Jubilee Hitchhiker (116 page)

Gilderbloom made herself useful at the Bolinas house. Skilled with a needle, she sewed all the cushions for Richard's dining room. She prepared pancakes from scratch for breakfast while Ianthe squeezed fresh orange juice. One day, randomly browsing through an old wooden chest, Mary Ann came across a 1901 edition of
Wedded and Parted
, a novel by Charlotte Braeme, originally published in 1883. The heroine was named Lady Ianthe. “Look at this,” Mary Ann said, showing the book to Richard, who passed it along to his daughter. Ianthe, long convinced her name was unique, found this literary coincidence “a bit startling.”

Bolinas provided Brautigan and Gilderbloom a vibrant social life. There were lively parties at the Creeleys'. “He was such a decent man,” Mary Ann said. “More drydock than Richard.” She recalled their heavy drinking. “I remember going to the Creeleys' one night, and there were a whole bunch of people, and the house was just warm and ripe. Bobby Louise was such a woman. She had this voice and this sexiness about her.”

Gilderbloom recalled spending time at Don Allen's house in Bolinas. “Really incredible evenings at the Allen household, which was nice and small and totally intimate and wonderful warm and filled with a soft yellow light.” Don also entertained in the daytime. “We'd all be at his house on a Sunday afternoon,” Mary Ann remembered. “A whole bunch of us were sitting on the front porch and somebody pulled out a joint. They were passing it around, and it came to me, and [Richard] came and he put both hands on my shoulders, and I passed it right by. He didn't expect it of me.” Once, in a glow of good spirits after an agreeable bohemian soiree, Brautigan told Gilderbloom that “when he died he wanted to be burned in a big fire-pyre on the Bolinas beach. Then you can just ship me out on a big wooden raft.”

When his walking cast came off for good in November, Richard flew down to Monterey for a long weekend of frolicking with Price Dunn. As always, he stayed at Borg's Motel. Brautigan returned to San Francisco just before the end of the month and departed the next day for New York, flying on American with his daughter, Ianthe's first trip to the East Coast. They checked in to a suite at One Fifth Avenue for a two-week stay, and Richard stocked the place with an ample supply of Courvoisier.

Ianthe had a fine time in New York. Her father gave her cab fare and expense money. She went ice skating at the sunken Lower Plaza in the heart of Rockefeller Center and attended the ballet at Lincoln Center on her own. Treating her like a grown-up, Brautigan brought Ianthe to dinner at Helen Brann's Sutton Place apartment. Bored with the literary shoptalk, she spent the evening playing with Denver and George.

When Ianthe wanted to see more of the city, Richard asked Gatz Hjortsberg, a native New Yorker, to guide them on an improvised tour. In town to attend a
Playboy
awards banquet at the Four Seasons (an abbreviated version of his novel
Gray Matters
garnered Best First Contributor), Gatz had been trampled by a rodeo bull the month before on assignment for
Sports Illustrated
. “All covered in hoof-prints,” Tom McGuane observed.

Late in the morning of the day the
Apollo 17
lunar module set down on the surface of the moon, Richard and Gatz, both limping, explored Manhattan, an adventure planned for their daughters. Ianthe enjoyed looking after six-year-old Lorca, holding her hand as they hurried across crowded streets and down into numerous subway stations. Their first stop took them far uptown, to Fort Tryon Park.

They came to see The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art located on a four-acre hill at the upper end of the park. Built around enclosed quadrangles with architectural elements salvaged from several abandoned French Romanesque and Gothic monasteries, The Cloisters housed a portion of the Met's astonishing collection of medieval art. Unfortunately, the place was closed on Mondays, a fact lost on Brautigan's native-born guide. It was a clear windy morning, and the intrepid quartet wandered around the exterior terraces and sere winter gardens.

By lunchtime they were famished. Gatz led his charges from the very top of Manhattan to the Fulton Fish Market on the East River just below the Brooklyn Bridge. In the midnineteenth century, the area bustled with activity, alive with ship chandlers' shops, sailmakers' lofts, counting-houses, and warehouses, the very heart of the port of New York. China clippers moored in every slip, upthrust bowsprits angling out over South Street. This was the city familiar to Herman Melville. By 1972, the place teetered on the precipice of oblivion. All Melville would recognize from the great age of sail were old Federal-style red brick buildings, constructed between 1811 and 1813, now mostly boarded up, slate tiles slipping off their mansard roofs. The Fulton Fish Market, built in 1822, was one such survivor.

Richard found the old neighborhood fascinating. Gatz brought them to Sloppy Louie's, a venerable seafood restaurant across South Street from the Fish Market. The place remained at heart a workingman's joint, with sawdust-covered floors, mirrored walls, a pressed-tin ceiling, and twelve bare wooden tables scarred from decades of use. Sloppy Louie's served an extensive variety of fresh seafood at reasonable prices. Richard, Gatz, and their daughters ordered from the daily menu hand-lettered with wet chalk onto a large mirror at the back of the room.

After lunch, they walked for a couple blocks along South Street, turning west on Maiden Lane and continuing south to Wall Street through the coffee-roasting district. Gatz directed his party into the heart of the Financial District. Much to Richard's delight, he pointed out the large bomb scars pockmarking the marble facade of J. P. Morgan & Company, remnants of an anarchist attack in 1920 that killed thirty-eight innocent pedestrians.

Continuing westward on Wall to Broadway, they spent a short time exploring the Trinity Church cemetery, where Richard lingered for several intense minutes staring silently at Alexander Hamilton's tomb. Soon, they all headed south down Broadway, urged along by the daughters, who anxiously anticipated their final adventure of the day, a trip to the Statue of Liberty.

The ferry trip across the upper bay over to Liberty Island took fifteen minutes. After disembarking, the four gawking tourists traversed the back end of the small island, sharing an unspoken excitement. Even Gatz felt an unfamiliar thrill. Like his companions, he had not been here before. Native-born New Yorkers never do anything so corny as visiting the Statue of Liberty.

The interior of the giant statue was even more amazing than its dramatic exterior. An elevator carried them up through the ten floors of the pedestal, after which they climbed a circular iron staircase for the next twelve stories. They ascended slowly. Richard's recently mended broken leg caused him considerable discomfort. Up in the crown, the incredible gull's-eye view of the harbor
and the Verrazano Bridge provided an ample reward for the rigors of the climb. A pale winter sun hung low over New Jersey. The day was ending.

It was cocktail hour back in Brautigan's suite at One Fifth Avenue. Richard got two water tumblers from the bathroom, filling them both to the brim with Courvoisier: his idea of a proper drink. Brautigan downed the first as if it were tap water and poured himself another. Gatz had a harder time, taking small cautious sips. He'd hardly drunk a finger or two before it was time to leave for dinner. Richard gave his twelve-year-old daughter some money to take Lorca to a Greenwich Village restaurant before heading out into the night.

Brautigan reserved a large table at Max's Kansas City. When he and Gatz arrived, most of his guests were already there. Bob Dattila, Marian Hjortsberg, and the actress Jada Rowland were among the group. Marian and Gatz had been having marital problems. She and Lorca came earlier to the city without him, staying in Jada's Midtown apartment. Jada and Gatz had been friends since high school. She debuted on Broadway at age four with Katharine Cornell and created the part of Amy Ames on the soap opera
The Secret Storm
when she was eleven, staying with the show for its entire twenty-year run. Jada came with another actress friend. Penelope Milford had appeared recently on Broadway in
Lenny
, a play about the late comedian Lenny Bruce.

Richard called for bottle after bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé. When the raucous conversation turned literary, Penny Milford said that her favorite writer was Richard Brautigan. The long table fell silent as she went on, enthusiastically describing her great affection for his work. By degrees, it became apparent that Penny was unaware the man with the long blond hair and drooping mustache seated at the head of the table was Richard Brautigan. Someone finally nudged Penny and told her the truth. “No, it can't be,” she insisted. Everyone chimed in, insisting the tall stranger was Brautigan. Penny took a longer look, overcome by acute embarrassment. Richard beamed with undisguised pleasure.

For the rest of the meal, Brautigan focused his attentions and charms on Penny. When the party drew to a close, Richard picked up the $93.60 wine tab. Penny invited everyone to her loft downtown for a nightcap. Jada, Marian, and Gatz piled into the cab along with Penny and Richard, not ready to call it a night.

Penny Milford's loft occupied an entire floor of an old industrial building, one vast room providing most of the living space. Against a bare brick wall at the far end, brass cymbals gleaming in the dim light, a drum kit seemed somehow out of place. Penny fixed everyone drinks. The conversation subsided into a gentle murmur. It was well past midnight. Like a deflating balloon, essential energy transpired from the occasion. Penny's boyfriend burst into the room. He was Richard Gere, an unemployed and as-yet-unknown actor. Richard Brautigan leaned toward Gatz. “We better go,” he whispered. “No percentage in sticking around.”

Jada dropped them off at Richard's hotel suite. Ianthe and Lorca were fast asleep. Brautigan offered more Courvoisier, but Gatz felt too queasy for another drink. He burned with fever. Marian also felt sick, so Richard kindly gave them his bed for the night, sleeping on the couch in front of the television. Gatz and Marian had the flu. In the morning, the fruity smell of spilled cognac nauseated them and they retreated to Marian's aunt's place in Connecticut to recuperate. Two days later, Richard and Ianthe returned to San Francisco.

Back on Geary Street, Brautigan got word of an unexpected surprise. The same day Richard flew back from New York,
Apollo 17
astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan had lifted
off from the moon. They had discovered a small crater about the size of a football field and less than thirty yards deep that they named “Shorty,” in honor of Trout Fishing in America Shorty. On the rim of this crater, the astronauts had made an even more important discovery, a yard-wide patch of bright orange dirt vented up as a fumarole from deep beneath the moon's surface, “the greatest single find made during America's six explorations of the moon.”

Back on earth, the new year of 1973 began badly for Timothy Leary, who had slipped away from the Black Panthers in Algeria, taking refuge in Switzerland. His wife, Rosemary, left him, and the acid guru took up with Joanna Harcourt-Smith, a jet-setting playgirl. The pair traveled on to Afghanistan, where they were immediately busted in Kabul, set up by Leary's son-in-law. In January, accompanied by Federal Narcotics Bureau agents, Leary was flown to Los Angeles. He wound up at Folsom Prison facing twenty-five years of hard time, by ironic coincidence in a cell across the corridor from Charlie Manson.

Preoccupied with typographical nit-picking involving the forthcoming Dell editions of his first three books, Richard Brautigan did little new writing. He continued taking notes for his projected Western novel but had not yet started on the book. He fussed with Loie Weber over the correct spelling of “harpsichord,” the accidental addition of an “a” by a typesetter, and changing the word “while” to “a while” on the page proofs. Brautigan had Helen Brann insist that Dell pay Loie $4.50 an hour to “go over” the page proofs, comparing them to the corrected galleys. Dell refused to pay the $90 billed by Brautigan for Loie Weber's editorial services. In the end, Sam Lawrence wrote Richard a personal check, insisting that if he wished to check the galleys again “it will have to be at his own expense.”

Ken Kesey wrote Brautigan in February, telling him about
Spit in the Ocean
, his new alternative magazine, and asking if he might be interested in becoming an editor. The theme of the first issue was to be “Old in the Streets.” Richard said he was not an editor. He offered a poem instead. “The only literary activity I am interested in is writing,” he wrote to Kesey, “and as you know, at best, that is like having a bull by the balls at midnight in a bubble gum factory.” He wished Ken good luck with his new project.

Jayne Walker (formerly Palladino) wrote to Richard in mid-February, saying she'd like to see him, having recently had an “absolutely outrageous” dream about him. She included her phone number. She would have called but Brautigan had changed his number so often. Richard got in touch with her. They soon started keeping company again.

Brautigan took Walker out to Bolinas for the weekend. Jayne found the place “ultragloomy, the creepiest house, a horrible house,” and couldn't figure out why he'd ever bought it. “Incredible cobwebs” hung down from the “cathedral ceiling.” She thought he'd just moved in. Jayne couldn't stand it. When Richard left the room, she got a broom from the kitchen and started “swatting at the cobwebs.” Brautigan raced back into the room, greatly disturbed.

“Don't touch those cobwebs,” he shouted. “I love those cobwebs. I want them to stay exactly the way they were.” Jayne knew nothing about the resident Chinese ghost but thought Richard wanted his own haunted house, an Addams Family mansion.