The Color of Light

by Wendy Hornsby

  I admit to feeling some relief when the front doorbell rang and interrupted their overly polite conversation. Though it was early, when I opened the door I expected to see Rafael standing on the welcome mat. Instead, it was Father John, wearing his white cassock and looking quite angelic.

  “Come in,” I said. “This is an unexpected pleasure. We’re just sitting down to lunch. Will you join us?”

  “I rarely say no to a meal.” He followed me through the house to the backyard, commenting on the jumble the place was in at the moment. “Was there an earthquake I missed?”

  “Looks like it,” I said. “What brings you?”

  “I need a favor,” he said. “Beto was going to take all the food that the hungry ghosts and hungry friends didn’t eat at the party last night and deliver it to the soup kitchen. I’m counting on it for lunch tomorrow. But he called me a bit ago to say that he had to take Bart to the hospital in the middle of the night and is still with him.”

  “What happened to Bart?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Father John said. “But it looks like he’ll be okay. I told Beto I would go by and see him later. But in the meantime, Larry, my fine cook and backup delivery boy, is nowhere to be found, again. Beto suggested I borrow your truck to pick up the leftovers and get them to the church basement.”

  “Sure. My truck’s in the shop but we have a van,” I said. “Do you need help loading the food?”

  “I’d appreciate that,” he said. “And there’s one other little thing.”

  “Why am I suddenly quaking in my boots?”

  He grinned. “I don’t drive anymore.”

  After lunch, Uncle Max, doing a bit of matchmaking himself, volunteered his and Guido’s services to Father John so that Jean-Paul and I could have our last few minutes alone. Before they left in the van Guido rented at the airport at Max’s behest, we picked everything out of the garden that was ripe and sent it along.

  The silence that followed the three of them out the door felt loaded, as if a bomb were about to drop inside the house.

  “It was an interesting weekend, yes?” Jean-Paul slipped his hand into mine and walked me into the living room. Looking weary, and still holding my hand, he dropped into an easy chair.

  “Interesting, yes,” I said, perched on the arm of his chair. “It isn’t every weekend that I dance in a couturier gown one day and get shot at the next. Or make love on a bed of rose petals.”

  “Ah, the damn rose petals.” His cheeks colored from chagrin. “I was afraid I would bore you.”

  “You, bore me? Dear God, Jean-Paul, you may be the least boring man I know. I was afraid that the chaos of this weekend would frighten you away.”

  “I don’t frighten easily.” He canted his head to one side and quietly studied me for a moment, pensive.

  “Maggie, you know that my wife, Marian, and I were very happy, as I know you and Mike were. I have missed her so terribly these last two years. Between us, everything was so—” He searched for the right words. “Peanut butter and jelly. I don’t know how else to say it. Comfortable, I suppose. Sometimes, you remind me of her.”

  Last thing I wanted to hear: You remind me of my dead wife. Perhaps reading my reaction, though I tried not to show anything, he smiled in a self-deprecatory way, acknowledging a flub, and I relaxed.

  “About the rose petals,” he said, pulling me across his lap. He swept some loose hair from my cheek and tucked it behind my ear. “I was trying so very hard to be a dazzling French lover; it is expected of my countrymen, is it not?”

  “You do your nation proud, Jean-Paul.”

  “Tu es très gentille.” With his palm against my cheek, he looked deep into my eyes. “You reminded me this afternoon that a small, spontaneous gesture can touch one’s heart more profoundly than the most elaborate grand geste.”

  “Did I?”

  “Without any hesitation, you wiped my face with your shirt and then carried on as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world for you to do.”

  “It was. There was tomato juice on your chin.”

  “It was a gesture between intimates,” he said. “Something I have missed very much.”

  “Yes.” I put my hand over his, happy, comfortable, yet wary: Where were we headed?

  “What I tried to say and got all muddled up earlier was that Marian always took whatever was thrown at her in stride—no fuss. It is a quality I cherish in you as well.”

  “Oh, I can make a dandy fuss,” I said.

  “No doubt. But when I stupidly did not tell you that evening attire was required for the reception Friday, you never complained, and on short notice found a solution that turned heads. Maggie, if you had shown up Friday wearing this stained shirt...” He tugged my shirttail. “You would have turned heads.”

  “I’m sure I would have.” I laughed, wrapping my arms around his neck. “I can hear them now, ‘Who’s the babe with the imprint of the consul general’s face on her shirt?’”

  “Exactly.” He kissed the top of my head. “Natural, like peanut butter and jelly.”

  Rafael arrived before that conversation could walk us further into the woods than we were ready to go.

  Jean-Paul went upstairs and quickly changed into slacks and a dress shirt for the flight to Los Angeles. Because he would only be gone for a day, he took nothing with him except a book he found in Dad’s den.

  George Loper must have heard the Town Car pull up because he was on his front porch, standing watch, when I walked out with Jean-Paul.

  Jean-Paul eyed him warily over my shoulder. “How long until Max and Guido are back?”

  “Any time now.”

  When he made no move to get into the car, probably thinking of some way he could stay, I said, “Go. And hurry back.”

  I watched the Town Car disappear around the corner before I turned to go inside. George Loper was still on his porch. When I went in, I turned both of the new bolts on the door, hearing a very satisfying pair of clunks when they shot home.

  I took advantage of the few available moments before the next wave of people arrived to gather myself. I found a bottle of good pinot noir in the stash Mom left behind for me, uncorked it, poured a glass, and to avoid the racket of the locksmith’s drill, carried it out to the backyard. It was early maybe to indulge in wine, especially when there was so much work to do, but it was summer and the afternoon was warm and sweet-smelling. I took a few minutes to do absolutely nothing except savor the day and sip my wine and walk around the garden. I felt buried beneath stuff, old family stuff, and not all of it was of a physical nature. It could just wait a little longer, I decided. I took out my phone and called Beto.

  “How’s your dad?” I asked.

  “He’ll be okay,” Beto said. “Looks like he woke up in the night all confused, didn’t know where he was. He went walking around in the dark and took a pretty good tumble. The docs are keeping him overnight again to check him out. They’re talking about doing a brain scan tomorrow.”

  “He got overtired getting ready for the party.”

  “Probably,” Beto said. “You saw how he was. He had a little fit during the party and I sent him to bed. I probably should have asked Doc Saracen to put down his beer and his egg roll and come inside to take a look at him right then. Twenty-twenty hindsight, huh?”

  “I’ll hope for the best.”

  “Hey, did Father John get in touch with you?”

  “He did. My uncle is helping him.”

  “Our old friend Larry was supposed to do the delivery, but he flaked out.”

  “You weren’t bothered that Larry was coming to your house to pick up the leftovers?”

  “Why should I be?” he said. “That was then, this is now, if you know what I mean. We deliver bread from the deli to Father John’s kitchen every morning. I’ve always had one of my guys make the run so I wouldn’t risk bumping into Larry. But after talking to him, I know that was just stupid on my part. The man atoned; time for all of us to move on.”<
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  “Dear God, Beto,” I said. “You sound like a grown-up.”

  “I’m just parroting Father John.”

  “And you sound tired,” I said. “But it was a great party.”

  “Must have been,” he said. “Dad wasn’t the only casualty of the evening.”

  “Who else?”

  “Lacy,” he said. “Kevin put her in rehab last night.”

  “I’ll light a candle.”

  “If only it were that easy. Hey, girly, I gotta go. I’ll call if anything comes up.”

  “Please do.”

  Next, I texted Kevin: “Call me. Now.”

  * * *

  Max and Guido were back and it was time to talk film business. Under the grape arbor, we went over our options for the Normandy project. Max had left several messages for Lana Howard, our executive producer at the network, but she hadn’t responded to them—not a good sign. He was fairly confident that the network would eventually release funds to us, but the issue was when. Whatever they did, it was clear that our position with the network was increasingly fragile. We had alternatives. We could wait out the network. We could take the project to the French television production company and hope that a long-term relationship with them would develop. Or, as Guido preferred, we could strike out on our own and try to scare up independent funding and distribution. All three prospects had both potential benefits and unknown perils.

  In the middle of the conversation, my phone buzzed. I looked at the I.D. screen. “Lana,” I said, flipped on the speaker function and set the phone in the middle of the table.

  “Lana,” I said, speaking loudly. “This is the Lord’s day. Why are you at work?”

  “Are you underwater or something?” Lana snapped. “You sound weird.”

  “You’re on speakerphone,” I said. “I’m here with Max and Guido.”

  “With Max and Guido? I was hoping you and I could have a little private talk. Where the hell are you?”

  “We’re in Berkeley,” I said. “Where the hell are you?”

  “I’m in the middle of Malibu Canyon, sitting in my car in front of your house. That cowboy neighbor of yours wouldn’t tell me a goddamn thing about where to find you.”

  “You could have called before heading up there.”

  “That’s exactly what the bastard said.” She was in full rant mode; I knew it only too well. We had worked together for a long time, and it had never been easy. Not, as Jean-Paul would say, a peanut butter and jelly relationship. “Your damn uncle—and I know you can hear this, Max—gave me some cockamamie story about you and Guido taking your production to someone else. After all these years, I can’t believe you’d kick me to the curb like this.”

  “Lana, no one has kicked anyone, yet,” Max said. “But you know how important this project is to Maggie and Guido, and how narrow the time window is. That makes me think that this foot-dragging over the budget is your own sweet way of kissing us off.”

  Guido chimed in, “That’s how I read it.”

  “You read it wrong,” she said. “This foot-dragging is more probably the head shed’s way of kissing me off.”

  Max didn’t need much time to consider that before he shook his head.

  “You walk out on me,” she said, “and I’m toast with the network.”

  “Television is a young man’s business, Lana,” Guido offered, winking at me as he said it. He had more gray than black in his sideburns and a wrinkle or two; he was exactly my age. “A tough game.”

  “Yeah?” Lana countered. “Well I’m neither young nor a man, Guido. As long as you can shoulder your cameras you’ll be okay in the business. And you, Maggie, my little sister, with a nip and a tuck and some good highlights you can last another ten, fifteen years in front of those damn cameras. I don’t have your advantage of makeup and lighting when I go into meetings with the children who run the network now.”

  “By saying that, you aren’t helping your case, my dear,” Max said. “It’s time for you to test whether you have enough mojo left at the network to take care of Maggie and Guido. Tell your money goons that they have until noon Tuesday to release funding, or we walk with the project. And, maybe just for the exercise, we sue them for breach of contract.”

  He snapped the phone off without uttering a sweet word of good-bye. Grinning, he said, “Bullshit. Pure manipulative bullshit.”

  Guido wasn’t so sure. “If they dump Lana, will they keep us?”

  “No one is dumping Lana,” Max said. “She has too many of those goons by the cojones for them to release her.”

  “I liked the little sister gambit,” I said. “Last Christmas she canceled our series without shedding any tears over it, and brought us back three months later without any fanfare or apology. If that’s family, Guido my love, maybe we should run away from home.”

  “Is that a decision?” he asked, looking hopeful. “You know what I want to do.”

  “Lana was right about one thing,” I said, feeling every one of my years. “You have better job prospects than I do if we fall on our faces. I propose this: We give Lana until Tuesday noon to move the network to fulfill their end of the contract. But if the money isn’t in our account by the stroke of twelve, then Max should accept the French offer for the project. After that, we’ll see where we are. Whichever way it goes, I have a feeling that after this one, we’ll be on our own again the way we were when we started out.”

  “Suits me,” Guido said. “But is that a good or a bad thing for you?”

  “Hell if I know,” I said. “Max?”

  “Nothing we can do until Tuesday.” He fiddled with his snazzy watch. “I’ve started the countdown. Lana has exactly forty-six hours, eleven minutes to move her people. In the meantime, you two need to book your flight to Paris and pack your bags. I’ll drive you to the airport, myself. One way or another, you will commence filming in Normandy by the first of August.”

  There was a little more give and take, but that’s where we left it.

  Roy and Lyle had worn out Max with the clubbing the night before, so he went upstairs to take a nap. Guido and I sat down to talk about old business. There were still some continuity issues with the Crooked Man film we had been working on since late spring. The air date wasn’t until fall Sweeps Week, but we had put in long hours to get it finished early so that we could leave for France as soon as the financing arrived.

  We were happy with the film overall, but it still needed a final tweak for us to be completely satisfied with it. We made notes about what needed to be done, and then Guido headed off to San Francisco to use an editing bay at the studio of the network’s local affiliate. He planned to work late and bunk overnight with Lyle and Roy. If all went well, by Monday afternoon he might have a finished version to show me.

  I saw him off, turned my phone back on and checked for a message from Kevin: nothing. I texted him, “Call.”

  As soon as I sent the text, the phone buzzed. Not Kevin, though, but my cousin Susan. Would I mind if she arrived just a bit later than planned? She had met some interesting people during her week at wine camp—her sommelier course—and wanted to join them for a last glass of wine before everyone took off. I told her she should have fun. There were no specific plans for dinner, except that we would dine out and Uncle Max would pick up the check.

  The locksmith finished his work, showed me what he had done, and handed me a bill that made my eyes roll back in my head. I dug my checkbook out of my bag, and paid him. He handed me a receipt and a fistful of nicely labeled keys to add to the growing collection. I pulled a bowl out of a kitchen cupboard and dumped them all into it.

  Fergie, my assistant, hadn’t checked in to tell me what she had found about Thai Van, so I called her.

  “Do you know how many Thai Vans and Van Thais there are?” she asked. “I looked into the Vietnamese nationalist groups in Little Saigon, and didn’t find your guy. A lot of people anglicize their names, so he could be calling himself Tommy Van or Vincent Thai, or Epaminondas,
for all I know. But I did find his father, Thai Hung. That is, I found his obituary. The son is named in the obit, but that’s it.”

  I thanked her for her efforts and asked her to keep at it. And then I went back to work.

  I was making my third trip to the garage with kitchen boxes when the service manager at the Ford dealership called with a bit of good news. Though their body shop was closed on Sunday, the police had just released the hold on my pickup, a surprise because Kevin had told me that the ballistics techs couldn’t get to it until Monday. As soon as I came in and signed the repair estimate, the service manager would order parts so they could get to work on the truck first thing in the morning. I needed my truck back. I told him I would be right down.

  I texted Kevin again, asking him to call ASAP this time and adding three exclamation points. Then I wrote a note telling Max where I was headed, took his car keys and drove his rented Caddy to the dealership on MLK, Jr.

  “Looks like you got caught in the shootout at the OK Corral yesterday.” Bill—that’s what his shirt said—at the service desk slid a sheaf of papers across the counter toward me. “You were the second vehicle we got in yesterday afternoon with gunfire damage. Everyone in your truck get through it okay?”

  “Fortunately,” I said as I read over the estimate. I cringed: new side panel, new dashboard, new disc player, rear window, and on, and on. Insurance would cover all but the deductible, but from the list of work to be done, I wouldn’t get the truck back as soon as I hoped. I signed the bottom and slid the paperwork back. “Everyone okay in the other car?”

  “No injuries,” Bill said. “Side-view mirror was blown off, there are a couple of divots in the door frame. Shots must have gone straight through that car and into yours.”

  “Small silver car?” I asked.

  “A Ford Focus.” He looked up from separating my copy of the estimate from the original. “Did you see it get hit?”