Saturday, December 23, 2017

Book II - Chapter 4. A Coincidence of Fate

Itxassou Commune in Southern France nearby
the Fournier Estate on the River Nive 
Adrienne met Nick Baker in Santa Barbara while her father was still alive during one of her earlier, more serious, attempts at sobriety. Marcel knew of Harry Baker’s affair with Iniga, the birth of Nicholas, and Harry’s efforts to free her from La Venta, but he knew nothing of Nick’s record in Charleston. He was cautious of past dealings with Harry Baker and curious about the coincidence of Nick and Adrienne meeting each other. But he resigned to the feeling that fate brought them together and went along with it after consulting with Alesandro. Alesandro affirmed that there were stranger alliances and, though he too was reluctant, he gave his blessing to the affair while secretly hoping it wouldn’t go as far as it did.
Some say there are no coincidences, but Adrienne preferred to believe it to be blind luck… the serendipity of natural selection. She was agnostic about it. Who knows, the fact that they were in the same town might have been fate. She was in a women’s recovery home and he was in a men’s sober living one. Her lesbian friend, Jane, introduced them. He was Jane’s date, but they found that they had some things in common…. besides Jane. She couldn’t have imagined at the time how much history they shared.
Jane and Adrienne were roomies in the graduate house at Casa Pacifica and were both from well-to-do families. This gave them the feeling, founded or not, of being estranged from the rest of the girls there from the beginning. It was while they were cloistered the first few months in Casa Pacifica that Jane seduced her: as if Adrienne needed seducing. Adrienne wasn’t exactly Gay but she would later say, “Any port in a storm will do.”
Nick came with Jane to a social meeting of the two houses. Adrienne knew he was only her “Beard” and as far as she was concerned that made him fair game. Nick was attracted to Jane’s affluence, but Adrienne was blind to his intentions. Nick was impressed when Jane told him that her father was a pauper compared to Adrienne’s. Almost instantly, upon hearing this, he sat down on the couch next to Adrienne. From her perspective, Jane lost out in that instant… Jane lost both a lover, and a “Beard”, before the night was over.
Adrienne fell, as the cliché says, head over heels for Nick and couldn’t care less how Jane felt about it. Jane exchanged sobriety for bitterness and left the sanctuary of the recovery home. Nick and Adrienne escaped from their respective recovery facilities and rushed off to Las Vegas to get married by an Elvis impersonator. Nick then insisted on Papa’s blessing right away. She did that, without knowing why Papa made so much of a fuss about it. For him it was a reunion in a very real sense, as in a family reunited after a long diaspora. He didn't tell her of the connection with Nick, and his mother, whose self-imposed estrangement for so long from the intimate circle of the estate at Itxassou. At first she thought the reason for this oversight was because Papa wasn't sure that she would ever marry because he didn't reveal the deeper reasons. Those reasons had to do with a distaste for Nick's father, and his sorrow for Iniga's self-imposed severance of the bond betwen Alesandro and himself. He had promised himself he would tell her all about it at a more convenient time.

Marcel insisted on a formal wedding, but Adrienne would've never put a foot in a church. Ever so perceptive of Adrienne's feelings, Johanna suggested a garden wedding and reception at the estate. It was this soon that the blinds of love were lifted, and Adrienne realized Nick’s attraction to the pretenses of wealth over any real affection towards her; wealth she had been born into, and frankly, was sometimes embarrassed about. Embarrassed by people’s reaction to it more than the wealth itself. That could have been because Papa’s was “new money” and she had rejected the usual affectations of the so-called aristocracy of France. She had taken on the bohemian appearance of a struggling artist and was almost ashamed of the privileges bestowed upon her by those who knew of her true resources. She never felt she fit-in anywhere. Her classmates looked down their French pseudo-aristocratic noses at her. They had all came from, as they say in America, old money. The rest were either jealous of her privilege or wanted a piece of it.
Nick was smooth… he seemed to be educated, and mannered, with polite airs that came with only a hint of a rough side… a bad boy unimpressed, she thought, by her wealth. That was what attracted her to him. But, from their Las Vegas wedding day on, he switched… or her perception of his persona did.  Nick took to the chimera of power and prestige in Biarritz like a hound to a fox. He was impressed that Papa had their friends and Nick's adopted mother, Marylyn, flown over from New York to Orly by SST. Nick boasted afterwards, to anyone who would listen, that Papa had not only provided cars for them, but purchased the cars, so that they could drive around the countryside at leisure. He went on about how the guest houses for Marylyn and close family were well stocked with champagne and fine wines… always mentioning the price of everything.
At the reception Nick repeatedly declared, to their American guests, as he grabbed the bottle from the server and poured everyone another glass, “Did you know that the price on each bottle of this champagne is worth over a thousand American bucks!”
Annoyed, Adrienne had never seen him drunk, she taunted, “What do you think they would be in, Canadian Dollars.”
That meant, of course that, even though they were both in recovery, the newlyweds had to join in with all the toasts with a glass… just one glass… one glass for each toast. Before the reception was over, and Nick and Adrienne were sent away to honeymoon on Capris, she was so wasted that she staggered about the room, telling each guest, “I married a bastard.”

Nick’s dad, Harry Baker, arrived at the reception after the toasts, just as Adrienne was approaching that state of conscious right before a black-out. She had never met him before so she watched closely his movements as he navigated his way towards her. He paused to exchange pleasantries with her father and shook hands with Alesandro. His mannerisms were restrained and dignified and she thought of him as a gentleman: the opposite of Nick’s callousness. She did notice that Alesandro’s easy smile turned flat… slightly contemptuous. Marcel’s demeanor was polite but also hard to discern. It was obvious to her that the three had a history she knew so little about.
Harry made his way to Adrienne and, after apologizing for his tardiness, he asked her for a dance. She had nearly forgotten her lessons in ballroom dancing that she’d learned at that clumsy age when most girls are all knees and feet. He was an adept dancer making it easy for her to follow his lead. He was slightly taller than Nick, with a still broad and firm frame for his age, she giggled in his arms like a teen about to swoon, “My hand is but that of a child in yours.”
“I am so very proud to be your father in-law,” he responded to that.
Adrienne felt an uncustomary nervousness, but realized she no longer felt drunk, “I'm pleased to finally meet Nick’s father. I had no idea you would be so handsome.” She flirted… immediately feeling embarrassment at doing so with her father in-law.
No longer drunk, she excused herself, and crossed the dance floor to where Nick was slurring something to a couple of middle-aged women and Marylyn, who had been ignoring Harry’s entrance. She took the glass of champagne from Nick’s hand and set it on a nearby table, saying, "Are you gonna drink, or will you dance with your bride?"
“Enjoy the party, Adrienne,” Marylyn reacted defensively, “Why don’t you two loosen up and have some fun.”
“Yes, we might as well, eh? I will get drunk today, and then what?” and that was the last Adrienne could recall of the wedding reception.

The marriage was on the rocks from that time on. The bad boy she fell in love with, and swept her off her feet to be married in Vegas, was just another greedy boy. She became but one of his prestigious toys, like his Ferrari, once he had a taste of luxury. He even adopted a French accent and put on the airs of sophistication when he drank.
Adrienne knew he was nothing more than a hustler from that first wedding toast on, to landing in Santa Barbara two years later, recouping from another bout of addiction. Like far too many women try to do, she had attempted in vain to refine him… “He just needs some polishing,” she told herself. “He’s a diamond in the rough.” She even went along with him when he insisted they acquire a more luxurious house than the modest one she was quite happy with in town on Victoria Street, a short walk from Pascual’s bar and restaurant. She managed to talk him down to a proud but modest Spanish Revival house on the Santa Barbara Riviera. It was prestigious enough, but a typically small, George Washington Smith villa. It wasn’t as ostentatious as the McMansions plopped on proportionately small lots all over Montecito that he would have preferred.

Adrienne left her last visit to Biarritz after a spat with Papa two years after the wedding… it was over Nick’s irresponsible extravagances.  She’d also been disturbed at what was becoming apparent about unspoken mysterious past relationships between Nick’s father, Marcel, and Alesandro. She’d blown up because she knew he was right and was embarrassed that he’d poked his nose into family business in front of strangers. His was an uncustomary indiscretion. Hers was not.  Marcel’s excuse was that he was light-headed from the wine during a very boring soiree with his banking associates. She had no excuse, nor did she think she needed one.
“You have never said a word... you could have said at the very least a few words about Nick’s dad. Why he was such a pariah... how you and Alesandro avoided him at the reception?” she spilled a glass pounding her fist on the table while demanding an answer.
To think of how much sorrow she’d caused him was a source of shame for her after he passed. She felt warmth mixed with regret to remember how she had always known she was the light of his life. God, how she rued all the times she’d reciprocated his love with the resentment of a spoiled brat. She saw her Papa the last time that evening when he came to her room to apologize after the guests left. Marcel sat at the end of her bed. “You were right, I’m sorry. I have tried to protect you from... it was so unexpected.” He sighed, “When you brought Nick home to us I saw his father in his bearing and something about his mother in his demeanor.”
“What do you mean?” she searched his eyes and thought she saw them wince. “Tell me now. It’s not so tender a subject now that I know Nick is a colossal asshole.”
“He is the same size as his father... intimidating. They were in Spain with us.”
“Who? His mother too?”
“His mother too. I would have told you about her. Alesandro was in love with her.”
“And she was too dangerous to tell me about?”
“She passed away a long time ago. She was one of the last hold-outs of the Spanish Civil War,” Marcel tried to explain. He felt like he had opened up the contents of Pandora’s Box.
“And his father too? He was there?”
“We were all there. Sometimes we were all on the same side too,” he smiled to what seemed to him to be an inside joke and then grew ever so serious. “Harry tried to get her to come to America with him but she hadn’t given up yet and hated him for what we did to her for Alesandro’s sake.”
“This is so complicated. Damn, you can’t make this shit up. Enough... Enough. It is too much for me to digest. Perhaps when we’re not so tipsy,” she let him off the hook.
“I understand, Adrienne… even the heroin addiction… I am more like you than not, Ma fifille,” he confided as he tried to mend their heated argument. “You are not like Nick or Rémy. I haven’t told you this before but I admire the courage to paint… not as a hobby. You could have married into the best families but you chose art... then you fell in love with Nick.”
“You know nothing of Nick and me.” She angrily responded to his awkward attempt at affection even though she detested Nick more than she let on to Marcel or to anybody.
“I confess that I know little of your love life,” he admitted, “but I do know Nick and I know your spirit.”


Adrienne had boasted in a complaint to Max, “You know, even though my papa was filthy rich, he used his wealth and power for something I had no knowledge of. I barely suspected. I didn’t know… except that there was always someone… an amputee or some disabled friend staying in one of the guest houses… to me, they were just funny men, drinking wine and telling stories. I was barely conscious of these things. Alesandro told me most of it on our rides. So much of what Papa and Johanna had done, for disabled veterans… you know, the Resistance… refugees from Spain. It was hidden from me. I knew nothing more of his activities than I could see… he had a statue… an abstracted granite sculpture of a Basque Resistance fighter in a beret that lorded over the view from the lawn down the hillside towards the river. I thought it naïve and unsophisticated then, and would blush if a friend made mention of it.”

Marcel had tried, when she was young, to set her up with his connections. After Eder died she would have nothing to do with these snobs, or their eager sons who hovered around hoping to have a piece of her. She resisted any helping hand except for her trust fund. She hadn’t let him see what she was doing in her studio in Paris and he had only visited once. At that time heroin was new to Adrienne then and she’d just cooked up a spoon with a junkie friend. She ushered Papa away, still hoping he hadn’t noticed how fucked up she was.



Friday, December 22, 2017

Book II. Chapter 3. 1985 - Old Behavior

While Nick was at the Academy, and because Harry was hardly ever around, Marilynn acquired a Realtors’ license and set up an office in Mount Pleasant. Nick fell right in with her after dropping-out and, with his natural good looks, glib tongue in conjunction with an innate ability to read other people; together with Mom’s pretentious airs and business acumen, made them a good team, tailor made for the polite airs of Southern congeniality. Marilynn was a matronly southern-belle whose pretenses were less annoying to him than they might have been, had he not already spent some time at Bishop English and The Citadel acquiring a smattering of manners and vocabulary above jail-house jargon.

Nick took his libido into town to the gay bars and picked up on an occasional hooker too. Sitting at the bar in Dandy’s, Nick was complaining about his last affair with a real Southern Belle that had ended just when he thought he’d arrived, a real-estate acquaintance asked him, “Why honey, are you wasting your time with these stuck-up bitches in Charleston? You don’t have the pedigree for these Southern Twats…”
He was aware his friend wasn’t putting him down and he could easily admit he hadn’t the pedigree for Charleston’s society girls. He was acutely aware that he was, however, a well-off twenty-seven year old bachelor that would be a good prospect anywhere else but Charleston.
“Yeh, that’s true, but if only…”
“If only… if only, darlin’… if wishes were fishes.”
He listened out of boredom but paid attention because this swish with the fishes was onto something when he quoted the Beatles song, “You should get back to where you once belonged… Jo-Joe.”
“You mean, California?”
“Oh sweetheart, you are getting warm…” he nuzzled up to Nick’s ear, “C’mon, Nicky, you know Santa Barbara is teeming with trust-fund babies who could care less about class distinction.”
“What do you know about Santa Barbara?” Nicky wiped the moisture from his ear with his sleeve.
The friend leaned back on his bar stool slurring, “Oh, they have one of the most delightful gay-bars in the whole world, lover boy,” he then stood with his chest puffed out proudly, “go to ‘The Pub’ and be sure to tell Frankie, Donny of Charleston says, ‘Hi there’.”

The night before drew a blank… Nick remembered the conversation with Donny about Santa Barbara. His mind peeled away the layers of darkness… putting pieces of memory in place… there was cocaine; making out in the back seat of a cab to Donny’s place on Sullivan’s Island; a creepy blank space after that. Remembering only that there was cocaine and a black hustler scoring for them... He was there in a strange bed. He turned on his side to reach over… chiefly, to find out whose bed he was in.
His arm fell on cold flesh… Donny was there… face down with wrists tied to bed posts… a silk tie stretched tight around his neck… shit, dead… what? Dead! Oh, God, get out of here!

Nick drove to the office, hung-over, replaying over and over again, the events of the night before. Vague flashes of memory… leaving the bar with that other queer… was it Frank? Fred? Something like that… then the three of us making out in Donny’s bed… and the screen went blank… nothing… “Oh, shit, what’s going to happen… no one saw me leave the apartment… or did they? Oh, no, everyone at the bar saw us leave together… what the fuck… make up a story now… come up with something. There is sure to be an investigation. Did I leave any evidence? … Semen? … DNA? Sure did.. luminol on the sheets will find mine for sure…. Should I call Harry?”

There was an investigation and Nick was the only suspect. The incident was kept eerily hushed in the press. He was the last person with Donny seen leaving the bar. Frank met up with them afterwards. Nick was politely asked to answer some questions at the police headquarters.
The detective in charge of the investigation was congenial, as was the case with most folks in Charleston. Southern graciousness was bred into them but Nick knew it to be deceptively disarming. The investigator flipped through a folder… only glancing at the top pages of it momentarily before he began. “Mr. Baker, I’m Inspector Montague and I have been given the unpleasant task of determining exactly what happened with Donald Crowther. I know that this must be an uncomfortable… can I say, ‘situation’, for you and I hope you understand that what you say here will be held in the strictest confidence if we find you to be honest with us.”
Nick nodded in agreement. Southern charm held sway with most of these characters but family connections meant more. He wasn’t sure whether his natural gifts here would apply but was relieved at the tone of Inspector Montague.
“Now, Mr. Baker, what time did you leave Dandey’s with the deceased?”
“I suppose it could have been around ten but I’m not sure, sir.” He couldn’t stop his hands from shaking… some nervousness that could be seen as guilt, “You understand, I have a reputation that might be tainted were anyone to know I was ever at Dandey’s.”
Montague's eyebrows knitted as he pulled a cigar out from inside his linen jacketand put it in his mouth, “Yes, Mr. Baker, but we don’t give a damn about your sexual preferences or your reputation. To quote Groucho, I suck on a cigar but I haven’t sucked on anything else of the sort, if you know what I mean? But, as much as my wife disdains it, I haven’t murdered anyone. It's a brave new world Mister Baker and it isn’t a crime in Charleston to smoke a cigar.”
“Well, yes, I know what you mean… Groucho said he took it out once in a while. You understand, I’m not gay either,” because he hadn’t been Mirandized, he scanned Montague’s face for any sign he might be believed and hoped to dissuade the charming investigator of suspicion, “I just go where my colleagues and clients are.”
“I understand, Mr. Baker,” taking the cigar out of his mouth and waving it casually in Nick’s face, “I never light the damned things either. So, can you tell me then, how long were you with Mr. Crowther last night?”
“We went to his apartment for a drink or two… talking over a real estate deal… you know, we’re in the same business. I left around midnight, I think.”
“We?” Montague interrupted Nick’s prepared spiel. “Just you and Mr. Crowther?”
There was a possible way out, “Yes… I mean, no.” Nick stumbled onto his exit from the scene of the crime.
“No?” Montague tapped the desk top, “Who else was there?”
“There was another guy, I don’t know him.” He had to make up something quick.
The detective was pulling for a short straw, “Did this character have a name?”
Nick remembered that Frank had dropped by after Donny called him to score. They took a cab to pick up a bindle. Frank had left Donny’s shortly after he got his rocks off to score some more coke for them. They gave him a c-note to buy an eight-ball but he never came back. Nick put all his talents into play with a believable scenario, “I believe it was… he was a black dude. Yes, I remember now, his name was Frank or Fred… or something like that.”
Covering for himself he thought about the semen he might have left…“Oh, to be honest, I slept with Donny, and I was there a little later than that, I suppose.” 
Nick knew that Frank had also dropped a load, and his seman was sure to be discovered.
The inspector was being glib, “You suppose? You are being frank with me.”
“Yes sir, I sort of blacked out and couldn’t remember exactly what we did… I’m sort of embarrassed, you understand.”
“You’re embarrassed about what; you slept with a man or…” Montague suggestively wrapped his lips around the cigar and took it out again, “Or was it because you strangled Mr. Crowther?”
He knew he could be busted this time, “No… no, I know he was alive… we played some games with ropes and ties, but I remember us saying goodnight.”
He needed a good lie for cover. He’d never killed a man before… but, Nick could certainly lie, “Donny; I mean, Don, told me to leave the door ajar. He was expecting Frank or someone to come back with the coke.”
“This is just an inquiry Mr. Baker…” Montague had enough fun and was ready to move on, “I’m not interested in what you people do with each other until one of you ends up on a coroner’s slab.”
This Montague could see through any lie, so Nick tried to be humble, “I suppose I need a lawyer now.”
“There isn’t enough evidence to give the D A anything to go on… yet. We’ve sent samples of your mess on the bed for a DNA analyses, so I suggest you stick around if we need to talk again; you never know.…” Montague picked a folder from the table and gestured with an upturned palm for Nick to go ahead of him from the room, "You understand, I haven't Mirandized you yet, all of this is confidential."
Nick knew his DNA was deep inside poor Donny's rectum but it would be mixed with Frank's.

Harry had his feet on the detective’s desk, smoking a cigarette, outside the interview room. Montague greeted him like they were old fraternity brothers, “Harry, good to see you. What we have here is a young man in trouble,”
Nick stood at Montague’s side, avoiding eye contact with Harry, like a teenager busted for underage drinking.
“I trust you can keep an eye on him until the investigation's ovah.”
Swinging his feet off the desk, Harry stood casually dropping his massive arm over Montague’s shoulder, “Maybe I can talk with you privately tomorrow…. before this investigation goes too far. It would be better for Nick to set up shop somewhere else in the meantime, don’t you think?”
Nick wasn’t impressed that Harry held sway over regular cops but he was surprised that he could pull strings with Montague just like he did the Supe at Los Prietos. Harry’s massive arm over Montague’s shoulder diminished the Inspector’s threat and Nick was relieved that he had, by all appearances, escaped another disaster.

Harry had seen enough of humanity to set aside any judgment about the behavior of other people. As they drove away from the station, Harry was thinking more about how to get Nick out of trouble than any personal disgust at what he’d done. Nick waited for Harry to say something… anything that would give him an idea of what Harry thought.
He broke the silence, “I didn’t kill the guy… dad.” This wasn’t exactly a lie… that night was a blank after all.
“Doesn’t matter much, does it?” Poker-faced, Harry didn’t even look at Nick as he continued, “We have friends back in Santa Barbara; you can start-over there.”
“What about the investigation?”
“These cases usually go cold after a week or two…. Or they’ll hang it on this Frank… he’s black and Charleston is still the South.” The assurance with which Harry asserted this said everything Nick needed to know. His relationship with his dad was that way. He’d learned to never push too hard for things when Harry didn’t offer.
Crowther had no family to speak of. Donny had said so much when they first met, “They’re Episcopalian and I was disowned when they found out I was queer. They might be tolerant in other places, but not around these parts. As long as we stay in the closet, we’re okay, but once we’re outed, fags down here in the South don’t stand a chance.”
Harry's calm baritone voice broke into Nick's thoughts, “Don’t worry, the ACLU will jump on it and it will get thrown out of court. Or, maybe, Frank will get a couple of years for manslaughter. He’ll be okay. That is, unless your Donny's family calls for justice. Frank's black, they'll hang him."
Nick knew that South Carolina went for capital punishment that year. A bile arose from his gut, “Yeh, I guess so. Lethal Injection, I think.”
“If you get in a jam like this again I might not be able to help. There's a detective in Santa Barbara, Ryan’s his name. We did some work in Da Nang.”
“You were in Nam?” Nick knew this guy had some history, but he had no idea, “No offense, but I thought you were too old for that one.”
Harry dismissed Nick’s comments with a wave of a hand that held a card, “Look, this is a number for special occasions… emergencies. I hope you never have to use it.”
Nick opened his window, said, "Gotcha,” and vomited.


The realization, that the corpse on a slab in the morgue was of little consequence to anyone, only bothered Nick a little. Knowing that, were it not for Harry Baker, Nick might as well have been locked up for twenty years for a murder and that meant more to him: all for a sex crime, and a murder he couldn’t even remember. He shook the thought off like a dog his fleas before it sank in too deep. He easily dismissed guilt or shame of this sort. It’s a talent he had for keeping facts like that from sinking in.
 
A change of address took care of the immediate problem, and, as for any nagging conscience, he found out a long time ago that the wicked do sleep well. That’s what Zoloft and Ambien were for.


Thursday, December 21, 2017

Book II. Chapter 2. 1973 - New Beginnings


At sixteen Nick Baker was approaching manhood after bouncing from the orphanage to foster homes… to another foster home… to another foster home… to Los Prietos Boys Camp on the inland side of the Santa Ynez Range that serves as a scenic backdrop to Santa Barbara on the coast. Harry would have his hands full de-institutionalizing his son. Hell, he owed it to Iniga… he’d promised her that much… and these were the few kinds of promises men, even men like Harry, are honor bound to keep.
Nick had been orphaned, or abandoned, before he was conscious enough to do anything but roll with the punches; and there were plenty of punches at that. Awkward from an early age, he expressed his disquiet with the universe in the form of violence. There were several years of foster homes that were hardly homes at all. He preferred the disciplined structure of Los Prietos Boy’s Camp to the fatherless transit center for discarded youth that was the last foster home he’d lived in from the time he was twelve until his hormones took over at sixteen years of age. The mother of that last house, Patsy, was a fifty-something matron who sat, all three-hundred pounds of her, chain-smoking in her Barcalounger in front of the TV with the volume full blast, tuned to whatever Televangelist occupied the airways that hour.
The old bat, Patsy, had caught Nick in the toilet with his pants down more than once from the time his hormones began dictating his pleasures around the age of twelve. Each time he was caught he was pulled by the hair into the kitchen, stripped naked while the house gathered, and forced to stand there while Patsy read from her Bible scriptures about seed falling to the ground. Then he was caned on his bare bottom (he preferred the caning to the Bible readings). Then he was sent back to the room he shared with six other boys. Out of a sense of duty to defiance he’d pull out a muscle mag from under the mattress of the bunk bed to stroke one more off for good measure. As he grew older he’d hold his load and wait for his younger bunkmate, Kim, to come back to the room where he forced the boy to finish the job orally and, once, even anally. It was only once because the little shit cried so loud, Nick had to shut him up! He beat the faggot until he lay on the floor unconscious, bleeding from his ears.
Juvenile courts put Nick in juvie on Hollister for that one. Joints like that are play grounds for institutionalized kids like Nick. He did so well that he was transferred to Los Prietos Boys Camp in the hills above Santa Barbara on Paradise Road. It was in places like these that Nick learned more about the rewards of brutality and his own peculiar form of newly discovered sexual expression. He had shrinks tell him that old Patsy’s canings led to the brutal rape of Kim, and thus caused his brain to equate sexual release with violence and guilt: guilt for the pleasure of ejaculation but not guilt for his acts of violence. Sometimes the two were intimately interwoven. He would have been hard pressed to distinguish one from the other: that is, only with sex with men. This was how his brain was wired: with women it was another story.
He thought he preferred sex with women, but he rarely achieved orgasm with them. Had he been capable of admitting to his innermost self, he was intimidated by them… even afraid… it was control. He never seriously asked himself that question, nor did he care to delve into the whys and what-for’s of things that made him anxious. He let the shrinks and counselors do all of that bullshit. He told himself he knew who was to blame for most of it… this or that circumstance, institutions or authority figures. It sure as hell wasn’t his fault.

It would have been easy enough to walk out of Los Prietos Boys Camp, and he could have done that. He didn’t stay put because he had nowhere to go but he actually liked it there. However, this institutionally friendly life changed one afternoon when, as he leaned against a rake in the yard, he watched a sedan with government plates pull up. An oddly familiar old man in a crew cut, coat and tie, unfolded long legs in chino trousers, and stepped out of the car. His eyes were fixed on the man as he shook hands with the Supervising Officer. The Supe, who is usually most confident around probation officers and staff, was most cordial. And, to Nick’s highly sensitive institutional radar, he saw that the Supe was downright submissive to this character. Nick’s intuition was confirmed when he was called into the visitor’s area … what the fuck, it wasn’t even visiting hours for the camp.
The Supe left them at one of the tables. The man’s hand closed on Nick’s in a firm clasp. This was one of the few hands, even adult hands, that diminished his own. He dared not get into a squeezing contest with this one. On top of that, they had the same gray-blue eyes, and the man’s features could have been Nick’s in twenty years.
“Harry, Harry Baker,” he offered, as they cased each other.
“Uh, same name… who are you?” He had the urge to take a leak… maybe to just get away. He wasn’t accustomed to being this nervous around anyone, including adults.
“Take a deep breath Nick. I have some news for you.”
It was over 95 degrees. The old man took off his coat, revealing sweat stains with an empty shoulder-holster, as he reached into his shirt pocket and took out a pack of smokes.
“You can’t smoke here,” Nick objected, and at once felt awkward for this uncustomary reflex to enforce the rules adding, “Hey, are you a cop or something?”
Harry lit it regardless, “Or something…”
Nick was delighted. Even the Supe, standing off to the side in the shade, had nothing to say.
“You got some sand, eh?” Nick tried to sound cool.
Harry let out a puff of smoke from the corner of his mouth as he spoke, “Nick, I’m your father.”
Nick’s blood then boiled and his gut ached… the smoke… those three words… “Fuck you man, I got no dad,” but he kept a poker-face.
“I didn’t know where they had you tucked away…”
“How hard were you lookin’?”
“I confess, not much… but then I found your mother a few weeks ago.”
“Mom? Now I know you are bull-shittin’ me.” He got up to walk away but this Harry character just reached over the table, put a massive hand on Nick’s shoulder and sat him back down. He wanted badly to throw that hand off and follow through with a right hook but thought better of it. The guy was old, but he was huge, and emitted an aura about him that only a fool would fuck with.
“I found out she was in Boise Idaho a few years ago, but never got to her, well, I did see her before she passed away.”
Nick sensed this was a difficult subject for Harry Baker so he bore into the old fart, “Passed away?”
“Yeh, we had her put in the Hospital there,” flicking the coal off the end of his cigarette and putting the butt back in the pack, he continued, “Your mother, she had to give you up when you were born. It's a long story and I can tell you about it all … but we have more important things to take care of.”
Nick’s head was swimming, “You could’ve passed that butt to me, Dad.”
His sarcasm wasn’t missed. Harry was proud of him. Shit, how would he have taken such news under similar circumstances? “You know, Nick, she tried to get in touch with you but that bitch…”
“The bitch’s name was Patsy. What the hell do you expect me to do with this information, Pa?” Again, Nick wasn’t about to show any affection in the use of the hillbilly expression for paternity. 
Harry’s expression didn’t change. His poker face was as stoically unmoved as anything Nick could pull off. He hadn’t noticed the folder Harry had carried to the table until he opened it to several pictures. One was a yellowed newspaper clipping showing a young woman with dark curls flowing out from under a beret. She was holding an odd shaped blade upright in front of her face like she was going to kiss it. The caption was in Spanish but Nick could only read some of it. Words like “Basque bandeleros” were easy enough to figure out. “Detenida”, “Iniga”, “Alesandro”, “smatchet-daga”, “maquisard”, “guidari”, were words he wasn’t familiar with. Before he could get lost in that image, a few others were shown of what looked like the same woman… much older… gaunt… weary and frail. Another was a glossy eight by ten it with the same hair but snowy white though looking much healthier. It had red ink, Top Secret, stamped at an angle across the top. 
The two sat in silence as Nick flipped the pictures back and forth as though he were looking for a clue of some sort, “Your mother was infamous, depending on whose side…That knife is a smatchet, designed to drive through a NAZI helmet like butter.” Harry stood up.
“She was bad, eh, did she use it?” Nick felt a taste of pride welling up in the form of a lump in his throat.
“She did.”
“Shit!”
“You want to go home, son, or, do you like it here?”

Nick had secretly longed for what social workers would call, “a masculine role model.” He had an imaginary figure pictured… a superhero… no cape or anything, but there was this Bat Man and Robin relationship often in his dreams. He was eager to follow this man anywhere. He now had a mother and a father, even though they had abandoned him and his mom was dead. He now had something to go along with this surname that had been nothing more to him than a name attached onto a birth certificate... the mysterious Iniga Baker was his mother…. and so was this dead-beat dad his father, Harry Baker.
Nick was jazzed as they rode away, father and son, cruising from the camp in a sedan… even if it was a funky government car.  He had arrived at the camp in a County Sheriff’s van with a half-dozen other juvenile delinquents. This car was a step up from that and he knew that all the other campers were watching them pull away.
“So, are you going to tell me more about my mom?” He hesitantly probed this strange giant of a man.
“Your mom had been given Baker as a surname. I managed to do that for her… I owed her that much.”
“What do you mean, ‘owed her’?”
“It is too complex to tell you all of it… maybe later. We have more important things to take care of for now.”
“Like?”
“Your education…” He passed a cigarette to Nick. “You wanted that pretty bad too, eh?”
Nick muttered, “They have a school at the camp.”
“No, I meant a cigarette,” coughing, Harry let it soak in that Nick, who had nothing but adversaries up to now, had a friend in his father (even if not such a good father)… perhaps nothing more than a friendly hand. “You’ll have to do something about smoking or you’ll end up like me.”
“What, a dead-beat dad?”
“The camp has a pretty good school but it won’t look so good on your resume.”
“True, I guess so.”
It was a few more miles, headed for Lompoc, before Harry spoke, “I haven’t been much of a father and I know it. I’m not even going to try to make it up to you; there's nothing I can do for the past, but I owe you this much, your future.”
Nick had never heard an adult talk to him this honestly. He half-assed expected his dad to say something like, “I will be there for you always.” The events of the day were overwhelming and this Harry-dude’s tone put Nick in the mood to listen. He wasn’t speaking down to him and making promises that couldn’t ever be kept the way most foster parents did.

“About your mother, we married when I found out she was pregnant. You were born in a place called la Ventas woman’s prison in Madrid…” He pulled the car into a convenience store in Buellton, “Need a sandwich or anything?”
“I’d just as soon you tell me how you got me outa Los Prietos?” this question had bothered Nick ever since … “You don’t get cut loose that easy. I was sentenced to rot in juvie ‘til I turned eighteen.”
“Let’s just say, I have ‘sand’,” and they both laughed at Harry’s awkward use of the jailhouse term for influence.

Promises aside, Nick had very little contact with his dad after he was set-up in Charleston South Carolina with a new step-mom, Marilynn. Marilyn and Harry, though still married, were separated and Harry was out of the picture for the most part. Harry was out of the picture because he’d only married Marilyn for Nick’s sake. He had, in spite of his absence, kept his promise to Iniga by trying to assure that Nick would not go wanting. After all, he told himself, when the vision of Iniga’s scowl would appear to him late at night; Marilyn’s house was a whole lot better than the way Nick had been left on the orphanage’s porch.
Nick had to study under a tutor he’d been assigned and even he managed to complete prep-school at Bishop England Catholic High School in South Carolina before Harry used his connections to get Nick into The Citadel. Noting his physique and size, Harry hoped Nick would adapt, choose a military career and be primed for life there… better than as a civilian in Ivy League colleges.
Nick liked the discipline at The Citadel and excelled at karate and was on the boxing and wrestling teams. The gymnasium and ring were more interesting to him than academic studies and, because he was possibly the most physically intimidating “knob” on campus, he wasn’t hazed as much as other, Fourth Class, Cadets there. Engineering, mathematics, military history and instruction weren’t for him but, hell, he’d already been institutionalized and anything, even the rigors of a Catholic prep school and the military academy, were a good deal better than the dumbed-down kindergarten of Los Prietos. He made up his mind, after the third year at the Citadel, he had no desire for a military career, nor did he have any academic aspirations. He discovered that his gift for gab opened doors for him that even the best colleges couldn’t. By this time, he’d taken to the newly discovered privileges of wealth and the prestige that wearing the right clothes, driving the right car, and living in the best neighborhoods, could avail. He felt he was wasting time sitting in classrooms when there was so much money to be made in the world beyond the walls of the Citadel.


Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Book II. The Tyranny of Chaos - Chapter 1. The Homecoming


Adrienne’s flight landed late night at the Santa Barbara Airport. Max was waiting for her in the cab. She habitually opened the back door to get in but he stopped her, opened the front door and teased, “You know you can sit in the front, girl.” She looked weary from the hours of airports and connections. “Oh, sorry Max, I got used to sitting in the back. New York cabs have this barrier... you know. You even put the money in a slot like the banks...” she sighed, “It feels nice in here. You know, the warmth of your taxi.”
Her body visibly relaxed as he pulled away from the airport and accelerated onto the Ward Memorial freeway.
“You look good, Adrienne.”
“Shee, how can you say that? I am a mess, I haven’t bathed in a day...”
He loved the way her visits to Biarritz awakened her accent, and had to admit, though he was a reluctant Francophile, that there was something irresistibly sexy about a French woman’s accent. Not so much the sweet bedroom sexy, but Adrienne’s had dropped the proper Oxford English of the écoles, and had adopted a cabaret smoky gutter English she’d picked up from her stateside lower companions, “I’m not kidding. You look good... clean.”
“Yes, I’m clean alright, like... oh, you say, a baby’s bum, ha-hah!” she was, in spite of her aching bones, sarcastically jubilant.
“You know what I mean.”
“Oui, I am sober as a judge, eh?”
“I’m glad for you...” and he was very glad for her. He’d become personally invested in her struggles. “I’ve been looking forward to your home coming...”
He stopped talking when he saw she had fallen asleep, and, lightly snoring, slept the rest of the way home.

Adrienne awoke midday, stretched her arms across her bed. "Of course," she thought, "Max isn't there, and thank God, neither is Nick."
She came down stairs to the kitchen, and put on a pot of coffee. She looked around the house. It seemed emptier than she expected, and missed being greeted by Sushi and Tofu. Nick had the dogs boarded the past week after she phoned him to let him know she wanted to be alone in the house when she got back. A stack of unread newspapers were on the floor under the kitchen table. The trash can was overflowing, ashtrays full of butts, and half full Mexican beer bottles were everywhere downstairs; in the music room, on the dining room table, in the living room on the fireplace mantel.

Half full bottles meant to her that Nick was using something other than beer to get high. “Oh, Nicky, you’ve been enjoying the house while I was away,” she said to the walls. Two cups of coffee later she went upstairs and passed through her bedroom and small bathroom to her studio. That room was the most private one in the house; with a view of the garden in back where her brushes, and tubes of oil paint, were neatly laid out on the counter for a clean gessoed canvas that awaited on the easel to be awakened with color. She had resolved to do something about Nick, and her marriage, while she rode around the countryside of Biarritz with Alesandro. She was determined to change everything, inside and out, that fed her addictions now that she was clean. She was hell-bent for her home to be a refuge, a creative hermitage, to make something of her life and she was determined that Nicky was not going to be a part of that life.

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Book I Chapter 12. 1999 - The Legacy (Pt. 2)

Alesandro knew she was as secretive as her mother. If anyone knows how to live a double life, and addict does. “Just as long as she lives, you don’t have to go that far. Johanna moved in some elite circles while in London. All who knew her thought she was one of several aristocratic women hired to fill government jobs...  low ones, like typing pools.”
“I never knew she could type.”
“She could type... maybe not the standard eighty words a minute, but she passed the appearance.”
Alesandro’s posture on horseback became taller and gallant like a knight without the armor… proud, and as though boasting of a child's accomplishments, he said, “her forte was the financing of resistance groups in Holland and eventually France with your father.”
“And an Aristocrat too? Was she well off?”
“No, certainly not. She barely managed to dress the part before the S.O.E. provided her with a stipend and generous clothing allotment. But she made connections, as more than a typist, that led her to meet with a young French journalist exiled in London, your father.”
“What do you mean, dress the part and more than a typist? I have a feeling you mean that my father owes it all to her? Wasn’t this his family’s estate before the war?”
“Oui,” he laughed, saying, “They were farmers… maybe they were frugal, but not financial powerhouses. After the war, it was she who mentored him. It was her maneuvers that brought his fortune here.”
“They could have at least told me a bit of it. You write your memoirs… Were they ashamed of what they did? They should have been proud.”
“Sure, I write, but my pages are more of an exorcism than memoirs. Maybe they had to quiet their demons: not at all out of shame or fear… but of being found out. I can’t speak for them, but some don’t like to talk about the war, and others, can’t. Those of us who made it through… maybe we withhold our own stories out of respect for those who didn’t survive,” Alesandro held the reins tighter on his horse, pulling back at the bit as it backed up. He would have been more honest to speak of the guilt, the nightmares and sweats, it gets muddled with time, but horse-sense told his steed that the subject was getting touchy.
 After the horse calmed he continued, “Your mother had fled from Holland to Britain after she escaped being taken to Poland with her mother and father.”
“Poland? Taken? That is where the camps...”
“Yes, they were taken to Auschwitz.”
“What, Ma-Mère is Jewish?” Adrienne hadn’t heard any of this before but felt an unaccustomed pride swell in her breast. She had always felt herself to be on the outside, looking in, to French society, as though her family was a pariah... les nouveau riche. There was an underbelly of anti-Semitism in France too that gave reason for Adrienne to belong somewhere, “Maybe I’m half Jewish.”
“Yes, but anyone with a pair of glasses and a bookshelf was suspect. Her father was a professor at the Municipal Amsterdam University… a dangerous intellectual.”
“She fled… how did she get to Britain?”
“The Jewish underground knew how to get her out of Holland… she saw the gloom that was rising over all of Europe with no one else helping.”
"What was she then, a spy, some kind of accountant?"
"Johanna got out of the typing pool and worked as a secretary at the S.I.S. She wanted to be of more use to the resistance in Holland and managed to get her boss, the Judge, to recommend her to another Dutch woman... an operative for Churchill’s baby, the Secret Operations Executive. This woman recommended her to be trained and equipped as an operative by the S.O.E.”
“Who was she?”
“This woman was a courier for the Dutch banker I mentioned. His name was Walraven of the De Nederlandsche Bank that financed the Resistance during the War.”
“I’m sorry, I know so little of this…” embarrassed at her ignorance, Adrienne asked, “I should know, what they are. These initials? The S.I.S. and S.O.E.?”
Alesandro was patient. He was accustomed to history fading from one generation to another. This generation had no new folk songs to pass on their heritage… after all, the memory of their ancestors had been usurped by the mythology of pseudo-rebellion in the self-absorbed nihilism of popular culture; sex, drugs, and fashion. He explained, “The S.I.S. is like our Deuxième Bureau and there has never been anything like the S.O.E.”
“Like the American C.I.A.?”
“Yes, but more so than that, the S.O.E. was about subversion, sabotage… assassination. It was most suitable for Johanna after she fled from Holland,” he spoke as though recalling a dream, admiring the sunset glowing crimson on gossamer clouds across the landscape, as they sat side by side on horseback at the top of a knoll.
“My god, I’m left out of my own heritage… uninformed.” she said, knowing that, by the time she was of age to hear of such things, drugs had alienated her from her family.
Alesandro spoke respectfully solemn, “There is so much that you didn’t need to know.”
“I’ve done so little with the life I’ve been given… but, why wouldn’t anyone tell me about…?”
“War is a dirty business and some of what we’ve had to do lives with us in our sleep. Secretly, and not so secretly, there are a few who can’t admit to themselves that they enjoyed it... took great pleasure in it and profited greatly.  Some of us tried to bury the past, but the past never lets us rest. Hannah and Marcel chose that path while, so many others march as heroes in all the parades and claim a glorious fiction of their parts in the Résistance. The truth, if they told it, was that what your mother and father did after the war would be considered criminal in some circles.”
Feelings of pride in what that generation stood for, and shame for what her own generation had done with this heritage, Adrienne was overcome with admiration for the white-haired man at ease on the horse next to her.
“Some of us do have our share of shame too,” he glanced over to catch her wipe away a tear. "Shame and pride were buried for me in Carabanchel. Not all, but for some of us, our crime was that we allowed ourselves to be drawn into an ideal of perfection that was nowhere near as perfect as this vista.”
Alesandro would eventually tell her, on these rides, "Most of the estate, beyond the original farm, had been gotten through Johanna’s resentment. By the time Berlin fell, the bureaucrats sneered at them with disdain."
"Them? Who is them. Spies?"
"Yes, for the lower classes. If you think London is bad now, it lightened up during the war but snapped right back... especially biased against foreign women. They never suffered more than a paper cut while she, and several other women like her, were the S.O.E.'s most productive spies. Post-war bureaucrats would offer them little more than a job back in the typing pool where she'd begun."
"How did she even the score?"
 "Throughout the war, she used her acquired skills to uncover and obtain the Reich’s hidden assets. Unemployed and lacking support from the agency, she fell back into the reserves she’d acquired and spirited away in Swiss banking accounts. She had to fund herself and her handler, The Judge, knew it and looked the other way. These activities were unknown to anyone else in the S.O.E. It was her private joke that she and Marcel would exploit the knowledge she’d gained during the war in retaliation for her talents shunned by the stuffed shirts of the British bureaucracy."
Adrienne's was eager to hear moret of her mother's cunning, and asked questions as fast as Alesandro could answer, "Was she afraid she'd get caught?"
"You know," he said, "Johanna’s had a more compelling reason to keep her war record secret. Stalin’s agents were everywhere in the underground. Even after the war. Communists, rather Stalinists, were anxious to have opposition that wouldn't kiss their red asses. She protected your father... his cover was that of a journalist and she had gone deep after the Judge had been taken out... died, and her former identity slipped away as she became a ghost. This protected Marcel from some in the Kremlin and in London... she might as well become more of a ghost because they would surely have her erased as though she never existed."

During another ride, Adrienne asked, “Is shame the source of your writing?” Curiosity compelled her to probe deeper into the enigma of Alesandro’s mysticism.
Alesandro insisted, “Rid yourself of that notion, dear one. I am no more a writer than I am a hero.”
She had no understanding of his steadfast denial, so she asked, “Isn’t that what writers do, write?”
His answer was simple, “Yes, writers write, but more importantly, writers publish.” he quipped, remembering her precociousness so many years before when she first met Iniga, and trying unsuccessfully to make light of the subject.
Unwilling to accept such a flippant answer, she insisted, “Then, why do you write, dammit?”
He admitted, “I suppose I’m driven to clear my mind of it… the past.”
She challenged his humility, “And why are you not a hero if what I know of your life has been an epic saga of heroics?”

Sadness washed over his face. His eyes glazed over as though they were full and ready to overflow with tears, “Heroes die at the end of their saga.”
“Perhaps, but wasn’t Carabanchel a death of sorts?” She could never dismiss both notions; that he was a writer of the first rank, and his heroics were legendary. She could see that, though violent and tumultuous in youth, the natural poetry of Alesandro’s humility, and the nuances of a gentle mind moved as steadily as the Nive towards the estuary of L’Adour as he aged.
Though he wrote of what would be despicable crimes, if war hadn’t engulfed the continents of Europe and Asia, he didn’t excuse himself or dodge the morality of his past actions. In this sense what he wrote of was a true confession. Since his imprisonment in Carabanchel, Alesandro had shunned his academic compatriots in the cafés of Paris and the communist Anarchists of Barcelona. He had committed an unpardonable sin to some of them by seeking refuge in this hermitage of luxury contrary to the socialist faith of his fellow maquis and professing a conversion to a filtered Zen of his own Western Catholicism instead of dying a martyr in the field. But more than that, he’d settled with a truce against his own demons of despair and became enthusiastic about living within the grace of a forgiving cosmic reality.
“Yes, I surrendered. The war was over for me... body and soul.” His face lit up like a paper lantern as he continued, “At that moment I knew a presence in my heart far more powerful than anything of my own making.”
His sudden enthusiasm was mildly disturbing to her so she changed the subject, asking, “What did this Iniga do after the war? Was she still in Spain?”
The panorama of the landscape spread out beyond the two on horseback nearly all the way to the Bay of Biscay. The beauty of it made more sense to Alesandro in that moment than all the politics, platitudes, dogma, and morality of revolutionary zeal, he’d survived. His memory was consumed by the tragedy that always began with the massacre of innocents and ended with a cavalcade of slaughter and oppression worse than the horrors before.
He said softly, “She carried on in Spain,” wistfully adding, “She came to her own terms with peace. She passed away a long time ago, but, in a way, her destiny has become your legacy.”
“What legacy?”


Chapter 24. The Dick of Despair

23:00: Miguel had been in his kitchen when a few of his heavies from Oxnard and Santa Maria arrived. Besides Yuri and Dimitri, he had only ...