HIS WORK DONE, ARNOLD MADE HIS WAY AROUND THE EDGE OF THE property, toward the cave where Raj lived. They would wait there together, along with the young woman, until Twyla and the guests made their discoveries and finally, Arnold’s life would begin. He’d never spoken to Raj’s friend, the woman with the beanpole frame and nervous green eyes and dark cascade of hair, but Raj cared for her, and said Candance did too.
When Arnold had met them in the woods outside Betelgeuse, Raj and the young woman, Quinn, hand in hand, she had looked more like a girl in her too big dress. Skittish like a nervous filly. But Raj had promised she was one of them. Both a prisoner and a noble warrior, fighting for her life. Just like Arnold and Raj and Candace.
Arnold made his way through the trees to the clearing near the barn and hooked left toward the far ridge. Overhead, the moon was faint in the sky, soon to be banished by the bloody hues of sunrise, to another endless day in the canyon.
When had the prospect of a new day begun to bring him such dread? There had been a time when the sunrise—as sunrises were supposed to do, and as the poets and songwriters promised—brought him a feeling of hope, of expansive possibility. Another day, another chance. At some point, soon after Twyla’s third, or maybe even fourth, venture—the avocado farm—had failed, the inverse had begun to creep in. Lightly at first: another day, one less chance; it finally landed with a thud when the godforsaken virus had hit, when it became clear that Twyla would never go anywhere, would never let him go anywhere: another day, another step closer to death.
He needed a change. From the monotony of isolation. From the relentless chores of the ranch—he yearned to never again lift a shovelful of goat shit. It began to feel like a war. The canyon versus Arnold and Twyla. Why repair holes that termites would only reopen in a week’s time? Why water vegetables when the sky refused to open, and the land was as dry as the Sahara? There was no point in anything but surrender to the beechies, who were as plentiful and indestructible as cockroaches.
He’d tried all the reasonable methods to convince Twyla to leave. Presented, gently and without pressure, all the sensible reasons to leave Celestial Ranch for an easier life.
They were drowning in debt. Twyla thought he was oblivious, but Arnold had no trouble logging into accounts on his wife’s phone during the long stretches she went “screen free.” Bills stamped with OVERDUE in red ink arrived in the mail weekly.
They were all alone. The hard-to-access location of the canyon, combined with quarantine, had brought Arnold to a level of isolation so extreme he often felt he was living in a cage some cruel god had dropped from the sky.
Not only had Twyla refused to even consider selling the ranch, but she also wouldn’t venture down into the Valley for something as noncommittal as an open house at one of the airy, modern complexes they could live in for a fraction of what it cost to maintain Celestial Ranch. A place where their water simply flowed from a faucet without a well having to be primed first, where air-conditioning was a basic option of life instead of an impossible luxury. Twyla would rather die of heat stroke than cool their house during the broiling, rainless Topanga summers.
And then, of course, there were the goats.
The ornery, ever-shitting animals were yet another reason Twyla refused to leave the ranch. Never mind that he had offered to give up Klondike—an animal infinitely superior to the goats—if they moved to a senior community. But Twyla said the goats were her children. That she could not make them orphans.
Arnold was trapped. Trapped by the goats, and the guests, and this drought-racked mountainside his wife would not leave. All he wanted was a little comfort. Was that so much to ask, in the twilight of one’s life? A little comfort in the way of appliances that worked and stairs he wasn’t terrified of falling down, and a bit of company here and there. Twyla had stopped needing (wanting?) his company long ago. He’d come to feel like nothing more than a nuisance in her presence, yet another task to check off her to-do list.
He’d almost given up. He was ready to kiss Klondike’s velvety nose and step right off the steep edge of the canyon. Twyla, on the other hand, did not seem lonely. She had Sibyl, the quack psychic who practically lived with them, and her hoity-toity city-slicker guests from the website.
The rotating weekend guests had been the nail in the coffin. They’d transformed Twyla, once the most authentic person Arnold had ever known, one who saw right through the loud, phony chaos of the world, into a phony herself. Into someone who ran herself ragged all over the ranch in order to please her “guests”—utter strangers! Trespassers! She drove all the way to Topanga Village—sometimes as far as the Palisades—to buy garbage for the guests with money she and Arnold did not have, insisting the “guests” have soap that smelled like a specific flower, all because she’d read an article on the internet on how to be a great Airbnb host!
When Arnold thought of the money she’d spent to please rich people from the city—building the ridiculous yurt, fixing the plumbing and the flooring in the cabins—he felt ill. Ill, then angry, his rage building until the force of it scared him.
It was when he began complaining about the Airbnb funny business, which Twyla considered a legit business, that she began using words like dementia and Alzheimer’s, and made appointments for Arnold with Dr. Belk, the goddamn geriatric specialist.
He knew about the pills, had known all along. He heard her drag the stool over to the fridge each night so she could pluck out a pill, mash it into powder, and slip it into his tea. His Twyla, the love of his life, had tried to drug him. Most nights he found a way to dump the tea and make her think he drank it. Other nights, he had to drink it and woke the next morning in a fog, forced to trudge through the day even more depressed than he already was.
It had been Twyla’s insistence that there was something wrong with him that had revealed to Arnold his plan. If she wanted so badly for him to be a dumb, drooling senior citizen, well, he’d give her what she wanted.
He made her believe he was going soft in the head, fast becoming a confused old geezer who wanted nothing more than the love of his dog and the bland meals Twyla set out before him three times a day and praised him for eating, as if he were a stubborn toddler.
It was easier, he found, to have Twyla think he was succumbing to dementia. Easier than going head-to-head with her in battles he was destined to lose.
Then, by some miracle, Raj had come into his life, the strange young man with haunted eyes and dirt-caked skin beneath his matted beard Arnold had found half dead in the cave behind Hydra Hill. Raj who talked to the cave walls and insisted a woman named Candace slept in the darkest corner.
It was Raj who helped Arnold realize there were ways to get off Celestial Ranch that did not require the direct persuasion of Twyla. The young man’s total independence from the stranglehold of the regular world, while born from great tragedy, made Arnold believe that he, too, could be free.
Raj was all too happy to help. Together, they became a team, working to liberate each other: Raj from the corporeal struggles of living in a high, waterless canyon, and Arnold from the lonely vortex of his life. The deal they struck was simple: Arnold would keep Raj nourished and protected from the dangers of the canyon. And in turn, Raj would help Arnold break free of each shackle that bound him to Celestial Ranch: The guests. The goats. Twyla.
Raj had not let him down. This weekend, he’d shone more than ever, rattling the guests with bear shit in the shower, bee swarms at their picnic, sharp pine cones in the bedsheets, and beechies at their silly psychic readings.
Just hours ago, Raj had performed the ultimate feat. Arnold had wrestled with the idea for weeks before finally proposing it to Raj.
“You can keep the meat,” Arnold had said, after explaining what needed to be done. “Klonnie can have some too.”
But Raj had refused. At first. Arnold had been forced to make a threat—it was the goats or Raj. One of them was leaving the ranch.
Raj’s eyes had grown wide with horror.
Then, acceptance.
They understood each other, Arnold and Raj.
Arnold knew Twyla would grieve for the goats. He also knew that grief passed, leaving new strength and clarity in its place.
Grief woke you up.
Raj had taught him this.
Twyla needed waking. A good strong dose of reality.
It was for this reason that Arnold had stopped when he’d seen her golf cart, parked in a seemingly random spot on the trail between their house and the now-destroyed hive. He had checked the ignition for the key. There it was. The round metal head gleaming in the soft moonlight.
Twyla assumed that the world waited for her, bent to her will.
Well, Arnold thought, as he fingered the key now deep in his pocket, he had news for her.