Erased From Memory (14 page)

Plus, since Rita didn’t have the kind of sequential, organized brain that I’m sure Scott does, copies of personal letters (which she saved—some people discard theirs right away; Rita liked her effusions) are stuck in the same file as research notes. Jeordie (who’s at the British Museum—that’s BM) gets a message with a fond reference. “Hey, Jeord, great evening. That is some place, wow, and good conversation, great company. Thanks a bunch. You’re a pal.” I try to limit my attention on the files talking about shoes, clothing, perfume, ornament. Scan them, forget them. But this is hard to do; they’re interesting.

VIGILACE does seem to be Vigilance, as I’ve been suspecting. But it’s just a couple of news items about some other Egyptologists who are researching shoes.

And the lady did have a sense of humor.
Me vs. You
. That’s a love poem or, more accurately, an “I Don’t Love You Anymore” poem. No date, but it sounds recent. Was her depression due to a rebound romance?

 
 
There are lots and lots of letters, confusing, boring: “Tom, you dreamboat, can you possibly get your drug-dealing outfit to pay me a little faster?” (
Drug-dealing
? I think.
Oh, migawd, alert, alert. But no. It’s a joke.
Later on in the letter: “Anyway, tell them I tried their aspirin-
bulti
-fishoil mixture and, sweetcakes, it’s nowhere as good as straight aspirin.”)

“Rosie, how is the snow at Aspen?” “Sam, Tchaikovsky is soupy, please change tickets.” “Hey, Aunt Margery: It isn’t fair that someone as nice as you . . .”

Partway through, I find tears smarting my eyelids. This is all that’s left of Rita, who was too damn much alive. So much in the now, so curious, puppylike, incautious, that somebody picked up a gun, sighted along it, or whatever you do, and performed all the rest of that cold, calculating process that ends with somebody’s life being bled out on a Best Western rug.

Scott is shuffling papers rapidly. He takes from a pile on his left and adds to a pile on his right. Occasionally he makes a subterranean remark.

“Hey, Scott,” I intervene.

“Huh?”

“She knew everybody here, right? I mean, like you and Egon? Shouldn’t she have a file on each of you?”

He says, “God.” And then adds, “Listen, you come on a file about me, hand it over, will you?”

“Oh, sure. Did she write to you?”

“Not for the last five years.”

“Five years ago was Thebes, right?”

“Why do you care about Thebes?”

“I just do. Big scene. Everybody together, wild nights. Rita talked about it.”

“She would. Better let
me
try the computer.”

“Forget it. There’s nothing about you here, not unless she has you hidden in her perfume research. She knew Marcus, too?”

“Very, very well.” He reaches a hand toward the computer. I guess he’s sorry he let me get involved in this, but he couldn’t very well have said no, it being my idea. I keep on through a few more gushy personal letters and some research notes on turquoise jewelry and kohl eye makeup.

I’m looking for some really personal files, ones that will include Scott Dillard and Marcus Broussard.

What was it Rita called Scott? Studly?

“Hey, Scott, was there an Egyptian fertility god?”

“Everybody was a fertility god. Or goddess. The whole religion was about the Nile.”

“No, I mean like the Greeks and Romans had the little guy with the fat erection.”

Scott says, “Min,” and when I say, “What?” he repeats, “Min. An agriculture god. Why?”

I think fast and invent a poem that Rita was quoting, involving wheat fields.

This discourages Scott, so I can scramble around some more in Rita’s Documents file where, yes, there is a MIN folder and, yes, it contains two subfiles, M and S.

Bingo.

I open M first. M would be for Marcus.

Six or seven letters of the
Hey, baby, what a dynamite night last night
variety. A couple that refer to Scott with tender remarks like
I guess we showed Scott the Stud a thing or two, am I right?
And surprisingly, a whole batch of records of stock transactions. Pages of printouts of sales. Letters of thanks (
You always have the right info
) and short notes saying,
Wow, you are the best
, along with pages of reports from Pricewater-house showing very nice profits.

And finally, unexpectedly, some copies of biographical reports from Google on MARCUS BROUSSARD.

I gobble these up. I’m getting really curious about Marcus Broussard. I should have Googled him myself before this, but I didn’t think of it.

I read. Then I read some more. Then I say to Scott, “Guess what, there are two of them.”

“Two what?” Scott asks, looking up, alarmed. He has been getting edgier as I’ve kept reading.

“Two Marcus Broussards. Rita printed them from Google. One is a banker and one makes adult films. I guess your friend, her friend, our dead trustee, is the banker. Because, from what Egon says, I don’t really guess . . . although it’s possible . . .” I trail off because I’m reading again.

 
 
“What do you think?” I ask. “Was he the banker?”

Scott says, “Yeah, I guess. And other stuff.” He’s stopped reading and is watching me.

Rita’s computer is already hitched up to a printer; all I have to do is punch some more buttons. The adult film maker has an illustrated description. The banker has just one brief, pithy, boring statement, one paragraph long.

“Does
adult film
mean what I think it means?”

Scott shrugs. “I guess.”

“I mean, like, in-your-face, close-up, scorchingly lit photography, women with legs spread, guys with dicks out, tits, ass, group fuck—”

Scott interrupts me, sounding muffled. “I guess.”

“Well, this isn’t exactly . . . Maybe you’d know.”

“How in hell would
I
know?”

“Listen to this: ‘Marcus Broussard, cutting-edge director-producer of the voyeur-film movement, late 1990s, organizer of the group Casualty. His company, Directionless, based in Tenerife, made six films combining reality with anime, art, painting, Picasso, Chagall, Stella, Arbus, comic-huckster Tradu.
Wild, intense, way, way out. Unzip. Adult Industry Revu.
’ ”

“Son of a bitch.” Scott waits a minute, then asks, “Surreal sex movies. So where does that get us?”

“And here’s for the good, boring Marcus: ‘Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the Central California Land Bank, founder of that bank, founder of the Stockton Credit Association, the Stockton Loan Group, Central California Title,’ and more and more and blah, blah. ‘Mr. Broussard is active in many volunteer organizations . . .’ and it lists a whole bunch with names like Jobs Ahoy and Growth into Management. The only faintly interesting one is the Cross-Cultural Museum; he was a trustee of that. Oh, and ‘Trustee of Egypt Regained, a museum devoted to Ancient Egypt.’

“Which Marcus would you rather be stuck in an elevator with?”

Scott is silent, and I wait, staring down at the page. “Do you think Marcus Broussard was a double personality?” he says.

“Yeah, I sure do.”

“He was a writer, too,” Scott says after a minute. “He talked about the writing as if it were a joke on all of us. Like he was especially planning to write up the story of the dig.”

Scott sounds thoughtful. “I sure would like to get my hands on that, but I’m not sure he ever really did it. More, just threatened to.”

 
 
The S file is not as interesting as the M one. Most of it is earlier and includes several
Hey what a hot night
notes. There are two breakup notes of the
I should have known about you, you
rat
type. There are a couple of
I hate Danielle
missives. And there is a recent note. (Yes, Scott lied. Or forgot. Or something.) I memorize it: “Scotty: She’ll never go along with you. Never. Give it up.”

Below this there’s a fragment of what looks like Google information. Or maybe a biographical line from a catalog. “DANIELLE BERTOLUSCI has given lecture courses at Oxford, University of London, and Yale. She is the author of nine articles on the historic placement of British Museum Egyptian texts and is a consutant to the Luxor Museum.”

Danielle. Rita had a thing about her, and she gets put in the S for Scott (or for Stud?) file. I don’t say anything about that to Scott, sitting on the floor facing me.

I wish I could print out both MIN files. I look over at Scott, busy shuffling paper, and decide I can’t.

 
 
“Did you find anything?” I ask as we prepare to quit. He is stacking his papers into a neat bunch and fixing them together with red plastic tape.

“Some messy research notes. Nothing to get her shot, for sure. And you?”

“Nope. Not unless you’re suspicious of perfume cones.”

“Jesus.” He flips the edges of his red-bound pile of paper. “So here’s Rita. Oh, Christ.” He lowers his head. “Some people you don’t think will ever get it; they should just go on and on being peculiar; know what I mean?”

When I don’t answer, he picks up, “That daffy quality. We weren’t ever in love. Not exactly. But we were okay. I liked that irrepressible . . .”

“Uh-huh.”

After a minute, he says, “Let’s go out to dinner. Some place ordinary. No printed menu or Middle Eastern theme.”

“
Not
a Best Western.”

He asks me if I’ve ever been to Penitentia; it’s inland and dusty and there’s a Mexican restaurant.

“Bring your dad along if you need to,” he says.

But Daddy wants to stay here. He likes the new TV program where the four young men help you redecorate your house.

 
 
Scott is cheerful over dinner. Almost, I think you could say, hectic. “Hey, what do you think about that Marcus?”

“It’s interesting. Strange.”

“Like I told you, a wild man. Am I right?”

“I didn’t know him.”

“Oh, sure. I forget. Just because you and I . . .” Some shared ordeals make you feel you’ve had a lot of other stuff together.

“I guess Marcus was a strange cat.”

“Tell me.”

He consults the menu. “Stuffed chile with mole.” He fires this in the direction of the waitress, who is departing, before he turns, looking surprised. “Unless you don’t like spicy?”

“What happens if I don’t?”

“Oh, hell. Sorry.”

“I love spicy. Tell me about Marcus.”

“You saw. He did everything and tried everything.”

“But he was a banker.”

“Sure he was a banker. And a stockbroker. And a whole lot of different kinds of speculator. It was a game. Life was a play.”

“And he was successful?”

“Way successful. Totally off the wall, like a bundle of exploding firecrackers. He made the rest of us look pale beige.”

Our baskets of chips and salsa arrive. Scott is finally telling me about the crowd at Thebes and I want to keep him there. “You weren’t a beige crowd.”

“Not likely.” He realizes where I’m pulling the conversation and stops himself. “But listen—”

“Tell me about his stock deals.”

“Oh, God, the stocks. They were stuff you wouldn’t ever dream of. A company that made a stair-climbing toy. Another one that processed avocado pits.”

“And they always paid off.”

“Every single time. The stair-climber got sold to the army. The avocado oil—Jesus, it was awful—I think Heinz took that. We got so we bought anything he said. He was making all of us rich.”

Scott looks wary again, he’s been listening to himself; so I pile in quickly, “What besides finance?”

Our food arrives. It’s wonderfully spicy, steamy, and greasy. With that weird chocolate tang of real mole. I tell Scott thank you for ordering it and try to steer the conversation back. “But you think he could be the filmmaker, too.”

He shrugs. “He could be anything. Now, let’s talk about . . .” Maybe he can’t think of a neutral topic fast enough. “Boy, I sure would like to see one of those movies.”

“I bet we can find one.” Susie is an old-film buff. She gets them from a special Berkeley video store and she tends to favor Buster Keaton. But she’d be thrilled by this assignment.

“He did sculpture, too,” Scott says, looking reflective. “Mostly, he took Japanese model figures—”

“Japanese model figures?” I can’t picture it.

“Yeah, you know, like Godzilla and Dragon Man . . . and he pasted stuff on them. Crucifixes and halos.”

I say, “Oh,” which seems about to cover it.

“And he was a dynamite welder.
That
kind of sculpture, too.”

I’m silent here, which is good, because Scott is caught in retrospection. “Danny—that is—Rita—couldn’t make up her mind. Was he a genius or was he nuts?”

“
Danielle
couldn’t decide,” I say, pouncing.

“How’d she get into this story?”

“You just said.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Instead of getting into a
yes, you did
and
no, I didn’t
, I say, “This was in Thebes, at the camp in Thebes, and Danielle and Rita were both there. Did Danielle look like Rita?”

He’s been wanting to deny more and change the subject more, but this stops him so cold he has to protest, “Oh, my God, no.”

“So Rita was your girlfriend and then Danielle was your girlfriend?”

“Hey, cut it out.”

After a minute he picks up, hesitantly, “You don’t understand ...”

“Oh, but I do. That was one active scene.”

“Okay, okay. I guess you never—”

“Sure I never.” I think about the Habitat camp on a weekend night. “So Danielle didn’t look like Rita.”

“Danielle looked like . . .” He clamps down on this idea. “Yeah, that was one wild scene, but Marcus was the one. I mean he was the center. He had all the ideas and every sort of other idea. And the resources. He spoke three different kinds of Arabic. He got us the digging site, which was terrific. He got us drugs.”