Casebook

by Mona Simpson

  I asked if he was still alive. But he died in 1957. Ben took us to his bedroom to show us his most valuable print, by a different artist named Kotundo. He opened the door for us to see it, but he stayed back in the hall. It was a nude woman, stooping, combing her long Japanese hair. Maybe he had a thing for Asian women.

  “You guys know a teacher at Cottonwoods named Zoe Fisher? Teaches art? She has a son, he’d be a year or two older than you?”

  “Yeah, sure,” we said. We knew her. We knew Ez. He was a friend of Charlie’s brother. He played drums in a band.

  I thought Hector had paid attention to the bus routes. But he hadn’t. I avoided the whole thing for the last days of summer, and Hector, weirdly for him, didn’t push me.

  Finally, when we went, we decided to be the Westside kids we were and took a taxi we found in front of a hotel in downtown Santa Monica. We told the driver we wanted the Glendale Central Library, on Harvard Street in Glendale.

  Hector was wearing a button-down shirt, his only one. We didn’t talk much as we rode. I was watching the meter.

  How far are we? I asked, on the freeway.

  Still a long ways, the driver said. Already it was more than fifty dollars. I was holding the money. Hector’s forty-one dollars, which hadn’t grown since the day he’d unfisted them for Ben Orion, and my eighty, which had increased, via poetry and Hart relatives, to a hundred and some.

  We were literally speeding on the freeway and the meter was ticking away, counting every mile. Something about money made me clear. I looked out the window at the unfamiliar, anonymous LA. Los Angeles was so big, I thought. Any other city, this would be three cities. “What are we doing?” I said. “We’ve gone crazy.” We were two rising high school juniors, underachievers, spending our entire net worth chasing down a rumor about my mother’s boyfriend’s ex-wife. We were spinning farther and farther away from our real lives. But we were more than halfway there, the man driving the cab said, and now the fare was approaching seventy.

  “This has got to be the end,” I said, to myself more than to Hector.

  Hector had rolled down his window and had a hand out.

  The meter passed a hundred before he took the exit for Glendale. I thought of asking him to just let us off. We didn’t have nearly enough to get home. Now we really would have to take the bus.

  When he finally stopped, we paid him almost all we had. I knew we were supposed to tip, but we only had eleven dollars left. We’d need that. I explained that Glendale was farther than we thought and more expensive, and looking back now, I’d have imagined he might have laughed at our pile of crumpled dollar bills, but he was immune to our charms. That seemed to have been happening more often. He turned around and roared off.

  The air outside was crushingly hot. It felt like someone picked you up and squeezed the oxygen out. We hurried inside. The library turned out to be louder than I would have expected, with little kids and their moms draped over furniture, pawing through stained books. Homeless guys nimbly fingered DVDs. They felt too close to my situation. I was already obsessed with how we’d get back. We asked at the information counter for the librarian Joanna Greenwood and waited while someone pushed a square button on a telephone and then were told she was at lunch, due back in a half hour. We lolled around. Hector was hungry, and this library had a café, outside behind the glass doors, but we needed to keep our eleven dollars. Who knew how much the bus would cost? Hector dragged me then to the L shelf and found more books by the Victim. We turned to the dedications. Every one except The Other Woman was dedicated to Eli. “That marks a change,” Hector said. “All those to him and this one to C.” It must have been when he left her. Maybe C was a new boyfriend? Christopher? Carl? I hoped so. She sure wrote a lot of books. They all had covers with vividly painted skies. More than one took place in the mountains.

  Finally, a tall, obviously pregnant woman with curly hair and humungous breasts tapped my shoulder. “I’m Joanna. You were looking for me?”

  We explained that we wanted to ask about Jean Lee. We said as little as we could, but we kind of tripped over each other, explaining what the other one said, and it came out that we hadn’t met Jean Lee, but we knew Eli Lee and he was my mother’s boyfriend, and we were under the impression that they were divorced.

  “What gave you that impression?” she asked.

  “He told us,” I said.

  “He said that exactly,” Hector added.

  Her head moved as if she were looking for someone else around who could help, then she turned back to us. “I interviewed her for our Lunchtime Locals Series. I only met him once. He came here to pick up their son.”

  “What did he look like?” Hector said.

  “Oh, he was a normal-looking boy. Cute. I think he had a stain on his shirt. Active, you know.”

  But Hector had meant Eli. He opened the tiny notebook from Kat and penciled a thumbnail drawing of him.

  “Yes, that’s him, I think. You draw well.”

  We asked if she knew who was C, the book’s dedicatee, but she didn’t.

  She looked from one to the other of us as if wondering what it was all right to say. “I don’t know what to tell you. She definitely sounded married. Everything was my husband this, my husband that.” Then she lifted her hand to her mouth and right in front of us bit at a hangnail. It was awful to see a pregnant person gnaw at herself.

  “Wait,” Hector asked. “You said Lunchtime Locals. Is Jean Lee local?”

  “I thought they lived in Pasadena,” she said.

  “Would you have a maps section here?” I asked. “With, like, bus routes?”

  She led us to a computer, where we googled the MTA. She left us with that big screen open—it seemed we would have to go downtown, either on a 780 rapid or a 92, 93, or 94 to Broadway. We’d need to get off south of First, then take the 30 or the 31 to the MTA station at Pico and Rimpau. From there we could catch a Santa Monica Blue Bus, line 7, or Super 7.

  “Looks like at least two hours,” Hector said. “Maybe three.”

  As we were walking out, Joanna Greenwood came up to us again. “Here, I found this,” she said. It was a Xerox of a clipping from the Pasadena paper.

  PASADENAN PENS REVENGE TALE

  After writing sixteen romances, including the best-selling Heirloom in August, a Pasadenan scribe publishes a tale about adultery.

  When we left the building, heat slammed into us the way a huge kid could, knocking our wind out. I didn’t say anything. I kicked the debris by the curb, trying to orient myself to the bus stop.

  “So what do we think?” Hector said.

  That was the question. I really didn’t know. The ex-wife, the Victim, whom I’d imagined in Wisconsin, stomping in rubber boots among cows and Nazis, with a sick cat and a stolen dog, now seemed to live here. With the kid, it had to be. What that meant about Eli, I didn’t know. Was he pretending to be still married to her but living in Washington working for the NSF? Then why would she live here, though? And she hadn’t dedicated her book to him this time. She must have known they were split up. But why had she said my husband this, my husband that? Had she ever lived in Wisconsin? When did she move?

  But whatever was true, and it was all a storm in my head, I was pretty sure he’d lied to us. I hadn’t heard anything about his kid moving here. That would have been a huge big deal! He couldn’t have told the Mims, or I’d know. He probably visited his kid on the same trips when he saw us. I’d been told once to be careful touching a baby’s head, because there was a part right at the top where the skull hadn’t fused yet, and it was fragile, the brain swirling just below the skin. I felt like I could feel that drain at the top of my head now, pulling liquids down. And the air in Glendale was so hot and static that little specks of ash attached themselves to our skin.

  We were walking to the bus stop. Even under trees, even in shade, it was murderously hot. The trees here looked dusty, half their leaves giving up and dying. “Do we think he never got the divorce he said he did,
and that he’s living with his wife and kid in Pasadena?” Hector asked.

  “But he couldn’t live here and work at the NSF. That’s in Maryland. I know for sure. I mean, my mom and Marge have been there.”

  “He’s got your mom thinking he’s flying in to see her from DC. Do you ever see the plane tickets?”

  “I never really looked.” I should have. All the doors I’d listened behind, why didn’t I check his bag? Eli living here! I hadn’t thought of that. It never occurred to me once, even after I saw him that time in Pasadena. I couldn’t believe it, really, even now.

  “I think he has to live in DC. For his job.”

  “I wish we had a phone. We could call the NSF. See if he’s there.”

  That made me feel awful, because I had a phone in my backpack. The dictators had finally broken down and gotten me one, for my last birthday. I hadn’t told Hector. He and I were like the last kids in our grade who didn’t have phones or smoke dope. I didn’t want to tell him I’d defected. I thought of myself really wanting the phone but not being able to tell Hector and Eli lying and that that connected us. I made myself open the zipper of my pack, pull the thing out, and toss it to him.

  “Oh, we do have one. Good,” was all he said.

  By then we were at the bus stop, a small ugly metal tent over an equally ugly bench with no one on it. We waited. Fifty minutes, and the bus still hadn’t come. Hector finally called Ben Orion. I wouldn’t have had the number on me. But he kept it in his little notebook. He explained that we’d met the librarian and that she’d told us Jean Lee lived in Pasadena. That Jean Lee had said my husband this, my husband that. I hoped Ben Orion would rescue us.

  But Ben was in a car following a stalker who’d arrived the day before from Idaho. The stalker was in love with a nineteen-year-old singer my sisters listened to. He’d rented a car yesterday and checked into a hotel. He must have taken a shower and gotten himself something to eat, Ben said, and then, finally, hours later, he drove to her house—he knew where it was—and he walked straight up to her front door, carrying a bouquet of roses he’d bought from Vons. By the time he rang the doorbell, Ben had the house staff ready. A maid answered and told him the singer wasn’t there and she wouldn’t be back for a long time. It was true she wasn’t home. She was hiding out in the Chateau Marmont. But then today the stalker drove to her manager’s office and hassled the receptionist. Now he was heading toward his hotel, a low-rent Days Inn on Santa Monica Boulevard, where another car with one of Ben’s guys was already parked.

  We waited and waited. The MTA never came. I began to think we’d read the bus schedule wrong. Ben called back. “What’s the story?” We told him, and he said to call our parents. We said they were working and anyway we couldn’t reach them, and he finally said he’d get us. But he told us to leave messages. We said sure and then just didn’t.

  “Remember how she said in that article how they’d just bought a house?” Hector said while we were still waiting.

  “She might’ve meant her and her son,” I said.

  “May-be.”

  Ben arrived at last. On the front seat there was a picture of a guy, younger than my dad probably but with wrinkles. Not good-looking. But not bad-looking either. He had on one of those cowboy ties. Ben said he’d lived with his parents most of his life; then the father died, and a month ago the mother got sick. Ben thought that set him off. He’d sent the nineteen-year-old singer that picture of himself and told her what flight he was coming in on. Poor guy was probably disappointed when she wasn’t standing there waiting for him at LAX. The girl of his dreams who he’d never met.

  Whom, Hector mouthed. I kicked him.

  Then what’d he do? we asked. When she wasn’t there.

  “He did like you. He took the bus. For him, it came. He learned how to read a bus schedule.”

  That was a little dig. He thought we were spoiled. He was right. We were spoiled. And he didn’t even know about the taxi.

  But that poor guy, the stalker. He paid to fly out here for just his lonely dream. He must have understood, even as he hoped against hope, that the real girl wouldn’t be standing there holding his picture at the bottom of the escalator where the arriving passengers came down to the luggage conveyors. There just wasn’t any reality in it.

  “What happens to him now?” I asked.

  “He’s in his hotel. He’s got the little sign on his door that says don’t disturb. So maybe he’s taking a nap. Day two of his great adventure. We’ve got a psychiatrist on call.”

  “Who pays for that?” I asked.

  “She does. The celebrity always has to pay the psychiatrist.”

  “Doesn’t seem fair.”

  Ben Orion shrugged, driving. I looked at the glove box, imagining the gun. A Glock 9mm. I’d never seen a live gun. I wanted to. “I’ll take you guys home. I’ve got to get back and jump on the computer.” But when we were just a little past USC on the 10, his phone rang. It was one of those systems where it broadcast through the whole car. 0:400, the object is getting in his rental car and driving in the direction of the target property.

  “Oh, man. Okay. Meet you there. Keep him in sight. Let me know if there’s any diversion.” He told us, “I’ve got to make a detour. See, this is why I shouldn’t have kids in my car.”

  We could have volunteered to jump out, but we just stayed quiet. His car was comfortable. Air-conditioned. I thought if we were very still maybe he wouldn’t do anything about us. He made two calls to a Dr. Gilmore. He made a call to someone who must have been in the house. And then he called the police.

  The car went steadily but fast. Ben was gripping the steering wheel. We exited and drove north. When we finally slowed and parked outside a huge property, he told us to stay in the car. He opened the glove box, took out the gun. The real thing. He went around to the back of the car and put it in his trunk. Locked it.

  “What does he think, we’re gonna go Rambo on him?” I whispered.

  There were two other cars parked in front of us. We couldn’t see what was going on. There was a hedge all around the yard and a gate in front. Hector got out and looked through the trees. He said it seemed as if a bunch of guys were standing around in the yard, talking tensely. He said the way they stood looked like if you plucked them, they’d twang.

  I asked if there were cops. “No uniforms,” he said. “No badges.” But when they finally came out of the gate, we had a glimpse of the guy, in handcuffs. He looked up around him wildly and then settled politely in the car parked two ahead of us.

  Ben Orion slammed in. “You guys’re gonna have to walk home from my place. The psychiatrist’s already on his way there. There’s a 9:03 flight to Twin Falls, and we’ve got to get him on that plane.”

  We didn’t answer. At his house we just sat in the car. We said we were hungry. He told us we could hit his pantry but not to leave the kitchen. And cool as his house was, there was something dry about the pantry. On inspection, his snacks resembled ours. Bags that looked like chips turned out to contain dehydrated peas. The only graham crackers were certified organic. He had stacks of those foil-wrapped seaweed wafers Boop Two loved. We settled for the graham crackers. We had to. We leaned against the door trying to hear something.

  “I wonder what’ll happen,” Hector said.

  “I know. Me, too.” I kept thinking about Jean Lee saying they’d bought a house and now had seven walls of books. I could see Eli with seven walls of books.

  “What do you think?” Hector finally asked me.

  “I don’t know. I don’t even want to know if Eli doesn’t really live in DC.”

  Finally, we heard noise. We weren’t allowed out, but the pantry had a window onto the front. We saw a slant view of four men, the guy in the center. He had his hands just hanging down in front of him. He looked at his hands.

  Ben banged into the kitchen. “We’re taking him to the airport. We’re going to see that his car gets returned, and we’ll put him on that plane. Let’s talk tomorrow and
we’ll figure out what to do about your case. Wait till we’re all out of here, and then you guys should head home.”

  Poor stalker. No sightseeing even. And after this, he wouldn’t be able to use his worn, familiar fantasy. At least I wouldn’t be able to, if I were him. Since Ella hadn’t called me back, I couldn’t work up the little scenes that I used to rely on to help me fall asleep. There just wasn’t enough reality in them anymore. I didn’t actually have a big imagination. Once I knew something was impossible, I couldn’t use it, even for the pleasure of a dream.

  On a table near the front door was a book called The Sound of the Mountain, with a picture of a flat-topped hill you could tell was Japanese. What was it with Ben Orion and Japan? I thought he probably did have a thing for Asian girls.

  That night, Eli called. The phone rang, I answered, and it was him. That startled me like a gunshot. He told me his cat had died.

  53 • Surveillance

  The next day we rode our bikes to Ben Orion’s.

  “So you want to go to Pasadena?” he said. “Do some surveillance?”

  I had to make myself ask him what that would cost. He waved me off. “Let’s go.” He opened the refrigerator and grabbed a six-pack of root beer in bottles. “Maybe we’ll learn something. Settle in, guys. It’s a long ways.”

  I felt glad for the drive. I wished I had Tylenol. I leaned against the car door and let myself drift. Hector asked what we were going to do when we got there.

  “Well, first, we’ll go to the city hall, department of records. See if we can pull a deed. See if there’s really a they that bought a house.”