quickly, leaving a flash of light that hung in the room like a frozen lightning rod.
SHE SAT WITH A FISHING POLE in her hand. Her bare legs dangled off the Venice pier. The sky was see-through blue, with the stiffed winged gulls like shadows against the horizon. Sarah pretended she sat alone, ignoring the U-shaped crowd that had gathered out of curiosity around the reporters on the dock. No doubt they were craning their necks and bobbing over one another’s heads to steal a glimpse of the star. Looking out into the expanse of the Pacific Ocean, she kept her back to them as they crept up on the auditorium.
Her line sunk far beneath the water’s surface in the hope of seducing an unsuspecting fish. She sometimes swayed the rod from side to side in order to create some variety, feeling the force of the water mass in its resistance. Closing her eyes. The crisp moist air blowing off the waves reminded her how small she really was in the world.
She thought that she felt a tug on the line, and her body tensed in excitement and pleasure. She centered her weight. Braced her arms. Adopted a grimace that was more anticipation than anything else. By the time she gripped her free hand on the handle for support, the line loosened, then as quickly slackened, reinstated to its former free-floating form. Such is the drama of fishing. In this constant give-and-take, unpredictable rhythm, and seat-edged suspense, Sarah felt whole. The performer and the audience at the same moment. The combustible relationship of energy between actor and viewer that sparks the theater is alive in every act of fishing. Here there is no celebrity, no cues, no critics. Here every bit of business is stage business. With no need to jump and shout and lift her skirt bare ass in public in order to be seen. The same wholeness she felt when she would sit on crushed grass at her uncle Faure’s farm in Neuilly, dragging a line across the lake, each little movement breaking and rustling the dried brown stalks, and causing the fish to scatter, leaving only a constellation of bubbles and ripples. She could sit out there all day long without catching a fish. Just gazing into a sky animated by silky clouds, unable to dream a better life.
Her line pulled again. Jerky in stilted movements. She didn’t feel the usual tugging and fighting. Almost as though the catch had given itself up in a desperate attempt of hopelessness and soulless resignation. Then came a sudden force that lightened momentarily before turning heavy again. She leaned back, rolling her shoulders toward the pier. The ends of her dark hair caught in the breeze. She opened her legs for balance and strength. Stomach muscles taut and ready. Slowly cranking the fly. Reeling it in. Hoisting the catch above the surface, a fish in sequin scales, oddly content, with barely a trace of distress or fight. At least a foot long, and plump with fat.
Behind her a staccato of hands clapped from the mouth of the pier. A whoop and holler. But she didn’t look back, this was not her audience. Instead, Sarah reeled in the fish, watching it come closer and closer. And as she looked into the rainbow prisms of its skin, Sarah remembered a dark winter afternoon when the Mother Superior held a manuscript that the old woman herself had handwritten. A play. A parable.
ABBOT KINNEY HAD WANDERED BACK to the crowd, rubbing elbows with the reporters, addressing the ones he knew by their first names, and nodding feigned smiles to the unfamiliar. He reiterated all the pabulum that had comprised his announcement about Venice’s defining moment, leaving little time for questions about Sarah Bernhardt and why she was on the pier, other than to say, “You would be too. Like everything else, the fishing is great here in Venice.” Baker stood back and listened. He had read Kinney as being smart, certainly more so than most of the reporters surrounding him. He had a stature similar to Edward Doheny, powerful and firm, with a presence that commanded attention. However, unlike Doheny, Kinney clearly wanted the spotlight.
Kinney was shooting the breeze with an
Just then Kinney caught Baker’s eye. “Well, I’ll be. Vince Baker. Venice of America ought to pay you a commission for sending Bernhardt our way. You and the goddamn bishop. We might still be struggling if it weren’t for your story.”
Baker thought of saying something like “glad I could help” but resisted anything other than a perfunctory smile. There was often a power struggle between reporters and subjects as to who was going to subjugate themselves first, all dependant on how badly one needed the other. But these battlegrounds had their own castes, and while Baker and Doheny might engage in the ongoing gentlemen’s duel, Baker was not inclined to lower himself to a second-tier upstart like Kinney. But still he tried to be polite. At this point Kinney was the more likely to get him the facts for an over-and-done-with story.
Baker nodded. “Is she giving interviews today? You letting her talk for herself?” He tried to keep his tone matter-of-fact. He did not want any suggestion of deference, or worse, that they were equals setting the abacus for a future of tabulated negotiations.
“She’s a little busy, can’t you see? You have the quotes.”
“Still I’d like to hear what
Kinney pursed what little lips he had between his mustache and beard, and nodded. “If you want to hear from her, then I’ll be glad to set you up with a good seat on opening night. Do you prefer orchestra or balcony? I don’t need the kind of news that you make.”
Baker ignored him and looked out at Bernhardt, sitting almost childlike on the pier. Her shoulders slightly hunched, head dropped, with her hands gripped high on the pole. Except for the brilliance of the scarf on her head, she appeared ordinary, without mystique or fascination. A woman in her sixties who seemed as likely to single- handedly demolish the mores of Los Angeles as she was to lick her fingertips and reach out over the horizon to extinguish the sun. “Look at this crowd,” Baker said. “There must be fifty people lined up behind us. Just to watch her fish. Incredible what some people will buy into.”
“And you can see that she is most delighted to be here. That downtown boycott may have done her a favor, but the people of Venice are the beneficiaries.”
“Come on, Kinney. Just give me five minutes.”
“Orchestra or balcony?”
Baker watched Bernhardt fish. Her body swaying slightly with the breeze. She looked solid. Firmly rooted to the dock. Balanced. But one errant gust, Baker figured, could topple her over and shatter her into a thousand pieces.
KINNEY STRODE TO THE END of the dock, following his slap and tickle with the reporters. He wore straight-legged linen trousers that bunched full at the waist, a white shirt that clung to the bloat of his body, and an understated tie that traveled the contours of his midriff. He knelt beside Sarah, as much as his legs would allow. Eyes squinting in the sunlight.
She looked up at him, then turned away from the immediate boredom that he inspired, and finished bringing in her fish.
“I see you caught one,” Kinney said, sounding not fully surprised.
“You are a very astute man. I should think you’ll go places.”
He smiled and then coughed to clear his throat. “We’ll get that fellow cooked up for you right away. You’re quite an angler.”
The fish lay still on the deck. No flopping or fighting. One black eye round and protruding, looking upward. The end of the glistening silver hook poked through the side of its cheek, stained by a patch of blood. Sarah dropped the pole to her side. “I have never seen a fish so resigned before,” she said.
“I’d say you caught yourself a sea bass,” Kinney said. He leaned forward a little more to inspect the catch. “That would be my guess.”
She ignored him.
“Chef Louis can do amazing things with a fish.”
She propped herself up on her knees and crawled to the bass, pulling on the line to drag the fish closer to her. She crooked her index finger into its limp mouth, delicately wriggling the hook, then slid it out like a jeweled
