Tropical Depression (10 page)

I was going back to Los Angeles.

A half-hour later I was knocking on the door to Nicky’s moldering cottage. The door was glossy with a recent half-inch-thick coat of brown paint. The paint couldn’t hide the fact that the door was full of dry rot. If I knocked too hard I had the feeling the door would crumble.

Almost before I finished knocking, Nicky was yanking open his door.

“Billy!” he bellowed. He eyed the brown paper bag under my arm. “Perishables? And I should feed the cat?”

I blinked. It seemed like the whole world was moving twice as fast as my best speed. “Yeah. How’d you—”

He was already shaking his head. “Mate, mate—din’t I just finish telling you? Your rising sign, Billy. In Aquarius, lad. Think I make this shit up?”

“Yes,” I said, with as much firmness as I could manage. I shoved the bag at him. “I’d really rather think you do. Table scraps are fine for the cat.”

“And then what’ll I have for breakfast?” He laughed, then stopped when he saw my face. “All right, Billy, take a deep breath, boyo. It’ll be fine. Cat’ll be fine. No worries, mate.”

“Thanks, Nicky. There’s beer in the fridge.”

“Not for long, mate. Come back to us, Billy. Come back safe and soon.”

Art was a little harder to manage.

“The fuck are you saying, Billy? Got two charters in the next four days.”

“Cancel for me, Art. Give ’em to Tiny.”

Art shook his head mournfully, just slowly enough to get his two outside chins rotating in opposite directions. “Tiny’s a dickwad. Couldn’t find a fish if it was blowing him. You’re just getting started, Billy. Building up some momentum. Take off now yer gonna fuck it up.”

“I can’t help that. I have to do this, Art.”

“I’m telling ya, you’ll drop two, three grand you leave now.”

“I have to.”

“That kind of money, it can smooth over a whole lot of have to.”

“Not this time. Keep an eye on my boat?”

Art spat at his ashtray. The tin tray rang like a gong. “Goddamn stupid son of a bitch. Serve you right the fucking boat sinks.”

“Tiny can handle two charters.”

“Tiny can’t handle tying his own fucking shoes without tyin’ ’em together and falling on his goddamned stupid ass. You leave now, Billy, goddamn it, you’re not gonna work again until next year this time, that’s a promise.”

“I’m sorry, Art.”

He slammed a fist on the glass countertop. There was weight to the move, but very little force. It made a flabby slapping sound, like dropping a large chunk of bacon on a butcher block. “Sorry don’t mean shit, Billy! You got to take care of business! Is what I’m saying.”

I’d had enough. I liked Art, and he was throwing enough work my way to make me grateful, but I was beginning to feel like I was facing a very large school principal.

“Art,” I said, leaning in close enough to count the pores on his nose. “I am leaving. I have to. I’ll call when I get back. Please keep an eye on my boat. Thank you.” I looked him in the eye for a long beat. He looked back. He sighed heavily.

“Go,” he said finally. “Go on, get outa here. Go.”

“I’ll see you, Art,” I said. I turned for the door. The latch felt frosty as I pushed the door open. “Butthole,” Art mumbled behind me. It seemed mild under the circumstances.

There wasn’t much to pack. It all fit into one small suitcase. The suitcase fit into the battered basket on the front of my bicycle. I pedaled over to the airport, chained my bike to a signpost in front of the American Eagle building, and went in.

I just had time to make the feeder flight to Miami. The same overly made-up woman sold me a ticket, with a tight professional smile that said even if she remembered me from the last time when I came in to ask about Roscoe, she would never admit she noticed me now.

I shuffled out the gate, up the stairs into the airplane, and buckled up in a window seat at the back of the small jet.

Ten minutes later we were in the air.

Miami International Airport has changed a lot since I saw it the first time when I was a kid. It used to be a sleepy place, the kind of airport you saw only on the way to somewhere else. It had been a large airport with a small spirit. It apologized for where it was and politely helped you get through to your destination. It was like being in a backward foreign country that had spent all its tax money to make one public building look modern, but instead it looked like an animal shelter in downtown Cleveland. It was homely, but kind.

But sophistication came. Miami had grown tremendously, not always in the right directions. So had the airport. The shyness was gone, and the politeness. Now it seemed false and brash, like a recycled set from “Miami Vice,” and it was busier than Mexico City at rush hour, except the transportation wasn’t as good. In fact, the transportation wasn’t even as good as the San Diego Freeway at rush hour. The whole airport was carefully laid out so that no matter where you were going you had to walk at least twenty-five minutes to get there.

My flight from Key West arrived ten minutes late as the result of taking an eastward turn to avoid a bad thunderhead. It took me five minutes to find a screen listing arrivals and departures. Three people in airline uniform resolutely refused to help me. When I finally found the display terminal I was jostled seven times as I looked for my flight information. A kid spilled a Coke on my foot and then yelled. His mother glared at me.

I finally read my flight number. The plane to L.A. was leaving from a far-off terminal. I had ten minutes. I ran through four and a half miles of blind passages, sticky floors, and crowds thrashing by at a panicky gallop. I made my turn and pelted through seven construction zones, eighteen Latin American Shriners conventions, nine hostile cleaning crews, three metal detectors, two detachments of dope-sniffing dogs, and then outside for a final half-mile sprint in a rainstorm.

I made it to the gate as they were locking down the doors on the plane. Somehow I caught the gate attendants on an off-day. Instead of giving me a snotty explanation that I was too late, they actually smiled as they undogged and opened the door for me, wished me a pleasant flight in Spanish, and sent me on my way.

By the time I flopped into an aisle seat, gasping for breath, and shoved my bag under the nun in the seat in front of me, the plane was already moving backwards, headed for the runway. But this was Miami; after backing out and turning slowly into position, the plane simply stopped dead for fifteen minutes. The air-conditioning in the cabin went off. Within thirty seconds it was sweltering hot and the pocked Plexiglas windows were steaming over.

Within two minutes the cabin smelled like the Raiders’ locker room at halftime.

The intercom beeped and clicked on. I could hear someone take a ragged breath. Then it clicked off again. The nun crossed herself.

And we sat there on the runway.

At the back of the plane a door opened and closed. A smell slid up the aisle. It reminded me of Boy Scout camping trips, when somebody peed on a pine log fire.

I thought about Roscoe. I had not really been his friend, but I was maybe the closest thing to a friend he had, because he trusted me for some reason. He was too ambitious, too aware of political risk, to have real friends in the LAPD. Friends slow you down; you might be held responsible for their mistakes and so you had two backs to watch instead of one.

But he remembered the time he spent in my car, and he came to me. The fact that he had come, even though I was still a political hot potato in LAPD, showed how important this had been to him. The only other thing that had ever mattered to him was his family. I had spent around sixty hours cooped up in a patrol car with the guy, and the only time he seemed human was when he talked about his son.

That was before Melissa was born. If I’d had a kid at the time, maybe Roscoe and I would have been real friends. Maybe I would know why he had trusted me. And then maybe I would have gone to L.A. when he’d asked me. And maybe he’d be alive today.

I was glad it was not night. In the bright Miami sun coming into the cabin of the plane, the maybes were bad enough. In any case, I had to do this. I owed it. I didn’t know if I owed it to Roscoe or to me, but I owed it.

The man in the middle seat next to me was fidgeting. He was huge, and he was sweating like only a big man can. The drops ran off the bald top of his head and into a neat fringe of dark blond hair. Then they would roll down the curve of his ear, onto his lobe, and fall onto his magazine with a tiny “plaf” sound. He turned the page of the magazine, carefully separating the damp pages. He let the magazine fall into his lap, limp. He stared at the seat in front of him, then at the intercom speaker above him, then took a deep breath. He loosened his red power tie and flexed his neck muscles spasmodically. He turned to me.

“Excuse me,” he said, in a voice that sounded like it came from the bottom of a rusting old oil drum. “I’m getting very claustrophobic. Would you mind changing seats?”

I turned to face the man. Beyond him at the window seat I saw a profile like they used to put on coins. She was maybe thirty, with a shower of light brown ringlets falling away from her face and across her shoulders. Under the hair her neck looked impossibly delicate. I felt my heart kick and turn over in a way it hadn’t for almost two years. “Sure,” I said, quickly sliding into the aisle to let him out. “No problem.”

The big guy lurched out after me and I slipped back into the middle seat. The woman at the window turned and gave me a brief smile, and then turned to look out the window again. It was only a small smile, a smile for a stranger. But even after she turned away I felt the smile sticking to me, making my face hot and my palms clammy. I wanted to bite her neck, spend a week chewing on her lips—

—and the bottom fell away as I realized what I was thinking. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t feel this way. Like Los Angeles, this part of my life was over; it all ended at the Rossmore on March 18. I hadn’t done more than think about a woman since that day. The thinking had left me shaking and guilty enough. If I were ever to do something beyond thought, like touch that creamy olive skin—I couldn’t. In the deep three A.M. of my head and heart I was still married.

But here I was, going back to L.A., back to all the old ghosts. Maybe it was fitting that those other dead parts kick up, twitch into brief life, on that long plane ride back to my dead self. And yet—

I still didn’t want to think about the feelings this woman was raising in me. If I had to go to L.A. I would, but I could not visit those sealed-off places in myself. I had put up heavy doors and locked them. To open those doors would let all the pain out again, and this woman was already fingering the padlocks. And yet—

Maybe I should just talk to her; odds are she’d be so dumb the feelings would die away again. Nobody can look like that and still be worth talking to. Every perfect profile I had ever met had nothing to say beyond advice on nail care. This profile was so far beyond the perfection of any other I had ever seen—how could anybody possibly live in there? She had to be what Nicky called a Twinkie; all delicious, bubbly dumbness in a transparent wrapping.

As a way to prove it to myself I looked at her hands. I have known guys who would chase a humpbacked sheep if she had large breasts, or great legs, or a firmly rounded butt. I have always been more attracted to a woman’s hands. To me they reveal so much more about who she is than any other feature. Faces can be made up or controlled. Figures can be accidental, or contrived. And legs, after all, are just something to walk around on.

The hands alone are naked. They can tell you all you need to know about the person they’re attached to. Long red nails and chubby knuckles? A bonbon eater, stay away. Stubby, chewed-off nails and twitching fingers? A nervous wreck, a bed-wetter, a neurotic. If you know what to look for, you’ll never be surprised. Other features might be more seductive, but only the hands tell the truth.

This woman’s hands looked strong. They were lined and the nails were neat; not painted, but glossy with health, trimmed to a useful length. Like that impossible neck, the hands were close to perfect.

I looked up at her profile again. She had turned away to look out the window, and in turning had caused a tendon to stand out on her neck. It ran in a graceful curve up from her shoulder and into the halo of her hair, accenting unnecessarily the unbearable delicacy of her neck. At the corner of her mouth I could see a very slight smile playing on her full lips.

I felt two steps back from the grave for the first time in eighteen months. I had to speak. If she was a Twinkie I needed to know, and fast, because otherwise—I couldn’t say. I was not ready for otherwise. But I had to talk to her.

I took a deep breath and opened my mouth, with no idea of what sort of clumsy, stupid, fatuous dumbbell thing I was about to say to her. It didn’t matter; just noise, anything to see that smile again.

“Thanks,” rumbled the rusty voice of the big guy on my other side. “Thanks for switching seats. Every now and then I get like that. A little panicky. Just a little. I appreciate it. Usually it’s just when we’re not moving, you know? Something about just sitting there on the runway, I start to picture a big bull’s-eye on top of the plane. I mean, if something went wrong, like another plane coming in on top of us or a fire or a”—he lowered his voice and almost whispered the word—“bomb, I mean we’d be stuck here. They don’t want you to think about it, but hey, no way we could all get off this thing if it was burning. No way. Anyhow.”

He stuck a large soft hand in front of my face. I stared at it stupidly for a long second, disoriented at being jerked back to such a strange place, to such an improbable monologue. He smiled and gave a little dip to his hand to let me know what he had in mind and, instead of strangling him for interrupting, I shook the hand.

“Jordan Loomis,” he said. “I’m an actor. Going back home, back to L.A. Just wrapped ten days on the new Segall flick they’re shooting here. Not a big part, but hey—I think it’ll get noticed. It was pretty right for me. Kind of thing I do well, you know? Sort of second heavy is the technical term. You know, the guy who stands behind the featured villain and cracks his knuckles.” He cracked his knuckles for me and gave me a mean little leer. Then he laughed. “Like that. Seen me before? I was in ‘Evil Breeze’ last year.” He saw my stupid expression. “The miniseries. You didn’t see it? Incredible. It got like a forty share. You don’t watch TV? I don’t blame you. Where you from?”