Our pied-à-terre became his way station and laboratory. I was the beneficiary and got to watch the master at work and the rooms evolved around me. I’d return home from work to find him reclining on the sofa with a cocktail and the neighborhood alley cat he’d tamed purring softly in his lap. Cocktail hour would be a litany of the horrors of the day and dreams of a better tomorrow.
Recently he’d painted swaths of dusty mauve on the living room walls to test out a color of his own invention he called “dead trout.” He proclaimed it would be his signature color, “Dead trout is too chic.” When I return to Los Angeles I will certainly paint the rest of the apartment this color.
It’s hard not to sound proprietary when talking about Paul. His friendship made you feel like you were special and he was the only one who really understood you. But Paul made all of his friends feel that way. I’ve heard people say, “I wouldn’t be the person I am today without Paul,” “Paul helped us to start our business,” “I would have been out on the street if it hadn’t been for Paul,” “Paul literally saved my life,” and so on.
He had a huge influence on people. He nurtured the people he cared for and made you feel like you could do anything you put your mind to because that’s exactly what he did. “Well, that’s simple, darling, now let’s shut up and do it!”
Paul was a mentor to me and so many people, but I never remember him ever telling me what to do. He didn’t give advice, he was never prescriptive, he simply gave you his time and attention. If he thought something was crap he’d let you know. “Too chic” was the highest praise and a “Well, I don’t know, darling…” with a pinched sideways smile was his kind way of saying, “I think you can do better.”
Two years ago we spent a quiet Thanksgiving weekend at the house in Ojai he cleverly named Rancho Refugio. This was his “refuge” from the work-a-day life he left behind in Los Angeles. The joke was that it was a 1980s ranch-style house, and not a horse ranch.
That weekend we were all exhausted from work and mostly kept to ourselves. Paul set up shop on the deck of the house, Chris worked in the garden and polished “Joyce,” his 1967 Rolls-Royce, and I napped and read in the sleeping berth of the guesthouse, a beautifully retrofitted airstream trailer, sort of the Ojai version of La Casita.
For dinner Paul made a turkey meatloaf and some roasted vegetables from the farmers market, and we had what he called an “easy-peasy Thanksgiving.” I brought up a few bottles of “that surprising white Burgundy” he liked from Greenblatt’s Deli: “It’s cheap and delicious and the bottle isn’t bad looking.”
After dinner we drove up to an outlook in the mountains to walk a parcel of land they had their eye on. We hiked in about a half mile to where the forest opened up into a clearing. Paul described how the house would be situated, which way the sun moved, where he wanted a terrace and what time of day you’d want to be out there. He could see it all in his mind and Chris could too. It occurred to me that Paul had finally found his refuge there with Chris. They were “easy-peasy” too.
We hiked further along the trail and into another clearing that opened onto a stupefying vista that felt like you were looking down into the Ojai valley from Valhalla. I was awestruck.
We all stood there staring out for a while without saying anything. Then Paul turned back to me and sighed, “You just can’t beat mother nature, doll.”
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