The foreman indulged this behaviour until one afternoon the owner arrived unexpectedly and toured his home-to-be and, baulking at the pornographic graffiti desecrating what would one day be his child’s bedroom, demanded it be sanded off.
“You should quit,” said Gilbert.
“And do what?”
“Come to San Francisco with me and get some of that free love. You could do graffiti. Or T-shirts. Or body painting. All those hippie chicks want their tits painted.”
While there was a definite allure to painting boobs, Cyril didn’t want to go to San Francisco, he wanted to go to Los Angeles, because he’d received a letter from Connie.
Dear C,
First of all, apologies for not writing.
I’m a total s—t. No excuses but lots of
explanations. Like working two jobs
and going to auditions and rehearsals.
Hardly time to breathe. The competition’s
fierce. And to be honest there isn’t much
call for my type here if you get my drift.
Though did have a role in an episode
of I Spy. Got to use a gun. Cosby and
Culp are so cool. It was a taste. Amazing
how long you can live on a taste.
I meant to write sooner. But the thing is
you’d write back, (I hope), then I’d miss
you so much I might come running home,
and I might end up resentful. Not fair to
you or me. It was cold turkey or nothing.
I hope you understand that. (It’s a compliment.)
So what’re you doing with yourself? Married?
Kids? Teaching art? Doing art? Stealing art?
Let me know. And if you’re ever passing
through L.A. drop in on us. If you don’t
and I find out you’re dead.
Hope this wasn’t too out of the blue.
Love,
C
He’d reread the letter so many times he could recite it like a poem. But for all the sweet sentiment it all came down to one troubling word. Us. Drop in on us. No mention of her being married, no mention of a boyfriend, but there was that word, us. He’d have gone to Los Angeles in a minute if not for that one small word, those two tiny letters. He tried reinterpreting the letter, wondering if there was any way us might mean just her? Did it refer to Hollywood in general, to the city as a whole, was she perhaps identifying so completely with the place that she had become plural, or was it the sort of thing that happened to actors who had, he assumed, multiple characters to choose from for their various roles? Or had she inserted that one little word as a caution? It occurred to him to simply write and ask, except he couldn’t bear the truth even after four years. Us meant us. She was a couple.
Which meant Los Angeles was out. Gilbert drove a lot of Americans in his cab and heard non-stop stories about sex and drugs. It was 1966 and the ever curious Gilbert acquired some lsd, and one Sunday at the beach he made a performance of cutting a confetti-sized square of paper in two then piercing one half on the tip of his Swiss Army knife.
“Behold.” Gilbert’s hair hung to his collarbones and he sported motorcycle shades and a Joe Namath Fu Manchu moustache that was impressively thick and black. He licked the flake of paper from the blade tip then pierced the other half and offered it to Cyril. “Don’t want to hit the Haight as LSD virgins. We gotta be experienced.”
Cyril glanced around. They were at Spanish Banks, the beach crowded with families, couples, sunbathing girls, screaming kids, seniors in sling chairs. He wondered if Connie had tried LSD. He knew Paul certainly hadn’t. Paul thought hippies should be sent to coal mines or Vietnam. Yet colours and shapes were said to take on new life. Baudelaire took opium and he had no doubt that Salvadore Dali had as well. Maybe he’d finally understand what was up with the flies and honey. He pinched the half hit of acid from the knife-tip and swallowed it down.
“Bravo, my friend.”
“Now what?”
“We wait.”
“How long?”
“Until we’re there.”
“Where’s there?”
“Right here.”
Lying on the sand, Cyril’s heart sped. It was noon, the sun gold in an azure sky. By half past twelve he felt nothing, by one he felt nothing, by half past one he realised that Gilbert had played a joke on him, and while he was relieved he was also disappointed. By two he was sitting up cross-legged pouring the miracle of sand from one hand to the other. How was it that sand could be melted down into glass, and how was it that something as solid as glass could be transparent? He stretched himself out on the hot sand and began to writhe, discovering the delicious feel of the sand against his skin. Oblivious of anyone watching, he writhed slowly to get the full satisfaction. Then he sat up. Gilbert was petting a log as though it was a cat.
“This log is a genius,” said Gilbert.
Cyril understood. They knelt side-by-side.
“Ask it anything. Go on. It’s an oracle.”
Cyril had no questions. Life was all too perfectly clear for questions. Electricity, radio waves, space, even glass, all made sense. He petted the log.
“It’s purring,” said Gilbert.
Cyril put his ear to the sun-bleached driftwood and discovered that it was, like a great big cat, a panther, a puma, a leopard.
They remained with their ears to the wood and then convulsed in laughter.
“Swim,” said Gilbert, sending the word like a smoke ring into the air.
Before he reached the water Cyril dropped to the damp corrugated low tide sand and began drawing, trembling at the electric sensation on his fingertips, listening to the delicate scraping sound, intrigued by the texture of the lines and savouring the scent of brine. He thought of sea caves and galleons, the particulate existence of grit.
He raised his hand and began drawing on the air with his finger. Contrails of colour hung before his eyes and he spread his fingers in wondering admiration then began drawing with all ten fingers at once, each one independent and yet each one orchestrated with the others. A spider. A puppet master. He saw cinematic tapestries flowing in time lapse speed from his fingertips: Hieronymus Bosch, the Mouseketeers, Muhammad Ali, the earth itself rotating with its coastlines and mountain ranges beneath a living gauze of cloud.
Then they were bombing along the beach road in Gilbert’s Bug with the surface of the world flowing over them. Up ahead an owl dropped from the trees and plucked a rat from a ditch. It was so swift, so perfectly executed, that Cyril thought it must have been rehearsed, that it was a scene from a movie, that they were not driving at all but sitting in a theatre, or perhaps—and this sucked the breath right out of him—in a movie, and that therein lay the secret of secrets, that God was Otto Preminger in a beret with a cigarette in a holder clenched between his teeth.