“What about the Kalashnikovs?”
Another deep breath. Her father’s round, steel-toed engineers’ boots kicked the soft, fertile ground with a imploring thud. Please say no.
“Yes. Yes! Yes, I arranged the sale of some crappy, outdated Russian rifles to a handful of over-zealous gangsters-cum-warlords in exchange for the theft and delivery of a sizable supply of Eastern European grape cuttings.”
Daci tried to form a question but the words wouldn’t come. Just unspecified accusations punctuated by anguish. “Aren’t you…? Doesn’t it…?”
“The transfer of a few hundred half-broken guns made little if any difference in any of those wars. And I got to preserve the history of those areas. They can burn down the libraries and plunder the museums and commit all other forms of memoricide. But wines will tell the story of regions destroyed. Even if the flavors fade with time, as they may, vintages from certain grapes will always tug at the drinker intellectually. In wondering about the flavors and the soil and the climate, a drinker of these wines will recall the region from which they arose and in that way recall the past. So no, I am not conflicted. The history of those places exonerates me.”
Daci gazed evenly at her father. She realized it hadn’t been Sydney she’d fictionalized, but this man. “You sound like Daddy Machiavelli.”
“And you behave like a Benita Mussolini, whose namesake famously stated that Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
“No! That’s exactly why I took over this company—to put an end to those kind of practices.”
“Which you have yet to accomplish. Which it seems to me you have yet to even address. And while we’re on the subject tell me: What are you doing to Sydney to provoke this?”
“I went to him for help. He absolutely refuses to help me distribute the vaccine.”
Her father rocked on his heels and gazed into the deep blue sky.
She watched him and waited. Because Sydney had told her something her father hadn’t: Who’d put him in touch with all those grimy gangsters in the first place. Which was Sydney himself. Sydney had sent Daci’s father in search of Radu. Yet here her father stood, not pointing his finger. Not casting blame. The bigger man.
His violet eyes caught hers and held them. “What else?” he asked.
“He claims he started another company with the missing NOx credits, that he developed the Flower Flu on purpose. His new company distributes the virus in a controlled fashion that keeps the research funded, then once the other companies catch up, they’ll basically all keep each other in business.”
“And he’s telling you that you’ve got nothing to say about it because your father is a war criminal and you behaved like a wicked slut up in that den of wolves.”
Daci felt herself blush, looked at the ground. “Yes.”
“I see.” He pulled his wallet from his back pocket. Once black, now worn brown and smooth, and Daci thought it might disintegrate to a pile of dust before he could get it closed again; but then the wallet went back into his pocket and she found a business card in her hand.
The card displayed a stylized dragon, the name Balaur Radu Tepescu, and a phone number preceded by an 818 area code. Daci’s brow knitted and she looked to her father nonplussed.
“War criminals are much frowned on when the war is over,” he told her. “They often get put on trial in a public court—”
Daci scoffed. “The same type of international institution that let them rise to power in the first place.”
“Yes. And you became an active, responsible part of that international nexus when you took the helm of Sydney’s company. Radu—now Balaur—wanted only to come to the States and drink Pep-shee.”
Daci ran her fingers over the cheap, thin business card. Wondered what kind of business this vicious man had found for himself here. “He lives in the Valley?”
“Valley Village. He has a pre-teen son named Zalmoxis, and his wife Elena makes the best mititei this side of the Danube.”
“And?”
“He still speaks fondly of you. And I’m sure he’d be interested in knowing that Sydney Ion Scalinescu is spreading rumors and lies about him.”
“Interested.”
“Uhm-hmm.”
“How interested?”
“Don’t call him unless you’re quite serious. As I said, Radu’s wife makes the greatest mititei. Sausage, too. She makes them in bulk and sells them at one of the little local delis.”
Daci looked carefully at her father at this hardness she had never seen, did not recognize. She’d not understood him capable of such cruelty. Her heart pounded again, this time in her ears, the rush of blood momentarily muting the laughing chatter of the workers. She recognized it—fear. She saw her father in an entirely different light and was afraid of him.
Which, she understood, had been Sydney’s goal.
* * *
Terri’s voice down the phone asking—reasonably, “How is killing Sydney—and having him eaten apparently—going to help things?”
Daci tried to explain, more to herself than to her friend, what she believed were her father’s motives. “He’s saying to watch myself. And that if I need help—you know, drastic help—that this man will help me. And that Sydney is maybe dangerous and—” The words didn’t make sense or convince even herself.
“You know what’s really going on here, right?” Teresa, grounded queen of sensibility. “It’s as old as the creation of earth. Or at least of man.”
“Sure. Sure, these men are attempting to hurt and destroy each other and I’m caught in the middle.”
“Oh honey. You’re more than caught in the middle. They’re using you against each other.”
Daci’s nose stung and her eyes filled with tears. “But that’s my dad,” she croaked. And the sound of her own weak voice embarrassed her.
“I know. But, as your mother drilled into us, he’s still a man and still a human and like the rest of us sometimes must bow to the demands of the species.”
“I have to go now.”
“Stop and see your mother!”
“Exactly.”
* * *
Cacophony, California lay across the beach from the overrated drive that was Highway 1. It claimed neither Northern or Southern California but Central, that wild, largely unknown stretch where Hearst built his castle and the pine trees kissed the ocean. On the service road running parallel to Highway 1 stood a sign, white letters on a green background: “Cacophony, CA, population 35.” Somebody had used reflective tape to change the 35 to a 38.
Dacianna’s mother, Jillian Rogan Worthington, had kept her studio here for nearly a decade now. Santa Barbara had become too much for her at some point, with its unusable beaches and drunken college-kid surfers. She’d openly envied Daci’s father for his vineyards, about which she intentionally maintained a romanticized vision. In the interest of continuing to preserve this idealized image, she’d never spent more than three consecutive days at the vineyard, a practice Daci herself followed and also applied to Las Vegas.
Daci’s father had hired an architect to fashion a studio from an old barn. Her mother would have preferred a Cape, but Capes are notoriously small. The idea of a studio space worked at cross purposes with the dimensions of a Cape Cod style house. This little dualistic want had come to characterize Jillian in Daci’s comprehension of her. Jillian wanted to live on the beach but not get a tan, wanted a husband and child to love but not be responsible for.
And the marvelous thing about Jillian Worthington, the thing Daci admired and sometimes envied her mother for, was that she usually managed to finagle a solution, some third way which satisfied her seemingly irreconcilable demands. The barn, for instance, still rectangular and blocky from the outside, had been reworked so that the sec
ond floor studio had the pitched roofs and dormers characteristic of Cape, while the monstrous space afforded by the building’s actual architecture remained preserved.
Another marvelous thing about Jillian Worthington was that despite being a vintner’s wife, she enjoyed the bubbly sweet flavor of sparkling boxed wine, especially when paired with Twinkies and Doritos. So Dacianna made a stop at the local market to get some, along with a Hershey bar and the latest copy of Cosmo.
At the barn, the Hummer crunched over gravel and Daci left it to rest in the shade of a pine grove. A mural graced the side of her mother’s barn studio, reminiscent of those along the Venice Beach boardwalk—stars and planets and lions and dolphins and a little girl in a green dress poised on a rock, staring out at the wide world in wonder and amazement. Daci had witnessed her mother paint these images. Otherwise, she would have questioned the claim. Because Jillian’s artistic mainstay, her fairies, were painfully mediocre at best, and occasionally reached the point of laughably embarrassing.
Daci walked along the mural to the back of the house, where renovations to the barn reminded visitors of a secluded forest cottage. The entire second floor of the back was comprised of wide windows and opened onto a redwood deck. As Daci came around the corner, she caught sight of her mother on the deck, her grey hair sparkling in the sunshine while she cradled a giant orange cat in her arms. She peered into the forest, frowning.
Jillian had hair that rivaled her daughters in length and wildness. Medium height and build, but with the body that ninety minutes a day of Ashtanga yoga earns a sixty-six year old woman. Despite the Twinkies. She left her waist-length hair down, crowned with a thin braid. The only thing brighter than the sheen of that hair was the sparkle in her yacht-blue eyes. Her clothing accented the lines of her body without being teenager-tight or showing an inappropriate amount of skin, and she wore her laugh lines with dignity and pride—a veritable poster child for graceful aging.
The stripy monster in her mother’s arms purred so loudly that Daci heard it before she reached the bottom stair leading up to the deck. Her mother held the contented animal upside down and rocked it gently, like a baby.
The snap-snapping of Daci’s sandals against her heels echoed as she made her way up the sturdy wood of the staircase, and a generous smile wiped clean all traces of her mother’s creased brow. “Hi sweetie! It’s great to see you.” As if Daci had been expected. But, Daci knew, she was always sort of expected.
Her mother jutted her chin at the thick forest in front of them. “I’ve misplaced Thing. I’m afraid he’s run off.”
“Is Thing the white one?” Daci scratched the big orange cat on the head, and it nuzzled her appreciatively.
“No, the white one is It. Thing is the grey one.”
“How many have you got now, Mom?”
“Just the three! I know your father believes that I’m slowly deteriorating into the crazy cat lady down here but I find homes for all those strays.” She once more searched the perimeter of the tree line around the house, then hunched her shoulders in a shrug.
“Probably he’ll turn up. Come inside.”
The deck led directly into the second floor studio, through one of the flared gable dormers. Three of these little rooms projected from either side of the barn’s sloping roof. The one directly across from the deck’s foyer held a veritable jungle’s worth of plants and a sliding door separated it from the rest of the house, allowing this sunroom to serve as a proper greenhouse.
In the small, pale pink room to the right of the greenhouse, books spilled out of old white bookshelves and two Adirondack chairs with ottomans and puffy blue and yellow pillows invited guests to waste a day reading. The dormer left of the greenhouse held a day bed and an oversized velvet fainting couch. Both pieces shunned the classic burgundy, sporting instead pink and yellow with lace accents and striped pillows. The ultimate in by-the-sea princess furniture couture.
The two dormers sharing the side of the house as the deck and foyer held her mother’s art supplies, and central to all these miniature rooms lay the studio, its enormity disguised by the lowered, pitched ceilings and warm, caramel painted walls. Littered throughout the studio, grouped loosely by color palette, were the fairy paintings. Rendered with a childish over-simplicity and fragmentedness, Daci had never appreciated them, and had on more than one occasion suggested that her mother choose alternate subject matter.
“I’d probably do a better job painting them,” her mother once confided, “if I believed in them. Or for that matter liked them.”
Regardless, they apparently sold: Her mother had paid all the expenses for the barn renovation. A few of the paintings had been purchased for use in a TV series, which no doubt helped, between the obscene prices Hollywood paid for even the tiniest of details and the subsequent residual sales to people who just absolutely had to have that painting Jezebella the Werewolf Huntress had hanging in her living room.
Her mother brought a bowl for the Doritos and glasses for the wine.
“Lunch of champions!” she said.
They settled on the redwood deck, under the shade of a green striped picnic umbrella. Birds called their separate, distinctive songs; Daci made out four. A hummingbird buzzed to the feeder, its constant motion keeping it in one place. Daci relaxed. She didn’t feel like talking.
Her mom, being a mom, let her get away with this for a bit, munching snacks and drinking wine and occasionally calling attention to some nearby bird or animal. When the Doritos were about two-thirds gone, though….
“Your father called me today,” her mother told her. “Right after you left the vineyard.”
Daci, despite being in her thirties, and regardless of running a company, felt herself pout. A grown woman and this was her response, what she reverted to in the presence of her parents: a pout and the tightness of yet again fighting tears.
“It’s cooler in the house. Why don’t we go inside for a bit?” Her mom swept up the snacks and her wine glass, floated through the sliding doors with her long flowery skirt trailing behind her.
They resettled in the room next to the greenhouse, her mother on the daybed, folding her knees up “Indian style” as Daci had called it growing up. Daci opened a bottle of her father’s wine and poured a full glass, then stretched out on the fainting couch.
Her mother sensed when she was once again at ease and took a different approach. “Funny,” she started, like easing into a swimming pool. “You’ve never liked people very much. Always enjoyed the offerings of being alive but people you could take or leave. Yet you continue to live in Los Angeles. Where there are so many people.”
Daci shrugged. “I live in the snobby section. Bohemian snobs. We all keep to ourselves.”
“You are somewhat elitist. In your way.”
Daci couldn’t deny that.
“You’re intellectually elitist and you don’t like people, but you do care about them. Even for them. Curious. I’m happy about it—it shows you have compassion, so I must have raised you right.” She gazed dreamily at the greenhouse.
“But?”
“But it confuses me as to just why it’s so important for you to get the Flower Flu treatment released.”
“People are dying, Mom. I’m not especially fond of alligators, but that doesn’t mean I want them exterminated.”
Her mother shrugged, placid. “From what your father told me, from what you told him, the treatment will eventually meet the market.”
“It could take up to three years!”
“Is that too long?”
Daci paused; he mother had asked this in earnest and Daci had to admit she’d never seriously considered it. Her knee jerk response was to get it out to the public immediately, and besides, “Flower Flu isn’t an accident. Sydney had somebody design it. On purpose! It’s murder, Mom. Would you wait three years to stop a psycho ki
ller?” She stopped, realizing she sounded on the verge of panic.
“I’m not asking you to justify yourself, sweetie. I’m just curious is all.” She gave what Daci’s father called her Serenity Smile. Half closed-mouthed, half toothy, with her head cocked. Simultaneously acknowledging and dismissing all the world’s awfulness and cruelty.
“Your mother will smile through the Apocalypse,” Daci’s father used to say.
“I heard about the Flu being invented,” her mother said.
“Horrible!”
“Mmm. But a lot of cures have been developed and then a disease had to be found to apply them to. Also, is there any evidence that what he’s told you is true? Are you certain?”
“I’m not. I don’t know. And I’ve lost the only person who can tell me for sure. And that person could develop his own cure, too.”
Her mom smiled again, soothing like a summer shower.
“You always have admired scientists.”
“I appreciate devotion to specialized knowledge, I guess. They also seem resistant to nostalgia. And unlikely to commit murder.”
“I always figured you simply admired their intelligence.”
“I guess. But the stuff should be taught in grade school, the concepts anyway. ABC’s, unified field theory, counting, quantum mechanics, reading, nap, snack.”
“You know what’s terrible? I don’t know either of those things.”
“You don’t know your ABC’s?”
“Nope, those either. For instance, I don’t actually know what E equals M C squared means.”
“Oh. It’s part of the theory of relativity. It just says that energy, the e in the equation, can be expressed as a product of mass and the speed of light. So energy and matter,” she rapped her knuckles against the arm of the fainting couch, “are different manifestations of the same thing. Kind of like steam and ice. Both water.” She stopped, pausing to listen. “Do you hear that? It sounded like the greenhouse door.”
They listened, but the sound didn’t repeat.
Baroness Von Smith Page 33
