He learned that she’d never married. Ghulpa looked around 42 but as Ray got older he had become a poor judge of age, especially a lady’s. He told her he married only once, a lifetime ago, with 2 kids he no longer knew. That puzzled her; how could that happen? He shook his head, saying he didn’t think he’d been “ready” to have a family. (It sounded cavalier though he didn’t mean it to.) He added that his wife was a “ballbuster” then thought, Now why did I say that? Ghulpa didn’t know the phrase and he laughed, relieved. He would choose his words more carefully now because he wanted to court her, not as a sexual being, but as a man in the September of his years who wanted a companion, a female companion, this female companion, dropped before him like a swarthy outmoded mermaid, without the baggage of a culture that he had exhausted and had exhausted him in return.
“I do regret not knowing them. The children.”
Now something in her seemed relieved; that he’d taken her question seriously, and considered it, like a serious man. Ray saw how sorrow wasn’t foreign to her and drew comfort from her demeanor during his confessions. They both exhaled.
“I wonder about that every day — wonder how I let that…But you get to be my age and there’s a lot of water under the bridge you can’t quite explain.” He wondered if she knew what he meant. He’d muffed it anyway. “I guess as time goes by and you get closer to your Maker, you become all right with it. You don’t have much choice. You try to forgive and be forgiven. Jesus, I sound like a fundamentalist. You pray for that. To live and let live. You try to let go of things too.” The platitudes somehow felt right. Longitudes and platitudes. “You feel pretty bad but with time you become all right with it, and all right with God. At least you hope you do.”
Ghulpa smiled, lips closed over buckteeth to disarming coy effect, because she saw the 2 of them were alike — in some ways.
“How old are you?”
“A man never tells.”
“60?”
“Well now I wish!”
His heart fairly fluttered, and that had been a while.
“58?”
Ray’s eyes twinkled at the sweet con. There was an innocence about her that was inviolate.
“You’re good, Ghulpa. You’re very good. And you’re a helluva nice lady.”
Pleased as punch, he was.
WHEN the Town Car pulled up to the apartment complex, the ancient landlord stood there holding a bouquet of 7-Eleven — bought flowers, because she liked the tenant in 203B, and knew that soon the City of Industry would be giving him booty with which he might be generous.
XI.Chester
CHESTER and Laxmi were on their way to the empty clinic to meet with the landlord about renting it for the shoot. Maurie was the one who suggested she keep his friend company, and Chess was glad. He was out-of-control attracted to her and had the feeling Maurie knew it. Chess thought, Maybe he’s being kind or maybe he’s just perving.
Laxmi was around 27. Her hippie parents were divorced and her dad lived in Pune. He was a failed Jewish poet who’d hung with Ginsberg during the latter’s early 60s Benares sojourns; a pretty boy, almost a generation younger than the Beat Buddha, and Laxmi said that she was never able to confirm if “they’d gotten it on.” He headed a big company now, the usual software collective — he was “way ahead of the outsourcing curve,” she said — having lived in India on and off for 40 years. Even though he was a successful businessman, he was a “renunciate, in his own way.” Chess asked what that meant and she said her father was a sanyasi, that he meditated and that Ganesh was “his personal adviser.” (It all sounded seriously fucked up, but Chess was entranced. He knew about Ganesh from storybooks Mom used to read from but Laxmi made the elephant-headed god sound like some mobster-guru.) Laxmi’s father was rich but never gave her money, instead offering to pay her way any time she wanted to come to Pune, something she planned to take him up on one day. She said her name had been given her because Laxmi was the goddess of good fortune. “Meaning, money. Dad is a Jew to his teeth.” She said she would rather have been named Padma (her supposed middlename), which meant lotus, and asked Chess if he’d ever read something called the Lotus Sutra. He shook his head. “ ‘Suppose there was a wealthy man,’ ” she began to quote, “ ‘who had a magnificent house. This house was old, and ramshackle as well. The halls, though vast, were in precarious, perilous condition…’ ”
She fell silent, unable to recall what once she had so fiercely, and without comprehension, committed to memory.
WHEN they got to Alhambra, it was dusk. Maurie’s car was at the end of the cul-de-sac. A handwritten sign on a piece of cardboard stuck to the front door said GO AROUND BACK. Laxmi and Chess strolled to the alley entrance. Rusty barrels overflowing with medical detritus swarmed with flies.
“I don’t know where the guy is,” called Maurie, from inside.
Chess and Laxmi stepped into the ruined building.
“What time was he supposed to be here?”
“About now.”
“Shit, it’s really trashed,” said Chess, looking around. “What were they shooting, a satanic ritual training video? Too small, anyway. It stinks. What was this, an animal hospital?”
“Yeah. Supposedly the guy went nuts or something.”
“Huh?”
“As in ‘apeshit.’”
“What guy?”
“A veterinarian. Caught his wife with someone he worked with and, like, killed her, then killed the kid. Bashed their heads in with a fucking ball-peen hammer.”
“Oh my God,” said Laxmi. “I think we should split.”
“Are you serious?” asked Chester.
Maurie nodded. “I don’t think they ever found the guy.”
Chester shrugged, like he wasn’t in the mood for any of Maurie’s campfire bullshit. “It’s too small,” he said. “Plus it’s righteously fucked up. It’s a health hazard.”
“Let’s go see the other rooms. I mean, we’re here. I was in traffic for 2 goddam hours.”
“This is like a horror film,” said Chess. “This is like Saw.”
They laughed uneasily.
It grew darker as they went farther into the honeycomb of shambled rooms, each saturated in bad odors — like someone had set animal fat on fire. Laxmi said maybe it wasn’t safe and to be careful not to touch anything. There were dirty syringes and rolls of stained cotton gauze underfoot. Chester said how crazy it was that someone was showing the place as a location before it had been cleaned — he wondered aloud if what they were seeing were props or not, but then Maurie said the clinic had been scouted but never actually used. Whuh? Chess was acting more macho than usual because of Laxmi. Maurie made a few lame jokes then shouted, “Look at this!”
A dead dog had been nailed to a door, like a wolfish Christ.
Laxmi screamed and began to run then screamed again as she plowed into the arms of a gaunt, grizzled, wild-haired man in a bloody green surgical gown. He had a big gun. He asked why they were “trespassing” and when Chess began to explain, Maurie quickly motioned to let him do the talking. They weren’t trespassing, said Maurie, they were scouting locations for a TV show, and had an appointment to meet someone. The man kept saying they were trespassing and Maurie started shaking and said he was sorry if there was a misunderstanding and they’d leave right away. If he “would let us.” The guy suddenly asked if Maurie had slept with his wife. No, said Maurie, of course not, I don’t even know your wife — but Chess could tell that his friend’s panicked posturing came out snarkier than Maurie would have liked. Then he began to insist that Maurie “looked just like the dude” who slept with his wife and “molested” his children. Maurie laughed nervously, trying to deflect as his eyes futilely darted for an exit strategy.