always admired. It seemed an omen. Then.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
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REVERE Mount Mansions deserved the plural. I was glad of two things: that I didn’t have to storm it, and that I’d decided to suss it out before night fell.
It stood back from a cliff edge which overlooked a multi-lane highway flooded with headlights. A road nosed the Malibu hillside as if trying to find contour lines among the bushes. Why was the land so dry? Coloured lights arched over the gateway proclaiming that Revere Mount Mansions was Heaven’s Gift to California. Close to, it looked as if the paint wasn’t yet dry.
Not that I got close to straight away. Nor did I lurk in the undergrowth. I stayed away seeking middle-class mediocrity until the day began to wane, then prepared for action. I’d spent hours being toured around Movie City. I ogled studio sets, saw where the great directors had shot this movie and fought that mogul. On a normal day I’d have been thrilled. Now, I just kept asking the time and judging how long it would take to reach Malibu. People kept giving me brochures, or begging. I’ve never seen so many people asking to have their clipboard signed in support of some cause or other.
We passed it on a coach trip. In mid-afternoon sunshine it was brilliant, a Samarkand of a place, El Dorado, with golden towers Camelot would have been proud of. Peacocks fanned their tails among the laid gardens. Small pagodas and summerhouses dotted the walks among lakes and waterfalls. The coach guide was in raptures.
“The gardens alone took a quarter of a million tons of stone, fifteen thousand plants and bushes…”
People photographed, darted from one side of the coach to the other, called for the driver to pause because the sunshine was catching somebody’s lens wrong. The guide even said that it was currently a focus of a huge All American convention of charity associations, and L.A. was especially honoured yet once more folks to be the site of might…
I honoured Revere Mount by seeing how far it stood from the road—half a mile. The cliff seemed pretty sheer. When finally the hillside ran out of patience and recovered its slope, the drop was sudden until barricades landscaped some sort of surety for the traffic on the teeming highway below. If I’d been the roadbuilder I’d have gone round, only the opposite side ended in close wooded screes. Distantly, glints of water showed. The hills astonished me by their height and dusty brown dryness.
Men stood by the gateway. They wore livery, but garments do not hinder truth. Smart, vigilant in constant communication. There were seven, taking turns to leap forward to direct drivers along one of the three roads through the ornamental gardens. The main building had more verandahs than a castle, more windows than any Vatican. Outlying smaller places were presumably the kind of separate motel buildings America has perfected. Then the driver called he was behind schedule and we drove on across bridges beneath which no rivers ran, to lose the view among dense cloying trees.
I’D HAD the shakes ever since reaching America. I couldn’t remember a single hour when I’d been quiet, at peace. I’d always had to be running out of the firing line, working out where I was, what the hell I ought to be doing to survive. Maybe that’s what folk meant by the American Way? It certainly was Magda’s view of her world, and Zole’s opinion of his. Things here weren’t immutable. What today forbids, tomorrow might make compulsory. Today might hang you, and tomorrow sanctify. But even with dusk rushing the hills into night I couldn’t find it in my heart to scold America. Why? Because love is the same, after all. The lady sloshes you with her handbag one day, and the next day pulls you, moaning.
Eight o’clock, I went over my words, trying to spot unexpecteds.
Nine, I phoned the reception at Revere Mount. I tried to sound as if I was delayed by impossible inefficiency somewhere, bullied over the girl’s routines, said to get urgent word to the gate supervisor, make sure I wasn’t delayed because I’d barely make it before the Game. Then I rang off, sweating. It could have been the sticky heat that drenched my palms, but wasn’t.
Sometimes—in love, war, gambling, any sort of risk—time is paramount, no pun intended.
Half past nine I was out on the pavement watching taxis. The third driver looked as if he knew the area and could get a move on. I flopped into the cab and told him Revere Mount Mansions fast.
He drove like a maniac. I would have been frightened to death, but was there already.
I’D WORKED out my phraseology, tersely gave it the gatemen. “Point me to the Game. I’m late, a’ready.” Two barred the way. A third approached, stooped to examine all occupants. I noticed ihe lights were clever. However a car was positioned, light entered from every direction.
“Evening, sir. I think we have full complement.”
“You think wrong.”
A list was consulted. “Have you a number, sir?”
“Alhambra one-four-zero, for Christ’s sake. Lovejoy the name. Nicko called it yet? Sheet, I oughta seen Gina and Tye Dee before now —”
“It’s here.” The man glanced at the others, flicked open a thick wallet of photographs, checked one against me, nodded, spoke to the cabbie. “Up the main drag, left, big square annex on your right. Don’t deviate.”
“Got it.”
Two minutes, and I was trying to took casual at the entrance of Revere, having my photograph checked and rechecked, moving into affluent aromas and ascending a staircase out of Elizabeth and Essex with showbiz music accompanying the hubbub of talk.
My scheme included washing hands, smiling at the staff and giving them joke time. Easy to make a show of haste without actually hurrying.
It was one minute to ten when I reached the main gathering. I knew I was going to be the only one not wearing a dinner jacket, and I was right.
