A Trip to the Stars (40 page)

That evening he had a dinner invitation in Haena, so I offered him a ride. On the way, he told me some of the story which he had shared at another meeting, earlier in the day, in Lihue, where he had been the speaker.

“I’m from Phoenix originally,” he said, in his quiet, hoarse voice. “I studied mathematics at the university there. Later I lived in Santa Fe. That’s where I got into acid. I heard that weed, Grade-A stuff, grew so wild here on Kauai that you could just pick it by the roadside. And that some cats from Berkeley had set up a little LSD factory: ‘pure Sunshine from the rain forest,’ that’s what I heard. So I came out on the next plane.” He shook his head. “The rest—I don’t know if I can get through it twice in one day, so I’ll just skip to my bottom, seventeen months later. I was down to one hundred ten pounds. I had uncontrollable trots. Nothing stayed in me longer than ten minutes—and all I was putting in were the rolls I fished from the trash at the burger stand. And green bananas that I stole. The park rangers found me shivering like a skeleton in my tent one afternoon when it was eighty-five degrees. Tripping. Shitting in the sand. I was in detox for a month. Now I’m on food stamps. Working at beach cleanup for the state—two-fifty an hour. But I’m clean. I have a room in Kapaa. A bicycle. In a coupla months I’ll be able to buy a used motor scooter. Day at a time.”

We had crossed the last of the twelve wooden bridges into Haena. It was a misty night. Long gray clouds streamed out of the mountains like plumes and poured down torrents of rain when they slid to sea. Just above the horizon the sliver of a moon was barely visible.

“So we’re here,” I said. “Where can I drop you?”

“A place called Four Crosses. Just up a ways.”

“I know where it is.” I looked at him. “Alvin Dixon’s house.”

“Yeah, the rock-and-roll guy. A sweet cat.”

“You’ve been there before?”

“Once.”

“Since you were sober?”

He was offended. “Why yeah. I don’t go to the places where I wasn’t sober. When I can remember, that is.”

“Sorry.”

But now he was looking at me. “Ever met Alvin?”

“Briefly. At the same party where I met you.”

“Oh.” He brushed his hair from his eyes. “Well, he’s not like you think. Not like that party. Alvin’s cool. Nobody does dope at his place. Hardly anyone drinks.”

“He’s straight?”

“As a ruler. Listen, the cat who invited me out the first time is one of his best friends. Used to be his bass player. I met him at the meeting in Kapaa, okay? Alvin’s cool.”

The big houses on Tunnels Beach all had long dirt driveways off the main road. At one of these, with a chain across it and an unmarked mailbox, Olan said, “This is it.”

After he got out, I said, “You know, that night in Kilauea he invited me out here. He said to come anytime.”

Olan shrugged, opening his palms. “You should do it,” he said, slipping under the chain. “Thanks for the ride.”

A week went by, and another, and then I did go up to Four Crosses. I was restless for change, and I thought, why not. It was only about a mile and half from my place, so instead of driving, I simply walked west along the shore, around the deep horseshoe of Tunnels Beach, where wind-gliders were riding the swells, and through a cypress grove. A sandy path led to a weather-beaten gate with a
NO TRESPASSING
sign. Beyond the gate, nearly concealed by a line of palms, was the rear of a sprawling white house. It was a modern two-story design, with harmonious Mediterranean lines. There were several canopied balconies, a widow’s walk, and wide picture windows. Looming behind the blue roof were the greenest and most imposing mountain peaks of all, at Ke’e Beach.

A black Labrador burst from the tall grass when I opened the gate and, sniffing the thongs I carried, escorted me up to the terrace that wrapped around the house. At the far end, two men were playing cards at a glass table. Near the steps I ascended, a woman in a yellow bikini was looking out to sea through binoculars from a beach chair. She was about my height, with long, bright blond hair and an athletic figure. I was wearing a two-piece black bathing suit—not quite as skimpy as hers—under an open white shirt, a baseball cap, and the black wraparound sunglasses I had to wear constantly since recovering my sight. This was what I would typically wear for a walk on the beach. The
light makeup I had applied, and the coral nail and toe polish, were not so typical.

When she lowered the binoculars, I saw that the woman was a few years older than me, pretty, with widely spaced eyes. I recognized her as one of Alvin Dixon’s companions at the party.

She came up to me, and after I introduced myself, extended her hand. “My name is Claudia. Come, sit.”

Claudia was Alvin’s girlfriend. She was Italian, but she had met Alvin in Kyoto just after his retirement from music. A ceramicist, she had studied in Japan, and now she also imported ceramic pieces from there and sold them in Italy, where they were much in demand. She and Alvin spent two months of every year in Tokyo and Kyoto, and she made regular trips to Milan. The rest of the time they lived at Four Crosses. I learned all this in our first half hour together, sitting beside her on another beach chair. I also learned that Claudia had a pretty good memory herself: not only did she recall running into me at the foot of the stairs at the party, but she informed me gently that I looked a lot healthier now.

“Your eyes are clear as the sky,” she smiled.

I flushed, wondering if like so many other people I ran into she had followed the lurid newspaper accounts of the car accident. Somehow I didn’t think so.

“Thank you,” I replied. “That was not a happy time for me.”

The other two men, who I thought were playing cards, had just stood up to go for a swim. In fact, the one—a houseguest—had been giving a tarot reading to the other, who was a neighbor.

“He’s very good with the tarot,” Claudia said to me of the house-guest, a short, bald, powerfully built man about fifty, “though he doesn’t use it professionally.”

“And what is his profession?”

“Jorge is a mind reader. He’s performed all over the world, in nightclubs and theaters. Once, even at the Royal Albert Hall, for the Queen.”

“Really.”

“Yes. And he
can
read your mind. You’ll see. In the meantime, here,” she handed me the binoculars, “you can have a look at Alvin while I get you—what?—juice, soda …”

“Juice is fine. But where is he?”

She pointed to the sea, fully extending her arm. “Far out. With those you can make out the sail, just to the left of the point.”

The deep water was indigo and the waves were high. At first I couldn’t see a sail among so many whitecaps. Then I spotted it: like a white saw going up and down through blue wood, the spray flying like shavings. The hull flashed into view for an instant, then disappeared.

“It’s very rough today,” Claudia said simply, returning with a pitcher of grapefruit juice and two glasses.

An hour later, the man who had been at the wheel of that ketch was sitting with us at the glass table, pouring himself the last of the juice. His eyes were still intense, his face a strong V framed by wavy brown hair, and his thin wiry frame was as dark as a desert wanderer’s, but Alvin Dixon no longer looked to me like Jesus. For which I was grateful. However, my instincts about him had been correct during the brief encounter at the party—and I was pleased that something good might come of that ill-fated night. He was an exceptionally kind and private man. A good listener. I hadn’t met anyone quite like Alvin, in disposition, since Cassiel.

Like Claudia, Alvin too remembered where we had first met. “I’m so glad you accepted my invitation,” he smiled.

“Yes,” I said, “I’m only sorry it took me seven months.”

“You’re here now. You’ll stay for dinner?”

I stayed that night, then returned the following night, and one night that weekend. Other guests also came and went: some were people I knew in passing, others were islanders I had never met before, and a good many were visitors touching down briefly before returning to Honolulu, en route to Asia, Oceania, or the mainland. Some were people like me, others were individuals of great notoriety. Artists, musicians, explorers, global wheeler-dealers, aesthetes, even a taciturn man en route to Australia who was a meteorite hunter—Alvin and Claudia knew all kinds of people, the sort of people with whom I had little contact previously. But, then, I had never been around anyone as wealthy and famous as Alvin Dixon. And Olan had been right: I saw none of these guests, including the most sophisticated, break the unspoken house rule prohibiting drug use—which was saying a lot in 1972, on Kauai, when things were so free and easy.

Yet despite all this activity, Four Crosses mirrored its two principal
residents in that it seemed a calm and unhurried household. This was what impressed me most about the place. Alvin and Claudia were Buddhists: they had met in Kyoto at a retreat. Not the sort of Buddhist-one-month, Hindu-the-next faddists who were so common in those days, Alvin and Claudia were serious adherents, and many of their guests, for all their glitzy trappings, were fellow adherents they had met at temples, shrines, and secluded inns during their travels in Asia.

There was a beautiful Steinway concert grand in the living room which Alvin evidently played on occasion, but seldom when anyone was around, and an elaborate, rarely used, stereo system, but otherwise very little around the house that had to do with music. And nothing at all—no framed gold records, photographs, or mementoes—related to his musical career. It seemed to be an off-limits topic in his home—banned as strictly as drugs. But I couldn’t help bringing it up one day later that summer after I had been a frequent visitor. We had all just come in from a long sail and Alvin and I were sitting alone on the terrace, relaxed and tired. Having heard one of his songs that morning on the car radio, I remarked to him that I had been a great fan of his band, T-Zero. In fact, I went on, warming to the subject, their take-no-prisoners LPs had been favored even over the Stones and the Dead in our rec room on the
Repose
.

His face darkened, and I was afraid I had not only crossed a line, but offended him. “Because of its violence,” he said finally.

“No. Because of its sexual energy, and its anger.” I sat up in my chair. “It was a release for people trapped in a war.”

He just looked at me, and I was surprised he wouldn’t have known this.

“I’m sorry for bringing it up,” I said.

“Don’t be,” he said, leaning closer. “You know, I’ve worked at making my former life feel like it belonged to somebody else. When people went into how they listened to my music while having sex, or tripping, or seeing God, or whatever, I just shut down. Everything about that life shut me down. That’s why I had to start over.” He smiled. “Forgive me, Mala. I haven’t run into many people who were in the war. I’m glad you told me what you did.”

After that, he sometimes played jazz for me on the piano—especially early stuff like Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton—just as Zaren
Eboli once had. We became much closer friends. So much so that when Claudia had to fly to Rome late in September, I spent a good deal of time with Alvin. At Four Crosses, on his boat, and one day at my house for lunch, just the two of us. But in all that time, when I felt as if with the slightest nudge—and a ton of guilt—I could have fallen for Alvin, he never once came on to me. I was his friend, he wanted to keep our friendship, and he was faithful to Claudia. It was that simple.

“Can you believe it?” I said to Seth one night over dinner in town. “At Wilcox Memorial I got mixed up with a bunch of respected physicians who—present company excluded—were among the most depraved people I’ve ever encountered, and here I’m hanging out with a world-famous rock star and we drink green tea and do yoga and he never cheats on his girl.”

Just before Claudia’s return, Alvin and I visited the Blue Room one afternoon. The Blue Room was a cave within a cavern at the northern tip of the island, where the road ended. To reach it, you had to climb halfway up a mountain, then descend into its bowels through a chasm, down a rocky slope, to a pool of fresh water, cobalt-colored and very cold. You then had to swim across the pool to a tunnel in the rock face that led deeper into the mountain. The tunnel allowed you just enough room to breathe above the waterline, and after about sixty feet it ended in a small cave. The sides of the cave were smooth stone that formed a perfect dome—like the upper half of an eggshell. In fact, the cave was the topmost portion of a vertical shaftway filled with cold water that ran to depths no plumb had ever reached. It was called the Blue Room because its water was a stunning, luminous blue—like the color of a swimming pool lit up at night—as if from that great depth light were shining upward. No one could explain the source of this light.

“Olan told me the ancient Hawaiians believed sunlight enters the mountain through a hidden shaftway and reflects off seawater far below us,” Alvin said, as we treaded water, his voice echoing sharply. “But no one has ever been able to find the shaftway.”

Afterward, we sat on the bank of the cobalt pool in the outer cavern. The rock walls there were smeared with bat droppings and the air was damp and cool. As we sat wrapped in our towels, I found myself discussing my passion for, and grief over, Cassiel; Alvin would be one of only two people to whom I ever related that part of my story completely.
The Blue Room’s waters, rich in minerals, were reputed to possess healing properties, restoratives of the spirit, and perhaps they had gone to work on me, for it surprised me that the story should spill out more easily with Alvin than it ever had with my women friends. A worldly man who was detached from the world, nonjudgmental, he listened quietly while for nearly two hours I related the entire tale. Though his eyes lit up, as they did when I showed him the palimpsest of rings where the spider had bitten my palm, he didn’t once interrupt me.

When I was through, he took my hand. “You say you and he only had so little time together as lovers. Whenever I come here, I’m reminded of a story I heard when I visited India. Long before there were telescopes, Hindu cosmographers concluded that the universe was composed of billions of galaxies. They defined the life cycle of a galaxy as an eon. Asked the length of an eon, they replied: ‘Imagine a mountain of solid rock, bigger than the Himalayas, which a man brushes with a piece of silk once every century; the time it would take him to wear away the entire mountain is an eon.’ When you consider time in that light, days, years, centuries begin to blur, don’t you think? How you fill any one day—while emptying it of distractions—is all that matters. It sounds as if you filled your few days to the brim. Also, Mala,” he smiled, “I do believe that there
are
stars which fall to earth. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to be around when they do.”