A. Homes - This Book Will Save Your Life

"What is your language?"

"I read Sanskrit, French, and English, and speak English, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, French, and a little Italian. What do you think we did growing up? We had no DirecTV." Anhil shakes his head. "Americans always think they are smarter. Did anyone ever tell you that your Ivy League is poison ivy, and that's why you're all so busy scratching your heads and your behinds." Anhil laughs at his own joke.

"I had no idea," Richard says. "He doesn't act like he's something special. I just thought he was the fucked-up guy next door."

"He must have money," Anhil says, "because at the end of the wow-wow he said we should go looking for real estate, he wants me to open a Donut Depot in Santa Monica. Maybe you and Nic will back me?"

Anhil goes into the back, and together he and Barth measure ingredients into the gigantic bowl — "To be good at donuts, you have to learn how to do the same thing again and again with consistency. It is about getting the same donut every day. People come back because they want the same donut again, not to be part of an experiment."

Barth turns on the mixer; flour flies everywhere.

"Too fast," Anhil says. "You have to go slow until all the ingredients fold in."

"My father is a scientist," Barth says, out of the blue. "He almost won the Nobel Prize."

Anhil nods. "That's good. Lipi's sister is coming to visit. She is very beautiful; maybe you'll marry her. She is a mathematician coming to UCLA to finish her Ph.D., she is like a goddess. Before you go, I have to show you something." Anhil takes Richard into the basement of the store. "There is blackness creeping in," Anhil says. "It frightens me."

Pungent, black, sticky, it smells like roadwork — tar.

"It can happen to anyone," Richard says. "I heard a story where the police caught someone they'd been looking for for years — he murdered someone and took off leaving tracks. There are yards that ooze black — it seeps up under the grass and takes over; dogs, cats get stuck in it; swimming pools crack and fill with it."

"You are not making me feel better," Anhil says.

"Call a plumber or a foundation man."

On the way home, Richard drives by the house. They were supposed to start work, but so far nothing has happened. The city is, "off the record," taking some version of responsibility for the sinkhole: they've agreed to send a crew to fill the hole, but deny responsibility for the property damage.

Back in Malibu, he opens the fridge — empty. He calls Sylvia and leaves a message that he needs a double order of everything: high-protein, low-carb, and some extra snacks. "I've got the kid staying with me and he eats like a horse. P.S. He really likes your cookies."

At noon, Sylvia calls back, "I'm coming that way this afternoon, so I can just drop it at the house."

"Great," he says. "I should be here."

"If you're not, I'll leave it with Nic."

"Perfect," he says. "So you two are pretty serious?"

"Actually, no," she says, "but he has a good sense of humor."

He runs into Nic while he's putting out the recycling.

"Are you avoiding me?" Nic asks.

"I don't know what to say."

"How about you apologize for being a Peeping Tom?"

"Oh, I am sorry about that. Ben called me to come look, and I thought it was like your cleaning lady or something."

Nic smiles. And then there is a pause and neither speaks. "What's the problem?"

"I just don't get it."

"What's to get?"

"I thought we were friends. I was liking having another equally fucked-up guy to hang around with."

"And?"

"I don't know who you are. Actually, I should say I didn't know — and now I do. Why didn't you say anything? Is it some sort of a game, fun for you, deceiving the guy next door?"

Nic shakes his head. "The opposite. I was enjoying having a friend who didn't give a shit who I was — you may have noticed I don't really have friends."

"Bob Dylan."

"He's not my friend, he just stopped by."

"John Lennon."

"You're being mean. What does it matter who I am?"

"It would have been nice to know."

"It was nicer for me that you didn't. I'm making French toast, you want some?"

Richard shakes his head. "I already had a cruller."

"Well, at least come inside; I can't have this conversation with an audience." Nic tips his head towards the photographers across the street.

"That's what they're here for? Pictures of you?"

"I used to think they were trying to catch the mayor coming out of his love nest, but when he left and they stayed, I figured it out."

Richard follows Nic back into the house. He sits at the kitchen table, looking at everything differently. The mess has taken on new meaning. It's not just any mess, it's Nicholas Thompson's mess.

"Are you sure you don't want some?" Nic asks, cracking eggs into a bowl.

"I'm not sure of anything." He glances at Nic's desk, his computer screen. "What are you writing?"

"I'm working on a book."

"And you write movies?"

"And I write moves. As you probably know, many of America's great artists have sold their souls in order to pay the rent.

"Did you write a novel?"

"I wrote a bunch of crap under another name — if that's what you're asking about. This is a real book, something I care about."

"What's it about?"

"Hopefully, transformation." Nic taps the file drawer of his desk.

"Do you have more than one copy?" Richard asks.

Nic laughs. "Nope, I use my typewriter."

"Just knowing that makes me nervous."

"All living is living dangerously," Nic says, grinning. "I can't take what I write on the computer seriously. I need to pound it out, word by word, line by line, in order for it to mean something to me. I like the hum of the machine, the way you have to really hit the keys." Nic opens his closet; it's filled with IBM typewriters, one on top of another, and boxes and boxes of ribbons and correcting tapes. "I've got a guy who comes to fix them — last time he was here, he'd just fixed the one at the L.A. County Morgue; it was sticking, having trouble with the toe tags."

"Did you tell Anhil you would invest in a Donut Depot?"

"Yeah, I was thinking we should find him a spot in Santa Monica — his donuts, Sylvia's healthy snacks, a one-stop shop."

Richard pauses. "So what's the story? Are you a recluse? Are you missing? Are there people out there looking for you? And what makes you so special anyway? You seem, pardon me, equally fucked up as everyone else, and still they think you're a god."

"They don't know me. Do you know the old joke? To your mother you're a captain and to your father you're a captain, but to a captain you're no captain. I don't like people expecting me to be able to fix their lives; it's not like I have special powers or know something the next guy doesn't. I'm a guy whose dad sold insurance, who got famous because my brother died and it fucked me up. Me getting famous only made things worse for my family. They'd come out in the morning and there'd be people camped out in the front yard."

Nic puts French toast on a plate, douses it in syrup, and passes it to Richard, who digs in, despite having eaten the cruller.

"Can you imagine the burden? I could barely speak for myself. The whole thing was me trying to figure out what I thought, and then there I was being invited to testify before Congress, give commencement speeches, officiate at weddings, be at the birth of children; Kellogg's wanted to name a cereal after me. I left home because I couldn't stand it. I didn't know what to do, how to feel; I was afraid. My family lost its hero. I ran because if I didn't do something I'd burst. I walked because I didn't have a car, because I was angry and needed to pound it out mile for mile, because I wanted to see what was out there, just beyond my reach. I wanted to know what America was. Everywhere I went, someone gave me something — a pair of pants, a shirt, a little bit of their person. They gave me their stories. I typed them up on an old portable typewriter with carbon paper, I sent the carbon pages home and kept the originals with me. I was obsessed about not losing things — can you imagine? Now I could just walk to a Kinko's in every town, make a copy, e-mail it, fax it, beam it up, and store it in cyberspace."