Leave It to Me (24 page)

I said, “Hello, Mom.”

Jess shrieked.

“She is registering pleasure,” Romeo explained.

Jess shrieked again.

Romeo turned on the charm, scooped her hand off the deck rail and kissed it.

“Long time no see?” I suggested.

With her free hand, Jess grabbed the deck rail. Scary biceps. She kicked Romeo hard once, twice, thrice, in the shins. Romeo’s grin got wider and wider as each kick landed.
Envy my strength
.

Change that bumper sticker, Pollyanna. Some five-foot-nine, one-hundred-fourteen-pound children are miserable.

Romeo tired of Jess’s kicks. His leg shot up and out and made contact with Jess’s chest. He was faster than the Flash. Two more high kicks. Speed and malice total serious damage.

Jess moaned. “You can’t have fucking broken out of that Indian jail. They kept you shackled. You’re not here. You’re fucking dead.”

Romeo belly-laughed. “I’m not enjoying your nice company and the view of this nice bay,” he said. “Bribery doesn’t pay.”

“Devi, call the cops!”

I backed away from Mom and Dad.

“That’s what cell phones are for, Devi. Emergencies. Get 911!”

“We left in a hurry, Jess.” No cell phone, no promo kit; only the care basket of waters, fruits and candies in the backseat of the Corolla.

Romeo snickered. “She doesn’t like guns to her head.” He shoved Jess roughly against the deck rails, bent her torso so far back over the top rail that I felt her pain in my spine.

“Let her go, please let her go.”

Romeo nuzzled his chin in the mohair tautness between Jess’s breasts. “Not bad for your age.” Then he switched to his Ma Varuna-Lauren Bacali voice. “If roses are red, and violets are blue, our hate is eternal, and our love absolute. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

I’d forgotten it was Valentine’s Day. Pappy would have left a box of Laura Lee by Mama’s penny jar in the kitchen. Frankie would have sent his newest two dozen red roses. Or saucy stuff from Victoria’s Secret. Probably both. To all his women. He’d have Fatboy Frontman take care of the Valentine problem. Nobody sent me flowers
this year. Not even a Hallmark card. I’d have settled for one splinter-small ice-cold lead on whatever Romeo’d meant by absolute love. I hated Jess. She wasn’t worthy of obsessive desire and claim-or-die pursuits.
He made me wanton
, Jess had lied to herself. She wasn’t wanton, had never been and would never be, she was just another Central Valley hippie aging into Marin matron.

You didn’t earn the right to pay Emily homage, Mother; I have.

“Get the hell out! Both of you!” Jess screamed. Then she sobbed.

“Fred didn’t fall, Mom! He was pushed.”

“Shut up!” Jess shouted. “Shut the fuck up! This isn’t happening to me.”

Something was happening to me. A little girl in a shapeless gray smock was being marched up the cracked cement steps of a small-town courthouse. Pariah puppies suckled on the saggy tits of a scarred, bony bitch in the courtyard. Movie lines merged with memories.
You shouldn’t have. You was my mother
.

I rushed Romeo and Jess; I clawed, punched, jabbed, screamed and wept. Romeo eased his hold on Jess, but didn’t let go.

“Why?” I begged. “They brought me to see you. The Gray Nuns. It was a long, nasty ride. The bus was packed. Why didn’t you want me? I need to know. Why didn’t you keep me? Why didn’t you want to see me again?” It always came back to needs and wants. Frankie Fong had had that one figured.

Jess spat in my face. “I’ve never been pregnant,” she hissed. “I wasn’t that dumb. I may have been naive, but I wasn’t dumb, never.”

A flash, not a memory:
Judge, I’m not exactly dumb, you know. I’ve been on the Pill since I was fourteen, okay. That’s not my kid. The dumb nuns got it wrong, but then what did you expect?
I must have been in the courtroom. I couldn’t picture the place. I didn’t see faces. Had it been hot or rainy that day?

Romeo pushed me away, and tightened his grasp on Jess’s wrists. “Petunia, my pet, you can still rouse me.”

Jess was flattered into a slight blush. I watched that grateful rosiness spread across her cheeks, and streak into the wrinkles around her lips.

Romeo took advantage of the blushing and softening. He whipped something metallic out of his pocket. Handcuffs. The man and woman who’d given me life were as strange to me as honeymooners from Mars.

Nothing is wrong with that picture of lovers on the deck of a houseboat in a neighborly marina. Of the men I have known, more have than haven’t routinely carried handguns and sex toys, in addition to the usual wallet-stuffers like credit cards and driver’s license.

“Petunia? Is that her real name?” Approver, Petunia: Jess had gone through more melodramatic incarnations than Debby DiMartino.

“My pretty Petunia. Alias Miss Free Love from Fresno alias Jeanne alias Magda alias …”

“What was your mother’s name, Mom?”

“Get the fuck off my property. You’re fucking trespassing. Ham? Why the hell isn’t he back? How long does it take to pick up a pack of pitas, for chrissake?”

“What was her name?”

“Leave her out of this. Mother’s been dead thirty years.”

“Iris?”

“Get off the boat or I’ll call the cops!”

“Not your boat, Mom. You don’t have the right to order me off.”

Romeo chortled. “You make me proud, little Devi. Now my turn to take over.” He pinned Jess’s body against the rail, unlocked the cuffs he’d only just put on her and closed his killer hands around her shoulders. “My pretty Petunia.” He scrunched her shoulder blades together, and squeezed. I winced. She twisted her chin as far back over her shoulder as she could and spat. He laughed, let go of one shoulder, whipped out a handkerchief and wiped drool off her chin. “Keys,” he said to me. “I need the keys to your motor, little Devi. You don’t mind, do you?” He reached for my purse and yanked. The shoulder strap snapped. He stole the whole purse instead of just the keys. “I’ll bring the motor back, not to worry, kid. Ta-ta!”

Dad shoved and dragged Mom; Mom cursed Dad all the way to my car. I couldn’t have stopped them even if I’d wanted to. Dad had the 9mm, the cuffs, the strangler’s hands. Maybe Mom’s time had come.

I stayed on the deck, rocking back and forth on my heels in time to the rocking of
Last Chance
. The waves lapped the sides, higher, faster, stronger. I listened to seagulls,
I sang with mermaids and waited for Ham to skid back into my life on the worn-smooth tires of his Triumph. And he did, could have been a half hour later, could have been longer than that; all I know is that by then sea and sky were communing.

“Hey, Day-Vee, hi!” He stuck his head out and waved. Women complications he could handle. “Your boss tell you she sent me for the one brand of pita bread they don’t sell in Sausalito?” He hefted a small sack off the passenger seat and joined me on the deck. No ghosts, no purple auras, no angel halos: just a longhaired smiling man in a red polo shirt and white baggies, hugging dips and munchies. “What’s up?”

What’s up? Oh, nothing much, Ham. What’s up? I’ll tell you, starting with, Your friend and squeeze, Jess, Jeanne, Iris-Daughter or whoever, helped Romeo Hawk or Haque or Haq kill a total of seventeen men and women, nearly choke to death a no-name baby of no fixed address, bump off Fred … You want more?

“Jess just stepped out.”

“In future, call before you show up.” He led me into the cabin all the same. A quick kiss before emptying the deli items, then another kiss, this time long, rough and ardent. “Catfights prohibited on
Last Chance
,” he whispered. He found my nipples with his teeth.

“I don’t do jealous, Ham.”

“That’s why you turn me on, hon.” The nibbling and biting continued. “So what brought you?”

“My author turned out to be Jess’s best friend from way back when. He planned the surprise visit, I went along because
he was the client. The surprise worked, I guess. They took my car and went for a spin.”

“Which leaves us just enough indiscretion time, hon?”

I said, “What’s that romantic aroma? The Ham Cohan Valentine Special Roast Chicken?”

“I lucked out. Happy Valentine!”

The secret of the sexes was suddenly apparent to me. Clueless jerks who can’t get their underwear on straight still have the priceless women. It’s on all the sitcoms, it’s the imponderable, it’s what makes the world go round. It’s got to stop. I settled among beat-up cushions on the kilimcovered banquette and watched Ham rinse clean a wineglass and paper-towel it dry before pouring a splash of Zinfandel into it. There wasn’t more left in the bottle. He didn’t reach for another wine from the rack behind him. He wasn’t inviting me to stay for dinner.

The soundtrack of
The Big Easy
was playing on the CD player “… 
Got to be closer to you … wrapped in your arms, holding you tight, whispering faintly, baby, deep in the night
 …” Ham and Jess had been getting in Valentine mood when we
apparitioned
on the houseboat. You kill the past only if you have the know-how to survive hauntings.

I leaned a lazy finger on the rewind button. When I let it up, the singer was reminiscing about lace curtains, willow trees, rustling bedsheets. I didn’t have to listen to someone else’s nostalgia “… 
the smell of the morning in the rainy lane …
”

A wartime memory that Larry once shared popped into my head. “You know what I remember best about the place,” he said. “The swallows. Blue swallows, goddamn
swarms of them getting in your face. It was beautiful! I wouldn’t have missed Nam for anything.”

I didn’t care if too much Dexedrine had turned crows and sparrows into a blue blanket of swallows. Eighteen-year-old Larry Flagg had gone into the war with a fuck-with-me-and-you’re-dead attitude; Loco Larry had come out of it with a postcard-pretty souvenir.

I turned up the volume.
“If I said that I loved you, would you turn away … well, that’s all right, baby, ’cos I already know … believe me, baby, we got no choice
 …” I saw Larry, Ham, me, chasing aquamarine birds down terraced fields of emerald. “ ‘Come here,’ ” I sang along with the tape, patting the cozy space beside me, “ ‘come here, come here, come here, got to be closer to you.’ ”

“Got to check on the roast,” Ham said. “Wonder what’s keeping them, must have a lot to catch up on.” He slipped on a starched, white, professional-chef’s apron. “The trick to perfect chicken is a five-hundred-degree oven. I learned that from my last ex.”

I kicked my shoes off, and stretched my legs out on the banquette. The big toe of my right foot touched the boom-box’s
STOP
button, then traced huge hearts on the plush velvet nap of a cushion. I felt like pulling up anchor, dancing naked on deck, steering
Last Chance
into the eye of Hurricane Faustine. The boat tuned in to my mood, rocked on violent waves.

Ham got off on the subject of ex-wives. “Tess gave me the apron,” he said. “You’ve met Tess, right? She was at Fred’s wake?” He yanked down the door of the oven. A whoosh of hot, spicy air made his face red. “The mitts,
cap and apron were her divorce-anniversary present. She was a CIA dropout.”

“You were married to a spy?”

“CIA as in the Culinary Institute of America.” Ham was recharging bitterness. “I got the Wüsthof knives in the settlement, the Chinese meat cleaver, the Japanese woks, the All-Clad pots. She kept the house.”

I arched my neck. Frankie once told me that I had the sexiest neck and clavicle he’d ever seen. Ham didn’t notice the seductive stretch.

“There’s justice, though. In the Oakland fire, the house went up in smoke.”

“What do you have to be so bitter about, Ham?”

He caught me eyeing the table set for two, the speckled orchid, the colored candles. “I’m not bitter. Who says I’m bitter? Did I ask for any insurance money?”

“Thanks for inviting me to stay for dinner,” I joked. “I’d love to. How about a splash more wine?”

Ham reached behind him and plucked the bottle nearest him off the wine rack. It was another red. “Who’s this friend that Jess’s dumped us for? What’s he written?”

“She met him in Asia.”

“Oh, Asia. She really did Asia.” He uncorked the bottle. “That makes the guy a hippie burnout.”

“If you’re part ethnic Chinese, part French Vietnamese, definitely part Pakistani and part you-never-figured-out-what, what does that make you?”

“Not a bad Merlot,” Ham said. He carried the bottle and two paper cups to the banquette, and slid in beside me. “The city council in the People’s Republic of Berkeley?”

I unlaced his running shoes. He finally took the hint, and played along, easing his feet out of the shoes. I peeled off his socks. No Mona Lisas on these socks. Just over-washed, yellowing white absorbent cotton. “And if you add half Californian to it all?” My toes stroked the feet’s pale, clammy arches.

Ham kissed me on the lips. “Trouble?” He kissed me again.

“Force of nature,” I reminded him.

“A fault creep,” he amended, working on the metal button of his baggies.

“What’s that?” I shrugged my shirt off.

Ham explained between kisses. About creeping and gliding and sliding movements along fault lines, pleasant pressure—“think of yourself as the Bay Area with fault lines running through,” he said, “and your body is being worked on by a master masseur”—and then, wham, bang, whoa! the Big One breaks the body in two. He calculated creep rates with his lips on my fingers, slip rates on my toes. “Happens every hundred years or so,” he whispered. “I don’t want to be around for the Big Quake.”

A quickie on a banquette in a houseboat may be no competition for acid-high sex with god-demon-snakeman, but for one nanosecond that night my brain could sleep. The immediate past and the about-to-happen both receded. It was my oldest past that suddenly surged forward.

I was on a country bus, tasting dust and diesel. My new Bata sandals were wedged between someone’s dirty metal trunk and someone else’s stacked-high baskets of live fowl. My feet were going to sleep inside the pretty canvas
shoes. The man beside me said to pinch the littlest toe of each foot. The man next to him kept spitting out the open window. His spit was the color of blood. I imagined blood-red betel-juice stains on the sister’s funny clothes.