Talk Talk

by T. C. Boyle

  It didn’t do him much good—if there was a blip in the receipts it was too small to notice. But the ad itself (it wasn’t even an ad, just a cheesy coupon in the Thursday morning insert), aside from costing him money, seemed to suck the last shred of class out of the place. He hated it. Hated the way it looked on the page, the lame line drawing of a stereotypical grinning potbellied mustachioed greaseball of an Italian chef holding up a vertical pizza in defiance of gravity beneath the legend Pizza Napoli, Buy One Regular Size Pizza with One Topping, Get the Next One Free. Christ, he might as well have been selling hula hoops.

  And then there was Gina. He wasn’t allowed to contact her, but he still had the right to see his daughter every Sunday, all day Sunday, whether Gina liked it or not, and his lawyer contacted her lawyer and worked out an arrangement whereby Gina’s mother would bring Sukie to some neutral place and he would pick her up. They agreed on McDonald’s—she loved McDonald’s, more for the playground than the food, the vanilla shake thick as sludge and the shrunken little patty of whatever it was they slipped between the grease-soaked bun, no ketchup, no mustard, no onions, neither of which seemed to interest her beyond the first sip and the first bite—and Gina’s mother was consistently late. He sat there in the Mustang, checking his watch every ten seconds, kids all over the place, but not his kid, and when Gina’s mother did show she never apologized or even said word one, handing Sukie over as if she were giving her up to a child molester. Did he hate that woman, with her surgically restructured face and her liposuction and frozen hair and the way she locked up her features and threw away the key as if just to look at him was an ordeal? Yes, sure he did. And he hated Gina for what she’d done to him. And the Bullhead—just hearing his voice on the phone, the hectoring nag of a voice going on and on about the menu at Pizza Napoli, the books, the bottom line: You’re not offering the public what they want. You know why? Because you get stuck on one thing. Listen to me: you’re screwing up. Big-time. Wake up, will you? Not to mention Stuart Yan, who was suing him for damages in civil court. It had to come to a head. A saint would have broken under the pressure, and he never claimed to be a saint.

  It was a Sunday and he was sitting in the car outside McDonald’s, reading the sports page, watching the leaves change, checking his watch—nine o’clock, nine-thirty, ten—and Gina’s mother never showed. His first impulse was to drive out there and do some damage, confront the bitch, tear the house down if that was what it took, but he suppressed it: that was a ticket to jail. He checked his watch again. A guy came out the door, a nobody, a nonentity in flip-flops and shorts, and he had his two kids by the hand and they were one happy family, their Egg McMuffins tucked away and the park or a football game in their immediate future or maybe a cruise up the river to see how the leaves looked against the water. He wanted to call, but that was against the rules too. At eleven, sick with rage, he gave it up and drove to the restaurant to discover a message on the machine: Just to let you know, Gina’s mother’s pinched voice came at him as if she were hollering down a tunnel, Sukie won’t be coming today because of the ballet at Carnegie Hall. The whole family’s going.

  He listened to the message twice through, standing there over the phone in his office at the back of the building, struggling for control. There were stains on the wall. The place smelled of marinara sauce, a dark ancient funk of it, and of the grease extruded from the pepperoni and the cheese burned to the walls of the oven. They thought they’d beaten him down, marginalized him, taken him out of the equation—before long, he’d be erased altogether. That was what they thought, but they were wrong. He could have called his lawyer and started up that whole dance again, could have complained, and yet he didn’t see what good that would do—they had their own lawyer. Up to this point, he’d played by the rules. Now the rules were off.

  In the morning, as soon as the offices were open, he put in calls to the phone company, the gas, electric and water, identifying himself as John Marchetti and ordering a stop service on all utilities at the house. He filed a change of address at the post office, then called American Express and Visa—the two cards he’d seen the Bullhead flash—and claimed he’d lost his wallet and wanted replacement cards overnighted by FedEx. When the new cards arrived at the post-office box he’d set up, he began to order things for delivery to 1236 Laurel: a new washer and dryer; an antique slate pool table that weighed over a thousand pounds; a pair of purebred Dalmatians; a deluxe fourteen-jet hot tub that could accommodate six people comfortably. That was just the beginning. He canceled Gina’s cell, canceled her credit cards, went down to the bank and closed out their joint savings account. And Yan. He went after Yan too, but in a more immediate way. A week later, after he’d closed the restaurant for the night and made the rounds of the bars, he found Yan’s Nissan parked out front of his apartment and poured six plastic jugs of muriatic acid over the finish, then slashed the tires and took out the windshield for good measure. The night was cold, his breath steaming, the tire iron flashing under the street lamp like a sword of vengeance, and maybe somebody saw him there or maybe it was the post-office box, maybe that was it. He never knew really. In fact, he was still asleep when they came for him, and he never did remember his toothbrush.

  By the time he got round to cooking, it was past seven and Madison was distracted and whiny. She sat at the kitchen table, pounding her legs back and forth under the chair as if she were on a swing set at the playground, watching him poach the gnocchi while the cordon bleu began to send up signals from the oven and the white sauce thickened in the pan and the zucchini simmered in olive oil, red wine, garlic and chopped basil, the flame up high just before he cut it down nearly to nothing. There was an untouched glass of milk in front of her and the croque monsieur he’d made her from a heel of French bread and the leftover slices of prosciutto and Emmentaler browned in the pan. He could see the semicircular indentation her upper teeth had made in the sandwich when she’d lifted it to her mouth and then decided she wasn’t going to eat it after all because she was cranky and tired and sugared-out in honor of Dunkin’ Donuts Day at camp and because he wanted her to eat and her mother wanted her to eat and she didn’t want to do what anybody wanted her to do, not in her present mood.

  For his part, he was through coaxing her. She could kick away all she wanted and she could pout and mug and whine that the milk was too warm and the sandwich too cold or plead for him to read her a story or at least let her get up from the table and watch TV, but he was in a zone—he was enjoying himself, the meal coming to fruition, two sips left of the vodka martini on the counter and the Orvieto on ice. Natalia had set the table on the deck—it was an uncharacteristically mild evening, the fog held at bay, at least temporarily—and she was out there now, martini in one hand, magazine in the other. After the spa, she’d spent the afternoon shopping with Kaylee, and she’d come home in a delirium of shopping bags, the slick shining colors catching the light, her hair swept back, her smile quick and unambiguous and her mood elevated. Definitely elevated. She insisted on trying things on for him—Did he like this one? Did he? Was he sure? It wasn’t too, too…was it?—and Madison was summoned to try on the three outfits she’d got for her (hence the mood and the lateness of the meal).

  He hadn’t told her a thing yet, just that he had a surprise for her. While she’d been out shopping, he’d been shopping too, and he’d traded the Z4 in on a Mercedes S500 sedan with charcoal leather seats, burl walnut trim, an in-dash GPS navigator system and Sirius satellite radio, in a sweet color they called Bordeaux Red. There was a price differential, of course—a considerable one, and he knew he was being taken, the salesman pulling some sort of phony accent on him and kissing his ass from the front door to the desk and back again—but that hardly mattered. The Beemer was his down (the pink slip signed over to him by none other than Dana Halter) and there were no payments for the first six months, by which time it really wasn’t relevant. Now, as he dodged from one pan to the other, checking the cordon bleu, dipping the gnocch
i out of the pot and slipping them onto a greased sheet for a three-minute browning in the oven, he was burning up with the need to show it to her, to show it off and see the look on her face. That was how he’d planned it out, the new car first, the thrill of it, maybe a ride round the block or over the bridge, and then he’d give her the news: Business. An opportunity on the East Coast. But it would be a vacation, a vacation too—see the sights. Didn’t she want to live in New York? Hadn’t she always said that? New York?

  In the heat of the moment—pans sizzling, aromas rising—he didn’t hear her come in the door. There was Madison, pouting at the table, there was the deck and the empty chaise, and here she was, Natalia, slipping her arms round his waist. “So what is this surprise?” she cooed, her lips at his ear. “Tell me. I can hardly stand to know.”

  Flipping off the gas under the burners, he gave the zucchini pan a precautionary shake and then swiveled round in her embrace. Both his hands climbed to her shoulders and he took her to him for a lingering kiss while Madison looked on in mock disgust. “You’ll see,” he murmured, and in that moment he was sure of her, sure of the feel and the taste and the smell of her, his partner, his lover, the dark venereal presence in his bed. “As soon as we eat.”

  “Ohhh,” she said, drawing it out, “so long?” And then, to her daughter: “It is a surprise, Madison. For Mommy. Do you like a surprise?”

  After dinner—Madison managed to get down two forkfuls of gnocchi and half a slice of the veal, though she just stared right through the vegetables—he took them down the front steps to the gravel walkway along the bay. They were holding hands, Natalia on his right, Madison on his left. Madison bunched her fingers in the way Sukie used to, not quite ready to interlock them with his because she was still in a mood and that would have been too conciliatory under the circumstances—the surprise wasn’t for her, after all, or not primarily. “What is it, Dana?” she kept saying in a high taunting schoolyard voice. “Huh? Aren’t you going to tell?”

  “Yes, Da-na,” Natalia chimed in. “I am in suspense. It is out here, outside? Something outside?”

  He didn’t answer right away. He was thinking of Sukie, the last time he’d seen her. It was the week he’d been released. They were at McDonald’s, same place, same time, but she wasn’t the girl he knew. It wasn’t just the physical changes—a year older, a year taller, two teeth missing in front, her hair pinned up with a tortoiseshell barrette so that she seemed like an adult in miniature—but the way she looked at him. Her eyes, fawn-colored, round as quarters, eyes that had given themselves up to him without stint, were wary now, slit against the glare of the sun, against him. He could see the poison Gina had poured into them and see too that there was no antidote—there was nothing he could do to win her back, no amount of fudge on the sundae, not the desperation of his hug or the prattle of the old stories and routines. She was lost to him. He didn’t even remember her birthday anymore. “No,” he said finally, bending low against the tug of Natalia’s hand to bring his face level with her daughter’s, “it’s inside.”

  All three of them had halted. Madison’s nose twitched. “Then why are we out here?”

  “Because this is an alternate way to our garage, isn’t it? An acceptable way? A nice way, out here, breathing nice clean air after dinner?” He straightened up even as she let go of his hand and flew across the grass; just as she reached the garage door—unfinished wood gone gray with the sun and sea for the natural look—he clicked the remote and the door swung up as if by magic.

  “It is a car?” Natalia said, catching the glint of chrome as they strode across the grass hand in hand.

  When they were there, when he’d let Madison in to scramble over the seats and Natalia, her mouth slack, had pulled back the driver’s side door to peer inside at the dash, he said, “Top of the line. Or nearly.” He paused, watching her run a hand over the upholstery. “I could have gone for the S600, but it’s such a gas hog—four hundred ninety-three horses. I mean, think of the environment.”

  Natalia was giving him a puzzled look. “But where,” she said, “is my car?”

  “Mommy, Mommy!” Madison shouted, bouncing so high on the rear seat her head brushed the roof.

  “I traded it on this,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “For you. For Madison. You can’t have her on your lap all the time, I mean, she’s growing up—look at the size of her.”

  “But I love my Z-car.” Natalia’s lips were clenched. Her eyes hardened.

  “I know, baby,” he said, “I know. When we get to New York I’ll get you another one, I promise.”

  Her head came up now, up out of the dark den of the interior, with its rich new smell and the shining screen of the GPS system. “New York? What are you talking about?”

  Later, after they’d put Madison to bed, they had a talk. It was the kind of talk he hated, the kind where you were up against the wall, no place to hide, and everything was going to come out sooner or later. He felt vulnerable. Irritated. Felt as if he was standing before the judge all over again, the lawyer, his probation officer.

  Natalia had made coffee and they sat across from each other in the living room, holding on to their mugs as if they were weighted against a hurricane wind. She was watching him closely, her eyebrows lifted, both hands clenched round the mug in her lap. “So, you are going now to tell me what this is all about? That I should have to leave my home and tear up—is that how you say it?—tear up my daughter when she is just to start in school?”

  “You love me, right?” he countered, leaning forward to set his mug on the coffee table. “You’ve told me that a thousand times. Did you mean it?”

  She didn’t respond. Outside, a pair of blue lights drifted across the bay.

  “Did you?”

  In a reduced voice, she said that she did. One hand went to the throat of her silk blouse; she fingered the necklace there, pearls he’d given her. Or paid for, anyway.

  “All right, good. You’re just going to have to trust me, that’s all”—he held up a hand to forestall her. “Haven’t I given you everything you could possibly want? Well,” he said, without waiting for an answer to the obvious, “I’m going to continue to do that. No, I’m going to give you more. Much more. Private school for Madison, the best money can buy, and you know the best schools are on the East Coast. You know that, don’t you?”

  Her face was ironed sober, no trace of theatrics or antipathy. She was trying hard to comprehend. “But why?”

  “It’s complicated,” he said, and he glanced up at a movement beyond the window, a flash of white, the beat of wings, something settling there on the rail—an egret. Was that an egret?

  “Yes?” she said, leaning into the table herself now, her eyes probing his.

  “Okay,” he said. “You just have to—listen, my name isn’t really Dana.”

  “Not Dana? What do you mean? This is a joke?”

  “No,” he said, slowly shaking his head, “no joke. I—I adopted the name. Because I was in trouble. It was—”

  She cut him off. “Then you are not a doctor?”

  He shook his head. There was the shadow of the bird there, faintly luminous, and he couldn’t help wondering if it was a sign, and if it was, whether it was a good sign or bad.

  “And all this”—her gesture was sudden, a wild unhinged sweep of her hand—“is a lie? This condo, this coffee table and the dining set? A lie? All a lie?”

  “I don’t know. Not a lie. Everything’s real—the new car, the earrings, the way I feel about you and Madison.” He glanced away and saw that the bird was gone, chased by her gesture, by the violence of her voice. “It’s just a name.”

  There was a long moment of silence during which he became aware of the distant murmur of the neighbor’s TV, a sound that could have been the wash of the surf or the music of the whales. But it wasn’t. It was only the sound of a TV. Then she said, “So, if you are not Da-na, then who are you?”

  He never hesitated. He looked right at her
. “Bridger,” he said. “Bridger Martin.”

  PART III

  One

  “IT’S GOOD,” Bridger said, using his hands for emphasis. “I like it.” He nodded his head vigorously, chin up, chin down. His smile widened. “Really good.”

  “Really?” she said, and felt the color rise to her face. “You’re not just telling me that, are you?”

  They were sitting in her car across from Mail Boxes Etc. in the town of Mill Valley, California, just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. She’d never been here before, had never in fact done anything more than attach the name to a place she knew vaguely to be somewhere north of the city. It was a pleasant-enough town, she supposed, with its oaks and pines and the mountain that loomed over it, the streets that managed to seem urban and rural at the same time and the carefully cultivated small-town feel—just the sort of place a thief might want to live. Trees to hide behind. Money that spoke quietly. Anonymity.

  They’d been here, in the parked car, for two hours now. The day before, they’d checked into a motel in Monterey—Bridger had insisted on taking her to the aquarium there, which she loved despite herself, sharks tapping some hidden energy source with the flick of a fin, fish floating like butterflies in the big two-story tank as if this were the Disneyland of the sea—and they’d got up early that morning and driven straight through to Mill Valley. Bridger’s map, downloaded from Map-Quest, with a red star indicating the Mail Boxes franchise they were looking for, took them right to the place without fret or deviation, and if she’d expected it to look sinister, expected the criminal himself to be grinning at her from behind the copy machines, she was disappointed. The store looked no different from any other Mail Boxes Etc. There it was. People going in, people coming out.