Christietown (5 page)

Speaking of, Gambino had to get up. He was conducting eleven interviews today, starting at eight thirty. I nudged him awake. He kissed my shoulder, then squinted questioningly at the phone. When I mouthed, “Ian,” he rolled his eyes, then staggered into the shower. He never waited the three and a half minutes for hot water.

Back to yesterday. After vomiting, Ian apologized profusely then requested breath mints, which I didn’t have. His assistant, however, soon appeared with a toothbrush and a fresh shirt. While he changed, she poured two cups of strong tea that we took with us as we strolled away from the Vicarage toward Lansham Road, where the last houses (Chipping Cleghorn 1 and 2, priced from the low $400,000s, each with four bed
rooms, three bathrooms, a three-car tandem garage, and 2,346 to 2,981 square feet) were still being built.

Ian drained his cup within seconds, handing it to me so he
could more closely inspect a palm-shaded gazebo, one of nine
teen in Christietown. True enough, the paint was already chip
ping. Maybe they should’ve thought twice about doing things on the cheap. But that was Browning McDuff ’s M.O. A film-production company had recently bought one of their failed housing tracts in the Mojave Desert for the express purpose of blowing it up on camera.

Ian and I made quick work of our list.

One: the mailing. A thousand invites had gone out two weeks ago. Check!

Two: the ads. They’d been placed in the
Antelope Valley Gazette
and the
Antelope Valley News
. Tour Christietown! Sample ye olde English fare! Free murder-and-mayhem color
ing books for the small fry! Check!

Three: the live-radio tie-in; 100.1 the Edge was on board, I had no idea why. Check!

Four: the food. When it came to food, you could always count on Lael. Check!

Five: the play. I hadn’t known then I’d be down one soldier of fortune. Check! All good! Ready to go!

On the walk back to the Vicarage, Ian hadn’t so much as blinked at the gazebo. There was a spring in his step, the rash had faded. I didn’t want to take full credit, but I did feel a warm glow inside.

This morning, as I tore down the Antelope Valley freeway dressed like Lauren Hutton, I summoned that memory of yes
terday: Ian Christie, beet-faced, yet serene; me, organized, effi
cient, glowing.

Because I’d already screwed up.

Twelve miles outside Palmdale, I realized that my back
seat was empty. My backseat was not supposed to be empty.

It was supposed to contain my doddering neighbors Lois and Marlene, who couldn’t get anywhere under their own steam if their lives depended on it. In a moment of lunacy, I’d told them they could come with me. And I’d forgotten them. And it was too late to turn around. And nobody else had room, which is why I’d gotten stuck with the job in the first place.

Well, that was that. If I could write out my soldier of for
tune, I could write out my showgirls. They were comic relief, really, with those froufrou outfits. It would be fine—better than fine. There were too many laughs anyway. Death isn’t supposed to be funny. It’s supposed to be depressing. And my play was going to be really depressing now.

Stop, I told myself. Self-pity is not attractive. And I was almost there. The hop sage and saltbush scrub lining the free
way had given way to the red-tiled roofs—thousands upon thousands of them, as far as the eye could see, swarming over the hillside like a Tuscan-village virus.

The housing developments were relatively new. During the 1980s, first-time home buyers, priced out of L.A.’s nearer sub
urbs, drove farther and farther out to places long considered too remote for commuters. Lancaster and Palmdale became large cities overnight. By the 1990s, however, home values had tanked, foreclosures reaching an all-time high. That’s when Ian Christie stepped in. He bought low and waited for the right moment. Which was, in theory, now.

I exited at Sagebrush Canyon. Last year, Ian gave the folks at city hall a good laugh when he campaigned to have its name changed to “Christie Canyon,” which turned out to be the name of an eighties porn star. Bumping along the unpaved access road, I tuned in to the Edge, hoping to hear a promo for my event, but it was somebody giving sex advice to teen
agers. I’d have recommended they abstain until reaching finan
cial independence, not that I’d followed that advice myself. I hit the Off button. There was some kind of commotion going on up ahead.

Strange. It was too early for the guests to be arriving.

I pulled into the lot across from the Vicarage, cut the engine, and grabbed Liz’s Miss Marple costume out of the trunk.

What was this?

A news van from a local TV affiliate.

Cars parked willy-nilly.

People milling about.

This was not our target audience.

These people weren’t waving checkbooks.

They were waving signs and posters and placards:

TEN LITTLE INDIANS NO MORE
!
CHRISTIETOWN CELEBRATES RACISM
!
DON’T BUY INTO IT
!
TRIBAL LAND SULLIED
!

Where was the huge Christietown welcome banner I’d strung up yesterday?

I couldn’t see it.

All I could see was a reporter holding a microphone in front of an indignant-looking man with a bullhorn.

And Ian Christie—wringing his hands and ruing the day and probably losing his shirt, which was already dripping wet.

C
HAPTER
5

an came running over the minute he saw me, right through
some freshly planted beds of lovage, foxglove, and clematis. But that was the least of his troubles. “Oh, Cece,” he wailed. “This will be our undoing! It’s a disaster of epic proportions!” In the background, we could hear a chorus of children chanting, “One little, two little, three little racists.” “Take it easy, Ian,” I said. “Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems.” It was obviously worse. “Whatever shall we do?” His sweaty hand was clutching mine now. “Oh, dear. They’ve brought coolers and blankets.”

“I think we should start by finding whoever’s in charge.”

“That’s a fine idea,” he said without conviction. “Of course. It’s just a big misunderstanding. We’ll have these good people on their way in no time. Only logical thing to do.”

We made our way over to the man with the bullhorn. He was Native American, very tall, with a shaved head. The bones in his face looked sharp enough to cut glass. He’d finished his
interview. The camera crew was packing up. But he wasn’t done, not by a long shot.

“Can you imagine,” he bellowed to the rapt listeners, “two thousand years ago, Roman families teaching their kids to sing ‘One little, two little, three little Christians’ when they were throwing them to the lions?”

It didn’t seem like such a stretch.

“No!” he cried. “Even the Romans had more decency!”

Ian Christie piped up, “I beg your pardon, sir, but that particular children’s rhyme is not the one Dame Christie was referring to in her book title.”

Oh, no.

The man put down his bullhorn and gave Ian a radiant smile. “This gentleman is quite right,” he said.

Ian looked pleased for half a second.

“We should clear up a few things,” he said, looking Ian straight in the eye. “First of all, ‘Dame’ Christie’s book has had three different titles. The original title was
Ten Little Niggers
—”

Ian blanched.

“Which was derived from an unforgettable ditty recited to African-American children as a bedtime story. A story of their annihilation enacted for the amusement of others.”

“Shameful!” came a cry from the crowd.

“Ten Little Indians
was next. It was supposed to be less offensive. And what do we say to that?”

A chorus of boos.

“But the book is no longer published under either of those titles,” Ian protested. “It’s published as
And Then There Were None
, the last line of the rhyme. Nothing offensive there.”

“Does everyone know that line?” the man asked. “‘One
little Injun living all alone / He got married and then there were none.’ What does that sound like to you?”

“Death by assimilation!” shouted a youngish woman with a baby in her arms.

At that moment, one Yorkie and two Corgis wearing kilts sprinted toward the man with the bullhorn.

“Alice May, Jenny, Scout!” A woman with a platinum blond bob was following in hot pursuit. “Heel! Stay! You are better than this!”

“They’re setting the dogs on Joseph!” an elderly man cried. “Where is the camera now?”

Ian turned to me despairingly. God help us, I was the authority figure.

“Please say you’re Linda,” I called out as the woman bar
reled past us. Meanwhile, the man with the bullhorn—Joseph, I’m assuming—had gotten down on one knee to pet the dogs, who were licking him all over the face.

“Yes, I’m Linda,” she said, struggling with her fanny pack. “We spoke yesterday. Are you Cece?”

It seemed like a trick question.

“Nice dogs,” Joseph said to Linda with a rakish smile. Linda blushed, and handed him some treats to distribute to the dogs, who didn’t deserve them, if you asked me.

“So are you or are you not Cece?” Linda repeated.

At that point, I had no choice but to acknowledge that I was indeed the person who had selected Alice May, Jenny, and Scout from the worldwide database of purportedly well-trained dogs at the Hollywood Animal Actors Agency. The dogs were not there to attack the protesters—whom I obviously hadn’t anticipated—but to enhance the English country ambience. Dogs were ubiquitous in Miss Marple’s hamlet of St. Mary Mead—real ones, little china ones on mantelpieces. Anyway,
Linda was supposed to be wearing a mackintosh and dark green wellies while trotting them around—not a faded wrap
around skirt, Birkenstocks, and oversize white sunglasses. And the dogs were supposed to be well-behaved and unclad—not in
kilts
, for god’s sake, which were Scottish, not English, and therefore entirely inappropriate.

But Linda had lost interest in me. She much preferred bask
ing in the warmth of Joseph’s attention. They were fussing over the dogs, chuckling at the lamb-chop-shaped treats, probably exchanging phone numbers. Maybe I’d get invited to the wed
ding. Linda must have decided to spread the love because just then she turned to Ian—who no longer knew which way was up—and complimented his shirt, which was now dry.

“It’s a guayabera,” he said. “In addition to Dame Christie, Ernest Hemingway is a great passion of mine. His Cuban years, in particular.”

“Did you say Hemingway? Ernest Hemingway was a great friend to the Native Americans,” Joseph began, drawing Linda and Ian into a huddle.

“Joseph?” the woman with the baby ventured timidly.

“I’m busy right now,” he replied without turning around.

With Joseph otherwise engaged, the mob—which I real
ized consisted of no more than fifteen people, some of whom were now making faces at their erstwhile leader behind his back—began to disperse. It seemed like an opportune moment to duck into the Vicarage to drop off my things.

We were in the middle of a desert, but the Vicarage was the apotheosis of Cotswold kitsch: faux stone with a thatched roof, Canterbury bells spilling from window boxes, ivy climbing the walls. On Ian’s ecologically unsound orders, the front garden was to be overwatered daily so there’d always be flowing rivers of mud. Visitors were invited to don one of the pairs of wellies
lined up outside the timbered front door, but by the time you got that far you were already a sodden mess, so I never bothered.

Inside was the latest in high-tech sales paraphernalia: wall
to-wall plasma-screen monitors showing the happy denizens of Christietown taking sunset walks on the nine miles of nature trails; three offices separated by acrylic walls which provided natural light without reducing privacy; and two separate conference rooms with state-of-the-art video-conferencing facilities so people around the world could watch Ian Christie perspire in situ.