"You're a freak," the husband says. "Fine, you want her, you keep her. I have no idea what you're going to use her for — can't imagine." He climbs back into the minivan. "She's not going to get away with this and neither are you — you little fairy shit." The husband drives off.
"He's not really so bad, is he?" Cynthia says, coming out of the house.
"Hard to know," Richard says.
"The minute they drove up, I knew I couldn't go back. I felt like I'd escaped, like I got lucky. I'd die if I went back. When he drove up I felt sick, and now I feel really good. Look how strong I was." She gestures towards the house. "I'll pay you for it as soon as I have some money. I'll take care of everything. I can't believe I broke your house."
"The house was already broken."
"Do you think he'll come back? Do you think he'll come and kill me?"
"We can't stay here anyway. Between your husband being on the loose and the house being broken, we should just go to Malibu. The real-estate guy left me the key."
"I just want you to know, I'm not going to mooch off you forever. I appreciate all you've done for me, but it's not like I'm moving in permanently. I will figure this out."
They go into the house and tape big green plastic bags over the broken windows. When they run out of plastic bags they use whatever shopping bags are in the cupboard — Hermes, Armani, Barneys, Bristol Farms. They piece together a consumer collage meant to protect the interior in case the weather turns, and to keep the wildlife out.
He leaves a message for his insurance agent. "OK, so now someone visiting me managed to break two of the large plate-glass windows — is that covered?"
He puts his dirty retreat clothes into the hamper and takes clean clothes for Malibu: hats, sunglasses, a bathing suit, white pants, pale-blue sweater, a jean jacket he hasn't worn in years. He packs like he's going on a vacation, a pleasure cruise.
"I only have this," she says, patting a small plastic bag. "Maybe at some point I can sneak home and get some stuff. It's not like I planned on leaving; I accidentally escaped."
Richard hurries, moving like he has to get someplace soon, like someone who's old and worries about his ability to see in the dark.
They drive all the way down Sunset, into what feels like the wilds of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and then up the Pacific Coast Highway, stopping at the Malibu Country Store for supplies.
"Didn't we just eat?" she asks.
"When?"
"At the restaurant?"
"I didn't really eat anything, did you?" Richard asks.
"I really want to stay on my diet; I can't eat crap," she says, circling the potato chips.
"Neither can I." He picks up a package of donuts, reads the ingredients, and puts it down.
They get eggs, bread, butter, water.
"French toast," she says happily. "With fruit!"
"Do they have fruit?"
"There's a pile of bananas by the register."
Back in the car, Richard searches for the house number in the fading light. "I was only here once. It's a big white box." Pulling off the highway, he practically runs over a man in a bathrobe digging through the trash.
"Are you fucking trying to kill me?"
"Sorry, I didn't see you."
"Am I fucking invisible?"
"Sorry." Richard fumbles with the key, the lock, the alarm code. It's like checking into a hotel late at night — something he always hated, arriving when it's too late to see where you are, too late to change your mind.
He turns on lights.
"It's nice," she says. "Smells like fresh paint."
The odor dilates the inside of his brain, a cross between a high and a headache. There is a part of him that is so exhausted he could go right to sleep, some massive sense of being overwhelmed that causes a shutdown. Like squatters, they spread out their loot on the kitchen counter. He finds a pan; she cracks the eggs and dips the bread.
The smell of the French toast makes him feel better. It's nice to eat something warm, soft, sweet.
"I found some Splenda in my pocket and sprinkled it in. Good, right?"
"Fantastic."
"Do you think that guy was homeless?" Richard asks.
"I don't know. Most people don't rummage through the trash in the dark in a robe," she says. "It's so white in here…"
"Very white."
Is white the color of hope?
After dinner, she goes to take a bath and he takes his jean jacket outside, neatly folds it, and leaves it on top of the trash can — it's got to be better than a bathrobe.
Alone in his room, he sets up his computer and goes online, first checking to see how his accounts did while he was away. Fine, good, no better or worse than if he'd been on them every day. And then he checks his e-mail. His brother has been forwarding the daily entries from the boys. They are getting closer, wending their way across America. He is thrilled to be in on the story, but devastated that it's coming to him secondhand.
There they are buying lemonade from a little girl with a stand on the side of a rural road — "She had a box of Free Kittens, 10 weeks old, we wanted to take them all, instead we just played with them and took pictures. Logging a lot of hours behind the wheel — CD player is great. Accidentally left the cell phone in a diner — didn't realize until late at night — located it by calling the number. It was on the floor under the booth with all the fallen French fries, saltine wrappers, and old napkins. The waitress dropped it at FedEx and we picked it up the next morning at Mail Boxes Etc., in New Mexico. We're now in a Starbucks, it's all pretty great. I'm sending you this message from there. Have you ever had Mountain Dew? We love it and are drinking it round the clock — lots of caffeine. We're buzzed!"
Looking at the pictures of Ben, Richard is overwhelmed — it's incredible that he has a son. A boy, a man, just like him and not like him at all, except that some piece of his essential self has continued on, has a chance to get it right, to try again.
Looking at the pictures, he feels the weight of all those years, the enormity of his absence, and he begins to cry.
Cynthia sits next to him. She holds him and he cries harder.
"I missed so much," he says.
And when he is done, she leaves him, and as grateful as he was that she held him, he is glad to be alone with his grief.
HE RISES EARLY and meditates. There is a white velvet painting on the wall; at first he thinks it's an abstraction, then he realizes it's two women making love. He sits, noticing his breath, his back, his body, the sound of the water outside, the cool air blowing through. He practices, banging an imaginary gong, gently closing his eyes, finding his breath in his body, the morning sun flooding through, seeming to rise on him, in him.
He misses the sounds of other people breathing, throats clearing. He makes a note to himself — buy incense.
He sits, breathing, transforming the darkness into light, breathing, transforming anger into compassion, into forgiveness.
He sits for an hour, and by then the sun is fully risen, the room is bright, glowing, hot. Glancing out onto the ocean, he sees something — first he thinks it's a bit of debris, floating, and then realizes it's a yellow swimming cap. He watches the swimmer, stroking her way down the ocean, swimming towards Santa Monica. The fact that there is a swimmer out there, a mermaid, is incredibly uplifting — if there is a swimmer there is hope.
He tiptoes into the living room. She is on the sofa. "Are you awake?" she asks him.
"Yes," he says, wondering if and why she thinks he's sleepwalking.
"You're up early."
"Always."
"Do you want to go for a walk?" she asks. "I got in the habit of early-morning walks."
Together they go to the glass, they stand looking out over the Pacific.
"From the bedroom I saw a woman swimming. She was swimming like she was doing laps, swimming the ocean like it was a forty-foot pool, and at some point she'll get to the end, touch, and turn around and swim back. Look," he says, excited. "I just saw something else."