Free Like People in History by Felice Picano Page B

narrowly, so that while on one side we hugged flower-and vine-covered retaining walls with steep little stairways leading up to front and side entrances, on the other side we overlooked little more than the roofs of other houses, or an occasional carport, sometimes a group of trees, beyond which I caught sudden glimpses of abysslike drops, and beyond them an immense sweep which Cousin Diana assured me at various points was "the valley," then confused me by calling "the city," although the two views looked alike and in the second one I could make out nothing from this distance even vaguely like an urhs —no skyscrapers, no public buildings, nothing but miles upon miles of evenly ranged rectangular blocks of single-story houses, surrounded by greenness and outlined by the omnipresent palms.
    The Chrysler arrived at a longer though not straighter road—Laurel Canyon Boulevard—and after driving a few miles, we turned off again and commenced to wind around the city and valley until we reached a second wide road, which she assured me was Coldwater Canyon, though it looked the same to me. A dozen turns later, we were on a long dirt road ascending deep into dry chaparral.
    "I hate this part," Cousin Diana said as we approached and bumped hard over a rough apex of dirt road. Ahead I saw that our route suddenly dropped onto a wide apron of peninsula high above its surroundings, stripped bare of foliage, upon which a dozen long irregular foundations and three halfway completed houses perched, arranged more or less around a splayed semicircle of dirt lane evidently later to be paved. Tractors, steam shovels, dump trucks, flatbeds, and pickups littered the area. At least twenty workmen were in sight, busy at various tasks. I assumed this was the "project" she'd mentioned as we'd left the airport, but I was most struck by how very high and isolated it all was, overlooking the surrounding land the way a medieval castle lorded it over its demesne.
    I was drawn to the spectacular view. While Cousin Diana parked and strode about looking for someone—Alfred? Dario?—I walked as close to the edge of the butte as I could, bypassing a gigantic hole which I supposed had been dug for a future swimming pool. From where I stood on the cliff, it must have been close to six hundred feet down. Far below, a double-lane road unfurled aimlessly through more dry, wooded hills, which seemed to go on and on in gnarled humps to the horizon in every direction.
    "I wager you don't have anything like this back east," a man's voice said in a British accent.
    Astonishing really that Oxonian voice, given that the person containing it looked like another of the laborers on the property, by now finishing work for the day and beginning to drive off. Tall, shambling, wearing filthy overalls and no shirt to hide his dirt-streaked, potbellied, straggly-haired torso, but a crushed and tar-stained, overwashed powder-blue baseball cap that shadowed his shaggy eyebrows and deep-set eyes, the man smiled crookedly through an unkempt mustache and beard, and when I didn't answer, he asked, "I'm not mistaken? You are the cousin?"
    I stood up to say yes and introduce myself and to shake his hand, but it was so dirty he wouldn't and I couldn't.
    "Alfred Descoyne at your service, sir!" He gestured what might have been a bow at me. "Named after the old Poet Laureate. Or the West Saxon king who let the old lady's corn cakes burn to a crisp. Never quite sure which. Al to my friends and the men here. But Alfred at the house, what with Alfred and Alistair and too many Al's altogether, if you get my drift."
    Behind us we heard Cousin Diana's throaty shout.
    "Her Grace," Alfred said, indifferently nodding back to where Cousin Diana was picking her way toward us through various pieces of equipment. Looking me up and down, Alfred said, "You look fit enough. If ever you want to get your hands blackened, you're welcome to give a hand here. We're behind schedule and always short of help and