“We’ll talk more after I get a psych eval lined up.” The lawyer cleared his throat and the scratch of a fine-point pen on paper traversed the phone line. Brian stepped to the right for a better view of Jocelyn’s car in the parking lot. It hadn’t moved. The front left tire remained at an odd angle, nearly ninety degrees to the wheel well.
The lawyer said, “We want to be careful because we don’t want the evaluation done until we know what it’s going to show.”
From his father, also an attorney, Brian recognized this cornerstone of legal theory — only ask questions you already know the answer to. Increasingly, it struck him as a good policy for life in general.
“So I’ll call you,” the lawyer said. “And don’t do anything between now and then, all right? I mean, don’t go out drinking or ask anyone on a date. Just daily necessities. Nothing special, all right?”
“Yeah, okay.” Brian hung up and went out on the balcony. Over the two years since he’d moved in, the director’s chair had faded from navy to a dusty shade the color of old blueberries. He sat down.
Next door, Jocelyn’s balcony looked the same as yesterday, and the day before and the one before that. The plants, a group of cacti in staggered-height pots, didn’t divulge her absence. Even in containers and with temperatures over a hundred, cacti could go weeks without water. What worried Brian was her red bathing suit. It was Jocelyn’s favorite, and it wasn’t like her to leave it outside for days at a time, and yet it had been there ever since Brian returned from his last flight. Snagged on the spines of the tallest plant, its bright gold stars had tarnished to brass under the July sun.
Brian listened for movement or voices from her place. Hearing nothing, he leaned over the railing. Through the sheer drape he could make out her armless purple couch and yellow chair. The sun blinded him from the rest.
Brian had been off work for two weeks, having taken a leave of absence from his job as a commercial pilot. Before that he was doing overnights to New York and Detroit, and he couldn’t say when he’d last seen Jocelyn, though he did know it was before his arrest.
They’d met at the complex’s pool, where they both liked to do laps in the tolerable heat of twilight. Jocelyn swam every day, straight from taping the evening news, while Brian made it only when he wasn’t flying. They swam in opposite directions. “This way it doesn’t feel like we’re racing,” she said, squeezing her nose empty of water with her thumb and index finger in a cute, ladylike way. She never acted wary, as he expected her to, because she was on TV and he wasn’t. It didn’t seem to occur to her she might be the target of weirdos and stalkers. When he pointed this out, she laughed. “You aren’t the type, and I’m pretty good at spotting things like that.” It was the uniform — captain’s hat and double-breasted navy jacket with four gold cuff stripes and six gold buttons. People had to see you in it only one time and they’d put their lives in your hands.
Last year Jocelyn broke her leg and Brian had carried her groceries and laundry and driven her to work while she was still on painkillers and couldn’t drive herself. Still hobbling around in one of those black boots, her cast cut down to below the knee, she made him dinner as a thank you. While she cooked, he walked around her living room. She must have noticed his expression because she laughed, a little embarrassed. “I know. It’s bright. Turkish monarch moves to Soho.”
“I like it,” Brian said. “It’s a hell of a lot better than tan and turquoise.”
On the balcony, mindful of being caught peeping, Brian sat back down. Jocelyn hadn’t delivered the news since he’d been off work. If she was on vacation, why hadn’t he seen her at the pool, or passed her coming and going? It was possible she’d taken a trip, but why would she leave her suit out? Maybe she’d heard about his trouble and was avoiding him. Maybe she was scared of him.
Under the Phoenix sun, Brian’s jeans and long-sleeved shirt felt like a suit of armor sweat-welded to his skin, so he gave up and went inside, to the opposite problem — too-cold air conditioning, the annoying hum of the fan that never turned off. His apartment had come furnished, castoffs from another pilot who moved out to get married. Brown leather sofa with enormous saddlebag arms. A pine Adirondack chair with cushions in the ubiquitous, threatening Navajo pattern of expanding triangles. Scarred pine coffee table. Cut-pile, tan wall-to-wall carpeting and turquoise drapes. Besides toiletries and clothes, the only thing Brian brought with him was the faded director’s chair. That ought to make prison a simpler affair.
Taking up a pad which bore the flight carrier’s logo at the top and their slogan—Travel made good again—across the bottom, Brian sat down on the couch. After thinking a moment, he wrote, As you might have heard, things haven’t been going well for me. I promise, though, I won’t bother you if you don’t want to be my friend anymore. So I hope to see you around just to say “hi” and be relaxed where you live. Brian.
And be relaxed where you live? He crossed out that part, reread the note, then copied the edited version onto a fresh sheet of paper, went outside, and walked the ten feet of squeaky metal planks that separated his door from Jocelyn’s. As Brian leaned over, ready to work the note into the generous gap between the door and the frame — a gap he counted as another reason he hadn’t bought a house here: what kind of craftsman could the desert produce who didn’t need to guard against bitter cold, furious hurricanes, or sneaky earthquakes? — the lawyer’s admonishment made him pause. Just the daily necessities.
Brian straightened up. Maybe Jocelyn had started seeing that guy again, or someone new, and was staying at his place. But wouldn’t she have her car there? He raised his hand to knock, then stopped. Even if she wasn’t avoiding him, she probably knew about the arrest. She was in the news business, after all, though his story had not garnered enough attention to appear on TV, thank God.
Brian reread the note, went back to his apartment for tape, then left it hanging on Jocelyn’s door. If the note disappeared it meant she was safe and he’d let it go. If the note didn’t move, he would call. Maybe screw up the courage to knock. If that yielded nothing, he’d have to ask around the complex. But Brian didn’t know any other residents. They might not even recognize him. In the desert, where construction of gated communities never stopped, dozens of people transferred from these holding pens to their fake adobe two-cars on the last day of every month.
Brian walked back along the squeaky planks, wondering how long until his father called to find out what the lawyer had said.
Jolly for Jocelyn. The nickname originated in infancy or toddlerhood and stuck. Obi didn’t remember why. As a child she wasn’t particularly jolly, but she wasn’t glum either.
After the medical examiner had cleared her body for burial, they flew Jolly home. “We’ll bump you over and put her where you were going to go,” Karen said, referring to Obi’s burial plot as if it were a place setting. “That way Jolly can be between us.” She nodded at this plan to protect their daughter in death as they hadn’t in life.
Karen also made plans to clean out Jolly’s apartment, booking them a hotel in Phoenix, but when Obi insisted on driving instead of flying, she refused to go. “I can’t sit in a car for four days. I have to get this over with.”