Tales of the City 05 - Significant Others
Booter knew for a fact, had been in mid-September, almost two months after the encampment had shut down.
The real function of the Grove was escape, pure and simple. It provided a secret haven where captains of industry and pillars of government could let down their guard and indulge in the luxury of first-name-only camaraderie.
Escape was certainly what Booter had in mind as he sped north on the freeway, away from Frannie and the city and the cruel vagaries of a career in aluminum honeycomb.
After an hour’s drive, he left the freeway and headed west on the road to Guerneville, where sunlit vineyards and gnarly orchards alternated abruptly with tunnels of green gloom. When the river appeared, glinting cool and golden through the trees, so too did the ragtag resort cabins, the rusting trailers, the neon cocktail glasses beckoning luridly from the roadside.
He drove straight through Guerneville, doing his best to ignore the pimply teenagers and blatant homosexuals who prowled the tawdry main street. He had liked this town better in the fifties, before its resurgence, when it was still essentially a ruin from the thirties.
In Monte Rio he turned left, crossing the river on the old steel bridge. Another left took him along a winding road past junked cars and blackberry thickets and poison oak pushing to the very edge of the asphalt.
At the end of this road lay the big wooden gates to the Grove and the vine-entangled sign that invariably caused his heart to beat faster:
PRIVATE PROPERTY. MEMBERS AND GUESTS ONLY.
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
He drove through the gates and past the gray-frame commissary buildings, coming to a stop in front of the luggage dock and checkin station. Climbing out of the car, he adjusted his tie, brushed the wrinkles out of his suit, and inhaled the resinous incense of the great woodland cathedral that awaited him.
The familiar cast of characters was already assembled: the jubilant new arrivals, the blue-jeaned college boys who did the valet parking, the leathery rent-a-cops with their cowboy hats and huge bellies and belt buckles the size of license plates.
Sweating a little, he opened the trunk and hauled his two suitcases to the luggage dock marked “River Road.” He was filled with inexplicable glee as he grabbed a stubby golf pencil and inscribed two old-fashioned steamer trunk labels with the words Manigault and Hillbillies. Why did this feel so much like coming home?
After relinquishing his BMW to a valet parker, he spotted Farley Stuart and Jimmy Chappell and sauntered up behind them. “Damn,” he said, “we’re in trouble now!”
Both men hooted jovially, clapping him on the back. Jimmy looked a little withered after his bypass operation, but his spirit seemed as spunky as ever. Farley, heading for the shuttle bus, turned and aimed a finger at Booter. “Come for fizzes tomorrow morning. Up at Aviary.”
Aviary was the chorus camp. Farley was a valued baritone, an “associate” member whose talent alone had qualified him for a bunk in Bohemia. He wasn’t an aristocrat by any stretch of the imagination, but he was a nice fellow just the same.
Booter pointed back at him and said: “You got a deal.”
He knew already that he wouldn’t go (he expected an invitation to fizzes up at Mandalay), but his burgeoning spirit of brotherhood made saying no a virtual impossibility.
He was amused, as always, when the guard at the checkin station punched him in, using a conventional industrial time clock. This, he’d been told, had largely to do with billing for food, as members were charged for any meals that occurred during their time at the Grove, regardless of whether or not they chose to eat.
The guard was one he liked, which comforted him, since this was the fellow who would know the most about his comings and goings.
When he was done, he found Jimmy and Farley holding the shuttle bus for him. He decided to walk, flagging them on—a joint decision, really, between a vain old man proud of his endurance and a wide-eyed boy ready to explore.
Somewhere up ahead, someone was playing a banjo.
The ceremonial gates, the ones meant to welcome rather than repulse, were a boy’s own daydream, a rustic Tom Swiftian portal built of oversized Lincoln Logs. As Booter passed through them, a blue jay swept low over his shoulder, cackling furiously, and his welcome seemed complete.
He strode briskly, following the road into a forest so thoroughly primeval that some of it had
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