Hollywood Gothic

by Thomas Gifford

  So he’d gotten in earlier than planned; the standard gold 450SL had started after the week’s rest, and he headed up the Pacific Coast Highway from LAX with the morning sun glowing brightly behind the fog crouching over the city. The ocean was calm and peaceful and white sails slid across the surface like enormous shark’s fins. What traffic there was as he reached Malibu was coming the other way, and he drove fast with the top down, letting the moist breeze wake him up. He turned left and went through the Colony’s gates. It was a beautiful morning, clean and wet and the sun glowing brighter every minute. Christmas was only a week away, and he’d survived a week with the temperature hitting 120 every day and he was glad to be home.

  He was surprised to smell coffee in the kitchen. The container had dripped halfway full. A radio was playing softly somewhere. He heard the surf in the particular way that meant the sliding glass door onto the long deck was open. There was wet sand on the kitchen floor.

  Still carrying his bag, he walked into the living room and stood quietly by the desk that looked out at the water. A fire had burned down in the grate and the wind coming up off the beach fluttered papers on the desk. It was cool, dim, fresh in the room.

  Goldie was screwing some guy on the rug. They were naked and there was wet sand ground into the rug, and her hair was wet. As far as Challis knew, this was the first time, but then, it would be, wouldn’t it? He felt the sickness in his stomach and went back into the kitchen. They hadn’t noticed him. He mechanically got a cup and poured himself coffee, put cream in it, added brown-sugar crystals because in California everybody said brown-sugar crystals wouldn’t give you cancer and if you couldn’t believe everybody, who the hell could you believe? With his bag in one hand, the hot coffee in the other, he went back to the living room.

  Goldie’s eyes were tightly closed and her jaw was clenched and she was shaking. They were just getting there, and the conversation was about par for the particular course they were playing. In times of crisis, Challis habitually fell back on composing dialogue in his mind and then saying it, thereby removing himself slightly from the unpleasant reality of the moment. He put the suitcase down softly, walked across the room, stood looking down at them.

  “When you two are done,” he said, “I’d like just a moment of your time.”

  The effect was all that he could have hoped for. The sexual act, the ardor itself, was dampened with a pathetic suddenness. He looked past the steaming coffee into four terrified glazed eyes and two flushed faces. The scene became one from a very amateurish porno movie or one’s worst private nightmares. Naked bodies were rolling in all directions, limbs flailing, voices crying out. He was surprised that they didn’t handle it with rather more aplomb. In his gut, he probably felt a good deal worse than they did. But, of course, he made his living writing words for people to say in equally unlikely and melodramatic situations. He watched them struggling to their feet. There were no robes or shirts or towels in the room. In a movie the scene might just conceivably have been played for laughs.

  “Look at the bright side,” he said. “I’m not carrying a gun.”

  “Oh, shit!” the man said. His chest was hairless, and sprinkled with red splotches, decorated with the standard terrace of awful gold chains. He looked terribly ordinary: middle-aged, tanned down to his neck, gray hair, splay-footed. Goldie didn’t look so hot either. Her mouth looked sort of raw and smudged.

  Challis walked past them and went out on the deck. He sipped the coffee, scratched his beard, leaned on the railing looking out at the water. What in the world were his next lines? He couldn’t seem to get a grip on the scene, and he loathed the idea of crying, which was what he felt like doing. Goldie had frequently accused him of being buttoned-up, buttoned-down, but never unbuttoned. Inhibitions were his “bag,” as she was fond of saying; he was afraid of his emotions. He blinked back the tears and waited while he heard the sounds of the unidentified chap packing it up. Eventually he heard Goldie’s voice: “Toby …” He turned around. She was standing in the doorway, leaning against the rough wood of the siding. She wore Levi’s and a sweater, and her face, expressionless, was impossible to read.

  “Toby,” she said with surprising softness, “don’t be sorry you came home too soon.” The surf rushed in his ears. “This was bound to happen … it’s a miracle it hasn’t happened before. Oh, Toby, don’t look like such an idiot. You’re so dense, so stupid, so wrapped up in that goddamn typewriter …” She threw her head, the hair clinging wetly. She grabbed a towel from the back of a chair and began angrily drying the darkly streaked hair. “This jerk you saw,” she called, walking away, “just the latest in a long line, Toby.”

  He followed her into the kitchen. She was pouring coffee.

  “Don’t take it personally, okay?” She grinned sourly at him.

  He swiped at the coffee mug, watched the hot liquid spray upward in a wave, staining the camel-hair sweater. He heard her shriek as the coffee burned through to her big golden breasts. The shrieking stopped when the flat of his right hand connected with the side of her face. She fell forward, caught herself against the sink. She blinked at him. He realized with considerable satisfaction that she was terribly frightened. There was blood in the corner of her mouth. He felt his adrenaline rushing, his senses bared. The smell of coffee was overwhelming.

  “Don’t take it personally,” he said. “Okay?”

  It must have been the smell of the coffee that brought on the memory of that remarkable morning at Malibu. When he opened his eyes, the memory of Goldie’s terrified eyes and her cheek flaring red as she fell sideways was gone, but the smell of the strong coffee remained, assailed him, cleared his head. He’d forgotten that he was supposed to be dead. So far as he could tell at first glance, he was at the center of a semicircle of squatting fellow mortals. Small fellow mortals.

  Somewhere a disc jockey was babbling.

  A morning disc jockey. Challis recognized the voice. He squinted at the morning’s bright grayness. Clouds hung low in the valley. He was sitting in a shallow cave, a depression cupped out of the rocky hillside, and it was morning and he wasn’t quite dead. He was beginning to get the picture.

  “Bandersnatch!” cried a high, squeaky voice. “He moved … look, he moved. Ralph, come here, Bandersnatch just moved.”

  “Relax,” Challis croaked. “Don’t talk so loud, little boy.”

  A bulky figure appeared in the corner of Challis’ vision, clumped in out of the blowing cold. He was as wide as he was tall and looked to be about thirteen. He paused, looked down at the small blond boy whose piercing cry had just stopped rocketing off the stony, icy walls. “Stevie, for God’s sake, be quiet. You’ll start an avalanche. Don’t you know nothin’?”

  “No, Ralph, I don’t,” Stevie replied solemnly.

  “God, you can say that again,” Ralph muttered. He looked down at Challis. His face was swarthy, his hair thick and black, his eyes a lustrous dark brown. He wore a blue down-filled jacket which made him look like a large beach ball with arms and legs. “You awake? You feel all right?” Ralph’s eyelid jumped, a tic.

  “Coffee?” Challis tried to swallow. He didn’t understand what was going on, but coffee would probably help.

  There was a fire crackling nearby, on the ground beside it a camper’s collapsible pan with a longish handle. Ralph poured coffee powder into a tin telescoping cup, heated the snow in the pan over the fire, and made coffee. A heavy-looking backpack leaned against the wall of the cave. Ralph handed over the cup and watched while Challis sipped. Six other boys, ranging in age from maybe ten to twelve, watched quietly. One was cross-eyed; another’s mouth hung slightly ajar, a trail of saliva working its way down his chin. The tin cup was hot as hell. Challis grinned at them over the cup’s rim.

  “That’s good,” he said. “Thanks … ah, what the hell is going on? What happened to last night? Who are you guys, anyway?”

  All the faces turned toward Ralph, who was busy tearing pictures of naked girls out of a Pentho
use and putting them on the fire. He scooped another hand full of snow from the cave’s lip, dropped it into the pan, swilled it around over the fire.

  “We are campers,” Ralph said, smiling faintly. He put coffee powder in another cup. The other campers were munching candy bars. Ralph reached into his backpack, withdrew a Mars bar, and handed it to Challis. “Our leader wandered away and we couldn’t find him, so now we’re on our own … it’s no big deal because Ralph Halliday is always prepared.” He brewed his own cup of coffee and sat down across from Challis. Music played on the radio, a small Sony propped against the backpack. “That’s who we are, and I know who you are.” His eyes caught Challis’ for a second, and the faint smile reappeared. His eyelid began to dance nervously. He looked away.

  “You’re Bandersnatch,” one of the smaller boys said.

  “Frumious Bandersnatch,” another said, slurring the words. There was something off-center in the scene, but Challis couldn’t pin it down.

  “Listen, you guys,” Ralph said calmly, as if lecturing a group of kindergarten children. “Go police the area. We need twigs and sticks for the fire. And snow … here, take the pan, collect snow in it. And put your candy wrappers in your pocket. No littering, or I’ll bury you at the back of this cave. You got that? Okay, get going.” He waited, taking little swallows of coffee, while the boys jumbled quietly out into the cold. Ralph was the top kick, and the rest of the kids acted like boot-camp recruits. When he and Challis were alone, he waved some smoke away and said, “You want a cigar?” He reached for the backpack. “My dad smuggles these things in from Cuba—”

  Challis began to chortle, felt the roar of laughter growing. He remembered suddenly that he’d believed at first that they were angels. And now he’d met them and he still didn’t know what they were, but, my God, there was coffee and a warm fire and Penthouse and candy bars, and now, beyond all the boundaries of imagination, a Cuban cigar. Maybe he was dead. Maybe heaven was just a bit more primitive than he’d expected.

  “We saw the plane go down, see? So we were heading that way, thinking somebody might’ve got out, see? Some of my men, well, you seen ’em—little gimpy there, some of ’em, right? So I keep what passes for their minds—just a joke, heh, heh—occupied with a little singing, a little … well, you know, what they say. A little laugh, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants … just a joke, heh, heh.”

  Ralph got a cigar for himself, lit it, and looked at it appreciatively. “Yeah, I been smoking these things since I was eleven. I’m thirteen and a half now, see?”

  “There’s something funny here …”

  Ralph smiled slowly.

  “I know,” Challis said. “You’re doing Eddie Robinson—”

  “Key Largo,” Ralph said, nodding. “Been working on it since I was ten. I used to do Benny and Cagney, and my Kirk Douglas wasn’t bad, ’cause he’s got a kind of high voice. That’s why my Peck is so bad … you gotta get the deep voice. Anyway, my Robinson is so good it’s all I do anymore.”

  “How’s your Ralph Halliday?”

  “Very funny. I haven’t done Ralph Halliday in a long time, see? I’ve forgotten how. Nobody any good does Ralph Halliday … it’s like Benjamin Franklin, nobody does him. Ralph Halliday! A nothing, a kid, and I don’t do kids.” He blew an arrow of smoke toward the entrance to the cave where the brightness had already given way to dark clouds and the beginnings of either snow or sleet.

  In the silence, with only the wind whirring outside, they heard the eight o’clock newscast from Los Angeles.

  “And the record rainstorms show no signs of lessening in the next few days, which is bad news for all you residents of Malibu and the canyons all the way from Bel Air and Beverly Glen to Laurel. Foothill Drive is blocked with mud as of the moment, and Pacific Coast Highway, opened at noon yesterday, is already blocked again with overnight mudslides.

  “In the mountains the rain has turned to snow again, and in the Arrowhead-Puma Point area we’ve got a couple of human-interest stories in the news this morning. Rick Wallace was on his way up the mountain last night but didn’t make it. The roads are completely snow-blocked, not open to any traffic, so all we can tell you is that both the plane carrying convicted wife-killer Toby Challis and the camping party of retarded children from St. Christopher’s School are up on the mountain and out of contact with the rest of the world. The small aircraft carrying Challis and four other passengers and crew radioed that it was going down in the storm yesterday afternoon, and nothing has been heard since … the little lost campers have not been heard from since the day before yesterday, when they left Arrowhead on an overnight trip with a counselor from the school.

  “On the Hollywood scene, the latest on the David Begelman affair, which has got a lot of folks white-knuckling it in Bel Air and at the Polo Lounge—”

  Ralph flipped the radio off.

  “Little lost campers!” He snorted. “Makes me wanna puke.” He glared at the ash on his cigar. Challis munched thoughtfully on his Mars bar, wondering where the conversation was about to go. His head was clearing and he was beginning to remember the reality of his situation. The radio announcer had it right on the button: he was convicted wife-killer Toby Challis, and from out of nowhere, in the most unexpected way possible, he had become a free man. But the brand of freedom was … well, it reminded him of Dudley Moore getting his wishes realized in Bedazzled: the letter of the wish was granted but not the spirit. Stuck on a mountainside in a snowstorm with a bunch of retarded kids and the reincarnation of Edward G. Robinson. On the other hand, he could be sitting in the remains of the airplane with his head on the seat behind him.

  But what was he going to do now?

  Wait to be found? Try to go for help? Leave the kids? Take them with him if he left?

  Or try—he had no idea how—to escape?

  The thought of escape tantalized him. He felt a rush of life: his senses seemed to sharpen.

  Ralph made no further comment about the radio report.

  “You wanta stand up? Move around. …”

  Challis nodded, reached for Ralph’s shoulder, and slowly got to his feet. His head brushed the roof. Ice grew like moss, smelled cold. For an instant his head swam, his vision became pinpoints of light at the distant ends of twin dark tunnels. He steadied himself against Ralph’s stocky frame, waited for everything to come back. He was stiff, but not as bad as he thought he’d be: the warmth of the campfire must have taken the chill out of his bones.

  “You okay?”

  Challis nodded. “Let’s go outside.”

  They met the returning twig party, each of the boys carrying clumps of sticks and leaves. Ralph told them to fuel the fire and stay inside the cave, get warm, and don’t fight. His authority was absolute. Together, going slowly on the slippery snow and ice, Challis and Ralph set off. The snow was thicker than Challis remembered yesterday’s had been; stinging in a strong, gusty wind, and colder, too. The trees looked black, dark; foggy clouds dipped down into the valley, giving them a sense of eerie isolation. It was utterly quiet but for the wind and the snow pattering all around them, their breathing and footsteps. The small sounds which accentuate the quiet. …

  They found the footpath where they’d encountered one another. Five minutes farther on, around the bend, they stopped. The wind pushed a bank of gray vapor away from the mountainside, and far below them they saw the rope of blacktopped road snaking its way painfully, slowly upward. From above, it looked flat and seemed almost to be alive, squirming as snow skittered across it.

  “Look,” Ralph said, pointing. “You see that? There, see?”

  “Christ. …”

  Two vehicles were edging along at the lead end of the black road. Ahead of them there was no road.

  “Snowplow,” Ralph said. “They’ve both got red lights on top.”

  “Can you see that?”

  “I got good eyes, see. Snowplow and a cop car, maybe … or an ambulance. They’re looking for us, see, all of us.”
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br />   “It’s pretty slow going,” Challis said. “It’ll take them a couple hours to get up this high.”

  “I don’t know. Looks like they’re making pretty good time to me.” It was true: already the black ribbon had taken the two vehicles out of sight behind an outgrowth of treetops.

  “You’re right,” Challis said. He licked snow from his mustache, wiped caked snow from his eyebrows. “An hour at the most.” He looked around him, analyzing the topography. He had to figure out a way to stay free. He saw an outcropping of rock, ice, and snow twenty feet above them. It reminded him of a scene he’d once written. “Come on, Ralph, grab the other end of this log. …”

  They hauled, tugged, and yanked the fifteen-foot length of rough, barky wood up onto the ledge. Panting hard, Challis inspected the boulder, the accompanying smaller rocks, the few small trees attached to the basic mass, and the covering of ice and snow. He kicked at the perimeters, wedging his boot into a moist, unfrozen opening between the rim of the rock and the earth. He pushed his foot in as far as his ankle allowed. He hoped it was a deep hole burrowed by an animal.