The Illusion Of Separateness Part 8

The hood of the car creaked so loudly that John felt certain anyone outside would have heard. For a few moments he listened, but could hear only his breath and the faint whistle of morning wind through the ruins.

The engine and cha.s.sis had already begun to rust. John melted wax onto the fender as a base for his candle and located the hose he wanted. It came out easily, and he climbed back up using the stack of furniture, making sure not to disturb the remains of the previous tenant.

After packing up, John wound his watch and went outside. It was almost completely dark. He crept around the house looking for food, and located a small patch of carrots growing near a heavy-leafed vegetable that had mostly been eaten by slugs.

After taking more painkillers, he continued north, skirting villages and scrambling for cover at the faintest murmur of an engine. There was a great deal of action in the air, and John lay on his back sometime around midnight to watch a brilliant firefight.

His plan was proving to be a success, and he considered that he might try to reach an even more northerly position on the coast.

When dawn came, it was dry and warm. With no buildings in sight, John squeezed his body into a hedge, and spread his limbs around the branches and roots, the same way he had hidden himself that first night. He urinated by turning his body to the side (defecating only on the move-so the smell wouldn't draw attention from anyone pa.s.sing).

Despite eating half of the food he was carrying, John fell asleep very hungry, then woke about ten hours later in the early evening with no appet.i.te at all. He also felt dizzy, and his foot was so bad that he was half tempted to put a bullet in it himself.

When it was dark enough to travel again, John pulled himself out of the hedge for a third night of walking. For the first hour, he had to vomit several times. Then his stomach seemed to dry out and settle.

The landscape changed. Fields churned by fighting and low fences of barbed wire. John wondered if, by some miracle, he had reached the Belgian border. Then it started raining, and he felt very sick. When dawn came he lay under a tree and pa.s.sed out.

Nine hours later, when faced with a fourth night of walking, John considered that he wasn't going to make it.

If he gave himself up, he would be tortured and killed; if he pushed on, he would certainly collapse. He also convinced himself that he'd been walking in circles, and that Paul's farm was only a few hundred yards away. With the help of four painkillers he kept going. There were rain showers all night, and by dawn John was soaked through and barely able to take a step. His forehead burned with fever and his vision was blurred.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, he looked around and realized he was surrounded by human remains. He fumbled for his pistol and c.o.c.ked the hammer. Muddied uniforms of German infantry torn to shreds. They had been attacked from the air with machine guns.

Then John saw a cat. He tried to follow it in the hope it would lead him to a farmhouse, but it turned out to be a helmet filled with mud. He fell on his knees and stared at the helmet, realizing that it was not mud after all.

An hour or so later, John opened his eyes to the growl of a tank. There were no trees or hedgerows in which to take cover, so he rolled into a deep tank track. His intention was to blend in with the other corpses in the field.

As he shifted his limbs in the mud, John realized there was a body beneath his, and when it moved, John flipped over and rammed his pistol into a steadily opening mouth. Two eyes, white with panic, stared at him. John gripped the trigger and waited for the tank to get closer. The noise would mask the shot.

DANNY.

LOS ANGELES,.

2009.

I.

DANNY HUMMED BACH part.i.tas on the freeway and thought of the pianist Glenn Gould in a heavy coat. He knew very little about his father, and often thought of him too.

Some days the sky was so clear, it was like staring into darkness.

Danny moved to Los Angeles from Scotland in his late twenties, determined to be a success, determined to direct pictures his way, and to make life easy for his mother in her old age.

He was born in Manchester, England, and often imagined the moment of his delivery. Screaming for sure, hard fluorescent light, his mother's shaking hands and glistening forehead, white towels on the floor, nurses in starched uniforms with steel watches pinned to their ap.r.o.ns. In her arms, nothing could hurt him.

When Danny was only a week old, his father taped a note to the television to say he would never come back.

Danny's mother went from job to job. She was always late for work because it was hard to find people she could trust with her son. Her parents lived in London. Her father wanted to move back to Nigeria, but her mother was happier in Britain. They invited her to come and live with them, but Danny's mother couldn't imagine being in her old bedroom with a baby.

When Danny was about twelve years old, his mother fell in love and they left Manchester for Scotland.

The marriage ended after two years with more relief than resentment. His mother battled her disappointment in private, and enrolled in night school to study sociology and nursing. Danny used to walk home from school, then let himself in and watch television until his mother got back and started dinner.

She had a few friends, but liked most of all to be at home with her son.

The apartment complex where they lived overlooked a supermarket. There was also a ca.n.a.l guarded by a tall fence. Holes had been opened in the wire, and the fence resembled a spider's web teased apart by children with twigs. On the gra.s.sy descent to the murky water, there were car tires, a mattress, oil cans, and a ripped armchair that lay upside down. Pupils from a local comprehensive often bought lunches at the supermarket, then ate them noisily on a gra.s.s verge above metal lines of carts.

Litter blew against the fence and formed piles. In summer, the upside-down armchair, the car tires, mattress, and other discarded items disappeared under tall, lush weeds.

After Danny moved across town into a flat of his own, he visited his mother several evenings a week-and always on Sunday, with a small box of Milk Tray chocolates to eat during Songs of Praise. She knew each chocolate by its shape. Danny liked the hard caramels because they lasted.

He stayed until she went to bed, then called a mini-cab and waited inside until it came. The apartments were not as safe as they once had been. Gangs of teenage boys shouted things and followed at a distance.

When Danny mentioned that he was thinking of moving to Los Angeles, his mother could tell it was what he wanted.

She came to Glasgow International Airport, and watched him inch along the security line. He knew he would never come back to live in Scotland and felt the pull of another home that could never truly be his.

Danny's employment in Los Angeles was prearranged to satisfy immigration requirements. He had already worked in television for years. Starting immediately after college, he made coffee and ran errands. There were others his age, but Danny was the only intern who put chocolates on the saucers, and left notes for the actors to say how well they had done. After a few years on set, he instinctively knew where the couch should be for the murder sequence, and how the detective should enter the pub, and for how long he should stand at the bar before having a heart attack, and whether gla.s.ses should break or not in his fall, and who should scream (and how).

By twenty-five he was doing well, but for Danny it was not enough. Instead of joining the others at the pub after a hard day of shooting, he went back to his small flat and read Shakespeare, Beckett, Artaud, and Ibsen-studied Ca.s.savetes, Antonioni, Ozu, and Bergman.

After directing a few short pieces for BBC 2, Danny started writing his own scripts. There were so many techniques that interested him. Ideas flickered like small fires.

The first four years in Los Angeles were not easy. Americans work day and night. His first film took a long time to make but everyone was satisfied. His second was quiet but allowed him to pay his debts. His third picture, a historical drama about the Resistance called Ste. Anne's Night, was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Director, but Danny felt the film didn't work, and needed to make a fourth to find out why.

About that time he bought his mother a modern apartment in the Quayside section of Glasgow. He flew back to Scotland for a week and they shopped for furniture. She kept saying, "You don't have to, Danny, you really shouldn't."

It took her six months to settle in. She would sometimes walk around the apartment at night and touch things. Danny called twice a week, and they talked for about an hour.

During preproduction on his fourth film, Danny moved from the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles to the Hollywood Hills. He traded his El Camino for a white Mercedes with tan leather, and hired someone to shout at him regularly in the gym. On the backseat of his car was a Scottish wool blanket for his three beagles. His mother had sent it with a six-month supply of tea bags, and some HP sauce.

Ten years pa.s.sed.

His mother retired. The beagles were slower and howled less. There were gray hairs on their noses. Danny enjoyed listening to music in the car and being at home with his dogs. He liked sometimes to swim, then eat his breakfast outside with The New York Times. Bougainvillea and jasmine grew around the pool, and there were many birds.

When Danny needed to think, he drove all night through the desert to Las Vegas, stopping to fill his mouth with warm air and to scoop up handfuls of sand. After living in Scotland for so long, it had taken years to warm up. He stopped for meals at roadside diners, chatted with the waitresses, and watched people play Lotto machines, drink coffee, smoke quietly, and sweep the pay phones for coins. There were sometimes showers for truck drivers. You could see them in a line at the counter with wet hair, eating eggs.

Danny's office took up a suite at the Soho House-a Hollywood hotel and members-only club. The management was British, and there were items on the menu like fish and chips, and mushy peas. He could host parties without leaving the building, and sit alone on the balcony when it rained. A waiter once sat with him during a heavy shower. He was from Galway, and also felt the pull of a home he would never return to.

Tell them that we need them to go up to five," Danny said. Other lines flashed but were taken by his secretary.

He opened the top drawer of his desk.

"I just looked for cigarettes," he said. "Can you believe it?"

He took an unsharpened pencil and rolled it in his mouth.

"No, not for a month now."

He swiveled in his chair to face the city outside his window.

"It's a pencil, I swear," Danny said. "Anyway, I'm doing it for the dogs, not myself." He listened for a moment. "Tell Stan that we appreciate his enthusiasm, actually no, that's patronizing-tell him we appreciate the relationship we have with him, but can't move forward for less than what they paid before-but then they already know this; it's just what they do, you know that."

He listened again. "All right, do that then-as long as it's in the contract, it will cost them more in the long run, but if it makes him look good, it's fine-if you think it's a good move. I trust your judgment."

He nodded, and wrote a few things down.

"Before you go, Jack," Danny said, "I was planning to stop by and see Raquel this afternoon. Let her know for me, would you?"

It was very hot outside and there were no clouds.

The sign in the distance once read HOLLYWOODLAND. Mules hauled thick poles up the steep ravine for mounting the letters. In 1932, an actress jumped to her death from the letter H. There were old-style cars parked along the boulevards. Men wore hats and beige suits. Everybody smoked and rode horses. The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald ate at lunch counters, and sat in a park near the tar pits, writing letters to his daughter, telling her not to spend so much money and to look after her mother.

Danny's secretary, Preston, knocked and came in. He was from Youngstown, Ohio. His first job was at a popular brunch place in Echo Park. He wore bow ties. He went to a lot of parties. He called his parents every Sunday when they got home from church. They were encouraging but wanted him back in Ohio. His mother wore slippers with fluff inside. She liked to put her feet up when she watched television. Preston's father colored her hair once a month. He wore plastic gloves and the kitchen smelled of chemicals. They were both forty years old when he was born. It was their wedding anniversary last week. They had a cookout with ribs, fried chicken, okra, corn bread, collard greens, and homemade pork and beans. Preston's father e-mailed pictures. People ate off paper plates and held up Dixie cups to the camera.

n.o.body cared when they found out Preston was gay. He told his parents one Sunday night with the television on. He told them it was as natural as breathing.

How's the Paramount thing, Preston?" Danny asked without looking up.

"Great, that new producer is like a Christmas miracle, I should have something for you by tomorrow."

"And are you going home for Christmas, Preston?"

"Yes, if you don't mind. Are you going to Scotland?"

"Actually Mum's coming here-though I think she's more excited about seeing the dogs."

"It's much warmer here than Scotland, right?"

"It's warmer everywhere, Preston. Do you need anything else from me?"

"No, I should have something for you to look at tomorrow."

"Okay. I'm going to see Jack's wife this afternoon-would you call the hospital and make sure everything is fine, ask the nurse if she needs anything?"

"How is she?"

"Probably bored more than anything."

"I've got some magazines on my desk if you want to take them?"

"I'm glad you have time to read magazines, Preston."

The parking garage was bright and always busy. An automatic chime sounded until Danny attached his seat belt. "Thanks, Grandma," he said.

There was a rubber bone on the pa.s.senger seat, and a dent in the driver's-side door that the Soho House parking attendants were always offering to have repaired while Danny was upstairs in his office.

Occasionally he would insist on parking the car himself and then recline the front seat all the way back for a nap.

He often daydreamed of childhood and the rain-swept terrace-house in Manchester where he grew up with his mother. He thought of her often, because he was old enough to understand things, old enough to remember when she was the age he is now. She had loved him but withheld herself from others. The mark of her life was not only what she had done, but what she had denied herself.

Danny felt they were similar. He preferred to be at home with his beagles and a cup of tea. There were so many parties and dinners that they didn't mean anything anymore. He no longer felt the need to convince anyone of anything. Everything he found interesting went into his films and he had nothing else to say. He had enjoyed a few light relationships over the years, but the men he was attracted to always wanted more than he was willing to give.

He would not have described himself as lonely, but would have admitted that something was missing. He often sat at his kitchen counter wondering what it could be, watching his dogs sleep, watching them breathe, their small hearts turning and opening like locks.

II.

BEFORE JOINING THE freeway that would take him to the hospital, Danny stopped at Lucques on Melrose to buy a package of homemade cookies for Raquel. It was early, and the owner, Jane, was doing paperwork at the end of the bar.

"Not staying for lunch, Dan?"

"No, I'm going to visit a friend in hospital-Jack Miller's wife."

"Oh, I know who you're talking about-Jack and Raquel. I can picture her. I hope it's nothing serious."

"She'll be in very soon for lunch, by which time, Jane-you'll have forgotten this conversation."

"She doesn't want anyone to know she's in the hospital?"

"Who knows," Danny said.

"Jesus, you're discreet," Jane said. "Remind me to tell you my secrets sometime."

"Preston doesn't call me the Vault for nothing, you know."

When Danny got back to his car, the meter had expired, but there was no ticket on the windshield. In the bag, he found a few extra cookies packed separately from the box. He put three in his pocket for when he got home, then ate the fourth standing up. Opposite the restaurant was a shop that sold vintage watches. Danny looked at them in the window. Such tiny lines and numbers, such delicate springs, all hard at work on something they would never understand.

Raquel had been sick for months. Her hair fell out during the treatments, but the worst was over, she said.

When Danny arrived at the hospital, he asked the valet if he could park the car himself. It was a peculiar habit of his that people in Los Angeles didn't understand. One valet accused him of not trusting Spanish people. Danny was so offended that he got out of the car and kicked a small dent in the door with the heel of his shoe, but they just thought he was crazy.

When he got to the main desk, there were five women pointing people in various directions and placing others on hold with their long nails.

"h.e.l.lo, sir, how can I help you?"

"I'm not sure I'm in the right part-"

"Give me the name of the patient, sir, and I'll look them up in the system."

"Crane with a C, and Raquel is her first name."

The woman made a few strokes on her keyboard.

"Mrs. Crane, Raquel Crane. Are you Mr. Crane?"

"No, I'm Uncle Crane."

"I beg your pardon?"