SO FAR, I HAVEN’T TOLD ANYONE WHAT HAPPENED ON CATALINA. It’s not that I’m embarrassed; I just don’t know what to think at the moment, and I’m wary about entrusting such fragile, half-formed impressions to other interpretations—especially Renee’s and Jeff’s—before committing them to paper. With any luck at all, there should be enough room in this journal (the one Neil gave me, appropriately enough) to tell the whole story. If not, I’ll switch to something different.
The boat we took left from Long Beach, so we drove down late Saturday morning in the PortaParty van. The van was a sad sight, conspicuously unwashed and stripped of its usual jolly stock of props and streamers. It had all the poignancy of an empty stage. A cardboard box crammed with plastic beach toys rattled against the back door, but that was the extent of our cargo. I shuddered a little at this visual proof of the troupe’s decline, but didn’t remark on it to Neil, scared of what he might say.
“Are those Danny’s?” I asked, indicating the toys.
Neil smiled out at the white blur of the freeway. “We drove down to Zuma last week.”
I remarked that it was nice there.
He seemed a little surprised. “You like hanging out at the beach?”
“Sure.”
“Same here.” He grinned extravagantly, as if we’d just discovered something rare and wonderful in common.
“Where is he, by the way?”
“Who?”
“Danny.”
“Oh. Staying with the neighbors. Linda’s neighbors.”
I told him I’d hoped I might meet Danny today, that I’d wondered if either he, Neil, or Linda might bring the boy along for the day. It seemed like a great trip for a kid, after all, in spite of the circumstances.
“Yeah,” said Neil. “We talked about that.”
“But?”
He shrugged. “We just weren’t sure how heavy it might get. The funeral, I mean.”
Great, I thought, and suddenly I was picturing Mrs. Glidden again, only this time she had me by the throat of my charcoal crepe de chine funeral frock and was shaking the bejeezus out of me. Do you know what that video meant to my daughter? Do you? Do you have any idea?
“Of course I’d like him to see the island, but…”
“What? Sorry.” I’d lost track completely of what he was saying.
“Danny likes it at the neighbor’s,” he explained. “They’ve got a pool with a water slide.”
“Oh…well…that’s good.”
“Yeah. Gets him outa my hair.”
You could tell he didn’t mean that at all. It was just a man thing, mostly, a false gruffness designed to underplay his obvious devotion to his son. This embarrassment surprised me a little, since I’ve seen him be so unembarrassed around hundreds of children. I guess it’s different when it’s your own kid. “Is Linda taking the same boat?” I asked.
He shook his head. “She flew into Avalon this morning. She thought the Gliddens might need some help.”
I pondered that one for a moment or two, discarding several possibilities, all of them ghoulish. “Help with what?”
Neil smiled at me languidly. “I think there’s a brunch after the service.”
“Oh.” A funeral brunch, I thought. Only in California. As we barreled on down the freeway, bound for God knows what, the event grew more and more surreal in my head.
The dock for the Catalina Express was immediately adjacent to the Queen Mary, the classic thirties ocean liner, now dawdling away her declining years as a stationary hotel and all-round tourist trap. We had two hours to kill before our boat left, so we did the obvious, foolish thing and paid to go on board. The tickets were hideously expensive (Neil put it on his Visa card), and the approach to the gangplank alone nearly did me in. It seemed to wind along for miles, a grueling serpentine, routing us first through Ye Olde Phony English Village, then past a huge circular hangar containing Howard Hughes’s preposterous wooden airplane, the “Spruce Goose.” By the time I finally set foot on board the Queen Mary I was panting like a sheep dog in a heat wave.
“Are you OK?” asked Neil.
I fell back against a wall—a bulkhead; whatever—and swatted my chest several times with my palm. Neil hunkered next to me and offered me a handkerchief. I took a few broad swipes at my dripping brow and handed it back to him.
A squadron of children, accompanied by a haggard middle-aged female, came to a dead halt next to us, enraptured by what they must have taken to be the first of the ship’s exotic attractions. The adult—a teacher, I guessed—gaped at us just long enough to embarrass herself thoroughly, then salvaged what remained of her composure and bustled the children away. I took a deep breath. Then another. Then counted to ten slowly. My heart felt like a small, desperate bird trying to escape from my rib cage.
“Better,” I said at last.
“You sure?”
I nodded.
“Can I get you some water or something?”
“No,” I said. “Just shade. And a place to sit.”
We retreated to one of the big lounges, a calmly elegant space, all curves and gilt and cool green frescoes. Neil hoisted me onto a sofa, then gave the ship’s brochure a hurried once-over. “This was a big mistake, I guess.”
I told him we had no way of knowing that without seeing for ourselves.
“Everything’s so far away,” he said. “Unless…” He looked down at the brochure again.
“What?”
“They have something called The Haunted Passageway. It’s kind of a ghost tour. Like a fun house.”
“Kids in the dark? I don’t think so.”
He smiled. “Good point.”
“What sort of ghosts?”
“Oh…some deckhand who got crushed by an iron door. Back in the sixties. According to this, they still hear him thumping sometimes.”
I rolled my eyes, though I couldn’t help admiring the cold-blooded genius of the marketing strategy. The owners of this enterprise had obviously learned from experience that a pretty ship alone wouldn’t cut it with the American public; true Family Entertainment demands at least a smattering of gore. But that “ghostly” deckhand had been a real person, after all, who was mangled during my lifetime, a guy who probably still has a family somewhere, people who loved him and miss him and remember the real horror. Does it give them the shivers, I wondered, to know that he’s been reduced to a thrilling special effect, a scenic attraction in a spook house? Do they get royalties?
“We could split,” said Neil, reading my mind.
“We could.”
Without further ado, we made our way back to the neighboring dock. The afternoon had turned unseasonably hot, and a gritty industrial haze hung over the harbor. A long queue of tourists, laden with scuba gear and ice chests and plastic tote bags, had already gathered for the Catalina Express. A vein in my temple commenced to throb in smart syncopation with my dread. I was beginning to think I’d made a terrible mistake.
The voyage to the island took a little over an hour and a half. Mercifully, the smog lifted and the temperature dropped as soon as we were out of sight of land. The seats on the boat were airline style, really quite comfy, but the view they afforded was completely lost on me. Sensitive to this fact, Neil led me out to the slippery deck several times, where I clung for dear life to the bottom rung of the railing and made appreciative noises about the color of the water. A whey-faced lady in a sundress and Barbara Bush beads watched this awkward ritual with smug, philanthropic glee, as if I were some midwestern orphan with leukemia catching my first glimpse of the mighty Pacific. “She must enjoy that,” she said to Neil, apparently perceiving me to be deaf as well. For Neil’s sake, I restricted my response to a brief, murderous glare.
Our first glimpse of Avalon was amazing. The town was almost ramshackle, miraculously undone, The Land That Time Forgot. Simple wooden cottages as random as shipwrecks tumbled down the dry hills to a pristine crescent-shaped beach, at the end of which stood the great circular ballroom, as natural there as the dot on a question mark. There were dozens of sails on the harbor. And dipping gulls. And chimes, so help me, as if to welcome us, ringing from a distant hillside. Neil and I both wore expressions of wordless wonder. Blink once, I remember thinking, and the whole damned thing disappears.
Up close, of course, it was easier to detect the chinks in the fantasy. The eroding crag above the boat landing had been repaired with sprayed-on concrete, and there were far too many lard-assed tourists like me (well, almost like me) slouching along the promenade in search of diversion. Even worse, some of the more recent architecture (a sort of faux-Spanish postmodern) had lost touch with the charming artlessness of the rest of the town. Still, I liked the place a lot, and Neil did too. We felt unreasonably proud of ourselves, as if we were the first people ever to discover it.
We had an hour or so before the funeral, so we camped out on a waterfront bench and let the motley parade of humanity pass us by. The people who weren’t on foot were in goofy little white golf carts, since cars are verboten on major portions of the island. I couldn’t help grinning at the sight of these Toontown vehicles. Here was one place, at least, where life seemed a little closer to my own scale.
Neil pored over a street map he’d bought at the landing.
“How far are we from the church?” I asked.
“Not far.”
“Let’s see.”
He pointed to it on the map.
“That’s far,” I said.
“Is it?”
I nodded. “Unless you’ve got time for two funerals.”
He chuckled. “We’ll rent a golf cart, then.”
I made a face at him. “You can’t go to a funeral in a golf cart.”
“Who can’t? That’s what they do here.”
So that’s what we did. We procured a racy little number with a striped canopy at a rental agency right there on the main drag and tooled up a leafy street called Metropole in search of the church. The suspension on the cart wasn’t for shit, but Neil had strapped me in snugly, so my squeals whenever we hit a bump were more of exhilaration than of terror. Neil would glance at me each time with a look of real concern until I succeeded in reassuring him with a smile. It was the strangest sensation, riding along like that. I felt utterly ridiculous and utterly contented, all at the same time.
The church was a plain white frame structure hung with scarlet bougainvillea. An assortment of golf carts was parked in front, most of them fancier than ours and missing the telltale rental number painted on the side. These were locals, obviously, friends of the family. As we made our way to the door, I wondered if Neil and I were the only mourners from the mainland. Besides the dreaded Linda, that is.
Our progress was observed by a tall, gray-haired man in a navy suit standing guard just inside the door. When we finally reached him, he gave us a dubious once-over and uttered Janet’s name softly, as a question. Neil nodded, following the man into the church. I came after them at my own pace, trying to look devout—or at least concerned—and acutely aware of all the eyes on me. Neil lifted me onto a pew and handed me a printed program bearing Janet’s name, the minister’s name, and the high points of the service. That piece of paper and the less-than-fascinating grain of the pew in front of us was all that occupied me for the next half hour; I couldn’t see for shit.
The service was your basic Protestant understatement, so devoid of specifics that the honoree might just as easily have died from natural causes at eighty. We sang a few tired hymns and received a few tired words of comfort from the reverend. At one point, about halfway through, Neil glanced at someone across the room, acknowledging her presence (I was sure it was Linda) with a thin smile. I couldn’t help wondering if the deceased was there, too, but decided not to put the question to Neil. My voice has a way of carrying sometimes.
To avoid the rush, we left before the last hymn was finished, then waited outside on the lawn for Linda. When she emerged from the crowd she gave Neil a chaste peck on the cheek and, without waiting for an introduction, extended a long, dry hand down to me. “Hello, Cady. It was sweet of you to come.”
“Hey,” I said stupidly. “No problem.”
The ex-Mrs. Riccarton was tall, lean, and oval-faced, several shades lighter than Neil. Not exactly pretty, but elegant, and enormously self-possessed. She wore a chic-looking gray silk suit, and her hair was pulled back in a modified Wilma Flintstone. Neil had never painted her as a monster, and she certainly didn’t seem to be one. What was it he had said? Unsentimental? Too organized?
“Have you met the Gliddens yet?” she asked.
I told her I hadn’t.
“I think they’re…” She craned her graceful neck. “Yes…over there.”
The Gliddens stood together on the sidewalk, receiving the consolation of friends, so identically pear-shaped and shaggy-headed that they might have been salt and pepper shakers. Both of their plain, open faces wore the same expression of wistful stoicism, and you could tell at a glance they were one of those couples who do everything together. I just knew they owned matching nylon wind-breakers.
“Maybe we should wait,” I said. “There’s sort of a crowd.”
Linda nodded, then looked at Neil. “I know a shortcut to the house, if you feel like a little walk.”
Neil looked confused. “Isn’t there going to be…?”
His ex finished the thought for him and shook her head. “The ashes are at the house.”
Neil glanced to me for guidance. “How do you feel about a walk?”
“Fine,” I said, sounding as casual about it as possible. I was determined not to look like a pussy in front of Linda.
So we followed those long, efficient legs through the dusty shrubbery to the Gliddens’ house, about three backyards away. It was part of a row of houses, cottages really, each the same, yet each in some way different, facing another such row across a palm-lined walkway. They reminded me of the company houses that mill owners once built for their workers, only nicer, with tile-studded bird- baths and rose trellises and perfect little postage-stamp lawns. To my surprise, there was already a small group of people assembled in the Gliddens’ backyard.
“Is this where Janet grew up?” I asked Linda, after Neil had gone off to get us punch.
“I believe so,” she said. “She was third generation, Mary says.”
“And Mary is…?”
“Her mother.”
“Ah.” I tried in vain to picture Janet here, she of the acrylic-look hair and artsy ways, living in this simple house with these simple salt-shaker people, this matched set that couldn’t be broken. Maybe that had been the problem, come to think of it. Maybe Janet couldn’t picture it, either. Even as a kid.
“Her grandfather worked down at Catalina Pottery,” Linda continued. “He was one of Wrigley’s original employees.”
I had no idea who she meant.
“The chewing gum guy. The big millionaire from Chicago. He sort of invented Avalon. Half the people in town worked for him.”
I nodded.
“Neil says he really likes working with you.”
I was rattled for a moment by the abrupt change of subject. “Well,” I said eventually, “I’m flattered.”
“You should be. He doesn’t make friends all that easily.”
This was so out of left field that all I could say was: “Doesn’t he?”
“No.” She offered me a tiny, sisterly smile as if to say: it’s the truth.
I was so flummoxed that I glanced around me in search of distraction, which came in the form of Neil himself, returning with two cups of punch. The stuff was lime green, with vanilla ice cream floating in it. I’d seen nothing like it since junior high school. “Festive,” I deadpanned. Then I hoisted my cup in a silent salute to Neil, which he returned with a flicker of a smile. I just wanted us to be alone again. His ex had already struck me as the sort of woman who could say something incredibly mean in the name of just-us-girls intimacy.
“I met the Gliddens,” Neil said. “They’re nice.”
“Aren’t they?” said Linda.
“They’re coming over, Cady. They really want to meet you.”
“Well…good.”
Even as we spoke, I could see them approaching. I could feel myself wobbling a little too, so I moved my legs apart slightly to gain a steadier stance. Moments later, the ever-attentive Linda spotted the Gliddens herself and moved in swiftly to take charge of things. “Mary, Walter…”
The couple greeted her in unison.
“Such a sweet service,” Linda said.
“Wasn’t it? We were just saying that to Bud Larkin—the reverend.” Mrs. Glidden was smiling graciously, but her eyes were swollen from crying. It was touching to see her make such a valiant effort to be social in the midst of her pain.
“I think you’ve met Neil,” said Linda.
“Yes.” Mary nodded. “And this must be…”
“Cadence Roth.” I held up my hand before Linda could usurp the introduction. I didn’t want to risk how she might define me to the Gliddens.
“And what a pleasure this is,” said Walter.
I thanked him.
“It certainly is,” Mary put in.
Looping his arm through hers, Walter drew his wife closer. “You know, Mary here reviewed you.”
Mary looked instantly embarrassed. “Oh, Walter, for Pete’s sake!”
I had no idea what they were talking about, but my guilty heart was lodged firmly in my throat again.
Walter patted his wife’s hand. “Don’t be so modest, Mary. I’m entitled to brag about you.”
Mary gave her husband an affectionately reproving look, then turned back to me. “I used to write a little column here. Just chitchat, really. For our local paper. I thought Mr. Woods was delightful, so…I said so in the column.”
“It was a rave review,” Walter declared.
“It wasn’t actually a review as such.” Mary addressed me sheepishly, clearly embarrassed by her husband’s hyperbole.
“Must have sold a few tickets, though.”
This time Mary was firmer. “Walter, please. I don’t think they needed my help. It was the top-grossing movie of all time.”
I was beginning to like this lady a lot, so I sent her a faint, private smile, just for the two of us. “Second, I believe.”
“Really? What was first?”
“Star Wars.”
“Oh, well. I liked you much better.”
I thanked her as earnestly as I knew how.
“Janet was just thrilled to be working with you.”
“That’s so nice.”
“It’s not nice,” she insisted, “it’s the truth.”
“Well, it was mutual,” I said, biting the bullet. “I thought your daughter was a supremely gifted artist.”
The Gliddens were far more touched by this monumental lie than I’d expected them to be. Almost instantly, they tightened their grip on each other, like riders on a roller coaster bracing for another heart-stopping dip. Mary’s lower lip began to quiver slightly, but she managed to retain her composure. Her husband staved off the tears by gazing woodenly at the ground. I didn’t record Neil’s response, or Linda’s, for that matter, because I couldn’t bring myself to look at them.
Walter was the one who finally spoke, his voice cracking pitifully. “We’re…awfully proud of her.”
“You should be,” I said.
An excruciating silence followed. I waited for Neil to fill the void, but he just left me there, the sorry bastard, flailing in the quicksand of my own hypocrisy.
Finally, Mary said: “We looked for that film, you know. We couldn’t find it anywhere.”
“What film?”
“Of you. Janet’s film.”
“Oh, really?” I squeaked.
“Isn’t that odd? As much as she talked about it.”
“It is.”
She destroyed it, I told myself. Burned the sonofabitch. Tossed it off a cliff. Right after I told her what a loser she was.
“Did she give you a copy, by any chance?” Walter asked.
“Not really.”
“What a shame,” said Linda.
I shot a quick glance at her to see if she meant this maliciously, but I found her face utterly unreadable. Turning back to the Gliddens, I said: “It wasn’t really finished, you know.”
“Still,” said Walter pleasantly, “you’d think there’d be something.”
“You would.” A clammy trickle of sweat had begun to work its way down the inside of my crepe de chine.
“What did you sing?” asked Mary.
“‘If,’” I told her.
“I don’t believe I know that.”
Linda’s face became animated for the first time that day. “The old David Gates song? You’re kidding? Janet didn’t tell me you were doing that.”
I sincerely hoped that wasn’t all Janet hadn’t told her, like what a roaring bitch I’d been when I quit. I didn’t particularly want Linda for a friend, but I didn’t want her for an enemy, either.
“Why didn’t you tell me she was doing that?” This time Linda was addressing her ex-husband, and he, in turn, was looking awkward beyond belief. I wondered suddenly if the song had once meant something to them. If, perish the thought, it had been their song. It was Neil, after all, who’d suggested that number, who’d included it in our repertoire in the first place. It gave me the willies to think that all this time I might have been acting out some sort of postmarital delusion for him.
Walter spoke up before the question could be resolved. “Say, I don’t suppose you’d mind…?”
“Walter…” This was Mary, admonishing her husband with a stern glance, having read his mind. “I’m sure Miss Roth didn’t come prepared to sing today.”
I was struck dumb for a moment.
“You’re right,” said Walter. “We wouldn’t dream of asking you that.”
“We certainly wouldn’t.”
Linda was giving me a plaintive, cow-eyed look that said: Think how much it would mean to them.
Neil was studying his shoes, no help at all.
“The thing is,” I said, “I’m used to working with accompaniment.”
“They’ve got a piano,” Linda burbled. “Neil, you could play.”
At this new development, Walter gazed hopefully at Mary, Neil gazed at me, and I gazed into another dimension, where I was just tall enough to reach out and throttle Linda’s scrawny neck.
“It isn’t as strange as you might think,” Mary informed me, clearly beginning to warm to the idea. “We have a little program planned. Janet’s grandmother is singing a few of her favorite hymns.” She smiled at me sweetly. “Funerals are really for the living, aren’t they?”
Lucky Janet, I thought, to be missing all this.
“Well,” I said finally, “if you don’t mind a few rough edges.”
“Of course not!” The Gliddens spoke in unison, united in their joy.
Linda was positively ecstatic at the prospect of something new to organize. She offered her services to Walter and Mary on the spot, then engaged them in a brief discussion about folding chairs and placement of the piano. Charged with purpose, the three of them scuttled off toward the house, leaving me and Neil alone on the lawn.
“You’re dead meat,” I said.
Neil chuckled.
“I mean it.”
“Well…it’s the least we can do.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“For such a supremely gifted artist.”
I gave him the evilest eye I could muster.
“I think you’re wonderful,” he said.
There must have been thirty people crammed into that tiny living room—including Janet, who now resided on the mantel, I was told, in a piece of vintage Catalina crockery. My opening act, as promised, was Janet’s grandmother, who did a creditable job with those hymns of hers, despite a brief dental mishap. The audience rewarded her with polite applause and several dutiful pecks on the cheek.
Then Walter took the floor.
“And now it’s a great honor for me to introduce a special guest, a person our Janet was working with when—uh—this year. Some of you know this young lady starred in Mr. Woods, the—uh—second, I believe, most popular movie of all time, and went on to star in Janet’s most recent movie…film; excuse me.” He displayed a tepid smile. “Janet preferred the term ‘film.’ Anyway, before I mess this up…Cadence Ross.”
He made an ineffectual flourish toward the ancestral upright, where Neil and I were both seated—him on the stool; me, rather precariously, on top. Feeling oddly like a saloon girl, I explained to the audience that I had sung this song in Janet’s brilliant but sadly unfinished film, that it had always been a personal favorite of mine, that I hoped it would mean something special to each and every one of them.
I was surprised by how well it worked. I was in decent voice—thanks to all that fresh air, no doubt—and Neil played with a tenderness that seemed perfectly tailored for the occasion. It was easily our best performance, far better than anything we’d ever done for that stupid video. Something just clicked that had never clicked before. And the music seemed uncannily appropriate. Especially the soaring part at the end that sounds like an ascent into heaven.
As that last wistful note lingered in the balmy air, I closed my eyes and let my head drop humbly to my chest. There was a moment of total silence before the audience could convert its raw-edged emotion into thunderous and sustained applause. I basked in it at my leisure, soaking it up like sunshine after too many weeks of rain. When I finally opened my eyes again, Neil was beaming up at me, every bit as stunned as I was.
“We killed ’em” was the way he put it later, when we were down on the beach at an open-air café.
“Fuckin’ A,” I said. “Miss Ross can sing.” I’d had a few margaritas by then.
“We should do funerals more often.”
“We should do something more often.”
“Hey.”
“Oh, c’mon. We’re washed up, Neil. Aren’t we?”
To my horror, he didn’t even bother to deny it. He just shrugged and twitched a little and shook the ice in his glass.
“That’s what I thought.”
“Things could change,” he said. “The whole economy’s lousy.”
“Yeah, right. Want another one?”
He looked down at his empty glass. “Well…”
“Waitron!” I made an elaborate semaphore signal across the deck at the girl who’d been serving us, then turned back to Neil. “I owe you at least a round or two.”
“What for?”
“The journal, remember?”
“That was a present.”
“You said I could buy you a drink sometime.”
He smiled. “That was a figure of speech.”
“Well, I, for one, plan to get shitfaced.” I polished off the tangy remains of my margarita and plonked the glass down. “That’s another figure of speech.”
He chuckled, studying me for a moment, then looked up as the waitress arrived.
“The gentleman would like another gin and tonic,” I informed her grandly. “And I’ll have my usual.”
“Coming right up,” said the waitress.
“I think that should be my last,” Neil said after she’d gone.
“Why?”
“I have to drive, remember?”
I snorted. “You couldn’t kill anybody with that dinky thing if you tried.”
“Just the same.”
“You wanna hear my theory?”
“About what?”
“Us,” I said. “The business.”
“OK.” He wove those long mahogany fingers through each other and laid them on the table in front of me.
I could never have said it without the booze, but I did say it: “I think the problem is me.”
“Oh, shit.”
“No, hear me out…”
“Look, Cady, we did a record number of gigs after you came on with us.”
I told him I was aware of that.
“Then, why would…?”
“Just listen, OK?”
“I’m listening.”
“I think the clients liked me at first because…it was a novelty, and everybody wanted to see what it was like. But the novelty has worn off now, and they’re just left with sort of, you know, a creepy aftertaste.”
“For Christ’s sake.”
He looked so annoyed that I winced a little. “It’s just a theory,” I said.
“Were you conscious back there?”
“Back where?”
“The Gliddens’ house. Those people adored you, Cady. You let them look into your soul, and they worshiped you for it.”
As much as I enjoyed hearing this, I felt compelled to remind him that it had been, after all, a funeral, that the audience had been emotionally primed for the moment.
He wouldn’t buy it. “They weren’t primed for the old lady. They barely clapped for her at all.”
“Well, her teeth fell out, for God’s sake. She lost the momentum.”
He threw back his head and groaned in exasperation.
“Besides, I wouldn’t exactly call that…”
“One margarita and one G and T.” Out of nowhere, the waitress had returned with our drinks.
We both thanked her sheepishly and waited until she’d left before resuming.
“Did it ever occur to you,” said Neil, more softly this time, “that business just might be shitty, period? It’s a big world, Cady. Everything doesn’t have to be about you.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No.”
“Well, that sucks.”
He laughed wearily. “I hate to be the one to break it to you.”
“I need a drink,” I said, grinning at him over the salty rim.
The boat back to the mainland didn’t leave for several hours, so we paid for an extension on our golf cart and took it out for a spin. Neil seemed relatively sober, thank God, but I was feeling very little pain. We followed the coastal road past the original pottery works, long ago demolished, then hung a right at the water conversion plant and climbed into the hills. There wasn’t another vehicle in sight, so the road was all ours most of the way. It snaked along through spicy eucalyptus groves and huge forbidding clusters of prickly pears, affording random glimpses of the blue-green water below. A fine red dust danced in the slanting afternoon light, so that everything around us seemed rendered in sepia.
“I wonder if we’ll see buffalo,” said Neil.
I gave him a half-lidded look. “Sure thing, kemo sabe.”
“They have them, you know.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Not here, maybe, but they’ve got them.”
“Real ones, you mean? Wild?”
“Yep. They just keep multiplying.”
I asked him how they got there in the first place.
“Somebody brought a few of them over for a movie and forgot to take them home. Back in the twenties.”
“I didn’t know buffalo went to movies.”
I thought this was a brilliant witticism, but all Neil could manage was a tiny smirk. “They used to shoot Zane Grey westerns here.”
“Aha.” In my drunkenness I conjured up my own version of a Gary Larson cartoon—a retirement home for aging buffalo actors, where the inmates sit around reminiscing about the big stampede scene that brought them their only fame.
“He lived here, in fact.”
“Who?”
“Zane Grey. His house is a hotel now, sort of pueblo style. Across the harbor there.”
“No kidding.”
He swung the golf cart off the road and parked it.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Stretch my legs. Wanna get out?”
I told him I was fine right there.
He climbed out and shook the stiffness from his limbs, then he fished a cigarette from the pocket of his blazer and lit it, took a drag, surveyed the picture-perfect scene beneath us. I wasn’t used to seeing him so dressed up, I realized. He looked nice like that. One more thing to thank Janet for.
After a while, he came and stood next to the golf cart, still holding the cigarette and staring down at Avalon.
“You know what?” he said.
“What?”
“There’s no way I wanna get back on that boat.”
I had no earthly idea what he expected to hear from me, so I kept it as pleasantly neutral as possible. “It’s pretty nice here, all right. I’m surprised.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“Who’d’ve thunk it?”
He took another drag. “We don’t have to, really.”
“Have to what?”
“Go back.” He shrugged, then looked at me directly, those amazing eyes probing mine. “What’s the rush, anyway? It’s not like we’re working. I bet we could get rooms at the Zane Grey.”
Rooms. Plural. I can’t remember when a single letter has mattered more to me.
“Yeah,” I said carefully, drawing out the word to cover my confusion, “we could, but…” I didn’t manage to finish the thought.
“But what?”
“I’m broke, Neil.”
He laughed it off. “Forget it. It’s on me.”
“You’re broke too.”
He shrugged. “That’s what credit cards are for.”
“Don’t you have to get back to Danny?”
“Nope. Linda’s got him. She’s picking him up at the neighbor’s right about now.”
“She’s gone back, then?” I don’t know why I had to know this, but I did. Linda had vanished completely after thanking me for my performance and spending an agonizingly inaudible moment or two with Neil.
He nodded. “Took the plane. Right after the reception.” He smiled ruefully. “After she helped ’em clean up, I’m sure.”
Surprised by how relieved I was, I kept from betraying myself by changing the subject. “How much does that cost, anyway? The plane.”
He rolled his eyes. “More than we’ve got, believe me.”
Oh, how I wallowed in the sound of that we, the way he’d lumped us together so casually, so naturally, as a functioning unit—in distinct contrast to Linda. And now, separate rooms or not, we had a whole island to ourselves. A whole night, too, and another whole morning.
The Zane Grey was so high up on a ridge that it looked across at the carillon we’d heard on our way into the harbor. A small parking space next to the road was as close as we could get to the place without walking, so I waited in the golf cart while Neil climbed the stairs through the cactus garden to inquire about accommodations. He came bouncing back down less than five minutes later.
“Two singles,” he said, beaming, “next to each other, just off the swimming pool. With a view you won’t believe.”
“Great.”
“It’s a climb.”
“Yeah, I see.”
“Why don’t I carry you?”
I declined this time, because the operation struck me as a little too public and undignified, and because I didn’t want him to think of me as helpless. Also, I’d begun to pit out my funeral frock. “You go ahead,” I said. “I’ll meet you up there. They don’t sell T-shirts, by any chance?”
“I think they do. Why?”
I told him I needed a new gown.
He smiled. “What size?”
“Large.”
“Coming right up. Any preference as to design?”
I shook my head. “Long as it doesn’t say ‘Eat Shit’ or something.”
“Right.” He started up the stairs, two steps at a time.
“Wait,” I said. “What’s my room number?”
He thought for a moment, then said: “‘Western Stars.’”
“That’s the number?”
“They’re all named after Zane Grey novels.”
“Cute.”
“It’s the row just past the pool. You can’t miss it.”
I asked if he’d take my purse with him and leave my door open and turn the shower on, please, medium warm. He smiled and said, “Yes, ma’am,” took my purse and bounded up the steps out of sight.
It took me almost fifteen minutes to get up there. In the absence of railings, I negotiated most of it on my hands and knees, cursing the faceless housekeeper who’d neglected to sweep the grit off the tile. Just before I reached the top, a pair of bare male legs appeared in front of me, white and unrecognizable and definitely going down.
“Lovely day,” I said.
“Uh…yes. Can I…?”
“I’m fine,” I assured him. “Just pretend I’m not here.”
So the poor, confused thing stepped around me and left me to manage the rest on my own. There was a low rail, thank God, where the steps ended, so I hoisted myself to my feet again and caught my breath. I was standing on a small poolside terrace overlooking the harbor. The view was spectacular, all right; it looked as if this might be the highest point in town.
Somewhat to my relief, the pool area was completely deserted, if you ignored the pride of house cats skulking around the AstroTurf. There must’ve been a dozen, at least, of every age and coloration, and they seemed to regard me with overt suspicion as I set off in search of my room.
“Nice kitties,” I murmured. “Just passing through. Stay the fuck away.”
The sound of showers running led me to a motel-style row of rooms perched on the very edge of the drop-off. The first shower belonged to Neil, I decided, since the door was shut. The second one shushed invitingly behind an open door that was indeed marked “Western Stars.” The room was hardly bigger than its double bed, adorned with southwestern murals and a huge plastic cactus stuck in a pot of gravel. A blue-and-gray plastic electric fan droned away on the bedside table. On the bed, arranged neatly next to my purse, lay my new T-shirt—an ad, not surprisingly, for this very establishment.
I pushed the door shut and shucked off my dress with a sigh of relief, then made a beeline for the bathroom. Neil, bless his heart, had thought to take the soap and shampoo off their way-too-high ledge and leave them on the rim of the shower stall. It felt wonderfully rejuvenating to wash away the grime of the journey, not to mention the sweat of my various exertions, both physical and mental. I never feel fully at ease in a new place until I’ve had a nice hot shower.
I was toweling dry my hair in front of the electric fan when he rapped on my door. “Hang on,” I hollered. “Almost done.”
“No problem,” said Neil.
I pulled on the T-shirt—which was white, with just enough green to do something for my eyes—gave my bouncy, apricot-smelling ringlets a final fluff, and made a hasty effort at applying lipstick.
“OK,” I yelled. “Entrez.”
Neil was wearing a T-shirt just like mine, only red, and the same khaki pants he’d worn with his blazer. “All riight,” he crooned. “A new woman.”
“We try.” I did a little curtsy in the T-shirt. “Thanks for the smashing ensemble.”
“My pleasure.”
I stuffed my lipstick and compact mirror back into my purse. “I think I’m ready.”
“You want me to turn off the shower?”
“Oh, yeah, would you? Thanks.”
When he came back from the bathroom, he said: “I made dinner reservations for us.”
Us. For us.
“It’s down on the water, and they serve seafood,” he added. “That’s all I know. I hope it’s OK.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“The guy at the desk recommended it.”
I smiled at him slyly. “It’s probably run by his brother-in-law.”
“Yeah.” He looked distressed, suddenly. “If you’d rather wait and…”
“Hell, no. I’m just kidding. I could eat a horse right now. A buffalo.”
He laughed and led the way out the door. As we passed the swimming pool, with its battalion of cats, he said: “Have you noticed how empty this place is?”
“I have, yeah.”
“The season must be over.”
“Yeah, probably. I don’t mind a bit. I like having it all to ourselves.”
“Same here,” he said.
This time I let him carry me as we went down the stairs.
The restaurant was very nice. I’ve already forgotten its name, but it was weathered and shingled and strung with lights and built out over the water on stilts. The food was nothing grand, your basic deep-fried seafood with iceberg lettuce and baked potato, but it tasted heavenly in the salt air, especially after two or three drinks with little umbrellas in them.
“This is all right,” I told Neil, twirling one of the umbrellas as I gazed out at the moonlit sea. “I am one happy camper.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I think we owe Janet one.”
I smiled a little, tickled that we thought so much alike, then plunged headlong into the only subject still eating at me. “Linda seemed to like the song.”
“She did,” he agreed.
“I mean, a lot.”
He shrugged. “It’s beautiful the way you do it.”
“Yeah, but it seemed like it had…you know, some significance. Just the way she reacted when I told her I was doing it.”
Another shrug. “I didn’t notice that.”
“You didn’t? I did.”
“Lots of people like that song.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
He looked completely confused. I decided maybe I had been barking up the wrong tree.
“She was much nicer than I’d expected, by the way.” I didn’t mean a word of this, but it was the only way I could think of to test him.
“Oh, yeah?” he said, tossing the ball back to me.
“Well, she was awfully sweet to the Gliddens.”
“Janet was her friend,” he said, as if that took care of it. “They were in the same sorority or something.”
“Yeah, but she was so helpful.”
“That’s her,” he said grimly.
I asked him what was wrong with being helpful.
“Nothing. Unless it’s a substitute for ever showing any real feelings.”
I closed the little umbrella, opened it, closed it again and set it aside. I’d wanted him to be philosophical about Linda, a little blase even. This maelstrom of unresolved emotions just beneath the surface was bad news indeed, confirming my worst suspicions.
“She’s a cold fish,” he added.
I nodded.
“What are you getting at?” he asked.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“No, but you’re thinking something.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yes it does. What?”
“OK…just that…you don’t seem to be over her yet.”
“Don’t I look over her?”
I told him I wasn’t sure what that looked like.
“Like this.” He framed his face with his big pink palms and mugged at me.
I smiled at him faintly, unconvinced.
“Why would you even think that?”
“Just the way you’re talking now,” I said. “Your bitterness. If you didn’t still feel something, you wouldn’t resent her so much.”
He was genuinely aghast. “I resent her,” he said with calm deliberation, “because she’s still in my life. We share a little boy, and she’s been one lousy influence on him.”
Some people, I reminded myself, have kids in the equation. Neil loved his kid more than anything, so it was only natural to resent Linda for forcing him to subdivide that love. It made perfect sense. Of course he was over her. I felt like jumping off the pier in celebration. With one of those tacky little umbrellas over my head.
“How,” I asked soberly, “is she a bad influence?”
“Like I said, she’s a cold fish. She never should have become a mother in the first place. She does it now just because she thinks she should, because it’s one more noble responsibility for her to shoulder. She’s not even comfortable around Danny. She pats him on the head like he’s a neighbor’s kid or something. It’s a real crime, Cady. He’s shut down for days after he gets back from her.”
“How awful.”
“It is. You should see him. He has to pretend she loves him. He makes up stories about the nice things she does for him. You can tell he makes them up.”
I nodded.
“I don’t talk about it a lot, because it sounds…you know, typical. Fighting over the kid.”
I reached out and squeezed his hand—or as much of it as I could manage: a finger or two. Neil squeezed back, looking straight into my eyes. “I just think he deserves better,” he said.
I told him I thought so too.
We got a lot merrier after that, practically closing the place. How we made it back up the hill safely in that golf cart will remain a mystery to me forever. We were both giggling like stoned teenagers when we reached the daunting stairs at the Zane Grey. Neil composed himself briefly, then hoisted me to his chest with an exaggerated groan and began the climb. “Jesus,” he muttered. “Who knew a few scampi could weigh that much?”
“Just shut up and drive,” I said.
“Yes, Miss Daisy.”
That got us both giggling again, more hysterically than ever, until it struck me that Neil had begun to sway ever so slightly, like an oak in a high wind. “Stop,” I said. “We’re gonna fall.”
He came to a halt and steadied himself. “Just trust me, OK?”
I gazed down at the necklace of lights along the beach, the black silhouettes of the palms, the luminous white carousel that was the casino. Even at this height, it was far too beautiful to be scary. And what a way to go, I thought, to tumble heedlessly into that mystical landscape in this man’s arms. It would almost be worth it.
“Just take it a little slower,” I said.
So he did, and we made it, congratulating ourselves with simultaneous sighs of relief. The little pool was lighted now, the same glowing green—or so I imagined—as the eyes of the cats who slept in the shadows around it. Wisps of vapor shimmied along its surface, beckoning to us. Neil stood stock-still at the edge, as if momentarily hypnotized, then shucked off all his clothes and dived in. His body shot through the pool like a projectile, a dark steel torpedo, surfacing in a soft-spoken explosion at the other end. “It’s really warm,” he said. “Go for it.”
I glanced around briefly to make sure we were alone, then kicked off my shoes and shed my T-shirt, leaving it on top of Neil’s. My entrance into the water wasn’t nearly as graceful as his, but after dropping like a rock, I managed to flutter-kick my way back up to the surface and catch my breath. I gave Neil a game smile, which he returned from across the way, bobbing merrily above the surface, on the same level as me for once.
“Nice,” I said.
“Mmm.”
I wasn’t sure where to look at this point, so I looked up, found the moon, studied it as a newfound object, huge and pale and perfectly round. It glinted back at me in amazement, like a monocle inserted in haste by an old man who couldn’t believe his eyes. When I looked down again, Neil was paddling closer.
“Maybe they could use an act.”
“Who?” I asked, still treading water.
“This place. Then we’d never have to leave.”
“Right.”
“I could play, you could sing ‘Feelings.’”
“Where? Next to the Ping-Pong table?”
He chuckled, closer still, walking on the bottom now, though his head remained level with mine.
“My legs are tired,” I said. “I think I’d better…”
“Grab hold,” he said.
“What?”
“Put your hands around my neck.”
I did that without protest, and my buoyancy increased instantly, lifting me like a giant’s hand, up and forward, into the sleek porpoise flesh of Neil’s chest. As my feet dangled free, relieved of their task, my muscles relaxed completely. I felt the cedary caress of his breath across my cheek.
“How’s that?” he asked, holding me by the waist and drawing back a little.
“Fine.”
He bounced a little on the balls of his feet. “Where would you like to go?”
“Nowhere.”
He studied me for a moment, then kissed me on the mouth. I kissed him back.
There was a clink. Then the whir of machinery and a final kerplunk. Somewhere in the darkness behind us, a can of soda was removed from a machine.
We froze in that absurd bouncy-baby position, silent as burglars, with only our eyes to register alarm. Neil was facing the wrong way, but I could make out movement in the shadows, a fragment of something pale. It hissed at us, snakelike, as a pop-top was released, lingered there for a moment, then retreated down a concrete path, to the slapping sound of flip-flops.
“Damn,” said Neil, grinning. “How long you think they were there?”
“Who knows?”
“Oh, well.”
“Yeah.”
Still holding his neck, I began to tread water again. I wasn’t altogether surprised when something poked against the bottom of my foot. “What’s this?” I asked, feigning shock.
He gave me a sheepish look.
“How long have you had that?”
“Long enough.”
I couldn’t resist. “Seems to be.”
He chuckled.
I moved my foot in tight against his sculpted belly, then down into that sweet Velcro wonderland until it rested on the base of his cock, making it spring out from his body. Then I traced its length slowly with my toes, enjoying the silken feel of it—my own private diving board.
He began moving us toward the shallow end.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Somewhere where we’re not the resident act.”
“Oh, c’mon. Think of the fun we’ll be spoiling.” It was booze and nothing else that made me this playfully brazen. I can be as trashy as the next girl, but I’m not an exhibitionist. At least not the sexual kind.
We gathered up our discarded clothes and made our dripping way back to Neil’s room. It was a miracle we didn’t run into any of our neighbors in the process, but we didn’t, so the poor souls were deprived of cocktail chatter that would have lasted them well into the next millennium.
Neil’s room was exactly like mine, except that the closets were reversed and his plastic cactus was of a different variety. He switched on a little lamp on the dresser, then brought towels from the bathroom and dried us—first himself, hastily, then me—blotting away gingerly as I stood on the nubby chenille of the bed, my cool skin all taut and tingling, my knees weak from the exercise and the raw, unobstructed sight of him. “You OK?” he asked softly as he put down the towel.
“Fine.”
“Lay back, then.”
He scooched both pillows against the headboard and eased me back into them, stroking me lightly, smoothing me into place. Then he knelt on the floor next to the bed and moved in close to me, his head so huge and unbelievable it might have been on a movie screen. The lamp behind him produced a sort of coppery nimbus around his hair as his velvety lips covered mine. His tongue slipped into my mouth, filling it momentarily, then roamed off to my ears, my neck, my nipples, which he lapped at with teasing expertise before finally devouring my tits, one after the other, completely enveloping them in liquid warmth.
Before long, though, his mouth had wandered off again, swabbing its way across my belly and between my legs. I reached down and buried my fingers in the thicket of his hair as his tongue continued its exploration, charting in precise terms a territory it seemed to know already. When he looked up again, smiling at me with half-lidded pleasure, he said only one word—“Nice”—and returned to the business at hand.
“Hey,” I whispered.
“Mmm?”
“Come up here.”
He hesitated briefly, then rose somewhat clumsily to his feet, his cock swinging into sight. “Where?”
“On the bed.”
I wiggled closer to the wall to make a space for him.
“Like this?” he asked, lying down.
“No. Kneel.” I had spoken his name, of course, which was funny to me, but I didn’t remark on it, since it was hardly the time for word games.
So he knelt in the middle of the bed and I knelt in front of him, a pilgrim before the Wailing Wall. From there I could reach up to pet the thick-skinned planes of his chest and stomach and, moving lower, trace the thin ridge of hair descending from his navel. I hoisted his balls with one hand, feeling their weight spill over the sides, then nuzzled the shaft until it began to stir in fits and starts, jerking to life again, the foreskin rolling back with lazy majesty to reveal flesh as shiny and pink as the heart of a conch shell.
In no time at all, my hand couldn’t encompass it, so I used two to steady him as I went down on him. Actually, around on him would be more like it, since I had to tackle the job in stages, a bit at a time, like licking a large manila envelope. He made gentle growls of encouragement while I worked, stroking my hair and leaning into me for easier access.
When I finally got the head in my mouth, he bent even lower, propping himself up with one hand, sliding the other across my tits and belly and into my bush, where his middle finger pushed deeper and deeper as I bounced on my haunches. In the process his cock slipped from my mouth and banged against the side of my head like a boom on a sailboat in a storm at sea. I wanted his lips on me again, but they were miles away by then, somewhere just below the ozone layer. He must have sensed this, because he stretched out full length on the bed and pulled me up into the crook of his arm, still wearing me on his hand like a bowling ball. Then his mouth covered me again, and a second finger joined the first, and the circle was miraculously complete.
I lay there panting, a pat of butter melting into him, as much there as everywhere. Those chimes were back again, doing their silly thing, and a kitten was mewing plaintively somewhere outside.
“What about you?” I asked, glancing down at his cock to show him what I meant.
He took hold of it and slapped it once against his belly, making a wonderful sound. “You mind?”
“Of course not.”
He smiled at me sheepishly and began pumping away, slowly at first, then building steam.
“What can I do?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just stay there. Stay close.”
So I obliged, happily, nestling into his shoulder, enjoying the ripe, ferny smell of him, the rising heat of his body. Just before he came, I lodged my tongue in his ear and gave his nearest nipple a vigorous tweak. Jeff told me once that men like that too—or at least some of them—and it seemed to work, because Neil groaned even louder the moment I did it. His sperm shot so far that gobs of it caught us both in the face.
“Whoa,” I said, laughing.
He rolled his head toward me, wiped some of the stickiness off my temple. “I’ll get a washcloth.”
“No. Stay put.”
“OK.” He observed me with startling tenderness, then added: “Those eyes.”
We stayed sprawled there for the longest time, blissfully debilitated. As I nestled into his shoulder, he reached down and held my foot for a while, rubbing it idly, as if it were a smooth stone, all but engulfing it in one of his palms. Something about the gesture got me to thinking again. Worrying.
“Neil?”
“Mmm?”
“This wouldn’t be…a black thing, would it?”
“Huh?” He turned his head toward me again.
“Don’t take it personally, OK?”
“What wouldn’t be a black thing?”
“This,” I told him. “Us.”
“What are you talking about?” He let go of my foot at this point, not angrily, but certainly distracted.
“Well, some black people see little people as…sort of enchanted. Like a good luck charm or something, someone who can grant wishes. They’d do anything for you. Just because you’re there.”
He propped himself up on his elbow suddenly, separating us. “I am not believing this.”
“It’s the truth.”
“According to who? David Duke?”
“I know how it sounds, but it’s not just blacks. Norwegians are just as bad. Or good, depending on how you look at it. And some of the Eastern Europeans. It’s cultural, really.”
“And you thought…?”
“I didn’t think anything. I’m just asking.”
“What? If I think you’re a leprechaun?”
“Well…yeah.” I tried to soften it with a smile. “More or less.”
He laughed more bitterly than I’d hoped.
“Please don’t be mad.”
He brooded for a while, then asked: “How long have you been thinking this?”
“Not long. Just then, really. I’m trying to…explain it to myself.”
“Explain what?”
“Why you would…you know.”
“Cady…”
I knew where he was heading, or thought I did, and did my best to stop it. “I’m not fishing for compliments, Neil.”
He grunted. “More like handing out insults.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve had it happen before, that’s all.”
“You have?”
“Uh huh.”
“Somebody black.”
“Yeah, sure.” Reading his expression, I amended that as quickly as I could. “I mean, not like this, not with someone I really…not in bed or anything…Oh, fuck, just fuck it.”
My confusion made him laugh, at least. “Relax,” he said, sliding in next to me again. “Tell me about it.”
“No, it’s stupid. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“C’mon, tell me.”
So I told him about the time Mom and I stopped at a market in Watts to use the telephone, how the kindly old proprietor had grinned at me and followed me through the store, heaping me with frosted doughnuts and Baptist blessings, how we’d returned there repeatedly when money was low for bags of free groceries, with nothing expected in return except the touch of my hand on the old guy’s arthritic elbow.
“Was he the only black person?” Neil asked.
I told him there’d been a few others.
He chuckled, absorbing it all, more fascinated now than offended.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I said. “I was just being insecure.” I smiled at him wanly. “Which is a Jewish thing.”
“I know,” he said somewhat ruefully. “This whole thing could be a Jewish thing.”
“What do you mean?” The way he punched the J-word made me put my guard up.
“You having sex with me. It could be Jewish guilt, for all I know. Your version of a freedom ride.”
“Well, that’s pretty nasty.”
“No nastier than comparing it to a couple of free doughnuts.”
“It wasn’t a couple,” I said, thumping him on his sticky stomach. “It was lots. And bags and bags of groceries.”
“Oh, well…in that case.”
“I wasn’t comparing, either. I just wondered…”
“Yeah, yeah. Did it work?”
“What?”
“Did you cure his arthritis?”
I gave him a guilty smile. “I got a movie about that time. We never went back.”
He issued a little murmur in response—disapproving, I thought—then left the bed, snatched a towel off the floor, and wet it in the bathroom sink, mopping himself up. When he came back a minute or so later, he worked on me, dabbing delicately at my face and shoulders as he held my head with the other hand.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said finally.
“What?”
“You granted my wish.”
I sailed along on that thought all night, willing myself awake sometimes just to prove that he was there, warm and real and breathing beside me. Once I even left the bed, so I could stand by the window and feel the breeze and memorize the look of it all: that enchanted ballroom, the dwindling constellation of lights along the shore, the miracle of Neil’s body beneath the sheet. I knew that whatever happened from then on would never be quite the same as this, never as pure and rich and bracingly new. I wanted to save it somehow, to store it away somewhere to be treasured again when I needed it most.
The feeling lasted well into the next morning, but I never gave words to it, for fear of frightening him. He had hoped this would happen, I reminded myself; he had planned on it even, much more than I had. His actions that morning gave witness to that, since he held my hand at breakfast (a sweet little greasy spoon straight off a sound stage) and romped with me in the clear blue-green waters of our own secret cove. Even as we sailed back to the smogbound mainland and watched with mounting melancholy as our special island shrank back into nothing, he stayed close to me always, touching, smiling, speaking with his eyes. There was nothing to dread, I realized. Everything about him said this was a beginning, not an end.
He dropped me off at my house a little past six. We kept our goodbyes brief and unsensational, sealed with a couple of pecks on the cheek. Renee watched us from the door, giving a little wave, obviously bursting with curiosity, since overnight funerals are not all that common a phenomenon. Once Neil was gone, I told her something vague and half-assed about missing the last boat and went directly to my room.
That was yesterday. Now it’s night again, late, and I’ve been writing nonstop since who-knows-when, practically to the end of the journal. Renee has been in and out all day, both excited and vaguely unsettled, I think, by this burst of literary activity. She had a date last night with “a serviceman,” she says, though she seems unclear about exactly which branch of the service it was. They went to a taco place in Burbank and then out for beers somewhere. I have a strong suspicion she fucked him in his car.
She’s in bed now, talking ladylike in her sleep, delivering her Miss San Diego acceptance speech. I melt a little whenever she does that; don’t ask me why. I’d hoped that writing this all down would eliminate the need for a listening ear, but it doesn’t seem to have worked at all. This one takes a girlfriend, I think.
Maybe I’ll tell her in the morning.