Sacred Monster

Flashback 11

Having two salaries now, blessed with growing reputations, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Pine could afford, in fact needed, a larger house, a more prestigious location, better suited to greeting friends and the press. This house, until recently owned by a television star named Holt who’d committed suicide when his series was canceled, sprawled on three levels, a white blob cunningly worked into a fold of canyon up near Mulholland Drive. Though the view was of the Valley, the approach was from the Los Angeles side, and the area code was 213, not (gulp) 818.

The box hooked to the visor of Jack’s rented BMW operated the gate at the end of the cul-de-sac off Mulholland, where their driveway began. He drove in, the gate swinging sidearm shut behind him, and steered around the carefully jungly plantings to the sudden blacktop puddle where the house began; three-car attached garage on the right, entrance and main living room straight ahead.

Gathering up his same old two pieces of luggage — the battered round, soft traveling bag and the well-worn soft suit-carrier — Jack unlocked his way into the house. He crossed the large formal living room with its large formal view of the Valley nestling its large blanket of dirty gray haze, and went down the stairs to level two, with its more informal family room and bedrooms all opening onto the large free-form pool, which sparkled and gleamed below the sightline of the formal view above. Coming into the large comfortable family room with its conversation pit and its walls graced with rented original oil paintings, Jack looked around with pride of ownership and the happiness of contentment. This was his; his and Marcia’s.

The television set was on, showing Bringing Up Baby. A large book of the paintings of Hopper lay on the broad glass coffee table, open to “Nighthawks.” Beside the book were a half-full coffee cup and a half-eaten sandwich. Jack looked at all these things, his smile quizzical, then dropped his luggage and crossed the room to feel the coffee cup. It was warm.

His smile broadening, Jack tiptoed across the room and opened the hall door. Tiptoeing past the rented framed etchings, he couldn’t help a conspiratorial chuckle.

The master bedroom door was at the end, on the right. It was closed. Jack reached it, closed his hand around the doorknob, hesitated once more, grinning, and then leaped through the doorway, yelling, “Surprise!”

Buddy reared up in the bed, looking over his shoulder in amazement and shock. Beneath him, Marcia writhed. “Not noowww!” she wailed. “I’m coming!”

Jack stood in the bedroom where his momentum had left him. Turned to stone, he stared into Buddy’s eyes. He could neither speak nor move.

Buddy was horribly embarrassed, achingly aware of the social awkwardness of the situation in which they all found themselves. But he was quite obviously also aware of the woman still desperately thrashing away beneath him. He offered Jack a ghastly smile, saying, “Give us a minute, will you, Dad, uh, just a minute, we’ll...”

An electric jolt shot through Jack’s body, slamming him back into life. Spinning about, he flung himself from the room, the door banging behind him with a sound like a shot. “Nice to see you, Dad, uh...” Buddy called after him, in despairing camaraderie.

“Oh, there it is,” Marcia gasped, her hands clutching his shoulder blades. “Oh, there it is, oh, there it is, oh, there it is.”

“There it is, all right,” Buddy muttered, broody.

Marcia’s breathing slowed, her arms relaxed, she raised her head beside Buddy’s and looked toward the door. Lank hair plastered to her skin framed her face. Still panting a bit, beginning to look worried, she said, “Was that Jack?”

“Mmmmmm,” Buddy said, meaning yes.

From far away came the sound of a car engine roaring, the accelerator pressed ridiculously to the floor. Then there was the grinding sound of some sort of crash, a tiny pause, and once again that roaring sound, this time receding to silence.

“What was that?” said Marcia.

“Jack’s going,” Buddy said.

The interviewer glares at me in prissy disapproval. “There you go again,” he says. “You didn’t see that part. You were driving away.”

“With a broken heart,” I say. “Plus two broken headlights and a cracked radiator. But one senses the truth of such scenes, doesn’t one? One doesn’t have to be present at every fucking instance of an emotional scene to sense the reality when one fucking well hears it, does one?”

“Okay, okay,” he says, patting the air at me. “Take it easy, Mr. Pine. It’s your story.”

“My wife and my best friend,” I say, with my best brokenhearted chuckle. “The oldest story in the world, am I right?”

“Second oldest, I think,” he says, nit-picking again.

“Old, though,” I say, too weary to fight. “Very old. Buddy came to see me in Mexico.”