By the time they hit Santa Clarita, Vale remembered why he had grown to despise Southern California in general and LA specifically. The ceaseless traffic, the noise, the phalanxes of single occupancy vehicles stretching as far as the eye could see. The ball-of-yarn confusion of the freeways. The great and callous waste of it all, just the sheer volume of shit being taken and used and irrevocably thrown away. It was the same everywhere, of course, all over the planet, but nowhere did it seem as pronounced as it did here. Los Angeles. Christ.
He thought for approximately three seconds about calling someone he knew, and then realized there was absolutely no one he wanted to see. What was he going to do, go hang out with Edwin Tanazzi? Get a cappuccino with Jared Brophy? See if Mindyfrom-Pratt wanted to do a few more lines of blow? No. There’d been one good thing about Los Angeles, one good thing left to him at all, and she was gone now.
• • •
Vale only had to ask directions once to find the place. The familiarity of the city coming back to him. Memory, that old reluctant ghost.
Candice and Richard’s home was a sprawling one-level sandstone in Culver City. There was a half circle of a driveway and an iron fence laced around the property. Beyond the fence the sloping lawn was just as Vale had imagined it, emerald-green and lush as carpet. In front of the house was an island of raked gravel studded with blooming cactuses. Cars filled the driveway and lined the street. Nice cars. They found parking a few blocks away.
Casper and Marvin stood awkwardly on the sidewalk, squinting in the dazzling sunlight as Vale unwound his bandage in the front seat, peering into the rearview mirror. He probed gingerly at his scab. It was about as bad as he expected, which was pretty bad. My God, he thought. It looks like I’ve got fruit leather on my forehead. This was compounded by that fact that the flesh around his eyes looked bruised and purple, and his hair, filthy and wind-blown, had formed a kind of stringy, blown-back pompadour.
He turned to Marvin. “Be honest. Does it look better with the bandage or without it?”
Marvin winced and tilted his hand back and forth. “That’s kind of a tough question, Mike.”
They walked back to the house. Wide stone steps led up to the front door, which was braced by a pair of huge picture windows. Two men stood there in dark suits. One had a clipboard. They both had the jaws of comic book superheroes and, as they watched the three approach, were clearly telegraphing fuck off vibes. Casper took his baseball cap off and wrung it in his hands.
Vale said, “I’m Michael Vale.”
The doorman looked at his clipboard and then looked up. He looked at the other guy. For a moment, nobody said anything.
“I’m sober,” Vale said flatly.
The second doorman looked over Vale’s shoulder. “These gentlemen are your guests?”
Vale turned to him. He’d decided to leave the bandage off and could feel the scab tighten when he made certain expressions. Like when he scowled, which he did now. “Yes. They are. These gentlemen are my guests.”
The one with the clipboard nodded and opened the door. “The memorial will be held back here after the funeral, which will be held at Woodland Park Cemetery. Programs are available in the foyer. The procession leaves in approximately half an hour. Mr. Brandt can answer any of your questions.”
Vale thanked him, felt a flurry of anger at himself for doing it, a bird snapping its wings against a cage.
The foyer was marble and beyond that the rest of the house was blond hardwoods or pale ceramic tile depending on where you were. High ceilings, and panels of sunlight fell everywhere from skylights above. The rooms themselves were dense with low-slung furniture, everything done in clean lines, neutral. A painting on the dining room wall was easily eight feet tall but little more than an abstract collision of aquamarine panels. Clearly Richard’s influence. Right? Candice had loved his work, or people like Barbara Kruger, her faux-clumsy earnestness. Did she actually like this stuff?
People stood in their dark clothes, murmuring in small clusters, holding bottles of water and cups of coffee. Marvin stood next to Vale with his hands clutched behind his back, nodding at the funeral goers looking at them, of which there were more than a few. Even for Hollywood, they stuck out. Their dishevelment, Vale felt, bordered on obscene here. Casper stood near him with his hat pressed to his stomach, gazing at the floor, looking like he’d flinch at a cough.
They stepped out to the enormous backyard. Another green expanse battling the turquoise pool, the top of it dappled in sunlight. Between Richard’s copyright work and the Janey books, the two of them had done very well. There was a buffet table and waiters walked rigidly among the guests with carafes of coffee and trays of bottled Evian, appropriately solemn. Casper, with a wince of apology and a slap of his hat against his leg, beelined for the buffet table as discreetly as he could.
Vale caught a glimpse of someone across the lawn amid all the faces staring at him. He stopped, his breath seizing in his chest. The world around him seemed to freeze, turn crystalline.
Fifteen steps away? Twenty? He started moving.
Behind him, Marvin said, “Hold up, Mike. Wait.”
Twenty steps on the grass at most and there in front of him was Jared Brophy, his ex-agent, he of Paris, he of Mindyfrompratt, he of the contract that ruined Vale’s life. It’d been years, but there he was. Older and clearly ill. Brophy was sick, anyone could see that: he looked like a skull wrapped in tanned, liver-spotted burlap, with a pair of obviously false teeth pressed into the mess. He looked like dog shit in a dark blue suit, honestly, like he would be dying soon. But the eyes were the same. Liquid, searching, darkly mirthful. “Mike Vale,” he crowed, “long time, no see,” and his voice had become terrible, like he was trying to speak while slurping up the last dregs of a milkshake through a straw.
Vale’s fist pistoned out, caught him beneath the eye.
Brophy tumbled to the grass like a puppet with his strings cut.