Somewhere in Time (2 page)

Lordy, there I go again. Held up by a camper, pulling out into the next lane, speeding up and passing, jockeying to gain position. Don't you get the point, R.C.?

The music ended. Didn't hear what it was. Now they're starting "Ragtime for Eleven Wind Instruments" by Stravinsky. Just turned off the radio.

Los Angeles has vanished now. So, too, has Long Beach and the Queen. San Diego is a fantasy. All that's real is here; this piece of highway unreeling in front of me.

Where will I stop in San Diego?-assuming it exists, of course. What difference does it make? I'll find a place, go out to eat; maybe a Japanese restaurant. I'll catch a movie, read a magazine or take a walk, I'll drink, pick up a girl, stand on a dock, throw stones at boats, I'll decide when I get there. Boo to schedules.

Listen, cheer up, kiddo! It's going to be a ball! There's months and months ahead!

There's a seafood restaurant. Think I'll start eating swordfish. Open my meals with bowls of Bon Vivant vichyssoise.

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San Juan Capistrano is kaput.

A godlike feeling to uncreate entire communities with a stroke of will.

The clouds ahead are like mountains of snow piled into giant, castlelike shapes against the blue sky.

No character at all. Just turned on the radio again. They're playing Liszt's Les Preludes. Music of the nineteenth century suits me better.

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Clouds look like smoke now. As though the world is burning up.

That feeling in my stomach is returning. Makes no sense now that the Queen is far behind.

I guess it was the apple danish after all.

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The traffic is thickening as I enter San Diego proper. Got to get out of it.

Isn't there a place called Sea World down here? Think so. See a whale jump through a hoop. Downtown. Getting hemmed in. Billboards popping up like toadstools. Just past four o'clock. I'm getting nervous.

Why did I come here? It all seems senseless now. A hundred and twenty-eight miles for what?

Tomorrow I'll turn east. I'll wake up early, sweat out the headache, start for Denver.

Christ, it's like being back in Los Angeles! Surrounded by cars switching lanes, red lights blinking, angry driver faces.

Ah; a bridge ahead. I'll take it. Don't care where it leads so long as it's away from this.

Coronado says the sign.

Driving straight into the sun. It blinds me. Fiery, golden disc.

Cliffs in the distance; the Pacific Ocean.

What's that on the edge of the water? Huge, weird structure. I'll pay my toll and take a look.

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Just turned left onto A Avenue. Looks old, this place. There's an English cottage on my right. No traffic here. A quiet, tree-lined street. Maybe I can stay here overnight. Has to be a motel somewhere. There's an old house like a mansion from the nineteenth century. Made of brick; bay windows, giant chimneys.

Is that it up ahead? Look at that red-shingled tower. I don't believe it.

Just drove in the wrong way. Sitting in a parking lot behind the building. Must be sixty, seventy years old. Enormous place. Five stories high, painted white, red-shingled roof.

Have to find the front of it.

There's a motel across the way if this turns out not to be- it is a hotel!

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I'm in Room 527, looking out a window at the ocean. The sun is almost down, a vivid orange slice of it above the horizon to the left of a dark cliff line. No one on the strand of pearl-gray beach. I can see and hear the surf, a tumbling thunder. A little past four thirty. This is such a restful spot, I may stay here for more than one night. Must look around.

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Glazed by twilight, the patio looks unreal; huge, with curving walks and green manicured lawns. The sky looks like a painted studio backdrop. Maybe this is Disneyland South.

I drove up underneath the porte cochere before and an attendant parked my car, a porter took my bags; he looked a little startled at the weight of my second suitcase. I followed him up a red-carpeted ramp to the foyer, circled a white metal bench with a planter in the middle, stepped into the lobby, signed the register, and was led across this patio. Birds were fiercely noisy inside trees so thickly foliaged I couldn't even see the birds.

Now the trees are still, the patio is still.

I'm looking at it from the fifth-floor balcony; at chairs and tables with umbrellas, banks of flowers. This is a chimerical place. I'm looking at an American flag flying high above the tower. What's up there? I wonder.

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Too hungry to wait for dinner service; six p.m. in the Prince of Wales Grille, six thirty in the Coronet Room. It's only five. If I drink for an hour, I'll be out of it and I don't want that. I intend to savor this place.

I'm sitting in the almost empty Coronet Room by one of the picture windows; asked and was told that I could still get limited lunch service. Adjoining is the massive Crown Room, used only, I gather, for banquets. Outside, I see the place where I first drove up. Was it only forty minutes ago?

This room is beautiful. Wall panels of red and gold textured material, above them panels of richly finished wood curving to a ceiling three or four stories high. White-clothed tables, candles lit in dark yellow tubes, tall metal goblets waiting for the dinner guests. All most gracious-looking.

The waitress just brought my soup.

Eating now, superb, thick navy-bean soup with chunks of ham. Delicious. I'm really hungry. Which may be pointless in the long run but is something to be relished at the moment. This stunning room. This good, hot soup.

I wonder if I have enough money to stay here indefinitely. At twenty-five dollars a day, my pot wouldn't go very far. I imagine they have monthly rates but even so I'd probably be destitute before departed.

How long has this hotel been here? There's a sheet of information in my room I'll look at later. It's an old place though. En route to the lobby via a basement corridor leading from the Prince of Wales Grille, I passed through a marvelous old bar room with a palatial counter; I must have a drink there tomorrow. Also saw an arcade with a barbershop and jewelry shop, peeked into a side room filled with game machines, glanced momentarily at some period photos on the wall. Will take a look at them as well. Later, when I've fed my ravenous body.

Too dark now to see much outside. Shadowy trees nearby, some parked cars, and, beyond that, the multicolored lights of San Diego in the distance. Reflected in the window is the huge, hanging light fixture, a crown of lights suspended in the night. This is not like being in the beached and overrun Queen Mary. This is the Queen still ruling the seas.

Only one thing wrong: the music. Inappropriate. Should be something more genteel. A string quartet playing Lehar.

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I'm sitting in a giant armchair on the mezzanine above the lobby. In front of me is an enormous chandelier with tiers of red-shaded lights and necklaces of crystal dangling from its bottom. The ceiling overhead is intricate and heavy-looking, dark paneled sections polished to a high gloss. I can see a massive, paneled column, the main staircase, and the gilded grillwork of the elevator shaft. I came up by another staircase. There was a silence on it I could feel in my flesh. This chair is something else. The back is far above my head, two plump urchins flanking its scroll. Both arms end in winged dragons whose scaly serpent forms extend to the seat. Where the arms join in back, two figures loll, one a childlike Bacchus, the other a staring, fur-legged Pan, playing on his pipes.

Who sat on this chair before me? How many have looked across that railing down into the lobby at the men and women sitting, standing, chatting, entering, and leaving? In the 1930s, '20s, '10s.

Even in the '90s?

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I'm sitting in the Victorian Lounge, drink in hand, staring at a stained-glass window. Lovely room. Lush red upholstery in the booths; looks like velvet. Paneled columns, paneled ceiling squares, a chandelier with hanging crystal pendants.

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Nine twenty p.m. Showered, legs all tired, lying on my bed, looking at the information sheet. This place was built in 1887. That's incredible. And I knew that something about it looked familiar. Not deja vu unfortunately. Billy Wilder used it filming Some Like It Hot.

Various quotations from the sheet:

"Structure resembling a castle.'

"Last of the extravagantly conceived seaside hotels."

"A monument to the past."

"Turrets, tall cupolas, hand-carved wooden pillars, and Victorian gingerbread."

I'm listening to a sound I haven't heard since childhood: the thumping of a radiator.

Astonishing silence in the corridors. As though time itself has collected in them, filling the air.

Wonder if it fills this room as well. Is there anything inside it left from yesteryear? That speckled gold-brown-yellow carpeting? I doubt it. The bathroom? Probably didn't even have a bathroom then. The wicker chairs? Perhaps. Certainly not the beds or end tables nor the lamps; God knows, not the telephone. Those prints on the wall? Unlikely. The drapes or Venetian blinds? Nope. Even the window glass has probably been replaced. The bureau or the mirror hanging over it? Don't think so. The wastebasket? Sure. How about the TV set? Yeah, yeah.

Not much of the past at all in here. A shame.

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My name is Richard Collier. I'm thirty-six years old, a television writer by profession. I'm six foot two and weigh one hundred and eighty-seven pounds. I've been told I look like Newman; maybe they meant the cardinal. I was born in Brooklyn on February 20, 1935, almost 'went to Korea but it ended, graduated from the University of Missouri in 1957, bachelor of journalism degree. Got a job with ABC in New York after graduating, started to sell scripts in 1958, moved to Los Angeles in 1960. My brother moved his printing business to L.A. in 1965 and I moved into the guest house behind his house the same year. I left there this morning because I'm going to die in four to six months and thought I'd write a book about it while I traveled.

A large amount of verbiage to get myself to say those words. Okay, they're said. I have a temporal-lobe tumor, inoperable. Always thought the morning headaches 'were caused by tension. Finally went to Dr. Crosswell; Bob insisted, drove me there himself. Big tough Bob who runs his business with an iron hand. Cried like a kid -when Dr. Crosswell told us. Me the one who had it, Bob the one who cried. Lovely man.

All that less than two weeks ago. Up till then I thought I'd live a long time. Pop cut off at sixty-two only because of excessive drinking. Mom, seventy-three, healthy and active. Figured there was lots of time to get married, have a family; never panicked even though I never seemed to meet The One. Now it's done. X rays, spinal taps, the works confirm it. Collier kaput.

I could have stayed with Bob and Mary. Taken X-ray treatments. Lived a few extra months. Vetoed that. All I had to see was one look exchanged by them; one pained, awkward, and uncomfortable look which people always seem to exchange in the presence of the dying. Knew I had to cut. Couldn't stand to see that look day after day.

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I'm writing this section instead of dictating it into my recorder. Bad habit I got into, anyway, doing scripts entirely on cassettes. To lose the feel of putting words on paper is a bad thing for a writer.

Can't dictate now because I'm listening to Mahler's Tenth with my headphones; Ormandy, the Philadelphia. A little hard to dictate when you can't hear the sound of your voice.

Amazing job Cook did orchestrating the sketches. Sounds just like Mahler. Maybe not as rich but indisputably his.

I know why I love his music; it just came to me. He's present in it. As the past haunts this hotel, so Mahler haunts his work. He's in my head at this moment. "He lives on in his work" is a trite phrase, rarely pertinent. In Mahler's case it's literal truth. His spirit resides in his music.

The final movement now. Inevitably, the loosening sensation at the corners of my eyes, the swallowing, the swell of emotion in my chest.

Has there ever been a more heartbreaking farewell to life expressed in music?

Let me die with Mahler in my head.

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I'm looking at a face in a mirror. Not my face; Paul Newman's, circa 1960. I've been staring at it such a long time, I feel objective about it. People do that sometimes; gaze at their reflection until-zap-it's a strange face looking at them. Sometimes, a scary face too, so alien is it.

The only thing that keeps me coming back is that I see Paul Newman's lips moving and he's saying the words I hear myself saying. So I guess it's my face though I feel no sense of connection to it.

The boy who owned that face was beautiful; the word was used, he heard it all the time. What did it do to him? Grown-ups, strangers even-smiled at him and, sometimes, stroked his white-blond hair and stared at his angelic features. What did that do to him? Girls stared too. Obliquely, as a rule. Sometimes straight on. The little boy did lots of blushing. Bleeding too; bullies loved to punch that face. Unfortunately, the boy was long on suffering. It wasn't till they pounded him into a corner so tight that even he lost his temper that he fought back. Poor kid didn't ask for that face. He never tried to cash in on it. He was grateful to get older when most bullies change their tactics to less obvious ones.

Hell, I'm sitting here talking about my own face. Why play the third-person game? It's me, folks. Richard Collier. Very handsome. I can talk about it all I want. No one's listening at the keyhole. There it is, world. Da-da-a-a! And what good did it ever do the guy behind it? Will it save him? Will that face rise up and slay the treacherous tumor?

No chance. So, in sum, that face is worthless, for it cannot keep its owner in this world one day beyond his measure. Well, the worms will have a pretty picnic-Jesus, what a rotten thing to say!

What a stupid, idiotic thing to say.

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Almost midnight.

Lying in darkness, listening to the surf. Like distant cannons being fired.

These are the hardest hours.