Tor raised his wine glass to his mouth and said, “That’s what I was thinking.” He turned toward Ram, looked him in the eye and squeezed his knee. “You need to take better care of yourself, brother.” A warm smile spread over his face. “It’s a long-haul and we want you around for the third act, or at least the end of the second,” he said laughing.
It brought a smile and a chuckle from Ram. Then Tor and Vera joined in until they were all laughing. “I gave him a book called Poison and Vision, Michael, but I think Ram relies a bit too much on the former while ignoring the latter,” said Vera.
“He’s been that way since he was fourteen years old and I’ve told him the same thing. He wouldn’t listen to me either,” Boswell laughed.
Ram was getting used to the new routine. Vera would rise early and make him a breakfast of scrambled eggs and whole wheat toast that he’d wash down with a quart of water, after which he was allowed one cup of decaffeinated coffee and one cup of Darjeeling tea. Then Vera went back to sleep until noon, leaving Ram to himself, which he’d spend reading or tending the vegetable garden that Vera had planted in the backyard with the help of Tomas, who was allowed to visit Ram afterward under Vera’s supervision. Mad Michael was still banished. “When I see that it’s something other than trouble that the two of you are up to, then I’ll reconsider,” said Vera.
Although Michael said he understood, the word around Refugio was that he regarded Vera as a control freak and a fascist and Ram as a pussy and wimp, although he denied it when Vera confronted him at The Lotus one Friday happy hour. “That’s a crock, Vera,” Michael replied after Vera told him what she’d been hearing.
“I hope so, because if I hear it again, there’ll be the devil to pay, and you know I’m not just talking, I mean it.”
Michael saw that she did and thereafter made a conscious effort to avoid topics of Ram and Vera whenever someone tried to engage him in conversation. Eventually, he began avoiding the bars in downtown Refugio, taking his tequila at home, while he pursued his study of Pepys.
With the poison now gone from his system, the vitriol that propelled much of Ram’s output likewise receded. He hadn’t written a new poem since the night of the poetry festival when he dashed off the I Shot a Faggot in the Fern Bar opus. At the moment, he wasn’t angry, or disgusted, or driven, and it was stunning when Ram considered how much of his poetic output was driven by poison, how little powered by vision. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, Ram cautioned himself as he sat on the couch taking in the golden light pouring through the picture window. But it was true that he hadn’t been struck with anything approaching vision since his immersion into Bergson. Now he was waiting, a passenger in transit at a foreign station. Vera told him to be patient; that something would come. But patience was never one of Ram’s strong
suits and he was anxious for lightning to strike again. To tell the truth, he felt missing in action. He was at sea and didn’t know if or when he’d return to shore again.
The crescendo of bells inside his head stopped ringing some time ago and Ram felt quieter and calmer now, although he wasn’t sure what the interregnum meant or how long it would last. He watched the shifting autumn clouds, the stacked cumulus, the streaked cirrus nimbus, and the rise and fall of the orange autumn sun, not so much looking for signs in the heavens, just feeling the rhythms of it, wanting to be in synch with its rise and fall and progression without assigning meaning or amending anything personal to it. It was as it was, with him or without him, and Ram recognized this again.
Some days, he and Vera would go to the beach at Venetiana or Izquell, where Vera would read scripts or poetry while Ram sat alongside her, arms resting on his knees, watching the glassy Pacific. They’d sit until sundown with hardly a word passing, Ram murmuring that he was okay whenever Vera asked how he was doing. Sometimes, she might ask if he was bored or wanted to do something else. Usually, Ram would shake his head no, but one time, when they were at La Selva Beach and she asked him this question, he paused for a long time before answering. “I don’t know if bored is the right word, but I am anxious and I don’t have a clue what comes next.”
“Don’t worry, baby. Everything is going to be fine,” Vera assured him.
But Ram was at odds with his doldrums for it had been an unending skein of action and motion ever since he’d come back from Amsterdam. He found it difficult to value the inactivity. He wondered where his motionlessness might be leading. It bothered him to think about it whenever he allowed himself to indulge it.
He’d been in one of these infrequent dazes, looking out the window on the spray of wild golden poppies along the fence, when he heard the screen door slam indicating that Vera was home again. “Where are you, honey?” she called. When Ram answered from the back room, she walked in and saw him looking outside.
“Any calls?” she asked.
“Just this Gates guy,” Ram answered. “That’s about the fifth time he’s called.”
“I told you about that, Ram,” she said. “He’s a friend of George’s. He works for Golden State magazine. He’s an editor there. He’d like to meet with you.”
Ram knew about Golden State. It had been publishing for about two years now. It was a slick, well-written magazine that dealt with California culture in all its ramifications.
“What does he want?”
“I’m not sure. He wouldn’t tell George or me but he said he’d like to meet with you. Will you?”
“I don’t know. Should I?” he shrugged.
“I don’t think it could hurt to hear what he might want. Besides, aren’t you getting a little bored with this recluse routine, Ram?”
“Kinda.”
“Let’s call him then. We’re not going to San Francisco though. We’ll invite him here and hear what he has to say. That okay with you, baby?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
Vera excused herself, went to the bedroom, and made a phone call. When she came back, she was smiling. “He’ll be here on Friday night to take us to dinner. He’s bringing somebody along with him who says he knows you.”
“Who’s that?”
“He’s a conceptual artist, I think. His name is Thomas Honey.”
“A conceptual artist? What’s this about?”
Vera slid onto Ram’s lap and kissed him on the tip of his nose. “I haven’t a clue, Ram. We’re both in the dark until Friday.”
When Friday came, Ram and Vera were in their finest awaiting their visitors. Just before seven, they heard tires on the driveway. A moment later, there was a knock on the door which Vera answered, admitting the two men inside.
They were a Mutt-and-Jeff pair. Michael Gates was tall and blonde, bearded, and dressed in Ivy League clothes with an Irish wool cap. Thomas Honey was small with thinning gray hair and bad teeth. He wore a corduroy jacket and faded jeans with a skinny pink tie. A number of small picture buttons were pinned on his jacket lapels, one of them was Picasso looking like a madman. The men shook hands with Ram and said hello to Vera, Honey kissing her hand before reaching inside his breast pocket and producing a small bottle of Courvoisier.
“Would anybody like a cognac besides me?” he asked. Ram shook his head no. Gates politely declined. Vera shot Honey a baleful glare then softened.
“I’ll have a small one,” she said, then got up to fetch two snifters.
The air in the room was charged and stiff, then Ram broke the silence. “What’s this all about?”
Gates edged forward in his chair and came to the point. "We were wondering if you might consider reporting for Golden State."
“Me? Report what?”
“Well, we don’t have much in the magazine coming out of Sagrada. We’d like someone to report on what goes on inside the capitol.”
“I don’t know what goes on inside the capitol,” Ram said. “Besides, I’m not a reporter.”
“That’s not really the point.” Gates said. “We’d like a nonprofessional’s take on politics. Besides, I understand you grew up the
re. Thomas says your mother still works at the capitol.”
Ram turned his attention from Gates to the button-decorated character working his way through his cognac.
“My Aunt Rita knows your mom. She remembers you too, and both Mike and I think you’d make a great political reporter. We thought that maybe you and I could work together, you know, give politics a different spin; kind of give it an artistic angle.”
“An artistic angle? How would you do that?”
Honey was about to answer, but Gates leaned forward and cut him off.
“It would give you a forum, Mr. Le Doir. I heard you read a few times, once in Berkeley and once here in Refugio at the poetry festival.”
Ram rolled his eyes and moaned.
“No, I thought it was actually on point. It’s obvious you have a point of view and a fresh perspective on things that I found refreshing. We’re not looking for some by the numbers political reporting. We’re looking for someone who might be able to pull some diamonds out of the dreck. We think you might be him.”
Ram shrugged. “Sure, I grew up in Sagrada and I still know a few people there, but it’s been years, Mr. Gates.”
“You could bring a historical perspective and, like I said, you’d have a forum to present your vision on Sagrada, on what really goes on behind the scenes.”
At this point, Vera sailed in. “Just what exactly is it that you want Ram to do and how much are you going to pay him?”
Gates sat back in his chair, looked over at Thomas Honey, then Ram, then Vera.
“Thomas has two story ideas we think are worth exploring. He and Ram will share the byline; we’ll pay them $350 a week plus expenses.”
“And then he’ll get a fee for whatever he writes that you publish,” said Vera, not asking a question but stating a fact.
“Our publishing rate is $.50 a word.”
“A dollar,” she countered.
“A dollar,” Gates agreed.
“So what do you say, Ram?” asked Gates. Ram looked from Gates to Honey to Vera. Gates seemed like a straight shooter, Honey more like an opportunistic hustler that Ram felt he could handle.
“I’d say I’m starving,” said Ram. “Let’s get some dinner and we can discuss this at greater length.”
They drove to the Bay View Hotel in Gates’s Volvo station wagon. Vera sat in the front seat, giving Gates directions and answering his inquiries about her acting. Honey and Ram set in the backseat, Honey keeping up a running commentary on his career as a conceptual artist and sometimes animator, dropping the names of California artists who Ram sometimes recognized, although he didn’t know their work. When they entered the hotel, they were shown into a private dining room in the back that Gates had reserved. When they were seated, a platter of oysters and a bucket of clams were presented, along with a delightful bottle of Riesling, which Ram was allowed to drink half a glass of provided he also drink water. The meal proceeded with no details from Thomas Honey, but whenever the opportunity presented itself, Michael Gates would ask Ram about his work and the poets and writers he admired, taking care also to complement Vera whose Refugio performance, in Moon for the Misbegotten, Gates had seen.
When the evening was over, they had a deal which Gates sealed by presenting Ram with a signed copy of Cary McWilliams’s California the Great Exception. “You might want to read this,” he said. “It’s the best book on California history and politics that I think has ever been published.” They stopped at the Edgewater in Venetiana where Gates worked out the final terms of the agreement with Ram and Vera, then took them home before heading back to the Bay Area with Honey. Ram stood in the driveway, watching the taillights vanish into the fog rolling up the San Gregorio.
“I wonder what I’m getting myself into,” he said.
“Relax, baby, I think this is a good thing for you, and a good thing for us.”
Vera’s eyes sparkled and danced. A smile spread over her face. Seeing her this way made Ram happy and he smiled back at Vera. They kissed. ‘Who knows?’ thought Ram. ’Maybe it’ll be a good thing.’ Then he began thinking about going back to Sagrada. A chill came over him but he fought it off, resolving to push ahead.
From the crest of the Antioch Bridge, Ram looked out to the water below him but was unable to see anything other than wisps of tulé fog rising from the Delta. Thomas Honey was driving and they motored northeast, quietly and comfortably. When the steel trestle towers and red twinkling lights of the Rio Vista Bridge appeared out of the fog, Honey asked Ram if he’d ever been to Foster’s Trophy Room.
“What’s that?” asked Ram half-heartedly.
“It’s this bar filled with hundreds of stuffed animal heads and a whole elephant,” said Honey. “The guy who owned it used to be a hunting buddy of Hemingway’s. When I was at Deerville, all of us in the art department used to go there and drink, me and Bill Raney and Bob Cardispan and Lewis Fregallen, the whole West Coast pop art crowd, everyone except Mark Depot. He wouldn’t associate with us. Mark was a Scientologist. Want to stop there?”
Ram considered, then rejected it. “I don’t think so, Thomas. I’d like to get to Sagrada first before we stop.”
Honey grinned, nodded, and lit a Sherman’s. “I know another place we can go in Sagrada. It’s where all the politicians hang out—at least the people in the Barry Bailey administration who I know.”
Ram nodded and looked away through the tulé they passed through. The skeletal limbs of the cottonwoods and sycamores were black against the otherwise gray tone. He was heading home, or to a place he once called that.
He had only been in Sagrada maybe half a dozen times since he retreated from it some years before, escaped from it was closer to the point, and he was uncertain if it still had the same kind of profound gravitational force that he once knew it had over him. As they motored north past Isleton and through Walnut Grove, Ram recalled the Le Doir family tales that his father, Fran Jr., and his father’s sister Hazel told him of their family history. He recalled all the time that he’d spent down here in the Delta, when he was a kid and then as a junkie. It wasn’t something he particularly wanted to recall, and he morphed back into the moment and asked Thomas Honey about the stories they’d been assigned by Golden State.
“We’ve got two features,” said Honey. “The first one’s called In Search of Clout and Muscle, a story about lobbyists and lobbying. The second one is on the Restoration Gala. It’s a weeklong party to celebrate the restoration of the state capitol. Our press passes will get us into all the events.”
“So we’re doing that one first?”
“Yeah, but I figured we could also work on the other one at the same time if we just ask questions about it during the course of the Gala parties.”
“What’s the point of this clout and muscle thing?”
Honey inhaled a drag from the Sherman and seethed the smoke out through his teeth, reminding Ram of John Devlin as he did so.
“Well, it’s to give people an idea of how legislation is passed and how political deals are really put together,” Honey said. “Everything from the warm and fuzzy stuff to the down and dirty stuff.”
“And you think these lobbyists are gonna tell us that? To you and me, who they don’t even know and have probably never heard of?” asked Ram, looking at Honey.
More Sherman smoke seethed out.
“Sure, why not? Everybody in politics loves to talk about themselves, at least that’s what I’ve found during my time around the Capitol. In fact, the first place we’re going is where some of the lobbyists that I know hang out. They’ll be there when we get there.”
“What is this place?”
“It’s a political bar, or mostly a political bar called Emile’s Backroom. A friend of mine named Emile Donner owns it.”
Ram nodded, stone-faced, and silent.
“Relax, Le Doir. You might even like it.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
They passed the remaining twenty miles quietly, Ram looking ou
t on the landscape and bends of the Sagrada River as they grew more familiar to him. The land seeped out memories of his family and his own personal history in Sagrada as they passed Rooney Road heading north on Wellport. When they were parallel with Dillon Park, Ram thought of Jaime and Earl and Jonas and Shaughn, remembering the Friday night happenings before the police shut them down as a public nuisance and blockaded the roads into the park with patrol cars, turning it into a deserted no man’s land by the time Ram left for Amsterdam. He smiled at the recollection of those times and the times at Fran’s house on P Street, before he noticed that Honey had pulled the Citroen into a lot and parked.
“We’re here,” Honey said.
Ram looked out the window through the still thick fog and saw a white building, with a tall obelisk rising into the sky, that he recognized immediately as the original location of Monument Records. The actual record store was now across the street in a warehouse-sized building adorned with a prominent Monument Records sign in super graphics along the side. Honey turned off the motor and motioned for Ram to follow him around the cream-colored building in front of the car. When they reached the other side of it, a blue neon script above the Art Moderne porthole doors said "Emile’s." Honey pushed open the double doors and Ram followed him into a crowded room. Welcome home, Le Doir, Ram said to himself.
The main room was a rectangle bisected by a wall. On one side of the wall was a bar with maybe twenty stools; on the other side were half a dozen tables. The bar side was packed to capacity, mostly with middle-aged men and a few, younger punk rock types. A cocktail waitress, in fishnet stockings and red cowboy boots with roller skate wheels, cruised between the tables taking and delivering drink orders. The jukebox was blasting a strange mix of music from the overhead speakers: Elvis Costello followed by Frank Sinatra, then Dire Straits, then Rosemary Clooney. Above the music were shouts of “bartender!”, booming laughter, and occasional female shrieks.
Behind the rectangular room was a smaller narrower rectangle with small cafe tables where it was quieter. Honey and Ram took one of the tables. The waitress on roller skates came and took their order: cognac for Honey, a ginger ale for Ram. Honey knew the waitress and introduced her. She was maybe 22, a redhead with wild green eyes named Jill Amundsen.
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