Chapter Two
The Rare and Lovely Blue
The
Bay Area offers a self-blindering, binocular existence, a life spent
genuflecting to red-green onramp meters, a constant overriding sense that time
is being squashed flat. This is
especially true in Silicon Valley, where the famed Stanford Linear Accelerator
is not smashing atoms at all, but minutes, hours, and days, until they resemble
small scurrying ants.
On my morning escape from the
hallowed bottomlands of Computerville, I considered the possibility that my
imminent freak-out session lacked sincerity.
Certainly, I had made some grand gestures. I had traded in my five-year-old Honda for a
brand spanking new Mitsubishi Montero-Sport and had talked my supervisor,
McNeal Conowith, into a four-week sabbatical that I planned to extend for as
long as it took to heal my aching heart.
(McNeal was quite understanding, having survived a freak-out of his own
five years before that took him all the way to Juneau.)
My lack of intent came instead in
the small things, the bloody little mosquitoes of hesitation. At each and every intersection, I imagined
two or three forgotten, essential items.
And then I stopped for a latte in Cupertino, ten whole miles into my
trip.
Then there was my route: north up
Interstate 280 through San Francisco.
The eastern route through Milpitas and Fremont would have been
quicker. Halfway to The City I spotted
the lumpy cartoon statue of missionary Junipero Serra at the Hillsborough rest
stop, pointing one long stony finger and scads of accusations in my direction:
Oh,
Sister Sandra, I know where thou art headed – directly into a major
metropolitan rush hour. Listen to me,
hermana, and confess thy weaknesses.
Thou art irrationally fond of carbon monoxide. Thou art tuned into the time compression,
married to the stopwatch that never stops, the wrinkled cardboard beg-signs,
the staticky mutter of talk-radio pundits as the man next to you shaves in his
rear-view mirror while steering with his knees.
It was very pleasant, in any
case, to cross the Golden Gate Bridge – that bright orange paint job never
anything short of shocking, even after all these years, even with the towers
cut off by a drift of morning fog. I
treasured that one final slice in my rear-view mirror before drifting into the
soft Irish spaces of Marin County, then across the swampy hood of the North
Baylands and the 505 grassland shortcut out of Vacaville. It wasn’t until I hit the I-5 junction
northwest of Sacramento that the almighty time-suck began to lose its grip,
before my fellow navigators lost that hawkish day-planner ache for arrival, arrival,
arrival.
I was soon whizzing my way along
the high, snaky bridges over Lake Shasta, blasting the recently-deceased Frank
Sinatra at levels he never anticipated.
I made it to Grant’s Pass, Oregon before I surrendered my first day’s
journey and checked into a motel.
The second day began with a
French toast breakfast at a cheesy diner with mirrored walls and waitresses
with names like “Jolene” and “Billy Sue.” From there I proceeded north to
Eugene, then headed west through the underachieving Siuslaw Mountains. I turned north again at Florence, onto the
lovely Highway 101, along the coast to Hirshfield, checking off postcard
lighthouses as I went.
I crossed Hirshfield’s wide and graceful WPA-era bridge (reminding me
of the strings of a giant cello) into a main and modern shopping strip. It took me three U-turns before I found Third
Street, hidden between a discount shoe emporium and a warehouse-sized doughnut
shop. I followed Third down a
residential quilt of scattering children and trails of chimney smoke before I
rolled into the Knickerbocker Beach vista point. There, to my left, I found the mariner-gray,
four-story bulk of the Hotel Bel Canto, my destination and, I hoped, an
escalator to salvation.
I rounded the corner through the
Bel Canto’s vaguely British garden entrance (taking note of Gilda’s, a
low-slung Italian bistro across the street) and entered its pleasantly musty
lobby to find a ten-foot-high mural depicting the decadent opening court scene
from Rigoletto. Knowing Hessie, this
seemed about right.
As I strolled to the desk, one
eye on the Duke of Mantua, I was passed by a quick-footed teenager who leaned
across the front counter, gave the desk clerk a facetious smile, and said, “Are
you aware that Jesus hates you?” then breezed on downstairs. As for the clerk, who had barely raised an
eyebrow at the joke, he had to be Jeremy, a fantastical character pre-assembled
for me in Hessie’s rambling letters. Up
top he was completely bald – purposely so, I suspected – and he sported a
goatee small and sharp enough for Cupid to use on one of his little
arrows. He wore a big cream-colored
Irish sweater, thick burgundy corduroy pants, and black Buddy Holly spectacles
with tiny brass wings marking their upper corners. Around his neck he wore a snake – yes,
really, a snake, a pearl white creature with a sleek little head like the hood
of a Corvette, with pop-up eyeballs in mandala patterns of tiger-stripe
yellow. Despite all of this, the snake
seemed rather docile, even content, so I felt no hesitation stepping up to the
counter.
“You... are Jeremy.”
“Ah, my reputation recedes
me.” He let out a small but dexterous
smile. “And who might you be?”
“I am Sandy Lowiltry.”
“Ah.” The smile again, slightly
bigger. “Ms. Lowiltry. I have been blessed with instructions
regarding you and...” Even bigger. “The
Carmen Suite.”
“No! Really?”
Jeremy unwound his reptile friend
and settled him atop a black bust of Richard Wagner. “Yes,” said Jeremy. “The suite is all yours.”
“Really!”
“At least, for the next three
days. The Swensons from Long Island had
to cancel. A death in the family.”
“That’s great! Oh, I don’t
mean. Well you know...”
Jeremy raised a helpful
finger. “Yes,” he said. “I do.
In any case, Hessie said the first night is on the house, and she wishes
you a happy convalescence.”
“Oh,” I said. “Does that mean that Hessie isn’t here?”
“Had some business in
Portland. But she’ll be here later
tonight. She said she’d call you when
she gets in.”
“Oh, good. It’ll be nice to see her.”
Jeremy extended a clipboard with
a couple of spots for me to sign, then handed me my key, attached to a small
castanet.
“Go straight up the stairs, then
turn right down the hall and it’s the third door on the left. Believe me, you can’t miss it. If you turn left at the top of the stairs,
you will find our lovely, scenic listening room, stocked with tea, coffee,
cheap cookies, fresh fruit, board games and the widest selection of operatic
LPs on the West Coast. Anything else
you’ll need to know?”
“Yes,” I said. “Does your snake mind being petted?”
Again, the small smile. “If Stinger were any more tame, she’d be
marked ‘Made in Taiwan’ and sold in a novelty store next to the plastic
doggy-doo. But, she prefers being held. It’s a body heat thing.”
“Naturally,” I said. Stinger extended her head from Wagner’s pate
as I ran a finger along the narrow ridge behind her eyes. I found her scales surprisingly dry and
pleasant to the touch. She responded by
unscrolling her forked red tongue in my direction.
“Forgive me, Stinger, but I think
I’ll wait for our second date before I try holding you.”
“I seem to inspire that same
reaction myself,” said Jeremy, and smiled half-wickedly.
The Carmen Suite was just the
amusing little wonder that I had expected – and, just as Jeremy had said,
remarkably easy to find, what with the pearl-handled Spanish dagger embedded in
the door, trailing a vivid little stream of blood into the suite number.
The room itself you could
probably predict. Blood red and black
everywhere, a canopy of black Spanish lace over the bed. An old rosewood secretary with artful black
notches in the wood, holding a humidor full of cigars with Spanish names, and,
just above, a gorgeous antique fan of black and gold, spread out against the
wall like a peacock’s tail. The wall
offered photographs of Spanish soldiers from various wars.
Along the opposite wall hung a
complete toreador’s outfit – spangles of orange, yellow and gold covering the
jacket and fringing a pair of black pantalones.
The outfit was preserved in a narrow glass case, next to a crossed sword
and sheath. Atop the nightstand were
three decks of well-used Tarot cards with vivid illustrations and a weathered
black Bible printed in Spanish. Further
down in the corner I came upon a small bookcase holding all manner of operatic
paraphernalia: a small white bust of Bizet, various scores, programs, framed
letters, several recordings, and even an ancient copy of the source work –
Merimee’s novella of the same name. A
quick look up revealed that the curtains covering the northward windows were
made from red bullfighting capes. The
entrance to the bathroom was set off by a cascade of dangling gypsy beads.
And now, finally, I take you to
the Carmen Suite’s main attraction: literally bursting from the northward wall
above the false mantel, a huge, fierce big black bull, and I don’t mean just
the head, I mean head, horns, shoulders, forelegs - even that big brass ring
they put through the nostrils; all of this fearsome animal aggression charging
wild-eyed and murderous right toward the bed.
I possessed enough road-weariness
to grab a little nap, even with El Furioso tailgating my dreams, and woke up an
hour later to find myself remarkably refreshed.
I decided to check out the beach.
I slipped on a comfy sweatshirt from Sedona, Arizona, my oldest pair of blue
jeans and a pair of walking shoes, and made my way down a short trail to the
sand.
It was a gloomy day on
Knickerbocker Beach, but in a very real, physical way, I found it
comforting. The fog was cutting in a
hundred feet above the sand, just at the top of the cliffs leading to the
Gerrymander Lighthouse, effectively sealing off the sky before it showed too
much potential. It was a similar effect
out to sea, the visibility winking out about a half mile from shore. But I was perfectly happy to see my new
environment self-contained and horizonless, like one of those souvenir
bubble-worlds that you turn upside down to make it snow.
Empowered by my limitations, I
made off for the chunky rocks at the northern end. Walking on sand quickly tired me out, so I
found a flat rock to rest upon and stared out to sea for a while. The late-afternoon surf seemed to be picking
up, as I watched the waves strike a rock a few hundred feet away with
increasing fury. The rock was about
thirty feet high, shaped like the narrow end of an egg, and split down the
middle, forming a tight channel between its two sides. When the water streamed into this gap, the
waves would rumble around and build up pressure until they erupted in a long
stream of spray out the top, much like a...
“Whalespout.”
Had someone said that? I turned and found that yes, someone had.
“Whalespout Rock,” he added. “It’s a wonderful invention. I wish I had thought of it.”
I had no idea how he’d gotten so
close to me without my knowing. He stood
next to my perch, eyes level with mine, arms folded like a lumberjack, a
professor, a scholarly lumberjack, a lumberjack who read Nietszche, an academic
who felled trees between classes, a rather wiry young man about thirty-five or
so who I’d have to place in the sub-species of elf. Very tall elf. Did I mention good-looking? A very attractive woodsy scholarly elf,
standing there with his arms folded, like an attorney.
Do I seem confused? Let’s try particulars. He had small, sharp eyes, not beady, but
perhaps avian, like a predatory bird, a head of close-cropped blond-wire hair
receding from his forehead in an uneven manner.
He had a sharp chin – almost too sharp, but balanced by a medium-sized,
aquiline nose, a basic European model. A
generous mouth, full lips, but not quite feminine, and his ears, they were
elfin. Really, they were. I half-expected Vulcan tips tucked away
beneath his hair.
It was his clothes, though – that
was the thing, strangely immaculate given his surroundings, strangely bright
given the overcast. He wore
straight-seamed, indigo-blue jeans that looked like they should still have
sales tags over the pocket; a braided leather belt, black with a hint of
burgundy and a small brass buckle; earth-colored loafers, barely ruffled
fringes over the tongue, a flash of argyle socks, squares of brown and red on a
black background; and finally, neatly tucked over a baby blue, close-collared
T-shirt, a brilliant white long-sleeve cotton dress shirt that looked like it
had been ironed five minutes before.
That was him, my logger/professor/lawyer/elf, and he spoke in a rumbling
baritone, a barely detectable Scottish growl leveling in on the ground floor.
“Lousy glass day today.”
“Lousy what?” I answered.
He proceeded unchecked. “I call it a Flatiron Beach. Level as the Texas Panhandle and wet, not
from the breakers, but from the water seeping up through the sand. It leaves the glass half-buried, and the
green and amber look just like dark flat rocks.
The clear is still a possibility, though. Amazing that I spotted this one.”
He handed me a piece of glass (Oh… glass!
I thought). It was about the size of a
guitar pick, an inch-long tab of cobalt blue, a squarish base with a small
groove where the bottom of the bottle must have been, extending into a rounded,
tongue-like edge. The surface was smooth
to the touch, but if you looked close you could see tiny pockmarks like pores
of skin. I took it and let my thumb
settle into the groove, rubbing the spot like the hollow in a worry-stone.
“The rare and lovely blue,” he
said. “So where do you come from?”
“Oh... well, I’m just up from...”
“Oh, look - dolphins.” His eyes turned to the water, honing in on a
spot just south of the Whalespout. I
followed in time to catch a single black fin knifing into the steel surface,
then a breathless three seconds later a trio of them shot up at once,
half-exposed bodies of slick black-blue in the dimming light. I had never seen such a thing. After they
went back under I lasered in on their presumed path, praying for a reoccurrence. A minute later, I tired of the wait, and
turned back to find that my elf had vanished.
“Have a good one!”
It came from above, a hearty
shout followed by a jolly, contented laugh. I twisted around to find him forty
feet up on a series of steps carved into the cliff. I gave a rather meager wave and he turned to
go, his loose-jointed stride folding neatly into a grove of evergreens. After a moment, I dropped my gaze and found
the rare and lovely blue still there, a dark island in the palm of my hand.
It was dusk when I began the trek
back to the Bel Canto, although on a Flatiron Beach, the exact passage from day
to night is hard to pin down. There, in
the shadows above the bulkhead, I was surprised to see Hessie’s baby blue ‘65
Mustang. I cruised into the lobby to
find her at the tail end of some joke she was telling to Jeremy.
“...a super-callused fragile
mystic plagued with halitosis!
Hah-hahahaha!”
No one ever laughed louder at
Hessie’s jokes than she herself, which was nice because it took the pressure
off her audience.
After she was done tailing her
hahaha’s into a mud-spring giggle, she looked to her left and found my bemused
smile (that’s what they tell me – bemused).
She immediately dashed over and locked me in a bear hug.
“Sandy Sandy Sandy Sandy -
Sandy! Oh it’s good to see you!” She
telescoped me back to arm’s length and gave me a studied once-over. “You look fan-dipulous, bubbala! You’ve lost weight! And you’ve...
oh, my. You’ve lost something
else, too… haven’t you?”
Drop all deceptions major and
minor when dealing with Hessie Nygaard.
She can tell from a five-second scan whether you have, in the last
month, locked your keys in the car, ordered something too spicy at a Thai
restaurant, had illicit sex. It was no
wonder she was twice-divorced; who’d want to live each day being read like a
book?
Fortunately for me, Hessie had
made a much more obvious change than I had, which afforded me a handy escape
hatch.
“Jesus, Hessie! You look like Marilyn Monroe!”
Hessie’s hair was, in fact, done
up in a disarranged pile of white-blonde, ribbon-like curls. They were not particularly suited to her, but
they were definitely striking.
She twirled one of the ribbons
around a pinkie and flashed a coy smile.
“Thank you. I wish I had a body
to match. I’ve been dating a stylist
from Vancouver – heterosexual, no less – and he likes to... try things out on
me. These little trinkets probably won’t
stay more than a week, but it’s a nice trip while it lasts. Hey Sandykins, are you hungry? Jeremy tells me they’ve got some killer
shellfish rigatoni left over from yesterday.”
Jeremy, hunched over a card file
across the room but still listening, confirmed Hessie’s statement by whistling
an affirmative downward glissando. Not
that I needed any encouragement; my long walk on the beach had left me
downright famished.
“Do you mind if I change
first? I’m a little damp from my walk.”
“Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t
mind a hot shower myself,” said Hessie.
“That fucking drive from Portland gets a half-hour longer every time I
make it. Come knock on my door when
you’re all set. I’m in the Magic Flute
suite.”
“You always were a sucker for
that mystical stuff.”
Hessie fluttered her eyelashes in
that superhuman way of hers (faster than a hummingbird’s wings). “I take whatever scraps the customers leave
me, honey. And confidentially, that
single floating Freemason eye in the shower really creeps me out. In any case, it’s 304, third floor, on the
left, just past Boheme and Rosenkavalier.
Look for a...”
“Magic Flute? On the door?”
“You are oh-so quick. ‘Bout a half hour?”
“Sure. That’s fine.”
We were done stuffing ourselves
on rigatoni, my hands flying around in faux-Milanese gestures of glee every
other forkful, and were finishing up a couple of vanilla flans with caramel
syrup when Hessie finally arrived at the inevitable subject.
“So this thing that you’ve lost,
Sandymysweet...” ( Hessie often speaks like a gay man.) “This thing
wasn’t... George, was it?”
The Bel Canto dining room was
situated downstairs from the lobby, a series of windows spread out like a poker
hand on the oceanward wall. There wasn’t
much to see out there tonight – just the amorphous blue-white of cloud cover –
but I was glad nonetheless to have somewhere to direct my blank stare.
“To put it short,
Hessie-pie... it was more like George
lost me.” Uh-oh. Those familiar
rumblings in my face. “Listen....” I
managed to return my gaze to Hessie, whose perpetually bloodshot blue eyes were
taking on that dreaded air of compassion.
“I promise... sometime soon, I’ll
give you all the gory details – in fact, I’m sure it’ll be cathartic when I
finally do – but right now my tank’s getting close to empty and...”
Damn. More rumbling. No no no.
No more helplessness. No more
weakness. I pulled my new worry stone
out of my pocket and began to click it nervously against the table.
“Sandy? Whatcha got there?”
The question didn’t quite
register, but then I saw what I was doing with my hands and held my chip of
glass to the candlelight.
“Oh, uh... a present. From...”
“You met Frosty!” Hessie beamed
at me as if I had just won an Oscar.
“Frosty?”
“Frosted Glass Man. Oh, he is the star character of Knickerbocker
Beach. And you met him on your first
day!” She gestured at my hand. “May I
see it?”
I placed the glass in her hand
and she studied it with great curiosity.
She seemed doubtful about something, then she pulled out a pen light
attached to her car keys and held the glass in its beam. I half expected her to whip out one of those
jeweler’s monocles.
“Oh, honey,” she chanted. “Honey honey honey. Little ol’ Sandy Lowiltry. Sandy Sandy Sandy...”
Fearing she might go on
indefinitely, I gracefully interjected.
“What?!”
Hessie placed the chip in the
center of the table. “The rare and
lovely blue. You are a marked woman.”
This idea struck me as
simultaneously preposterous and, well, intriguing. I pretended to believe only the former.
“What can you possibly be talking
about?”
Hessie snickered to herself like
a guilty Scooby-Doo, crossed her hands and waved them like an umpire signaling
“safe.”
“No, no.
No, precious Sandy. I leave the
discovery process to you. But I will say
this: you might be in for an adventure.”
Photo by MJV
No comments:
Post a Comment