‘I set fire to a buncha stuff as an exorcism,’ Blaike said. ‘The point was to get rid of it, not the fire itself. But I did it in the backyard, near that big eucalyptus?’
‘Ohhhhhhh,’ I said. ‘That was you?’ I had read about it in the Voyager – a fire in someone’s back garden in the Spanish streets, smack in the middle of the driest, deadest month of a dry, dead summer, when everyone was freaking out about the brush in the hills to the north of the state and the neglected forest inland.
‘That was me,’ said Blaike. ‘I got kicked out of CHS.’
‘Permanently?’ said Todd. ‘That doesn’t sound like the CHS I went to.’
‘No, just a semester,’ Blaike said. ‘I didn’t even care. I could have done my work at home with a tutor, but Mom has the most suspicious mind of all moms.’
‘Right,’ Devin said. ‘She knew you would download the assignments and spend all day playing—’
‘Fortnite, yeah,’ said Blaike. ‘Like she doesn’t use every red light to get in a game of Angry Birds. She’s obsessed with it.’ He spoke with the easy scorn of a child who believes his mother will always be there, annoying and dependable. I wasn’t looking forward to breaking the bad news.
‘What do you want on your pizza?’ I said. ‘Each choose one topping and veto one topping, and I’ll work it out.’
‘Artichokes and no anchovies,’ said Todd.
‘Extra cheese, no cat food,’ said Devin. He meant sausage but he had a point.
‘Pepperoni, no pineapple,’ said Blaike.
‘No pineapple is a given,’ I told him. ‘What a compatible carful we are tonight. One extra-large, thin-crust pepperoni, mushroom and artichoke pizza, with double cheese, coming right up. And I’ll get a small spicy Hawaiian with extra anchovies for Noleen and Kathi.’
‘What does Della like on her pizza, Dev?’ Todd said.
‘Salmon.’
Todd pulled a sharp breath in over his teeth. ‘Ouch,’ he said. ‘Sorry, man.’
‘So why not the … What do you call it, Todd?’ I said when I was back in the jeep with the pizzas ten minutes later. ‘Or, if you’ve already done this, don’t go over it again for me.’
‘Continuation high school?’ said Todd. ‘No, we haven’t. We were talking about Steph Curry.’
‘Who?’ I said.
Blaike laughed until Devin told him I wasn’t joking. That clued me into the fact that it must be a sports player. And if Todd and Devin had been discussing her, she couldn’t be a figure skater or a climber.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Blaike, why didn’t you go to the continuation high school?’
‘Because my stepdad’s a snob,’ Blaike said. ‘Sorry, Lexy, I know you were married to him.’
‘Only that one time,’ I said. ‘We all get to make a mistake. Speaking of which, this “bunch of stuff” you set fire to? You want to say any more about that?’
Blaike was silent for a while. We chugged under the tracks, past the cop shop, drive-through and self-storage, and had turned in at the Last Ditch before he spoke. ‘No offence,’ he said, in the end. ‘But who are you?’ I realized he was talking to Devin.
‘I’m a consultant,’ Devin said. ‘Bound by the same client confidentiality as everyone else in Trinity.’ It was news to me.
‘Since when am I a client?’ Blaike said.
‘This is where it’s got the potential to get awkward,’ I said. ‘Branston is actually our client, Blaike. Remember I said earlier that he had asked us to come up to Iowada-ho and talk to you? Well, it was an official assignment. I see you with your hand on the door. Please don’t run again. Hear me out.’
‘After the pizza,’ said Todd. ‘And a beer. Ten minutes of Steph Curry, beer and pizza. We all need a break.’
‘So long as she’s not a sleazy reality star,’ I said. ‘I’m not watching some poor schmuck get exploited by a camera crew.’
‘Seriously?’ said Blaike.
‘Seriously,’ Devin said.
Turns out Steph Curry is a man and he plays basketball. Roger, Kathi and Noleen were already watching him play it when we got to Todd’s room. Della had peeled off, partly because of Diego’s bedtime and partly because one of the few opinions she shared with me, although neither of us would ever speak them, concerned how much fun it was to watch ten giants bouncing a ball.
When they had all finished rushing about in their squeaky shoes and both pizzas were down to crusts and greasy boxes, Roger turned off the telly and gave me a significant look.
‘I’ve been thinking, Blaike,’ I said.
‘When?’ he asked, truly mystified that I’d had a brain cell to spare while those enormous men had lolloped about, patting a ball into a hoop with their enormous hands.
‘Yeah but before you do that,’ said Noleen, ‘we’ve been hustling. We called Branston. Poor guy snatched the phone off the hook before it even rang.’
‘Oh, really?’ I said, giving her a stern look. ‘He must be worried about something, eh? Maybe we could talk about that later on, eh?’
‘Oh!’ Noleen said. ‘Right. Yeah. So anyway I’m real proud of what I thought up to say to him.’ She cleared her throat. ‘“Trinity Solutions calling, Mr Lancer.”’ I took a moment to reflect that Trinity’s workforce was expanding by the minute. ‘“Lexy has gone to see Blaike.” Neat, huh? Cos he’d think I meant gone to Idaho, but really you’d gone to the hippy commune. Anyway so I said to him, “I just wanted to check that we’re cleared to talk to the kid. Those security questions and answers you gave us copies of? You did mean us to use them to gain access, right?”’
‘Ohhhh, clever,’ I said. ‘I was worrying about that.’
‘Me too,’ said Kathi, ‘since it was me who did the possibly illegal impersonation.’
Blaike had been following along pretty well but he was only seventeen and he had to be tired, as well as worn out from travel and upsets. He was beginning to look mightily confused.
‘What’s going on?’ he said.
‘Absolutely!’ I said, robustly. ‘I agree I should just tell you straight.’ I took a deep breath. ‘But first: why did you run away from White Pine?’
‘Because they call me Smokey the Bandit,’ he said. ‘Not the kids; most of them are off their heads on Adderall – which is another thing. That place was soaking my mom for a shit-ton of fees like they were so great at straightening us all out but, if they’d lost the keys to the drugs closet, it would have been Armageddon. Buncha grifters.’
‘So the teachers called you unkind names?’ I said.
‘Right. It’s not like it made me cry into my pillow, you understand. It’s that it made me realize they weren’t so highly trained and talented and all that nonsense in the brochure. They were stiffing my mom for all this money and it might as well have been sleep-away camp. They called me Smokey the Bandit; the guy who did my one-on-ones brought his crossword book into sessions with him. And he looked stuff up on his phone. Guy cheated on his crossword, with me sitting right there. And he filled in all the bullshit in the world we were supposed to have discussed and explored: “Blaike is still struggling with authority. Unresponsive to suggestions and resistant to new ideas.” What ideas? What suggestions?’
‘So you didn’t like your new school,’ I said. If I hadn’t heard the principal lie to me down the phone, I wouldn’t have given this report a second thought. Blaike had been a whiny fifteen-year-old when I knew him. The notion that he might be a whiny seventeen-year-old two years later was no kind of bombshell. And there was still the matter of him denying the label ‘arsonist’ just because he ‘set fire to a bunch of stuff’.
‘Why Smokey the Bandit?’ Noleen chipped in.
‘What was the last straw?’ I asked hurriedly.
‘They put it in my record that I had burned my mattress because I didn’t want to wash the dishes when it was my turn.’
‘You didn’t, right?’ said Kathi.
‘No! I did the dishes. Kind of. Thing is they always put them back i
n the microwave after we’ve eaten, to get stuff really stuck on and make it harder. So when I did them, I wiped them over with a cloth enough so if they hadn’t been back in the microwave they would have been clean. Then I went to rowing practice. Because if you miss two you’re off the team and I had missed the last one because we’d had spaghetti and meatballs and the tomato sauce wouldn’t shift.’
‘And the mattress?’ I asked.
‘I went to my bedroom and it was gone. There was the box spring and the blankets and a pillow, but no mattress. I asked my room-mate what happened and he said the deputy principal had come in and taken it away.’
‘And they said you burned it?’ I asked him. ‘Did they tell you that?’
‘No way,’ Blaike said. ‘I hacked into the records. Well, OK, I paid this kid Jeffrey to hack in. He got in first time about three months ago and they didn’t catch him, so anything you want to know, you give Jeffrey a quart of bourbon and he tells you.’
‘A quart …?’ I said. ‘Where the hell do you get quarts of bourbon?’
‘The dark web,’ said Blaike. ‘It gets delivered to the chem teacher. He takes ten per cent before tax and shipping.’
‘Jesus,’ I said.
‘Anyway so, my mattress?’ said Blaike. ‘Someone burned it. I couldn’t sleep, on account of laying right on the box spring, and so I looked out of the window in the middle of the night and saw it smouldering. It was under a tree. I thought that was a nice touch, if they were trying to frame me.’
‘And why would that be?’ said Noleen.
‘You never did tell us what it was you burned in your garden under the eucalyptus tree,’ I said, thinking the best thing would be to blooter right through it.
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa!’ Noleen said. ‘You’re that kid? Lexy, you didn’t tell me he was that kid.’
‘My dad’s stuff,’ said Blaike. ‘My fake dad’s fake stuff.’
‘Go on,’ said Roger.
‘My dad – Leonard Kowalski? Turns out he never existed.’
‘What do you mean?’ Kathi said. ‘You’ve got his name.’
‘I know, right?’ Blaike said. ‘My mom’s got his name, I’ve got his name, there were photographs and stuff. There was a great big picture of a baby, that looked like all the other baby pictures of me, and I’m with this guy in it and so I always thought that was my dad – Leonard Kowalski – until he died.’
‘What changed your mind?’ I asked him.
‘My mom told me the truth,’ said Blaike. ‘She sat me down one Saturday morning when Bran was out golfing and said that, since I was going to be eighteen and I would be expecting my trust fund to kick in, she was going to have to tell me that there was no trust fund because my dad, Lenny Kowalski, who she had said set it up for me … never existed.’
‘Why the hell did she tell you he had set up a trust fund?’ I said. ‘If you believed everything she told you for seventeen years, why did she tell you something that was going to bring it all crashing down?’
‘She told me about the trust because she thought she would be able to sock away enough money to make it true by the time I turned eighteen. And she came clean because that didn’t work out like she expected it to. She spent a lot of money divorcing Bran, then a lot more money divorcing Burt, and then because Bran is her business partner she lost a lot of money when Bran divorced you, Lexy. So, basically, you killed my daddy.’
‘Hang on!’ I said. ‘Rewind!’
‘I’m kidding.’
‘No, I mean hang on and rewind to the bit where it cost your mum a packet when Bran divorced me.’
‘Because he had to buy you out of the house and he set you up in a business of your own and bought you a yacht.’
‘A yacht?’ said Roger. ‘Is that what they told you?’
‘My “yacht” is moored on the slough behind this motel,’ I said. ‘It’s a hundred-year-old wooden houseboat with a foot-pump-action tap in the kitchen and a chemical toilet. And I inherited it. Also, my business wasn’t a drain on theirs. My business was two thousand cards from SpeedInk and a domain registration. I left the Beige Barn with a rolling suitcase, containing my own clothes. Ask these guys. I came straight here that night – fourth of July last year – with nothing.’
‘She’s telling you the truth,’ Todd said. ‘Even the roller bag wasn’t worth packing, actually. Her clothes were a sin against fashion. I had to take her in hand. Sorry. Not the point.’
‘So your mom told you when you were seventeen that your daddy wasn’t this great guy who left you a trust and died,’ Kathi said. ‘I’m not being mean, but welcome to the club, kid. Who was he?’
‘A sperm donor,’ Blaike said.
‘Huh,’ said Kathi. ‘That actually does suck. Why did she tell you the story?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Blaike.
‘Why did she call herself Kowalski?’ I said. ‘I mean, if she was making the whole thing up, she could have called herself anything. Like Tourmaline.’
‘I don’t know that either,’ said Blaike.
‘And so you took the baby pictures and other stuff from your fake childhood, and you set it all on fire?’ I said.
‘Under a eucalyptus tree,’ said Blaike. ‘Accidentally causing a bit of a mess in our backyard and the neighbour’s, yeah.’
‘And so, they sent you away to a military academy, for arson?’ said Kathi.
‘Not military,’ said Blaike. ‘Just real mean. And now she won’t even answer her phone. Well, she might be answering it now, but mine’s out of charge and I can’t get in touch with her.’
No one said anything. They all just swivelled, in unison, like a team of synchronized swivellers, and stared at me.
‘Thing is, Blaike,’ I said, ‘the reason we were coming up to White Pine, when you stopped us by coming down here, was that your stepdad wanted us to tell you something.’
‘Is my mom OK?’ he said.
I hadn’t been feeling good about hiding the truth from him anyway. But now, now that he had asked the question outright in his suddenly tremulous voice, sounding much younger than seventeen, it was time for it to stop.
‘Absolutely,’ I said. What was wrong with me?
‘Where is she?’
‘We don’t …’ I said, ‘… think it’s a good idea to tell you.’ Blame me, sue me, shoot me. Do all three. The kid had been through enough for one day.
THIRTEEN
‘You’d make a good dad,’ I said to Todd an hour later when we were standing over Blaike, watching him sleeping, finally. It had taken a while, but he was under at last. That was the main thing. And he was on my boat too. Noleen had been very sympathetic about the shock he’d had re the sudden non-existence of his dad, leading to the fire under the eucalyptus, but she’d pointed out that he’d just had had quite an upsetting time of it again, between one thing and another. And if I thought he was house-guest material then I could guest him at my house.
‘I intend to,’ said Todd. ‘Be a good dad, that is. Roger needs a little encouragement. Being a baby doctor, he only sees the calamities. He doesn’t believe we could raise a child without medically induced comas and emergency tracheotomies.’
‘Does he believe you could raise a child without a home?’ I said gently.
‘Why not ask Della?’ said Todd. ‘See what she thinks about the horrors of raising a child in a motel.’
‘Why don’t you ask Della?’ I said. ‘You ask her what she thinks of someone living in a motel room, who doesn’t have to. You feeling lucky enough to broach that subject with her?’
‘I know, I know,’ said Todd. ‘Of course, I know. But I’m happy here, Lexy. With you and the others. I like living with family round me. It was always only Mom and me, growing up. I never knew this. It’s not an easy thing to walk away from.’
‘Oh puh-lease!’ I said, loud enough to make Blaike catch his breath and turn away, humping on to his shoulder. I hoped he wouldn’t bang his head or his bony feet against the panels of the little box b
ed. I hadn’t realized how short it was until I saw him fold himself in there.
‘Yeah, that was too much,’ said Todd. ‘But I’m glad you’re nagging me about long-term self-improvement even in the heart of this crisis.’
‘Oh?’ I said.
‘Because I still think you should go on a date and I’ve got one lined up for you. He’s the uncle of the costume manager of the Sacramento Ballet.’
‘How old is he?’ I said.
‘Forty. Never been married. Been building his business. He’s an architect.’
‘No, he isn’t,’ I said. ‘No one is an architect in real life. Are you sure he’s not a vet? And a widower? With a golden retriever?’
‘OK,’ said Todd. ‘You got me. He owns a portable-toilet rental company.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘That’s important work. What made you think I would have a problem with it?’
‘Oh my God!’ said Todd. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you? He’s a goddam architect, Lexy. Take the win. Although, now you come to mention it, I do know of a single man in the toilet-rental business …’
By this time, Blaike was actually thrashing back and forth, presumably trying to escape the nightmare he was having that his parents were standing over his bed, bickering. So we withdrew, going along to the back of the boat to stand in my midget kitchen.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll go on a date with this clearly fictitious individual if it’ll shut you up.’
‘And I’ll … What do you want in return?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘In return, I want you and Roger back in your lovely house, and you back in your proper job that your poor mother sacrificed so much to educate you for.’
‘You really want this to end?’ said Todd. ‘Trinity? Us?’
Of course I didn’t. I didn’t want anything to change. I didn’t want Devin to graduate and take Della and Diego away. (I kept thinking of that lawyer asking him if he was a citizen and how he didn’t go white and run.) I didn’t want Todd to recover and leave me alone. As much as I complained about him bursting into my bedroom in the morning, judging my choice of bedtime reading, thread count, night cream, PJs, and language when woken by intruders, I always started the day a bit flat when he was too busy to swing by. Ah, well, I’d still have Kathi and Noleen. Even if Kathi ever recovered from her germophobia, she’d only go as far as the owner’s flat. And it was closer to my houseboat than the room she and Nolly usually slept in.
Scot on the Rocks Page 12
