Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

Oh bugger! Oh bollocks! Oh brilliant! Oh, Toulouse —

But that wasn’t why she threw herself at him now … he would not want her for her little tits or for the pulse that shook her neck like explosives deep within a building being demolished; he would not want her for the thing she guided his fingers toward, and would not want her for her smile or kindnesses or funny girl-detective ways. He would not want her for any of that. No: he loved another, and she could not change what wasn’t meant to be. Just now she wanted what she wanted — merely to touch him, to breathe in his smell and his hair and feel his clumsy hands stumble-bum over her. Not, as her aunt might have put it, such a terrible way to say good-bye.

Toulouse began his last year at Four Winds feeling very much older, and more philosophical, too. During one of Mr. Hookstratten’s lectures, he stared out a window and mused on the capriciousness of this life. The mature student played a mental parlor game, imagining he was eleven years old again, sitting cross-legged on a hill. Peering into a crystal ball, he saw himself just as he was now, in Mr. Hookstratten’s class during a lecture, musing through a window. The ball then showed him walking the campus alone. “But where,” he asked of a wizened old warlock, “are my cousins?”

“Edward is dead,” said the Merlin. “And Lucille Rose has moved to England.” The images in the crystal swirled and changed: there was Toulouse romping with Pullman at a house in the flats, just south of Wilshire. His mother turned into the drive in a Mercedes G-wagen, while a handsome bear of a man in corduroy slacks, tweed vest and smudged cook’s apron barreled out the front door to greet her. “And who,” asked the mesmerized child, “is that ?” “Why, your father, of course!” said the mage. “But,” stammered the boy, “my father is dead—” A final figure materialized in the ether: Amaryllis. But by then class was over. Toulouse gathered up his books, passing Mr. Hookstratten on the way out.

“How is your cousin Lucy?” asked the teacher with a smile.

“Fine.”

“She’s in London? Or was it Monaco.”

“London, sir,” he said, giving his enunciation an Oliver twist. “Living the bloody high life!”

“Well, give her my love — she’s much missed. And tell her Mr. Hookstratten said, ‘Keep writing!’ ” He shuffled his papers, then posed a daring afterthought: “And your father? Is he well?”

“Bloody well, sir. Bloody well.”

As Toulouse emerged from the Hall, a shiver of autumnal breezes brought the scent of chimney smoke and the haunting frisson that only the end of a year can deliver; an unsettled, gnawing feeling that when the music of Time stops (and starts up again, soon enough), one just might be left without a chair. Yet as Lucille Rose “smelled” England, so did Toulouse intuit a whole cosmos awaiting him, grown-up and filled with adventure. Students ran or walked past on the way to their own thrilling destinies; some nodded in recognition, fellow ships nearly launched. The knowledge that his father had returned was by now common and somewhat secondhand. The occasional mockeries had stopped. He wondered if the general restraint had been tied to Edward’s death — maybe not. Everyone was busy enough with sails and rigging, readying their vessels for the full-masted world.

When his brother-in-law left Montecito, Dodd was happy enough to provide him with new lodgings. The redbrick colonial was on South Cañon, between Gregory and Charleville, and within a few weeks had been graced by Trinnie’s sure touch — funky Moorish tapestries hung on wood-paneled walls that overlooked a sly, swank mishmash of furnishings from the sixties of the last two centuries. The backyard garden was deliciously, deliriously remade, with a charming little brook that meandered through creeper and feverfew.

Though Mr. Trotter provided his son-in-law with a generous allowance so that he could begin to manage his own affairs, Marcus retained the frugality he’d exercised on the streets (and still had a not insignificant amount left over from the once Right Honorable Geo. Fitzsimmons’s original bequest); so he was well fixed to treat his boy to marathon movie binges and snackathons. Within the dreaded claustrophobic cineplexes — Marcus beguilingly called them “charnel houses”—our fearless duo leapfrogged from theater to theater, dodging an incessant barrage of special effects and silver-screen profanities. (He was sad his beloved Wilshire Boulevard mecca — the Vagabond, that old Buñuelian bastion of youth — was no more, yet gladdened the lake at MacArthur Park appeared in great good health). They went bargain bookstore — hunting for inexpensive treasures to fill the groaning shelves that lined most rooms of what his father had sardonically christened Cañon Manor. They even journeyed to Tabori & Co. There, after Toulouse made “improper introductions” (Marcus’s witticism), Emerson was startled to be the recipient of profuse apologies in regards to the infamously stolen volume, which the scholar accepted (the apologies) on behalf of his belated brother. The wide-eyed visitor, still Victorian in taste and sensibility, marveled at the establishment’s Gothic arches and spent a full hour lingering over the pages of the Kelmscott Chaucer —Mr. William Morris’s pride and joy.

Toulouse accompanied him to Redlands, where the boy had the surreal experience of rediscovering the childhood bedroom of his father (the same one he had napped in on a prior visit) through the very eyes of the man responsible by half for bringing him into the world. Marcus made his folks a succulent osso bucco with risotto alla Milanese before embarking on a bicycle tour of old haunts. (Redlands, oddly enough, was famed for its Victorian homes.) They camped in Joshua Tree. He showed his son the Dog Star, Sirius, and spoke intimately of Magellanic clouds buffeted by stellar wind, nostalgically perusing the sky as he once did from the lonesome beaches of Santa Monica, as if it was there whence he’d hailed — not Redlands or England or Misery House — now so far away from home. On the way back to L.A. they went to Huntington Gardens — there was a Morris exhibit that his father assiduously avoided but whose presence seemed to galvanize him nonetheless, for suddenly he got the urge to visit the 4th Street Bridge. Off they trooped, and made a walkabout to that encampment and other spots of local lore and legend: the motel where Amaryllis had lived with her mother, and the Higgins, too (now property of Quincunx Holdings), where he and the girl once rendezvous’d — on to the magnificent cathedral (in those days barely a shadow of its current self) that had replaced dear old St. Vib. He told him how he piggybacked their friend alongside its fence in the wee small hours of night, saving the whole of the story for another time.

At dusk, the Town Car stealthily skirted the Twin Towers, then rolled by thousands of homeless in cardboard shacks. Watching the street bonfires scared Toulouse, and he leaned into his dad. Before long, Marcus had guided them to the alley behind Frenchie’s, where the boy took over. Recovering his courage, he directed the driver to double-back to the SRO where the children and Amaryllis had first met — but in the darkness, the former movie set could not be found.

“Are you certain?” she asked, with not a little superstition. They were stepping from Katrina’s G-wagen; Pullman had already leapt out. “You’re sure this is a good idea?”

“Well — actually, no! But we’ve got the boy here. The boy will keep us from harm, won’t you?” He winked, but Toulouse didn’t wink back; seeing his father was having sport, he merely smiled. “And if the boy won’t, then Pullie will!”