The sun was setting in the usual Technicolor splendor when he walked out to his car. The wet-dust smell of rain filled the air, as it did so often these days. He was getting used to both the gorgeous sunsets and sunrises and the crappy weather. Eventually, he supposed, he’d forget things had ever been any other way. So would everyone else his age. And people like James Henry wouldn’t even know things had changed.
* * *
Louise Ferguson didn’t mind too much when James Henry woke up once in the night. She could even deal with twice. She was tired enough, going back to sleep was no big deal.
But three or four times. . That wore you down. That had worn her down even when she was half her current age. She remembered. And it was more than doubly tough now that she’d reached her present state of decrepitude. Caffeine helped, but only so much. She didn’t know what she would have done if coffee hadn’t started tasting good to her again. Cocaine and crank were uppers, too, but she’d stayed married to Colin too long to look at anything illegal.
When the baby left her really exhausted, she thought that was a goddamn shame.
Mr. Nobashi gave her a fishy stare when she sat down at her desk in Ramen Central. “You good, Mrs. Ferguson?” he asked. What he did to her last name was a caution. It sounded like Fugu-san, as if she were an honorable puffer fish.
“Ichi-ban, Mr. Nobashi,” she answered. He giggled, so her Japanese was probably even lousier than his English. Well, too bad. She was also lying through her teeth-she was a long way from being A number one.
Ichi-ban or not, she could do the job. Riding herd on noodles and flavoring packets was a hell of a lot easier than taking care of a baby, as a matter of fact. She hadn’t exactly missed it while she was having the kid, but she didn’t mind coming back to it.
She also didn’t mind when Mr. Nobashi started yelling for coffee and sweet rolls, just as if she’d never left. If he was dead set on jitters and Type 2 diabetes, she’d lend a helping hand.
Patty came by and asked, “Everything okay?” in her harsh Midwestern tones.
“Could be worse,” Louise answered.
“I bet,” the other woman said. “So, who’s taking care of Junior now that you’re back here?”
“One of my sons. He needs money, and I need a babysitter. It works out.”
Patty nodded. “That’s handy, anyways. You prolly don’t gotta pay him as much as you would if you hired somebody from an agency or somewheres, either.”
“I wish!” Louise exclaimed. “It’s cash on the barrelhead with Marshall.”
“Sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful child, the Good Book says,” Patty clucked. “It knows what it’s talking about, too. It mostly does.”
“I guess,” Louise said uncomfortably. She’d ditched her family’s stern Presbyterian faith a long time ago. Despite endless New Age experiments, though, she’d never found anything that really filled the gap. Her kids seemed to get along fine with Nothing, but she couldn’t. She wanted Answers, dammit. As the old TV show said, the truth was out there.
Somewhere. She was sure of it. Where was a different question, and one of the Answers she hadn’t found. Yet.
To her relief, Patty didn’t push it. Louise couldn’t stand people who liked their religion so much they tried to sell you on it, too. There she agreed with her ex, and with her children. She couldn’t think of many other places where they were all in accord.
What had felt strangest about coming back was how normal it seemed. She knew the inventories she needed to ride herd on. She hadn’t seen the latest and greatest numbers since she went on maternity leave, but they were in ranges and patterns she found familiar.
The more it changes, the more it stays the same. There was a reason cliches got endlessly repeated. They were the ramen of thought: quick, easy, and filling, but without much real nourishment.
She remembered how to ride herd on Mr. Nobashi, too. He’d changed even less than the inventories. He still spent a lot of the time on the phone, spewing impassioned Japanese laced with English profanity. Louise presumed he was talking to the home office in Hiroshima, but for all she could prove he might have been getting bets down with his bookie. She knew a few Japanese words and phrases-anybody who’d lived in San Atanasio for a while picked them up, the same way Southern Californians generally had fragments of Spanish even if their folks came from Denmark-but she didn’t speak the language.
Mr. Nobashi was just hanging up when she brought him coffee a few minutes before quitting time. “Thank you,” he said, which, along with his bad language, proved he was getting Americanized. A boss in Japan, from everything Louise had heard, would take getting waited on for granted.
“You’re welcome,” Louise said to encourage him.
He gulped sugary caffeine and smacked his thin lips. “I talk with Hiroshima,” he said. “Very bad weather, Hiroshima. Cold like nobody remember.”
“Here, too,” Louise agreed. “Snow!” Like any good Angeleno, she said it as if it were a word for people in other, less lucky, parts of the world. And so it had been, till the supervolcano went off. “Not just snow, either. Rain all year long! It’s ridiculous!”
“Snow in Hiroshima, too,” Mr. Nobashi said. “Snow now. Crops in Japan very bad this year.”
“Crops everywhere are bad this year,” Louise said. In most of the American Midwest, there were no crops. Dust and ash buried much of what had been the world’s breadbasket. Even where it didn’t, the horrible weather the supervolcano had caused screwed up crops and shortened growing seasons.
“Hai,” Mr. Nobashi said. “Not much wheat-and cost so much! Oh, Jesus Christ! Company have trouble afford.”
It sounded as if the price of ramen would go up. The price of everything had gone up as if inflated with helium. College students would particularly mourn this bump, though.
Mr. Nobashi eyed the clock on his wall. “You go home,” he told Louise, even if it was early. “You got to be tired.”
“Thank you, Mr. Nobashi!” She bailed out before he had the chance to change his mind.
Marshall was changing James Henry’s diaper when Louise walked into the condo. “Good job,” she said, to encourage him. “You’re doing super with him. No diaper rash or anything.”
“Yeah, well, when he’s wet or stinky I deal with it,” he answered, and she could hear the shrug in his voice. He washed his hands, grabbed his laptop, and headed for the door. “See you in the morning.”
“Marshall-” Louise began. He paused, but his face didn’t open. She swallowed a sigh. “Never mind. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Out he went, not quite slamming the door behind him. No, he hadn’t forgiven her for leaving Colin. Odds were he never would. She’d tried to explain how stifled she’d felt while she was married to his father. She’d tried, and heard herself failing. He didn’t understand, or want to.
Louise sighed. Yes, she’d lost the children, and she couldn’t do a damn thing about it. She’d hoped Vanessa would get it, but Vanessa’s own troubles were the only ones that were real to her. James Henry made a baby noise, halfway between a gurgle and a burp. Louise picked him up and cuddled him. He couldn’t even smile yet, but she didn’t care. He’d love her no matter what.
For a while, anyhow.
V
“I’ve got a job for you, Colin,” Mike Pitcavage said. He didn’t look like a police chief. He looked like a national news anchor, or maybe a Senator who was thinking about running for President. He was tall and fit and tan, with a full head of iron-gray hair. He wore custom-made Italian suits, not the off-the-rack stuff most cops-Colin included-put on every day.