HOPE FOR CHANGE... But Settle for a Bailout (26 page)

“It’s not good news,” said Lena.

“There is no movie,” said von Sommerberg.
“There. I said it.”

“The Royal Ballet will archive our work and
we retain exclusive first-use of the raw material for 24 months,”
said Lena.

“Oh,” said Larry, not shifting from monitor
scanning and hand-holding. “Um, hey, sorry, you know. It’s not
gonna kill you, is it?”

Lena laughed. “You Americans are so
dramatic.”

“For me, it’s not so bad,” said von
Sommerberg. “In the Dogme95 style, the director does not receive a
credit, so for me, well, who would know? It’s not like we’re
sounding a horn, you know?”

“And Larry,” said Lena, “Larry?”

“Yes, Ms. Martins?”

“Please, would you tell Miss Lewis a big,
big hello from me? She will be viewed in the archive, perhaps even
by Her Majesty.”

“Okay,” said Larry. “I will, Lena. Sorry
about the movie.”

“And the Royal Ballet, Larry,” said Lena,
“someone from the ballet will seek out Emma.”

“Yeh, okay,” said Larry, “that’s good… bye,”
and he pushed the red button, ending the call.

Chapter Sixteen

Potatoes in the Pilothouse

Larry clamped a red-&-green navigation
lamp to the bow of the Whitehall, as I sat in the rowboat. “Why do
you use clamp-ons?” I asked, watching Larry screw a white lamp onto
a thin metal pole mounted to the stern.

“Calvin’s bastards go to war with me over
every rowboat I’ve ever had,” said Larry, reaching into his pocket
to pull out a brass ring. He knelt and picked up one of the four
oars, sliding the ring onto the oar and handing it to me. I slipped
the peg of the oar ring into a mount to my left and, when Larry
handed me a second oar, into the mount on my right. Larry slid
rings onto the two remaining oars, which he left on his
grandmother’s dock as he stepped carefully into the boat. When he
was seated, he reached for the oars, mounted them into their
hardware, untied the boat from its cleat and pushed off.

“Why are we doing this at eight at night?” I
asked.

The Whitehall drifted lazily into the middle
of the wide slip that could easily berth an enormous craft, but
which held only Larry’s 14-foot rowboat. Larry dipped his oars into
the water and pulled, moving silently into the straight that
separated Treasure Island from the Peninsula.

“Helps me think,” said Larry. “Everyone is
over there and I can be here, safe, away from them.” He waved
across the bay, to the dock from which Italian-style gondolas took
couples and groups on picturesque tours of the Naples canal, and
beyond that, to the thatched-roof beach shack, with its holiday
lights glowing around the bamboo bar and the sounds of laughter
drifting across the water.

As Larry rowed, I looked onto the water, at
the long, wiggling silver reflection of the full moon. If I was
trapped, at least I had a warm jacket.

“Keep your oars up, Lawrence,” said Larry,
as he rowed, facing me as I sat at the rear. “I don’t want to go
fast… I just wanna row.” He took the boat to the middle of the bay,
towards a tall, white buoy. When he got alongside the buoy, he made
a 90-degree turn and continued rowing. “Ed had a scandal, you
know.”

“What?” I said. “What do you mean, he had a
scandal?”

Larry kept up his rowing. The water rushing
over the oars came up silvery-green as Larry rowed the Whitehall
into the river of silver light. upon the water wiggled under the
spell of the oars.

“When I said to Ed that you had something on
him,” said Larry, rowing without breaking rhythm, “he said, ‘oh, he
probably just wants to tell you about the scandal.’ ”

“What scandal?” I said.

“Just a sex and drugs thing, Ed told me,”
said Larry. “Something about entertainment clients.”

“O… k-a-y…,” I said, not sure where to go
with this. “Do you wanna dump the guy?”

“No,” said Larry, as we approached the entry
to the Rivo Alto Canal that circled its way through Naples Island.
“Sort’a makes me feel more comfortable with the dude. Just thought
you would want to know.” Larry turned the boat so he was pushing
the oars to move, with my end of the boat now at the front. “Oh,
and Emily’s got a lot of family stuff going on, so we might not see
her much.”

“Larry, we really don’t have that much to do
right now,” I said. “Your money’s safe. You have liquid capital.
And it doesn’t seem to have changed you, so….”

“You know Lori almost went to the Olympics?”
Larry asked.

“Lori what?” I said, astonished. Why is it
that every time I hear her name, I’m both happy and torn up into
little pieces.

“W’ull, it wasn’t the Olympics, but she came
in fourth. She needed to be first or second.”

“Where? When?”

“Last weekend… the… uh… western regional
trials to qualify for the national thing,” said Larry. “Oh, and I’m
gonna give you a receipt for five hundred from Ralphie and he’ll
come by asking for three months pay to be my driver.”

“… Ralphie?”

“Yeh, the driver.” Larry turned the boat
easily and aimed us towards Treasure Island, looking over his
shoulder several times to gauge position. “We agreed to $1,750 a
week.”

“Seven thousand dollars a month for a car!”
I yelled. “Are you crazy?”

“It’s okay,” said Larry, lifting his oars
oat of the water and letting the Whitehall slowly drift into his
grandmother’s enormous slip. “He’s got a Lincoln. With a fridge.
He’s gonna put in a safe, too, so I guess you’ll get your vault,
Lawrence.”

I was stupefied, but at least Lori wasn’t
kicking my shin. “Ralphie….”

“Yep,” said Larry, rowing a tiny stroke at a
time, to bring the rowboat in towards the dock. Larry dipped just
one oar in the water for small circular motions, to control the
drift to the dock. When we drew close, Larry grabbed a cleat,
pulling the Whitehall to the dock and tying it off.

“The Olympics,” I said softly, not
disbelieving, but amazed. On a good day, I knew Lori could take any
competition. She’s as strong and disciplined as anyone I’d ever
known. During our marriage, when she’d go for long swims in the
Belmont Olympic Pool, I would sit in the bleachers, watching her
swim for as much as an hour at a time, just for that glimpse of her
stepping from the water, like a goddess rising from the foam.
Records she set at Wilson still stood fifteen years later. She once
showed me a photo of her at 13 with the gray haired woman who
coached her and in the photo, Lori’s face showed awe and intense
responsibility as she held her coach’s gold medals.

“The Olympics,” I said again, softly.

.

“So, uh, yeh,” said Larry, stirring his
coffee.

Ed, in a crisp tee shirt and baggy shorts,
had a steaming egg roll in his fingers. “Hot! Hot!” he gasped after
the first bite.

“Larry mentioned something to me,” I said,
holding my coffee.

“Oh, the sex-and-drug thing?” said Ed,
dipping his egg roll into sweet and sour sauce.

“Those smell really good,” said Larry.

“Want one, man?” asked Ed.

“No, no, I don’t wanna....”

Ed pushed the box of two remaining egg rolls
towards Larry and stood up. “No worries, dude, I’ll get me more.”
Ed walked around the corner.

“Larry!” I fumed. “Bad timing.”

Larry picked up an egg roll.

“You only get one chance to see a person’s
true reaction to a bombshell, and now Ed has time to compose
himself and figure out the next thing he’s gonna say.”

Ed returned.

“So how’s ‘Lonely Island?’ ” asked
Larry.

“Man, that shark!” said Ed, laughing. “Good
add. They honestly all look freaked.”

“So what’s the scandal?” asked Larry,
quickly.

Hearing a number called aloud, Ed stood, “My
number, but I’ll be back. I’m not running away.” A few seconds
later, Ed returned with two boxes of egg rolls and several sauce
containers.

“What do we need to know?” I asked.

“No one was arrested, no one got hurt, no
one lost money,” said Ed. “Just had some wacked out entertainment
clients who wanted me to score and party ‘em up.” Ed pulled off the
top of the first egg roll, repeating the bared teeth exclamation.
“Hot, hot.”

.

Larry stood near the front railing of his
grandmother’s balcony, with a metal bucket of tiny yellow potatoes
sitting open on a director’s chair next to him. Below, two teens
walked slowly onto the dock where Emma’s slip lay empty, save for
the Whitehall. Larry loaded a potato in one hand and several in the
other and cocked his arm.

Seconds later, a yellow spud sped across the
distance, smacking a teen in the back of his neck. A second and
third potato caught the other teen on his chest and shoulder, and a
fourth spud hit the first teen again, as they scrambled off the
dock, flashing middle fingers upwards as they ran.

.

‘Oh, this is really nice,” said Emily,
wrapping a wide shawl around her shoulders as Larry spun the
Whitehall, maneuvering so that the rowboat moved slowly into the
Rivo Alto canal. Docks on either side of the canal held a plethora
of electric pleasure boats, speed boats and motor cruisers of
varying sizes, sailboats and, beyond the final bridge, the giants.
“Thanks for suggesting this, because it’s been really crazy at
home. This helps a lot.”

“Like, what’s going on?”

“Oh, just my mom….”

“Who has a store…,” said Larry.

“… furniture now. Antiques,” said Emily.
“She’s pretty deep in debt, and me and my brother and uncle, we
figure we’re just not going to get our stake back, since we’re not
seeing anything to replace the cash she needed for estate sales…
and forget my stake, you know, one day she’ll have
nothing
to pass down.
Nothing.
And so what was it all for?”

.

Larry cranked the Victrola, as Emily sat in
a wing chair along the front wall, looking to the Thorvaldsen.
“That’s amazing you have a piece by Bertel Thorvaldsen. How did you
even get that?”

“W’ull, it wasn’t me, but I suppose I could
probably buy another one,” said Larry. “It was my grandmother’s
mom... she was really big as a dancer, real famous in Denmark,
danced for the King, had lots of visitors here in California. I
think it was a friend of her dad or uncle that brought the statue
from Italy and travelled on the boat and then the train that
carried the Thorvaldsen here.” Larry dropped the needle onto a disc
of Enrico Caruso, producing crackling, popping hisses underneath
the sounds of an orchestra and a voice that carried across the
ages, across technology, each sweet note filling the studio.

Emily finished her cup of coffee and set the
cup and saucer on her thigh. “Thanks, Larry,” she said. “I needed
this. You’re really a good guy. I hope your grandmother comes home
soon.”

“Yeh,” said Larry. “Me, too.”

.

Ed sat in the middle of the Whitehall,
facing Larry, in the stern, who was doing all the rowing. Ed sat
poised with a notepad and pen.

“Okay,” said Larry. “Ewa Sonnet....”

“She’d take a meeting, her contact said.
Preferably New York or Paris.”

“Miriam Gonzalez.”

“Her person said to stop calling.”

“Anekee,” said Larry, pushing forward in a
circular rotation, moving the rowboat ahead.

“Still waiting to hear.”

“Odalys Garcia?”

“Her agent said yes to an initial meeting,”
said Ed. “She is open to film. Depends on script.”

The rowboat narrowly missed banging into the
center lane buoy at the mouth of the canal, leading out onto the
straight between the Peninsula and Naples. “A movie with Odalys
Garcia,” said Larry, absently. “Who wouldn’t wanna see
that
?”

“Most chicks,” said Ed.

.

Lori covered her face with a towel while
adjusting her position on the lounger on Emma’s balcony. “Bix, has
December spent any time over here?”

“Actually, I haven’t seen her since the
hospital.”

“I haven’t either,” she said, reaching for
her glass of water with lemon. “Just thought, maybe she’d... you
know… like… call.” Lori sipped her water and set the glass onto the
table.

.

Larry rowed hard. The Whitehall, with its
keel and wide bottom, flew across the water, as he looked over his
shoulder, to gauge position. Behind him and closing from the
distance was an enormous, gleaming motor yacht crossing the bay in
his direction. Grotesque in its enormity, the boat hypnotically
pulled Larry’s focus towards it.

As it drew near, the boat climbed into the
sky as Larry, in his 14-foot rowboat, craned his neck to look up,
to the very top, and in the pilothouse there stood a smiling,
deeply-tanned, bare-chested man with graying hair, one hand on the
wheel and another holding a beer can.

With Larry mesmerized, the wake from the
motor yacht caught him by surprise. It took a moment for Larry to
steady the Whitehall, as he watched the man and his machine motor
past. The shirtless man drank from his beer, looked down towards
Larry, smiled and waved.

Chapter Seventeen

Ring the Golden Bells

“So here’s what I worked out,” Larry told
me, as we walked in the front door of his apartment. Inside, there
was the heavy smell of stale clothes and food long ago lost in
clutter.

On the long wooden dining table, heaped with
newspapers, books and magazines, was a golden metal object rising
through the mountain of papers.

It was a cash register. It could have been a
hundred years old.

The round keys gave it the look of a
typewriter, but with numerals and a few function keys. Larry
eagerly stood next to the register, his hands tenderly caressing
it.

“So, say I want to give my driver, Ralphie,
the cash he needs to buy a safe and a second refrigerator for the
Lincoln,” said Larry, keying in numbers, pushing an arithmetic
function key and pulling a long lever on the side of the machine,
which produced a ringing sound and was followed by a narrow tape
being spit out and the cash drawer opening simultaneously. Larry
handed me the tape, which simply showed random numbers. “But then I
just…,” said Larry, taking the tape back, signing it and handing it
back to me. “And, presto!”