by Sue Grafton
I shook my head.
She said, "Guess what?"
"I'm afraid to ask."
"Take a look around and tell me what you see."
I love this kind of quiz. It reminds me of that game we used to play at birthday parties in elementary school where somebody's mom would present a tray of odds and ends, which we got to look at for one minute and then recite back from memory. It's the only kind of party game I ever won. I surveyed her desk. Same old mess as far as I could see. Files everywhere, insurance manuals, correspondence piled up. Two empty Coke bottles... "No cigarette butts," I said. "Where's the ashtray?"
"I quit."
"I don't believe it. When?"
"Yesterday. I woke up feeling punk, coughing my lungs out. I was out of cigarettes, so there I am on my hands and knees, picking through the trash for a butt big enough to light. Of course I can't find one. I know I'm going to have to throw some clothes on, grab my car keys, and whip down to the corner before I can even have my first Coke. And I thought, to hell with it. I've had it. I'm not going to do this to myself anymore. So I quit. That was thirty-one hours ago."
"Vera, that's great. I'm really proud of you."
"Thanks. It feels good. I keep wishing I could have a cigarette to celebrate. Stick around. You can watch me hyperventilate every seven minutes when the urge comes up. What are you up to?"
"I'm on my way home," I said. "I just stopped by to say hi. I'll be gone tomorrow and we'd talked about having lunch."
"Shoot, too bad. I was looking forward to it. I was going to fix you up."
"Fix me up? Like a blind date?" This news was about as thrilling to me as the notion of periodontal work.
"Don't use that tone, kiddo. This guy's perfect for you."
"I'm afraid to ask you what that means," I said.
"It means he isn't married like someone I could name." Her reference was to Jonah Robb, whose on-again, off-again marriage had been a source of conflict. I'd been involved with him intermittently since the previous fall, but the high had long since worn off.
"There's nothing wrong with that relationship," I said.
"Of course there is," she snapped. "He's never there when you need him. He's always off with what's-her-face at some counseling session."
"Well, that's true enough." Jonah and Camilla seemed to move from therapist to therapist, switching every time they got close to a resolution of any kind; "conflict habituated," I think it's called. They'd been together since seventh grade and were apparently addicted to the dark side of love.
"He's never going to leave her," Vera said.
"That's probably true, too, but who gives a shit?"
"You do and you know it."
"No, I don't," I said. "I'll tell you the truth. I really don't have room in my life for much more than I've got. I don't want a big, hot love affair. Jonah's a good friend and he comes through for me often enough..."
"Boy, are you out of touch."
"I don't want your rejects, Vera. That's the point."
"This is not a reject. It's more like a referral."
"You want to make a sales pitch? I can tell you want to make a sales pitch. Go ahead. Fill me in. I can hardly wait."
"He's perfect."
" 'Perfect.' Got it," I said, pretending to take notes. "Very nice. What else?"
"Except for one thing."
"Ah."
"I'm being honest about this," she replied righteously. "If he was totally perfect, I'd keep him for myself."
"What's the catch?"
"Don't rush me. I'll get to that. Just let me tell you his good points first."
I glanced at my watch. "You have thirty seconds."
"He's smart. He's funny. He's caring. He's competent..."
"What's he do for a living?"
"He's a doctor... a family practitioner, but he's not a workaholic. He's really available emotionally. Honest. He's a sweet guy, but he doesn't take any guff."
"Keep talking."
"He's thirty-nine, never married, but definitely interested in commitment. He's physically fit, doesn't smoke or do drugs, but he's not obnoxious about it, you know what I mean? He isn't holier-than-thou."
"Unh-hunh, unh-hunh," I said in a monotone. I made a rolling motion with my hand, meaning get to the point.
"He's good-looking too. I'm serious. Like an eight and a half on a scale of one to ten. He skis, plays tennis, lifts weights..."
"He can't get it up," I said.
"He's terrific in bed!"
I started laughing. "What's the deal, Vera? Is he a mouth breather? Does he tell jokes? You know I hate guys who tell jokes."
She shook her head. "He's short."
"How short?"
"Maybe five four and I'm five nine."
I stared at her with disbelief. "So what? You've dated half a dozen guys who were shorter than you."
"Yeah, well secretly, it always bothered me."
I stared at her some more. "You're going to reject this guy because of that?"
Her tone became defiant. "Listen, he's terrific. He's just not right for me. I'm not making a judgment about him. This is just a quirk of mine."
"What's his name?"
"Neil Hess."
I reached down and pulled a scrap of paper from her wastebasket. I took a pen from her desk. "Give me his number."
She blinked at me. "You'll really call him?"
"Hey, I'm only five six. What's a couple of inches between friends?"
She gave me his number and I dutifully made a note, which I tucked in my handbag. "I'll be out of town for a day, but I'll call him when I get back "
"Well, great."
I got up to leave her office and paused at the door. "If I marry this guy, you have to be the flower girl."
Chapter 3
* * *
I bypassed my run the next morning, anxious to hit the road. I left Santa Teresa at 6:00 a.m., my car loaded with a duffel, my portable Smith-Corona, the information about Irene Gersh's mother, my briefcase, miscellaneous junk, and a cooler in which I'd tucked a six-pack of Diet Pepsi, a tuna sandwich, a couple of tangerines, and a Ziploc bag of Henry's chocolate chip cookies.
I took Highway 101 south, following the coastline past Ventura, where the road begins to cut inland. My little VW whined and strained, climbing the Camarillo grade until it reached the crest, coasting down into Thousand Oaks. By the time I reached the San Fernando Valley, it was nearly seven and rush-hour traffic had crammed the road solidly from side to side. Vehicles were changing lanes with a speed and grace that I think of as street surfing, complete with occasional wipeouts. Smog veiled the basin, blocking out the surrounding mountains so completely that unless you knew they were there, you might imagine the land to be flat as a plate.
At North Hollywood, the 134 splits off, heading toward Pasadena, while the 101 cuts south toward downtown L.A. On a map of the area, the heart of Los Angeles looks like a small hole in the center of a loosely crocheted pink shawl that spreads across Los Angeles County, trailing into Orange County to the south. Converging freeways form a tangle, with high-rise buildings caught in the knot. I've never known anyone who actually had business in downtown Los Angeles. Unless you have a yen to see Union Station, Olvera Street, or skid row, the only reason to venture into the neighborhood around Sixth and Spring is to check out the wholesale gold mart for jewelry or the Cooper Building for name-brand clothing discounted to bargain-basement prices. For the most part, you're better off speeding right on by.
You'll notice that I'm skipping right over the events of Thursday night. I will say that I did, indeed, stop by Rosie's for the drink she'd promised, only to discover that she and Henry had arranged a surprise birthday party for me. It was one of those mortifying moments where the lights come up and everybody jumps out from behind the furniture. I couldn't believe it was happening. Jonah was there, and Vera (the rat – who hadn't breathed a word of it when I'd seen her earlier), Darcy and Mac from CFI, Moza from down the block, some of th
e regular bar patrons, and a former client or two. I don't know why it seems so embarrassing to admit, but they had a cake and actual presents that I had to open on the spot. I don't like to be surprised. I don't like to be the center of attention. These were all people I care about, but I found it unnerving to be the object of so much goodwill. I suppose I said all the right things. I didn't get drunk and I didn't disgrace myself, but I felt disconnected, like I was having an out-of-body experience. Reflecting on it now in the privacy of my car, I could feel myself smiling. Events like this always seem better to me in retrospect.
The party had broken up at ten. Henry and Jonah walked me home and after Henry excused himself, I showed Jonah the apartment, feeling shy as a bride.
I got the distinct impression he wanted to spend the night, but I couldn't handle it. I'm not sure why – maybe it was my earlier conversation with Vera – but I felt distant and when he moved to kiss me, I found myself easing away.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing. It's just time for me to be alone."
"Did I do something to piss you off?"
"Hey, no. I promise. I'm exhausted, that's all. The party tonight just about did me in. You know me. I don't do well in situations like that."
He smiled, his teeth flashing white. "You should have seen the look on your face. It was great. I think it's funny to see you caught off-guard." He was leaning against the door, with his hands behind his back, the light from the kitchen painting one side of his face with a warm yellow glow. I found myself taking a mental picture of him: blue eyes, dark hair. He looked tired. Jonah is a Santa Teresa cop who works the missing persons detail, which is how we'd met almost a year ago. I really wasn't sure what I felt for him at this point. He's kind, confused, a good man who wants to do the right thing, whatever that is. I understood his dilemma with his wife and I didn't blame him for his part in it. Of course, he was going to vacillate. He has two young daughters who complicate the matter no end. Camilla had left him twice, taking the girls with her both times. He'd managed to do all right without her, but the first time she crooked her little finger, he'd gone running back. It had been push-pull since then, double messages. In November, she'd decided they should have an "open marriage," which he figured was a euphemism for her screwing around on him. He felt that freed him up to get involved with me, but I was reasonably certain he'd never mentioned it to her. How "open" could this open marriage be? While I didn't want much from the relationship, I found it disquieting that I never knew where I stood. Sometimes he behaved like a family man, taking his girls to the zoo on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes he acted like a bachelor father, doing exactly the same thing. He and his daughters spent a lot of time staring at the monkeys while Camilla did God knows what. For my part, I felt like a peripheral character in a play I wouldn't have paid to see. I didn't need the aggravation, to tell you the truth. Still, it's hard to complain when I'd known his marital status from the outset. Hey, no sweat, I'd thought. I'm a big girl. I can handle it. Clearly, I hadn't the slightest idea what I was getting into.
"What's that expression?" he said to me.
I smiled. "That's good night. I'm bushed."
"I'll get out of here then and let you get some sleep. You've got a great place. I'll expect a dinner invitation when you get back."
"Yeah, you know how much I love to cook."
"We'll send out."
"Good plan."
"You call me."
"I'll do that."
Truly, the best moment of the day came when I was finally by myself. I locked the front door and then circled the perimeter, making sure the windows were securely latched. I turned out the lights downstairs and climbed my spiral staircase to the loft above. To celebrate my first night in the apartment, I ran a bath, dumping in some of the bubblebath Darcy had given me for my birthday. It smelled like pine trees and reminded me of janitorial products employed by my grade school. At the age of eight, I'd often wondered what maintenance wizard came up with the notion of throwing sawdust on barf.
I turned the bathroom light off and sat in the steaming tub, looking out the window toward the ocean, which was visible only as a band of black with a wide swath of silver where the moon cut through the dark. The trunks of the sycamores just outside the window were a chalky white, the leaves pale gray, rustling together like paper in the chill spring breeze. It was hard to believe there was somebody out there hired to kill me. I'm well aware that immortality is simply an illusion we carry with us to keep ourselves functional from day to day, but the idea of a murder contract was inconceivable to me.
The bathwater cooled to lukewarm and I let it galumph away, the sound reminding me of every bath I'd ever taken. At midnight, I slid naked between the brand-new sheets on my brand-new bed, staring up through the skylight. Stars lay on the Plexiglas dome like grains of salt, forming patterns the Greeks had named centuries ago. I could identity the Big Dipper, even the Little Dipper sometimes, but I'd never seen anything that looked even remotely like a bear, a belt, or a scuttling crab. Maybe those guys smoked dope back then, lying on their backs near the Parthenon, pointing at the stars and bullshitting the night away. I wasn't even aware that I had fallen asleep until the alarm jolted me back to reality again.
I focused on the road, glancing down occasionally at the map spread open on the passenger seat. Joshua Tree National Monument and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park were blocked out in dark green, shaped like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. The national forests were tinted a paler green, while the Mojave itself was a pale beige, mountain ranges shaded in the palest brushstrokes. Much of the desert would never be civilized and that was cheering somehow. While I'm not a big fan of nature, its intractability amuses me no end. At the San Bernardino/Riverside exit, the arms of the freeway crisscross, sweeping upward, like some vision of the future in a 1950s textbook. Beyond, there is nothing on either side of the road but telephone lines, canyons the color of brown sugar, fences of wire with tumbleweeds blown against them. In the distance, a haze of yellow suggested that the mesquite was in bloom again.
Near Cabazon, I pulled into a rest stop to stretch my legs. There were eight or ten picnic tables in a grassy area shaded by willows and cottonwoods. Rest rooms were housed in a cinderblock structure with an A-line roof. I availed myself of one, air-drying my hands since the paper towels had run out. It was now ten o'clock and I was hungry, so I pulled out my cooler and set it up on a table some ten yards from the parking lot. The virtue of being single is you get to make up all the rules. Dinner at midnight? Why not, it's just you. Lunch at 10:00 a.m.? Sure, you're the boss. You can eat when you want and call it anything you like. I sat facing the road, munching on a sandwich while I watched cars come and go.
A kid, maybe five, was playing with an assortment of Matchbox trucks on the walkway while his father napped on a bench. Pop had a copy of Sports Illustrated open across his face, his big arms bared in a T-shirt with the sleeves torn out. The air was mild and warm, the sky an endless wash of blue.
On the road again, I passed the wind farms, where electricity is generated in acre after acre of turbines, arranged in rows like whirligigs. Today, gusts were light. I could watch the breezes zigzag erratically through the turbines, visible in the whimsical twirling of slender blades, like the propellers on lighter-than-air craft. Maybe, when man is gone, these odd totems will remain, merrily harvesting the elements, converting wind into power to drive ancient machines.
Approaching Palm Springs, the character of the road begins to change again. Billboards advertise fast-food restaurants and gasoline. RV country clubs are heralded as "residential communities for active adults." Behind the low hills, mountains loom, barren except for the boulders bleached by the sun. I passed a trailer park called Vista del Mar Estates, but there was no mar in view.
I took Highway 111 south, passing through the towns of Coachella, Thermal, and Mecca. The Salton Sea came into view on my right. For long stretches, there were only the two lanes of asphalt, powdery dirt
on either side, the body of water, shimmering gray in the rising desert heat. At intervals, I would pass a citrus grove, an oasis of shade in a valley otherwise drubbed by unrelenting sun.
I drove through Calipatria. Later, I heard area residents refer to a town I thought was called Cow-pat, which I realized, belatedly, was a shortened version of Calipatria. The only landmark of note there is a building downtown with one brick column that looks like it's been chewed on by rats. It's actually earthquake damage left unrepaired, perhaps in an effort to pacify the gods. Fifteen miles south of Calipatria is Brawley. On the outskirts of town, I spotted a motel with a vacancy sign. The Vagabond was a two-story L-shaped structure of perhaps forty rooms bracketing an asphalt parking lot. I rented a single and was directed to room 20, at the far end of the walk. I eased my car into the space out in front, where I unloaded the duffel, the typewriter, and the cooler.
The room was serviceable, though it smelled faintly of eau de bug. The carpet was a two-toned green nylon in a shag long enough to mow. The bedspread and matching drapes were a green-and-gold floral print, flowering vines of some kind climbing up parallel trellises. The painting above the double bed showed a moose standing in lakewater up to his knees. The painted mountains were the same shade of green as the rug – just a little decorating hint from those of us in the know. I put a call through to Henry to tell him where I was. Then I dumped my belongings, christened the toilet bowl, and took off again, tracking north as far as the little hamlet of Niland.
I pulled in to what would have passed for a curb had there been a sidewalk in view. I asked a leather-faced rancher in a pair of overalls for directions to the Slabs. He pointed without a word. I took a right turn at the next corner and drove another mile and a half through flat countryside interrupted only by telephone poles and power lines. Occasionally, I crossed an irrigation canal where brown grasses hugged the banks. In the distance, to the right, I caught sight of a hillock of raw dirt, crowned by an outcropping of rock painted with religious sentiments. god is love and repent loomed large. Whatever was written under it, I couldn't read. Probably a Bible quote. There was a dilapidated truck parked nearby with a wooden house built on the back, also painted with exhortations of some fundamentalist sort.
