A Trip to the Stars

  His face darkened, and I was afraid I had not only crossed a line, but offended him. “Because of its violence,” he said finally.

  “No. Because of its sexual energy, and its anger.” I sat up in my chair. “It was a release for people trapped in a war.”

  He just looked at me, and I was surprised he wouldn’t have known this.

  “I’m sorry for bringing it up,” I said.

  “Don’t be,” he said, leaning closer. “You know, I’ve worked at making my former life feel like it belonged to somebody else. When people went into how they listened to my music while having sex, or tripping, or seeing God, or whatever, I just shut down. Everything about that life shut me down. That’s why I had to start over.” He smiled. “Forgive me, Mala. I haven’t run into many people who were in the war. I’m glad you told me what you did.”

  After that, he sometimes played jazz for me on the piano—especially early stuff like Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton—just as Zaren Eboli once had. We became much closer friends. So much so that when Claudia had to fly to Rome late in September, I spent a good deal of time with Alvin. At Four Crosses, on his boat, and one day at my house for lunch, just the two of us. But in all that time, when I felt as if with the slightest nudge—and a ton of guilt—I could have fallen for Alvin, he never once came on to me. I was his friend, he wanted to keep our friendship, and he was faithful to Claudia. It was that simple.

  “Can you believe it?” I said to Seth one night over dinner in town. “At Wilcox Memorial I got mixed up with a bunch of respected physicians who—present company excluded—were among the most depraved people I’ve ever encountered, and here I’m hanging out with a world-famous rock star and we drink green tea and do yoga and he never cheats on his girl.”

  Just before Claudia’s return, Alvin and I visited the Blue Room one afternoon. The Blue Room was a cave within a cavern at the northern tip of the island, where the road ended. To reach it, you had to climb halfway up a mountain, then descend into its bowels through a chasm, down a rocky slope, to a pool of fresh water, cobalt-colored and very cold. You then had to swim across the pool to a tunnel in the rock face that led deeper into the mountain. The tunnel allowed you just enough room to breathe above the waterline, and after about sixty feet it ended in a small cave. The sides of the cave were smooth stone that formed a perfect dome—like the upper half of an eggshell. In fact, the cave was the topmost portion of a vertical shaftway filled with cold water that ran to depths no plumb had ever reached. It was called the Blue Room because its water was a stunning, luminous blue—like the color of a swimming pool lit up at night—as if from that great depth light were shining upward. No one could explain the source of this light.

  “Olan told me the ancient Hawaiians believed sunlight enters the mountain through a hidden shaftway and reflects off seawater far below us,” Alvin said, as we treaded water, his voice echoing sharply. “But no one has ever been able to find the shaftway.”

  Afterward, we sat on the bank of the cobalt pool in the outer cavern. The rock walls there were smeared with bat droppings and the air was damp and cool. As we sat wrapped in our towels, I found myself discussing my passion for, and grief over, Cassiel; Alvin would be one of only two people to whom I ever related that part of my story completely. The Blue Room’s waters, rich in minerals, were reputed to possess healing properties, restoratives of the spirit, and perhaps they had gone to work on me, for it surprised me that the story should spill out more easily with Alvin than it ever had with my women friends. A worldly man who was detached from the world, nonjudgmental, he listened quietly while for nearly two hours I related the entire tale. Though his eyes lit up, as they did when I showed him the palimpsest of rings where the spider had bitten my palm, he didn’t once interrupt me.

  When I was through, he took my hand. “You say you and he only had so little time together as lovers. Whenever I come here, I’m reminded of a story I heard when I visited India. Long before there were telescopes, Hindu cosmographers concluded that the universe was composed of billions of galaxies. They defined the life cycle of a galaxy as an eon. Asked the length of an eon, they replied: ‘Imagine a mountain of solid rock, bigger than the Himalayas, which a man brushes with a piece of silk once every century; the time it would take him to wear away the entire mountain is an eon.’ When you consider time in that light, days, years, centuries begin to blur, don’t you think? How you fill any one day—while emptying it of distractions—is all that matters. It sounds as if you filled your few days to the brim. Also, Mala,” he smiled, “I do believe that there are stars which fall to earth. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to be around when they do.”

  I kissed his cheek. “It’s no mystery why you were a star yourself, Alvin,” I said. “For me you always will be.”

  High above us, at a forty-five-degree angle, the oblong chasm leading to the open air was golden with light. The foliage rippled brightly in the mountain breeze. It was as if we were truly in the underworld, gazing up at the world of the living. And though I was not his Eurydice—nor anyone else’s, despite Francis’s efforts—that day Alvin Dixon felt to me as if he were Orpheus himself who with his music could charm the animals and even the rocks. When I followed him up that rough slope, grasping his extended hand over the last, steepest portion, Alvin seemed to be leading me back into the sunlight once and for all after my extended sojourn in the darkness.

  Jorge Gaspard, the mind reader, was nothing like Alvin. And he was decidedly not one of the many Buddhist visitors to Four Crosses. I had barely spoken to him during his visit in the summer, but when he returned just after Christmas, after touring in Canada, Claudia invited me over for dinner. Gaspard was their only houseguest, so along with Olan, who had also been invited, there were just five of us at the big table. Olan and I had arrived at the same time, and he proudly showed me his motor scooter, which he had finally saved up enough money to buy. I was seated between Olan and Gaspard, and it was clear to me that Olan didn’t much care for Gaspard. Superficially, I could see why: Gaspard was not unfriendly, but he was humorless, even smug.

  Over coffee, Claudia, just back from Tokyo and in an expansive mood, told Gaspard about the telepathic powers that manifested themselves in me during the week of the waning moon.

  “She can become privy to, and visualize, fragments of memories passing through your thoughts,” Claudia said. “I have seen it many times.” And indeed she had, but only when I had been alone with her and Alvin. Then she turned to me suddenly. “You don’t mind my talking about this, Mala, do you?” she asked, for my expression must have betrayed some of my discomfort.

  I shook my head. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Alvin, too, was uncomfortable, and obviously not pleased that Claudia had brought this up. He didn’t take an invasion of privacy lightly.

  Gaspard turned his dark, direct eyes upon me and compressed his thin lips. His round face and bald head were glazed with moisture, for it was a stifling night and the trade winds had stopped blowing. “This only occurs during that one week?” he asked in a deliberate bass voice.

  “Yes.”

  “You have never tried to induce it at other times?”

  “I’ve never wanted to.”

  He grunted. “You need to be in the person’s physical presence, correct?”

  I nodded.

  “And if there is more than one person present, you can choose among them?”

  “Yes.”

  At that point, Alvin ended the interrogation by changing the subject, but later, when I went out to the terrace to look at the stars, Gaspard came up to me out of the darkness.

  “I’d like to make you a proposition,” he said bluntly, lighting a thick, short cigar with a gold lighter. My defenses went up, but he surprised me. “My current stage assistant is experiencing burnout,” he went on. “She’s talking about marrying some fellow she met in London. We’ve both agreed that she should move on in March. Thus I need a new assistant. I think you would fit the bill perfectly
, Miss Revell.”

  I shook my head in astonishment. “Are you serious?”

  He waved away my question. “I perform thirty-eight weeks of each year. Four ninety-minute performances a week. The pay is one thousand dollars per week, plus all expenses. For two weeks I rehearse and you receive full pay. The weeks you don’t work at all you receive half-pay and do as you please. What do you think?”

  I was thinking I still couldn’t believe my ears: “But exactly would I have to do?”

  “In a nutshell, the assistant is my conduit to the audience. Her duties are threefold: she goes out into the audience, soliciting questions and collecting cards on which people have written their queries; she deals me cards and handles other props; and she sits blindfolded onstage and passes on people’s thoughts to me. I’ll be frank with you: I’m offering you more money than any previous assistant because with them the blindfold portion of the act was accomplished through technical manipulation—word codes, inflection patterns, and the like. With you, at least one week per month—one-quarter of all performances—we’ll evidently be able to employ genuine telepathy. There is a new moon now, or I would ask you for a demonstration, but I have no doubt your ability is just as Claudia describes it. If you utilize it onstage, I predict that I’ll almost certainly be giving you a raise very soon. My wife, who was my partner before I went solo, had similar powers, and they were what launched me. But she lost them.”

  “You have a wife?”

  He was put off. “What of it?”

  “Does she travel with you?”

  “Ah, I see,” he snorted. “No, she lives at our house in the Bahamas.” He grinned, his lips compressed. “She is the guardian of my tax shelter. The three months I don’t tour I am there with her. Anyway, I have no romantic involvements ever with my assistants. Neither serious nor casual. Never. And I have had many assistants.”

  “Why so many?”

  “Because it is a demanding job. My sense is you’ll be good at it. And, I’ll be honest, you’ll be good for me. In this business, no one is completely authentic, but without some authenticity you cannot flourish. In the end, never forget, it is show business. You are poised, attractive, intelligent, and possess an unusual skill. With me, you will get the finest international bookings and make invaluable contacts.” He shrugged. “It is likely that at some point you’ll be able to go off solo yourself, if that interests you.”

  The job was unusual, but despite our surroundings the job interview had come to sound much like any other, complete with the promise of a raise dangled before me as well as the prospect that I could someday parlay the work experience into a business of my own.

  “Since it obviously concerns you,” he concluded, “you will have total privacy in the time that is your own. For one thing, I prefer sitting alone or with strangers on airplanes—never with my assistant. And I always dine alone. You will have first-class accommodations, and eat where you like, but you will not have to reckon with my disturbing your privacy. In return, I ask that you respect mine. For professional concerns, or illness, knock on my door, but do not come to me with personal problems. So, you see, if you have anything to be concerned about, it is loneliness, not invasion of privacy.” He cocked his head, drawing deeply on the cigar. “But you strike me as a solitary person, accustomed to being on her own.”

  “I am.”

  He continued to look hard at me. “At the same time, you’re worried about leaving your first real home and being on the road so much—as your sister was.”

  I started. “How—”

  “Please,” he cut me off. “You see, I do have some skill at what I do,” he added drily, as if he had just handed me his calling card. “Well, then, enough for now,” he said. “Sleep on it, and give me your answer in a day or two.” And blowing a chain of smoke rings, he turned on his heel and set out for a walk on the beach.

  I lay awake for a long time that night with those figures he had tossed out dancing in my head. Forty-six thousand dollars a year was a lot of money for me. And with all my expenses covered, I’d be able to bank most of it. There was almost nothing left of my severance pay from the hospital and I had been anxious for weeks about what I would do next. This seemed like an amazing stroke of luck, but with a big catch: I would have to leave Kauai and bounce around the world in the company—however detached—of a dour, self-absorbed employer. At the same time, my job prospects on the island were not good, and though I now had some real friends, and felt healthy again, I had been itching to get away ever since the accident. This would be a way to do so while traveling to cities I had never seen, working in a strange and intriguing profession, and piling up money for the day I returned to Kauai, which, in the long run, I knew would be my home. It sounded almost too good.

  Which was what I said to Alvin the next day when I sought his advice. He was uncharacteristically edgy, even evasive, about the whole subject.

  “You want a character reference about Jorge?” he said.

  “No, I want to know what you think it would be like working for him and traveling with him.”

  “I met him in Paris four years ago. He was the friend of a very close friend. I’ve always known him to be an honorable person. He’s gruff, he doesn’t suffer fools, but he’s very smart. You can never really tell about people’s private lives, but from what I’ve seen, he dotes on his wife.”

  “You’ve met her, then?”

  “Oh yeah. Heléne was a very famous clairvoyant. She’s older than him. Originally it was her act, and Jorge assisted her. Didn’t he tell you that?”

  “In a way.”

  We were in his kitchen, and Alvin paced back and forth, fidgeting with a knife sharpener.

  “Alvin, what’s bothering you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Are you holding out on me?”

  “It’s nothing like that. I think you’ll be fine working with Jorge. And I understand why you might need a break from the island. But if it’s really just the money, Mala—you know, I have so much money.…”

  “I can’t take money from you, Alvin. And if I borrow, how would I pay you back?”

  “Look, I know you’ve been fretting about getting a job. Claudia and I were talking, and we thought you might be able to help her. You could go to Japan as her buyer.”

  “She doesn’t need anyone to do that. Anyway that would be very part-time. It’s sweet of you both to think of it, but don’t you see, this is a chance for me to earn some real cash. I’m sick of worrying about it. And I’d like to buy my house. If I do this, I can.”

  “What about the house—do you want us to look after it while you’re gone?”

  “Olan’s going to stay there, with the dogs.”

  When I said this, I realized I had already made up my mind. I had spoken to Olan that morning, and despite his dislike of Gaspard (“a burrow-dweller in his previous life” was his description of him), he encouraged me to take the job.

  “I’ll miss you, but you need to get away,” he added.

  When I saw how much Alvin would miss me, too, I was deeply touched, for I had never left any place before—not home, school, or the Navy—where I felt I was leaving anyone behind who really cared. And when I left other places and was churning with deep feelings—New York after Loren’s disappearance and Manila the day of Cassiel’s departure—the two of them were already gone.

  Late in March, I flew to Honolulu to meet up with Gaspard and proceed on to Australia, where he would break me in to his act. The night before, Alvin and Claudia threw me a farewell party and invited all my friends. Seth and Val came, and Estes, who obeyed house rules and smoked only cigarettes, and Olan, who offered me his medallion.

  “You’ve heard of Janus,” he said, “who looks forward and backward at the same time. This is his Ethiopian counterpart. He’ll protect you night and day.”

  “Olan,” I said, brandishing my star bracelet and my pendant, “I already have more protection than I need. You keep the lion to watch over you,
and my house, okay?”

  Seth gave me a watch that kept time in different time zones, so I’d always know what time it was on Kauai, and Estes gave me a pocket atlas, so I’d always know where I was. “With a twist,” as he put it, showing me the table in the back that listed the world’s major cities and their respective distances from Hawaii.

  “See, when you arrive in Sydney, you’ll be 5,070 miles away.”

  Alvin waited until the end of the party, and then, without a word, put a record on the stereo and asked me to dance. The record was his last T-Zero LP, and its first cut was a slow number that we danced to in the middle of the living room. I was stunned, but when I recovered a little, my heart full to bursting, I whispered in his ear, “Thank you.”

  When the song was over, Claudia and everyone else clapped, and I looked up at Alvin, still holding his hands.

  “There’s one thing I’ve never asked you,” I said. “Why did you invite me out here that night we first met?”

  He tilted his head quizzically.

  “I mean, I was so stoned and drunk, Alvin, and you can’t stand being around people like that.”

  “Yeah, you were pretty wasted,” he said. “I don’t know, just an instinct—a flicker in the back of your eyes.”

  “A pretty faint one.”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t so hard to see.”

  At dawn tears streaked my cheeks as my plane lifted off from Lihue Airport and I watched the green mountains fall away beneath the clouds. Just before boarding, I was sure that one last person, absent from the party, had come to say good-bye when a strong cool wind swept over me suddenly on the tarmac, lifting my hair and fluttering my skirt.