Pacific (9780802194800) (18 page)

“Well, that's what they said.”

He went to the kitchen and came back with an ice pack made of a twisted washcloth and pressed it to his cheek.

She put the necklace box on the counter.

“I don't want this.”

“You don't like it?”

“It's not a question if I like it. It isn't right.”

“I thought who it would look good on, and you were the one that come to mind.”

“Tiny . . .”

“You want to sit down? I'm kind of dizzy.”

He went to the living room and settled into a chair with a leather back and wooden arms.

“You're married,” said Tiny. “That's a given. But I just want to know something. With Micah gone, I've been thinking back. Would you've stayed with me if I'd done things different?”

Louise brought a kitchen chair over and sat looking at him, elbows on knees, the living room between them.

“I don't think so,” she said. “It's been such a long time. You know. But I'd have to say, since you're asking, no. I don't think so.”

“How come.”

“At the time? I wanted what you stood for.”

“What was that?”

“Trouble.”

“Did I?”

“You want me to get a mirror?”

“And what were you to me?”

“I don't know.”

“A way out,” said Tiny. “Is what I think you were.”

“Of what?”

“Everything. Myself. And fine-­looking. To this day.”

“Let's be quiet now.”

He stood up. “I'm going to go lay down.”

“Will you be all right?”

“Oh, yeah. I've had worse than this.”

“Put something on those cuts.”

“I've got rubbing alcohol. That'll probably hurt worse than the fight.”

“And don't go after them.”

“After what they did.”

“You want to do things different, you make me that promise.”

“All right. Promise.”

Louise picked up the necklace and put it in her pocket. To do otherwise now would be to side with the gang that battered Tiny.

She went to him then and touched his face with her hand. “Take care of yourself,” she said.

The woods were damp and sugary and mossy on the first weekend of May. Lyris and Albert walked the forest with backpacks. The birds flew tree to tree whistling broken songs.

They'd never camped together. It seemed like the next step for them as a couple.

“You think we'll find her,” said Lyris.

“It's been, what, five months. Cops would have her if she was here.”

“Tiny says they couldn't find cheap sandals at Target.”

“You would question our heroes in blue.”

“Every day I would.”

“Well, you know, I got the map. Just seems like I ought to follow it.”

They came to the river at the bottom of a ravine and followed it upstream. The river was twenty feet across with a rock wall on the far side and the current hurried along carrying dead branches and skeins of leaves plus the occasional beer can.

In late afternoon they found the abandoned fire ring of the Boy Scout camp opposite a rock ledge and narrow opening in the bluff.

“That's her tunnel,” said Albert.

They dropped their packs on the ground and made camp. The tent had ridgepoles of shock-corded carbon and went up so fast and neatly they wished they had more tents to pitch.

Albert built a fire, opened a can of hash, and cooked it in a skillet. The sun went down as they ate, and shadows came over the campsite. Lyris took two bottles of beer from a cooler and passed one to Albert.

After supper they drank apple brandy and played cat and mouse with flashlights in the treetops. The tent was low and warm, and they crawled inside to go to sleep. The Twins were playing the Red Sox in Minneapolis, and they listened on the radio. The Twins were up 2 to 1 in the seventh. Lyris fell asleep with her head resting on Albert's arm, breathing with a tiny click in her throat.

Lyris cried out in her sleep. She'd dreamed that she was playing a parlor game, but no one would tell her the rules, and everything she said was stupid, and people laughed at her.

“That sounds like my regular day,” said Albert. “Go back to sleep. Listen to the river.”

“Shhh,” she said, sitting up on her elbows. They heard soft steps. A shadow moved over the tent.

Albert pulled jeans on and picked up a flashlight and went out. He shone the light on the emaciated figure of Sandra Zulma. She hunkered by the fire ring, sifting coals with a hunting knife, hair long and matted around her face.

“Put that out,” she said. “The moon's enough.”

Albert turned off the flashlight.

“I wasn't expecting you,” she said.

“Who were you expecting?”

“Do you have a message for me?”

“Have something to eat. That's my message.”

“I don't do that.”

“You don't eat.”

“Nope.”

“Maybe you should think about it.”

She laid the knife on the ground and put sticks on the coals and leaned close to breathe on them, her body folded like a heron's. A circle of flames came up with a soft breath.

“Jack's coming,” she said.

“Oh yeah?”

“He's meeting me here.”

“That would surprise me.”

“Who's your friend?”

“Her name is Lyris. We live together.”

“How nice. Bring her out.”

“What do you want?”

She turned toward him smiling with a pale and dirt-streaked face. There were pink scars on her forehead and the side of her face. “I'm not going to hurt you, Albert.”

Lyris came out of the tent, a sleeping bag around her shoulders.

“Lyris Darling, this is Sandra Zulma,” said Albert.

“Hi,” said Lyris, her voice small and far away in the clearing, with the wraithlike Sandra building a fire.

“Don't be afraid,” said Sandra.

“Well, I am. I am afraid.”

“You have been a long time.”

“How would you know?”

“I can tell.”

“The knife isn't helping any.”

Sandra sheathed the knife at her hip. “There. All better.”

“Thank you.”

The fire was going now. Sandra added kindling and then rested her upturned hands in the dirt in a strangely imploring gesture.

“This is certainly pleasant,” she said.

“How did you get out of Stone City?” said Albert. “There were cops all over the place.”

“A man gave me a ride. He gave me the knife. He gave me this.”

She took the rock from her jacket and held it up, slate facets reflecting the firelight.

Albert thought of the things he might tell her. He'd been in her room, he'd seen her books, Jack Snow was dead. But he didn't know what she would do and wasn't eager to find out.

Sandra got up and stretched. “Well. I should be on my way. Jack will be looking for me.”

“He's dead,” said Lyris. “Don't you know that?”

“There's all kinds of dead,” Sandra said. “Don't try to follow me. You wouldn't like it where I go.”

“Come with us,” said Lyris. “We'll take you home.”

Sandra stood looking at the moon. Tears rolled down her face in silver tracks like beads of mercury. She wiped them away and stared at her hands.

“Take care of her, Albert. Don't forget her.”

Sandra turned and walked to the river. She waded across in the moonlight, scrambled onto the ledge, and was gone. Lyris brought clothes from the tent. She dropped sneakers on the ground and hopped about pulling on jeans.

“Where are you going?” said Albert.

“After her.”

“You heard what she said.”

Lyris snapped her jeans with her chin on her chest. “She'll die. That'll be on us.”

“We should call the cops.”

“Oh my God.”

“What do you think she meant?”

“About what?”

“She doesn't eat.”

“It doesn't mean that.”

“There's different kinds of dead.”

“Ghosts don't carry knives,” said Lyris. “They don't build fires.”

“How do you know?”

“Come with me.”

Albert followed Lyris into the river. The water swept cold around their legs. They climbed to the ledge, scraping hands and shins on the rocks. Sandra had had a much easier time of it. Albert shone the flashlight into the tunnel, the walls furred with moss.

“Sandra,” called Lyris, her voice echoing down the passage.

They entered single file and holding hands. Albert fanned the flashlight on wings of bats like wet leaves pasted to the rocks. After they had gone a hundred paces, they began to hear the singing of many voices.

The tunnel angled left. Sandra held the knife and the rock, her eyes like blue glass.

“You can die if you want to,” she said.

“Who is singing?”

“It's a radio.”

Albert and Lyris returned to their camp, where they kept the fire burning all night. They didn't talk a lot but only passed the brandy back and forth or got up to fetch wood. They made love on the ground, gold and warm by the fire.

A park ranger arrived toward morning. He stepped into the clearing with uniform pants tucked into hiking boots in the old style. He had a broad neck and red face and brushy gray hair and mustache. The light was coming up over the bluff.

“I don't make a big deal of it,” he said, “but you're supposed to camp in the numbered sites.”

“We didn't know.”

“It's posted.”

“There was a woman here last night.”

“What woman is that?”

“Do you know who Sandra Zulma is?”

“Everyone does,” he said. “People see her sometimes. Think they do anyway. She's not here. She have anything to say?”

“Quite a bit.”

“Sometimes she's just quiet.”

“Look in the cave across the river,” said Lyris.

The ranger laughed. “There ain't no cave across the river. That's just a story. You go in about ten feet and you hit solid rock.”

“We were in it,” said Albert.

The brandy bottle lay empty on the ground and the ranger shoved it with the side of his boot. “So you say.”

“What the hell,” Lyris said.

“This is a strange place,” said the ranger. “I see lights sometimes, and they ain't campfires. My grandma used to talk about this fella had a cabin round here in the thirties. Baker. He would have parties in Prohibition and they'd hear the railroad men laughing in the trees. So then one day his friends come up to see what old Baker was up to and the cabin was gone and him with it. Like there hadn't been nothing there.”

Louise put on black rubber boots with terra-cotta soles and walked the dog at dusk. They'd named her Pogo after a comic strip character Mary used to like. Louise and Pogo ambled past the barn, the dog swinging the bones of her shoulders and wagging her tail like a switch.

She hadn't turned out to be slow, though she did not like to be alone. The first nights they had her she would cry until Louise got up and lifted her into bed, where she burrowed slowly into the covers, exploring. She had slept at their feet ever since.

The path between the fields ran long and grassy under jet trails crossing and breaking in the sky. Louise threw a tennis ball for the Lab, who sat rigid waiting for hands to clap before sprinting off and trotting back with the yellow ball in her grinning teeth. When they got tired of throwing and chasing the ball, they would walk side by side. The lane ended at a T intersection, where sometimes they went east, sometimes west, sometimes home.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

T
HE VOLLEYBALL
players drank in a beach bar late at night. It was a dim tavern with a bicycle and mannequin and Christmas lights in a loft. One night Micah got drunk on tequila. You can have too much tequila and still seem all right for a while. Micah caught himself falling in the bar and borrowed a cell phone and went out in the night.

The road was empty and the asphalt seemed to turn around him. Safe on sand, he felt steadier and made his way to a lifeguard hut on pilings, and there he called Lyris.

“Hello?” she said.

“Sister,” said Micah.

“Boy?”

“Yeah, hi.”

“Where are you?”

“The Pacific Ocean.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

Micah looked at his wrist. “I lost my watch. How is Albert?”

“He's good. Asleep.”

“I'm going to find you. You're around here somewhere. Hold on. I'm checking.”

“Micah, I'm home. Where is Joan?”

“On the seventeenth floor.”

“Did she leave you?”

Micah climbed the ramp to the walkway that bordered the hut. He went all the way around looking for Lyris. “I live at the beach now. Listen. That's the ocean.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was staying with Mark and Beth. These friends of mine. I've made so many friends, Lyris, you wouldn't believe.”

“I'm glad.”

“They have no idea who I am. But one night we were playing music and Mark didn't like the way Beth and I were dancing and he said I should leave. We were getting into it. The dancing, I mean. You can't blame Mark. So I've been sleeping on the beach and in the morning I go swimming and then I go back to sleep and then I play volleyball and that's what I do. Why aren't you here?”

“I'm in Stone City, Micah. You know that.”

Micah descended the ramp and ducked through the piers. It was dark and cool under the stand. “I thought I could bring you here,” he said. “By thinking of you. . . . I know that doesn't make sense.”

“I'll come. Okay? Just give me a few days.”

Micah crawled out and lay down in the sand and looked at the stars. The sand was good. “I'm kind of fucked up, Sister.”

A vacuum cleaner followed Joan around the apartment, banging into her heels like a little red dog. She sprayed the surfaces with specialized cleaners that she suspected were all the same thing. Housekeeping was not her strong suit.

She put on sunglasses and took the elevator down to the lobby. The doorman stood in the shade of the awning in a forest-green coat with red epaulets.

“I'm going to run to the flower shop, Alexei,” said Joan. “My daughter Lyris will be arriving any minute.”

“Your daughter, yes. I remember.”

“So, right, if she should get here, tell her she can go on up.”

“Very good.”

“On second thought, have her wait. The lobby's nicer, don't you think?”

“The lobby is a good choice.”

“Maybe she should stand by the fountain.”

“We don't tell them where to stand.”

“Do you realize how long it's been since I've seen her?”

“Many years.”

“I'm going to Larchmont to get some flowers. What kind of flowers would a young lady like?”

“Azaleas.”

“What do they look like?”

“There are different varieties. Blue, yellow, orange. If I were a young lady an orange azalea would suit me very fine.”

Lyris had yet to arrive when Joan got back. She arranged the azaleas casually as if she and Micah lived always among flowers. Ladybugs emerged from the petals and clung sleepily to the stems, then began bobbing around the apartment. They were picturesque at first but there were a lot of them.

Joan picked up a magazine and holding it open herded the ladybugs toward the windows as if there were something in the magazine she wanted them to read.

The intercom buzzed and Joan went and held the button down. Nothing said on the intercom could be understood in the apartment.

“Send her up,” she said.

Joan opened the door and then went to the windows and pressed her thumbnails against her teeth.

“Hi, Joan,” said Lyris.

Joan took a breath and turned to the door. Lyris wore a yellow sundress and faded jean jacket with threadbare elbows and frayed cuffs that people in this town would pay a fortune to have.

Joan crossed the room and took Lyris's hands in hers.

“You're so beautiful,” said Joan.

“Where's Micah?”

“At the beach. He practically lives there.”

“He told me he does live there.”

“That's not true. He comes home sometimes.”

“Joan, he's fifteen years old.”

“I've made us lunch. You must be hungry from your plane ride.”

“I want to see Micah.”

Joan thought her knees would go out and she would fall on the floor. Lyris put her hand on her shoulder. “Okay, let's have lunch.”

Joan went to the refrigerator and brought out sandwiches with radishes and cornichons, and they ate sitting at a table by the pullout couch where Joan slept.

“What's up with the ladybugs?” said Lyris.

“We have a lot of them in California.”

“I knew you couldn't keep him.”

“He's in Redondo, Lyris.”

“I wanted to believe it would be all right.”

“I know what you think. Joan is bad, Joan is a monster. Just wait till you see him. He's growing up.”

“I can't reach him. I tried calling his number but it was somebody else's phone.”

“Oh, he won't carry a cell phone. That's because of this club he was in at school.”

People who look like they'll never win can be the most dangerous to play. You should ask yourself what are they doing here, what secret might they have.

Micah and a team player from Riverside were up against two brothers who sold furniture in Anaheim. In their thirties, they were not tall men but had arms and legs of particular density. They wore sand socks and Oakley shades. One had won a tournament at Mission Beach some year.

Ridges of hard sand broke underfoot. It was a hot day with a fair wind off the ocean. They were playing for twenty-seven dollars apiece because that was all Micah had on him.

The furniture dealers lost the first game but seemed to have used the loss to uncover the strength and weaknesses of Micah and his partner. Micah's sets varied in height and distance from the net. His teammate relied on a cross-court kill that could be anticipated and defended. Thus in the second and third games the brothers tried to make Micah set and his partner attack.

Plodding on in their methodical way, impassive behind their mirrored shades, the furniture brothers knew what they were doing, and their knowledge wore Micah down. He stood between points with hands on knees, breathing hard. Sand coated his arms and legs. He could feel his heart beating in the light and the trees and the water. He had never lost to anyone wearing sand socks.

The match came down to a serve that Micah hit long. It didn't break the way it was supposed to. The stocky brothers had outplayed them in an almost unbelievable way. “Ah well,” thought Micah. He went to his sneakers and took out his last bills and paid the men from Anaheim. He could see a distorted image of himself in their glasses.

Then he heard someone call his name, and he turned to see Lyris and Joan standing in the shadow of three palm trees. He walked slowly toward them, dazed in the sun, as if they might be other people who looked like them. The lost match was all but forgotten. He hugged Lyris and lifted her off her feet, both of them laughing.

They walked down to the Pacific and she kicked off her sandals and they waded into the surf. Lyris's yellow dress floated on the water. A gull passed overhead, wings fixed, silent. A ship lay on the horizon like a city built on water. Micah and Lyris stood hand in hand, waves breaking against their legs, never falling back.