Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [202]
I wrote Frank as soon as I got back to L.A. Within a few days, the letter came back. It was marked: NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS—NO FORWARDING ADDRESS. I tried to find him for a long time, but I couldn’t. It was as if, on the morning that we said good-bye to each other on that haunted stretch of Oatfield Road, he just walked into the void with all the other ghosts.
ANOTHER DREAM:
I am living in a single-room apartment in Portland, when one day my father shows up at the door. He tells me that he has recently located my mother, whom we both have lost track offor some time. Apparently she is living somewhere in Seattle, and my lather thinks we should go visit her.
We get into his car-an old Pontiac station wagon-and set out for Seattle. My father should know this drive well-he has made it literally hundreds of times-and yet for some reason, every exit he takes turns out to be the wrong one, confusing him and making, him increasingly angry. What’s worse, all the exits appear the same: They are big, careening loops that encircle vast marshes. After a few wrong turns, after no longer being able to find what should come easilyand familiarly for him, my father takes to driving off the loops and onto the marshes, digging his wheels into their softness and turning their turf into muddy tracks. A state policeman sees him doing this and pulls us over. My father explains that somebody has hidden his exit from him, and that he can no longer find what was once as common as home to him. The policeman seems to like my father—he doesn’t arrest or ticket him, doesn’t even lecture him—and he guides us the rest of the way into Seattle.
When we arrive there, it is early evening, and my father takes me to a small apartment that he has rented for me. It looks just like the desolate firetraps we used to live in when I was a child. The major difference is, this place comes with a live-in woman, whom I am expected to sleep with. My father leaves, saying he will see me later. The woman fixes us some drinks and we begin to make love, when we are interrupted by the arrival of two other women: friends of hers, bearing sleeping bags. They have arrived to spend a few days with her. We all talk for a while, and then they lay out their bags on the floor, at the foot of her bed, and we all go to sleep.
I awaken in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. I get up and fix myself a drink, and then I see the blond woman in the bag at the foot of the bed sitting up, watching me. She also is unable to sleep and invites me to join her on the floor. We begin to kiss. I start to move down on her. “Ah, we don’t want to be tacky, do we?” she says, then presses my face between her legs, holding it tight and hard against her, until I can taste her need and my own.
After we have finished, I get back in bed with the woman who is my “girlfriend” and fall asleep with my arm around her.
The next day, my father shows up and says it is time for us to go see my mother. Next thing I know, it is night, and my father and I are seated in a restaurant, sharing drinks with two women; I am with my live-in partner, and my father is with the blond woman I’d gone down on the night before. Everybody is getting along well and having a good time, and there seems implicit in all this the promise of unlimited and uncensored pleasures still to be had.
My father gets up, a little drunk and happy, and says he is going to find my mother. He comes back a little while later and indicates! should follow him. Suddenly, everything feels solemn, as if we are on our way to something ritualistic and unpleasant—like a funeral or execution. To find her, we have to wind our way through the rest of the restaurant, which is like a maze, taking us through rooms and rooms of