Adultescence: a novella

Mulberry Grove

6.

An Eastern European chauffeur met Nathe at the airport, but none of Castle's goons were there to greet him. He didn't know if Castle actually had 'goons,' but that was who he expected. Somehow he imagined every aspect of Castle's affairs had its basis in cinema. The chauffeur chatted with him about the weather and the surrounding landscape, as it turned from blasted urban industrial to the lush Mediterranean climate on the leeward side of coastal mountains. Mulberry Grove, Castle's sprawling estate was located a full hour outside the city in an unspoiled natural setting, ringed by native walnut trees and horse pastures, on the outskirts of a small town so picture perfect, so quintessentially wholesome-looking in that 'Aw-shucks' American way that it seemed like one of Castle's elaborate digital illusions.

The property was so large, in fact, that for all Nathe knew Castle owned half the mountain behind the enormous house and its satellite buildings. And for all its faux-Victorian fakery, making a rather strong contrast with the Spanish Villa-inspired architecture of the town, the huge manse was tastefully done. If Dickens had ever lived in California, he might have built a home like this.

Nathe was dropped off a good twenty yards from the front door. The driveway didn't permit vehicles to come any closer than that, at least not from the front. Visitors walked up a path of irregular charcoal-grey flagstones leading to the big main door. Keeping motor vehicles at a respectable distance was no doubt meant to give the place a Little House on the Prairie charm, but it intimidated the hell out of a guest like Nathe. As he clanged the large iron knocker, he felt like he was paying a call on the palace of Ali Baba, and that Ali Baba was bound to be unhappy with him.

A chipper young female assistant in a pressed midnight blue skirt and matching jacket met him at the door. She invited him to take a seat on one of two leather sofas that furnished the spacious, sky-lit foyer. But he was too over-awed to sit down. Antique mirrors lined the walls, along with pictures of Castle, his sons and their famous friends taken on movie shoots and lavish vacations around the world. There were several solo shots of Castle receiving various awards (usually technical rather than creative), all of them depreciating with each new round of appealing mediocrities to whom they were annually doled out.

He lived surrounded by reminders of the film franchise that had brought him his spectacular wealth and fame: prototype toys and rare collectibles, movie posters in the style of the 1940s serials that inspired the Mulberry films. It was like a theme-park simulation of some Platonic ideal of 'home' more so than the dwelling of a real family, if not lacking in warmth for all that. But everything about it felt corporate, branded, like walking through the pages of a depressingly opulent catalogue. Indeed it was not unlike the home Nathe's mother had been trying to create out of their shell of a suburban monster house, and in that way, she and Castle were linked in a bizarre aesthetic fraternity with the Führer.

"You must be Natheny," a primordial voice came to him from behind. Nathe turned away from the shelves of fake leather-bound volumes, and there he was, the man he'd adored for as long as he could remember and had since come to despise in almost equal measure. But he was also the first stranger Nathe had dealt with in the past 24 hours who could pronounce his name correctly.

"Yes, I'm... It's really an honour to meet you," he said, as if pre-programmed to do so.

"I trust you had a comfortable flight?"

"Uh, yeah. Thank you." He wondered what miserable fraction of his self-respect would survive this trip.

Physically, Castle was not, to Nathe's surprise, an intimidating man. Not particularly tall, and definitely on the chubby side, with a weak chin, made all the weaker-looking by a bushy moustache, he did have one physical characteristic that lent him great authority, and had more to do with the high regard in which he was held by his vain peers than his mediocre films: he still had a full head of his own hair, a distinguished grey mane that fell in waves and one Superman-esque curl over his forehead. Nature had been kind to Castle, even if the critics hadn't. He still looked like an auteur, whereas if he had gone bald he would have looked like the washed-up sell-out that Nathe believed, and needed, him to be.