Bruce Wagner - The Chrysanthemum Palace

But I think what galled me most, though I never let on, even to myself, was his prior knowledge of Clea. I’d known about it, even if she had never spoken of the affair in any detail. One word she had used to describe their alliance stuck in my head: “volatile.” Naturally, I took that as a rebuke to my genetically unvolatile ways. There I was again, absurdly, in the same triangle I’d found myself with Leif: unsexy third wheel in an adolescent psychodrama.

So, as dusk turned to evening, lounging around the vast modernist prairie of the refurbished suite, I did what any self-respecting triangulated schmuck would have done: doted on the bookish Miriam Levine as if she were the reincarnation of Roos Chandler herself, or at the very least, the only one in the room. While Clea flirtily wrangled her restless, doped-up ex, I cozied on the couch with the agent, sassily grilling her on where she lived, which town she’d been raised in, what college she attended (Brown, of course). Oh, and — any sibs? Parents still living? Where did they live and how were they faring? Now when did you enter the book racket, and please to name current stable of authors… by the way, how did you and Thad meet? My eyes bore deep into hers and I made sure she saw my nostrils subtly crease in randy inhalation when commenting on her lovely complexion (the latter, I’ll admit, said out of Clea’s hearing range), and so on and so on and so forth, lavishing her with the kind of attention that, falling short of a seasoned lothario’s, more than fit the profile of any decent, serial monogamizing narcissist. During Clea’s own ministrations — far more labored than mine — I caught the occasional sidelong glance betraying grudgey acknowledgment of my heedlessness to both her and the outsized Vorbalidian guest star, a passing irritation at my focus on Miss Miriam. I could have been wrong. My little display may have been laughably transparent.

Soon enough, Miriam spun from my orbit. We gathered around the fire of Thad, so to speak, as he declaimed sans translation:

Vaghe stelle dell’Orsa, io non credea

Tornare ancor per uso a contemplarvi

Sul paterno giardino scintillanti…

“That’s Leopardi,” interjected Miriam. (She’d obviously heard his act before.) “Ah! To be an ensign fourth-class on the Starship Demeter !” he shouted, shuffling about in seductive, self-mocking dinner-theater mode. He’d taken the stage, disarmed and dangerous. “I cannot tell you how I’ve been looking forward to this”—he addressed himself to me—“I’m Starwatch ’s biggest fan, così fan tutte ! The stars! Oh, the stars!”

He cleared his throat, narrowing his eyes like a midget Barrymore.

Glittering stars of the Great Bear—

Never thought I’d be back to see you,

Shining down on my father’s garden…

Still poetizing, he looked each of us square in the eye like the old Wellesian ham he was, transported to the deathless realm of the one-man show. In full, hoary command, he cocked his neck toward the heavens.

“I could hear the murmur of voices float back and forth in my father’s house, conjuring mysterious worlds and a future full of secret joys, knowing nothing of what might lie in store — nor yet how often times would loom where I’d gladly swap this bereft and wretched life of mine for death.”

The doors of the massive terrace were shut, yet a breeze from Sunset Boulevard found its way through the cracks like a spirit and advanced to the living room where we sat, shifting the mood from cordial conviviality to melancholy foreboding. Thad suddenly grew pale and wobbly, and Clea signaled she was going to “put him down.” Within moments, Miriam and I were traveling silently in the elevator then saying good-byes at the great wicker chairs that graced the garage’s entrance.

YOU REACH DEATH VALLEY FROMa town called Baker, which features a motel called the Bun Boy. Thad got a predictable kick out of that, especially as the campy signage had its cartoonish, portly icon pointing at the low-slung resort with a come-hither neon arrow placed literally at Mr. Boy’s pelvis. To make matters worse, or more hilarious, a couple of seedy, shirtless young boys lolled Bruce Weber — style outside one of the rooms, visible from the 76 station where we gassed up.

I finally understood where they shot those car commercials I’d been watching all my life, the ones with swooping helicopter shots of sedans and sport coupes traversing endless ribbons of road. (I’d mistaken the nearly mystical vastness for Arizona or New Mexico.) Being a native Angeleno, I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Palm Springs and Joshua Tree. I’ve driven to Telluride and Santa Fe — and Vegas, of course — but never got around to Death Valley. I guess getting stranded in 120 degree temperatures didn’t have much appeal. This time of year, though, the weather was clement. Besides, we were only going to stay overnight, and I was in pleasant company. Miriam and her bare, backseat legs were really growing on me.

We didn’t pass many cars along the way. There were rolling dunes, sandy ziggurats, and pristine mountains of tidy majesty. We drove through a town with an incongruous working opera house at the end of a long, one-story adobe hostel that wore ghostly bedsheets for room curtains. Just before the final turnoff came Zabriskie Point. Thad insisted we have a look. Everyone went on about the Antonioni movie of the same name, which, being the dolt I was, I’d never seen. (Not to be confused with another Antonioni film, Red Desert, said Miriam.) We ascended the slope on foot, ahead of a busload of German tourists.

The point overlooked a place called Badwater. At the top, a plaque said something about Mr. Zabriskie being a mortician before he got to working for the Borax Company, and also mentioned the famous 49ers, stranded and rescued that very year. There was a weird, pervasive, acoustic void, even with the hushed, parenthetical polyglot of voices — people seemed naturally to speak more softly when faced with the fire and brimstone of the valley spread out before them — and timbrey drone of low wind. It made you see how there were all different kinds of quiet, different levels, rungs, and spaces. I can’t exactly describe it but the intensity of silence had a kind of calming, ionizing effect, sucking the human element from the scene the way filters rid the air of dirt particles. Taking in the panorama, I thought of those 49ers and wondered what it would have been like in the peak of summer (one year, it reached 132°) with no roads or wellsprings.

Like Zabriskie Point, the Furnace Creek Inn sat on a hill above the wide, bleakly beautiful moonscape. It truly seemed a mirage. The anomalous luxury hotel had been there for seventy-five years or so; the dining room even had a dress code. We settled gratefully into three large suites.

Though Clea had been denying it, the cat was now out of the bag — they’d gotten back together. I decided to decide that was all right. I’d never seen her happier.

“I thought you were going to ask where they caught Manson,” the front-desk clerk said.

“All right,” said Clea. “Where did they?”

“Farther down the road.”

The man was garrulous and sweet-faced, and Thad was thoroughly entranced, like a writer (or actor) who’d felicitously come across a wonderful character study. Miriam had all her maps out, efficiently poised with a fancy pen, like we were about to go treasure hunting.

“I’m from New York,” the clerk continued. “Whenever a guest comes from the Big Apple, I say, ‘Which part?’ They tell me the street and I tell them where I lived and that’s how we bond. Well, in Death Valley, it’s different; took me a while to learn that. You don’t ask a certain type where they’re from. If you do, they give you a look.”