Rudolph Wurlitzer - Slow Fade

“What kind of a deal?”

“Any kind. A deal is a deal. I just want to keep moving the furniture around. I don’t want to be caught at home practicing scales.”

He wasn’t making any sense. He wanted to say more about the deal and hear what Walker had to say, but words wouldn’t form and then it was too late and he was rolling back into painful sleep.

WALKER remained next to A.D. while he slept, watching over him with somber gaze, listening to his shallow, constricted breathing. A pack of Marlboros lay on the night table. Using one hand because of his neck and shoulder wrap-around cast, he slowly opened the box and tapped out a cigarette. Lighting a match, he held the flame up to the cigarette in his mouth and inhaled deeply. He hadn’t smoked in five years, or perhaps it was longer, and the smoke made him dizzy and immediately caused his lungs to ache. But he had needed the violation somehow and he was glad as well for the steady pain in his shoulder, as if that raw focus might help him to review the past few chaotic days, even up to the obscure and perilous present.

When his plane had landed at the L.A. airport a week ago after a seventeen-hour flight from Hong Kong, there had been about fifty minutes when Walker hadn’t known where or who he was. When the other passengers stood up to leave the plane, he stood up as well even though he had no idea where the line was going or even if there was a line. He moved forward because everyone else was moving forward, his mind seized with such sudden paralysis that only his body seemed capable of an act and then only if there was no need for a decision or a known direction. On the outside he looked odd as well, his tall, emaciated frame covered with a lemon-yellow Taiwanese silk suit three sizes too small for him, black alligator shoes with no socks, and a wild confusion of blond hair falling to his shoulders. The customs official asked him three times to step forward and when he finally made the commitment it took Walker another few minutes to realize he had left the carry-on canvas bag containing his passport back on the plane. Another official, silver-haired and obviously of a higher rank, asked Walker please to follow him to a side room.

As Walker entered the room, a short muscular man in mauve slacks and blue Lacoste tennis shirt offered him his hand.

“Roger Woods,” he said. “Your father’s attorney. You’ll be out of here in no time.”

“No time,” Walker said with a sigh and sat down on a chair. “But that’s the way I’ve been traveling. At least lately, that is.”

Both the attorney and customs official took a closer look at Walker’s pale green eyes, but his disorientation was so extreme that it was impossible to tell if he was stoned or just one of the crazies that show up on Pan Am flights from the East. In any case, drugs or a mystical loss of faculties wasn’t the issue. Walker’s canvas bag appeared and was placed on a table. The silver-haired official spread out the contents with the objective detachment of a surgeon: white cotton pants, dirty underwear and socks, a Hindi-English dictionary, a John D. MacDonald paperback, a small clay statue of what looked to be a Buddha with a red hat on, a torn notebook, a faded Polaroid of Walker and a dazzling blond girl in a sarong standing arm in arm in front of the Grand Hotel in Calcutta, and finally the passport. The official thumbed through it with one hand, reading off the stamped litany:

“India for quite some time I see, Nepal, Thailand twice, no, three times, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong. You are well traveled, Mr. Hardin.”

“Well traveled, yes,” Walker agreed.

“You were out of this country for two years and you’ve let your passport lapse for over a year. That is quite a serious oversight on your part. In different circumstances you would be in serious

trouble.”

“Unfortunately there are only these circumstances,” Walker said, as if they were in the middle of a serious discussion. “At least there are no other circumstances that I am aware of in this way, I mean.”

The official scrutinized Walker to see if he was being a wise ass, but it was obvious from the way Walker was staring at one of the attorney’s blue Topsider sneakers that his mind was way off to the side of any kind of attitude.

“Let’s just say for the sake of brevity that your father has a friend in a very high place,” the official said.

“The President,” Walker said matter-of-factly.

The room was silent, no one having wished that awesome title to be actually expressed.

“Well, Wes Hardin and the President have certainly spent personal time together,” the attorney said, nodding to the official as he picked up Walker’s bag and gently guided him out of the room and down the long corridor to the baggage claim area.

As they stood waiting for the bags, the familiar smell of ozone and car exhaust penetrated through the protective envelope that Walker had wrapped so firmly around himself. Staring outside the glass door at the passengers drifting through the smoky congested light, he began to recognize with every organ of his body, if not his stunned brain, the airless aura of the city, his city, and it was then that he finally let himself know that he was home.

“You’ll fly out to Santa Fe tomorrow,” the attorney said. “The production secretary will drive you to your father’s home for the night. If you’ll give me your ticket, I’ll get the rest of your bags.”

“I have no bags,” Walker said.

“No bags,” the attorney repeated, as if that was information he couldn’t deal with.

Walker followed the attorney as he pushed through the door into the slow flat air and walked over to a black BMW. The attorney opened the door and threw the canvas bag into the backseat, waiting for Walker to climb in. Shutting the door behind Walker, he reached down through the open window and squeezed his shoulder. “It’s damned good that you came home. It will make a difference to your father. He’s not in the best of shape.”

The BMW pulled away from the curb into the flow of traffic heading for the San Diego Freeway, and for the first time Walker noticed the driver. She wore dark glasses over a thin sensual face and her black hair was pulled behind her into a bun. A professional, Walker thought. Like Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep , although Lauren Bacall hadn’t really been professional or was he thinking of another movie? It had been a long time since he had thought of a movie at all but whoever she was like, she was certainly calm and contained, not saying anything or even looking at him.

She drove past the freeway and turned north on La Brea. It was evening and there was a line of office buildings that hadn’t been there two years before reaching up into the smog and the dark shadows of the Hollywood Hills. He was almost sure they weren’t going toward his father’s house in Beverly Hills, and making a great effort that caused a slight stammer, he asked if his father had moved.

“He still lives on Mulholland,” she said in a soft nonprofessional voice. “He wanted me to take you up to the Griffith Observatory before going home. He said that you might be spaced-out or disassociated or something and would need some time. He gave me a list of instructions for your reentry.”

“I’m sure he did,” Walker said.

The Griffith Observatory was where they had shot Rebel Without a Cause , a handle his father had often used on him and an association Walker was sure his father had been aware of when he dictated his list of reentry instructions. He became suddenly panicked when he couldn’t remember James Dean’s companion in the film.

“Do you remember who the kid was in Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean? He died at the end.”