Ishmael was leaning against the big pepper tree in our front yard when I walked up the driveway. I hardly noticed him at first, in the faltering light. He had one foot resting against the trunk, and his arms crossed over his chest. I noted that Melinda’s car was gone. He looked at me with his green panther’s eyes.
“Now that things are out in the open, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am,” he said. His tone was jocular, amused.
“You’re a feeling human being, Ish.”
“And that if I ever see you in the general vicinity of Penelope again, I’ll kill you.”
“Whatever blows your hair back.”
“It’d make me happy, you little bagga shit.”
With this, he straightened off the tree and, watching me like a mailman watches a dog, walked across the yard, hopped the little fence in one graceful motion and moved toward his car.
I watched him drive off before letting myself into the house.
Melinda’s note was taped to the hardwood floor just inside our front door:
Dear Terry,
I’m looking for a way to believe in you. Maybe I’ll find one, because I love and respect you. I don’t see any way that your being here would be good for any of us. I have Penny to consider. Take whatever you’ll need and go. I’ll be here for you. I’ll be there for you. If you’re the man I think you are maybe we’ll laugh about this someday, after we sue the shit out of somebody. If you’re not, you must get the help you need. I’ll explain this to Penelope as best I can. God be with you, with all of us.
I packed a few things. Then I went to the liquor store, drove to the little apartment in the metro district, let myself in, opened the windows. I sat at a table in the dining nook and looked out. The Performing Arts Center was lit up like a shrine. The bean field was an empty black rectangle. Beyond it flowed a river of headlights, and the big hotels rose into the night and the palm trees stood erect and motionless. The dark glass of the business towers caught the lesser lights below, wearing them like medals. Tonello’s glowed with self-importance, and I could see the valets standing just under the awning in their red vests and bow ties.
I got out a notepad and made a list of the people I thought might have the opportunity to do this to me. Included were Jordan Ishmael, Jim Wade, Frances White, Johnny Escobedo and Louis Briar. I added Ardith Naughton, Melinda Vickers and Donna Mason. I added Burns, Woolton and Vega. But who knew about the cave, or could have found out about it? I hadn’t told Wade, Ish or either of the undersheriffs directly, but any one of them could conceivably have learned about it, located it and salted it. Right? I added three fat question marks, for the people who might have been told about the cave by the people I had told. They could be anybody. Then I put the names together in various combinations, like cards in a poker hand. Even with knowledge of the cave, who had the opportunity to slip the falsified photos into Chet’s den? That eliminated Ardith and Donna. And even with knowledge and opportunity, who had the technical skill to create such documents? That eliminated only Melinda, positively, because I truly didn’t know what secret skills my co-workers might possess. Anything was possible. But even with knowledge, opportunity and technical capacity, who had a motive to see my career, my relationships — perhaps my life — destroyed? I could only write down one name for certain: Ishmael.
Strange, I thought, the way that name comes off the tongue: Ishmael.
I drank swiftly and earnestly.
I remember a cab ride through the metro district. I remember standing amid the fragrant furrowed earth of the bean field to behold the quarter moon. I remember part of a movie, a long hot shower that didn’t slow the cold shivers of my body, the tequila and beer vanishing, a late-night taxi stop to get more, words with two men as I got back into the cab, the way the floor of the apartment seemed to pivot steeply in alternate directions as I navigated my way across it. I remember fast-food wrappers flying out the window of a car I wasn’t driving. I remember a phone booth. I remember vivid dreams — I can only assume they were dreams — of caves and girls and women and various methods of execution, my body always on the verge of something either deadly or pleasureful, neither of which was consummated, and swirling planes of bright stars in a blue night, and smells. I remember the smells of damp stone, blood and sagebrush, female sweat. I remember dreaming that Donna crawled into bed with me and held my naked, clammy form and tried to reassure me. That morning when I awoke she was in fact there, splendidly fresh and dressed for work, running her fingers through my damp hair.
I felt like I’d returned from death itself. But I didn’t know how to feel about it.
I looked up at her.
“You said some crazy things last night,” she said. Her expression was more interested than accusatory.
“Bad. Dreams.”
“No. You were awake still. Lots of talk about the pictures. What pictures?”
“Hm?” There was a riot of pain, an insurrection of agony led by my soul.
“The pictures. Don’t you remember anything you said?”
“Uh-uh.”
“You kept saying the pictures had followed you. The pictures had caught you. Someone was trying to get you. What were you talking about?”
“Beats me,” I managed.
She brought me a cup of coffee, sat on the bed beside me and put her cool hand on my head. I closed my eyes. I could tell by the turn of her wrist that she looked at her watch.
“You and Melinda had a fight. You did tell me that much. I’m sorry for that. It brought us together for a night, but I’m still sorry.”
I looked at her. “No. I am. Sorry. About last night. About everything.”
“You don’t have to be, Terry. But you really ought to come clean with me. I can live with half of you for now, but that half’s got to be all there.”
“Yeah. I’m trying.”
“What’s happening?”
“Not sure yet. Special duty. I really can’t tell you about it. You know — regulations.”
She looked down at me with frank suspicion. Even through the throbbing fog in my brain I could tell she was vetting my stories. I was dully aware that that’s what she did for a living. She looked at her watch again. She leaned down and wrapped my head in her arms and whispered in my ear, Terry, I got to be at the newsroom in thirty-five minutes. It’s a half-hour drive this time of morning. That leaves five minutes to spare and I’m going to use that time to tell you something you might not understand.
I watched her make some adjustments in her underthings, then climb over me. She looked like she might on TV, the upper half of her a thing of beauty and intelligence, the lower half of her unseen. But that lower half was connected to me in a way that made me want to stay right there with her forever. It was like being plugged straight into heaven. Like a live feed from an angel. She closed her eyes. Her bangs dangled and cast moving shadows on her forehead. I heard the bathroom water running. Before she left she kissed me on the lips, then cheek, then stood there looking down at me.
She touched my face with her fingers. “I hate mysteries. I hate all the things you don’t tell me, all the mysteries you hold back. I like the truth. And I like things I can see and touch and hold — things that prove the truth. I love you, too, Terry Naughton. But you sure don’t make it easy.”
Sixteen
Darien Aftergood was an old acquaintance of mine from high school. We were both second-string guards for the freshman basketball team, the Laguna Artists, and we went 3-14 that year. I couldn’t really handle the ball and he couldn’t really shoot, but we had the boundless hustle of second stringers everywhere. We were skinny kids who rarely had our heads in the game. We left the hoops after that first year. He started running with the art-theater crowd and I spent my afternoon surfing Brooks Street. Darien must have taken our mascot name literally. Now he’s an artist and gallery owner in Laguna, with a studio/gallery/apartment downtown on Ocean Avenue. Darien is plugged into the art world at a hundred different sockets. He guest-curates for the Orange County Art Museum; he organizes shows at his own space; he is a critic for two national magazines and his work has been collected and shown around the world. He’s a photographer who manipulates his images in the lab. The results are images that sometimes look like photographs, but aren’t photographs at all.