18mm Blues Read online

  She continued down the avenue, thinking the beach on her left wasn’t at all Boudin. Even a single striped umbrella would have done it a world of good. Up ahead across the avenue on the right was the largest hotel, Le Grand. A gray structure of nine stories, lonelier looking because of its size. All its many windows shuttered, hundreds of windows. Julia wondered whose responsibility it had been to close them. Out of curiosity she went up to the hotel’s front entrance, peered in through the glass of one of its formidable doors.

  She saw a light inside, and a man.

  The man noticed her, came to the door and for a long moment, separated by the glass of it, which was like nothing, looked her over. She would never really know what he saw, of course, but what she saw was a hulk of a man with a mass of gray hair that met a mass of gray beard that hid his mouth. He had clear young eyes and a kind right hand because it unbolted the door so that she could enter.

  His name was Monsieur Varen. He volunteered that he was the off-season concierge, caretaker, janitor, hotel minder or whatever. They sat opposite each other in two of the hard upholstered chairs of the lobby. No one else was in the hotel, not a soul, then again, he said, perhaps a soul or two. He smiled at that and his mouth, Julia thought, was like a sea urchin in a bed of weed revealing itself, glistening slick pink.

  He took for granted she was an artist and she liked that. He asked to see some of her watercolors and especially cared for one she’d done in Vernon of a field speckled with poppies. It was the most expressionistic thing she’d attempted, bordered on abstract, but he recognized what it was immediately, held the watercolor at arm’s length and said, “Coquelicot!” as though enjoying the word.

  She made him a gift of the painting.

  He gave her a place to sleep. And more.

  She would have considered one of the sofas in the lobby a luxury, but Monsieur Varen wouldn’t hear of it. She was, after all, in a manner of speaking, his guest. He left her seated there, and after about a quarter hour returned for her, took her up in the cage of the main elevator to the ninth, the top floor. To one of the choice front rooms. The bed had been freshly made and was turned down, the tall windows opened, their shutters swung aside. On a tray on the main table was a bottle of Vichy, a half bottle of local cider, two baguettes, a slice of ham and a jar of confiture de framboise. Julia guessed the Vichy water and the preserves had come from the hotel kitchen, the cider, ham and bread from Varen’s supper. She was touched by his thoughtfulness.

  “There is no running water nor electricity,” he informed apologetically. “But there are candles.” He indicated several on the dresser.

  “I prefer candles.”

  “I’ll draw some kitchen water and leave it outside your door.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Ça ne fait rien,” Varen said and was gone before Julia could thank him again.

  She got acquainted with the room. It, everything in it, had that odor usually assimilated from being so near the sea. Not unpleasant really, just distinctive and not how one would preferably have chairs and drapes and bed linens smell. The nap of the wall-to-wall carpet was clotted from being usually damp and trampled. The sheets and pillowcases overstarched. There were two rather identical darker areas on the upholstered headboard where the backs of heads had been placed, causing hair oils to be transferred.

  These were observations, not complaints.

  What remarkable luck! One minute she’s out in the street believing she’ll have to use a doorstep for a pillow, the next she’s all comfy in a room that probably cost five hundred a day high season. Monsieur Varen had certainly restored her faith in the French male. Was it possible she’d be able to stay there a few days? To do some seascapes. She’d ask the kind Monsieur but in a way that surely conveyed she wasn’t trying to take unfair advantage.

  She heard him now outside the door, expected his knock. But when, after a long moment, she opened the door, he was headed down the darkened hall to the elevator, his back to her, bidding her, “Bonne nuit, mademoiselle.”

  “Bonne nuit, monsieur,” she called out and brought in the two pails of water he’d left.

  Oncoming night was swiftly taking color from everything. Julia looked out the open double window and could hardly distinguish the demarcation of shore and sea. The avenue below was an undisturbed gray stream. The room had also turned gray. She closed and latched the window. Lighted three candles and stood them in their own melt in hotel ashtrays, to revive the rose beige of the tall walls, the deep burgundy of the carpet, the floral pattern of the bedspread and drapes, her own flesh and clothes.

  She ate at the main table by candlelight and afterward pushed the chair back and put her feet up. The cider was more toward hard than soft, had a slight warm kick to it, sweet and acidic to the tongue and throat. It reminded Julia of the autumns not many years ago when she’d worked in the apple orchards around home and up in places like Ancram and Austerlitz. Picking for so much a bushel and sometimes helping at the cider press for so much an hour. Saving every dime, eager to work in order to save and thinking of her savings as her someday leaving money. And look where it had taken her, beyond Jean Luc and all the way to the top floor of a hotel on the Côte d’Emeraude.

  A contented sigh came from her, then a feeling of well-being so pervasive it caused a smile. She was thoroughly pleased with herself and with having encountered the kindness of fellow human being Monsieur Varen.

  It was at that moment her outlook inverted. Her optimism drained. Why just then, when she was feeling so at one with the world, had she been struck by such severe reality? Perhaps her breaking off from Jean Luc had brought it on. Or was it prompted by her being the lone occupant of that large hotel? The proximity of all those separate forsaken rooms, the infection of so much emptiness? Or had it been what had occurred at the entrance of the hotel, the instant when she and Monsieur Varen had been separated by the clear glass door panel and through it had tried to decipher each other? Whatever, no doubt it had been all the while within her just below the surface, waiting to be revealed with the most possible impact.

  She felt her isolation.

  Julia Elkins alone all the way with Julia Elkins. No one else, not really.

  She’d known, of course, that was how life was, but she’d never dwelled upon it. Throughout her emotionally detached childhood she’d looked forward to the adult time when she’d be out on her own. That would be when her sense of solitariness would dissipate, countered by her exposure to others, relationships, the back and forth trading of experiences. She would be permitted to be demonstrative and be the reason for demonstration. There’d be no end to such exchanges, she had thought. There was so much to share.

  However, she had just come to realize that sharing, absolute open-hearted sharing, which seemed such a natural human necessity, was actually an illusion. Every word, touch, smile, even pain, would be limited to interpretation. There’d be no connections adequate enough to disprove the insularity, only a lifelong series of futile attempts to connect and time after time of deluding one’s self.

  Blessed were the entirely self-involved, perhaps. And the totally ignorant, possibly.

  It wasn’t a matter of believing or not, of having faith or not. Apartness, literal apartness, was the bitter, irremediable fact of life. And the more sensitive the person the more exasperating it would be.

  That had certainly been the case with Julia, who now, twelve years after Dinard, had had enough of it, was giving up. She and her apartness in her bed in her house on Portrero Hill in San Francisco with over a thousand milligrams of sodium pentobarbital in her system and more at the ready.

  Lord knows she’d tried to endure, had sought ease through all sorts of things, from prodigal passion to penitential psychotherapy. None of her love affairs had exceeded a one-month stand, and after hearing her out during the first forty-five-minute session, the psychiatrist she’d gone to in Manhattan diagnosed her as a depressive with recurrent melancholia and obsessive thoughts. She went
along with him for three months. The antidepressant medication he prescribed didn’t do her any good because, contrary to his theory, she wasn’t chemically unbalanced; her brain was using a normal amount of the normal kinds of neurotransmitters that were normally firing across the normal synaptic gaps of her brain cells. Evidently, depression wasn’t her problem. Desolation due to perceptivity was more like it. Her self-diagnosis was the Nathanael West-Sylvia Plath-Jules Pascin syndrome. When she told that to the psychiatrist he’d laughed. When he’d laughed she never went back.

  Then began her Cody, Wyoming, phase and painting in earnest. No use reviewing that. Instead, a gulp of Margaux, accompanied by the bellowing of a distant harbor horn. San Francisco night language.

  There was heaviness now in her hips and legs. Her buttocks weighed a ton. The small of her back felt as though it was collapsing and her fingers didn’t want the responsibility of holding the wine goblet. How could she be so heavy and yet feel so floaty? A deep breath was impossible. Her insides just below and behind her breastbone were being softly crowded. She’d have to be swift about it now.

  Her hand seemed detached, a creature acting on its own as it slowly reached for oblivion.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It definitely wasn’t white light.

  Nor a tunnellike arrangement of the sort people who’ve had near-death experiences describe.

  Instead it was an undimensional dark crimson, caused by the rhomboidal-shaped slash of sunshine on Julia’s face. Her eyelids went up slowly like a lazy theatrical curtain, and there, in the chintz-covered overstuffed chair across from the bed, sat Royce.

  His eyes opened wider as he noticed hers open. “Oh, back from the dead,” he said with a too abrupt smile, meant to inspire.

  “That I am.” Her voice was strong and clear, as though it had been impatiently waiting again to be used. And her mind was sharp. It wasn’t like her, even in normal conditions, to come so immediately awake.

  “I’ve fed Maxx and brought in the mail. You left your coffee maker on and the pot went dry. It may or may not be cracked,” Royce reported.

  Julia was wondering why she was so thoroughly oriented. She remembered everything, her every action and thought, right up until she’d gone to black. That she’d tried suicide now seemed ridiculous. Anyway, she’d botched it and was glad she’d botched it. She looked to the side table. Only purple lozenges in the candy dish, no yellow capsules. The drawer to the stand was closed and no wine bottle or goblet in sight. Evidently Royce knew or at least suspected what she’d tried. She liked him for not mentioning it, although his back from the dead remark hadn’t been too far off.

  “Next time warn me when you’re going to take a sleep cure,” Royce said, letting her know he was letting her completely off the hook.

  “You’re a dear,” she said.

  “A universal opinion.”

  “And I’ve got to pee.”

  He stood and turned his back and she bounded nude out of bed for the bathroom. A long, loud pee. She flushed when only halfway through to override the sounds. Tried to ignore the mirrors but a glance told her she looked none the worse, in fact, better, more vibrant. She attributed that to all the sleep she’d gotten, was even more convinced of that when, after putting on a robe and returning to the bedroom and Royce, she noticed what he had on. His pale blue velour jogging outfit with royal blue piping. He jogged around the Portrero Hill playground three afternoons each week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, was obsessed with routine, so much so that at times he’d referred to himself as an undeviating deviate.

  That would make today Friday, Julia thought. It would mean she’d been out thirty-six hours straight. Perhaps she’d come closer to dying than she realized. She didn’t recall a thing for the whole thirty-six, not a toss or turn or even a fragment of dream. Normally she dreamed so vividly she was able to play back every scenario and nuance. But not this time. Strange. Probably an effect of the barbiturate.

  Royce took in and exhaled a noisy rather feminine breath, his habitual punctuation for concluding. “Well,” he said, “got to run and I can’t, just absolutely can’t be late for work. They let three poor souls go yesterday and I have a feeling they only missed me by one.” He was an afternoon to midnight clerk at the reception desk of the Stanford Court Hotel. One of the reasons he liked the job was it required that he be highly presentable, which provided him with an excuse for his overmeticulousness and extensive wardrobe.

  He went to Julia, conveyed with his eyes that she shouldn’t repeat her attempt, told her with his smile he was assured. “Ta, hon,” he said, gave her an upper body hug and left.

  Julia took a shower, and while the nearly unbearably hot water was beating upon her skull, it occurred to her that there was something urgent she should do. But she didn’t know exactly what. It was more a strong sense than anything specific. Something she’d forgotten because of the drama of the past few days? If it was important it would come to her, she decided.

  She dressed, was too ravenous to cook anything. So she drove down the hill to an eating place on Carolina Street and had a four-egg tomato and cheese omelet, rye toast and coffee. Wolfed it down, cleaned her plate. Returned home with that same sense of urgency foremost in her mind.

  She took a critical look at the canvas on the easel that was supposed to have been her final work. She could do better, she thought, would. She stood in the midst of the mess of her studio and was revolted by it. An entirely new reaction. Perhaps that was what needed doing, she thought.

  She threw out a lot of stuff, three trash bins full and some loads in cardboard cartons. Got rid of all the used plastic bowls and the opened quart and gallon cans scummed with paint from as far back as two years. Gathered up the layers of newspapers from the floor, using thinner and a scrubber on those that were stuck. She spent an entire day on brushes. Cleaned and treated those that were salvageable, felt guilty about those with bristles beyond saving. They had, she thought, served her well and were not deserving of such abuse. She bunched and bound them with string, wrapped them in a shroud of fresh brown paper and put them in a clean, substantial carton. Sealed the carton with masking tape and, before placing it out with the other trash, said a silent thanks and thought a ritual.

  At the late end of the third day the studio was cleaned and reorganized to Julia’s satisfaction. The place seemed happier with the new orderliness, especially the storage cabinet where the brushes were now all lined up on their own shelf above the shelf where tubes of medium were arranged according to color. Julia vowed to everything that she wouldn’t ever again allow such a mess. Probably.

  Still, that sense of there being something she absolutely should tend to was pressing her. What the hell was it? Could it be something inconsequential to which she’d given a thought and it hadn’t receded to its proper place in her mind as it should have, something of no great matter such as having her hair trimmed or the car washed? Minds could be tricky like that when they wanted to be, she believed.

  Four days went by. During that time, just in case, she subjected her Jeep Cherokee to a torturous-looking automatic wash and got herself a trim at Transitions. While she was downtown she browsed some stores, including Gumps, where she especially appreciated a display of exquisitely detailed Suzuribako, lacquer writing boxes, and various pieces of carved lavender jade. Perhaps it was viewing those things that put her in a shopping mode.

  At Saks she intended just to try on but ended up buying a simply stunning black Issey Miyake for more than she’d ever before paid for a dress. Just had to have it for some reason, and of course new shoes as well, a pair of Bruno Magli’s that perhaps didn’t look the price but felt it when she had them on.

  She thought she’d shopped herself out until she came onto the place that had just opened on O’Farrell. A shop offering all sorts of tasteful, unusual petites choses, little things. Objects d’art and just objets, like a private collection. There, she was drawn to a shagreen and ivory military hairbrush and comb set, a silver
art nouveau shoe horn and an antique business card presentation case of alligator with 18k gold corner trim. She settled on the case, yes definitely the case.

  “Shall I gift wrap it?” Julia was asked.

  “Oh … yes,” Julia replied.

  And while that was being done Julia questioned her sanity. A business card case for five hundred and seventy-five plus tax? My god, why? She didn’t even have a business card.

  Anyway, it was done. She went home, got nude and sat upon a high stool at the large table in the studio. Munching three different varieties of Pepperidge Farm cookies.

  She ought to stretch and prepare some canvases, she thought. Not yet, she decided.

  Then the owner of the gallery on Octavia Street phoned to say he’d sold two more of her works and it might be beneficial for all concerned if he had two others to hang in their place.

  While on the phone with him, half hearing his words, she contemplated the dendritic cracks in the white plaster surface of the near wall. Her eyes ran from those to the raw pinewood bulletin board, her mind tagging along. Passed the pinned-up articles and scribbled notes to herself to the far left edge and a small white rectangle, upon which her entire attention abruptly focused. She hung up the phone with an interruptive good-bye. Liberated Grady’s business card from the stab of a red-headed push pin and as she examined it realized it was the reason for all the recent nudging.

  But what was she supposed to do, call this Grady Bowman person? He’d said he’d call her when her pearls were ready. Best to wait. Why? To hell with that. She dialed his number. After the fourth ring his answering machine activated. She hung up as soon as she heard his recorded voice.