Charlie Huston - The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

I closed the door and went up to see L.L.

The house smelled like mold and whiskey.

Piled books squeezed the entryway, leaving just clearance enough to open the door and scrape through. Bindings and pages swollen and dotted with rot from the damp canyon air, the stacks teetered and listed, propped up by more books. Shelves lined the walls. Shelves that were little more than more stacks of books broken by the occasional strata of a pine plank used to create stability. The fireplace, long out of use, vomited books. The couch rested on a pedestal of them. Looking into the kitchen, I could see that the doors had been removed from the cabinets to allow more room for the spines of oversized editions to jut out. If I opened the fridge, I had little doubt I'd have found paperbacks wedged into the crisper, first editions of Mailer growing ice crystals in the freezer. The only thing to challenge the rule of books were the empty bottles lining window ledges, mounded in the sink, overflowing from liquor store delivery cartons.

I picked my way through the heaps, noticing, above the books’ high watermark on the walls, the occasional slightly less dingy patch of paint where L.L. had once hung posters from his halcyon years. Five Easy Pieces signed by Jack. An original lobby card from The Thin Man. An Alfred Hitchcock silhouette, also signed. A photo of himself and Mom, when the novelty of Hollywood could still hold her wandering attention, flanked by Francis Ford and Eleanor Coppola at the Afocalyfse Now opening night after-party

But over the mantel, on the wall that had been entirely rebuilt following the fire, there was no mark to show where there had once been a picture taken by Mom: L.L. reclining on a lounge chair, a wineglass in one hand, pen in the other, marking up a script propped on his knees, a sleeping baby in his lap. And beyond him, mugging and holding his own child over his head like a trophy, Chev's dad, a cigarette between his lips, sideburns to his jawline, his wife beside him in a purple Mexican housedress, brushing long gold hair.

I walked past the absent photo and out onto the deck where it had been taken.

Ringed with wood vegetable crates filled with more waterlogged books, by the light of several candles pressed into a mass of melted wax that flowed over a rusting tin-top table and dripped to the planks below, L.L. dozed with an open copy of Tom Jones on his stomach.

– L.L.

He lurched, came awake with a phlegmy cough.

– Nguh. Hm.

He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes without turning.

– Money's in the jar, Raj. Leave it anywhere.

He put the glasses back on and started to crane his head around, the book slipping from his belly and onto the deck.

– Could you maybe take out a few of the empties for me?

He saw me. Cleared his throat. Looked at the book he'd dropped.

– I'd make a cliché comment about the prodigal, but it wouldn't really apply, would it?

He reached for the book, missed it, and his shoulder jostled the table, sending the candle flames jittering and the various glasses and empty bottles clinking.

I bent and picked up the book and held it out to him.

– Here.

He took it.

– Thank you.

He found his place and scanned the page.

– Thought you were the delivery boy.

– Late for deliveries.

He looked at his watch.

– Suppose it is.

I nudged a box of full bottles by the table.

– Looks like he was here earlier.

L.L. pulled his glasses low on his nose and looked at me over the rims.

– Is that someone I know casting judgments about? Is that, wait, allow me to cup my ear.

He cupped his hand to his ear and angled his head at me.

– Is that perhaps the voice of my absent wife speaking to me through her son?

He removed his hand.

– A prodigious bit of ventriloquism for her to accomplish from her far northern climes. Perhaps, if I speak distinctly, I can send a message back to her via the same medium.

He put his hand to the side of his mouth.

– Althea, dear bitch, get out of the boy's head, he's sufficiently fucked up now, we need neither of us endure in the effort.

He wiped his brow.

– There. With luck that will transmit to her and she will desist in dispensing her opinions about how I live my life, through my own flesh and blood. However misbegotten said flesh and blood may be.

He took a full bottle of Seagram's from the carton and held it to the light.

– Drink?

I shook my head.

– No thanks.

He shrugged, picked up a glass, sloshed the dregs at its bottom over the edge of the deck into the toyon, chaparral, coast oak and walnut growing up from the hillside, and poured himself a double.

– I'll have one for the both of us.

I moved some books from another chair and took a seat.

– Was there any doubt?

He saluted me with the glass.

– In your mind? Apparently none.

He downed the whiskey.

– But I generally don't drink alone.

I looked back into the dark house, the moonlight glinting off all the empty bottles.

– Been having a lot of company, have you?

He swung his arm in an arc, indicating his massed library.

– My oldest friends. My enduring companions. Those that stand by me.

I picked at the wax on the table.

– And experiencing the delights of Renaissance technology, as well, I see.

He topped off his glass, sipped this time.

– The electric bills. They send them, God knows they're here somewhere, I just never quite find the time to deal with them.

I looked up at the sky, remembered that same sky projected inside the Griffith Observatory planetarium, how the stars would swim and race down the horizon as the view shifted, season by season, between the hemispheres. L.L. providing commentary, whispering in my ear.

– You could always get someone to take care of that shit for you.

– I have an ex-wife, my boy, I don't need another.

– I was thinking more in the way of an assistant. Or a business manager.

Didn't you used to have one?

He opened his book, turned a page, ignored the implication that he might once have been in the kind of business that would require a manager.

– L.L.

– Yes, I attend.

– Has it ever occurred to you, all these books, the alcohol, open flames?

He turned a page.

– Has it ever occurred to you, mother's son that you are, to mind your own business?

I snapped a stalactite of wax from the edge of the table.

– L.L.

– Web.

– I don't want you to die.

He pressed the back of his hand to the corner of his mouth and closed his book.

– I'm choked up, filled with emotion. Imagine, my son not wanting me to die. How many fathers can say the same?

– Shut the fuck up, Dad.

He turned his head, looked at me through the candlelight, and waited.

I threw the spear of wax over the rail.

– I don't want you to die. I don't mean just that I don't actively wish that you would die, I mean that I don't want you to die at all. I don't want you to trip and fall over that rail one night and break your neck. I don't want you to pass out on your back and vomit and choke to death. I don't want one of these candles to tip into a puddle of 101 and ignite a copy of Madame Bovary and incinerate you.

He touched his throat.

– I loathe Bovary. Wouldn't be caught dead with a copy in the house.

I stretched my arm and slapped the side of his head.

He looked at me through skewed glasses.

– You have my attention.

I stood up.

– You're a fucker, L.L. The champion fucker of the world. I'm never gonna take the crown from you. I concede, you have the throne all to yourself.