Eleven

In the Air with Louie—and the Other Alice

Even though they had been in the air for thirty minutes and were cruising silently above the clouds, Louie’s eyes were still closed, and he was conscious of nothing but his thundering heartbeat, which sounded in his ears and overwhelmed the buzz of voices around him in the first-class cabin. Earlier in the week, when he’d told his therapist how frightened he was to fly, she wondered if he’d ever experienced a similar kind of fear before he went on stage.

“All the time,” he told her. “But as soon as I say my first line of dialogue, it disappears.”

His therapist smiled. She was a heavy-set woman in her fifties with large features and serious blue eyes that rarely blinked. “So when you become someone else, you’re relaxed?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s easier than just being Louie.”

“I’m okay with who I am.”

“But you’re scared,” his therapist said, and she looked at him questioningly. “Not just of flying. You’re scared of lots of things.”

“I’m scared the fucking plane is going to crash.”

“Yes. I understand that. But the plane is not going to crash.”

“You don’t know that,” Louie said, looking away from her eyes. “It happens all the time.”

“That’s not true, Louie. It doesn’t happen all the time.”

“It happened to my uncle. That’s how his fiancée died.”

“Yes, I know,” the therapist said. “But you’re going to be fine,” she reassured him. “This is an exciting moment in your life. Enjoy it.”

*   *   *

“Can I take your order, Mr. Burk?”

Louie blinked open his eyes at the sound of his last name. A trim stewardess with a pert expression and short, reddish-blond hair was standing in the aisle by his row. She was staring down at him with her brows slightly arched.

“Sorry to wake you up.”

“I wasn’t really sleeping,” Louie said, sitting up and reaching for the menu that was tucked into the seat pocket in front of him. “I was just trying to relax.”

“I would go with the chicken piccata or the prime rib,” said the man sitting next to him by the window. He was around forty and deeply tanned, dressed in jeans and a faded blue denim shirt with silver snaps instead of buttons. A pair of aviator sunglasses were balanced on the top of his head. “Skip the fish. It tastes like cardboard.”

Louie said, “I’ll take the prime rib.”

“Good choice.” The stewardess gave Louie a sly wink as she wrote down his order. “Would you like a glass of complimentary champagne with your dinner?”

“No thanks.”

“Wine?”

“If you have a Diet Coke, that would be great.”

“Mr. Geller?”

“Let me have another double vodka,” said Louie’s seatmate, and when the stewardess stepped away he held out his hand. “Ronnie Geller.”

“Louie Burk.”

“Louie Burk? No shit! I thought I recognized you,” Geller said, and pulled back to stare at Louie’s slowly reddening face. “I saw you in Tooth of Crime the night before last. You were awesome.”

“Thanks.”

“I love Shepard. I love the fucking theater, period. When I’m in New York, I see everything I can. Unless I’m banging some broad,” Geller added in a voice that was a little too loud. “What’re you doin’ in L.A.?”

“I’m auditioning for a pilot.”

“Good for you. That’s terrific,” Geller said, and, after an awkward moment, Louie asked him if he was in the business. “Fuck no! Are you kidding? I’m in the rag trade. I got a couple of sportswear lines. Geller Casuals. All the big stores carry them. But half the kids I knew in high school became either agents or writers.”

“My dad’s a writer.”

“Yeah?”

“Ray Burk.”

“Ray Burk. I know that name. Wait a second,” Geller said, almost to himself, pausing to create a melodramatic moment. “By any chance does your dad have a brother named Gene?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re kidding me?” Geller looked utterly taken aback. “I went to high school with Gene. He was a cool guy. Quiet but tough. Really tough. In our senior year he went with this chick from Venice named Barbara Westbrook. Redhead with huge tits.” Geller paused to gulp down his drink. “So how’s he doin’?”

“Not too good,” Louie said, and he suddenly looked weary, older. “He was supposed to get married, but his fiancée died a few months ago.”

Geller simply stared at Louie for several seconds. “That’s terrible. I’m sorry to hear that,” he said somberly. “How did she die?”

“In a plane crash,” Louie said, and Geller came forward in his seat, as if he were jolted by a small electric shock. “She was a stewardess. Gene thinks the pilot had a drinking problem.”

By now the conversation in the rows around them had stopped. A Time magazine slipped off someone’s lap, landing in the aisle, and a stewardess near the galley was staring at the back of Louie’s head while she poured ginger ale into a plastic cup. Her hand was shaking as she tried to block her mind from imagining the unimaginable.

Louie’s eyes were now closed, but he was wearing on his face an expression of wild agitation. Geller said softly, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“I’ll be okay as soon as we land.”

“That’s in three hours.”

Louie opened his eyes and forced a smile. But inwardly he was straining against some kind of primitive fear that he couldn’t eradicate. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Flying scares the shit out of me.”

“I can see that,” Geller said dryly. “But don’t worry, this plane isn’t going down. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because you and I have a lot more to talk about. That’s why,” Geller said and checked his watch. “Right now it’s two o’clock on the West Coast. I’m gonna nap for an hour. We’ll continue this conversation after lunch.”

Geller grabbed a pillow and a blanket from the overhead compartment, and, not long after his eyes were shut, Louie heard him snoring softly, his uneven breaths making a tiny purring sound as they left his nose.

In a while, Louie reached under his seat for the leather shoulder bag he’d bought at Bloomingdale’s earlier in the week. Inside was the latest issue of Rolling Stone, a day-planner, a collection of plays by Tennessee Williams, and the script for Cool Heaven, the television pilot he was reading for the following morning. After he took out his script and leaned down to store his bag, he noticed a woman gazing at him thoughtfully through the slightly parted curtain that separated the first-class passengers from those flying in coach. She was in her late thirties, decent-looking but certainly not pretty, dressed in a Levi’s jacket and corduroy pants with a light blue crew-neck sweater underneath the jacket.

Louie maintained eye contact while she took a sip from the plastic cup she held just short of her lips; then, shivering slightly in the alien air, he turned away from her intensely curious stare and began to study his lines. But twice during the next hour he glanced over his shoulder, and both times this woman’s face was fdled with a sadness so pure and complete that he thought it must have been drink-inspired.

“My dad was in retail. Women’s wear. He had a store on Hollywood Boulevard called World Wide Fashions. He knew your grandfather,” Geller told Louie, as the aircraft descended slowly through a sky that was the color of dead skin. Lunch was over and they were not quite an hour away from landing in Los Angeles. “That’s where he bought all his magazines.”

“It was the best newsstand in the city.”

Geller nodded. “Yeah, I know. And now it’s some fucking porn palace. Must make your grandfather sick, huh?”

“I don’t think he cares,” Louis lied, remembering his grandfather’s ceaseless rants about the “perverts and other garbage” who now roamed the boulevard, frightening the tourists and driving away what little glamour was left over from Hollywood’s halcyon days: the decades of the thirties, forties, and fifties. “He’s retired, anyway. I don’t think he’s been up there in five years.”

Which was another lie, because the last time they had spoken on the phone, his grandfather told Louie he’d eaten lunch at Musso-Frank earlier in the week. “And when I’m done, I walk outside and what do I see? Whores with skirts barely covering their private parts are posing on my corner. Nate’s corner,” he said, with a fatalistic laugh. “It makes me want to throw up.”

“House of Love! That’s it!” Geller said, and his voice, filled with energy, pulled Louie back to the present. “I heard it’s owned by Larry Havana, Jack Havana’s son.”

Louie nodded his head but didn’t reply, hoping his silence indicated indifference. He was getting a little tired of Geller’s overhearty friendliness, which seemed unearned and was the reason he’d lied to him in the first place. But Louie’s impassive face hid the tremor of apprehension that came with hearing Jack Havana’s name, a name that was discreetly mentioned by his father and his uncle Gene while he was growing up, but never by his grandfather. There was a mystery surrounding this faceless person that Louie didn’t understand, a secret that pertained to the disappearance of his grandmother in 1950, when his father was only eight years old.

With a certain pride, Geller continued to talk about his father and the store he owned on Hollywood Boulevard. Competing against the Broadway and other department stores in the neighborhood, Maury Geller barely scraped by until the late 1950s, when he made a bundle selling hand-painted Mexican skirts and blouses that he imported from a manufacturer in Mexico City, a company owned by a German named Luther Von Lang.

“It was common knowledge that this guy was a Nazi,” Geller said. “But my dad didn’t give a shit. That’s how he paid for our house in Brentwood. In the sixties, when the whole Mexican fad was over, he switched to suede. Geller’s House of Suede. By the seventies he had five stores, including one in San Francisco. I could’ve taken over the whole deal, but I needed to make it on my own, which I did.” Geller smiled suddenly. “That’s probably why you became an actor, not to compete with your dad, right? What about your mom? What’s she do?”

“My mom’s dead,” Louie said, looking a little bit angry. “She killed herself two years ago. She drank herself to death.”

Geller stared at Louie with such great pity that it seemed insulting. “I’m sorry,” he finally said in a soothing voice.

“That’s okay. You were just being friendly. Don’t worry about it,” Louie said, and he flipped open the script that was resting in his lap. “I think I better work on my lines.”

“Yeah. Sure,” Geller said, making a professional face. “When’s the audition?”

“Monday.”

“You got a big talent. You’ll do great.”

Louie shrugged. He was less concerned about the audition than the time he would be spending with his father in Los Angeles. He’d already angered Rick Hirsch, the producer of the pilot. Hirsch’s secretary had booked Louie into the Burbank Hilton, which was located directly across the street from the production offices, but his father had called and insisted that he stay with him at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

“Come on. We’ll have a blast,” his father said, a few days before Louie’s flight. “We haven’t seen each other in six months.”

“Dad, we talk to each other on the phone all the time.”

“Look, I’m proud of you. I want to see you. Don’t you get it, Louie?”

“Yeah, I get it,” Louie said. “But I’m not a little kid anymore. It’s not like . . .”

“Like what?”

“Forget it.”

“No. Tell me what you were going to say.”

Louie sighed. “I’ll see you when I get in,” he said, taking a moment’s pause before he gently hung up the phone.

“We’re almost home,” Geller said, holding Louie’s eye while the aircraft circled slowly over the ocean, preparing to approach their runway from the west. “I told you we’d be okay.”

“We’re not there yet.”

Geller met this remark with silence, his face taking on an expression of relief as the wings flattened out and the landing gear dropped with a jolt. When the wheels touched down, the woman seated directly behind Louie in coach quickly stashed her magazine inside her purse and checked her ticket to make sure the baggage claim tags were still stapled to the envelope. Then she prayed silently, thanking God for letting her arrive safely and then asking him to allow her to leave the airport undetained with her suitcase, the contents of which she had hidden for the last sixteen years in the weedy backyard of her childhood home, the home she had inherited when her parents died but where she rarely stayed, until the first week of June, when she decided to come back to Cedar Rapids for good.

The woman—her name was Alice McMillan—stood to Louie’s right and slightly behind him, calming down a little as the moving walkway slowly carried them from their gate to the front of the terminal. Of course neither knew that twenty years ago, back in November of 1965, the November before Louie was born, she and his father and his uncle Gene had spent an evening together inside the same nightclub, watching Bobby Fuller perform live. That was also the night Alice saw Sharon Tate for the first time, the first time Alice touched her skin.

At the end of the moving walkway, Louie was surprised to see a limousine driver holding up a cardboard sign showing his name printed in large blue letters. When their eyes met, Louie said tentatively, “I’m Louie Burk.”

The driver reached for Louie’s carry-on luggage. “Welcome to Los Angeles, Mr. Burk. We’re parked just outside.”

“I wasn’t expecting a limo.”

“Compliments of William Morris.”

“Lucky boy,” Alice McMillan said to herself, as she watched Louie walk outside, into the buttery sunlight. “So handsome and with his whole life ahead of him, unlived. Lucky, lucky boy.”

On October 8, 1969, the night before he was arrested, Charles Manson, speaking with a half-mournful smile, told Alice McMillan a story that he’d never told anyone before. It was a story about Charlie’s mother and a day they spent together after she was paroled from the West Virginia State Penitentiary in 1942, where she served two years for armed robbery. She was twenty-four years old and Charlie had just turned eight.

Kathleen Manson never had a decent job, and prior to the summer of 1942, she had spent little time with her only son—a boy who could barely read but only wanted to please—abandoning him for weeks and sometimes months at a time, while she ran around the country following her restless heart.

“Growing up, I lived in Kentucky, either with my grandmother or Betty, my maternal aunt,” Charlie told Alice McMillan. It was after midnight in Death Valley, and they were sitting in a dune buggy that was parked on a small hill overlooking Barker Ranch. “When my mom got out of jail I was living with Betty. It was Sunday. Usually when she came to pick me up she was with an older man, some needle-jerk she’d introduce as my uncle, and we’d go back to a fleabag hotel, where I ended up out in the hallway, listening through the door while they drank and fucked and shot dope.

“But this time she was by herself, and she was driving a shiny new Buick convertible with spoked wheels. I knew it wasn’t hers, but it didn’t matter as long as we were alone. You know what I mean, Alice?”

“I do, Charlie. I know exactly.”

“It was summer and we drove with the top down all the way to Panama Springs, this resort by Lake Lorraine in the Blue Ridge Mountains. At a store on the boardwalk she bought me some swimming trunks and some comic books and a deck of cards so we could play casino and gin rummy. The beach was really crowded, but we found a place by ourselves down near the shoreline.”

Alice said, “I remember goin’ to the beach with my mom. I remember bein’ embarrassed because she was overweight. We were both fat.”

“You look fine now,” Charlie said.

“Thanks, Charlie.”

“You know I wouldn’t fuck you if you didn’t.”

“I know that.”

“I like my girls trim. My mom had skinny legs, but she was built on top,” Charlie said, shifting in his seat a little as he watched some car lights slowly wind their way down the mountain on the eastern edge of Goler Wash. “She was wearing a one-piece swimsuit that was so tight I could see her moneymaker when she opened her legs. I saw some hairs there too, curly hairs. I remember that.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t shave down there,” Alice said.

“You forget about that stuff in prison,” Charlie said. “Shaving your pussy is something you do on the outside, like dancing in the kitchen or opening a bank account. I know about prison.”

“I know you do, Charlie.”

“She was sweet to me that day,” Charlie went on, still keeping his eyes on the approaching headlights. “She played with me in the water and, when we got out, she rubbed suntan oil on my back so I wouldn’t burn. For lunch she bought me a hot dog and a sno-cone, and when some men tried to start up a conversation she shooed them away. I wanted that day to last forever, because I knew that once we left the beach we had to go back to wherever she was staying, and I knew a man would be there waiting for her.”

“The man who owned the car.”

Charlie nodded his head, his moist eyes looking across the valley, his blank expression only a transparant protection against his private pain. “Can you see me as a small boy on the beach?”

“Yes. I can, Charlie.”

“What color are my trunks?”

“They’re striped, blue and white in a slanting pattern.”

“What else do you see?”

“Just a little boy with his mom, lying next to each other, both of them on their bellies with drops of water drying on their backs.”

“Can you see the hair snakin’ down her thigh?”

“Yes, I can.”

“I get a hard-on thinkin’ about it. I think that might be wrong.”

“Why?”

“It’s my mother.”

Alice reached over and felt his crotch. “I like it when you get hard.”

“I may want to feel your mouth down there when I’m done telling this story.”

“Sure, Charlie. Anything you want.”

Charlie remained silent for several seconds. Then Alice saw him blink twice and smile wryly, then sadly, his lips wide with pain. “We played gin rummy after we dried off. I think she let me beat her,” he said, as more headlights appeared in the distance, at least five cars moving across the desert from the west in a snakelike line. “We played cards and swam and laughed and talked until the air got cool. I told her I didn’t want her to leave, that I missed her when she was in prison. She said she missed me, too. I started to cry.”

Alice’s hand was still resting in Charlie’s lap. She was surprised to see a tear slide down his cheek and disappear into his beard. She said, “You loved her. Didn’t you, Charlie?”

“Yes, I did. I loved her that day very much. I didn’t want it to end.”

Alice leaned over and kissed the side of Charlie’s face. “You can cry, Charlie. It’s okay.”

“Mama took me back to the hotel, the Hotel Sherman in Lexington, Kentucky, this ugly five-story brick building in the middle of skid row. Her room was on the second floor,” Charlie said with a cold stare, his tears drying and his voice powered by rage. “In the middle of the room was an iron bed where her boyfriend, Joe Charles, a black man, lay asleep. Under the bed were two suitcases, his and hers, and a bag filed with loose cash.”

“Money he’d stolen.”

“Him and his crime partner, Whitey, who was stayin’ in the room next door. They both ended up dead, shot during a bank robbery in Akron, Ohio. But that was years later.”

“How long did you stay with your mom?”

“That time, two weeks, the three of us sleepin’ in the same bed. At night when Joe Charles thought I was asleep, he’d fuck my mom; and when he was done, he’d send her next door to Whitey.”

Alice, gazing away, her face filled with disgust, said, “That’s no way for a little boy to see his mom.”

“When she left the room, Joe Charles took advantage of me. He fucked me up the ass. He said if I told my mom, he’d kill me. And I believed him,” Charlie said, speaking firmly and holding back his shame. “He came in my mouth. He just used me like he used my mom. But that was the last time I sucked a man’s dick. In the penitentiary a nigger tried to punk me out, but I slid a shank in between his ribs and that was that. The word got out quick that Charles Manson was no one’s butt-boy.”

Alice said, “I only fucked one nigger, this musician I met at Monterey Pop. I was high on LSD at the time.”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Charlie said.

“That’s okay. I don’t remember much anyway.”

Charlie smiled and his hand went up to squeeze her breast. “You’re a good chick, Alice.”

“I know I am. I used to think I was bad, but not anymore.”

“Ain’t none of us bad,” Charlie said, staring into the darkness. “Me, you, Joe Charles, Whitey, my mom. None of us. We’re just doin’ the best we can.”

Alice pointed at the mysterious headlights crawling across the landscape. “Those cars are getting close, Charlie.”

“I can see that.”

“Are they comin’ for us?”

“They might be.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

“Hide, I guess.”

“What happens if they find us?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. His eyes were sealed, and there was a new peacefulness in his face. “It doesn’t matter anyhow. In jail or not, I’m still serving a life sentence.”

When Louie arrived at the Beverly Hills Hotel, there was a message at the front desk to call Jeremy Piatt, his West Coast contact at William Morris. There was also a note from his father, explaining that he was at a meeting and would be back at the hotel by five o’clock.

“He arranged for a two-bedroom suite,” said the desk clerk, a young woman with thin shoulders and dark-framed glasses that seemed to magnify her eyeballs. “It’s on the second floor, overlooking the garden.”

Louie looked disturbed by this information. “You mean I don’t have my own room?”

“You did, yes. But your father thought it would be more convenient this way.”

“I’d rather have my own room.”

“I see,” the woman said, with exaggerated dismay. “Perhaps you should discuss—”

“I don’t have to discuss it with anybody,” Louie said, losing his temper. “NBC is paying for my room, not my dad.”

“That was not my understanding.”

The desk clerk stepped away to summon the hotel’s assistant manager, a tall man, fortyish, with an expression on his face of unreasonable annoyance. Speaking with a slight French accent, he told Louie that the billing had been switched and Columbia Pictures, his father’s employer, was now picking up the tab.

“If you like, we can go back to the original arrangement,” he said, gazing over Louie’s head. “However, it could take an hour or two to get everything straightened out. It would mean calling the network and getting their okay, which I would be happy to do.”

“I can’t believe he did this,” Louie said. Then his face broke into a forgiving smile. “All right. Screw it. I’ll stay with him.”

The assistant manager presented Louie with a key. “Enjoy your stay,” he said, and Louie turned and crossed the lobby, while the bellman and the desk clerk exchanged glances, that were impenetrable, lacking any sign of professional kindness.

Louie had not yet finished unpacking when the phone rang inside his suite. It was his uncle Gene calling from his grandfather’s house in Mar Vista.

“Welcome back,” he said, his voice competing with the televised baseball game that was playing noisily in the background. “When did you get in?”

“Just a while ago. How’s Grandpa?” Louie asked hopefully. “Is he feeling okay?”

“He’s watching the game. You want to say hello?”

“Sure.”

Two weeks earlier on a stroll to the drugstore, Nathan Burk took a false step and tripped over a curb, straining all the ligaments in his right knee. At the doctor’s office his leg was put into a brace and he decided to get his yearly physical. The results that came back the following week indicated a suspicious elevation in his red blood cell count. More tests were run, including a colonoscopy and a biopsy of his prostate, the latter revealing the presence of a slow-growing cancer that his doctor recommended treating nonaggressively.

“As long as you’re not in any discomfort, I don’t feel surgery is necessary,” the doctor told Nathan Burk. “Not for a man of your age. If it grows at its present rate, it would not be a problem until you’re well into your nineties.”

“And presumably dead,” Nathan Burk said, without smiling, and he then informed the doctor that he was still capable of having orgasms. “Not that you asked.”

“Another reason to leave things as they are,” the doctor said, and he told Nathan Burk to schedule an appointment in six months.

“So how’s my grandson?” Nathan Burk asked Louie. His voice sounded tired, hoarse. “I hear you’re going to be a big star.”

“Not quite. I’m just auditioning for a pilot.”

“You’re playing a pilot. That’s a good role. John Wayne was a pilot in The High and the Mighty. “

“Not that kind of pilot. It’s a television pilot, a new series for next fall. I play a cop.”

“I don’t understand but never mind. Your father will explain it to me,” Nathan Burk said. “When am I going to see you?”

“Friday. On my way to the airport.”

“Good. Are you watching the game?”

“No.”

“What’s wrong with you? Turn on the television. The Dodgers just tied the score.”

There was a short silence. The phone in the other bedroom rang, making a slightly muffled sound. Standing up, Louie said, “I met this guy on the plane. He said his father knew you. Something Geller. Marvin, I think.”

“Maury Geller! World Wide Fashions. He was a putz,” Nathan Burk said. “Here, your uncle wants to talk to you.”

“Let me speak to your dad,” Gene’s voice said in his ear.

“He’s not here. He’s at a meeting. I have to get the other phone,” Louie said. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Louie hung up quickly and moved into the adjacent bedroom. The ringing phone was on the floor next to the dresser, buried underneath the morning newspapers and some twisted clothing. When he reached for the receiver, a small green tinted vial fell out of a shirt pocket and rolled across the rug. It was half-filled with a white powdery substance that Louie knew was cocaine.

“Hello?”

“Louie?”

“Yeah.”

“Jeremy Pratt from William Morris. You get my message?”

“I was just about to call you.” Louie picked up the vial and placed it on the bedstand next to an empty pint of tequila. “I got in a few minutes ago.”

“That’s cool. Just touching base. You all set for tomorrow?”

“Pretty much.”

“I hyped the shit out of the casting director. I told her you’re the man,” Jeremy Pratt said, his voice brimming with confidence. “This could be a huge break for you.”

Louie took a moment, then mumbled something about doing the best he can, but his mind was really elsewhere, occupied with thoughts of his father and what the night ahead would hold if he were drinking heavily or taking drugs.

“So what about tonight,” Jeremy Pratt said, as if he were dialed into Louie’s mind. “You have any plans?”

“I’m going out to dinner with my dad.”

“Too bad. I got this chick who’s dyin’ to meet you. Jessica Santee. You know who she is?”

“The name sounds familiar.”

“She plays Angie on Crooked Hearts,” Jeremy said. “She saw your picture in my office and flipped out. Let’s get together for a late drink.”

“I don’t think so,” Louie said. His voice was friendly but firm. “I appreciate the offer, but I better get eight hours tonight.”

Jeremy Pratt made a humming sound. “Yeah. You’re probably right. We’ll be at Le Dome if you change your mind. By the way,” he said. “How’d you like the limo? Surprise, huh?”

“Yeah,” Louie said. “It was.”

“We treat our clients right. Look, I gotta take another call,” Jeremy Pratt said, his voice recapturing a more businesslike tone. “If we don’t hook up tonight, I’ll talk to you after the audition.”

Louie replaced the receiver and sat on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees. His face felt hot. In the back of his head he heard his psychiatrist’s voice.

“You’re a talented and dynamic young man,” she told him toward the end of their last session. “But you had a difficult childhood. And growing up without a mother can make you—at times—feel angry or deeply shameful. There is nothing wrong with shame,” she wanted him to know. “Or sadness. And to be vulnerable and cry was not a sign of weakness but a sign of courage.”

Louie, breaking out in a sweat, told her he’d visited the Museum of Modern Art earlier that day. He said he saw a painting there that frightened him.

“By who?”

“Mark Rothko.”

“What did it remind you of?”

“Drowning. Going underwater and being unable to breathe.”

“Have you ever been close to drowning?” the psychiatrist asked Louie.

“No. I’m a great swimmer. My mom taught me,” he said. “In fact the best times I remember were the days she took me to the beach.”

“Did she ever leave you by yourself while she went in the ocean?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Could it be you were afraid that she would drown and leave you all alone?”

“That’s what happened. She did drown—in fucking booze.” Louie stopped speaking and peered closely at his psychiatrist. “What are you afraid of?”

The psychiatrist showed Louie a brief expression of surprise. Then she smiled. “Many things. But I don’t let these fears ruin my day. I know they’re mostly irrational,” she said, and Louie told her he was worried that his father was going to die. “What do you mean?”

“That he’ll kill himself, like my mom.”

“You mean die of alcoholism?”

“Maybe. Or commit suicide. I don’t know.”

“Do you ever feel like killing your father?”

Louie responded immediately, with almost a compulsion to confess. “Yes. Lots of times.”

“Because if he was dead, you wouldn’t have to worry about him. Is that true?”

Louie lifted his shoulders in what was kind of a shrug.

“Your father is fortunate to have a son like you.”

“He wants to help me too much.”

“Maybe you should let him.”

“No. You don’t understand,” Louis said. “If he helps me, and I get too far ahead, he’ll have to kill me. “

“I don’t think so, Louie.”

“But that’s the way it feels.”

Louie took a long shower that started out burning hot and ended up so shockingly cold that his body felt almost numb. While he was toweling off, he heard his father using the phone in the living room. He was speaking to his agent in a harsh, grinding voice, demanding that he take his side in a script-related conflict with Derek Ralston, the director of his movie. The last words his father said before he slammed down the phone were: “Tell Ralston to kiss my ass.”

Moments later Louie came out of his bedroom wearing Levi’s, a clean white T-shirt, and a loosely structured black linen jacket.

“Well, look who’s here,” his father said, and he smiled admiringly as he pulled himself up from the couch. Unsteadily, he crossed the room and embraced his son, giving him two manly slaps on the back before he pushed him away and said, once they were at arm’s length, “You look fucking great.”

“You too.”

His father snorted. “Yeah, right. But I can still kick your ass,” he said, and faked throwing a punch. “You pissed about the room?”

Louie looked away from his father, back toward the television, which was tuned to the evening news. “A little bit. Just because we’re in the same city doesn’t mean we have to stay in the same hotel, let alone the same room.”

“I thought it would be fun. You know, a father-son show-biz moment,” his father said, seating himself again on the couch. “Come on, sit down. Let’s talk about this piece of shit.” His father looked amused but also strangely hostile as he held up the script for Louie’s pilot. “This sucker needs a lot of work.”

Louie was staring coldly at his father. “Where’d you get that, Dad?”

“Out of your bag. Where do you think I got it?”

“When I was in the shower?”

“Yeah.”

“You unzipped my bag and—”

“Wait a minute. No one unzipped anything,” his father said, with an excessive indignation that he knew sounded defensive. “Your bag was already open. I saw the script on top. I got curious. I’m a writer. Big fucking deal!”

Outraged, Louie said, “It is a big fucking deal! I don’t want you going through my shit!”

Louie’s father slowly stood up. His face was tight and red from alcohol. “Fuck this. Nothing I do is ever right,” he said, and he moved inside his bedroom and shut the door. He came back out in less than a minute, and Louie was surprised to see him smiling strangely, almost rapturously. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I apologize. You’re right. I shouldn’t have gone through your things. Okay? Now let’s see if we can get along for a couple of days.”

Tears suddenly came into Louie’s eyes, blurring and doubling his father’s face. “This is wrong,” he said, almost sobbing. “This is really wrong. You’re not supposed to act this way.”

“What way? What are you talking about,” his father said, the cocaine he’d just snorted making him feel pleasantly excited. Then he looked around the room, as if he was searching for an ally. “Hey, I’m your dad. I love you. Don’t you get it? I love you.”

*   *   *

Gene was already at Musso-Frank, nursing a beer at the far end of the bar, when Louie and his father arrived thirty minutes late for the eight o’clock reservation. Ray slipped the maitre d’ a ten and they were quickly shown to a spacious booth in the back room. Sitting directly across the aisle was Bruce Springsteen and a party of six which included singer Linda Ronstadt and Nils Lofgren, Bruce’s new rhythm guitar player.

Keeping his eyes turned down and his voice low, Louie said, “I saw Bruce live at Madison Square Garden. He was unbelievable.”

Gene nodded in a knowledgeable way. “Great act. No question about it.”

“But not compared to Elvis,” Ray said, taking a sip of the double martini he’d ordered before they sat down. “Maybe he’s the boss, but Elvis was the motherfucking king!”

Louie made a face at his father, a warning face, and Gene said, “Keep your voice down, Ray.”

“What did I say that’s wrong? I was just telling the truth. Gene and I saw Elvis in person,” Ray said to Louie, ignoring the rage and frustration he saw in his son’s eyes. “We saw all the great ones. Right, Gene? Elvis, Buddy Holly, the Drifters, Bobby Fuller. Now that was a great show. Gene’s a Bobby Fuller fanatic. He’s convinced he was murdered but he’s wrong.”

Gene’s hand found his brother’s wrist. “Take it easy, Ray.”

“He’s drunk,” Louie said.

“That’s right. I’m drunk,” Ray said in a vicious tone. “Too fucking bad. If it bothers you, leave. You too, Gene—split.”

“You’re on probation,” Gene said. “You get popped again and you’re going to jail.”

Ray stared at his brother. His mouth began to twitch. “Let go of my arm, Gene.”

Gene relaxed his grip and Ray flexed his fingers a few times; then he lifted his head and glanced around the restaurant. He didn’t move when Louie tried to slide out of the booth.

“Let me out. I’m leaving,” Louie said, and his father stubbornly shook his head. “Dad, don’t be an asshole.”

“Stick around. Come on.”

“No.”

“Please. I had a bad day,” Ray said, in a voice that was distraught. “I’m sorry.”

There was a long chord of silence. Then Louie, trying not to sound concerned, said, “What happened?”

“They want to get rid of me, hire another writer.”

“Who’s they?” Gene asked.

“Ralston, the producer, the studio, everyone.” Ray chugged down the rest of his drink. He looked angry now, almost dangerous. “They want me to change the ending. They don’t want to see any kids die. That’s missing the whole point of the book. Fuck them. I’m not changing a word.”

The table fell silent. Across the aisle, Nils Lofgren had a quiet smile on his face. Then he glanced at Gene and exchanged a friendly nod. Gene and Nils had known each other since the late seventies, when they both lived in Topanga and Nils played regularly with Crazy Horse, the band that backed up Neil Young on his album After the Gold Rush.

Nils was still smiling as he lifted up his glass of wine and saluted Gene. “To the good old days.”

“Yeah,” Gene said, smiling back. “It’s been a while.”

“The party last year on the Fourth of July. You broke out all those killer oldies. You still have them?”

“Every one.”

“What about the blond?” Nils said. “You still have her?”

Gene slowly answered. “No,” he said softly. “She’s gone.”

While the waiter was taking their order, Louie watched heads turn as Steve Martin was seated in a booth on the other side of the room. He was wearing a smirking grin and a loud peppermint striped shirt that was tucked into white duck pants. With him was a smaller man with carefully parted hair and two women, both blonds with skinny waists and large breasts, and all four were laughing playfully, delighting in some secret joke.

Bruce Springsteen wrote a note on a napkin and Nils passed it over to Louie. It said: “Pledging My Love was a great movie. Your dad’s an artist. Stop breaking his balls.”

Louie smiled. The next time Ray made eye contact with Springsteen, he said, “That was cool. Thanks.”

“I meant it.”

Gene said to Nils, “Alice is dead. She died in a plane crash.”

Conversation stopped at both tables. Linda Ronstadt looked frightened as she stared at Gene with her round, doll-like eyes. “Why did you bring that up?” Ray said to Gene.

“Nils met her. I remember on the Fourth they talked about books. They both liked Kurt Vonnegut and Flannery O’Connor. And Alice used to fly out of D.C.,” Gene said. “That’s where he’s from. Right, Nils?”

“Baltimore.”

“Close,” Gene said. Then, without expression, he revealed that Leon Russell, the legendary Tulsa-born piano player, was also at the party. “I remember talking to him about Bobby Fuller. He was a real fan.”

Ray gave Gene a dreary look. “Why don’t you let these guys finish their dinner?”

“We’re cool here,” Nils said.

“Maybe too cool,” Linda Ronstadt said, with a hesitant laugh.

Bruce Springsteen was chewing a piece of steak. After reflecting for a moment, he said, “Bobby Fuller could write some tunes,” and no one disagreed.

Ray excused himself to use the restroom. Once inside he locked the stall and broke out the vial of cocaine that he always carried in the right front pocket of his jeans. Four quick toots and he was standing in front of the sink, feeling light and graceful as he splashed water on his frozen face. On his way back to his table he saw Steve Martin glance in his direction with a stiff smile, as though a disagreeable and long-dormant memory had suddenly surfaced in his consciousness. After a moment, he put down his fork and said something to the busty blond companion on his right.

Ray, his face tingling and his heart beating hard, crossed the room and stood in front of Steve Martin and stared down at him with some dislike. Several seconds passed before the man with Martin, the weak-looking but well-groomed man, turned toward Ray and said impatiently, “Can I help you with something?”

“Do you remember me?” Ray asked Steve Martin.

“Should I?”

“I worked at CBS back in the sixties. I was the censor on the Smothers Brothers’ Show during their second season.”

Steve Martin grimaced. He avoided looking at Ray’s face. “Burk?”

“Yeah. I’m not a censor anymore. I write movies now,” Ray said, not quite smiling as he recited his credits.

“That’s good, Burk. Good for you. Maybe you’ll write something for me.”

“I don’t think so, Steve.”

The blond sitting next to Martin turned and looked at Ray with a kind of cruel sweetness. “Why don’t you go back to your table,” she said.

“He’s drunk,” said Steve Martin’s male companion.

“He treated me like shit,” Ray said to everyone at the table, and Steve Martin, helpless in the face of Ray’s anger, just shook his head and stared down at his plate. “Tommy, Dicky, the writers, everyone. They all treated me like shit.” Ray spun around and pointed across the room. “See over there? That’s my son, Louie. He’s an actor. The guy sitting next to him is my brother, Gene. Gene Burk. The Burk brothers say fuck the Smothers brothers, and I say fuck Steve Martin.”

The man with Steve Martin made a move to stand up, but the blond on his left said, “Don’t, Lee. It’s not worth it.”

“What an asshole,” the other blond said under her breath.

Ray turned around with excessive care, trying to maintain his balance while he ignored the diners who were staring at him with faces that were quietly appalled. Gene stood up quickly and, using both hands, he maneuvered Ray back to their booth. Louie was already gone and so were the rock and rollers across the aisle.

Before Ray could order another martini, the maitre d’ appeared at their table. “I’m sorry,” he said to Gene, “but I must ask your friend to leave.”

Gene said, “He’s not my friend. He’s my brother.”

“Nevertheless he—”

Gene waved the whole thing away. “I’ll take care of him. Don’t worry. He just had too much to drink.”

The maitre d’ shook his head. He made a signal and a waiter materialized at his side with the bill. “He insulted my customers. He must leave now,” the maitre d’ said, “or I will call the police.”

“Go ahead. Be my guest,” Gene said, as Ray pretended to be absorbed in chewing on a breadstick. “And I’ll point out the six customers I saw snorting coke at their tables. This place will be closed down in thirty minutes.”

The maitre d’ was silent for several seconds. Then, with a proud face, he held up their bill and slowly tore it in half. “You are not welcome here anymore,” he said in a firm voice, dismissing the waiter with a brisk nod, before he returned to his station at the front of the restaurant.

Ray looked at his brother. “I guess I fucked up.”

“Yeah, you did,” Gene said, and Ray laughed softly. “You might think about going back to A.A.”

“You’re probably right,” Ray said. His voice was steady, but he looked a trifle uncertain. “What about you?”

“What do you mean? I’m not the one with the drinking problem.”

Ray shrugged him off. “You got other problems, Gene.”

Gene leaned across the table. “Did you see Springsteen’s face when I mentioned Bobby Fuller? Did you see it light up?” he said. He was staring into his brother’s red floating eyes with a new intensity. “He was a fan, big time. You could tell. And Ronstadt and Nils, they all knew his story.”

“So what, Gene?”

“So what?” Gene slumped back against the booth with a righteous expression. “I can’t believe you said that. You were with me, Ray. We saw him together. You were fucking there. How could you not want to know who killed him?”

“Nobody killed him, Gene.”

“You’re wrong. And if you had any brains, this would be your next screenplay.”

“You mean after I sober up,” Ray said, and stood up. “Fuck this place. I need another drink.”

*   *   *

The air was muggy and Gene felt woozy and kind of sad as he silently watched Ray’s rented red Mustang pull up to the curb. After his brother tipped the valet and slid behind the wheel, Gene crouched down so he could speak through the open window on the passenger side. “Let me drive you home,” he said, quickly reaching in to stop Ray’s hand before he could turn over the engine. “You’re fucked up.”

“Don’t worry about me, Gene.”

“I do worry about you. So does Louie.”

“And if Alice were alive, Gene, she’d be worried about you.”

Gene slowly let his hand fall away from the ignition. When he stood up and glanced around, his face looked lost, and he was barely conscious of the cluster of diners who had walked outside and were now chatting loudly as they waited for their cars.

“Gene?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m okay now.”

The Mustang’s lights came on and Gene looked with concern at his brother’s face through the windshield. He was smiling feebly.

“Really,” Ray said. “I am. I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” Gene said brusquely, and then he smiled back. “So will I.”

Gene remained standing by the curb with his head bent, looking slightly puzzled, watching Ray pull into the light traffic moving west on Santa Monica Boulevard. When he could no longer see the red taillights in the blue darkness, he pulled out the letter he had neglected to show his brother, the letter from Alice McMillan, the other Alice who later joined the Manson family back in 1967, becoming one of its earliest members.

Gene had read through all the letters several times since returning from Cedar Rapids, all eight, but he still remained mystified by their sheer strangeness. Although he knew it was not possible—the prose was too flat and cool, and the impressions and memories, no matter how loathsome or weird, were too precise—there were moments in the middle of the night when he’d come awake thinking that he was the victim of some elaboraate hoax, that it was all an illusion, something he’d created out of his abysmal despair, and that (in fact) he had written the letters himself.

The letter he carried with him tonight was a long letter, almost seven legal-sized pages with writing on both sides. Toward the end, Alice McMillan mentions a night she spent in a town near Springfield, Missouri. She writes:

A man named Dan picked me up in a white Chevrolet on Highway 30, just outside Camden, Ohio. It was dusk, my favorite time of day. Dan was driving straight through to Omaha. He was wearing pressed jeans and a clean white button-up shirt with the sleeves folded back twice, so you could see the dark hair on his forearms. Talk about sexy! Wow!

He was coming home from college in Santa Barbara, California. I wanted to tell him I was in Santa Barbara once with Charlie, living in a school bus that was painted black, but I decided to keep my mouth shut. That would be the last thing he would need to know. Right? After an hour or so we stopped for cigarettes at this little store off the interstate. Dan bought a pint of dark rum and a bottle of Coca-Cola, which he mixed together, and we passed it back and forth until it was all gone.

Around midnight he pulled off the road near Thurman. We found a motel and fucked like bunnies, telling stories in between. He told me he had a girlfriend back at college, a sorority girl, and I told him I once fucked Charles Manson. He said I was a liar and I said “you’re right,” but I could tell he wasn’t quite sure.

Just before he passed out, a car pulled up outside blasting the radio, playing “I Fought the Law,” an oldie by Bobby Fuller. I was gonna tell Dan that years ago I met Bobby Fuller, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t believe that either. When he was asleep, I put on his white shirt and walked outside and danced backward in the parking lot, the taps from my boots throwing red sparks around my shins. The sky was clear and as dark as the sea. A cool breeze opened my shirt and stroked my breasts. My lips were smiling, mostly from the sex I just had. I felt good about my life.

And it was not over yet.

Love,

Alice