Wakefield (27 page)

Anton lives in some kind of miner's shack, as far as Wakefield can make out by the light of the kerosene lantern. Anton points to a pile of burlap sacks in a corner and Wakefield, totally smashed, falls on them unconscious.

He wakes to a world of pain made absolute by a brilliant shadow-less light that enters his head like knives. Anton is asleep in his clothes on an army cot. Wakefield takes a look at the puffy face, then stumbles into the desert to vomit.”

It is almost noon when Anton stumbles out and finds Wakefield, a few yards from the cabin, staring fixedly at a bush where a rattlesnake is staring back at him. Anton's good nature has returned.

“Wakefield, my friend, back up really slowly, don't take your eyes off him, and we'll have us some breakfast.”

The mention of breakfast nearly makes Wakefield sick again, but he follows the advice, backing on his haunches away from the rattler. Anton drives him to his car at the roadhouse, doing his salesman's spiel all the way, each word a stake through Wakefield's body.

Wakefield drives blindly for a while, head splitting, reaching every few minutes for the gallon of water he had the foresight to put in the car. There isn't a cloud in the desert sky, but he sees a shape in it nonetheless. It's Marianna, spreading herself by occult means all over his horizon. What did I ever do to you? Wakefield admonishes the apparition. Nothing, she answers, but it's a vast nothing, skywide. He looks away but hears the snapping of her briefcase anyway. She's either letting out the orphans or shutting them back in. For a moment he regrets his lamentable lack of concern, but then he realizes: they are
Marianna's
orphans. If he as much as looked at them, he'd be Marianna's for eternity. He looks stubbornly instead at the dividing line in the road.

Wakefield is out of water, but he spots the eagle-feathered warrior holding playing cards and follows him to The Golden Eagle Casino. He's driven back a piece.

He pulls into the nearly full parking lot and squints in the direction of a domed white building. Two state troopers are dragging a man to a squad car. It's Never Stop, without his backpack. Wakefield would like to intervene, but his feet are leaden and he needs liquid.

The air inside the casino is thick with cigarette smoke. A group of old people in wheelchairs with oxygen tanks strapped to the handles are parked in front of a bank of slot machines. A couple of them are actually smoking, one through a hole in her neck. Loudspeakers announce slots winners and imminent drawings for prizes, and pipedin music blares from speakers clutched by giant eagles. The blackjack and craps tables are jammed, surrounded by people trying to place bets over each other's shoulders. The dealers are all Native Americans in dark vests stamped with golden eagles, standing boulderlike against the waves of sickly-looking gamblers. I have arrived in hell, Wakefield realizes, and he finds a seat at the bar and orders two Cokes from a broad-faced waitress. He is waiting for the Devil to show up. In case anybody asks.

After a few sips he feels anonymous and free. Smoke drifts about him, the shrieks and loud music wash over him. No one around here is in the market for redemption. The architecture of the place is intentionally hollow, a huge absence in the middle of what was once a native world. No one is alive here; he is surrounded by ghosts. Does it matter to anyone that eagles were once sacred? Or even that they once certified real value on gold dollars? Now they are plaster, money is dust, the Indians are smoke, and pain floats about touching maimed bodies, squeezing as hard as it can, without effect. People scream in pantomime, holding whiskey and pretending to drink, laying down fake money, shaking cups full of confetti; their corpses are carried out and more are brought in by tall, thin shadows.

Wakefield takes a room at the motel beside the gambling hall, a small, dark, windowless cubicle steeped in acrid smoke and bleached vomit. The threadbare blanket on the bed stinks of sweat. He can hear the chiming of the slot machines and the blare of loudspeakers all night in his sleep. Yet he is innured to annoyance, waiting to die.

When he wakes up, he feels less confident: he isn't strong enough to die, not all on his own. He lies another hour on top of the stinking blanket, looking mutely at the blank TV.

The Devil stares with him. He'd like to die, too, but he's immortal.

Days later, he's not sure how many, Wakefield is in a town perched on the edge of the Pacific, sitting on a bench, waiting for the diner to open. Along the street there's a health food store, a video rental place, an art gallery, a pottery shop, a dance school, and a surfing-gear rental place. He counts six joggers passing by at an even and optimistic pace. Five bicyclists glide by on sleek machines that complement the outfits molded to their perfect bodies. The sun gradually warms the cool sea-salty morning, and by the time the sleepy teenager inside flips the Closed sign to Open, Wakefield feels himself returning from the dead. The smell of coffee makes him want to cry for joy. When the girl starts frying bacon for his eggs, he is ecstatic. Diana Vreeland called the smell of bacon frying “the most optimistic scent in the world,” and Wakefield agrees.

While Wakefield savors his bacon and eggs, his teenage cook sits at another table with her laptop open, researching homework with a friend via cell phone. Wakefield hasn't checked his e-mail for days; it's as if one of the cords binding him to the world has snapped. He feels no desire to reconnect.

“Rosa Parks. Yeah. The bus driver threw her off the bus when she refused to move to the back, right.”

She sees that Wakefield is listening. “Black History Month.” She shrugs. She reviews a few more salient facts with her friend, then gets up and refills his coffee.

“What's life like around here?” Wakefield asks.

“Boring.” She smiles. “Are you a vampire?”

His lack of sleep must show. “Hardly. ‘The key to the whole thing was boredom,'” Wakefield quotes someone, he can't remember who. He wonders if
l'ennui
can exist in this jewellike beach town sparkling gloriously on a sunny morning. Bored, bored, bored, ma petite. Be bored, sweet, it's a luxury.

Wakefield wishes he could offer her some wicked fun, but he's full of eggs and light. “Surely,” he says, “there is something to do.”

“My mom's having an olive pressing today. Tourists like it.” These last words she pronounces ironically, dissociating herself from the tourists and from her mom. “She makes fancy olive oil.”

He imagines hippies squeezing olives with hand-operated presses, or with their bodies. Doesn't sound like a symptom of ennui. He'll try it, why not. He still has time to spare before his next appointment in the City of Rain.

The teenager directs Wakefield to a stone house half-hidden among Spanish olive trees. He walks up a stone-paved path to the massive wooden door and finds himself inside a divinely scented and spotless factory. Mounds of Spanish olives on conveyor belts roll toward a device that pits them and passes them on to a big crusher. Other conveyors transport blood oranges to a different crusher, and another machine mixes the olive oil with brief spurts of oil from the orange peels. Three workers in white coats are supervising the process; one of them, a dark-haired beauty, waves to him and points to a sliding glass door, gesturing him to go through to where other visitors are sampling the finished product.

The olive oil glistens in miniature Japanese tubs next to fresh loaves of sourdough bread, and people are eating black caviar and pâté de foie gras, their wineglasses filled and refilled by a smiling waiter. Wakefield dips a piece of bread into the oil. Wide windows frame a view of rolling hills covered with grapevines and olive trees.

“Everything but the caviar is made in-house,” a cheerful, cultivated voice is saying. “Olives, grapes, oranges, wine, goose livers.” The voice belongs to a woman with gray-streaked chestnut hair gathered into a chignon. “What restaurant are you with?”

“The Beat,” blurts Wakefield.

“Oh, you're not Argylle, are you?”

“No, unfortunately.”

“Argylle is splendid, formerly of Chez Panisse. I'm Beth's mom, Sandina. She called to say she was sending you up here.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Wakefield shakes her hand. “Sandina?”

“Well, that's a story. I named myself after the Sandinistas. You know, Nicaraguan rebels. Youthful folly. I was in love with Ernesto Cardenal's poetry.”

“And now?”

“Now I'm in love with olive oil. My partners, you saw them coming in, the people in the white coats. They are Portuguese. They bought the groves and vineyard from a bankrupt guru who had to flee the country after being indicted by the I.R.S. The Portuguese have a long history of oil, you know.”

Sandina pauses for Wakefield to wipe a drop of oil from his chin.

“Our oil is some of the finest produced in this country.” She gestures toward the other guests. “Buyers, chefs, some L.A. people. Are you buying?”

“Observing,” admits Wakefield.

“My modest abode is nearby. I have a collection of ten thousand cookbooks. I also make wine, strictly for myself and my friends.” Her tone becomes intimate. “Beth is not coming home after work today, and her sister is with their father in Switzerland. Would you like to taste my wine?”

This is as direct a proposition as Wakefield has ever heard. And as complete a biography as could be put in a few words. Clearly Sandina is a working member of the leisure class. After the tasting he follows Sandina's BMW convertible down the hill to town. She pulls up in front of a grocery store. “I need a couple of things,” she explains, and Wakefield follows her inside. The store isn't what he expected; there are sacks of Colombian and Costa Rican coffee beans, wooden boxes of Peruvian amaranth, tin containers of Italian olive oil, and hard salamis hanging from the ceiling. An enormous wheel of parmesan covers a burled redwood table. A refrigerator case along the wall is stocked with mineral waters and imported sodas bearing colorful labels.

“Our modest grocery-cum-lunch place,” explains Sandina, with a tinge of irony he finds quite attractive. Behind the deli counter, a chef wearing a tall white toque converses briefly with Sandina in German.

“He says you cannot leave without trying his duck.”

Wakefield doesn't mind. Before he can even say thanks, he's handed a plate on which a roasted duck leg is nestled on a bed of lentils. Sandina takes one, too, and they sit at one of the burly tables, under the chef's watchful eyes. Wakefield takes a bite: the duck tastes slightly smoky.

“Slow-cooking,” Sandina explains. “It cooks all night and he's very proud of it. Rescues his own ducks, too. And he has a bone to pick with me, haha.”

When the store first opened, Sandina and her Swiss husband had grievously insulted the chef in some way that she has now forgotten. The chef, however, has not forgotten, and every time she comes in, he subjects her to his latest dish, then waits for her praise. It's been their little game for years now.

Wakefield takes a forkful of lentils, but they are bland, underseasoned for his taste. He walks to the counter and asks, in all innocence, for hot sauce.

At first the chef appears not to understand English. Then he turns away abruptly, and Wakefield could swear there are tears in his eyes.

“What did I do?” he asks Sandina, upset that the guy's upset.

“You've destroyed his ecology,” she whispers.

“His what?”

“Seriously. You've stepped onto a battlefield. He came here to rescue Pacific cuisine from the Mexicans and the Chinese. It's like a holy war for him. You just asked for the enemy.”

They leave in a hurry.

“There's more about the duck,” laughs Sandina before they get in their cars. “It's wild duck, but it wasn't hunted. It was ‘rescued' by volunteers after the oil spill. Beth and all her friends worked for a week without sleep, rubbing the oil off the ducks, but a lot of them died. Some local restaurants bought the ones that didn't make it. This rescued duck is the regular Friday special.”

“Why did we go in there?”

Sandina laughs. She holds open her windbreaker for him to see. Peeking over the top of an inside pocket is a long package of ink-black squid noodles. “Part of the game. I always lift something. Anyway, I thought you would enjoy seeing the place.”

As they drive, rising and dipping over the grapevined hills, Wakefield imagines lines of force over the landscape, connecting the people to the cosmos where the continent meets the restless ocean. People have always found, or made, utopias here, utopias of refugees and migrants, eccentric religions, infinite kindness, and silliness without end. The End of the World is often anticipated here, but the Garden of Eden just keeps growing.

Sandina's house is hidden inside a paradisical garden. Paths of seashells and smooth stones lead through it to a meditation gazebo and a windowless redwood building. Wakefield sits in the kitchen, surrounded by the ten thousand cookbooks, while Sandina rolls an enormous joint.

“My husband was a marijuana grower way back when. He perfected this strain of sensimilla.…” She licks the paper, completing her task. “Eventually he went into banking, like all good Swiss.”

A young Asian girl comes through the kitchen door. “Will you need me today?” She smiles at Sandina, paying no attention to Wakefield. She's wearing a batik scarf over her hair.

“You could make a fire for the sauna,” Sandina tells her, passing Wakefield the joint. “Use the balsam, okay?”

The girl nods and leaves noiselessly, trailing a scent of sage and leaf smoke behind her.

“She's with a Sufi-type group. They show up to do chores for people around here, but won't take any money for it. They won't even accept a glass of juice. They are required to do ‘service': roof repairs, plumbing, gardening, anything. Some people don't like to have them around: they're so otherworldly, they seem almost weightless. I've even heard people say that their ‘service' is some kind of ritual before they kill us all, but I don't think so. Do you?”