Chapter One
2008: Prologue
Pressential Reading.
Comfort Alert: The following story presents a
fictional give and take on what remain several of the
most pressing and persistent issues today. It employs a
rigorously full and ultimately fair approach:
in essence a didactic give and take within a dramatic tale.
Some tough, touchy stuff—but somebody has to try
a meeting of the minds on all this. Because nothing else
seems to be working these days…
__________________
SATURN RENDEZVOUS II
What Goes Around, Storms Around.
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San Francisco: 2008
R.I.P. Eternally
Robin Williams (Ed.)
Shots were fired, the race was on. But before they could even hit the first mark, change came like a breakaway header and serious, on-goal kicking of some balls.
Zaaap, a full-sail regatta gave way to soccer warm-ups on the house plasma TV, sort of an America’s Cup for World Cup, with an accompanying volume burst until a shot puller behind the counter clicked the sound way down. More sudden, jolting change, I thought, returning to the envelope at hand. Just like I should have seen this coming all along.
With a little luck, the off-white #10 would have had a tripwire and traces of toxic white powder. But no, not a chance, meaning better that we should have ended this reconnect right then, before something got started that couldn’t be settled so easily. Christ, this could not have been good news either—not today—no cold-bloody way.
Hey Hee-bert, you ol’ scumbag. Good thing my ol’ lady can do some Googlin’ on her lunch time—thought I’d never track your sorry ass down…
Here in my sweating palms was no quick, dirty e-mail, no text message on the fly, but real hard-copy, a full former lifetime of old-school needling echoed via postage-due snail mail —many iterations removed. Not that I didn’t still have some residual luv for Nate and Chitown. Just don’t be coming back at me with all that, Natorious, not when it’s taken me so long to slink away from all that. I’ve since lived, I’ve learned, I’ve seen the hallowed light. Thus I rechecked the return address: hmm…P.O. Box. Don’t tell me Nathan Grimaldi is back in the ’burbs, much less the bloody Southside Chicago Lawn. Naw, bet he’s still cleaning up big time on the near Northside.
Whatever, dead-letter history, I had bigger lawns to mow right now. I hastily refolded the letter, along with what appeared to be some sort of crumpled press clipping, then crammed it all back into its twice-forwarded mailer, which I stuffed partially between the arts and business sections of my liberated morning newspaper. Glancing up at the long, antsy customer line, I could see a queue now swelling out the café’s doors, so many plodding stiffs on the down-low side of their caffeine cycles. I knew all about it, having just been there myself—java here being priced about right.
One strong styrofoam cup later, I was little more than a bundle of resurgent Garuda-charged nerves—biding my time, waiting out, waiting on the latest mark. There I was, tabling the paper, last gasp gripping the armrests way deep into the second act, calender clocking my waning Returnal days, when Saturn would transit stage right all over again.
Christ, Nathan, why the hell go writing me now?! OK, man up—altogether now…Head over heartstrings, remember? So let’s see, where was I? Oh, right…don’t worry…hell, I should have known I’d get flushed out after all these years.
That aside, Mecca Java was a neighborly corner coffee joint with a loyal stream of lefty regulars, and spillover from the loftier addresses on up Fillmore Street. Among them, past the stacked poetry throwaways and Capiero flyers, around a pair of pay-to-scroll Internet terminals, stood idling paramedics, spackled Russo-Irish sheet-rock hangers, flexing hairy-back gym junkies and speed-reading bank teller trainees. But toward the front of the line, sandwiched between a barrel-waisted East Village exile in a floral quilted frou-frou, and a sight-impaired afro-harmonicat impatiently tapping his cane, a famous favorite son sidled about, quietly hunting for some hot joe and maybe just a little good will.
Yeah, these stellar Robin sightings were becoming increasingly du jour around then. Off camera, this iconic comic seemed oddly furtive, at once bracing and insecurely vamping for recognition, counting on the ‘don’t ask, don’t leer’ policy San Franciscans resolutely have toward the celebrities in their midst, hip as they were to the reality that the glitterati usually only interfaced with fans anymore when they were hawking their memoirs and compilated C/DVDs.
Apparently just back from some barnstorm trooping through Baghdad’s Green Zone, Williams’ incognito look was fashionable camo and faux fatigues. Hiding behind a BlackWatch beret and orange tinted titanium shades, his eyes seemed fixed on the colorfully calligraphed overhead menu boards. God forbid anybody should notice; god help anybody who didn’t.
One person ahead of the outwardly nonplused woman pedicurist whom Williams immediately followed was Reese Paulen, Ph.D., who had pegged me on his way in the door, and was now paying for his Masala Chai Tea. A tall, full figure in corduroy and chinos, he turned away from the pastry cluttered counter, nodding, lowering his gaze as he passed this shorter, stouter, world-renowned riffmeister, who himself was now digging deliberately into his guerilla pants pockets for a billfold of platinum plastic. Their near miss by the cream and sugar table, besides rattling the soy milk canisters and honey jars, held all the look-don’t look de-magnetism of a solar eclipse.
Paulen handled the pas de deux capably enough, betraying nary a wink or nod, yet acknowledging that say, aren’t you…look, I know who you are, but I’m not letting you catch me knowing dynamic, because that is so uncool. While Robin’s vacant stare suggested I know you know who I am, yet don’t let me catch you knowing, because that’s a way turn-off. But you still better know who I am, ’cause why else would I be out here–and you’d better damn well let me not know it, too. Just don’t come too close while you do. This little exercise in San Francisco celebratory civility seemed to preoccupy, mildly amuse the revisiting university professor all the way over to my table.
“Honestly, Herbert, how bizarre that I should be bumping into you here after all this time, having just come down from the temple,” he said, sitting down across table like an old wingman at an undergrad class reunion, lifting the black snap lid of his take-out cup. “Talk about probabilistic serendipity…and spotting mighty Mork himself in the flesh!”
“Really, such a…coincidence,” I pushed that letter further between the newspaper sections. “Small world, small town—temple what?”
“Actually I’d happened by Congregation Sherith Israel, up the hill on California Street,” Paulen said, after a sip of his tea, tapping a glossy brochure. “Such a grand Reform synagogue, with its classic Colusa sandstone-clad masonry and magnificent domed sanctuary. Amazing how the opalescent stained glass windows brilliantly illuminate its arching Moretti mural interior. The temple’s in Byzantine and Romanesque style, and over 100 years old, you know. It’s even going to be placed on the National Historic Register, and I’d never really paid attention to it before.”
“Uh, no—afraid I’ve never taken much notice.” All I could picture was the big, brooding holy fortress up there that lorded over the neighborhood. No offense, but what did a little sightseeing have to do with his popping in down here? And why couldn’t he have visited St. Dominic’s Church over on Steiner, worship a little Van-the-Man’s Preview, strumming on the front steps?
Still, Sedge’s tip was pretty much spot on. Except it didn’t account for doc’s surfacing so soon…so right here and now, when he was said to rather recently bend elbows over at the Elite Café across Fillmore Street. But it was what it was: less friendly face time than strap-on-the-game-face time. So better to giddy-up, change the subject and be done with it I diverted once again toward Williams, there singularly awaiting his triple shot Mocha aside the condiments stand, man of the people that he was. “Yeah, Mork & Mindy are hot in reruns again. Nanu, nanu anew.”
“Robin Williams put Boulder, Colorado on the map all right. Sweet rock candy mountain in his rainbow red space suit and silver boots,” Paulen loosed his brown wide-whale sports jacket, then began stirring some nutmeg into his Chai. “Trouble is, the town’s never been the same since.”
“Yeah, he and JonBenet,” I stared up, quantifying the overhead lights and grinding ceiling fans, demonstrating my grasp of tabloid topicality. How did he come across me here, anyway? And what was up with the new personal handle of his? But I wasn’t going there, not yet—had to pace things a bit, see where this ungainly little mashup might lead. Like the head honcho said, take it wherever it has to go to get him flapping, so let’s see what blows. “These days, you can often spot Mork carousing around The City with Bono and Whoopi. Such a positive energy source—wonder how old a guy he is by now…”
“Must be around our age—late 50s, or so,” he cleared his throat, then peered, probed clear through my burning eyes, as if for a hint, some trace evidence of who and what lay inside. “In any event, Boulderites prefer not to talk about the dreadful Ramsey tabloid circus any more unless we absolutely must. Count me among them, no matter what.”
“Why’s that?” Haughty smokescreen, stony denial: Hmph, we’ll just have to see about that. “I mean, the case does keep coming back around, doesn’t it? Kinda like the Zodiac saga here—becomes something of a cartoon strip after a while.”
“Because among other things, those Ramsey people never belonged in the first place—they’re the sort who are ruining Boulder as we speak—all that tax money wasted on a grand jury. Such ignominy has no place in a mellow place like that. Alas, nasty business all around, therefore what say we just change the subject,” Paulen said in muffled tones, pausing for didactic effect. “On the other hand, my guess is you won’t see ol’ Robin waltzing into this place with Billy Crystal any time soon…”
“How do you mean?” Intriguing that the professor seemed to take the Ramsey case almost personally—why so quick to dismiss—gotta mine that vein, all right. But first I glanced counter-wise to spot Mork peeling off his field jacket to reveal a black Rainforest T-shirt and the same old rainbow suspenders he sported when Orsen was calling down from Ork—peering anywhere but straight ahead. Everybody else seemingly waited for him to go off somehow on the tabletops, just like the old days. “You talkin’ about all the snow Crystal’s blown, or what?”
“I mean, this isn’t exactly Beverly Hills or South Beach in here, now is it…”
“You’re saying as in, like demographically…” I nodded, struggling to grokk the reference, noodling way back for some grasp of a once common clinical lexicon.
“No, as in ethnographically,” Paulen’s voice rose over some thrumming and trilling, quite exotically thrilling ambient music overhead.
“Whatever…” Unclear on that concept either, I dismissed it as arcane sociological argot I’d begged off ages ago: I instead noted the metallic protuberance barring across his right ear. These electronic devices I’d come to deride, long annoyed with the slow pedestrian wandering, the disjointed monologues in a polyglut of tongues—the overheated airs and wireless pretentiousness of them all—ultimately leading to little more than radiation burn and a bad case of celliflower ear. “Too loud in here…with the hearing aid there…I mean, what’s with the ear armor?”
“It’s Bluetooth, voice activated,” Paulen pressed the green call button blinking near his starboard lobe, a brown and chrome Jabra v2.0 headset, not that much smaller than a 9-volt radio battery, hooked tightly to his ear. Mildly distracted, he released the button, then reached for his jacket pocket. “I’m just getting accustomed to it—you know, the driving, and all.”
“Oh, right, cell phone-free…look, ma, no hands…”
“So to speak. Although under current circumstances, ma is an unfortunate choice of words.”
“Wouldn’t know, don’t drive much anymore,” I relented, pursing my lips, at pains to lighten the mood. “Bluetooth, huh? I just know my grill is getting more on the yellow side.”
“Non-stop coffee will do that to you,” Paulen leaned forward, folding his arms. “What’s more, if you’re not careful, it can make you hide yourself. Is that what you’ve been doing here all these years, Herbert? Hiding out from something, or hiding from somebody are you?”
“Me? Hell, no, I’ve got plenty going on, don’t you worry,” I grimaced, pursing my lips—really, how did he even find me here? Shit, call it Saturndipity. “But I’ll take your input under advisement…”
“Yes, chew on it…because you do look a bit thinner than I recall.”
“Well, guess I’ve shed a little poundage around the edges,” I replied guardedly, noting his tight, streaking curls. “Just like you look a bit saltier…”
“Goes with the gray matter, I suppose…”
“Tell me about it, doc…”
“All in good time, my friend. All in good time…”
Care for more?
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