He would never have seen it if he hadn’t caught a glimpse of a river stone fireplace mantel and leaned in at the window to follow the play of his beam over the stones. And there, with the side of his face pressed against the window, on the floor he saw a hand and a portion of an arm before the rest of the body disappeared from his angle of vision.
Mickey rubbed the boneless goat-leg roast with olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary, and thyme. He inserted fifteen cloves of garlic into slits he’d made in the meat, and now the smell of the thing cooking with root vegetables in the oven infused the entire small apartment.
Alicia sat on one side of the fold- down table, Tamara and Jim Parr on the other, and after throwing together a beet, arugula, and goat cheese salad, Ian had boosted himself up onto the kitchen counter. Mickey was just stirring the polenta into the pot of boiling and salted water. Ian had explained with no embarrassment at all that he was an addict and an alcoholic and couldn’t drink, but everyone else was having cheap rosé in heavy juice glasses.
They were talking about surfing, which was what Alicia told them she had been doing all day out at Ocean Beach.
“How did you not freeze?” Tamara asked.
“Oh, you never go without a wetsuit. It’s not like surfing in Hawaii or even down south. If you didn’t have a wetsuit, you couldn’t last five minutes.”
“How about the sharks?” Mickey said.
But Alicia was shaking her head. “Not here. Up in Bolinas, maybe, but not here.”
“Famous last words,” Ian put in. “I tell her she’s surfing around the general vicinity of Seal Rock. You know why it’s called Seal Rock? Right. You know the preferred diet of the great white shark? I rest my case.”
But Alicia just shook her head. “I’ve never even seen a shark out there, Ian.”
“Most people who get eaten don’t see ’em, either, except from the inside.”
“Well, I’m not planning to get eaten. Besides, you’ve got to take risks sometimes if you want to do what you want to do.” Suddenly she turned back to face her tablemates. “Am I right, Mr. Parr?”
Flattered to be included, Parr nearly choked on his wine and then, coughing, was shaking his head up and down, laughing at himself. “No guts, no glory,” he said. “That’s my motto, and I managed to get myself old living with it.”
“You’re not old, Mr. Parr.”
“Jim, please.”
“Jim, then. Who is not old in spite of a life of risk.” Then Alicia whirled back on her brother. “See?” And finally, to the rest of them, “Ian doesn’t want me sleeping out in my car either. Too dangerous.”
“It is dangerous,” Ian said. “There’s all kinds of nuts out there.”
Mickey turned away from the stove. “You sleep out in your car?” Alicia nodded. “Sometimes. Last night I did. I wanted the early morning waves.”
“Actually in it?” Mickey asked.
And Tamara clarified, adding, “Mickey’s been spending about half his nights sleeping outside.”
“Mostly on the ground, though,” he said. “I can’t stretch out in my car.”
“She can,” Ian explained. “She’s got a Honda Element. She can run laps in the damn thing if she takes the seats and her surfboard out.”
“Why do you do it, Mick?” Alicia asked. “Sleep out, I mean.”
He stirred the polenta for a moment. “I don’t know exactly,” he said. “It’s not structured. It’s peaceful. You feel free. You wake up with the sun.” He shrugged. “I just like it. How about you?”
She sighed. “Well, here’s the thing. I get two days off a week, Monday and Tuesday. Otherwise, I’ve got to be in a dress and nylons and high heels and makeup. And sometimes, a lot of the time, I guess I feel like I’m trapped. So I drive off and sleep where I stop, and I don’t feel so… I don’t know, so regimented. Like I can still make some of my own decisions, and I’m not stuck in a life I don’t want to live. I mean,” she added, “look at all of us-maybe not you, Jim-but the rest of us. We’re just all marking time, trying to get into something that’s going to feel like our real lives, you know. You guys going to chef classes, and, Tamara, you starting your day job again.
“Maybe I sleep out to remind myself that my real self is still there, I’ve still got time, I’ve got game, I’m going to be doing something that’s really me someday, that matters, and as long as I’m still that person who can just jump up and go sleep out somewhere, then that’s someone I recognize. I’m still here.” As though surprised by how much she’d revealed about herself, she ducked her head a bit into her shoulders and looked around at her audience. “Sorry,” she said. “TMI.” Too much information. “It’s my inner nerd. I can’t shut her up.”
“That’s all right.” Tamara grabbed a bite of arugula from the bowl in front of her. “We’re a tolerant household. The nerd’s welcome too.”
Mickey was looking in at the goat and now pulled it out of the oven, setting it on the top of the stove. He covered it with aluminum foil, then turned back to the table. “Ten minutes to let the meat rest while the polenta cooks, then we eat. And you said it better than I could, Alicia. That was pretty much exactly it.” In spite of her no-nonsense style of dress tonight-she wore old jeans, a plaid flannel shirt, and hiking boots-Mickey had been fighting the temptation to stare at her since she’d come in. But now he braved a quick surreptitious look and noticed a faraway glaze and glassiness in her eyes. “Alicia? Are you okay?”
Biting her lip, she nodded. “Just, you know, dealing with the Dominic thing again. That whole doing-something-that-matters is looking a little more distant right now, that’s all. But I’m okay. Really.”
Parr tipped up his glass, then poured himself some more. “What about Dominic? Did you know him too?”
“Did she know him?” Ian asked.
And for the next twenty minutes, until the dinner was halfway gone-everyone loving the goat-they covered the common ground between Jim and Alicia as Como’s drivers, some of the life and politics up at Sunset, how things were the same, and how they had changed. “Yeah, but even with all the changes,” Parr was saying, “everything I hear is that what Dominic did was essentially the same. He drives around, talks to people, helps wherever he can. Serves food. Drives nails. He was just a hands-on guy. I’m never going to believe Dominic was stealing money. And irregularities? A business this big, there’s always going to be paperwork problems. But if somebody was taking money, it wasn’t Dominic.”
“But do you think that’s what this is about?” Mickey asked. “Somebody taking money and Dominic found out?”
“This is what’s been getting to me,” Alicia said. “I can’t imagine what it’s about. Given who Dominic was, the man he was, it just defies belief.”
“Well.”
All eyes went to Parr.
“But I promised my good-cooking grandson I wouldn’t go out there and ask around.”
Ian was sitting in the visitor’s chair at the end of the table. “And what would you ask about?”
Parr put his fork down. “Just what we’ve all been talking about here. Somebody taking money. Maybe somebody who just wanted to take over. I mean, look at it. Dominic’s been doing it his way forever. So long as he’s there it’s going to keep getting done the same way. But now there’s more money and more organization all around, am I right? More decisions that he’s got to take part in, but he’s not really interested. He wants to be on the street ’cause that’s who he is.”
Mickey, though, was shaking his head. “It’s a good theory, Jim, but let’s not forget that Dominic wasn’t exactly Saint Francis of Assisi living with a vow of poverty. Just his legit salary was six hundred and fifty grand a year in this job.” He held up a hand at the expected opposition around the table. “Not that he didn’t earn it, but he was also the rainmaker who brought in most of that money.”