A Place out of Time

By Jon David Douglas

A Place Out of Time
by Jon David Douglas

Hidden worlds, witches, cultural conflict!

Ralph Sutherland, a novelist, and his wife Elizabeth, formerly a publishers editor-both sophisticated New Yorkers, are settling into life in the village of Pleasant View, in New York state. Ralph has burnt out as a novelist, losing his money and property through extravagance and imprudence. Elizabeth has had a miscarriage because of her careless lifestyle. Their present relationship is cool although they express love for one another.

Then Ralph discovers a tiny hamlet, Paradise, concealed-since the 1700s-deep in the Adirondack woods behind their home. When a developer threatens the tranquility of Pleasant View and the very existence of the hidden isolated village, he must solve personal dilemmas and enter the political arena to fight for the survival of both communities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 22, 2004
• ISBN: 9781465330673

Book preview

Chapter 1

Bending over the newly cultivated soil in his vegetable garden, Ralph Sutherland made a long straight furrow with his hoe along the string attached to stakes on each side of the garden. This is where I’ll plant the peas, he decided. He passed the back of his hand over his forehead to wipe the sweat away as the hot sun beat down relentlessly from a cloudless cobalt-blue sky. Taking off his gloves, he removed his gray T-shirt. His shoulders crimsoned into a sunburn as he continued working down the row beside where the string beans had been planted. He knew that’s where they were, because he had stuck the empty seed packet at the end of the row with a small wooden stick.

The sun’s warmth felt wonderful after the long winter, Ralph reflected. The cold-hardy plants he planted this morning were normally fine for early spring planting because, of course, there were bound to be more nights of frost, in spite of the unusual warm early spring weather in the Adirondacks. Pleasant View’s weekly newspaper, The Northern Ledger reported it was the warmest temperatures for this time of year, since records had been kept. Still you couldn’t count on it in the Adirondacks. Maybe it was caused by the global warming that everyone warned about nowadays, he concluded.

Suddenly, even though the day was unusually warm for spring, Ralph shivered. There was that eerie feeling again, the uneasy sensation that someone or something was watching him. He glanced down the slope toward the pond. Nobody there, only a beaver at the edge of the water, busily repairing his home. He looked in the other direction, to his rustic log home, backed by a wall of pines in the green park-like setting.

Honey! he called. Honey! he repeated even louder.

He struggled upright to his full six-foot height, rubbing his gloved hands on his pants to free the clinging dirt. He was a slender, dark-haired man in his mid-thirties, wearing Levi’s, his T-shirt now hanging from a back pocket. Cupping his hands around his mouth he shouted, Elizabeth! toward the house.

What is it? What’s the matter? Elizabeth asked, bursting out the screen door onto the wooden deck, a look of panic on her face. What’s all the shouting about?

I just wondered where you were, what you’re doing, said Ralph. Were you looking out the window just now – watching me?

Is that all? she answered, leaning on the railing. "Oh Ralph, you’re so self-centered. Believe it or not, I don’t have time to watch you all the time! No, I was not looking out the window. I was in the laundry room getting ready to wash the garden dirt out of your clothes. Don’t scare me like that. And I really wish you’d be more careful. Oh look! Now you’ve got dirt all over your forehead."

Don’t worry, it’ll wash off.

I know, but please try to keep clean just for once. You drag in so much dirt and mud, it’s driving me crazy, trying to keep the house neat and clean. I don’t like to be washing and cleaning all day. I didn’t earn a Phi Beta Kappa key to do laundry and housework every day. I never expected to be married to a plain dirt farmer.

Don’t say anything, you’re one too! he said, but then thought to himself – oh, oh she’s getting into one of her tizzies. But he went on. What about your herb garden? Don’t you bring in your fair share of dirt, too?

Oh, honestly! I guess I do. Sorry to be such a nag, she laughed. Elizabeth was an attractive woman in her early thirties with long-lashed green eyes and straight, shoulder-length light brown hair. She wore a brown jumper over her long-sleeved black turtleneck and tights on her long shapely legs. She still looked much like the same young preppie girl he had first met in a publisher’s office in New York when Irving Finestein, the CEO, introduced her as the senior copy editor at Baush Publishing.

As long as she was outside anyway, Elizabeth rearranged and watered plants on the sill of the window that overlooked the deck. Ralph picked up his tools, putting them away in the storage shed at the end of the driveway. He washed his hands using the garden hose, pulled on his T-shirt, climbed the steps to the deck, settled into a cushioned chaise lounge and watched Elizabeth with her plants. Still quite a looker, he thought, closing his eyes and recalling the day ten years ago when he had first met her. He wasn’t so sure he liked her then.

* * *

The three of them were in Finestein’s office. When Finestein introduced Elizabeth, Ralph thought she was attractive, but he was upset to learn she’d be editing his work. She left immediately after meeting him, throwing Ralph a broad smile.

What do you mean, she’s going to edit my book? he asked as soon as she had closed the door behind her. I need editing? I’ve just put four years and all my efforts into that manuscript.

"Every book needs editing. Don’t worry, Liz is the best there is. Take my word for it, said Irving. She wrote a best seller that we published even before she graduated at the head of her class at Vassar."

As you know, I studied writing at NYU, and that wasn’t exactly a party-school either, Ralph protested. She seems so young.

"Okay, so she’s young, but remember she’s about your age, Finestein pointed out. We hired her right out of school, but we trained her thoroughly in our methods. Ralph, I guarantee you’ll be happy with Liz. If you’ll look at our list of best sellers each year since we hired her, you’ll see she edited every one of them. True she didn’t write them, but she supervised editing them. She keeps us on our toes. She is probably the reason we’re the most successful publishers of current fiction in the world today. She’s an editor, but oh so much more."

Well, okay, I suppose you’re right, Ralph grudgingly admitted.

Besides, it’s in the contract you signed, remember? Since it’s your first book, we have requested editorial revision rights. Read your contract or ask your agent.

When Ralph walked out of the office, he noticed that Elizabeth was still in the reception area talking to someone, probably another writer. Apparently she was wrapping up the conversation.

He hovered near. Elizabeth, Ralph asked, when she had finished, would you care to join me for coffee at Starbuck’s on the street level?

Well, I’m really busy – would you mind if we had coffee in my office so I can take calls, if necessary? My secretary will get the coffee, and we can get to know each other a bit. I don’t have much time. It’s a busy morning. Regular?

No, black will be fine.

Trust me, Mr. Sutherland she said over her coffee, I want to make your book so popular it’ll be in every bookstore and major library in the United States. I want you to be as big a success as you do, believe me. Ralph warmed to Liz and decided that he liked her.

He sent her flowers three weeks in a row, took her to a Broadway play the next week, the Guggenheim Museum a week later. Ralph worked at an ad agency on Madison Avenue, only three city blocks from her office. So during noon hours he started to drop by the office to see her and say hello. To the surprise of friends on both sides, they were married after a very brief courtship. As she predicted, in less than a year his novel, Used Body, was in almost every bookstore in the country and on seven-day waiting lists in each library he checked. The publicist and his new agent helped get him personal appearances on several television talk shows. After he made a guest appearance on Oprah his book showed up on the New York Times best sellers list by the end of the month. Then it was out to California for Jay Leno, and on to a promotional tour that included book signings in Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver, Chicago, and Cleveland.

His second and third novels came out a year apart. Bookstores sold out of his hardcover within hours of their going on sale. He became a celebrity and he lived as one. Their combined incomes were sizable. From the Village they moved to a fashionable New York penthouse apartment in Sutton Place. Elizabeth had it decorated by a leading designer, they purchased paintings from Sothebys and new paintings by up and coming young artists exhibited at small galleries. Invest in art, their friends advised. It can only increase in value. As a hobby Elizabeth took Saturday art classes in Soho and became a passable painter. Ralph thought she was quite good and placed her oil of a Central Park scene on the wall over his computer. She started a roof garden and became interested in natural healing through herbs, buying and growing exotic plants thought to have medicinal powers.

They went out every night. Ralph started dressing as he thought the public imagined authors dressed: tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows, coordinated cravats at the neck. He quit cigarettes, but took up pipe smoking. He was good looking, with regular features, brown eyes, and expensively cut dark brown hair. The author image was there all right. Ralph and his attractive wife were on the must-invite list for the parties in just the right circles. Everybody thought they were the perfect couple.

One day an interviewer asked him, What are you working on now, Mr. Sutherland?

He had to admit to himself and the reporter that he hadn’t written much in the preceding six months. He was already spending the advance, but he realized that he really didn’t know what he was working on, and he hadn’t been able meet deadlines because what he had written didn’t seem to be going anywhere. He began to dress in Levi’s, bare feet, sweatshirts, the way he used to dress when he created. Day after day, he sat at the computer, but nothing significant seemed to gel. Then one day Elizabeth told him she was pregnant.

His agent arranged a meeting between Ralph and some movie people. They proposed that not only would he sell the film rights of Used Body, but as a certified Writers’ Guild of America member, he’d work on the screen adaptation himself. Paramount offered an absurdly high bonus and a liberal fee to work on the script. Ralph thought it might be a solution for his creative crisis and provide them with needed income. The difficulty was that he would have to move to Los Angeles for immediate production.

Elizabeth was not pleased, "I didn’t think this would involve your having to be in Hollywood. I’m telling you right now, I won’t move to California – I just won’t. I want to be near my mother when the baby comes."

Annabelle could fly out when you have the baby.

What about the rest of my family, and my friend Nancy?

Honey, but I have to do this. I’m going to get my career back. I have the best opportunity anyone ever had and I can’t throw it away. You could grow to like Southern California.

Elizabeth stomped upstairs to the bedroom and slammed the door. She opened the door a minute later, stuck her head out and shouted down the stairs to Ralph. New York is the center of the world – my world anyway! She walked back into the bedroom. California is Loonie Tunes. I simply won’t move, and that’s that!

"Well I have to go, and that’s THAT he said, coming upstairs and following her into the bedroom. I don’t want us to be split apart. I ask you again, please come with me. Stop being so damn difficult!"

Elizabeth retreated into the bathroom and flushed the toilet to drown out his pleas.

Ralph flew to Los Angeles by himself. From his window seat on American he could see the haze thickening to smog over LA as he landed. He walked out of the terminal into a warm world of exhaust fumes, bright lights in the center of make-believe. From the window of the taxi during the long ride to the Beverly Hills Hotel he noticed oil wells pumping here and there beside the freeway. It seemed unreal.

The next day he took a cab to Paramount Studios. An assistant producer showed him around the studio lot and the small office where he would work. Ralph’s heart-beat quickened and he inwardly became frightened that he wouldn’t be able to write an acceptable script. That afternoon he met with others on the creative team. He ate bite size cheese cubes with fresh fruit and drank California wine at a small informal welcome party that a secretary had quickly put together in his honor. After a few glasses of white wine he admitted his fears to the assistant producer.

I’ve never written a script, Ralph said confidentially. I hope I don’t have trouble with the format.

Don’t worry. We’ve got some excellent writers on the project.

Other writers? What’s going on? I thought I was going to adapt my own work. I supposed that’s what I was being paid to do.

Get used to it. This is the way we work out here. You can do the first draft of the adaptation – we’ll rewrite it anyway. These guys know how to get the script in a usable form fast. They’re pros, they make necessary changes in the plot and storyline to conform with other current films that have performed well. We’ve talked intensely about your book and decided it has way too much sadness in it, especially the prostitute committing suicide near the end. We want to lighten it up a bit. You can’t kill off the main character, especially if it’s Julia Roberts, who we have in mind for the part. She’s attractive as you know. In your story you have the female protagonist kind of ugly.

That’s why her business isn’t so good and why she can’t seem to get married, even though she wants to and tries and tries, protested Ralph. That’s her frustration.

The producer went on, We’re going to lose that. She’ll be pretty and marry a professional football player she meets at a post Super Bowl party. It’ll be a serious comedy.

That’s not how the book goes. I wrote it as a tragedy.

Listen, we need star appeal. If Roberts agrees to come on board, she wants a male hunk in the picture. Someone like Tom Cruise – not him of course, he’ll only do starring roles, but she’ll get what she wants, maybe a promising young Australian actor we have our eye on.

But I . . .

"Don’t bother arguing, we now own the screen rights to your book, so we’ll do whatever we have to do to your story. You know how to write, but we know how to make pictures. So, we’ll change the ending if we have to. We want people to feel good after they see the film. You know most projects never make it to the screen. Or maybe if they do, they don’t break even. So we will make sure it does. We’re talking big bucks. This film will cost millions to produce – we mean to make it all back and more. Those are the facts of life. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. Relax. Let it happen."

Okay, I’ll take your word for it, but I’m surprised you even bought my book if you didn’t like it that much.

"Oh we like it all right, but we just want to like it even more. A good book is just the beginning, but then it’s the attachments that make it sell at the box office. What do you care? You’ll get your money anyway."

When he found that the studio had three contract writers on the adaptation who actually knew how to write a script, he made an art of idleness and simply went Hollywood.

They really don’t need me, he confessed to Elizabeth when he talked to her by phone the next day.

Why don’t you come home then?

I’ve got a contract to stay until the picture’s finished – at least sixteen months. I have to be on the set all during production for script changes, as needed. You know we can use the money. It’s big bucks. We’ll need it with the baby on the way. I hope you feel okay.

I’m okay, don’t worry about me. I just I hope they don’t screw up your book too much.

Ralph looked at a rack of sunglasses at Nordstrom’s. He tried on a pair with large black wraparound lenses.

Do you think these glasses are too much? he asked the sales clerk.

No, they’re cool. If you notice, practically everybody here wears them day or night.

Next he looked for a place to live. He rode around with an attractive blonde real estate agent in her BMW convertible.

For your image and reputation you should have a prestigious address. she said. Let’s just scout the area so I can get an idea of your needs. First they went to Beverly Hills. The agent nodded toward a Tudor mansion, Twenty-one million, Cher and Sonny Bono used to live there for a time during their marriage.

Twenty-one million? Wow. In New York, it wouldn’t be more than five million.

California pricing.

No, I’m afraid it’s too expensive, he said. I won’t be here that long, I don’t want to stay in a hotel, but that’s way too much.

Everything is expensive out here. Then Beverly Hills will be out of the question, I’m afraid. You’re in the industry, you have to keep up a successful appearance.

Well I don’t want east LA, but show me something less expensive in your listings.

They went to Brentwood and Bel-Air. Many screen stars live in this vicinity, the agent said. It’s not quite as prestigious as Beverly Hills, but it’s a very desirable area. She pulled into a long driveway of a home where a famous silent screen star once lived. This place is a steal at seven million. That includes all the furnishings.

He shook his head. Too dated-looking, too large, and still too expensive. Looks like the Metropolitan museum.

They drove along Mulholland Drive. This area will be too expensive also. She finally showed him a contemporary three-bedroom home cantilevered over a cliff in Coldwater Canyon.

Perhaps this is in your price range, she said enthusiastically, just nine hundred fifty thousand. It belongs to an entertainment lawyer who lived here before he was divorced. Frankly, now he’s afraid of fire and mud-slides. So, it’s a real bargain – worth much more for the scenic location alone. But, because of the canyon fires last year, I usually don’t show this and it’s not my listing. At the moment the view is a mess – but wait a few months. Just picture it when it greens up a little. It’s been on the market almost a year and the owner has recently dropped the price and will finance, because he’s trying to relocate to Miami.

Okay, that’s more like it. Let’s take a look.

The small comfortable modern home of brick and redwood was set on the edge of the natural beauty of the rugged Hollywood hills. Most of the property was vertical. Inside it was charming. He liked the cathedral ceilings. There was a fireplace in the corner of the bedroom. A balcony, wrapped along two sides of the house overlooking dazzling scenery, opened from the living-room. He could see himself having cocktails there, unwinding after a busy day at the studio.

I like it, but I can’t believe it’s worth nearly a million.

"Well, California, you know. Perhaps he’ll take it, if you make a lower offer. I notice it’s been on the market for some time and I think he wants out of this part of his life. Since you’re only going to be here a relatively short time, you can no doubt sell at a profit when you want to leave, by then the view should recover, then it’ll move fast on the market and consequently this home will be no cost to you whatsoever."

I like that. Okay, let’s try it. Write an offer for eight-fifty, and tell the owner I’ll pay cash, I don’t want a long drawn-out expensive mortgage. We can close right away. An easy closing for you. And if I get it, I’ll re-list it with you, when it comes time to sell.

The agent broke into a broad smile. I think you’ll like it here.

No doubt about it.

The owner accepted the offer, but Ralph had trouble getting home insurance. Agent after agent said, It’s a beautiful house, but with the high incidence of mud slides and recent brush fires there, not to mention the possible structural damage from inevitable earthquakes, the coverage will be astronomical, you understand, because it’s a big risk.

Oh, so I’ve got this nice house . . . now I discover I can’t afford to insure it?

California.

Well, okay, Ralph thought, so that’s the way it is. I don’t like it, but I can’t break the contract. I’ll just have to risk it. So what if I don’t bother with insurance just now? What’s the chance that something will happen in a few short months? I probably won’t need it at all, anyway. I’ll save myself some money – money I’d just throw out the window, it won’t be that long! I’ll be in and out.

He stopped at a Mercedes showroom in his rented car and inspected a red sedan. You have this in a convertible model don’t you?

The salesman grinned, Of course. You’re in luck. In the back of the showroom.

Every day he drove to the Paramount lot with his top down. He avoided the morning rush hour by not driving to the studio until after nine a.m. Nobody seemed in a hurry. No one cared what time he arrived in his office. That wasn’t important, because he automatically approved the script pages already written by the other writers the night before, or in the morning in the hours before he arrived. Actually, the writing wasn’t bad. Once in a while he would correct a tiny punctuation or spelling error. He’d get credit on the screen as the original writer, for whatever promotional value that had.

Chapter 2

Ralph told Elizabeth on the phone, There’s so little for me to do. I go from one party to another, sometimes even in the middle of the afternoon!

Don’t complain, said Elizabeth. Sounds like fun to me.

That afternoon Ralph attended a party held in a house an associate producer had rented from an Ambassador to South Africa. If he’s in Africa, he remarked to an attractive young woman at the bar, why does he have a place in Beverly Hills – halfway around the world from there?

Oh, he used to spend a lot of time here. You don’t think Desmond spends every weekend in darkest Africa, do you? He leaves every chance he gets. Problem is, he’s got another place in Aruba and he can’t get out of his long lease here, so he rents it out when he can.

In New York Elizabeth continued to live in the fast lane, just as she always had, with daily literary luncheons and evening art openings. Though she’d tried recreational drugs, she didn’t use them now because of the baby, but in spite of her doctor’s advice, she dropped in at bars for relaxation after work with her friend, Nancy Wells.

Almost every afternoon Elizabeth’s phone would ring. This is Nancy, ‘Lizbeth. Want to meet me in twenty at the usual watering hole?

Of course, said Elizabeth, I’m too bored to go home without Ralph there.

Nancy worked at CBS as secretary to a top network programming executive. She was blonde, bubbly, and Elizabeth’s best friend. After work Elizabeth and Nancy met at 21 Club, around the corner from CBS, where they encountered publishing friends, acquaintances from advertising agencies, and television network executives. While Nancy slammed down martinis on-the-rocks until it was time to go to another cocktail party, Elizabeth mostly drank ginger ale, but sometimes an occasional good Chablis. "After all, I’m not a member of the Temperance Union. A little wine can’t hurt me that much."

This is a semi-final, so please give me two olives, Nancy shouted over the noise to the bartender. She turned to Elizabeth and laughed, I like olives. Mother says I should eat a green vegetable every day, and this will sure be as close as I’ll get to one tonight.

Elizabeth didn’t let her condition slow her. She didn’t show an inch and she didn’t feel the normal discomfort of pregnancy, or so she informed Ralph.

He often tried to call her from California, but the time-zone difference made it difficult to reach her at convenient times. He started calling her from the parties he attended. One night he tried every fifteen minutes until she picked up the phone.

Where the hell have you been? he asked. I’ve been calling all night. All I get is our damn answering machine.

I was out with Nancy, there was a wonderful charity reception for the Heart Association over at Trump Tower.

You’d better watch it. Liz, try to be responsible. You’re pregnant . . . you shouldn’t be drinking and staying out so late.

I only have a tiny amount, one or two.

Well, that’s two, too many.

And I’m used to staying up late. Besides I’m lonely here without anybody. What about you? I notice you’re up late, too.

Ralph looked at his watch. But it’s only 11:30 out here and I’m not the one who’s pregnant.

Don’t worry about me, Elizabeth said and changed the subject. How’s the script going?

"I don’t really know. Okay, I guess. Hey, listen to this – I’m going to a party Thursday night at the house where Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford lived while they were building Pickfair. It was the house Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson used in the movie, A Star is Born, remember? It’s being rented by Don Ross, the Used Body executive producer. He just moved in. Everybody is always moving in or out of one fabulous house or another. I guess it depends on whether they’re working or not."

Maybe you should have rented a place too.

I could have leased a place instead of buying . . . but I thought I’d be just throwing money away on a rental. The leases run plenty high, too. I wish you were here with me. I really miss you.

I know, I miss you too. Nancy and I are going to a party at the Guggenheim Thursday for The Kidney Foundation.

Ralph admonished, "Don’t you stay out late. You need to be rested and healthy. The way you’re going, you’ll ruin your health. You’ll pay. You could go into one of