Spider Season (19 page)

“You’re in pretty good shape for an old man,” Steele said, grinning.

As I demonstrated three takedowns, they came to me effortlessly, the moves coded into my body’s memory from all those years of drills and competition. I started with a single leg tackle, one of the more basic takedowns; followed it with a fireman’s carry, slightly more difficult to perform; and finished with a Japanese hip roll, the most complicated of the three, in which balance, timing, and momentum are crucial.

“Like most sports, wrestling is a kind of dance,” I told the group, “sensing the rhythm of the match, getting a feel for your partner, setting him up, timing your move just right. You practice them often enough and the moves become instinctive.”

“Kind of like sex, you mean?”

The voice came from the back of the group and sounded familiar, as well as vaguely taunting. There was some laughter, but it was more nervous than lighthearted. The notion of sexuality on the wrestling mat is always a touchy subject among coaches and participants, even in a wrestling club, like this one, that was largely gay. In the heat of competition, the sensuality of the sport is never an issue. It’s all about moves, countermoves, strength, stamina, injury, the score, how much time is left—being entirely focused on the extreme mental and physical demands of the match. But outside that competitive framework, the old taboo against men getting too comfortable with one another, touching too intimately, invariably raises its ugly head. For wrestlers, straight or gay, the issue is always there, like the subtext of a conversation between two married strangers who have illicit romance on their mind but can’t quite admit it.

I ignored the annoying comment from the back of the room and completed my demonstration. Steele announced that it was time for the wrestlers to pair off for three-minute matches. He asked me if I was game.

“Not against you,” I said. “I’ll need a partner who’s lighter, without biceps the size of melons. Otherwise, you’ll have to carry me out on a stretcher.”

Steele swept his eyes around the circle. “Any volunteers?”

“I’ll face off with him,” a voice said.

It was the same voice we’d heard a moment ago, tossing out the impolite remark about sex. All eyes turned toward the back of the circle. Wrestlers stepped aside to let the man through.

It was Lance. He held his motorcycle boots in one hand and a sleeveless leather vest in the other, showing off his hard-plated chest and colorful tattoos. His dome was still clean-shaven, but he’d added a blond Fu Manchu mustache to go with the soul patch.

“You don’t have the right gear,” Steele said. “I don’t believe you’re even a member, are you?”

“Maybe I’ll join, if the competition’s any good. Unless the old guy has a problem squaring off with me.”

Steele glanced my way. “Benjamin?”

“No problem,” I said, keeping my eyes on Lance.

“Cool,” he said. “Let’s get it on.”

I suddenly realized I hadn’t disclosed, not to Steele or the others.

“I’m HIV positive,” I said. “There could be blood.”

“You looking for a way out?” Lance asked.

“Just being up-front about it.”

“I told you before,” he said, “I like to take risks.”

“You two know each other?” Steele asked.

“After a fashion,” I said.

Lance glanced at Steele, then back at me. “Do we do this, or not?”

“You’ll need to sign a waiver of liability,” Steele said. “In case of injury.”

“I already did, when I came in.”

“You’ve wrestled before?”

“Some, back in high school. You got gear for me?”

“Shoe size?”

“Ten.”

Lance fixed me with his fierce blue eyes while Steele rustled up shoes, a singlet, and headgear.

“I don’t need no headgear,” Lance told him. “I’m not that pretty, anyway.”

Maybe not, but he was worth looking at as he stripped down to his briefs. Exposed like that, he looked even leaner and more wiry, the kind of man whose tensile strength can fool you if you’re not careful. He stepped into the Spandex singlet and pulled it up snugly over his hips and torso, slipping his arms through the shoulder straps. A minute later, he was lacing up his wrestling shoes. Then he was standing, rolling his neck and jogging in place to loosen up, while I did the same.

When he was ready, we faced each other in the middle of the mat.

“You sure you’re up to this, old man?”

“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

“Three minutes,” Steele said, and blew his whistle.

Lance came at me like a raging bull. An undisciplined wrestler is often more dangerous than one who’s well trained—a flurry of awkward motion and flailing limbs, the kind of frenzied, slam-bang action that comes at you from all angles and makes injuries more likely. Lance was like that, ferocious and unrelenting. Right off, we butted heads painfully, but it didn’t slow him down. I felt his fingernails dig into my flesh—face, neck, hands—as he clawed at me like a wild animal. I kept trying to push him off, to put some distance between us so I could measure him and set up a move, but I never got an opening. I quickly realized that trying to execute any conventional moves was futile. I was reduced to nothing but defense, trying to ward him off and minimize the damage. He just kept coming, tearing my flesh, banging my skull, thumbing me in the eye, slamming me every which way, until I began resorting to the same illegal tactics, while Steele exhorted us to get back to wrestling.

Finally, with half a minute remaining, he blew his whistle and stepped between us, pushing us apart.

“That’s enough,” he said. “That’s not wrestling. It’s warfare.”

Neither Lance nor I had scored a point, although we’d both drawn blood. I was heaving for air and close to throwing up.

“I’m bleeding,” I said, looking Lance over for abrasions that might allow transmission. “You need to get cleaned up. Use some antiseptic.”

Lance just stared at me in silence. His eyes were hard with fury but also brimming with tears. Steele shoved a towel and a bottle of antiseptic at him. Lance ignored him, turning away to strip off his singlet. Steele grabbed him roughly.

“When you’re in this room,” Steele said, “you do things my way.”

To my surprise, Lance didn’t argue. He just stood staring at me, wiping away a tear as Steele cleaned my blood off his face and upper chest.

When he was done, Steele said to the group, “That’s enough for today. We need to disinfect this mat.”

“Sorry about the blood,” I said.

“Don’t worry about it. We’ve got a few members who are positive. We deal with it.”

Lance moved to a corner to change back into his street clothes. When I approached him, he looked away, blinking back tears.

“You finally got to me, didn’t you? You happy now?”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t bother you again.”

“Is that a promise?”

As he slipped into his vest, he finally met my eyes.

“Count on it, old man. You won’t see me again.”

He strode from the room, down the corridor, and across the lobby. I followed him from a distance, as far as the exit. Outside, he climbed on his old Harley, kick-started it, and roared out of the parking lot.

I turned as Bruce Steele came up beside me. Both of us watched Lance ride off, heading east on Santa Monica Boulevard, toward Hollywood.

“What the hell was
that
about?” Steele asked.

I had no response for him. I was just happy to have Lance out of my life. At least that was what I told myself as I thought about the tears I’d seen in his conflicted eyes, and the perplexing questions he’d left behind.

TWENTY

August arrived in a wave of dry heat, crackling and dangerous.

It was the kind of climate Southern Californians variously think of as wildfire, earthquake, or riot weather, depending on what part of the region they live in. Rampaging wildfires were a sure bet, about as routine as going to the beach. Major earthquakes and urban riots struck less often, every couple of decades or so. But they were always lurking as possibilities, one below the sun-baked streets and the other above.

I didn’t need a change in climate to put me on edge. Lance may have ridden his Harley out of my life, but Jason Holt had decided to stay in touch. One early afternoon, the mail carrier delivered another postcard, similar to the others. Fred, unable to climb the stairs to my apartment, left it on the bottom step with my other mail.

This one was addressed to Benjamin Morgue Justice:

Now that your pretty convertible has been reduced to salvage, perhaps you should replace it with something more fitting, like a hearse. (Since those toxic medications you take will surely kill you one of these days, if AIDS doesn’t get you first.) Got AIDS? Got Milk? Have a nice death, faggot.

That afternoon, I put my Mustang up for sale online through craigslist, a mess of ruined paint, shredded upholstery, and cracked glass. Since it was a ’65, which made it a classic, I was able to unload it quickly, selling it to the first bidder for six-hundred bucks just to get it over with. Still, it wasn’t easy watching the Mustang being hooked up and towed away, knowing I’d never see it again.

With the arrival of the latest piece of hate mail, Holt let me know he was still around, determined that I not forget him. I decided to go back on the offensive, but less directly. He’d mentioned two people—his aunt, Victoria Faith, and Charles Wu, the artist who’d painted his portrait—who I hoped might tell me more about him, give me an inside angle and advantage on the guy. It was what my old boss, Harry Brofsky, had called going fishing—keep fishing long enough, and in the right spots, Harry had advised me, and a perceptive reporter was bound to come up with a bite, which invariably led to bigger fish.

I contacted Victoria Faith first, calling her at the Motion Picture & Television Country House. I told her I was writing a nostalgia piece about film ingénues of the 1930s and wondered if she’d see me for an interview. Figuring she might not be computer savvy at her age, I made up a mythical Internet magazine as my employer. She sounded pleasantly surprised and eager for the company, and we scheduled an afternoon appointment for the following Wednesday.

*   *   *

I drove out the 101 through the furnace heat of the San Fernando Valley to the northern stretches of the city of Los Angeles.

Bordered by mountains, this end of the triangular valley had been picturesque but largely arid flatland until the early decades of the twentieth century. That’s when the city’s wealthiest and most powerful figures—businessmen and landholders, almost exclusively white—decided to transform the onetime Mexican pueblo into a thriving metropolis. For that, they needed water. Through legal maneuvering, ingenious engineering, federal intervention, and outright deception, the power elite had acquired far-flung water rights, extending aqueducts hundreds of miles into distant regions, diverting water from rivers, streams, and lakes, and destroying countless ecosystems in the process. With water came great prosperity and growth: The city’s population, a mere eleven thousand in 1880, had exploded to more than half a million by 1920. Today, more than four million residents were packed within L.A.’s 465 square miles, a number that was expected to increase by roughly fifty percent over the next four decades.

The “country house” where Victoria Faith resided, opened in 1942, wasn’t really out in the country any longer. As I sped along an elevated freeway that would slow to a crawl in a couple of hours, development of every kind extended in all directions: gated communities, tract homes, trailer parks, horse ranches, golf courses, artificial lakes, colleges, movie studios, hospitals, shopping malls, airports, and endless asphalt and concrete grids comprising thousands of miles of streets, connecting suburban neighborhoods like the intersecting tunnels of an ant farm. These days, the Valley was not much different from the rest of L.A., only hotter and with bigger residential lots. A city without boundaries, Mike Davis had written once of Los Angeles—a metropolis devouring the land, driven by the dream of its own infinity.

I took an off-ramp into the affluent suburb of Woodland Hills, where Victoria Faith resided in a comfortable retirement community, waiting to die.

*   *   *

The Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, as it was officially known, sat on forty lushly landscaped acres just off the 101. A guard at the entrance checked a guest list for my name, asked me to sign it, handed me a map and brochure, and waved me through.

The brochure provided a thumbnail description of the place: a full-service retirement complex that included state-of-the-art medical facilities, a modern gym, and myriad other recreational amenities. Although it had once been known as “the Old Actor’s Home,” where legendary stars spent their last years, it was open to anyone who had worked in the film or TV industry for twenty years, regardless of their occupation or ability to pay. Of the four hundred residents, about half lived there for free, supported by the nonprofit Motion Picture & Television Fund.

Following the map, I drove past acres of walking paths, manicured lawns, and colorful gardens until I reached the Fran and Ray Stark Villa, an independent and assisted living facility. I checked in at the front desk and was escorted to a studio apartment on the first floor.

A nurse was leaving as I arrived. Victoria Faith stood just inside, stooped over a walker but dressed and made up as if she were going out for an afternoon of tea and high-end shopping. She was small and thin, almost birdlike, yet I got a sense of strength and energy about her that must have been more mental than physical, given her frail condition. Even in her late eighties, she was a handsome woman, with luxuriant, wavy white hair nicely cut and swept back along the sides, and pale, pliant skin whose folds and wrinkles seemed a natural part of her ageless beauty.

“Mr. Justice,” she said, speaking precisely. “Please do come in.”

Her apartment was small but well appointed, with a window looking out to a garden abloom with hundreds of roses.

“That’s the Roddy McDowall Rose Garden,” she said, following my eyes beyond her small patio. She raised an arthritic finger and pointed in another direction. “The Wasserman Koi Pond is over that way. I enjoy sitting there in the quiet, watching the fish swim about, when I’m up to it.” She smiled warmly, without a hint of complaint. “You’ll be my project for today, Mr. Justice, as long as I’m able to last.”