2
“I hope you don’t mind that I’m holding
you hostage.” Liliana’s voice carried through from the open doorway of the
guest room to the spacious living area where Beau now stood before a plate
glass window taking in the magnificent hillside view of green bucolic splendor
which Laibrook so richly afforded. Apparently, they were the only ones home.
“Not at all. My pleasure.”
“Not at all your pleasure?”
“No, two separate things—”
She was fixing an earring on as she
left the room, mischievous grin evident that she had been joking and that he
didn’t get it. A phone was ringing which she ignored.
“Want me to pick it up?” asked Beau.
“No thanks,” she called from the
kitchen, “I’ll just let the machine.”
A man’s voice said to leave him a
message. Beau had a hard time matching up the voice with his memory of her
little brother.
“This is Omar,” came the voice of
the caller after the beep. “We’re having our Gothic Convention tonight. Come on
out anytime. I’m counting on you. Your brother told me you would be in town. So
you have him to tha-ank. Seriously though, come on out anytime. Bring yourself.
Bring a friend. Plenty for all. Very casual. All right.” The machine cut off.
“Who’s Omar?” Beau realized this may
have sounded too demanding. He hadn’t meant it to sound at all possessive and
it probably did.
“We don’t need to go out there.”
“Out where?”
“About a half hour’s drive into the
mountains.”
“What’s out there?”
“Omar’s castle.”
“Omar has a castle?”
“Omar’s rich.”
“Why is Omar rich?”
“He plays guitar. And teaches it.
People say he’s really great, Beau.”
“Really?” Beau was fairly stunned.
“But we don’t have to go out there.”
“I don’t mind going. I just find it
amazing that there’s some great guitarist named Omar who has a castle out here
and this is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“You said you haven’t lived out here
for years.”
“Yeah, well, in my heart I never
left.”
“Well I’m not making it up.”
“I’m not saying you are a liar this
time.”
“Are we having a fight?”
Beau looked at Liliana. Even hurt
she was pert. “No,” he said. “No fight. And if you want to go, I’d like to as
well. Gothic Convention, huh? Does that mean like a costume party?”
“You heard. He said casual.”
“Sounds like he’s pretty interested
in you.”
“Well I’m only interested in you.”
“Really?”
She was in front of him now, fingers
laced behind his neck. He had his head bent down. “Yes,” she said. “Really.”
Right then and there. He was sorely
tempted to suggest this. But, it was ten in the morning at a strange house.
Beau thought about that, looking at the doorway to the guest room and smelling
Liliana’s long dark hair. Actually, how strange a place could it be? Her
brother’s house, just right there locally. If they did it now, that would
establish a precedent for later. If they didn’t, that might set the wrong
precedent for the rest of the day. And night.
Better wait till evening, he thought
as she pulled away. Apparently she had sensed what was going through his mind.
In which case she now definitely understood that he didn’t want the wrong precedent
set.
“Mind if I make a phone call?” he
said. “I never should have told Leif I’d call him between five and six. I don’t
want to have to feel guilty when I remember later on that I forgot.”
Smiling, Liliana gestured toward the
phone and politely seemed to need to vacate the room.
It occurred to Beau that bothering
Leif to tell him that he wouldn’t be getting a call later because he, Beau, was
going to a party at a castle with that beautiful woman he saw, so pert, so
remarkably young-looking for her age, might not be all that kosher. He would
need to discreetly let Leif understand something unusually amazing was
happening for him, and in a way that didn’t sound more like bragging than
necessary. But Leif didn’t pick up, and when Beau heard the answering machine
start to kick in on the other side, he almost hung up automatically. He didn’t
want to be caught on some strange people’s answering machine. Rather by chance
he stayed on long enough to hear Leif’s voice, providing verification of the
number and whose house it was, adding, “If this message is for Leif, I will be
out of the house for most of the day, probably making trellises.”
Making trellises. That was code.
Beau knew what it meant. It meant Leif would be heading back up north to
Manuel’s, and didn’t want Pam to know in case she called. Which she should have
no reason to. Beau understood. Leif wasn’t taking any chances. In fact, an
afternoon at Manuel’s sounded like a good idea right there. Yet as he turned
with the intention of finding Liliana and suggesting a trip north for the
afternoon, Beau saw a strange-looking woman standing in the hall.
Something was off. Was this woman
drunk? Stiffly she raised an arm, looking pretty hot, he had to admit, in a
slutty little mini. Face zombie-slack. Yet whether the finger pointed in
accusation, recognition, supplication, or because she just wanted him to pull
it, Beau never did determine.
“I see you’ve met Shelley.” The man
stepping briskly across the glossy hardwood looked familiar to Beau only
through the framed photos of himself with various other people he had seen
placed around the room. The tight synthetic shirt he wore looking like
something on a European cyclist had no give. It was the kind of shirt nobody
could bunch up. Not ever. “Shell, run along now. Hustle. Go into the master bedroom
and wait for me.” He turned to Beau and stuck out his hand.
They shook. Beau watched amazed as
the zombie-woman did as she was bid. “Hey, how’s it going, Terry?” he said.
“Beautiful place here.”
“It’s Terrence, actually. Yeah,
beautiful. You could say that. Beau, right? You’re still around here, huh?”
Liliana appeared. “Terrence, you
remember Beau, don’t you?”
“From the family vacations we took
in that little town. Sure.”
“Beau lives out of the area now, and
happens to be visiting his parents. He’s taking me to Omar’s.”
“Right now?”
“No, tonight. You must have already
gotten your invitation.”
“Yes, that’s right. We’ll be there
tonight.” He went toward the hallway as he spoke, into the darkness of which
the zombie-woman had disappeared.
“Then we’ll see you tonight at
Omar’s.”
“You really think he should do that?
Does he know what he’s getting into? Don’t go, Beau. You don’t want to do
that.”
Liliana shook her head
disapprovingly and made a pish-posh motion with her hand dismissive of her
brother.
“What does he mean?” Beau asked when
Terrence had disappeared. “That Omar likes you?”
“No, don’t listen to him. Let’s go
somewhere. Did you make your call?”
“He didn’t pick up. Hey, I was
thinking we could go up north for the afternoon. If you like, I’ll drive.”
“You want to drive my Karmann Ghia?”
“Oh no, I mean I’ll drive my car, if
you can get us back to town.”
“Do you need to see your parents
before you go?”
“They’re not even there right now.
They’ll be getting back tomorrow from their own trip. We had a slight
miscommunication in the planning.”
“Well why don’t you drive mine then?
Would you please? I’d like to see the area, and I can’t do it as well when I’m
driving. Pretty please?”
Beau didn’t like to drive other
people’s cars, on general principle, but he had to relent. Liliana giggled and
tossed him the jingling keys. It was incredible. If Beau didn’t know it, he
never would have believed she was older than her brother.
3
The midnight blue Karmann Ghia threaded
through the redwoods. It was 10:41, Beau noticed, looking at his watch for no
particular reason, having taken the turnoff from the highway back onto the
Avenue for the very specific reason that he spotted a cop camped out across the
bridge, all ready to make quota.
“Fuzz thwarted,” he announced. A
quarter mile down the road, where the sign proclaims Avenue of the Giants, they
got stuck behind a van.
“Looks like that one in ‘Up in
Smoke,’” said Liliana.
Beau didn’t register his surprise at
her referencing Cheech and Chong, saying merely, “Oh yeah.” An old bumper
sticker, he noticed, had defiantly resisted being torn, so that S. OUT OF HUMB
was all that remained. Suddenly he realized they hadn’t seen hardly any sketchy
people at all. Certainly not in Laibrook, boasting the pastoral tranquility of
golf. None on the north end of Bargerville thumbing, either. Not a single soul
in a boofy knit hat with a hungry-looking dog held perhaps with a piece of
rope, not a one in genii pants and weird scraggly beard. No body odor emanating
from any shirtless sorts hitching rides on strange journeys next to piles of poorly
packed stuff, skin of the thin limbs browned and burned and Biblical.
Taking the turn some miles later
down to the bridge which they would cross before merging back on the highway,
Beau looked for the old organic market, a Hippie store his parents patronized
years ago for the fresh produce. It looked like something more or less was
still there, but having to drive kept him from clearly seeing.
What he did see were people parked
at the bottom of the hill, milling around on the bridge. Beau slowed down to a
snail’s crawl.
“It’s like trying to drive at
Fisherman’s Warf,” Liliana observed.
Beau had never seen so many people
on Madrani Bridge in his life. “Hey, that guy right there,” he said, pointing,
“I know him from way back. We were in school together.”
The slower they went and closer they
got, the more faces from the past Beau recognized on the bridge. Down below,
Mist River flowed, and the different colors on the wide swath of rocky sandbar
sloping to greater deposits of the gray pebbly sand indicated the swelling
levels of the river’s rhythms, filling up in the winter and receding in the
summer, yet in the faces of the people he saw on the bridge few of the physical
traces of time stood out passing by.
Merging with the highway alongside
the river, Beau was glad to split the scene. He passed one turnoff to a town
with a liquor store where he’d worked, years and years ago, and another where
he’d also worked at a mill. If he thought about it, the distinctive muffled
sound inside the cooler at the store, machinery droning up close, bottles in
crates clinking at the touch, loose stacks of six-packs always in danger of
falling, sour smells of previous spills, were memories all readily at hand. He
could hear the buzzing grind of a machine at the mill called the Ripper, into
the multiple blades of which one guy pushed a piece of lumber, another guy
standing with his back to the pusher a few feet away receiving the jittery strips
slowly worked through, the trick being to grab them at the right time in the
right way, because failure to do so meant a funny rattling sound coming from
the blades for a moment prior to a strip of wood suddenly shooting backward,
zipping like an arrow hard enough to stick in a sheet of plywood, if it didn’t
stick in the operator easily enough first. In the days Beau worked those jobs,
he and Liliana were already history. How he had longed for those letters from
her, with what eager anticipation did his trembling fingers remove the scented
contents, pages penned by her sacred hand. And with what speed did he pour
through the pages past the hum-drum itinerary, looking for and often finding
the fluttery mush he so ardently craved. So many years had passed. So many
lives already lived.
Wide fronds of tall palm trees waved
languidly in the breeze. They stood outside the big Victorian house with its
three palms in an area where maple predominated. Spotless pickup trucks parked
with tires on the sidewalk looked like stretching ballerinas. This was
precisely at noon, and the bell of the great clock in the tower of the
university could be heard, resounding throughout the off-campus vicinity.
“Oh
shit,” Beau thought, crossing the street when Liliana took his hand. To her
he gave a casual smile, as though they were some sort of couple, and
comfortable together. “Sounds like they’re in the pool,” he said aloud,
catching a high-pitched bray of laughter preceding a sloppy splash. The lull in
the music facilitating the observation ceased when somebody cranked up the
Rolling Stones.
Everywhere you looked, people were
milling. Young people, primarily. A few less so. All busy partying. A sense of
dream-like privilege oozed from the great Victorian college party walls.
Throughout a sizable portion of the house, upstairs and down, the walls were
tiled with redwood shingle. Little brass lamps curved out along the narrow
winding halls. It was no place to get separated, but even though they tried to
keep their fingers touching over the young heads of the people who endlessly
streamed between, they had to let go, and Beau looked back for Liliana as he
kept moving forward, until somebody offered him a beer, which he took with a
grateful nod and a gracious word right on over to the pool table, where he
stood around and watched for awhile before catching sight of a dude of his
peripheral acquaintance and inquired if he knew where Manuel was.
The guy, now clearly seen to be
completely sloshed, regarded Beau with the dull blank eyes of an inbred hog.
Beau knew the score. Probably this guy was stumbling around at noon on faraway
legs rising and falling like teetering stacks of ill-trained circus animals
because he was in college and somebody threw a kegger, so naturally somebody
else had to bring in a bottle of Tequila, and would have wanted to show that
off, and someone else would have said, “T’ kill ya! T’ kill ya!” in the knowing
way that urges, so now this poor sap tottered around with a clammy pale green
pallor mere minutes, maybe seconds, from going totally projectile. Beau would
have to get his information quickly.
“Upstairs,” the guy managed, nearly
falling over as he pointed. A couple of younger kids, who didn’t look to Beau
like they could even be in college, were following the guy around like two
vultures who couldn’t wait to see something juicy. “First door,” he added,
gasping like a winded moose.
The crowd had thinned. Two past
visits told Beau some of the flow likely siphoned down to the basement and the
rest went outside. On neither occasion, however, had he seen Manuel’s room.
When he knocked on the door, the guy who answered let Beau in as though Manuel
were somewhere inside.
Suddenly, the thought assailed him:
She wouldn’t take off without him, would she? Surely she wouldn’t do such a
thing. It really was too early to drink. Basically the bottle in his hand was
only for show.
“Look at this,” said the guy who let
him in, indicating a painting on an easel. “What do you see?”
On the canvas a freshly painted
smiling man missing an arm sat on the root of a tree filled with green foliage,
and a stump indicated where a large branch was missing. Resting on the foot of
the man sat a small TV set with one antenna broken off. Inside the TV was an
image of the tree, but now with its limb restored; and the man, frowning, and
with both of his arms intact, held on his foot the TV with two intact antennae.
Any further images in the TV within the TV were too small to see.
Well, what the hell. Beau went ahead
and took a couple of pulls off the noon brew, wondering if this guy, who set
about articulating many of the more fascinating aspects of the piece (without
waiting to hear the opinion he had invited) might not think that Beau was the
dad of someone there. Or maybe a really hip prof on some kind of super groovy
far out trip.
“Want to see something else?” the
guy said.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m actually just
looking for Manuel.”
“Hold on, this’ll only take a
second.”
Beau realized now he never should
have trusted that drunk. The guy who was not Manuel produced a box with a
cellophane window, in which could be seen a pirate action figure. “Never been
opened,” he said. “Take a close look.”
Beau took another pull and peered in
close. He could see his reflection in the cellophane. But when he concentrated
on what was inside, he realized. Beau showed this by looking at the guy, and then
back at the doll again.
“Wow,” he said. “Looks exactly like
you.”
“I know,” the guy said proudly. “He’s
my Mannikin.”
“Your what?”
“My Mannikin. My tiny version of
myself. My soul. My mom got him for me just before I was born, but put the box
on the top shelf of her closet and forgot. I don’t know why she did that. She
must have been going through her second childhood or something. Then after she
died a couple years ago, we went through her things and found this. And he
looks just like me.”
Beau took another pull, nodding.
“Do me a favor? Never open this box.
The day this box gets opened is the day my pirate soul gets released. And then,
watch it. Better yet, forget about it. Don’t ever open the box, okay?”
“You got it. You know where Manuel’s
room is?”
“Downstairs. In the hall right
underneath. Last door on the left.”
“Right on. Nice picture.”
“Hey, are you somebody’s dad here,
or what?”
Outside the room, bodies were
bouncing down the hall. To step into that river of innocence would mean certain
death. What a way to go, trampled under a tide of people for whom the problems
of life remained not remotely an issue. Until they stepped away. Then the
grandpa with the malaria and the aunt with the impending foreclosure on top of
the bad case of the clap would creep right back, as would once more the cold
hard reality concerning lack of cash. For now, for them, everything was riding
on borrowed time and money, slim hopes and dicey dreams in the face of certain
debt.
Then, down the hall, for a brief
moment, he saw her. Beau called out Liliana’s name. She had a beer in her hand.
Who gave her that? he wondered. But
the next moment she was lost from sight, and Beau heard instead someone calling
his own name from somewhere down the hall. It was Leif, waving Beau over with a
grin.
The door was shut. The dry ice was
going. A rock tumbler churning away gave off a grinding drone. As the fog from
the dry ice coalesced, the overhead lights gradually dimmed. Everybody
comfortable, nobody moved. This helped let the dry ice develop into a wispy
opaqueness concealing the bean bags and the throw pillows on which the three
present sat cross-legged and calm, silent entities in a timeless land of cloud.
“Look at me and Pam,” said Leif.
They had been talking awhile. Manuel, remote control to the overhead lights at
hand, had his eyes closed meditating. “You should cut loose while you can. Tell
Liliana that you’re married. She’ll understand, I’m sure. You still haven’t
actually cheated.”
Judging by Manuel’s breathing
patterns, he was returning from his meditative journey. Manuel had changed his
major eight times. He was definitely over thirty. Still in college. As a direct
result of having sat in so many classes for so many years, Manuel was
considered by many to be the smartest human being who ever lived. People had
arguments about this.
“I tell ya, the guy’s been exposed
to so much knowledge, he’s just gotta be the smartest human being who ever
lived.”
“Einstein!”
“Manuel!”
“Goethe!”
“Manuel!”
Now his eyes were open. Calmly, he
smiled. The harmonic modulations of his voice traveled across the mist.
“So,” he said, “according to Fraser,
animism leads to polytheism, which of course means that polytheism leads to
monotheism. By logical extension, monotheism therefore leads to atheism, and
atheism must lead back around to animism. This is the cycle of regeneration and
decay. The many boundless opportunities of youth decay over time until one is
stuck in the rut of the same old routine. This is the funneling function of
fascist age. The wide rings of animism inexorably narrow and diminish until the
emptied cosmic bowl fills back up again.”
Something loud hit the door. Sounds
of grab ass in the hall. This interruption proved more than Manuel could take.
“FUCKIN’ ASSHOLES! I PAY RENT AROUND
HERE!”
It had to be hard having so much
knowledge, stuck in the world of humans.
Manuel turned off the tumbler. Leif
closed up his pack.
“You’re right,” said Beau. “I should
tell her. She’ll understand.”
“She’ll probably be flattered.”
“You guys taking off?”
“Thanks for taking care of that for
me,” said Leif. “On such short notice.”
“My pleasure, my pleasure. Enjoy it.
So what are you dudes up to now?”
“I think we were thinking about
getting some lunch.” Leif looked over at Beau and got a face that meant
shrugged shoulders.
“Lunch? Where at?”
“We hadn’t really decided. Maybe
pick up something from Das Bagels, I guess.”
“Das Bagels, eh?”
“Did you want to come?”
“Nah. Nah, I shouldn’t. Thanks
anyway. I really should stick with these rocks today and see how they turn
out.”
When they stepped out of the room,
careful to close it for Manuel before anyone could spill inside, Leif told Beau
he could get a ride back with him, and Beau agreed this was the best thing to
do.
“But I can’t just leave her without
telling.”
“Well, we have to find her.”
So off they went looking for
Liliana, Leif being exceptionally careful with his backpack that it never leave
his hands, and also that it not get crushed. Beau couldn’t help thinking if
he’d had any idea there would be so many kids, he never would have shown up.
They went out to the barbeque and
didn’t see her there. Some rookie had burned the wings. Beau didn’t count that
much of a loss, having always thought that chicken wings were a total waste of
time, being mostly skin and bone. It was another one of the world’s great
rip-offs, fooling people into believing it was such a great treat smearing
sugary crud around their lips.
One kid’s cheeks looked as though
rouge had actually been applied, though Beau knew this was no rouge. Mere baby
cheeks, flushed with the blush of alcohol, and perhaps a little barbeque sauce.
His polo shirt was crisp and smooth, and would have smelled of fabric softener,
were it not for the abundance of men’s perfume slathered on his person, a
distinction he may have thought connoted superiority over all the
environmentalists, as though he were preppie, as though he were yuppie, as
though the theater which he mimicked ensured him safe passage into the land of
a million jillion dollars, and happiness ever after. This one busied himself
expounding on plagiarizing techniques.
“I just got through turning in a
paper on all the sun gods and shit with the birthday right after the winter
solstice or whatever. Something about how there’s these three stars pointing at
this one really serious one or something, and how it looks like you can’t see
it for three days, and then it comes back up, and how that got stories written
about it to try to explain shit and everything. Fuck man, I get great grades
and I never write a word.”
“Your parents gonna give you another
new truck this year?”
“Yeah, but I have to go down for the
holidays and pick it up.”
Beau couldn’t stand anymore. It was
time to go. Suddenly, Liliana showed up.
“Young lady!” Beau expostulated.
“Where have you been?”
Liliana’s response was to snuggle up
and apologize, every aspect of her considerably attractive being conveying pert
submission. The commercial sprang in Beau’s mind of the woman privately
noticing with great dismay that her husband never
has a second cup of the kind of coffee they drink at home.
By the time all three had broken
free and gotten into the street (the time was now 2:15), Liliana pulling Beau’s
arm around her and snuggling close as they walked to the cars, Beau remembered
he had something to say to her per that regard. But he didn’t. After depositing
her in the passenger seat, he stepped aside with Leif, and assured him he would
tell her when he had dropped himself off back in Madrani.
“She’s had a few. I don’t want her
driving. Especially not upset.”
“Okay, Beau. It’s none of my
business. Whatever you think is best. I’m sure I could be projecting a lot of
my own anxieties on you from my own situation.”
“I’m glad we talked about it,
though. I definitely will tell her. Hey, if you’re going back to Madrani, I’ll
call you up when I get in.”
“I still need to stop off at Das
Bagels to stock up for the next few days.”
“All right. We’ll reconvene when we
get in town.”
“Sounds good.”
STAY TUNED
FOR MORE
AVENUE OF THE GIANTS
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