like some great musky elf, and Winter’s heart leapt in her chest for the mysteries of the world. She watched him a long time in her mirror, waving as she pulled away. Then some children tugged at him, Lilliputians at Gulliver, and he went along.
Winter laughed as she sped toward the 405. It was an extraordinary idea, but she wasn’t as confident as Marcus that Mr. Trotter would approve — oh but to hell with it! Maybe she’d sign her condo over to the Candlelighters. They could probably fit a dozen in there.
She laughed again with wet eyes, imagining the entire cemetery, and broken tower too, overrun with tiny bodies — invaded by those holy homeless souls, thrown out before they were ever named.
About the Author
BRUCE WAGNER is a novelist and film director. He lives in Los Angeles. I’ll Let You Go is the middle book of Wagner’s “Cellular Trilogy.”