Page 18 - The Myth and the Moment

Morning

“Yes, but I don’t—”
Ah, the hell with it; she’s gone, carrying off her prize to needy Phil.
Why did I let them know so much? The old desire to reveal all,
despite my best intentions to remain anonymous. I’ve got to go
somewhere neutral and sort this out. Oh, poor little Nate baby,
dormant passions all stirred up? Goddamn this city! Why do I stay
here? It’s a minefield: step on a stone and it flips over, showing you a
piece of the past best left buried. Going to start rolling downhill and
pop the clutch.
Wham!
Where did I put those sunglasses? Oh, left them at home, dammit!
See: now you’re acting up. For whom? Down we go, wheee! Watch
out, lady, or your shiny new Mercedes will spend the next six weeks
in dry dock. Al Hodges, if you could only see me now: a fifty-two-
year-old teen-ager tearing through Trousdale Estates in your prize
pick-up truck. Just because I saw those two. And they saw me. But
did we see each other? Down, down, down. And here’s Sunset.
Where to, Nathan? Home, as good a place as any to unboil the blood.
If I drive around like this much longer, I’ll get in trouble. Right.
Yes, just in time: Beverly Hills police car. Observe, officers. You
are passing a paragon of blue-collar industry and sobriety. No Sunday
driver here, just an honest working man on his way out of your fair
city. Evangelino executes a letter-perfect right turn on a green light
and cruises down Doheny at precisely thirty-five miles per hour.
Curious: the left side of the street is in West Hollywood. What if I
strayed across the line and had a head-on collision with that Rolls
Royce sailing toward me? A jurisdictional dispute of Wittgensteinian
proportions, that’s what. Dismembered equally across the border, his
tail in two cities, Evangelino finds his carcass the subject of
controversy. Rising above it all, his spirit looks down upon the
assembled coroners, tow-trucks, and press photographers. His
mocking laughter is lost in the babble of officialdom. Which side was
he on? they ask, consulting the statutes and measuring the angles. Ha!
Reminds me of that psychic who claimed she saw Kennedy
dancing on top of his coffin, while the caissons went rolling along.
And why? Freed from his demanding wife, from the pressures of
high office, from an incarnation too heavy for any Ivy League
playboy to bear? No, says dear old Madame Mystic; he was rejoicing

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