Nothing to Declare Page 15

  Dylan won’t touch his sandwich if you don’t cut off the crusts,” she said and went to gather her boys for school

  Painting the mural took four days. Astonishing how the design poured out of him, as if he’d stashed it away and only had to dredge up what he wanted from memory. Jesse drew Captain Analog as a basketball player, lent him Marty’s hooked nose and something of his crooked grin. Instead of a ball, he set an LP between the character’s outstretched fingers and arched the figure on its toes, poised for a jump shot. It captured Marty in a moment of becoming: his impatience, his endless requirement for motion. A decent likeness, better than Jesse imagined.

  At both ends of the day, he jogged the route between Escalona House and work—an old discipline he saw no need to change. He had the streets mostly to himself. The few people he passed were stubbornly cheerful; they cleaned windows and watered window boxes as though every homely chore would rub the earthquake from remembrance.

  The majority of downtown was boarded up or tumbled to pieces; the inflatable shopping pavilions billowed in the wind as if they were about to drift to sea. He would finish the painting, he thought, and never come back.

  In the afternoons Jesse made a point to clean up early and cook supper for the household. Paul and Natalie’s boys had decided to befriend him and they stood on footstools and helped at the counter, the three of them wearing white chef’s aprons and toques Jesse’d picked up downtown. Spaghetti carbonara and Cajun meatloaf and kung pao shrimp—dishes Jesse learned in this very kitchen at Marty’s elbow. Zach and Dylan were good students. What he was teaching them would serve them forever.

  He avoided calling the restaurant, let them trudge on without him, but the afternoon he completed the mural, Jesse went out to stretch his legs and found himself at a phone booth, feeding in dimes and waiting for the ring. The other end opened onto a barrage of rock-and-roll. “Turn down the goddamn music, Cheryl,” he kept shouting into the receiver until the volume receded a hair and she came on.

  “The long lost Jesse Kerf. You forget where we were? Got a pencil, I can give you the address.”

  “Very funny. Find some other music to inflict on the lunch crowd, sweetheart. AC/DC will curdle the crème brûleé.”

  “We aren’t doing crème brûlée anymore. Which you’d know if you hadn’t dropped out of the world.”

  According to the Times, Helena’s crème brûlée was worth a forty-minute drive; they’d had it on the menu since day one. “Jesus,” Jesse said. “Go to the kitchen and tell her to pick up.”

  “She’s out,” Cheryl said. “Everybody’s out, I’ve been humping nothing but five-sixes, it’s a wonder I’m still here. Manuel’s running the show, it’s a thing of beauty, drop by sometime and see for yourself. You are coming home, boss?” Her plaintive tone was a novelty. What would be next—Cheryl in Laura Ashley?

  Across the street, a wrecking ball chewed another piece from a Victorian storefront; Jesse tasted the brick dust in his throat. “I’ll be there any minute,” he told her. “Sooner than you want.” He cut the connection and watched the wrecker finish its work.

  Tonight the boys demanded Jesse for story time, and after they had heard their chapter and were tucked in, he walked down to the lanai for a hot tub. Natalie had gotten there before him and was drinking a glass of wine. She watched Jesse take off his clothes, then shut her eyes. Chlorine-scented mist drifted between them.

  He eased into the tub—it was an old wine cask—and ducked under the surface, rose and shook the water through his hair. On one side of his head, his hair was clotted with dried paint. He used to love that feeling, the sense that work had left its measure on his body.

  “I thought you and Paul were going to play records,” Natalie said.

  Paul was on a buying run, hot for a collection of Springsteen bootlegs, they’d listen later or tomorrow. Natalie hoisted up and sat on the edge of the tub. She’d rebuilt herself at the gym, a concentration of muscle and bone with a C-section scar tracking palely beneath her pubic hair. Naked, she seemed less vulnerable than clothed, if that were possible—trim and battle hardened. She put on her robe and looked down at him, how he imagined she drew a bead on witnesses in court.

  “There’s something I want you to do,” she told him.

  “Name it.”

  “Go home. You’ve finished your painting, so go back to your restaurant and your fancy meals and your Hollywood clientele. We used to be friends, Jesse. Old times should count for something.”

  “I thought we were feeling simpatico. Or pretending to.”

  “Is that what they taught you in L.A., how to pretend? Look around you—we can hardly crawl from one end of the week to the other without you hanging around confusing things. Have you completely forgotten what it takes to stay connected to what you believe?”

  “Dylan and Zach will forget me twenty minutes after I’m out the door. Next week it will be comic books and go-carts or Mao’s little red book if that’s what you want.”

  The moon had risen and its pale, gray light planed the edges from Natalie’s features. “You really don’t have a clue. It’s Paul who’s in danger, Paul you’ll drag down. This morning he got the bright idea he wants to grow the business, you can help him get a toehold in Santa Monica. He’s drowning with the little he has. We won’t survive.”

  “You should give Paul more credit,” Jesse told her. “Maybe he could bring it off.” He got out of the tub and toweled dry and put on his clothes. Natalie followed him into the kitchen.

  “Do I have to beg you?”

  “I like it better when you’re issuing instructions. More familiar.”

  Natalie laughed and her face opened to him. “If you want to win your cases, you learn to hit your marks.”

  The tub had flooded color to her cheeks—all that spirit, she probably still showed Paul a run for his money in bed.

  “Marty left me an inheritance,” Jesse said. “A little over $8 million. I want you and Paul and the boys to have some of it. I’m sure it would make Marty happy if he knew.”

  Natalie’s hand jerked to the collar of her robe; for a while she didn’t speak. “You won’t be satisfied until you ruin us,” she said at last.

  “What are you talking about? I just want to spread around some good fortune.”

  There were tears in her eyes. “Is that what you call it?”

  She waited until he gave her his promise to say nothing to Paul, then went upstairs. Jesse put some music on and sat for a while in the living room drinking the last of the Blanton’s. A celebration of fucking up in every way at every turn.

  It didn’t take long to pull together his few belongings. The Lucchese boots were in Zach’s room and Jesse was about to carry them off when the boy stirred in his sleep. Jesse bent to give him a kiss; the kid smelled of garlic from tonight’s pesto genovese. He left the boots in their place and went downstairs and finished packing. He wanted a look at Marty’s portrait before he left.

  Paul drove up while Jesse sat on a downtown bus bench waiting for the San Jose airport van. He bounded out of his car but stopped short, looking a bit sheepish to have played detective. Paul had something in a paper bag, which he moved from hand to hand like a bashful suitor. “Who said you could split without saying goodbye?” he said.

  Jesse smiled. “The quick fade, a specialty of the house, don’t take it personally. What’s that you’re hiding over there? Not a bon voyage present, I hope.”

  It was the cardboard container of ashes. “You forgot Marty,” Paul said, putting the box into Jesse’s hands. “I didn’t know what to do with him.”

  The thing sat on Jesse’s lap, slightly tattered around the edges. “Like anybody ever did,” he said.

  Paul wanted to drive Jesse to the airport, and they sputtered up the hill. The ancient Saab was a pint-size version of the house: a repository of record albums and thrift shop refuse glowing with a comfortable aroma, part pepperoni pizza, part old clothes. Jesse burrowed in, throwing whatever was in his wa
y into the back and laying the ashes box on top. Paul was right to track him down, no telling when they would see each other again.

  When they came up to High Street, Jesse asked Paul to turn, and he complied with a sideways glance—they both knew it was 17 to San Jose, not 9. The signs pointed them to Felton. “We’ll take the route through the trees,” Jesse said. “I’d like a look at the redwoods. We have the time.”

  Paul shook his head with brotherly concern. “You aren’t thinking she still lives there, Jesse? I mean, nobody’s heard diddly-boo from her in years and years, not since she vanished just before the trial. I bet going up there isn’t such a good idea.”

  “Probably isn’t,” Jesse said. “Let’s do it anyway.”

  Nothing about Isabel’s road came back to him; most of the houses had been repainted and added on to, and one entire stretch of woods had been developed into a cul-de-sac of cheap duplexes dotted with fiberglass spas and two-year-old trees. Jesse found himself looking down at his lap more than out the window.

  Paul had come to the opinion that setting eyes on Isabel’s former cabin would be cathartic for Jesse and kept asking where they should stop. There were three or four it could be, and Jesse settled on one to bring the question to a halt. It was shingle-style like hers had been, set back from the road, but the driveway was straight where hers had been curved, and there were too many doors and gables. The Saab’s headlights whitened a small side deck that held a swing set and a tricycle and two potted geraniums.

  Jesse brushed fog off the window glass and tried to arrange what he saw into something better shaped to his recollection. An electronic glow battered a downstairs casement—someone changing channels one after the other. They could be anywhere.

  He turned away. “Come on, let’s go before somebody calls the cops.”

  “We just got here.”

  “I don’t need any more,” Jesse said.

  At the airport drop-off, they parted awkwardly, Paul hanging onto Jesse for dear life as a red-cap snatched at the duffle. Jesse watched Paul trot through the parking lot, pausing at every row. He’d misplaced the car, but he walked lightly, as though he didn’t care.

  TWENTY-TWO

  JESSE’S PLACE WAS CANTILEVERED over the canyon walls. Built in the early sixties by a student of Richard Neutra, its right angles and floor-to-ceiling glass were a placid argument for the boundless American prospect. Jesse decorated it with furniture by Saarinen and Eames and had the rooms painted four barely distinguishable tones of gray. The painters redid their work twice before he was satisfied.

  There were more than thirty messages on his answering machine. He set down his duffle bag and counted the flashes—3 in the morning, who’d want an answer now? Helena might be awake but she’d be screwing her new boyfriend, Charles. That was always on the bill in the wee hours after the restaurant closed—and woe to the man who failed to deliver.

  He found the box with Marty’s ashes, gave it a dusting and stuck it on the mantel. That was how it was done—turn the thing into bric-a-brac, make it vanish into the general scheme. He switched on his stereo and Schubert piano shone through the room. Brendel’s magisterial touch on the Impromptus: the music of petticoats and duels under the plane trees. Jesse opened the doors and stood on his balcony while the melody played. It would rouse the coyotes and the neighbors, but fine, let it roll down the canyon. He stood there and traced the fall of earth toward the highway and the distant lights of the pier and the dark ocean beyond. The carousel was still spinning—an endless revolve in every color of the rainbow. He watched until the Schubert ended and then went to bed.

  In the morning, he poured himself a glass of guava juice and did the laundry and opened mail, sorted the bills. Then he called Helena to tell her Copain was going to have to miss him for a little while longer. She was on her treadmill as she took the call, panting as he stumbled through an explanation. His personal business still hanging him to dry. She didn’t ask for details and took his excuses more calmly than he expected. She told him to do what he had to—they’d carry him until he was ready to come back. Helena’s voice drifted away, as if she was already onto the next thing on her list but had forgotten to click off.

  “One of these days we’ll have a heart-to-heart,” Jesse said.

  “Of course we will.” She picked up running again and they said goodbye over the pounding of her equipment. She’d have the lawyers all over their partnership agreement before the week was done. You could bank money on it.

  He switched on the Brendel again and took a shower, leaving the bathroom door open to the music, then called a travel agent. Five flights to Maui today—the first would put him on the ground before dinner with an hour in a car to Lucy’s house. He had never been to Hawaii before, and all he could think of was hula dolls and rayon shirts and mini-bar macadamia nuts. Lucy was pregnant now, well along with it. Seeing her would put his mind to happier times. Jesse drank the last of the guava juice and licked his lips. So sweet it gave him a headache.

  The ride to Lucy’s went past pineapple groves and condo developments and the foothills that rose in the lee of the volcano. The light was changing, the light after sunset, a dense, electrified blue that threw everything into relief. Drizzle had started, but Jesse kept his window open. The rain stirred up a ripe, green scent.

  At Ho’okipa he stopped at an overlook where he could watch the wind-surfers in the bay. In the fading light, five of them breasted the rollers, flipping head over tails in whipsaws of neon-colored sail before they glided to shore. Jesse gazed out his windshield—how many years since he’d been in the water? Maybe he’d give it a try before he returned home.

  Lucy’s instructions led him down a rutted dirt road designed for four-wheel drive. The last hundred yards, Jesse abandoned his rental and slogged through the rain on foot. The house was set into a clearing; it was small and constructed of quirky gables and curves and a potpourri of mismatched windows and carved doors. The rain made music on its metal roof.

  Lucy and her girlfriend, Eileen, waited for him on the porch safely out of the weather. They lay together on an old settee, and at first Jesse thought they were talking. No, Eileen was reading from a book, casting light on the pages with a candle lantern. Lucy listened with closed eyes, one hand curled over the dome of her belly. It was Lord of the Rings, Lucy’s favorite, he remembered, a world of spells and dragons and place names with more consonants than they could hold. He shifted his duffle to his other shoulder and moved forward slowly. “Got any room up there for an old, wet man?” he said.

  Lucy kissed him and marched him inside to dry him off while Eileen made dinner in the kitchen alcove. Lucy seemed unchanged by the approach of childbirth, a spike-haired sprite from her storybook with a basketball-size midsection as a minor addendum. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since they’d last been together.

  “Sixteen years,” Jesse told her. Lucy had a long, appraising look at him and his face got hot.

  “Been some ups and downs along the way,” she said. She moved around him and bumped him accidentally with her belly. Jesse wanted to lay his cheek on it, test its firmness, its quality of life. “I have something to tell you,” he said. “Bad news.”

  “No shit. I didn’t think you hopped over here to work on your tan.”

  “Marty died two weeks ago—a car accident.”

  Lucy refused to flinch. “Holy fuck. So you were hooked back with him, kissed and made up? That must have been a little wonder of a conversation. Wish I could have been there.”

  “I haven’t talked to him since Santa Cruz,” Jesse said, while tears ran down his cheeks. Lucy let him have his cry.

  He brought out the box of Marty’s ashes to keep them company, and he and the women stayed up late trading stories about the man at his worst. The news of the inheritance barreled out of him, and Lucy chuckled when Jesse wondered if they’d accept some of the haul. She tapped her drowsy girlfriend on the shoulder. “Man wants to know if we’re too high-and-mighty f
or a piece of Marty’s stash?”

  Eileen was a small woman like Lucy, though thicker in the body, yet there was a gracefulness about her and a wellspring of sweet nature as though the world had yet to do her wrong. She looked at Lucy to be sure she wasn’t joking, and said, “We’d be dumb not to, I guess —diapers and music lessons, college, even. We could give some of it to charity.”

  By midnight it was decided that Jesse should camp out in the guest room as long as he wanted. He was family, Lucy said, and whatever went down once upon a time, she wasn’t in the mood to pick over the bones. She patted her abdomen. “Only thing of interest in this neighborhood is the mysterious future. Why don’t you cool out for a while and see what shakes.”

  “If my partner hasn’t sold me down the river, I have a business to run and a life in L.A., important obligations.”

  “Nobody has a life in L.A. Only a collection of events and people and recently acquired objects.” She pointed out the window to the moonlit flank of Haleakala rising in the distance. “Walk through the crater at sunrise and then we’ll talk about what’s important and what’s not.”

  “A few days,” Jesse said. “That’s all I have.”

  He did what he could to fit in. In a backyard wood shop, Lucy and Eileen ran a business turning salad bowls and candlesticks out of tropical hardwood. Jesse offered to reorganize the accounts, which were a bungled mess. The chore was refreshingly simple-minded. Often, he’d look up from his desk to the women at their lathes. They held their chisels against the Koa blocks with remarkable control, paring the raw wood into something beautiful and of use. The sawdust dyed their air-masks, skin, and clothes a deep burnt red, as if they were carved out of the same stock.

  Mornings before breakfast, Jesse weeded the side garden, winging rocks into the brush until his arm ached. The plot sprawled with anthurium and heliconia, and he chopped the flowers back with everything he had, wrestling what was left into well-behaved patches. He filled the house with blooms.