Saw it all as I walked toward larger rocks. Moon full enough to see tracks from which the Playa took its name, slid-boulders like tombstones in my father’s old E.C.s.
The detective said the ranger found Thad propped up against one like he’d been pushing — again, I saw: laughing, thrusting, cut-rate costume warrior wrestling sisyphean sculptor’s stone, expiring herniated breath and life force as he butted, in breathing concert with mysterious forces that moved the rocks, Atlas strained and shrugged, and that was when the blood came through the mouth — choking on its torrent (so the coroner said), an aneurysm was what killed him and I thought: what a rare, good thing, how merciful of that which governs, knowing he wouldn’t have had the will to finish himself and certain that was his plan because it was learned he’d left a gun in the trunk, forgotten but maybe deliberate in the forgetting, I wasn’t convinced he had the strength to retrieve it, the gall, the stamina, better a gory red fountain through ruptured aqueduct of worn-out tissue than to lose one’s mind, already lost, in prison, useless hell of that, better to fatally shoulder Outback rock than suffer sick frenzy of renown accompanying incarceration and trial.
I phoned the ranger who discovered them but he was on holiday. I wondered if he was the kind of person for whom images fade or retain their power: clump of woman in early fossilized pupfish purplish insect hummed dawn, beat and disfigured though from a distance merely at rest on outside oval track — farther in, the curious half-standing figure rooted in a brackish pool of his own black blood, barefoot in the interplanetary park, cheaply woven garment hanging like a sequined burlap bag, dull-edged dumb-bass Super Kmart dagger on hardscrabble desert floor, laughable instrument of the settling of royal disputes.
That was not the place I wished to say good-bye.
In the morning, I headed for Badwater.
The narcotic silence was there, and tourists too. I walked out as far as I could till hardly anyone was in sight. Sponged up the quiet. Said a prayer for Clea. Told her I loved her and would always be there. I remembered kissing her a lifetime ago in her mother’s house and when I thought of Leif doing the same, sweet dimple-chinned Leif long dead and gone, I felt that familiar jealous twinge and laughed out loud in the sacred stillness, sobbing at the invincible riddle of it (imagining Clea laughing her tattooed ass off as well). Just then it struck me she would never age, she would always be that girl, the shy, nervous one with the outsized movie-star mom — and I, the nervous boy, forever groping and adoring in that celestial second-story room, beloved Californian winds in holy chastisement, roughing up the voyeuristic trees outside our window. The thing of it is, she was with Leif now; the kid had the upper hand but I was happy for him. I smiled with the maudlin thought they were together, “on the other side.” What comfort!
Grateful to have this phantasmagorical inkling that my Clea could travel between worlds and boy-lovers evermore, if that was her wish.
I left the valley.
~ ~ ~
A WEEK AFTER RETURNING TO L.A. I was in my trailer working on Holmby Hills. We still hadn’t heard from HBO but Dan said I should just start writing, to calm my nerves.
So there I was, trying to pound out a first scene — one already delineated in the “bible”—yet hopelessly stuck.
I lit a cigarette, drifting back to Anaheim.
“Where would you most likely find a denouement?” asked the unctuous host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Idly, I typed:
1. In the bathroom
2. In a story
3. Under the hood
4. In Death Valley
It occurred to me to write a movie about our ménage à trois but nothing coalesced — not that I’d spent much time mulling it over. It was way too soon. How to begin? (There wasn’t even a bible!) I couldn’t, in all fairness, favor Clea over Thad, though of course that was my bias. Anyway, all was moot because the biggest part of me wouldn’t dare defile her memory by commodifying it, or worse, memorializing by screenplay, then failing — I was an old hand in the Failed Script Department. I decided it was only a daydream. The time had come to refocus my energy and discipline on Holmby Hills. I set upon the opening scene with renewed fervor.
While pondering my destiny — and developing a serious urge for Mexican takeout — Dad called. Nick Sultan was no longer involved in the Chrysanthemum project. Perry said that while he liked the final version of “Prodigal Son (Episode 21-417A),” “Mr. Sultan” had scored a studio tent pole that would keep him busy for the next two and a half years. Good for him. “Recent events” had convinced my father “to get off the dime” and develop Black Jack’s novel himself. He wanted me to begin work on the script ASAP. He’d spoken to Dan Fauci and while things looked optimistic re Holmby Hills he said it was always good to have a few irons in the fire. Dad’s production company would negotiate a fee with the lawyer of my choice. “I can tell you right now it’ll probably be something in the seventy-five-thousand-dollar range,” he said firmly, as if expecting me to bitch. He couldn’t have been more wrong. As the studio gods said, Let there be nepotism. I got that puffed-up, mini-mogul feeling again; that’s how much I needed a shot of self-esteem.
This one, I’d truly earned.
I put Clea’s things in storage.
Her landlord quickly leased the Venice house — I knew, because I’d become a bit of a Peeper. I watched a hip couple move in, barely in their thirties. I actually drove by for a few months, hoping to bump into Clea’s unquiet ghost. Sometimes I’d pull up to the curb and sit there in darkness. I wondered if the new tenants were in the business.
For a while I dreamed about her. I guess Clea’s last “visitation” came when I finished reading Chrysanthemum. I was startled by the power of Michelet’s novel — and its vengefulness. How strange that until recently I hadn’t known the scandal behind it, a cause célèbre at the time of publication. My father never spoke of it; he presumed I already knew.
The book’s protagonist is “Jack Michelet” (this, prepostmodern). “Michelet” has been short-listed for every literary prize known to man — winning most. He’s married to a dilettante who takes artsy photographs of animals in zoo-cages, worldwide. Their son (“Tad”!), an unsuccessful writer of advertisement copy, and his fiancée, a onetime hooker turned day-care center operator, arrive at the house in the Hamptons for a weekend visit. “Michelet” seduces the bride-to-be in the nursery, where he gardens during writing breaks.