Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army (35 page)

Lydia took in a quick gasp of concern, betraying a genetic commonality to her sex.

“Their condition?”

“Having the time of their lives. Not sure Euro Disney will survive though.”

“Captain, has Sheila Barnes been informed that we are holding her children?”

“She has, and she is ours.”

“Okay. Good.”

I had noticed that Lydia had not really been paying attention. Her focus was somewhere else. “Lydia, if you want to back out, this is the time.”

She came to. She looked at me. At the others. Back to me. “Aaa, what for? You're my cowboy hero, you'll protect me.”

“That's right, and you'll totally forget about me when you become the Queen of Hollywood.”

“That's okay. I'm beginning to think you would rather ride off into the sunset anyway.”

“Could be you've discovered the true me.” I turned my attention to the whole group. “Let's have a pleasant drive up the coast tomorrow. Everybody should enjoy it and relax. For Saturday will be eventful and possibly nonstop. With any luck, Sunday we will be able to rest without having to nurse too many wounds.”

We spent the night at the Bel-Air and early the next morning packed up the Town Car and took off, taking Sunset to PCH, turning right to head up the coast. I drove, Lydia sat in the front passenger seat, and Roee sat in the back. Despite the pleasure of driving along the California coast, an activity that engenders breezy chatting, Lydia was unusually quiet, setting the tone for the drive. Without admitting it, she was having butterflies about more than just her performance. I had given her plenty of opportunities to quit, but she had turned down each one. Normally I would admire such resolve, but I was unsure about hers. Often we can act against our instincts if other forces intrude: hungers, desires, irrational wants. Was she still in the game because of the rewards she expected, ignoring that the potential of danger had intensified since that first afternoon in Hamo's office, when it all just seemed like a profitable lark, or was it a long buried, rarely admitted integrity that was forcing her to keep this contract? An integrity she may hardly have recognized, thus found confusing. Possibly it was just a silly bravado. She did not want to be seen as a quitter. Lydia was of that generation of women who had forced themselves into what traditionally were men's territories, who never got used to not proving themselves. There was no rest for the weary feminists of her type. Then again, it may have been something deeper and, quite frankly, more disturbing than any of these. Was she coming to the conclusion that she was fighting on the wrong side, more that she knew, because of my unfortunate slip, that this was a battle of opposites? This worried me the most. She was not incapable of private scheming. Would I find her more of a liability than an asset when we were in the thick of it?

It's never easy figuring out the true motivations of other people. Other people are always foreign to us. While, ironically, being native to our needs.

When we got to Santa Barbara I decided to stop for an early lunch. As beautiful as most of Los Angeles is ugly, Santa Barbara is an almost too perfect Pacific comfort zone. Big houses; large ranches; fine and expensive hotels, all like jewels dropped into the setting of sea breeze polished brilliant blue and green precious metal. Anchored to Earth by thousands of palm tree plugs, Santa Barbara should be a floating island, risen above the mundane; that would make sense. Roee and I have often talked of relocating there, but we worry that the lack of friction would too cool us to the harsh realities of humans, which we have found too amusing to forgo. “When I lived in L.A. before I never came up here.” Lydia was talking again as we sat in a restaurant gifted with views of both the ocean Santa Barbara faced and the green hills it backed into. “I'd heard of it, of course, but I had no idea what a little paradise this was.”

“Many people in the industry live up here, you know,” Roee told her.

“Really?”

“It's not that far from Hollywood. Even for its new queen,” I said. “Certainly closer than Corfu is from Athens. Especially by helicopter.”

“Lot of money up here?” she asked, referring not to the actual coin but to those who hold it so dear.

“Of course. Beauty is in the purse of the be-hoarder,” I said.

Lydia looked at me, met my eyes for the first time that day. “You are a strange, if lovely man, Nico. I can't figure you out.”

“A fruitless effort, believe me,” Roee said with a smile.

“To be ‘figured out.' What would that do to a person?” I asked. “Set him in stone, stopping his heart? That's no way to die.”

“Yes, but at least you get a ready-made statue for your memorial.” Roee winked at Lydia, encouraging her not to take me seriously.

Ignoring Roee's wink, Lydia said directly to me, “Knowledge is power.”

“That's the old saying,” I replied.

“No one has power over you.”

It was a statement of fact. “Only Roee, but that's because he has knowledge of my palate.”

“So I have figured out at least a little bit about you.”

“Yes, I can feel the stiffening begin.”

“In the right part of your anatomy, I hope,” Lydia said and smiled. It was good to have her back. There's nothing quite like a glimpse at what money can buy to charge the soul.

~ * ~

For the rest of the drive, Lydia returned to her former, more gregarious self, commenting on the undulating hills, sensual in their flow to the coast, asking what they were like during Spring. Green and full of wildflowers I told her. She was fascinated by the craggy shapes of the large old oak trees that stood everywhere on the hills, sometimes in clusters, sometimes just one, starkly standing alone; often more beautiful when standing alone. The true symbol of California, I told her. She gasped at her first sight of the huge rock that rockets out of Morro Bay. Had this been Greece, she said, there would have been a mythological story behind that rock, something to do with a god throwing it during battle with another god, or giving it as a gift to the Nymph of the bay. How did she know there wasn't such a myth among the Chumash Indians, I asked. Was there? She politely wanted to know. I told her if there was, I'm afraid I was unaware of it. We then made up our own myth about the rock, Roee adding some gruesome details of sea otter sacrifice.

She got silly when she saw herds of cattle on the hills, leaning out of the window, mooing at them, hoping for a reply. Roee was quite embarrassed by this. I joined Lydia in laughing about it.

A little over two hours after we had left Santa Barbara we pulled into the parking lot of the Cavalier Ocean Front Resort on the motel row of San Simeon. “Resort” was an optimistic name, but the establishment tried hard to earn it by operating like a hotel, with dining facilities, room service, and a courteous manner. It was indeed on the oceanfront, if you booked the right rooms, which, of course, Roee had. They were three adjoining rooms in a separate building from the rest of hotel that sat near the edge of a cliff, the shallow beach and Pacific Ocean directly below. The view was stunning—if the fog was lifted. For this was Central California. The coast here is a serious coast, a real continent-falling-into-ocean kind of coast, not a bright beach ball, hot dogs and soda, lazy day in the sun kind of coast. This coast did not amuse you—it brought out the brooder in you.

The rooms, comfortable if not large, each featured a small fireplace, the centerpiece image of their sales brochure. It went with the fog. Sex was as possible as it was probable in these rooms, but it was Romance that they were selling.

Roee went to his room to rest. I took Lydia down for a walk on the beach. It was strewed with rocks and driftwood, leftover timber from Northern California logging, I guessed. As the sky was now overcast, the ocean was gray. As the tide comes up high here, the sand, damp and cold, was gray as well. Surprisingly the Mediterranean in Lydia did not react against all the foreign in this. She was, instead, drawn to the foreign. I liked that in her.

“So,” she said after we had stood for a while just looking at the ocean, trying to catch a sight of a seal, “you will sleep with me tonight.”

“Is that a request or an order?”

“Neither. It is a need. Sex, you know, is life. I very much wish to be alive tonight,” she said taking in a deep breath of the ocean air.

“I am honored you choose me,” I said with a cartoon-like flourish, trying for a lightness; probably failing.

Lydia looked at me with a quizzical eye. “Roee is unavailable.”

“Not to me,” I said brightly. Lydia chastised me with her eyes. I had no more retorts. As a last refuge I kissed her on the gray beach.

~ * ~

Sara Hutton's faxed instructions had said to come to the Visitor's Center for the Hearst Castle at ten AM and someone would meet us there. We checked out of and left the Cavalier at nine-forty the next morning. It was a clear day. No fog. No overcast. I had been dismayed to discover this upon waking when I had gently slid out from under Lydia's arm, got up, opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the balcony. The air was clear, cool and filled with the squeals of seagulls. The ocean pounded the shore adding its agitated crowd sounds into the air. The sky was light blue and featureless. There was not a hint of clouds. Except for the little black cloud forming directly over my head.

 
Henderson and Pinsker dressed in conservative casual: Loafers with tassels and well-pressed slacks, and sport coats over their Izods. Lydia, her hair up and secured against the sea breeze, wore a bright, tight Nicole Miller dress of large squares of color and low sweeping neckline. Her cleavage greeted the day with a smile.

We pulled into the visitor's center at nine fifty-five and were approached by a State Ranger, even before we got out of the car. He was a big, hard, blunt man. Not a PR person's dream.

“Lydia Corfu, Mr. Henderson, Mr. Pinsker?” he demanded to know, almost standing at attention in his drab, light olive uniform, his, “Smokey the Bear” hat, as Mike called it, giving him a no nonsense air of a slightly absurd quality.

“Yes,” I acknowledge.

“Follow me. I'll take you to your transportation to the air museum.”

“Fine,” I said and we got out of the Town Car, Roee and I grabbing our briefcases.

“You won't be needing those,” Ranger Blunt said.

“That's okay, we don't mind carrying them,” I said.

“No, I mean, I'll arrange to have all your luggage picked up for tonight's stay, your briefcases included. It's Sara Hutton's orders.”

“Sara Hutton gives orders to State Rangers?” Pinsker wanted to know, coming up real close to the Ranger, almost face to face to share the shade under the brim of his hat.

“Well, you know, her request. We're happy to oblige.”

“That's fine for the bags, but we'll keep the briefcases.”

“Well, you know, you'll just have to lug them around the—”

“What kind of gun is that?” Pinsker interrupted the man, pointing to his large gun in the holster at his side, almost touching it.

The Ranger backed up. “Uh? Well, it's a Smith & Wesson 629.”

“Are you going to continue to carry it?”

“Of course, I'm, uh, you know, a police officer, it's my duty.”

“Well, I'm a lawyer.” Pinsker held up his briefcase. “This is my weapon. It's full of ammunition. I never not carry it. Does that make sense to you?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. I was just trying to save you the inconvenience.”

“Fulfilling my duty to my clients is never an inconvenience, Ranger.”

“Okay. Sure. Whatever you say. Follow me.”

Despite what the Ranger said, we could tell he was disappointed.

He led us through the visitor's center, a cleanly designed modern structure in the California Spanish style of white stucco and red tile roof. As this is where tourists pick up the buses that take them up to the castle sitting on the hill Hearst thought of as enchanted, it was not surprising that it had the feel of a terminal with its very high ceiling and row of ticket windows; snack bar and gift shops. The Ranger rapidly passed by all this, taking us back outside to the bus area and ushered us into a white stretch limo, asking for our car keys so he could see to our luggage. Another Ranger was in the driver's seat, eyes forward, sitting at attention, the pointed Ranger hat just grazing the limo's ceiling. When Ranger Blunt shut the door behind us, the limo moved forward immediately and started up the road towards the castle.

“Not too many State Rangers get to drive limos, I guess,” I said.

“It's Sara Hutton's,” the second Ranger said. That's when we knew she was a woman. When we knew it was Sheila Barnes. “She drives it up here herself, never has a chauffeur. She's real nice, real regular, you know? So I don't mind volunteering to drive her special guests to the air show. It's a neat car. Fun to drive. Love to take my kids to Disneyland in it someday.”