“…see what we’re missing in America, Ram? Over here, you can be a spastic and get paid a pound a kilometer to march in a parade held in your honor. How fucking civilized is that?”
He shook his head slowly from side to side, raised the rolled-up spliff to his lips, sealed it, and then blew on it, waiting for the paper to dry. When it did, he motioned for me to follow him down the steps to the river’s edge where we scrunched down along the wall facing south to Waterloo Station. Overhead, a mackerel sky was pushing in against the bright blue and a breeze was starting to blow. Devlin lit the joint, inhaled it deeply for a good three count, and then began the tale that told me how he had become what he had come to be.
“Pull over here,” Devlin told the cabbie. The cab slid to a stop on a dingy street in Noe Valley at the bottom of Diamond Heights. I gathered my packages while Devlin paid the fare. The cab rolled away and John nodded toward a one-story clapboard house with a sagging porch.
“Here we are. This is where I call home.”
Devlin unhooked a massive key ring from his belt and from the hundred or so keys, produced the one that fitted the lock on the front door.
“Careful when you come down the hallway,” Devlin said. “It’s kind of a mess. I’ve been meaning to clean it, but…”
I entered the house and navigated down the hallway with stacks of newspapers and empty bottles lining the walls and turned right, following Devlin into the living room. He cleared a space for me on a couch littered with clothes, collecting a stack of them and disappearing down the hall. In a moment, I heard running water. When he re-entered the room, he was holding two bottles of beer.
“Merry Christmas,” he said, handing me a bottle and taking a pull from the other.
I put the bottle on the cleared spot on the table in front of me and considered for a moment. Devlin saw me, shook his head, and laughed.
“You probably don’t drink, right, Ram?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s cool. Better for me. Cheers,” he said and raised his glass in toast.
I nodded back to him. He paused. “Is there something else I can get you? I think I’ve got some sodas. Let me look.”
I followed Devlin to the kitchen while he opened the refrigerator door and perused what was inside. The kitchen had a smell of burnt grease and there was a sink full of dirty dishes in greasy water. The floor was littered with paper and, the window was so greasy you could barely see through it.
“There’s Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, Lemon Lime, and, oh yeah, I’ve got some eggnog.”
I thought about the eggnog for a moment, but then considered the probability that he’d be serving it to me in a glass.
“Dr. Pepper,” I said. Devlin did as I asked him to do and we went back into the other room and sat down. He took a pull on his beer and began looking through a wooden box until he produced a plastic film container and papers. As he was rolling the joint, I looked at him from across the table and tried to imagine him otherwise: as a small boy, or a football playing teenager, as the honors college student that I knew he had been before he joined the Army. I couldn’t draw out any of them, because for me, this was the only way I’d ever known John Devlin—as an insular man who kept himself pickled in his own blend of preservative/corrosive. I thought better about mentioning her for the longest time, but I could see that Devlin was thinking about her and wanted me to, and so I broke down and asked him if he saw Miranda Mintz anymore.
He took a hit from the joint, swallowed a mouthful of beer, and nodded slowly. “Occasionally,” he said. “Mostly, it’s just over the phone. But whenever Monica comes to Sagrada, I take the bus down to see her, and sometimes I’ll see her mother too.”
Devlin took a drink and extended the bottle out toward me with index finger pointing. “It’s your fault, Le Doir,” he said, laughing hard but mirthlessly. “You’re the one who introduced us… remember?”
I lied, telling him that I didn’t.
“Sure, you do, Ram,” Dev nodded. “Sure, you remember.”
I watched the names and times and track numbers flipping by. In my hand, I held a bouquet of fresh flowers as I paced Paddington Station platform. Then I heard my name called, and scanned the throng until I saw Miranda Mintz. She was standing amid her luggage with her small daughter Monica alongside her. I moved toward her, and then she saw me and walked forward to hug me.
“Thank God you’re here!” she sighed. “I was afraid we’d miss one another.”
“Like the first time at the Post Office Tower,” I said. “I rushed there directly from the airport, but I got there late. It was 12: 30 when I arrived and I waited until two. I guess you’d already gone.”
“Not really,” she said, gritting her teeth and shrugging her shoulders. “I actually didn’t get there until a little after three.”
I was dumbfounded for a second or two. Then I reassembled the smile on my face and ventured forth again.
“No big deal. I used the time to get to know London a little. It’s A pretty cool city, Miranda, and I’m starting find my way around pretty well.”
“Have you found us a place?”
“Not yet. But we’ve got a few to look at this afternoon. I didn’t want to put out the money until I was sure there was one that met with your approval.”
“…okay, well, let’s get this show on the road then. Can you help me with these bags? Monica, you remember Ram. He’s Shaughn’s friend. We—”
“—I know who he is, Mama, and I know why we’re here; so we can all live together.”
The little child stepped forward, her bottom lip protruding, her dark eyes cold, her voice petulant. “Hello, Ram,” she said. “Are you mom’s new boyfriend?”
I was momentarily speechless, and Miranda leaned down and whispered something in her daughter’s ear. Then I remembered what I had in my pocket and reached in and produced the Rollo pack and held it out to her.
“Rollos! My favorite! Wow!”
Monica was dancing about with her hands in the air, holding the candy in front of her worshipfully. “What do you say to Ram, Monica?” her mother asked in a severe tone.
“Oh. Thank you, Ram! Thank you!”
The little girl came close and hugged me, much like her mother’s embrace: tight and so swift that there was but a moment to return it…
“…so where have you been these past three weeks?” I asked her.
We were sitting in a small café in Chelsea, near Ransleigh Gardens. We’d just finished looking at a flat around the corner but Miranda declined it. She found it too dark and cold. In the tour of six flats we had just finished, Miranda Mintz found none suitable. The one in Earl’s Court was the wrong kind of neighborhood for Monica. The one in Camden Town smelled funny. The one in Hampstead was too expensive, the one near Islington too gritty. She turned her teacup to the proper angle, just so, and raised it to her thin red lips. She blew on the tea and the rising steam fogged her wire-rimmed glasses. She removed them and polished them with a handkerchief of Irish lace.
“In Edinburgh, mostly, with that professor I told you about.” She polished her glasses some more, then shrugged. “It was fun while it lasted, but it didn’t work out. I don’t know what it was; I wasn’t his cup of tea, I guess. Maybe he wasn’t mine. Who knows? Anyway, we went down and visited Glasgow. It’s a beautiful city, actually, quite important in terms of art. You know, Art Nouveau.”
“Yeah,” I lied. “Then what?”
“Oh, nothing, really. We were invited for a weekend to someone’s country house—”
“—another boyfriend of Mom’s,” Monica interjected.
Her mother glared at her daughter until Monica turned away. Then she turned to me and cocked her eyebrow.
“Nothing long-term there, but quite something as one-night stands go.”
Miranda chuckled almost noiselessly and I laughed, trying to play it cool and disconnected.
“Tell me about you then.”
I had a grin on my face and shrugged non
chalantly as best I could.
“Oh well, I’ve been getting around. I’ve had my fun too.”
“Tell me, tell me. Who were they and what were they like? Tell me all the details.”
I was about to start fabricating a story when the waitress came over and interrupted, asking if I was a Mr. Le Doir. I said I was and she told me there was a phone call for me and I could take it in the booth near the front. By the time I returned to the table, Miranda had forgotten about the subject at hand and wanted to know who it was that was calling me and how they knew where to reach me.
“A friend of mine at the hostel I’m staying at. You’ll meet him. He’s going to meet us for dinner at the place we’re going to. But first, let’s check you in at the hotel. It’s not far from here.”
The bill arrived while Miranda was away in the bathroom attending to makeup. I looked across the table at her little six-year-old daughter who stared back at me appraisingly.
“So Monica, how do you like England?”
“It’s boring. There’s nothing to do and the people talk funny. This is Mom’s deal. I’m here because I have to be.”
I waited a few more minutes for Miranda to return and then dug out some notes to pay the bill. The waitress was taking the money away when I heard Miranda’s voice.
“Are we ready? Let’s push on then.”
We taxied to Islington to a modest hotel near my hostel and checked Miranda and Monica in. Miranda disgorged some items out of her bag and excused herself to bathe, leaving Monica and me to ourselves. The child reached into her backpack and produced a crossword puzzle book. I asked if I could help her. She looked me dead in the eye and told me not to worry, she was okay, that she learned how to amuse herself and didn’t need grown-ups’ help. I picked up the Evening Standard and looked in the classifieds for flats but didn’t see anything promising. It was an hour before Miranda emerged from the bathroom, her long hair freshly washed and combed. Her skin had a radiant glow to it. Her eyes were freshly made up and her fingernails newly painted. There was a charged air around her before time and exposure dissipated the thickness of her perfume. She was wearing a slip with nothing underneath it. She reached onto the back of the bathroom door and produced two dresses on hangers, one, a full-length black cotton print, the other, a wine colored mini.
“What do you think? Which should I wear?”
She held each of them up against her small body for me to examine. Her eyebrows arched, her lips pursed, just this side of pouty.
“Depends on how you see yourself, as the hunter or the quarry.”
She grinned widely and chuckled lowly. She disappeared back into the bathroom and emerged, moments later, wearing the mini.
“Well, are we ready then?” she asked, guiding me toward the door. A moment later, we were walking arm in arm, heading toward the Greek restaurant on King Street. Moving down the street in the still warm late summer evening, Miranda keeping up a running commentary on all things British and how she felt about them. I hearkened back to how I had met her some months before, when she was Shaughn’s roommate and occasional bedmate, and how I projected what it would be like with her when we were together in London. Now, she had come, and now, it was real. I thought that Monica and I would have problems adjusting to one another, but now I could see that I would have come to some accommodation with Miranda. Fidelity, I could see, was not a virtue she prized highly or, more accurately, was even something she regarded as a virtue. I’d have to subdue my tendencies toward jealousy and work on my possessiveness, but that was part of the hippie credo, whose dogma I was still trying to follow, and it would be a good test for me, I thought. I was lost in these abstractions and nearly passed the restaurant. The only reason I didn’t was because I heard Devlin, calling out to me. “Ram, hey, Ram, over here,” he shouted. I stopped and saw him standing to the side under the awning. I guided Miranda and Monica over to meet him, and when I saw the look and felt the charge of current passing between Miranda Mintz and John Devlin, I knew instantly that all bets on a future with Miranda were forever frozen. It was love at first sight for the two of them right then, a case of ‘coup de foudre’…
“…at Monica’s wedding to that fucking accountant or engineer or whatever he is, from New Jersey, her mother finds out that I gave Monica and her husband a week at the cabin in Maine, and Miranda comes over and hits on me for some time there, too. Says she’s going to come up and visit Monica during their honeymoon. During her fucking honeymoon, can you believe that, Ram? And she wants to stay there for a week after Monica and the accountant leave. Can you believe that? Can you believe her?”
I shrugged. Having witnessed or heard secondhand all that I had of John and Miranda for as long as I had—nearly three decades minus my time inside or in hiding—I could believe anything they did to one another, up to and including murder. The only thing shocking was that John was still shocked, still ensnared in the expectation of the Miranda Mintz who she should have been, who was someone she never was. I tried to turn the conversation elsewhere to a less charged topic, but Devlin was on a roll now and wanted to talk about Miranda. I thought of the intervening years when I was inside, seeing him now, and wondered how he occupied himself without some companero like me to share his Miranda Mintz war stories with. The last times I was around him, he was in the habit of periodically returning to Sagrada, where he’d stay with old friends of Miranda’s and his. I remembered what one of them, Dixie Ann Salmon, told me once. Dixie Ann said she faked a call that she was wanted out of town on business, just so she’d have an excuse to rid her house of the never-ending monologue of John Devlin shortchanged on romance by Miranda Mintz…
We met at St. Christopher’s, the Islington youth hostel where we all lived in transit. Juan Altavista and David Porter, another Aussie long on the road and their Canadian friend Quentin Damon were looking for a London flat to share. Then there was Devlin and Miranda and Monica and I, and after Dev and Miranda became an item after I introduced them, I evolved into my role as kid brother and eccentric uncle in our decidedly nontraditional family. Now, I was eligible again, but that changed quickly the moment I met Hillary.
She was traveling with two Canadian girlfriends, Kathy and Barb, and I met her in the basement of the hostel one night when there was a dance. She was drunk on hard cider and nearly knocked me over when she executed as a spin move and crashed into me. Our eyes locked, our hearts opened to one another, we talked all night and made love on a sleeping bag we dragged to the hostel rooftop. Hillary and friends were flat hunting too, and every day, our separate would-be households met to compare notes on what we’d seen and share what we’d heard about flats for let around London town. And it went on like that for a couple weeks or more, until that night I looked in the Evening Standard and saw a large notice in it that read, “Kent Coast, 5 bedrooms, 3 reception rooms, 70 pounds.” I called the number, made an arrangement with the landlady to look the place over and raced back to the hostel to bring the news and share it with all my friends. The following Saturday, we piled in a rented van and drove southeast from London to St. Margaret’s Bay, an old seaside resort that once counted Lord Byron as a resident. Miranda and Quentin and Monica—respectfully dressed and shiny, posing as a young family—went on to meet the landlady and look the house over. The rest of us trooped into a pub with locals who regarded us coldly while we nursed pints and played the jukebox. I picked a song from the Boz Scaggs’s Moments album called ‘Painted Bells’ that I forever afterward identified with Atcliffe. An hour later, the young family Damon returned with a signed lease and two sets of keys.
We celebrated for an hour or so, then scooted back to London, packed our things, cashed checks at American Express, and rerouted our mail, scored a half ounce of Afghani, and returned home to our new digs at Atcliffe-by-the-Sea, St. Margaret’s Bay, Kent…
“…when are you picking up the car tomorrow, Juan?”
“Whenever I wake up and get over there, Ram. It’s late and I’m tired. Maybe ten,
more likely eleven is when I think I’ll get back here.”
“Uh-huh,” Ram said.
“How many of us are going?” asked David.
“Five of us, just the guys,” said Juan. “The Canadian girls are taking the bus to Hastings, and Miranda and Monica are staying here.”
“What’s the plan then, Ram?” asked Quentin.
I was lost in the music at that moment, listening to ‘Painted Bells.’ I popped back into the present, recalled Quentin’s question and considered it for a moment…
“…what about this concert?” I asked, just as Devlin was about to sail back into a monologue. He nodded slowly, deliberately, finished the other beer he’d left out for me and placed the joint he’d rolled into his wallet.
“Sure, why not,” the first word coming out shooah in his Boston drawl.
We walked to the corner, boarded a bus, and transferred on Haight to the #6 line that went directly out to the park. We passed the time in silence, disembarking at Ashbury to walk the last six blocks, stopping at a liquor store for a couple cans of Heineken for John and cigarettes for me. As we emerged from the store, plainclothes policemen were frisking down a suspect, pulling items out of his pockets and tossing them onto the hood of a parked car, a female cop standing lookout at a distance. Some of the youngsters gathered nearby were calling out things like ‘fascist’ and ‘pig’… but not too loudly. John nodded his head toward the law-and-order tableau. “Different world these days, Ram, arresting poor little hippies for an eighth ounce bag of weed.” He shook his head and chuckled.
Into the park we trooped, John leading and me following. A bright sun was beaming down, the lemony light warm on my skin as we moved toward the music coming from the polo fields. When we got there, some hip-hop band whose name I didn’t catch was finishing its set. We found a place on the grass removed from the crowd and Devlin opened one of his beers and took a pull from it. When he was sure he was safe, he lit a joint and took a deep toke. He coughed violently for a couple minutes, took another toke, and began another coughing fit. Then he shook his head, took a deep breath, and put the joint out between his fingers. “This fucking Humboldt skunk weed,” he said. “Too fucking expensive, but it is killer… sixty fucking dollars for an eighth. Can you believe that, Ram?” I shook my head no and said that I couldn’t. I didn’t remember what pot cost, couldn’t even recall the last time I’d bought any. Devlin took a drink and looked at me. I had the impression he wanted to ask me something but couldn’t. I looked back at him as openly as I could, intimating that it was okay if he did, and that I’d answer any question he wanted to pose. He declined. We sat watching the stage while the roadies wheeled out Tower of Power’s equipment. While they did, I thought back to my high school days when Stew and Earl and Jaime and I would cut school and come down to San Francisco. The film spool started to load in for projection, but then I stopped it by blinking in black. Devlin was enough right now; I didn’t need to add Jaime and the others into the mix.
Windwhistle Bone Page 58
