Tatiana. No message.
I squirmed around the whole ride back, abandoning Zaragoza to distribute lunch while I escaped to the intake bay to call her.
“Hey,” she said.
“Is everything all right?” I said.
“Uh, fine,” she said. “Are you all right?”
Unlike me, she sounded calm, if a trifle perplexed. Nobody tapping on her window. Nobody crouched in the bushes. Only my unexplained urgency to trouble her.
“No no. I’m...” I let the adrenaline seep away. “Busy day. What’s up?”
“I wanted to let you know, I’m going to be heading out of town for a bit. In case you need to reach me about something.”
The best of news. Safer for her, at least in the short term. Mixed with my relief, though, was a stab of regret. “Thanks for the heads-up,” I said. “What’s the plan?”
“Tahoe. My dad has a house there. Had. I need to start dealing with it.”
“Are you leaving soon?”
“Tomorrow morning,” she said. “I found someone to cover my classes for the next few weeks. Figured I might as well get it over with.”
“Right,” I said. “Would you be up for something before you go?”
“Up for...”
Smooth, Clay.
“Dinner,” I said.
A beat. “You mean tonight?”
“That sounds like our only option. Unless you’ll do breakfast at three a.m.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was planning on getting an early start.”
“Sure.”
“I mean,” she said. “It depends.”
“On?”
“You said you needed to figure things out.”
“I know I did.”
“And. Have you?”
I said, “I’d like to see you.”
Longer pause.
She said, “Sorry, tonight’s not going to work. I’m wiped.”
Steeerike!
“But,” she said, “I could leave Monday instead.”
Before going home I tried Samuel Afton one final time. In my voicemail I informed him that the county was moving to cremate his stepfather as an indigent. I gave Cucinelli the green light, packed up, and headed down to the lockers. Zaragoza was already there, lethargically stowing his gear.
“Yo,” I said, “I have to bail on Sunday night. Something came up.”
He took my flakery in stride, shrugging and starting to compose a text.
“Tell Priscilla thanks and I’m sorry,” I said.
He clucked his tongue. “I’m telling Iris she doesn’t need to come after all.”
Chapter 18
Tatiana stepped from her apartment in jeans and a sleeveless top that fell straight and sheer, emphasizing her leanness. Black hair fanned over her shoulders. She’d put on a touch of makeup. Hoop earrings. She said, “How do you feel about Mexican?”
“Some of my best friends are Mexican,” I said.
We set off walking.
“You look beautiful,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“Too strong?”
“No such thing,” she said.
She’d picked out not a restaurant, but a food truck, one of a dozen circled in the parking lot outside the North Berkeley BART station. A couple hundred people milled around under string lights, eating off paper plates. Unattended kids ran in giddy loops to the backing of a zydeco band. A banner behind the stage read OFF THE GRID.
“You are free to partake wherever and whatever you want,” she said. “But I strongly recommend the tacos al pastor from Red Rooster.”
“Done.”
We got food and beer and found a pair of unclaimed plastic chairs.
“I think they do one of these around Lake Merritt,” she said.
“Saturdays,” I said. “I’m working.”
“Poor you.” She held out her lengua for me to try. When I declined, she reached over, forking a piece of pork off my plate. “I only offered so you’d give me some of yours.”
“You could’ve gotten your own.”
“Then we couldn’t share.”
“We aren’t actually sharing,” I said. “You’re just stealing politely.”
“Right, but this way I feel justified.”
“For some reason I had this idea you’d be a vegetarian.”
“Vegan,” she said. “Thirteen years.”
“What happened?”
“Tacos al pastor,” she said.
I asked what she planned to do in Tahoe, other than dispose of furniture.
“Ski. Do yoga. Realistically it’s my last chance to use the house before we sell it.” She paused. “Barb — his first wife — she was the skier. My dad never cared for the cold. I don’t know why he’s held on to it all these years.”
“From what I’ve seen,” I said, “he wasn’t one for purging.”
“Yeah. Although you’d think, a house... He kept talking about renting it out, but he never got around to it. Most of the year it was unoccupied. He went up every few months to check on it. I can’t remember the last time I was there.”
“You didn’t go with him.”
“He never invited me. I’m sure he would’ve let me tag along, but I could tell he needed to get away, so I tried to respect that.”
“Away from what?”
“Me,” she said.
“Kind of harsh on yourself.”
She shrugged. “I pestered him. I knew I was doing it. I wanted him to be healthy.”
I said, “Your brothers are Barb’s sons.”
Tatiana nodded. “She’s a nice lady. She flew in for the funeral. I was touched, but my mom threw a hissy fit.”
“About what?”
“What’s it ever about? She seems to believe she still has an ownership stake in Dad. Their relationship was totally ridiculous. They’d be in divorce mediation during the day then go home and sleep together at night.”
“That’s... different.”
“You think? I know because my mother told me. I was like, ‘I don’t need to hear this, please.’ She told me I had a bourgeois sense of morality.”
“Meaning ‘a sense of morality.’ ”
“It’s the revenge of our generation.”
“What about your brothers?”
“Oh, they’re way more uptight than I am. Charlie’s a lawyer. Human rights. Stephen was in finance, but he quit to open a rock climbing gym.”
“That doesn’t sound uptight.”
“He runs it like an investment bank,” she said. “We don’t fight, but we’re not close. You?”
“I grew up in San Leandro. My folks are still there.”
“Siblings?”
“None to speak of.” I reached for her empty cup. “Another?”
“Please.”
As I stood in line, listening to an accordion-driven version of “Every Breath You Take,” I glanced at the street sign.
We were on the 1400 block of Delaware.
Four blocks east of Julian Triplett’s mother’s house.
I looked over my shoulder at Tatiana.
She raised a hand.
I did the same.
I brought back a Corona and a margarita, giving her the choice.
“We’ll share,” she said, taking the margarita.
“I know how that works with you.”
The band played “Super Freak.”
Tatiana said, “I want to tell you something but I’m not sure I should. Should I?”
“How about this,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me what it is first, and then I can decide if you should tell me or not.”
She laughed. “Okay, I’m going to tell you. I was married.”
“Yes,” I said, “you can tell me that.”
“It doesn’t freak you out?”
“Why would it freak me out?”
“It freaks some guys out.”