Last night, after all those months and all that distance, Stanley finally found what he was looking for. He found it, and he couldn’t remember a goddamn thing, not any of the things he’d planned to say: nothing to show that he’d gotten the message, that he’d understood. He just followed Welles around like a goddamn dunce while the old man ran his mouth and that nasty little dog peed on stuff.
Patches of light inch along the floor, and drifts of white powder on the concrete glitter like pixiedust in a Disney flick. Stanley hears car engines, a faraway motorcycle, the faint thud of heavy surf. The gulls sob like old women at a funeral.
Claudio doesn’t stir when Stanley rises and stretches. They didn’t get in last night until very late, and the kid’ll probably be copping z’s for hours yet. But Stanley can’t sleep anymore. Too much to do.
The leg of his jeans sticks to his calf. He tugs it free, then winces, remembering the cut. He steps into the front room, pisses in a milkbottle, stoppers it to hide the smell. Then he opens the pack, drinks from the canteen, brushes his teeth.
When he’s done he takes off his pants, removes the bloody bandage, and rinses the wound. It doesn’t look too nice. He finds his bottle of rubbing alcohol, his spool of thread, a clean white T-shirt he can spare. Then he pours alcohol on the cut, yelping through clenched teeth at the sting. There isn’t much left in the bottle, and he uses it all. He wipes his watery eyes with the T-shirt, rips it up, bandages himself again. Finding sturdy satisfaction on the other side of the pain: a pleasure at tending to himself, spiced with earned contempt for the soft squarejohn world that can’t or won’t do the same, that fixes everything with money. Lately it’s not in daydreams but in moments like this—performing grim simple self-sufficient tasks—that he feels closest to Crivano.
Once the bandage is tied, he bites off a length of thread and sews up the tear in his jeans. Later he’ll rinse off the dried blood in the ocean.
In the backroom, Claudio rolls over and says something in Spanish. Stanley leans in the doorframe to watch him sleep—a funny smooth shape under the blanket—then reaches through the hole in the gypsumboard to find what he stashed there last night.
After he and Welles finally parted company, it took Stanley a while to retrace their steps, to find his way back across cracked sidewalks and swampy lawns to the parked motorcycle, the pond curtained by bulrushes, the street he couldn’t recall the name of: Navarre. The motorbike was still there, as was the pair of black boots, poking through the vegetation. After a nervous pause to make sure the coast was clear, Stanley crept to the water’s edge to see. An overjolted biker, just like he’d figured: gaunt face, blue lips framed by a handlebar moustache, spike still in the vein. A strong smell of piss mixed with night-blooming jasmine. Stanley held his breath, leaned down, and jackpot: four cellophane envelopes tucked inside the stiff’s denim vest.
By the time he made it back to the coffeehouse it was nearly two. People were filing out, the jazz combo was putting horns in cases, and the poets—Larry and Stuart and John—had Alex boxed in a corner, arguing about someone or something called Molloy. Stanley caught Alex’s eye without even trying, like the guy could smell the junk when it walked into the room. As Stanley watched, Alex produced a pencil and a black notebook, scratched on a page, tore the page out, and passed it over his shoulder to Lyn, his black-haired girl. No pause in his monologue. De Gaulle gave him the Croix de Guerre. But his behavior during the war was not heroism. It was simply what one did. No act that’s justifiable by reason should ever be regarded as brave. His books—the fierce refusals they contain—those are his heroic acts. The girl drifted over, wraithlike, to put the folded page in Stanley’s hand. Stanley roused yawning Claudio from his seat by the door, and they walked into the night with the foreign pulse of Alex’s voice at their backs. Yes, I knew him in Paris. I published him, when no one else would. In some ways he became like a father to me.
Now Stanley pulls on his mended pants, stuffs the cellophane packets into the front pocket, and unfolds the page from Alex’s notebook. 41 CLUB HOUSE AVE, it says. He moves the pinewood plank from the door, glides into the street.
Club House is seven short blocks away, north toward Ocean Park. Scant traffic on the Speedway, but Stanley opts to use the boardwalk, to see what the water’s up to. Heavy surf. Uneasy blues in the waves and sky. The shoreline seems limp, collapsed, like an old helium balloon. Somewhere out there the Pacific’s making plans for rain; no telling when it’ll come. The mercury must be in the barometer’s basement. Stanley’s sinuses feel too big for his face.