The Angel's Cut (22 page)

Not that the guests did. The two movie people were often animated over their work. They worked all day, on the terrace, their white-painted wicker chairs pulled together so that their knees nearly touched. They were tall men, and one was hard of hearing. On the marble-topped table beside them were papers—the screenplay they were working on—a typewriter, an ashtray for the one who smoked, whisky in one jug and iced water in another for the one who always liked to fix his own drinks. They were often silent for hours, but then noisy in friendly dispute. One would jump up and act something out in an effort to persuade the
other, while the other would just talk—the younger one, with the shy, hypnotic voice. One went to the grotto sometimes and took the waters, the other didn't, and was very careful about his diet. They both vanished for long drives, the younger man driving although it was the older man's car. They were Hollywood people, the younger more famous, the older easier to deal with, and more easily pleased. No one bothered to eavesdrop on them, for there was no news in their friendship or their mutual industry. But there was an air they had of being involved in something of momentous importance. As the weeks went by a kind of tenderness entered into their discussions—a tenderness directed not toward each other, but perhaps to the promise in the pages piled up between them.

For one week of the three they were joined by another man, a gnarled and waspish Southerner. When he was with them the whisky was put away and didn't reappear till the final night of his stay, and, the following afternoon, they carried him out to a cab, handed over a hundred-dollar bill and sent him off straight to Sacramento, where he was to board the
Twentieth Century
. The older man was overheard saying, ‘He'll be sober by Chicago.' To which the younger replied, laughing, ‘Sober enough to order a drink.'

After the writer left, the hotel made enquiries about its guests' intentions, for it was usually around this date that the maitre d' took over the cook's duties for the hotel's handful of winter visitors. The staff were told that the two intended to be there for only another week, and that they didn't expect anyone to join them.

A still afternoon. The sun was warm and low, the air hazy. The entire reduced population of the spa town heard the roadster before seeing it, climbing the slope on the far side of the river toward the viaduct. The road was illuminated in yellow light from the trees and the car's white paint looked cream. The dead leaves on the road hopped along after the car's back wheels, seeming to float on static over the road's surface, galvanised, and living again. The car crossed the river. It drove slowly up the terraces between the guesthouses, passed the spa where a few old people—thin haired, swollen-legged—were walking arm in arm, limping between the grotto and park benches, carrying glasses of the spa's piss-coloured water. The car passed the other hotel guests—all four of them sitting on a horseshoe-shaped stone bench with their bellies in their laps. The roadster roared up the driveway, and parked below the hotel's steps.

Crow was by himself on the terrace, with jugs and teacups, papers and typewriter before him.

Flora turned off the engine and stepped out onto the drive. Its white grit crunched under her feet. She went up the steps. The tiles on the terrace were uneven, some were loose. They made a musical tinkling under her shoes.

‘Flora,' Crow said, pleased and exasperated. He was smiling and a little flushed, with drink and combativeness. ‘Carol sent you. Don't deny it,' he said. ‘Look—I'll join my wife's drama when I'm good and ready, and not before.'

Flora took a seat. She lifted the covers on the jugs. One held whisky, the other iced water. She poured herself a small neat whisky. ‘I don't see how you can be angry at Carol. She's not acting on her own behalf. What would she have to gain by encouraging you to rush to your wife's side?'

‘I'd arrive in the middle of the mess, and have to confront how irrevocable Edna's problems are. That's what she'd gain.'

‘Oh,' said Flora, and made a mental note not to try to argue motivation with Crow again.

‘What I'm doing here is important.'

‘That's why Cole's dashing about in your Isotta Fraschini. We passed him on the road.'

‘We? That's Carol's car—where is she? Did you drop her across the river? Nothing is open over there. Or only the gas station.'

Flora ignored this. ‘Did Carol tell you that the baby is at Sisters of Mercy?'

‘He's unharmed. I called the hospital myself.'

‘Unharmed and unloved,' Flora said. ‘Edna apparently refuses to see him.'

‘What gross sentimental exaggeration!' Crow said. ‘I scarcely know the little thing. He's hardly lying there, at eight weeks old, saying, “Where's my father?”'

Flora couldn't think of anything else to say. She looked out at the woods, a forest of redwoods and white fir that girdled the lower slopes of the mountains above the river. The sun was low, the air misty. It was the kind of season, in the kind of country, that feels like a last resort; like time emptying out, and the world winding down.

Crow said, ‘Carol has bought into all Edna's troubles because, by being sympathetic to my wife's plight, she can feel better about the fact she has never had from me the full pledge of time and attention she imagines she wants. No wonder she thought better of facing me herself.'

‘
Imagines
she wants!' Flora repeated, incredulous. ‘Why be sceptical about Carol's needs if you're never going to answer them? And I didn't come with Carol, I came with Xas.'

Crow looked shocked and angry. ‘He's reappeared? You must be delighted.'

‘Inexpressibly.'

‘So, you came with Cole's handmaiden, but Carol sent you.'

‘She asked me to come. But, Connie, I agree with Carol. I think you should come back to town.'

Crow's face went stiff with a resolve made mostly of spite. ‘And what makes you suppose I'd care what you think?'

‘I don't have to consider that, Connie. I have your confidence. And Cole's too. You do know, don't you, that all sorts of people come to me asking advice on how to handle you both? The two imperial characters. I know that can all change in an instant if I offend you—or alarm him. But don't imagine that I'm going to let my peace of mind depend on being careful of your feelings. I've got bigger fish to fry.'

‘Oh have you?' Crow said, scornful.

‘Go on, just say it,' she said. ‘“Oh have you? You invalid, you spinster.”'

Crow looked startled, then laughed. He got up and told her he'd go pack his bags, adding as he went, ‘You old sourpuss!'

The sun declined, and the meadow gradually took on a mythical bathed-in-honey look. As Xas waited, a red-tailed hawk dropped down to the road's rutted surface to perch on a bloody mammalian smear. It planted its claws and dipped its beak to tear off a strip of furry skin.

There was another hawk, near the forest, hanging like a kite on the breeze and scanning the meadow, head down and talons ready. The air directly above the meadow was fizzing with minute insects, and looked like soda water. Beyond the meadow a grove of redwoods stood in their blue reservoir of shadow.

The Isotta Fraschini's return was first announced by a smoke of dust above the trees hiding the last downward curves of the pass. Then Xas heard the engine and, finally, the flinty roar of wheels displacing gravel. The car appeared, moving fast, and practically ploughing the surface of the unsealed road.

The hawk, its beak buried deep in piled viscera, didn't notice the car until it was too late. It had only just raised its wings when Cole's left front tyre caught it and spun it under the car. Cole braked and skidded to a stop some fifty feet on. The car's comet tail of dust caught it up and rolled over it. The car was partly obscured from Xas's sight. He did see Cole stand up and look back to where the hawk lay, one wing beating uselessly, the other plastered to the road. Its mate had veered away from the forest. It began to circle and call. Cole sat down again, clasped the steering
wheel and was for a time motionless, frozen. Then he covered his face with his hands.

Xas had had his talons ready too—ready for Cole—but witnessing this private moment of humble culpability, he abandoned the plans he had and went back to waiting on the resources of the moment, as usual. He walked to the car, opened its passenger door, and got in beside Cole. Cole dropped his hands and looked at him. Cole's face was already drawn and pale and, like his clothes and the car's upholstery, powdered by dust.

Xas could see that Cole thought he was seeing a ghost—or having a vision somehow connected to the dying hawk and its distressed mate.

The wounded bird was perhaps dead now, though the steady wind lifted and flourished the wing that wasn't maimed. The other hawk alighted next to its mate, and swivelled its head, checking with either eye as though hoping for a different report from one or the other.

Xas got out again, walked around the car and opened the driver's door. He said, ‘Slide over. I'll drive.' He got in and edged Cole over with his body. Cole complied. He was limp and pale.

Xas released the handbrake, gunned the engine and put the car in gear. They drove off. Cole turned to look after the dead hawk and its grieving mate, and Xas thought, or hoped, that perhaps Cole was watching for the mangled bird to lift itself out of the mix of offal and its own blood and fly away—restored—followed by its mate, faith restored. The landscape would then put itself back in better
order. It would become less beautiful. It would stop looking like a place with a story to tell or a lesson to teach. Instead it would be like the moment when the curtains come down on the final act of a tragedy and everyone on stage gets up and falls into line for the applause. That's what Xas hoped—that the world had altered for Cole when he climbed into Cole's car. That the world was momentarily unmasked. It had pulled off its death mask and was taking its bow. Xas hoped Cole might see that—what was also true. It was true that time wouldn't stop, or run backward. But it was also true that there were things indigestible to time and that those things—even if they were neutral or trivial—could never have the life crushed out of them.

Xas slowed at the river before the spa. There was a one lane bridge and he stopped to let another car go by. It was Carol's Imperial. Crow was driving. Flora waved as the Imperial accelerated past them and Crow gave Cole a salute, a droll gesture that seemed to say, ‘Look at me—taken in hand.'

Cole stared, then wrenched his door open and jumped out of the car. He ran up the slope and into the forest.

Xas pulled off the road, got out, and went after him.

Cole ran deep into the forest. Xas followed, but didn't attempt to catch him up. They passed through a sheltered grove of sequoias. The forest was silent, and scented—tangerines with an edge of camphor. There was a sheen of water in the air between the trees. Xas noticed that Cole's breath made more steam than his own.

The man stopped where the slope became steep. He flung himself back against the heavily grooved trunk of a cedar, breathing hard.

It was a forest with myriad, no-particular paths leading on from where they were. Xas glanced up at the confluence of cedar branches above his head and saw how they made a pattern against the sky like frost stars framing a windowpane on an icy day.

Cole rested on the tree trunk with his hands behind his back, his throat exposed, his posture suggesting simultaneously that he was looking for an escape, and that if he found one he wouldn't take it. When Xas came close Cole reached out and snatched Xas toward him, stepping out of the way at the last minute so that they changed places. Xas found his own back to the tree trunk. He had a second in which to try to read Cole's expression. Cole's face was white, and his eyes seemed to give onto a black gas filling the inside of his head. Cole pressed Xas into the tree, one knee pushing between Xas's legs.

Cole said, ‘You're dead.' He spoke, and his misty breath filled the space between their faces. Xas had forgotten to breathe himself. A leaf fell beside them, spiralling down, reversing its spin twice in its tumble. ‘Or did I only imagine it?' Cole said.

Xas could taste the whisky fumes in Cole's breath. He began to breathe again and vapour mingled between their mouths.

Cole released Xas's arms and slammed his hands against the angel's abdomen, under his ribs. His fingernails dug into
Xas's skin without breaking it. ‘What do I have to do?' Cole whispered. ‘What does it take?' He moved one hand to seize a fistful of the long hair on Xas's crown, and yanked his head back so that it bashed against the tree trunk, and bits of bark rained down into his collar. Cole thrust his hand up under Xas's shirt, scattering buttons. He pressed his mouth against Xas's, not exactly kissing but grinding and wiping. He caught the side of Xas's jaw between his teeth and bit down so hard that his own jaw joint clunked. He chewed at Xas's throat, and chin, and collarbone, as though drilling for blood. He attacked Xas with his teeth, tongue, lips—and his weight, hauled him away from the tree against which they were both braced, then dropped on him. Cole's hand, wound into Xas's hair, thrust into the loam, as though he meant to plant the angel, press his hair into the earth like something that might be encouraged to take root.

Xas didn't resist, not even to hide what he'd hidden with dedication for nearly one hundred years. He didn't stop Cole when the man grappled him over onto his stomach. Xas felt his shirt tear, and his jacket was pushed up over his head so that he was in the dark. His face was buried in the springy needles. His nostrils were full of the smell of fermented resin and rot. Cole stopped ripping at him, and made a fussy, impatient, inarticulate, but intelligent sound. He reached under Xas to unbuckle his belt. The cold air touched where Cole wasn't touching—Cole's hot skin, and scratchy clothes. Cole made another sound, a moan of mingled shock and rage and joy as he found what he wasn't immediately looking for, but what moved him. He thrust his
hands into the pelt of feathers on Xas's back, feathers that covered the mounds of muscle and knobs of vertebra, and filled the long twisted seams of the old scars. As Cole's hands ran over the feathers they bent and popped straight again with a sound similar to the one dough makes when a baker pounds it down after it has proved, and kneads the bubbles out.