Gravity’s Volkswagen

Twenty-Eight

We came out of the east, driving into the sun, a horde if ever I saw one, not that I’d ever really seen one, and only if a horde can consist of about thirty people in about a dozen Volkswagen Beetles. We were a ragged, miscellaneous band in their equally ragged, miscellaneous rides. We had all the cars that had been built for the movie, plus the ones from the automotive freak show that Motorhead Phil’s crew had been able to patch up and get running in quick order.

We looked scary. That was the idea. The people from the freak show could look effortlessly scary at any time, and the actors had decked themselves out in their survivalist drag from the movie. There were also some angry crew members to whom Josh Martin owed money. In their way they were the scariest of the lot.

We looked dangerous, too, and that was at least partly because some of the Beetles were so barely roadworthy that they seemed likely to lose a panel or a wheel or a transmission at any moment. We looked like trouble. We looked like something you’d want to avoid.

Even I looked somewhat scary. I’d been supplied with an outfit: a sheepskin waistcoat, worn bare-chested, and a flying helmet and goggles. I felt like a fool and a fraud, but I also thought I looked pretty cool. The effect was undercut, however, because I was riding in Barry’s Beetle along with Barry, an unhappy pairing after the night of Beetle sex, voyeurism and tears, but there wasn’t much either of us could do about it.

Of course Barry had to come along. How could he not? How could he be left behind at a time like this? So they had winched him and his dead Beetle on to the back of a flatbed truck and the truck came along too, bringing up the rear, like the final float in a parade, or possibly like a caboose. You could have argued that the flatbed was an inauthentic touch, a seriously un-Beetle-esque item, and I can see your point, but I think you can overdo the quest for authenticity.

I had finished up in Barry’s Beetle because I’d been too slow to claim a place in one of the others. It had been quite a scramble, and as ever, notions of hierarchy had been much to the fore. Motorhead Phil, naturally, was in the lead car, along with two of the sensual freak-show women: the snake lady and the underwater-straightjacket woman.

The actor playing Ronnie the dwarf hadn’t gone away after all, it turned out, and he was riding along with the actress playing Natasha, a contrasting pair that worked equally well on screen and off. Angelo Sterling was also towards the head of the pack, in a black Beetle convertible, a nice touch that allowed his hair to flow freely behind him like a golden wave. He wasn’t driving, however. Leezza was in there with him, a pairing that made me much less happy, although by now my happiness was not on anybody’s agenda, not even my own.

There had been much talk before we left about the terrible things that could and would be done to Josh Martin once we found him. Some were crudely physical, involving punching, kicking, gouging and fracturing. Others were more ambitious and creative: crucifying him, harnessing him to the rear bumper of a Beetle and dragging him round in circles.

Barry and I did our best to be civil in the course of our ride together. We could hardly ignore each other, given the enforced proximity caused by the amount of room Barry took up and the little left for me. There was also the clutter of Barry’s life, a limited life to be sure, but one that certainly left its traces. In addition to the evidence of heroic eating and drinking there were numerous books and motoring magazines, and many sheets of paper, some with handwriting scrawled on them, Barry’s work no doubt. I glanced at some of it, and although much was illegible, the bits I could make out looked like ramblings, or at least quotations, about Volkswagen Beetles. I spotted something about ‘a managerial Volkswagen’. I was hardly surprised. What else was he going to be writing about?

There was an inevitable coolness between us, but that didn’t stop Barry talking.

“Some people might say this Beetle is half full,” he said. “Others might say it’s half empty. But I say it’s both, simultaneously. Which it is. Obviously. Right?”

“Right,” I agreed, though I didn’t particularly.

Then he said, “I always knew that vagina dentata would spell trouble.”

“What?” I said.

“That thing painted on the front of Leezza’s Beetle: the teeth, the hole, you know?”

“Isn’t it just a mouth?”

“Just a mouth?” said Barry. “Don’t be naive. It’s a vagina dentata if ever I saw one, and I knew no good would come of it. But I suppose it’s easy to be wise after the event.”

“You know,” I said, “this whole thing about the vagina dentata has always struck me as pretty weird. Yes, I can see you wouldn’t want suddenly to discover teeth in a woman’s vagina, but that’s mostly because you’re not expecting them. If they were there the whole time you’d soon get used to it. Men don’t find the teeth in a woman’s mouth much of a deterrent to putting their penis in there, do they?”

“The chance would be a fine thing,” said Barry.

I thought it best not to be too sympathetic.

And later Barry said, “I know what you’re thinking, Ian, you look at me and think there but for the grace of God go I. But you see, here’s the thing, God doesn’t have any grace. Because it’s in the nature of being gracious that you don’t hand out the grace unequally. If you’re only gracious to some of the people some of the time, then you’re not really gracious at all. I’d expect God to know that.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I said.

It didn’t really amount to conversation. And, of course, we didn’t discuss the really important matter of how we both felt about the sexual shenanigans that had gone on last night. Perhaps neither of us knew how we felt. I spent a lot of time looking out of the car window and finding that a lot of people were looking back. A few of the looks were admiring, most of them confused. Somewhere along the way a cop on a motorcycle spotted us and drove alongside for a couple of miles, observing us carefully, but he didn’t pull as over. I didn’t blame him. If you’d been on the freeway and encountered thirty or so Beetle freaks and their cars in full post-Apocalyptic finery, I believe you’d have thought that letting them go on their way unmolested, to do whatever the hell it was they were going to do, would be the very wisest course of action.

We drove along Interstate 10, the western end of a road that could lead you all the way across America. The sun shone, the air was sparklingly clear. Talk of the famous Los Angeles smog seemed much exaggerated. And then we were in the outlying sprawl, then within the boundaries of the city itself, and on the Hollywood Freeway. Even the name had an excitement about it, though in itself I don’t suppose it was so very different from any other bit of American freeway. And although it was nice to think of ourselves as warrior outlaws, we still got stuck in heavy traffic like everybody else. We got even more looks then.

And eventually we saw the freeway exit signs for Sunset Boulevard and then Hollywood Boulevard, which sounded pretty romantic, and then the exit we were taking, called Gower Street, which sounded a good deal less romantic, but it happened to be the one that was most convenient for getting to Josh Martin’s house.

I knew he lived in the Hollywood Hills, whatever those were, and we had every reason to believe he’d be at home that afternoon. Somebody in the production office had intercepted some faxes from Josh Martin’s lawyer. These weren’t absolutely explicit but they referred to some vital and complex financial, legal proceedings that required him to be at his house at four o’ clock that day. It all sounded extremely serious, a matter that even Josh Martin in his current state couldn’t and wouldn’t ignore.

♦

I don’t know if you’ve ever driven on the roads around the Hollywood Hills. I haven’t — I’ve only been a passenger — but I imagine that if you had a small, fast, nippy, European sports car with fantastic acceleration, braking and road holding, then you could really enjoy yourself going up and down the fantastically steep gradients, around the tight hairpin bends and terrifying blind corners. You’d flash by hedges in full flower and by palm tress and banks of escapee cactuses, and every now and then you’d find yourself on a crest and get a view right over the city, not that you’d be able to stop and appreciate the view because you’d be concentrating too hard on your driving.

If you weren’t in a small, fast, nippy European sports car, but rather in a convoy of Volkswagen Beetles or, say, in a car on the back of a flatbed truck, the ride would be a lot less fun, but that wouldn’t stop you seeing the possibilities.

Fortunately Angelo knew his way around these parts — we certainly would have got lost otherwise — and we found our way to Josh Martin’s house with only a few hairy moments, when we encountered oncoming pick-up trucks or postal vans, the drivers of which, understandably, weren’t expecting to encounter the likes of us.

Josh Martin’s home was a perfect little Spanish-style house, with a series of red-tiled roofs, arches and rustic shutters. It was, no doubt, a pricey house, but it wasn’t a mansion by any means. It wasn’t opulent or showy. Unlike the man himself it was restrained, modest, discreet. There were a couple of expensive cars parked outside, but unless Josh Martin had mysteriously acquired these on his way home, they had to belong to visitors. There was no sign whatsoever of Leezza’s Beetle.

Our arrival was loud and hardly unnoticeable but nobody came out of the house to see what the hell was going on. We would have to make the first move. There would undoubtedly have been some satisfaction in seeing all the Beetle freaks marauding through Josh Martin’s house, casually destroying things as they passed, and there was every possibility that it might come to that, but initially the majority of the horde stayed outside, forming a guard of honour, while Motorhead Phil, Angelo, Leezza and I made our less grand entrance.

The front gate was unlocked and as we went inside we could hear voices coming from around the side of the house. We followed the sound and stepped on to a green, shady, screened patio. There was a gaudily tiled fountain burbling at its centre, and next to it a stone table at which Josh Martin sat, alongside a man and a woman, each wearing a severe black suit, and together the three of them were perusing a pile of legal documents, and Josh Martin was signing his way through them.

He looked rather better than when I’d last seen him. He had his clothes on for one thing, and he’d managed to wash off most of the engine oil, at least from the areas that showed. I couldn’t have sworn that he was stone-cold sober but he appeared more composed and in control of himself than he had been in a long time.

He looked up at us without surprise, and said insultingly, “Ah, the help has arrived.”

“Any trouble from you,” said Motorhead Phil, “and we’ll turn your house into an architectural junk yard.”

Josh Martin looked casually at the document currently in front of him and signed it with a quiet flourish.

“Not now you won’t,” he said. “It’s not my house. Not any more.”

There was a set of keys on the stone table, and Josh Martin now pushed them across to the black suited woman, who took them sadly, earnestly and handed over a legal document in return.

Josh Martin said, “These good people from the mortgage company are now the owners of this property. They’ve very kindly offered to let me lease back the place at a very reasonable rate, but since I don’t have any money whatsoever I can’t do that, which leaves me homeless. I guess there’s a trailer park in Fonti-nella where I could stay for a while, but you know what, pretty soon the owners of that place are going to find out that I’m broke too. They haven’t been paid, and they’re not going to be paid, and then it’ll be truly over and all I’ll be left with is part of a movie that I can’t afford to shoot or finish or edit or anything else. Welcome to Hollywood, guys.”

This was not what we’d come to hear, and Motor-head Phil and Leezza weren’t even interested, but as far as Angelo and I were concerned it was quite the revelation, far more than the discovery that Josh Martin was Mexican.

All too guilelessly I asked, “But what about the movie’s backers?”

“There are no fucking backers, Ian. There were potential backers once, for a while, but in the end they didn’t back me. They backed out. They were wise, much wiser than me. They saw it wasn’t going to work. But I thought hell, fuck it, live the dream, remortgage your house, make the damned movie, will it into being and then everything else will fall into place and everything’ll turn out just fine. Big mistake.”

Angelo and I were left quite speechless. My stomach descended to knee level. I felt giddy with confusion and disappointment, though not quite disbelief. But Motorhead Phil still had plenty to say.

“Where’s the car you stole, Josh?” he yelled. “Where’s the fucking Beetle?”

“The car, yes,” Josh Martin said. “El vocho volante,” and he laughed, and the laugh was too theatrical for my tastes, or do I mean too filmic, trying to be a little sinister, a little insane, a little superior. Trying too hard. It was certainly a laugh you couldn’t trust. It was a laugh that could very easily get you beaten up.

“I’d had a couple of drinks last night,” Josh Martin said.

“That much we know,” said Leezza.

“Mistakes were made.”

“You crashed the car, didn’t you?” said Motorhead Phil with disgust.

“Not crashed it, not really, no.”

“You’d better tell me what the fuck you’re talking about,” said Motorhead Phil.

“I will, Phil, I will. You see there’s an old Mexican saying that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. And that’s supposed to apply to all kinds of history: personal history, movie history, whatever. But I don’t believe it. I think the opposite is true. I think all too often those who know their history want to repeat it.”

“This better start making sense soon,” Motorhead Phil said.

“It does. It will. It makes perfect sense, Phil. You see, everybody who’s ever seen Bullitt wants to race a Ford Mustang through the streets of San Francisco. Everybody who’s ever seen Pulp Fiction wants accidentally to blow somebody’s head off in the back of a car.”

I thought he might have a point there.

“Now I’m not gay, Phil, and I know this sounds a little weird, but the truth is I really like a good Doris Day movie. My favourite? The Thrill of It All. 1963, Universal, directed by Norman Jewison; Carl Reiner wrote the screenplay. You know why I like it? Because James Garner drives his car into a swimming pool, and you see…”

He was going to tell us more, but there really wasn’t any need, and he was interrupted as Motor-head Phil got a thrill of his own by decking Josh Martin with a simple, single, strongman’s knock-out blow to the side of his head. I had a feeling it was what Josh Martin wanted.

We ran round to the back of the house where the pool was. It wasn’t nearly as big or as fancy or as blue as the pools you see in movies, though it was in every sense a Hollywood swimming pool. And there at the bottom of it, proving that the legend about floating Volkswagen Beetles was, at least sometimes, untrue, was Leezza’s submerged, waterlogged, earth-bound Beetle.

♦

The guys who knew about these things, Motorhead Phil’s technical crew, said the situation was retrievable. The car wasn’t heavy: a small crane could be hired to fish it out of the pool. With a bit of careful manoeuvring it could be put on the flatbed truck next to Barry’s Beetle. Then it could be taken back to Fontinella, stripped down, dried off, reassembled and it would be as good as ever by next Sunday, and then Leezza could do her jumps exactly as planned. Most of this proved to be true, but not all. There was one small hitch.

The crane was brought, the Beetle was hooked up, and they were soon putting the sodden, dripping, streaming thing on to the truck. Leezza, very concerned, a little tearful and very hands-on, was squatting on the flatbed, peering closely at the underside of her car, trying to see what damage had been done when the car went into the pool. Quite a lot it seemed to me. One of the tyres had burst, the trans-axle was askew and all the basic geometry of the chassis looked out of whack. Leezza was very close indeed to the car, too close, as we now know. While she was inspecting the damage, the crane driver, unaware of where she was and what she was doing, dropped the Beetle the last twelve inches or so on to the truck, and the front right wheel, the one with the burst tyre, landed directly on top of her right foot. If the tyres had still been inflated it surely wouldn’t have been too bad, and obviously it could have been a lot worse, but as it was, the solid metal of the wheel hub and the flattened rubber smashed down against Leezza’s instep, shattering three of her metatarsals. It would be a good long time before she was able to walk or drive again.