Ten Days in the Hills (45 page)

The next panel was fairly self-explanatory, thought Stoney. Pierre was wandering through the forest, clearly dejected. The tapestry-maker had taken this opportunity to fill the forest with birds and animals, none of which Pierre was noticing, but all of which were noticing Pierre. His path was strewn with flowers, and flowers and fruit seemed to lean toward him from the branches of the trees. The forest was not as wild or hostile as he thought it was, but he didn’t notice that. He stumbled along, his sword dangling from his side and dragging on the ground.

They stepped to the following panel. Isabel said, “Why is he in the tree?”

“Well,” said Joe, “he has hoisted himself into the tree, and you can see that he has tied himself to the trunk so that he will not fall out while he is sleeping. No doubt, he feels that this is the safest way to spend the night in such a wild forest. And, indeed, here is his horse, being chased across the lower half of the panel by wolves. You see the fear on the horse’s face, again. This weaver, whoever he was, was very good with horses. Of course, every tapestry had many weavers, but the expert who has told me about this tapestry maintains that one person might specialize in one theme, such as flowers or birds or, indeed, the facial expressions of horses.

“In our next tapestry, we turn to Agnès, who has found herself refuge in a small house deep in the forest. We see the householder here to the left, in the doorway, and you can just see his wife peeking from behind him. Perhaps he is a woodcutter or a mushroom gatherer. At any rate, his clothes and shoes reveal that he is a humble fellow. The wife’s headdress is merely a scarf. Here to the right you see Agnès’s white horse, and he is looking around. I think he is surveying the path along which they have come, keeping a wary eye out while Agnès and the couple confer.

“After this panel, there are two missing. In the story, the house is raided in the night by one of the marauding bands, though I do not know whether it is the black-and-yellow band or the red-and-green band, and Agnès takes refuge in a pile of hay, where she narrowly escapes being impaled by a spear belonging to one of the knights. When the knights leave, they steal her horse. Subsequently, Agnès emerges from the hay and persuades the humble couple to accompany her to the nearest castle, where she throws herself upon the mercy of the count who lives there, whose wife turns out to be a friend of Pierre’s. I am sure there would have been a panel showing the conversation between the two women, in which the girl tells of the dangers she has passed and the wife compassionates her. We would also be able to see the very elaborate room in which the conversation would have taken place. I am very sorry that this panel has been lost, because no doubt many of the details of dress and furniture would have helped date our tapestry more precisely.”

The last panel, thought Stoney, did not seem to fit. It was of many men eating and laughing around a fire, with the sun coming up in the background, and it also included six sheep, five white and one black. He said, “Is this one from a different set?”

“No, indeed,” said Joe. “When Pierre wakes up, he discovers a group of shepherds and their sheep not far from his tree, and he goes to them and begs for succor, and here they are giving him food and drink. You can see him a bit in the background. The designer has been far more interested in the fire and the sheep. But here is the bit of blue sky that we saw in panel two, only it is larger. Unfortunately, the last panel is missing, This panel would have shown the reunited lovers, probably taking part in a marriage ceremony which has been brought about by the intercession of the noble lady in the other lost panel I was telling you about.” Joe smiled, as if he himself had brought the lovers together.

Max said, “Thank you, Joe. You made it seem like a movie.”

Joe inclined his head for a moment, acknowledging both the compliment and the man who was complimenting him.

Cassie said, “Where did you find such a beautiful set?”

“Mike is a great connoisseur of art, and he has agents who are aware of what has become and what is becoming available. Since I have been working for Mike, I have discovered that there is no scarcity of beautiful artworks in the world, just as there is no scarcity of money. The question, as always, is one of distribution.” He grinned. “Let me say that some of the rooms of our house here are not ready for your inspection, but many are, and you, of course, may wander around as you please. I trust that in your stay you will have many pleasant discoveries. The rooms that are not ready for you are locked. If you can open a door, you may open the door. Mike is not a secretive man. Our residential staff here includes myself; the two girls, Monique and Marya; and the chef, Raphael. Raphael’s cooking skills are quite eclectic. He will be sending in to you a paper every morning, detailing alternative menus for the evening. Whom shall he send this paper to?”

Max gestured toward Delphine, who had come in during the story of the tapestry. “I would like that,” said Delphine. “May I meet him?”

“Of course you may. Our staffing arrangements are quite informal at this point, since Mike has not yet been in residence here, pending the completion of the rest of the rooms. Raphael will be quite pleased with your feedback, since you are, in a good way, his guinea pigs.” Joe grinned again, and led the way into the library.

The library, which was a circular room with a dome, like a miniature rotunda in some state capitol, was full of books on shelves. A mezzanine ran around the room, with a railing and more books on shelves. A staircase on rollers ran on a track set into the base of the mezzanine, and there were various gates in the railing that the staircase could be rolled to. The floor was carpeted with a custom-made Oriental that was woven and laid to accentuate the circular nature of the room. Other Persian rugs were scattered here and there. The furniture consisted of a large desk and a blond leather couch and chair with a reading lamp. There was also a cushioned window seat inset between two sets of shelves below the mezzanine, and another on the mezzanine. These windows faced east, over the cleft that Stoney and Isabel had just been exploring. Joe said, “Does this library look familiar to you?”

No one said anything except Zoe, who said, “
My Fair Lady.
”

“Yes,” said Joe. “That is correct. This library was inspired by the set of Professor Higgins’ library in London, in that movie. An amusing thing is that when Mike was a boy that was the first movie he ever saw, and although he did not understand it in any way, because he did not at that time speak English, the luxury of Professor Higgins’ library made a great impression upon him, and so he has built this room here in Hollywood. That is his joke, that he is a Russian man from Asia with an English library in Hollywood. He is very globalized. However, there are no media in this library, only books.”

“Can you tell us something about Mike?” said Elena.

“Here is a story about Mike. When he got to the university, he did not want to live as we others lived, in a large, drafty dormitory with no privacy. So he found a shower stall that was not working, and he installed himself in there, with a mattress and a lap desk, and he bribed one of the men who worked at the dormitory to remove the shower head and the handles. He did not have a light, but he made sure to do his work by daylight. He was very enterprising even then.”

“He lived in a shower stall?” said Simon.

“It did have a door,” said Joe. “He lived there for three years. Now perhaps you will be wishing to go to your rooms. If I may ask, will you be needing ten rooms, or not so many?” He smiled. “The rooms are actually small suites, with a generous bedroom, a sitting area, and, of course, a large bathroom.” He paused.

Elena said, “Max and I only need one room.”

Zoe glanced at Paul, then said, “Two for us, I believe?” He cocked his head at her, and she said, “I think so, yes.”

At this, Charlie cleared his throat, and then Zoe said, “Paul does need to be able to receive late-night phone calls from his client in Europe. Also, he rises at four a.m. now.”

“Certainly,” said Joe. “I will give you our telephone number for the calls, and you will have your own extension number, Paul.”

“One room for us,” said Isabel.

Stoney saw Max’s head swivel toward Isabel and heard Max let out a surprised cough. He then glanced at Elena and at Simon, who was standing next to Isabel. All Simon did was raise the fingers on his right hand about an inch, but it clearly said, Who me? Not me. Isabel acted nonchalant. “One room for me and Stoney, I mean.” It was then that Stoney remembered that he had intended to have things out with Isabel somewhere in the garden. Well, not things, but something. He had forgotten, and now they all looked at him, and of course he nodded and smiled. He could feel himself smiling. He nodded again, more emphatically. He said, “That would be good.” Joe must have registered the general surprise, but he made no sign. He said, “And the others?”

“We come alone,” said Simon.

“So—eight rooms. Thank you. Monique and Marya will show you to your rooms. All of them are on the first floor.”

“The
premier étage,
” said Isabel. She took Stoney’s hand tightly in her own.

Two smiling girls appeared in the doorway of the library, both blonde. Simon said, “But maybe we won’t leave alone,” and Stoney noticed that Elena gave Simon a look, but then, evidently, it was time for Isabel to march him out of the library, which she did, and as they came to the center of the entry hall, where they were surrounded by tapestries depicting true love, she leaned toward him and kissed him on the cheek in the full sight of her father. And in front of her mother. And in front of her grandmother. And Stoney did what he thought appropriate among those tapestries, which was to pause, turn toward her, and kiss her on the lips, her lips being so familiar and simultaneously so forbidden that it gave him a zinging sensation not so much in his groin as in his knees. Isabel said, gaily, “Are the rooms decorated more or less alike?”

“Oh, no,” said Joe. “They are all different. I am putting you in what we call the Amber Room.”

Behind them, Zoe laughed aloud. Stoney thought maybe that was a good sign.

After dinner
(rack of lamb served with a reduction of red wine and woodland mushrooms, braised bitter greens, and roasted potatoes, plus an artichoke-and-caramelized-fennel frittata for the vegetarians, followed by pistachio biscotti and blood-orange sorbet made with Grand Marnier), Stoney disappeared from the dining room when nobody happened to be looking in his direction—he went out one of the French doors, turned right past the upper pool, and trotted down the steps until he found a seat in the shadows not far from the second pool. The only thing that prevented him from going on down to the lower pool, the one in the grotto, was that he didn’t want to seem to be fleeing, even though he was fleeing. When he got to the second pool, he lit a cigarette, his first since Jerry was diagnosed with his brain tumor, which everyone knew came from years and years of smoking and an earlier bout with lung cancer. And he got a buzz from his first drag on that cigarette, no coughing or hacking or adjustment at all, and he felt himself starting back down that very bad tobacco road that led nowhere good and everywhere bad, that he had started down at fourteen and Jerry had started down at eleven, and that he had forsworn, and that Isabel hated, and here was Max.

Max sat down on a concrete bench that was decorated with a mosaic of some sort, maybe six feet from him and a little off to the right. All of L.A., spread over the hills and the mountains in a Milky Way of lights, lay beneath them. The sky above was pale. The moon, as so often in L.A., looked nondescript and tentative. The breeze was cool, almost chilly, and Stoney found himself thinking that, after all, the site of the luxurious house was a little too exposed for his taste.

Max said, “Do you have something to tell me?”

“Would you care for a cigarette?”

“No, thanks.”

“I think,” said Stoney, after what he gauged to be a thoughtful pause, but was really a blank as far as he was concerned, “that I might like to tell you some things, but unless Isabel and I agree on what there is to tell you, no doubt she would say that we would be entering on an essentially patriarchal discourse that would demean her personhood, so I’m not sure what I have to tell you.”

“How is it that I don’t seem to have any idea that you and Isabel have a relationship?”

“I think I can divulge that we have made an effort to keep it a secret.”

“Can you divulge why?”

Stoney thought about this for a moment, then decided to say the most honest thing he could think of at the time, which was: “My inference from what Isabel has said to me is that she didn’t want it to get out, because she didn’t want such an unimportant relationship to be formalized by publicity. I think I would have said before this morning that, while she enjoys me, she isn’t very interested in me, or at least she wasn’t. I’m not sure how she feels now. I was quite surprised when she told Joe Blow that we would be sharing a room.”

Max drew in a deep and, to Stoney, threatening breath, and said, “Stoney, are you telling me the truth?”

Stoney sat silent for what he considered to be a long moment, pondering this question. Questions about the truth worried him, because of course he didn’t know what the truth was. His own true feelings were always confused, he had no access to any general truths, and if you said you were telling the truth, you laid yourself open to all sorts of contradictions that would ultimately confuse you even further. Whenever “the truth” came up, it was often as a prelude to a lengthy and usually contentious discussion. He reiterated, “I’m really not sure what she feels now, and it was a surprise when she wanted to share a room.”

“What do you feel?”

“What do I feel for Isabel, or how do I feel in general, you know, glad, sad, anxious, depressed—”

“What do you feel for Isabel?” Max said this impatiently, and so Stoney’s general feeling edged even farther away from more or less happy and toward more or less anxious. He said, “Would a good reply be that I want to do what others—namely, you and Isabel and maybe Zoe and certainly Delphine, but not necessarily my own family—want me to do?”