“Professor Ruíz said the book upset Prado’s family.”
“Yes, it was rather tragic. They booted him out of the house. Next thing I know he’s calling me from a bus station pay phone in San Francisco.”
“Is that where he settled?”
“Not for long. He kept picking up and moving. He was terribly frightened.”
“Of?”
“His brothers had given him a righteous beating. I think they intimated that they’d do it again, or worse, if he dared to write another book. Remember, he was nineteen. To become simultaneously a darling and a pariah was a shock to his system.”
“He struggled with the spotlight.”
“Oh, did he. He was shy to begin with. Getting pummeled wasn’t nearly as threatening as being trotted out in public. It triggered a streak of paranoia in him. I invited him to come stay with me but he was afraid of flying. So he just went along like that, hopping from one fleabag to the next. I wouldn’t hear from him for weeks at a stretch. Whenever a check came in, I’d hold the money. Sooner or later he’d call needing cash, and I’d send Lauren over to Western Union.”
“Do you know where he was? Specific locations?”
“I do not. California’s one big plate of avocados to me.”
“Any chance you still have the transfer receipts lying around?”
“Goodness, no. What kind of hoarder do you take me for?”
I smiled. “How much did he make?”
“For Lake of the Moon? I think the advance was about thirty-five thousand.”
“That doesn’t go very far around here.”
“Well, it was twenty years ago. And there was option money, too, and a handful of foreign sales. Fifty or sixty K, in all. But yes, I knew he was going to run out. I kept pressing him to sign another deal, strike while the iron’s hot. He wouldn’t hear of it. He was busy, he had to concentrate, something big in the works. I said, ‘Wonderful. May I see a few pages to get the flavor?’ No, it’s not ready, he’s writing as fast as he can. All the clichéd excuses you get from writers who are choking. Then he stopped communicating altogether. Months went by, a year, two. I’d just about written him off. You can imagine my astonishment when this twenty-pound package crash-lands on my doorstep.”
“Cathedral.”
“Ah, yes. Cathedral.” She sighed. “I want to be kind. It’s a work in progress. And I believe Octavio would’ve gotten there. In time. But clearly it’s not publishable as is. He must have known it, because he sent a follow-up letter, instructing me to burn the manuscript.”
“You didn’t.”
“Naturally. I’ve worked with too many writers to heed those sorts of hysterics.”
“Where does the title come from?”
“I’ve always thought it referred to one of those medieval churches that take five hundred years to complete. You begin building knowing someone else will finish it.”
“You helped him with his first book,” I said. “Could he have wanted you to take over on this one?”
“If so, he was delusional. Lake of the Moon had its issues, but at the core it was a story, amenable to refinement. Cathedral is... was well beyond my skills. Those of any agent. Or editor, for that matter. In any event, all that’s irrelevant. Octavio never contacted me, and I had no way of reaching him. There was nothing for me to do but sit and wait for him to call.”
“When did you realize he wasn’t going to?”
“It wasn’t an epiphany. He simply faded from my consciousness.”
“You made the decision to donate the manuscript.”
“I hung on to it as long as I could. After I retired I was cleaning out my office and found it in my file cabinet. Taking up the better part of a drawer. Sap that I am, I couldn’t bring myself to toss it. Couldn’t very well give it to his parents, either. I had my assistant look up libraries specializing in California literature. I can’t remember who took it.”
“Merced.”
“Sounds exotic.”
“Only if you like cows. I’m headed there today.”
“I thought that professor sent you his copy.”
“He did, but I’d like to see it in the flesh. I’m not sure how well you remember it—”
“Not in the slightest.”
“At one point, there’s a stick figure giving the finger, and the line En el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo. A Men 83.261.”
“That sounds like a Mass.”
“It is. But the word amen is broken up. You can read it as two words: A, ‘to,’ and Men 83.261. The number corresponds to a mile marker in Northern California. Mendocino County, 83.261. In other words, ‘I’m going to this place,’ and then the precise location.”
She said, “Goodness, that’s clever. If I was still in the business, I’d talk to you about a book. The real-life adventures of a preternaturally clever private detective.”
“Thanks, but the job’s mostly plodding along.”
“So is writing.”
“Did Prado ever mention Northern California? When he called to have money wired—”
“Sorry, no. As I said.”
“Please indulge me for a second and I’ll name some towns. Stop me if any of them ring a bell. Fort Bragg. Millburg. Swann’s Flat.”
“Avocados,” she said.
“Okay. Thanks anyway.”
“You’re welcome. It’s nice to think about Octavio. Amend that: bittersweet. He was a sweet boy. A sweet, sad boy. I wish I’d done more to help him.”
“What else could you have done?”
“Flown out, bought him dinner, bucked him up.” A beat. “We never met in person, you know.”
“Really?”
“Really. Everything was phone calls. That’s how we operated, in those days. Now I have to go. Husband, cigarettes, martini, then walk the dog.”
“Thanks for your time, Ms. Ferris. I’ll send your regards to the manuscript.”
“Please do,” she said. “It broke my heart to let it go. As if I was signing Octavio’s death certificate.”
Chapter 30
The newest addition to the University of California, UC Merced, was built in 2005 to serve the undereducated, low-income agricultural communities of San Joaquin Valley. From the East Bay it was a two-hour drive inland, all fields and cattle farms till the campus sprouted from the earth like some modernist bumper crop. I’d never been there before and was struck by the contrast between its boxy, no-nonsense layout and the august, tree-lined pathways of my alma mater.
Kolligian Library was one of the larger boxes. I rode the elevator up to Special Collections.
The desk librarian was a dyspeptic middle-aged guy with a waxed mustache. In exchange for my reservation number, he handed over a pair of white cotton gloves, a golf pencil, and a baggie of weighted shoelaces.
“I’ll retrieve the item from storage and deliver it to you in the reading room. Are you planning on taking pictures?”
Without waiting for an answer, he shoved a tray of forms at me. “You’ll need to fill this out. Every image requires a separate form. No flash photography.”
I held up the shoelaces. “What are these for?”
“Keeping pages flat.” As if I should’ve known. “Never press down on the binding.”