"Maybe he was just picking up girls."
"He told the woman he was never married and that he had no children."
"Does he know who you are now?"
"Yes, he claims the incident never happened, that I made the whole thing up."
"Well, it's good he's feeling better." Richard smells smoke. "I have to go," he says.
"Of course you do — you always have to go."
Something smells. He goes from room to room, sniffing. There is nothing, no smoke. He opens the front door — all the trash cans up and down the street, trash cans put out this morning for collection, are on fire. Some are smoldering, some have flames shooting up. How did that happen, did a pyro drive by, squirt a little butane in each can, and toss in a match? He turns on the garden hose and puts out the four cans within reach. People driving by beep their horns. Unable to tell how far in either direction the cans are burning, he goes in and dials 911.
"Police, fire, emergency."
"Fire," he says.
"Los Angeles Fire Department."
"I'm calling about trash cans on the Pacific Coast Highway. I smelled smoke and opened the door, and all the trash cans are on fire. I put out the ones I could reach, but there are more."
"Checking. Yes, I have a report of a trash-can fire in our system."
"It's not a trash-can fire, it's fires. Is someone coming?"
"Sir, what is your name?"
In the distance he hears sirens. He hangs up and goes outside again. A fire engine is coming down the highway. Not wanting to be late for his first Gyrotonics class, he jumps in the car and takes off. A piece of metal falls to the ground.
WALKING INTO Malibu Gyrotonics is like entering another world: the air is without temperature, neither warm nor cool, but entirely even, equal, and smells like salt.
"I'm Sydney," a woman says, extending her hand. Sydney is curvy in a way few women are curvy — she is not a small woman, not a large woman, but a curvaceous woman in a one-piece leotard.
"Have you previously experimented with Gyrotonics?" she asks.
"I used to have a trainer; we did weights, yoga, stretching," he says. "And I used to get on the treadmill every morning for an hour."
"Used to — when did you stop?"
"Very recently. My house is… under construction, and the treadmill isn't accessible right now."
"Do you have any health issues, medical problems you're being treated for, back, knees, hips, any artificial parts?"
"All original hardware," he says.
She leads him into the room and begins by having him perform a series of simple movements.
"Taken from swimming, dance, yoga, and gymnastics. The Gyrotonic method is a series of undulating circular movements. There are breathing patterns that work with the movements to release blockages and stimulate the nervous system."
She is testing him, bending and flexing. "The exercises begin in the sacral area of the spine and are done with rhythm and flow, moving uninterrupted through flexion and extension, contraction and expansion. Our goal is increased muscular strength, endurance, range of motion, coordination, and balance." She pauses and repositions him. He tries not to resist. She presses against him.
"Your pelvis is very closed," she says. "Take a breath. It's not unusual for men to have tight hips."
Richard is aware of her hands on his hips, aware of something giving way, a kind of crunch or crack. Later, near the end of the session, she has him facedown and works her elbows in the cheeks of his ass. The whole thing feels more personal and intimate than what he is used to. Unlike his regular shapeless trainer, this one cannot lean over him without touching him. And there is something about the tightness of her leotard, the shape of her, soft but firm, that makes him want to squeeze her. She wears her long hair back in some sort of ponytail; he wants to play horse, to ride her. And he is shocked by what he is thinking. He finishes the workout feeling energized, released, embarrassed.
DRIVING BACK, he passes a "Falling Rock" sign and then a pile of rubble by the side of the road. He drives around it, swinging wide into the next lane.
Up ahead are the trash cans: melted molten blobs, strange sculptures, like burned aliens by the side of the road. There are smoke streaks up the telephone poles, as though they've been hit by lightning. He parks. The houses are at the edge of the highway and so close together that they actually touch. Up and down the highway someone has staple-gunned sheets of paper to the phone poles: "Have you seen this?" Below there is a drawing of "this," an ovoid shape with light beaming out from the bottom, and a phone number to call.
"What smells?" Nic asks, sticking his head out a window. "Like lightning."
"Someone lit the trash cans on fire — how'd you miss it?"
"I was working," Nic said.
The window frames Nic's head exactly. Richard can see that he's got the headphones around his neck, in standby position.
"Are you all right?" Richard asks.
"Oh yeah, I'm fine. I'd come out but I'm hooked up right now, and, besides, there's someone across the street again, taking pictures, and I'm not feeling photogenic."
"Have the signs always been there?" Richard points to the signs.
"Sometimes you see a lot of them and sometimes none for months." Does Nic mean a lot of the Xeroxed notices or the thing itself, whatever it is? "Maybe I'll see you later," Nic says, retreating.
ACCORDING TO their e-mail log, the boys are getting closer to Los Angeles. Richard is nervous. He calls his ex-wife. "I don't know if I'm ready. I'm in this new place, it's all very unfamiliar."
"Well, if you don't want him, send him on."
"I didn't say I didn't want him, I said I don't know if I'm ready. I'm having memories."
"Of what?"
"Everything: the day he was born, when we all went on vacation, me coming to New York always carrying things, the thing with the dog."
He doesn't go into details, though he has them all in his mind's eye. Remembering. At some point the dog had a real name, like Rocket or Sparks, but they always called him Your Brother.
"Your Brother loves you," they'd say. "Did anyone take Your Brother out? Have you seen Your Brother? I think Your Brother's got something — a shoe." They got Ben his brother when Ben was six months old — a Lab puppy. Later, when they had the big talk, telling Ben that things were going to change, Your Brother lay at their feet, tail wagging. "Your mother and I have decided…" It was Your Brother who comforted Ben, Your Brother who was his constant companion.
Richard remembers coming home when both Ben and Your Brother were very young, finding the occasional puddle of pee on the floor, and both Ben and the dog looking a little guilty. He remembers walking the dog at night, the beauty of New York City in the early morning, the dewy air, the sleepy fog, the dog culture of knowing other people only by the names of their dogs.
At fifteen, Ben called in tears.
"What happened?"
"Brother died."
Three thousand miles away, Richard didn't know what to say. "How?" The father heard his son cry, and not having heard the faintest sound, the faintest squeak, out of the boy in years, Richard began to cry. He hid it at first, and then it poured out, and suddenly there was silence on the other end.
"What are you doing?" the son accused the sobbing father.
"I'm so sorry," Richard cried.
"Stop crying, asshole," Ben said and hung up the phone.
OUTSIDE, it is starting to rain. The beach dog is still out there, playing at the edge of the water, entertaining himself with a piece of floating wood. Richard opens the door; the dog hears it and rushes up the steps and into the house, as if to say, I've been waiting all day for you to invite me in.