Nothing to Declare Read online

  On the patio, mushroom heaters loomed over the tables, and the faint smell of propane moved on the breeze. It was a cool night, but even in February Jesse’s patrons required access to the out-of-doors. Stopped near the parking valet, he watched a four-top toasting each other with a round of margaritas. The waiter had lit the triple sec on fire before setting down the glasses: a blue flicker licked up at the tanned, eager faces. No one hesitated to drink.

  Jesse took the car to the back alley, tucked into the lot next door so as not to be seen at the restaurant’s rear entrance. The kitchen noises made him grit his teeth—the crash of pots and pans at the sink, the busboys roaring at a joke in Spanish. It had been five days since he’d flown the red-eye to Boston to shut down the Somerville apartment and manage Marty’s death. Jesse’s clothes smelled of mildew; everything he owned was damp and caked with cobwebs and dust. Only Marty’s Luccheses had weathered the trip in good order—the boots molded to Jesse’s feet as though they’d been made for him.

  He squinted at Marty’s watch in the darkness. As he expected, on the dot of 11:15 Helena came out for her nightly smoke. Her whites were grease-stained and her baseball hat was fingerprinted with gravy. She looked in her standard fury, blew smoke through her nostrils, one hand balled into a fist. Six years before, they’d gotten married in a fit of lustful optimism. They’d put a good face on it for ten months, most of the time spent in bitter silence or in bed. Finally, they’d had the sense to call it quits.

  Helena squashed her cigarette to the ground and stomped back inside. Jesse could hear her howl at the pastry chef over a less than perfect chocolate soufflé. What would she do if Jesse told her about Marty and the apartment and the InfoCon millions—would she tuck him into her arms or speed-dial the accountant? He pulled the car onto the street and drove north for home. Up Temescal, where he lived, the night-blooming jasmine would be spreading its scent.

  It wasn’t until the BMW came to the light at Zuma that Jesse realized he’d missed his turnoff fifteen minutes back. German automotive luxe: the sedan was driving itself. Fog was descending, the dense winter fog California specialized in, the kind responsible for three or four fatalities a year.

  As his headlights cut through the mist, the cliffs of Point Mugu shone out of the murk. LAX was probably socked in; he’d made it down by a few hours’ grace. Jesse eased the car through the tight curve around the point, then punched it hard for the straightaway. He could drive all night, he thought, and make Santa Cruz by morning.

  Near dawn, he broke the journey in Soledad, ordering coffee at a truck stop off 101. He was alone in the place and the waitress fussed near him while she sponged the counter and rearranged the pies. She wore her pink uniform too snugly, one of those people who’d made it to her thirties overspending in flesh and emotion. She was in a mood to talk about her boyfriend Marlon; his faithless ways had done her dirt more times than she wanted to know. Carlie was her name—Carlie and Marlon, destiny had brought them together, she said, their names so close. Sometimes you’re in clover, Carlie had the opinion, sometimes you’re in shit, pardon her French. How do you tell the difference, Jesse wanted to ask.

  A young local came in, a farmhand in his twenties who wore a black Stetson and a touring jacket for the rock band Poison.

  “Hey there, Roddy,” the waitress said and poured him a mug of coffee. Roddy grunted and sat himself three seats away. His hair, Jesse noted, was a blond so white it must have been dyed. Roddy twirled his legs around the stool with the physical confidence of a natural athlete.

  “Lookin’ at something, mister?”

  “Sorry,” Jesse said.

  “Keep it up, I’ll dust your fucking pinhead off.”

  Carlie glided over. “How about a nice sticky bun, honey,” she asked Roddy. “Raisins and cinnamon and lots of that sugar glaze. Just made fresh—still warm from the oven.”

  “Dude was looking at me. Shouldn’t stare at somebody, it ain’t right. L.A. faggot. That your faggot car, faggot?”

  Jesse felt a surge—perhaps a fight was exactly what he needed, better for the system than caffeine. “Why don’t you talk politely in front of the lady,” he said. “Mind your manners and your mouth.”

  Carlie came around the counter and put herself between the men and laid a calming hand on the younger one’s arm. “You just forget about him, we don’t need to worry about somebody we don’t know. Come on over to a booth and I’ll get you that roll.” Roddy shot Jesse a final carnivorous glare, but let himself be pointed to a far corner of the restaurant.

  “Now, do you need something sweet to settle you down, too? I’m giving out free samples this morning,” Carlie asked Jesse. He told her no.

  “Thanks for sticking up for me,” she said. “It was kind of wasted on Roddy, though.”

  Jesse tossed a few dollars on the counter. “Maybe you should have let him knock me around—I bet you could use a little excitement in your shift.” He took himself to the john to wash his face. His legs were shaking, he discovered. What would it take to be the one accounted a threat?

  Roddy was gone when Jesse passed through the café and Carlie was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a woman in her sixties who ignored him as he went out to the parking lot. The sunrise had burnt off the fog, and in the distance, a hawk circled above the valley, harrying its prey. They mated for life—Marty had taught him that, one of the thousand things he knew.

  The BMW, when he came to it, looked wrong. Someone had keyed the paint on almost every panel. Nails stuck out of both rear tires, and on the driver’s seat, a squashed cinnamon roll dripped over the leather. Jesse edged back and found a place to sit and consider the scope of the damage.

  “You all right over there?” It was Carlie going home, puffed out in a down parka. She wheeled a rusty moped.

  “Your friend Roddy’s got quite a talent.”

  Carlie took in what had happened to the BMW and offered to call the deputy. Jesse pictured himself in the local police station, listening to the banter of the cops and signing his name to forms for the rest of the day. “Don’t bother,” he said, and yanked his duffel bag out of the trunk. The carton with Marty’s ashes was still on the passenger’s seat, miraculously intact. He stuffed it inside the bag.

  “What’s your name,” Jesse asked. Carlie didn’t answer.

  “Your name, Carlie, your last name?”

  “Davis, how come?”

  Jesse found what he wanted in the glove compartment and scribbled with a pen, shoving the paper toward her. The pink slip, signed over. “Here. Car’s yours. Fill in the rest yourself.”

  The waitress backed away. “You’re crazy.”

  “So what? It’s a BMW. Everybody wants one, it’s the best driving machine in the world. Don’t you watch the commercials?”

  “Why don’t you let me call the deputy,” Carlie said.

  Jesse crushed the pink slip into her hand. “Do me the favor, Carlie. How much could it take to get it into shape, a few hundred dollars? Give me your address and I’ll send you whatever it costs. Think how Marlon will walk the straight and narrow, his girlfriend speeding around in her very own 520i.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Jesse hoisted up his belongings, and the stiff muscles of his shoulders gave a crack. “A friend of mine once said, everything happens for a reason. Let’s leave it at that.”

  As he hiked up the on-ramp, the draft from a passing semi blew him against the safety rail. Jesse regained his place and stuck out a thumb. He could wait as long as it took.

  There’s Jesse now, poking around the house on Escalona, knocking on doors and peeking through windows. Nobody’s home, Little Brother, it’s a working day, the old folks putting a dollar in their pockets and the little ones in school. The house hasn’t changed, has it, that ugly yellow paint we lifted from a storage locker over at U.C., the posters for Earth First and Nicaragua, the macramé shades? Christ, it brings me back. Something fine in remembering who we once were.

  Paul
and Natalie—decades on and look at them, holding the line, toiling for the voiceless and the poor and the oppressed. Tyranny’s a growth business these days, no shortage of the iron hand and many reasons to lose faith. But our old roommates have stayed on course, they’ve kept their hearts pure. More than me. More than most. They’ve got two kids, I wonder if you heard.

  Hey, Jess, the sign you painted over the door, old Uncle Ho, he’s faded now, but there he is still banging in the wind. I’m glad nobody ripped it down after your foxtrot with the feds. Some wanted to—they were angry, claimed they didn’t know you anymore, or never did. Turning state’s witness was a bigger crime than mine, some said. But I argued no, you were pressed beyond your limits and you lacked the necessary limberness to bend. A failure of biology, not character, not will.

  I wished you’d stuck around instead of turning tail for Santa Monica. That was where you let us down, fear running you instead of nerve. You should know I did my year point five in Lompoc standing on my head. I didn’t waste my time, and I learned a trick or two. And so did you. And so will you again.

  Right, it comes back, doesn’t it—the key’s stashed under the avocado plant, a taste of illegal entry, very much to the old standard. There’s our couch, that musty green corduroy, what wars it’s seen. Go on, lie down and catch yourself some shut-eye, you need the rest. You look poured out. Grief does that—redecorates your soul. Don’t worry, Paul and Natalie should be glad to see you and sniff around the past. They don’t know you’ve got some news that’s going to bring them down. My advice is don’t be bashful; say it straight. Dead is dead.

  Afterward, I suggest a stroll around downtown. You missed it coming in. There was an earthquake last year—maybe you forgot. The Big One, or almost, there were tremors from mid-coast to San Francisco. The town’s been smacked around. The Garden Mall’s a field of broken brick and glass, and there are temporary bubble buildings everywhere you turn, and painted banners sticking a pretty face over the destruction.

  They say it’s going to take a decade to rebuild. The longer the better—ten years might be too short for everyone to understand the story. We’re small and the universe is big. It moves just how it likes. We think if we keep nosing along, we’ll stumble up against the meaning, glimpse something of the ultimate design. I wish I could say there was one. You know me, I went for moment to moment. The only plan, if you want to call it one, was the food chain. Everybody ends up dinner on somebody else’s plate.

  The argument woke him up. Paul and Natalie were in the kitchen from the sound of it and someone was cooking supper—onions and garlic and tomatoes, the garlic wanting a gentler hand. They were keeping their voices down but Natalie’s familiar animation refused to be corralled. Fuck nostalgia, I want him gone, Jesse heard her say.

  Exhaustion prickled beneath Jesse’s eyelids, a hard crust of fatigue. He could do this, he thought—tell them and then take off. It wouldn’t be what Marty would like, a minimum of weeping and lamentation, but Marty had no vote. Jesse sat up to look for the box of ashes.

  The boys of the house were camped out on the stairs. They kept their eyes on him as though instructed to call an alarm when he awoke. The older one was ten or so; he had Natalie’s dark good looks and a nervous manner with his hands on the stair rail. The six-year-old had put on Jesse’s boots. “Are you a real cowboy?” the boy asked. “Dylan said no way.”

  Jesse swung his legs down to the floor and spiked his foot on something sharp—a plastic robot or car, he couldn’t tell. “Anybody can have a pair of boots. I’ve never been on a horse or even a pony. My name’s Jesse. What’s yours?”

  “Don’t tell him,” the older boy said. He whacked his brother instructively on the head and the little one jumped into it and hit him back. They fought like small animals, slamming their bodies in all directions. They were having fun, Jesse decided. He left them where they were and limped to the kitchen.

  Natalie was rushing through her chores, laying out the supper dishes and keeping half an eye on the stove. The years had treated her well—filled her out and settled her to ground. In her tailored wool outfit, she looked ready for anything. She was a lawyer, Jesse recalled, immigration and labor on the angels’ side. She was setting four places at the table.

  Paul grabbed Jesse on sight and kissed him on both cheeks, spun him around and wouldn’t let him go. He was plumper than Jesse remembered but he was light on his feet and his face welled over with pleasure as he led Jesse on a tour of the house. Paul talked rapid-fire, as though trying to squeeze the last fifteen years into the first three minutes.

  The impression was of clutter and making-do, the ceilings cracked and peeling, the rooms and hallways piled up with broken tools and bicycles and stacks of LPs. Jesse’s former bedroom had become a catch-all for boxes of yellowing photographs and handbills and other ephemera. Its walls were marbled with dust, and clothing and toys were tossed around as though someone had fled the house in panic. Jesse stood in the midst of it without moving. It was a minute or more before he could remember where he’d had his bed.

  “Gotta bring you back,” Paul said. “A trip and a half.”

  Jesse sidestepped a bundle of twenty-year-old concert posters from the Shoreline Amphitheater. “You ever want to cash in on some of this, I know some collectors in L.A.”

  Paul looked shocked. “Why would I want to sell? I like my stuff.”

  “Just thinking about your bottom line. A little money in hand and you could afford a cleaning service, get things more in control.”

  “Like there’s a universe where Natalie would hire a maid. You shouldn’t have been such a stranger, man. You’ve lost track of how we live.”

  Jesse’s face reddened. “If there was an open invitation, somebody forgot to tell me. That wasn’t exactly a hero’s welcome I got from Nat.”

  Paul shrugged as though to make allowances for his wife’s lack of welcome. “You’re here now. Stay for supper, stay longer. The more the merrier.”

  “OK,” Jesse said. “But if Nat wants me gone, I’m gone.”

  They squeezed around the table and ate spaghetti and talked about the dinners Escalona House had hosted—the one with the drunken Belgian director who kept shouting how cinema was revolution rendered concrète, while attempting footsie with Lucy under the table. Jesse did the accent and Natalie laughed and the children too, and it seemed for a while as though everything that needed to be forgotten would drift away.

  The boys had ice cream and went off to watch TV. Jesse retrieved the Blanton’s from his duffel bag and served out some of Marty’s good bourbon. It was time, as reasonable as any, and he told them about the accident. Paul blanched and he reached for Natalie. She leaned against him, blinking back a rush of tears. Jesse felt his eyes pooling—he was a little tipsy, enough to start them through the turns that began with Mrs. Folari’s phone call. Almost at once, though, Paul left the room.

  “Is this too hard for him?” Jesse asked Natalie. “I didn’t think he really liked Marty.”

  She shook her head. “No, no, he’s gone for Dylan and Zach. He thinks whatever we hide from them will come and get them in their thirties. He doesn’t want them to have to shell it out for therapy.”

  Paul nudged the two boys into the room and he and Natalie took one each on their laps and Jesse began again. He repeated the highlights, Marty in his casket, the empty InfoCon office, Marty’s sixty thousand dusty books. He didn’t have the energy to talk about the money and left it for another time, capping things instead with a description of the incident with the BMW. He painted himself the clown.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Natalie said. “This is a joke—a $30,000 car?”

  “Forty-five,” Jesse said.

  “Forty-five, pardon me. You junk it like it’s litter?”

  “Something like that.”

  Natalie got up to take the boys to bed. A vein skittered in her neck. “You and Marty, you’re two peas. Everything’s bullshit to you. Try running a real life sometime.�
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  “Mommy said a dirty word,” Zach said as he followed her out of the room.

  Jesse looked at Paul. “Marching orders, it seems to me.”

  “Nah, she’s over the edge on everything right now. I just ignore her. You know I had a record store? We had an earthquake in October and the place got walloped. That’s been hard on Nat. Captain Analog, vinyl only. We’re reopening in a month or two, bigger and better than before. We’re gonna be great—digital’s a dead end, anyone with ears can tell you that.”

  Paul told Jesse to bunk wherever he liked and went up to kiss his boys goodnight. In the living room, the terrain was more or less familiar. Yes, there were toys and children’s books everywhere, and the record collection had swollen beyond counting, but the shadows fell as Jesse remembered and the couch would do for now. The sounds of childish temper filtered down the stairs, and what appeared to be the stomp of the Luccheses on the bedroom floor. A real life, Natalie had called it.

  TWENTY-ONE

  AT BREAKFAST, PAUL WORKED ON JESSE to stay another week. The sheetrock had recently gone up at Captain Analog, and there was a spot by the main sales desk perfect for a mural, a Kerf original. Their logo was a pirate—eye patch and parrot, but Paul couldn’t stop thinking that they had to redo him using Marty’s face. Natalie had her back to them making school lunches at the kitchen counter, and Jesse watched her shoulders tighten under the fabric of her blouse. But the idea had a poetry that he didn’t want to deny. He went to Natalie and put a hand on her sleeve, offered to finish for her so she could take some time for herself before she went to work. Natalie’s eyes were over-bright from lack of sleep and she stared at Jesse, then slid the knife and bread toward him.