Jan was silent for a moment, musing on this issue. Clearly she hadn’t worked that one out yet.
RIIINNGG.
The doorbell?
Who could possibly be ringing their doorbell now?
Marcus opened his eyes a little wider when he saw a cop from the LAPD standing on his doorstep, blue uniform tight over a ramrod-straight physique. The man was of medium height, and his wide brown face was bisected by a trim mustache. A black nameplate on his chest read Vasquez in white lettering.
Marcus instantly tried to remember just exactly how decriminalized pot had become and whether he was about to be hauled off to jail. Then he recalled that Lenore had a prescription. “Officer, I can exp—”
The cop was so intent on delivering his own speech that Marcus never got the word explain entirely out of his mouth. “Are you Marcus Ripps?”
“Yes, sir.” Marcus believed everyone in a position of authority should be called sir as often as possible; it (however infinitesimally) reduced the chances of pain and suffering at their unpredictable whims.
“You’re the brother of Julian Ripps?”
This question came as a shock to Marcus. He had written Julian off long ago and, suspecting Julian had done the same, tried to think of his estranged sibling as seldom as possible. He knew the presence of a police officer did not bode well. As this unhappy thought dawned on him, he again noticed the sweet pot fragrance now permeating the house. Marcus answered in the affirmative, hoping to keep the conversation from veering toward his having to explain anything further. Marcus noticed the cop’s nostrils seemed to quiver. Did he smell the dope?
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Ripps, but … uhh … your brother?”
“Yes?”
“… is deceased.”
Julian, only thirty-nine, was dead? It had been several years since Marcus had seen him, and it wasn’t as if he imagined a rapproachement could have been effected, but dead? That was a kick in the teeth. He heard an audible intake of breath behind him, Jan weighing in word-lessly. Marcus took a moment to collect himself.
“Why did they send the police to notify me? Was he in trouble?”
“My sergeant told me to come down, Mr. Ripps.”
“How did he die?”
“I don’t know.”
Officer Vasquez mumbled condolences and returned to his patrol car. Marcus closed the door and turned to face Jan. She embraced him, whispering “I’m sorry.” He reflexively hugged her, more because he sensed she expected him to than because he was experiencing the need to be comforted. He felt curiously light, as if a burden had been lifted, a weight he had shouldered removed. As his wife held him, he realized this was the closest physical contact he’d had with her in months.
Lenore appeared in the foyer, maraschino-eyed, and said: “I need a ride to the market so I can get some hummus and a box of crackers.” Then she began laughing uncontrollably, great golden giggles tumbling forth from her slender frame, liberating her for a moment. After a few seconds, the laughter began to subside and Marcus and Jan waited patiently for conversation to resume. When Lenore noticed them looking at her so attentively, the laughter began to roll forth again and took a full minute to bring back under control.
“Mother, I hate to harsh your mellow, but Marcus’s brother just died.”
Lenore looked expectantly from Jan to Marcus, awaiting the punch line.
Chapter 6
“Is Lenore going to be arrested?”
Nathan glanced at Marcus with a mouth full of candied toothpaste, from which the tips of his blue braces were peeking. The boy was at the sink in the upstairs hallway bathroom. Marcus was standing in the doorway.
“No … no, she’s not.” Here Marcus gave a rueful laugh. He was still off-balance from the unexpected reek of pot, the arrival of the police, and the shocking news about Julian.
“So why was that guy here?”
“The cop came to tell us that my brother died.”
“He died?” Marcus nodded. “I liked him. Didn’t he try to give me a minibike?”
Marcus knew that Nathan had only the vaguest recollection of his uncle. Did the boy remember Julian showing up uninvited on his fifth birthday? There was a party taking place in the backyard and his friends from school were there. Julian arrived with a blowsy-looking woman and a gleaming red minibike, one of those gizmos with a gasoline motor which, given the right conditions, could burst into flames and maim the child riding it. Marcus had no idea how Julian had known it was Nathan’s birthday, but, miraculously, he did. Nathan could barely ride a two-wheeler. Giving him a minibike was a ludicrous idea. He and Julian had argued and Julian had left, leaving his gift behind, like a grenade waiting to detonate. Marcus told Nathan he was donating it to charity since he wouldn’t have anything that belonged to his brother in their home. Nathan hadn’t understood at the time, and Marcus suspected he still didn’t.
Given the news about Julian, Marcus appreciated that Jan put aside her grievances with him. Normally, an exchange like the one they’d had would have required at least twenty-four uncomfortable hours before a truce was declared. But death changed the equation.
Marcus assured Jan that he was all right, that he could handle whatever emotions were roiling him. When she went to bed, he filled a glass with ice and poured three fingers of whiskey. Then he fell into a chair in the living room. They had bought the furniture—a love seat, two club chairs, a sofa, and an oblong oak coffee table—when they were first married. But now its longevity suggested incipient decrepitude rather than comfort, and its tired aspect intensified the unforeseen sadness he was feeling.
Marcus remembered Julian as someone who took the noble out of savage. Sixth grade blowing up mailboxes with M-80s, high school dealing quaaludes. Then: a boosted car, a joyride with two cheerleaders, a month in Juvenile Hall. Julian was the total entertainment package, constantly butting heads with the parents who would periodically take a break from sniping at each other to try and rein in their increasingly unmanageable son.
Unwilling to accept the constraints of an after-school job at his father’s store, the ever-cunning Julian started scalping concert tickets and could be seen weekend nights outside popular Los Angeles venues, moving merchandise under the watchful eyes of undercover cops. Enlisting Marcus and Roon in the sales force, Julian drove to places like the Forum, Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, and the Hollywood Palladium where they would work shows by aging rock dinosaurs, hair metal acts, and punk bands (when Julian eventually fired his brother for not being an aggressive enough salesman, Roon quit in protest. Marcus subsequently reflected that it had been the last time Roon would do anything on principle).
He recalled his parents’ reaction when Julian beat his wings and fled home at sixteen. While they ached on one level, on another they were palpably relieved. His mere presence had become a harbinger of bad tidings. Julian crashed at the homes of friends, moving from place to place every few weeks. Marcus would occasionally run into him in the neighborhood and they would exchange uneasy pleasantries, as people who had known each other once will do.
A spring afternoon and Marcus is fifteen. He sees Julian walking out of Flaco’s Diner in San Pedro with Patty DeWitt, all pale skin and green eyes, a river of wavy red hair running down her back. She’s wearing gold hoop earrings that tickle her soft neck. In faded jeans and a tight black T-shirt that says THE MISFITS in red letters across her full breasts, she is Venus on the high school half shell. Marcus lusts after Patty, but Julian has his arm around her, the fingers of his hand dipping lightly into the pocket of her jeans. Marcus is amazed at the ease with which his brother can slip his fingers into someone else’s pants. Now Patty laughs at something Julian says, and on a whim Marcus decides to shadow them.
They walk to Averill Park, an urban oasis of meandering streams and shady groves that evoke weddings, family picnics, and teenage groping. It’s curiously empty today. Marcus keeps a safe distance back. Julian’s been gone several months and Marcus
has no idea what he’s doing, although he’s certain it’s illegal. He wants a window into his brother’s life since, in a strange way, he misses him. Julian and Patty walk around a pond and disappear in a copse of pine trees. Marcus has never done this before, follow someone like a spy, and he feels a churning in his stomach. Something is making him hesitate. The late-afternoon light slants through the trees and hits the surface of the pond, where it shatters into a million diamonds, sparkling on the water. He knows this is something he shouldn’t be doing, but the treachery excites him. He is invading Julian’s privacy, betraying him. But hadn’t Julian fired him from the ticket-scalping business? Marcus doesn’t owe him anything. Besides, he is curious. When he comes upon them in the darkening glade, Patty is on her knees in front of Julian, and he is in her mouth. Marcus has never had a blow job, so along with shock he feels jealousy, doubly so since Julian was getting one from Patty DeWitt, whose thick red hair is lustrous against Julian’s black jeans. Oh, for a blow job, Marcus thinks. How is it that Julian, who ignores every boundary, is the one moving in and out of Patty DeWitt’s mouth? Doesn’t being good count for something? What is wrong with the world? Marcus wants to back up, step away, leave the park, allay the shame he is feeling for watching his brother and this girl, for rending their intimacy with his presence, but he is held there by a force he does not understand and he keeps looking until Julian arches his back. Marcus can’t tell what happens next, whether Patty does something, or says something, or maybe it is nothing at all, but it causes Julian to smash her face with his open palm so hard that she falls to the ground. Marcus doesn’t know some people like getting slapped. He is shocked by the sudden spasm of violence and, without thinking, he emerges from his hiding place and walks toward them. He is not a hero, does not want to be Superman, has no idea what he is doing other than maybe this will be a welcome opportunity to kick the shit out of his brother. Julian looks up. He is zipping his fly as Patty, her lip bleeding, struggles to her feet.
“Julian!” Marcus says. Julian’s grin is lopsided, too cool. Patty looks at Marcus, startled.
“Get outta here!” she shouts, her voice like broken glass. He is confused. Is she yelling at his brother? Marcus asks her if she is okay. “Get the fuck outta here!” she says. She is addressing Marcus. Julian does not say anything. He looks vaguely amused as if they are playing a game and now he is bored. Marcus feels the air going out of him.
Patty says nothing, but her eyes are untamed. Marcus does not know what else to do, so he turns and runs through the trees, around the pond, to the road and out of the park, and keeps running until he arrives at the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean where, gasping for breath, he sits down. It is early evening and the sun has dipped below the horizon, leaving the sky a purple bruise. Marcus knows Julian lives in a dark place. He didn’t know he would hit a girl, but it does not surprise him. What freaks Marcus out is the way Patty reacts. It’s like she is mad at him for intruding, and at fifteen that is entirely too difficult for him to get a handle on. Julian’s mojo works on her, and Patty DeWitt isn’t the only one. Marcus sees it when his brother is doing business with strangers at concerts, how he handles them, how he sells them. Julian gets what he wants.
Marcus finished his drink and poured another. The house was muffled in sleep. Images of Julian kept coming. As Marcus matured, he tried to see his brother as a wild child, refusing to be constrained by the dictates of bourgeois society—someone who merely wanted to roam free. But he knew in his heart that this was a fancy excuse. Julian was a criminal, and though Marcus could tie this up in theoretical ribbons and bows, there was no avoiding it. He drained the remains of the second whiskey, put fresh water in Bertrand Russell’s dish and went to bed.
Marcus glanced at the digital clock on the night table and saw that he’d been lying there for nearly an hour. Propping himself on his elbow, he gazed at his soundly sleeping wife and found himself experiencing, along with deep fatigue, a sense of great comfort at her presence. He watched Jan for a moment, her chest rising and falling rhythmically, a few strands of hair in her face. He felt the urge to reach over and caress her cheek but didn’t want to wake her up.
The next day, Marcus drove down a dicey stretch of Beverly Boulevard looking for an address. Half an hour after Officer Vasquez had left, a lawyer had called, summoning Marcus to his office to discuss Julian’s will. What could Julian possibly have bequeathed him? When their parents had died—his mother seven years before, of a bad heart, and his father four years later, from cancer—Julian hadn’t come to the funerals, hadn’t sent flowers, couldn’t be bothered. Family meant nothing to him, so what did this meeting portend? Marcus would have preferred not to think about it, but a combination of his brutal financial situation and his innate curiosity left him anticipating the meeting with something bordering on eagerness.
“So, Dominic, how did my brother die?”
Dominic Festa, Esq., had an aversion to giving people painful news, particularly when it involved death, and it was this weakness that had brought Officer Vasquez to the doorstep of the Ripps family the previous evening. Dominic had diverted moneys from another client’s estate to the Policeman’s Teddy Bear Fund in return for their services as a bad-tidings delivery system. So he paused before saying: “Bum ticker.”
As Julian’s attorney and the executor of his will, Dominic needed to see Marcus. Normally, the lawyer for an estate simply sends a letter explaining what was to be done on the deceased client’s behalf but, since Julian’s state of affairs was slightly unusual, Dominic thought a face-to-face meeting would be beneficial. This was how Marcus came to be sitting in the office Dominic shared with a usurious lender above the Primo World Laundromat on Beverly Boulevard, just east of La Brea (a large sign in their window read: BAD CREDIT? NO PROBLEM! WE’LL LEND TO YOU!!).
Overweight and balding, Dominic wore a green polo shirt under a brown blazer, cream slacks, and brown shoes, one of which rested languidly on a knee as he leaned back in his imitation-leather desk chair. His earth-toned wardrobe lent him the mien of a large, benevolent woodland creature, and he chortled as he recalled his dealings with Julian, whom he referred to fondly as “Your fuckin’ brother.” Marcus wasn’t sure he’d heard right when Dominic described Julian as a pip, but he wanted to seem casual, to appear successful—to project anything other than desperation—so he said “Definitely. A pip.” He nearly cringed as the words came out of his mouth. A pip? Julian had been a braggart and a bully. Frankly, he had been a sociopath. But Marcus didn’t need to get into any of that with Dominic Festa, Esq.
“Me and him flew to Bangkok one time, Thailand?” Dominic continued, as if Marcus was not aware of where it was. “Julian knew that fuckin’ town, right? All the bars and shows? Two of us spent the whole time in Patpong, saw girls do shit with their pussies the Ringling Brothers couldna thought of.” He smiled warmly at the recollection. “I’m telling you … it was always a party when he was around.” Here his voice trailed off, having gone soft at the recollection of his deceased client and the Garden of Earthly Delights, to which Julian admitted anyone with a major credit card. Then, regaining a soupçon of the probity he felt was professionally necessary, Dominic said, “You’re his brother, so you know, right?”
“Sure, right.”
“Here’s basically what we’re looking at. Julian lived better than he earned, which wouldn’t surprise anybody who ever saw his house … some place, right?” Marcus nodded, although he had never seen the house in question. “Fact is, the IRS is gonna seize it. What I’m saying is, forget the house. He had some jewelry, which I’m having valued—believe me, it won’t be worth much …” Marcus knew that when someone like Dominic Festa said believe me, it was the last thing he should do. But he also quickly realized that pursuing the imagined bounty of Julian’s estate would be fruitless. “… and some clothes, and about the clothes let me say that unless you have a forty-two-inch waistline, and looking at you I can pretty much see you don’t, you might as well fo
rget those, too.” Marcus shifted uncomfortably in his seat, recalibrating his already low expectations.
“I’ll tell you right now, the IRS is dunning him and I think they’re gonna take the cash reserve in the estate—but don’t worry, it’s minuscule anyway. He held the lease on an apartment Beverly Hills-adjacent, you might want to look at it if you’re in the market for a sugar shack.” Dominic winked at Marcus, who was too crestfallen to notice. Would there be nothing positive to emerge from Julian’s untimely demise? “However”—the lawyer said this word with such emphasis that Marcus resumed paying attention—“He did own a business, a dry cleaning operation on Melrose in West Hollywood.” Marcus’s visage sparked, almost as if the electrical current running in his body had suddenly shifted course. This reaction caused Dominic to instantly adjust his message. “Now don’t get your hopes up, he doesn’t own the building, but he’s been running the business out of there for more than five years and, according to the will, it belongs to you, my friend.”
“A dry cleaner?” Marcus said this with a degree of hopefulness not generally associated with those two words. To him they represented nothing less than deliverance from his predicament. “How many people does he employ?”
“I have no idea. I’m his lawyer, not his accountant.”
“Is there anyone I can talk to?”
Festa removed a small, slightly soiled envelope from his desk drawer and handed it to Marcus. “Here’s the key. And you might want this, too.” He gave Marcus a cell phone and told him it was Julian’s. Marcus was puzzled, but realized perhaps the lawyer thought he might want a keepsake, something personal of his brother’s. So he thanked him and slid the phone, a thin silver item with a camera lens, into his pocket. Dominic Festa gave Marcus his card, told him to call if he had any questions, and wished him good luck.
Marcus left the office supremely thankful his run of bad luck had abated. Some men were meant to cure diseases, others to explore new planets. The world needed dry cleaners, and if that was Marcus’s fate, at this point he saw no alternative to pursuing it. Potentially freed from the horror show of his family’s financial implosion, he was slightly giddy. The complexities of running a business didn’t matter, the health hazards of a carcinogen-intensive industry were irrelevant, and the hours he would be forced to work—as a sole proprietor, since he realized no one could be trusted to not skim the proceeds—didn’t strike him as onerous. Marcus pictured himself smiling rakishly on the cover of American Drycleaner, clad in an expensive bespoke suit, freshly dry-cleaned.
Shining City Page 7
