Golden States (9 page)

“I know,” she said in a subdued voice. “Don’t mind me, I’m the crazy daughter they keep in the attic. Thank you for coming, really.”

The partner let his flashlight beam creep along the floor and stopped it short of Janet’s feet, where it quivered. “Apology accepted,” he said, and a smile broke, startlingly white, in his heavy face.

“Yes, thank you, you’ve been grand,” Mom said. “Come on now, crew. Back to bed.”

“No trouble, ma’am,” the partner said. He shifted his focus to Janet and added, “Just call me any time there’s trouble.”

She said thanks and smiled, in the particular way she sometimes did, her head cocked and her brows lifted skeptically.

“Bye,” David said. He said it too loudly. He said “Bye,” again, at the right volume.

“Evening,” the first one said, settling his mouth in a grumpy, doglike way. They both left, and the first one closed the doorfirmly, with a finality that suggested the outdoors was private property, and the Starts were being evicted into their house.

“Assholes” Janet said.

“Is it you lizzie gets it from?” Mom asked.

“Hey, Lizzie slept through this whole thing, didn’t she?” Janet said.

“What I wouldn’t give to sleep like that.” Mum said.

David thought with satisfaction of how angry Lizzie would he to have missed out. She always fought sleep like death itself but yielded to it. when it took her, so completely that she slept through earthquakes and thunderstorms. She always instructed everyone to wake her up if anything important happened.

“You know,” Janet said, “it s sort of cold in here.”

“Weil, what about a shot of brandy?” Mom said.

“Good idea.”

“Can I have one too?” David asked.

“Oh sure” Mom said. “Maybe you”d like a cigar too.”

They ail went into the kitchen. Mom took a bottle from the cabinet and poured brandies into two juice glasses. The glasses had pictures of sliced oranges on their sides.

“You said I could have one too.” David told her.

“You can have a sip of mine.” Mom said. “A small sip.”

David took the glass from her and raised it cautiously to his lips. The trick was to swallow as much as possible without spitting it back up. He let some seep in and held it on the back of his tongue, a thick brown taste that burned. To get rid of the burning he swallowed, which only pulled the liquid heat in a line down through his throat and chest. His eyes filled with tears, and it was a while before he could regain enough breath to say, “Ahh. that’s good.”

Mom took the glass back from him. and held it aloft. “Cheers.” she said with a faint smile.

“I really did see a man in the backyard” David said.

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell in the dark,” Mom said. “Don’t worry, you were right to tell me about it.”

“I think there was a man in the backyard,” Janet said.

“Well, maybe there was,” Mom said. “He’s gone now.” “Right,” Janet said.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Mom told David.

“Can I have another sip of your brandy?” he asked.

“No. What are you, a midget in disguise? What have you done with my little boy?”

“I don’t know,” David said. He slipped his fingers between the buttons of his pajama top and plucked at the single wiry hair that grew from his nipple.

“If we have another Peeping Tom, let’s not call the police,” Janet said. “Let’s just deal with him ourselves.”

“If we have another Peeping Tom,” Mom said, “I can stand in the window and show him a thing or two that’ll send him into another line of work.”

“Mother. There’s a child present.”

“Him? He’s practically thirty.”

“Well then, he can have some of my brandy too,” Janet said. She handed David her glass. In his excitement he took too deep a swallow. The liquor seared his throat and came right back up again. He sputtered it all over the table. The burning buzzed in his nostrils.

Mom said, “Whoops,” and patted him on the back.

“Listen,” Janet said.

“What?” Mom asked her.

“Nothing. My imagination.”

“Did you hear something?” Mom said.

“Nope. Drink your brandy. I’ve been turning into a nervous old maid these past few weeks.”

“I’ve been turning into a nervous old maid since 1972,” Mom said.

“What did you hear?” David was finally able to ask through his choking.

“Nothing,” she said. “Don’t listen to me, you’ll get as crazy as I am.”

“Let’s just go to bed,” Mom said. “Squeeze your eyes shut tight and before you know it it’ll be morning.”

“Right,” Janet said.

“David? Hit the sack, school day tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he said.

For a long moment before going upstairs, the three of them kept still, listening. Deep in the house a pipe gurgled, a rude froggy sound like male digestion. They all laughed and went to bed.

D
avid slept patchily and woke with the first light. A bird piped outside, a single repeated shrill like metal twisting on metal. He’d had a bad dream, a variation on the monster dream, which was already dispersing into his blood as he woke.

He got up and went to the window. It was a violent sunrise, the sky burning orange at the horizon, setting fire to the scraps of cloud that hung behind the black branches of the tree. The pool blazed pink, and wisps of steam rose up into the warming air.

He put on his jeans and T-shirt, checked his hair, and went downstairs. The house held its darkness. When he walked out the kitchen door the new light cut through his clothes, brilliant and cold. His breath ran before him in darts of vapor. He walked around the pool and checked for footprints in the little corner garden. Nothing. He went out through the gate and around the side of the house, and found no prints in the dewy grass. The man was gone. David crossed the lawn and stood at the edge of the sidewalk. He turned to look at the house. Its pale yellow face stood blue with the sun behind it; the windowswere black as tar paper. He looked up and down the street. On the Starks’ side the houses were all shaded, blue or gray depending on their daylight colors. On the other side the houses burned, pure white or deeper white.

He walked down the street, checking it out. The bird screeched again, and he wondered what kind of bird it was. Everything in the world had a name. He resolved to learn more of them than he knew; he didn’t even know the name of the tree in his own backyard. He thought he would feel less strange and overwhelmed by things if he knew better what to call them. As he walked along, he speculated over the names of the trees that lined his street. Under the trees were cars, and he ticked off their names. Cougar, Firebird, Country Squire, Rabbit.

When he first noticed the man sleeping in the car a chill shot through him. The fact that someone was
in
one of the cars, with his head propped against the window, impressed itself upon him. He jumped, and the blood rose singing to his head. A man. There. His focus blurred, took in nothing but black hair inside a brown car, then sharpened again.

It was Rob. He sat behind the wheel, asleep with his head reared back and his mouth half open. David approached the car cautiously. He had seen Rob plenty of times before, most recently at Christmas, but didn’t remember his head being so big. The sun caught Rob’s face in profile, turning his beard stubble the color of copper wire. He wore a gray suit, and a dark red tie covered with little circles like wagon wheels. The top button of his blue shirt was open, revealing a riot of illuminated red hairs that turned black and burnt-looking as they disappeared into the shirt.

David could not think of what to do. His first impulse was to call the police. His second impulse was to get Mom. But if he woke Mom, Janet would know about it too, and she had a bad habit of feeling sorry for Rob.

Hesitantly, almost against his will, David crossed over to the driver’s side and tapped on the window. He tapped toosoftly, and Rob didn’t stir, so he tapped again, this time too hard.

Rob jolted awake and looked frantically at David. When he turned David could see that he had a black eye, swollen and dark as a plum, yellow at the edges.

David jumped back. He recovered himself a moment before Rob did, and took a half step forward. He could not think of what to say.

Rob thought of what to say. An opaque shallow-bottomed sureness rose into his good eye, replacing the terrified glitter, and he rolled down the window and said, “Morning, David, my friend.”

David stood hovering between courtesy and murder, his own eyes bleary with an agitation that was like tears. Rob’s face was fattish around the jaw, and his lips were too red for his white, white skin. He was not, David thought, what you could call handsome.

“What are you doing?” David heard himself ask.

“Sleeping,” Rob said, and grinned. His small teeth were as square as products off a factory line. When he smiled he showed a stripe of puffy darkish gums.

“What happened to your eye?” David said.

“Minor altercation,” Rob told him. “You should have seen the other guy.”

“Oh. Well, you shouldn’t sleep here.”

“Question of zoning?” Rob scrubbed his good eye with his finger.

“Janet doesn’t want to see you,” David said.

“Is that what she told you?” Rob opened his eye again. He looked at David as if he could see something meaningful on David’s forehead.

“Uh-huh,” David said to the curb.

“Well, sometimes women don’t mean just exactly what they say, or say just what they mean. What if you and I went andhad a cup of hot chocolate somewhere, and talked about women?”

“Did you drive down from San Francisco?” David asked.

“Yes I did. I stepped out of my office and got in my car and came straight here from work. That’s just what I did.”

There was something of Janet in the way he spoke. David couldn’t put his finger on it; it had to do with rhythm, or something. Rob smiled again, showing his teeth and gums in a proud, satisfied way, as if he’d swallowed Janet whole.

“Oh,” David said, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“What do you say to a cup of hot chocolate?” Rob said. “I’ll buy.”

David hesitated, then said, “Okay,” because he couldn’t think of how to say no to anyone as big and insistent as Rob, and because he was flattered to be asked by anyone to do anything. His cheeks burned with the knowledge that his vanity made him too easy.

“Good,” Rob said. He patted the passenger seat beside him. “Hop in.”

“We can walk,” David said. “There’s a place over at the Plaza.” He silently congratulated himself on staying out of Rob’s car, which he noticed was a Celica.

“Okay,” Rob said. He opened the door, stood, and stretched. David had not remembered him being so tall. Rob’s spine cracked, and he rubbed his neck. “Jesus,” he murmured. “Never let yourself get as old as I am, my friend.”

“Okay,” David said. He turned and set out walking toward the Plaza, anxious to put a little distance between himself and Rob’s height. Rob caught up with him in one loping stride.

“Nice morning,” Rob said.

“Uh-huh,” David said, hurrying along.

“What are you in now, the fifth grade?”

“Sixth,” David said.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

They walked the rest of the way in absorbed silence. Rob walked in a loose-footed, reared-back way that didn’t match his suit or his haircut. David could hear him breathing, in short breathy snorts like a horse. David thought with pride of how he could probably outrun Rob, even though his hips barely came up to the middle of Rob’s thighs.

The Plaza when they reached it was nearly empty, its parking lot vast and sun-dazzled. The Burger King stood apart, at a remove from the Plaza proper, sharing a corner with the Cinema Twin. It alone was open for business, its glowing yellow sign made pale and greenish by the sky. David made to push open the swinging glass door but Rob reached over his head and touched it first, opening it for both of them while David’s outstretched hand pushed empty air. He nearly stumbled on a ribbed rubber mat.

Hardly anyone was in the place, just a few men in suits, men with a certain sad, displaced look. The Burger King was spotless, all its surfaces scrubbed clean and its floor swept, the plastic wood-grain tables and molded orange chairs looking content and natural in the absence of people. It was a pretty sight.

David and Rob went up to the counter, to order from a sharp-nosed woman whose name, according to her badge, was Faith. “What’ll it be, my friend?” Rob asked.

“Coffee,” David said. Rob looked at him doubtfully, eyebrows lifted, and David said, “Coffee” again, this time directly to the woman named Faith.

“Okay. One coffee and one tea,” Rob said. “You don’t have any herb teas, do you?”

“Nope,” Faith said scornfully. David agreed with her. To ask for something like that at a Burger King was stupid.

Faith rang it up on the register, and David reached automatically into his pockets, though he knew he didn’t have any money. Rob raised his hand, flat, like a cop stopping traffic, andsaid, “On me.” David felt a tick of gratitude for which he was instantly ashamed.

When Faith brought the coffee and the tea, two cardboard cups sealed over with white plastic lids, Rob gave her a limp dollar bill from his wallet, which had cowboy designs stamped onto it. Curlicues and steer skulls. David put his hands around one of the cups, absorbing its heat, which made him feel stronger. He took his cup, along with the white plastic tubs of cream and the envelopes of sugar, and guided Rob to a table at a window on the neighborhood side, overlooking the slant tile roofs and sun-gilded TV antennas of home.

In silence, they peeled the lids off their cups, which yielded with small sucking sounds. David poured the two creams and all four envelopes of sugar into his. The cream turned his coffee a mottled khaki, and he lifted it tentatively to his lips. The smell and heat assaulted him. Eying Rob, he let the coffee creep against his upper lip. It worked its way between his teeth, and he summoned every thread of will he had to keep from grimacing.

“So. I’ll bet you’re surprised to see me,” Rob said.

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m a little surprised to be here.” He grinned and glanced around the Burger King, pleased with himself for being there. In the fluorescent light his black eye looked worse; it looked like something he was dying of. David squinted one eye and focused on Rob’s bad side.

“You’re going to miss work today,” David said.

“I’ve always suspected the practice of law could go on without me for a day. How’s Janet?”

“She’s okay.”

“Has she been going out a lot?”

David looked into his coffee. He knew he ought to confess, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t stand to topple that far over into the wrong. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Well, I’m here now,” Rob said. He looked doubtfully at thebacks of his hands, as if he suddenly wondered whether he was really here at all.

Neither of them spoke for a while. David noticed that his coffee was unsteady in the cup, and realized he was jiggling his legs furiously against the single post that held up the table.

“Sometimes you have to take action,” Rob told him finally. “I think maybe I haven’t taken enough action in the past.” David nodded sympathetically, and wished he hadn’t. He concentrated on keeping his legs steady.

“Has Janet talked about me much?” Rob asked.

“I don’t know,” David said. “A little, I guess.”

“Well, I think it was definitely the right thing, coming down here like this. I wasn’t getting anywhere on the phone. Come on, let’s go talk to Janet.”

“She’s still sleeping,” David said. Rob jumped up, and David took both their cups, the cream tubs and empty sugar envelopes, and put them in the trash. The trash can had a swinging orange lid that said thank you in yellow letters.

They cut across the parking lot. David wondered what he could do to stop Rob from reaching the house. Rob wouldn’t have come if David hadn’t told those lies; it was a disgusting habit. Yet this particular story seemed truer to him than the idea of Janet’s marrying Rob. He wasn’t at all the type of man she would marry. She was much more likely to marry a man similar to the one in David’s head, somebody strong and tall who looked a little like David himself, an older David. She would go back to school and make up her classes and become a doctor and marry a good-hearted, gentle man who knew how to protect her if he had to.

The sun was high enough for the streets to look ordinary, unhaunted. Neither Rob nor David spoke, and Rob walked with such big strides that David had to trot every few paces to keep up. When they reached the house Rob started right across the lawn to the front door.

“Everybody’s still sleeping,” David said, running now at Rob’s side.

“Then we’ll wake them up,” Rob said. “It’s a beautiful morning, no one should miss a beautiful morning like this one.”

The door was locked, and David didn’t have a key. He dug in his pockets as if ordinarily he carried one but had forgotten it. Rob reached over his head and pressed the doorbell with a single businesslike stabbing motion. David saw that his fingernails were cut so short they looked painful.

Rob let a few seconds pass, then rang again. “They can
hear
you,” David said. “They’re just putting their robes on.”

Rob stood scowling, with his long finger pointed over the doorbell and his other hand buried in his pocket. David thought, suddenly, that he had helped bring everything bad in the world right here to the front door. He should have done something to prevent it.

“Who’s there?” Mom’s voice came uncertainly from behind the door. David knew she must be frightened.

“It’s Rob, Beverly,” Rob said, and his deep voice slit the morning air. David thought it must be audible to the end of the block. “I happened to find your son wandering around out here, and I brought him home.”

David felt like a hostage. To let him in, Mom would have to let Rob in too.

“Rob?” Mom said. “Schmidt? Janet’s Rob?”