Fallen Idols (21 page)

Yet another change, Tom reflected, after he hung up the phone. When he used to visit his parents in Madison (if he hadn't driven there himself), his mother would lend him her car. It was also a not-so-subtle dig on his father's part that he wasn't going to be responsible for his underachieving son's expenses.

Browsing the Internet, Tom booked the cheapest flight he could find, and reserved a subcompact car through the same site. The fees went on his current credit card—he could dodge the charges for a couple of months, until his teaching pittance started trickling in again, and then pay them off in drawn-out installments. He had gotten into the clever habit of taking out a new credit card every six months. He would use it as long as the low introductory interest rate was in effect, then he'd drop it and switch to another. That way he could afford the monthly payments and not get overwhelmed financially. It was either that or live even shittier than he was doing.

Thus far, he had resisted the temptation to go into the lines of credit that the cards offered—that was a sure path to perdition. He had friends in similar circumstances to his who were into their credit card companies for tens of thousands of dollars, and had no intention of paying off their debts. Their rationale was that the companies ripped off their customers with high usury rates, and it was not only legal but ethical to turn the tables on them. If they got in too far over their heads they could declare bankruptcy, walk away from their unpaid bills, and start over.

Tom had never gone that far. If he declared bankruptcy due to credit card abuse the university would kick him out, and all those years of work would go to waste, Although he was fed up and tired of what he was doing, he had no other financial options on the table.

This was going to be the make-or-break year. By the end of this year he would either finish writing his thesis, defend it, get his coveted doctorate and find a real job, or he'd chuck the whole mess and do something completely different. A friend of his, in similar circumstances, had quit on his thesis when he had almost reached the finish line and had gone to work as a journalist. That was two years ago, and the man was already assistant city editor for the
Dayton Daily News.
Tom could see himself as a I modern-day Woodward or Bernstein, rubbing elbows with the rich and famous and covering cool stories around the globe. It would be a great way to meet interesting women, too.

Maybe next year. He wasn't ready to take that radical a step yet.

Clearing security, he walked out of the terminal at the Los Angeles airport and boarded the bus to the rental car lot. He noticed, immediately, the lack of moisture in the air. It had been hot in Detroit when he'd gotten on the plane at six in the morning (it was now mid-afternoon, L.A. time; he'd been on airplanes and in terminals—Chicago, then Denver—for almost twelve hours), but more than the heat, the humidity all throughout the Midwest was brutal, in the nineties. Here, even though it was hot, it didn't feel hot, because of the dryness. No snow in the winter, either—as kids they would watch the Rose Parade on television and beg their parents to move to Los Angeles.

Now his father had. Maybe he and his brothers had overlooked the simplest of reasons: Walt Gaines had gotten tired of shoveling snow. Wouldn't that be a kick in the ass, after all the angst they'd been putting themselves trough.

But that was wishful thinking. Not with the lies about the houses.

Tom drove into Westwood, following the directions his father had given him over the phone. Clancy was right, he thought as he watched the scenery go by—this is the high-tent district. Nothing in his hometown compared to these houses. This was as upscale, in a California way, as Grosse Point, Michigan, the town near Ann Arbor where the GM and Ford millionaires and billionaires lived.

Seeing this display of riches firsthand was a real eye-opener; that his father, the jungle explorer, discoverer of ancient civilizations, university professor, a man who was almost disdainful of the trappings of wealth, was living in it, was astounding. Walt Gaines was living the life of a millionaire.

Where had he gotten the money? Tom wondered, yet again.

He turned a corner, drove halfway down his father's street, and there it was: his father's house. From Clancy's description he had formed a picture of what it would look like, but this was much more impressive than he had imagined.

There was no one outside the house that he could see, no cars in the driveway. He parked in front, got out of his cheap rental, and stared at it. For a moment he felt like a tourist who had bought a map of the stars’ homes and was checking them out—this one belongs to Michelle Pfeiffer, this one to Bruce Willis, this one to Warren Beatty. And this one, ladies and gentlemen, that you are presently looking at (and drooling over), belongs to Walter Gaines, the renowned archaeologist.

Carrying his small bag, Tom crossed the street, walked to the front door, and rang the bell. There was no response. He reached up to push the button again, but before he could, the door opened.

A woman stood in the archway, her hand shielding her face against the late-afternoon sun. “You must be Tom,” she said, giving him a welcoming smile.

“Yes,” he responded. So this was her, he thought, as he stared at her.

“I'm Emma.” She dropped her hand from above her eyes, extended it.

He took her hand. It was soft, but her grip was firm. The grip of a woman who works with shears in the garden, plays a lot of tennis and golf but always wears gloves.

“Hello,” he said back. His lips were dry. He licked them, reflexively.

“Is that all you have?” she asked, referring to the small bag slung over his shoulder.

“I have another one, in the car.” He pointed his thumb back over his shoulder.

“Why don't you get it, and come on in?”

He turned and walked back down the long front walkway to his car. As he opened the trunk to retrieve his large bag he looked up, to the house. She was standing there, watching him. Seeing him looking at her, she waved. He grabbed the bag, slammed the trunk shut, and walked back to where she was standing.

It was cool inside the house. The air-conditioning I hummed quietly. As he followed Emma through the front hallway into the living room, he glanced about admiringly. She had been the decorator; he remembered Clancy had mentioned that to him and Will. She had a good eye—the style suited a rugged man like his father.

Standing in the middle of the living room, she turned to him. “Would you like something to drink? A soda, water? Beer?”

I “A beer would be good, thanks.”

“I'll be right back.”

She walked to the kitchen, a bit of which he could see around he corner.

Where was his father? Why wasn't Walt here to greet him? He knew when Tom was getting in. What was going on?

The woman came back with a dark beer in a frosty mug. “Dos Equis,” she said, handing it to him. She smiled at him, a more open smile this time than the one she'd given him at the door.

He smiled back, took a long swallow. It went down cold. He took a look around. “This is really nice. You've done a nice job of decorating.”

“It's your father's house, not mine. I helped him, but he made the selections.”

Tom knew that wasn't the truth. This house was beautifully done, but it wasn't his father's doing. Walt wouldn't know how, and wouldn't take the time. Then he caught himself up. Maybe he would. He has the time now. But still, it didn't feel like his father. It felt like a woman trying to make it right for a certain kind of man, a man like his dad. Or like she thought his dad was.

He was gratified that he had insisted on coming out and seeing his father's life-style firsthand. Clancy hadn't prepared him for this. Maybe Clancy hadn't been paying that much attention to the physical surroundings—breaking the ice with their father was what he had been mostly concerned about.

He turned back to the woman. She was standing still, looking at him, as if expecting something from him. She's really attractive, he thought, taking her in. Like Catherine Zeta-Jones, the kind of easy, sophisticated woman he had always felt awkward around. Leave it to Walt Gaines—even now, at sixty, when most men are dandling their grandchildren on their knees and bitching about their prostates, the old man was with a winner. His father cast a mighty shadow—it was hard to get out from under it.

“So where is he?” he asked.

“He isn't here.”

What?

“He was called out of town unexpectedly,” she explained, acknowledging the surprise and disappointment on his face. She seemed embarrassed. “Berkeley. A last-minute thing, some lecture series they want him to do.

He'll be back by eight—his plane gets in at seven-fifteen. So …” She spread her arms wide, a gesture both welcoming and apologetic. “Why don't I get you settled into your room, and then you can decide what you want to do.”

Tom unpacked and put his personal items away and sat on the edge of the guest room bed. He was pissed—this was so much like Walt. If it had been Clancy or Will his father wouldn't have been absent when they arrived. He would have gone to the airport to pick them up. But Tom had to fend for himself, and if something else came up— anything else—too damned bad. He could wait.

Tom had built a construct in his mind of his family being similar to the Kennedys—in miniature, as there were only three children as opposed to the eight or nine or however many Kennedys there had been. Walt was old Joe Kennedy, the patriarch, the builder. Clancy was JFK, the handsome prince with the beautiful wife. Clancy was charismatic, athletic. People gravitated to him. Will was Teddy, the youngest. Also a charmer, who could always squirm his way out of a jam. And like those two Kennedys, the women went crazy over his brothers.

He was Bobby. The runt of the litter, the brother who always had to push harder to get attention, the one who would always live in the shadow of his older brother. Because of his status, Tom was a momma's boy, Jocelyn's favorite—so the others thought. She had always doted on him, praising his achievements and forgiving his failures, explaining them away.

They all missed her, but he missed her the most.

The Kennedys were a romantic fantasy. There was another family that Tom sometimes compared his to, although it wasn't as flattering a comparison. The Corleones, with him as Fredo, the vain, shallow middle brother, played by John Cazale in the films. The hapless one, the one you couldn't trust to get the job done.

If there was a job to be done about his father, he wouldn't be hapless. If anything, he'd be the one among the brothers who would find out what was really going on, and do it.

Whatever that meant. As of now, he didn't have a clue.

She was in the house somewhere, but he didn't want to intrude on her space—being alone with her like this, without his father around, made him nervous. He walked out to the backyard and looked around. The sun was hitting the pool at a low oblique angle, so that the water, from where he was standing, appeared to be moving, like small waves in a much larger body, a lake or an ocean. He was used to the Great Lakes, particularly Michigan and Erie, but he hadn't spent much time on either coast.

That was one thing he wanted to do before he went home—swim in the Pacific. He had the rest of the afternoon to kill. No time like the present.

Emma suggested that he drive down the Pacific Coast Highway to one of the beaches past Malibu—Zuma or Carillo State Beach. It would take about forty-five minutes, but they were better beaches for swimming than those in Santa Monica. And, she said with what he thought was a teasing smile, the girls were cuter. She wrote down instructions on how to get there.

He changed into his trunks, grabbed a towel, and headed out the door.

“Don't forget this,” she called from the kitchen. She tossed him a tube of Bullfrog. “You're a Midwest paleface. You'll burn up otherwise. And this, too.” A bottle of water came sailing his way.

Thanks,” he told her, pleased by her thoughtfulness. He stuck the lotion and water bottle in his pack.

“Have to watch out for you while you're here,” she told him cheerily.

Her friendliness was disconcerting. She looked aloof, but acted like she had known him for a long time. “I'll be back by seven,” he promised.

“Don't rush. Like I said, Walt won't be here until eight. Enjoy yourself.”

The drive to the beach was easy—a straight shot down Sunset to the coast highway, then north fifteen miles. He drove through Malibu, savoring the sights and smells of the ocean to his left. Malibu! The very name was exotic, evoking images of movie stars. Mel Gibson lived in Malibu—he'd read that in People, while waiting for his appointment at the dentist's. Kate Hudson, he thought. Winona Ryder. It would be cool to run across a famous actor (better a famous actress) at the beach. Something to tell tales about back in Michigan later in the year, when the snow was a foot on the ground.
Yeah, I was carching some rays, taking it easy, this woman comes walking by wearing a bikini the size of two cocktail napkins, looks kind of familiar, I smile at her, she smiles back, I say. “Aren't you Ashley Judd,” she says, “Yeah, I am,” I introduce myself, we talk for a while, grab a cool one. Really nice, not standoffish at all. Nothing happened, I had to get back to have dinner with my father, but who knows otherwise? She was as friendly as any other woman a regular person.

In your dreams, he thought, as he turned into the Zuma Beach parking lot.

There weren't any movie stars on the beach, none he recognized, anyway. There was hardly anyone at all. Summer was over, the local schools were back in session, and it was a weekday. Mostly it was kid surfers, out on the water. The beach was almost a mile long and a quarter-mile wide, and he had a big piece of it to himself.

He rubbed some lotion on and lay down on his back on his towel, hoping to get the beginning of a tan. But it was hot and he was restless, so he took a walk along the beach at the water's edge, looking out at the surfers who waited patiently on their boards for waves to ride. It was low tide and the ocean was calm, not much wave action that he could see. When one did come, rising up with its foam cape, all the surfers would begin paddling in unison, getting up on their boards as the wave crested, trying to ride under the curl. A few did. Mostly, they wiped out.