River Under the Road

by Scott Spencer

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s chaos. It’s a mess.”

  “I think a part of me sort of wishes none of this had ever happened,” Grace said. “I feel very small. I liked it when we were both on the same level.”

  “But the house was your idea,” he said, plaintively.

  She jutted her hip into his. “Anyhow, who the hell are these people? We hardly know one guest.”

  “Do you think our old friends hate us now we’re rich?” he asked.

  “They weren’t that crazy about us in the first place,” Grace said. They had sent their New York friends invitations to the housewarming, but most went unanswered. Grace took it in stride, feeling that the fewer people who showed up for the party the easier things would be, but Thaddeus could not bear to think that their friends would treat them badly, would ignore them, or resent that he and Grace had stumbled into the winner’s circle. He was not really convinced that the lack of RSVPs meant no one planned to make the trip north to celebrate their house. Many of the old bunch had wobbly manners, or abhorred making plans too far in advance, preferring to leave themselves open to serendipity. Their friends did not own cars and a few of them never ventured out of the city. Two had asthma, one was fatally allergic to bee stings, and some were broke.

  Broke! To be without money in this world! It was like being naked with only your hands to cover you. A twenty-dollar round-trip ticket on the train was not always something you could buy without considering the consequences—the domino theory might not have held true in geopolitics, but it had validity in personal finance for those with limited means. Twenty dollars spent on a train ticket had to come from somewhere, and it might mean having to sacrifice the Con Ed bill, or choosing margarine instead of butter. And for what? To celebrate the purchase of a mansion and a swath of forest? Who could blame them for thinking twice about that? Even the ones who were not broke, who were getting by or even better, even they might not want to view what sudden riches could buy.

  The only person from the Celluloid Collective to show up was Ace Disend, a gaunt, weirdly lopsided fellow in the best of times and tonight was not the best of times. He had gone from thin to malnourished, and he was literally dressed in rags—his jeans frayed at the cuffs, torn at the knee, held up by hairy brown twine. He seemed to have made the hundred-mile trip north for the express purpose of snubbing Grace and Thaddeus. He had never had a script produced, bought, or optioned, he had no agent, and he never brought any pages in to be discussed at monthly meetings. He claimed he was a surrealist and his favorite film was Un Chien Andalou; he also asserted that his aim was to blend the aesthetic of André Breton with that of Johnny Rotten. He prowled the outskirts of the party, feeding wolfishly on a platter of shrimps and hearts of palm. It occurred to Thaddeus that Breton had once said the truest act of surrealism would be to fire a revolver into a crowd of strangers.

  Suddenly, Kip Woods announced his presence by grabbing Thaddeus from behind, startling him into heart palpitations.

  “Jesus, Kip. We’re not in college anymore.”

  Kip made a show of taking in the surroundings. “I see that, Comrade Kaufman.”

  “Crazy, right? It’s actually not as expensive as it looks.”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” Kip said. “Well, you once said you’d like to have a place where Fred Astaire could take refuge in a time of political crisis.”

  “So?” Thaddeus said. He hadn’t seen Kip in three or four months. Actually more. The last time together was at Max’s Kansas City, where over beers and cheeseburgers he told Kip that Grace was pregnant. It was an odd venue to make such an announcement—a dark place filled with the Warhol crowd and people who wanted to be around the Warhol crowd. Kip had frowned, plucked at the stubble on his chin, offering congratulations that were so tepid it would have been better not to say anything at all.

  This evening, Kip was dressed as if to parody the upstate bourgeoisie—blue-and-white seersucker suit, white bucks, a pink shirt with a yellow tie. “Been busy. I’ve got about three more years in me. Then I’m going to buy an island off Maine. And read.”

  “Buy something up here,” Thaddeus said.

  “No way. Too close to Wall Street, and all that M and A.”

  “What’s M and A?”

  “Murders and assassinations. Well, actually, mergers and acquisitions, aka, what I do, you dumb fuck.” Before Thaddeus could show offense, Kip offered up the present he’d brought, wrapped in plain paper. “Here you go.”

  “Kip! A book?”

  “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” Kip said. “First edition.” He turned and took the house in from a distance. “Quite a crowd you’ve got here. Look at old Gene Woodard. In his element. You guys see a lot of each other?”

  “Not really.”

  “Everyone’s in their little niche,” Kip said. “The pink-scalp patricians over here, the local shopkeepers over there, I see your little B. Altman crew huddling near the buffet table.”

  “Did you bring someone?” Thaddeus asked.

  “Like a woman? A date? No. Alas.”

  “Too bad. We were hoping you’d bring that Iranian woman, my Persian muse.”

  “Ah. No. I actually don’t even know who you’re talking about.”

  “The woman you were with at Gene’s birthday thing. She changed my life.”

  Kip shook his head. “I don’t remember her. I see a lot of women.” He pointed at the house. “I’m curious, does it remind Gracey of the hotel she used to work at? Does it have a gift shop?”

  AT LAST, THADDEUS FOUND HIS way back to Grace. She was standing alone on the edge of the patio, half in the light and half in darkness.

  “How you holding up there, Mama?” Thaddeus asked. He placed his hand on her swollen middle, hoping to feel the stirrings inside.

  “Don’t,” she said, removing his hand.

  “One day this will be his, too,” Thaddeus said. “The house, the land, the light on the river. We’re giving him an amazing life.”

  “Or her.”

  “Yes, or her. It’ll be amazing. She’ll be amazing. I hope she looks like you.” He noticed the look of alarm on Grace’s face. She was pointing at the most beautiful tree they owned, a white oak, two hundred years old with no sign of faltering, in full possession of its power and gravity—giant limbs, leaves the size of dinner plates, elephant-hide bark. From the base of the trunk to the apex of the crown, the tree measured almost eighty feet.

  “Do you see what I see?” Grace asked.

  At the tree’s midpoint, the moonlit milky white of Hat Stratton’s undershirt was visible.

  “What is he doing up there?” Thaddeus asked.

  “Remember you asked him if he could put a couple of lights up there?”

  “I didn’t mean today.”

  “Well, actually you did. You said you wanted it for the party.”

  “Really? Are you sure? Suddenly that doesn’t seem like a very good idea.” Thaddeus’s brow furrowed. He could feel himself becoming more serious about certain things—between the money, this house, and a child on the way, he felt he was becoming the man he would remain. And part of that new gravitas was taking good care of the land he now owned, including protecting the aristocratic old trees. He was aware, acutely so, that to many of the people living along the river, he and Grace, aside from being too young to own property here, were cut from the wrong cloth, burped on the wrong shoulders, schooled at the wrong schools. Now they would be wondering why the first Jew to own one of these houses decided to put lights up in the trees.

  They were approached by one of their neighbors, a man in his sixties named Hal Marquette. He had a bouncing sort of walk, a merry expression. His face was flushed from several glasses of wine, but even in his slightly dissolute state, he projected confidence and a sense of superiority that Thaddeus suspected was, at its core, racial. With him was Gene Woodard, carrying a highball glass filled with sparkling water.

  “I see you’ve got Hat up a tree,”
Marquette said, turning again, peering closely, as if his eyes might have initially deceived him. “Will you look at him? My God, he still climbs like a young man.”

  “Or a monkey,” Gene said. “What the hell is he up to, city friend?”

  “I’m sure he’s safe up there, right?” Thaddeus said.

  “Oh yes, yes,” Marquette said. “Hat was born to climb. His second home is in the trees. So what do you have him doing up there?” His accent split the difference between Sutton Place and Belgravia, with something of W. C. Fields thrown in, for levity’s sake.

  “He’s putting up a couple of lights for us,” Thaddeus said. “Kind of a safety issue.”

  “Lights? How extraordinary.”

  The four of them watched for a moment as Hat struggled with a floodlight while keeping his grip on a high branch with his free hand.

  “He really should come down,” Gene said.

  “Lights,” mused Marquette. “In that lovely tree. I wonder if you realize yet how much natural light we get along the river. Particularly from the moon.”

  “Oh, the moon,” Grace said. “The moon’s okay, but it can be unreliable.”

  Hat was seated astride one of the oak’s thickest limbs, as if on horseback, wrapping the base of the first of the two lights in copper wire.

  “This will be a first,” Marquette said, adding just the merest trace of regret to his tone, with the same expert care and restraint with which he would have swabbed a trace of vermouth along the side of his martini shaker.

  Gene, perhaps out of consideration, changed the subject, and spoke to them about Parker and Tony Boyett, their house’s past owners. They were in Mexico now, apparently no longer dope addicts, and no longer in debt, living modestly but well in San Miguel de Allende. “Tony’s developed a formula,” Gene said. “He’s estimated their life expectancy, and made all these calculations based on interest rates and stock market fluctuations, and he’s come up with some number, how much money they can spend each year without running into trouble.”

  “Of course if the price of tortillas goes up, the whole thing goes up in smoke and Tony and Parker are reduced to penury,” Marquette added. He patted the breast pocket of his sports jacket. “You wouldn’t have a cig, would you?”

  “We’re both nonsmokers,” Thaddeus said.

  “Good for you!” Marquette said. A small smile, a little curve of silver in the pink frosting of his face. Suddenly, his attention was pulled to an outpouring of light from the majestic oak. A moment later, the light failed.

  “So much for that,” Thaddeus said.

  “He could use a bit of help up there,” Marquette said. “He should have his boy with him.”

  “Jennings? I thought he’d flown the coop,” Gene said to Marquette.

  “Back. With a bride no less. A wan little thing from California.”

  “The Casanova of Windsor County? Married? What is the world coming to?”

  Stratton suddenly lost his purchase on the limb upon which he’d been seated and a moment after was hanging upside down, grasping the branch with both hands as well as his feet, which were crossed at the ankles.

  “You just watch,” Marquette said. “Hat’s an old tree man, there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “I just assumed he would have ropes and stuff,” Grace said.

  “This is so fucked up,” said Thaddeus.

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Marquette assured them. He clapped his hands as if at a sporting event.

  And sure enough, Hat, by moving his hips and his shoulders rhythmically back and forth, began to sway, five times, ten, and on the fifteenth, like a trapeze artist, he had increased the velocity of his swings and had risen high enough to make a mad scramble. He clawed and hoisted, pulled and shimmied until, at last, he was sitting straight on the limb, where, as a matter of pride, he set immediately to work again, as if nothing unexpected or unintended had occurred.

  “What did I tell you?” Marquette said, beaming. “Things have a way of working out around here. And by the way: welcome to Brigadoon.”

  THE MOON, WHICH HAD BEEN there all along, was suddenly prominent, round and rocky, pale and gold. Hat and Jennings had gotten one of the lights connected and it cast a long spear of brightness onto the lawn. Along the party’s southern perimeter, a long table had been set up and the catering staff were making and pouring drinks. People were illuminated briefly before they disappeared into the darkness, and then they would be visible again, drinks in hand. As people in black trousers and white shirts scurried around with trays of food, Thaddeus felt a sudden surge of anxiety. Either the caterer had neglected to tell him what all of this was going to cost or he had somehow forgotten the number, or perhaps had even deliberately deep-sixed it. Oh well, he thought, as a way of calming himself. People seem to be enjoying themselves. Eating well, getting pleasantly hammered.

  Just then, he noticed a tall, thin man with a guitar strapped over his shoulder, wearing a shiny jacket the color of polished gold, straight-legged jeans, and boots. He was tilted to the left, like a tree that has grown on the side of a windswept hill. The man looked like Buddy Klein. It was not completely out of the question. Thaddeus happened to know that Klein lived somewhere in the vicinity. Klein’s was one of the names Sawyer Halliday dropped while he was selling them Orkney. The name had meant next to nothing to Grace, but since moving to Leyden Thaddeus had been hoping that one day he might catch sight of his old rock and roll idol. But to have him here on the little patch of the world that Thaddeus himself happened to own? This thrilled Thaddeus more than the Hollywood people he’d met so far—Hoffman, Redford, Lily Tomlin, Richard Dreyfuss, Lee Grant, Sally Field. It did not surprise Thaddeus that Klein’s entrance seemed to have been unnoticed. Klein’s heyday was ten years gone, and even at the height of his career, Klein was an acquired taste. However, Thaddeus prided himself on his pop connoisseurship, and Buddy Klein had a place on his list of Great Rockers You’ve Never Heard Of. Not six months ago, Thaddeus had ridiculously overpaid for a vinyl copy of Klein’s second album, called Buddy Klein and the Kleimaniacs in Dusseldorf, the album title being a small jest, since it was recorded in upstate New York, not far from Woodstock, and nowhere on it was there a reference to Dusseldorf or any other European city. Dusseldorf contained—track six, actually—Klein’s closest thing to a genuine commercial hit, “Zero Divided by One.”

  And here he was striding across these newly acquired acres, astonishing under any circumstances, but almost dreamlike in its strangeness now because Klein’s name actually appeared in Hostages, when the youngest and most appealing of the American hostages talks about music with one of the surprisingly sympathetic Arab insurgents. Thaddeus also indicated that a particularly obscure Klein song—“I Was Never Gone”—be played under the crawl during the movie’s final credits, though as he learned more about the limits of his influence in the filmmaking process, either the studio, the producer, or the director taking his musical cues seriously seemed less and less likely.

  Yet the question remained: what in the world was Buddy Klein doing at Orkney? Thaddeus hurried toward him.

  “Mr. Klein,” Thaddeus said, extending his hand. “I’m a huge fan.”

  There was a long moment of silence.

  “Nice of you to say,” Klein finally responded. He was neither western nor southern, but even with a slight New England accent, he managed to drawl. “We’re neighbors. I’m just over . . .” He waved vaguely in a northerly direction.

  “I’m trying not to gush,” Thaddeus said. “But this is total fantasy.”

  “You may feel different after my set,” Klein said.

  “You’re going to play?”

  “Yes, it’s come to that.” He shook his head, laughed. “Hey. I’m not complaining. We’re going to have fun and I’m glad for the work.”

  “You’re going to play here, at this party?”

  “This is news to you?”

  “I’m not sure,” Thaddeus said.

  One
of the caterers, a birthmarked girl with short blond hair and harlequin glasses, drifted over holding a tray filled with little sandwiches. Klein peered intently at the tray, licking his lips once and swallowing. “Do any of these have mayonnaise?” he asked the girl.

  “All of them do, Buddy. Sorry.”

  “Fuck it,” he said, helping himself to four of them. And then to Thaddeus, he said, “I’m your housewarming present.”

  “It can’t be true,” Thaddeus said.

  “I guess I’m also supposed to be a surprise,” Klein said. “Well: surprise!” He raised his arms, causing the headstock of his guitar to knock into him.

  “Are you all right? Jesus, it’s really amazing to meet you. I just got a fresh copy of Dusseldorf, I mean not six months ago.”

  “Thank you kindly. But just so you know, the artist doesn’t make a nickel out of those secondhand sales. It all goes to the fat guy in the tank top.”

  “Wait here for a second, would you? I want to introduce my wife to you. Let’s just say she’s heard a great deal about you.”

  “If you could aim me at a telephone, I need to make a call,” Klein said.

  They were standing at the edge of the patio, not more than fifty feet from the back of the house, and the French doors were ablaze with light.

  “I’ll walk you in,” Thaddeus said.

  “One day we’ll have these little phones like the size of a stick of Juicy Fruit and everyone will carry one in their pocket,” Klein said. “It’s already happening in Japan. Nippon’s got the place all tuned in. The Japanese are eating us alive. The whole place is plugged in. The children glow in the dark.”

  Thaddeus led Klein to the house, with a longing last glance over his shoulder—how he wished Grace were at his side right now, experiencing the giddiness he felt walking with this old rock icon.

  “We’re getting more phones,” he said, opening the doors for Klein. “But there’s one right over here in the kitchen.”

  “You’re right here on the river, man,” Klein said. “I can see the river from my crib, but I’m not on it. Movies, right?”

  “Movies?”