During these years many solid friendships developed. Some died for lack of nourishment. I look on them now as I would dried flowers pressed in a book of memories. They are often hard to recognize as the people I once loved.
How to keep them alive? ... maybe Westlake Village is the answer.
The town I live in is the model for Westlake Village. It's not a perfect model, and I've been forced to make alterations here and there so the story and the people in it ring true. The people who live in Westlake Village are people I've known all my life. In many ways it is a simulated village of the mind which I have designed and built in my own way as a habitat for my friends, some living, some gone.
In the world of words and quiet contemplation, such things are possible. A boyhood friend or a never-to-be-forgotten female flame can come back with all flags flying and live again in Westlake Village. Through the magic of writing and reading all of us are blessed with the ability to live in the past, the present, and the future. It is a special gift of writers to create and recreate them. It is no less a gift for the reader to join hands with the writer and venture down this road of recreation. I have made the past, present, and future the foundation of Westlake Village.
I find it frustrating to look too closely at the present. It's hardly committed to paper before it's history, and each earth-shattering event of the passing day is washed away as a new wave washes in. Memory is a writer's best friend, for with it he (or she) can live in a present that never passes.
I know that sounds obscure. I hate when people try to pull that on me. But it's true none-the-less, and it's something I've come to believe in.
The publisher of the "Guardian" is a man I worked for long ago who printed street flyers on pink, blue, yellow and green paper. He worked at night and delivered them during the day. His secretary Stacey is from another generation. She was a friend of my daughter and at the present age of 43 has two fatherless children. Florida, bless her soul, was a client of ours at "Neighborhood House," an organization my wife talked me into joining. Florida came in weekly for clothing and subsistence and never left without bear-hugging the life out of both of us. Old Dick, Angelo the barber, Tim Clancy, Ardsley, and Lotte with the twisted spine are people who have shared life with me in earlier times but now have taken up residence in this ever-present world of Westlake Village.
I have never been able to build a fence between fiction and non-fiction, and I don't know if the Westlake series is one or the other, or maybe something in between. When I consider that Michener's Tales of the South Pacific and Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath won Pulitzer Prizes for fiction, I wonder if there is a line at all. I am not suggesting that the Westlake stories are anywhere near such a level, but they are concerned with real people in real places doing things I'm sure they would have done had they lived here.
If you have a good memory, a long active life behind you, and if you can still see to the next bend in the road, count your blessings. Fiction based on life's experiences is a form of immortality, not for the writer, but for the people he loved and who made him what he is.
Every morning, weather and health permitting, I walk in cadence all the way to the Dairy Barn to get the "Times." It's two miles there and back, and I arrive just about the time the newspapers do.
Dairy Barns are built to serve people in automobiles, people barely awake enough to drive. There are no tables or chairs inside. Customers on foot, like the pigeons that keep the place free of crumbs, have to be on their toes. I usually shuffle in, take the second paper from the top (never the top one), give my sixty cents to Julio and go. Julio's the runner and Tony's the chef-he keeps the coffee machine full and butters the bagels.
Lotte was there this morning. Lotte is an elderly, raven-haired lady with a twisted spine. She lives alone in a rented room on Westwood Avenue. Thirty years ago her husband left her for a more attractive woman. With assistance from the government and the Catholic Church, Lotte raised her two children and supported two male friends who lived with her from time to time. All of them are gone now. From the beginning life has given Lotte the back of its hand, and while it's taken a toll on her appearance, it has not dimmed her soul. She is an outgoing woman, effusive in her greetings, and more than willing to accept her shortcomings as God's will. Most people avoid her if they can-she will talk your ear off if you don't.
Today she sat like Quasimoto on a stool in the Dairy Barn and gummed her bagel down while passing the time of day with Julio and Tony. Occasionally she shouted greetings to customers through the open door. I knew she was waiting for Father Stanley.
Father Stanley arrived about this time. Rather than driving through, he parked outside, because Father Stan has a gentlemen's agreement with his parishioners to play their numbers in the state lotto. They figure their chances are better with Father Stan on their side. Father Stan does not trust Julio's accuracy with numbers and operated the lotto machine himself. It was while Lotte was waiting for Father Stan to finish and drive her to early mass that she caught my eye.
"I had a hip replacement," she announced, and slid off the stool. She wriggled her hips and shoulders in a provocative manner an inch or two this way and that and gave me a nearly toothless grin. Approaching closer, she inquired about my 'love life.' She was careful to keep her voice down in respect for Father Stan who was busy punching numbers into the lotto machine. No question about it, it was an onion bagel. I should have known.
I blushed as only a man of 79 can blush and assured her that my 'love life' was full to overflowing. It was probably a mistake; I should have told her the truth. At my age sex is not only on the back burner, but the gas is not turned on. The joy of being granted another day of living, however diminished it may be, is a blessing. It is all I can honestly ask for.
But the honest truth would have ruined both her day and mine. Old people, like Lotte and me, must play the game. The game of life.