A World the Color of Salt (30 page)

I came to a low building barely recognizable as a restaurant, and stopped. When I got out of the car, the pungent aroma of eucalyptus reached me, and these tall trees had no beetle chewing them to death. Despite the gray overcast here and a chill dampness in the air, the scent lifted my spirits a little, and I set off toward the front.

Inside was a patio off to the right, enclosed with turquoise plastic slats. A woman in a plum-colored waitress uniform sat at one of the tables there, working a crossword puzzle. Overhead, a heater was on, blowing warm air her way. I asked if it was all right if I sat here. She said, “Sure, I'll get you some coffee.”

“I'm surprised anybody's open today.”

“Yeah, well, we get the aerospace people, you know.”

If I bobbed my head while I looked through the slats so that the letters on a distant building joined, I could make out,
HOME OF USAF
c-17, and then,
DOUGLAS AIRCRAFT COMP
. . . with the rest obscured.

The waitress came back with a cup and a pot, saying, “They take the week off between Christmas and New Year's, but we always get some who keep working. They come in early as six, six-thirty. Not me, boy, if I had the time off.” I read her name tag: It said
FRIEDA
.

“Me either,” I said.

“It's probably the computer types,” she said.

I said, “They do get engrossed.”

“And the managers. We get them all the time, the ones not too friendly, sit there reading their papers and don't look you in the eye.” She was standing with her pencil poised on an order pad.

I smiled, looked her in the eye, and ordered a burger.

When she came back with water, she said, “Now, the ones I like are the oil hands. I tell you, some of them are funny, those oil people. They do love a joke.” On the heavy side, Frieda was still attractive. Not so many years back the boys would've said, Now, there's a blouseful.

From a room behind the main room and within earshot of the patio came the sounds of a football game and a male voice yelling, “No, you dumb shit, don't go that way! Oo, ma-a-n.”

Frieda looked over her shoulder and shrugged.

I said, “You wouldn't happen to know of anyplace around with a bartender named Jubey, would you?”

“Just a minute,” she said, and walked away, into the back room. She came back with a black man with a receding hairline and a thick mustache. He was still wiping his hands on a towel when he came up to my table.

“This lady here wants to know if we know anybody by the name of Jubey.”

Putting the hand with the towel in it on his hip, the man said, “Hi. I'm Avri Rousseau.”

“How do you do?” I said, liking his name, his African look. “Merry Christmas.”

“Thank you. You want to find somebody named Jubey?”

“Yes,” I said, stunned that there was any response at all to the Judy/Jubey question.

“What for, may I ask?”

“Oh, well, uh, I think he knows a friend of mine.”

The man leaned against one of the chairs and cocked his head at me before saying, “You a process server, now?”

I laughed, shook my head. “No way. Really. I'm just trying to find a friend I think was in his place. She telephoned me. I heard music in the background, like at a bar, and someone call a name that sounded like Jubey, or . . . or Judy, and then
my friend and I got cut off, and it's really important I find her—”

“On Christmas Day.”

“Well, she didn't call me
today
. She called the
other
day.”

“She could call you back.”

“Yes, sir, I know that. But she seems to have some sort of problem.”

“That's my brother,” he said. “Can't be two people by the name of Jubey, now, can there?”

I had to agree that'd be unlikely.

He pointed out toward the direction I'd come. “Go down Alamitos till you pass Seventh—”

“What city would I be in then?” I asked.

“Long Beach.”

Not bad, Smokes. Right city anyway; wrong bar.

And then he told me the address of Jubilee's Saloon.

“He may not be there today, though. He was going to take his kids to the river.”

I said, “Gee, I looked in the phone book. I didn't see—”

“He took the place over last month. Don't think he'll make a go of it, though. Today, for instance. He takes his kids to the river. You can't be going to the river when there's people want to get out of the house, away from the relatives, go to a nice bar and relax.”

This was nearer the waterfront than I'd gotten on my first trip. The sign outside read
THE OASIS
, and the one on the door said
SHOVE
.

Inside, the jukebox was on and vibrating, a male voice asking if his girl would ever get tired of hurting him. Behind the bar was a man who looked like Avri except that there was no gray in his hair and his skin was mocha-colored. At the stools, four men: two Asian, one black, one Cauc. Two other Caucs with Fu Manchu mustaches and ponytails were playing pool in the back, sending a pod of balls cracking just as I stepped in. Fu Manchus usually mean Aryan brotherhood, and I wondered what they'd be doing in there.

Men look at a woman when she walks in a bar in two ways. The drunker ones stare; they reel around on their bar stools
and follow your every move. I can outstare most of them, get them to the point where they snort, as if to say, “Shee-it, I bet she ain't a good hump anyway,” and then they go back to their beer. The second way, they glance over but pretend they don't even see you, at least for awhile.

I walked to an empty stretch of the bar and stood, waiting for the bartender to come down, and when he didn't right away, I hefted up on a stool. One of the men down the line broke away, went to the jukebox to choose a song, and, as if choreographed, the second one came over and sat one stool over from me.
Then
the bartender came down. His eyelids seemed thick, and one eye was bloodshot. I said, “Are you Jubilee?”

He said, “All day long.”

I ordered a beer to give Jubilee Rousseau additional reason to be open on Christmas Day.

The minute he moved away, the man next to me swiveled on his stool, looked me over, and said, “Hel-lo, Heaven.” His face was pinched and speckled unevenly with beard.

“Sorry. I'm here to do business with Jubilee.”

Three or four expressions passed quickly over the man's face as he considered each possible retort. Then he simply got up and swaggered, the way men do when they've just told someone off, back to his stool and his buddy, his pal-o leaning out once to look at me with a grin on his face.

When Jubey came back with the beer, I told him very directly that I was worried about a friend and was looking for her companions.

“Are you a police officer?”

And, of course, I could look him square in the face and say no.

His shoulders relaxed, and he leaned on the bar next to me but kept his body so he could see the others. I had the feeling the posture was not just to see who might flag him down for a drink. His voice became soft-spoken then, and he asked me, “How come y'all are not out with a boyfriend on Christmas Day?”

“Dumb, I guess.”

“Now, I don't believe that.” He hadn't asked it in a salacious way, but as a family man might.

And then we talked variously about his patrons, how well he knew them, and if he remembered a tall, pretty redhead in here last night; then about what was happening in the Gulf, about tough times ahead for everyone, about the weather and the water police.

Because he couldn't help me, and that was the bottom line.

The week after Christmas was extremely busy, lots of tox testing from all the drivers who'd soon be paying lawyers before they paid their Visa bills.

I was in the robot room working with Chris. I'd spent all day entering data into the computer and trying to print it out, but the paper kept jamming, and it seemed I was spending more time fooling with that than producing anything. I went back to my desk for a chocolate-covered peanut and a tea bag, when the phone rang.

“This is Rowena Dwyer.”

“Well, hello.”

“I wanted to call you yesterday,” she said. “I wanted to call you
Christmas
.” She sounded funny, but I couldn't put my finger on it. There was a hardness there, and a breathiness, as though she were taking a drag on a cigarette and exhaling. She said, “I don't have your home phone number.”

“No. It's not listed.”

“That's smart, I guess.”

“Are you all right, Rowena?”

“What do
you
think?”

Chris Cummins stepped out into the hall as though he were looking for me. When he saw I was on the phone, he went back in.

“What can I do?” I said, thinking, If she just wants to talk, I'll talk.

“It's not working for me,” she said, pausing for only a moment. “I know that's not your problem.”

“Have you talked to the detectives at all?”

“Oh, yes.” And then I thought I heard a soft sobbing coming from her. I didn't know what to say, so I waited a second, and then she added: “Oh, God, I'm drunk,” and then more sobbing, her voice cracking when she spoke again. “I'm sorry. I bet you've never been drunk, have you? I shouldn't be calling you. I'm sorry, so—”

“You want my home phone, Rowena? You have something to write with? It's kind of hard for me to talk here.”

“Let me see,” she said. I heard more sounds, some sniffling, her blowing her nose. Outside my work area, people passing by were talking loudly. I put my hand up over my other ear. Rowena came back on the phone and said, “Okay. Here I am. Smokey? I know your name is Smokey. I heard.”

“Yes,” I said, and started to give her my home number.

“Just a minute. I have to tell you something.”

“What's that, Rowena?”

There was a long pause. Then she said, “What?”

“You were going to tell me something.”

“I was. . . . Do you have a mother?”

“My parents live in Florida.”

“Oh. I'm back home. Did I tell you that?”

“You're in Wichita, then?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can I help you with something, Mrs. Dwyer?”

She said softly: “Oh, there you go again.”

“I'm sorry—I should be getting back to work, Rowena.”

“Wait,” she said. I could hear a raspy sound through the receiver, like a wheezing, and then she said, “I loved that boy so . . . much.” Her voice was soft and I had to strain to hear it.

“I know. I know you did. Rowena?” She was still there, I knew, but she didn't answer. “Rowena, where's your husband? Where's Mr. Dwyer?”

“Who knows? I don't care. The sonofabitch. I wanted him to get a private detective. I wanted him to go after this, and he won't do it. He says leave it alone. He says it won't bring Jerry back. I'll hire the goddamned detective myself. That's why I'm calling you: I want you to tell me the name of a good detective, not one of those other ones. Can you do that for
me? I have the money. I was going to send it to Jerry for half a car. For Christmas.”

Now was not the time to argue with her. I knew that from home experience, both parents.

I got her to give me the number in Wichita where she was, and told her we'd talk soon. Somehow in doing that, I wound up not giving her my own phone number, and later I thought it was probably for the best. I am not a very good vessel. People's woes pour into me, my sides burst.

Chris was struggling with the printer when I came back. He said, “This thing has a vendetta against me. When's Stu going to get the new equipment?”

“Don't ask me. I only work here,” I said.

We wrested the paper out and set back to the job of processing the dozens of samples lined up on the counter, Chris feeding the Robert, and I building charts as he read data off to me. At one point I turned in my chair and said, “People do persist in killing themselves, don't they?” and Chris said, “Less people to get in my way at the Meadows,” meaning an outside concert stadium south of the lab, in Irvine.

“You're such a sweet guy, Chris. I don't know how I ever lived without you.”

“That's what my wife tells me every day.”

And I was right. People kill each other on the freeways, on the side streets, on back roads where the only other vehicle around is a titled belly-dump earth mover perched on the shoulder; and we sit here handling their fluids like it was something delivered from a drugstore.

The week was going to be a bitch. As if in verification, Billy K. stood outside in the hallway telling the new girl that by noon on Christmas Day the coroner's had six more stacked up in the cooler.

Contemplating this, and despite the fact that Chris could've used my help at the spectrometer all day the next day, Friday, what did I do but type up a request for vacation. Because in my mailbox when I got home Thursday night lay a postcard.