(And your father now wanted you to notice things)
(But something else did not)
(You dream a book, and sometimes the dream comes true)
(When you give up life for fiction you become a character)
(A writer would always be cut off from actual experience because he was the writer)
“Mr. Ellis?”
Kimball was calling to me from someplace far away, and I faded back into the room we were both in. He was already standing and his eyes interlocked with mine as I got to my feet, but there was a distance. And then, after a few promises to keep each other posted in case anything “came up” (a term that was left so deliciously vague), I walked him to the door and then Kimball was gone.
Once I closed the door, I noticed the manila envelope next to the footprints stamped in ash, resting on the floor, an object I hadn’t noticed before.
(Because it hadn’t been there before, right?)
My mind shrugged: anything was possible now.
I stared at it for a long time, breathing hard.
I approached it not with the casual wariness I usually felt when a student was handing me a story, but with a specific trepidation that spasmed throughout my body.
I had to force myself to swallow before picking it up.
I opened the envelope.
It was a manuscript.
It was called “Minus Numbers.”
The name “Clayton” was scratched in the corner of the title page.
I don’t know how long I stood there, but suddenly I needed to talk to Kimball.
When I rushed to the window I saw the taillights of Kimball’s sedan rolling down College Drive and in the distance, farther into the valley, the searchlights of an army helicopter sweeping over the deserted forest.
By now it was completely dark out.
But what was I going to tell Kimball? The paralysis returned when I realized I wanted to ask him something.
You will drive to Aimee Light’s studio, which is located a half mile from the college in a series of perfunctory brick bungalows that house off-campus students and brackets a parking lot surrounded by pines. Her car will not be there. You will cruise through the parking lot, searching for it, but you will never find it (because it was driven from the Orsic Motel and dumped somewhere) and your palms will actually be sweating, which will cause your grip to slide off the steering wheel. The moon will be a mirror reflecting everything it looms over, and the smell of burning leaves will permeate the night air as you briefly reflect on a day that has passed too quickly. You will park in her empty space and get out of the Porsche and you will notice her lights are off, and the only noise will be the hooting of owls and the cries of coyotes lost in the hills of Sherman Oaks, emerging from their caves and answering one another as they lunge toward lit pools of water, and always with you everywhere will be the constant scent of the Pacific. You will walk to the door and then stop because you don’t really want to open it, but after pushing uselessly against it you will give up and move to a side window and you will peer through it
(because you need to be so much bolder than you feel)
and the computer on her desk will be the only light in the room, illuminating a stack of papers, the Marlboros she smokes, the hurricane lamp next to the mattress on the floor, the Indian rug and the worn leather chair and the CDs scattered next to an ancient boom box and the framed Diane Arbus print and the Chippendale table (the only concession to her upbringing) and piles of books stacked so high they act as a kind of wallpaper, and as you scan the empty room suddenly something will jump up on the windowsill and scowl at you and you will scream and leap back until you realize it’s only her cat, pawing hungrily at the pane of glass separating you from it, and you will rush back to your car when you notice the dried blood staining its jaws, and as the cat keeps clawing at the window you will pull out of the parking lot, wanting to drive to the Orsic Motel in Stoneboat, but that’s forty minutes from here and will make you late to meet Jayne for couples counseling, though, of course, by this point, that isn’t the real reason. You are afraid again because it isn’t time to wake up from the nightmare yet. And even if you could, you know that there are so many new ones about to begin.
What I wanted to ask Kimball was: Did you find a navel ring on the torso in that shower stall in the Orsic Motel?
17. couples counseling
When I arrived back home Jayne was in the middle of packing. The studio’s Gulfstream would fly her out of Midland Airport tomorrow morning and land in Toronto sometime after ten. Marta reminded me of this while Jayne busied herself in the master bedroom, fitting clothes into various Tumi bags spread across the bed, checking each item off a list. She was saving everything she needed to say for Dr. Faheida’s office. (Couples counseling always reminded me of what a terrible thing optimism was.) I took a shower and dressed and was so exhausted I doubted my ability to sit through a session—I shuddered at the energy it would take. Since these dreadful hours usually ended in tears on Jayne’s part and a raging helplessness on mine, I steeled myself and didn’t mention the phone call from Harrison Ford’s office that I received in the parking lot in front of Aimee Light’s studio, warning me that it would be in “everyone’s best interests” (I noted the ominous new Hollywood-speak) if I could be there on Friday afternoon. In a zombie monotone I said I would call them back tomorrow to confirm while I stared through the windshield at the swaying pine trees looming up into the darkness above where I sat in the Porsche. Another failure on my part—though any excuse to get out of the house was now acceptable to me. Was, in fact, becoming a priority. While waiting downstairs I avoided the living room and my office and didn’t glance at the house as Jayne and I walked to the Range Rover parked in the driveway because I didn’t want to see how much more of its exterior had peeled off.
(But maybe it had stopped. Maybe it knew that I understood already what it wanted from me.)
And there was none of the casual bitching in the car that usually preceded these evenings. No argument ensued because I kept focusing on my silence. Jayne knew nothing about what was going on inside the house, or that a video clip existed of my father moments before his death, or that 307 Elsinore Lane was turning itself into a house that used to exist on Valley Vista in a suburb of the San Fernando Valley called Sherman Oaks, or that a vast wind had kept me from looking for a car I’d driven as a teenager, or that a murderer was roaming Midland County because of a book I’d written or—most urgently—that a girl I desired had disappeared into the Orsic Motel in Stoneboat sometime late last night. And I suddenly thought to myself: If you wrote something and it happened, could you also write something and make it disappear?
I concentrated on the flat asphalt ribbon of the interstate so I wouldn’t have to see the wind-bent palm and citrus trees that suddenly lined the roads (I imagined their trunks pushing out of the dark, hard ground for my benefit only), and the windows were rolled up so the scent of the Pacific didn’t seep into the car, and the radio was off so “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” or “Rocket Man” wasn’t pouring from an oldies station in another state. Jayne was leaning away from me in the passenger seat, arms crossed, tugging her seat belt every so often as a reminder for me to strap myself in. She made a clicking noise with her mouth when she noticed my conscientiousness. It was taking every cell I possessed to destroy (for just this evening) all the things that had been whirling through my mind, but in the end, I was just too tired and distracted to freak out. It was time to concentrate on tonight. And because I started paying attention something eased as we walked through the parking lot. I made a joke that caused her to smile and then we shared another joke. She took my hand as we moved toward the building, and I felt hopeful as the two of us entered Dr. Faheida’s office, where Jayne and I sat in black leather armchairs facing each other while Dr. Faheida (who seemed at once stirred and humbled by Jayne’s stardom) perched on a wooden stool off to the side, a referee with a yellow legal pad that she would mark up and casually refer back to throughout the session. We were supposed to talk to each other, but often forgot and during the first ten minutes we usually aimed our complaints at the shrink, forgetting to not use specific pronouns, and I always zoned out while Jayne always started (because she had so much more to contend with) and then I would hear something that would snap me out of my lassitude.