His advice was valuable to me. He was another real man who had landed on my empty beach. I respected Frank. He was an upscale version of my tough Italian friends in the projects. Once, he locked an entire family of jewelers in his building all night because they wouldn’t follow building hours. His words left a mark because I wanted to be like him, but I lost contact with Frank after the deal closed. That happens with a lot of clients. Being discarded like a used condom after a transaction was one of the things that was hard for me, but that wasn’t what happened with Frank. He had a heart attack a few months after the deal was done. He was hit hard and wanted me to remember him the way he’d been.
A few years later, Nicole and I were in Palm Springs. We were with another couple, and the husband brought up this great hike he had discovered in his LA Times. He suggested we should try it. I loved hiking and agreed right away. I’d been a regular in the Santa Monica Mountains, so I was game for a hike in the desert. When I got into his van, the guy seemed a little full of himself, but I’d been around plenty of guys like that. He explained how there were a few routes we could take. He mentioned how we could pick up Indian Canyon from close to where we were and go through Desert Hot Springs but that it would be better to drive Highway 111 to the freeway. I didn’t really care how he went. I was used to men like him making decisions, especially when you’re in their van on a trip they suggested, so when he told me we would take the interstate through the San Gorgonio Pass, it sounded fine.
It’s a lot easier to take a panoramic view of things when somebody else is in control, and I was enchanted by the startling pieces of desert landscape along the way, starting with the giant San Jacinto and San Gorgonio Mountains we saw on our way to the 10. Route 62 rode a steep incline through hills of green grey shale, the small flat pieces resembled backgammon tiles ready to flip and roll downhill. The road quickly bent east, and in another ten miles we turned off at Joshua Lane and drove into Black Rock Canyon Campground.
Jerry held the map out in front of him as he led us from his van through the continuing display of desert landscapes: a meandering grey wash, then a series of undulating yellow canyons, then a green woods with large fern trees and huge boulders on an angular hillside. The strenuous uphill climb ended when we poked our heads into the air at the top, pulling ourselves onto a large dirt plateau, and saw the gorgeous vista to our south, a wide cobalt sky, the tan sands of Palm Desert, the jade green Coachella Valley, and snow-capped San Jacinto Mountain. I was soul-struck and hardly heard him say, “I’m going to walk ahead to find the other view,” as he left my peripheral vision.
For the entire walk down Warren Vista Trail and Black Canyon Wash back to the car, I was silent except for repeated exclamations of, “Wow, that was amazing.” Once inside his van for the ride down Route 62, I must have repeated “what a gorgeous view” often enough to make an impression, because when we got back to our wives and stepped from his van, he handed me the article. “I’ll probably not go back there,” he said, “but you seemed to really like the view, why don’t you take this.”
“Thanks, Jerry.”
Before we rejoined our families, I put it in the trunk of my car. I had fallen in love. I had found my mistress.
For the next eighteen years, when I finished a big deal and needed to get out of Dodge, I hiked to Warren View and recovered that exhilarated state of mind. As Frank had instructed me, I got my wife used to the fact that I went away now and then — without leaving a name, phone number, or address of the place I was going. Every rendezvous, I took off from the Swiss Health Resort in Desert Hot Springs, headed for the Black Rock hike, and spent an afternoon of bliss on the plateau lying in a comfortable perch above the trail and gazing across the Palm Desert at magic San Jacinto.
The LA Times article, with its map of the hike, moved with me from my black Saab to a green Jeep Cherokee, then to a black Highlander. On the early encounters, I took the map from the trunk and carried it along, also checking my directions with a compass. But after I learned the route by heart, I stopped using either and left the map behind.
I don’t remember seeing it when I organized my things in the rattan baskets.
I passed through undulating Moreno Valley’s cobbled hills of sand and grey until I reached the foot of the San Bernardino Mountains — the gorgeous sisters of the San Gabriel range. Lines of patient cars crawled up towards Big Bear and Arrowhead resorts. I continued east towards the haunting wasteland that’s been a beacon for dreamers and outcasts for centuries.
In the shadow of monster trucks, my Passat reached the San Gorgonio Pass, the only passageway to and from the high desert in the 1850s for resourceful rustlers who fattened stolen cattle in the high hills of Joshua Tree, then drove them through the pass to markets on the coast. I passed the off-ramp to Palm Springs, where the pass opens to a mile-wide expanse of wavy grasses, rimmed by the brown foothills of the mountains, and dotted by giant wind turbines.
I turned right off the interstate and picked up Route 62 for the short stretch to Desert Hot Springs, pulling off at Indian Canyon to arrive at Swiss Health Resort, the same restful place I always stayed. The lot in the rear was uncrowded on the hot afternoon, and after a few rings on the buzzer, still nobody came to open the motel registration room. Then finally, ruddy-looking Ursula, the proprietor, came up the steps from her private rooms to greet me.
“Hello, Ed. So nice to see you.”
“Same here.” I sat on a couch as she went behind the counter to get my paperwork. She was writing up my bill. “So, when is breakfast?” I asked.
“So sorry, Ed. We stopped offering breakfast.”
“Not enough visitors this weekend?’
“We’re not set up for it anymore, with the financial crisis, and some of the regulars stopped. But I just baked some multigrain bread; if you like, I can get a loaf.”
“Sure.” I nodded.
She went back to her place, and I recalled Ursula’s busy breakfasts in past decades — I saw people waiting to fill up on Swiss Muesli, hard-boiled eggs, fresh vegetables, and colorful jams of berries and prickly pear. As I wondered when exactly was the last time I was there, the smell of her wonderful multigrain bread came in. It distracted me from telling her where I was going the next morning. “Here you are.” She handed me the bread and bent her silver head over the paperwork, wrote the $5.00 bread charge to my total, and addressed me from inside her space. “Karl is still doing the water-massage, would you like that?”
“That sounds good.” I had never tried his special massage in all the visits to the place. It sounded like a fantastic way to start the weekend and might actually wash the last buyers off my skin.
“He has a 7 p.m. opening. Is that good?”
I floated face up in the indoor pool on that Thursday night buoyed by multicolor noodles. Karl stepped into the water and greeted me politely, but without any warmth, in his Swiss accent: “You’re here for a one-hour water massage?”
“Yes, I am,” I answered, knowing how relaxing it would be. The tall, muscular man walked behind me to cradle me in his arms and began to massage my back. He carried me to the center of the warm pool.
“Do you like firm massage?”
“Yes.” His stiffness impressed me. It’s not like he hadn’t seen me fifteen times before. Or hadn’t talked to me about the special access his property had to the underground hot springs. But I knew I was in for a treat. I thought about the Allstate Insurance ad, “You’re in good hands,” and I closed my eyes. His finger tips pressed across my waistline from hip to hip, then
