La Dolce Vita

In those days there was a violence right behind his eyes all the time. Don’t get the wrong idea. He — I — would never have acted on it. Maybe, he thought, that was part of the problem. And yet the violence was there all the same. Waiting, simmering…

Horner and Milo had gone to a movie theater on the Berkeley campus to catch a Fellini film, La Dolce Vita. It was a long film, full of scenes of debauchery in crumbling Italian castles, erotic nightclubs, and seedy apartments. At the very end, the main character, a reporter assigned to cover the rich and jet set, wanders out to the beach at dawn after another endless orgy at somebody’s apartment. He’s grown entirely disillusioned by this point, and you can tell that something’s broken inside him. A few fishermen have just hauled an enormous squid out of the sea, and that’s what the others are trudging out to look at. But the main character, as if he’s seen all this before, strolls once around the scene and then sits down on a clump of sand at the edge of a channel the tide’s cut through the shore. Across the channel he spots a girl he recognizes as a waitress he met many years ago in a little café. He’d gone there to try to write, but he kept getting interrupted by the jukebox, by the telephone, by a thousand other things. He’d struck up a conversation with this girl and promised her he’d teach her how to type. Now, she’s grown into a beautiful young woman, and she spots him and waves her hands in the air in a typing motion, indicating perhaps that now she’s ready to learn. It seems as though she’s saying she loves him. You can’t tell, though, because you can’t hear her for the rushing water, and neither can he. In fact, he doesn’t recognize her at all, and in a moment he’s led away in the sordid dawn by one of the vampires from the party. The end.

The two friends spilled out of the theater and walked down side streets through campus to find Milo’s van.

“Well, that was Fellini.”

“Very long.”

“Some of the scenes were just beautiful, though. I really loved the opening scene.”

“What did it mean, though? What did it have to do with anything else that happened in the movie?”

Meaning was very important to Horner in those days; he worried about it a lot.

“I don’t know.” The famous opening scene had followed a helicopter as it transported a golden statue of Christ, his arms outspread and hands raised in the classic pose of benediction, over Rome, all the way to the Vatican. “But I liked it.”

They found the van parked on a quiet residential street, the leaves of elm trees swaying under soft light from dormitory windows.

“MRS. ROBINSON!” Horner yelled into the quiet evening.

“What are you doing?”

“I always think of The Graduate when I’m in Berkeley.”

“…Oh.”

Horner had supposed they might go out for a drink, but Milo knew of a party back in the City. Under normal circumstances, neither of them was keen on parties, but Milo had been crashing at his uncle’s house in San Rafael, and Horner had just returned from a visit to New York. They were both eager to see everyone in San Francisco and enjoy a little debauchery themselves. They drove across the Bay Bridge and instantly plunged into the mysterious fog of the City. They found the address on Sacramento and Polk, parked on Van Ness, and hurried over.

“Should we bring something?”

“I dunno… they just said to show up.”

The front door was open and they walked in past some people just coming out, continued down the hallway to another door that was also ajar, and strolled inside. Immediately a face, and then another and another, pressed against them—women smiling, sipping drinks, glancing up briefly from clusters of conversation at these new arrivals who in turn looked around as if they owned the place. The apartment was packed. There were bodies jammed into every corner, and a DJ set up in the front room with two turntables spinning records, the music throbbing through enormous speakers. In the kitchen they could hardly move without grinding through a jungle of elbows and shoulders, and it was there that Horner spotted a familiar face.

“Corey!”

Corey was an acquaintance from Horner’s days working for the San Francisco Jazz Festival; he realized this must be the same party Corey had invited him to just before he left for New York. Corey stood swaying in a fancy silk shirt, already lit from drinking and who knew what else. He clapped Horner on the back and stood next to him, listening absently to his explanation of the coincidence before whirling off to some new circle of folks. There were women everywhere. Milo had already found one he knew and clipped her off from the rest to engage in fervent conversation. Then they spotted their friend Ledecky in the impossible crush of people in the courtyard below. They had to navigate a maze of flesh and stairways, pushing through throngs of partygoers perched on the steps, smoking and drinking. Milo and Horner sidled down the stairs, muttering “Excuse me” every step of the way, bumping and squeezing through.

They found themselves in a damp square of space beside a keg of beer and a strange, slanted table off which every empty bottle eventually wobbled and fell to the concrete floor, shattering in a heap of glass. Milo quickly began talking with several other people he knew; Horner knew no one, and caught Ledecky’s eye across the courtyard. They cut through the crowd to reach one another. Ledecky was an art dealer; he was from back east and would be flying to New York for a wedding in a couple of weeks. They talked about New York, Horner telling him of his recent adventures there.

Horner used to feel much wittier in former days, when he’d lived in Austin; he used to enjoy going to parties like this, where amid the crush of unfamiliar faces he could grow hilarious, spinning elaborate lies about himself to new acquaintances, passing the fabrications off with a deadpan look. He’d tell a woman he was a polo player, until his horse had to be shot; or, hearing someone mention they were from the South, he’d affect an accent and insist he’d grown up there as well, naming imaginary friends on invented streets—asking, “You remember June Goodbody who lived on Wilbury Street?” So earnest was he in presenting these fictions that sometimes the stranger would nod as if recognizing the names. Perhaps he had never been so witty as he believed and hadn’t noticed folks rolling their eyes. Perhaps everyone had been so young and high that Horner’s games scarcely registered in the mayhem. Nevertheless, as Ledecky was pulled into another conversation and Horner fought his way to open space to breathe, he lamented the loss of his former bravado.

His gaze climbed the high stone walls of the courtyard, picking out the puzzle piece of sky visible at the very top, thin clouds blowing swiftly along. He stood with a few others, laughing and making small talk as a joint passed from hand to hand. And out of nowhere, the anger arrived.

It arrived, oddly enough, in the form of a beautiful young woman. She sailed through the courtyard in a short, tight dress, her black hair fresh and sleek, flashing under the lights, everyone gaping at her as she passed. She was followed by her man, a big, sullen type with tattoos under his t-shirt, taking slugs from a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor as he stalked behind her. Instantly, and without realizing it, Horner began to spiral through a scenario in his head.

In the scenario, the boyfriend caught him gaping at the girl. Their eyes locked. Horner was slow to look away. The man stepped forward and smashed the bottle over Horner’s head in a spray of beer and glass and blood. The scene was so viscerally satisfying to Horner’s thirst for anger that he replayed it over and over, first moving them to a better-lit part of the courtyard for maximum effect. There, the man smashed the bottle again and again, each explosion more violent than the last. A shard of glass lodged in Horner’s eye. His eye gushed blood, and he became furious, desperate. He came after the man, could see nothing through the pain but understood the brutal fact: it was him or me. He staggered forward, arms raised, ready to fight, fight, fight…

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