by Alison Lurie
Of course, he needn’t have been deliberately hired to produce a tax loss. Not conscious financial calculation of waste, but mismanagement of a larger, more unconscious sort, might be the explanation of what had happened. Nutting’s hiring him was another example of Watson’s Law: it was the expensive public manufacture of nothing; the vaguely deliberate consumption of time, energy, intelligence, knowledge, and money, with no result—no product.
But there was a product: his history. It was a good job, a goddamned serious, careful piece of work. At least, that was what Paul had thought when he handed it in. He would have liked to recheck this opinion, but at present all three copies of the history had disappeared into the administrative offices; nothing remained but these scattered notes and scraps. Angry, he brushed his hand across the desk, and flakes of paper fell to the floor on all sides, some dropping directly, some drifting and gliding downwards like withering leaves.
He looked up, and his eyes registered the picture of the Universal Data Processor, or UnDat, which in a more light-hearted mood he had affixed to his wall. The large green and silver machine, with its wide chrome mouth into which unwanted classified materials could be inserted for speedy and complete destruction, seemed to be smiling at him greedily. Fred Skinner’s recommendation had been adopted, and the twin of this machine was now installed at N.R.D.C., down by the air-conditioning plant. Had it already eaten his history?
Or perhaps it was smiling at the pretty girl who stood leaning sexily against its shiny bulk, one arm about its shoulders. She was an attractive piece, no doubt about that. As he had noticed before, she somewhat resembled Ceci, with her dark yellow hair, snub nose, and Irish kitten’s face. But, in that case, who was her companion? For a moment he saw himself as another kind of UnDat: another 9K investment of the Nutting Research and Development Corporation whose function was to process unwanted and obsolete materials, embraced by an anonymous California blonde.
Twisting and tilting, Beverly Glen Boulevard rose into the hills above Westwood. Paul’s Ford climbed the curves under protest; he kept having to shift back into second and even into first.
“Damn this heap,” he exclaimed to Ceci. “I’m going to sell it and get a decent car. An MG maybe ... or maybe a Jag,” he added, as one behind them, growing impatient, swerved out into the other lane and passed the whole crawling line of cars, accelerating uphill with a scornful roar.
The canyon was very narrow: though it was barely past three o’clock, it was half in deep shadow. The houses clung close to either side of the road, crowding together under the tattered trees. Slopes of rock, scrub bushes, and ground creepers rose up steeply behind them.
Paul was taking Ceci out into the country. Because, after all, where else were they going to go? He was determined not to use his own house again, and her pad was still overrun with Mexicans—more so, even, for now Tomaso’s cousin, an owlish, talkative Latin named Roberto Nuovomo, had arrived.
Earlier this week, Ceci—finally giving in to what she called Paul’s hang-up on hiding things—had sent the whole lot of Mexicans down to the beach one morning, so they could have her place to themselves. At first it had been just as good as before. But afterwards, lying beside Ceci while she slept, Paul kept staring up at that mural on the bedroom ceiling. Once he had thought it exotically romantic; now he began to imagine that Ceci’s husband had painted it there on purpose to make people uncomfortable. Walter Wong was up there somehow, watching everything they did, in the shape of a scarlet lizard, or the dog with the body of a toaster—it looked sort of Chinese, with its scraggy Airedale’s beard. Or maybe he was the bird-man—who, Paul noticed for the first time, had a tremendous erection. Anyhow, he was there; and all the others were his friends or familiars. Paul began to wish Ceci would put out the lights like his other girls.
But it wasn’t only that: he wanted to go to the country for its own sake. For him love had begun out of doors; he had many warm distant memories of summer fields and hedgerows in the outer suburbs of Columbus; then later, during college, of wooded glens in Belmont where the sunlight was sprinkled in patterns through the trees, and the grassy banks of remote streams in Concord and Lincoln. How he had liked to take off his clothes and feel part of the landscape! He wanted to get back to that state of innocent delinquency. And who that he had ever known would be a better companion there than Ceci, who so loved to take off her clothes?
Besides, he was concerned about the state of their affair. At first, and for a long time, it had become more and more passionate and engrossing; maybe finally too engrossing. But now Paul felt that the tide was ebbing. It had receded almost too far, and he wanted to hold it back. A year of his life had been turned into nothing by N.R.D.C.—but his coming to Los Angeles was not wholly a loss, because he had found Ceci there. The scene this morning with Howard Leon had made him feel used, and unreal; now he wanted to fling himself onto the real Ceci, onto grass, onto earth.
It made no difference, in a way, that she hadn’t been able to comprehend what had happened to him that morning. From her point of view any gig was a drag: the less you had to sweat, the better deal it was. It was pretty obvious, she said, that Paul could get away with murder; like today, saying he was going up to U.C.L.A. to do some research, and then just walking out. And look at the bread he was making! Of course, if they had really fired him that would have been a downer, but they hadn’t, so what was his hang-up? Ceci said she didn’t see what he was griping about. She was in an off mood today, touchy: but once they got out into the country, that would change.
“I thought you were going to take over Kelly’s dragster from Walter,” Ceci remarked.
With difficulty, Paul came back to the conversation. “Oh,” he replied. “Oh, that. I guess not.” He wondered again whether he should tell Ceci what Steve Tyler had said to him—with reluctance, for after all Wong was his friend—“Hey, better stay away from Kelly’s car. Walter’s been cannibalizing it.” The term was unfamiliar; in the moment before he understood it, Paul saw Walter Wong sitting on the front fender of Kelly’s dragster, eating pieces of the engine.
Why shouldn’t he let Ceci know that her husband was trying to cheat him, taking out the vital parts of the Ford and, he supposed, exchanging them for broken-down parts of other automobiles? But he decided to let it pass. It might make her mood worse. Besides, now that he had given up the fantasy of living in Venice, all those dragsters looked like teen-age jokes. He was too old for such a car; he didn’t want Ceci to try to find him another one.
Around the next curve the houses stopped. The bare, steep banks of the road, unwatered, were suddenly dry instead of green. The waste ground was bright with real estate signs: Glen-View Estates to be Erected Here. Level Exclusive Homesites! For Information Regarding This Desirable Property Call ...
Now they were at the top of the range of hills. Ahead of them, blurred by smog, was the San Fernando Valley. Paul turned off onto Mulholland Drive; this was a narrow road along the crest of the mountains, badly paved, twisting and turning around heaps of earth and rock, skirting sheer cliffs of mud. The long dry grass and sparse grayish weeds which grew beside the road erupted at intervals into tufts of wild flowers: yellow, white, even brilliant red.
Paul’s spirits rose. “Well, how d’you like this?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s nice.”
“Look at those flowers! We’re really getting into the country now.”
He began to drive more slowly, searching for an uninhabited side road. They passed houses that had been recently completed, houses under construction, and more real estate signs. Paul began to be aware that they were losing a lot of time.
Well, here; maybe this would do. He turned uphill to the right. The springs of the Ford squeaked angrily as it jolted over the dust and stones, around a sharp corner. Now there was a view: below, to their left, the mountain was being sliced into like a loaf cake, for “development.” The flowers and brush on the slopes had been bulldozed away, and flat rectangular lots, dirty b
rown, were aligned one above another along a curve of roadbed, marked out with sticks and string and red rags.
His first thought was that they should turn back and look for another place. But it was getting late. The construction site was empty, anyhow: the tractors and graders and dump trucks stood motionless down the hill; the workmen had gone home. And the other side of their road was undisturbed. The chaparral grew high there, and in the ditch by the car were star-shaped white flowers. He turned off the engine.
“Hey! Let’s get out and walk.”
“Okay.” Ceci’s reply, though not as enthusiastic as his suggestion, was fairly agreeable.
Together, they started uphill along the dirt road, now only a track. After all, this landscape had its own kind of beauty, Paul thought. The smoky green and indigo of the hill behind the construction site, the intense blue sky, were exotic and interesting. The barren ground and the grayed foliage made the flowers seem much more miraculous than those back East—it was as if a swarm of fragile, bright butterflies had suddenly settled on a dead bush.
But round the next bend, with the trucks and bulldozers still in sight, the road ended in a trash pile: a heap of smashed bottles, cans, and dead sticks and leaves.
“Goddamn it,” Paul said. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to strike out across county.” Digging his feet into the sides of the bank, he climbed up it, releasing a small landslide of dirt and stones.
“You’re crazy,” Ceci said. But rather fondly.
“Yep. Come on.” He held out his hand; she took it, and he pulled her up the bank and into his arms. For the first time that day they really kissed. Her lips and tongue fluttered against his face. He would have liked to lay her down right here, but it was too close to the road.
“Hey.”
“What?” Ceci mumbled, kissing him under the chin.
“Come on.”
Crossing the waste ground was not easy. The sage put out stalks of brittle, whitish leaves to scratch them; and the sumac held them back with its woolly, awkward stems, and slapped their faces with clusters of faded red leaves. The larger scrub trees had thorns. The ground was dry, uneven, and stony; and each plant, bush, or tree was surrounded by an area of barren earth.
“Hey,” Ceci said. “Where’re we going to?”
Paul stopped. “Nowhere.” He turned and caught hold of her by her brown, bare arms, now marked with white scratches.
They kissed. “Oh hell,” Ceci whispered, rubbing herself against him. “I’m still so hot for you. Ah, goddamn it.”
“Let’s sit down,” Paul gasped. Crouching, he tried to clear a patch of ground; he broke off twigs and threw stones to one side. “Ceci. Come on.” He ran his hand up her warm, scratched brown leg.
“You want to do it here?”
“Yes.”
Ceci was bending down towards him; her breasts were heavy under the tight cotton jersey. Paul took hold and pulled her over, onto him.
“Ow! Paul, you’re flippy. We can’t make it here, right out in the open. I mean, anybody came along, they could see us.” She giggled.
It was true that though the field seemed to be grown over with an almost impassable network of coarse bushes, the foliage was so sparse that there was hardly cover enough for a dog. But Paul’s body was quivering with excitement; even the prospect of having to overcome Ceci’s reluctance, so rare for her, excited him. And if not here out in the country, where?
“Who cares?” Holding Ceci down, Paul began deliberately to do all the things that he knew aroused her most: he bit her neck, and forced his leg between her legs, dragging up her skirt, and rubbing against her curly mound of hair with his knee, so that she began to pant and cry out.
“Ah. Oh! ... Ah! All right; all right.”
He lifted her aside and as rapidly as he could began to pull off most of his clothes, kneeling in the dust. Ceci did the same. Paul spread their things hurriedly over the dirt and stones to make a kind of patchwork bed. He could not help, meanwhile, glancing over his shoulder to see if anyone were coming up the road. Cars going to the dump, construction workers, hikers, or whoever owned this property. Because at the very least they were trespassing; there was probably a city ordinance against what they were about to do. Somehow they had got out of Walden into “The Waste Land,” from private pastoral to public lust.
“Come on, huh?” As usual, Ceci, who wore many fewer clothes, was ready first.
“Just a moment.” Paul took off his shorts, and then, rather self-consciously, pulled a piece of gold wire off one finger. It was his wedding ring, the result of an elaborate ceremony nearly four years ago. Sentimentally, or superstitiously, he always took it off before he did anything he had promised then not to do. He put the ring into a pocket of his jacket. Then, shutting his eyes, he fell upon Ceci.
“This bed’s pretty hard,” Ceci said presently, breaking the silence that follows climax. “Wow, my back.”
“My knees,” Paul replied, echoing her joking tone, and thus tacitly accepting this excuse for what had been as intense, but not exactly as protracted as it might have been. It was true that his knees were sore; one of them, he noticed, was even bleeding a little. This made him feel better, because it proved how much he had been able to forget himself in nature; but worse in that it proved how hostile this particular nature was.
The hazy white spot of the sun was dropping towards the tops of the scrub thorn-trees. “Well.” He stood up, glanced around the field again (still no one in sight) and began to put on his clothes, which wasn’t easy here with nothing to lean on or sit on except sharp branches. His undershorts, his shirt, his pants, his socks, his shoes; everything was wrinkled and smudged with dust.
“Look at that,” he complained to Ceci, holding up the dust-streaked jacket of his olive-green Dacron suit.
“Yeah, me too.” Ceci grinned, showing her skirt. “Looks like we’ve been rolling on the ground or something,” she said, leaning affectionately against him.
“Your clothes aren’t so bad.” Paul brushed and slapped at his jacket. Why hadn’t they brought a blanket from the car, or even some newspapers? He shook the jacket angrily in the air. Then he remembered something, and put his hand unobtrusively into the inside pocket. His wedding ring was not there. He felt all round the pocket; then he felt around the other pockets of the jacket. Then he looked down at the ground.
“What’re you looking for?” Ceci asked.
“Uh. My ring,” he muttered unwillingly. “I put it in my jacket, but it must have fallen out.” He felt through his pockets again. “It must be here somewhere.”
Ceci said nothing. She stood waiting, making no effort to help, while Paul bent and then knelt on the stony ground, turning over gravel and disturbing leaves and twigs in a widening circle.
“Can’t you find it?” she said presently.
“I’ve got to find it.” Paul shuffled a heap of dead vegetation. He searched in his shirt pockets, and partly lifted a decaying branch.
“Is it that important?”
“Well, in a way.” Paul’s first impulse when he felt attacked was to compromise, but he corrected himself. “Yes, it’s important.” Ceci was looking at him; he went on. “I don’t mean it’s valuable. It just means something.” He stooped again to the dust and brittle leaves. After a moment, Ceci bent down too, but only to read his watch.
“Hey; it’s quarter to five,” she said. “I’ll be late. Come on.” Paul shook his head. “You can get yourself another one.”
“I cannot,” he replied crossly.
“C’mon,” Ceci coaxed, leaning against his shoulder and impeding his movements. “Forget it. It doesn’t mean all that much. It’s just a thing, and anyhow, you’re not even making it with her.”
“How do you know that?” Paul asked, looking up. His face was hot and marked with dust, and he spoke without thinking.
“Why, you told me so,” Ceci sounded surprised. “Didn’t you?”
Too late, Paul realized what he was getting into. But h
e was too irritated, as well as too straightforward, for deliberate deception.
“No.”
“Sure you did, too. Right at the beginning.”
“You must have misunderstood me. I never said anything like that.” Ceci’s eyes began to dilate, her mouth opened, and she took half a step back. “Maybe you assumed it,” he said more gently.
Paul started to stand up, but before he could rise very far Ceci hit him in the head with her handbag. “Ow!” he exclaimed, and toppled over sideways into a coarse, prickly bush. She hit him again, less accurately now because there were branches in the way. “For Christ’s sake!”
“You shit!” Ceci shouted. “You cheap, lying, two-timing shit!” She burst into angry tears.
Paul picked himself out of the bush. The sharp twigs clung to his clothes; he stood up, trailing shreds of Dacron suiting. He moved cautiously towards Ceci, one arm advanced to put round her shoulders, the other to ward off further blows.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Ceci did not raise her bag again; it hung limply to the ground. But she jerked aside from his touch.
“All this time!” she gasped. “Mother of God, all this time you’ve been shucking me. What a bring-down!”
“You don’t understand.” Paul did not attempt to hold Ceci again, but sort of swayed towards her. “What’s between me and Katherine has nothing to do with us. It’s a completely different kind of thing; it’s not really physical. We don’t really make love very often. And anyhow, that side of it isn’t very important. I mean, well. I don’t enjoy it very intensely physically.”
If it were possible to make the situation worse, he had done so.
