the porch.
Peter washed the bowl in the sink and suddenly started snorting with laughter. It didn’t last long; it wasn’t funny, really. It was sad. ‘I see live people,’ he said, and started snorting again until he had to take off his glasses to wipe his nose and his eyes.
His best friend’s wake was today and he couldn’t keep his act together long enough to get a good night’s sleep. He had to start seeing things. Peter the screw-up, two nights running. Maybe he was hoping to draw attention to himself; poor Peter, maddened by loss once again.
Really sad.
The self-hatred built like bad clouds before a storm. Then it burst and went away. Peter’s ground state was a mellow kind of cheer, high energy at times, but usually slow to blame or anger. Sometimes he just reverted to the ground state when things got really bad, without explanation, but no solution either; the bad clouds inevitably returned. He would have to deal with them. Just not now.
‘It did not feel like a dream,’ he told himself. He was clean and well dressed, wearing his beige silk coat. He had become a figure of calm masculine dignity, grey-bearded, with wide-spaced and gentle eyes and glasses, lacking only a pipe.
Bring it on.
He sat on the porch swing, relishing the sun, the cool fresh air.
‘What a great house, Phil,’ he said. ‘Really.’
A dark blue unmarked panel truck came up the road trailing a thin cloud of exhaust and dust. It parked on the gravel beside the Porsche and a man in a dark brown suit got out, carrying a square cardboard box.
‘Is that Phil?’ Peter called from the porch.
‘Delivery for Ms. Lydia Richards,’ the man said, holding out the box in both hands. He had thick, theatrically wavy grey hair and walked and spoke with a jaded but professional dignity. Peter had once known a stripper who had married an undertaker. It was all about flesh, after all.
‘I’ll take him,’ Peter said.
‘Are you authorized by the family to receive the mortal remains of Mr Philip Daley Richards?’ the dignified man asked. ‘I’m family,’ Peter said, and signed for Phil’s ashes.
Peter gingerly placed the box on the mantle of the fireplace. It barely fit.
The morning’s explanations weren’t making much sense now.
‘“Lydia, where did Phil die?”’ he rehearsed out loud, standing before the fireplace. ‘“Lydia, I don’t think he died in the house. Did you die in the house, Lydia? Because it wasn’t Phil who showed up this morning, in the dark.”’
He rubbed his lips as if to wipe away that potential conversation. Best to just let the wake roll on. Unlike Peter, Phil had not become a teetotaler. He would have appreciated a few drinks hoisted on his behalf. But solemn speeches and rows of furtive people dressed in black would have bummed him.
Peter looked down at his hands. They were trembling. He was not cut out to lose people. He was not cut out to face the death of loved ones, and he had loved Phil. Maybe he was not meant to be a friend or a husband or a daddy or any kind of serious human being. He had been at his happiest, he thought with a real twinge, facing the softer truths of young flesh, bawdiness and bodies live, parties on sets that sometimes turned into happy orgies. So much joy and laughter, walking around with a large pad of newsprint and a marker, wearing a wide floppy Shakespearean hat and nothing else, sketching his actors while orating like Richard Burton; loose easy conversations and kisses and oral sex and gentle, easy fucking and food, just between friends.
In the sixties and early seventies, he had stayed well away from the serious and somber.
He would have loved to go on that Old Farts Hot Dog Tour, had there been time; that would have been something he could have done well with Phil. This, he did not think he was going to do well.
‘“Lydia, do you burn incense, practice astral projection?”’
Peter gave it up.
At noon, still alone in the house, pacing, glancing at the mantel, Peter realized that the cardboard box was not decorous. He walked up to the fireplace and lowered the box to the brick hearth. Inside, a bronze-colored plastic urn looked both cheap and better. He lifted the urn from the box and centered it, creating two urns, one on the mantle, one in the mirror above the mantel. Phil and anti-Phil. Through the looking glass.
By one o’clock, Peter was irritated and not in the least nervous or worried about what he would say. By two, he was furious. He opened a can of baked beans from the back of the cupboard and ate them cold. He spooned up the sweet smoky beans and the little lump of pork fat and thought of all the pot-luck food Lydia would no doubt bring.
As he finished the last bite, the Trans chimed in his pocket. He answered.
‘Yeah?’
‘Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?’
‘Who is this?’ Peter asked.
‘Stanley Weinstein. Mrs Benoliel told me you were in the Bay Area. I’m calling to say thanks.’
‘For what?’
‘For convincing Mr Benoliel to invest in our company.’
‘Did I?’
‘You did. And he did. We’re bubbly. I’m inviting you to come to the Big House and meet the crew. We have some of your reward, and if you’re interested, we might have some work for you. I’ve been doing my research. I didn’t know I was meeting a famous man.’
Peter stared out the window at the city. ‘Where are you?’ he asked.
‘Michelle says you’re somewhere in Marin. We’re not far, if that’s true – and I don’t otherwise know, because a Trans unit cannot be located, it is completely private.’
‘I’m in Tiburon,’ Peter said.
‘That’s grand. We’re less than half an hour away. Let me give you directions. You can’t miss it, actually. Do you know where the old San Andreas prison is?’
‘I’ve never been there.’
‘Now’s your chance. California Department of Corrections closed the prison three years ago to sell the land. Very posh, four hundred and fifty acres, great Bay views.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Peter said.
‘We lease space in the condemned wing. It’s right next to the gas chamber. When can you get here?’
‘There’s a wake today. Maybe tomorrow?’
‘I was sorry to hear about your friend.’
‘Thanks,’ Peter said.
‘You’ll need some time, obviously.
