Josie waited a few minutes longer, fooling with “Big Butter and Egg Man” on the child-sized guitar, but still the girl didn’t come, and Josie was awake, hungry, ready to be on the road. She had done all she could do here now. It was time.
She carried her things over the gravel to the short end of the L and packed up the Falcon. The manager’s door remained closed, hospitable as a barbed-wire fence. So she got in, started up the car, ran it for a minute, giving the ancient engine a chance to warm up, rattling and shaking in the cold. She had to admit to herself, the girl wasn’t coming. She too had chosen her labyrinth.
She turned on the radio, Buck Owens, and put the car in gear, backed and then headed down the drive, past the gate of the Paradise Inn, signaled left, and pulled out onto the highway. The sun behind her. Heading west. She had no idea what time it was, before eight for sure, on a Sunday morning. Even if she stopped for breakfast in Banning, she’d be home by noon.
She was about a hundred yards down the highway when she saw the girl in her rearview mirror, running down the drive of the Paradise and out onto the highway, a pink bag over her shoulder, her braids flopping in the early morning light. She waved her arms in the air as if Josie were in a plane, waving her down. Josie reversed down the empty two-lane, and the girl threw her bag in the back and hopped in, that mousy thing glowing bright as a lightbulb. She watched out the rear window as the Paradise grew smaller.
Turning front again, she threw a green book on the dashboard, about the size of a funeral prayer book. Josie picked it up.
Reisepass. Republik Osterreich.
She opened it on her thigh and spread it out in front of her on the wheel. A picture of the girl looking like a dog in headlights, just before the car hits it.
Wilma Rutger.
Wilma. Wilma and Josephine. Well, okay then. Okay.
I
’d like to thank those who gave so generously of their care, love, and attention during the writing of
Paint It Black.
Muchos abrazos to the Three Musketeers, writers David Francis, Julianne Ortale, and Rita Williams, for their unceasing insight and encouragement, that willingness to read a scene just one more time. Many thanks to my wonderful readers Trudie Arguelles, Charmaine Craig, and Gus Reininger, who helped me see the forest again, when I could only see leaves and twigs.
Grateful thanks to my generous informants: Brazil-based concert pianist Ilan Reichtman and Peter Stumpf, principal cellist for the LA Philharmonic; artists Enrique Martinez Celaya, Greg Colson, and Lucas Reiner; art models Nancy Keystone and Melinda Ring; Warren and Leroy at Diamond Towing; Lia Brody; the Skirball Museum, for their remarkable exhibition
Driven into Paradise,
which gave me a rare look into the world of the European exiles in Los Angeles in the Thirties and Forties; Anthony Hernandez, Director, Los Angeles County Department of Coroner; and the many websites supporting survivors after suicide, particularly 1000 Deaths.
I want to thank William Reiss, my agent, and Asya Muchnick and Michael Pietsch, my editors at Little, Brown, who stuck with this book through its long hard journey. No words suffice. And most of all, I thank my daughter, Allison, who has had to deal with such an awkward and demanding sibling on a daily basis—thank you for putting up with me.
The author is grateful for permission to include excerpts from the following previously copyrighted material:
The excerpts from “Riding the Elevator Into the Sky” on pages 372 and 379 is are from
The Awful Rowing Toward God
by Anne Sexton. Copyright © 1975 by Loring Conant, Jr., executor of the Estate of Anne Sexton. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
The excerpts from
The Poems of Dylan Thomas
by Dylan Thomas are reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. and are copyrighted as follows: “Altarwise by Owl-Light,” copyright 1939 by New Directions Publishing Corp.; “Love in the Asylum,” copyright 1943 by New Directions Publishing Corp.; “Over Sir John’s Hill,” copyright 1952 by Dylan Thomas; “In Country Sleep,” copyright © 1967 by the Trustees for the copyrights of Dylan Thomas.
The author would also like to acknowledge the following: The lyrics on pages 18 and 381 are from “They Ain’t Walking No More,” by Lucille Bogan; lines from “The Prose of the Transsiberian and Little Jeanne of France” are from
Complete Poems
by Blaise Cendrars, translated by Rod Padgett, University of California Press, 1993; the lines on page 378 are from “Burnt Norton,” by T. S. Eliot,
Four Quartets,
Harcourt, 1943; the lines on page 376 are from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Waste Land,” by T. S. Eliot,
The Waste Land
, Harcourt, 1930; the lines on pages 265 and 266 are from
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon
, translated by Ivan Morris, Penguin Classics, 1971.
The Thirteen Clocks
by James Thurber, Simon and Schuster, 1950, is the children’s book referred to on page 122 and elsewhere.
J
anet Fitch, a Los Angeles native, is the author of
White Oleander,
an Oprah Book Club selection. Now translated into 24 languages, the novel was the basis of a movie by the same name. Her short stories have appeared in journals such as
Black Warrior Review, Room of One’s Own, Rain City Review,
and
Speakeasy.
She received the Moseley Fellowship in Creative Writing at Pomona College in 2001 and currently teaches fiction writing in the Master’s of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California. She lives in Los Angeles.