“What’s your name?” I asked her.
“Mrs. Unicorn.”
“Where do you live, Mrs. Unicorn?”
“Here.” With a languid hand she indicated the beautiful playground behind her. A band of little boys on tricycles had stopped in the background to eavesdrop. She turned her back on them and gestured me closer. She whispered into the lens, “I don’t like having my picture taken. You have to call my nanny and make an appointment.”
“Cute, huh?” Guido ejected the tape and slipped in another. “Now MacArthur Park,” he said.
I had hoped that the silvery tones of Pisces by moonlight would be caught on the tape. Instead, she was a deathly blue-gray. The flat screen made her seem even younger, as if she too were a little girl playing dress-up with makeup and sexy clothes. She tottered on heels that were both too big and too high for her.
I heard my voice: “What’s your name?”
“You can call me Pisces.”
“Where do you live, Pisces?”
“Here.” She gestured toward MacArthur Park, averting her face from me. “I don’t like having my picture taken. Not for free.”
All the time I was recording Pisces, my eyes had been focused only on her face and her body. I had not noticed much of the background then. On Guido’s big screen, what I now saw happening around Pisces as we talked I can only describe as a nightmare version of the scene on the Encino playground.
In the frame to the right, a few yards behind Pisces, a derelict sat vomiting in the gutter. Frame left, an old woman with an aluminum walker began a slow and painful progress across the screen. In a flash of lights and sirens, a black-and-white police car blasted out of the station in the middle of the park and sped toward us, its speed and noise a wild contrast to the stillness of the derelict and the old woman. It was great choreography. I wished I could take credit.
On some level, I had noticed all of it as it happened. The city is always noisy. The destitute are everywhere. Who hears sirens anymore?
The one image that really stood out against the blue-tinged scene was the red Corvette that had followed us along the curb. An eerie counterpart to the little Encino boys on tricycles.
“Want to see it again?” Guido asked.
“No,” I said. I tapped my forehead. “I’ve got it here.”
“Infuckingcredible, isn’t it?” Guido took a slug of scotch straight from the bottle. “‘What’s your name and where do you live? Next time I complain when you want to stop and film something, just slap me across the face, will you? It’s brilliant, Maggie. The parallels, each scene a visual metaphor for the other. Fucking brilliant.”
“Uh huh,” I said, getting to my feet. “‘What’s your name and where do you live?’ How else do you start a conversation with a kid? The really big question is, ‘Does your mommy know you’re here, or has she lost you?’ “
Guido was watching me as I began gathering up the tapes and stuffing them into the insulated duffel.
“Need something?” he asked.
“If you’re still sober.”
“I am. More or less.”
“Will you drive me to the airport?”
He yawned. “Now?”
“As soon as I can get a flight,” I said. “Unless you want to drive me all the way to San Francisco.”
“Whatever. But why?”
“You were right. I’m doing nothing here that I can’t do in San Francisco. I want to be home before my daughter wakes up.
CHAPTER 3
Casey’s fever had amounted to nothing. She was already at school before I managed to get home.
I felt like shit. For more reasons than fatigue.
I had always been a working mom. For the last two years I had been a single working mom. It was a fact of Casey’s life that I was not often at home like the Beaver’s mother, with fresh-baked cookies and milk waiting for her after school. Because of the nature of my job, sometimes it was necessary for me to be gone for weeks, and occasionally for months at a time. Casey accepted my time away from her with various degrees of grace, as I accepted it with various degrees of guilt.
During my absences over the years I have been accused of going to extremes to make sure that Casey was not only well tended, but well loved. If that’s true, it’s a sin I can live with. For the last couple of years the privilege of being with my daughter in my stead had been bestowed upon Lyle Lundgren.
Lyle used to be our back-fence neighbor in the Marina District of San Francisco. When the big quake of recent memory hit, my family was lucky. All we lost was the rear wall of our restored wood-frame Victorian house, while the block behind us, Lyle’s block, was completely leveled. The afternoon of the quake we found Lyle out on the street and took him in. And we kept him.
We have evolved a very happy arrangement. Lyle is our housewife. He works at home as a free-lance copywriter. I charge him some rent for his Bay-view room, but not nearly the going rate. To compensate, he does most of the cooking and cleaning and errand-running. He deals with the workmen who are still making repairs on the house. When I travel, he takes charge of Casey. We adore him. We cannot imagine life without Lyle.
When I called Lyle from Los Angeles before I boarded my plane, he reminded me that it was his day to volunteer at the hospice. He said that on the way he was dropping our beloved dog, Bowser, at the groomer’s to be flea-dipped.
All the way in from the San Francisco airport, I looked forward to having the house to myself for a while.
As soon as I got in the door, I began the ritual of homecoming. First, I put on a pot of coffee – not fresh-ground espresso or caffe whatever, just auto drip stuff out of a can, the way I like it. Then I toted my bag upstairs and unpacked, dumping my dirty clothes down the chute into the basement laundry room. By the time I had finished that, the coffee was ready. I poured a cup and carried it into my workroom. I sorted through the mail and the telephone messages, catalogued the new videotapes, and put the rolls of 35mm stills I had shot into preaddressed processing mailers and set them out for the mailman. It was all very ordinary and, in its way, very comforting.
The next order of business was checking on Sly and Pisces. I picked up the telephone and dialed Agnes Peter.
“How are my kids, Pete?” I asked her.
“They took off, Maggie. Right after breakfast.”
“Did something happen?”
“No. I think they sensed the inquisition was about to begin. They had clean clothes and full tummies, and they just scooted right out the front door.”
“I guess I’m not surprised,” I said. “But, damn, I wish they hadn’t gone.”
“Pisces is a bright little girl. She has our phone number. If she needs us, she’ll call.”
“I hope you’re right. What do I owe you?”
“Whatever you can spare. Walk down the street and put it into the nearest poor box.” She paused, and I waited. “Are you okay, Maggie?”
“Me? Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Just asking. You have my number, too. Anytime you want to talk.”
“I appreciate the offer,” I said. “Thanks for everything.”
I hung up and poured myself a second cup of coffee. I had a lot on my mind. My project needed to be refigured. I thought that while I was at it, maybe my entire life could use some refiguring.
Herman Melville said that when a man’s mind turns to contemplation, his feet naturally lead him to water. I did the next best thing. I went up to the third, and top, floor of the house and leaned against the tall front window. From there the view of San Francisco Bay was the stuff of postcards.
The sun shone on the water. Across the Bay, a few dark clouds hovered near the peak of Mount Tamalpais. I watched the ships in the harbor, the ferry crossing to Sausalito, yachts at full sail passing under the Golden Gate. The carillon of Grace Cathedral over on Nob Hill marked the hour. It was better than therapy.