Spirit of the Place (9781101617021) (35 page)

“I don't even know what I'll be doing yet.”

“I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll start in Rome with Celestina. But at first we won't live with her, no. We'll get a nice little apartment near the Spanish Steps—no, wait—on the Piazza Navona, my favorite, favorite place!”

“How do you know so much about Rome?”

“Milt and Mom and I did Rome when I was little. So, then, we're living there, and I'll take Italian lessons and you'll work at a free clinic and at night we'll have dinner really, really late and then maybe—hey, yeah—we'll put on little plays at the Piazza Navona for the tourists!”

He stared at her and laughed.

“I mean it!”

“I know.”

“Take me seriously, will you?”

“I will. I am. Sounds great, but I'm not sure it's right for you, Ame.”

“But I'm like dying here!”

He saw in her eyes that she, like he, in fact was. “Okay, I'll—”

“Yes!” she said, raising her fist in triumph.

“Wait! I'll ask Penny. But she'll say no, and I can't kidnap you. It's illegal.”

“Shit,” she said, lying down on her back. “Okay, but can I at least come visit you?”

“Sure. Every vacation.”

“And can I stay with you at Grandma Selma's 'til you leave?”

“What about camp?”

“I hate it.”

“What about ‘Finding Your Voice Without Boys'?”

“The boys come over all the time from the other side of the lake. It's a joke.”

“Why are they on the other side of the lake?”

“They go to an all-boys' camp run by the same jerky people, a ‘Finding Your Warrior Camp' or some garbage. Can I stay with you?”

“I work all the time.”

“Yeah . . . Hey, I got an idea! I'll work in your office—I'll be your receptionist. You don't have one, right?” He said right. “And we'll live in your house and it'll be fun!”

“Yes, it would. Okay. Maybe Penny'll agree to that.”

“First ask her if I can leave with you, and when she says no, ask her the other.”

“You know, for a kid, you're pretty smart.” She beamed. “I'll do my best.”

They lay there for a few moments in silence, watching the sky.

“Why're you going?” Amy asked.

“Except for you, there's nothing to keep me here anymore.”

“Since Miranda left?”

“And Cray.”

“You guys were really, really in love, right?”

“All three of us, yep.”

“So what happened?”

Without thinking he said, “Our handicaps didn't match.”

“Whoa! That's heavy.”

“Yeah. Broke my heart.”

“Have you heard anything from them?”

“Nothing.”

She laid her head on his chest. They watched the clouds, sailing across like ghosts.

“So you're leaving because of her?”

“Her, yeah, but there's more, Amy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It's about a vision. One day when I was six, I lay on my back like this, alone out in a field, and looked up and saw the clouds like that and I had a vision.”

“Cool. What vision?”

“That the world wasn't just about what you see and hear and feel and all of that, but that there was something else.”

“What?”

“I don't know what, but the words I heard were, ‘something else.'”

“Like God?”

“Maybe. Something else that was whole, of which I was just a part. If I were to try to name it now, I'd say something ‘Divine.'”

“Far out.”

“Maybe not. I was so excited by this vision, I jumped up and ran home to tell my mother. And I told her and she said, ‘Sorry, Orville, but there's nothing else but this.'”

“Selma?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Bummer.”

“So, anyway, I've been trying to hold on to that vision all my life, Ame, and when I was away, working for Doctors Without Borders and running around the world and falling in love with Celestina in Italy—almost exactly a year ago now—I could hold on to it a little bit. And I felt, I don't know, like I was
worth
something, you know? Because I was part of something else.”

“I felt that when I was young, too, yeah.”

Orville smiled. “But what I've found, being back here, is that it's really hard to keep holding on to that vision. If I stay here much longer, it'll die. And a long time ago I decided that before I would let
it
die,
I
would die.”

They were silent again, and peaceful.

“Do you think, Uncle O., that Grandma Selma's vision died?”

He was taken aback. Not only at the question but at Amy's love—no, not the love, the empathy. Amy's ability to flip over into Selma's world, see Selma's lost dreams, the flip that he simply could not make, even after everything.

“Know what, Ame?”

“Yeah?”

“You're a miracle. Let's roll.”

“But you didn't answer me.”

“Kid, you picked that right up, didn't you? My answer is I'll do everything I can to convince Penny to let you quit camp and move in with me and be my receptionist. And with Selma's money, when I leave I'll be able to bring you over to Europe anytime, even for a weekend if you need me. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Cool?”

“Way.”

“Let's go!”

Orville dropped off Amy at home and idled the bike through the twilight back down to the Schooners'. He parked it and walked up onto the porch under the gold-painted ceiling and then on in through the unlocked front door.

“Hello? Anybody home?” He knew Henry and Nelda Jo weren't, but maybe the kids were. No answer. He left the key on the kitchen table and headed back out.

For some reason he paused in the den, poured himself a bourbon and a beer chaser, and lit a Monte Cristo cigar. He flumphed himself down into Henry's big leather chair facing the wobbly breakfront and the big blank
TV
. He had dropped in.

He thought, So this is what it's like to be Schooner? Yeah, must be. But what is it, to be Schoonerish?

He sat, looking blankly out for a long while. Finally he said to himself that maybe what it is, after all is said and done, is to be blank. That's it, that's all, just kinda blank. Waiting for Godot or Nelda Jo—whatever.

The blankness was so vivid he soon dozed off, to be awakened minutes later by the ringing phone, ringing and ringing until the answering machine cut in.

“Hi, Eagle, Sancho here.”

Orville recognized the voice of Milton Plotkin, brother-in-law.

“All systems go for the demo tomorrow at oh-six-hundred.”

The machine clicked off.

For a second Orville was astonished, mesmerized with disbelief. They wouldn't . . .

And then he believed. They were going to blow up the Worth Hotel.

He was furious, enraged at having been duped. He pictured, again, Henry standing before the angry crowd at the public hearing just a few months ago, calming, reassuring, proposing a stay of execution for the grand old hotel until the end of the year, asking that as a community they not do anything rash or in haste, that they all give the Worth Saving folks a decent chance to raise the necessary “monies.”

A lie, all a total lie. As soon as the chance had presented itself to them—Miranda gone, Mrs. Tarr deep in mourning over the death of her cat and the disappearance of her friend, and Orville giving up—they arranged to destroy it.

It all rushed in on him—his first sight of the forlorn three-person picket line that first evening he'd walked into town, his meeting Miranda at the schoolhouse with their sweet good-bye of “Worth Saving, yes!,” Amy and him joining the cause, the town meeting. Now, gone. All the air went out of him, in one long breath out. He sank, deflated, into the worn leather. His anger turned to defeat. First we lose each other, and now we lose this too.

He felt powerless, sad, thinking of Miranda, knowing what saving the hotel had meant to her. He stared around the Schooner den, at the perfectly decorated walls, at the massive breakfront, the impenetrable
TV
. He felt the silent desolation of this beautiful old house that had seen an awful lot of ugliness.

Chance, followed back far enough, is fate.
Miranda had told him that once, talking about history, her green eyes alight with mischief.
Chance.

All at once things shifted. He felt a glimmer of hope, a flutter of relief. Rising up out of the clutches of the soft leather, he faced the glass of the breakfront.

“Okay, you assholes. Now it's my turn. Thanks for the chance. I'm gonna make my move!”

· 27 ·

The dewy red air of dawn. Silence. Orville lit another Camel and sat back in his rocker, staring across Washington Street at the Painted Lady Lounge. For the past few hours, things had been quiet. As town doctor, he'd come to know some measure of truth of the Columbians, maybe even of Columbia itself. He could sense all around him the dream town, the town the Columbians collectively were dreaming. This, he thought, is the only utopia. Timeless, placeless, tethered lightly by the gossamers of
REM
sleep to the historical place. He imagined most of the dreams—compared to what the dreamer would awaken to—to be sweet. He imagined that the dreaming Columbians were attending civic functions and having things work perfectly, and that they were fit and thin and sober and nonsmokers and well-off and kind and had no need to go to a doctor. These utopian dreams were a bountiful history of good things to come.

Sound. According to Celestina, quoting the
Vedantas,
sound came before anything else in the creation of the world. Sound came first now, in the creation of the day. A car coughing alive, racheting into gear, moving downhill into the South Swamp toward a job while a tanker tooted past the rotting lighthouse in the river alongside the same Middle Ground Flats of the idiotic horse-ferry-to-nowhere fame, two hundred years ago. An alarm clock, a radio, a tune, an argument, a light in a window across the way and a silhouette of a sleepy, stoop-shouldered Columbian.

Orville saw first light on the gold ball atop the flagpole to his left at Parade Hill, reflecting the rays of the sun pulling itself up out of the covers of Massachusetts and walking over the brow of Cemetery Hill.

B-dangg! Bang!

The explosion of heavy machinery starting up, down on North Second. Coming closer. Massive metal. Diesel-powered massive gears, shifting first to second, second to third, groaning along heavily up Washington in the gauzy light. From his days as a toll collector on the Rip Van Winkle, Orville recognized the sound. A heavy flatbed trailer hauling something heavier. Coming closer.

And then there it was, moving in from his left like a wall, the float carrying a big crane with a black wrecking ball tucked under its lowered arm like an elephant tucking a black fruit into its mouth. It stopped directly in front of him. Scomparza Demolition and Upholstery.

“What the fuck?” A man followed these words out of the cab of the flatbed. Orville recognized him as a patient of his, Jeffrey Liebowski, of Ukrainian descent, deep descent. Bill had gotten his little boy to stop pooping in Jeffrey's motorcycle helmet.

“Holy shit!” This voice belonged to Officer Packy Scomparza. “Hey, Doc, whatchu doin' here?”

A flash of light, and another, and another. Packy and Jeffrey turned toward Toby oop den Dyke, who, with one of those sophisticated news cameras, was snapping away, capturing the moment for the afternoon edition of
The Crier.

“Aw shit, man,” Jeffrey said. “Shit.”

“Fuckin' A, Orvy,” said Packy, “didya
have
to?”

Toby snapped a few more photos. “Thanks for the tip, Orvy,” he said. With a cheery wave, whistling “Some Enchanted Evening,” he left.

“So what the hell you think you're doon?” Packy asked.

“Meditating.”

“In chains?”

“Jesus was, wasn't he?”

Packy thought about this. “No joke.”

“What're
you
doing here?” Orville asked.

“Detail. Traffic detail for the demo.”

A truck with a few other workers stopped by. A car stopped, then another. A small crowd started to blossom. People stared.

“Hey, Jeffrey,” Orville said. “Who told you to demo this?”

“We got orders.”

“From who?”

“Look, man,” Jeffrey said, “we got orders not to tell who we got orders from, okay? And if we don't demo this baby right now our ass is grassed, you get me?”

“I do, and too bad.”

“Yeah, man,” Jeffrey said, “and who told
you
about this, man?”

“Milt.”

Looks of astonishment from both of them.

“
Milt?
” said Liebowski in surprise. “Fuckin' A!”

“Wait, wait,” Packy said. “Wait. Milt
who?
”

“Milt Plotkin, my brother-in-law.”

The workers looked at each other.

Liebowski said, “Holy shit.”

“You can say that again,” said Packy.

“Holy shit.”

“Unbelievable, y'get me?” Packy turned back to Orville. “I mean, chains?”

Chains they were, and Orville was locked into them. The biggest chains and most impenetrable padlock he could find. He had taken his grandmother's rocker from the house and popped it into the trunk of the Chrysler and at three in the morning had driven down to the General Worth Hotel.

Chaining himself to the columns of the portico had been difficult and dangerous. The front portico of the hotel, the columns, and the roof were a honeycomb of decay. He had checked out other parts of the building, but all were rotted. A hard shot anywhere, and it could all come down. He'd fed the heavy links of the chain around the two Doric columns of the rickety portico—it sagging like the bad side of his mother's face—in through one smashed window beside the rotting door and out through the other smashed window, and then around himself and the rocker a couple of times. The padlock arm slithered into its socket and snapped to with a steely, conclusive
clrokk!

He sat there, dressed in his suit and wearing the tie Cray had given him, elephants grazing on a silk veldt. Orville had spent the dark hours rocking, chained to what the sign said was the
GENERALWORTH HOTEL
. As if the dear old hotel had become a Columbian biotech company. Rocking in the dark, waiting. Given Selma's fashion show triumphs at the hotel when she was still beautiful, he half-expected to see her floating or flying. From time to time he scanned the sky, half-hoping. But no.

“Okay, Doc,” Packy was saying now, “youse made your point, okay, so now unlock yourself and go home.”

“Not until my demands are met.”

“Demands, man?” cried Liebowski.

“Damnit, I just
knew
you was gonna say that,” said Packy.

“Dee-fuckin'-
mands?
”

“What do you think this is,” Packy said, “one of them flower-power protests against 'Nam? They're over, Orvy. The war's over, okay?”

“Maybe not. This is an emergency. Get the mayor.”

Packy looked at Jeffrey, Jeffrey at Packy. Their level of discomfort rose.

“Look, Doc,” Packy said, “we only get the mayor in an emergency.”

“I
know
that,” Orville said, “and
that's
why I said to get the mayor. This
is
one.”

They thought about this, whispered about this. The bystanders were more numerous now, a real crowd. Someone shouted out, “Save the Worth, yeah!” and another shouted, “Go for it, Doc!”

“Okay, Orvy,” Packy said. “We decided.”

“Good. I like decisiveness.”

“We decided we'll go ahead and like, you know, wreck
around
you, okay?”

“What?” Orville cried, terrified suddenly of what these dopes could do. A shock anywhere could bring the portico down on him. The end. Dead. Here? Like this?

“Jeffrey says he can like just wreck around you a
little,
right, Jeffrey?”

“Yeah, man, I can just wreck a little, yeah. Like you say to your patients, you won't feel a thing.” He paused. “Man.”

“So just relax, Doc,” Packy said. “We'll start over there where the ballroom used to be, remember?”

“No!” he said, thinking
breakage!
“No, you can't do that.”

“Why not?”

“You'll kill me. This front part will come down on me.”

“No, it won't,” said Liebowski. “You don't get me. We're just gonna wreck a
little,
man, a
little
little, the side part, over there.”

“The ballroom,” said Packy.

“But it's all connected.”

“Which is why I'll be extra-careful. No problem. I'll wreck over there.”

“Wreck?” Orville asked. “You're not even
in
the wrecking part, Liebowski, are you? You told me in the office that you were in the upholstery division.”

“I can see where you might question my competence, man,” Liebowski said. “But I assure you, you pick up a lot here and there. The problem is, the real wrecker's in Vegas this week.”

“No problem, Doc,” Packy said, “you just sit there and relax.”

“Yeah, keep meditatin', Doc,” Jeffrey said, laughing. “Think like nice peaceful thoughts!” He roared with laughter, shaking his head in disbelief as he went back to the wrecking crane and got into the cab and powered it up. His helpers put down the steel ramps to unload it from the flatbed. As the ramps slid out and clanked down on the pavement, the crane sat there idling, an unruly woolly mammoth, well-rested and ready, warming up.

“You touch this hotel,” Orville called out, “my lawyer'll sue you for all you're worth!”

At the word “lawyer,” everybody froze. Packy went over to Jeffrey in the cab of the crane. He shouted up at him, and Jeffrey shouted down. Orville couldn't hear over the muttering of the crane's diesel engine. Then Packy got out his walkie-talkie and clicked it on and put it to his ear and talked a little and then he screamed in pain and pulled it back away from his ear and clicked it off and sat down on the edge of the flatbed and lit a cigarette. The diesel wrecking crane, perched on the start of the downslope of the two ramps, kept idling—
ka ba doommmm,
ka ba doommmm, ka ba doommmm.
To Orville the sound was a comfort, a throaty, oiled steel mantra on internal combustion.

Nothing happened, except the crowd grew bigger. They were mostly passive, but a New Yorker put a flower in front of Orville. Then other people went to get flowers and put them in front of Orville, too.

By the time the diminutive mayor's big pink Cadillac El Dorado rolled up, stopped, rocked a little on its shocks, and disgorged Americo, the crowd, by Columbian standards, was huge. Some were chanting “Worth Saving!” and some were chanting “Worth Wrecking!” Americo was up for reelection, and it was the first time anybody had seen his new campaign slogan, on the Caddy's bumper stickers:

PUT A LITTLE ITALIAN IN YOUR LIFE

A. SCOMPARZA FOR MAYOR

Americo headed straight for Orville, looking as if he would kill him and eat him. “What the hell do you think you're doing?”

But then a bright light went on, and Orville and Americo turned toward it. A
TV
crew had just arrived and was about to capture on videotape whatever happened next to broadcast on the morning news and the noon news and the evening news and the late news and, if it were salacious enough, even on the national networks and in print—
Time, Newsweek,
and
People.
Maybe even into the two opinion leaders,
The National Enquirer
and
The New Yorker.

Caught in the spotlight, Americo shifted direction. He gathered himself and walked deliberately toward the portico where Orville and his cousin Packy were. To the
TV
camera Americo said, “As mayor of this fine town, I am outraged. Outraged!”

He turned to face Orville and Packy, maintaining his good angle to the camera.

“Yes, I am outraged by this!”

His eyes went from Packy to Orville, Orville to Packy. It wasn't clear which “this” of the two of them he meant.

“Outraged at
you,
Officer Scomparza, to think that a public employee would aid and abet the demolition of this sacred old historical landmark hotel. Outraged that someone—some disgruntled citizen of our town—would even
think
to knock down this fine hotel. And though I disagree with your action, Dr. Rose, I fought in a war to protect your right to act like an—like a patriot. Free speech. I'm ashamed, Officer Scomparza and Mr. Liebowski, ashamed that you'd even of thought of knockin' off this fine old historical hotel.” He considered, and, seeming to realize he had been too wordy for the
TV
camera, moved closer to it and said, “Freedom is due process for all Columbians!”

The
TV
light went out. The crew started packing up.

Americo turned to Packy and Jeffrey and shouted, “Why are you doin' this?”

“We was just followin' orders, Mr. Mayor,” said Packy.

“And who gave you your orders, Officer?”

A pause. “Am I under oath?”

“Not unless you wanna be.”

“Nope. Okay.” He considered, brow furrowed in thought. “I forget who.”

Americo shook his head and spat on the pavement. He looked up into the cab of the crane and shouted. “Liebowski?”

“Yer 'oner?”

“Come here. On the double!”

Jeffrey did so. He and the mayor and Packy conferred. The shouts of the crowd rose, but the officials ignored them until the shouts turned to screams as the wrecking crane without Liebowski in it began to move down the two steel ramps toward the street and the vehicles parked there, including the
TV
crew's minivan and the mayor's pink Cadillac.

People scattered. It looked for a second as if the wobbly crane would topple over off the ramps toward the Worth and demolish it, and Orville thought he would die, but then it tilted back the other way toward a meticulously restored eighteenth-century whaling house with a widow's walk, the bottom floor of which was now the high-end store called Misery Antiques.

In a fit of bravery, Liebowski leapt onto the flatbed, mounted the crane like a cowboy on a runaway horse, and managed to keep it on the ramps until, going too fast, it hit the street with a terrible
mmmronkch!
which shook the old hotel ominously and set the columns creaking over Orville's head, the dust raining down so thickly he feared the whole thing would collapse and that in fact he would end up dying there and then.