Something New Under the Sun

by Alexandra Kleeman

  In the bathroom, he turns both faucets, but nothing comes—only a faint scraping sound from the rotating fixtures. Crouching, he opens the cabinet beneath the sink and finds a vacated space: the pipes end abruptly; their open gullets gape above a little upright notice from the hotel, informing him that WAT-R pods are available for guest rental at an additional fee, inquire at the front desk, installation not included. He thinks he remembers seeing an article about WAT-R pods a year or so back, when California switched over from the old webwork of mains and pipes to the new, privatized system—but he can’t recall whether he actually read it. Insect song blares through the open window, and he wonders if maybe his situation isn’t as depressing as he thinks: he may just be dehydrated, overheated, unable to see it all clearly.

  In a men’s exercise magazine, he had read that hypohydration comes with a slew of mental side effects: slowed or faulty reasoning, false memories, hypersubjective judgment. The article warned that you should never make a major decision about personal relationships or employment while under-hydrated. An hour before exercising, an adult male should drink one twelve-ounce glass of water, then another one fifteen minutes before beginning the warm-up. In the first twenty minutes of activity, at least two small glasses of water should be downed quickly, and then one sixteen-ounce glass for every following hour of sustained physical activity, plus more for unusually hot or dry conditions.

  On the dresser next to the TV sits an extra-large bottle of WAT-R Pure, WAT-R’s downscale diffusion line. Unlike the bottles at the hipster hotel—thick, expensive plastic bullied into the many-faceted shape of a gem—this bottle is like any other: only the WAT-R logo in cool Helvetica remains the same. The price tag reads $4.50. Patrick twists off the cap and slopes the bulky object upward. The cheap plastic caves beneath his fingertips as smooth, clear WAT-R, the exact and mediocre temperature of his motel room, slides deep into his throat, leaving behind a stale taste, like ice that’s been too long in the freezer.

  He sits on the foot of his bed with the bottle between his knees and calls Alison twice. On the other line, someone picks up. There’s a loud, close sound, something being rubbed over the mouthpiece. Silence, and then Alison’s voice, tentative, asking “Hello?” as if it were a question.

  “It’s me. I called earlier,” says Patrick. Hearing his own voice, he realizes that he is more annoyed than he had thought.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. How long ago?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says.

  “Okay,” she replies. He can’t tell if she’s annoyed at his annoyance or if, on the other hand, she is not annoyed, not thinking about him at all.

  “So—I landed safely. Two kids who work for the production company picked me up. I don’t think they have much access to what’s going on with the picture; I’m saving my questions for when I meet with the producer tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” she says. “All right.”

  “These kids, you know, they like to speak about everything as if they know all about it, but I can’t imagine anyone showing them the budget for the film, asking them if it all looks right. I can’t imagine anyone even telling them who the VIP they’re picking up at the airport is, what his job title is—they’re nice kids, but you can tell they’re not in any position to see the whole picture. I have to say, it’s getting on my nerves, and it’s only the first day. Well, I can’t complain about being driven around. There’s so much traffic here it makes you want to crash your car. At least the weather’s nice. It’s a pure blue sky. No clouds.”

  “I don’t know,” says Alison distractedly. “I’ve always liked clouds. You watch them change and grow and move across the sky. They turn the sky into a sort of entertainment, like theater or cinema, when you get to know the common types they’re like characters showing up again and again. My favorite was always cirrus. Ever since I was a kid.”

  Patrick doesn’t reply.

  “Patrick, are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” he says.

  “Cirrus clouds. Do you know what I mean? Like soft, gauzy scraps of cotton wadding, stretched thin and drifting through the sky. I made some for a class project once, it must have been fourth grade. I used two whole boxes of Q-tips.”

  He flops back on the motel bed and exhales loudly. In the weeks leading up to this trip, he had tried to show Alison movies about Hollywood, about writers going to work in the film industry and detectives tracking down the murderers of beautiful women strangled in the hills, had sent her real-estate listings for Modernist mansions with pools and topiary perched precariously in the brown steepness. He bought Nora a book about glamorous actresses of yesteryear, hoping her fascination with historical disasters past might be cultivated into something broader, a fascination for the industry and the state where he could already almost see them living, laughing together and soaked in sunlight. The idea of a future in California, with a swimming pool and a full-sized trampoline on which Nora could hurl herself upward into the cloudless sky, seemed more real to him the closer he came to the date of his flight: his daughter could go to school with the children of Kardashians, his wife could restore her frayed nerves, become one of those women in vintage kimonos who wear their hair in a waist-length braid. But neither of them took an interest, or even seemed to notice what he was trying to do. He felt like a man slaving away, uncelebrated, digging for lost treasure in the unmarked desert.

  “Can you just pretend that you care about what I’m doing here?” he says. “I’m living a literal adventure, and you make me feel like I’m sitting alone at home, imagining it all.”

  There’s a pause on the line, and when her voice comes back it’s his Alison again, more alert, more familiar.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were feeling this way,” she sighs. “You know how it’s been for me lately, everything so blue. It’s hard to wrap my head around the idea that something good could happen. And I’m not sure how the movie world works, but I know this is really exciting for you. And I’m proud, believe me. Nora is too.”

  “Thank you, that means a lot,” says Patrick, and it’s true, he feels a bit better.

  “It’s not your problem, Patrick,” she continues. “It’s really not. I know there’ve been times I made you worry. That thing about the lawn—I know that was so bad.”

  He remembers Alison on the lawn in her pajama pants and sleep tee, and shakes his head sharply, as if to make the image less clear.

  “I don’t know if you can understand what it’s like,” she says, her voice growing quieter, taking on a pale tone. “I know I’ve said this before. But I look out the back window of our house and I don’t see the park or the trees. I see all of it dying. Part of me knows it’s not—‘dying’ is the wrong word for it—but another part can look out and see a place that’s already dead. You see? I look at Nora and I know there’s no future for her, and it tears my heart in two. And what makes me feel crazy is that all around me, everywhere, people are driving cars and buying propane grills and eating double cheeseburgers, and not one of them acts like they’re dying, even though they are. Not one of them sees what I see, and that means we have no chance.”

  “Listen,” says Patrick, tense and urgent, “just listen to yourself. If you heard someone else saying this, your sister or Nora or me, what would you tell them? You would tell them to get help. To go see someone.”

  “Or maybe I’d listen to them. Maybe I’d think about whether there was any reality to what they were saying.”

  Some background chatter comes over the line. He can hear her covering the microphone with her hand, talking to someone else.

  “What is that?” Patrick asks. “Who are you talking to?”

  “It’s Nora,” Alison replies offhandedly, her mind elsewhere. “She’s asking me if she needs to pack a puffy coat.”

  Suddenly, Patrick feels nervous. He stands up, walks to the front of the motel room, n
udges the curtain aside, and stares out at the lone car at the far end of the lot below, sitting with its lights on and windshield wipers running, though there isn’t a drop of water in sight, the blades whipping blindly back and forth.

  “Pack for where?” he asks. “Where are you two going?”

  When Alison answers, she answers slowly. She may be trying to reassure herself as much as him. “I’m taking Nora with me on a nature retreat. It’s sort of a, I don’t know, support group. You know, the exact thing you think I need.”

  “Well, where is it? What’s it called?” He’s raising his voice now, which she won’t like. “How far away is it? And, Alison, how are you even going to get there? You don’t drive.”

  “I try not to drive,” she says. “And there are so many ways to avoid it—you can bike, you can carpool, you can take the bus all the way to the shopping center. But you know I used to drive an hour each way to that vet clinic outside of Philadelphia before I had my own practice. And it’s just for a few days, while you’re out of town. I don’t want you to worry,” she says in a soothing tone.

  “I’m worried,” he says.

  “You don’t need to be. It’s a well-known place. They have a website.”

  “Well, that makes me feel better,” he says sarcastically. “Does this place also have a name?”

  “Earthbridge. It’s called Earthbridge.”

  “That sounds ominous. A bridge from Earth to where?”

  “I’ll give you the phone number,” she sighs.

  Through the bathroom window, which he discovers is not just open but missing a pane, the sweet, wet scent of night-blooming jasmine forces its way into the room. Out on the ivy-covered slope behind the Hacienda Lodge, rodents scurry up and down through the ground cover, causing the broad, dark leaves above them to jerk violently from side to side. Patrick punches the number his wife gave him into a search engine, but nothing comes up. Then he enters just the area code alone. Upstate New York, far upstate, near Oswego. Near where Cassidy Carter shot her first starring feature at age nine, a feel-good comedy set at a summer camp where all the adult counselors have been taken prisoner by a band of drug smugglers and young Cassidy has to assume the role of leader, directing a horde of preteens to hunt, forage, and scavenge for food. What was that movie called again? He takes another long swig from the plastic bottle at his bedside and then falls asleep with his mouth open to the dry, chill air. All through the night and through his formless dreams, strange sounds emanate from the hills behind the motel, sounds that could be cries of pain but could just as easily be laughter.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  In the photographs posted online, the restaurant is enchanting: shady and cool in a land of so much sunlight and bare, exposed skin. In one photo, a close-up of a whole spatchcocked quail, grilled with preserved kumquat, is set against a colorful salad of shaved fennel, caraway seeds, and smoked juniper berries. The body of the quail is fragile and precise, like a tropical flower. Small crooked wings and glossy drumsticks encircle a vacated center, where the guts have been extracted with the tender skill of a model-airplane hobbyist. Past the tight-focus food, the background is a murk of charcoal grays and moody blues, indistinctly stylish. In another photo, a gray granite bar slopes a mellow S, bordered on one side by a line of gleaming gold-tone Art Nouveau barstools, on the other by a wall of artisanal tequilas reaching all the way up to the vaulted ceiling. At the right side of the image, individual dining tables in dark wood and oiled metal are cast in somber window-light and shadow, like a Vermeer painting of a high-end gastropub. In reality, the place feels like a cave: dark and in-set, with a guillotine of expensive brass lights dangling overhead.

  Patrick sits in the corner of a large, steep-backed booth upholstered in cerulean velvet, with two brand-new copies of his novel Elsinore Lane on the table before him. He’s tall enough, five foot ten, which is almost six feet, but the booth is designed to make all guests feel small and weak, regardless of their size or body type. The tufted back rises up over his head, culminating in a forward-curving cushion that pushes his head down slightly, forcing him to slouch. On the way here, his rideshare had gotten stuck in traffic, and he had spent most of the trip trying to think of how he’d play his tardiness off to Jay Arvid and Brenda Billington, the film’s executive producers. Lateness, a sign of irresponsibility, could be transformed into a sign of power under the right circumstances: What if he was late because he had to take an important call from his agent? What if he had traveled farther, say from Malibu or Venice Beach, where he had been meeting with a celebrity film editor that he might want to bring on board? What if he had been on the phone with his family, a diligent and beloved father, handling one of their problems from afar?

  But instead he had shown up only a few minutes late to find the restaurant nearly empty, the only people in the dining room the waitstaff and hostess, staring into the bottomless depths of their smartphones, exchanging short, flirtatious jokes that made him feel invisible. It had been forty minutes already, and Patrick was devoting himself, now, to thinking about how he might play off his earliness. What if he, too, had only just arrived a few minutes ago? What if, on entering, they found him immersed in a phone call that he wrapped up, graciously, before greeting them with a strong slap on the back? A half-hug handshake? With a raised hand toward the waiter, he requests another plate of bread and olive oil.

  Arvid and Billington arrive, greeted by the maître d’, the slender hostess, the bread sommelier, and the waitstaff by the door, all wishing them well. It’s impossible to see them, but Patrick infers where they are from the direction in which the black-trousered bodies of waiters are turned. He’s looking for the face that came up on the image search, a soft-necked man with an angular nose and a gentle chin, but the man who emerges from the throng of restaurant staffers has a more chiseled appearance. His neck has the tanned, sinewy heft of an artisanally crafted hatchet, something sold with its own hand-worked leather carrying case. He reminds Patrick of someone famously good-looking, some interchangeable leading man or a smooth, liquid blend of them all. First he thinks of Gerard Butler, then Edward Norton, then Russell Crowe, though looking at the face before him makes it harder to call any other face up for comparison. In a few seconds, Jay Arvid, who actually happens to be exactly six feet though he looks even taller, is standing next to Patrick, hoisting him up to his feet for a combination handshake-backslap. Behind him is Brenda, hair silky and mink-colored and wearing oversized red plastic eyeglasses affixed to a chintzy gold chain, the privileged art-school daughter of somebody extremely powerful. She holds her slender white hand up and gives Patrick a little wave, though she is close enough for a handshake, if she wanted one.

  “So glad we could do this,” says Arvid in a way that sounds both offhand and heartfelt. “It’s such a pleasure to meet the author.”

  “It’s not every day that we have dinner with a writer,” says Billington. “I guess Jay and I will have to watch our sentences. Not to give too much away, but there’s a fourth coming tonight. It’s a big surprise.”

  Billington orders red wine for the table; then Patrick calls the waitress back and asks for some water.

  “WAT-R?” asks the waitress, looking from Patrick’s face to Jay’s to Brenda’s. “No problem.”

  Wine glugs from the bottle. The three of them toast. Patrick toasts with WAT-R. He misjudges the rim of the hand-blown glass tumbler and ends up with WAT-R down the front of his button-down. Everything feels like it’s happening at 1.5x speed, a phantom finger on the fast-forward button, dragging the scene ahead to its action point. He lifts the glass up to the light to check for holes or leaks, but all he sees are the overhead lights shifting back and forth in mottled clarity. The ice has settled in a heap at the bottom of the glass, and this seems strange to him. He tries to think of another time when he’s seen this happen, but he’s coming up empty.

  “Don’t worry,
it won’t bite,” Brenda says, eyeing him. “You don’t have much of this stuff on the East Coast, do you?” Her delivery makes him self-conscious.

  Patrick takes two quick gulps and sets the glass down on the table.

  “So, Hamlin. I have to tell you,” says Arvid warmly, leaning toward Patrick. “When I picked your book up for the first time. I turned it over and read those words on the back. ‘A ghost story,’ it said, ‘written in family blood.’ It sent shivers down my back. What an amazing tale.”

  “Thanks so much,” says Patrick, taking a gulp of wine. “That line was from the Times review.”

  “Ghost stories are sure bets in our industry,” says Brenda, nibbling at a piece of bread. “Audiences like them. You know there’s never going to be a ghost hanging around someplace for a boring reason. Where there’s a ghost, there’s a story.”

  “Well, I don’t really think of the novel as a ghost story, I suppose,” Patrick says. As he speaks about his work, he gains momentum. “Or…it’s a ghost story in the sense that Hamlet is a ghost story—in other words, not so much. I was really writing from personal experience—coming back to my hometown after my father passed away, finding that my mother was already beginning a new relationship. How quickly one’s childhood is swept away by the foundation of an adulthood, hastily assembled. How the lifelong quest to surpass one’s father is thrown into disorder by an untimely passing, leaving a life without center, without endpoint. The hurt of all that. You could say that ghost stories are fundamentally about the past, about unearthing a buried trauma and setting it to rest. I see my novel as an exploration of how the memory of a person, which is like a ghost in its way, can live on in the present and the future.”

  “Hmmm,” says Brenda.

  “A story with real sequel potential if I’ve ever seen one. No, I’m serious,” Jay says, chuckling. “Maybe we’ll just keep you out here with us for the long haul, you can move your family west, et cetera.”