The Book of Lies

by Felice Picano

  ‘That’s just it. Now it’s all tied up with the Purples.’

  ‘I mean … I know you want to do this thesis on Len and the Purples. But you don’t want to be Len, do you, by any chance.’

  I must have looked flabbergasted, because he went on.

  ‘The reason I ask is that you evince such an interest in him, I won’t say an unhealthy interest, or even a morbid interest, but you have to admit an interest, maybe an obsession that it is to say, at the very least, a bit Hollywoodish.’

  ‘I have been living in Hollywood. I don’t get …’

  ‘Hollywoodish in that noir sense. You know, the unnatural obsession to know absolutely everything about the deceased. What was that film? Films. Were there more than one?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I answered. I knew the film he meant: Laura. ‘As for what I want, as you asked it. I suppose I’d like to be … well, if it isn’t too much to want to be, like Dr St George! You know, to teach young people literature – that’s what I’m doing this summer and really enjoying it. And at the same time to write about writers. And who knows, maybe to get to know one well, as he has. To be connected in some way. As he’s managed to do.’ I let it drift. ‘I know I could never be Len Spurgeon,’ I began to defend myself. ‘I know very well …’

  ‘That’s just my point,’ Axenfeld interrupted. ‘You could! You could be Len! Don’t you understand? Oh, not the Len who lived from, when was it? 1948 to 1991? But an even better Len. Smarter. More personable. More Len than he was himself. Because now you’ve got the gifts of knowledge and of hindsight, you can do Len right! To do him better than he ever could, poor thing, not knowing what in the hell would make him stand forth, never mind what would happen to sidetrack him!’

  My mouth must have hung open at this outburst. I didn’t have a clue how to answer him. He was speaking about something that lay in the realm of the metaphysical, and was simply beyond me. At the same time, I wasn’t anxious to let him know how far beyond me he’d gone, lest I seem even more of a naïf than he’d doubtless already judged me. How could I be Len, I wondered, since my times were so different? There was no young group of genius gay writers to influence as he had. His era had been unique and unprecedented, hadn’t it? Not to be repeated? So how could I possibly … I kept wondering what it was I was missing in what he was saying. It had to be more. Yet what? I simply couldn’t reach it. So, instead, I picked up my coffee and began to sip.

  After a minute, Axenfeld must have recognized my inability to comprehend, to meet him as an equal. He said, ‘Forget that. Forget everything I’ve said.’

  More awkward silence ensued. I was terrifically embarrassed, even humiliated. At last I ventured, ‘I’d better get going. Thank you for everything.’ He mumbled something inaudible and went outside to his begonias.

  Once I’d brushed my teeth and showered and changed and packed and was at the car, I had another thought. ‘By the way, the fax I was expecting … It didn’t by any chance …?’

  ‘Yes. It came while you were still asleep.’ Axenfeld turned to the toolshed and lifted out a manila envelope and handed me the sheets of single-spaced manuscript. I had to wonder if he’d planned to keep it back unless I’d specifically asked for it. ‘As you thought, it is substantial.’

  I looked at it and it was all I could do to hold myself back from immediately reading it, pouring the pages out of the envelope and reading them right there, leaning against the rented Tiburon. I resisted the impulse, not wanting the last thing I did in Axenfeld’s presence to be anything that would detract from him. I slid it into the outside pocket of my laptop bag, shook his hands, waved goodbye, drove off.

  An hour later, at the airport, settled and awaiting my plane, I at last was able to open the envelope and settle in to read.

  It was Harve’s idea to take the Cable Car up Mount San Jacincto. Everyone agreed on that afterwards … after everything that happened.

  They were driving along Interstate Highway #10 on their way to Palm Springs, car windows open, their faces and hair lightly buffeted by the summery breezes of an uncommonly warm late February day. They had just passed the turnoff for Beaumont and the until-then straight highway had concluded a wide curve south when the chocolate-brown mountain hove into view, rising out of an undistinguished ochre plain, a drowsy giant commanding the entire prospect outside the right windows of Theo’s Volkswagen Beetle.

  Harve commenced to whine. ‘C’mon, Theo. We don’t have to be in Cathedral City any special time. It’s only fifteen minutes up the mountain and fifteen down. We’ll go up. Have a drink and come right down. Dale and Tony said it’s a terrific ride. You promised we could go next time we were here.’

  ‘We have a guest, Harve. What if Paul’s claustrophobic?’ Theo asked, serenely self-assured behind the opalescent plastic steering wheel.

  ‘Are you claustrophobic?’ Harve turned around in his seat to ask. ‘Anyway, it’s not that small a cable car. And it’s surrounded by windows on all sides. Floor-to-ceiling windows at times. Please say yes.’

  ‘The question,’ Paul clarified, ‘is not whether I’m claustrophobic, but whether I’m acrophobic. How high does it go?’

  ‘Five or six thousand feet,’ Harve said. ‘In several stages. Only the last is said to be at all steep. It’s supposed to be a really spectacular view from up top!’

  ‘Are you acrophobic?’ Theo asked with mild amusement, as though he wouldn’t believe a positive answer.

  ‘Not a bit,’ Paul answered back.

  They’d spent an unusually languorous and pleasant night and morning in the Hollywood Hills, the three of them. First in the large floor-sunk immersion tub, with that breath-taking gridwork of yellow lights outlining darker squares visible through wraparound 200 degrees of floor-to-ceiling windows. Their mood enhanced by the view, grass, wine, music, incense, each other’s bodies and each other’s presence, all three had begun making love right in the tub and had only gradually relocated to the bordering shag-covered bed, where they’d consummated, Theo and Paul returning to pleasure each other’s bodies long after Harve had come and, exhausted, fallen asleep. For Theo and Paul this engrossment in each other had been a cultivated surprise. After all, they hardly knew each other, and only through Harve. Paul from up in San Francisco, where they’d dated years before. Theo as Harve’s lover these past two years in Los Angeles.

  ‘Harve’s acrophobic,’ Theo said, the purposefully long sides of ash-blond hair over his right ear riffling gently in the breeze like the pelt of some elegant animal. ‘Which he might explain, along with his unnatural interest in going up.’

  ‘Okay, as long as it’s not too long. I’ve missed Palm Springs each of my past three trips here because of one stupid reason or another.’

  The Aerial Tramway parking lot wasn’t full. A car was just docking, people exiting, others ready to board. The cable car waited a minute, before its doors electronically hissed shut and with an unanticipated lurch that caused a few women to pitch and cry ‘Oooh!’ the car lifted off the ground.

  The car rose above the arid landscape of rock and sand interspersed with deep crevasses filled by parched-looking pinon trees and creosote underbrush, the view opened considerably. Enough for him to observe as they approached the metal girder ‘station’ upon a rocky ridge another cable car coming ahead. It rode abreast, passed – people waving through the windows at each other.

  After a third girder station was passed, the parking lot where they’d left the VW was a faraway slate lozenge amid beige soil, the highway a snake cutting through prairie.

  Theo and Harve were standing near a full-length windowdoor, with their arms about each other. Paul saw a family: parents in their thirties, three boys ranging in age from seven to maybe ten. Most were couples. One elderly. Two in their fifties. Four younger, including a man and wife Paul had seen step out of a chauffeured limousine, as well as another duo who’d tumbled out of a Hot Rod Deuce. Two barely retirement-age men, so similar in appearance and dress they must be
brothers, at the front of the cable car, were talking nonstop to a tanned, sable-haired youth in a gray uniform, wielding the oversized cable car levers.

  As the car rose the wind began to blow with more force. Paul noticed the driver having to clutch at the levers.

  After two more stations, it became apparent they had crested the mountainside. The pinnacle rose ahead, a precipitous granite wall. Paul could detect a pre-cast concrete and steel portal jutting out from beneath the cliff face, into which the cable car would berth, and above, upon the flattened-off apex, an amazing redwood and glass edifice, two stories high, circular to take advantage of the site, numerous glass panes glittering as though with undeclared promise, reflecting like the facets of some cyclopean sapphire the exact tint and strength of the ante-meridian sunshine.

  The other passengers spied their destination and began pointing in a susurrus of anticipation. The cable car veered perpendicular with a tremendous panorama unfolding below. From their height, the mountain resembled a dusky wrinkled tablecloth dropped and unevenly spread upon a lighter surface. The highway was a flimsy silver thread: autos and tarmac and service roads condensed to a single shimmer. Paul could ascertain the city of Palm Springs, a green tetragon containing brighter tints and hues, its little kaleidoscope apart from the encircling buffed desert creams, olive drabs, and sallow ochres.

  Paul tapped Theo’s shoulder to have him turn to look at the wondrous sight of a city as Lilliputian as on a board game when the winds picked up with such insistence, the cable car shuddered.

  ‘Whoa, Bessie!’ one of the brothers up front joked. No one laughed. Once begun, the wind seemed reluctant to let go of the cable car. It buffeted them again and again, causing the car to swing wildly. Their vulnerability, so far were they now from either the rocky ground beneath or the concrete berth above, was apparent. The wind continued to shake the car and a woman called, ‘Make it stop, Bob!’ as two kids laughed. Paul could see the car operator doing all he could to not let the levers be wrested from his grip.

  A stillness, then the car quivered more madly. Passengers swayed insanely. Several, pried loose by centrifugal force, were thrown into the seats where they slid about. The ritzy couple were whirled into the Hot Rod kids. The women screeched. The older lost her balance and was sent sprawling onto the floor. The shaking went on, until Theo, not laughing, shouted out, ‘Enough already with the special effects!’ Harve held him. Paul could see terror filling Harve’s eyes as his face went rigid. The wind raged on until there was a fresh sound, an abrupt ‘thuurranng’. The cable car went suddenly still.

  Before anyone could express relief, it began rattling more brutally than before. Women were sobbing, huddling into their husbands’ jackets. The Hot Rod girl had her poison-green fingernails over her ears. Her pompadour-haired boyfriend was looking around with fright distorting his bland, handsome face. The elegant couple found a spot down between seats. The oldest tourists had fallen to their knees, wrapped their hands about a metal pole, lips dribbling in prayer. Harve could no longer hide his terror and shoved himself into Theo, who tried to comfort him.

  Paul alone was unconcerned. Wait, the kids standing at the car’s back window, pointing down, also seemed unapprehensive.

  Paul slid over to where the boys were excitedly pointing down.

  The smallest looked up at him with the most cherubically thrilled face. ‘One of the cables snapped. We’re hanging by a single cable. Look!’

  He pointed to where the shattered metal cable fluttered like a black ribbon in the wind, tethered only at the girder station they last passed.

  ‘That was the loud noise before?’ As the three boys let him join them, he added, ‘If that’s true, we’re in deep fucking doodoo.’

  They laughed with the pure, heartless mirth of youth. Paul felt himself connect with these unalarmed, heedless children.

  ‘What do you think?’ The elder quietly asked, ‘of our chances?’

  ‘Fifty-fifty!’ Paul said.

  ‘That high?’ the boy seemed disappointed.

  ‘They probably have some back-up system,’ Paul said.

  ‘None!’ The older boy grinned with enormous delight.

  ‘What if …’ the middle boy, ‘the other cable snaps?’

  ‘Zero!’ Paul said nonchalantly. ‘We’re all goners!’

  ‘I told you, Zeb!’ the youngest gloated.

  ‘No survivors?’ the middle one insisted.

  ‘I figure,’ Paul went on, cold-bloodedly, ‘as the car plummets, most of us will black out. So we’ll be unconscious when the car actually hits the rock and is smashed into pieces. But before that, the sudden fluctuations of air pressure inside and outside of an object this dense in a field of this gravity will probably suck in the windows. They’ll shatter in and carve us into pieces.’

  ‘A zillion pieces,’ the youngest added gleefully.

  ‘We’ll be dog meat!’ the older uttered.

  ‘Chuck ground!’ the youngest exulted.

  ‘Out cold. Diced to ribbons. Flattened like pancakes,’ the middle one persisted. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘The engine in back might burst into flames as we hit ground,’ Paul hazarded. ‘So whatever was left would be charred unrecognizably.’

  ‘Cool!’

  ‘I said we’d burn up before,’ the youngest insisted. ‘Remember?’

  ‘You said we’d explode, dummy!’

  ‘This is better.’

  All three chuckled.

  The boys’ father was hovering at Paul’s shoulder, his face was a mask of consternation restrained by vestiges of masculine dignity and parental concern.

  ‘Don’t you boys worry. This will only take a minute to fix. Hi!’ he said to Paul. His mask wavered and Paul read upon it, Help! Don’t let my boys die! ‘You boys behave. Okay? When we get down I’ll buy sundaes at Johnny Rocket. Okay?’

  ‘Okay, Dad,’ the oldest said in his let’s-be-kind-to-this-jerk tone of voice, which went unnoticed by his father.

  The man stumbled to his wife, sitting with her head in her knees.

  ‘Sundaes at Johnny Rocket!’ the middle boy sneered.

  ‘He’ll end up on the menu at Johnny Rocket,’ the oldest said.

  Paul said, ‘Ground clown!’ All three boys snickered.

  The operator was talking excitedly on a phone. When he’d finished he faced the passengers. ‘Uh, folks. We’ve had a sort of mishap.’

  ‘No shit! Roy-Gene!’ the guy with the pompadour yelled out.

  ‘Let ’im speak!’

  ‘I know you’re upset,’ the operator went on. ‘But I’m in contact with both stations, top and bottom. We’re in no immediate danger. They’re going to do all they can to …’

  The cable car was struck and everyone not holding on tight was flung around. Including the operator.

  ‘All they can,’ he repeated, ‘to get us up top. That’s closer.’

  ‘How they going to move us,’ the elegant man asked, ‘with only one cable?’

  ‘Yeah! Stupid!’ Paul heard one of the boys murmur.

  ‘They’re going to bring another cable. We’ll hitch it to the roof and they’ll pull us up,’ the operator explained. ‘It’ll be slow, but sure.’

  Everyone seemed to have a question. He good-naturedly tried to answer them. The phone rang. Those passengers not in despair began discussing whether it would work. He’d just hung up the phone, when the pompadour asked, ‘How they going to get it here?’

  ‘Helicopter! It’s on its way.’

  At that moment, the car began shuddering. The boys’ mother began to cry out, ‘We’re going to die!’ before her husband got his hand over her mouth. The chic woman, the girl in white leather and the old lady who’d managed to rise from her knees closed around the pair.

  ‘Mom lost it!’ the middle boy declared with the objectivity of a newscaster.

  ‘Shut up, Zeb!’ the older one commanded, equally unemotional.

  The youngest boy saw the helicopter come in from the wes
t-southwest. From one end dangled a chain.

  The operator had begun unlatching a roof hatchway.

  ‘He’s not going outside, is he?’ the old man of the couple asked.

  The youth had lifted himself up. The two brothers held his ankles.

  ‘Why can’t we just move to the helicopter one by one?’ Theo asked. ‘These side doors open, don’t they? Wouldn’t that be faster?’

  ‘Winds too strong!’ one guardian-brother said.

  Harve had been listening with apprehension. He hid his face in Theo’s shoulder.

  ‘They’ll never make it,’ the middle boy said, watching the helicopter approach. The cable hanging was lengthening, as it was played out, and swung in a great arc. The helicopter was fighting the wind.

  The operator had to reach out and up for the end of cable being dangled and try to keep from being blown off his precarious roof perch. There was one especially close call when the hanging cable was slammed inches from the operator. The resounding noise as it struck the roof alarmed the women. Theo was doing all he could to keep Harve from falling. Was he having a fit?

  A half-hour of heart-stopping trial and error before the cable was gotten hold of and attached to a grapple. The operator was brought in to a faint cheer.

  ‘Now the real fun begins!’ the perceptive middle boy said.

  As the helicopter separated from the cable car, it played out the cable until it became a narrow black snake, appearing to furl and contort into some menacing form with every draft. The deafening noise as it hit the roof or once grazed the back window where Paul and the boys watched it with sangfroid terrified everyone else. Its antics, fascinating and beautiful to look at in an impersonal way, threatened to demolish them.

  Once the helicopter had reached the wind-struck summit, another twenty minutes were required before the cable could be secured. The boys’ mother had been tied up in clothing, her face hidden by a kerchief. Two other women were half holding, half comforting her on the floor. Harve had blacked out and Paul had to help Theo lay him across a seat. Theo knelt repeating, ‘Why today? Harve? Why of all days, today?’