The Edge of the Gulf

by Hadley Hury

  The anchor of Chaz’s focus was clearly his wife. He was cordial and attentive to them all, but he watched Sydney like a movie. Hudson could understand why, and he didn’t imagine it to be merely a honeymoon mooniness that would wear away with the ongoing intimacies of married life. Hudson knew a powerful woman when he saw one, and he was seeing one now. And he could see that, whatever else they might or might not have going for them, Chaz Cullen willingly gave his wife his undivided attention, and, in return, she gave his life direction and interest.

  After a few minutes of pleasantries, Charlie said, “Well, I have to get these two back home. I have dinner waiting and they didn’t have lunch.”

  Libby laughed. “That’s not the strongest endorsement I’ve ever heard for the Blue Bar’s kitchen.”

  “Oh, we’ll be sampling the fare from time to time!” said Sydney. “Chaz tells me the fried shrimp and hushpuppies are unsurpassed.”

  As they began to move away, Charlie placed one arm around her waist and the other around Chaz’s. “Hudson and Libby will be joining us for dinner on Saturday.”

  “Great,” said Chaz.

  Sydney added, “We’ll see you then,” looking back over her shoulder at them.

  Hudson imagined that the brilliant smile, for the first time and only for a moment, faltered.

  ***

  Once back at the cottage, Hudson could not settle. He sat with Moon for awhile on the porch. Finally, he decided to check another review. Perhaps meeting Sydney guided his hand to one that in some odd way seemed apropos to the evening.

  Quality Star In Afterglow, the incomparable Julie Christie shows the kids how “It” is done

  More than thirty years after initially falling in love with Julie Christie, I realized as I viewed her new film Afterglow that I was falling in love all over again with Julie Christie. Then, she was the wide-eyed, bekerchiefed Lara of Dr. Zhivago and the wistful, desperately glamorous model in Darling, for which she won the Academy Award for best actress, and I was in braces.

  Since that time, both Julie and I have been around the block a few times. Her face is artfully, and ever so slightly, touched up; my hair is beginning to gray. But the strong feeling that her riveting performance in Afterglow evokes is not mere nostalgia nor some middle-aged desire to recherche le temps perdu. It is how her longtime fans are likely to appreciate Christie now that is of the essence. Thirty-five years ago, American teens found her sultry New Wave English looks either the stuff of exotic fantasies or the ultimate role-model for hair-frosting and sang froid stylishness. It is we who have matured. Even though the Christie of Afterglow is more interestingly attractive, intelligently sexy, and husky-voiced than ever before, we are better able at this perspective to see that she is a fine, fine actor, and one of the most satisfyingly watchable film stars of the past three decades.

  At one point in Alan Rudolph’s absorbing and entertaining new film, someone asks Christie’s character, Phyllis Mann, “Oh, are you an actress?” With a flash of that fabulous grin, unconsciously sharp timing, and painfully self-conscious irony, she rasps: “All the time.”

  Phyllis knows, in a mid-life best described as manageably bitter, that the modest talent that led to her only claim to fame, years ago, as a minor movie queen in B-minus (mostly horror) movies, has also been the primary bane of her existence. Rudolph explores, through an odd sequence of coincidental events, what it takes to break her out of her latest, long-running gig as a frustrated wife and failed mother, a beautiful woman in her early fifties whose tragedy is that she actually no longer has a role to play, and who drifts, watching videos of her old movies and dodging the threat of any real emotion with self-deprecating wit and too much gin.

  With Afterglow, writer-director Rudolph continues to hack out his own distinctive path through the sulfurous urban angst, the postmodern moral and cultural detritus of our times. He has, on occasion, lost his way, as those who managed to sit through his Love at Large a few years back will remember. Afterglow, produced by his mentor Robert Altman, is Rudolph’s most compelling film to date, marking a subtle but substantial advance over his previous best, 1984’s Choose Me. As in that film, here we are treated to the same lush visual vocabulary, the same cool affect that somehow manages to quicken rather than alienate. Afterglow is a wonderful mood piece; but it is more than that. Integrating coherently Rudolph’s dreamy, bracingly eccentric style, his sense of societal anomie, and his writing’s oblique narrative investigations into human relationships, Afterglow takes great cinematic risks. What gives the film its own afterglow is the grace with which Rudolph manages to keep his three-ring circus balanced. We leave the theatre not only not particularly bothered but actually invigorated by his unique capacity for juggling icy surrealism with an almost giddy lyricism, and clinical dissections of the human heart with plot elements straight out of Restoration farce.

  The ruefully smoldering heart of Afterglow is Christie’s performance, which, short of a possible “Brit-split vote” benefiting Helen Hunt, should win her another best actress Oscar. Also helping Rudolph hold this odd, fascinating, and ultimately moving entertainment together are the three other lead actors: Nick Nolte as Phyllis’ cheerfully philandering handyman husband, Lucky, and Lara Flynn Boyle (of television’s Twin Peaks) and Jonny Lee Miller (Trainspotting) as a young couple facing their own marital challenges. More accurately, it is the fact that the couples are not facing what ails them that leads them astray, albeit eventually, to a sort of enlightenment. Miller’s character, Jeffrey, a prissy young financier whose emotional circuits are clogged by his pretensions to a cold perfection of hi-tech, hard-edged style, seeks to revive himself through an affair with Phyllis. Her maturity and romantic air of loss have the effect of turning the jaded young man into a positively medieval, chivalric knight. Concurrently, with each pairing unbeknownst to the other, Nolte’s Lucky has struck up a liaison with Jeffrey’s lonely young wife, Marianne.

  What begins as a cold examination of estrangement, set against the gray stone buildings and wintry sunsets of Montreal and musically edged by that master of film score chill, Mark Isham, ends, after all is said and done, as something quite different. The characters have come to a new place, and so have we. From a film of high artifice, with a vivifying sense of something rather magical, some real-life lessons have been learned about breaking free, and about the even harder business of breaking through, of expressing need, and of granting forgiveness whether to others or ourselves. As one character in Afterglow (speaking, one suspects, for the filmmaker himself) repeatedly exhorts: “Take a flying leap into the future.”

  Chapter 20

  A few nights later, after a run of evenings out, Charlie, Sydney and Chaz dined in the bosom of the family, on the lower screened veranda. Charlie grilled red snapper and yellow corn, Sydney concocted the salad, and Chaz churned fresh lemon and pineapple ice cream. More than once Sydney saw Charlie beaming at Chaz, and at one point when Chaz and she were looking out to the sunset-russet lagoon, the older man came up and stood behind them, wrapping his arms around their shoulders.

  “I’m so very happy for you two.”

  Around ten, Sydney said, “Let’s go to the Blue Bar for a nightcap.”

  Charlie looked tired and had already stifled a yawn or two, but he said he was good for a few minutes.

  The three of them ambled over around eleven. Earlier in the day Chaz had called from the bedroom and ascertained that the Bar closed at twelve on weeknights. And that Terry Main would be there.

  They had spoken briefly to Terry when they arrived. He had been behind the bar in the small middle room. “Sure, I remember Chaz. You were here a few weeks back. This must be your bride, Charlie mentioned you were coming down.” He nodded appreciatively. “Congratulations.”

  They stood on the back deck with their drinks for nearly half an hour. It was a crystalline night on the coast. Even the lights of the bar could not obliterate the shimmering stars, and what was left of the thinning late crowd had wound down to qui
et laughter and intermittent conversation.

  Finally, Charlie drained the last of his scotch and said, “I’m leaving you kids to it.” He kissed Sydney on the cheek and patted Chaz’s shoulder.

  Sydney returned the kiss. “Oh, I feel I could stay out all night, just walking the beach. It’s so glorious.”

  “Do it! Come in whenever. You know the alarm code, and we have no plan for the morning except to do whatever you please whenever you please….” As he walked away, Chaz said, “We won’t be too late.”

  Blue Bar patrons apparently knew the drill. There was no hue and cry about last call and by twelve the place was deserted.

  ***

  “Would it be an imposition to ask for some of that?” Sydney approached the bar where Terry was sipping a cup of coffee while he closed out the register. Chaz followed her in.

  Terry swung two mugs from the rack. “Not at all. But I need to warn you, it’s high octane.”

  “We don’t drink it any other way,” Chaz smiled. “Mind if we join you here for a minute?”

  If Terry found the attempt at after-hours socializing odd, he didn’t let on. When they had discussed strategy earlier, Sydney had said, “You’re the boss’ family. What’s he going to say…‘No, get out’?” Dinner service had stopped at ten, so the night kitchen staff was already gone, along with most of the waiters. Terry called out a couple of orders to his two remaining staff as they came and went from the front room and the back deck, cleaning up. Then he looked noncommittally over his steaming coffee, first at Sydney and then at Chaz. “Having a good time?”

  Chaz said, “Yeah. Great weather—not too hot yet.”

  Terry smiled and sipped his coffee. “Yeah, this is as good as it gets for summer.”

  Then silence.

  Chaz looked down hard at the bar for a moment, and when he looked up at Terry his eyes had become searching, vulnerable, even humiliated. “Charlie…”

  Sydney casually reached over and rested her hand on his, and said softly, “It’s not quite the trip we’d hoped for.” She noticed a slight flash somewhere deep in Terry’s otherwise impassive brown eyes, and he seemed to forget for an instant the bar towel he’d picked up.

  “Nothing wrong with Charlie I hope…,”

  “No,” said Chaz, “…and, yes.” He looked up earnestly at Terry. “Does he seem different in any way to you lately? Has he done anything…well, to you?”

  Terry looked like a man drifting into uncharted waters, but his eyes became more interested, alert.

  Chaz exhaled deeply, and smiled with a little shake of his head. “Hey, man, I’m sorry. You don’t even know me. We’re just kinda worn out with a bad situation and have been trying to figure out what to do about it. But we shouldn’t bother you. It’s just old family stuff, and Charlie’s your employer and you’re probably crazy about the guy like everybody else seems to be down here.” He stood and put his arm around Sydney’s waist.

  Terry hesitated only a second before laying the towel aside and taking two steps down the bar. He lifted over a bottle of good brandy and three glasses. “Let me send Jake and Marcie home. If you’ll take these out, I’ll be right behind you with the coffee.” He winked at them as they picked up the bottle and glasses.

  “Thank you,” they both stammered in the tones of lost children.

  ***

  Over the first brandy, slowly at first, in a very credible agony of fits and starts, with occasional sympathetic urgings and amendments from Sydney, and finally in almost uninterrupted transports of passion, Chaz confided to Terry that his family had known the dark side of Mr. Magnanimous, Lord Bountiful, a.k.a. Charlie Brompton. That his father who had been like a brother to Charlie had been repeatedly ill-used by him in business ventures. That Charlie’s success over the years had been built as much on bilked relatives and friends in Louisville as on his own entrepreneurial skills. That the easily summoned graciousness and flaunted acts of generosity masked, and, in Charlie’s own sense of self-esteem probably atoned for, an essentially ruthless, cold, self-absorbed nature.

  “We never knew what to expect. He could be the nicest guy in the world. I think he’s always really wanted to stay on an even keel. But it’s almost a sort of Jekyll and Hyde thing, you know? We’ve seen it take on some pretty frightening aspects over the years. Black depressions. Have you ever noticed? But usually he keeps to himself then. Irrational fears and anger.…” Looking and sounding spent, Chaz tapered off. “My father died, unexpectedly, four months ago. He was supposed to have been Charlie’s heir.”

  Sydney tenderly picked up the thread. “And Chaz would then inherit. We’ve discovered through some letters between them just before Chaz’s dad died, and which Charlie doesn’t know we’ve seen, that Charlie is planning to cut Chaz out of most of his inheritance.”

  “He doesn’t know we know. He’s just acting like it’s old times and everything’s fine.”

  Terry had lighted a cigarette and exhaled into the cool, light breeze. “Why don’t you confront him?”

  “He’d deny it like he’s always denied his schemes in the past,” said Chaz. “And, unfortunately, we have no proof. My father was a fine man, a good man, but he was a little eccentric. And very old school and very proud. He could never bring himself really to admit just how badly Charlie had always behaved in their business dealings. They had grown up together more like brothers than cousins. Dad was kind and generous toward him to the end. He knew he was leaving me a decent little trust and probably thought he was doing me a favor by not contesting Charlie’s usurpation of the land agreement. Thought he was saving me a lot of heartache.”

  “And saving you from any more disappointments in your only ‘uncle’ beyond those you’d already seen,” added Sydney, her hand on his. “They’re a small family.”

  “I did have some good memories of this place when I was a kid. I didn’t catch a lot of what was going on.” Chaz paused. “Terry, we know, too, that he’s cutting you out of the group that’s getting this place and 26-A.”

  Terry didn’t bat an eye, merely tapped his cigarette, drew a last drag, and ground it out. He looked out to sea. They sat in silence for awhile. The moon tilted, a ghostly half ring in the west, and other than a low bar light inside, a candle on their table, and the pale suffusion of a distant streetlight around near the front, the world was awash with stars.

  Terry looked back at the two of them, his head just perceptibly nodding.

  ***

  Over the second brandy, Terry told them everything they needed to know.

  Even more important, as Sydney, in a rapturous whisper, pointed out as they walked back to the house later, was how he told them. They had broken the ice sufficiently and, as if someone had suddenly thawed him, he began to gush his own account of betrayed understandings, two-faced dealings, arrogant presumptions, unfair and capricious decisions. As he warmed to his subject, Terry easily segued from the demeanor of laid-back, laconic beach guy to that of a former corporate attorney as if reverting to a more natural state.

  “I’ve been in or around Laurel for six years, since I decided to leave law and come out here on the coast to slow down. Worked for a contractor for the first couple of years. I’ve been with Charlie for four years. He’s said, and I think not just to me, that I’m the best manager he’s had since he bought the place twenty years ago. I really like it, I treat it like it’s mine. I like the area and I like the people, and I treat them like they’re mine as well. It’s become home.

  “Charlie knows this. We’ve always had a good professional relationship. I know he relies on me when it’s convenient for him to do so. I thought he trusted me. And, occasionally, he allows himself just a touch of that warmth with me that he seems to spread around pretty easily with everyone else. But there’s always been a slight reserve, something held back. No matter how I prove myself, it never seems enough to get close to him.

  “I make no bones about the fact that in these four years I’ve grown increasingly interested in th
e question of Charlie’s retirement. Lately I’ve been fairly up front about my desire to take over when he decides to go from this sort of ‘semi-state’ he’s in now into the real thing. I was never able to pin him down and talk details. I guessed it was at least partly that emotional thing people go through when they’re at this point, you know, that he probably felt some denial or at least some conflict about laying down the reins. So, I never pushed hard. I’ve been a gentleman. Just let him know from time to time that whenever he was ready, I’d appreciate the opportunity of sitting down and talking turkey, that, for me, it would really be a dream come true. I could tell that he believed I meant what I said: that I wasn’t interested in turning around and selling the place as a ten-floor pre-fab condo or miniature golf course, but all he’d say was ‘Okay, okay’ and go on about whatever he was doing.

  “I trusted him to do the right thing. I really believed he’d give me first option whenever the time came, and I just kept my nose to the grindstone and tried in any way I could to let him know I was there for him. The best option. I’m his right arm. Anticipate things without being told. Keep the tone of the place the way he likes it. The kitchen is superb. Someone who knows and loves the place, who understands what it means as a tradition in this burg. I actually thought I’d earned enough confidence and respect that he might give me the best possible price. Maybe even help me secure the business loan.” Terry paused and gave one of his quick generic grins. He leaned back in his chair and briefly considered his fingernails. “Silly me.

  “He called me into the office over at 26-A about three months ago. Very businesslike yet very fatherly. To let me know about his decision regarding the new management and investment group for both the restaurant and the bar. His embarrassment was obvious and excruciating. I can’t truthfully say that I cared. I was furious. He reassured me three times that everyone was pleased with my management skills and liked having me at the bar and that no one wanted me to leave.