Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje [59]
Do you gamble always? she had asked him then.
One or two games a week now. I used to play endlessly.
I don’t understand such a world … what its blessings are.
It’s no different from any compulsive work. Some live a full life. I had one friend who was a Deadhead, but he was also involved with local politics. He’d play cards socially in a casino in Grass Valley.
Is he your friend still?
Unfortunately no.
Sounds like you should have stuck with him.
Then she had said, Do you ever think of our farm? And he had not said anything. And she had let his silence fall between them.
What is your mission, do you think? Vea had asked her once. And she didn’t know. In spite of her desire for a contained universe, her life felt scattered, full of many small moments, without great purpose. That is what she thought, though what is most untrustworthy about our natures and self-worth is how we differ in our own realities from the way we are seen by others. What Claire later remembered, for instance, of her walk with Coop back to her hotel in Tahoe that day was her pleasure in his presence, and how invisible she believed herself to be in their brief hour or two together. She was simply happy to be walking beside him, nursing her tiredness, listening to him talk about the world he lived in. This extraordinary recurrence of him back into her life, the grandness of the names of the towns—Vegas, Grass Valley, Nevada City, Tahoe—seemed iconic, something discovered on an adult’s map. If she had been told that Coop mused on her brown shoulders, that he had been remembering how she had saved his life in that ice storm, that somehow she was perhaps the heroine of their meeting, she would not have believed such a truth. We relive stories and see ourselves only as the watcher or listener, the drummer in the background keeping cadence.
There was sunlight in their room when Claire woke. Coop was waiting for her, already dressed. ‘We need to visit Grass Valley, to find someone,’ she said. ‘We need to go back the way we came.’ So they headed towards Nevada City and the neighbouring town of Grass Valley, where there might still be the casino in which Coop’s friend, the Deadhead, used to play. She had no idea if the man still lived there or even what his name was.
They reached Nevada City and had a meal, and afterwards Coop sat in a chair in the foyer of the National Hotel, while Claire went out and bought some poster board. That evening she stood outside the Gold Rush Gaming Parlor in Grass Valley, with a sign in front of her that said ARE YOU COOPER’S FRIEND? At about ten o’clock a man with shells around his neck walked up to her and asked her who she was.
Dorn got into the car and looked at Coop. He put his palm up to the bruised face. A gesture, not a touch. He suggested they leave her car in Grass Valley. Dorn helped Coop into his station wagon. There was a hound, alert in the front passenger seat with no intention of moving into the back.
Dorn’s home was a modest bungalow a mile or two from town. He began cooking a meal he called ‘broccoli surprise,’ and a short while later Ruth arrived with their six-year-old daughter to find the house busy with strangers. Ruth walked over to Coop and embraced him. Dorn explained the situation to her, and they moved some of their daughter’s things out of her bedroom so Coop and Claire could use it.
After the broccoli surprise, in which no broccoli could be found, Ruth began to examine Coop’s wounds. She turned to Claire. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen him, she said.
Did you know him well?
Yes, I was one of the boys, then. And Coop was ‘The Untouchable.’
Claire was enjoying watching Coop, now in the context of his old friends, even if the affection and concern flowed only one way, towards Coop’s unawareness. Dorn lit a joint, passed it over to Claire, and spoke of the incident with The Brethren, and then moved to various anecdotes in which the well-dressed Dauphin drifted