I'll Let You Go

CHAPTER 36. Reunions

“Aren’t you curious about our guests? I mean, what they’re doing here?”

Trinnie was making sport, but her son wasn’t receptive.

“It’s a wonderful thing that we’re here,” said Ruth. “Wonderful!”

“I can’t believe it myself,” offered Harry. The spiffed-up face still drooped on one side but was so closely shaven (Ruth had done the job) that his cheeks looked like marzipan. “This marvelous house — hasn’t changed! Nothing has changed.”

“Nothing, and everything! Well, aren’t you wondering, Toulouse?” his mother asked mischievously.

“Now, don’t bother the boy!” said Grandpa Lou.

“The Weiners graciously consented to come to dinner tonight so that I could make amends.” She looked at her son with near-religious gravitas. “It’s important to make amends. Do you know what ‘amends’ are, Toulouse?”

“Of course he knows!” exclaimed Ruth, beaming.

“But does he really—”

“Why talk to the boy like that, Katrina?” chuffed Louis, stabbing a forkful of quail salad.

“He’s extremely intelligent,” Ruth went on. “Like his cousin Edward.” She was thrilled to be sitting there dropping names and having discourse with … family! “Why, I couldn’t even follow some of the things that child discussed!”

“Marvelous boys,” said Harry, soaking an endive in Persian mulberry sauce. “Marvelous minds.”

“Now, don’t bother him, Katrina!”

“Father, he’ll be fine!” She gently mussed Toulouse’s hair with her fingertips, then took a breath, centering herself. “There’s an old saying — Ralph told it to me — back when he was still Rafe! But it’s a beautiful saying: ‘When someone plants a tree under which they will never sit, that’s how you know civilization has arrived.’ ”

“That’s lovely,” said Ruth, putting her hand on her husband’s.

“And quite pertinent,” said Harry, “for a designer of gardens.”

“It’s Greek — he probably read it during his Poetics period. Remember, Tull?” Then, to the Weiners: “Rafe is an old paramour. And so is Ralph!”

“Avery young old paramour,” said Toulouse.

“Oh!” said Ruth. She liked a little spice.

Trinnie eyed her son with mock reproach. Then: “He wrote for the movies, or was trying to, anyway. I think he was convinced that Aristotle could teach him something about screenwriting.”

“Now he prefers the ancient philosopher Ron Bass.”

Trinnie gave him another look.

“I wonder what Detective Dowling reads,” he cattily mused. Toulouse was on a roll.

She ignored the remark and turned to her affable in-laws, who, for their part, were somewhat confused by the banter. “The Greeks knew how to keep it real,” she said. (His mother’s hip-hopisms made the boy squirm.) “I share this, to illustrate something about amends — that they always come too late.” She lifted her glass of cranberry juice to the Weiners in salud; Grandpa Lou looked up, hastily raising his own. “Tonight, I have planted a tree. It was meant to be planted long ago, but never took root.” She winced, blinking back maudlin tears as she addressed their visitors. “I hope that … now that you know the tree is here, you’ll feel free to sit under it when you like, and avail yourself of the shade.”

Toulouse thought he was going to be sick. “You’re not even making sense!”

“It is never too late,” said Ruth ingratiatingly. “And it’s very nice what you’ve done, Katrina — to call after all this time and have us here for this lovely dinner.”

“To send a car,” added Harry, adjusting a crepitant knee to throw his comment Louis’s way.

“It could not have been easy,” said Ruth. “It has not been easy — for any of us!”

“It has not been easy, no. And least of all for Marcus!” Only Harry could have pulled off such a remark. He reached for the gold raspberry vinaigrette; a server jumped into the fray, handing over a Chinese porcelain sauceboat.

“My son—your grandson—has taught me so much,” said Trinnie. “He taught me not to run and hide; I’ve been doing that long enough. Though he probably doesn’t know it — I hope he does — though he probably doesn’t know it, his mother loves him more than anything.” She fussed with his hair again, and he blushed in spite of himself. “Toulouse is why the two of you are here tonight. And I just want to be as brave as he has been — and to make my amends. To ask his forgiveness again — and yours, for shutting you out. For taking this light — this lamp, my son, and hiding him away! For closing the door on his beautiful grandparents because of my own self-indulgent … I am praying the fences can be mended. I am praying you will sit beneath this tree that I have—”

“That’s enough!” said Louis, not to chastise, but to protect her from further shaming herself in the depths of such sorrows — he knew how low she could go. “But very well spoken. Very well spoken.”

“Oh, Katrina!” cried Ruth, unable to hold back. “Please don’t! We already love you — aren’t we family? Aren’t we still family? Haven’t we always been?”

“Yes! But say you forgive me, Ruth! Harry … just say it—”

“Katrina!” barked her father.

“Well of course we forgive, dear! Now, we need to put this all behind us—”

“Listen to the lady, Trinnie!” chuffed Louis. “That’s a wise lady — listen to her.”

“She is wise,” said Harry, who never stopped munching his quail. “Always has been.”

Trinnie recovered herself. “Did you know that Toulouse never even mentioned that he’d been to see you?”

“Isn’t that something?” gushed Harry. “That’s how I’d have played it — close to the vest!”

After a few choice queries, he realized that his mother’s dinner invitation had been coincidental to the Redlands excursion and not because of it. (He’d been thinking the cousins had tattled.) He was impressed — and less pleased with himself all around.

“Well, well!” said Louis, spontaneously pushing back his chair to stand in greeting — for Bluey had come from the kitchen in chenille robe and silky hairpiece. Shadowed by Winter, she bore a silver tray of butter-laden sweets.

“How marvelous!” said Ruth, and really meant it. The appearance of the old woman moved her; she’d always had a fondness for Berenice in her heart and had been genuinely unhappy to learn of the recent downturn. Harry echoed his wife’s enthusiasms with bird-like perorations.

“Mother,” said Louis. “Do you remember the Weiners? Harry and Ruth?” He wished he could take it back, for his tone was too much the one used with a child.

“Yes of course!” she said contemptuously. “Marcus’s folks!”

“You look so lovely!” said Ruth.

“Beautiful, beautiful!” said Harry. For some reason, everyone was shouting.

“Mother,” said Trinnie. “Some of us are trying to diet. What evils have you brought to tempt us with?”

“No one says you have to have any,” said Bluey.

A server went to relieve her of the heavy tray, but Louis did that instead, setting it on the table with Harry’s valiant, if tottering, help.

The old woman approached the couple, who received her as subjects would a dogaressa. Leaning over, she whispered: “My daughter — in case you haven’t already noticed — tends to think she’s the center of the known universe.”

Why is it that, in lull or interlude, we so often turn to Dodd Trotter?

Well, why not? As someone once said, attention must be paid. Besides — no one close to our story is going anywhere, at least not for the moment.

William Marcus is in jail for the weekend, at minimum; and Trinnie has made amends, so all’s well with her world. The detective is in turmoil for a number of reasons, but so be it — his discomfort won’t last. Toulouse and Pullman are at rest, the former reading a book, head propped on the pinkish mottled bellows of the belly of that loyal beast. Bluey is well fed, well loved and unafraid, the briny waters of dementia having mysteriously receded; Mr. Trotter is in her good favor again and sits upon the Duxiana duvet cross-legged, helping with the mordant scrapbook after having packed Winter off to the movies. At Stradella House, Joyce has just received a curious call: the dumpster baby she’d been forewarned of and whose burial she had already begun to plan — the first for the Candlelighters’ Westwood site — the soul she had named Isaiah — wasn’t dead at all. Rumors of the castaway’s demise were deemed exaggerated enough to make page three of the California section of the Times (the article said a police dispatcher had jumped the gun). Joyce thought it a wonderful omen. She celebrated with a rubdown at Aida Thibiant, followed by a smattering of Restylane to smooth the facial furrows.

So: no one is going anywhere, and all is relatively well. Even Amaryllis is being looked after, or at least looked into. Then why not follow Dodd into a hastily organized luncheon? It is one of the last events on his calendar before pressing business swallows him up.

A casual reunion of sorts; he walks the few short blocks down Cañon to Spago. Marcie Millard held the last — the official — coming-together, Beverly Vista’s twenty-fifth, at her home in Benedict Canyon. Grade-school reunions are uncommon, but attendance was surprisingly high. They barbecued and the Vistonians sang Christmas carols once belted forth in the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel; a few graying alumni who won the fertility lotto brought their newborns. Marcie made hilarious I.D. tags from yearbook photos and everyone had a high old time. (Just recently she sent Frances-Leigh a newsletter with photos and funny captions of the event; the note that accompanied said, “Call me stupid, but I literally did not know how to get in touch!”)

There had been a flurry of excitement surrounding the Vista re-build, and Dodd Trotter’s felicitous participation only added to the buzz. Marcie said a decision would be made by the Board any day now; meanwhile, his agents had already made a number of quiet bids on property surrounding the school. They were batting a thousand, with over twenty separate units bought and fifteen more in escrow.

Marcie thought it timely for the Vista Vets to meet and greet the new crop of movers and shakers, whose children were current enrollees — and it couldn’t hurt to informally invite some of the Board and their spouses. Dodd shook a lot of hands, and was gratified to meet the well-shod, multiethnic parents of kids who were flowering in the greenhouse of a new millennium. Only one of them commented on the school being named after him and Dodd brushed it off, not wishing to call attention. He’d been pillow-talking with Joyce lately and had decided (Marcie’s cheerleading aside) that if renaming BV was going to be a deal breaker, then he’d simply accede to the Board’s wishes and forge ahead as planned. They could call the thing George W. Bush Elementary for all he cared — this wasn’t about ego; this was about the children. This was about tradition, values, education. Joyce said, you know you’re sounding more like a politician each day. But she reveled in her husband’s newfound serenity, not knowing whether to thank God or the psychopharmacologist.

“Are you Dodd Trotter?” asked a bald, portly man. This time, Marcie hadn’t made I.D. badges.

“Yes, I am.”

“My God. I’m Val DeWitt!”

As the billionaire pumped his hand, a memory flooded back. Val DeWitt was the once-hardbodied boy who got him in a playground headlock that lasted almost twenty minutes. Other students artfully encircled so the P.E. instructor couldn’t see; Dodd had almost blacked out. He’d often dredged that image up through the years as a symbol of what he had managed to overcome — he saw the two of them in stone, timeless victim and oppressor, a frieze of everything unjust and unexpected that the world had to offer.

“I just wanted to congratulate you on your amazing success,” said Val. “I’m kind of a geek freak — I guess I was into it more before the bubble burst. I’ve read about you the last few years and saw the article in Forbes—I think everybody saw that article. It was seminal! You guys became a hobby of mine. But this is actually the first time I’ve ever met a billionaire! Well, now wait a minute — that’s not true: I just saw Marvin Davis inside, sitting on his special chair. But he doesn’t count. And I didn’t actually go up to him. I don’t even think he’s in the top hundred anymore — you’re still way up there, no? Quincunx is holding its own. I guess you and Gates and Ellison and all those guys’ll do OK no matter how low the Nasdaq goes. But I’m being a bore! I hope you don’t mind! Thanks for letting me say hello.”

He started to edge away, and Dodd grabbed his arm. “No, not at all — and what are you doing these days, Val?”

“I own a restaurant — two, really — in Northern California. I’m afraid I operate on a slightly smaller scale than you.”

“Restaurants: that’s a very difficult undertaking. Super — high risk. What are they called?”

“DeWitt’s — not very imaginative. We’re actually pretty well known in the Bay Area. I’m only in L.A. today to sample the goods; they have some amazing wines here. Spago’s has a master sommelier. Not too many people know that — there’s only around forty in the whole country. Do you know Mike? He’s the sommelier. By the way, you should try the La Tâche. It’s only about a grand per bottle — you can afford it!”

“Have you kept in touch with Marcie?” he asked perfunctorily.

“Who?”

“Marcie. Marcie Millard.”

“Now, that’s a name from the past …”

“She organized the luncheon.”

“What luncheon?”

“You mean, you didn’t know this was a Vista event?”

“Vista?”

“Beverly Vista — we’re having a bit of a precelebration.”

“For what?”

“I’m rebuilding the old school. All the people here”—he nodded at the patio—“they’re all BV alumni.”

“Now wait a minute. Hold on. You went to Beverly Vista?”

“Oh come on, Val.”

“No way.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t remember the headlock.”

“Headlock?”

“Yeah, the damn headlock. The mythic fucking headlock. Bruised my damn windpipe.”

“There is no way I went to school with Dodd Trotter!”

“You absolutely did,” said Dodd, almost jovially. What did any of it matter now? “And I’ve the psychic scars to prove it.”

Just then, Marcie came over. Dodd began to introduce them, but there was no need — Marcie effusively declared she’d had a crush on fat-boy since second grade. He left them to their flirtation and eased his way to the rest room.

He sat in a stall and scrolled through his BlackBerry. Frances-Leigh said his mother had called; she seemed to be reaching out to him less often, even when there was a “big” death in the news. Dodd felt a pang of guilt, and promised himself he would spend more time at Saint-Cloud. It was anyone’s guess how much longer she’d be living there.

The men at the urinals spoke some kind of Arabic. He heard his name—Doahd Trotter—stranded like an oasis amid melodiously guttural consonants. One of them laughed, shifting to English, the accent clipped and British.

“No one can remember him? But how is it possible?”

“I’m telling you,” said his friend. “I spoke to the crazy woman — Marzie. And she said no one can recall. He is the Invisible Man!”

“As long as he puts his money where his mouth is, what difference can it make? He is going to build a hell of a thing.”

“I don’t know if you want your money where that mouth is,” he said nonsensically. “You don’t know where that mouth has been!”

“He is not the Invisible Man — he is the Indivisible Man. Because he will never divide that pile of money up.”

“Oh!” laughed the other. “Ho! The Indivisible Man! The Indivisible Man! Oh! Ho!”

There was more unintelligible Semitic discourse; urinals flushed and faucets turned at sink. As they toweled their hands, Dodd heard his name mentioned once more amid the babble, and then Forbes and then “number twenty-three.”

“I am predicting I too will be on the list — in the privacy of my home, I will soon make number two!”

They laughed all the way out.

On Sunday afternoon, the detective drove to Broad Beach and limped around an empty lot. He felt it would be irresponsible to share what he suspected — what he knew—before the computers gave confirmation. That could take a week, maybe more.

What if he was wrong? What if he was just lovelorn and in the wake of the perceived “breakup” with Trinnie had superimposed all this foolishness onto the wrong man? That’s insane—it was Marcus, he was certain … but what if he was withholding information from the family because deep down he was angry that the ghostly rival of his affections had returned to the scene? His predicament was even worse than when he had gotten shot; at least then, his role was clear-cut. There were pills to take and wounds to swab — the healing was visible. It behooved him to convey the weird development to his client, Louis Trotter (after all, he was still on the payroll); that was the right and happy solution. He fantasized breaking the news to Trinnie, but that wasn’t his place, as martyred or heroic as it would make him feel.

Samson headed back down PCH. He called Saint-Cloud and asked to speak to Mr. Trotter. The old man wasn’t home, but a servant patched him through to the Silver Seraph. That part of the highway was dicey when it came to cell phones; they could barely hear each other.

“Samson?”

“Yes! I need to talk to you.”

“Where——you?”

“Around——bu.”

“Where?”

“Malibu — Malibu!”

“Do you——where the——Dining Car is?”

“The what?”

“The Pacific Dining Car!”

“Yes! On W——?”

“The Pacific Dining Car!”

“On Wilshire!”

“Yes!”

The detective said he would see him there, but the phone was already dead.

By the time he arrived, his employer was seated in a bar banquette. He looked like someone who’d just been in a hit-and-run. As Samson slid into the booth, the barkeep brought another martini and it was just in time, because Mr. Trotter had downed the one at hand.

“I have something to tell you,” said the old man. To fortify himself, he swallowed the contents of the glass. “I–I—well, Samson, what I mean to say is — is — is … that I found our Marcus!”