“Nikki Catsouras?” He knew Jeremy was high, and being playfully absurd. “That was in Orange County, bitch.”
He was high — and happy. He’d just come from a meeting with the awesome Heather. She was in her late thirties, which worried him until he got educated on how that was a common age for surrogates. (She had four kids of her own and three more from IVFs.) It was all about the paperwork now, which was going to be hassle-free — Heather was already vetted by the agency, the same one she’d worked with when carrying his friend’s twins. The whole deal was going to cost about a hundred grand. She’d clear about twenty-five thousand, more for “multiples,” but he still couldn’t fathom why a woman would want to have a bunch of babies for strangers. When he probed, Heather said, “I just love the way I feel when I’m pregnant.”
“You seem awfully chipper tonight, Twisteramakrishna.” They curved around the Lake Shrine Temple, a few minutes from PCH. “I’m going to have to start calling you Sunshine.”
“It was a pretty good day. Hung out with my pops.”
“Oh yeah? How’s he doing?”
“He’s actually super fucked up. He’s trying to get on the transplant list.”
“Kidney?”
“Heart.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s crazy.”
“I had no idea.”
“It’s one of those rare kinda irreversible deals.”
“My nightmare. Maybe you should, like, hack him a heart.”
“Hey, if I could, I would. But I have an almost better idea.”
“Do me a favor,” he said with a smile, “and don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to be an accessory to any inseminating information.”
—
In preparation for the evening, he gave Tristen a précis of the ballad of Devi and the Sir, and was glad the boy had the savvy to appreciate the peculiar genius of the encounter. Jeremy liked showing off a little of the ol’ anarchist brio that was a lion’s share of who he was; showboating his psycho-historical DNA made him feel virile and adventurous, still relevant. And Tristen gave Nobodaddy props because he wasn’t monetizing or script-teasing the couple. He was just following his Dadaist nose.
When she opened the door, her lustrous beauty overwhelmed. She’d morphed from street hippie to bohemian-cum-socialite, and vanity begged Jeremy to wonder if Devi’s anticipation in seeing him had anything to do with primping her ride. When they kissed (that was a first) her skin smelled like cannabis and troubled sleep. They gathered in the overqualified kitchen and smoked — the Gaelic guru’s whereabouts unknown — while Devi cooked up a storm. She moved with the alacrity of a five-star chef amongst the elegant dishes she was preparing. Maybe it was just a chemical thing but the socially awkward Tristen got on with her right away. Learnedly au courant without being pedantic, the hostess riffed on Trolls as Authentic Heir to Coyote Tricksters. The blasted boy was charmed and at ease, something Jeremy had yet to see, at least not in mixed company. It gave him intense pleasure.
He left them and walked to the vast terrace that overlooked the crashing sea. On the way, he was startled by three figures whom he thought to be guests before realizing they were employees. They smiled at him unobtrusively as they tended to the open-pit fire and busily set the stage with a profusion of scented candles, Persian pillows, and dark cashmere throws. He noticed a southern gate and went through it. Without fanfare, he found himself in a garden of dumbfounding sweep and breadth. He strolled, insensate, through a dusky, virtual meadow of ghostpipes and creeping myrtle, monkeyflowers and bursting heart, coatbuttons, toadflax and old man’s beard.
Another gate led to the beach and he stumbled toward it.
He took off his shoes and walked onto the sand. The sorrowful wisp of a Santa Ana, broken off from the herd, brushed his face consolingly and reminded him of Devi’s greeting.
The refrain of late—who am I, why am I, where am I—played just beneath the wave song, with its choral variation: And what if I die before I know?
He looked toward the soft lights of the house and heard laughter… Tristen, laughing! His wild child, blue-eyed boy! Would wonders never cease? He ambled back to the patio, where servers revolved with platters, delicately setting dishes on driftwood tables round the fire. Others brought carafes of water, juices, and wine. After a few minutes Devi emerged and dismissed them.
Suddenly the three were alone on the deck, gathered by the colored flames:
Storytelling Hour!
“Do you remember where we left off?”
She jumped right in, her method to a tee, which suited him fine. Tristen was already wolfing his food but paying strict attention.
“I was talking about the bells — always the bells! — and the fire that took my mother… I’ve been thinking about all of it. The only thing I haven’t put to mind is my daughter because I knew I was going to tell you about her tonight. It’s an extraordinary gift to have found someone to talk with—organized by my Sir and the Source—for I haven’t spoken of this in so long. My guru says it’s my fate—our fate, yours and mine! — to have found each other, just as it was mine to have found him. We don’t know what ‘the bells’ have in store for us yet, do we, Jerome? Isn’t that exciting? We forget so quickly that it’s already written, and can be no other way. Mind if I call you Jerome? I like it so much better. Well, not so much better, but I do like Jerome. And I’m thrilled that you brought your friend!” Tristen grinned, his mouth half full. “It’s always a good omen to have a witness, particularly since the Sir is dead to the world. (If we’re very quiet, we might hear him snoring.) We’ve had such a long day and he needs his rest.
“Now, I’ve told you Mama died in a fire, and Papa followed just a few months later. His lungs were scarred by the heat and smoke when he carried her out. He held her so close that his skin became hers; I can see them emerging from the conflagration of that house like figures in a great fresco of Rubens — or something in the American style of Thomas Hart Benton… where her skin was no more, his stood in, like a graft. I’ve found that detail (not a metaphor) to be worthy of any of Poe’s creations.”
Jeremy noticed the boy had stopped eating and was completely rapt. He presumed Tristen’s awed attentions had something to do with his recent role as caregiver to his own father, and the looming mortality of the aggrieved man who had brought him into this unquiet world.
“Before he died, my father made me promise I’d return to school (I’d taken a sabbatical to nurse him) and resume my studies. I was to inherit his practice — the only legacy he had to give. I told him I would and meant it, but after the fire it was impossible. You see, he never cared about money. His finances were in shambles. We’d been living in a motel since the holocaust; he’d forgotten to pay a bill and the insurance on the house had lapsed. The bank foreclosed.
“I told you at the restaurant that after their deaths, the clanging of the bells became too much—‘a fatal tinnitus,’ remember? I returned to Loyola and promptly went mad. I lived for months in a hospital associated with the school but that’s another story. The short version being, I became pregnant there. A boy I knew from campus, prone to violence. He’d been placed on seventy-two-hour hold. They put him in the lockdown ward and he smuggled me in — as I say, another story! I knew at the very moment I lay with him that she had been born. I knew her sex and even what I would call her: Bella! — my beauty, my only, my Bella, my ‘bell’! And in that moment of conception, the world stood still. Everything stopped ringing too… everything but my love for my daughter and this mysterious blue planet and the starry places beyond. I left the hospital immediately.