Like People in History (9 page)

Cousin Diana's car was a six-year-old Chrysler station wagon, a stodgy high-bodied vehicle with wood paneling except for its forest-green metal hood and roof. Drearily suburban, I thought, until I jumped into the front passenger seat and noted that the speedometer went up to 120 mph, and when I started to roll down the windows, she asked, "Wouldn't you rather have the air-conditioning?"

Wouldn't I?

The late fifties and early sixties were the years of great construction of the L.A. freeway system. As we drove south out of Burbank Airport, along Vineland Avenue toward the mountains ahead, I was constantly amazed to see enormous sections of crisscrossing cloverleaf ramps just sitting there in midair every few miles, unconnected to any likely road. For Cousin Diana they were merely a nuisance, obstacles to be gotten around, objects worthy of passing interest—"This is where the Ventura and Hollywood freeways will meet. Eventually. Up ahead is Ventura Boulevard. But that's different."

In fact, Cousin Diana had a constant patter of conversation filled with names and Spanish-sounding places, few of which I understood. Her nonstop conversation was more or less as follows:

"I told Dario this car wasn't taken care of properly the week in the shop. I should have taken the Bentley, even though he just washed and polished it!"—To me, the Chrysler ran fine. But a Bentley? They had a Bentley? I'd never seen one outside the auto show at the Coliseum. Who was Dario?

And:

"I hoped your cousin would come with me to meet you. But he's been gone all day. I know he had a dance class earlier, and he probably went to Topanga to surf. Or over to Judith's. Even so, I wish he'd check in once in a while."—What cousin? Alistair? A
dance
class? Where was Topanga? Who was Judith? Did mother and son
ever
see each other?

And:

"Now you tell Inez if there's anything special you eat. And, of course, anything you won't or can't eat. Are you allergic to anything? Alfred's allergic to almost everything. Your cousin's a vegetarian. Lacto-ovo type, of course. Almost all of us are, except Dario, of course, which drives Inez crazy. She's off Sundays, so we generally eat out. Or fix it ourselves. Do you cook? Dario's wonderful with the barbecue. Do you like barbecue?"—Lacto what? Inez, I guessed, was their cook. But who was Alfred? And
who
was Dario?

And:

"We're not going directly to our place, you understand. If we were to do that, you'd have to take Ventura almost to Stone Canyon then... What am I saying? You wouldn't know Beverly Glen from Mulholland, would you? We really should stop up at the project. Alfred should be there. And your cousin might be too, although that's unlikely. I'll call the house from there. Dario might know where he is."—What project? What kind of project? Who was this Alfred? And, above all, who was the omniscient Dario?

We'd already driven into the mountains upon a road that began to swerve and curve and rise ever more narrowly, so that while on one side we hugged flower-and vine-covered retaining walls with steep little stairways leading up to front and side entrances, on the other side we overlooked little more than the roofs of other houses, or an occasional carport, sometimes a group of trees, beyond which I caught sudden glimpses of abysslike drops, and beyond them an immense sweep which Cousin Diana assured me at various points was "the valley," then confused me by calling "the city," although the two views looked alike and in the second one I could make out nothing from this distance even vaguely like an
urhs
—no skyscrapers, no public buildings, nothing but miles upon miles of evenly ranged rectangular blocks of single-story houses, surrounded by greenness and outlined by the omnipresent palms.

The Chrysler arrived at a longer though not straighter road—Laurel Canyon Boulevard—and after driving a few miles, we turned off again and commenced to wind around the city and valley until we reached a second wide road, which she assured me was Coldwater Canyon, though it looked the same to me. A dozen turns later, we were on a long dirt road ascending deep into dry chaparral.

"I hate this part," Cousin Diana said as we approached and bumped hard over a rough apex of dirt road. Ahead I saw that our route suddenly dropped onto a wide apron of peninsula high above its surroundings, stripped bare of foliage, upon which a dozen long irregular foundations and three halfway completed houses perched, arranged more or less around a splayed semicircle of dirt lane evidently later to be paved. Tractors, steam shovels, dump trucks, flatbeds, and pickups littered the area. At least twenty workmen were in sight, busy at various tasks. I assumed this was the "project" she'd mentioned as we'd left the airport, but I was most struck by how very high and isolated it all was, overlooking the surrounding land the way a medieval castle lorded it over its demesne.

I was drawn to the spectacular view. While Cousin Diana parked and strode about looking for someone—Alfred? Dario?—I walked as close to the edge of the butte as I could, bypassing a gigantic hole which I supposed had been dug for a future swimming pool. From where I stood on the cliff, it must have been close to six hundred feet down. Far below, a double-lane road unfurled aimlessly through more dry, wooded hills, which seemed to go on and on in gnarled humps to the horizon in every direction.

"I wager you don't have anything like this back east," a man's voice said in a British accent.

Astonishing really that Oxonian voice, given that the person containing it looked like another of the laborers on the property, by now finishing work for the day and beginning to drive off. Tall, shambling, wearing filthy overalls and no shirt to hide his dirt-streaked, potbellied, straggly-haired torso, but a crushed and tar-stained, overwashed powder-blue baseball cap that shadowed his shaggy eyebrows and deep-set eyes, the man smiled crookedly through an unkempt mustache and beard, and when I didn't answer, he asked, "I'm not mistaken? You are the cousin?"

I stood up to say yes and introduce myself and to shake his hand, but it was so dirty he wouldn't and I couldn't.

"Alfred Descoyne at your service, sir!" He gestured what might have been a bow at me. "Named after the old Poet Laureate. Or the West Saxon king who let the old lady's corn cakes burn to a crisp. Never quite sure which. Al to my friends and the men here. But Alfred at the house, what with Alfred and Alistair and too many Al's altogether, if you get my drift."

Behind us we heard Cousin Diana's throaty shout.

"Her Grace," Alfred said, indifferently nodding back to where Cousin Diana was picking her way toward us through various pieces of equipment. Looking me up and down, Alfred said, "You look fit enough. If ever you want to get your hands blackened, you're welcome to give a hand here. We're behind schedule and always short of help and we pay a good wage." He pronounced schedule as though it had no c, which surprised me. "But as you're on holiday," he went on, "I suspect you'll prefer laying about and all that other la-di-da His Nibs has made into an art."

"There you are, Alfred." Cousin Diana reached us. "Stop!" she commanded uselessly as he grabbed her with one muscular begrimed arm and pulled her over for a rough kiss. "You two have met, I see," she said, pulling herself away from him and continuing to slap at his exploring hands.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Our development," she replied. "Fourteen homes with pools and views."

I wondered who the "our" referred to.

"Creosote Crescent," Alfred said, smiling crookedly at his own joke.

"It's called Chaparral Point!" she corrected.

"Alistair bought the land and hired the architect, and they worked up the plans," Cousin Diana explained. "But, as usual, once it got going, he left me with all the hard work."

"She's a regular devil behind that earth mover!" Alfred joked.

"Don't listen to him!" she said to me. To Alfred: "I couldn't reach him on the phone. Has he been here today?"

"Rang up once. Didn't have the honor myself."

They moved away to have a more private conversation, from which I gathered problems existed. Still, I was impressed. My cousin, the troublemaker, was a land development entrepreneur!

Within minutes of our arrival, the place was emptied of workers. We left too, Diana and I in the station wagon, Alfred—with a torn T-shirt on—following in a pickup. Off the mesa, the setting sun was more apparent. For another fifteen minutes, we drove through patches of low-angled, almost woundingly intense orange sunlight alternating with deep, chilled shadow. It was dark when at length we drove in through a gateway and parked. The sky had turned that electrical blue it sometimes does, which only served to throw into greater relief the thick slabs of front walls draped with unknown blooms, which was all I could make out of the house.

I was shown to my room—a suite really—off one long corridor, with glass doors opening onto a balcony overlooking the huge backyard, terrace, and pool. I showered, changed, and after wandering about the oddly split-level house, found my way to the large space-age kitchen, where a rotund ink-haired woman—Inez, I gathered—was holding court, simultaneously talking quickly in a thick accent, cooking four or five dishes, and mixing drinks for Cousin Diana, Alfred (somewhat cleaned up if no less scruffy), and to my surprise, me. The three of us dined about an hour later, with candles on the table, in the glass-enclosed dining room overlooking the by now bluely lighted pool, and I was so overexcited and exhausted I began to fall asleep sometime during "Gun-smoke" and allowed myself to be led to bed.

All in all, I thought in the few seconds before I conked out completely, my visit had begun auspiciously. I liked Cousin Diana, Alfred, Inez, and above all I liked California. But then, I hadn't seen Alistair yet. Nor had I met Dario.

My eyes flashed open. Russian-green shades allowed slashes of morning sun to slide in. Redwood beams crossed the ceiling. I was in a strange room. Then I remembered: California.

Outside my window—all sounds seemed mere inches away—I heard a sudden and very loud splash of water.

I jumped out of bed and leapt to the window—in time to see a slender figure slide underwater through the pool to the other side. It bunched up, then slid underwater in the opposite direction. At that end a head rose out of the water briefly then dunked back in as the youth continued his below-surface laps back and forth, again and again, coming up for air sometimes after one lap, more often after two. I was so enthralled by the rhythm I almost missed seeing the other figure, kneeling among the wide shelf of plants under the dining room, where sneering birds of paradise jostled one another. From my angle all I could make out of the second person was strong, tanned knees in beige shorts, a wide-brimmed sunhat, and large, dirty brown-gloved hands working trowels and shears. I suppose what made me look at the second figure was the fact that instead of working, he was looking so much at the first figure. I decided that the man in the hat and shorts was Dario, the delphinid-boy in the pool my second cousin Alistair.

Downstairs, Inez waved a big earthenware mug at me.

"Coffee!" she said. "But stay off my floor. I just washed."

I was sent out to the terrace, where she handed me the coffee through a little window then leaned on the sill and took my breakfast order as though she were a waitress working one of the new takeout burger stands Cousin Diana and I had passed the day before. I settled myself at the outside table and sipped my coffee, trying to get my bearings.

Not the easiest task. Like the rest of the house, the terrace was on several not completely distinctive levels, set amid a lush growth of the oddest assortment of flowers and trees: candleflower bushes dwarfed by cypress trees, next to screw cacti, next to stands of tall nearly black iris, next to what looked like giant powder puffs on long stems. Their camouflage, as well as my difficulty in telling one long, almost identical glass-and-cedar-walled wing from another, or in guessing what each sudden outcropping of granitic wall contained, kept me from ever really discovering the complete plan of the house, even when it was later shown to me.

I'd been sitting with my coffee for maybe five minutes when the swimmer came up the steps, shaking his wet head like a great dog.

"Hey! Watch it!" I jumped out of my chair.

"Sorry!"

He didn't sound or look sorry. What he looked was tall and tan and confused.

"Hand me that terry robe, will you."

It was clear he had no idea who I was. This, strangely enough, pleased me. I sat down. He pulled a pack of Tareytons out and lit one. After exhaling, he was about to say something, then thought better of it and instead inhaled again, looking away.

I followed his glance down to the nearest level beyond the pool, where the man in shorts and gloves and sunhat was now working in a bed of tubular orange flowers. As his head was down, I couldn't see his face.

Inez came out of the house with my breakfast on a tray, and with it a second, prescient, mug of coffee for him.

"Oh!" He suddenly seemed to understand. "I thought you were here to see Mother."

"This is your cousin from Nueva York," Inez said. "Eat all!" she commanded. "Him!" referring to Alistair, with a Latin shrug, "he eats who knows what? The air, I think."

When she'd gone, I ate. Alistair smoked and looked away.

"I remember you differently," he mused. "Smaller or... different!" he concluded vaguely.

I said we'd both changed, physically at least, and while we could no longer be taken for twins, sitting next to each other, we still shared some features. "Of course, you're taller," I assured him. I noticed a half-moon scar over one eyebrow. "How did you get that?"

"This?" touching it gently, as though it were still fresh. "Diving off a cliff in Acapulco. Mexico." He added, "Twelve stitches. I needed something anyway. You know, to put on my passport where it says any scars or distinguishing features. A rather high cliff at that," he mused again, puffing distractedly. "You're here for how long?"

"Don't have a clue."

"I see. Well, it's a pretty drab scene, as you can tell, what with the Mexican Mama and Alfred Engels and Mother Courage all rushing about trying to be busier and more virtuous than Saint Agatha. Still, I suppose," he said, looking at me directly for the first time, "you're presentable enough to take around. You don't surf, do you?"