Ten Days in the Hills

by Jane Smiley

  The task of dealing with those keys, of getting his car from wherever it was parked on Sunset back up the hill, of climbing in one of the windows of his house and finding spare keys in the mess, of being angry or not at Isabel for losing the keys, and angry or not at himself for not having spares ready to hand, these tasks awaited. Better, he thought, to pour a cup of coffee, take a few sips, listen to the ambient conversation, and see if the car situation righted itself on its own.

  In fact, the meeting had succeeded in driving from his mind his worries about Isabel. Or was it Isabel and Max? Or was it this new branch his relationship with Max had suddenly sprouted? If someone had told him in the course of the last year not only that he would find a project for Max, who hadn’t looked at a project in recent memory, but also that his long-ago relationship with Isabel would revive so suddenly, he would have laughed. He would have scoffed. Or, maybe, he would have prepared himself in some way.

  Stoney glanced at his watch. Almost two hours without thinking about it. A relief. It had been all very well, after dinner the night before, to tell Max that he was leaving everything up to Isabel. He didn’t mind appearing to be a passive schlemiel. A passive schlemiel was not only more or less what he actually was, it was also good cover for those times when he was not a passive schlemiel but had something more on the ball. Who was it? Some writer whose name he couldn’t remember, but a guy who interviewed lots of people and wrote long articles. Even though he couldn’t remember the name of the guy, he could perfectly remember his strategy in interviews, which was to play so dumb that the interviewee had to repeat himself over and over, always adding new details, and sometimes even getting angry or impatient with the obtuseness of this writer. But the articles he got out of this method were always better than the articles other people wrote, people who had a desire to appear smart. When had Stoney read about this? In high school or even junior high? It had been a revelation to him, that you could learn more by seeming to be a dork but keeping your eyes and ears open than you could by acting cool.

  Even so, in this case, the case of how he and Isabel were going to proceed, appearing to be or actually being a passive schlemiel conferred upon him only limited immunity. Isabel had gloried in their night in the Amber Room, staying up, reading all of the book with him, watching that weird animated movie and making love to him twice while it was going on, eating the fruit and biscotti that were in a bowl, drinking the champagne that someone had left for them, and in general treating the room like her private party. Fucking, pacing, reading, talking, laughing—the whole situation had excited her, and she had been very affectionate, exclaiming over his various parts (“I love the back of your neck, did you know that? I always have”; “Your hands are really beautiful, you know”; “I’ve always thought that your ass has a certain sassy charm”) in a way that made him nervous. Hadn’t he counted on Isabel to maintain the positive but skeptical (and, indeed, almost indifferent though friendly) view of him she had always displayed, to more or less anchor him in a world where you didn’t fall for anything, and most certainly didn’t fall for yourself? And yet, in the Amber Room last night, where he felt mysteriously uncomfortable, as if all the dark corners contained spiderwebs even though he knew they didn’t, she had expanded and charged up even while Stoney felt a growing sense of alarm at the way events were accelerating. Something dramatic was shaping up that seemed as though it was certainly going to threaten the colorless life he had been leading in which his dearest hope was that Max would do this movie and get this Russian money, and even that hope wasn’t terribly dear. His second-dearest hope was that his floors would be refinished in the next couple of weeks, and his third-dearest hope—well, there hadn’t actually been one of those, though now that his car was parked down on Sunset somewhere, he was growing a bit anxious about getting it back. That car was usually not far from where he himself was planted at any given moment, and so it made him anxious, or nervous, or disoriented, or something like that to think that the car was far away and yet not in the custody of the Jaguar dealer.

  Max said, “I guess that’s that, then.”

  “In a way,” said Stoney, “only in a way,” and he looked Max right in the eye—as difficult as that was now that he had ruminated again upon not only the changes in their relationship, but also the fact that Max as yet didn’t know what those changes were—but he was rewarded when Max gave him a little smile and a very little nod, as if to say, Okay, okay.

  Everyone got up, pushed his chair back, and stretched a bit. There were grunts. Stoney heard Max say he was going for a swim. Paul said he had been for a swim—the water was very refreshing. Al and Sergei conferred about something in Russian. Simon paused and picked up a magazine—Stoney couldn’t see which one it was. Max asked Simon if he had taken his car to the Jiffy Lube, but Stoney didn’t hear his reply. The group went out the door of the My Fair Lady library and spread into the tapestried entry hall. The front door was open, and sunlight fell through it in a bright triangular block that stripped all color from the rug there and said to Stoney, Come out, come out. He muttered to Max, “Are we going to talk?”

  Max shrugged and said, “We’ve talked enough for the time being,” but he didn’t say it dismissively. They both knew the promise was that Max wasn’t saying no just this very minute, that at least for another two or three days, while they were ensconced at Mike’s place, the project was alive. Stoney looked up and saw Charlie coming down the elaborate staircase. He looked ill, or exhausted, but he was wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and black-and-white running shoes with small white socks. As Stoney looked up at him, he looked down at the three Russians.

  “What time is it?” said Simon.

  “Eleven-twenty,” said the voice of Joe Blow.

  “I think you told me there is a handball court?” said Simon.

  “There is,” said Mike, and Stoney saw Mike and Simon cock their heads at one another and grin. They turned toward the kitchen.

  Max said, “Hey, Chaz, did you miss breakfast?”

  Charlie said, “I had some sorting to do. It took a while.” Then he glanced at the Russians. Max shrugged. Charlie turned, suddenly perky, and trotted back up the stairs. Max said, “Uh-oh.”

  Joe Blow said, “We will be serving lunch by the pool at one.”

  What will I do until one? thought Stoney, languidly, as he glided toward the front door and out into the sunshine. It was Monday. He should call the office, but why go in? Hadn’t he done a nice piece of work already? He knew what he should do, of course—he should go get his car and find the keys, and generally take responsibility—but now that Jerry had come into him and then left him again, he felt used up, though in a nice way. There were other movies to watch. Mike had different collections in different rooms all over the house. In addition to that, he couldn’t say that he had exhaustively explored the grounds and the aviary, not to mention the garage and what could easily be an interesting car collection—Joe Blow hadn’t mentioned that, but this was L.A. Everyone in L.A. who collected paintings also collected cars. He went down the front steps and walked toward the aviary across Mike’s pavers, set in an elaborate pattern of interlocking arches. He took note of Mike’s Bentley. Next to it was Charlie’s bright-yellow rental, and beside that, Zoe’s silver Mercedes. She had the back door open, and she was looking under the passenger’s seat for something.

  Right then, without at first distinguishing it, he heard the rumble of a large engine approaching on the other side of the avenue of eucalyptuses, and then the blue-and-yellow curves of the large front end of some kind of truck appeared. Zoe’s head popped up. Stoney noticed that. Then he noticed the words “Sunset Towing,” and after that the long bed of the tow truck and on it something red. Oh, yes, he thought for the very smallest moment, and then, as the truck slowed to a halt, he saw a thing he had never imagined in his whole life, Jerry’s red Jaguar, windows and headlights smashed, and the finish keyed in long strokes from front to back.

  Zoe’s voice said, “Oh, S
toney! What happened?” and Max’s voice said, “What’s going on?,” but for the life of him he did not know.

  DAY NINE • Tuesday, April 1, 2003

  Simon thought that there was still a chance they could get caught by Joe Blow, even though they were back behind one of the sofas in what amounted to the living room but here was called “the salon,” which made him think of a beauty parlor, but actually was a hotel-lobby-like space with a bar at one end. If he were to lift his head over the back of the sofa (but of course he was in no position to do so), he would see the stars and the moon through the giant arched true-divided-light window at the other end, and the lawn falling away to the dark trees below. Right above him, where he had just been fellated by Monique, was a huge painting by a Russian artist named Kramskoy. The painting was of a large green-gold field under a blue sky. Near some birches in the corner were a woman, children, and a small dog. It was entitled Sofya Andreyevna Tolstoy Taking a Walk with Three of Her Children. Simon, who had no idea how to read Russian, knew this because he had asked Joe Blow about the painting during dinner. Joe Blow had said that it was a great unknown piece of art by a famous artist who had also done a portrait of the woman’s husband. Joe Blow suspected that Kramskoy had done this painting while at the Tolstoys’ estate, even though there was no record of his doing so. Personally, Joe Blow said he preferred this composition to the famous portrait of the novelist, for the very reason that the figures were so small and seemingly ordinary. “But look,” he had said, “how they are having fun. The dog especially is enjoying himself.” All of the figures were dappled by the thin shade of the birch leaves. When you looked at them, you wanted to squint your eyes and try to see them more clearly. It was a mysterious and alluring effect. Simon liked the painting very much, but that was not the reason that Monique had been giving him a blow job underneath it, or the reason that he had performed the same operation simultaneously upon Marya. And it had only just turned midnight; there was no guaranteee that the rest of the household was asleep, or even in their rooms for the night, which was probably the reason the three of them were behind the couch in the salon. Simon’s fine appreciation for the pleasurable dangers of possibly getting caught doing sexual things seemed to be shared by Monique and Marya more than by any other girls he knew.

  Marya reached over the back of the couch, pulled down a needlework pillow, and placed it under his head. The three of them then settled back, not too uncomfortably, really, on the Oriental carpet. The girls nestled against him. It was kind of cozy. The house was warm, and they were still naked. He bent his knees and put his feet flat on the rug. Marya bent her knees and tucked them under his. That was better.

  “He hated sex,” said Monique.

  “Who?” said Marya.

  “Tolstoy,” said Monique.

  “Who was that?” said Simon.

  “Leo Tolstoy,” said Marya. “He was a great Russian novelist.”

  “You mean the husband of that lady in the painting?” said Simon. There was a lot of information that he had passed on acquiring. His mother still told a story about how, when he was six, she had asked him why he thought people celebrated Christmas, and it had turned out after several questions that he didn’t know who Jesus was. He said, “I like that painting.” He felt he could say this with conviction and authority, because he was a graphic-arts major.

  “Kramskoy,” said Monique in a clear voice. The lights above the painting came up.

  “I know,” said Simon. “Joe Blow told me about it.”

  “I’m not telling you the painter’s name,” said Monique. “Each of the paintings in the room is programmed to light up individually. Those two over there are both by Ivan Shishkin, so you have to say”—she lowered her voice to a whisper so the paintings wouldn’t hear—“‘Ivan’ for the one by the door and ‘Shishkin’ for the one by the window.”

  “Tolstoy hated sex,” said Monique. “I read one of his books once. I thought it was going to be about music, but it was about a man who kills his wife because he thinks she is cheating on him. Really, he’s already looking for a reason to kill her, because he’s ashamed of having sex and thinks that even married people should have as little sex as possible. Of course”—she gestured toward the painting—“he got her pregnant over and over, and they had thirteen children.”

  “In the book?” said Marya.

  “No, in his life,” said Monique. “And on their honeymoon, he showed her his diaries about all the whores he’d slept with before he married her.”

  “Can you imagine?” said Marya.

  “She was the one who wrote all his books out longhand. And I’m talking about thousands of pages. I mean, have you ever had one of those boyfriends who, the more you do what they want, the more they actually can’t stand you?” said Monique.

  “Remember that guy Lukacz?” replied Marya.

  “That Hungarian?” said Monique.

  Simon felt Marya nod against his chest. “Lukacz, who said he was a gastroenterology medical student? I don’t think he really was. I think he worked in a Kinko’s on Sunset, because I was walking past there once, and I looked in the window, and there he was behind the counter, and when he saw me looking at him, he bent down and pretended to be putting some things away. I watched him for a minute, but I didn’t go in.”

  “I would have gone in,” said Monique.

  “He was like that, though,” said Marya. “‘Put your coat on. Button your blouse. Order the chicken, not the steak. We are going to see Nightmare on Elm Street.’ I did what he said, and he praised me and told me he loved me, but then he talked to all of his friends in front of me about how women have no ideas of their own and never do anything original, and the whole time he was stroking my thigh under the table. I think he thought he was turning me on, because then he would give me this secret smile, like we shared something.”

  “Was he?” said Simon. “Was he turning you on, I mean?”

  “Simon is still here,” said Monique. The two girls cuddled closer to him, and Marya began stroking the hair on his chest.

  “Well,” said Marya, “I was turned on, but not by that. He was just good-looking. That’s enough for a while.”

  “I do remember that guy,” said Monique. “He looked like Colin Farrell.”

  “That was the first thing I noticed about him when I met him and the last thing I missed when he was gone.”

  “Do you have boyfriends now?” said Simon.

  “Do we?” said Marya.

  “I don’t think we can say that we do,” said Monique.

  “The only men around are Joe and Raph and the gardeners,” said Marya. “Joe and Raph are gay, and the gardeners are Mexican.” She sounded as if these disadvantages were equal and equally self-evident.

  “Listen to this,” said Monique, and then she began to speak rapidly in what sounded to Simon like Russian. Simon said, “Hey! Be polite.” He gave Monique a pinch on the ass, and her ass felt good to the pinch, not hard but full of tensile strength. She laughed and said, “Ouch! I was just telling Marya about our friend Svetlana, who was here before. I’m afraid she’s come to a bad end.”

  Marya giggled.

  “I want to know,” said Simon.

  “Well, Svetlana came with me from France, and the whole time we were on the plane to L.A., she talked about how she was going to be discovered for the movies because she was so beautiful. She thought it would happen the first week. She said she would always remember me and be my friend no matter what happened to her, because she was the sort of person who remembered her humble beginnings—”

  “In a town on the Volga, no less!” exclaimed Marya.

  “—even though she was so beautiful.”

  “What did she look like?” asked Simon.

  “She looked like Britney Spears,” said Marya.

  “But there already is one of those!” exclaimed Monique. The two girls laughed. “By the time we’d been here a month, and no stardom, she was beside herself,” Monique continued, “
and then, one day, she was shopping in Gelson’s and a man came up to her and discovered her! He said he was a producer of Christian films, and he wanted her to be in his new movie. But she had to join his church. It was some storefront church somewhere, but this was fine with her, because she thought that she would have stardom and salvation at the same time, and it seemed like she couldn’t lose, and so she told Joe Blow that she was going to be in a movie, and she gave notice. She left here, and the man found her an apartment, where supposedly she was an inspiration to him while he worked on the script. She went to his church every Sunday and Wednesday, and that was the last thing we heard of her, but she called me today, Marya, and she said that she had witnessed a miracle, and the miracle was going to be in the movie. She was very excited.”

  “What was the miracle?” asked Simon.

  “I can guess,” said Marya.

  “This man, I think his name is Roger Something—”

  “No doubt,” said Simon. “In English, ‘Roger’ is a slang word for ‘fuck.’”

  “I never heard that before. So, a few days ago, she was with Roger at the church, and she started nagging him about the movie, and he told her to shut up and gave her a hard time, and she flounced out and was going to try to get Joe to give her her job back. Then, Thursday, Roger came to her apartment and went down on his knees and said that a very strange thing had happened in the night—the angel Gabriel had come to him and reprimanded him and beaten him with a stick! And he had some bruises on his shoulders and his back, supposedly from this beating. He said that the angel Gabriel wanted to come to her in the body of a man and pay homage to her beauty. She was very excited. So, that first day, he said that she could name the man whose body the angel Gabriel would make use of, and so she said, ‘Matthew McConaughey,’ and Roger said okay and went away.

  “The next day, Roger came back to her apartment and said that the angel Gabriel had visited him again in the night, and had said that it would be better for her if he visited Svetlana in the body of Roger. However, he promised that Roger himself would know nothing of the visit. His body would be there, but his mind would be replaced by that of the angel—”