The Gold Coast

81

He tracks down to Sandy’s, refusing even to look at South Coast Plaza.

Sandy’s door opens and it’s quiet inside. Angela’s there. “Oh hi, Jim.”

“Hi Angela. Is Sandy—is Sandy okay?”

“Oh yeah.” Angela leads him into the kitchen, which seems odd, so quiet and empty. “He’s fine. He’s gone down to Miami to visit his father.”

“I just heard from Tashi what happened the other night. We’ve been up in the mountains since then or I would’ve been by sooner. I’m really, really sorry—”

Angela puts a hand on his arm to stop him. “Don’t worry about it, Jim. It wasn’t your fault. Tash told me what you did, and to tell you the truth, I’m glad you did it. In fact I’m proud of you. Sandy’s all right, after all. And he’ll be back in a few days and everything will be back to normal.”

“But I heard he got arrested?”

“It doesn’t matter. They can’t make any of the charges stick. Arrests by security cops don’t mean much to the courts. Sandy and Bob said they were just boating out there, and there was nothing to indicate they weren’t. Really, don’t worry about it.”

“Well…”

Angela sits him down, comforts him in typical Angela style: “Sandy wasn’t even to shore when they caught him. It was pretty scary, he said, because they fired a warning shot to stop him, and then they had submachine guns aimed at him and all. And he spent a couple days in jail. But nothing’s going to come of it, we hope. Sandy may have to quit dealing for a while. Maybe for good. That’s my opinion.” She smiles a little.

Jim asks about Arthur.

“He’s disappeared. No one knows where he’s gone or what’s happened to him. I’m not sure I care, either.” Apparently she blames Arthur for getting all of them involved with the sabotage/ drug rescue attempt at LSR; although, Jim thinks, that’s not exactly right. For a moment she looks bleak, and all of a sudden Jim sees that her cheerfulness is forced. Optimism is not a biochemical accident, he thinks; it’s a policy, you have to work at it. “That was damned stupid, what he was doing,” she says, “and he was using you, too. You should have known better.”

“I guess.” They were being used to cover a drug run, after all; what can he say? And in the earlier attacks… was that all there was to it? “But… no, I think Arthur believed in what we were doing. I don’t think he was doing it for money or whatever—he really wanted to make a change. I mean, we have to resist somehow! We can’t just give in to the way things are, can we?”

“I don’t know.” Angela shrugs. “I mean we should try to change things, sure. But there must be ways that are less dangerous, less harmful.”

Jim isn’t so sure. And after they sit in silence for a while, thinking about it, he leaves.

On the freeway, feeling low. How could he have guessed that sabotaging the sabotage would get Sandy in such trouble? Not to mention Arthur! And what, in the end, did he and Arthur accomplish? Were they resisting the system, or only part of it?

He wonders if anything can ever be done purely or simply. Apparently not. Every action takes place in such a network of circumstances.… How to decide what to do? How to know how to act?

He drives by Arthur’s ap in Fountain Valley. Into the complex, up black wood stairs with their beige stucco sidewalls, along the narrow corridor past ap after ap. Number 344 is Arthur’s. No one answers his knock: it’s empty. Jim stands before the window and looks at the sun-bleached drapes. That visionary tension in Arthur, the excitement of action… he had believed in what he was doing. No matter what the connection with Raymond was. Jim is certain of it. And he finds he is still in agreement with Arthur; something has to be done, there are forces in the country that have to be resisted. It’s only a question of method. “I’m sorry, Arthur,” he says aloud. “I hope you’re okay. I hope you keep working at it. And I’ll do the same.”

Walking back to his car he adds, “Somehow.” And realizes that keeping this promise will be one of the most difficult projects he will ever give himself. Since both Arthur and his father are “right”—and at one and the same time!—he is going to have to find his own way, somewhere between or outside them—find some way that cannot be co-opted into the great war machine, some way that will actually help to change the thinking of America.

It’s late, but he decides to drive down to Tashi’s place, to discuss things. He needs to talk.

He takes the elevator up the tower, steps out onto the roof.

It’s empty. The tent is gone.

“What the hell?”

What is happening? he thinks. Where is everyone going? He walks around the rooftop as if its empty concrete can give a clue to Tashi’s whereabouts. Even the vegetable tubs are gone.

Below him sparkle the lights of Newport Beach and Corona del Mar. Somewhere someone’s playing a sax, or maybe it’s just a recording. Sad hoarse sax notes, bending down through minor thirds. Jim stands on the edge of the roof, looking out over the freeways and condos to the black sea. Catalina looks like an overlit sea liner, cruising off on the black horizon. Tashi.…

After an insomniac night on the living room couch, Jim calls Abe. “Hey, Abe, what happened to Tashi?”

“He left for Alaska yesterday.” Long puase. “Didn’t he say good-bye to you?”

“No!” Jim remembers their parting after the drive back. “I suppose he thinks so. Damn.”

“Maybe you were out when he called.”

“Maybe.”

“So how did you like the mountains?”

“They were great. I want to tell you about it—you going to be home today?”

“No, I’m going to work soon.”

“Ah.”

Long silence. Jim says, “How’s Xavier?”

“Hanging in there.” Another silence.

But maybe Abe hears something in it. “Tell you what, Jim, I’ll call you tomorrow, see if you’re still up for getting together. We’ve got to plan a celebration for when Sandy comes back, anyway. As long as nothing happens to his dad.”

“Yeah, okay. Good. You do that. And good luck today.”

“Thanks.”

Jim tracks by First American Title Insurance and Real Estate Company, just because he can’t think of anything to do and old habits are leading him around.

Humphrey is out front, looking morosely at the construction crew that is cleaning up the inside of the building. It’s a mess in there—it resembles fire damage, although it isn’t black. They’ve got most of it cleaned.

“They blew it away,” Humphrey tells him. “Someone blasted it with a bomb filled with a solvent that dissolved everything in there. They got a whole bunch of real estate companies, the same night.”

“Oh,” Jim says awkwardly. “I hadn’t heard. I was up in the mountains with Tashi.”

“Yeah. They got all my files and everything else.” He shakes his head bleakly. “Ambank has already pulled out of the Pourva Tower project because of the delays, they said. I just think they’re scared, but whatever. It doesn’t matter. The project is a goner.”

“I’m sorry, Humph,” Jim says. “Real sorry.” And the part of him that would have been pleased at this unexpected turn—something good coming out of his madness, after all—has gone away. Seeing the expression on Humphrey’s face it has vanished, at least for the moment, from existence. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right,” Humphrey says, looking puzzled. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Uh-huh. Still, you know. I’m sorry.”

All these apologies. And he’s going to have to give Sheila Mayer a call sometime, and apologize to her too. He groans at the thought. But he’s going to have to do it.

So Jim spends the afternoon pacing his little living room. He stares at his books. He’s much too restless to read. To be on his own, by himself—not today, though! Not today. He calls Hana again. No answer, no answering machine. “Come on, Hana, answer your phone!” But he can’t even tell her that.

Okay. Here he is. He’s alone, on his own, in his own home. What should he do? He thinks aloud: “When you change your life, when you’re a carbrain suddenly free of the car, off the track, what do you do? You don’t have the slightest idea. What do you do if you don’t have a plan? You make a plan. You make the best plan you can.”

Okay. He’s wandering the living room, making a plan. He walks around aimlessly. He’s lonely. He wants to be with his friends—the shields between him and his self, perhaps. But they’re all gone now, scattered by some force that Jim feels, obscurely, that he initiated; his bad faith started it all.… But no, no. That’s magical thinking. In reality he has had hardly any effect on anything. Or so it seems. But which is right? Did he really do it, did he really somehow scatter everyone away?

He doesn’t know.

Okay. Enough agonizing over the past. Here he is. He’s free, he and he only chooses what he will do. What will he do?

He will pace. And mourn Tashi’s departure. And rail bitterly against… himself. He can’t escape the magical thinking, he knows that it has somehow been all his fault. He’s lonely. Will he be able to adapt to this kind of solitude, does he have the self-reliance necessary?

But think of Tom’s solitude. My God! Uncle Tom!

He should go see Tom.

He runs out to the car and tracks down to Seizure World.

On the way he feels foolish, he is sure it’s obvious to everyone else on the freeway that he is doing something utterly bizarre in order to prove to himself that he is changing his life, when in reality it’s all the same as before. But what else can he do? How else do it?

Then as he drives through the gates he becomes worried; Tom was awfully sick when he last dropped by, anything can happen when you’re that old, and sick like he was. He runs from the parking lot to the front desk.

But Tom is still alive, and in fact he is doing much better, thanks. He’s sitting up in his bed, looking out the window and reading a big book.

“How are you, boy?” He sounds much better, too.

“Fine, Tom. And you?”

“Much better, thanks. Healthier than in a long time.”

“Good, good. Hey Tom, I went to the mountains!”

“Did you! The Sierras? Aren’t they beautiful? Where’d you go?”

Jim tells him, and it turns out Tom has been in that region. They talk about it for half an hour.

“Tom,” Jim says at last, “why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me about it and make me go up there?”

“I did! Wait just a minute here! I told you all the time! But you thought it was stupid. Bucolic reactionary pastoral escapism, you called it. Mushrooms on the dead log of Nature, you said.”

That was something Jim read once. “Damn my reading!”

Tom squints. “Actually, I’m reading a great book here. On early Orange County, the ranchero days. Like listen to this—when the rancheros wanted to get their cowhides from San Juan Capistrano to the Yankee trading ships off Dana Point, they took them to the top of Dana Point bluff, at low tide when the beach was really wide, and just tossed them over the side! Big cowhides thrown off a cliff like frisbees, flapping down through the air to land out there on the beach. Nice, eh?”

“Yes,” Jim says. “It’s a a lovely image.”

They talk a while longer about the book. Then a nurse comes by to shoo Jim away—visiting hours are over for a while.

“Jail’s closed, boy. Come back when you can.”

“I will, Tom. Soon.”

Okay. That’s one stop, one step. That’s something that will become part of the new life. All his moaning about the death of community, when the materials for it lay all around him, available anytime he wanted to put the necessary work into it.… Ah, well.

Okay. What else? Restlessly Jim tracks home, starts pacing again. He tries calling Hana, gets no answer. And no machine. Damn it, she’s got to be home sometime!

What to do. No question of sleep, it’s early evening and again this isn’t a night for it, he can tell. His head is too full. As a seasoned insomniac he knows there isn’t a chance.

He stops by his desk. Everything neatly in place, the torn-up and taped-together OC pages on top at one corner. He picks them up, starts to read through them.

As he does, the actual words on the page disappear, and he sees not OC’s past but the last few weeks. His own past. Each painful step on the path that got him here. Then he reads again, and the anguish of his own experience infuses the sentences, fills the county’s short and depressing history of exploitation and loss. Dreams have ended before, here.

Okay. He’s a poet, a writer. Therefore he writes. Therefore he sits down, takes up a sheet of paper, a ballpoint pen.

There’s a moment in OC’s past that he’s avoided writing about, he never noticed it before and at first he thinks it’s just a coincidence; but then, as he considers it, it seems to him that it has been more than that. It is, in fact, the central moment, the hinge point in the story when it changed for good. He’s been afraid to write it down.

He chews the end of the pen to white plastic shards. Puts it to paper and writes. Time passes.