Deceit

TWENTY-SEVEN

The next morning, Wren was still absent.

I walked into his cabin to return his notes and make some coffee.

I was only half-successful.

He’d gone into Fishbein for supplies, he’d said. He needed them. He was out of coffee-seemingly out of everything.

A gray mist was hovering inches above the lake. It felt like fall. I half expected to see swirling leaves carpeting the ground.

On the way back to the highway, I reached over to turn up the heat just as a panicked deer flew across the dirt road. It clipped my hood with its back hooves, then tumbled off into the brush.

I lurched to the right and stopped dead, then took a good minute or two to catch my breath.

My heart wasn’t the only thing racing. My mind was too, replaying Bailey Kindlon’s surreal story. Floating houses spinning down the street. Hundreds of dead people bobbing around the water. The part of her story that was real.

Do you believe in fairy tales?

If you did, you would have to believe in the rest of her story. Little blue aliens with no mouths. White robots with no faces. Medical exams in the bowels of a spaceship.

A fairy tale worthy of the Brothers Grimm. If they were on mushrooms maybe.

I drove straight down the PCH without stopping.

The forests thinned, the surf quieted, the steep cliffs turned into flat sand, the B amp;Bs into motels and fish fries. I found a classic rock station with a DJ named Frankie Foo and tapped the steering wheel to “Soul Sacrifice,” “Layla,” and “Brown Sugar.”

When the sun went down, I could just make out the Ferris-wheel lights on the Santa Monica Pier. It made me think of my one and only childhood visit to an amusement park. Not really a park-one of those traveling carnivals with junky rides and shoot-water-in-the-clown’s-mouth concessions. After Jimmy died. After I told the police and the caseworkers that he slipped on the ice. That he fell in the tub. That he walked into the door. What happened, Tommy? An accident. He was clumsy. At the carnival my mom took her lying son for a spin around the Ferris wheel, then threw up while we were suspended at the top. The resulting screams had nothing to do with the cheap thrill of being carted up to the stars. One sniff of her breath once we were back on the ground was enough to secure her a lecture on responsible child-rearing-this from an itinerant barker who looked like he did a fair amount of drinking himself. It was enough to swear me off carnivals forever-though not enough to swear her off Jim Beam. Do you still blame her? Dr. Payne had asked me. He meant did I blame her for being a drunk-for being verbally abusive, for fucking anything in pants. He didn’t know what I really blamed her for.

How could he?

I remained the ever-dutiful son.

I didn’t tell.

I’m not sure when I chose not to turn off to the 405, when I made the conscious decision to keep motoring straight into Santa Monica.

Maybe I wanted one more turn on the Ferris wheel-figuratively speaking. There’s 2 percent of your brain that can believe just about anything. I should know-I made liberal use of it in other people’s brains. The Children’s Protective Services caseworkers, for example, who somehow believed a 6-year-old boy could have a strange affinity for hard surfaces. My editor, for another, who swallowed stories about Jesus think tanks, con-men actors, and bomb-throwing pediatricians. It’s the same 2 percent that tells you that the beautiful woman who sat across from you in Violetta’s found you irresistible. Or at least mildly attractive. The 2 percent, in other words, where dumb hope resides.

I didn’t have a plan.

I was fairly sure I wasn’t going to fulfill my e-mail threat and park myself on the Third Street Promenade till she passed by. I had a general address and her cell number-I was kind of chicken to use it. The other 98 percent of my brain remembered her expression when I told her the good news-that she was dining with a famous liar. I remembered her good-sport attempt to keep the conversation rolling; it was more painful than silence.

I parked in the municipal parking lot on Fourth and strolled around for a while.

It was prime time on the promenade. Once, in the not-so-distant past, downtown Santa Monica had been a haven for America’s refuse-an army of strung-out, homeless, down-on-their-luck, just-released-from-a mental-asylum kind of people. After all, it was warm, and there was always a place under the piers to lay your head.

The Third Street Promenade had changed all that. It had turned downtown Santa Monica into a crowded outdoor mall, replete with street jugglers, musicians, and dinosaur topiaries.

I window-shopped, wondering who that disheveled middle-aged man was staring back at me through the window of VJ Records, and was only mildly surprised to discover it was me.

I escaped the crowds by ducking through an alley onto the next street, where there were still people milling around, but not as many. Where it was at least breathable.

I knew I was slowly working my way somewhere, even if I wasn’t exactly admitting it.

There was a coffee shop on Fifth called Java.

An Adidas store. A Blockbuster.

Two residential buildings connected by a single lobby, with wraparound terraces and what appeared to be an inner courtyard with a pool. I could just about sniff the chlorine.

On Fifth, she’d said, right off the promenade.

I stopped and took in the scenery. I admired the rhododendrons and bougainvillea fronting the buildings. I noted the new coat of black paint on the filigreed railing that lined both sides of the walkway.

The one I was strolling down toward a suddenly beckoning lobby.

It was lit by two banks of blue fluorescent lights.

There were mailboxes on either side-one per building. I casually perused them, doing a little window-shopping again, even though, okay, I might’ve, just possibly, you never know, been searching for one particular hard-to-find item.

The girl with Botticelli eyes. The one who’d made me tell the truth to her and then instantly made me regret it.

No Anna Graham listed.

For either building.

Fifth, she’d said, but Fifth stretched on for blocks.

I wandered out of the lobby, stopped short by the momentous decision of whether to turn left or right. I picked left, changed my mind, crossed the street, and drifted into Fatburger for something big and greasy.

No false advertising there. I walked out with half a cow.

I found myself in front of a playhouse. Or maybe I didn’t just find myself there. Maybe I was guided there.

It was a play called The Pier.

Evidently some kind of comedy, since the actors featured in several photos seemed to be mugging for the audience, one of the actresses holding up women’s lingerie in front of a man sporting an okay, you got me look on his bug-eyed face.

I was going to turn and keep walking. To where?

I didn’t know.

I’d walk until I couldn’t. Until I ran across her, the odds of which were slim to none.

But something caught my eye.

Caught is right.

Picture one of John Wren’s lake trout hooked right through its gut.

It was an ensemble shot-that moment where all the actors come on stage hand in hand to take their bows.

There were maybe eight of them.

I leaned in till my breath smudged the glass and I had to step back, wipe it clean, then crouch down to stare at it again.

I stood there transfixed. I might’ve been meticulously reading the review from Santa Monica Weekly, which promised a riotous night in the theater.

You’ll shake with laughter, it said.

Or with fear.

I BOUGHT A TICKET, CENTER AISLE, NINTH ROW.

I was right about it being a comedy. A sort of French bedroom farce, except most of the action took place on the Santa Monica Pier. It involved mistaken identities, mismatched lovers, lots of sexual innuendo. The funniest thing was the scenery-a painted backdrop of the pier that kept folding over. One actor or another would deviate from their marks in the middle of a scene in order to mosey over and casually push the Ferris wheel back into place.

Still, the audience seemed to like it well enough. It’s hard to tell with theater audiences, since they always seem to try so hard. It must be the proximity to the actors, who are not up on some celluloid screen but right there in front of you. No one wants to be impolite.

By the second act, all the mistaken-identity stuff basically worked itself out. With one exception.

He made his appearance at the end of act one.

He played a gay actor pretending to be his straight roommate in order to impress a female William Morris agent, who had the hots for his roommate who she thought was him. The William Morris agent kept having conversations on one of those invisible cell-phone speakers that various bystanders took to be directed at them. That was the running gag, leading to all sorts of mistakes and would-be hilarity.

He first appeared stage right, in tank top and running shorts, seconds away from bumping into the talent agent who was telling some producer-over her cell phone, of course-about some hot project, using words certain to be construed two ways.

I leaned forward in my chair, nearly planting my chin into the person sitting in front of me.

It was meant to be dusk, that twilight hour Shakespeare was so fond of. Magical things happened at dusk; people turned into donkeys, spells were cast and lifted, lovers parted and reunited. I leaned forward because the dimmed lights made it hard to see and I couldn’t be 100 percent sure.

By the time he appeared at the beginning of act two in the full, glaring sunshine of morning, all doubts were dispelled.

It was him.

THERE WASN’T A STAGE DOOR.

This was off-off-off-Broadway. The actors exited from the same door the audience did, the one in the front.

I had to wait them out, mingle with the handful of other theatergoers waiting for the actors to appear.

After ten minutes, they began straggling out, first an actress met by a middle-aged couple I imagined were her parents. They wrapped her up in a big hug and gushed on and on about how hysterical the play was, exhibiting the acting genes they must’ve passed on to their daughter.

Then one of the male actors, barging through the theater door and already yakking on his cell phone.

What d’ya mean, not right for the part… you tell them…

When he came out-his name was Sam Savage, according to the playbill-he was with two other members of the cast, a man and a woman. I was half-turned to the wall, undecided whether to go up and confront him or wait back for a while.

I waited.

They slipped out the door where the man waved good-bye. That left Sam with the lithe blond actress; they sauntered down the sidewalk hand in hand.

I followed them, trying to keep a respectable distance. Maybe half a block or so.

If you’ve never followed anyone, it’s harder than it looks.

They weren’t just a moving target-they kept stopping too, peeking into one window or another, mostly her. He would separate from her, wander away, and sometimes turn around and stare back in my direction.

I tried to mirror them, to anticipate, to stop, turn, and hope that when I turned back, they’d still be there.

They turned right on Santa Monica and walked up to Seventh.

The whole time, as I followed and ducked and covered, I kept asking myself one question. Like a mantra. Hoping that if I mumbled it long enough, I might figure things out.

I was starting to connect the dots-here and there beginning to draw very shaky lines from one thing to another. But it was like that dream I had-every time I looked at the half-finished picture, it had disappeared like Littleton Flats itself.

They ducked into a bar on Seventh.

The Piñata.

I didn’t have to walk inside to know what it looked like. Frozen margaritas with little pink umbrellas, plastic table tents with sombreros on them, wooden bowls of chips and salsa. I waited outside, listening to the strains of Los Lobos as people wandered in and out.

Finally, I pushed the door open and walked inside.

It was loud and packed.

She was sitting alone at the bar. The actress. Sipping a gargantuan frozen margarita, the kind you could only dream about at Muhammed Alley.

Where was he? Bathroom?

I walked to the end of the bar farthest away from her, managed to squeeze myself in next to a group of five very drunk women, and ordered an Excellente, the house specialty according to the drink menu, a margarita made with Cuervo Gold, peach liqueur, and a secret ingredient they refused to divulge upon pain of death.

I was halfway through my Excellente when I spotted him.

I’d been staring at him for a while before I knew who it was. There was the actress-already starting on margarita number two. There was the fashionably decked-out couple sitting next to her-he with shaven head and sunglasses, she with tan, silicone-enhanced breasts. There was the waiter taking their order. It wasn’t until the waiter closed his pad, smiled, and leaned down to whisper something into her ear that I knew it was him.

Why not?

He was an actor. In an off-off-off-Broadway theater. Which meant he was also a real estate hawker, a telephone sales solicitor, a parking lot valet. Or a waiter. After the curtain went down, he simply traded one costume for another.

I was starting to feel the margarita. Good.

It was helping to dull the fear.

I was sucking the last remnants of my second one when the lights suddenly began flickering on and off, on and off, on and off.

Closing time.

The five girls disappeared.

Not the blond actress.

He came out from the back, apron off, and whisked her off her stool.

I took the opportunity to slink out of the bar, making sure to stand several yards away from the front entrance.

They didn’t make sidewalks like they used to; this one was swaying like a rope bridge in a gale.

The two of them came out the door and walked right past me without exhibiting the slightest recognition.

I was just an audience member. Someone sitting out there in the dark.

I became bolder with that realization, tailing them by mere feet. Stumbling after them like a third wheel.

They turned the corner, and five seconds later I followed.

Which is when an odd thing happened.

I was greeted by empty sidewalk.

Nothing.

There was a car illegally parked on Fifth, but when I peeked through the window, no one was sitting in it.

I felt the panic of walking into a dark and unfamiliar room when you have no idea where the light switch is.

When you lose something, retrace your steps.

I staggered back to the corner-looking for a doorway I might’ve missed. Somewhere they might’ve ducked inside.

I felt his forearm smashing into my lower back before I actually saw him. Then I was on my knees, staring straight into very blurry pavement.

“Okay, motherfucker, why are you following us?”

My lower back was on fire. When I tried to get to my feet, he pressed his knuckles into my shoulders and shoved me back down. I felt his hot spittle spray against my neck.

“Answer me, asshole!”

“I had a follow-up question,” I said.

“Huh?”

“There was something I forgot to ask you.” I could see the girl now. They must’ve been hiding behind the quaint, retro lamppost, waiting for me to come sauntering by.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked.

“I’m talking about the story.”

“What story? Who the hell are you?”

“I want to get up.” I was this close to throwing up. Too many Excellentes.

He hesitated, then said: “Okay. But slowly, right, chief?”

I managed to push myself up to a standing position without falling over. My left pants knee was ripped and bloody.

When I turned and looked at him, I saw someone who’d simply been taking on a role before-that of the tough, streetwise hombre-but who now looked pretty much like an actor uncertain of his lines. For one thing, he’d stepped back as I turned around, a physical surrender of previously hard-won territory.

Maybe he’d recognized me.

“Hey there, Ed,” I said.

He didn’t answer me.

“He’s not Ed,” his girlfriend said, looking wary and spooked. “He’s Sam. You obviously have the wrong person. We thought you were trying to mug us. So we’ll just continue on our way home, okay?”

“I know his name’s not Ed,” I said. “But he played someone named Ed. You remember, don’t you? A pharmaceutical salesman named Edward Crannell. On a highway outside Littleton.”