Planet Fever (18 page)

EZ’S PAGER
vibrated and he checked it. He used the phone in Fillono’s office, speaking briefly with someone on the other end, nodding his head. “Be there in a few.” He hung up and headed to the door. “Hey boss, problem with that little EMP device I’ve been tinkering with. The test just blew out all the circuits on the
Leif Eriksson
lift—I’ll catch you fellas on the rebound. Nice meeting you, Ed.” EZ excused himself.

“Most-a-good engineer and technician I have ever met,” Fillono said. “Keeps this place running.”

Fillono and I walked out to the station for the
Stellar Wind Xpress
—a high-speed scenic gondola that went from one of the peaks to another via the basin and over much of the town. A group of students circled us, filming as we boarded the gondola.

The cab jettisoned out of the bay and hummed along the cable.

They filmed that, too.

“We go to your lodging. Very nice.” Fillono grinned.

Downward we went, hovering above legions of trees that swayed in the mountain breezes.
I’ll keep my conversations with those trees to a minimum,
I thought.

So far I liked it here. I felt at ease.

The gondola made a steep descent over a large cliff. My heart skipped a beat, bringing me back to reality. I was on a mission and needed to stay focused.

“How’d you get this place going?” I asked.

“My uncle Gaetano was champion skier from the old country—from Italia. He-a- move to here and-a-race and work at this little ski resort, before-a-ski resort were everywhere. Then in the war, the army, they came and ‘leased’ the resort and-a-trained special mountain soldiers, and my uncle joined them and was-a-helping to train them, because he was a great skier, mountaineer, and a good guy. So he-a-goes to fight in Europa, and he has to-a-fight his Italian cousins … but that is a different story. He come back with the shiny medals and a hero. The ski resort owner, a man called Jon von Tier makes him a partner, and the army makes a deal to have a base and training mountain on some of the property and pay-a-lots of money for use of it. So, when I was boy we would visit my uncle here and I would-a-stay summers and some winters here, and my uncle Gaetano he love me very much and he never have-a-kids so he give his half to me in his will when he die, and he died-a-one year ago.”

“What happened with Von Tier?”

“Von Tier, he was-a-the risk-taker, adventurer and wanted to be a Guinness Book of World Record holder. The first person to go around the globe in a one-man submarine. He was-a-last heard from near the Cook Islands in the south Pacific. His last radio dispatch had-a-been received there. It was to his son, Lars.”

My son—whatever you do, do it well. If you can help it, don’t die in a submarine in the middle of the ocean.

Love,

Your Papa

Fillono went on to explain that Lars was with his grandparents in Innsbruck, Austria when he received the news. He was ten years old and those were the last words he would receive from his dad. The resort was left to him, but he didn’t want it. On his eighteenth birthday, he sold his half to Fillono’s uncle and used the funds to eventually go on deep-sea explorations in the south Pacific, to find his dad and his submarine at the bottom of the ocean. He continues his search to this day.

THE GONDOLA
descended down the mountain and hovered over the main street of the town, which was alive with activity. People sat at cafes and chitchatted or read novels; some folks strolled about the streets or lounged on the grass, enjoying the crisp air and mountain breeze.

It reminded me of a college campus in late spring, where the mood is light and the excitement of the coming summer break looms.

Me and my thoughts floated like the clouds in the sky—just passing through, no mal intent.

A steady electric buzzing began to permeate the gondola cabin. At first, I dismissed it as a fly that might’ve breezed in, but as the intensity swelled, the buzzing—along with a white-noise accompaniment—droned from within my own skull. I flashed back to the last night I saw Fillono at the camp in the park years ago. It was the same sound.

Fillono didn’t hear it, or he pretended not to, for he was smiling and whistling “o sole mio” and gazing down upon his wondrous utopian town.

I cleared my throat. “Fred, do you happen to recall the last night we saw one another? That night Moroni’s company was disbanded?”

Fillono stopped whistling and scratched his chin. “Like a dream I remember. It was all-a- … surreal. I have tried to organize and edit together my-a-thoughts of that time…. I can remember fog, smoke, chaos, and destruction, and then—nothing. Like-a-the dentist when he knocks you out…. Then waking up…. So strange, so strange.”

“Yeah, strange is right. Then waking up where?”

“I cannot explain it Eddie. Like I was-a-taken by aliens and dropped off somewhere far away.”

“Oh yeah? Where?”

“Eddie, you won’t-a-believe me…. I woke up in an Air Force base in the state of Nevada.”

“And you have no clue how you got there?”

“None that
I
can remember. But the nice man—he was called Colonel Parley West and he told me all about it.”

Here is the story Col. West told Fillono:

The Los Angeles Fire Department was called to respond to a fire in Griffith Park, where a bunch of vagrants, riffraff and general outcasts were having a rally of sorts. L.A.P.D. got called in because most of the bums were drunk and delirious and had no idea what was going on—and they were uncooperative with the Fire Department’s commands to get the hell out of there so they could fight the damn fire.

Some of the emergency personnel noted heavy pupil dilation with all of the vagrants, and suspected psychotropic drugs. The police officers went in and used any means necessary to get everyone out of the danger area, which was burning harder by the minute. Many of the vagrants passed out due to smoke inhalation, heat exhaustion, intoxication and general fatigue.

Fillono was taken to one of the general hospitals, and he was recognized by one of the ER doctors on duty that night. He had remembered Fillono from when he was a kid: he and his family would ski at the Fillono resort. The young Fred Fillono would shoot home movies of the family and give them Italian sodas. His name was Dr. Percy West and his older brother was in the military and had trained at the same resort—this was Col. Parley West. The good Doctor noted the transient state Fillono was in, and placed a call to his brother. The fine Colonel personally had Fillono airlifted to the base in Nevada.

The next day, that is where Fillono woke up.

Outlandish, I thought.

Fillono thought so also. “But the Colonel, he-a-insisted that he owed a debt that can never fully be-a-repaid to my uncle Gaetano. He never tell me what it was. So Eddie—it
is
unbelievable, but that is the case. He cleaned and sobered me up, put-a-money into my bank account, and told me that he had a business proposition….”

I guessed that the business proposition was the experimental town and Academy that I was hovering above.

“Yes, Eddie—he is also a very philosophical man, very scientific man, a visionary man…. He had-a-ideas for ‘operational rational cultivation centers’—places that would act as academy, community and recreation townships as well as a military base. Like-a-the city-states of old. Of course, the perfect-a-test-ground would be this old ski resort I had inherited. So he met with big-shot money investor people from around the world and here we are!”

The gondola made its ascent up the next mountain as I chewed on this data, reckoning how I had fit into all this.

“YOU DIDN’T
believe him, did you?
”

I’m back on the Lay-Z-Boy, answering the Interrogator. “Not really.”

“
Why not?
”

“First, the story itself made no sense. An ER doctor in L.A. who recognizes a passed out transient, calls his visionary Colonel brother with a heart of gold who
immediately
jumps into action
that same night
and flies Fillono to Nevada, then goes into business with him? That’s some flimsy writing. No—it’s not that I don’t believe the story—I can’t believe Fillono believes it.”

“
How do you mean?
”

“The Fillono I remember
trusted no one
off-hand. I always got the impression he was
avoiding
people like Colonel West.”

“
People change.
”

“Yeah—but their past doesn’t.”

“
What do you mean?
”

I almost answer, but I refrain. I’ve received a flash of incite with the Interrogator’s questioning: he’s bantering more this round … he’s either attempting to get me to buy the Fillono story hook, line and sinker or he’s testing my own memory of the events to see if I remember more than I am letting on.

Or
he’s trying to get the real story from me so he can write a more accurate Fillono history.

My paranoia level is high because I don’t know who this Interrogator is or what he wants and what is at stake. A gut-hunch says he’s tying up loose ends. Attempting to make this interrogation seem like a hypnosis session; that “we” are trying to psychoanalytically get to the core of my “issues.”

“
Mr. Bikaver, are you still here?
”

“Yes.”

“
You said a person’s past does not change.
”

“I mean that a person’s past stays the same.”

The Interrogator is attempting to make sense of why I would say something so obvious. Fillono had alluded to a different set of circumstances to his own history there on the gondola than ones that I was remembering, for a few details were coming back to me at that moment. I
knew, and still know
these recalled details and what Fillono was telling me were in contradiction to one another:

1. Fillono was never broke. He was never a bum—he was well heeled the entire time while gallivanting around with our vagrant art band. His was a pedigree of modest Italian wealth via interests in various wineries, Italian soda, and radio stations the Fillono family had owned since the early 1900s. In 1993 he read Kerouac’ s
On the Road
and was so inspired he decided to roam about the United States and make a “cinematic homage” to Mr. Kerouac. He tried to “rough it” as much as possible, but I recall he had bailed us all out financially on a few occasions when money for us had been really tight. As a matter of fact, he was the guy who sponsored Moroni’s “theatrical” system of lights, amps, P.A.s, etc.

2. Fillono was never a drunk. I never saw him drink more than 2 glasses of wine at any time, and it was rare to see him drink that. He was a disciplined and focused filmmaker. He never needed to “sober up” because he was always sober anyway.

“
You feel skeptical that Fillono either intentionally or unintentionally misrepresented his past? For what purpose, Mr. Bikaver?
”

The question of “for what purpose” had been nagging at my insides for a while now. Why would anyone think they could change or rewrite the past? It already happened. It’s finished.