by Bill Cameron
November 19 — 11:32 am
The Color of Hay
The fish are nervous.
Before Ruby Jane leased the space for Uncommon Cup II, the building housed a commercial aquarium supply business with a built-in showpiece fish tank in the waiting area. She liked the tank so much that when she remodeled, Ruby Jane worked it into the interior design. The aquarium takes up most of the wall across from the counter; on work days I often find myself transfixed by the glittering motion during slow spells. This morning I sit at a table next to the tank, hoping to be soothed by the complex, graceful dance of gouramis and angelfish. But the fish seem to have picked up on my mood.
I last saw Ruby Jane four days ago for our old friend Andy Suszko’s funeral. After the burial, Ruby Jane and I went to the reception, an event Andy wouldn’t have tolerated were he alive to object. He was never much for sentimentality, and a raft of neighborhood biddies bemoaning his demise over Waldorf salad and Swedish meatballs would have driven him off the rails. We stayed only long enough to shake a few hands and each drink a plastic wine glass overfilled with astringent merlot. Ruby Jane drove me back to my place and, before I could say anything, invited herself in. I assumed she didn’t want me to spend the evening alone, brooding in the dark. More likely I’d have brooded with the lights and television on, but in any case I was grateful for her company.
She’d dropped her coat on the floor next to the front door and kicked off her shoes. Roamed the perimeter of the front room. My place is a fairly typical Old Portland bungalow, living room to the left, dining area to the right. The original built-ins anchor either end of the wide space. She inspected the place like she was seeing it for the first time, despite the fact she’d been here a hundred times. The old mirror over the fireplace seemed to occupy her attention for a long time, but I couldn’t tell if she was gazing at her own shadowy reflection in the degraded silver, or at mine. I moved to the couch, flicked on the lamp on the end table. Specks of dusts floated in the stale air. Ruby Jane turned.
“What do you got to drink?”
“Not much. Water from the tap, grape juice in the fridge.”
“Dude, you’re living on the edge.”
I blinked. “Did you just call me ‘dude’?”
“Of course not.” Her lips curled into a half-smile. “I think I was in shock over the grape juice.”
“Alton Brown says it’s good for my heart. It’s got polyphenols.”
“I was thinking of something more in the solvent category.”
“Solvent.”
“Some kind of grain distillate perhaps.”
Ruby Jane was never much of a drinker, aside from a beer here and there. She noted my surprise with a shrug.
“I know, I know. Funerals just make me feel so—” She wandered over to the couch, but didn’t sit down. “I don’t know. Loose. Unmoored. Like I’m going to blow away afterward.”
“When you put it that way, I can see why you’d want to get all liquored up.”
“Skin ... dude ... you got any booze or not?” She tried to fix me with an impatient glare, but her dimples spoiled the effect.
I went into the kitchen and rooted through the cupboards, looking for the bottle of twelve-year-old Macallan Ed Riggins gave me as a retirement gift. “You might think I’m a cheap bastard, Skin, not springing for at least the eighteen for such an auspicious occasion, but the twelve is better. Trust me.” I’d never opened it. I wasn’t supposed to drink during my cancer treatment, and by the time my doc declared the cancer in remission, I’d all but forgotten Ed’s gift. I found the bottle on the shelf beside a canister of flour that had been there since the Clinton administration.
I cracked the seal and poured a couple of fingers each in a pair of juice glasses. Back in the living room, Ruby Jane accepted hers with a grin and tossed it back like an accomplished drunk, then held out the glass for more. Good thing I’d brought the bottle from the kitchen. She sipped her second round, settled back with her hair pulled up off her neck and draped over the couch back.
“I don’t like whisky.”
I took a sip my own and joined her on the couch. The warm, heavy atmosphere around her seemed to stir a nest of bees behind my belly button. “So why are you drinking it?”
“This is good.” She raised the glass and peered into the fluid. “It’s the color of hay. Or shellac.”
“That was fast.”
“What?”
I tilted my head.
“I’m not drunk.” She continued to stare at her glass, her eyes at half-mast. A faint smile danced on her lips. “Did you know shellac is made from bugs?”
“I must have missed the Discovery Channel that day.”
“I want ice for my next one.”
I wasn’t sure she needed a next one. Her mood was weird. Talk about feeling unmoored. She’d cooked in my kitchen, watched birds on my back deck. Hogged the remote on my couch. This was the first time I’d ever felt uncomfortable around her.
“RJ, what’s going on?”
She rolled her head my way. “Nothing. Want some ice?”
“I drink my whisky neat.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She sprang off the couch and vanished through the door into the kitchen. I heard her banging around in the freezer, then a moment later she was back, her glass full of ice. She dropped a couple of cubes into my glass and topped me off before sitting down again. I looked at her, but she didn’t return my gaze. Her eyes went back to the glass in her hand. I could hear the ice cracking in my glass.
“Ruby Jane, you’re freaking me out.”
She continued to smile her hazy smile. “Sorry.”
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. Feeling bad about Andy, I guess. How old was he?”
“Eighty-one.”
“That’s right. You joked about him traveling the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon. ‘You have died of dysentery.’”
“Yeah, I was hilarious.”
“He laughed about it.” She sipped her whisky, her blue eyes remote. “The funeral didn’t do him justice.”
I have my own feelings about funerals, but I didn’t want to unload them on Ruby Jane. I’d known Andy Suszko all my life, and no ceremony arranged by the little old ladies who lived on his street and spent their days trying to mother him could ever do him justice. But I knew the funeral wasn’t for him, and it wasn’t for people like me and Ruby Jane either. I was okay with that. Ruby Jane seemed to feel differently.
She knocked off her whisky, reached for the bottle. I put my hand on her arm and she stopped, turned her eyes to me. They were deep and unfocused, or maybe they were fixed on the space behind my own eyes. “Skin ...”
I kissed her.
I didn’t plan it, didn’t quite realize what was happening until the moment was upon me. For the briefest of instants, I felt her lean into me, felt the softness of her lips, tasted the woody smoke of the Macallan.
Then, abruptly, she pulled away and jumped to her feet. I looked up, couldn’t read her expression. She raised a finger to her lower lip, and for a second I thought she was going to wipe her mouth. Instead she offered me a quick, embarrassed smile and looked away. “You know what? I’m opening the Hollywood shop tomorrow. Five o’clock comes early.”
“Ruby Jane—”
“It’s no big deal. It’s not.” She scooted around the coffee table, bumped it and almost knocked over the bottle. I got up to follow, but before I knew it she had her coat on, the door open.
“Do you think it’s a good idea—”
“I think I could use a little walk. Don’t worry. I’ll call a cab or something.”
Her car was still there when I stumbled to bed, hours later, the Macallan dangerously depleted. The car was gone by morning.
I’ve managed to avoid her for days, managed to avoid this awkward encounter beside the fish tank. I’m glad Marcy is behind the counter, working just a few feet away, that other customers sip drinks around the shop. College stu
dents, people tapping away on their laptops. Free WiFi helps keep the place middling full all day long. A couple of guys seem to run their businesses from RJ’s deep couches. Dark, edgy music plays in the background, a playlist from Marcy’s iPod. Ruby Jane offers me an uncertain smile from behind the counter. I don’t know what’s going to happen.
A deep disquiet rumbles through me. I need to leave. Quit my job, go find a new coffee shop to haunt. Create some distance and give Ruby Jane air. Drown my sorrows in a stranger’s lesser latte. Hell, Common Grounds is a few blocks down the street and I’d only have to trade in two syllables. Instead, I’m sitting here like a nervous adolescent while she makes tea. My stomach is knotted up; I don’t want anything. I know she’ll bring me something anyway. That it will be something I like helps explain why I created this mess. I can hear her talking to Marcy, but I can’t make out the words. Shop talk, most likely, but I’m feeling paranoid. When she finally sits down, she doesn’t make eye contact. Or perhaps it’s me who won’t make eye contact. We both look at the fish as she slides a mug across the table top. The aroma rising from the surface of the cup offers me a small measure of comfort. Coffee, black: my current poison of choice. I lift my eyes.
“RJ, listen, I just want to say—”
“You don’t have to say anything. Really.”
“It’s just ... I feel like I owe you an apology.”
Her gaze bounces around, finds her tea cup. “If anyone should apologize, it’s me.”
I slump. It’s even worse than I thought. “How do you figure?”
“I just think—” She brushes her bangs off her forehead. “It wasn’t fair, what I did—”
“Ruby Jane, don’t. You have been my friend. I’m the one who crossed the line.”
“I don’t know why you think you crossed some line. Maybe I crossed the line.” She blinks, and light glitters in her eyes, silver reflections of fish. “Maybe no one did.”
I feel like she’s trying to somehow excuse my behavior, but the effort is only making me feel even older and more ridiculous. I sip my coffee, concentrate for a moment on the crisp warmth, the flavor of earth and cocoa. I’m trying to decide what to say, sure whatever I come up with will only sound foolish or desperate.
“Skin, we’ve shared a lot over the last few years. I’ve been closer to you than anyone else.”
“What about Pete?”
She looks away from her tea, meets my gaze at last. Her eyes are moist. “You’re sitting here, aren’t you? Where the hell is he?”
I am only too aware of Pete’s absence. Theirs had been a mercurial relationship from the start, erupting out of the hot flash of a murder investigation that ended with Ruby Jane gut-shot and half-dead, and Pete nearly so. After a long period during which my own emotional fluctuations were downright stable in comparison, he’d moved to California the previous year to work as the greenhouse manager for a plant nursery. It was supposed to be temporary, six, maybe eight months, a stop along the way to a planned transfer back to Oregon and an even bigger operation out near Woodburn. But he keeps not getting the transfer, continues to stay on in the Central Valley. As the months pass, an inertial stasis seems to have set in. Except for one thing.
“He flies up to see you fairly regularly though, right?”
Fire floods her cheeks. “You think I’m building a life around a once monthly weekend round trip from Sacramento? Even if he didn’t realize he was blowing me off when he took the job, I sure as hell did.” Her back goes rigid and she presses against the table top, mouth set into a hard line. I expect her to get up and walk away. But then her face softens and her hands relax, her shoulders drop. She shakes her head. “I like Pete. He’s a kind of weird I can appreciate. There was a time when we might have had a chance. But that was a long time ago. He’s never gonna get past himself.”
I’m not a stupid man. I’ve puzzled out crimes as petty and simple as car prowls and as complex as multiple murders and criminal conspiracies. I’ve served on organized crime task forces, held my own against hot shot defense attorneys on cross. Hell, I even manage to surf the internet without handing over control of my computer to Ukrainian identity thieves. But apparently I’m too damn dumb to understand what Ruby Jane is trying to say to me. I lower my eyes, raise one hand to my neck. I try to resist scratching my red patch, but my fingertips brush the rough flesh, an involuntary reflex as old as I am.
Ruby Jane reaches across the table, snatches my hand away from my neck. I look up, meet her eyes. She’s smiling, melancholy. I let her pull my hand away from my throat. “Skin, you’re in your fifties and you still let that thing on your neck convince you that you don’t deserve anything good.” Her touch thrills me, an electric buzz in my spine. I don’t want her to let go. She doesn’t. “I get it. I’m smart and pretty and ambitious and young, or at least younger. But not nearly so young I can’t decide for myself whether I want a crusty grump with a face like a baboon’s ass to kiss me.”
She studies me, the crusty grump. It’s an act I find undaunting— but only from her. I see the strands of grey at her temples again, and I realize I know exactly how old she is. Her age was one of those personal details about a crime victim I’d learned in the course of the investigation into the attack that had nearly killed her. She’s thirty-five, almost twenty years my junior. She’s not a child. Not a girl, but a woman who can look me in the eye and not flinch.
“You may not realize it, but I haven’t seen your neck since you came to check on me at the hospital the day I got shot. Remember that?” The question doesn’t require a response. “You’re a good, funny, smart man when you’re not awash in self-pity. Okay, so you’re retired. It’s not a death sentence. Stop acting like it is.”
Anyone else—Susan or anyone from my cop days—could tell me the same thing, use the same words, and they’d strike me as harsh or condescending. Raise my hackles and bring out the fight in me. But from Ruby Jane they’re like the gentle caress of a cool, damp cloth on my fevered forehead. I feel at once embarrassed and reassured. I open my mouth, intending what, I don’t know. But she isn’t finished, which saves me the trouble of saying too much.
“I was as much a part of what happened as you were. I’ve made more than my share of bad choices, but this isn’t one of them. My mistake was not being sure of what I wanted, and instead of facing it I ran away. I’m not sorry you kissed me, and I’m not sorry I kissed you back. But before we can go further with this, whatever it is, we both need to be clear about something. I know why I kissed you, Skin. But do you know why you kissed me?”
“I ... Ruby Jane, of course—”
“No. Wait. Don’t just toss out an answer. Think about it. Did you kiss me because of how you feel about me, or did you kiss me because you’ve lost faith in who you are? I can be with the Skin who first walked into my shop two years ago and made fun of frou-frou coffee. I can’t be with the Skin who fears his own imagined irrelevance.” She lifts her free hand, touches my cheek. “Don’t you become Pete. Okay?”
“I couldn’t handle the jail time.”
She laughs quietly, then turns her head to the fish tank and stares into the water. Without releasing my hand, she reaches out and runs our interlocked fingers along the cool surface of the tank. A coral gourami bumps along the glass, following our fingertips.
The shop door opens behind me, bells jangling, and the fish darts away. Ruby Jane looks past my shoulder and I turn. I don’t know who I expect to see, but Susan isn’t it. She oughta still be hip deep in the operation at Mitch’s place. Neither Ruby Jane nor I speak as Susan crosses the café and stops at our table.
“Hello, Skin. I’m sorry to intrude. I tried calling, but you never answer your phone.”
I look over at Ruby Jane, then back to Susan. “Sorry. I must not have heard it beep.”
“I realize this is abrupt, but I need you to come with me. Something has come up.”
I don’t respond right away, and her gaze bounces between Ruby Jane and me, then down to
our clasped hands. I wonder for a moment if she realizes what she’s walked in on. I don’t want her to even guess. When she turns her gaze back to me, RJ gently disentangles her hand from my own.
I lean back in an attempt to appear casual. “So what’s up? Did you find Eager?”
“No, it’s not that.” Susan has known Ruby Jane as long as I have, if not as intimately, but she hesitates the way she would in front of a stranger.
“What is it then?”
“Mitch is out of surgery.”
“That was quick. How’s he doing?”
“They say he’ll pull through.”
“That’s good, I guess. But what does it have to do with me?”
“He wants to make a statement.”
I’m surprised he didn’t lawyer up. “I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”
“He says it’s a matter of life and death. Skin”—her fingers drum against her thighs—“he’s only willing to talk to you.”
A Day, A Week, Eighteen Years Earlier
You Can Call Me Hiram
Big Ed Gillespie first met Hiram Spaneker in a casino parking lot in Reno. Big Ed was twenty-two at the time, three weeks past being cut by the Oakland Raiders, dead broke and dead drunk. A decent senior year as linebacker for Southern Oregon University and a four-six forty got him invited, undrafted, to Raiders camp. His beer-drenched work ethic and inability to cope with pro blocking schemes got him sent packing again. He took his training camp pay—two weeks’ worth plus a modest signing bonus—to Vegas, where he distracted himself with craps and blow jobs purchased from plasticine women he met off full-color postcards. He burned through five grand in a baker’s week. When he checked out of the Barbary Coast eight days after his arrival, he couldn’t buy gas for the drive back to Medford. He sat in his car in the parking lot, windows open under the hot sun, and thought about a guy he knew who went to Australia to play Aussie Rules football. Whatever that was.
A couple crossing the parking lot caught his eye. They were holding each other up, weaving as ineffectively through the parked cars as he had through the silver-and-black tackling dummies. Just another afternoon in Vegas. His first thought was they must be in the same shape he was in, broke, drunk, and short of options. Why else leave the casino in the middle of a hot afternoon? But as they neared his car he heard them laughing. Mid-fifties, overweight suburban types. Khaki and Keds, red cheeks and white arms. Big Ed got out of his car and approached.
