All the way down the 110, then the 405, Rebecca alternately shook to the music and prodded Ash with questions, and he answered in his familiar monotone, which always made him sound at ease, not bored, no matter what job he'd just left or new woman he'd found and taken meditating or clubbing or drifting and then gotten dumped — gently — by. Ash had been to more weddings of more ex-girlfriends than anyone I'd ever met.
But tonight, he talked about his supervisor at the hospital, whose name apparently really was Ms. Paste. "She's kind of this nurse-artist," he said. "Amazing. Hard to explain. She slides an IV into a vein and steps back, and it's perfect, every time, patient never even feels it. Wipes butts like she's arranging flowers."
Rebecca laughed, while Ash sat in the back with that grin on his face. How can someone so completely adrift in the world seem so satisfied with it?
We hit the 710, and immediately, the big rigs surrounded us. No matter what hour you drive it, there are always big rigs on that stretch of highway, lumbering back and forth between the 405 and the port, their beds saddled with giant wooden crates and steel containers newly gantried off incoming ships or headed for them, as though the whole city of Long Beach were constantly being put up or taken down like a circus at a fairground. As we approached the fork where the freeway splits — the right headed for the Queen Mary, the left for Shoreline Village and the whale-watching tour boats and the too-white lighthouse perched on its perfectly mown hilltop like a Disneyland cast-off — I slowed and glanced at my wife. But Rebecca didn't notice. She had slid down a little in her seat, and was watching the trucks with a blank expression on her pale face.
"Rebecca?" I said. "Where to?"
Stirring, she said, "Oh. The old pier. You know where that is? Downtown, downtown."
Just in time, I veered left, passing by the aquarium and the rest of the tourist attractions to head for the city center. Not that there was much difference anymore, according to Rebecca. Scaffolding engulfed most of the older buildings, and as we hit downtown, the bright, familiar markings of malls everywhere dropped into place around us like flats on a movie set. There were Gap and TGIF storefronts, sidewalks so clean they seemed to have acquired a varnish, fountains with statues of seals spouting water through their whiskers. Only a few features distinguished Long Beach from the Third Street Promenade or Old Town Pasadena now: a tapas bar; that eighty year-old used bookshop with the bowling alley-sized backroom that seems to exude dust through the wood and windows, even though the windows are painted shut; and, just visible down the last remaining dark blocks, a handful of no-tourist dives with windowless doors and green booths inside for the more traditionally minded sailors.
"Go straight through," Rebecca said. "Turn right at the light. God, it's been years."
Given her tastes and the sheer number of days she'd spent with her mother, then with her sister, ever since we'd moved down to L.A. that seemed unlikely. But Ash's patience was soothing, infectious, and I waited. And as we edged farther from the downtown lights, through sports cars and S.U.V.'s skimming the streets like incoming seagulls and squawking at each other over parking places, Rebecca shut off the music and turned to us. "My dad used to take us here," she said.
I hit the brakes harder than I meant to and brought the car to a lurching stop at the road that fronted the ocean. For a few seconds, we hung there, the lights of Long Beach in the rearview mirror, the ocean seeping blackly out of the jumbled, overbuilt coast before us like oil from a listing tanker.
"Your dad," I said.
"Left, Elliot. Down there. See?"
I turned left, slowly, though there was no traffic. Neither tourists nor sailors had any use for this road anymore, apparently. "It's been a long time since you mentioned your dad." In fact, I couldn't remember the last time. She talked about her school commissioner mother — stable, stubborn, fiercely loyal, nasty Scrabble player. Also her recovered junkie sister. But her father …
"I've never heard you mention him," Ash said, detached as ever, just noting.
The frontage road, at least, did not look like new downtown Long Beach or Third Street, or Downtown Disney. To our left, the scaffolded buildings loomed, lightless as pilings for some gigantic pier lost long ago to the tide. To our right lay the ocean, without even a whitecap to brighten its surface. Few other stretches in the LosAnDiego megalopolis were still allowed to get this dark. We'd gone no more than a few hundred yards when Rebecca sat up in her seat and pointed.
"Right here. See?"
I punched the brakes again and brought the car to a stop. Just behind us, a signless, potholed drive snaked between the black iron posts of what must once have been a gate. Beyond that, a parking lot, then the old pier, lit by too-dim streetlights on either side. And beyond those, right at the end of the pier …
"What is that?" Ash said.
It seemed to hover above the ocean, a dark, metallic, upside-down funnel, like a giant magician's hat. Beneath it, dim and scattered lights flickered. If there were ocean rather than pier beneath it, I would have assumed we were looking at bioluminescent fish.
I glanced toward Rebecca, whose smile was the wistful one I'd gotten used to over the past year or so. When I reached over and squeezed her hand, she squeezed back, but absently.
"What's the smile for?" I said, and turned us into the drive. Past the gateposts, we emerged into a startlingly large parking lot that sprawled in both directions. A handful of older cars — an orange Dodge pickup, a '60s-vintage Volkswagon van, a U-haul trailer with no lead-vehicle attached to it — clustered like barnacle shells near the foot of the wooden steps that led up to the pier. Otherwise, there were only empty spaces, their white dividing lines obscured but still visible, rusted parking meters planted sideways at their heads like markers on anonymous graves.
"There used to be a billboard right next to that gate," Rebecca said, staring around her. "A girl dressed in one of those St. Pauli Girl waitress uniforms, you know what I'm talking about? Breasts like boulders — you felt like they were just going to pop loose and roll right off the sign and smash you when you drove under them. She was riding one of the merry-go-round horses and holding a big beer stein. Her uniform said Lite-Your-Line on it, and in huge red letters over her head, the sign read, LONG BEACH PIER. GET LIT."
Ash laughed quietly as I pulled into a spot a few rows from the van and pick-up, and Rebecca got out fast and stood into a surprising sea wind. Ash and I joined her, and I had a brief but powerful desire to ditch our friend, never mind how good it was to see him, take my wife by the elbow and steer her to the dark, disused stretch of beach fifty yards ahead of us. There we'd stand, let the planet's breath beat against our skin until it woke us. The whole last year, it seemed to me, we'd been sleeping. Or I'd been sleeping, and Rebecca had been mourning, and something else, too. Retreating, maybe, from everything but her child. Shaking free of something old, because she had not been sleeping, even before our daughter was born.
"I think this is the only place I remember coming with him," Rebecca said. "For fun, anyway." She moved off toward the steps. We followed. Ash's vest left little purple trails of reflected streetlight behind him. His gaze was aimed straight up the steps. Rebecca had a deeper hunger for these spots, I thought, these night-places where people washed up or swept in like sharks from the deep sea. But Ash could smell them.
"You came here a lot?" I asked. I considered taking Rebecca's hand again, but thought that would be crowding her, somehow.
"More than you'd think." She mounted the stairs. "Some days, he hadn't even started drinking yet. He'd wait until we got here. Buy my sister and me three dollars each worth of tickets — that was like fifteen rides-and plop us on the merry-go-round while he—"