Vineland (7 page)

In the morning, full of marsh birds, cigarette smoke, and television audio, down the two sand grooves of the access road came the Billy Barf and the Vomitones Official Van, with elaborate nukehappy cyberdeath graphics all over the outside and a ring of welded-together miniature iron skulls for a steering wheel, at which sat Isaiah Two Four. Other dimmer faces bloomed behind the tinted bubble windows. Zoyd had no clear idea of what Prairie might be going into, felt helpless, didn't even know if he'd missed something last night and she was really going away for good. They'd agreed to keep in touch through Sasha Gates, Zoyd's ex-mother-in-law, who lived down in L.A.

“Stay out of that joint, ol' pothead,” Prairie said.

“Keep 'em legs together,” he replied, “teen bimbo.” Somebody put a Fascist Toejam cassette, 300 watts of sonic apocalypse, on to the van stereo, Isaiah gallantly handed Prairie up into the lurid fuchsia padding of this rolling orgy room, where she became indistinct among an unreadable pattern of Vomitones and their girlfriends, and quickly, in an arc unexpectedly graceful, they had all turned outward, tached up, engaged, and like a time machine departing for the future, forever too soon for Zoyd, boomed away up the thin, cloudpressed lane.

 

B
UT just before she left, Zoyd had slipped Prairie a strange Japanese business card, or as some would call it, amulet, which, leery as always of anything that might mean unfinished business from the olden hippie times, the girl at first had been reluctant even to touch. Zoyd had received it years ago, in return for a favor. At the time he was working a Hawaiian cruise gig for Kahuna Airlines, a non-sked flying out of LAX's East Imperial Terminal, a gig he'd stumbled into in the turbulent last days of his marriage, out on one more desperate attempt, transpacific this time, to save the relationship, as he saw it, or, as she saw it, once again come messing with her privacy, red-eyeing in to Honolulu on a charter flight in an airplane of uncertain make that was not only the flagship but also the entire fleet of a country he had not, till then, heard of. If Frenesi was half expecting him, it was not in the condition he arrived in, taken over by an itch he could no longer control to see how she spent her evenings. “Me, I get through OK,” practicing in front of a stained and cracked mirror in the airplane lavatory, whispering in the jet throb and structural creaking, “just worryin' about you, Frenesi,” standing there miles above the great ocean making these faces at himself.

At first it had seemed like a terrific idea, a perfect break for them both, at a critical time. Sasha had been there too, to see her off on the flight, she and Zoyd handing the half-asleep Prairie back and forth, arms to arms, like a rehearsal of arrangements to come. It was a rare cooperative moment for the in-laws, in their mutual uneasiness, Sasha never having known really what to make of Zoyd, settling instead for a reflex headshake whenever they met, with an embarrassed laugh that seemed to mean, “You are so inappropriate for my daughter that even you must see it and be as amused as I am—we're adults after all, and we can certainly share a chuckle, can't we Zoyd.” But they were to find themselves, amazingly, on the same side of the law after all, which meant no custodial battles ever, for as they both came to learn, no judge would waste the time deciding whose rap sheet was more disreputable—if it was a choice between a lifelong Red grandmother and a dope fiend father, Prairie would end up as a ward of the court, and no question, they had to keep her out of that. Like it or not, they would be forced, now and then anyway, to coordinate their lives.

“Feel like Mildred Pierce's husband, Bert,” is how Zoyd described his inner feelings to Frenesi, having located her finally at the gigantic Dark Ocean Hotel, a towering dihedral wallful of 2,048 rooms with identical lanais cantilevered into blue space, all facing the Pacific. Far below, tiny figures rode the curl of the tiny surf, sunned upon the beach, frolicked in tiny glowing aqua pools set in tropical groves of deep green.

From any distance an observer would have noticed, here and there upon the great bent facade, folks on their lanais out taking the breezes, eating room-service banquets, smoking the local cannabis, fucking in semipublic.

“Appreciate the comparison Zoyd, although as you see I'm alone, yes quite alone, not that there aren't enough good-looking guys around. . . .”

“Ain't pickups I'm thinkin' of, or we could've had this li'l get-together
long
ago.”

“Oh? When, exactly?”

“Nah, forget it.”

“Wait a minute, you come barging in here—”

“Yeah and on my own ticket too,” almost adding, “my mommy didt'n pay for it,” but seeing she was expecting it, he let the wave go by uncaught.

In fact what he'd done was check in right next door to her, so that they were standing on adjacent lanais hundreds of feet above sea level having this adult discussion, each holding a can of beer, Frenesi in a bikini and Zoyd in an old pair of baggies—except for the lethal altitude, it could have been year before last, back in Gordita Beach. Above them somewhere another couple were screaming at each other, out of control. Their voices, punctuating, helped to calibrate Zoyd and Frenesi's own, though they could share no smug look meaning, “at least we're not that bad,” because they knew better.

Zoyd couldn't help wondering, almost aloud, where Brock Vond, her charismatic little federal boyfriend, might be. Hiding under the bed in her room, copping rays down on the beach at Waikiki? Zoyd didn't want to be disappointed. It was ignorance of U.S. Attorney Vond's whereabouts, after all, a kind of reverse presence, that had helped fetch Zoyd across the Pacific Ocean in a plane whose airworthiness only grew, in memory, more doubtful.

Sasha had been no help either. “You can't bring me into this. I'm not going to fink on my own daughter, am I? Even if I knew anything in the first place, which I don't—why would she tell me?”

“Well—you're her mom.”

“You got it.”

“OK then, how about Brock Vond, who we both know for what he is, exactly the kind of criminal fascist you've been takin' honest shots at all your life—are you gonna be loyal to somebody like that? All's I'm askin',” dropping into gentler, con-man tones, “is didn't you ever meet him? See him face-to-face?”

Sasha could hear the pleading, close enough to whining to make her careful. This poor sap could too easily settle for any least shadow of pain, seemed to want to suffer every hurtful detail. Dummy. Why waste his time so? He looked old enough to've been through it before, but who knew, maybe this was his maiden voyage into the green seas of jealousy. She might have asked him, but her job these days, it seemed, was just to hold her tongue, keep it sharpened and ready but withheld in a sheath of silence. Doubly frustrating because she was furious as hell with her daughter. Frenesi's involvement with Brock, politically, was appalling enough, but she'd also once again failed to take care of business, and Sasha was as angry as she'd ever been at Frenesi's habit, developed early in life, of repeatedly ankling every situation that it should have been her responsibility to keep with and set straight. Far as Sasha could make out, this eagerness to flee hadn't faded any over the years, with its latest victim being Zoyd.

Who at the moment was pretending to have a look around Honolulu. “So—I don't see Superfuck anyplace, what happened, Steve McGarrett couldn't solve a case, had to call him in on it?”

“Zoyd, better lay off, we don't want any trouble.”

That she could have said “we” so easily had him suddenly short of breath, numb, drawing blanks. “Trouble? Me? Hey—” unbuttoning the native shirt he'd bought, flapping his arms, “I'm clean, lady! I ain't gonna shoot some asshole just 'cause he's fuckin' my wife, 'specially if it's a federal rap,” while he really wanted just to double over in a clenched bodyfist right in front of her face . . . except that she would only shift away those eyes of blue painted blue, as the Italian oldie goes, shift them away to sea, weather, any prop in visual reach, for deploying that blue whammy was just as good—she knew it—as touching, or taking touch away.

She withdrew into her room, slid the glass door shut, pulled the drapes. He stayed outside, contemplating the airspace between him and the ground. He was almost pissed off enough to do the deed on himself, almost. . . . He finished off the beer in his hand and with what he imagined as cold scientific interest dropped the empty can, observing it all the way down, particularly the convergence of its path with that of a pedestrian far below, a surfer carrying a board over his head. Seconds after the beer can hit the board, Zoyd heard the faint clank of impact, as the can meanwhile bounced away into a nearby pool and sank, leaving no proof of its visit but the ding on the board, whose perfect geometry the surfer was now examining closely, with suspicions extending well beyond Earth's orbit.

Back inside his room, first thing Zoyd looked for was a connecting door to Frenesi, but no such luck. He lay on the bed, flipped on the Tube, lit a joint, took out his cock, and imagined her beyond the drywall barriers that could as well have been the years to come, seeing her at least as clearly as he would later, again and again, on the astral night flights he would make to be near and haunt her as best he knew how, seeing her now taking off her bikini, top and bottom, then unhooking her earrings, an act, because of how it revealed her nape, that had never failed to stir Zoyd's heart. She headed for the shower, feeling soiled, no doubt, by her encounter with him. Apprentice ghostly peeper, he went right along, watching the bathing ritual he'd once grown to take for granted, fool, now able only to fine-tune the way the steam came and went around her body, being limited, given his own incorporeal state, to the lightest of physical forms. . . .

As sex fantasies go, this one, especially for vile-minded Zoyd, was pretty bland. More like an ex fantasy. No outfits, accessories, or scenarios beyond this pure interaction of woman, water, soap, steam, and Zoyd's own unseen restlessly throbbing eye, registering it all. Getting accustomed to the only future they would have. What didn't enter into this was that Frenesi had in reality repacked her bags immediately and checked out, so quietly that Zoyd, preoccupied with jerking off, never noticed.

It wasn't till later, when he tried to get flowers delivered to her room, that he learned she was gone. He had to break down, cry, and divulge most of the story before he could get an assistant manager to admit that Frenesi had gone to the airport and had mentioned catching the next flight back to L.A. “Well, shit,” said Zoyd.

“You're not going to do anything, mm, weird, are you?”

“How's that?”

“Hawaii is where men from California bring their broken hearts, seeking exotic forms of self-injury not so readily available on the mainland. Some specialize in active volcanoes, others in cliff diving, many go for the classier swimming-out-to-sea option. I can put you onto several travel agents who offer Suicide Fantasy packages, if you're interested.”

“Fantasy!” Zoyd was sniffling again. “Who said anythin' about make-believe, dude? Don't you think I'm serious about this?”

“ 'Course, of course, but please, just—”

“Only thing that holds me back,” Zoyd blowing his nose at length, “is the indignity of lying there all splattered by the pool and in my last few seconds on Earth hearing Jack Lord say, ‘Book him, Danno—Suicide One.' “

The assistant manager, long used to this kind of talk, let Zoyd ramble on for a while, then tactfully disengaged. Soon evening had swept in and wrapped the islands. After a short unintended beer nap, Zoyd got up, put a white suit he'd borrowed from Scott Oof on over his Hawaiian shirt, rolled up the cuffs of the pants, which were a little long, left open the jacket, too tight and also too long, giving it a zoot-suit effect, put on shades and a straw hat he'd got at the airport, and hit the street in search of someplace he could sit in on a keyboard instrument, preferably with people he knew. That he was not headed for the airport owed as much to the indecipherability of the fine print on his ticket, a special excursion offer nobody at the airline said they'd ever heard of, as to a strange cheery fatalism that had often, instead of tears, been known, as now, to overwhelm him. Fuck her, he chirped to himself, today's your release date, let ol' Brock have her, let him take her on into that lawyers' world where they can get away with anything and get everything they want, and someday when the little bastard is running for national office, there together on the evening news they'll be, and you can pop a beer and toast the screen and think of that last time up on the balconies, her turning away, sashaying ass in that tiny flowered bikini bottom, hair swinging, the window sliding, no look back. . . .

He bounced slowly from one Honolulu bar to another, allowing himself to trust to the hidden structures of night in a city, to a gift he sometimes thought he had for drifting, if not into intersections of high drama and significant fortune, at least away, most of the time, from danger. At some point he found himself back in the toilet of the Cosmic Pineapple, a then-notorious acid-rock club, conferring with a bass player he'd worked with, who told him about the lounge-piano opening at Kahuna Airlines.

“A gig of death,” his friend assured him, “nobody knows how they stay in business, and that's not the only mystery, either.” There were unconfirmed reports of incidents high above the planetary surface that no one talked about in any but the most careful euphemisms. The list of passengers who arrived was not always identical to the list of those who'd departed. Something was happening, in between, up there.

“Sounds like just what I'm lookin' for,” Zoyd figured, “who do I see?” Turned out to be a 24-hour number in the Yellow Pages, with a display ad whose biggest type read
ALWAYS HIRING.
Zoyd called them at about 2:30 a.m. and was signed up on the spot for a dawn takeoff to L.A. He had just time enough to get back to the hotel and check out.

Each 747 in the Kahuna Airlines fleet had been gutted and refitted as a huge Hawaiian restaurant and bar, full of hanging island vegetation, nightclub chairs and tables instead of airplane seats, even a miniature waterfall. In-flight movies included
Hawaii
(1966),
The Hawaiians
(1970), and
Gidget Goes Hawaiian
(1961), among others. Zoyd was presented with a thick tattered fake book full of Hawaiian tunes, and on the lounge synthesizer, a Japanese make he'd heard of but never played, he found a ukulele option that would provide up to three orchestral sections of eight ukes each. It would take several flights across the Pacific Ocean and back before Zoyd felt easy with this by no means user-friendly instrument. The critter liked to drift off pitch on him, or worse, into that shrillness that sours the stomach, curtails seduction, poisons the careful ambience. Nothing he could find in the dash-one under the seat ever corrected what he more and more took to be conscious decisions by the machine.

Many would be the starry night, transparent dome overhead, subpurple neon outlining the baby-grand synthesizer, that Zoyd's fingers would creep the keys in auto mode while his mind occupied itself with sorrows attending the ongoing self-destruction of his marriage. Layovers in L.A. usually were only long enough for phone calls she didn't return, seldom for visits to Prairie and her grandmother, but never even the sight of Frenesi, who would have already slipped out. On westbound flights, Zoyd's job at the keyboard, like that of the hula dancers, flame eaters, cocktail waitresses, and bartenders, was to keep passengers from thinking about what lay in store for them on the Honolulu end, the luggage misconnected and untraceable, the absent bus links to hotels which had already lost everybody's reservations, the failure of Jack Lord to show up, as promised in the brochure, for photo opportunities. Kahuna's all but unpredictable scheduling produced arrival times lost in midwatch hours when airport security grew eager to play roles with disagreeable subtexts, harassing the single women, sweating the dopers, abusing the elderly and foreign, staring, needling, trying to get something going. Where were the traditional local cuties with the flower leis, one for each deplaning neck? “For you?” the armed, uniformed gents all broke out into high barks of laughter. “At this hour? What for?”