Alexander Murphy's Home for Wayward Celebrities

A change of plans

2011-09-06T18:55:00.000-07:00

I have decided to self-publish this novel as an ebook through Smashwords. Please visit my smashwords site where you can purchase the complete novel now, or - if you must - you can wait until it is available on your favorite ebook site (which will hopefully be sometime this week). The first 100 readers that purchase the ebook can use the coupon code KH55P, which will save you 80% off of the already reasonable price of 4.99. Enjoy!

Chapter Nine

2010-04-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

One afternoon after lunch, having walked Anthony Lawrence to his room, Lucy found herself alone in the hallway with the passage to the attic studio in her periphery. She sensed movement there that wasn’t there, like the mild hallucinations that come from lack of sleep – a manifestation of her subconscious trying to resolve her distracting curiosity. She ambled over to the stairway, listening for any approaching footstep, and peeked around the corner. The stairs were straight and dim – the only lights there were small lamps that curved out from over five framed pictures along the right wall to illuminate them gently from above.

Lucy bit her lip like a stereotypical suspense movie heroine and debated whether she should venture up. Alexander wasn’t home – he and Tracy had driven Linny to her plastic surgeon in L. A., and would most likely stay overnight – Lucy had seen Linny’s Mercedes convertible dart away toward the gate with a woman passenger, woman backseat, and man driving – but she had the same fear children get when, despite their care, they expect their parents to discover their indiscretion through their supernatural parental means. And so, like many, she eased herself into her snooping incrementally. First she stepped up to view the closest framed picture: a monotype print of swirling green with red and yellow blended in around the edges, titled Happy Meal #2 at the bottom left, and with JEK 4/97 bottom right, both in pencil. Then Lucy moved on to the next print, Molotov Bitch 3/97 – a red swirling fire fist against deep blue, and then the next, Liquid Diamonds 4//97 – ocean teal with yellow waves, and of course a dress-shaped patch of lilac lower-middle-right, where she realized that all of the print titles corresponded to song titles; to the next, Protection 4/97 – a color wheel of open hands around a pink fetal center, and finally to the last one, a print of bright sky blue and verdant green that whirlpooled in, losing shine and distinction into a center of blackness with a tiny (she had to lean in to see it) spot of white. It was entitled Retreating 5/97, and she knew that it expressed her song perfectly – certainly much better than the single cover art: a photo of her looking wide-eyed and doe startled. Lucy was transfixed by the white, and investigating it by lowering her station point to the picture-plane base, under the spot blinding accent light reflection, saw that the spot wasn’t with made white ink but an intentional void of clean paper. This meant that she as viewer was looking out at brightness from the abyss, that she could grasp the rich colors and pull herself out. She told herself to remember to ask Alexander for a copy of it, but then realized this would reveal her snooping, and, sighing, dismissed it.

Two more steps and Lucy found herself before the door and hesitated, she asked herself to what extent she was willing to continue, and concluded a little bit further. She reached out and tried the doorknob, turning it slowly, silently, so that she had to push the door to tell if it had opened the catch.

It had, and the door swung inward. The room was illuminated, and Lucy was somehow suddenly emboldened to say out loud, “Shame on you, Alexander, going away and leaving the lights on,” in a mocking, victorious tone. The attic opened up grandly to the right and slightly to the left in front of her, and seemed to run the length of the house, creating an enormous open space. The ceiling followed the angle of the roof toward the front of the home, twelve feet high at its lowest point.

Though there was a superabundance of open space, the room didn’t feel at all empty. Three large groupings of furniture lay spread out along the hardwood floor. The first, at right, was a deep leather couch set against the wall, two oversized matching easy chairs facing it with a coffee table between. A neat stack of sheets and a blanket sat on one arm of the couch, a pillow on the other, and Lucy guessed that this was where Alexander slept while she occupied his room. She walked over and noticed that camouflaged in the blanket was a cat by its head raising at her approach. The cat allowed Lucy to pet it, and examine its tag to learn that its name was Chamfer. She sat upon the couch, then lay down and turned on each side, finally sitting up and concluding that he was sufficiently comfortable sleeping here. The coffee table had a glass case at center showcasing a set of books, and she leaned forward to see that it was an old, probably original edition of Les Miserables: ten tomes in all, gilt-striped dark-blue leather with a raised band of red encasing the author and title. On top of the table were the books Nam June Paik, and S M L XL.

The couch served as the division between towering wall cases of several thousand CDs to the right, and books to the left, organized by the genres of horror, science fiction, fantasy, graphic novels and Manga. Lucy looked instinctually, and found her sequence of discs, not finding them at first because they were listed under the L of Lucy instead of the usual F of Faas, bookended between L7 and Luscious Jackson (instead of between Everything But the Girl and Faith No More). They were all there, including the same Japanese version Marty had, as well as the Limited Edition of Waxing, with the bonus live EP. Then she looked up Teagan, going right to T, which looked equally superfluous, down to the redundant second disc of the Australian and New Zealand Tour edition of Under the Pink, rattles the limited Rapunzel’s Escape bracelet in its box, even taking out a couple of bootlegs to look over enviously. Perusing the shelf of box sets (“goodness Bjork has a lot!”) she also marvels over the rare Athena and Me box EP, with Teagan’s visage imprinted in the wood case.

Satisfied, she walked over to the second furniture grouping: a large, multileveled desk as its nucleus. The right half of the desk was devoted to the computer: folders of disc media, a small row of instruction manuals and reference books, a complicated looking joystick with a dozen buttons, video conference camera, empty laptop dock, digital camera dock, flatbed scanner, idly humming printer, and a tall CPU: black, with a glass window showing its innards under a cold blue cathode light; matching black backlit keyboard and blue optical mouse. Lucy thought that the computer was pretty silly – like The Fast and the Furious version of a CPU. A 50-inch Plasma TV mounted on the wall served as monitor. The left half of the desk was devoted to paper: two shelves held thick stacks of basic college-lined paper and bright white heavyweight stationary; five large black binders collected papers, labeled: Notes, Collage, Fragments, Ideas, and Current. Center on the left wing, the desk’s only writing surface, was a black leather organizer, cracked at the binding edges from overfilling – closed, but unzipped – and a cup filled with identical Schaeffer fountain pens in cobalt blue, matching the computer’s light. Three round blue and black multimedia speakers sat about the desk, with four more mounted on thin black aluminum-tube floor-stands at a height where your head would be sitting in the black leather executive command chair.

Without opening the organizer, Lucy thumbed through the index tabs: individual calendar month tabs, multicolored address sheet alphabetical tabs with two to three letters each; then handwritten through clear, colored tabs: Notes, Writing, and Art.

The left side of the desk stuck out straight from the wall and against its back was a set of wood file drawers. Not all were marked, but of those that were she noticed Shorts 1 and Shorts 2, Experiments, and a drawer for each of Josh Karaczewski’s novels. On the wall were framed originals of the cover art, and atop the cabinets were the books themselves, in various editions and translations.

Lucy laughed and said, “Ah ha! He really is Josh Karaczewski,” and laughed again, proud to have conclusively solved the home’s mystery.

She looked over toward the third furniture grouping and from that angle noticed that the studio turned and continued right, probably over the East Wing. She walked over and explored the grouping, which consisted primarily of an enormous armoire, and a pair of heavily blanketed printmaking presses, one with its matting stains black to gray, the other’s stains multicolored.

She pulled on the two armoire doors which parted easily despite their immense size. Inside she found six long, flat drawers labeled Watercolors, Drawings, and Prints in pairs of Two, written all in capitol letters, Lucy noticed, the way architects enjoy; above the drawers several slots lay with thick stacks of wide white, off-white, and black papers; a row of black leather-bound sketchbooks; and all the paraphernalia required to keep a modest college art program progressing: chalk and oil pastels, colored pencils, the full gamut of H to B pencils, stick and compressed charcoal, charcoal pencils, Mars Staedtler erasers, bundt sticks and other wedge-shaped color spreading and shading tools, jars of brightly shining ink, flat and rounded-head dip pens; all materials piled into their own respective wooden bins which were in themselves very attractive red and brown woods with distinct dovetailed jointing; white plastic watercolor kits sealed against moisture loss with muddy, dried, color mixing tops, the classically notched round paint mixing palettes with thumb hole, two wood boxes like carpenter’s tool boxes – one for oil tubes and the other for acrylics, and vases of flat and rounded tip badger-hair brushes of all shapes and sizes.

Lucy didn’t know if she had any aptitude for visual art, she was never one to doodle, hasn’t held a colored pen or paintbrush since early elementary school, and since she left high school after her freshman year, chasing her musical pursuits, extricating from her memories, she was never induced by a graduate requirement to attend an art class. The ceramics/sculpture had appealed only for the modern woman equivalent sewing circle aspect, but surrounded by these sleek magic wands of art-making, and all those colors’ sentient humming for deliverance, she felt a tickle from the base of her neck down to her tailbone of inventive curiosity.

She closed the immense armoire doors, then passed by a workbench topped with slotted wood slats, thin nails, rubber hammers and staple-guns for constructing canvas frames; a five-gallon bucket of gesso under bench; giant-sized shears pegged up beside a tall roll of canvas like a minimalist rug.

She turned the corner to find a wall inset, with an undoored opening, but before entering, turned back to the studio space and reflected on the discovery and creation of worlds that occurred here, new universes gleaned and formed from the magic of ink and imagination, gilded with the infinite material combinations of art.

But the lure of the next, tantalizing possibility, bubbled over and Lucy continued her trespassing, moving to the opening that led to a dark, narrow passage going left along half the length of the floor, doubled back on itself to go back again the floor’s bisected length, small red squares the only light along the baseboard and at its cessation finding that this switchback’s purpose was to keep unwanted light from entering the darkroom that appeared up at the passage’s end.

The darkroom consisted of two print developers and a light box at left, a shelf above with boxes of filters, masking and burning tools of various shapes, several sizes of matting plates; an island with a swing-armed paper cutter on top, boxes of Ilford and Agfa photo papers in varying sizes on inset shelves down the sides; and along the right a large sink and six square steel basins, shallowly filled with developing and fixative fluids and water, each basin with a faucet at bottom front that would drain their contents into an angled trough which sloped down slightly to the sink. Left of the sink was a short counter with a rack of plastic film winders and steel developing canisters, a film case opener like a coke bottle-top popper on the wall next to a clock with three timers and phosphorescent hands. Above the sink from the ceiling hung a ring with clips around its circumference, weighted clips waiting to nip the film negative’s feet and keep them from curling.

For Lucy the room, with its dim red light that lent its color to everything, felt like a cave. But, though Lucy had an understandable aversion to dark enclosed rooms, this space didn’t make her feel anxious. Gently whirring vents took the edge off the tangy chemical smell of the developing fluids, but more so it was the knowledge that this was Alexander’s cavern that made what should have been a claustrophobic room for her into an almost cozy place. And for the first time, there in that place of artistic reproduction of balanced compositions, a tangible idea developed, the cryptic tickling sensation begun at the armoire blooming into a defined form from the blankness, that here was something specific besides music that could occupy her life. She imagined having access, with Alexander’s gentle instruction to the plethora of art materials and media, and felt a new and mysterious, anxious desire to explore other methods of creation.

Another passageway opened on the opposite side as the first, and after a long dreamy pause Lucy took it. This opened to a wider hallway, shocking bright after the miserly darkroom hall lights, from a row of high windows on the left wall where Lucy could see part of the ceramics/sculpture hut meadow (but none of the hut itself). There was a door on the right, which to her dismay she found locked, and one center at the hall’s end with a blue and purple glass block inlaid which turned and opened.

Lucy expected the room to be anything but what it revealed itself to be: a bedroom. Fully furnished with a mission style bed and foot bench, bedside tables of three wood triangles on thin tubular steel legs tiering down and out in diminishing size, pair of wide waist-high dressers, and a pair of contemporary wood chairs with thinly padded seat and back and separate footstools before a modest fireplace (perhaps only large enough to roast a chicken on it’s grate), and its accoutrements. An unmade bed, empty glass with fingerprints around the rim, the recent issue of Granta with a tasseled bookmark tucked two-thirds of the way through upon the headboard, framed photograph of a beautiful brunette alone on the left bedside table, all bespoke occupation, and as a flash she thought that Alexander had lied to her about having to sleep on the couch, but then with a chastising reassurance to Alexander’s fidelity she realized that someone else must live here – someone who wanted it to stay entirely secret that they visited or resided here. She was puzzled why someone would require that absolute secrecy, especially here in Alexander’s home; but also felt a thrill that she alone among the guests knew this. Lucy felt torn between the temptation to snoop around and discover their identity, and to allow them to retain their privacy. She opted for the later.

There were two other doors in the room, and Lucy tried the closer one around the bed on the far left, cautiously poking her head in to see a closet: men’s and women’s clothes hanging on a u-shaped pole; and a connecting bathroom where the locked hallway door would open to, full with a sky lit whirlpool bath, dual glass bowl sinks, the same blue and purple of the door glass, glass block walk-in shower that seemed to open up onto a balcony – she couldn’t tell for sure peering through the glass, and she didn’t want to trap herself inside going in to investigate like some dim-witted sitcom character, waiting nervously for hours until a nude prospective showerer entered to a mutual embarrassed shrieking.

She exited back into the bedroom and went to the second door, which she could already see through the red open shears of the windows led to a courtyard.

Clearing the doorway she realized that she had reached the end of the home, and the courtyard where she stood must be on top of her, and Alexander’s room (she flushed like a school-girl when she thought of it in those terms). The courtyard was round and simple. Along the bedroom wall were four Adirondack chairs, two on each side of the door, with small Spanish-mosaic accent tables between and large potted flower arrangements outside of the chair groups. Ringed around the courtyard were more of the large pots, varying from flowers to variegated coleus’s to flowering herbs to succulents in separate self-sustained groupings. Edging the courtyard was a short wall with trimmed hedges forming parapets broken only by the turret at the far left where a number of short Spanish-tile-faced steps led up, and an opening to its right with a round stone staircase stepping down. Lucy walked around the left side, glancing at each pot’s collection, then took the short steps up to see that they led to a Jacuzzi and a spectacular panoramic view all the way out to the oil derricks, the middle one in view seemingly perched on light itself in the sun’s reflection; her attitude toward the derricks had mellowed so that she now hardly minded seeing them on her horizon. “Shit,” she found herself saying in wonder.
After she had taken a good look she hopped down and continued around, glancing down the stone stairway and asking herself to look for the door that must lead to this passage when she got back to her and Alexander’s (flush) room. She strolled till she hit a bistro set with iron chairs and mosaic table, then walked toward the center of the courtyard. The floor itself was polished concrete, with a curve of water about six inches deep and six inches wide that spiraled to a shallow pool at center, and looking more closely at the water saw that in many places the floor was transparent, offering a watery view down to her bedroom, and explaining her ceiling’s unique design (a minute’s watching assured her that the room’s heighth and constantly flowing water would obscure any voyeur’s detail). At the center she heavily debated whether she should remove her sandals and dip her feet in, but thought better of leaving a wet trail of footsteps.

Moving back toward the room Lucy noticed a path to the left and approached it. The path skirted the outdoor shower area she had suspected, like a mini stone turret, five or so feet high with two high crowned shower heads at thirds on the half circle. Peaking around the shower area she saw that the path does continue around along the studio, turning left into green blue that Lucy was excited to think may be a rooftop garden, but the way was too exposed and her courage finally failed her, so she returned inside.

Quickly she threaded her way back through the bedroom, hallway, and darkroom – along the trail of crumbs of interest – into the studio near to the door she initially entered. Immediately to the left of the doorway was a fully equipped kitchen space: a definite loft kitchen with pantry, refrigerator, counter with cupboards, sink, oven range and hood, undercounter dishwasher and cupboard mounted microwave all on one wall, and a long island serving as cutting board, extra counter space, and table, with four chairs along the outside edge. Right of the kitchen was an open door; peeking in she saw it was a basic half-bathroom, four shuttered windows on the far wall with three more monotype prints (President Garfield – 3/97, Isobel-Deodato Remix – 3/07, and Crystal Clear (Beer) – 5/07), recent issues of PC Gamer, Details, and Stereo & Vision stacked on the toilet’s back.

To the right of the kitchen and bathroom was a short, wide hallway leading to a door and the area, Lucy surmised, where she had first glimpsed Alexander on the day of her arrival. She started toward the door, then paused and instead was drawn to the kitchen’s refrigerator, opening the fridge side and taking inventory. It was stocked with an inordinate amount of sauces and condiments to her mind: four kinds of mustard, six varieties of jams, jellies, and preserves, apple butter, pumpkin butter, two kinds of chutneys, three kinds of cracker spreads; more towards the rear that she didn’t delve into because their excavation would require removing too many jars.

On the door amongst cans of Mountain Dew and Vons Select Cherry Cola an unfamiliar bottle of beer caught her eye. She picked one up and read the label: Buffalo Bill’s Pumpkin Ale. Over the fridge door there was a brilliant flash from the door past the bathroom. Had she had the luxurious time they have in the movies she would have exclaimed, “Shit!” right there on the spot and tip-toed exaggeratedly and comically out – perhaps being caught for the viewer to feel empathically mortified. Instead she yanked the fridge door closed with the rattle and clank of colliding bottles and the door sealing with its own startled gasp, then bolted through the staircase door, each step a loud rasping scrape across the wood floor, a quick shriek from the door on its hinges, and Lucy stopped on the threshold, suddenly, trying to hear if she was pursued over the high idling of her heart, flooding her ears with a throbbing stampede of blood; gently, slowly releasing the doorknob so that it made only the slightest mechanical click as it caught. After a few seconds she thought she distinguished measured steps treading away – no pursuit – and she slipped downstairs to hurry off to her room, where she thought she might try the bottle of ale still in her hand to relax from her near capture.

Chapter Eight

2009-12-29T10:20:00.001-08:00

Acting upon Alexander’s advice, a few days after their talk on the subject of music Lucy sought Liam out in the White Room, which he shared with Perry. A soft knock, and then a loud knock brought a distant, “Enter!” and she obliged.

Now, Lucy wouldn’t label herself a Trekker (or Trekkie), but she had enjoyed the odd episode insomniacally, so the first analogy that came upon beholding the room was that it was victim to a Borg infestation,1 for while Perry’s side held a neatly arranged collection of percussion instruments – variegated woods and drumskins in shiny chrome stands; the curve and swell of hollow chambers, a five-gallon bucket full of various drumsticks and brushes, a made bed, headphones on the nightstand with the cord coiled under in a quoyle, and other tidy touches, Liam’s side was the hard functional edges of electronic equipment: black and gray, surrounded by precarious towers of CDs, a wall of blue milk crates holding a few thousand essential records, everywhere connected by wires in rat’s nests or tripwire traps. The one thing Lucy noticed curiously absent from the room was a member of ON; neither was there anyone in the dark, ajar bathroom at the back right of the room.

Though she felt lame saying it, still she called, “Hello?– Anybody there?” into the obvious emptiness.

“Come on through,” came the answer through the open window with music she had initially assumed to be coming from somewhere in the room. As Lucy approached the window she realized that the idea of a window here, in a room surrounded by home but with an unmistakable natural light and outdoor scent coming through, was wrong. At the window she saw three built-in steps leading up and through to five steps leading down, and was enchanted to find there a private grove.

Several windows opened out with identical stairs, wrought-iron railings, the glass of the windows swinging fully out and fitting into shutters that fastened back into the wall. Above, along the second floor rooms matching windows opened to individual balconies of intricately detailed iron in New Orleans style. Between windows there grew an assortment of flowering trees: wisteria, bougainvillea, roses, more flowers that should have been out of season where she recognized lilac; all contributed to a profusion of crimson, dusky purple, white, and deep green leaves, fanning up and clinging to the stone wall and iron. coffee ferns hung and sword ferns sat beside small tables on the balconies. Finches shot into and out of the false wall of leaves so fast you winced anticipating the little bird crunch against stone that never came; hummingbirds dipped their slender probes into their choice of blown glass and copper feeders or digressed to partake of a ground-grown flower, before darting up and over the clean line of the wall’s crest. And at center of the rectangular courtyard a walnut tree proudly sat, bowing laden arms to shade a ring of chairs and stools where Johnny, Leather, Crispin, Perry, Thom, and Liam sat jamming on their respective instruments acoustically (except Liam, or course, for there doesn’t yet exist an acoustic laptop, unless you make a convincing argument for the abacus, or relegate the undeserving machine to Perry’s sphere of instrumentilization).

Lucy walked over to the group. As she got there and received her Hey, how’re you doin?’s Perry popped up, handed her the Balinese drum he had been playing, and jogged over to a small brick oven, a red cube fronted with an iron door and a small chimney cheerfully puffing at its back, threw on an oven glove, and pulled out a tray of newly roasted walnuts that he placed on top. Beside the oven huddled two covered aluminum bins: one of walnuts waiting to be roasted, and the other with empty shells for kindling. Perry closed the oven door and returned to claim his drum. “You wanna join in?” he asked.

“I got an old Casio you can play,” Liam offered.

“No thanks – I was hoping rather for words.”

“Ask what you may. Any wisdom our humble fellowship has to impart will be yours,” Johnny said, punctuating his speech with a bluesy guitar phrase.

“It’s just that I’ve been wholly on the listening end of music for a while now, and want to get a feel for how the biz’ is going today,” Lucy asked, lowering herself into a spare stool.

“There hasn’t been a significant change – that’s the problem,” Thom said.

“Only if you don’t like the way things are,” Liam rebutted.

“Like it or not I’d like to know how to change it,” Leather said.

“But your issue is more with the group dynamic than with the industry,” Lucy said, as leading as a question, to Leather.

“But that’s all connected, isn’t it?” Crispin asked. “The question of rights and who’s got the say.”

“Wait – are you talking about rights to the music or rights to the musician?” Lucy asked. “Cause I thought I had that all figured out.”

Leather answered, “My issue is that regardless of who writes the lyrics and who was a founding member it should be a democracy. If I get kicked out of the band it’ll be by Athena, cause she was the one that put the group together and writes all of the lyrics. She’s the dictator. I know Katana and Shrew won’t want me to go, but don’t feel they have any say. And even though I wrote out the bass part they can bring any broad in to play it.”

“The problem is that everything needs to be in writing from the start,” Johnny said gently.

“I know – it’s just that I’m not a fucking lawyer – I just play bass – that’s all I want to do.”

“One hundred twenty-seven,” Johnny whispered.

“Shit! Don’t say it – I know – one hundred twenty-eight,” Leather grumbled.

“That’s it – we’re talking about art, man! Artists. We don’t need suits telling us how to do it, and certainly not how to create and realize it!” Thom said.

“That’s the game,” Liam said. “That’s the challenge: appease the suits – make your fans – and keep as much truth in it as you can.”

“But it’s got to be pure to be of any value – and you know I’m not talking about money.”

“But money means eventual emancipation after you’ve laid down your fan-base, and made your name. Money means more extensive marketing and touring. It means while the suits are counting their loot they won’t notice when you slip some art by them.”

“Execs can’t all be inherently anti-art,” Lucy said.

“Pro or anti-art it doesn’t matter with our stockholder first American music mentality,” Thom said.

Lucy looked around the group for further comment, her eyes clasping upon Perry first.

“Don’t look at me – I’m cool with whatever as long as I don’t have to get a real job,” he said standing, and walking over to check the walnuts. He returned with a small tray, legs unfolded from it’s base, that held small bowls of chocolate sauce, honey, and several salt and sugar based spice mixes, balanced on one hand, the walnuts rustling and clicking against each other in a shallow bowl on the other, and the kindling bucket swinging from the walnut arm wrist. “Note the extensive food service technician training I’d rather not further develop,” he said, placing them in the middle of the group.

They dug in. Though there was both a nutcracker and a small silver hammer the roasting left the nutshells brittle enough that their musician’s fingers could easily Godfather them open.

“So what’s the deal with you guys? Is it really just the question of ‘To sell out or not to sell out?’” Lucy asked. “Isn’t that a little old?”

“Yeah,” Thom, “but the unfortunate thing about the democracy Leather wants so much is that the parties never agree.”

“And I will give it up that though I’m the naturalized citizen I get an equal vote.” Liam said with a nod toward Thom, who nodded back a respectful acknowledgement.

“See, you guys seem to have a good rapport – why are you guys here? – at Alexander’s I mean.”
“You should’ve seen us before,” Thom said, “And most of that was on me, I admit. They always teach you that bullshit that you got to fight for your art above all else – so that’s what I did. Problem was I was fighting my own team – dividing us to a more extreme polarity – so that when we did get back out there we weren’t united.”

“And you’re the swing vote?” Lucy asked Crispin, who had been unnaturally engrossed with his walnuts during the discussion. His eyelids fluttered under the attention he was given.

“Yeah, but I don’t want to talk about it – let’s get back to the indie vs. major question,” he answered. Lucy didn’t envy his position.

“All right – now I’ve only been majors and I’ve never felt like a sellout. My words stayed the same – all they did was help on the notes – suggested instruments to add or subtract, constructive criticism,” she said.

“Yeah! We can’t go in thinking everyone with an idea about how we should sound is an adversary. We can find someone in the biz for the music, for us. It can be symbiotic, we can find that fifth wheel,” Liam insisted.

“But what if he turns out to be a fifth columnist?” Thom countered. “Name for me a major that maintained the it that brought them to the majors when they got there.”

“Radiohead.” Liam offered.

“That’s different – that’s Britain – I’m talking here, where we’re gonna play.”

“Green Day.”

“What, The Clash Jr?”

“You can’t tell me you haven’t outgrown that argument.”

“Okay, but now, see, Green Day is one of the bands I would use as a cautionary tale. I mean, Welcome to Paradise, right there. When they rerecorded it from Kerplunk! to Dookie it lost all of its vitality, all its insistence. The Kerplunk! Paradise was irony straight outta the garage and sweaty, vibrant shows at the Gilman; Dookie Paradise was looking back from the arena, from the hills – from Paradise! You know what happened at the arena: they got pelted with mud.”

“American Idiot.”

“From proud to be an American idiot to American Idiot. I used to be you and now I’m big enough to lecture you.”

“That’s progression, man. Natural evolution.”

“Maybe; but it took, what, three, four albums to get there?”

“And here we end up, again,” Crispin said, and I won’t be the one to decide it for us all!”

“Fuck it – just sell out and be over it,” they heard from above. They inclined their gazes to see Kord on one of the upstairs balconies. He was leaning back, one arm along the railing, a cigarette smoldering between his fingers – he taps a cylinder of ash to crash and disintegrate into the ceramic ashtray June had molded for him – the other arm hovering over a full binder, with pen pinched between those fingers, swinging back and forth like a toy trapeze artist. “What do you all know anyway? Look at me – a self-proclaimed militant indie gone Hollywood; major labels: same thing. I figure, why not give up a bit of control to make it so easy on yourself? It’s not like I’m some kind of auteur – look at my last couple of flicks: ruthless critics and diminishing box-office. I mean, what the fuck do we know anyway? Why shouldn’t we have a team of producers and execs with ideas, man? As I am I’ve got nothing but support: my friends, my family; but – fuck, man – what’s that good of that if shit is what they support? Indie film, alternative music: same thing.” Thus thoroughly vented, Kord’s pen returned to its downright position and resumed its short sprints across the binder paper, in an attitude as if he had never provided his commentary for their conversation.

The group lowered their attention back to each other. Lucy swallowed her walnut and said, “One thing I can tell you about the majors is that they’re into their timetables. That’s what killed me with Waxing: on Waning I had my inspiration and three years to tighten and revise it all – so much growth, and so much is culled, so that your first album is already a greatest hits compilation of your music. Then it’s released, and I’ve got nine months to come up with a whole new album before the label considers me too forgotten in the public’s eye to put any substantial money behind – which is complete bullshit cause if you like a musician you’ll like ‘em in a year, two years, whenever; forever. Nine months to find at least a dozen things to talk about, that I feel I have the authority to talk about; with music. Amid touring and public appearances, interviewing and other crap obligations.

“You’ve been conspicuously quiet, Johnny,” Lucy finished her baby rant and refocused the attention. “As a Major major, what’s your take?”

“I’ll tell ya. But it’s different cause it’s just me now. See, I put everything together exactly as I want it: every word, note, instrument, sample. I take my master, make a few copies for some choice compatriots, then store it away with the other pure masters, send a copy to the label and let them change whatever they need to release it successfully. I retain my artistry and my business.”

“But your name is on that – people think that that is all you!” Liam said.

“What, Johnny Midnight? That’s just image. It’s not me.”

“But then you go out all over the world and perform those, those…” Thom groped for his analogy, “amputated, and artificially prosthetic-icized songs!”

“Again, that’s under the guise of Johnny Midnight, and as performer, which doesn’t necessitate that I be the sole creator of the work to perform it. In this respect I guess I’m some quasi-actor/musician, and how many actors get that luxury of engendering and raising what they perform through adolescence?”

“So, then, you’d say the release of the songs to the producers is the release into adulthood?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah, but still I retain that pure master, forever locked up all to myself as the art that I alone created, remaining in perpetual childhood. And anyways, Art doesn’t have to be shared to remain Art.”

The statement was irrefutable without pondering. But, instead, after some nodded and others constricted their faces in thought and there was a half-minute’s pause, Lucy instead asked, “So, what’s new in music.”

Nothings all around save for Liam, who, after the sibilance faded, said, “The old genres are pretty stagnant – the new bands sound like the love children of the old bands. The only significant music of the new century – the Zeroes – has been mash-ups.”

Aw come on now and such from all around save for Lucy, who asked, “Mash-ups?”

“They’re kitsch,” Johnny derided – it seemed the consensus among the rest.

“They return fun as a concept to music. They remove all pretenses.”

“But it’s just recycling other people’s songs. They don’t create anything,” Thom argued.

“Sure they do – they’re the collage artists of music; found art. The Grey Album is as relevant as any gallery installation.”

Eah, the other guys said dismissingly, not conceding, but without anything else to refute him.

“So, in your expert opinions, is there a place for me in music today?” Lucy asked.

“Sure,” Johnny said.

“Of course,” Thom said. “Just because there’s nothing importantly new doesn’t mean we should give up the classic genres.”

“When Rock & Roll came around people didn’t stop listening to Jazz,” Crispin offered.

“Music is great because it endures so,” Perry added.

“Inclusively. People still listen to Polka for Goddess’ sake,” Liam said.

“Rock on,” Leather finished.

“Thanks guys – it’s good to hear that,” Lucy said. She placed her fingers in her mouth and sucked the walnut augmentations there off. While the miraculous southern Santa Barbara light retained its constancy over the course of the group’s conversation, keeping the tall two-storied secret grove in a perpetual gloaming, as if orange cellophane covered the space’s sky opening, to
Lucy the world seemed suddenly brighter.

1 To the proudly ignorant Anti-Trekker, let me simply explain that the Borg are a malignant society that assimilates cultures and technology by infesting it with themselves (not exactly the way that America does it – for the Borg works as a collective); the infection is represented visually by the pleasant, sterile, interior design of the starship being overcome by cold, gray, chaotic growths and lesions of tubes and wires without aesthetic.

Transcript 2: On Interior Design

2009-12-29T10:09:00.000-08:00

“Hey Alexander. Alexander!”

“Hey Lucy. Sorry; here, let me pause this.”

“What was that?”

“Zaireeka by The Flaming Lips. It’s a pretty cool concept piece. What they did: they made four different albums at the same time, which are supposed to be played from four different sources concurrently.”

“Wow.”

“What I did was have Liam transfer all four into one multichannel mix – you’ve heard about all that of course?”

“Of course.”

“That way the multi-channel mix would simulate the intended experience without the hassle of four separate sources.”

“Mmm…technology at work.”

“Are you going to remaster your old stuff into multichannel?”

“Old stuff?! Gasp! No, just kidding. Maybe if my new stuff turns out successful my label will want to re-release the catalogue. My label prefers using the DVD-A cause its parent company is involved in developing it – but, really, I’m just a broad and her piano, maybe some drums, some upright bass – I don’t see how surround sound is going to make it any more interesting.”

“Part of the multichannel deal is better fidelity, more depth to the sound – a truer sound.”

“But do people really need to know that the bass player stifled a sneeze during Heroine?”

“I’m sure they can edit it out now but as a fan I would say, yes, that sneeze is essential to the experience. Speaking of music – how’s yours going?”

“It’s not. I’m coming along unsurprisingly slow on the one for the Spicers – The Children’s Resurrection one – but I won’t be surprised when they reject it. That’ll be fun, getting rejected by children. I don’t even sound like me – you know when a singer writes a song that sounds like someone else trying to sound like that singer? It’s not even that good.”

“Ah…”

“Seriously, if you heard it you’d kick me out of your home immediately.”

“Ha ha. So Lucy what is it you love about music?”

“What is this, Almost Famous?”

“Hmpf – it’s definitely Untitled – only if I can be your band-aide.”

“Well, I don’t know….do you have a cool band-aide name?”

“I don’t know. How about…Arky-Tech.”

“Gag. Murphy…Murphy…? Smurfy!”

“Yeah, no.”

“Murphy. Something Irish? Gaelic! Gaelicker.”

“You want a band-aide called Gay-Licker? Quit dodging the question, eh?”

“Alright, alright – but I’m gonna think of your band-aide name soon. So what do I love about music? Besides that it made me all kinds of money? Well…what is there not to like about music? It’s universal – but so differently realized by every culture. It can change your mood – it can deepen your mood. That, and it’s pretty damn fun to make. Do you play anything?”

“I played trumpet in high school Jazz Band, but I didn’t keep it up after. I was never very good – I didn’t practice a lot.”

“My goodness – I’ve found something you don’t do!”

“Well…”

“Ha ha – alright, same question: what do you love about music?”

“I believe in having a soundtrack to life, that you can direct your experiences by the accompanying music. There’s something that bookmarks it then to time and place. Like, say, Cake’s first two albums say College, Santa Barbara – spring and summer. Rufus Wainright’s first album says autumn in Boston – but his Want One says winter, San Francisco. Sugarcubes and Dandy Warhols say sunny summer morning already smelling of cocoa-butter on 17 downhill toward Santa Cruz; Morcheeba and Portishead say afternoon, salt-crusted, driving home. That’s what I love most.”

“So now, desert island – you can take ten albums – I’ll give you my two for free.”

“Alright, um…Chemical Brothers: Dig your own hole. Bjork’s Debut. Teagan’s Broken Hotel. Um…Miles Davis: Kind of Blue and Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald on Porgy and Bess. Oh, Gorecki’s Third. Jane’s Addiction’s Ritual de lo Habitual.”

“Mmm…that’s a good one. Those guys were quite influential to me, actually.

“Really? I would never have guessed.”

“Not so much their music – though I do enjoy it. But they were the first group I heard that made me conscious that not all song lyrics have to rhyme. That was epiphanic – even if I haven’t always prescribed to it.”

“Interesting. They were my favorite band in high school. They were my U2.”

“Teagan was mine – though it was supposed to be Joni Mitchell, right?”

"Yeah. How many is that?”

“One two three four – seven.”

“Okay, three more…Radiohead: OK Computer. Beck’s Mutations. Um, do I get an MP3 compilation as ten?”

“No, the whole point isn’t what you’d take but what you can sacrifice. Do you go for the safe albums with lots of good songs or the crap album with one amazing song? I see you’ve mixed your genres a bit: jazz, classical, electronica, alternative; and you definitely stuck with personal favorites over critical acclaim. That’s good. Now – your last pick?”

“Argh – alright, um…oh wait! Duh! Juliana Hatfield’s Become What You Are. I drove my poor first college roommate nuts playing that over and over. Whew – that was stressful! So, lady, what’re your ten?”

“Teagan’s full length albums pre-My Hive minus Languidspace and Reform School Queen – that’s six. Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville. Ben Folds Five’s Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. Madonna’s Immaculate Collection – for something to dance around to. Rufus Wainright’s first album, and Beethoven’s Seventh.”

“Wow – really?– that doesn’t bring you back into the, er…moment?”

“No. Only my songs can do that – not Teagan’s You, Me and It and not Fiona Apple’s Sullen Girl and certainly not the Seventh. That would be like blaming the music for what happened, when the music was only an innocent bystander. More than that the Seventh was the companionable whisper from the next cell – anonymous, but concerned, brimming with empathetic orchestrations, that said, ‘Hold on! I know you’re stuck in the evil, dark Allegretto, and it’s dire and you more than wish that when he comes it will go off like a shotgun shell and spare you the forthcoming misery – but persevere Lucy! – it will end, you will be released. Your Presto and Allegro con brio are coming soon. It proved a slight distraction during a horrendous time, and for that Ludwig has my eternal love.”

“None of my picks is that rooted to one specific event. I don’t think you can choose that – it’s just up to circumstance.”

“No, I think you can, like, what about the song you danced to at your wedding?”

“Okay, yeah, that’s true.”

“What was your song?”

“I only have eyes for you.”

“Mmm, that’s a good one.”

“What song are you gonna dance to?”

“Something we can really dance to – none of that slow sappy shit. How about Land of a Thousand Dances?”

“Hah. Bust a Move?”

“You Can’t Touch This?”

“The Humpty Dance?”

"What?”

“You don’t know The Humpty Dance? Digital Underground? You missed out. They did the second greatest song ever ejaculated onto disc, Freaks of the Industry.”

“The first?”

“I’ll do ya, by Whale.”

“I’ll have to look them up later.”

“Alright. No, I know, you can do the Jungle Brothers remix of Song About My Bitch.”

“Hah.”

“I’ve always wanted to ask you: where did that song come from?”

“Well, obviously from the clitoris. But no, really, it was only a revenge song for my father. He thought he had a right to be critical of my public persona – especially the Promise-cuous video, but also my very public relationship with the model from that video. He saw ‘Model’ in print and assumed that he was just a witless pretty boy, so I kinda just fed him his own poison, undiluted.”
“Unadulterated.”

“Exactly. Do I need to say that I had fun with it?”

“And your dad didn’t.”

“No – ha ha – he didn’t. But he had to learn that it takes more than twenty-three chromosomes to have a say in your kid’s life.”

“The Spicers would agree with you there. So, what do you think about today’s music? Who do you like?”

“I like all the new stuff from the old artists – except Bjork: I just can’t get behind her experimental stuff; and post-sellout Liz Phair. But new artists? No one stands out yet. I’ve been more interested in discovering ones I had missed, like Poe. Your collection’s been good for that.”

“I feel the same way. Liam said something really pertinent about that. He said that instead of calling it The New Century we should be calling it The Zeroes – that there’s nothing new going on now; that that which we think is new is only something enough have forgotten about to seem new again. I mean rap and electronica are the last great music forms, but they’re already graduated from college and are now just out looking for a job.”

“Have you noticed that they’re bringing all out old toys back? I went to pick up a birthday gift for my five year old cousin and it gave me déjà vu! Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, G. I. Joe – they’re all back. I think everybody ran out of ideas and are bringing the tried and true back out of desperation.”

“More ‘tired and true’…Is that how it is now? Going back to the music biz that is? Cause, I mean, Liam is right there on the edge of it, but what do I know anyway about it all? – I still like all the old stuff that I’m supposed to bleed out of my system before I can move on – but I just don’t like much of the new stuff coming out now. I remember back in high school when grunge was spreading like patchouli smoke from Seattle and I knew that it was Me and I mocked the people that didn’t get it: all the folks from the sixties scene that would rather stick with Hendrix, and the eighties rockers who thought Guns N’ Roses was the future. I knew it was slipping right by them, and now I’m being slipped. Shit, up in San Francisco this radio station, Live 105, is doing their annual Not So Silent Night concert and this is the first year that I haven’t cared about a single band on the ticket.”

“Oh no – I’m counting on it holding out for me. I haven’t been in the mix for a long time but I gotta believe that there will always be a place for a girl and her piano. But then, like, my old road manager is touring a band that probably wasn’t allowed to listen to me when I came out because of the Parental Advisory sticker.”

“I really felt that electronica would be the great unifying force between genres, cause you could have rap or alternative rock vocals over a techno beat and retain the distinctiveness of their respective genres. But instead there’s all this homogenized punk-pop, watered down bling-bling shit selling. What they’re not saying is a better commentary of the times.”

“Or they’re simply talking over us, ignoring us – not worrying about being cross-generational. Watching MTV Cribs, they certainly don’t need our money.”

“That is true. Just the gripe of an abandoned listener. For a real opinion you should talk to Liam.”

“Yeah, I probably should. Johnny too, I’m sure.”

“I guess for an opinion on what sells, he’d be a good guide. An inside to the majors.”

“I’m hoping that won’t matter since there hasn’t been a significant restructuring at my label since I’ve been away. Here’s hoping they still think there’s a market for us old folks.”

“Definitely.”

Chapter Seven

2009-12-29T10:06:00.000-08:00

Early dawn and the world is in grayscale. The woods are so unusually taciturn and the fog lays so dense and sentient, a cavalcade of allied spirits under the tips of the tallest trees, the trunks at the edge of allowed sight grown from shadow, that our hero would have thought he had strayed through a nightmare, only he is running too fast for a nightmare and the veins on the leaves and the graduations on the bark are too detailed for dream – for the architect of dream only knows function, circulation, and structure – with no eye for materials. The birds and squirrels that made their home in this grove are silent and still, alert in their high perches – not straying to the ground.

The fog parts suddenly, a veil swung aside for the quickened passage of our hero. He runs, crouching low through the trees as fast as he can while remaining silent. In his hands he grips a bow with arrow notched, the string lightly tensed, held so that the arrow’s point is to the ground, flowing by a few inches above it. The lack of wind further obscures the man’s passage, but also gives no olfactory clue to his prey’s position.

The sudden low rumble of whispered grunts brings him to a halt. He breathes evenly through his mouth and turns his head slowly to track the whispering source. Stopped and bent as he is with his dark gray pants and deep green long sleeved shirt in this fog he would appear to be bush or part of a fallen tree until approached very closely. When he believes he has grasped their direction he moves in quick spurts tree-to-tree toward them.

He is proficient in his pursuit: not a twig is snapped, not a leaf or nettle is crackled into shards, not a branch rips its claws across his clothes; his quiver packed carefully with loose cloth rags so that the arrows won’t rattle against each other.

And then, clearing a tree, two large gray shapes appear amorphous through the fog. Quick as thought and instinct allows he pulls the bowstring back and looses an arrow, pivots behind a tree, pulling another arrow from his quiver and notching it back in one movement, revolves around the tree’s other side and lets the shaft loose at the second dark shape. Knowing there will be another orc in the group he sprints forward, readying another arrow. He passes the first two, not slowing to confirm how they were hit. What was at first all silence is now the sharp, harsh, persistent scrape of full running, the accelerating war-drum of blood in the ears, and roar of disturbed air.

There, ahead, he overtakes the last orc as it materializes in the heavy mist and lets his arrow fly on the run. It lands on a shoulder and he quickly sends another that hits squarely in the torso.
Alexander said, “Whew,” wiped his brow on a sleeve, and slung the bow over his unquivered shoulder. He stretched his fingers out and cracked the knuckles, stiff from the damp cold, and tight sustained grips on bow-hilt and bowstring. The forest relaxed, slowed its breathing, and its inhabitants set out on the business of the day calling to one another with the night’s gossip.
Alexander retrieved his arrows from the three full-sized targets, modeled and costumed after the orcs from The Lord of the Rings, especially proud of a head shot on the first one – not exactly in-between the rubber-mask-covered-straw-filled burlap orc’s eyes, but still he felt fairly impressed.
---
Lucy’s spoonful of Cream-of-Wheat, augmented with brown sugar, cinnamon, butter and milk, and lent a savory weight from the herb-infused evaporating dew of the kitchen garden, slipped off her spoon, splashing wet shrapnel onto her bare knees, when six-feet four-inches of sweaty Alexander blocked her morning-sun, sitting outside on the kitchen steps, a bow and quiver of arrows slung over his shoulder.

Her expression, with upturned eyes, was question enough for Alexander to explain, “Sometimes your basic work-out just won’t do.”

Lucy was a quick girl on the quips, but before she could settle on one Clive burst through the door and sang, “Hooray for Morningwood!” forth to the outside world, an impressive tentpole propped in his Burbury plaid pajama pants.

Lucy has always respected the transparency of crassness; with men like Clive there’s nothing scary hidden, making him imminently more trustworthy, and lest nerve wracking to be around, then, say, your friend’s husband who always looks at you a bit oddly, who you can never tell may try and jump you when he gives you a ride home; and so she held her commentary on Alexander’s choice of exercise and offered a second verse, “Even if you have no one to fuck you know you could!”

Lucy’s answer to Clive’s lusty call amplified the delight in his bawdy song, “Bring on the blondes and redheads, I’m ready to get AAAGH!” the last word not sung but shrieked, and obviously not his intended sentiment, as at that moment Lucy whacked the apex of his distended pants with her spoon. It wasn’t done maliciously: Lucy actually thought the prodigious extension was exaggerated by a flannel enshrouded banana. “Damn, Clive,” she said, her tone an amalgam of surprise and wonder. Lucy gathered her bowl and assaulting spoon, Alexander cuffed Clive on the shoulder, and the two went sinkward and showerward, respectively, leaving Colin leaning upon the wall to keep himself from collapsing into a fetal ball, grinding the heel of his hand into his stomach, echoing his prior statement, “Ah, ah,” in painful repetition.

Chapter Six

2008-12-29T23:29:00.000-08:00

One bright midmorning Lucy sat, trying to write The Children’s Insurrection song lyrics, starting with riff variations on Gollum’s Song. She got as far as the third line, “Where once was love,” but thought, jokingly, disparaging it from her frustrating lack of ideas, slow flexing of her emaciated songwriting muscle, “Love is fucking gone, Gollum,” which got so wedged in her mind she couldn’t uncork it for something better to effervesce out, and realized that it was entirely too pleasant outside to stay in and try to work, so she dressed herself in shorts, tank-top, and sandals and made her way outside through the gym exit. The path around the house presenting itself so humble and courteous there she took it, rounding the long circular wall of her room, and smaller circle of a turret she hadn’t known was attached to the end of the long curve like a Venus of Willendorf breast emerging from belly. She saw a trail diverge off from the circumambulating path into the East Woods and followed it. There were casual voices ahead through the trees – ladies’ voices – that she soon saw were coming from what must be the ceramics/sculpture hut.

The structure lay astride the trees in a bright ovoid clearing. It was constructed entirely of glass and iron in a rough circle, with a wide awning that faced toward the open center of the clearing like the bill of a baseball cap, where leveled tree stumps served as work pedestals – most with lightly-colored stone atop. Caught in sunlight, Lucy expected the hut’s interior to be hot as an arboretum, but stepping through the open threshold found it wonderfully cool. Along each vertical window extrusion were tiny nozzles that sprayed a cool mist into the space, which a powerful fan mounted center of the dome circulated, taking the hot, spent air up and out through hydraulically opened windows on the ceiling.

Four women hunkered at their work, dispersed around the room, gossiping from the pigeon sound of it. Sandra Jillian Palladio crouched over a pottery wheel making a squat vase; her former long-time co-star Karly Douglas sat on the wheel next to her attempting a bowl; June Sherbesman-Scott stood at a high table couching a small mound of grayish-brown clay, a small finger bowl of now slurry beside her; and Marisol sat on a high stool by a matching table glazing a set of plates in a bright rust orange with a mustardy yellow design at center. Sandra Jillian was the first to notice Lucy’s presence. “Hey there, Lucy,” she greeted her.

“Morning ladies,” Lucy replied. “Look at all of you in here being crafty.”

Which prompted June to sing, “She’s crafty!” à la Beastie Boys.

“Hi, I’m Lucy,” Lucy said to Karly as an introduction, and approached her.

“Good to meet you – Jilly told me you were staying here,” Karly brought a hand up to shake, then remembered that it was covered in wet clay and flinched it back, a laugh, a flash of her muddy palm, and shrug serving as explanation.

“So what’s news?” Lucy asked to enter the conversation, pulling a stool out for herself, across from Marisol.

“We were discussing my media issues,” Marisol answered.

“Refresh my memory,” Lucy asked, through she generally ignores the media and has no idea at all.

“Well, essentially my producer on Eisenstein in Mexico wanted to get rid of his wife, but he had a pre-nup that only paid out if he initiated the divorce. So he faked an affair with me, thinking she’d leave him. Instead, she got rabid and called all the tabloids saying I was a homewrecker.”

“That fucker,” Lucy commented.

“That’s exactly what I said!” Karly exclaimed.

“And so I came here to hide and wait until it gets forgotten – but every week that fuckin’ wife of his gets something else printed and I gotta start that hourglass of the public’s attention all over again.”

“But how did you respond to it?” Lucy asked.

In unison Sandra Jillian, Karly, and Marisol said, “No no no – you can never respond.”

And then Sandra Jillian clarified, “Any response or defense is seen as an admission of guilt in the media’s eyes.”

“You need to just say ‘that bitch is crazy and I wouldn’t go near her lyin’ fuck husband anyway.’”

Again a group consensus no no no. With Karly this as elaborator, “Cause, see, the media would play it like, ‘Marisol strikes back at spurned lover and scorned wife,’ and they would find or contrive some photo of the two of them together that would prove her guilt in the public’s eye, regardless of whatever she said.”

“So you can’t do anything – you just have to wait,” Lucy stated, incredulous.

“Well, there is one thing I could do if I had no dignity – we were just talking about it when you came in. The studio just offered me the chance to work again if I make a public apology to his wife,” the venom thick in Marisol’s voice.

“Wait, wait, they’re stopping you from working over this?!”

“Official ostracism – temporary as a muggle’s short-term memory, but across the board.”

“Shit,” Lucy felt the frustration build up as kinetic energy and had to get up and pace it off. “Whew – I couldn’t do it – I would dig my own grave before I could stop myself.”

“The music industry doesn’t work this way?” June asked, rolling half of her clay out flat with a reassigned wooden kitchen rolling pin to about a half-inch thickness.

“Oh no. First off, generally we pick our own producers,” Karly and June give a jealous whistle, “and if the artist is doing well they’re pretty much untouchable. But then I suspect our producer’s roles are a lot different: our performances serve as our audition so there’s no casting couch situation – at least none that yield deals; I’m sure there are plenty of empty-promising unscrupulous producers, but the label’s aren’t going to put any money behind someone just cause they put out.” Lucy paused, then asked, “That isn’t just a myth in your industry, right? Do you think that still goes on?”

A great sigh all around and Sandra Jillian answered for them, “Yes and it’s so obvious when those ladies come on set. Kim was always the first to spot them – she would point to each extra and say, ‘Couch, couch, family, walk-on, couch, couch.’ She called it her Slutty-Sense.” Karly gave a wide smile at this, but then a weight entered her face, like her bones, by some alchemical process, turned suddenly to metal, her eyes moistening; Sandra Jillian, seeing this, put her head on Karly’s shoulder and snuggled into her a bit. Lucy cocked her head at this, searching for a motive, and Sandra Jillian answered her question, “We’re still a little broken up about not being around each other all the time.”

Then Lucy asked, “Okay ladies, the truth here, have any of you been offered the couch? Or ridden it?”

June spoke up quickly, “Oooh, Oooh, I have! I fucked the director!” and everyone shook the windows with laughing. “I’ve gotten some pretty good parts out of it too.”

After her laughing had subsided sufficiently Sandra Jillian said, “I had one producer try – he started unzipping his pants and I literally ran. I wasn’t even past his secretary’s desk when I heard him calling for the next girl.”

“He probably didn’t even bother zipping up,” a dash of sarcastic Tabasco Marisol added. The other ladies grunted their agreement with this asshole-ic assumption.

The door to the hut opened and Lauren blew in, saying, “Ladies,” as greeting. With one arm she carried a pillow and with the other a laptop.

The group returned greetings. Lauren placed her skirt-protecting dust-cushion over the stool beside Marisol, and asked her, “I signed up – can you look? I just can’t.”

Marisol kept Lauren squirming and biting her thumb for a minute before declaring, “All they’ve got is a see-thru, two upskirts, and a blurry oops.” Marisol handed the laptop back to Lauren and resumed her glazing.

“Anybody want me to look them up on this site?” Lauren said, her visual contrast and sound color returning with the verdict that there were no significant nude pics or videos of her on the Celebrity porn paysite open on her laptop.

“They won’t have anything new,” Marisol said, “But go ahead and check.”

Lauren typed a flurry and said, “All screencaps: four from Bandito, and three from Picasso’s Women. I’m surprised there’s no vidcaps. Anyone else?”

“Why not,” June allowed.

“How do you spell your maiden name?” Lauren asked, and after she was guided letter by letter informed June, “Nothing.”

“Really? Should I be offended that they don’t have the Playboy pics there?” June asked; the group took it rhetorically and only answered with a chuckle.

Not waiting for further approval, Lauren looked up the rest of the ladies and gave her report, “Sandra Jillian: just some bra-and-panties. Kristen: wow, four vidcaps and a 15 screencap gallery: all Sex and the City. Lucy: one vidcap they insist is a sexy non-nude. Boring, Miss Faas!”

“Sorry,” Lucy replied, facetiously humbled.

The silence that followed this brought the sharp, ringing sound of hammered chisel on stone from outside of the hut, echoing off the tightly packed trees edging and forming the clearing. Feeling that the conversation had reached an end, Lucy said, “Well, I’ll stop being a distraction from your work, and your pornography” backing herself toward the rear door.

“It was nice meeting you,” Karly said; the rest simply said, “Bye, Lucy.”

Before she cleared the door she heard June ask, mostly to herself, “Why the fuck am I making him an ashtray?”
Out of the hut and under the wide brim of awning it was instantly warmer, but not unbearably so, for a sufficient, slight breeze blew through the meadow from the north.

Linny was the one chiseling – really rearing back and striking the chisel head for it was real marble she was carving. Leather was sitting cross-legged, on one of the many tree stumps that served as pedestals, the cauldron of her belly, brewing her nascency potion, perched in her lap, sketching Tracy onto a block of white, gray-veined alabaster, who posed for her on the last stump of the grouping, the only one in sunlight,. It took a second to register that the wind teased and sun glowed figure of Tracy was completely nude.

Though Lucy had breasts, of course, she still wasn’t used to seeing some when she was simply out for a stroll. She was embarrassed further when she couldn’t help fixating on them, first prying her attention away with a voyeuristic shame; then instantly reflecting that the glance showed Lucy the most fantastic breasts she had never imagined possible – even surgically – and her gaze returned for contemplation; “here indeed is the mother fruit, fruit of the knowledge of good,” the thought came strange, sudden, and so formed she thought she must have been recalling some poem or lyric, then again she wrenched her eyes away, this time thinking that her stare had been too long, too obviously focused, to damning; then finally, after thoroughly chastising herself as a prude, she relaxed and tried her best to appear nonchalant, like she was used to encountering such mammary grandeur.

“Okay, could you turn again, please,” Leather asked, rotating her marked up stone to the next of its hexad faces.

Tracy popped up, giving Lucy a full frontal, quickly twisted back and forth in a stretch, saw her and said, “Hi Lucy” in the carefree tone Lucy was trying to innervate, presenting then penetrating Lucy’s gauze of false aplomb, then returned to her previous posture, now in profile. Leather and Linny also turned from their work to greet Lucy.

“I wish I had a sexy accent like Marisol,” Lucy said, contriving a subject. “It would be cool, being bilingual.”

“I speak two languages,” Leather said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yup: English and Foul.”

“Ha. But Marisol doesn’t get charged a buck every time she speaks Spanish,” Tracy commented.

“But the only real reason to speak another language is to curse at people without their knowing what you’re saying about them,” Linny added.

Lucy watched Leather sketch Tracy onto the rock for a few minutes, and then asked, “I never caught what band you play for, Leather,” forgetting she had.

“The Sheena-na-gigs – bass.”

“No shit? That’s fantastic. Check this out,” Lucy said, pulling a necklace from under her shirt to show a Sheena-na-gig pewter pendant.

“Right on,” Leather approved, “Where did you get that?”

“Teagan Andrews sent it to me after she listened to my first album. I think she got it in Ireland, or Britain – she lives over there, so…” Lucy said as explanation.

“I want to see,” Tracy said, and Lucy walked over to show her, momentarily unsure about the etiquette of personal space when the other is naked, unsure about her sexuality because of a boiling desire to place a finger upon Tracy’s sun warmed skin, unsure about her name or where she was, and was midway into chastising herself again when Tracy simply grasped the necklace and tugged Lucy closer to her so that she could inspect the pendant properly, close enough that Lucy could smell her. Whether by perfume or lotion, Tracy smelled like wildflowers – nothing exotic, just beautiful and free, as if Tracy herself was blooming there in the late morning sun. Lucy got a contact high from her proximity to Tracy, and finally understood how drunken college girls could decide to experiment. “I like it,” Tracy said finally, with a chuckle.

“Can I?” Linny asked, and Lucy stumbled over to her. Linny looked at it, then did a slight double take and looked closer. “Euww,” she concluded, to which Leather and Tracy laughed. “Why?” was the only question she could formulate.

“She’s a Celtic…Goddess, right?” Lucy started.

“Sort of,” Leather confirmed, “She’s a fertility Goddess of sorts. Farmers would put her on their barns to ensure a good harvest. Many of the churches have her mounted on them too. Some just considered her a mad old lady, though.”

“Beats the hell out of When I Am An Old Woman I Will Wear Purple, doesn’t it?” Lucy said.

“When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Expose My Vagina,” Tracy offered as a title.

“Euww,” Linny echoed her previous statement, “And why did Teagan send you this?”

“She’s a senior member in a club we’re both members of, and after the success of my first album she sent it with some big-sisterly advice. She wrote, ‘A strong show of your sexuality can serve as sword and shield, depending on how you choose to wield it.’”

The ladies pondered and nodded as their only comment.

Lucy watched as Leather tried to scoot closer to her stone, and almost tipping it over with her inflating belly, mutter a growl of frustration. “How far along are you?” Lucy asked.

“Six months. I can’t imagine how I can get three months of bigger,” Leather replied in wondrous trepidation.

“Are you between tours?”

“Yeah – thank Goddess. Athena and Katana are working on the new stuff now – otherwise I might’ve been replaced – I’m not an original member, so…” she paused and then continued, “I may still be if I’m not ready to tour after recording – that should only be like three months after my due date.”

“Whew,” Lucy said, trying to evoke a genuine empathy. “And Johnny?”

“Well, Johnny is Absynthe – he does everything. He’s got a group of usual suspects he pieces together for a touring band that’s just sitting around waiting for him, or doing studio work, or other projects – whatever. He’s set for whatever he wants to do.”

“He can watch from the floor with the baby in a Snugli,” Tracy added, perhaps ironically. It was hard to tell with Tracy.

“Oh Goddess! – they hardly forgave me for having relations with a man in the first place – they’re so militantly feminist – they’d write me off altogether if I wanted to take a man on tour with them.”

“Fucked if you do, fucked if you don’t,” Lucy concluded.

“My only hope is that the baby’ll charm Johnny into staying home with her full time.”

“What’re the chances of that?” Lucy asked

“Her? – It’s gonna be a girl? Linny asked simultaneously.

“Yup – a little Leather Jr.,” to Linny, then answered Lucy with, “Well, historically what is the success rate of the father being charmed into staying home for the mother?”

“Euww,” the other ladies acknowledged in unified wisdom.

“Okay, Tracy – I’ve got what I need for now. Thanks,” Leather said, stretching her lower back, pressing a palm into the stiff muscles, strained from the extra baby weight and sitting hunched over her stone on the unbacked stool.

Tracy reached down for the pile of clothes, but Linny stopped her, saying, “Tracy, wait a sec.”

Linny put her hammer and chisel down and walked over to stand in front of her. “May I?” she asked.

“Be my guest,” Tracy said with a curious expression that wasn’t quite a smile.
Linny crouched until her face was level with Tracy’s breasts, crabwalked around to see the right profile, then over to the left profile, and then stood up straight again, her eyes never leaving those prophetic orbs; Tracy’s eyes never leaving Linny’s exterior, which is showing the concentrated gaze of a professional golfer eying the green for a long, crucial, putt; Tracy’s face shining with more and more pensive amusement, reflected, though quizzically, in Leather and Lucy’s expressions. A question passed over Linny’s face like a cloud’s shadow and she brought her hands out tentatively, asking, “And could I?”

“Go ahead,” Tracy answered. Linny placed her hands on the sides of Tracy’s breasts and pressed inward, moved her hands under and lifted each individually, then together; brings her hands over the front, spreading her fingers as wide as she could and gently squeezing. She removed her hands, and asked, “Can I see them with your blouse on?”

Without answering, Tracy picks her blouse out of the pile and slips it over her head. It is a simple cotton tank in burgundy, low cut with spaghetti straps. Without asking for permission this time she pulled the blouse taut, then released; tugged it down, measuring the amount of cleavage – valley of the glow of nourishment – then pressed them up and apart to simulate the effect of a brassiere.

All the while Tracy sat, still bare from the waist down, legs crossed demurely, with the patience of a natural teacher.

Lucy considered making a joke about being turned on by all this (the thought in her head because Tracy had turned her on – the joke therefore serving as a steam valve), but stopped when she saw Linny’s serious aspect, her lips squirming in silent debate.

Finally Linny removed her hands, looked at them for a flash as if she had just woken from a sleepwalk to find them thus gropingly engaged, stood up straight, and she asked, “Would you be willing to come in with me to my plastic surgeon?”

“You’ll make your surgeon cry you bring in a real pair like that,” Leather said.

“He’ll throw away his scalpel when he sees how nature’s got him beat,” Lucy added, nervously, though she couldn’t articulate why.

“No,” Linny answered with the measured cadence of resolution, “He’ll have the challenge of his career.”

“So you’re going to do it,” Tracy said, straightening her panties.

“Yeah. I have to,” Linny stated, a finality wrought of long internal debate.

Tracy stood straight in her panties and blouse with an air of authority, looked Linny in the eye quickly; gauged, then nodded and said, “Sure. I’ll come with you.”

“Thanks,” Linny said, then repeated, “Thanks,” and returned to her sculpture. She picked up her hammer and chisel, considered her stone for a while, eyes blank of the sculpture as if she were instead staring into another dimension, then lowered her arms, returned her tools to the tool cart against the hut wall and walked off in the direction of the home.

Tracy zipped up her pants and sighed a master’s disappointed, desperation sigh at Linny’s departure. Lucy sat down on the nearest stool. When Linny had disappeared through the trees Lucy looked around and saw a tarp-draped sculpture on the last pedestal by the tree’s edge. The wind picked up, sending a helix of spent leaves across the meadow, and Lucy asked against the rustling, lone sound, “Whose sculpture is that?”

Leather shrugged, and Tracy suggested, “I think it’s Alexander’s.”
Lucy walked over and half circled the mystery. She removed several stones holding the tarp down, and then lifted it off, several years of accumulated leaves and browned blossoms falling across her legs. The sculpture is the bust of a woman: the chiseling finished, and stopped mid-
rasping, a fine web of crosshatched white grooves over her face, rougher over the hair.

“I think it’s of his wife,” Tracy said, which piqued Leather’s interest to look over.

“Hmm…” Lucy considered, “Maybe – but in the picture I saw of her she had short hair.” The sculpture’s lady had long hair of curved straight ridges in an inverse wave over her shoulders,

“Guess that doesn’t mean anything though. It could just be a stylistic thing.”

“Yeah, or she just changed it,” Leather stated in an obviously tone.

“A lucky lady, she was,” Tracy said, coming over beside Lucy to look at the sculpture.

“Yeah?” Lucy asked her.

“Oh yeah,” Tracy answered, petrous as if already alabaster bound.Lucy ran her hand over the sculpture, from the rough lines of her hair, to the smooth face, and considered what Tracy has said, and how she said it.

Transcript 1: Conceptual Planning

2008-12-29T23:25:00.000-08:00

“Hey Lucy.”

“Hey.”

“I keep forgetting to ask you, do you need any help finding a church or synagogue or mosque or temple or other place of worship? May I ask what, if any, religion you follow?”

“Christian. I was raised Baptist, but I haven’t settled on a denomination to frequent. Though, I guess if I want to be a celeb now I either have to be Kabbalist or Scientologist or Buddhist. What is the deal with all of those celebs now?”

“Buddhism for a bit of serenity in their crazy lives – also, big with those who felt oppressed by the media and public, that they can learn to peacefully endure, free their obsessive minds for better topics. But mostly I think it’s just to appear cool. Kabbalism and Scientology I think are just bandwagon trendy now – though I’ve had no interest in looking them up so I can’t tell for certain what the draw is. What Christian denominations stand out then?”

“I like bits and pieces of each. I like the pageantry and beauty of Catholicism but I don’t like their ‘All Catholic or Nothing’ philosophies – I don’t think anyone should be excluded from communing. I like the passion of Baptists, but don’t always want to be engaged. Stuff like that. But, I don’t know. What churches are around?”

“There’s always Montecito Convenient, just down the roads.”

“Convenient?”

“Covenant, actually. We called it Convenient, cause we could walk there from Westmont.”

“Cause for a second there I thought it was a converted 7-11.”

“Yeah, no.”

“Well, what one to you attend.”

“I don’t go to church anymore.”

“Really”

“Yup. Not for a long time.”

“Hmm…I just thought, well, usually people that say grace before meals are of the regular church-going persuasion.”

“You know, I’ve never really enjoyed going to church. I’ve never liked the music or the singing, or the sermons. Too much of the sermons are simple biblical commentary that tries to emotionalize the text. I mean, I read the bible – I know what it says and believe enough in it to call myself a Christian – I don’t need someone to explain it to me, or convert me. At best I would hear a story that would intensify a point – but never illuminate. If I found a place that had better music, and focused on stories and testimonials then perhaps I’d attend. But the closest I’ve found so far is Glide Memorial in San Francisco, and that’s a ways to go on a Sunday.”

“I went there once! It was fabulous. There’s nothing like singing hymns next to a transsexual hooker.”

“That’s a big thing too with me. The major reason I don’t go to your basic everyday church is that I can’t stand Christians. There is no religion on earth more ignorant of what their faith should be than Christians. Christianity was initially special because it welcomed everyone, and focused on the whores and thieves just as strongly as the goat-herders and poor. It spoke for those who would hear but accepted all, and judged no one. Christians nowadays are more interested in getting into the right afterlife-party by distancing themselves from the very people they should be succoring. You think if that transsexual hooker wandered into a Middle-American church they’d give him or her or it a plate of cookies and cup of punch and say, “Welcome, we’re here if you need help, we’re here if you want to learn about Jesus. For now, just welcome, we’re glad you’re here, enjoy your snacks”? They’d cast him or her or it out in fear that the great boogeyman Satan was trying to get them! Was infiltrating their midst. Then wash their hands and congratulate each other on doing God’s Work.”

“It doesn’t even have to be a transsexual: imagine Anthony Lawrence in, like Heavenbound, Wyoming. ‘Get thee behind me Satan!’”

“‘Beelzebub!’”

“Little old ladies diving out of the way of the lightening bolts they expect to hit as he crosses the threshold.”

“The minister using the confusion as an opportunity to grope the acolyte.”

“That’s another thing: with the track record of the church how can they expect anyone to affiliate themselves with it? Crusades, inquisitions, the genocide of Native Peoples, witch-hunts, pedophile priests, silence in the face of the Holocaust! The profound contempt for the heathen unconverted; and probably most damning, all the denial they throw around, skirting an admission of guilt or responsibility, cloaking themselves in infallibility like children playing dress-up in their father’s clothes. Religious fervor has got to be one of the all-time greatest killers.”

“Well – you’re not really selling me on the idea of checking out local churches.” “No – you know there are some great congregations around with exceptional pastors and reverends leading – it’s just not my thing.”

“How long has it been since you’ve gone?”

“I stopped just after my wife died – so, seven years.”

“So, really you haven’t kept up enough to know what you’re talking about. They could have completely cleaned up their act, made their confessions and absolutions and everything – but you Christians, so ignorant of what your faith should be…”

“Ha ha, and put together a proper band – so yeah, it’s slimly possible that you’re right.

“So maybe you can personally show me around to a few and de-ignorant-ize yourself.”

“Let me think of how to explain this…Okay, This is how I see it: Petricia’s side of the family – before we were married – would every year go to a gawd-awful Thanksgiving dinner at some relative’s house – I think it was her aunt’s house – but anyway, it was so bad they would have to go home and eat a real meal afterwards – but they went every year – and happily – just to have that time to visit with her Grandma. That was enough. Then when she died, they stopped going altogether. That’s how church was to me with Petricia – that’s the best way I can describe it, honestly – I would much rather have stayed home with her and watched Rick Steves, or Location Location Location, but church was where she was and where she wanted me to be and so it was where I went. Now, I stay home and fantasize about Kirsten Allsop, and talk to God on my own time.”

“You and your British chicks. It’s a show about houses for Goddess’s sake! – that’s what you say here, right? Goddess? – how can you fantasize about that?”

“I imagine she’s showing me a house and says, ‘This would be the most fabulous room to shag in,’ and then I say, “Oh yeah? I don’t see it,” and she says, “Well, let me just show you…”

“Ha ha – okay, but I must say I find it disturbingly unpatriotic that you don’t fantasize about any of us American girls.”

“Well now you’re getting into American Patriotism which is a religion into itself – whose crusades and inquisitions and witch hunts and persecutions and abhorrent contempt for everyone Not-American while remaining ludicrously ignorant of what their ideals and actions should reflect or what their leaders are doing in their name…”

“The Cult of Americanism.”

“The worst in known history; one that I definitely don’t want to be affiliated with. Certainly more threatening than Atheists and Evolutionists: they’re just silly, and so mostly harmless.”

“None of that newfangled science for you, eh?”

“I believe in evolution as a process, but I believe there’s a plan behind it that requires a planner. Scientific evolution requires mutation, which are generally something happening that shouldn’t have – so are you going to tell me that all this is due to billions upon billions of mistakes that all managed to balance out somehow? I find it incredulous that scientists can marvel at the complexity and precision of the human and believe it to be a product of accidents. Especially emotion. If the purposes of the animal are survival and procreation: there is nothing more detrimental to the concepts of survival and procreation than emotion.”

“Don’t I know it!”

“You want a good example? In South America, I believe, there is this flower where the pistol, or whatever they call the thing where all the pollination happens, is curved perfectly to leave pollen on the backs of these accommodating bats, who spread it around. So I’m supposed to believe that luck would have it that this plant developed a nectar that just happened to appeal to this bat, and luckily, all by accident, its shape corresponded exactly to this bat to deposit the very substance required to propagate itself.”

“Ah, nature.”

“Right. Mother Nature: the coward’s God – God to all those who don’t like The God, or are lookin’ to shirk judgment. I love how they can deny the existence of a creator but insist that ‘Nature has a plan’. But sure I dig American girls: I really dig Morgan Webb…”

“What? – Who? – ah forget it – another esoteric chick…”

“I could set you up with Adam Sessler, or Kevin Perreira; they would make you laugh…”

“Yeah, right. Well, maybe you can just start going to church for me now.”

“Hmm…perhaps I will take you around to confirm my suspicions, or…”

“De-ignorant-ize.”

“Yeah – that – myself. No other promises.”“Alright.”

Author's Note

2008-12-29T23:24:00.000-08:00

Occasionally within this book you will find transcripts of several dialogues between Alexander and Lucy. Suffice it to say the idea of describing over and over the way Alexander alternately leans in to listen and lounges back to talk, rarely using his hands for punctuation, or the way he lowers his eyes when thinking, as if to review an invisible sheaf of notes on his lap; and the way Lucy instead looks to the ceiling where her invisible cheat sheet is fastened, usually has her arms crossed when listening, and almost constantly continues the aforementioned habit of hers to treat every surface under her fingers as a piano keyboard, under every circumstance, always unconsciously; well, it would bore me to catalogue this repetitive motion – the understated semaphores that guided the flight of their conversations – as much as it would bore you to read. So, enjoy listening to their conversation without such obstacles of contrivance. You’re welcome.

Waning

2008-12-29T23:15:00.000-08:00

The following are the lyrics to Lucy’s first album, Waning, in the order they appear on the album.

Promise-cuous

Your first promise
was the last to be broken
the one
where you said
I’ll never do anything to break your heart
how many others
lied within those bookends
I can only guess
for until then my heart has only been bent
and I thought
it’s okay, I won’t stay
with him forever
it might even be fun
seeing how far under
he’ll bury himself.

Do you worry
if your friends met the real you
they wouldn’t like you?
Well, maybe you’re right,
cause I’ve found that I can’t stand you
now.

You laid your little promises all over town
but I don’t care
I don’t take it personally
any girl with sense can see
that you’d be promise-cuous.
My heart isn’t broken baby
not even bent
so go on, get
you’re freed
cause there’s a man
somewhere that I’d like to meet
nothing like you
a handsome youth
of good repute
who doesn’t fuck around with the truth.

Retreating

She is retreating into herself
centipede coiling
water swirling down down the drain
away from this cold room.
Away with the Black then
Away with the White now
There are colors to find inside her, but I’m afraid
red has been violated
it will never be the same
assaulted so one could be sated
how so much could go when he came.

[chorus] And so she is retreating
abandoning ground
maybe inside she’ll find a warm place
maybe inside she’ll find her sound.

Suddenly a new intrusion
sharp probing cotton
from inside out to outside in in an instant
blooming back to inhabit my skin
police-man’s crude questions
my curt banishing nurse
What did he do?
Well let me tell you.
He took the wheat and left me chaff
left without word or laugh
left only an imprint of feet
and a bright white flash at his retreat
joyous alone, his scythe rezipped
cheeks bruised from leather-clad fingertips
took the gift so I couldn’t give it
took my chance to be a wife.
Will all the things he took in surfeit
why, I asked, did he leave my life?

And so I am retreating
Abandoning ground
maybe inside I’ll find a warm place
Maybe inside I’ll find my sound.

Fencing

[chorus] One step forward and two steps back
always overpowered by your attack
beaten down by all your shit
and since love is a game, I’ll just quit.

We choose our weapons
we test their weight
lean back into our defensive stances
and I wait
and wait
but never for long…

Here you thrust forward swinging your stick
but your blows all go wild and you don’t score a hit.
Dodge and parry, duck and block
you remove all interest I may have had in your cock
But you tire me out with your advances
under the onslaught what are my chances?
So I think, ‘Okay, this one time I’ll throw the match,
throw down my sword, let him make his snatch.
He’ll settle down if he thinks he’s won
and then maybe we can have a little fun

but too soon again it’s…
[chorus]

You tried to stick me but now you’re stuck
tried to fuck me but now you’re fucked
tried all your old tricks, tried your luck
but don’t worry
I’m sure someday you’ll find a bird
that likes to be plucked.

Save me Ferris

Every time that flick comes on
I stop whatever I’m doin’
I’ll get gone for an hour and a half
tryin’ to remember how to laugh,
away from my life and all that noise
I’m goin’ to Shermer, Illinois…

Come save me Ferris [repeat eight times]

Let’s go see what we can see
we’ll take Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari
I’m with the last boys who like museums
and stay loyal to losing teams.
I wouldn’t even mind goin’ back to school
with someone to make it cool
that’s the problem with fiction
there’s always a better could’ve been
and fiction always has to end…

Come save me Ferris [repeat 16 times in growing volume/intensity/desperation]

Prey’s Prayer

[chorus] Let him be quick as a sharp knife
quick as a hare
come quick as a bad thought
that is the prey’s prayer.

Cause you know you can’t stop it
though you’re welcome to try
you only risk to extend it
as you help it to fly.

I never had much to say to you.
Only Sunday mornings nodding off in the pews
when I’d say the words that everyone was saying
but now I’ve got a reason for praying.

Cause I’ve never needed a savior
Cause I didn’t need to be saved
I could take everything coming at me
I was good, I was young, I was brave
and God was only for weaklings
who couldn’t take care of themselves
and forgiveness was only for sinners
needing a free pass out of hell
But the time’s come that I’m tested
and I know that I only can fail
and I’ll flunk out of this young life
waning away with impossible travail

So, please…
[chorus]

Waning, waning
dissolving away
this is the end of my first phase
this thing has all eclipsed my old life
not leaving me even the reflection of light
I wait in the darkness and silence
and know that I can’t rebuild myself alone.
Here I am in the void, praying
take me or construct something new
whatever it is I will follow
a dark exit or the waxing
as long as I’m not the one to choose.

Musical Attention

First recommendation
came from Doctor Stipe and Associates
which was sweet
but it remained unclear
exactly
what I was supposed to hold on to
and Nurse Hatfield, I’m afraid
you and your rod came along too late

[chorus] Musical Attention’s
the kind that I most need
just give me a cd
to distract me
from my reality.

The Toads cut too deep I Fear
I have no problem producing tears.
Kurt, Kris and Dave
be sure and save a cracker for me
I’ll rape you again
maybe enlightenment will come with your pain
and you can finally attain
your name.

[chorus]

Teagan, my sweet
you made me feel so much more than meat
with your songs
on repeat

Song to Daddy

I don’t know
why I bother
nothing’s ever good enough for you.
I’ve got a ruthless critic
for a father
and he hasn’t seen the thing that he’s reviewed

It takes more than a spurt
for the right to get on my case
and just remember
that nothing would’ve ever happened
if you’d been a man in the first place, dad.

Delinquent
Across the country
in the sun and fucking your new wife
You chose to go
now why don’t you stay gone
there’s nothing I need less of than you in my life

Why is it always only men
that you can never fully trust?
Oh the many ways
they’ll destroy your life
just to temporarily quench their petty lust?

Being Driven

Somewhere on the 93
somewhere there is where I lose it all.
The world recedes
or are my eyes collapsing?
Everything that’s exterior is gone
and still my shell goes on
though I feel my tether’s thin
don’t know how I’ll last
don’t know how I’ll get there
for now I’m content just being driven.

Going fast
I’m in the backseat
curled up with my head in an angel’s lap
Another guardian
at the wheel
where they’ll take me I neither know nor care
But I ask,
“Can’t we just ride along?
Does this ride really have to end?
Can’t we just keep on going
take the next world exit?
No, for letting yourself be angel driven
is a way out and the way back.

Girl from Group

Breakfast at eight
was when you told them your period was late
eight weeks to the date
and your mom broke her plate
and you stepdad looked at you with such hate
that you felt the heat of it.
But you said to him, “Now there’s no escape
I have proof of your rape
and lets see you refute DNA.
It was easy
only took a pin
stuck through every Trojan.
To allow that swimmer in
and now maybe you’ll believe me again
the one with your blood in her veins.
And there was triumph in her eyes
behind the usual tears.

But instead
her mother said
you slut you tramp you little whore
go on out that door
and return no more.
Get out! Get out!
Don’t stop to pack
get out before I rip the clothes off your back.
I see now it’s because of you
I find myself pregnant too
that here I have another try
to raise a child that doesn’t lie.
And there was triumph in his eyes
behind the mock ignoble sneer.

Oh, just one story
from one girl
from group.

Where are you? (Where am I?)

Where are you?
my one that understands
my pathfinder
my guide through the tall cold mountains
this stark new anonymous land
someone show me the way through.
No one I know has been here
not the begetters, who only believe in fetters and more therapy;
no compatriots, orphan in my coward new world
only the sweet red voice in my headphones

Where are you?
my one that doesn’t understand and never will
but will stay to nurse the deep hidden sore
where the poison still seeps
without stoppage but may be slowed
I don’t need a man to complete me
I just need one that’ll fuck me sweetly
and stay till I sleep
and return when I wake
lay gauze over the puddled cruelty
repulse the ravishers
earn his stewardship

Where am I?
the wayfarer
the innocent abroad
unmarred by the hand of predestination
pushed up on the bank of the river
can I just climb back in?
Will the tributary,
my destination, still be open to me?
Or was it dammed up?
Damned?
Where am I? Or Rather – Where is the one that should have been me?

Relocation

I say for none to hear
‘I’m not coming back.’
My walls have no ears
but on every surface eyes
I’m gonna tumble down
the back of the world
contrary
to the way it rolls.

I sing to no one
when I sing ‘I’m not coming back.’
away from the cold
I gotta get away from the girls I intimidate.
Come sun
I race to keep up.
If I fall behind
you can find me at the waterline.

I whisper to myself
‘I’m never coming back’
I go to drop the dime
it’s the only way I’ve found to get away from these haunted ground
and if you find
me here before your eyesit will not be in a form you’ll recognize.

Chapter Five, Part Two

2008-12-29T23:08:00.000-08:00

Alexander and Lucy continued their tour. They drove south then zipped left into an area of drab light-industrial buildings with large wide mouths of loading doors, and then mid-block an open space of cottage studios blooming along a winding green path. “This is an artist’s and writer’s colony that we built on a burnt-out lot. They apply for renewable year-long residencies – most with stipends to cover expenses.” Other than smiling plants Lucy sees a man rocking back on the hind legs of a folding chair, staring at a typewriter propped before him on a TV tray, and a corpulent feline asleep, sprawled across a stack of books in the front cottage’s window.

This presented, they returned to Anacapa, and continued south to Gutierrez where they turned left. They made a quick stop at a nondescript but neat and well-furnished building. Similar to a warehouse in its cavitary openness, the floor was split between office computer desks, long tables with flat, stacked, shipping boxes and tape-guns, and a row of four book-printing machines like oversized ATMs. The company was named MK Press (for Murphy-Karaczewski, of course), and Alexander labeled it, A print-on-demand publisher specializing in obscure, scarce, and scholarly reprints: lesser known and early works of well known authors, translations, out-of-print; works that wouldn’t sustain a major print run, but are instead archived digitally, and printed individually, which keeps them cheap – “We aren’t making our authors or employees rich, but it’s a welcome quarterly check and some decent living wages. I tried e-books, but I just couldn’t get behind them. I need my books to have a physical manifestation. Like, I took my words and put them in this order; it took this many pages to contain it. If I save a quote or passage that has asserted itself I like to know what page it’s on.

“Or scholars that need to have several books open at once. Or – another cool thing – we archive as many short works as we can, so that someone can have a book printed with everything we have on Joyce, or eschatology. We get a lot of hand picked selections that are give as gifts, or inexpensive custom textbooks.”

From there Alexander took Lucy out the back door into a makeshift garden, where under a fig tree ferns cradle a wide fountain bowl, somnolently bubbling, scatter of plastic chairs (be sure to watch out for sticky fig debris before sitting), and turning back toward the building she followed his gesture up to find another structure perched on top like a cubist gargoyle. Bright cartoony blue against the rain-cloud metal gray of MK Press, with adjustable transparent green plastic rhomboid panels near the wide arched eyes of windows to adjust the consistent southern light.

Around the corner they entered an elevator that rose up a column of transparent yellow plastic opening up into the offices of Josh’s audio literary journal Oral Randomly. A much smaller office compared to MK Press: a few desks, a couple CD presses, a single shipping supply table, and a cozy recording booth. Alexander explained that both businesses were primarily staffed with college students, each with a fulltime manager, and mostly self-sufficient. Cardkey ID entry allowed them to come in as their class and study schedules allowed for their hours.

Back in the car they continued down Gutierrez until they hit the Milpas roundabout – no quick revolution on this much more crowded traffic circle – the smooth entry and exit right, where they took Milpas toward the ocean a contrast to her memories of Boston area roundabouts, which her mom had termed, ‘Circles of Death’ over white knuckles at each safe escape. She thought about mentioning this but didn’t; but should have, for Alexander did his Master’s in Boston, had himself wanted to mention this but as the area had only come up in her rape narrative he hadn’t had the chance to yet. When the view opened up instantly at the apex to the triangular Carrillo park, Alexander pointed to the rainbow arch of Herbert Bayer’s Chromatic Gate, explaining how it had actually been designed to stand on the beach as a conceptual welcome to the city from the sea, but had instead been removed to its current home at the western corner of the park, across Cabrillo Blvd. from the beach. A left on Cabrillo, and they followed the palm colonnade east, past the Zoo at left, Cabrillo Pavilion Art’s Center, playground, and East Beach volleyball courts at right; following the boulevard left as it dodges the cliff, Alexander showing off the bird sanctuary and labeling it a good place for jogging or rollerblading. At the Santa Barbara Cemetery he flipped a u-turn, and took Cabrillo a ways in the opposite direction back past the eternal seaward gaze of hotels, pointing to the iconic Dolphin Fountain and Stearns Wharf, whose entrance it graces, promising to take her to Longboards there sometime for roasted peanuts in the shell and mud pie; further on he showcased Ledbetter beach and its barbeque pits, City College and its exquisitely sited track, though she considered it cruel to the poor athletes that had to compete with that view across Cabrillo of the Harbor, and Yacht Club, and they turned before the incline toward the Mesa.

The sun here, worried that all this beauty would overwhelm her, sent bright blinders down to at least block the periphery, relegating the beauty to only what lay low ahead, as if they were driving through a tube of light, so that in their turning she only caught a few seconds of a lovely scene involving a pair of adorable children in their bright orange life-vests running down the dock, grandparents after admonishing them to slow; every other distinguishing feature of the beautiful motion all around lost focus in the sunlight – rollerblading skateboarding jogging walking – not enough, though, to diminish the enticement of beachfront stores and cafes. The upholstery, radiation warmed, stopped short of being sticky, stinging hot, as she placed her arm across the door, and her chin upon her arm.

Turning left onto State Street, he recommended Hot Spots for all hours coffee fixes and killer lemon cake, Be Bop Burger for milkshakes; lamented the demise of Comedy Sportz. Under the 101 overpass that occasionally floods so bad in El Nino years that it becomes a lake, past Santa Barbara Roasting Company (commonly referred to as Roco’s) where you can get unlimited refills, and bring your own cup to use, Esau’s for the best big breakfast; further, past the vintage clothing shops, pubs and clubs to Paseo Nuevo and its sphere of influence, which included KLM directly across from the Paseo Nuevo central walkway in the old Fresh Choice space; a left on E. Canon Perdido, then a right on Chapala; Alexander pointed down W Carrillo St. to the original Carrow’s, then continued up a few blocks and stopped at the office of SB Arch – the architecture firm Alexander founded, and still consults for on occasion.

“Okay, let me get this straight,” Lucy said to Alexander walking up the entryway path between landscaped bushes and a few short Andrew Goldsworthy-esque found-object sculptures of carefully balanced bright white rocks and springy brown branches, “You’re an architect, publisher, restaurateur, librarian, and writer, in addition to running a halfway house for wayward celebrities.”

“Wayward Celebrities – I like that. But yeah, I do all that. I also arrange for gallery space, publicity and opening receptions for the artist’s colony, do some artwork myself, own a few other restaurant franchises, and serve on the boards and councils for the city’s museums and Westmont. Oh, but I really don’t write all that much.” He held the glass door for her and they entered the foyer. On the right a receptionist swiveled back and forth behind a blonde-wood desk with a very distinct, darker, grain, apparently conversing with spirits, until she turned to their arrival and Lucy saw that there was a sci-fi accessory cordless telephone receiver attached to her ear. To the left several podiums of matching wood held fully rendered architectural models (Lucy recognizing the parasitic Oral Randomly office, and Short Library among them), with a large plasma screen above showing animated walkthroughs, elevations dissolving into sections then orbiting around a residential project, rising up above to see the bare base plan footprint, then electrical plans appeared, and plumbing plans, then the floor moved away, a flash of mirrored ceiling grid plan and it showed the second floor plan, continuing to the roof plan; from around the roof plan the site plan appeared, and then the overhead shot morphed into a photograph which moved in a smooth arch downward until if faced the completed building, and SB-ARCH scrolled across and stopped to the right below the photo.

“Good afternoon, Alexander,” the receptionist said having finished her call.

“Hi Jennifer. This is Lucy Faas. I’m going to show her around a bit.”

“Good afternoon Ms. Faas.”

“You can call me Lucy – good to meet you.”

Lucy stepped past the reception area onto the first floor of the office. The space was open save for a glass room at the right rear, dim and alone, with a single, empty round table and chairs, and two small rooms at the far left end. The open space was carved into three triangular sections: one by the glass office, and the others by two triangular wedge desks with round spaces cut from the hypotenuse for seating. Alexander pointed to the first and said, “Here is the CAD Manager, Chris’s, desk,” and then to the second desk, “and Mike, our IT guy. Guys, this is Lucy Faas.”

Both of them looked up with a wave, then quickly returned to their work. Alexander and Lucy walked along the left wall: all windows from floor to ten-foot ceiling, with more pedestaled architectural models at spaced across the floor’s length. When closer she saw the two corner rooms were labeled, Server Room, and Bathroom, and Lucy excused herself to quickly partake of the second, seeing with amusement that someone had taken the Intel Pentium 4 Inside and Powered by Windows NT stickers from their computers and affixed them to the toilet. Having installed her tinkling software, she was led past a little kitchenette space with a fridge, sink, cupboard, and coffee-maker, through a door into a round stairwell, with a ribbon window that followed diagonally at shoulder heighth all the way to the second floor.

The second floor opened up onto another, matching, kitchenette, bathroom, and open space. The circulation traced a triangle, with one wedge desk outside in the Server Room space, two wedges in the middle, and another wedge at the far wall with a rectangular table at the triangle’s apex, in the glassed Presentation Room space. Alexander took the angled path into the room and introduced, “This is Celia, our CAD drafter; Julie, our associate; Abby, our project manager; and Eben, our principal.” Each in turn swiveled on their personally adjusted Aeron chairs and gave a simple Hi, which Lucy returned. At the end of the room they doubled back and returned to the stairs past the reference library of bright green Sweet’s Catalogues, numbered materials vender’s folders, and oversized books of select major architects and styles. Up the stairs, and past the requisite kitchenette and bathroom they came to the third, and final floor space.

Instead of the central triangular spaces of the first and second floors, the third was split between three smaller triangular spaces: a diagonal path splitting left and right sections and ending in a T-junction at a glass wall, with a single door. To the left were vertical wooden racks with various T-squares and clear plastic triangles; a deep horizontal case with long shelves holding stacks of vellum, presentation bond, and Fome-cor sheets, in several sizes; a long worktable offset left with a swing-arm paper cutter; two large tables formed the right triangle which extended to the front window wall, and was bisected by a small space. Both desks were covered with the paraphernalia of model making: small cubby-holes of round and rectangular beech-wood dowels and sheets, of varying thickness and length; X-acto knives and their interchangeable cutting and sawing blades; rolls and sheets of clear and translucent acetate for model windows; spools of wire; stubby jars of craft paint, unplugged glue guns, tweezers, scissors.

A stereo blasted the late great Beta Band, and Alexander spoke up over the music, “It must have been Josh’s turn on the music.”

Seven interns were scattered around the room, trimming stuffing and sealing marketing envelopes, modeling, rubber-cementing material samples onto presentation board, spray mounting full color perspective drawings, and they answered, almost in unison, “YES!” melodramatically.

“There are lots of other bands in the sea, you know, Josh.”

“I know, but this is all I’m ever in the mood to hear in here lately.”

“You need to bring in some Kula Shaker, or Boo Radleys.”

“Alright, Alexander.”

“Everyone, this is Lucy Faas. Lucy this is everyone. John, Josh, Kristina, Cathy, Cassie, Becky, and ‘Drea,” pronounced dree-ah.

“Hi everyone,” Lucy echoed. The seven each gave greetings and gestures as their personality dictated.

“Now, back to work! Glue! Stuff! Seal! Model! Go Go Go!!”

The seven chuckled and returned to their respective activities.

Alexander led Lucy to the glass-walled office, which he explained, was his office. Though partitioned in transparency, Lucy couldn’t see more any inside details, as the inside wall was screened with papers: mostly rough sketches, white bond plans with vellum taped over showing circulation studies, variations and materials options, photos of Alexander and the SB Arch staff at different architecture sites – one Lucy recognized as Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall (Lucy, like most Americans, only recognized works by the two Franks: Gehry and Lloyd Wright). The furniture consisted of a leather executive chair, a monolithic wooden drafting table with a crooked arm of magnifying lamp pointing up as if anxious to ask a question, a leather couch that Lucy suspected was identical to the couches in Alexander’s home library, a wood cube with crossed slats over the top holding rolled blueprints (none actually blue), and a cart with a personal fax/copier/printer. Lucy considered the office neat, but perhaps not organized, as the mess of papers, folders, and books were in piles and not strewn about – pens and colored pencils were at attention in tiered cardboard containers; an ajar desk drawer showed a jumble of paper clips, long thin drafting pencil leads, and countless other indistinct objects.

Also on the desk was a single framed photograph showing Alexander embracing a woman in front of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Pennsylvania autumn profusion. “Is this your wife?” Lucy asked, picking the picture up for a closer look.

“Yup, that was Petricia,” Alexander replied matter-of-factly, “Spelled P-e-tricia.”

“She was beautiful,” Lucy said, meaning it.

“She certainly was,” Alexander affirmed.

“Do you want to tell me what happened to her?” Lucy asked.

“Well, how about we sit down,” Alexander gave as an affirmative answer. As he closed the door his office was instantly muted. They sat down, and Lucy waited for his story. “I’m afraid my devastating story isn’t nearly as involving as yours was. It was just a freak accident. My wife, and Josh’s wife, Suzanne, were out shopping and their car was hit by a truck in a high speed chase – just some kid not wanting to get caught under the influence driving daddy’s truck – pulled over on a routine traffic stop and bolted. Turned a fine and license suspension into vehicular manslaughter and jail time. Just a stupid kid naïve enough to be more afraid of his dad than jail, not realizing the cost of his decision would be our wives.

“I’m sorry I’m not as eloquent a storyteller for my sad story – what happened to me was just too simple to elaborate on.”

“No – rape is just as simple. All there is to rape is one person putting part of their body into another without their consent. It gets complicated after the emotional toil of unavoidably trying to intellectualize the experience – the search for some kind of rationality – that adds frustration on top of the victimization.”

“Does it ever get easy talking about this stuff?” Alexander asked with a sigh.

“For me, only by creating a beautiful way of expressing it, through music, was I able to erect set decoration around the narrative. Beauty was then a defense mechanism against my having to talk about it over and over: if I could believe that the story had beauty then it couldn’t have been the awful thing that happened to me, for that was the antithesis of beauty. This supplies a detachment from the story that, with forced repetition, makes the telling easier. It becomes a dramatic recitation, not a testimony. A routine you can do without thinking about.”

“That won’t work for me then – this is the first time I’ve talked about Petie since Brice and Jules first stayed.”

“Really?” Lucy said, incredulous.

“Yeah. But that’s fine – the people who come to my home have their own problems – they don’t need mine on top of that.”

“Still…,” Lucy said to show that she still didn’t quite approve.

“Eah…” Alexander dismissed, then said, “How about we finish our tour?”

---

In the car again they continued up Chapala to W. Mission where they turned right. They drove north, past the end of the residential grid where green lawns opened up before the Mission, creamy white in the afternoon sun. The Southern California stereotype of everyone having a pool came to her, and in a flash she imagined monks in back playing water polo; but then the idea that monks wouldn’t wear bright bathing suits – would drape robes and jump in with only God’s blessing – took on a Whitmanesque homoeroticism that she chastised herself for conjuring. She asked Alexander, “Do the monks still wear robes?”

“Some orders,” he answered. “To tell you the truth, I don’t even know if they have monks here anymore. I haven’t been deeper than the façade in years.”

Alexander offered Lucy his mp3 player for her to choose the next selection. She scrolled through his the menus before settling on songs from Rufus Wainright’s first, self-titled, album because it sounded like fall to her, and she was ready for fall.

Past the Mission she was as quickly lost in these curvy hills as she was in Montecito. They passed the almost hidden Museum of Natural History, with its whale skeleton looking like an oversized jungle gym; drove by the mostly arid Botanical Gardens; and then made their way back to Alexander’s home – the scenic route Alexander phrased it: dry empty roads, around the reservoir, and back into the woods of Montecito, toward home.

Chapter Five, Part One

2008-12-29T23:03:00.000-08:00

What draws us to a place? Say you sit down at a new café, you place a so far excellent cup of coffee on a small square table, lay your book beside it and let it remain unopened as you look around, absorbing the place through your skin. Word scraps float by, borne from the small crackling fires of conversation. Your simple wooden chair invites alertness, the pastry counter propositions pleasure later if you’re interested. You’ve found it: your place. It’s not in words yet, it isn’t even realized. It’s a blood magnetism pulling, and when you’re joined, it’s going to be hard to pull away.

The next morning Lucy had been curled up in the window seat for a full hour playing with the freshly extruded sunlight – soft and uncooled, malleable to the touch, Lucy could roll it between her fingers; sweet when she popped it into her mouth: dolce de sol taffy – when there was a knock on the hallway door and Alexander’s voice following, that asked, “Are you up? Are you decent?”

She was still in her pajamas, but she figured that Alexander had, as a professed fan, most likely seen her quasi-notorious video for Promise-cuous, so she shouldn’t worry about flannel pants with the top folded over, and a tank-top without bra. “I’m up, but never decent. Regardless, you’re free to enter.”

The door opened, and for a long pause Lucy puzzled why he hadn’t come in, when a glossy black piano slowly appeared upon its side, rolling on a carpeted dolly with Alexander, Trevor, and Steven soon behind pushing.

“Is this good?” Alexander asked, meaning the open space before the first window.

“Around the other way, if you could, please.” The three men rotated the piano around so that sitting at the stool Lucy would face the door, with the window at her right. “Perfect,” she intoned, and the three each set at reattaching a leg. In a minute they congregated at the long side, and lifted it upright with just a smidge of groaning.

“Ahhh,” she purred, “Fabulous gentlemen.”

“God, I feel so butch,” Steven commented, flexing; Trevor cooed approvingly.

“Thanks fellas,” Alexander said.

“Okay, we gotta run, we’re hiking up to Seven Falls today,” Trevor explained.

“Right on. Catcha later,” Alexander called to their retreating figures; then to Lucy, “A tuner’s coming this afternoon – I’m sure it probably needs it.”

Lucy grabbed the bench from the dolly, plopped herself down and played a note. It sounded clear to her, and it already being on her mind, she found herself going right into Promise-cuous.

“Not too far off,” Lucy said after, patting the piano, her new faithful steed. From the doorway Trevor and Steven clapped and whistled, having crept back at hearing her song; then actually left.

“Encore! Encore!” Alexander said into cupped hands.

Then something she could not yet classify compelled her to play the song: Retreating. When Lucy sang this song her eyes were either softly closed, or in a distant gaze that seemed to see far beyond the trees comprising the extent of sight outside the window.

Alexander tried to look on her without weight, while keeping his eyes available for when she was ready to make a connection.

At last, Lucy played the final chord, which resonated then withered to silence. She lowered her eyes, took a deep sigh, and looked up to Alexander.

He simply said, “Beautiful.”

She meekly gave her, “Thanks.”

They both knew what the song was about, so there was no need to discuss it. Instead Alexander asked, “I don’t know if you want to get right into working, or not, but if you want I’m free today, I could give you a tour of Santa Barbara.”

“Oh no. I’m such a procrastinator – I never jump into a pool without walking around it several times, then inching down the steps – God, I don’t even know what I want to say yet – so I’d love a tour.”

“Great. So when should I come to collect you?”

“Well, if you’re set now, you could adjourn to the hallway for a second while I decent myself up.”

“Sounds good.”

---

Ten minutes later they pulled out of his gate and into the curving tributaries of Montecito.

Alexander drove his Audi TT with its top down, Squirrel Nut Zippers current on his mp3 player’s proprietary mix ,so he had to shout his commentary on the landmarks they passed. He showed her several homes where celebrities lived; Lucy especially liked Steve Martin’s mailbox. On Sycamore Canyon heading north he pointed down Cold Springs Road to Lotus Land, and Westmont College further down on La Paz Rd through the vaulting progression of trees. Then a quick to almost screeching turn onto Baker Pass, which crested and wriggled down to Eucalyptus Hill, not abandoning it to the Alameda Padre Serra when it grew out as a ninety-degree right limb, but continuing humbly straight where an instantaneous view of rocky valley and Santa Barbara asserted itself. The road spun down then abruptly straightened with the appropriately straight laced new name of Clifton St., declining to S. Salinas St., where a right turn gradually rose, then steeply fell as N. Salinas St. to a whirlpool of roundabout that Alexander took around six whoo-hooing times before winding his squiggly way back up the APS, cause no one calls it the Alameda Padre Serra. The road squeezed to almost European narrowness, and its course seemed in Lucy’s mind to have been master planned with an earthquake measuring device under aftershocks. Handsome homes terraced up right, and down left, with the road bisecting this hypotenuse of hill face. Alexander pointed up the side streets, and said, “In college we would come up here at night and get lost. We’d yell Left! or Right! or Straight! and go by who yelled quickest, then try to find our way out.”

“You’re wild, man.” Lucy teased.

“I was a rebel,” Alexander said straight faced.

When the road reopened, back to a more traditional American horizontality, the intersections looked enormous. Alexander pointed out the Riviera Theatre as, “A great first-run Foreign and Indie theatre,” and pulled into a parking lot a few second’s slightly higher than speed limit way past. “This is the Short Library,” he introduced, “which I helped found, and support. The unique thing about it is that the collection is entirely comprised of short stories.”

“Ahh,” Lucy said, impressed not by the concept, but by the building itself. Two stories, and rotunda round, it seemed to be made entirely of glass. Cylinders of light blue tinted glass evoked columns around the center space, housing comfortable reading areas, and Lucy could see figures ascending a ramp just inside the center curtain-wall. “Cool. But, why just short stories?”

“So much of the new and experimental writing comes out in small-print-run journals – there are hundreds of them – so if libraries carry any at all it can only be a few. Here they’re trying to build a comprehensive collection, which really gives a truer essence of American Literature now, since it not only encompasses the major and minor writers, but those that may have only been published in journals. This is especially relevant for writers, most of whom can’t afford to subscribe to the dozen or so zines they’d like to, not only as research in potential markets for their style of work and to see what else is going on in writing, but as a communalizing force. Writing is isolationist enough, without the economic limitations set on their reading and inspiration.”

“Certainly,” she said and finished the statement in her mind, “Mr. Karaczewski.”

Alexander pulled out of the parking lot, and after determining that they were both ready to eat he took the APS back to Garcia and its curves like a slow rolling baseball’s stitches, to N. Milpas to East Canon Perdido, through handsome residential areas saved from suburban drabness simply by not being sited on level land (uneven ground goes a long way when calculating visual appeal), to Anacapa Street where he parked, and led Lucy to Main Squeeze for lunch.

While they were waiting for their order a seat opened up outside in the cool shade along Anacapa that Lucy claimed – Alexander carrying their food and smoothies out a few minutes later. They ate making mostly chit-chat conversation about the weather, the locale, and the relative merit of their food and drink choices. When the two were nearly finished and merely grazing over their remaining tortilla chips Lucy spoke up saying, “Okay, how about we get the rape talk out of the way.” Alexander was stricken mid-tortilla chip lift towards mouth, stopped and set it down in anticipation of soon losing his already waning appetite, and Lucy continued.

“I was fourteen. My parents were divorced and I was living with my mother near Boston. She worked a full workday, of course, and summer breaks she would send me to piano lessons so that I wasn’t just hanging around the apartment all day. I got home all right, and as I would try to help my mom out with the housework I went down to the basement to put a load of laundry in.

“We don’t know how he got in. It was August and sticky hot, and our building was built well before the era of central air, so the hallway windows were all open and he could’ve gotten up the fire escape; or piggybacked through the security door with somebody, or whatever.

“The basement was a real old New England apartment basement: sparely lit, half below ground so that ankles were seen striding through the windows along the top street-facing wall; the T’s occasional rumble rattling the windows and blocking the sunlight; breaker switches and meters; the super’s apartment with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony blaring behind the muffling door; and an array of great noisy boilers to rape somebody behind in concealing shadow. He was a professional rapist, like a trapdoor spider: he caught me coming out of the laundry room and dragged me to a little nest he had wrought from corrugated boxes to bend me over so I couldn’t see anything of him; and he was ready and apparently wearing a condom for all they found on me – or in me – was some spermicide. He must have felt pretty secure in his trap, for he let me scream all I wanted till I gave up and regressed to sobbing. Soon I stopped struggling; I went limp, and concentrated on the buried sound of the symphony through the apartment’s wall, and the endless succession of legs treading safely by. Bare legs, and stockinged legs and the occasional trousered leg, the sunlight radiating out between them across the ceiling like waves, breaking on both walls. However long it lasted, I really have no sense for a guess, suddenly the thrusting stopped, and in the darkness of a T passing he was gone, a bright flash marking his escape through the rear fire door, which led to the alley behind our building.

“I didn’t attempt to give chase. Instead, I just stayed where I was, enjoying his absence from my body. After another immeasurable space of time I pulled myself up, put myself back together, and climbed up to our apartment, wincing with every small step. The kitchen clock told me my mother would not be home for another four hours, and though there was no one I wanted to call more than her I didn’t. I was unable to form a singular opinion then: she worked too hard and felt too bad already that I was in the apartment alone, and I couldn’t bear to add to that, though I knew it would only be for those last hours my secret; this would career over to the need for my mother to know, to feel guilty for not being there even though it could just as well have happened if she was there; I wanted to forgive her for her absence, and my father’s absence, but I also needed her to plead for that forgiveness.

“My father had taught me to drive the previous summer, visiting him, so I resolved to take the spare set of keys and drive myself to the hospital. My pants and underwear were ripped along one side in their violent removal, and I would like to say as luck would have it there had been a presentation at school about “what to do when” that directed the victim in what to preserve as evidence, but really there wasn’t any evidence there to sustain by denying myself the urge to set those clothes to the pyre and melt down the shower drain. Since I didn’t know this then, I pinned my pants together, took the keys, and in five minutes found myself on the freeway.

“I had never considered the importance of knowing where the closest hospital was – I was fourteen and always healthy – so the only hospital known to me was in Boston, where I would see it from one of the freeways, and I headed up 95 toward the city. Every moment of the rape was playing itself back to me, like I was in front of a bay of TV’s rerunning it: some paused, some fast-forwarding, but most in slow motion. And trying to banish that from my mind I found that instead everything else had been banished – most presently alarming: my ability to drive, going eighty, in Boston.

“My father had seceded to my badgering the previous summer while I was visiting him – I said that already, didn’t I? Well anyway, my collective driving experience comprised about a dozen hours of that month-long trip, and there was no way my mother was letting me behind the wheel a day short of my sixteenth birthday, and then there was no way she was going to attempt to train me among Boston streets and Boston drivers. What I’m trying to say is that with my scarce driving knowledge it was easy to understand how easily that would abandon me, but the truth of it was: all I knew about my world and existence then was that I had been raped. All senses were kidnapped by this idea: my only sight was walking light, crashing like surf into the walls; my only smell the basement mold, detergent on my fingers, and the leather of his glove as he held my head down; taste only blood and bile; hearing only boiler din, churning washer, T’s footslide, quickened breath and Beethoven’s Seventh sequestered; and feeling – Oh!– only the throbbing wake of his intrusion.

“And then there was a rapping sound, and the thick accent of a lifelong South-Bostonian saying, “C’mah Lady, yah cahn’t pahk hehr”: a security guard outside of a hospital’s emergency entrance, a pause as he looks in my eyes, instantly knows what has happened, sees it carved in my skin, and says, “Ahw shit honey.” Opened the car with hands so strong I suspect they would have simply pulled the door off if it had not been unlocked. A great big old tough guy that had tears in his golden grandfather eyes as he carried me inside, calling forth doctors and nurses.

“He stayed with me until Mom arrived, at my request, though I doubt the doctors would have dared attempt to dissuade him from not doing just that. I hasten to think of what might have happened to the rapist had I any information to give him for his offer to ‘mahke inqueeries.’

“So in an afternoon I was effectively shattered – shattered so that it took three years to glue me back into my former shape. Music was my glue.

“Is there anything you want to ask?” she inquired in closing her narrative.

“Did they find him?” Alexander ventured.

“All they found was a size 10 Nike Air Jordan shoeprint that may or may not have belonged to the suspect. Really, all I knew about him was that he was male, from his exclusively male asset.”

Alexander cringed again with the irrational inclusive guilt of his sex, and said, “Shit.” There was a pause, and then he asked, “If this hadn’t happened to you do you think you’d still have become a musician?”

Lucy opened her mouth to answer but then sat back stunned. “You know, I’ve never thought about it before. Probably not – it was the rape counselor’s idea to get it all out by writing songs, and that was probably only due to an offhand remark that it happened after coming home from piano.”

“But you’ve got the gift. Not everyone who is just told to write could come out with the songs you wrote. I just wanted to know if that was what you wanted to do before.”

“No, I didn’t have any idea about the big what are you going to do when you grow up question before; and I didn’t write the songs with the intention of sharing them with the world. Some women have said that my music has helped them with their lives – and that’s great – but all I was ever trying to do was articulate what was impossible to express. There are two poles of human emotion that are outside of the ability of mankind to express: only the middle is lucid; the rest can only be expressed in the abstract – and that’s all my music was for me. If I could paint – I would’ve painted, but I can only write, play, and sing. I guess I still don’t know what I want to do with my life – music is just the only thing I know how to do.

“Thinking about music, you know when I played Retreating earlier? It was the first time I’ve played that song in years. My unfortunately definitive song.”

“Unfortunate because of content?”

“Because of all the songs on that album it was the biggest hit. It was the one all the talk shows wanted me to perform – the encore song, the note every show ended on.”

“Well, yeah, it’s an absolutely beautiful song, that’s why; and from what I’ve read it’s been the biggest help to your people. But even I, who can’t fathom what it would be like to be raped, find that song devastating. It’s rare that I can listen to it and not find myself misting. Though I must admit sometimes I’m in a mood where I just want to round up a posse or a lynch mob or something,” Alexander punctuated the sentiment by crushing a tortilla chip.

“Every day that I was in front of the world I was giving my tragic testimonial; and at first, it did help. I was gaining confidence, while I flushed out my system. But it wasn’t long until singing that song every day meant reliving that horror every day. All it did was remind me of how terrified, and violated, and weak I was then. I begged – I literally begged my label to release a different single, but they wouldn’t dream of it until they had squeezed every penny out of the first one. It wasn’t until I came up with the concept for the Promise-cuous video that they assented, but it was too little too late, so by the time my second album came around my fans were either exhausted with me, or only saw me as the victim, and weren’t interested in anything else. It was actually quite relieving when my popularity began to fade.

“But enough about me. Now it’s your turn. What’s the most devastating thing that’s ever happened to you?”

Alexander sat back, took a deep breath, and opened his mouth to start his testimonial when his cellphone rang, playing the opening line from Radiohead’s Paranoid Android. “Saved by the bell. Excuse me,” he said instead, and answered his phone, “Alexander – Hi Willem – Oh yeah? – I’ve got my laptop here so I’ll take care of it – I’ll let you know – alright, thanks – bye.” Then to Lucy, “I have to run to the car for a second.” Lucy, thwarted, watched Alexander walk to his car and pull a bag from its trunk that he slung over his shoulder, then return to the table. He pulled a laptop from the bag and after a minute of startup he pulled his chair around next to Lucy, shifted the screen so she could see and said, “Check this out, this is really cool.”

On the screen was an isometric camera view from what appeared to be an enclosed porch, facing a door that looked nearly identical to the doors in Alexander’s home, with windows asymmetrically on either side flowing out of frame. Before the door a woman was hunched and shivering with dripping hair plastering her face, and to the left of her a man paced, apparently looking for something. He disappeared from frame, and a second later water flew in like a shotgun blast at the woman and she cowered further into herself.

“This is from a camera at my cabin in Washington,” Alexander explained.

The man returned with another wet volley, a large rock in hand and approached the window. Alexander quickly pressed a button on his computer and said, “That won’t be necessary.” The man stopped mid-swing stricken, off balance and with wet soles he slipped and fell back onto his behind, and the woman’s head emerged like a snail from her shell. Alexander depressed the button and he and Lucy tried to stifle a laugh.

The man on the screen said, “Hello? I’m sorry. I didn’t think there was anyone inside.”
Alexander amended, “There isn’t. What can I do for you?”

“Um,” the man had been standing toward the house, and now he spun around, looking for the camera. “Well, my wife and I were out sailing and got lost when the storm came in. We weren’t expecting it to blow so hard on us and we ran aground. We were looking for someplace to ride it out when we found this place.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured – you two don’t have the look of thieves. It’s lucky you found the cabin, cause I hear the storm is going be a icy little bitch.”

“And you’re not here?”

“No.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at an outdoor café in Santa Barbara.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“There’s nobody inside?”

“No.”

“Is there a spare key hidden around?”

“No.”

“Is it okay if I…” he held up the rock to finish his statement. “I’ll mail you a check when I get home.”

“Oh no, Like I said: that’s not necessary.” Alexander swept his finger across the touchpad and tapped the button above it.

Lucy couldn’t hear the door unlock, but the man and woman must have, for their eyes went instantly to the door. The man gave his wife a hand up and opened the door. He ushered her inside and when partway inside himself, he turned and said, “Thank you.”

Alexander replied, “Of course. Now just in to your right there’s a little table with a folder. Inside that is all the info you should need. It’ll tell you where to find the towels, robes, dry clothes.

There’s also my number if you need anything else.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“Alright – get inside. Get dry, get warm; help yourself to whatever you want inside – really, that’s what it’s there for. Pretend you won a contest. Enjoy yourselves, alright? Alright. Go on.”
Alexander closed the camera screen, then the computer. He then turned to Lucy and said, “That was cool.”

Lucy saw him as a little boy who finally got to play with his new toy, and smiled at him. A smile of gentle amusement, and because she was quite charmed by his manner of benevolence, Lucy had the urge to give him a peck on the cheek as reward, something that wasn’t all that unusual with her present ideas about propriety and what constitutes the limit of her outrageousness. What was unusual was that she didn’t – that she felt something uncomfortable in the gesture. And so she didn’t want to spoil the mood by pressing him into a sad story now.

Not yet, later.

Chapter Four

2008-12-29T22:57:00.000-08:00

Now, Lucy doesn’t come from a big crazy family, or the circus, both of which might have prepared her for the experience of walking into that dining room. The cacophony of voices was like a fog of sound: nothing of the individual voices was distinguishable until you were within a few feet of them; and underlying all was the percussion of scraping chair legs being pulled out and pushed in, silverware on ceramic, glass on glass, guttural pouring sounds and gentle clinks of ice from the various pitchers of milk, water, clear sodas and caramel-coloring brown sodas where lemon wedges signified diet, three tones of red juice, red and white wines; the ripping sound of butter knives across bread; the snap and swish of napkins flicked open then draped across laps. Over the table there was a cat’s cradle of arms gesturing and passing breadbaskets and butter tins, and drink pitchers.

And then Lucy noticed Alexander approach the head of the table. The room got instantly quiet as if he pressed a mute button. He said, “Good evening everyone,” to which he received a Good Evening in unison. “Some of you have already met our new guest, Lucy Faas, but let’s go around the table with a quick introduction. I’ll start this up by saying that my name is Alexander Murphy. I am a non-practicing architect among other professions and hobbies. And this is my and Josh Karaczewski’s home.” He finished by holding his hands out in a this is all I’ve got posture, then nodded to the elderly man that had been upstairs in the media room.

“My name is Preston Wyler. I was a film director – my last film was released in 1957.” He is well weathered, but spry, wearing a thin tweed coat over a cream-colored Portuguese fisherman’s sweater.

Next is the man who was viewing the film with Preston. He was late twenties African-American, head shaven, with glossy bittersweet-chocolate skin. “Mitchell David. Right now I’m a screenwriter, my first film is currently in preproduction.”

“Luke Owen,” the next man introduced himself as. Late thirties, a solid frame encased in a polo shirt. “Character actor, descendent of The Owens of Hollywood.”

“I’m Perry – I play drums in Organized Noise.” Perry was pale, with thick locks of purple-black hair hanging over his head to nose length. He was wearing one of his band’s t-shirts: black with stippled white forming ON at front.

“And I’m Liam – lead vocals, guitarist, and primary lyricist for Organized Noise.” He had dusky brown hair receding from a widow’s peak into finger length spikes.

“Lauren Advil – you can guess what I’m heiress to – and I guess what I’m called is a socialite. I may have something more for you later,” like most heiresses, she was cute, but not enough so that she could have earned her notoriety without paying for it.

Next was an intense looking Chinese man who stood up as he introduced himself. “I am Ng Cheung-Yun – my American name is Edwin. I have directed in Hong Kong, but I am mostly actor.” He also has a receding widow’s peak, but his hair is cropped short.

Following Edwin is Tracy Merck, who reintroduces herself as a D-movie actress; then Frank Whalton, who added to his introduction, forgetting that Alexander had previously introduced him as such, that he was a director and screenwriter as well as an actor.

Next was a woman Lucy recognized as Belinda Drucker, who introduced herself as Linny, and that she was, of course, an actress. She was wearing a lovely powder-blue cashmere sweater, but Lucy marked that without her Hollywood makeup artistry Linny was looking rather worn. “Well,” Lucy thought, “I guess I was around thirteen when I first saw her in a movie – and she had to have been late twenties/early thirties then – a dozen years – she doesn’t age on the screen but she must be (she can’t be!) early to mid-forties?” Lucy tried her best to conceal this impression from constricting her brows and cheeks as she faced Linny.

Allspice and Clove were the last ones on that side of the table, and added producer to their classification of actors, sharing a smile between themselves. Crossing the table Cumin and Anise simply yelled out their name.

“My name is June Sherbesman-Scott,” the next lady said, “I’m a Sociologist by education, but mainly now I’m just an opportunistic actress.” She had long wavy brown hair, and a baby-t with the logo for Kord’s film, over her long, thin, frame.

“And I’m the pussy-whipped director that provides those opportunities: Kordell Scott – call me Kord. I also do my own chopping, write the words, and even sometimes I produce and act in movies that I don’t make.” Kord had a devilish twinkle in his green eyes that made him seem like a young, his ruddy hair and beard not yet grayed, Santa Claus before he settled down to do the toy thing.

Next was a young man with that rare combination of insouciant youth and dejection that can make leather pants look as everyday tame as blue jeans. His hair was a black Beatles’ mop with orange streaks, overgrown so he had to push some bangs aside that had fallen to obscure his view. He said, “Crispin, bass for Organized Noise.”

The man beside him piggybacked his introduction onto Crispin’s by simply saying, “Thom, guitar and words.” He was of the pale that the most minute of exertions would bring out flushes of pink. Lucy imagined that at the end of a concert Thom must look like some giant flashlight was shining through him. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt of thin silver and black vertical stripes that seemed to flow and scroll as if self-animated.

The next man must have expected more from Thom, for there was a long pause before he said,

“Alright, I’m Clive Harrison – and I’m a sex addict.”

To which the company replied in exaggerated concert, “Hi, Clive!”

“Sorry, lately that’s the only way I’ve introduced myself, and I’m afraid it’s becoming quite a habit. But, really, I fancy myself to be a bit of a thespian – primarily BBC productions, and here in the colonies as That British Guy.” Clive was a certain rogue, with three buttons undone of his blue checked poplin shirt and perpetually complementary hair. He would never play a convincing David Copperfield, but he would steal the show with his Steerforth. “We’ve actually met, if I’m not mistaken, years ago at the Golden Globes. You were resplendent in a green dress that held your form the way every man at that event wished they could…”

“Clive!” his housemates yelled.

“Don’t make me give you another intervention!” Alexander chided with a Sunday School Matron finger.

Trevor tilted his head toward Lucy and informed her, “They strap him to a chair and force him to watch Anthony Lawrence’s favorite…er…nature films.”

“Sorry, sorry, old habits and all that you know,” Clive said and sat down.

“I doubt you’d have forgotten me so soon, but just in case: I’m Anthony Lawrence Lee – a fine Chinese name if you’ll allow me to say so. Here in the colonies I appear as The Gay Guy.”

Following Anthony was a fairly pregnant woman in gray sweat pants and a Sex Pistols God Save the Queen shirt where Queen Elizabeth’s chin was even more aristocratically jutted out over the filling belly’s crest. “I’m sure you won’t mind if I stay seated. My stage name is Leather Love, and my given name is boring. I play with The Sheena-na-gigs – bass. If you know where I can find a pair of leather maternity pants I’ll love you forever. And the rest of you please speed it the fu… – whoa, hey, I caught myself that time! – just hurry, cause the little alien is tuggin’ on the umbilical cord here.”

Then the man next to her shot up quickly and said, “Well then, I’ll just say I’m Johnny Midnight of Absynthe, alien implanter,” and collapsed back into his seat.

Next was a short Latina who introduced herself, “I am Marisol Arregra, an actress,” in a slight Spanish accent, and sat back down mousily.

Marisol was seated next to Lucy, who had a moment of hesitant indecision whether she should introduce herself now or last that was decided for her when Trevor stood and introduced himself. Followed by Steven, who classified himself as an Art Director / Set Decorator.

As Steven was last at the table Lucy now stood up and said, “As Alexander told you, I’m Lucy Faas, singer, songwriter, and pianist. I’m here to work on my next album, and want to thank Alexander for letting me stay here.”

The company took this as a proposed toast and raised their glasses to say “Alexander!” and drank so that you would have thought they were Ancient Greeks.

Alexander stood and acknowledged them with, “Thank you, Thank you. Now, Edwin, will you lead us in the Buddhist prayer?”

Edwin stood, and said in a low chant, “This food is the gift of the whole universe – the earth, the sky, and much hard work. May we live in a way that makes us worthy to receive it. May we transform our unskillful states of mind, especially our greed. May we take only foods that nourish us and prevent illness. We accept this food so that we may realize the path of practice.”
Edwin sat down and Alexander asked Linny, “Linny, would you lead us in the Jewish Prayer?”
Linny, not so Orthodoxly Jewish that she would refuse the pork loin, rose and said, “Excuse me if I don’t wash my hands during the blessing. Ba-ruch a-tah A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu Me-lech Ha-o-lam, a-sher kid-sha-nu b’mitz-vo-tavv’tzi-va-nual n’ti-lat ya-da-yim.” Linny paused, lifted a hunk of ciabatta from her plate, and continued, “Ba-ruch a-tah A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu Me-lech Ha-o-lam, ha-mo-tzi le-chem min ha-a-retz.”

Linny ripped a bit of the springy crust with her teeth, sat, and Alexander said to Lucy, “You’re not Islamic, are you?”

She shook her head in the negative. Cumin chirped in, “I miss the Ozlum prayer.”

“Then I’ll lead us in the Christian prayer quickly before Rob starts pelting me with apples in impatient frustration.” He bowed his head and said, “Lord, bless this food to our bodies – let us and all people be well fed from the abundance You have provided for us. Amen”

On that cue Rob rolled in the first cart of food, which Cumin popped up to wheel around the table, distributing the food with a serious demeanor comical for his age, for which he has to brush off several tussles of his hair. Anise and Clove stood to take charge of the next two carts and Rob gave Allspice a reprieve from serving duties by personally handling the final cart with the loin, carving off quarter inch slices to the diner’s requested number, inviting them to sluice off any juices they might want from the platter’s bottom. Taking his seat at the end opposite Alexander and introducing the entrée, and sides, he finished his duty with, “I hope you enjoy it; if not, please be honest,” which occasioned a groan for his unnecessary pessimism.

After dinner and dessert, and an after dinner drink with Trevor and Steven, Lucy was over sated and felt that it was quite an effort to follow Alexander to his, and now her, room. She would admit that she was babbling like a schoolgirl after her first big arena pop concert if accused of the offense.

“So the Spicers…” she led him.

“Emancipated from their parents, Allspice claimed mismanagement, because they refused to let her audition for a part that required nudity…”

“She’s like eleven!”

“I know, I know, I agree. The part was about a child-prodigy, that sees sex as the last vestige of childhood to be overcome before others will consider her as adult as her intelligence makes her seem, who tries to blackmail a convicted child-molester into deflowering her.”

“Euww.”

“Yeah, it obviously – thankfully – never made it to production. And Clove claimed misappropriation of funds: his folks were acting as their managers, and he thought they shouldn’t get more than the standard ten percent, so when they ‘borrowed’ the money to buy a new house from the kid’s trust funds Clove started litigation. Anise and Cumin came because they worship their older siblings.”

“That’s sad. Do they go to school?”

“They have a pair of tutors that run a one-room Swiss model class. With all that individual time they’re getting pretty advanced; besides the basics they’re learning French, Spanish, and sign language.”

Lucy nodded, impressed, and the focus of her prattling jump-cut to “Marty and Jilly,” she loved referring to them like this, “really are just too perfect people perfect together, huh?”

“They’re the most loyal friends you could ever have. You could go up to them and say, ‘Guys, I just murdered someone’ and Jilly would probably say, ‘Aw, honey, I’m sure they had it coming to them; and Marty would probably say, ‘So what do you think would be easier? Wrap ‘em up whole or cut ‘em up into pieces to dump?’”

They rounded the corner past the Bath Room and into the ominous East Wing where a long hall
led to three doors: two right and one ahead.

Alexander waved at the first door on the right and said, “This is my closet,” but he didn’t open it for display. The second door he did open, and said, “This was my wife’s closet, and there’s plenty of room if you have things to hang up.” Stepping into the closet had the feel of stepping into an upscale clothing boutique – in fact Lucy half expected to see price tags adorning the angled shelves of shoes, flat shelves of sweaters, clothes-rods of skirts, trousers, blouses, jackets, stacked drawers promising shirts, socks, panties, lingerie; everything accent lit to warm tones. Even though Lucy wouldn’t be one to advertise herself as a clothes person, some part of her let out a little gasp. The room was arranged in a circle with a wide cushioned bench like a stylish giant’s ottoman at center. “Here’s the best part,” Alexander said, leading Lucy to the bench, and said, “Lie down here.” This set off a big alarm for Lucy that was only partially dissipated by Alexander’s crossing back to the doorway. But then Alexander clicked on a panel inset from the door and Lucy gave a much more dramatic gasp. Lights from the ceiling revealed it to be entirely made of glass with great piles of bright colored glass sculpture above. From undulating sea-shapes to globes, wavy fans and oblong vessels to abstract pieces of slaggy thickness flowing into thinner terrains; altogether the arrangement was a kingdom of light, shape, and color. “It gets better,” he said, and the lights changed in succession, augmenting colors into their lighter and darker counterparts, changing primaries into their secondaries in flashes like rainbow colored lightening; the lights suddenly converging center and swirling around and around further outward in colors so rich and intense Lucy could feel them pass over her body like sweet breath, like warm soft kisses. When the motion stopped and the light dissolved into gentle diffusion Lucy didn’t know if she had been there three minutes or thirteen. All she knew was that they had been pulled back prematurely to her satisfaction.

“Can’t I just sleep in here?” she said by way of approval.

“Sorry, but I don’t have any round sheets,” he replied.

“Ahhh…” she said with a half-facetious moroseness, then, “So what’s your closet like?”

“The same, only with deeper colored glass.”

“Mmm…” she hummed in a tone intended to entice Alexander to show it to her, but instead he
walked to a door that faced the same direction as the last door in the hall.

“And this door also leads into your room,” he said. The door was another one with an inlaid glass pane, this one a swirl of bright green and pink, like watermelon taffy stretched out to a square.

Lucy got up and stepped in to inspect her lodgings.

The room, essentially, was a large, open, half-circle: the far wall curving out and back, with three tall windowed areas spaced equally along the wall, a deep window seat on the second, which lied at center. Simply, but elegantly furnished with a vanity and bench, chest, and armoire along the first three wall segments; bed a cherry-wood cantilever with mattress only atop – made, of course, just no bedspring – and smaller, matching horizontal planes serving as bedside tables along the flat back wall. The last segment before the back wall right held a fireplace matching the size of the library’s. From the back wall there was a door, then an opening for an upwards staircase, the bed with vertical stripes of glass blocks above it showing through to the ascending steps, and the room ended with the doors to the closet and hallway.

“It’ll do,” Lucy said, her blitheness failing her so that enthusiasm was obvious in her wavering voice.

Alexander deposited her bag on the bed, and continued past the fireplace, where he beckoned and held the far door open for Lucy’s crossing, saying, “This is the bathroom – though without a bath I suppose it should be titled The Shower Room.

Long counter to the right, polished redwood with blue and green glass bowls atop as sinks; framed mirror as wide as the counter, a row of thin desk-style drawers and then cabinet doors under. A plain white toilet, and an angled rack under the toilet paper roll holding a micro-fiction anthology and an Esquire magazine. Then a glass wall across the room, an abstract fluidity of transparent line across its frosted length.

“I was trying for a Rivendell theme,” Alexander said.

Lucy opened the door at the glass wall’s center, only distinguishable by the brushed chrome handle, peered inside, and said, “Uh – you could title it The Shower Exhibit Room.” Ringed around the room in chrome or steel were the open ribs of a needle shower, pair of massaging shower heads on long snaky hoses, wide round shower heads placed to work alone or in conjunction, a five-foot wide open slot curled down at its low end for an artificial waterfall, a set of concentric rings hung from the ceiling, offset, for a warm private rain for two, and a bench deep enough to lie down upon with short nozzles adjustable for your front or back.

“Well, I couldn’t decide on just one,” Alexander conceded.

The chamber has a palpable sexual energy in all the pairings and width for two, enough that Lucy feels embarrassed, like an accidental voyeur, looking in on it with Alexander behind her. But she looked forward to enjoying it immediately when left alone.

“And since that is really everything, I’ll take my leave,” he said, taking a step back.

“Thank you for everything.”

“My pleasure. Good night,” he finished and exited.Lucy, though tired, searched out a towel from the under sink cabinets, and set off to figure out how those showers worked.

Chapter Three, Part Two

2008-12-29T22:49:00.000-08:00

Back into the hall again and Anthony is moving fast – Lucy had just caught up and now she’s scrambling again – moving with an eighteen frames-per-second Buster Keaton quickness, and sureness. The right hall wall, being the other side of the library stacks, is clean of doors, and the left has six. Anthony begins talking with a pace that matches his step.

“Upstairs guest rooms – Orange Room: Tracy Jane Merck – you’re the singer Lucy Faas, right?– you’re fabulous, just in case you didn’t already know.”

“Um, thanks – is there anyone here that doesn’t like my music?”

“Oh, no, I wasn’t talking about your music, I was talking about you – Black Room: Luke Owen – I can’t listen to your music; it’s pretty, but it’s so damn sad! – Tan Room: Marisol Arregra,” (he trills the double-r, and accents the last a to sound like Speedy Gonzales saying Arriba!) “God, if I listened to your music too much I’d do a Cobain! – that oh so-five-minute-ago bitch Linny Drucker has the Pink Room, which is a double! – all to herself,” adding a guttural utterance enforcing his opinion, “and this, this must be the most boring work of art in the whole place – and there are a few – don’t you think?– seriously, who cares who did it if it’s such a fucking bore? – and the Dark-Green Room, where Johnny Midnight and,” in a conspiratorial hush, “his knocked-up punk-rock Grrl Leather Love, are staying.”

They reach the end of the hall, which is a T-junction analogous with the floor below, with a perpendicular hall continuing left and right. Anthony Lawrence pauses there and quickly grasps Lucy’s shoulders, pulling her in so they face each other squarely. Anthony is only a few inches taller than her so her questioning look only requires a slight upturn of her eyes. At his touch she instinctually cringes and glances quickly at his immaculately manicured hand; and though he is quite unarguably gay, by conscious will only does she not rip herself away. “Now, before you go falling in love with me I must tell you that when you give your child a name like Anthony Lawrence and he’s Asian he is predetermined to either be adopted as a baby by an old WASP money family or unequivocally gay – or both – and I’m the latter. Sorry, through you are adorable, it’s not gonna happen.”

He gives her shoulders a compassionate squeeze and releases her, then motions down the hall right and says, deep and dramatically, “You must never enter the East Wing,” and before Lucy has a chance to inquire why he practically Beast shouts, “It is forbidden!” Then at a normal volume he amends, “Well – not officially – it’s just that the only locked doors in the place besides guestrooms and occupied bathrooms and the attic are down there – and Alexander will only say that those rooms are for his personal use.”

“But one time,” grabbing her arm and pulling her into an even greater conspiratorial enclave, he whispers, “I was walking by and I saw Alexander walk out of that room,” shuffling her out into the hall to an angle where she could see a door far down to the right before the hall stopped and turned right. “He must have just gone off to the little boy’s room, because he didn’t lock the door behind him and I was able to sneak in.”

Lucy is pretty curious now. “So what was in there?”

“Goddess!– I thought it was so boring at first. All there is in there is a big ol’ wood table, a couple chairs, and a whole mess of built-in file cabinets and junk like old trophies along the top. I was so disgusted I just walked out. But then, later, I was all like” – Anthony smacked himself upside the head here in place of actual words – “I had my chance to find a little something out about our Alexander and I blew it.” He let go of her arm as he finishes and deflates a bit.

“Now, what do you mean by, ‘Find a little something out about Alexander’? What isn’t he telling?”

“He says hardly anything about himself before the celebs came; whenever I try and catch him into telling where he got his money from he says he hates nothing more than talking about little green scraps of paper; whenever I trick him into revealing anything about his life before the celebs came he just dismisses it as nothing of any entertaining value; and he never talks about his wife.”

“Where is she – divorced?” she asks.

“Dead,” he answers.

“Oh,” Lucy says in a piteous tone. “When, and how?”

“Sometime before the celebs came, and some kind of accident. I want to say vehicular.”

Though Lucy has only known Alexander now for a scarce couple of hours she is genuinely touched by his loss. Not as she would be if he were a close friend, but at the least a fond acquaintance. And so she says, “Shit. I can’t imagine.”

“Who could, really? There are those for whom it has happened that cannot imagine either.”

Lucy is taken aback by a perceptive, even eloquent, statement coming from someone she had initially dismissed as garish and shallow. It is the same reaction she would have if upon greeting her mother’s dog, the dog responded with, “How ya doin’ Lucy.”

She remains enticed with Alexander heresy, but before she can continue her questioning
Anthony says, “Come on now, much still to see before dinner,” and takes off down the hall to the left.

Lucy scampers after him, and when she’s close enough she asks, “So what is known about him?”

“Nothing definitive, only subjective deductions.”

“Okay, so what have you deduced?”

They reach the end of the hall. There’s a short, bright hall to the left with two doors on the left wall, and a dim staircase leading up, to the right. Anthony stops and says, “Well, for a straight man he has a good sense of style: a fine if undaring wardrobe, a couple cool cars, fabulous home. The only thing I can say against him is that he likes everything.” He then answers the inquiry in Lucy’s puzzled expression, “He has something good to say about everyone he meets; if a book is shit he’ll still commend the work that went into writing it; if a movie’s shit the same thing. Or like, he’ll take a completely shit not-scary horror movie, switch up how he experiences it, and laughs his ass off as if he were watching The Farrelly Brothers. All that positivism is just too boring.”

“Alright then, so where do you think he got his money from?” she gets the question in before he can run off again.

“Well, that takes me to here,” Anthony says taking the few steps over to stand in front of the stairs. “This leads to the attic-studio, which is off-limits to houseguests because, Alexander insists, it is where his best friend Josh Karaczewski lives and works.”

“He’s best friends with Josh Karaczewski?”

“And he lives there. That’s the distinction Alexander gives to him. Everyone else is staying or rooming, or visiting – even Preston, who has no intention of ever leaving. But Josh lives there.”

“Okay, so, what, you’re saying that Alexander gets his money from Josh?”

“No no, I think Alexander is Josh – Josh is just Alexander’s pen name. You see, no one here has ever seen Josh, no one goes up there, no one has even ever of an evening caught him raiding the fridge. With everyone staying here someone would have seen him – he can’t have stayed up there, sneaking out in the dead of night only, for years; if he goes out at all – no one pulls the Howard Hughes routine anymore.

“But really, I think that’s why Alexander is so concerned with helping celebrities: he’s a closeted celeb himself! He gets all the benefits of an outed celeb – us – while staying in reclusive author mode, however cliché that may be.”

It does make some sense to Lucy. She isn’t exactly sure how a literary writer can make enough money for this house. Maybe the big genre guys and gals: King, Grisham, Crichton, Steele, Roberts, with their million book printings and options and paperback rights and foreign rights and movie deals with additional paperback movie-tie-in rights. But then she has never been interested in the business so she really doesn’t know. The celebrity angle seems to resonate, though. She decides to investigate – strictly for her own amusement she convinces herself.

“Mostly, I just can’t bring myself to believe that Alexander really is a muggle.”

“A muggle?” Lucy asks with a laugh.

“Non-magic, non-celeb. A squib, actually: part of the celebrity world without having any real powers.”

“Now,” and he’s off again at full speed down the short, bright hall, “The Dark-Yellow Room, which I like to call the Dijon Room: Perry and Crispin of the band Organized Noise; I have no idea (I’m sorry to say) what their last names are, much less their middle. Light-Orange Room: Kordell Peter Scott and June Sherbesman-Scott.”

Past the Light-Orange Room the hall ends and blooms into the living room’s second level. The entryway staircase lays to the right, straight and left are cantilevered paths with iron railings framing the open space at a right angle.

Three doors are on the left wall. Anthony points to the first and says, “Light-Blue Room, where you can find me in the middle of the night – Light-Purple Room: Mitchell Michalbon David, recently baptized screenwriter – Black Room: Preston Ford Wyler, movie director of the 30’s and 40’s.” A quick zip past the stairs and Anthony continues, “And on the topic of movies: here’s the media room.” The room comprises the remainder of the second floor in this direction. Three rows of furniture in various seating capacities angle toward a projector screen, classic movie posters flank both sides with a horizontal one angled toward the viewer above it, three stacks of components behind glass doors under it. Stained glass in squared sections framed two individual cases overflowing with VHS tapes and DVDs; another horizontal poster bisecting the cases above; dormant popcorn machine and cotton candy maker between more classic movie posters lining the rear wall. The superfluity of movie posters is explained when Anthony moves to the nearest and swings it out like a cabinet door to reveal a speaker filled cavity. “They’re actually just silk-screened onto speaker fabric! No big ugly woofer circles everywhere!”

The only occupants of the room are a young African-American man on a couch in the front row perched over an old man in a recliner that doesn’t match the other furniture, who is gesturing toward a black and white film playing before them. Anthony rushes up between the two men and asks, “Do you mind if I use this for a second?”

The old man passes Anthony something gray and book-shaped and he rushes back to where Lucy is standing by the back row of seats. “This is one of those tablet PCs, that Alexander has set up as an overpowered remote control. Now, watch this:” Anthony taps the computer screen with its stylus and panels slide out from inside the walls to block the previously door-free room’s entryways and two large bay window-like spaces on the entry-side wall, soft blue lights along the baseboard illuminating the floor just enough that you can see where your feet are. Anthony taps the screen again, and a warm yellow glow grows in the exposed rafters, much like the kitchen’s beams; another tap, and the wall sconces light; another, and accent lights shine on the posters; another, and lamps on the media cases lift a skirt of darkness to flash their contents; another tap, and the room reverts to the state it had been in when they first arrived. And then a series of taps, and Anthony holds out the remote for her to see, saying, “But best of all, we use it for karaoke!”

Lucy looks down to see the lyrics to her song Heroine You scrolling across the screen, the words changing from white to yellow as they reach the midpoint. “I never imagined anyone would karaoke me.”

“I don’t know if anyone has – Alexander has his whole collection on the network and this karaoke program will do it for any song.” Lucy returns the remote to him, and he adds, “And, of course, it does all that controlling crap,” with a gesture toward the screen and electronics below it.

As Anthony bounds off to relinquish the remote Lucy walks over to view film titles on the first case. As usual her attention is sequestered by certain ones that always lie in ambush for her: before Anthony can return to urge her away she has flinched imperceptibly, her bottom lip curling up towards its mate, while stumbling across reading The Accused, Boys Don’t Cry, Casualties of War, and A Clockwork Orange. When he returns and says, “Quickly now, one last place to see before dinner,” she sighs and quickly follows.

They scuffle down the stairs, turn right at the foot, then hurry toward the lone door on the left, but Anthony Lawrence stops and turns quick as his thoughts, which careen like a dozen rubber balls in the hallway of this mind, and asks, “Alexander did say that he showed you down there, right?” pointing down the long hallways leading past rooms to the gym.

“Yeah, but he didn’t say who’s staying down there.”

“Well, the only one of importance is Trevor Daniel Lehm, and his bitch Stefano Michel Angelo – though he goes by Steven Michaels (how could you be more boring?). Do I need to say that the closet Trevor is in is locked? Not that I can fault him – Hollywood already has its resident gay actor in Rupert Everett, and he’s already taken all the fun Oscar Wilde roles.”

With that dismissal they continue toward their initial intended destination, which is across from and slightly before the library door. Lucy hopes it’s the last, for though she finds the home extraordinary, she’s exhausted by all this beauty. It’s the same she finds in large museums, say, a trip to the “New” Getty Museum: one wing is all she needs; after that she’d rather just buy a brownie and sit overlooking the garden.

This hopefully final door has a clear glass window with two cylindrical shaped stained glass inlays of light blue and pink, which Lucy figures, after Anthony pulls the door open for her, represent the pegs from The Game of Life.

Walking into the room was like walking into an extremely well funded (ie. private) elementary school. “This is the Children’s Suite,” Anthony explained needlessly.

The suite consisted of a vast, colorfully carpeted, open space; Lucy guessed it to be about a hundred feet wide, and two floors high, with round-doored rooms on opposing sides, another pair of rooms up iron spiral staircases with wide balconies. Arranged about the floor are a mini-jungle gym, a separate swing set, a round craft table, and a trio of overstuffed loveseats in a U configuration facing a tabletop plasma TV. The length of the back wall was filled with papasan chairs and floor lamps creating cozy reading nooks, packed bookshelves, bins angled on doweled racks overflowing with toys, cubbyholes stacked high with colored construction paper, transparent colored plastic boxes with every craft and drawing utensil, a squat fridge, and a cabinet with glass doors filled with snack foods, crowned with a fruit bowl and fresh flower vase that would make a Dutch Master salivate. Everything in the room was warm wood tones and bright rainbow colors. Above this assortment, none of which was more than five feet high, vertical cathedral windows matching the Great/Grand Room stretched to brush the ceiling with their fingers; the bottom windows hinging out from their base for fresh air and ventilation.

Stepping inside Lucy turned around to see a wide media case with children’s videos and DVDs, a chalkboard, a corkboard tacked with drawings and paintings, a shelf with three laptops recharging and dock space for another, an expansive mural of clouds and blue sky above, dotted with windows along where the second floor hall must be. From both upstairs room balconies were slides: one straight, one corkscrewed.

The space held the time-traveling smell of peanut butter and paste. It inundated Lucy with the desire to finger-paint.

There were five children of various ages in the room; four of them Lucy recognized as the Spicer kids from seeing several of the films from their extensive prolificacy: Allspice, the oldest at eleven, was on one loveseat with a large folder on her lap; the next oldest, at nine, her brother Clove, sat on the loveseat opposite her, where he was hunched over a laptop sitting on a coffee table (is it still a coffee table when those who use it are too young to enjoy coffee? If not, then consider it a water table, for two bottles of that liquid lay on it) – next to a sunny hardback book and it’s cd audiobook sibling; the next child, Anise, seven, sat with her legs dangling off a platform on the jungle-gym, following the conversation her older siblings seemed to be conducting with the television; the final Spicer, a four-year old boy named Cumin (there actually was another eighteen-month old child, Cinnamon, that still lived with their parents, of whose existence Lucy was not aware) was here drawing, there swinging, scampering up the stairs to slide down again to the ground floor, the displaced air of his movement catching Anise’s hair so that it leapt after him.

Lucy was about to broadcast a group greeting to the children when the television began talking to Allspice and Clove. Anthony saw Lucy expand in preparation to speak and said to her under his breath, “They’re on a conference call.”

Lucy stepped up and peeked around where she thought the camera’s angle of view wouldn’t pick her up and saw a well-dressed man and woman seated behind a polished wooden meeting table. The man held out his hands and said, “Okay, outline it for us.”

Allspice began her presentation, “We’ll do each section as a single sixty-minute episode; one episode a month for a nine months. Caroline Thompson has completed initial drafts of the first five sections, and Henry Selick, Marc Caro, and Joe Dante have expressed interest in directing episodes.

“Clove will now outline our ideas about the character of Jeriron.”

“Thank you, Allspice,” Clove began, “For what the character of Jeriron entails, we believe that he would be best as a complete CG character. ILM’s work on Yoda, and Weta’s work on Gollum and King Kong has shown that not only is a complete CG character feasible, but in many cases, they’re preferable. We believe that an all CG Jeriron would create an appropriate counterpoint to the human actors, enforcing his otherworldliness.”

“If you look to your computer now, I’ll start streaming an animatic to you we commissioned from Banned From the Ranch involving motion capture. Is it coming through? Great. Now when this technique is coupled with other forms of digital wizardry, the characters will be seamlessly realized.” Clove pauses while the video presentation finishes with the effects company’s logo.

The man on the TV whispered to his companion, who nodded him an answer, and then said,

“Okay, we’ve seen enough to give you the greenlight on the first episode. We’ll set up the full meeting for sometime next week. You kids did a great job.”

“Thank you, have your people call us Monday to set up the meet,” Allspice responded.

“Will do,” the man said. Byes all around and the TV went to cyan.

Collectively, the two older siblings leaned back, sighed a tension-relieving sigh, took a stress induced dry mouth dispelling gulp of water, and got right into a production discussion, which was quickly interrupted by Anthony Lawrence.

“Good afternoon Spicers,” to which he is returned several forms of greetings. “Allspice Emily, Clove Liam, Cumin Shelby, and Anise Kara let me introduce to you Ms. Lucy Faas,” to which she received an equal set of greetings.

“Hello,” she said.

“And what do you do, Ms. Faas?” Allspice asked.

“I’m a singer and songwriter – and you can call me Lucy.”

“Can I call you Faasy,” little Cumin asked, suddenly appearing at her knee.

“Sure, just don’t call me Loose.”

“Are you any good? Are you popular?” Clove asked her.

“I enjoyed too much popularity for a time, several years ago.” Lucy answered. If an adult had asked this of her she might have been defensive, but she had the idea many adults hold when they have no children of their own, that all questions from a child should be indulged; parents know that they have to be moderately selective amid the onslaught of inquiries they receive.

“Several years ago? Are you still working and now unpopular? Or inactive?” Clove asked, the fingertips of his fingers coming together in front of him.

“Well, I have not become unpopular; more so, temporarily forgotten. But I plan on starting again while I’m staying here.”

“Can you describe you previous work in one word?” Allspice asked. She had moved over to sit beside Clove, facing Lucy.

Lucy thought for a second, and responded with, “Fractured.”

“What does that mean?” Cumin asked.

“It means broken, Cumin.” Clove answered for Lucy.

“Ohhh. I broke by music too.” Cumin said, despondently.

“He dropped his CD player,” Allspice explained.

“And he ruined a previous Walkman when he tried to listen to a piece of bologna,” Clove added.

“And will you be continuing in that vein, or will another word describe your comeback?” Allspice asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t really describe it as a comeback,” Lucy was beginning to feel like she was being interrogated: Cumin disarming her so Clove and Allspice could bad cop something out of her she wasn’t quite ready to give – partly because she just didn’t quite know, yet, for herself. It didn’t help that Anise sat still and taciturn, absorbing everything being said like a detective behind the two-way mirror ready to burst in when she made the inevitable incriminating slip. Yet amid this claustrophobic sensation, she still felt compelled to answer, “I believe my new word will be Reconstructed.”

“What…?” Cumin started.

“It means put back together, but not necessarily fixed to how it was before,” Clove explained.

Lucy almost gasped. She felt like she had just convicted herself.

“Do you think you could do Apprehensive Wonderment?” Allspice asked.

The way she was feeling now?, “Certainly.” A chance for plea bargain? Who would she have to rat out? She had a feeling it would be some part of herself.

Allspice glanced at her brother, who gave a nod, and asked, “Are you familiar with Josh Karaczewski’s The Children’s Insurrection?”

“No.”

“The Children’s Insurrection is the first fantasy novel by the Karaczewski. Akin to the best sociological science fiction, Karaczewski has applied anthropological ideas into a fantasy novel, creating a more realistic form of fantasy that your usual dungeon-crawler. Instead of culling the scenes down for a theatrical timescale, we’re adapting it for a nine-episode cable miniseries, since network doesn’t extend their budgets for adequate production values. We have the impression that you would be an excellent choice to write the series’ main theme. Would you be interested?”

So it was an interview, not an interrogation. She felt only a slim relief, though, and certainly couldn’t fathom how she had made an impression. “Perhaps. I’ll have to read it.”

“Here. Why don’t you take one of these copies to read?” Acting upon some surreptitious cue Anise swung herself to the ground, and picked the book up from the water table to walk over and hold out for Lucy. “Do you think you could have it read to get back to us by Friday with an answer?” Allspice finished, and Anise backtracked for the audio book which she additionally thrust upon Lucy.

“Certainly,” Lucy answered.

“Is there a part for me?” Anthony piped in.

“Sorry, no.” Allspice and Clove said in unison.

“Am I too dynamic for the series?” Anthony asked dramatically.

The Spicers giggled, and were saved from answering by Alexander’s entrance. “Dinner in five, kids. Hands! Wash! Now!” the last three words in an exaggerated Mike Myers Scottish accent. Alexander’s appearance had the effect of converting the Spicers back into children, and they hooted and scampered past him.

“So, did you see everything?” Alexander asked Lucy.

“All but the East Wing, and basement – though why anyone who didn’t need to would care about that,” Anthony answered for her.

“That’s okay, I’m not the biggest fan of basements,” Lucy stated, then added, “Oh, and we didn’t see the attic,” mock innocently with guile.

Anthony Lawrence gave her an approving wink.

“Great,” Alexander said only, “Why don’t you two head to the dining room. I’ll drop off your bag and follow.” Alexander shifted to show that the bag was still slung over his shoulder.

“Alright,” Anthony replied, and walked out past Alexander with Lucy following. Alexander walked down the hall toward his room, and the other two got about fifteen feet down the hall when Anthony halted suddenly and said. “Oh, I almost forgot, that last room there,” pointing to the last door on the right before where Alexander rounded down the hall right, “That’s the Bath Room – emphasis on Bath. I highly recommend reserving it sometime,” then continued on at his usual exaggerated speed. When they reached the stairs he stopped and said, “I’m going to run up to my room to wash. The dining room is through the kitchen there,” taking the stairs up in threes.

Lucy stood for a moment at the stairs’ foot. She liked the home, certainly; she’s already sees
more character here than she’s seen in some people, and for the most part she’s only seen the exteriors, the skin: time there will be to observe the organs and their functions, maybe even with fingertips caress the heart and brain. But more than its vast, intriguing and beautiful, chambers and paths, for reasons soon enough to be known to you, she liked that there were no dark corners: where there can be sunlight there is, where there cannot be it was simulated more than adequately.

Speaking of light, the ocean-extended twilight finally waned, concurrent with the sconces lustering like stage lights upon a new act, from a reproduction of the extraneous orange to a glowing interior, ready for a scene to be played. Lucy exited stage left through the double-doors.
She passed the small bathroom with ten squealing hands vying for the soap, the water, the towel, the exit, and ten steps past had to leap aside for the racing children to fly by, flinging water droplets onto her pants; then with a “Go on, go on,” she was swept out toward the butler’s pantry by a harried Rob. She stepped in and tucked herself out of the way into the corner.Several people passed by her, some ignoring her, some giving a polite smile, some familiar, some known, some unfamiliar and unknown, some looking away then back, trying to place from where they recognized her. About a minute later Trevor walked in on the arm of an olive-skinned man with dark, curly black hair he introduced as Steven Michael. They invited her to sit by them, and she followed them inside.

Chapter Three, Part One

2008-12-29T00:22:00.000-08:00

“My first real encounter with celebrities was with Brice Powers and Julie Aristotle; I had seen celebrities before, of course, all near here. I met Charlton Heston at an art exhibit featuring his wife’s photography at the Westmont Art Gallery, I saw Steve Martin renting at Captain Video, and I saw Kathy Ireland at Vons, but Brice and Jules were the first I had ever interacted with.

“I had spent the sunset at the Biltmore wall – that’s this popular spot on the beach by the Biltmore Hotel – and was walking back to my car through the long Santa Barbara gloaming where the sun is unrushed for his appointment with Hawaii, taking the time to ignite the clouds behind him when I heard an argument in progress somewhere nearby. Usually, by its nature, an argument involves loud debating, or at least a taut insistence upon your emotionally charged point, but reason hasn’t yet degraded to classify it a fight. Believing this, I thought it strange to hear a devolumized argument. Disconcerting enough that I went to investigate the source when I would usually avoid such a disturbance.

“Rounding a bush I saw a man and woman in heated discussion, and quickly
recognized them as Brice and Jules. Eavesdropping, I heard Brice pleading that they could find another hotel, it wasn’t a big deal; and Jules countering that it was too late, she didn’t know any other hotels around that she could trust to keep their vacation quiet, and she would rather just go home to Los Angeles than wake up to a paparazzi photo-flashflood.

“Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a cater-waiter pause from his cigarette break to spy Brice and Jules. He balanced his smoke on the edge of one of those freestanding ashtrays that look like bird sandboxes, zipped inside and emerged seconds later with a herd of similarly dressed gawkers, one of which pulled a disposable camera from his jacket pocket and took aim toward the unfortunate pair.

“I wasn’t able to grasp why then, but these celeb scandal vultures infuriated me (and believe me, I grasp the irony that I was surreptitiously voyeuristic as well). Two people weren’t having a good night, and they couldn’t agree on a method to amend this – that’s all there was to it, really – and now their night was about to be, probably, irreversibly, ruined, simply because a lot of people know who they were, recognized them, and wanted to use the poor frustrated souls to make their night a little more memorable, perhaps even profitable. I can say now, because I’ve had a long time to investigate the feeling and articulate it, that I felt a real sense of injustice there. Assuming that you can become a part, even such a miniscule part, of a celebrity or anyone else’s life, is categorically wrong, an obscene imposition. And I wanted to help.

“So I found myself disregarding all of my usual shyness, forgetting that Alexander didn’t behave in the manner that he was about to, and positioning myself between the couple and their amateur paparazzi assaulters said, ‘Excuse me. I’m sorry to disturb you. But you’re getting quite an audience with the Biltmore staff over there.’ They turned to me with indignation when I first spoke, testing their strained to thinning, trained patience, but then peering around me saw the growing shiver of cater-waiters gathering for the feeding frenzy.

“‘Shit,’ Brice said, and turned away. You could see the wheels in his head smoke, but without a plan to pop the clutch.

“‘Oh no,’ Jules said, dejected, and then, “Let’s just go, Brice,” her voice breaking, eyes misting.

“I set my forehead to evoke concern and empathy, then said, ‘You know, I live pretty close nearby. You could get out of the gunsights, relax for a bit, and call around some other hotels…’ I thought of offering for them to stay here, but decided this would probably freak them out. I certainly wouldn’t trust a complete stranger offering for me to stay at their home.”

(Lucy gulped a mouthful of water and hoped the cold would diminish her blush at this last statement.)

“Brice saw some promise in this suggestion, and conveyed this in a look of longing to Jules. Jules was leery, and still quite dejected, and said, ‘Well, whatever we do we have to do it right now.’

“Brice took this as an assigning of the decision making to him, and quickly said to me, ‘Okay, we’ll come over to your house,’ he trailed the word house off with a rise at its end in a pause for me to give them my name, which I did, and offered my hand to shake. ‘Brice,’ he said and shook.

“‘Julie,’ she said and shook next.

“‘I’m right over here if you want to follow,’ pointing to the Audi I was driving at the time. They agreed and got into their car, the one they had been arguing beside, and pulled out to meet me as I reversed. I led them out of the lot and into the darkening maze of Montecito, taking it slow so I didn’t lose them.

“We arrived here without incident, and as Josh was vacationing up north, I had them park in his vacated spot.”

(“Who’s Josh?” Lucy wondered, but kept this question to herself.)

“‘It’s a helluva home you’ve got here, Alexander,’ Jules said, alighting from their vehicle.

“‘Yeah, Jesus,’ Brice agreed.

“‘Thanks,’ I acknowledged, and then led them down the hall that runs from the garage here to the bar. They said Damn pretty much in unison upon entering – that seems to be the universal reaction to this space – which is always nice and flattering.

“I sat them at the other end of the bar and proffered them drinks, which they accepted. ‘So the Biltmore was full?’ I asked.

“‘Yeah, there was some kind of insurance convention,’ Brice said.

“‘Like big, annual international bring along your entire extended family insurance convention,” Jules elaborated.

“I gave a quick laugh and set out our drinks, ducking under the counter for the phone book, which I rose to place upon the bar, setting a phone on top, offering, ‘When you’re settled.’

“‘Thanks,” they said.

“Brice swiveled to look around the room again. ‘Are all the houses like this up here?’

“‘You mean, like, big?’

“‘Like, private.’

“‘Not all, but many. Most are pretty secluded.’

“‘That must be soooo nice,’ Jules said enviously.

“‘I’d imagine it would seem a lot nicer to you two. Privacy is nice, but it’s not like I have to worry about it. I can’t imagine having it be like it was at the Biltmore for you all the time.’

“‘It’s been so much worse since we’ve started dating,” Jules said.

“‘Oh my God, yes,’ Brice agreed. ‘It’s like your interest quotient is multiplied exponentially when you’re dating another celebrity.’

“‘Especially when that other celebrity is so big right now.’ Jules added. “I’ve gone out with other known people before, but it’s never been like this. Was it like this with when you were with

Gwen?”

“‘At the beginning and end it was. It calmed down a bit in the middle,’ Brice answered.

“‘Is this still pretty young for you, then?’ I asked them.

“‘It’s been a few months, but with our schedules we haven’t been seen enough together for them to lose interest,’ answered Jules.

“‘Right, we’re still around the top of the list,’ Brice agreed.

“‘List?” I asked.

“‘Celeb mags have a most wanted list for pics. The higher up on the list, the more reward money.’ Brice explained, ‘Some can get as much as six figures!’

“‘What!’ I was incredulous, ‘You’re kidding me.’

“‘No shitting.’

“‘Wow.’ I almost joke about running off for my camera, but think better of it.

“Jules sighed greatly and took a drink. She slumps low thinking of all the future invasions that will besiege her, maybe even scaling her fortress walls to violate and plunder.

“I refilled their glasses and tried to change the subject. ‘What are your plans in Santa Barbara?’

“‘We don’t have anything specific. This is the first big break we’ve had in our schedules in a while, and we just wanted to get out of L.A.”

“Jules nodded and said, ‘Mmm…’ in agreement. She has been looking at the black night outside the windows. Out here it can look like a solid thing. Like being snowbound with blackness.

“Brice placed a hand upon the phone book and thumbed the pages to a zippering sound, but did not open it.

“Suddenly the two of them looked exhausted to me, not just tired from the trip and their busy lives but bone-weary, world-weary.

“I drained the remainder of my beer and said to them, ‘Okay, I have an idea. How about you guys not worry about a hotel tonight. It’s just me here – so there’s plenty of room. Get some rest, and can decide on a hotel, or whatever, in the morning.’

“Brice’s please oh please take me for a walk doggy-look that he does so well met Jules’s resigned, acquiescing face to quickly respond, ‘That would be great, thanks.’

“I only showed them the basics that night: the kitchen, and their room. Late in the morning they woke and asked if it would be any imposition for them to stay, which it unquestioningly wasn’t. They stayed for a little less than two weeks – loved the area enough to buy a home nearby, and through them my home acquired the reputation for being a celebrity refuge: Jules recommended it to Mathew Perry, Brice talked Julia Roberts into coming by, and from there it spread, like an underground railroad, escaping the oppression of a bored society who believes it’s their right to be entertained.

“But, in order to sustain the secrecy necessary for this home to exist in this capacity, those who are aware of this home’s true nature must keep it quiet. Subsequently, to maintain the spirit of this home, it is imperative that the things you learn about those staying here remain within those in the know. And so, no matter how discrete your mother may be, I ask that you refrain from telling her certain specifics about my other guests.”
Lucy did trust her mother to be discrete, and she would use her own discretion concerning what she told her. But she understood why he was asking this of her, and managed not to be offended. She certainly knew the impact of everyone knowing the too intimate details of her life. In her mind she made the compromise between these ideas, and expressed it, “Oh yeah, I understand. You don’t have to worry about anything getting out because of me.”

“Thank you. I know that after you’ve been here for a while you will certainly want to defend this home as a haven for celebrity freedom, but I didn’t want you to inadvertently ruin it before you shared this sense.”

“Oh no, I wouldn’t want that,” Lucy said with finality.

“Great.”

“I was sad to hear about them breaking up. I suppose, though, that you know what really went on between them,” Lucy said, hoping to lead Alexander into informing her.

“Yeah, that was a shame. They were so great together. Some Hollywood couples you see and immediately know they won’t last and you’re always right, but then there are those real matches that you just hope and hope will stick together.” Lucy nodded, but didn’t prod. “Well, would you like to continue the tour?”

“Yeah, but I’ll need a bathroom stop soon.”

“I’m sorry, I should’ve asked you if you needed it when you got here: there’s one right off the entryway.”

“It’s alright. I was fine when I got here.” Lucy shook the empty water bottle accusingly as culprit.

“In that case let’s proceed to the kitchen, and only short introductions for now,” Alexander said while rising, and re-slinging her bag. He grabbed their two glasses and her guilty bottle, placed them in a tub and bin, respectively, around the back end of the bar, then returned and called to the couple playing air hockey, “Hey guys. This is Lucy Faas – she’ll be staying with us for a while. Lucy, this is the very unappreciated actor/writer/director Frank Whalton, and the unfortunately typecast Tracy Merck.” Frank switches the air hockey paddle to this left hand and he and Lucy shook hands (slightly calloused; guitar perhaps?). He had a week’s worth of tortured artist stubble and dark slicked back hair.

Lucy stepped toward Tracy, but as Tracy straightens from her competitive bent stance over the table she appears so luminously gorgeous that Lucy gasps and stops mid-step. Loose jeans and basic boring t-shirt do nothing to mask an enviable body, taut and ripe, flawless white peach complexion, exquisitely glossy brown hair that made you wonder if there was an effects team hidden somewhere clandestinely hi-lighting the simple sway of ponytail and the escaping strands that seemed too perfectly framing to her perfect face to be coincidental; eyes Irish clover-green with rays of leprechaun gold radiating from the black-hole iris with an equivalent gravitational pull; and terrifyingly magnificent breasts. She was the kind of girl that made gay men and straight women stop and think for a hard minute, and effect straight men with such diverse conditions as heart murmurs, instant and oppressive sweating, an octave rise in vocal tone or loss altogether of voice, temporary amnesia; a beauty to cause car accidents and boost gym memberships, and on two separate occasions caused old men to faint and insist later they had simply assumed they had dropped off dead when they saw that angel coming for them. When Lucy had recovered enough to shake Tracy’s hand, she found it so soft that she feared if she held it too long it would melt. As if she hadn’t felt self-conscious enough after shaking Trevor’s hand.

“It’s great to meet you. I love your music,” Tracy said. Lucy would say she purred, but that wouldn’t accurately portray her precise enunciation.

Lucy blushed so expansively hot it felt like she had just taken a double-shot of Goldschlager.

“Thank you. What may I have seen you in?” she asked.

“Nothing of note,” was Tracy’s reply, with a depreciating smile.

“Not yet,” Frank corrected.

“Frank is writing the Great American Screenplay,” Alexander explained

“He had better be,” Tracy added.

Frank dipped his head, shuffled his feet, and studied the rondure of his hockey paddle.

“We’ll let you guys get back to your game. Don’t you go easy on him, Tracy,” Alexander said, backing away from them.

“She’s not,” Frank said with a defeated sigh. Enforcing this, Tracy dealt a deft slap of the puck into Frank’s goal. “Hey!” he protested.

Tracy laughed deliciously and waved goodbye to the retreating Alexander and Lucy.

They left the living room by the passage past the bar. “This is the butler’s pantry,” Alexander said of the room there. The room was essentially only a wide hall, but with a long, deep, counter along the left wall and an enormous china cabinet along the right, she felt it deserved the designation of room.

“Is there a butler?” Lucy asks.

“No, the only staff is security in a building at the edge of the West Wood. It’s called a butler’s

pantry by tradition, cause this would be where they’d stage the dinner presentation.

“This leads to the main dining room, “Alexander continued, pushing the door past the cabinet open for Lucy to see a long wood table with chairs, several side tables, and a roasted pig-sized fireplace to the left, with the recess high off the ground, a large iron door swung back showing light from the next room. “And this leads to the outdoor dining area,” Alexander said crossing to a door opposite, opening it to show three wooden steps and the yellow-orange afternoon light hazing. Lucy climbed a step to see an arrangement of Spanish mosaic-topped bistro-style tables spread out across a covered, wood-railed rectangular deck: the appendix of the home’s length blocked by the hedge-wall.

“And here’s the kitchen.” Alexander said, having closed the door and led Lucy through the open arched passage out of the butler’s pantry.

Lucy turned into the airy kitchen space to gauge a full bookcase of cookbooks, magazines, folders, and a flat screen computer monitor; a large round (Round!) door with an elaborate hinge frame where the metalwork flowed over the door’s area as vines, a circular window at eye level, split into four segments so it resembled a gunsight, rising like a hunter’s moon over winter branches; an L of cabinets and counter turn onto the next wall; antique kitchen instruments, small white speakers, and real looking plants along the top; a sink before a protruding triptych window; pair of under-counter dishwashers, with two open shelves above stacked high and precarious with bottled spices, herbs, oils, vinegars, cooking wines; a pair of brushed-steel hoods were gentlemanly lifted chapeaus over brushed-steel oven ranges with six burners each, a stacked pair of additional convection ovens under a single large cabinet; more cabinets – these floor to ceiling; the next wall beginning with a slim pantry door; a twin side-by-side refrigerators matching the stoves; then a steel door with a small glass window opening to a walk-in freezer; the rest of the wall cut off from view by a stone staircase leading down; a few parked kitchen carts; the other half of the dining room fireplace – which Lucy now figures is actually a woodburning oven by the various long handled instruments, tinder box with a tongue of newspaper lolling out, and freestanding steel shelf of stacked fruitwoods; leading back to where Lucy stood awestruck.

A man worked on a long, steaming, loin of pork at the center island, half marble – half wood with sinks at both ends, and a shallow counter running its opposing length lined with stools. Gabled skylights between dark chocolate painted, exposed beams provide sufficient light for him now, but he’ll have to turn on the pendant lights hanging from the beams soon. An orange colored jar candle on the island counter graces the kitchen with a warm, nutty scent, and equally prevalent is the voice of Duke Ellington thanking the crowd for their welcome of himself and his orchestra to the Newport Jazz Festival.

“Out there is the kitchen garden,” Alexander said, pointing through the round door.

“Love that door,” Lucy exclaimed.

“Are you a Tolkien fan?”

“Who?”

“Tolkien. J. R. R. Tolkien. Have you read The Hobbit?

“Oh. No, but I remember that old movie from when I was a kid. The one with that awful Greatest Adventure song.”

“Ugh,” Alexander said in disdainful agreement. “Though I dig that Where There’s a Whip – There’s a Way one from Return of the King.”

“I didn’t see that one,” and then she could not resist saying, “Are you sure you’re not thinking of some porno?” with a wicked smile.

Alexander quickly countered with, “No, that’s actually gay porn, and it’s called Return of the Queen. A little hobbit on hobbit action while Gollum watches.”

“Ha Ha,” good, he has a sense of humor, “Except for Elijah, who I could eat with a spoon, I’d be more interested in the elves. My pointy-ear fetish.”

“So do you have a thing for Spock, then?”

“No, but I find myself strangely excited by Gremlins.”

“Okay now you’re scaring me.”

“Sorry.”

They both paused to laugh fully.

“Here, I’ll introduce you to Rob,” moving toward the pork loin man. “Hey Rob.”

“Hi Alexander. How are you?”

“Fine – just fine. I’d like to introduce to you Ms. Lucy Faas. Lucy, this is Rob Herrell.”

“Hello Lucy. I’d shake your hand but I wouldn’t want to give you trichinosis,” Rob held up his hands to her palms forward, as if Lucy would be able to see the alleged disease engendering parasites squirming around there.

“Sure,” she said.

“Rob is the head chef at KHM downtown, of which I’m the ‘M,’” Alexander explained.

“And I’m the ‘H,’” Rob added.

“We at the house have guinea pig duty for Rob’s new dishes before they’re put on the menu there. So what have we got going on for tonight?” Alexander asked.

“We have pork loin brined with Chai Tea, fried apples that were marinated in sarsaparilla, twice-baked sweet potatoes, butternut squash soup, basic green salad with apple-pear and roasted walnut pralines, and a pecan praline topped pumpkin cheesecake for dessert.”

Alexander must have felt that this required an explanation, because he said to Lucy, “Ironing out the fall menu.”

“Can I make a standing reservation through you or do I have to call the restaurant?” Lucy was a bit unsure but game about the rest, but she could see herself becoming a regular for the cheesecake. Ten, or even five years ago Lucy would have been more free with her distrust; but had, thankfully she believed, learned some tact. Being affiliated with the sub-genre of angry young Grrl musicians did not necessitate rudeness.

“Just come in the after hours, or have the maitre ‘d get me and you’ll be all set,” Rob answered. Trim, in a way that clashed with the prodigious amount of butter he chipped onto the pork, the bowl of peeled, cored, soda-browned Braeburn apples, and mash of once baked yams already mixed with brown sugar and cinnamon, whittling a one pound block down to a scant occupancy for the once vacant butter dish it was released unto. “The poor little starlet’s starved bodies here must think they’ve entered the Twilight Zone diet here with all that butter,” she thought to
herself.

“Well, we’ll let you get back to it,” Alexander said. “Lucy, you needed a restroom.”

“See you at dinner,” Rob said in parting.

“Definitely,” Lucy answered, and was led by Alexander to a door around the corner of the stone steps that opened to a half-bathroom: a satellite of the kitchen’s decorating scheme. There, while making her deposit (change – no bills), she was amused to see a squat, ceramic, see-no-evil ceramic gargoyle above her in the rafters.

Business transacted, Alexander led her through a short hall back into the foyer, and across to the hallway at the base of the stairs. They walked along, Lucy noticing several interesting objet d’art on several different styles of table and cabinet, with artwork hung in intervals over and between; some of the paintings familiar, as if she had seen them before in art books, others curious and new.

Alexander pointed to one and said, “Jules did this one for me.” Lucy has come to understand that when Alexander refers to Jules solely in the given he means Julie Aristotle. She gives the piece more attention but doesn’t slow. It is a very pretty contemporary piece, in oils, of many-sided squares in a scheme of blue and its secondaries. She was impressed.

They reached a T-junction and Alexander led her right. He said, “This is the first set of guest rooms.” There are four doors spaced along the length of the left side of the hall, two doors early on the right with a double door farther down, and an outside sun-brightened glass door at the hall’s end. “Four singles,” pointing left, “and two doubles,” pointing right. “Each room is named for a color, arbitrarily – they aren’t like theme rooms.”

The first door on the left is a medium stained wood with a single pane of thick, purple stained-glass at head level center. “You mean I won’t find an ‘Artist formerly known as Prince’ inspired interior décor here?”

“Sorry, no. Where were you when we were decorating?”

“Yeah, hindsight’s a cunt,” obviously she felt particularly strong upon this point.

Lucy noticed Alexander wince at her thorn word, and chastised herself internally, “Lucy, you potty-mouth,” but did not apologize. She reasoned from his that he must not have accommodated many inhabitants of the various British Isles, whom use it in substantially more instances than Americans deem necessary, hoarding it in their arsenal of curses with the equivalent sense of overkill finality of a nuclear weapon.

They continued down the hall, past milky white and yellow, which Lucy remembered Trevor mentioning as his shared room, on the right, and purple, blue, red, and light-green on the left. Though there were no windows out of the passage the lights did an excellent job of simulating natural light, keeping the wood of the walls and the richly colored artwork hung upon them from feeling too heavy. It was amazingly quiet: not so much as a susurration from the closed doors, nor the mild hearing loss high keen of television.

“And at the end here is the gym,” Alexander said approaching the double-doors, both matching the guest room doors but with pictures in the stained glass: Atlas power-lunging with the world at left, a doryphorous right.

Lucy entered past Alexander’s doorman graciousness, and found a fully stocked workout room: empty blonde-wood floor to the right, blue padding on the left; free weights against the far wall left of the bisecting double doors, an adjustable bench-press, a massive contraption resembling an adult jungle-gym at center on the mats, a pair of Bowflex machines against the near wall at Lucy’s left, and before a glass wall sharing an offset view with the living room were lined three stationary bikes, three Stairmasters, and three treadmills; the other three walls were covered with mirrors. Chain grease, and the ripe, sour, spent battlefield smells of the ongoing Sweat vs allied Antiperspirant and Deodorant war further enhanced the convincement of often use.

“Here’s the activities calendar and sign-up sheet,” Alexander said waving to a pair of clipboards mounted to the glass, both replete with words like yoga, pilates, aerobics, with their various specifying signifiers, and prevalent with corresponding times. “There’s a sauna there, with scheduled men’s, women’s, and co-ed hours (Lucy hoped there were unscheduled times, for she never enjoyed sweating with anyone else, regardless of sex). Gym equipment,” another wave, “and come check this out…” Alexander led her to the first Stairmaster. He stepped in front of it and opened a sliding glass door directly ahead, allowing the afternoon spores of bird-speak to infest the gym, then returned to step on a small circle in the padded mat of floor of a lighter blue, behind the machine.

Lucy tried to hide her embarrassment at jumping when they moved forward through the opening to outside by saying, “Wow, nice!” Followed by a greater, “Wow,” referring to the world beyond the deck. The deck itself was comprised of wood planks radiating out vertically to a railing that curved gradually out, widening to a width of about fifty feet before curving back around the living room wall. Looking out from the railing she saw the land terrace down a wide corridor of trees. A path wound in an ogee through successive levels of rich landscaping, creating an irregular patchwork of flowers, shrubs, short lawns with benches and Adirondack chairs, sculpture, Zen rocks, the path leveling at a generous lagoon shaped waterfall-fed swimming pool, and finished with a thickened sward leading out to a far drop in the landscape. Turning left she saw the deck end and a dirt path began that edged the home past the fortunate occupant of the light-green room’s windows, around the a great stone bulge where two stone turrets sprang up framing a emerald-cut gem of windows on the second floor, and a moderately (in respect to the front window) round stained-glass window beneath – it’s content indistinguishable through it’s backside and her distance from it; and then turned right to follow the east-wing of the home as it pointed towards the mini-horizon of green land’s end.

“You can follow that path around the home to the ceramics/sculpture hut,” Alexander added to her gaze’s attention.

“I don’t do either of those,” she replied.

“Not yet, anyways,” he countered.

Lucy managed to pull herself away from the view and the still warm unobstructed sunset to join Alexander on the Stairmaster cart to ride back inside. They left the gym and proceeded back down the hall, turning right at the T-junction.

The first door they reached was on their right, and Alexander paused before opening it to say, “This is the library.”

Lucy by then had been properly conditioned to expect a magnificent realization for Alexander’s humble introductions. The word library here, then, evoked in her imagination something outrageously beyond her conception of a personal library, and on entering was initially disappointed that the room before her fit her bibliophilic preconceptions. But this was momentary, and she was promptly invited in by the room to come and partake of its treasure. The library has two levels with an open center space that reached up to a ceiling of skylights that wouldn’t seem out of place in a grand old train station, if only the truss work were wrought iron instead of the carved wood used here. The ground level consisted of a small alcove to the left (the only break of asymmetry) with a table set under pendant lights, books stacked neatly across its middle like a bookworm’s ping-pong net; another, longer table sat on the left side of the room topped by eight flat-screen monitors, four to each long side of the table facing their own executive chairs, and farther right a cluster of couches and chairs upholstered in a brown leather which appeared so soft that it looked like it had been poured in place, around a fireplace merely large enough for a brace of suckling pigs to roast. The central staircase was guarded on one side by an enormous globe, and the other by a podium with one large, obscenely thick book; inside against the front wall two bookcases stood with horizontal glass doors, one filled with a set of small turquoise books, the other, with three separate book sets. Needless to say, bookshelves line the entire space of walls, along, around, and under the stairs except for the wall with the fireplace where squares of wood drawers were chest-high to the floor. The floor was hardwood with many large area rugs, but the stairs were carpeted up the middle in a forest green.

It was alluring – provacative in the way quicksand is insistently welcoming – to all those fortunate enough to be seduced by the printed word. Lucy, seeing her distinction of songwriter as only one of many additions to the word writer, has an insider’s affinity for books that increased the value of this room to her. The place simply reeked of idea and story. She’d have to
be careful not to succumb to the siren song of these works and neglect her own.

“The ground floor is nonfiction, drama, poetry, and periodicals,” pointing to explain the wood drawers, “and the second floor is all fiction. Everyone has a few books checked out, so if you’re looking for something specific you can check the inventory on any of the terminals,” Alexander demonstrated this by sliding a keyboard and mouse out from a flat drawer on the middle table; a flick of the mouse dispelling the Yosemite Waterfall video screensaver, a double-click to an open-book shaped icon opening the library database, a quick flurry of typing (Lucy looked at his fingers as they pressed the keys: they weren’t as long as she would’ve expected with his size; definitely not the fingers of a pianist), and a description of the book Franz Kafka – The Complete Stories came up. He pointed to a box at the bottom of the screen labeled “Location,” with one line of text saying “Library” next to an empty box, above a line that read “Checked out by:” followed by a long space with Josh typed in at the end with an x’ed box. “Not everyone is diligent about checking the books out, so you may have to ask around if you can’t find one.” Clearing the screen and replacing the drawer he says, “And then there are e-books, and links to the city and college libraries.”

Walking toward the stairs Alexander turned to Lucy with an impish, conspiratorial, look and said, “I couldn’t resist this,” sliding the Northern Hemisphere of the globe up to reveal a trio of crystal decanters filled with varying hues of amber, wearing silver tags bearing the words

“Bourbon”, “Whisky”, and “Scotch”, around their necks before a set of squat glasses.

“How James Bond kitsch,” Lucy responded with amusement.

“Ah, but he would be disappointed that there was no vodka.”

He rejoined the equator to its proper alignment and started upstairs. Lucy paused by the book on the podium. She had glanced over at the text, but the fact that it was unnaturally small caught her attention. On closer inspection she found a small glass cube that served as magnifier enlarging the dictionary’s extensive word definitions to a readable size.

Catching up to Alexander on the second floor he greeted her with a finger vertically across his lips, then further enforcing his directive by holding his hands out and patting the air like one would quiet a noisy child. Ahead on the landing a tall triptych window (the gem she had observed outside), two walls, two sets of angled waist-high bookcases with several coleus plants atop, and a trio of downward steps made an octagonal space with a single octagonal cushion lowered at center, where a woman sat reading. Lucy was surprised, even a tad indignant about being shushed when she wasn’t being loud, and was about to label Alexander a bit anal, until he jumped from the top step, laying out flat, so that when he landed the lady reader was launched a couple feet into the air, with a quick avian shriek. She landed to smack Alexander’s laughing body across the chest and join his laughing. Lucy realized it was Sandra Jillian Palladio mirthfully beating him.

“Alexander Richard Murphy, you fucker!” she said, “You lost my place.”

“Jilly, this is Lucy Faas,” inclining his head to where Lucy stood at the top stair.

Jilly turned over onto her stomach and said, “Hi,” amid the giggles still petering out.

“Hi,” Lucy responded, still so tickled by the spectacle that she squeezed out a laugh despite her careful treading toward a new acquaintance.

“Jim in with the Spicers?” Alexander asked Sandra Jillian in a voice that said he expected his guess correct.

“Yup.”

“And Marty?”

“He’s down in drama,” Sandra Jillian answered him, and then said to Lucy, “You should go down and meet him. I know he’ll enjoy meeting you.”

“It’s down the stairs, around under them to the right,” Alexander directed. “But he doesn’t really like you – she just wants you to go so she can make out with me.”

“Always,” Sandra Jillian said in a facetious bedroom tone, and flopped roughly across

Alexander’s stomach, expelling the air from him. Lucy was halfway down the stairs when she heard Sandra say, “Make out? What are you, like, twelve?”

Lucy has been starstruck by Trevor earlier, but truth-be-told she had never really cared that desperately about him. But she had always loved Martin Bradford, from crushing over him in Truant, to respecting him as an actor in Honor; and so when she rounded the stairs toward the alcove where her favorite movie star allegedly was, she took a long pause. When she had reached that balance of excited anticipation versus self-consciousness and nerves, she followed the bookshelves’ concavity behind the stairs.

At first she moved through dimness: there were sconces, but they were as yet unlit. Then, at the center of the cove, orange last-light came through a round window to catch the guilty dust swirling in mid-air. Below the exiting principal light Martin sat in a huge chair, legs over the chair’s arm, all attention occupied in a small orange book. His eyes flicked up at Lucy’s approach, and then he was on his feet, shaking her hand and saying, “Lucy Faas – Wow! It is you! I’m a big fan of yours. I must have seen you, like twenty times in concert but never had a chance to meet you! God, I just love your music – you know, as a matter of fact, I have Waning right here – would you sign it for me?”

Lucy was flabbergasted. A good word, flabbergasted. Appropriate, as it was the exact onomatopoetic of herself then: her body feeling like an untied balloon reverberating, a blush spreading gaseous across her face.

She didn’t recognize her first CD when it was placed in her hands, but it was not due to any emotional lapse of memory, but instead because it was the Japanese Import version.

“How did you get this one?” she asked.

“I picked it up when I was on a Japanese press junket. You know, I was wondering, why is it that the import cd’s always have bonus tracks? That’s why I picked up this one: for the extras.”

“You know, I’m not actually sure why.” Lucy turned the jewel case over to read what the bonus tracks were, but only found Japanese katakana characters with asterisks signifying them. “I think maybe the singles don’t get released there, so they put the b-sides on as extras,” Lucy tried.

“No. This one has a couple live ones and a cover that aren’t on the singles.”
Lucy is embarrassed that she can’t recall the contents of her bibliography, but she asks anyway,

“What song did I cover?”

“Human Behavior, it was live too. I love how you slowed it down and only used piano.”
Live. That’s why she doesn’t remember recording a cover. “Thanks. Are you staying here too?” She slips the cd booklet out of it’s case, and accepting Matt’s pen zips her autograph across her photograph’s torso.

“Oh, no. We have a house up the road – we just come by a lot.”

“I think I remember Alexander saying something like that now,” she was starstruck enough still that her short-term memory was inaccessible, “Or maybe it was about someone else…”

“That, and Alexander wanted me to read this,” Martin held up the simply designed, thin orange book.

“La…Bete,” Lucy read the title, pronouncing it like the root vegetable.

“La bête – The Beast, who’s this outrageous buffoon of a man. Alexander’s trying to talk me into reteaming with Nick Lay to perform it – only switching The Odd Couple dynamic around so that I’m The Beast, with Nick as the straight man.”

“Interesting.”

“Could be. Do a weekend of charity shows at the Center Stage or the Lobero – see how it goes – maybe a PBS special. Speaking of Alexander, is he upstairs with Jilly? I thought I heard him walking up.”

“Yeah, they’re on that…” she tried to think up how to describe it, but finding her imaginative powers not up to the task, instead she shaped the space in the air with her palms flat, straight, to denote the flat angles of windows, walls, bookcases, and steps.

“Ah. Let’s go up and separate them,” Martin said with a wink, cradling his book and waving for

Lucy to go before him.

Lucy and Martin found Alexander and Sandra Jillian laid out on their backs laughing about something. Alexander looked up at them and said, “Hey.”

Martin said, “Hey,” back.

“Are you guys staying for dinner?”

Jilly answered, “No, we’re going to Palazzio’s.”

“You’re going to miss out on Rob’s new stuff.”

“Eah,” Martin dismissed this, “If it’s good it’ll be at KHM, and if it’s shit we’ll be spared.” Instead of saying the initials KHM he pronounced it to rhyme with calm.

“He’s got a new cheesecake…” Alexander lured in a falsetto.

“I’ll just sneak over tonight and grab us some.”

Alexander looked to Lucy in mock dejection and said, “I shoulda never given them the gate code.”

“Sucker,” Sandra Jillian chimed in. Then to Martin in a mother-dearest tone, “Did you enjoy meeting Lucy, hon?”

“Yes,” Martin responded, childlike.

“Marty must have played your cd’s at least once a week since we started going out,” Sandra said snidely, but then quickly countered, “Not that I don’t love you too. Before MP3s he had about a dozen copies that lived in out cars, offices, dressing rooms, cabin – everywhere.”

“Isn’t Lucy on your list, Marty?” Alexander asked with a sly smile forming at his remembrance.

“Yes,” Sandra Jillian answered for him.

Martin blushed, and Lucy had to ask, “List?”

Alexander answered, “Everyone gets to pick five celebrities they can sleep with without their significant other getting upset.”

“And I’m on your list?” Lucy asked Martin sultrily.

Martin’s cheeks manage to fill themselves with even more blood, and he reached around to pull a card from his wallet, handed it to Lucy sheepishly. Lucy saw that she was third on his list. “It’s laminated,” she observed.

“I did them as a joke for stocking stuffers,” Sandra Jillian said, thoroughly enjoying Martin’s embarrassment.

Lucy thrust her hips to one side, put a hand on the side-table it formed, fanned herself with the list in a way that wouldn’t look out of character for Mae West, and said, “So, when did you say you were sneaking in for pie?”

To which Martin broke his embarrassed silence to give an embarrassed laugh; Alexander laughed the laugh of a comfortable friend, and Sandra Jillian laughed as all perfectly secure wives with any sense of humor should.

Lucy continued, “If he’s on my list does that mean we can do it twice?”

Sandra Jillian replied, “In that case I’ll have to see the fully notarized…”

“And laminated…“ Alexander added.

“Right – thanks – and laminated list for confirmation,” she finished.

“And am I on your list, too?” Lucy asked Alexander as she handed Marty’s list back, instantly regretting that she said something so forward to someone still so new that she would share such a proximity with.

“No, I just have Jilly down five times,” he scooted over and snuggled into her.

“Nooo…” Sandra Jillian pushed him away,” I’m only on there once; the rest are all his British chicks.”

“Mmm…I do have a thing for the Limeys.” He pulled his list out and flicked it to Lucy.

“What I like is how you all carry them around with you,” she said, and then looked down to read: 1. Sandra Jillian Palladio (In bold typeface and a couple of points higher font – she made them after all); 2. Olivia Williams; 3. Kate Winslet; 4. Sophia Myles; 5. Liv Tyler. She thought for a second and said, “But Liv’s not British.”

”She’s British by marriage,” Martin entered, now that the teasing target-sight had opportunistically transferred over to Alexander.

“Ahhh. And should I know who Sophia Myles is?”

“She hasn’t been in too much over here. She was in From Hell and the Underworld movies, but I really fell for her in the a couple of great BBC Dickens productions,” Alexander said.

Lucy paused then said, “Teagan Andrews is British by marriage too, then.”

“Yeah, I’ve been trying to say that The List should really be expanded to at least ten.”

“The card does have a whole other side,” Martin offered.

“I have been wanting to slip Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom onto mine,” Sandra Jillian mused.
Lucy tossed Alexander’s list back to him, and asked Sandra Jillian, “So where’s your list?”

“In my purse in our car. But I have it memorized so I can tell you it’s Sean Connery, George Clooney, Denzel Washington, Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck.”

“Yeah, but not me,” Martin said, wounded.

“Your name’s on my marriage certificate – how about that?”

“I guess,” and he laughed. Martin laughs like a child, unselfconscious and free; Sandra Jillian is allergic to this laugh: even when it’s coming from a few rooms away it causes a reaction in her.

Suddenly there was an electronic song playing, and Alexander reached for his pocket. Sandra Jillian used this pause to glance at her watch, and said, “We’ve got to get going – they made an exception for us at the restaurant – usually it’s just first-come-first-serve.” She sat up, and gave Alexander a final smack across the chest in parting, changing the octave of his greeting into the cellphone. He gave her a little wave goodbye while entering into his conversation.

Sandra Jillian and Martin said their goodbyes to Lucy, with sincere offers to share some time together at a later date. Lucy responded to the effect that she would be happy to keep them to their word. As Alexander was on the phone in earnest conversation, Lucy didn’t want to rush him (or at least to appear to), so she wandered away to browse through the books a bit. The books of the second floor sat on shelves fifteen feet high, accessible with a wood ladder that traversed around the horseshoe of floor on a rail that lay about two-thirds of the way up the shelves. The angled plane of books was only broken by narrow columns, where from the ceiling trusswork branched out. Tucked among the uniform spines of books, at differing heights but straight as a double gold star sticker kindergarten class were small framed photos, sculpture, pottery; outfacing books presumably to fill the gaps leaving space for later additions and delinquent editions. Wood poles served as railing between redwood planter boxes holding waist-high cubes of manicured shrubbery that referenced the exterior fence-wall. The twilight was finally waning, and the library sconces were still unlit, so the only light keeping the space from being too dim to see the author and titles were round jeweler’s lights inlaid into the front bottom-side of the shelves in threes. Lucy crouched at the horseshoe’s end and looked at the surprising amount of authors with names ending in Z, and then the equally surprising amount of authors with names ending in Y, and then to the entirely predictable amount of authors with names ending in X (poor lonely Can Xue and Gao Xingjian), when she heard the door inside the horseshoe’s start at A open, and a man entered.

Alexander called to him, “Anthony.”

Anthony stopped mid-step with a pause as if Alexander had said, “Freeze!” He reversed his steps, spun, and scurried over with a climactic hop, landing before Alexander to say, “Yesss?”

Alexander lowered his phone and asked Anthony, “Do you love me?”
It wasn’t so much that Anthony looked, dressed, moved, and sounded gay – rather he looked like the homosexuals that haunt fundamentalist’s nightmares: brightly colored clothing interestingly cut to reveal random spaces of toned hairless flesh; drama in every movement; every stance not just the position your body falls to naturally when you pause but a pose that has become the natural for Anthony through years of practice; his voice when he says, “That depends on what you want,” annunciated, musical, not the typical laziness of the common American (straight) male.

“Well…” Alexander started, “Would you mind continuing Ms. Lucy Faas’ tour for me? This is going to take a while,” indicating his cellphone.

Anthony looked over at Lucy approaching them and asked, “How long until dinner?”

Alexander glanced at the clock on his phone and answered, “Half-hour.”

“Sure,” Anthony said in a you know I’m doing you the biggest favor in the world victim voice.

“Is that all right, Lucy?” Alexander asked.

“Sure,” Lucy said, echoing Anthony’s tone.

“Lucy Faas – Anthony Lawrence Lee. Now, I’ve shown her all of the first floor except for the Spicers, the Bath-room, and my room, where she’ll be staying,” (Anthony gives him a wide-eyed lascivious whistle that Alexander ignores), “which I’ll show her after dinner. Nothing of the second floor or basement.”

“Okay. I’ve got it.”

“I’m sorry about this, Lucy. I’ll see you at dinner, okay?”

“Okay.”“Are you ready?” Anthony asks her, and rushes over to the door. Lucy is startled by his quickness, and has to scramble after him to catch up, then almost bowls him over when he runs back in to exchange the book he had entered the library to deposit in the first place.

Chapter Two

2008-08-21T23:14:00.000-07:00

The gate opened to reveal a dense colonnade of trees in warm shadow. The lane was paved with grass, with four stripes of light-brown gravel that would narrowly accommodate the wheels of two cars driving in opposite directions. Looking through the gaps between the outside row, Lucy saw only a contiguous profusion of trees, spaced with phenomenal transparency, seeming to reveal more than the twenty or so feet she actually saw; though peering diagonally into the right side of the drive she caught a glimpse of some dark amorphous shapes that were large enough to be people.

The curve of the sycamore columned lane was subtle enough that Lucy didn’t realize it was curved until the high hedge-wall she noticed rise up far ahead, seemed to roll back like a puppet-show curtain, and without warning the lane exploded into a oval meadow, copious with an easy sunlight over bright green grass, before the home’s face, the entry and exit lanes splitting to rejoin at the home’s left edge, where the balloon shaped area burst and a flagstoned drive hissed out around the home’s far corner.

The home itself was monumental, too much to process at once: Lucy had to read it slow as Colin Rowe[1]. The first chapter contained a long, high, three-storied wall leading from the left edge along just short of three quarters the home’s length, clad in the same honey brown stone of the fence-wall. Braille homonym of windows: a small arched window next to a larger round window, mirrored from first floor to second, then eight two-story-high vertical rows of rectangular windows before the circle/arch group is reversed; and there, high on the third story, just under the brown-tiled roof’s overhang, a thin ribbon of windows rushed along in a Morse code stutter. The wall ended, and the second chapter of the home began, short, but containing a lot of important information in its round turret, tapering inward as it rose to its two-story heighth[2], graced with a large eye of rosette window above the mouth of home’s entryway, reminiscent of a cathedral’s entrance. The third and final chapter of the home rushed past the turret to the right, two-stories initially, rising away to a full three-story heighth again toward the rear of the home, the roof in miniature bisecting the front face, shading a row of small windows along the right two-thirds, a large half-circular window lower at right, and a wide lower-case m of color-tinted windows perched above. Lucy discovered there was an addendum to the third chapter as the angle of her view shifted with the cab’s advancement, past the front wall’s terminus, further down the home’s side, but the hedge-wall obscured critical examination.

The cab spit watermelon seeds of gravel from its tires, halting in front of the entrance steps, and Lucy got out, dragging the bag she had been sharing her seat with across after her ito the cut grass and warm wood scented drive. As it was her only bag, Jim the cabbie stayed in the car to receive his fare with tip, returning a “Thanks” to her offering, and drove the contoured drive away. Lucy turned from the receding cab to have her eyes climb up the turret’s heighth and see a backlit figure bending over the precipice left of the turret, waving to her.

“Lucy,” the figure’s voice glided down, “I’ll be right there.” Angling her gaze to follow him Lucy could see the doorway he disappeared through and she thought she saw another figure, large and dim, standing back in the doorway shadow, but dismissed it as a trick of the afternoon light soaring over the home.

The lone palm tree at the corner of the flagstone path waved, also craving Lucy’s attention, but the home was blocking the facilitating breeze that would tap her on the shoulder, so the curve of the turret’s wall inward toward the door instead pulled her up the half-dozen entrance steps onto the small front landing, where she set her bag down. The turret walls were clad in the same stone as the other walls, but here were ground smooth and polished. Lucy felt the cool stone as it bent to meet the entrance wall, swiveled her neck to look up the wall’s arch to its apex, where there hung an unlit iron chandelier. On the stone Lucy’s hand drummed the fingering pattern that was the left half of her song Cali: this was a common tendency of her hands, subconscious metamorphosis of whatever object was under her fingertips into piano keys (anthro-piano-phizing?), manifesting itself whenever her attention abandoned her fingers to study things like new cities, or iron chandeliers; they weren’t always limited to her songs either: she had played a compilation album’s worth of Rufus Wainright, Ben Folds and Teagan Andrews upon the cab door’s armrest on the airport drive.

Turning towards the door’s silent opening, sensing its inward hinging, Lucy saw a man emerge. “Hi – welcome, welcome,” he said, reaching quickly with his right hand to grasp and pump her reciprocating hand (not a piano player, she Holmesed – Sherlock, not John – from his grip) while stooping to scoop up her bag with his left, coming back up to his full impressive height[3] before he had gotten two of the shakes finished in his series of five. “I’m Alexander Murphy.”

“Lucy Faas.”

“Yes, yes – of course. You could say I’m a bit of a fan.”

“Oh. Good.” Lucy said, mustering pleasantness, thinking dryly, “Great. He’ll probably never leave me alone.” Alexander was stout, and almost a foot taller than Lucy’s five foot seven and a half (you always had to add the half). He had short, dark brown hair the color of stained mahogany that lay forward on his head and branched out over his forehead’s precipice; a deep maroon t-shirt over charcoal trousers over black leather shoes; a cheerful, though unimpressive face with five o’clock shadow though it was four; but then Alexander has a pair of unbearably blue eyes: clean sky reflected in mountain lake, a woman could drown in those eyes believing she was floating through air if she were not careful. Lucy sighed imperceptibly through her nose, then followed Alexander’s gentlemanly wave through the threshold, into his home.

Lucy stepped into a cavernous entryway. Bright sunlight obscured what lay ahead at the end of a sweeping right wood-paneled wall, pierced only by a set of double doors about twenty feet from the front door. From the far passage back to where Lucy stood a wide stairway curled, widening where it salaamed the floor. Another passage ducked away from the entryway between the staircase and the wall that completed the space at left. Alexander opened the door that alone broke this final plane – one of those split over-under doors, appropriate, for Lucy saw it sentried a coatroom.

Before entering the coatroom she pivoted to appreciate the rosette window. It was of a contemporary design – not symmetrical, but with the figure of a man and small girl at lower left, and several smaller scenes radiating out. The depicted two were in poor, but modern dress, and Lucy had just begun searching her memory for what bible story this might correspond to (such was the sacrosanct feeling of the entryway), when Alexander elucidated, “It’s inspired by Les Miserables.”

“Ahh.”

“Are you familiar with the story?”

“I saw the musical years ago.”

“It’s my favorite Broadway show and novel.”

“Ahh,” Lucy said in the acknowledgement of strangers compiling information to soon qualify for acquaintanceship.

“You can put your coat in here if you like,” he said, revealing a room that encompassed the entire space of that wall, containing perhaps fifty coats, many with boots and galoshes set on a metal grating that outlined the floor’s edge. At center was a large wooden bench ringing a solid rectangular cube of backrest that looked like it had been bought at auction from a Rockwellian frozen pond-side ice-skating rink. “If you have rain-boots you might want to leave them here too,” Alexander said, holding her bag forward in tandem with his suggestion.

“I don’t have any – should I get some?”

“If you’re planning on staying through winter and going outside it’s a really good idea; when the rains come here they come like they have someplace to get to” Alexander said with a boyish smile.

Lucy took another gleaning look around the room, trying to grasp the variegated fullness of the coatroom. She inhaled the cedar and earth smell of the room, then asked, “How many people do you have staying here?” placing a particular emphasis on the word” have.”

“Uh,” Alexander tried to work out a quick head count, matching jacket to guest, “I want to say you’ll make twenty-seven.”

“Wow,” was Lucy’s stunned reply.

“Yeah, we’re full up. In fact I’ll be putting you up in my room.”

“Your room? But I don’t want to be putting you out…” Lucy started a sincere protest.
“Naw, don’t worry about it. I’m just going to bunk in the studio upstairs. My room should actually work out really well for you if you’re going to be composing.”

And before she could remonstrate further he asked, “Now, do you want to go straight to your room and freshen up, or do you want the tour?”

“I’m a little antsy from the trip, so I think if you can handle my bag I can handle the tour,” she enforced this concept with a nervous, energized shake from her hair out to her fingertips.

“Alright,” leading Lucy back into the entryway, “Now you have to determine how you want your tour to be. If you want your tour to start gradually then build to a climax: choose the left path. Or, if you wish, there is the immediate gratification of the right path, followed by a diminishing sense of the impressive.”

Alexander couldn’t have known how this simple attempt at character-elevating charm would cut Lucy (not deep – merely a kitchen nick, but those sure can sting). For her there wasn’t a choice, she would like to have chosen the left path had things been different – the singular draw of science fiction for her was the idea that somewhere there was an alternate universe where she wasn’t so directed by the negatives of her past. But the right path, with its promise of intense immediacy, was all she knew. The familiar trumping the desired. She would endure it, today was not the day when she would throw down her spectral oppressors; and so she winced, and with eyes closed, said, “The right.”

“Up or down? The effect is equal.”

Another wince, “Down.”

“Alright, if you’re sure.” Alexander sensed Lucy’s reticent change in demeanor, without grasping why – feeling the chill without realizing the source of the draft.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Alexander adjusted the strap on Lucy’s bag so it would hang to his lower back instead of his shoulder blades, and slung it over his shoulder, which was oddly intimate, and reassuring to Lucy: Alexander carrying her weight. Walking down the hall toward the room of light Alexander first pointed to the double doors, simply saying, “Kitchen,” and then to a series of paintings along the wall. The canvases were curved to match the wall’s curve. “These are by a local artist, a professor I had at Westmont,” Alexander conveyed.

“That’s around here, right? The college there were signs for off the freeway?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah, it’s a couple of roads over,” Alexander replied. Having given this tour countless times he had developed the habit of slowing slightly after drawing attention to something, so that the visitor sensed their options to stop or continue on.

Lucy figured she’d have plenty of time for closer inspection on her all too frequent work breaks (victim to the same malaise that kept me from finishing this novel in a reasonable amount of time), and wanted just the general now, not decreasing the rate at which her little legs strode. She liked that though you could see money as the home’s true foundation here was art made locally, not the ostentation or unimaginativeness of a big name artist. Lucy recognized that there are ways money can make things very cheap. “What did you major in?” she asked.

“English,” he answered.

“Oh yeah? People always assume that if I were to go to college I would study music. But I always figured, ‘Hey, I already know music’; I’d want to study something I don’t know that much…” She got about halfway through the word about when her train of thought uncoupled and crashed down into Lost Idea Ravine, as she entered the far room.

“Room?” she internally scoffed, wasn’t the right word for this space before her. Auditorium perhaps; Great Hall might suffice. She definitely thought its name deserved a prefacing signifier like Great, or Grand; if dancing were its purpose Grand Ballroom would be an appropriate title. This Great/Grand room opened up with a big bang, a universe of hardwood floor expanding rapidly away from her, pushing before it a wall of windows, floor to ceiling, encompassing three high-ceilinged stories, a set of glass double-doors only distinguished by their push-bars in the middle. The wall ended to the right in an enormous fireplace of dark rounded stones and decorated iron fireback, large enough, Lucy suspected, that if Alexander was inclined to roast a wild boar he would find ample space for his spit. The next wall, right of the chimney was constructed of the same stone used on the exterior, with eight stripes of windows inset, four-feet from floor up to four-feet from ceiling. Several of the windows were stained glass in various abstract patterns of sharp color in soft shapes, and the top windows were slanted downward to follow the roof’s slope from three stories to two, where the wall ended behind her.

Lucy had to walk well into the room to see that there was a full size bar against the wall to her right, like a real European pub bar with tiers of various spirits before a mirrored back wall, split into three segments by two wooden glass-doored cases housing industrial sized blenders. Tall stools with wooden back-rests lined the offset counter, topped by a set of ale taps, soda fountain, and at the end what looked like a Slurpee machine swirling blue, green and brownish-red. Under the counter she could see three clear-doored refrigerators: one stacked with wine and champagne (and “sparkling wine” for the finicky) bottles, another with rows of bottled ales, and the third fridge filled with Jones sodas, juices, iced teas, and water; racks filled with the basic varieties of drinking glasses, and a brushed steel icemaker. The only thing to distinguish this from a working pub was the absence of a cash register.

Stepping further into the Great/Grand room Lucy saw that the ceiling over the bar was on its opposite side the second floor landing, which served as observation deck and walkway, continuing into an L shape along the left wall, helixed wrought-iron staircases at each tip of the L. The left wall continued the wood paneling of the front hall, freight-sized elevator doors echoed on first floor and landing early on the wall, a single door further down the first, three doors evenly spaced on the landing.

There wasn’t much furniture in the expanse of room, a cluster of couches around the fire place; a few cabinets along the left wall; pool, foosball, and air-hockey tables near the bar, a row of pinball machines and arcade games on the wall behind the tables.

Taking everything in Lucy was exceptionally vulnerable to any belligerent bug’s kamikaze attack to her eyes or mouth.

“Here’s the living room,” Alexander said with nonchalance.

“Damn,” Lucy said, “a lot of people could do their living here.”

“Two-Hundred-Fifty according to the fire code,” Alexander specified.

“Damn,” she repeated. The room had completely disarmed her of any secondary attention, but she was only overwhelmed by the vast possibilities of the room, the variations of living that could occur here. The space seemed out of our time, of another era; she loved it, but knew she didn’t have the language to defend it against those who would say it was more space than on man needs. It was a pure realm of want.

As the initial wonder subsided she began to notice that there were a few people in the room. “Are you ready to meet some of the other guests? Alexander asks motioning to a man behind the bar filling a pair of margarita glasses with the green contents of the Slurpee machine.

“Sure,” let’s get it over with.

“Alright,” Alexander led her over to the man.

Lucy looked more attentively at him, and he looked familiar to her. Really familiar. Too familiar. Wait a minute, oh my God it’s…

“Trevor. Hi,” Alexander said to him.

Trevor replied with “Hey Alexander,” and a slap to his shoulder.

“Trevor D. Lehm, I’d like to introduce you to Lucy Faas.”

“Singer pianist songwriter Lucy Faas?!” Trevor said, each of his titles on a higher plateau of enthusiasm. “I love your music! I’ve been trying to get your song, Being Driven into one of my movies for years but there’s always some issue with the studio and your label. Whatever,” he dismissed this.

One of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood loved – loved! – her music. Even wanted one of her songs to express something in his films. She couldn’t help but gush.

“Are you visiting or staying?” big Hollywood movie star Trevor asked.

“I’ll be staying,” Lucy squeaked. Lucy was the mousy music-girl high school student she had missed out on being through the developing music career that started for her at fifteen, necessitating independent study, finally culminating at seventeen, talking to her star quarterback, prom king, John Hughes flick hero, who was inexplicably excitably interested in her.

“Fabulous!” Trevor beamed, but then suddenly his countenance fell, and he asked, “Are you okay?”

Lucy was taken off guard. She had to ask herself, “You’re okay, right?” Herself answered, “Yeah, I think so…” There was doubt now.

She answered and asked Trevor, “Yeah – why?”

His reply, “Because you’ll be staying here…” didn’t really clarify anything for her. “Well, if you ever need to talk we’re in the Yellow Room. Come over anytime. Really.” The genuine look of concern on his face worried her, and she could see that he didn’t really believe that she was okay as she had insisted and was patiently waiting for the possibility of helping her out in her timeframe.

“I should get back to Steven. It was great meeting you,” he reached for her hand and shook it warmly (it was an effort for Lucy to restrain herself from batting Trevor’s hand away and jumping into his arms like a monkey). His hand was manicured and soft, and Lucy felt self-conscious about her piano-hardened fingers. “Alexander,” Trevor said to him in parting, picked up a small tray with his margaritas and walked off towards the far window-wall doors.

“Would you like something to drink?” Alexander asked her. “We have margaritas, virgin cherry-coke and blue raspberry here,” pointing to the Slurpee machine. “Beer, wine, soda, liquor?”

“Maybe some water. So Trevor Lehm is staying here?”

“Yeah. He just wrapped a film, and usually when he wraps he likes to spend a few weeks here cocooning with Steven.”

“Steven is…” she hoped she hadn’t guessed right.

“His partner. Steven Michaels – he’s an art director.”

Lucy’s high school fantasy, as was typical of her fantasies, acquired an inoculating dose of reality. “No,” she said in much the same way she would have responded if Alexander had said Trevor had cancer. “I had no idea.”

“It’s not public.”

“But, I mean, there aren’t even any rumors!”

“They’ve been pretty lucky so far.”

“Why is he keeping it ‘in the closet’? I mean, he’s a big enough star that he could come out if he wanted to.”

“He’ll give you a better answer than I can.”

“God, my mother is going to die!” a precursory gossipy glint already graced Lucy’s eye.

“Maybe now would be a better time to tell you about my home. Why don’t you sit over here,” he waved her over to the nearest barstool. “You wanted water, right?” He crouched before the appropriate fridge and read out, “Aquafina, Evian, Poland Springs, Perrier, or this blue bottled Welsh water.”

Lucy sat and swiveled her narrow bottom into her stool. “Tap is fine, really.”

“Oh no, the local water here is way too hard to enjoy.”

“Whatever one you recommend, then.” She looked over at a couple playing air hockey to see if they looked familiar too.

“Ice?”

“No, thanks.”

Alexander set an Aquafina bottle in front of her with a pint glass, drew himself a pint from the tap that read Henry Weinhard’s Root Beer, set it down on a cardboard pub coaster and walked around the bar to meet it. Lucy poured and partook, then glanced over the bottle’s label; despite the bottle’s insistence on a fancily filtered purity, the water tasted metallic – not unpleasantly, almost sweet – and so cold that it felt solid when she swallowed it, like a silver oyster, which skipped across the excitement plus jetlag churned contents of her stomach. He sat down, took a small sip through the head to avoid a bubble moustache, and started, “Okay, now about this home…”

[1] A reference solely as somethin’ for my Arky-Techs
[2] Yes, I realize this is an archaic spelling/pronunciation, but standing before any structure that stretches up like a titan, as your eyes climb up it, there is a pleasant blurring of its topmost edge that the hard bite of an alveolar stop “t” does not reflect; and, like a wayward sibling, it should be reunited with its kinship length, breadth, and width.
[3] Though not impressive enough to merit the extra h.

Chapter One

2008-07-06T23:05:00.000-07:00

Design Phase (Part One)

The road moved with the abrupt seeming randomness of a cat’s tail: sharply curved left, straight, softly curved left, straight, sharply curved right. A rocky little gully for runoff framed the roadside – only leaves within, embrittling in the sun during their long wait to be flushed down with the winter rains – and served as a base for the various privacy inducing walls, progressing from the conceptual boundary of trimmed hedges to the literal wood or finished concrete fences. But it was the sycamore trees that ensured the real privacy with a great contiguous canopy of the palmately lobed leaves that give all other North American trees leaf envy.

And where you can gauge the cat’s adulation or agitation from the tail’s movement, so too, from the backseat of a taxicab, Lucy Faas could tell by the way she swayed and slid gently across the ass-thinned upholstery with the road’s bends and how the tires purred over the sun-dappled, smooth asphalt, that her driver was getting scratched behind the ears by this drive. The problem this posed was that after her early flight (for her anything in the AM was early) she was drowsy, and the warm late summer Montecito air and softly droning taxi threatened to lull her out, something Lucy could not allow to happen.

Lucy was enthusiastic that Alexander’s home lay somewhere ahead in this veritable forest; not that the ride from the Santa Barbara Airport hadn’t held a fleeting promise. She had always dismissed Santa Barbara as an extension of the Southern California stereotype set forth by Los Angeles and Malibu – more money and less traffic lanes; it didn’t help that she had only been here once before, when she played the County Bowl, arriving and departing in the concealing night that would have blocked any revelatory view had she been peering out of her tour bus’s windows. But as the quaint hacienda of an airport led through the adjacent grassy marsh to the freeway, with its consistent views of the chaparral shrouded Santa Ynez Mountains that seemed like a great grizzly bear patriarch snuggled up under its favorite old tree-green throw-blanket: worn, so that patches of its auburn (sandstone) body were visible in spots[1]; to the town proper with its distinctive Spanish-tiled roofs, billboards banished by ordinance to hunch sardonically at a twenty mile distance, and the uncouth, spiky heads of palm trees; the freeway itself with shrub and young tree landscaped edges and a long nearly unbroken center of the beautiful but deadly (hence, not derogatively I promise, female) oleander that gave a pleasant green-white-pink blur; finally leading to a corridor of eucalyptus – the aromatherapeutic leaves almost analgesic, so engrained in childhood respiratory ailments their scent was – where the freeway narrowed to two lanes, with enough zippering traffic to ensure a lengthy view of the majestic trees, their sword-tongued leaves begging for a koala to spar with, so that when the cab took an exit that professed a college Lucy had never heard of was nearby, she assented her Santa Barbara stereotyping was pleasantly fallacious.

The drive’s only disappointment to Lucy, curiously, was its ocean views. The freeway felt sunken, trough-like, riding low between soundwalls for a good long while, and when the receding western Mesa hills gave the illusion that the highway was rising more than the road’s actual, gradual, few degrees rise, the ocean views were obstructed and infrequent; when a clean line of sight was enabled the oil derricks on the horizon killed it for her: great iron ticks draining earth’s blood.

Some Riviera!

Departing the freeway it became Montecito, well scrubbed and polished for her arrival – no trash, nary a leaf or nettle unbalancing the roadside composition – and Lucy’s interior compass was sent spinning by its tight winding roads and frequent turns.

After a dangerously long blink, eyelids so heavy they pulled her whole head down with their weight, Lucy internally mused, “So drowsy…wonder if the cabbie would say anything if I slapped myself across the face? Too lost up here: can’t risk him just throwing the crazy bitch out…” and thought it a more prudent idea to begin a conversation to keep herself awake; so with a quick glance down to the cab driver’s identification sheet, she asked him, “Have you been a cab driver here long, Jim?”

“Year and a half, Miss.”

“Lucy.”

“Miss Lucy,” Jim acknowledged

Lucy waited for the possible recognition in revealing her name, where some would provide her last name for her – the ubiquitous, “Hey, you’re…!” – not disappointed when Jim didn’t place her any more eminently. “The way you steer your course through here I would’ve guessed you were a veteran. I’ll never be able to find my way out,” Lucy said with a concluding whistle to enforce her point.

“Oh no, every cabbie in Santa Barbara knows the way to Mr. Murphy’s house. Any street over and I need the map,” Jim said, flicking his GPS navigation screen, making another deft and ensured turn onto another avenue indistinguishable to Lucy.

Lucy waited for a clarifying continuance from Jim, but soon realized that he considered his reply sufficiently self-evident. Instead he said, “You forget how beautiful it is up here.”

“Why’s that?” she humored him.

“People up here don’t usually take cabs. They have their drivers pick ‘em up, or don’t care about paying for airport parking.”

“From the look of these houses I’d believe it,” she said as a house with four garage doors waved smugly to their passing.

“Yeah, but it’s the ones you can’t see are the richest,” he said, and then appended, “When you just see the gate – or gates – but not the house.”

“Have you ever been to any of them?” she asked, looking for a horse in the riding pen they were then skirting.

“Naw, but I got my wife a book one time that was all estates up here. I remember one was so big it had a tram which took you around it,” he answered. She responded with a humph kind of laugh and a Wow.

The view was, sadly, equine free. A handsome mansion with an Elizabethan façade passed on the right, and all Lucy could think of was it couldn’t be that great because you could see it from the road. The cab turned right soon after, before an adobe wall colored Latin American Pink. From there on she couldn’t see more than a glimpse of any home, lacking any architectural context, only gates with Casa or Villa as a prefix to the structures beyond. After a long straightaway, she became ridiculously lost in the snugly wound hills. Time, too, had been given the slip for the moment, listening to the cab driver’s pleasant prattling about an annual art show at the college she had never heard of, which was apparently comprised entirely of angels, trusting that he indeed knew his way through the labyrinthine roads despite his lack of an opportunity to visit them with regularity.

Central-Coastal Californian light colored the cab (dare I continue the cat figurative language?) calico. Lucy was feeling a relaxation above simply the famous temperate climate here already, bolstered by her professional cabbie who, if he did recognize her modest celebrity, kept it to himself, and didn’t worry her by looking in his rearview mirror more than was necessary. She would have to remember to send a something, some gift, to her agent, Adam, who had suggested that she ask to stay at the home of someone named Alexander Murphy if she wanted someplace fresh where she might be able to get some work done on her comeback (a term she enjoyed as much as LL Cool J). The idea had seemed a random one to her – inviting oneself to stay at a male stranger’s house – but Adam had managed to navigate her through the treacherous straights of inherent wariness that usually kept her secured in her two-bedroom hermitage, convincing her, somehow (Lucy couldn’t fathom how he had done it), to shed her character and borrow a more adventurous one[2].

Along Lucy’s right a stone wall appeared: monolithic without being austere, feeling taller than those previous[3]. A minute further an entryway opened in the wall and the cab slowed to a gritted gravel stop before a large wooden gate. Jim the cabbie rolled down his window to face a camera lens and keypad. He pressed a button, and was greeted seconds later with a “Yes?” the word taffy-stretched into a long bell curve. Lucy liked the humorous tone of the speaker, it helped quell the sudden, queasy, extreme close-up pull upon the fact that she was here at the trailhead of a great mount of unknowns, about to tread her way up in new shoes.

Jim yelled to the camera, probably louder than was necessary, “Hey Mr. M., I’ve got a Miss Lucy here for you.”

“Do you now? All right, be so kind as to bring her up to the house then , please,” Mr. M. replied.

Electric hands pulled the gate open and the cab served as the antonym to Lucy by striding confidently inside.

[1] No, that’s not right: it is too warm in Santa Barbara in September for that description to work. Jury of my readers, please strike this simile from my testimony, so that when I recycle it later in this book you can say to yourself, “Ah – what a nice simile!”
Instead, rather believe now that the hills looked like a legion of dusky green lizards lying over the hills, lethargic in the ambition sapping, siesta inducing, Santa Barbara early afternoon sunshine.
[2] Were I creating this as a graphic novel I would have a difficult time illustrating the fluctuating expression of Lucy’s mouth as her visage, tilted slightly upward, vacillated between apprehension and enthusiasm.
[3] Wait for Appendix A for a more in depth look at Alexander’s fence-wall

Dedications

2008-07-06T22:53:00.000-07:00

For

My parents, who made the library a favorite destination, and encouraged everything I have ever done.

and Steph, the one person I write for, always.

Acknowledgements

2008-06-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

There is no one to blame for the following story but myself. It has not been edited, or even influenced through the suggestion of others.

So, in lieu of official thanks on the novel's development, let me make the following acknowledgements:

Thank you to all of the teachers who got sick so I could substitute teach in their classrooms, especially the ones who did not give me very much to do with their classes other than babysit independent work, which gave me the free time behind a desk where I wrote the majority of this novel, while still managing to make some money to live by.

Thank you to Federal Express for providing a work environment where I could put my body on autopilot and assign my mind for a significant number of hours onto story tasks, while still managing to make some money to live by.

Thank you to Chapman University's computer lab printers for revising draft copies.

And finally, thank you Diana Soini, of santabarbarahikes.com, who answered a question I had on some flowers. I believe she is the only one I consulted personally on the book.

About the Author

2008-01-22T22:59:00.000-08:00

Josh Karaczewski is the semi-pseudonym of a writer for whom the act of publishing has taken the majority of fun out of writing. Perhaps later he will reaquire the stamina for seeking validation for his writing through attempted publication, but now he is much more interested in having this novel - and especially these characters - encountered by others.

Maybe the novel sat too long. Maybe other occupations eclipsed the incessent desire to hone and revise. Maybe he will discover a lucidity concerning the work - but he doubts it. He likes the story, the characters are real to him, and that is enough.

In entries to follow he will share this work of years here for whomever is interested. He will try to refrain from referring to himself in the third-person, but he makes no promises.

Suggestions on how he might improve his writing are not solicited, but will be accepted.

Comments and likewise examples of existance are craved above all.