But there was no reason for him to look dirty at her like that, Lila thought. She buttoned her cardigan. They didn’t pay him to look like that.
Maybe the Captain would like them when he saw them. Then he could give her some money to pay the restaurant and they could go back and have a meal and he wouldn’t give the waiter any tip. No, they’d give him a super big tip just to make him feel bad.
She didn’t have any money to take a cab now. She couldn’t call the police. Maybe she could call the police. They probably wouldn’t remember her. Nobody remembered her. But she didn’t want to do that.
Everybody was gone. Where has everybody gone? she wondered. What’s happening that everybody’s gone? First the Captain is gone and then Jamie is gone. And Richard too, even Richard is gone. She never did anything to him. Something really bad was happening. But they weren’t telling her what it was. They didn’t want her to know.
Lila began to feel her hands shake a little.
She reached in her handbag for her pills and then remembered they were gone too.
She began to feel scared.
This was the first time since the hospital that she didn’t have them.
She didn’t know how far it was to the boat… It was toward the river, in this direction, she thought… Maybe not… She’d try not to think about anything bad and maybe her hands would stop shaking… She hoped this was the right direction… It was so dark now.
19
It’s dark out, Phædrus thought. Beyond the large sliding glass doors of the hotel room there was no trace of light left in the sky. All the light in the room came from the wall lamp where the moth was still fluttering.
He looked at his watch. His guest was late. About half an hour late. That was traditional for Hollywood celebrities. The bigger they are the later they come, and this one, Robert Redford, was very big indeed. Phædrus remembered that George Burns had joked that he’d been at Hollywood parties where the people were so famous they never showed up at all. But Redford was coming now to talk about film rights and that was vital business. There was no reason to think he wouldn’t be here.
When Phædrus heard the knock on the door it had that special metallic sound of all the fireproof hotel doors in the world, but this time he was suddenly filled with tension. He got up, walked over to open it, and there in the corridor stood Redford with an expectant, unassuming look on his famous face.
He seemed smaller than his film images had portrayed him to be. A golf cap covered his famous hair; odd, rimless glasses drew attention away from the face behind them and a turned-up jacket collar made him even more inconspicuous. Tonight he didn’t look anything at all like the Sundance Kid.
Come on in, Phædrus said, feeling a real wave of stage fright. This was suddenly real time. This is the present. It is as though this is opening night and the curtain has just gone up and everything is up to him now.
He feels himself force a smile. He takes Redford’s coat, tensely, trying not to show his nervousness, being smooth about all this, but accidentally he bunches the coat in the back, clumsily, so that the Kid has trouble getting one arm out… My God, he can’t get his arm out… Phædrus lets go and the Kid gets the coat off by himself, and hands it to him with a questioning glance, then hands him the hat.
What a start… Real Charlie Chaplin scene. Redford goes ahead into the sitting room, walks to the glass doors and looks over the park, apparently orienting himself. Phædrus, who has followed behind, sits down in one of the overstuffed silk-upholstered gilded Victorian chairs they have put in this room.
Sorry to be so late, Redford says. He turns from the glass doors and then moving slowly, at his own discretion, settles down on the opposing couch.
I just got in from Los Angeles a half-hour ago, he says. You lose three hours coming this way. At night they call it the "Red-Eye" flight… His eyes dart in for a reaction. Well named… you don’t get any sleep at all…
Redford is saying this but as he is saying it he is becoming somebody real. It’s like The Purple Rose of Cairo, where a character comes off the screen and shares the life of one of the audience. What is he saying?
Every time I go back I like it less, he says. I grew up there, you know… I remember what it used to be like… And I resent what’s happened to it… He keeps watching Phædrus for reactions.
I still have a lot of beautiful memories from California, Phædrus says, finally taking hold.
Did you live there?
I lived next door once, in Nevada, Phædrus says.
He is expected to speak. He speaks: a jumble of random sentences about California and Nevada. Deserts and pines and rolling hills, eucalyptus trees and freeways and that sense of something missed, something unfulfilled, that he always gets when he is there. This is just rilling time now, developing rapport, and as Redford listens intently, Phædrus gets the feeling this is his normal habit. Real stage presence. He’s just flown across the whole country, probably talked to a lot of people before that, yet he sits right here with his famous face listening as though he had all the time in the world, as though nothing of any importance had occurred before he walked in this room and nothing of importance was waiting for him after he walked out.
The rambling goes on until a common point of connection is found in the name of Earl Warren, the former Supreme Court chief justice, who Phædrus says represents a kind of personality not too many people think of as Californian. Redford concurs wholeheartedly, revealing personal values. He was our governor, you know, Redford says. Phædrus says yes, and that Warren’s family came from Minnesota.
Is that right? Redford says, I didn’t know that.
Redford says he’s always had a special interest in Minnesota. His movie Ordinary People was a Minnesota story, although they filmed it in northern Illinois. His college roommate came from Minnesota, and he’d visited his house there and never forgotten it.
Where did he live? Phædrus asks.
Lake Minnetonka, Redford says. Do you know that area?
Sure. The first chapter of my book touched down for a second at Excelsior, on Lake Minnetonka.
Redford looks concerned, as though he had missed an important detail. There’s something about that area… I don’t know what it was…
There was a certain "graciousness," Phædrus says.
Redford nods, as though that is right on.
There was a Minneapolis neighborhood called "Kenwood" that was the same way. People there seemed to have that same Earl Warren "charm" or "graciousness" or whatever it was.
Redford stares at him intensely for a moment. It’s an intensity he never shows on the screen.
What caused it? he asks.
Money, Phædrus answers, but then, realizing that isn’t quite right, he adds, and something else too.
Redford waits for him to continue.
There was a lot of old wealth out there, Phædrus says. Fortunes from the lumber days and the early flour mill days. It was easier to be gracious when you had a maid and chauffeur and seven other servants running around the place.