“Maybe good sense,” I said.
“I love him,” she said.
“Then there you have it.”
“Not everyone ends up happy like you and Gina,” she said.
“You did the right thing today, McKenzie. You were alone up there and it wasn’t easy. You did the job. You got her out of there alive.”
McKenzie was quiet for a while. “How about you, Robbie? You okay?”
“I’m good.”
I watched the TV without sound until late. I fell asleep right there on the couch and dreamed of men falling from bridges and buildings into rich green jungles.
Late Sunday afternoon I called Vince. He sounded brusque and bothered and said he’d have to call me back. Ten minutes later he did, and his voice was changed.
“Sorry, Robbie,” he said. “Dawn and I been at it again about this. Look, Gina’s got a place of her own right here in Las Vegas. Nice little apartment. I’m going to give you the address but I need your word you won’t do something stupid, you won’t get loud or something with her. She’s my girl and I can’t let that happen.”
“I can’t get loud with Gina, Vince. You know that by now.”
“Maybe you two can work it out. Dawn says no, but what’s she know? Two people are two people. They find their own ways of doing things.”
“Thank you.”
He gave me the address. I wrote it down and stared at it: 414 Villa Bonterra, #B-303, Las Vegas.
I had just enough time to hit the Horton Plaza mall for a new suit. I had to buy one as is so I could put it on a few hours later, but I’m a forty-four tall, so it wasn’t hard to find. All of the forty-four tall trousers were too big in the waist but the salesman said safety pins and a snug belt would do the trick. The suit was navy wool and expensive. I got a new white shirt and a light blue tie in honor of Garrett Asplundh. A pair of new black shoes. When I got home I turned the trouser cuffs under and used duct tape to hold them in place. I looked in the mirror, tried to get the safety pins right, examined the finished product, and shook my head.
Dream Wheels opened at nine the next morning. I rented a silver Porsche 996 Twin Turbo because Gina had always wanted one. Cass said the new suit was sharp and my date was lucky. The car cost me nine hundred dollars for one day. I felt powerful and potent. I now understood why Garrett Asplundh had rented fancy cars and purchased expensive clothing to impress Stella.
I made the Las Vegas city limits in five hours and eight minutes. I was stopped by the California Highway Patrol and proffered my law-enforcement ID, which is a cheap trick when you’re driving a rental car over ninety. The CHiP looked over the Dream Wheels registration while telling me about a brother-in-law in National City who had season tickets for the Pads. He told me to cool it and get to Vegas alive. Heading into town I felt like a TV-show detective with my cool suit and killer car and the casinos wobbling up to greet me through a mirage of crisp desert air.
I found the B building of the Palacio Toscana apartments and drove the perimeter of the carports but didn’t see Gina’s car. The apartments were salmon-colored and new, with faux shutters swung back from their windows. There were flowers along the walkways. The Palacio Toscana smelled of fresh asphalt. I parked in the shade and spread a newspaper across the steering wheel. The afternoon was sunny but not hot.
An hour and fifteen minutes later Gina’s little blue coupe bounced off the street and into the lane of carports. I lifted the newspaper and watched her over the headlines, and she drove past me without turning. She swung wide right, then pulled hard left into her space.
As I walked toward her across the black asphalt she got out of her car. I could tell by the sudden stop of her head that she recognized me. I waved and couldn’t keep myself from smiling and walking faster. I remembered that there had been times like this when she’d run to greet me.
She had on a pretty blue sundress and blue shoes. Her hair was drawn into a ponytail that rose from a jeweled tube atop her head, then spilled over like a wild orange fountain.
“I’m not here for a scene,” I said.
“You shouldn’t be here at all. Nice car.”
I looked at her for a moment. “You take my breath away, Gina.”
“That’s why this is so difficult.”
“Should we talk inside?” I asked.
“Okay.”
Her apartment was upstairs. It had a view of buildings A and C, and the swimming pool, and a grassy park with a big pavilion for shade. A couple about our age sat in the shade of the pavilion, kissing unhurriedly.
I saw from the bland tan harmonies of the interior that Gina had rented the unit furnished. I looked at her. She was bright and radiant and as out of place as a ruby in a bowl of oatmeal.
“What?” she said.
“I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
How disappointing, to watch the red squares of dishonesty pouring out of Gina’s mouth. I watched the colored shapes flow toward me, then slide over a rounded edge, like water going over a fall.
I remembered times when she’d meet me at the front door when I came home from work and actually pull me inside.
Gina took a deep breath and looked down at the tan carpet. “Here. Have a seat.”
I sat at one end of the tan sofa and Gina sat at the other.
“How’s work, Robbie?”
“It’s good.”
“Catch any bad guys lately?”
“One.”
“Do you still see the shapes when people talk?”
I nodded. “Kind of wish I didn’t. It just seems to get in the way.”
She looked down.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you explain it to me?”
“I can try.” She crossed her pale legs and folded her hands in her lap.
“I came here for a new life. I think there must be more.”
“More what?”
“More everything. I know that sounds really shallow but I’m aching inside for something I can’t see and can’t identify and can’t touch. But I know it’s there. It’s right there, just past my ability to understand. Just out of reach of my words.”
“I’d be happy to help you look for it.”
“It’s something I want to do alone. I’m sorry, Robbie. I fell out of love with you. I was planning to call. I’m going to file the papers and I don’t want anything — you can have it all. I don’t want it to be expensive for either of us.”
I could barely formulate a reply. Something inside me took over the task of communication while my heart withered and died.
“Everything we have is community property,” I heard myself say.
“But I don’t want any of it. Not one thing.”
She bent her face to her hands and the orange fountain pitched forward. She reached up, yanked out the jeweled ornament and her lovely hair spilled down. She put her face into her hands again. Her back heaved but she made very little sound.
“Got another guy?”
She shook her head and her back heaved faster.
I sat for a while, feeling the rhythm of her crying relayed to me through the couch springs and the frame and the cushions. Because her face was buried in her hands, I was able to stare at her, as I’d been wanting to do for some time. I can’t accurately describe her beauty in that moment, but to me it was unique and entire. I wanted to take her in my arms until the tears stopped but I understood that they wouldn’t. I could smell them from where I sat, the same humid perfume of the Sonoran thunderstorms that sometimes towered over and burst upon Normal Heights early Septembers when I was a boy.
“Was it something I did?” I asked. “Or didn’t do?”
She shook her head again.
“I know I’ve got my faults.”
“No, you’re perfect. You really are.”