“Well, great.”
I got up to leave her office and paused at the door. “If I marry this guy, you have to be the flower girl.”
3
I bypassed my run the next morning, anxious to hit the road. I left Santa Teresa at 6:00 a.m., my car loaded with a duffel, my portable Smith-Corona, the information about Irene Gersh’s mother, my briefcase, miscellaneous junk, and a cooler in which I’d tucked a six-pack of Diet Pepsi, a tuna sandwich, a couple of tangerines, and a Ziploc bag of Henry’s chocolate chip cookies.
I took Highway 101 south, following the coastline past Ventura, where the road begins to cut inland. My little VW whined and strained, climbing the Camarillo grade until it reached the crest, coasting down into Thousand Oaks. By the time I reached the San Fernando Valley, it was nearly seven and rush-hour traffic had crammed the road solidly from side to side. Vehicles were changing lanes with a speed and grace that I think of as street surfing, complete with occasional wipeouts. Smog veiled the basin, blocking out the surrounding mountains so completely that unless you knew they were there, you might imagine the land to be flat as a plate.
At North Hollywood, the 134 splits off, heading toward Pasadena, while the 101 cuts south toward downtown L.A. On a map of the area, the heart of Los Angeles looks like a small hole in the center of a loosely crocheted pink shawl that spreads across Los Angeles County, trailing into Orange County to the south. Converging freeways form a tangle, with high-rise buildings caught in the knot. I’ve never known anyone who actually had business in downtown Los Angeles. Unless you have a yen to see Union Station, Olvera Street, or skid row, the only reason to venture into the neighborhood around Sixth and Spring is to check out the wholesale gold mart for jewelry or the Cooper Building for name-brand clothing discounted to bargain-basement prices. For the most part, you’re better off speeding right on by.
You’ll notice that I’m skipping right over the events of Thursday night. I will say that I did, indeed, stop by Rosie’s for the drink she’d promised, only to discover that she and Henry had arranged a surprise birthday party for me. It was one of those mortifying moments where the lights come up and everybody jumps out from behind the furniture. I couldn’t believe it was happening. Jonah was there, and Vera (the rat-who hadn’t breathed a word of it when I’d seen her earlier), Darcy and Mac from CFI, Moza from down the block, some of the regular bar patrons, and a former client or two. I don’t know why it seems so embarrassing to admit, but they had a cake and actual presents that I had to open on the spot. I don’t like to be surprised. I don’t like to be the center of attention. These were all people I care about, but I found it unnerving to be the object of so much goodwill. I suppose I said all the right things. I didn’t get drunk and I didn’t disgrace myself, but I felt disconnected, like I was having an out-of-body experience. Reflecting on it now in the privacy of my car, I could feel myself smiling. Events like this always seem better to me in retrospect.
The party had broken up at ten. Henry and Jonah walked me home and after Henry excused himself, I showed Jonah the apartment, feeling shy as a bride.
I got the distinct impression he wanted to spend the night, but I couldn’t handle it. I’m not sure why-maybe it was my earlier conversation with Vera-but I felt distant and when he moved to kiss me, I found myself easing away.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. It’s just time for me to be alone.”
“Did I do something to piss you off?”
“Hey, no. I promise. I’m exhausted, that’s all. The party tonight just about did me in. You know me. I don’t do well in situations like that.”
He smiled, his teeth flashing white. “You should have seen the look on your face. It was great. I think it’s funny to see you caught off-guard.” He was leaning against the door, with his hands behind his back, the light from the kitchen painting one side of his face with a warm yellow glow. I found myself taking a mental picture of him: blue eyes, dark hair. He looked tired. Jonah is a Santa Teresa cop who works the missing persons detail, which is how we’d met almost a year ago. I really wasn’t sure what I felt for him at this point. He’s kind, confused, a good man who wants to do the right thing, whatever that is. I understood his dilemma with his wife and I didn’t blame him for his part in it. Of course, he was going to vacillate. He has two young daughters who complicate the matter no end. Camilla had left him twice, taking the girls with her both times. He’d managed to do all right without her, but the first time she crooked her little finger, he’d gone running back. It had been push-pull since then, double messages. In November, she’d decided they should have an “open marriage,” which he figured was a euphemism for her screwing around on him. He felt that freed him up to get involved with me, but I was reasonably certain he’d never mentioned it to her. How “open” could this open marriage be? While I didn’t want much from the relationship, I found it disquieting that I never knew where I stood. Sometimes he behaved like a family man, taking his girls to the zoo on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes he acted like a bachelor father, doing exactly the same thing. He and his daughters spent a lot of time staring at the monkeys while Camilla did God knows what. For my part, I felt like a peripheral character in a play I wouldn’t have paid to see. I didn’t need the aggravation, to tell you the truth. Still, it’s hard to complain when I’d known his marital status from the outset. Hey, no sweat, I’d thought. I’m a big girl. I can handle it. Clearly, I hadn’t the slightest idea what I was getting into.
“What’s that expression?” he said to me.
I smiled. “That’s good night. I’m bushed.”
“I’ll get out of here then and let you get some sleep. You’ve got a great place. I’ll expect a dinner invitation when you get back.”
“Yeah, you know how much I love to cook.”
“We’ll send out.”
“Good plan.”
“You call me.”
“I’ll do that.”
Truly, the best moment of the day came when I was finally by myself. I locked the front door and then circled the perimeter, making sure the windows were securely latched. I turned out the lights downstairs and climbed my spiral staircase to the loft above. To celebrate my first night in the apartment, I ran a bath, dumping in some of the bubblebath Darcy had given me for my birthday. It smelled like pine trees and reminded me of janitorial products employed by my grade school. At the age of eight, I’d often wondered what maintenance wizard came up with the notion of throwing sawdust on barf.
I turned the bathroom light off and sat in the steaming tub, looking out the window toward the ocean, which was visible only as a band of black with a wide swath of silver where the moon cut through the dark. The trunks of the sycamores just outside the window were a chalky white, the leaves pale gray, rustling together like paper in the chill spring breeze. It was hard to believe there was somebody out there hired to kill me. I’m well aware that immortality is simply an illusion we carry with us to keep ourselves functional from day to day, but the idea of a murder contract was inconceivable to me.
The bathwater cooled to lukewarm and I let it galumph away, the sound reminding me of every bath I’d ever taken. At midnight, I slid naked between the brand-new sheets on my brand-new bed, staring up through the skylight. Stars lay on the Plexiglas dome like grains of salt, forming patterns the Greeks had named centuries ago. I could identity the Big Dipper, even the Little Dipper sometimes, but I’d never seen anything that looked even remotely like a bear, a belt, or a scuttling crab. Maybe those guys smoked dope back then, lying on their backs near the Parthenon, pointing at the stars and bullshitting the night away. I wasn’t even aware that I had fallen asleep until the alarm jolted me back to reality again.
I focused on the road, glancing down occasionally at the map spread open on the passenger seat. Joshua Tree National Monument and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park were blocked out in dark green, shaped like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. The national forests were tinted a paler green, while the Mojave itself was a pale beige, mountain ranges shaded in the palest brushstrokes. Much of the desert would never be civilized and that was cheering somehow. While I’m not a big fan of nature, its intractability amuses me no end. At the San Bernardino/Riverside exit, the arms of the freeway crisscross, sweeping upward, like some vision of the future in a 1950s textbook. Beyond, there is nothing on either side of the road but telephone lines, canyons the color of brown sugar, fences of wire with tumbleweeds blown against them. In the distance, a haze of yellow suggested that the mesquite was in bloom again.