For hours (4 hours), Laxmi tended him, bringing fruit drinks. Still, he had no desire to go outside.
There was no outside.
Once, on her way to the kitchen, Chess said with a laugh:
“I don’t know if I’ll be here when you get back.”
He wasn
rode beachrocket from marinesub to subcontinent, Old and New testamentary Worlds, found himself at sea as well, Homeric ship on tsunami wave, crest of voice imploring him to let go, let go of the mast—Her again, commanding—let go, for the mast is already broken. She whom imperial elephants guarded and for whom mushrooms were merely students and Chess a speck Chesapeake of submarined subatomic dust, showed him cubensis Cubist crystalline prismpink mosaic of amethyst-emerald alien cityscapes, high-tension tessellated grids, he literally got knocked down by her wedding train — merely one more groveling suitor. He began to shiver/shudder, felt his mother Marjorie, the plant ingeniously wafting him from cosmoecstaticdemonic to interpersonal, now on Freudian couch feeling melancholic pain of that old woman’s heart and body — there were so many Mothers, why should Marjorie be any less scared/ sacred? He was already in India, thankful soon to be faraway, sadness and anxiety of separation and necessary revolt. Rocked in Laxmi’s arms. Those men beating Mom’s small white body in the night, robbing her, Mother alone without him, his protectorship, saw himself taking her money, asking for money, Die Rich, how could he, how could he make such a joke, he killed with his jokes, 1st Maurie than Marj, and now it must stop, She, the Great Mother, would help him, must help, he would call on Her imperial army, guarding nothing, do what he had to, he was good for Nothing, he would leave the useless killing part of himself behind, rocking a rock in Laxmi’s arms, Laxmi, cheap ineffable wondrous sterling knockoff of She, It, Chess now stereoscopically keening and wailing at Her unfathomable horror and Mercy.
I will go to India for I cannot be here for her death. I could not be here for her life.
O Mother Mother Mother I have
LXXX.Marjorie
discarded the paper at her feet which she lifted to read the dingy ad blaring out at her
It’s never too late to finish rich.
Even if you are buried in debt — there is still hope.
Find your “Silver Lexus Nexus”—and turbocharge it to save money
you didn’t know you had!
from the floor of the bus that would take her (though she did not know it) to Long Beach.
The LOVE IS AROUND THE CORNER fortune and lucky numbers were tucked in pocket, she had gotten the original scrap back from Joan after her daughter had promised — sworn — to write the string of numbers down once and for all. They were to be used without exception when buying lottery tickets.
Marj left the bungalow while the nurse was dozing. She strolled the gardens awhile — a lovely hotel, she’d been to a reception there once with Hamilton — before going south on Beverly Drive to Wilshire where she sat and looked at the gutted Taj Mahal, the theater she took her babies to when they were young. A tear of sorrow on the cheek of time. Wasn’t that how a poet had described the palace in Agra?
Joan would be angry with her for sneaking away. Her daughter had been so kind but that hotel was costing too much, had to be. Why were they at a hotel in the 1st place? Joan was acting strange and solicitous, as if Marjorie were a child. She spent money like water on nurses and room service. It just wasn’t sitting well. Joan kept telling Marj she would soon be a grandmother, but she knew that couldn’t be true, Joan was too old to have children, and not even married! Marj didn’t want to say it but she was truly concerned. She thought Joan was and always had been barren, and worried she’d quit her job as an architect too soon.
She rested on a bench and let the buses pass. Then she walked to another hotel, kitty-corner to the vanished Taj — the Regent Beverly Wilshire — also quite lovely. (She remembered having been there with Ham as well, at a bar called Hernando’s Hideaway. There used to be a big bookstore inside, but all that was long gone.) She wandered into a restaurant with black-and-white floors called The Boulevard, they spelled it “The Blvd,” but suddenly had to use the restroom — a young woman pointed the way, though it took a while for Marj to find — and as she sat in the opulent marble-floored fully enclosed stall (reminding, as a certain opulence usually did, of Bombay’s Taj Mahal Palace Hotel), she thought of Bonita and their excursion to Neiman’s. She even imagined retracing their steps yet didn’t have the strength, not today.
She wiped herself then looked for the lever but there wasn’t one — nothing at all! How could such a splendid hostelry have skimped on a basic fixture, installing a toilet that couldn’t be flushed? Perhaps they were on timers; that seemed rather crude. She wondered what to do. She decided she’d go tell someone. Marj stood from the bowl, gathering her skirt around her. She didn’t like leaving all that in the water, it was ugly. A moment after she got up, she heard a flush. Something must be wrong and she still thought she should mention it at the reception desk, but shrugged. The old woman washed her hands with the sweet-smelling soap, glad that she wouldn’t have to share her travail with the staff, who had so much else to tend to.
Maybe the toilet had fixed itself.
She walked to the grand entrance (where the swimming pool used to be way back when) and asked the doorman in the marvelous costume for a cab. She gave the driver the address of her Beverlywood home. As they turned into the street, Marj felt bad because she hadn’t brought anything for Pahrump.
The coachman slowed down, looking for the house. Darkness was descending. She told him this was it, the charred lot (she didn’t say that in so many words), and he made a snorting sound. She said just pull into the drive please and let me out. He was one of those horrid, judgey men from unknowable countries who had an agenda on top of getting their money. Marj gave him a nice tip and he shook his head, ogling her as she stepped to the sidewalk, like she was a crazy person. The old woman was about to investigate the remains of her residence but saw the driver still sitting there gawking, and she looked him straight in the eye until he shrugged and sneered and snorted again or whatever it was he did and put the car in gear and pulled away.
She couldn’t get onto the property because of a wire fence.
“Marjorie?”
It was Cora.
“Hello!”
“Marjorie, what — what are you doing here? Aren’t you at the hotel? Joan said you were at the hotel.”
“Oh yes, we’re still there, but there’s no place like home!”
“But — how did you get here?”
“I cabbed it. Cora, why is there this fence?”