Well in Time (45 page)

Her eyes took on a vague, unreadable look. She gazed searchingly over his shoulder toward the Left Bank. Then, to his amazement, they lit with a friendly twinkle. She grinned again and said, “Okay! As long as we eat here,” nodding behind her toward Île Saint-Louis.

“Dear lady . . . whatever your heart desires!” Stooping, he retrieved her coat and held it open for her gallantly.

. . . .

Deep oak woods were wrapped in thick moss and rich in the umber scent of rotting leaves. An incandescent evening sky, apricot and electric blue, was snagged in a net of bare, black branches as Javier tramped, weighted by heavy clothes and muddy boots, his nose red and numb, his hands numb, too. His chest was tight: too cold for deep breathing, yet he was warmed down deep by some rising sense of transformation. Winter was in the land, but spring was rousing early in his heart. Fragile hopes flittered in the wintry dusk, sparks of summer glimmering on heavy, settled air. Winter was not death, as so many poets would have it. No, not death, but the tremblings of resurrection, rooted like the wildflowers already stirring beneath the snow, kicking at their seed hulls for liberation.

Liberation! Javier plotted as he trudged through crusted patches of snow, imagining the hungry fed, the homeless roofed-over, children reading and laughing. As the west gleamed like the Second Coming or the End of the World, ravens winged by, black silhouettes on the fiery sky.

OOSA. USA. So damn cold! Where is the sun of Chiapas and Yucatan that makes the humidity rise and vines bloom? Here in the north the sun burned through the black oak woods like the imperious eye of God, vermilion and gold, not caring if it warmed. And it had a message, as if it were written on a card and dangled on the thin, cold thread of the wind: It has to be done. It cannot be avoided. There is no turning back.

The sun was sinking fast, its curved bottom edge slicing into far indigo hills like a scimitar into flesh. The light was both more brilliant and more somber. The woods hunkered like a vast animal already camouflaged in night–not menacing but mysterious, all to themselves, not knowable, as was the way of all wild things; as was his own way.

He was divided between this awareness and other visions: Paris all aflame; London hanging the Lord Mayor; mobs in the streets of Santiago; American guerrillas lurking in the woods, awaiting the Red Coats.

Revolution. Others had done it. And now, Mexico. Again.

The land reforms of the past revolution were ineffective now. In Mexico City, the most populous, diseased, polluted place on the planet, people were packed like stockyard animals into dismal slums. Bad water, little food, violence, drugs, despair and death. Not the birthright Villa, Zapata and Cardenas envisioned back when the land was divided and the great estancias broken up into ejidos–community-held, farmable plots for the common man.

The sun cut deeper into the mountains’ flesh as his boot heels struck the frozen crust of snow with the report of small arms fire. In the woods, something big moved quickly and silently. A gato montés? A deer? His stomach felt empty and light; hungry, but also as if it would never accept food again.

This was the day, or never. This was the time and place, although it had always seemed to him a thing of the future. Now, the future had arrived and his life was no longer an endless stream of days. From now on he must live each day, hour, breath as if it were his last, all assurances of a long existence erased from his Book of Life. He would be like that nameless creature that moved in the shadows just now: both hunter and hunted.

There is, in my town, a person who is particularly irritating to me. Her voice is loud and intrusive. She digs for information and then disseminates it, often with embellishments that deviate widely from fact. Despite my having waged a campaign of both acts of kindness and tight-jawed tolerance over the decades, she has worked overtime to tell tales about me that are entirely false, and she does this with a persistence that would shame the Ancient Mariner.

Never one to let a good character study go to waste, I began to imagine what it would be like to be trapped with her for an extended period, say in a snow-bound cabin or wrecked train car. It occurred to me that each one of us probably knows such a person who, to a greater or lesser extent, irritates the hell out of us and whom we avoid like the plague. Thus, the possibilities for group interaction and its psychological consequences grew in my imagination and
Commune of Women
was born. In trapping my characters in a small room during a disaster, and separating them widely by race, age, education, and socio-economic status, there was definitely malice aforethought!

I am of the somewhat antique notion that a writer has certain didactic responsibilities to her reader; that writing should uphold undying virtues and principles, the “old verities and truths of the heart,” as Faulkner would have it. My desire is that each reader come away from one of my books with a sense of having been magnified, edified, and inspired. This is the deep thematic basis and underlying motivation of my writing, the place where it wells up out of my heart, what I most want to tell, my philosophical and spiritual underpinning.

In the case of
Commune of Women
, I first wanted to affirm the human spirit—that humanity is redeemable, despite all of its foibles. Secondly, that women are endlessly resilient in affirming life, nurturance, and peace, despite their personal differences and the burdens of prejudice which so often afflicts them. I also affirm poetry, intuition, and instinct and all other kinds of subjective knowing, while eschewing gratuitous violence or sexuality and the titillation of the baser instincts.

Additionally, I want to offer my readers a vision of the persistence of basic human decency, the prevailing of hope against all odds, and the immortality of love in the face of all that would annihilate it. To that end, in
Commune of Women
I address the nature of terrorism and its roots in disenfranchisement, poverty, political corruption, and violence. I focused on the Palestinian dilemma in particular because that captive people is a macrocosm that reflects the microcosm of the trapped women—for all the world’s greater problems have repercussions in our individual lives.

Most deeply, I affirm that love and beauty are the fundament of the universe, and I wanted to demonstrate how each of us, albeit often in stunted, misguided, or deviant ways, seeks to uphold that truth with rather touching, and sometimes stunning, honesty and faith. Through these individual choices culture is shored up or rearranged, one act at a time, and each of us, the women of
Commune of Women
included, is forced to stretch and grow to accommodate it.

Who knows? Maybe even me and my nemesis, in my town.

On an ordinary Los Angeles morning, the lives of seven women are about to become inextricably entangled, as they converge upon LA International Airport for various purposes. Suddenly, the morning erupts into chaos, as black-clad terrorists charge into the terminal, guns blazing. As the concourse becomes a killing field, six of the women dodge a hail of bullets to find refuge in a tiny staff room. Betty, a Reseda housewife, Heddi, a Jungian analyst, Sophia, a rugged and savvy mountain woman, Erika, a top-level executive, Ondine, an artist just returning from France, and Pearl, an ancient bag lady, all traumatized or injured, barricade the door and cower down, hoping to survive. As four days drag by, their expectations of an early rescue dashed, the women find a way to dominate their panic and terror by telling their life stories. As their situation becomes increasingly grave, the women begin to reveal their most intimate secrets, as their stories descend deeper into the dark shadows of their lives–and they discover that part of survival is simply surviving one another. At the same time, in a similar small room close by, the sole female terrorist, dubbed simply X by her so-called Brothers, has the task of watching a bank of surveillance monitors. Apparently forgotten by her co-conspirators, she nevertheless is the best informed of the happenings in the outside world–happenings that are not easily understood. Why are the police and FBI so slow to respond? What has motivated this attack? Who are these terrorists and what do they want? And will the women survive to tell their tale? Answers to these questions slowly reveal the terrible web of conspiracy and deceit into which they all have fallen. But the most profound revelation of all is how each has betrayed herself.

The noise as Erika steps out of the cab is deafening. She’s screaming at Amelia, “Just call Dallas and tell them…” and the fucking phone cuts out. She spins around, hoping to pick up the signal again. It’ll take Amelia ten minutes to settle down and remember that she already knows what she’s supposed to tell the Dallas office. They went over it yesterday. Christ!

The cabby’s on Mexican time. He’s taking her bag out of the trunk like he’s doing it underwater. She’s got forty minutes to dash through the terminal, get through fucking Homeland Security, and catch the flight to Berlin. Come on!

Every loser in Creation is in her way. Why do most people look like genetic throwbacks? They mope along, looking dazed – no sense of direction; no focus. How do they manage to feed and clothe themselves? What must their sex lives be like? She’s like a shark among guppies. If she has to, she’ll bite her way through this sea of zombies!

The thing Heddi always hates about LAX is the frantic pace. Traffic swarms around entrances and parking spaces like bees around a disturbed hive. Once she’s run that gauntlet, dealing with the mess inside the terminals is a piece of cake.

Thank God Betty insisted on driving her today. The thing with Hal has her so upset! And this Wellbutrin’s so strong she wouldn’t trust her own driving. Betty – big and solid as a navy-and-red mountain, her grip on the wheel like a strangler’s; her jaw, lost in a pudding-like sack of triple chins – is navigating the traffic like one of the Norns clutching the reins of the Car of Fate.

She’s never let a patient drive her anywhere before and this is the first time she’s ever come to the airport to pick one up. Heddi has a special spot in her heart for this arrival. According to her own analyst, Dr. Copeland, Ondine represents some part of Heddi’s shadow which is why Heddi always finds her so marvelously aggravating.

“Offer her particular hospitality,” Dr. Copeland advised her. “She has much to teach you.”

The digital read-out of Arrivals says Flight 3742 from Paris is on time, probably taxiing up to Gate 34 at this very moment. Which means she has at least half an hour to use the loo and then read a few pages of the murder mystery that’s got her hooked – if she can hold Betty at bay – before she even has to start looking for Ondine in this mob. And to make herself suitably hospitable, whatever that might entail.

Betty never thought she’d be the kind of person who’d go to a shrink. She’s as normal as apple pie. Dish water. Laundry soap. Whatever. But things happen to you in this life; things you don’t expect and that are painful.

That was a surprise. She grew up so normal and still that was no proof against suffering. During their last session, Heddi said that Betty survived her normality by staying unconscious – not, like, out cold, but by not really thinking about the things that were wrong. That’s why things got so crazy – because Betty wasn’t bringing any of the stuff to consciousness.

Betty steals a sidelong glance at Heddi, so cool and aloof in her short blond do and pale blue silk pencil skirt that glints like surgical steel, so slender and self-contained, and she feels a shudder run through her. She’s not sure if it’s from pleasure at being of service to such a svelte, sophisticated creature, or from pure terror of her.

At their last session, Heddi also said that Betty has made a fetish out of plastic flowers. She says Betty is living in a very primitive state of religiosity. That religio is the root word, meaning careful consideration of the dangers.

“What dangers?” Betty asks.

“The gods,” Heddi says. “The gods will have their way with us.”

“Gods? I don’t believe in them.”

“It doesn’t matter. They believe in you.”

Betty doesn’t get it. She’s new at this. If her friend, Em, hadn’t sworn that this was the best thing for her to do right now to save her sanity, she’d quit. It’s all a mystery to Betty, but at least she’s up out of the BarcaLounger and doing something positive – if navigating L.A. traffic, especially LAX traffic, can be considered positive. It does kind of perk her up, getting her adrenaline going like this. And Heddi’s surely in no shape to drive. Betty’s never seen her so somber. Maybe it’s this mystery person who’s arriving that she’s thinking about.

It doesn’t matter if Heddi doesn’t even say a word to her. All Betty wanted was to get out of her house before she took a butcher knife and drove it straight through her own heart.

Ever since she lost her spot in front a Pop’s Diner, Pearl’s been a gypsy. She tried settin up at the pier, but either the wind was too sharp or the sun got ta her. Then she tried a couple a blocks back from the ocean, by the Safeway. But people was too busy, bustlin in, bustlin out. Nobody paid her no nevermind.

She went from a good, solid twenty-dollar day at Pop’s ta almost nothin. It’s been two weeks an Pearl purdy near starved ta death, til José come along, him an his cab.

“Pearl, I been looking for you,” he says. “All over town.”

José was one of Pop’s regulars, an he never stiffed her. Ever single time he put somethin in her can –sometimes a dollar, sometimes two, or even five. Always with a smile an a “Buenos dias, Madre.”

Madre! Callin the laks a Pearl Mother! Well, if that don’t beat Hell!

“What you are doing now, Pearl? Where you are sitting?”

“José, I ain’t got no spot no more. Since Pop up an died on me, I’m double homeless. Ain’t got no home an

also ain’t got no business establishment.”

“Dis is turriblay.” He rattled off them r’s lak he’d got a chill. “Terrible, Pearl. You got to come wit me.”

“Whar we goin?”

“I don’ know. You get in. We theenk about it.”

“What bout mah chariot? Cain’t leave mah cart behind.”

“You get in, Pearl. I poot eet een de trronk.”

Pearl smiles at how these Mesicans can mangle the language. And sure enough, he hefts that damn thing in thar lak it warn’t nothin, an off they go. “Whar you takin me, José?”

“I don’ know, Pearl. We got to theenk. How about de pier?”

“Tried that. Most froze mah tush off.”

“How about de shelter?”

“Nope. Ain’t goin ta no shelter. If’n I gots ta sleep in the sand on the beach, I’ll do that. But I ain’t goin inta no shelter.”

By now, theys out on the freeway. Don’t ax her which one, cuz she ain’t never drove a car in her life. She barely done rode in one. José is real quiet an Pearl’s thinkin he’s regrettin takin her up. But then he shouts, “I got it! Pearl, I know where you got to go! You have good business there.”

“Whar?”

“De airport!”

“Now how the Hell am I gonna get ta the airport?”

“I take you.”

“Now listen, young man. I don’t need no one-day gig. I gots ta do this ever day.”

“Jes. Jes, I understand. I take you every day.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No. Listen, Pearl. I got to go to de airport every day, anyways. That’s where most of my fares come from. I take you in de morning and pick you up, my last run at night.”

Well, Pearl argued a piece, but José was so enthusiastic, she finally done give in an said she’d give it a try. It’s illegal as Hell, she’s sure. But the amazin part is, she’s made more in the first hour then she usually makes all day. She’s keepin a low profile. Hangin out mostly in the bathrooms. She cain’t ratly believe how many a them suckers they is. They gots more bathrooms then a pig’s got poop.

Pearl figgered out rat away that she could take a paper towel an wipe the counter an the bowl, fore a lady washes her hands. She knows they laks ta plunk they purses down – an them wet spots jes gives em the shivers. Some jes brushes her off, but more often then not, they’ll dig in a pocket or a purse an hand her some change, or even a bill.

Pearl cain’t hardly believe her good fortune. Only trouble is, she cain’t smoke her pipe. Other then that, thins is lookin real good.