by Bruce Wagner
“Hey,” he said. “It’s the girl.”
“What girl?”
“From the set.”
Lucy joined to watch. At odds with herself, the urchin moved inexorably toward the specialty vehicle as if pulled by a great magnet. The reflective glass made it impossible to see her audience.
“Look! She can’t help herself,” said Lucy. “We’re the monolith from 2001.”
“You’re about as flat,” said Edward.
“What’s a monolith?” asked Boulder, blasé.
“She’s sweet,” said Lucy, earnest and patronizing.
Boulder glanced through the window, then flopped onto a $10,000 Costa del Sol Alcazar nightspread. “I hate it when crew bring their fucking kids to the set.”
“I don’t think she—she looks kind of homeless.”
“Maybe she has AIDS.”
“Boulder,” said Lucy. “That is so mean!” She tended to be exclamatory around her famous friend.
“Or hep C—everyone’s got hep C. Or scabies! Oh God, do you remember, Lucy?”
“I so hated having scabies.”
“Well,” said Tull, “I’m going to ask her in for lunch.”
“Please don’t!”
“Boulder, we have to. I’ll use it for my essay.”
“What essay?”
Lucy put on her girl-detective/bestselling-author face. “It’s research. I’m getting credit for writing about visiting you.”
Boulder sighed. “I so hate the homeless.”
“Oh my God, Boulder, that is so vile!”
The movie star laughed devilishly and tickled Lucy until she begged for mercy.
“Edward,” said Tull. “You decide. It’s your Mauck.”
“It’s my Mauck,” sang Boulder, “and I’ll cry if I want to!” She did a spastic dance and laughed another starry, bigger-than-life laugh.
“You’re stoned,” said Lucy.
“Well what say, Eddikins?” ventured Tull, in a terrible rendition of some upper-crust character. “Shall we ask her in? Are you a man or are you a Mauck?”
“I say,” said the cousin, hand poised thoughtfully to chin brace, “that we haul her unwashed homeless butt aboard.”
Boulder beseeched the unsavory visitor be kept at the door with her back to them, like at the Belgian beach.
The sight of her crushed him. Why had he set all this in motion? Tull felt like one of those World War II GIs on the History Channel giving candy to children amid the rubble of cities—only he was about to lure the little one to a death by embarrassment at the hands of his rarefied friends. He hung back in the passenger seat, afraid she’d run.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Toulouse.”
He never called himself that.
“Tull,” he corrected. “Tull Trotter.” He felt ridiculous. “What’s your name?”
The girl said nothing.
“Do you want—would you like some lunch?”
He hated himself. She just kept staring. Then:
“Amaryllis.”
“What?”
An eternal pause, in which he thought she’d bolt.
“My name is Amaryllis.”
“Like the place in Texas?” Another massively dumb thing. Again her ancient stare, like the bas-relief of a child’s tomb. “My friends—my friends want to meet you.” Epic dumbness. Silence. She twitched. He’d blown it. “We have tons of food. If—if you’re hungry.”
Nothing to do now but retreat. She came closer, like Edith Stein to concentration camp gas. Lucy effusively threw an absurd, corn-fed “Howdy!” at the girl. Tull gave her a look and his cousin demurred. Then he went inside and strode to Mr. Hookstratten’s pleated seat, tearing the cellophane off the absentee tutor’s tray, wanting to feed her right away. After a minute or so, Amaryllis poked her head under the gull wing, trembling. Tull beckoned and she clambered in. She stood before them, a muted cable news anchor laughing beside her head.
“You must be so hungry,” said Lucy, coaxing. “What’s your name?”
“It’s Amaryllis,” said Tull.
“Can’t she talk?” said Lucy.
Boulder rolled her eyes, shook her head and picked up Teen People.
“Your name is Amaryllis? That is so pretty!”
“Would you like some chocolates before lunch?”
The orphan turned to see where the voice had emanated from, then focused on the seated apparition ladling soup into its mouth behind a gossamer yellow hood. Astonished, she moved backward, falling. Tull rushed to her aid while the others tittered like munchkins.
“Don’t mind Edward. He’s, uh, disabled.”
The beautiful girl who had played for the camera had spoken. She was lying on a quilted bed, languidly flitting through an old Weekly Variety. Her beauty—her luminescence—had a strangely comforting, nearly soporific effect upon the visitor.
“Disabled but still able to dis,” said Edward.
“Oh, just come and sit,” said Boulder to the girl imperiously. “Don’t make us beg. It’s not attractive.”
Amaryllis obeyed. She moved toward her seat and promptly stepped on the dozing Pullman. She shrieked. Barely stirring, the animal broke wind. Amaryllis smiled as everyone laughed, then grew self-conscious and sat grimly, as if reprimanded. Tull was amazed by what that smile did to him.
He took her greasy backpack and hung it from a peg. With his artful encouragements, she began to eat while Lucy and Edward peppered her with questions. Where did she live? (Nearby.) Where did she go to school? (Not far.) Why wasn’t she in school? (Getting medicine for her mother.) And what did her mother do? (Worked. Sick today.)
Amaryllis had hardly taken her eyes off Boulder; finally, the stare became fixed.
“Are you an actress?”
“Sometimes.”
“She doesn’t know who you are!” said Lucy, delighted. Perversely, Boulder made as if she liked that. Lucy turned back to their guest. “She’s a very famous actress.”
Edward watched Tull hover. “God, Tull, cut her food, why don’t you.”
“When you work for Disney, you don’t act—I mean, not really. You’re sort of … animated. You need to look cute.”
“Which you always do,” said Lucy.
“When oh when, please can someone let me do an indie?”
“Do you go to school?” asked Amaryllis.
“Oh my God, I’m being interviewed! Mostly on the set. I have a teacher.”
“But when she doesn’t,” said Lucy, “she deigns to attend Four Winds with the pleh-bee-enz.”
“Four Winds?”
“It’s a school,” said Tull. “In Santa Monica.”
“We all go there.”
Amaryllis turned to Edward and asked, “What happened to you?”
The cousin chortled. “Oh, I like that! Let’s put that on a T-shirt! What happened to you? We’d sell millions! I love it!”
“He’s got Apert’s,” said Lucy.
“Big Head Disease,” said Boulder. “That’s all you need to know.”
“He’s the smartest boy on earth,” said Tull.
“He’s a saint,” said Lucy.
“They streamlined the process,” blurted Amaryllis with enthusiasm, immediately wishing she hadn’t. She was rusty. She hadn’t spoken with other children for so long—with anyone really, except for Topsy and the babies—and these were like no children she’d ever met … but now, she had better go on or they’d think her crazy. “They streamlined the process for becoming a saint. John Paul made it easier. Everyone’s on a fast track.”
Lucy and Boulder exchanged secret looks and Tull winced, wishing to protect the girl from the half-assed cruelties of the world. He was having major feelings, all of which his braided tormentor noticed with customary alacrity.
“Amaryllis is such a pretty name,” offered Lucy again, somewhat poisonously.
Tull detected the hint of an English accent and hoped nothing lurid was coming.
“I hate it when you start doing
Anna Paquin,” said Boulder.
“Does it mean anything?” posed the unflappable inquisitrix. “I mean, the name?”
“It’s a flower,” said Amaryllis. “From South Africa.”
“Is that where you’re from?” asked Lucy, brightening. “I mean—Africa?”
Tull bridled and Amaryllis meekly shook her head.
Edward stood from his chair. “Amaryllis, do you like orchids?”
“What are they?” she asked. Boulder rolled her eyes at Lucy again.
“This,” said Tull, plucking a flower from a slim celadon vase, “is an orchid.” She held the stem in her hand and stared.
“A hybrid,” said the cousin.
A large white petal stood up like a bishop’s miter; beneath it, a pouch in the shape of the chin of a cartoon Mountie—or the chin of the boy called Edward.
Bisecting both was a leafy mustache, speckled with polka dots.
The invalid proffered a discrete flower, with movie-star-red lips. “This one is from South Africa—like your name,” he said. “It grows on waterfalls.”
“You know,” said Lucy, “you should really come to Four Winds and visit.” She turned to the others. “Don’t you think?”
“It’d be great!” said Boulder, rather affectlessly.
“We’re doing a homeless project,” she continued while Tull glared. “We’re building sidewalk shelters—I mean, that’s not why you should visit. It’s just that if you’ve ever had that experience or know someone who has … We’re using really strong, light materials—space-age. And laptops to design them.”
“We were homeless once,” said Boulder.
“The earthquake doesn’t count.”
“It killed our beach house.”
“You had two beach houses.”
“It killed them both.”
“She stayed in a hotel for three months.”
“A hotel is not a home.”
“You stayed at Shutters.”
“That’s a beach hotel,” said Tull for Amaryllis’s edification—then hated himself some more.
“That’s where I live,” chimed the orphan, then frowned. Again, she wished she hadn’t spoken. “A motel. The St. George—with my mother and brother and sister.”
“A motel! The St. George?” queried Lucy. “I haven’t heard of it. Now, is that near the Bonaventure or the Biltmore? Is it four- or five-star?”
Before the torture could continue, there was a sharp rap at the door and Amaryllis nearly jumped from her skin. The arrival of Mr. Hookstratten—Four Winds teacher of the year, private tutor to moguls and occasional on-set educator—was not unexpected, but the children (all but Edward, of course) scurried about as if they’d been up to great mischief. The balding scholar beamed from the driver’s side, hand of a raised arm gripping the Mauck wing, blinking in through bulgy, light-sensitive eyes. Boulder and Lucy rushed forward, trying to distract from the sight of Tull, who shadowed the orphan girl as best he could while she seized her backpack and made her way to the passenger-side portal whence she had come—clinging all along to the walls like a tiny cat burglar.
“And who’s this?” Mr. Hookstratten cheerily inquired. Boulder said she was the daughter of a grip; Lucy said she was part of “the research project”; Tull said she had helped bring the food trays—all in unison, while Amaryllis quit the luxuriant specialty vehicle, vanishing into the brightness of day.
When she got to the St. George, there were patrol cars and sedans with revolving red lights stuck on khaki-colored roofs. The babies were already in one of the backseats, with a policewoman fussing over them; the froggy front-office Korean pointed at Amaryllis and the men set after her. She had never run like that before, and prayed to Edith Stein no one would catch her.
She would have to find Topsy now. He’d give her shelter, and she would finally tell him everything.
CHAPTER 9
Squatters
Five in the morning. Will’m stood among ovens and large iron machines, unfurling canvas stored in a hard long tube. The hawk-nosed baker, Gilles Mott, held the bird-and-berry scene (the very same depicted in the “Cadillac” ’s mural) carefully in flour-dusted hands, an auctioneer apprizing maps of a medieval world.
“It’s very detailed,” he remarked. “Is it a painting?”
“Fabric, man—one of our more popular patterns. We call it the Strawberry Thief. Indigo-discharge on block-printed cotton. That’s what stained me blue!”
He waved his arms, which, at shoulder joint, were thick as cadets’ thighs, but Gilles saw no dye. The baker did think it an amazing business, though: this colored parchment with inked green foliage shot through by cocky thrushes, their beaks cadging strawberries hung from tendrils like swollen lanterns.
“Will’m … you’ve been to France, no?”
“I’m not fond of the Frankish tongue nor Frankish things.”
He rolled up the “Thief” and replaced it in the scabbard. For a moment, the baker worried his segue had offended, but an old memory stubbornly asserted itself.
Will’m unceremoniously began mopping the concrete. For this and other chores, Gilles paid him minimum wage plus bread, scones and other delectables. Once in a while, the mystery man announced the urge to bake; on such days, his startled benefactor wisely sat back to watch artistry unfold. Tossing off scintillating ciabatta and pane pugliese as if it were child’s play, his skill with sweet things was elysian—it was during one of those rare incursions that Bluey’s recent favorite, the mille-feuille of almonds and pomegranates, was born, and christened The Persephone. (If only the old woman knew, thought the baker, the circumstances of its preparation.) Yet whenever Gilles offered steady work, the prodigy angrily balked. He soon gave up his entreaties, fearing the man would never come around again.
“You’d look amazing there,” said Gilles. “I mean, in France. The French would love you. They wouldn’t know what to make of you, but they’d love you. That pattern made me think of something. My fiancée and I were having a look around Paris. An arrondissement near the Père-Lachaise—the famous cemetery. Every cemetery in France is famous. We thought we could run into Marlene Dietrich, who supposedly lived in an apartment house nearby; we were a little drunk. We finally found the place and stood knocking for fifteen minutes.” A polite listener, the transient leaned on the mop to hear him out. “We were just about to leave when a middle-aged woman came to the door. Not Marlene. What I remember were her eyes: dilated. One of those opium eaters. She looked like a fish coming at you from twenty thousand leagues. We followed her down—she floated down—to a six-hundred-year-old wine cellar. Well, we turned the corner and eighteen people looked up and stared. An amazing shock. Their eyes peeked over napkins; they were covering their faces like dignitaries caught in a raid. And formally dressed! Very Discreet Charm, do you know Buñuel? He was a Spaniard—an Andalusian, actually. Well, can I tell you what the occasion was? We later found out. It was a bunch of rich gourmands, and they had paid a huge amount of money to eat these songbirds. Little songbirds! Completely illegal—the birds were on the endangered species list. Very Kosinski, do you know him? Killed himself in the bath. Never had a tastier treat in my life: sweet, crunchy … bitter, too. My fiancée said they kept them in dark cages for months—”
“The dinner guests?”
“The birds! Gorged them on millet, then drowned them in snifters of Armagnac. And the reason they held up their napkins, so they said, was because you were supposed to eat the birds hot. You just popped them in and chewed with your mouth open or else you got burned.”
“That is the Frankish way, isn’t it? Murder a thrush behind veils of civility! Truth be told, the French are a dishonorable and troublously shoddy race.”
Gilles Mott had known the hulking homeless man for six months. He found him to be thoughtful, gentle and diligent at menial tasks, of which he neatly did a baker’s dozen. Gilles was something of a scholar of the fractured souls who wandered from dark and dirty wings onto his stage; of all the
players he’d known, the one called Will’m was the most “accomplished.” He looked magnificent—his face had the ruddy plein air nobility of a streetwise sage, without the astringent lunacy in the eye. He was truculent but never uncivil. The hair swept back like a Big Sur poet’s (he said he was nicknamed for his locks; friends got Topsy from the slave girl in Uncle Tom’s Cabin), and his beard grew like cliff bush over tweedy layers of dress, its wiry, earthen, sun-bleached colors blending with sport coat, vest and wan-pink debuttoned Brooks Brothers blouse fastened at collar with twine. How clothes were found to fit the dimensions of this man remained, for the baker, a puzzle. His voice too was distinctive, a contained whisper emanating from the citizens of a thousand nodal villages sitting upon cords buried deep as transatlantic cable within a meaty, blushing throat. Gilles thought of the self-averred Oxford-educated wanderer as a ghost who walked the urban heath, otherwise imagining him a character from H. G. Wells dislocated in Time. He worried about this tender mountain and keenly wondered about the origins of his elaborate personal myth. Like the student he was, Gilles nudged and probed, but not too hard—the baker’s wife, a volunteer caseworker herself, had cautioned him against it.
“Will’m,” he said, cutting dough for croissants. “Where exactly were you born? I mean, if you don’t mind.”
“All that’s public knowledge!” he snapped, mopping with new resolve. “If it must be said again, I came into this world in Elm House, Walthamstow—dead on Clay Street.”
“But when?”
“That, man, is also for the record: March of ’thirty-four.”
“Nineteen thirty-four …” said the baker, the slight emphasis giving him away.
Will’m stopped his chores and horse-laughed. Gilles was actually relieved—mindful of his wife’s admonition, for a split second he’d seen himself tossed to the floor and gutted.
“If that is the case, then something’s very wrong indeed!”
