My mother's lie was good. In fact its skilfullness was nothing short of brilliant. What tremendous shock she concealed, what massive turbulence of emotion she hid beneath a surface of total calm and placidity. Her only mistake was to forget about natural curiosity. When your daughter informs you that a business rival may have hired a private detective to spy on her you do not immediately ask to be dropped off at a department store. And her unnatural insouciance had the effect of turning what had been instinct and suspicion into conviction and acceptance. Salvador Carriscant's wild and incredible assertion was now taking on the lineaments of incontrovertible fact. With a strange mixture of reluctance and relief, of puzzlement and pleasure, I had to admit that what I had half suspected all along was now looking like a biographical certainty: Salvador Carriscant was my father.
SIXTEEN
Larry Rugola, freshly but crudely shaved, the blood still gleaming on a bad razor nick below his ear, collected me from my apartment at 7 a.m. and we drove up to the new site at Silver Lake. The plot was another steep one (I could not afford flat ground, yet) and had a distant view of the reservoir. A short new concrete spur road had been laid to open up this flank of the hill and at its foot was a chainlink fence with a padlocked gate. There were lurid realtors' placards tied to the fence advertising the lots for sale, declaiming 'lake view!' in excited letters. It was true: in the clear morning light I could just see a stripe of grey water between the live oaks and the pepper trees, Larry unlocked the gate and we paced about the two acres with the plans and a measuring tape. I turned and looked back up at the roadway: you would be able to step right off it on to the roof of any single-storey bungalow, such was the incline.
I called to Larry who was pacing solemnly about counting his big strides: 'We could cantilever out, instead of cutting in.'
'It don't come cheap.'
'Say, what about duplex? Duplex apartments, a row of three, maybe four?'
Larry wandered towards me, winding in his tape measure 'It's a thought,' he said, 'that way you could go with the gradient.'
'Living rooms on top, bedrooms below. Step it down and you've got a deck on top of the bedroom roof.'
'With a lake view, even.'
We set about measuring again with renewed fervour The plot was an odd fan shape, splaying out at the foot of the hill. We pushed our way through the sage and wild laurel bushes to the bottom of the slope to where the ground dropped away into a vegetation-choked arroyo. The plots on either side were still vacant, but through a line of trees on the left came the echoey sound of hammering.
'You'll get a lot of extra ground in front,' Larry said.
'So we landscape it, charge a premium.'
'Sounds good to me.'
We relocked the gate and drove up the spur to Ivanhoe.
'Our street got a name yet? How about Lakeview?' Larry said.
'Lago Vista's better. The 'Lago Vista site'. I like it.' I tapped Larry's shoulder. 'Turn right here, Larry, let's go to Micheltoreno, I want to see the old house.'
We weaved west until we hit Angus and then turned south on Micheltoreno. I felt a pleasant shifting in my gut, an old unfamiliar sensation-happiness, excitement. The naming of the street, saying 'the old house': it spoke of progress, the development of a body of work, an avenue of bright tomorrows.
We came over a rise on Micheltoreno and there was number 2265. A thin crane stood above it and hanging from its arm was a flat section of roof being guided up and away by a gang of men in green overalls. A green bulldozer was backing away from the completely flattened porch area, snorting diesel fumes, and other men were collecting the solid timber spars from what remained of the roof trellis of the sheltered yard. Two dump trucks were parked at the kerb and on their sides was written 'John Dexter Demo-Lition'.
'Holy shit!' Larry Rugola said, stopping the car, his eyes wide and uncomprehending. 'Holy fuckin' shit.'
We ran towards the house where a man in green overalls tried to stop us approaching as the roof section was swung over our heads towards the truck. From inside the house came the groaning rip of chainsaws and the tearing, nail-popping sound of jemmies being enthusiastically employed. Two men emerged from the opening where the front door had been carrying the bath and behind them followed three men in business suits and aluminium hardhats, handkerchiefs held to their noses against the dust. One man removed his helmet and a hank of thin blond hair was caught by a breeze.
'Ah, Mrs Fischer,' Eric Meyersen said. 'Always premature. I wanted you to see the vacant lot. I was going to call. I hope you took a photographic record.'
The crane swung round to collect another roof panel.
'Where's Mrs Luard Turner?' I said, staring at him, trying not to look around me.
'I think she's up for a part at Metro,' Meyersen said. 'Talented lady. Charges a modest fee.'
Then I stepped forward to take a swing at him, claw the pale eyes out of that smiling face, but Larry Rugola caught me by the elbow.
'Come on, Mrs Fischer. Leave the bastard.'
We walked quickly towards the car.
'Don't worry,' Meyersen shouted after me. 'We're going to build another house here. Very similar design, in fact. Different architect, that's all.'
We drove away down Micheltoreno. Larry was laboriously and vehemently calling Meyersen every obscenity he could summon to mind. His dogged cursing was obscured by a muted roaring in my ears, my boiling blood I supposed, a foaming red surf, heating my arteries, scalding my internal organs with its furious rage. The noise dimmed eventually, or was drowned by the traffic, as we turned west on Sunset and headed thoughtlessly on out, aiming somewhere for the distant sunlit ocean.
SEVENTEEN
Carriscant turned away from the window. Through its oval I could see the studded silver wing and the engine nacelle and half the blurred disc of the propeller hauling us through this thin high air. We were flying Transcontinental and Western's 'Sky Chief service to New York. Somewhere below us was Montana. We had eighteen hours to go.
'It's quite extraordinary,' Carriscant said, palms patting the armrests of his seat, then gesturing up the aisle at the other passengers and the neat stewardess pouring out cups of coffee. 'Here we are sitting in an armchair being served a beverage… To think we can do all this, in such a short time, up in the air like this. Unbelievable. I feel I've been given a mighty dunt on the head and woken up in a different world. Rip van Winkle isn't in it.'
'Dunt? What's a dunt?'
He chuckled. He was in a fine mood, clearly. 'It's a Scottish word. Means a 'blow', a 'hit'. My father used it.'
I sensed one of my rare opportunities approaching: he seemed as if he might be receptive to a few questions.
'Your father was Scottish?'
'Yes. From a place called Dundee. His name was Archibald Carriscant.'
'Is Carriscant a Scottish name, then?'
'It's the name of a small village in Angus. There's a River Carriscant too, tributary of the Tweed.'
'So you're Scottish by origin,' I said, slowly, taking all this in. Angus. Tweed.
He looked at me carefully, not fooled by my ingenuousness, stroking the cleft in his chin with his middle finger, pondering whether to answer me. I wondered for my part whether he might be thinking up some intriguing falsehood, to lead me on a little further.
