We went to Musso’s for a drink. At the end of the hour, he got the idea to go up to the Observatory. I told him the place was closed for renovations but Thad insisted. (He’d never been.) It was a while since I’d visited and it took a moment to retrace the familiar route in my head: Franklin to Los Feliz, Los Feliz to Griffith Park. There was just no way I was going to consult the car’s GPS.
On the way, I told him I’d finished reading The Soft Sea Horse.
“I was talking to Miriam — about how much I enjoyed it. And one of the things that interested me… do you mind talking about this?”
“Not at all.”
“I was intrigued when she said that you were actually there—in Capri — when your brother passed on. And I–I wondered why you wrote about it… ‘differently.’ Because the book seemed so fearlessly honest. Fearsome. I just wondered why you chose to distance yourself. Why you left the character of that boy behind, in the States.”
The question came from nowhere — instead of confronting him about having struck Clea, my subconscious played out its hand.
“They thought I killed my brother. Did Miriam tell you that? Strange! He loved to swim — to hold his breath. Years later I heard something that put me at ease, in a funny kind of way. A kid drowned in Hawaii, the son of a friend. He was sixteen years old, a surfer. Wanted to be a free diver — that’s what they call it. Guys who take a big breath then go deep as they can. In the ocean. Ride down on a cable, four or five hundred feet. There was a film someone made about it—Le grand bleu—‘The Big Blue.’ French. Never saw it. The way you train is by holding your breath in a swimming pool. They compete by using eighty-pound weights. They take a breath and these weights pull them down; a balloon brings ’em up. You’re never supposed to train alone cause apparently it’s very seductive to hold your breath for such a long time. You can black out, even in shallow water. They say you just want to let go. And this kid, the sixteen-year-old, he’d sent an e-mail or something to a friend only a week before saying how euphoric it was to be under, feeling himself drift away. That’s why you’re supposed to train in pairs. The ol’ Buddy System. And I think maybe that’s what happened to Jeremy. He was always so proud of how long he could hold his breath — shit, I could go maybe thirty seconds but Jeremy was an athlete! That day… I saw him go down… then disappear under the boat. They were in the middle of shooting: I remember hearing the director, the voices of the actors during the scene. They were very strict about noise during whatever shot they were getting. I didn’t want to call out. I didn’t want to interrupt because I thought they’d get mad — Jack would get mad. It was the big scene between Alain Delon and Sophia Loren. Le grand bleu-job! I wasn’t sure anything bad was happening down there, anyway. With Jeremy. So I swam to the other side of the boat. Didn’t see him, couldn’t find him. The engine was off (they were shooting) so I wasn’t worried about him getting caught in the rudder. I thought he’d gone back around but it turned out he got stuck beneath the hull. His suit got caught on something, whatever, he took in water. That’s what the geniuses later said. The CSI aquatic unit — hey, that’s not a bad idea! CSI: Marine. Le grand autopsy. I couldn’t see too well, I was looking under there, completely myopic. The water stung my eyes if I opened them. Jeremy used to tease me because I needed goggles even when we were in the hotel pool. Anyway, they found bruises and thought — good old Dad suggested, that’s why they thought! — that I hit him. Do you know what that was like? To be accused? The police talked to me, les gendarmes, it wasn’t exactly an interrogation. I can’t even remember what the fuck it was. You know, I still can’t watch The Bad Seed. When she drowns the kid who won the spelling bee? So she can have his medal?”
We drove in silence. A few minutes from our destination, he announced that Miriam had nearly closed the “Prodigal” novelization deal. The money wasn’t much but the psychological boost came just in time: he wound up at L’Orangerie with Morgana who, adding perennial insult to injury, had extended her stay to take photos of Paul Auster while he passed through on a paperback tour. Auster was one of her son’s pet peeves and she knew it. In retaliation, Thad said he was working on a “sweet little play” that would filet the Michelet dynasty in all its pornographic sound and fury. He acted out a barbaric monologue at the table, loud enough that surrounding patrons were captivated. Morgana, predictably appalled, stormed out. Thad received a letter the next day by messenger, warning that if he dared embark on such a venture, he would be excised from the estate — which he took as an idle threat, knowing in his heart of hearts this had already been done. As perverse parenthetical, he said he’d come to dinner with the sole purpose of soliciting her financial help in the matter of the lien. His hunch being, she might have agreed to help if he finally conceded to burial alongside Jeremy in the family plot, a desire which seemed to grow stronger in the old woman each year for reasons destined to remain cryptic, though the irony (happy family in death, if not in life) was not lost. As usual, things had conspired to undo him — so there he stood in the middle of that august salle à manger in crapulous soliloquy, shirt spattered in red wine — shallot reduction.
When he proclaimed that the estrangement, now official and irrevocable, was probably for the best, I half believed him. He had the natural-born talent to make one embrace hard endings, and fresh starts as well. Thad was positively giddy about the prospect of entering the Times bestseller list, thus foiling a grim practical joke orchestrated from the underworld. Besides, he still felt he could deliver something keenly poetic tucked within a Trojan horse. He said that “quality lit” and sci-fi had tango’d before: Margaret Atwood had done it — or was it Margaret Drabble? Doris Lessing too… He did have one small fear: that, of legal necessity, he’d be forced to share story credit with Starwatch staffers, i.e., while the novelization itself would have sole “written by” credit (Thad Michelet), it would include a “based on a teleplay by” credit (the geeks who wrote “Prodigal Son [Episode 21-417A]”) as well. He wasn’t sure if this was something that might potentially interfere with the parameters of the codicil; Miriam’s lawyer was looking into it. Thad strategized he’d tell the writers what he was up to — in the worst case (in exchange for an agreement to remove “the teleplay possessory”), he’d cut deals paying out a small share of the $10 million, far more than the “schmucks with PowerBooks” were due for their standard share of novelization rights. Miriam said she wasn’t sure how the guild would feel about it; bit of a gray area. (I could see Thad’s paranoid Time Machine/Small Claims wheel whirring.) All, he added, would naturally be moot if the book didn’t sell.