Pike's Folly (15 page)

“Oh, stop being so goddamned hard on yourself. We both fucked up. You did and I did. We're both guilty.”

“No, only me. I'm the bad guy.”

She was looking for sympathy, though he didn't feel much like giving it to her. “You think
you're
bad? You're an angel, sweetheart. You don't know what bad is.
I'm
the one who's bad. I shouldn't even be in the same room as you. I shouldn't be in the same house. Don't tell me about who deserves who and who doesn't. I don't deserve anything.”

He stormed off, leaving her alone in the kitchen. He'd never yelled at her like that before. Marlene was used to thinking of Stuart as a steady, stabilizing presence. She felt she owed him an apology, though she wasn't sure for what.

Later, in his office, she turned on the computer and logged onto
secret-exhibitionist.org
. Stuart had left for a walk an hour earlier, and she hadn't decided whether to start worrying or not. As a distraction, she went to the open forum page and browsed through the latest postings. About two dozen entries had been added since the last time she'd checked. Reading them quickly began to bore her. So many reports of flashing, streaking and masturbating in front of windows became monotonous after awhile, and she wondered if everyone else who visited the site eventually came to the same conclusion: there was only so much you could do, so many different variations before the stories began to repeat and break down into categories. She never thought she'd find the topic boring, but there she was—bored stiff.

Then, at the bottom of the page, she noticed a posting whose title,
Female Streaker Busted in RI,
intrigued her. The message went on, “Attention! Check out this article. Her name's Marlene Breen, and she lives in Rhode Island. This is, without a doubt, the ultimate streak!!!”

The posting contained a link to an article in the
Providence
Journal
about Marlene's arrest. In response, other contributors added their own comments: “Cool! Who is this person? Is she a member?” “Does anyone have a picture? I tried doing a search on AOL, but nothing came up. I will pay cash for top-quality jpegs. Urgent!” “Any ideas on how to track her down? Maybe
s-e.org
could do a profile—or, better yet, let's set up a live twenty-four-hour webcam feed. I
have
to meet this woman.”

Marlene reread the entry several times. To her, this was like receiving a glowing review in the
New York Times
—the ultimate expression of respect from her peers. I'm famous! she thought. People are talking about me. People I've never met, never seen before. Streakers, nudists, perverts, exhibitionists. People in different states, in different countries. They all want to meet me.
Me.
Marlene.

I'm on the Internet!

Alone in the empty house, she leaned back in her chair and, for the first time in many days, smiled: a great, glowing, sun-shiny
smile.

3

A few weeks after Marlene's arrest, Heath and Allison went up to New Hampshire for a sneak peek at phase two of the Independence Project. Unlike with phase one, Pike hadn't allowed cameras on the site until it was nearly finished. Allison didn't particularly want to go, but she didn't want Heath making the trip by himself either. They'd become much more clingy in the days since she'd returned from London, and less spontaneous. Their relationship had all of the hallmarks of two people who were either about to break up or get engaged.

Just outside of North Conway, she asked, “Do you know if Stuart's going to be there?”

“Beats me,” Heath said. “I think he's got a lot on his hands right now.”

“Oh . . . right. Have you ever met his wife?”

He didn't want to get into that, so he said, “Not really.”

“I feel sorry for her. People in this country are so fucked up. So goddamn conservative. You should see some of the sex clubs in Soho. Even the English are more hip than we are.”

“You went to a sex club?” he asked.

“Not a real sex club. It was more like a rave.”

“A dance club.”

“No, a rave. A fucking rave. You know?”

It wasn't worth fighting about, so he closed his eyes and listened to the music on the tape deck. As the driver, Allison had agreed to let him play his music for the second half of the trip, much as it annoyed her. Allison liked
songs,
finished songs, not half-baked works in progress.

“How can you stand this junk?” she asked.

Heath reluctantly turned down the volume. He'd brought along a box of
Smile
bootlegs for the three-hour trip, most of which consisted of multiple takes of melodic fragments: the same xylophone passage repeated sixteen times, or a vocal line sung a cappella, then overdubbed ad infinitum. This particular session, “Surf 's Up,” was one of his favorites. In late '66, Brian Wilson was working with a lyricist named Van Dyke Parks, and “Surf 's Up” was their greatest collaboration, a multipart suite featuring sleigh bells, horns and Brian's own wide-ranging vocals. Unlike a lot of Smile, “Surf 's Up” sounded fully realized, even on the session tapes. This alone made the song unique. Avid
Smile
fanatics had learned how to deal with disappointment; “Mrs. O'Leary's Cow” might've been an interesting title, but as a song it wasn't much. “Surf 's Up” didn't disappoint. The demo version of Brian playing the middle movement on the piano was gorgeous, complete in itself.

“I'm sorry,” Allison said. “I just need silence for a few minutes.” Shutting off the tape, she concentrated on the traffic, which had picked up considerably since they'd arrived in North Conway. During the warmer months, the roads leading in and out of town were always bumper to bumper—quite a change from her last time in New Hampshire.

“Why are you so uptight?” Heath asked.

“I'm not.”

“Okay.”

“What does that mean?”

“Okay, you're not uptight.”

“That's right, I'm not. I'm just tired, and I've been driving all day, and I want to get off the road. My bra's killing me.”

“Would you like me to drive?” he offered.

“No, we're almost there. You should've asked me an hour ago. What's the point in only driving the last five miles? None, nothing, there's no point.”

“Okay.”

“What do you mean,
Okay
?”

“Okay, there's no point. I'm sorry.”

Allison leaned on the horn and flipped off the driver in front of them. She grumbled, “Why are you sorry? You've got nothing to be sorry about.”

Leaving town, they continued north to the ski lodge, where Pike was waiting to take them to the top of Mount Independence. When she pulled in, he was standing in front of Sarah Cranberry's place, which he'd commandeered for the duration of the project. Heath and Allison joined him on the porch.

“You're just in time,” Pike said. He looked as upbeat as ever, and his bright blue camouflage jumpsuit made him stand out in the woods. “We're meeting a pilot to take us to the construction site. Anyone afraid of flying?”

“What kind of a plane is it?” Allison asked.

Pike smiled at her worried expression. “It's an MD-600. Have you ever been in a helicopter before?”

“A helicopter? No.” She looked at Heath, who was busy prep-ping his camera bag and didn't notice her. “Is it safe?”

Pike clapped her on the shoulder. “Of course it is! Would I let you ride in it if it wasn't? Give me a little credit, Allison. I'm not going to let anything happen to you.”

They piled into Pike's SUV and drove to a nearby airstrip, where the helicopter was sitting on the tarmac, its blades circling slowly above the cabin. Pike gave a thumbs-up to the pilot, who signaled back. Allison was the last to board. Neither she nor Heath was looking forward to the ride, but at least Heath had his video camera to distract him; Allison had nothing.

The Plexiglas-domed helicopter took off and flew west over the Kancamagus Pass. Allison did her best not to let the mild turbulence get to her. Her nerves were frayed and her pulse was pounding in her wrists and throat, thanks to the three lines of coke she'd ingested earlier that morning.

Doing drugs, like a lot of things, wasn't much fun anymore. Back in London, she'd first tried coke because her mother had enjoyed it, and initially she did, too. Cocaine was expensive, exciting and upscale compared to pot, which was common and teenager-cheap. Allison associated smoking pot with being in college, whereas snorting coke seemed like a more adult thing to do. She was feeling impatient with her life—confused, bored, nervous—and cocaine suited her perfectly. It was the right drug for the right time.

Unfortunately, her body couldn't handle it, and within weeks she'd developed migraines, insomnia and inflammations of the nose and throat. She'd even lost some of her hair. For Heath, being around Allison was like dating a junkie or a crackhead. There wasn't a morally sound rationale for doing coke like there was for pot. Brian Wilson had shown him that pot and LSD could serve as conduits for creative expression. Not cocaine. So far as Heath was concerned, she might as well have stayed in London.

“There it is,” Pike said, pointing out the canopy at the green mountainside two hundred feet below. “Heath, get a shot of that.”

Heath leaned forward and aimed his camera down the steadily ascending slope. Allison also rose, but the chopper hit a rough spot, and she fell into Heath's lap.

“Ow!” He glared at her. “You spoiled my composition.”

Pike called out, “Hey, everybody shut up back there. We're almost right over it.”

As their altitude dropped, a trail became visible through the dense cover of trees. About a thousand yards east of the trail, they saw what appeared to be the top of a building, which was rectangular and fairly low to the ground. The roof was flat and wide enough for the helicopter to land on it. Circling closer now, they looked down on Pike's parking lot, which flanked the building on one side. A sign jutted above the building's entrance, but they could see only the back of it.

“Now, check this out,” Pike said.

The helicopter descended and banked steeply to the right. Coming about hard, Allison and Heath got their first head-on view of the building. It was quite large and appeared to be constructed for commercial or industrial purposes. Tall, broad windows extended from either side of the multiple doors that provided access.

Allison squinted but couldn't see through the windows. “What is it?”

The roar of the propeller decreased as the pilot hovered fifty feet over the ground. She wondered if he planned on landing, or if this was as close as they were going to get.

“Look at the sign,” Heath said.

She did. She'd seen it somewhere before—so many times, in fact, that it'd stopped making an impression on her. This was an icon, an image anyone over a certain age associated with suburban sprawl, strip malls and commercial overdevelopment.

K
mart
, it said.

She couldn't believe it. “Fucking Christ . . .”

“Take us down,” Pike told the pilot. “You really have to see it close up.”

They landed in a field about a hundred yards south of the building and disembarked. Once Allison, Heath and Pike were safely clear of the rotor blades, the pilot gave a jaunty salute and lifted off.

“Where's he going?” she asked.

Pike smiled. “Don't worry, he's on call. Come on.”

He plunged into the woods, where a poorly cut trail wound up a hill to the construction site. Heath and Allison hustled to keep up.

“Can you deal with this?” she whispered to Heath, who'd taken a break from filming to have a look around. “This is beyond crazy. This is fucking certifiable.”

“I think it's pretty amazing,” he said.

“Oh, there's no doubt about that. I mean, a parking lot is one thing. But why a Kmart? I thought Kmart filed for bankruptcy.”

Pike overheard her. “They did. That's how clever I am, Allison. No other company was willing to sell their licensing rights to me. You should file that away for future reference, both of you. It's easier to negotiate when the other party's strapped for cash.”

At the end of the trail, the ground rose sharply to the level of the parking lot, which was still in pristine condition. A wall of trees surrounded the lot, some of them so tall that they loomed several feet above the rooftop, where workers on ladders and scaffoldings were applying finishing touches to the weatherproofing.

“The stadium lights just arrived a week ago,” Pike said, indicating a rack of lights near the construction site, behind which pink and black electrical cords were plugged into a massive generator. “Used to be, we couldn't work after nine p.m.”

Heath panned with his camera across the lot. He stopped on Allison, who looked wistful inside his viewfinder. “Are you just going to leave it empty like that?” she asked Pike.

“Hell no! As soon as these workers get out of here, we're gonna receive our first shipment from the DC in Columbus. DC—that's Distribution Center. It'll probably take two weeks to fill the shelves, but it'll be worth it. I'm even going to hire a full-time staff. Stockboys, cashiers, you name it.”

“But
why
?” Allison demanded.

He grinned savagely. “Stop asking that. I hate ‘why.' A kid your age shouldn't ask why all the time.” Across the lot, many of the workers had set down their tools to listen. “I declare war on why. If I do nothing else, that's my goal. My one cause in life. No more why.”

With his camera raised, Heath had a hard time keeping Pike in focus, so impulsive were his gestures. It occurred to him that this scene would fit in nicely with some of the bits he'd shot with Stuart and Marlene earlier in the spring. The two projects were basically incompatible, of course, but in an ideal world he could intercut them. He thought back to some of the earliest footage that he'd taken of Marlene, when they'd brought the camera down to Brenton Point in Newport and she'd walked naked to the edge of the seawall and gazed out at the Newport Bridge. If there was a link at all, it was that both Pike and Marlene were well-known eccentrics—marginal figures, ultimately, but no less interesting for that. Like Brian Wilson, Heath primarily saw himself as a collage artist; the individual components weren't as important as what they created together. On a certain track from
Smile,
for example, it was the juxtaposition between Hawaiian chants, a thundering motif for kettle drums and steel guitars, and the Beach Boys singing cyclical riffs about early American history. In Heath's film, the juxtaposition wasn't musical but visual, ideological rather than psychedelic. He had no idea what any of it meant but tried not to think about it. He, too, was on an anti-why crusade.

“Let's go,” Pike said and led them into the building. A pair of automatic sliding glass doors opened and closed behind them, just like in a real Kmart. Once inside, the drilling, sawing and buzzing sounds of construction became louder as carpenters installed huge shelving units that extended to the back of the building. The cash registers had already been set up, along with a numbered banner above each checkout station.

They proceeded as far as the customer-service desk, where Pike opened a box of ad-prep and pulled out a banner that read Save While You Shop. “Look at that,” he said. “An authentic, Kmart-approved aisle banner, and I own it.” Allison didn't want to touch it, so he offered it to Heath, who handled it with care. Seeing the inside of a Kmart in its semiconstructed state seemed to him a rare opportunity, like watching heart surgery.

“Who do you think will actually shop here?” Allison asked.

Pike took the sign from Heath and put it back in its box. “I don't know. That's the mystery of it. Short of a chopper, the only way in's on foot, and that's a three-hour climb up rough trail.” He paused for the punch line. “I don't think we'll be selling much office furniture.”

Both he and Heath laughed, but Allison didn't join them. “I don't get it. Don't you care what people are going to think of you when they see this?” she asked.

“Not particularly. Don't worry about me, Allison. My sterling reputation isn't worth losing any beauty sleep over.”

“Whatever,” she said. Arguing with him was pointless, since he had an answer for everything. Still, she had to give him some credit; he did what he wanted, and damn the consequences. Pike didn't believe in denying himself anything, even if it made him look bad. She supposed that this was what so many women had found attractive about him—not just his good looks but his fearlessness. How unlike her father, she thought; how unlike herself, for that matter.

She turned to leave, but a sudden pain inside her head stopped her. Everywhere she looked, she saw a haze of blue, then purple, then green.