I do not know you, Kung-Fu

After a late morning swim, I went alone to Los Jilbertos and sat down at an orange formica table to eat a plate of tacos. A thin, slight man in baggy cotton pants and sandals came in to the small restaurant. I could see his face only in quarter profile but thought he looked familiar. His countenance was mild but disdainful, his complexion, even his lips, a uniformly tanned shade of pale mud. He ordered in a quiet voice that did not carry.

I took a bite of taco but did not take my eyes from him. His haughty demeanor and long fingernails bespoke careful and long-term debauchery, pursued with phlegmatic cruelty. He took some time to explain to the woman behind the counter what he wanted and ended with a single, slightly louder and unsmiling word: “comprende?” The woman answered “comprendo” but looked confused, as if he had asked for something untoward. When he turned sideways to reach into his pocket, I thought, that’s Peter Fonda, who I recently saw on tv pitching a seven cd collection called “The Summer of Love” and looking wasted.

But when I got a better look, I realized that the man wasn’t Peter Fonda but David Carradine. Grasshopper. Kung-Fu. The singer of “I’m Easy.” Uma's Bill. Carradine stepped to the sideboard and filled two small plastic cups with pickled carrots, then waited for his order, motionless as a spider anticipating its prey. When his food was ready he took the white bag from the woman and headed for the door. He saw me and nodded, raised his hand in single-finger supercilious acknowledgement. But then he hesitated, stayed his hand halfway. “I thought I knew you,” he murmured in a quiet voice. No, you do not, I thought but did not say. No, I am not one of your minions, David Carradine, and I have not and will not be party to your corruption.

After my close encounter with celebrity evil, I proceeded to Larry and Sinda’s house. In response to the 112-degree heat, they were reposed on living room couches, Maggie too, soothed by a-c, holding tall drinks and watching a French film. That might sound a bit decadent too, but the mood was much friendlier than David Carradine’s Dementor vibe.

Just after the sun set we went on a drive up towards Coyote Canyon. A local rich person has bought up big chunks of open land in the Borrego Valley, named these parcels, collectively, Galleta Meadows, and sprinkled the lands with numerous life-sized pre-historic creatures. He commissioned a sculptor to build the two dozen or so sheet metal animals--camel-like, elephant-like, turtle-like, and more--and install them in the fields in small groups. They stand in the dead grass, rusty in the heat, strange and intriguing anomalies.

We drove into a lemon grove, down a long corridor of the trees, which grow together in a solid phalanx twenty feet high. At the far edge we got out, and I walked among the trees looking for ripe fruit. At my approach, big cicadas scattered out of thick-growing branches, bouncing off my hat and face and arms. Larry found me and we drifted out of the trees to the edge of the desert, where irrigated monoculture gives way to a far more interesting mix of creosote and catclaw and ocotillo.

Later back at the house, after dark, we all went up to the rooftop deck. Jupiter stood low over the southeastern horizon. Swathes of Milky Way stretched across the big sky. I lay down on a bench and spotted a couple falling stars before Maggie spilled her drink on my head.

Larry said that in Japan there’s a new and popular genre, the cell phone novel. Content arrives via text messaging, either the whole novel at once (the works tend to be shorter than conventional novels), or in installments. A Japanese aficionado told Larry that one of the best things about cell phone novels is that you can delete them immediately after finishing reading. Throwaway literature. I don’t know.