Ten Days in the Hills (4 page)

At any rate, now that those tornado-generated images were in her mind, she didn’t really want to kiss, or to have him lie on top of her. She pecked him on the lips and eased him off. She said, “You know, I can’t get this war out of my mind. I hate it.”

“It’s a dilemma.” He looked regretful.

“What’s a dilemma?”

“What to do about the weapons of mass destruction. What to do about Saddam.”

“You know I don’t believe in the weapons of mass destruction.”

“I know that. But he didn’t prove they aren’t there.”

“You can’t prove a negative.”

“You can be open and aboveboard. You can let in the—”

“Or bend over and take it in the ass. You can do that. If you’d been to enough movies, though, you would hesitate to do that because of the manliness problem.”

“I’m sure Saddam is beyond the manliness problem. I mean, the manliness problem doesn’t seem really to apply to him.”

“Why not? Don’t you think he watches movies?”

“You sound a little aggressive.”

“You sound a little condescending.”

“Do I?”

She sat up and looked around the room. The angle of the slanting sun had risen, and it crossed the feet of the woman in a photograph she liked. The sight of it relieved her a degree, and she said, “No. You just sound like you disagree with me. Supposedly, in some abstract way that I can’t quite comprehend right now, that’s not only okay but inevitable and even desirable.”

“I do agree with you. I just can’t quite gauge what will satisfy you.”

She thought for a moment. “Okay. Here it is. I don’t want arguments to be made. I don’t want logic to pertain or issues to be carefully weighed. I want the whole idea of the war to simply be disgorged from the body politic like the poison it is, and I want those who thought it up to feel sick with overwhelming nausea and horror that they somehow ingested the poison to begin with. I want them to sincerely and abjectly plead for forgiveness. Then I want them to spend a lot of time thinking about what happened. And I want them to make a solemn vow to change their ways and do better in the future. I don’t think it’s too much to ask.”

“But you know it’s too much to expect, right?”

“A remote part of me knows that,” she acknowledged.

“You know that there are people whose job it is to know more about this than you do and that they think this is a regrettable necessity, right?”

“I’ve heard that rumor, but I question their motives. If their motives are humane, I question their logic. If their logic is reasonable, I question their worldview and their right to impose their worldview on the lives and bodies of others.”

“Then, honey, you question the nature of civilization.”

“And you don’t?”

He sat up, put his arm around her, and brought her down again, but now they were lying face to face in the sunlight. His face had that clear, open shape she liked so much, prominent nose, smooth brow, well-defined chin, blue eyes. He was smiling. He said, “Do you know how long I’ve been in Hollywood?”

“Thirty-five years.”

“Do you think I have any faith in human civilization after that?”

“No.”

“Let me tell you how I see it.”

She rolled over onto her back and said, rather petulantly, she was willing to admit, “Okay.”

He rolled her onto her side again. He said, “Look at me.”

“Okay.”

“The people who are running this thing have spent their whole lives as corporate executives, more or less, and not only that, corporate executives with in-house philosophers of the free market. Not only are they rich and powerful, they feel that they deserve to be rich and powerful, because the free market is the highest good and they have worked the free market and benefited from it, and so has everyone they know. There are two things about them that you have to remember—that deep down they feel guilty and undeserving and that they live very circumscribed lives. Inside the office, inside the house, inside the health club, inside the corporate jet. Iraq is the size of California, right? But none of these guys has driven from L.A. to, say, Redding, in living memory. They have no idea what the size of California is, much less what it means in terms of moving armies and machinery, or having battles or conquering territory. They are used to telling people to get things done and then having them done—or partially done, or done in a good enough way, or done in a half-assed way that someone has convinced them is good enough. The real problem is that they don’t understand logistics and that they’ve been downsizing for decades. Even though Iraq is the size of California, they think it is the size of United Airlines. United Airlines could possibly be reorganized and made to sustain itself in a couple of years with the right sort of ruthless leadership, but California doesn’t work like that. That’s how I see it.”

“As an administrative problem that can’t be solved.”

“In a way, but more as a testament to inexperience and lack of imagination. If one of them had been in the army, or even just drove around in the Central Valley for a week and saw the scale of things, that might help everyone emerge from the fantasy. Or if everyone all the way up and down a single chain of command—let’s say forty levels of authority, down to the guy fixing the carburetor on the Hummer—just came into the office and told one of them what he had actually done for the last twenty-four hours, the inevitability of fuckups and waste would be so evident that even the idea of ordering up a successful invasion would seem laughable. Situation Normal All Fucked Up, as we used to say. But I know it isn’t going to happen. I know the machine is going to keep running and lots of people are going to be crushed beneath the wheels and mangled in the gears. I can’t not know that. I can’t even have hope that it won’t be so.”

Now she rolled on her back again, and he let her, though he kept his arm comfortingly under her head. Though no theory worked, she couldn’t help toiling at her theorizing. Her fellow citizens had become unaccountable. She had lost even the most rudimentary ability to understand their points of view, but she could not stop theorizing. Each new theory was accompanied by a momentary sense of uplift—oh,
that
was it—fear, native aggression, ignorance, disinformation and propaganda, a religious temperament of rules and punishments. But in the end, it was that they didn’t mind killing; they didn’t think killing had anything to do with them or their loved ones. It was unbelievably strange, a renewed shock every time she thought about it.

She said, “I think I’m becoming deracinated.”

“Then it’s time to get up.”

“Is there a word beyond deracinated?”

“Only in the realms of mental illness.”

“Well, mental illness is not the problem. Moral illness is the problem.”

He put a hand to each side of her face and turned it toward his face. He spoke slowly and clearly. He said, “I agree with you even when I don’t feel exactly as you do. That’s the best we can do.” He took his hands off her face. She nodded, feeling at first a bit chastened and after that comforted. Now he rolled her up against himself, her head in the crook of his neck, her breasts against his chest, his belly pushed into hers, his leg crooked over her leg and pulling her legs toward him. She could feel his warm solid body all the way down hers, no gaps. His wide hand was on the small of her back, pulling her tightly against him. Then he shifted toward her a bit, not on top of her but pinning her nonetheless between his weight and the resilience of the bed. She felt him breathing, then felt her own breath synchronize with his. She let this happen. It was slow, but they had done this many times, this exercise of physical agreement, usually as a way of getting back to sleep in the middle of the night. Even now, after only a minute or two, it made her feel relaxed and then sleepy. Should the occasion arise, she thought, this was a good way to be buried, and she should remember to put it in her will.

She said, “What time is it, do you think?”

“It is eight-oh-six. Time for a cup of coffee.”

When he walked across the room, she thought, This is the thing you never get to see in the movies—a naked hairy middle-aged man walking past the window in a graceful, casual way, pushing his hair back, adjusting his testicles, looking for his glasses, rubbing his nose, coughing—and yet it is a beautiful sight, no manliness problem at all. He went into the bathroom. She heard him blow his nose, urinate resoundingly into the toilet, and flush. She heard him go out the other door of the bathroom. After that there was silence for about a minute, and then he was back.

She said, “What’s the matter?”

“The house is full of people.”

“How many people? Do we know them?”

“Stoney, Charlie, Delphine, Cassie, Isabel, and Simon.”

“Simon! What’s he doing here?” She sat up.

“I don’t know what anyone is doing here. I got out there in the altogether, realized the place was teeming, and came right back for my bathrobe. Do you think we invited all these people for today? I thought they were going to be dribbling in one at a time over the next couple of weeks.”

It was, indeed, unusual
that they all showed up at once. Normally, Max lived alone in the house itself, but his former mother-in-law, Delphine Cunningham, lived in the guesthouse. Even when his ex, Zoe (Isabel’s mother, the pop icon and sex goddess Zoe Cunningham), left, there had, apparently, been no question of Delphine going with her. As Delphine was Jamaican, Zoe said, it was wiser not to move her. But really, of course, the arrangements were more about Isabel than anything else. Delphine was tall, thin, and imposing, but Elena had found a small, perhaps pinpointsized, area of common ground with her on the subject of correctly roasting pork. Delphine and Elena agreed that brown sugar in the marinade, soy sauce, and slivered ginger and garlic (always sliced lengthwise) thrust into cuts stabbed into the meat with the tip of a good sharp knife were key, along with, of course, laying the roast in the pan fat side up, and setting the oven temperature low—325. Thirty-five to forty minutes per pound was not too much, either, if you wanted juicy. And they had come to these conclusions independently, only happening to compare notes one afternoon in Max’s kitchen.

Delphine’s best friend, Cassie Marshall, also in her seventies, lived next door. Whereas Delphine was tall, Cassie was short. Whereas Delphine was laconic, Cassie was voluble. Whereas Delphine did not drive and almost never made any noise, Cassie drove, ran an art gallery down in the Palisades, and was notoriously well connected. Delphine was reserved and Cassie was busy (and Max didn’t like to be disturbed), so Elena could not say that she had become actual friends with them.

Max said, “Simon shaved his head.”

“He did what?”

“I guess he did it yesterday.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” But this exclamation was mostly for show. She was a veteran of worse surprises than head-shaving. She said, “What about Isabel? I thought she wasn’t coming for a few days.”

“She looks good. Get up. They’re making pancakes. I had no idea Charlie would be here. I thought his plane was due this afternoon.”

She got up.

The kitchen was the only other room on the same level as the master bedroom, but whereas the bedroom seemed to stand out over the hillside, anchored to the rock but jutting into the air, the kitchen was set back under the trees, on what had been the original tableland. It was shaded most of the day by overhanging purple bougainvillea that grew up through a spacious deck. It was not terribly modern—no restaurant range with grill, for example, and the work space was limited—but you could cook there happily day after day, as Elena sometimes did, making bread or cookies or authentic Bolognese sauce with milk and white wine, just to prolong the pleasure of puttering around in the wood-paneled quiet. Her own kitchen, which she had installed after much thought, research, and consultation with experts, was more up-to-date, but she found herself cooking there less than here, in what had become, more or less, her territory.

Not, she supposed, in the minds of Delphine and Cassie, who were busy flipping pancakes, or the tall girl, who would be Isabel, whose head turned in her direction as she came into the room. She was opening a jar of jam. She gave Elena a friendly smile, set down the jar, and stepped forward. Though she didn’t have the same attention-riveting incandescence that Zoe had, she did have a bright, intent look to her, and Max’s natural grace. She said, “Hi. I’m Isabel. You must be Elena.” And then she put a hand on each of Elena’s shoulders and kissed her. Simon said, “Hey, Mom.”

She turned from Isabel with what she hoped was a smile that matched Isabel’s in warmth. “Hey, Simon. What are you doing here?”

“Something not bad. Something fun.”

“That’s not a good start, Simon. I see you had your hair done.”

He put his hand on the top of his shining head and rubbed. “What do you think?”

She was more suspicious about his purpose for being here, but she knew not to openly pry. She said, “Honey, your head has a nice shape.” She kissed him on the cheek. “You’re lucky. Some people are entirely flat behind.” She decided to leave it at that. Cowardly. “How’s your car running?”