Winter 2007 (8 page)

People will come onto the
lot and say, “Hey! You’re that guy, right?” Usually they’re referring to a
series of commercials he shot in the Nineties, but occasionally they’re talking
about his movies, his name fifth- or sixth-billed, in which he played good guys
who were burned alive, exploded, eaten by monstrous creatures, or otherwise
horribly dispatched during the first hour. He often sells a car to the people
who recognize him and tosses in an autographed headshot to sweeten the deal.
And then he’ll go home to his beach cottage, a rugged old thing of boards and a
screened-in porch, built in the forties, that he bought with residual money;
he’ll sleep with one of the women whom he sees on a non-exclusive basis, or
else he’ll stroll over to the Surfside Grill, an upscale watering hole close by
his house, where he’ll drink and watch sports. It’s the most satisfying of
dissatisfying lives. He knows he doesn’t have it in him to make a mark, but
maybe it’s like in the movies, he thinks. In the movies, everything happens for
a reason, and maybe there’s a reason he’s here, some minor plot function he’s
destined to perform. Nothing essential, mind you. Just a part with some arc to
the character, a little meat on its bones.

###

The Celeste Motel is a
relic of Daytona Beach as it was back in the Sixties: fifteen pale blue stucco
bungalows, vaguely Spanish in style, hunkered down amidst a scrap of Florida
jungle—live oaks, shrimp plants, palmettos, Indian palms, and hibiscus.
Everything’s run to seed, the grounds so overgrown that the lights above the
bungalow doors (blue like the Vacancy sign) are filtered through sprays of
leaves, giving them a mysterious air. Spanish moss fallen from the oaks
collects on the tile roofs; the branches of unpruned shrubs tangle with the
mesh of screen doors; weeds choke the flagstone path. The office has the same
basic design and color as the bungalows, but it’s two stories with an upstairs
apartment, set closer to the street. Supported by a tall metal pole that stands
in front of the office is an illuminated square plastic sign bearing the name
of the motel and the sketch of a woman’s face, a minimalist, stylized rendering
like those faces on matchbook covers accompanied by a challenge to Draw This
Face and discover whether you have sufficient talent to enroll in the Famous
Artist’s School. Halfway down the pole, another, smaller sign to which stick-on
letters can be affixed. Tonight it reads:

WELCOME SPRING B EAKERS

SNGL/DBL 29.95

FREE HBO

The Celeste is almost never
full, but whenever Number eleven is rented, the No on the No Vacancy sign
lights up and stays lit for about an hour; then it flickers and goes dark. Once
Cliff realized this was a reoccurring phenomenon, it struck him as odd, but no
big deal. Then about a month ago, around six o’clock in the evening, just as he
was getting comfortable with Turow’s
Presumed Guilty,
Number eleven was
rented by a college-age girl driving a Corvette, the twin of a car that Cliff
sold the day before, which is the reason he noticed. She parked at the rear
(the lot is out of sight from the street, behind a hedge of bamboo), entered
eleven, and the No switched on. A couple of hours later, after the No had
switched back off, a family of three driving a new Ford Escape—portly
dad, portly mom, skinny kid—checked in and, though most of the cabins
were vacant, they, too, entered eleven. The girl must be part of the family,
Cliff thought, and they had planned to meet at the motel. But at a quarter past
ten, a guy with a beard and biker colors, riding a chopped Harley Sportster,
also checked into eleven and the No switched on again.

It’s conceivable, Cliff
tells himself, that a massive kink is being indulged within the bungalow. Those
blue lights might signal more than an ill-considered decorating touch.
Whatever. It’s not his business. But after three further incidents of multiple
occupancies, his curiosity has been fully aroused and he’s begun to study the
Celeste through a pair of binoculars that he picked up at an army surplus
store. Since he can detect nothing anomalous about Number eleven, other than
the fact that the shades are always drawn, he has turned his attention to the
office.

For the past four years or
thereabouts, the motel has been owned and operated by a Malaysian family. The
Palaniappans. The father, Bazit, is a lean, fastidious type with the skin the
color of a worn penny, black hair and a skimpy mustache that might be a single
line drawn with a fine pencil. Every so often, he brings a stack of business
cards for Jerry Muntz, the owner of the used car lot, to distribute. Jerry
speaks well of him, says that he’s a real nice guy, a straight shooter. Cliff
has never been closer to the other Palaniappans than across a four-lane
highway, but through his binoculars he has gained a sense of their daily
routines. Bazit runs the office during the morning hours, and his wife, a pale
Chinese woman, also thin, who might be pretty if not for her perpetually dour
expression, handles the afternoons. Their daughter, a teenager with a nice
figure and a complexion like Bazit’s, but with rosy cast, returns home from
school at about four PM, dropped off by a female classmate driving a Honda. She
either hangs about the office or cleans the bungalows—Cliff thinks she
looks familiar and wonders where he might have seen her. Bazit comes back on
duty at six PM and his wife brings a tray downstairs around eight. They and
their daughter dine together while watching TV. The daughter appears to
dominate the dinner conversation, speaking animatedly, whereas the parents
offer minimal responses. On occasion they argue, and the girl will flounce off
upstairs. At ten o’clock the night man arrives. He’s in his early twenties, his
features a mingling of Chinese and Malaysian. Cliff supposes him to be the
Palaniappan’s son, old enough to have his own place.

And that’s it. That’s the
sum of his observations. Their schedules vary, of course. Errands, trips to
Costco, and such. Bazit and his wife spend the occasional evening out, as does
the daughter, somewhat more frequently. In every regard, they appear to be an
ordinary immigrant family. Cliff has worked hard to simplify his life, though
the result isn’t everything he hoped, and he would prefer to think of the
Palaniappans as normal and wishes that he had never noticed the Vacancy sign;
but the mystery of Number eleven is an itch he can’t scratch. He’s certain that
there’s a rational explanation, but has the sneaking suspicion that his idea of
what’s rational might be expanded if he were to find the solution.

Chapter Two

When Cliff was eighteen, a
week after his high school graduation, he and some friends, walking on the
beach after an early morning swim, came upon a green sea turtle, a big one with
a carapace four feet long. Cliff mounted the turtle, whereupon she (it was a
female who, misguidedly, had chosen a populated stretch of beach as the spot to
lay her eggs) began trundling toward the ocean. His friends warned Cliff to
dismount, but he was having too much fun playing cowboy to listen. Shortly
after the turtle entered the water, apparently more flexible in her natural
medium, or feeling more at home, she extended her neck and snapped off Cliff’s
big toe.

He wonders what might have
happened had not he and the turtle crossed paths, if he kept his athletic
scholarship and, instead of going to Hollywood, attended college. Now that he’s
contemplating another foolhardy move—and he thinks taking his
investigation to a new level is potentially foolhardy—he views the turtle
incident as a cautionary tale. The difference is that no pertinent mystery
attached to the turtle, yet he’s unsure whether that’s a significant difference.
When he gets right down to it, he can’t understand how the Celeste Motel
relates to his life any more than did the turtle.

Cliff’s scheduled for an
afternoon shift the following Saturday. Jerry thinks it’ll be an exceptionally
high-traffic weekend, what with the holiday, and he wants his best salesman
working the lot. This irritates the rest of the sales staff—they know
having Cliff around will cut into their money—but as Jerry likes to say,
Life’s a bitch, and she’s on the rag. He says this somewhat less often since
hiring a female salesperson, the lovely Stacey Gerone, and he’s taken down the
placard bearing this bromide and an inappropriate cartoon from inside the door
of the employee washroom…Anyway, Cliff comes in early on Saturday, at quarter
to eleven, and, instead of pulling into Ridgewood Motors, parks in the driveway
of the Celeste Motel. He pushes into the office, the room he’s been viewing
through his binoculars. The decor all works together—rattan chairs, blond
desk, TV, potted ferns, bamboo frames holding images of green volcanoes and
perfect beaches—canceling the disjointed impression he’s gained from a
distance.

“Good morning,” says Bazit
Palaniappan, standing straight as if for inspection, wearing a freshly ironed
shirt. “How may I help you?”

Cliff’s about to tell him,
when Bazit’s pleasant expression is washed away by one of awed delight.

“You are Dak Windsor!”
Bazit hurries out from behind his desk and pumps Cliff’s hand. “I have seen all
your movies! How wonderful to have you here!”

It takes Cliff a second or
two to react to the name, Dak Windsor, and then he remembers the series of
fantasy action pictures he did under that name in the Philippines. Six of them,
all shot during a three-month period. He recalls cheesy sets, lousy FX,
incredible heat, a villain called Lizardo, women made-up as blue-skinned
witches, and an Indonesian director who yelled at everyone, spoke neither
Tagalog nor English, and had insane bad breath. Cliff has never watched the
movies, but his agent told him they did big business in the Southeast Asian
markets. Not that their popularity mattered to Cliff—he was paid a flat
fee for his work. His most salient memory of the experience is of a bothersome
STD he caught from one of the blue-skinned witches.

“Au-Yong!” Bazit shouts.
“Will you bring some tea?”

Cliff allows Bazit to
maneuver him into a chair and for the next several minutes he listens while the
man extols the virtues of
Forbidden Tiger Treasure, Sword of the Black
Demon,
and the rest of the series, citing plot points, asking questions
Cliff cannot possibly answer because he has no idea of the films’ continuity or
logic—it’s a jumble of crocodile men, cannibal queens, wizards shooting
lurid lightning from their fingertips, and lame dialog sequences that made no
sense at the time and, he assumes, would likely make none if he were to watch
the pictures now.

“To think,” says Bazit,
wonderment in his voice. “All this time, you’ve been working right across the
street. I must have seen you a dozen times, but never closely enough to make
the connection. You must come for dinner some night and tell us all about the
movies.”

Mrs. Palaniappan brings
tea, listens as Bazit provides an ornate introduction to the marvel that is Dak
Windsor (“Cliff Coria,” Cliff interjects. “That’s my real name.”). It turns out
that Bazit, who’s some ten-twelve years younger than Cliff, watched the series
of movies when he was an impressionable teenager and, thanks to Dak/Cliff’s
sterling performance as the mentor and sidekick of the film’s hero, Ricky
Sintara, he was inspired to make emigration to the United States a goal, thus
leading to the realization of his golden dream, a smallish empire consisting of
the Celeste and several rental properties.

“You know George Clooney?”
she asks Cliff. That’s her sole reaction to Bazit’s fervent testimony.

“No,” says Cliff, and
starts to explain his lowly place in hierarchy of celebrity; but a no is all
Mrs. Palaniappan needs to confirm her judgment of his worth. She excuses
herself, say she has chores to do, and takes her grim, neutral-smelling self
back upstairs.

Among the reasons that
Cliff failed in Hollywood is that he was not enough of a narcissist to endure
the amount of stroking that accompanies the slighted success; but nothing he
has encountered prepares him for the hand job that Bazit lovingly offers. At
several points during the conversation, Cliff attempts to get down to cases,
but on each occasion Bazit recalls another highlight from the Dak Windsor films
that needs to be memorialized, shared, dissected, and when Cliff checks his
watch he finds it’s after eleven-thirty. There’s no way he’ll have time to get
into the subject of Number eleven. And then, further complicating the
situation, the Palaniappan’s daughter, Shalin, returns home—her school
had a half-day. Bazit once again performs the introductions, albeit less
lavishly, and Shalin, half-kneeling on the cushion of her father’s chair, one
hand on her hip and the other, forefinger extended, resting on her cheek, says,
“Hello,” and smiles.

That pose nails it for
Cliff—it’s the same pose the Malaysian actress (he knows she had a funny
name, but he can’t recall it) who gave him the STD struck the first time he
noticed her, and Shalin, though ten-fifteen years younger, bears a strong
resemblance to her, down to the beauty mark at the corner of her mouth; even
the mildness of her smile is identical. It’s such a peculiar hit coming at that
moment, one mystery hard upon the heels of another, Cliff doesn’t know whether
the similarity between the women is something he should be amazed by or take in
stride, perceive as an oddity, a little freaky but nothing out of the ordinary.
It might be that he doesn’t remember the actress clearly, that he’s glossing
over some vital distinction between the two women.