The Decent Proposal (26 page)

“He did me proud,” said Mike, whose distressingly awkward Sunday afternoon with Elizabeth was the one chunk of time in the last six days she hadn't devoted to work, sleep, church, or the gym. It had come to her while she was praying. She'd quelled the “Project!” urge for too long. It had been time to start thinking about someone other than herself.

Mike caught Keith staring at her. He looked away, smirking. She turned instinctively to Richard to share a
can you believe this shit?
look with him, knowing full well he wouldn't be looking at her, except—and forget that whole thumbs-under-the-eyes
thing from earlier in the car, forget Angelyne, because
this
was the moment she would never forget, one of the greatest of her life—he
was
looking at her, he was looking
directly
at her, and never had she felt so recognized, appreciated, beautiful.

God, how she loved him.

“Let's go inside,” Keith said finally to the group.

“I'll meet up with you guys,” said Mike.

MIKE LINGERED THERE,
alone, and for all purposes bereft, except that she felt too joyous to shut herself inside a dark theater just yet. She wished her parents could have been there to witness the events of the previous hour. They would have been so proud. . . . Mike saw stars; her ears rang; she felt dizzy but she steadied herself because she didn't want to miss a moment of this. She felt it now too—this glorious pride—and not the bad kind, which was just another form of vanity, but the earned kind, the ennobling kind—the ultimate reward for a job well done, so much better than the tit-for-tat of karmic retribution. She felt that if her father were to die tomorrow it would still be too soon, it would
always
be too soon, but she could at least look him in the eye and tell him with an honest heart that she was happy, she was complete.

There was still one thing left to do. Mike had promised herself she would do it if everything worked out for her on this day, and though things hadn't gone exactly according to plan, she felt she owed it to the universe—why hide it now? to God, to
Jesus
—to follow through on her intentions to the last possible degree.

Mike sank to one knee in the middle of the pavement and bowed her head in prayer: a full-on bout of Tebowing that was the furthest thing from the spontaneous gesture it was meant to be. She was actually thankful when the harried publicity assistant hurried over to her, headset askew, reaching out the
same sweaty hand that had been maneuvering celebrities all night.

“Please tell me you're okay,” the assistant pleaded, towering over her.

“I'm fine,” said Mike, crossing herself before accepting the proffered hand.

“What happened, did you faint?”

“I just tripped, and fell for a second,” she said, pulling herself to her feet. “But see? I'm up again.”

Mike brushed off her knees and headed into the theater.

SCOTTY'S CASTLE WAS
not a castle, and the Scotty in question did not design, build, or even own it. Scotty was a con man who convinced millionaires to buy land in Death Valley on the promise that it was teeming with gold. Mines were dug at great expense, but no gold appeared; nothing piled up except the years, during which something unexpected happened: Scotty made a friend. Unlike all the other dupes who talked of suing him—or worse—the Chicago insurance millionaire Albert Johnson continued stubbornly to believe in Scotty, and together they continued exploring the land for gold. Over time, their outings became less about searching for a precious metal they would never find, and more about appreciating each other's company and the natural wonders around them.

Death Valley was much the same then as it is today. A vast valley of flat plains, it lies so low on the surface of the Earth that it constitutes the lowest point in all of North America: almost
300 feet below sea level. Enclosing these plains are gray and purple mountains that trap the sun-warmed air and send it rolling back to the plains to be heated over, and over, and over again. In summer, the temperature routinely hits 115 degrees. No one who visits Death Valley wonders how it acquired its name. And yet it is no wasteland: it has a meandering creek in which pupfish populations leftover from the last ice age have adapted and survived; a crusty white salt basin that occasionally becomes a saltwater lake in rainy winters; golden sand dunes; fields of yellow flowers that bloom in spring; abstract rock formations carved into mountain faces and painted with mineral splotches of color; and many other natural phenomena.

In the 1920s, Johnson built a Spanish Colonial villa so that his wife could join him in comfort and style. It was made to look like a desert castle, with Anglo-Saxon architectural motifs adapted to the American Southwest. Instead of guards in suits of armor, two giant cacti flanked a wooden portcullis painted red, with curling iron flourishes fixed inside each latticed square. The walls and towers were the color of sand, and made of stucco. From a notched battlement flew an American flag in place of a knight's pennant. Red Mission tiles created specially to withstand the sizzling desert heat capped off this ridiculous yet impressive monstrosity. There was even supposed to be a pool (the Jazz Age equivalent to a moat), but before he could install it, Johnson discovered that the government owned the land the house had been built on. Scotty had either made a mistake or purposely misled him; his tract lay farther north. It took years for Johnson to legally acquire the land in question, and by then the Great Depression had bankrupted his insurance company like all the others. The pool was not to be. Most people dismissed the millionaire as a fool for continuing to associate with a known huckster, but by then the friendship was sealed, and Johnson let Scotty live in the castle for the remainder of his life.

The Chambers family owned a desert estate near Johnson's. As a girl, Beverly was forced to spend extended weekends there, and while she relished the extreme heat—as she did all extreme things—the desert held few other distractions for her. Even with Charlotte there it took only a few hours for her and her brother Tom to begin fighting. Their father, “Big Stan,” was constantly taking them out on neighborly visits as a way of forcing them to behave (they knew better than to act out in front of strangers), and they spent many an afternoon at Scotty's Castle this way. Stan grew fond of the place, and at some point in the fifties he got it into his head to build a replica. Beverly, who was a young woman by then, convinced him to at least build this embarrassment where no one could see it from the public road, and never tell anyone about it. She said every great family should have a secret, and Stan was tickled by the idea of a hideaway.

The only difference between Scotty's Castle and its secret twin, Stan's Castle, was the tiled swimming pool Beverly Chambers stood staring at now from a window on the second-story landing. It was gorgeous, less a watery oasis than a second sun, as bright and glittering as its skyward companion but with the added attraction of refreshment. Bev had inherited the house from her father, and for decades “that vulgar castle” (as CharBev always referred to it) had lain unused. But in her old age, Bev discovered she had a measure of affection for it, as she did for anything that had managed to survive from long ago, and she spent at least a few weeks there each year, usually between the months of October and April.

The sun's glare began to overwhelm her. She looked away, puffing on her latest Parlie. A dirt road stretched from the entrance through a series of rolling hills to the public roadway, scores of miles in the shimmering distance.
Shimmering, and not even noon yet.
The desert heat still fascinated her. As a girl, she loved how the sweat under her arms would evaporate before
it even had a chance to settle. Out here, it was as if the Earth's atmosphere didn't exist—as if there were nothing between her and the heavens above. If she were religious (as Albert Johnson had been), this might have made her feel closer to God, but instead it always made her think about alien abductions, how easy it would be for a vessel to materialize out of the endless sky and snatch her from this desolate landscape. It was no coincidence, she always thought, that both Roswell and Area 51 were located in the American Southwest. The desert revealed how empty the world really was. In more reasonable climates, nature at least gave the illusion of providing cover, and in towns and cities people could crowd together and pretend they weren't powerless. But there was no pretense out here, no semblance of comfort, or false impression of safety. There was simply . . . nothing.

A distant noise intruded on her reverie. Bev's consciousness returned to the world like a swimmer rising to the surface of the pool outside—breaching the liquid coolness of interiority for the dry, blazing heat of shared reality. What
was
that noise? Of course: it was the faraway whirring of a car engine. She couldn't see them yet, but they were close. This was always how it was in Death Valley; sound traveled unimpeded over the flat land and through the crystalline air, over distances greater than the eye could see. In the desert, hearing was the more reliable sense.

They were early, which surprised her. What happened to young people being fashionably late? In their day CharBev were never on time for anything. There were a few things she still had to do. Bev turned to Peaches, who was brushing up her latest trail of ashes inches from her feet:

“Stop fussing, Peaches, and help me down the stairs.”

She stuck out her arm and wiggled her fingers impatiently. It was absurd, but at some point in the last week, during the aftermath of her hangover from her binge with Mike Kim, Bev had lost the ability to go up or down the stairs without assistance.
Peaches had tried to convince her to use a cane, but she refused. Decrepitude was officially a bore.

IT WAS RICHARD,
not Elizabeth, who was responsible for the early start. As it turned out he celebrated well into the night of the premiere with a number of friends, but no one more so than Mike. They did a series of shots (he lost count somewhere around six or seven) in honor of “Mikard,” a word that became funnier to them the more they said it, which happened to coincide with the more they drank. They both had to Uber it home, and it wasn't till well past 2 a.m. when a Lincoln Town Car ambled down Rowena, stopped a moment, and ejected a stumbling Richard onto the curb like a garbage truck emptying itself into a landfill. He was just sober enough to remember Elizabeth was picking him up at seven sharp. His head ached already; he knew he would be massively hungover in the morning and threw himself into bed in the desperate attempt to get a few hours of sleep. This desperation, of course, ensured that he got none. Two hours later he gave up, and on an impulse he texted her:

            
u up yet

She texted back almost immediately:

            
Yes. You?

Elizabeth had forced herself to wake up at five on Tuesday for a rare weekday roller skate. This had ensured she would be tired enough to go to sleep immediately upon returning home from the premiere the night before, at eleven. When she woke at five again on Wednesday morning, she was reasonably refreshed and ready to go.

A few texts later, they agreed they might as well get started.
It took Elizabeth only thirty minutes to get to Silver Lake so early in the morning. When Richard tumbled into the front passenger seat it was still dark outside, not quite 6 a.m.

He looked across at her. She was back to her normal self: loose clothing, ponytail, face devoid of makeup. He was glad. It was nice to have the old Elizabeth back. But she wasn't
quite
back, was she? Somehow she looked different; he couldn't put his finger on it. But it bothered him, and as she fiddled with what looked to be a picnic basket shoved between their seats (what the hell did she have in there?), he stared at her, trying to figure out what it was.

She caught him staring. Their eyes met, bouncing off each other in opposite directions. Elizabeth made a big show of rearranging the objects inside her basket. She removed a thermos and unscrewed the cap. The car filled with the aroma of fresh coffee.

“Do you want some?”

She had time to make coffee?
he thought, declining with a shake of his head. The smell was actually making him sick, and when she opened the basket to put back the thermos, he leaned over to take a peek, the sight of a homemade PB&J smeared against a Ziploc bag nearly making him heave. He swallowed thickly. Nausea and exhaustion were descending on him, fast, and he wasn't sure which would win out. He hoped it was the latter, though the saliva pooling in the bottom of his mouth portended otherwise.
Not again
, he begged silently. Richard was angry with himself for being hungover after promising he'd drink less—especially after being so good the last few weeks. But then he thought of Mike, and everything that had happened yesterday. He didn't regret a thing. He couldn't tell Elizabeth, though. He'd betrayed his best friend to her once before, and he was determined not to do it again.

Elizabeth pulled into the street. There were no other cars on the road except for a lone Prius behind them. It was 6 a.m., a full hour earlier than they'd planned on leaving.

“So how was the rest of last night?” she asked, once they'd gotten on the 101.

“Eh. You didn't miss much at the after party, or the after–after party. Nothing to report.”

“How're you feeling?”

“Not too bad,” he lied. “I'm not really much of a morning person anyway. Unlike you, apparently.”

“It's true. I am a morning person,” she said, with her uniquely flat intonation, devoid of inflection or innuendo. Richard remembered how he used to rail against her peculiar manner of speaking. He even had a “DP robot voice” he used to do for Mike in the early days, when he and Elizabeth were just getting to know each other. His eyelids began to droop.

“Feel free to lie down in the back if you want to.”

“Really?” he asked gratefully. “You sure you don't mind?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Go for it,” she said, swapping out the 101 for the 10. There was still hardly anyone on the road, and even though by the time she got to the 15 there were plenty of vehicles in her rearview mirror, the traffic remained light. Elizabeth did a quick five-count with “Mississippis” in between, while from the backseat Richard snored steadily. Soon, their suspense would be over.

Elizabeth thought about Orpheus, who was so often on her mind these days. He was doing so much better. She realized it was only a matter of time before she told him everything, rough patch included, because how could she not? They'd grown so close, especially over the last month or two. Suddenly she wished she could have conjured him there now, by some magic spell, and talked to him for as long as he would listen. She wouldn't have held back a thing.

ORPHEUS DID NOT
appear magically in Elizabeth's front seat, but by a more minor miracle he was only fifty yards behind her, in one of the many Priuses dotting the road—the same Prius, in fact, that had been following her all the way from Silver Lake.

Since showing up on Elizabeth's doorstep in the guise of a new man almost two months earlier, Orpheus had made significant progress up the side of the well. It became easier once Elizabeth knew what he was doing; it was as if she threw him down a rope, beckoning excitedly from the top. He continued his job hawking pizza on the Boardwalk, and each week they went to the supermarket together (he had his own shelf in her kitchen now). He slept over almost every night, and when she wasn't there, he had permission to loiter on her back porch as much as he wanted. (She made sure her neighbors knew he was her guest.) They'd even done a little “house hunting,” which consisted of trawling through Craigslist and Westside Rentals listings for something dirt cheap yet otherwise dirt-free, which turned out not to be such an easy find. They were in touch with Phoenix House and the St. Joseph Center, two local charities that helped the homeless with housing, both temporary and permanent. Elizabeth had told him finally about her “Orpheus account” and her intention to use the money she received each month from the lawyer to help him however she could, as long as he kept in mind that the ultimate goal was his financial independence. She was so businesslike about it, there was little opportunity for emotion, and he had to settle for a simple “thank you,” which he found himself repeating thereafter almost every day.

Elizabeth had told him about the lawyer's e-mail the night she received it. He didn't say a word; the “do not pry” strategy had been working well for him. But he wanted desperately to go with her. Partly, he wanted to protect her, but mainly he was cu
rious: his ability to keep inching up the well and eventually over its lip and onto solid ground was now tied directly to this anonymous benefactor. There was, however, another reason. The idea of getting back inside a car and hurtling down the highways of greater Southern California scared him—deeply—but he was drawn to this fear the same way a child insists on seeing the goriest horror movie in the theater or riding the biggest roller coaster in the park. Wouldn't this prove how far he'd come? That he had acquired more than the trappings of progress and secured real, lasting change for himself? In a flash of inspiration he realized it would be even
better
if he weren't just a passenger, but actually
driving
the vehicle in question.