Lost Angels

by David J. Schow

  Grant's head was angled sideways. He watched himself in the mirror, intermittently, until his eyelids became prohibitively heavy. Nothing peculiar happened.

  But past this night, the first night Jennifer had passed in his new bed, he knew he would regard the mirror uneasily. It was a morbid idea, almost a touch paranoid, but he abruptly felt like the man who discovers his pretty tropical fish have teeth and an appetite for fingers.

  When he projected this vague fear into the future, his heart bumped faster and he thought his prospects for deep and cozy sleep to be lost.

  Sleep came with almost absurd ease. He dropped off as if anesthetized and did not consider the mirror again until the following evening.

  "Assuming you can trust any doctor in town further than the distance between noses, mine and thine" Jennifer said around a mouthful of niçoise salad, "what was the verdict?"

  A bow-tied waiter with ridiculously wide tortoiseshell rimmed glasses flounced past long enough to reheat Grant's coffee. Grant's eyes stayed on the curls of steam as he spoke. "Everybody else would have added, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. They tack it onto the end of their questions, like they think I'm going to start crying or something. But in the end your feelings add up to a lot less than their need to pry."

  "Like, please pass the salt ... you don't have to if you don't want to, but I want the goddamn salt –"

  "Exactly." He was pleased she had not misinterpreted his complaint, or taken personal offense. He speared three of the smallest homefries he could find on his plate and forked them into his mouth. "You're right, though. All the lawsuits against hospitals and doctors around LA make me wonder a little bit. Anything expedient can be scribbled in on a death certificate if they're the least bit stumped, and we humble serfs will never be the wiser. But what they've settled on, as far as my father goes, is a hematoma. A little tumor full of blood in his brain. He keeled over in his living room and Mrs. Saks from next door found him in front of the fireplace. She peeked through a crack in the curtains; all the doors were locked. She hobbled back to her place and called the medics. He'd been dead almost a whole day when they collected him. A little sac swelled up with blood and burst; he hemorrhaged like mad inside his own skull and just dropped dead. When he blacked out he knocked a candle off the mantlepiece; it burned some of the carpet before it went out. Mouin shag; that goddamned carpet was brand new the last time I was inside that house." He had stopped eating.

  "'Sounds like he might have lain there a lot longer," Jenny said thoughtfully, still chewing, apparently determined not to let him lapse into despondency despite their topic, which had to be dealt with.

  "Yeah, well, paramedics are used to finding old folks who've been stiff and dead in their bathrooms for weeks, all bloated and gassy from - oop, sorry about that."

  Across from him, Jenny's expression was that of a woman who thinks, but is not positive, that she has just eaten a cockroach instead of a carrot slice. The dab of dressing on her lower lip looked obscene. After a second, her tongue swept it away and she swallowed hard, going for her water goblet. "Just stick to the pertinent stuff. Or else." She regarded the remainder of her food uncomfortably.

  "I'm - never mind." Sickly grin. At least some of his usual humor was seeping back. "Mrs. Saks. Father once told me she was the neighborhood busybody. Used to water the lawn on the east side of her house for hours, so she could peep through his side window - she must've thought something pretty hot was going on inside. Father started keeping his curtains closed."

  "Logical. Sensible."

  "What's weird is that burn on the carpet. It wouldn't have made any difference if the house had burned to the ground. There's an empty lot down there now:"

  "No house?" She looked genuinely surprised.

  "I met Father's legal wolverines two days after he died. Two locals and one appointed 'personal representative' from San Francisco. Until then nobody bothered to let me know that I was required to witness the demolition of Father's house personally in order to qualify for my inheritance. Which, by the way, is paying for this lunch, so pick a dessert."

  "Why, for heaven's sake? From what you said it was quite a place - all oiled mahogany and ornamental balustrades and stained-glass windows. Haven't you ever wanted a palace?"

  "First of all, I want my own palace, by my own hand. I can afford it now anyway. There are a lot of exquisite old houses down around Pico and La Cienega, true, but it just isn't my kind of neighborhood. Somebody connected with the corporation wants the property already, and I get the profit. Fine." He finished off his roast beef. "Next, nobody, including me and the lawyers, knows the rationale ... except Father, who currently is not talking." He was still attempting to appear breezy and unconcerned whenever they circled back to the given of his father's death. The masque was not totally convincing; pain came at Jennifer in surges.

  "That's where you vanished to a couple of weeks ago and wouldn't enlighten me?"

  "Now it can be told." He spread his hands. "The wreckers started half an hour before I got there. It got boring quick. The attorneys sweltered in their C&R suits. Then a large, hairy fellow shambled over to me and asked me what I wanted done with all the 'fuggin antiques."

  "Your father's furniture was still in -"

  "There was no furniture. Empty house. The executors even had the light fixtures removed. They hauled away the fireplace, which was solid Etruscan marble and probably cost its own gross tonnage in gold doubloons. That house was as empty when my father was buried as my checking account was before he died." Again the strained expression, the brief silence. "Nevertheless, this turkey comes up with a sledgehammer in one paw and says the basement room is full of junk. I said, 'What basement room?' He looked at me the way a librarian does when they find out you don't know what the Dewey Decimal System is. Was."

  Jennifer pushed her plate away, scanned around and signaled for coffee. "Everybody forgot the bomb shelter."

  "No bomb shelter. It was on the executor's list after attic compartments. No doors, no vents, no new brickwork or plaster. They pulled measurements of the exterior and only came up a foot or two short compared to the floorplan, so they assumed the basement they saw was all there was - until they started kicking the walls down and found -"

  "A bed," she interjected. "And a mirror."

  "And a couple of boxes of old Liberty magazines."

  Jennifer spooned a few drops of milk into her coffee, barely discoloring it. "Somehow I didn't think you'd paid for all that stuff. Even taking recent wealth into account, you should excuse the pun."

  "I spent a few hernias getting it out and a day or so polishing. For your benefit."

  "God preserve me - a romantic." She grinned.

  "You'll pardon my recent unsociability."

  To keep them both from abstracting into another clumsy silence, she spoke immediately: "I understand: You needed some time. Why do you make it sound so unreasonable?"

  He jumped in after her: "Don't apologize; that I don't need." And now comes the part where you reach across and squeeze her hand meaningfully, or she yours, or some damn thing. To hell with it, he thought. If she really did understand, it was unnecessary.

  Fortunately, the waiter showed up to fuss briefly over them and provide distraction. In his wake Jennifer said, "It really is a stunning bed, Grant," with a private, evil smile. "Luxuriously oversized and heavy. It doesn't squeak and it's expensive and permanent-looking. Unusual; when you think of brass bed you think of those bordello things - you know, incredibly tacky. I love it."

  "I've never seen one remotely like it, either. That's strange. If there's anything that ran against the grain of my father's style, it was that bed. He was strictly a Danish-modern, pure-functionalism freak; nothing ornate. He had his home maintained impeccably but never decorated in the sense you or I would understand. Just a perfect, hollow, empty cavern of house, which is now gone, too. I can't believe he wasn't aware of that stuff below him; I'm sure he probably walled it up down ther
e himself, because if it was there already he would have found it, noticed it, ferreted it out and mentioned it. He was painfully methodical. You don't capture the executive vice-presidency of Calex Corporation if you're not methodical, period?"

  "You sure it wasn't just a downstairs room that got ... um, accidentally closed off?" Her eyes flirted with the dessert menu again as her question trailed away. "Boy," she said, shaking her head. "Said out loud like that it does sound pretty stupid. Unlikely. Accidentally closed off."

  "That leaves you with intentionally closed off, which strands me with a why, either way. But there was no evidence of there ever being a doorway or access - just a niche of the basement, bricked up tight. No windows." He stopped to consider whether caffeine and sugar flash were helping his logic processes, decided against more coffee, then ordered cappucino. With a shrug he said, "I wonder if the bed has a name? Fortunato, or something?"

  "Provided your father did not indulge his Imp to the extent of a brass bed like that one?" she said (tossing his Poe reference back in his face, gleefully). "I doubt that he would run on to the stage of naming his furniture." She unclipped a Benson & Hedges from a flat silver case and fired up; she was the fastest draw with a lighter Grant had ever seen. They both ignored the slim box of wooden matches on the table. "Okay, try this: The bed was there. Walled up. When your father moved in, and he never knew about it." Thin gray smoke trailed from her lips as she spoke, now gesturing with the cigarette. "You said everything inside was moved out by special arrangement; if he had known it was there, it would have been inventoried, no?"

  "You shouldn't smoke those things," he said, his attention on the glowing orange tip. "They'll kill you dead."

  Jennifer ordered fresh strawberries, to counter Grant's request for a chocolate raspberry mousse torte so richly laced with brandy that the fumes could water their eyes.

  "That bed seemed to suit that house." He sliced away the tip of the layered brown wedge with his fork.

  Floral designs had been swirled in liquid chocolate atop the crimson bed of raspberry sauce. Peggy's was notorious for its desserts. "It was ... overstated. Another excuse for its burial in the basement. But when the wreckers checked the bricks, they said that although the wall wasn't new, it was about fifty years younger than the rest of the house. Which brings me back to my original conundrum."

  "Tastes change," she said. "A month ago you didn't even know what a torte was." Her mouth enveloped the head of a strawberry. crunch. Grant thought of Eve and the apple: You talked me into it, ma'am.

  "Sure I knew." He dropped into his redneck drawl. "Hell, ah seen me some torts gettill arrested on Sunset Boo -lee-vord ... "

  "You know what I mean. You just admitted you didn't know your own dad's nature that well."

  "He was an emotional isolationist."

  "So - his taste in beds might have taken a turn toward the eccentric. Or away from it. Just as his son's tastes in food have matured from cheap garbage to expensive garbage." She endured his disapproval of her cigarette for one more luxuriant puff, then butted it in the table ashtray. It fell over, smoldering, its life ebbing.

  "Hold on. I didn't actually eat that stuff."

  The memory of their first meeting filled in gaps of reference, and Grant's mind drew on it in the same languorous way Jenny had inhaled the cigarette smoke. He might never have met her had it not been for a rare, unanticipated, masochistic gut-rumble on behalf of pure sleaze food. Traditionally, Grant forced such fare on himself about once a year, to remind himself how repugnant the consumption of fast-food sewage really was, and thus reinforce against the illusory economy buying such food represented when funds were low.

  His mission had been to rendezvous with his good buddy Scott, projectionist cum English major at Northridge, for the purpose of roasting current movies over lunch. Their meeting had been bumped ninety minutes ahead, and Grant, anticipating food too eagerly, found himself with nothing to do but mosey into the closest, loudest conglomeration of neon and formica and order up a clownburger with all the slop, anemic string fries, and a shamelessly flat Pepsi in a go-cup. The percentages were heavily in favor of grease and ice. Sitting on a stone bench, he watched collegiate youth loiter past, bound for dipstick classes in Aerobic Video or Art and the Media Audience. His stomach recaptured sanity and the spicy garbage in the Happy Bag cooled, ignored. He tested a fry, and washed away his error with a sip from the watery Pepsi. He never got a chance at the rest.

  "Max!" A shrill shout, from far behind him.

  He turned to see the Happy Bag kidnaped and making good escape time between the jaws of a stone-white Alsatian. The big dog was being yelled at by a tall woman wearing a jacket and boots of impeccably matched soft-brown leather and a cream-colored cowl-neck sweater. Black, flowing hair; lots of it. She stood her ground as the dog homed in on her; Grant stayed neutrally on the bench to observe her pet being admonished. Then, as a pair, they approached him. He forgot about her wardrobe and turned his concentration to those first few, precious seconds of new physical attraction.

  The convergence of their lives was that easy, that random.

  "My dear Max has what a Victorian novelist would call an 'unfortunate predilection' for fast food. I'm afraid he's done this sort of thing before." Max pulled a parade rest, his butt plunking obediently down near her feet, eyes never straying from the bag she had returned to Grant.

  "I was in a suggestible state when I bought this stuff," he said. "I don't think I could've gone through with it." He unwrapped the burger as he talked. "Does he - ?"

  "Cast-titanium stomach," she said, pursing her lips pleasantly and nodding approval.

  Grant lofted the charred meat patty like a little frisbee. It vanished down Max's gullet with a chomp and a swallow; the dog, still sitting, looked at Grant with an expression that said all was correct in the universe.

  Max seemed to prefer his fries cold, anyway.

  "And now it seems I owe you a lunch - a proper lunch, at least, and not a dilemma between gastric death and food so obscene that in this state you could pull three-to-fifteen years for just sticking it in your mouth." She saw Grant smile at her and automatically begin his courteous denial. "I'll insist before you can protest," she added, on time. "Max would've let me know if you weren't okay."

  Max's eyes, such a vaguely watery blue that they were nearly colorless, seemed to affirm this. It was all a con, Grant thought, but Max wound up getting the Pepsi, too.

  Jennifer was new, therefore a party to the odd intimacy careful people generally allow only for strangers. Grant found he was able to edit his conversation around the death of his father and hit few chuckholes. The subject arose before the first time they bedded down together, at Jenny's, and the conversations became impartial, healing things. They consistently surprised each other, and reveled in it. The sole secret of recent weeks had been the brass bed and mirror; these being sprung on her the night before. The coronation that ensued was pleasing for both of them. Now they sat lunching, much as they had on the day Max had caused their lives to cleave, now able to joke and rebound and distill some of Grant's befuddling sense of loss into a painless void where it could not poison him.

  The desserts were used up.

  "When people die, the survivors always kick themselves for spending so little time with them," said Grant. "It's like a racial imperative."

  "But negate the death and nothing changes," Jenny regarded the dead cigarette. "No extra time would be spent:'

  "My father was always with the corporation. Always. Until I was seven I thought 'Calex' was some little brother I'd never met, and wondered why Cal merited so much of my father's time." He shook his head to indicate he was not lapsing into Heavy Revelations; rather, he seemed to be putting the chain of events together for the first time, consumer-testing it on Jenny for stability of logic. "The only time in my life there was a real interface was when I turned eighteen and found out a junior-executive slot on the Calex board was being held for me. That was a big thing, for my
father. Bigger than I knew."

  "Uh-oh. Rebellious youth."

  "I told him to roll and insert it. Bingo - no allowance. Calex was the Daddy Warbucks of Vietnam."

  "Sounds like you were seduced by the publicity."

  "I had as little social conscience then as now. All I sensed was another surefire way to rub against his grain ... and so began my odyssey through Real Life. Jesus, what a fucking idiot. College kids who protested the war had kids who would gladly serve up their genitals, today, right here right now, with garnish, if the sacrifice meant they could get a toe inside the Calex door. For me, it's all academic now."

  "Jeez, you're making that sound awful?" After a beat she was compelled by her nature to add: "My father would call it 'slicing it too thick to eat.’" Her smile stole the barb from the words.

  "You're right - financial autonomy is something I can live with, probably even at the cost of my father. Though I hasten to add I don't look at it that way. What irritates me is that just now, after eighteen years of more or less standard 'family' bullshit, plus five years of requisite alienation, I'm left with this year, which is half over, plus the year before that and the year before that, to know my own father. Not nearly enough; we were just beginning to become friends, and he was just starting to open up, even to me. Now he's gone, prematurely, and I'm not even sure who it is that's just stepped out of my life. That hurts. I don't even know if he had anybody else besides his Calex cronies - he never remarried, unless he kept it a huge secret, and he divorced my mother the year I was born."

  "You mean you're not the black sheep of a corporate dynasty? The son errant, thrust from your birthright by scheming siblings - two older, matching Porsches, one younger with a clandestine drug habit, and an iron-fisted matriarch holding illimitable dominion over all?"

  He laughed aloud. She was keeping him up here as well as she had in the big brass bed.

  "Seriously," she said. "No brothers, no sisters you dislike but would lend money to out of familial obligation? No forty-five-minute phone calls to update who's divorced and who's pregnant and who's out of jail?"