by Cora Brent
“Oscar,” she says.
A weird sense of foreboding rolls through him. He’d heard a noise. Not now, about ten minutes ago, as soon as they’d come through the front door. He hadn’t even registered it at the time. He registers it now.
“Fuck,” he spits and heads for the door.
Even before he’s outside, before he rounds the corner of the building and looks out at the gravel clearing, he knows. The sounds could have been just the driver of the car departing. But it wasn’t.
The rest of the Savages are nowhere in sight but August is still there. August is ready to tell him what he doesn’t even need to hear.
“Your mother,” August says.
“I know,” Oscar answers in a hollow voice.
“She left.”
“I know,” Oscar repeats.
It seems that August wants to explain. He shifts and runs a palm over his sweaty forehead. Oscar notices that he suffers from a slight tremor in his right hand. “Mina’s exhausted. She went somewhere she can get some rest. Somewhere she can get some help. She wants you to spend the summer here, among family.” August moves to pat Oscar’s shoulder but his hand falls away as soon as his palm brushes Oscar’s shirt.
“She’s coming back,” says Oscar. He says it because he really wants it to be true.
“Of course she is,” August nods. “She’ll be back at the end of the summer. In the meantime, you have a home here with us.” He gives Oscar a curious, pitying look before turning away and disappearing into the house.
Oscar stares at a cloud of dust in the distance. It gathers particles of the desert floor to its side and spins for a few seconds in a perfect funnel formation. Then, just as abruptly, it widens and evaporates.
“You hungry?”
It’s Ren. She followed him and she’s standing at his side.
Exhaustion, August had said. Addiction. Anguish. Mental breakdown. Oscar has never spent too much time trying to puzzle out Mina Savage. It’s always been impossible. She’s been running from herself for so long. Why did she drag him into her world in the first place? Maybe he filled some lonely spot in her heart. Maybe she needed another human being who needed her in some way.
Ren moves closer to him. He can hear the kind sympathy in her voice. “Lita can’t cook for shit. I’m making barbecued chicken wings.” She touches his elbow. Gently, like she’s unsure whether it’ll crack like eggshells between her fingertips.
He looks down at her and has no thoughts about how good it would feel to get her naked. He only thinks what a relief it is to drop the fucking façade of Oscar Savage. The tough guy, the callous heartbreaker, the owner of a name he didn’t earn.
“I’ll help you,” he says.
She raises her eyebrows. She’s pleased though. “You can cook?”
“No. Teach me.”
“All right. I will.”
And so he follows her lead toward the house. They share a glance. Her brown eyes are full of curiosity and kindness. Oscar couldn’t say what his own eyes might show. The shock of Mina’s abandonment has already receded. This won’t be his dream summer but he’s okay with being here. Ren’s shoulder brushes his accidentally and he’s glad she’s here. On one of life’s more fucked up occasions it means a little something to find a friend.
CHAPTER SIX
REN
Sometimes I think about how nice it must have been in the old days.
Not the horse-drawn carriage, shitting-in-the-backyard kind of old days.
Just a few decades back, before the perpetual intrusion of modern technology.
Don’t want to hear about something? Turn off the television.
Don’t want to read it? Close the newspaper.
Avoid grocery stores and their tabloid-littered checkout stands.
Leave the radio off in the car.
Ignore the phone. Allow it to ring and ring until the caller’s ears bleed from the sound of silence.
Voila. Ignorance. Bliss.
It’s not so easy anymore.
When I reach reflexively for my phone before I’m fully awake a vague alarm hums somewhere in my fuzzy brain. Too late. Along with everyone else in my generation I’m accustomed to checking on the state of the world before I brush my teeth. My eyes have already caught the top newsfeed headline, along with the first three lines of the article.
“Savage Family Values: In yet another naked attempt to capitalize on celebrity bad behavior, the troubled Savage family is joining the reality television circus. Famed only for their genetic link to dead Hollywood stars, this current generation represents the worst-“
I do not click on the article. I do not need to. Over the last few weeks I’ve plodded through at least a dozen similar ones, summarized as follows: The talentless remnants of a famed family have sold their pride and their privacy to Vogel Television Productions. Premiering this September, the cast of Born Savages present themselves for your mockery and contempt every Wednesday night at 8 pm.
A flutter of dread wanders through my belly. It’s become a familiar companion lately, along with an eerie sense that I am standing on the spot next in line to be struck by lightening.
Because I always had trouble with sidelong glances and chronic whispers I left my casino job the day after the press release broke. For the most part I’ve been holed up in my apartment and engaged in a repetitive loop of Netflix programming.
It’s really not as sad as it sounds.
Unless the situation involves crouching before your MacBook; un-showered, withered bologna sandwich in hand while episodes of The Walking Dead swallow up time.
Yeah, I just might have become a little pathetic.
I’m all packed. The apartment is being sublet to a seasonal Cirque du Soleil acrobat for the next two months. I’m wondering if anyone in Gary’s circle will whine about my wardrobe. I have jeans. I have t-shirts. I have two pairs of expensive shoes that were gifted by sympathetic designer ages ago, a trusty old pair of brown cowboy boots, and three pairs of everyday Converse. I am aware that if a gene responsible for fashion sense exists, it seems to have skipped me.
The knock on the door comes just when it should. I’ve been sitting on the edge of the futon with my legs pressed together for the last fifteen minutes awaiting the sound.
The man standing on the other side resembles a mole that has been thrust into unfamiliar sunlight. He blinks at me. Then he attempts a crooked grin.
“Loren Savage,” he says cheerfully as if we are old friends.
With a grunt he shifts a thick strap from his shoulder and cringes as the attached heavy camera equipment lands on the floor with a thud. “I’m Rash. I’m sure Gary explained everything to you already.” He extends a thick hand.
Despite my better judgment silently warning that I ought to think twice about skin contact with anyone nicknamed ‘Rash’, I shake his hand. He smiles, exposing a row of teeth the size and hue of corn kernels.
“Nice to meet you,” I say and withdraw my hand. My voice is robotic. I still haven’t budged from the doorway.
Rash’s mud colored eyes attempt to sweep beyond my door-hogging post and into the apartment. “What do you say we set up here for a brief interview before heading out on the road?”
“An interview?” I’m caught off guard. The way it was explained to me, the camera man, this Rash person, will accompany me on my journey to Atlantis in order to capture my homecoming in all its glory.
However, no one said a word about a pre-departure interview. I would have remembered.
I clear my throat. “Actually I’m ready to head out now. If we’re going to get there by evening we should really get moving.”
Rash glances at his watch, or pretends to. “We’ve got time.”
“No,” I argue. “We don’t.”
Rash steps back and surveys me. There’s no hint on his face about what’s going on in his head, but I would guess that he’s wondering just how difficult I plan on being. After a long moment he nods to himself and shrugs. �
��All right. You’re the boss.”
“Actually I’m not. But thank you for the gesture.” I retreat inside and grab a suitcase in each hand while Rash quietly observes me. “My Civic isn’t very roomy. Hope all your equipment is more portable than it appears at first glance.”
“Loren,” he says in a fatherly voice. “Look, I’m not your enemy. I understand the lens can be intimidating at first and I won’t switch the camera on until you’re ready.”
I stare at him for a minute. The man appears heartfelt but he’s on Gary Vogel’s payroll. His job involves gathering footage that may be edited into something interesting, decadent, controversial or any combination thereof. Gary Vogel’s shows do not tend to be placid documentaries about earnest people living ordinary lives. Not for the first time I wonder how I’m going to make it through these next few months.
“I appreciate that. I won’t hold you to it though. You have a job to do and so do I. So let’s get on with it.”
I’ve already turned my back and started a last minute mental inventory of my belongings when Rash clears his throat. When I turn around he’s holding out a small black box with a wire attached to it. “Microphone,” he explains.
I accept his offering and turn it over in my hand a few times. It’s not heavy. I know it isn’t. Yet the weight of it in my hand is oppressive.
Rash deftly illustrates how the wireless lavalier microphone works. The end piece may be simply taped beneath my clothes for now.
“When we get to the set we’ll have Angel there,” he says. “Angel can show you a few common tricks for keeping the piece functional and unseen.” He holds up a roll of medical adhesive. “For the moment, just secure the transmitter beneath your blouse and keep the box in your back pocket.”
Rash works a few miracles and manages to get my luggage and his ponderous equipment packaged into my silver Civic. It’s a surreal feeling, driving out of Las Vegas beside a stranger and heading in the direction of possible infamy.
For his part, Rash does his best to make me feel comfortable. He chats lightly about his wife and teenage daughters back home in Los Angeles. His nickname has stuck since childhood due to frequent bouts of psoriasis. He does not ask me any questions, and for that I am grateful. Soon enough I won’t be able to avoid them, the questions. I won’t be able to dodge giving out answers.
There’s not much of a geographical distinction moving from the brown, dusty landscape of Nevada into the brown, dusty landscape of Arizona this time of year. Rains might have been more plentiful than usual over the spring because patches of wild greenery are visible beyond the shoulder of the Interstate.
We pause in the hardscrabble town of Kingman to gas up the car and grab some fast food for lunch. Rash speaks affectionately about his wife and how her vegan sensibilities would be outraged by the double patty hamburger in his hand
He doesn’t seem to mind that our conversations are largely one sided. He points to sparse ruins that glint far beyond the road, hints of places people once squatted before leaving for unknown reasons. Whether they were boom towns rising from the promise of gold, silver or copper, they were used and then forsaken.
I squint behind my sunglasses and try to ease the ache in my wrists by loosening my grip on the steering wheel. I feel it pressing on me with each passing mile; the memories, the expectations, the very visceral fear of becoming a national (hell, even an international) laughingstock. When I glimpse a battered sign for the town of Consequences my nerves begin to dance with one another beneath my skin.
Rash notices. “You all right there, Loren? You look a little shaky.”
“Not shaky. Sun’s getting to me. And please call me Ren.”
He unzips a black canvas case. “Well Ren, looks like we’re coming down the home stretch here.” He pauses, drums his fingertips against the canvas. “You mind if I record for a few minutes?”
I don’t answer. I’ve had weeks to prepare for this yet my insides are liquefying. Who the hell was I kidding? I can’t do this.
“Ren?” Now he’s concerned. He’s back to the fatherly voice, the one I imagine he uses when he’s trying to figure out his own daughters.
“Fine,” I manage to say. “It’s fine.”
Rash slips the camera out of the case. “Boss’ll have my ass if I don’t get something.”
“I know. It’s your job. Record away.”
I’d been imagining that when the camera was turned on, every inch of my skin would recoil. But it is surprisingly mundane, and painless.
“I assure you that once the first spell of self consciousness fades you don’t even feel them. You forget they are there. You forget you are acting.” – Margaret O’Leary
Years ago I was wandering the aisles of a used bookstore in a shadowy corner of L.A. and nearly tripped on a box of movie magazines from the 1950s. I sat right down and turned brittle pages, unsurprised to immediately find an interview with my fiery screen goddess grandmother. I memorized that quote on the spot.
From the time I could talk, Lita would drag me to readings and screen tests. She was a natural stage mother; ruthless, overbearing to the point of cruelty. She just needed an offspring to exercise her ambition on. I was never a good match for her goals. When shoved before the yawning maw of a black camera lens I stiffened. Whatever graceful qualities existed in those prior generations was lost on me. I’m no actor. I never will be.
“Tell me about where we are,” says Rash in a gentle voice.
My eyes don’t leave the road when I answer. “We are right outside the town of Consequences. Twenty miles from Atlantis.”
“Atlantis…” Rash prompts.
“Atlantis Star. Once a grand movie set synonymous with large scale western films, then the private retreat of the Savage family. It’s now just an exhausted has-been.” I grab my soda from the cup holder and take a long sip. The ice cubes have melted and the taste is flat. “It’s kind of like us I guess. But that wouldn’t be really accurate either. Becoming a has-been means something somewhere was accomplished. We’re never-been’s. That’s us.”
I hear myself talking and try to shut off the words. They were meant to sound casual, lighthearted, a simple rendition of history. Instead the more words that emerge the more bitter they become.
Rash says nothing when I close my mouth and concentrate on the road. He pans the camera over the dusty town of Consequences, aptly named when one of the area’s early residents was discovered to be a bank robber and murderer on the run from eastern justice. Rather than await due process, town vigilantes hung him from a cottonwood tree in the town square. The last time I was there, the stump of the ancient hanging tree remained as a ghoulish monument. I’m sure it still does.
Rash might sense my agitation. He doesn’t push me for the time being. Instead he busies himself with panning the lens over the landscape and does not bug me anymore. It’s nearly irrelevant anyway. We’re within a few miles of Atlantis. Soon there will be plenty to talk about and no getting away from it.
There are no signs that lead up to Atlantis. After all, it’s not a town, not a tourist attraction. It’s the crumbling refuge of an era, of a family. The old fake brothel is still the tallest building. Before I see anything else I see the sagging balcony adorned with the French-style wrought iron embellishments. The vertical wooden sign running down its side is all but illegible.
A memory suddenly surfaces as I follow the narrow dirt road that branches off from the asphalt. If you didn’t know exactly where the road was you might miss it.
The memory in question is six years old. We’d left Los Angeles before dawn. Lita produced copious hysterical tears and gave everyone a headache while August cheerfully piloted the Lexus deep into the neighboring state. Monty and Spence rode separately in an old pickup my father had purchased so they were spared five hours of our mother’s complaints. After a little while she stopped resembling anything coherent and sounded like the ‘Waa Waa Waa’ speak of Charlie Brown’s mother. Ava worriedly twisted her hair, r
ecently dyed blond, around her index finger and stared out the window. Brigitte watched movies on her laptop and ignored everyone. For my part, I was hard at work trying to process everything. I watched mile after mile of nothing pass by while my mother seethed and my father drowsily pointed out landmarks to a disinterested audience.
I’d been to Atlantis once before, when I was very small. My father had hauled us along for one of his frequent day trips to check on the place. All I could remember was that everything was sharp and hot. The grounds were lazily kept by a man August had hired to clean up once every few months.
Lita had nothing but contempt for the place. “Why the hell do you hang on to that godforsaken eyesore?” The real estate wasn’t worth much, never was. Perhaps it was just old fashioned sentimentality that caused my father to keep it. Or maybe he figured some day he would need it.
Whatever his reason, I know August Savage had high hopes when we crossed the desert that spring afternoon. He was sure he’d made a decision in the best interest of his children.
Maybe that’s why I can forgive him fairly easily while I will always feel like spitting nails over the mention of Lita. He wanted what was best for us. He just went about it the wrong way.
In the end my father must have been horribly disappointed by the way things turned out.
As I get closer to the smattering of tired buildings that are all that’s left of the Savage estate, I see unfamiliar vehicles, expensive ones. Leaning against the side of the crumbling church are a pair of cameraman who smoke cigarettes and laugh about something private. One is young, tanned, with a wisp of black hair hanging in his eyes. He carelessly pushes it back and I stop breathing. But then the man moves his head so that I can see his profile more clearly. It isn’t the face that haunts my dreams and squeezes my heart.
It isn’t him.
I’m glad. And then I’m not.
We’d been out here for over a year when he arrived, full of attitude and sexual confidence that fascinated me from the start. What happened between us was beautiful.
