Nothing to Declare Read online

“I guess you’re right about this drink,” Jesse says.

  “I am?”

  “You see, I have a sudden desire to take a swim. Came out of nowhere.” He stands up and stretches for her hand. “Quick, let’s go before I change my mind.”

  There is a swimming beach a quarter-mile beyond the surfers’ lane. Emily slips through the break in total confidence, sleek and rosy in her pink leotard. In his rolled-up jeans, Jesse is happy for a spot near shore where he can scrape the bottom with his toes. The water is warm and fresh smelling and Jesse floats amid the whitecaps, watches Emily swim sidestroke laps out in the calm. If there’s anything more beautiful than the female body in action, he doesn’t know what it is.

  And then the storm launches against them. Emily disappears behind a flare of rain and spray. Jesse calls her name, braces to dive beneath the breakers, searching for a pink blur within the swirling blue. A wave knocks them against each other, his arm somehow cradling around her waist, although the last thing she seems to need is help. Even as they’re torn through the surf and dumped onto the shore, Emily is laughing. She’s on her feet at once and prods him with a toe.

  “Happy New Year, Subject Blue,” he hears her say. “You among the living?”

  Jesse clambers to his knees. “That was something,” he says at last. He can’t stop shivering, skin tight with cold.

  “Sure was. You good for seconds?”

  He hobbles upright, his jeans flapping against his shins. Sand scatters as he hops over broken mussel shells and driftwood shards looking for a smooth spot to set his feet.

  “Again...in the water?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s kind of intense out there, don’t you think?”

  “Certainly is,” she says. “I told you, that’s why I like it.” She sets his hand on her neck just beneath her jaw. “Feel me going?”

  Her pulse trips against his fingers, a point of heat almost, a beating spot of light. She’s drenched, hair rippled to her skin, yet Emily’s manner is so offhand she might be asking him to stroll around the corner. He follows her to the tide line and they wade to their knees through broken kelp and froth. “Whole idea is not to think too much,” Emily shouts above the wind.

  Jesse stares beyond her—are those lightning traces in the far-off sky? “I knew there was a trick to it,” he says. She plunges into the water. He takes a breath and chases behind.

  Jesse never saw the couple he and Emily put out there, crown of her head bumping his breastbone, for fuck’s sake, and his hands always on her, thinking she’d crackle off in a puff of smoke, if he neglected to ground her. She dug it, nestled close, red hair waggling and that lunatic dog. You wanted to herd them under your wing and shade them from harm.

  They were young, remember, nineteen or twenty, and true love, mercy, it’s a gooey ball, isn’t it, a mess of hope and fear and physical charge. It poured off of them like radio transmission: the lure of every valve cracked wide, all options clear, a fair, broad road. I might have warned Jesse. Loosen up, bro, don’t be so certain where you’re heading. I bit my tongue. Love, from what I’ve learned, wiggles away from you the more you hold onto it, but who was I to put them right?

  We would hear them stomping downstairs those gloomy February weekends. Late in the day and the crust of sleep or worse on their cheeks, their buttons half-done, their folksy effluence of patchouli and candle grease and many orders of funk. We were amused, the Escalona bunch, tickled by their intentions swinging ahead seasons and years, their glandular optimism. It was a kind of sweetness, really.

  We reconvened our Friday drives along Highway 1, a foursome now, with Carl nosing his shaggy muzzle to the breeze. I had a new ride, a Grand Prix bartered from a chop-shop in the Castro. A 1962 convertible, candy-apple red and taken, they claimed, from the Oakland P.D. repo lot. I ran it open to the sky and engine screaming. What’s the point of buying American if you don’t push things over the edge?

  We’d switch license plates for odd or even according to whose day it was for gas. Then fill the tank and blast the radio onto the hearings from D.C. We’d take the curve out of the hairpins while White House flunkies gave sworn testimony. Happiness was our lot, I have to say, we were counterbalanced—two by two. The air resounded with the husky voices of Ivy Leaguers facing stir.

  Late in the evening, we’d return to town and commandeer the Escalona living room, roust Paul from bed to be our deejay. Why sleep when we could dance and talk art and insurrection and slump now and again into a murky corner for a squeeze or screw? We’d rally friends from every precinct: U.C. politicos and biker dykes and an ingathering of granola-heads and street people and drugged-out seekers of the dharma. One night in April, the story goes, a reconstructed Miss Patty Hearst—lately in hiding as the revolutionary cadre Tania—chain-drank Mai Tais in our kitchen while laying down the law on Engels and Marcuse. Rumor reports she had a nimble hand upon the blender.

  FOURTEEN

  ONE SATURDAY IN MARCH, Jesse makes gumbo in Emily’s kitchen while she’s off at her weekend job. He’s never cooked gumbo before, and the recipe’s a challenge. He counts twenty-four different ingredients and multiple directions, all of it scrawled on index cards that line up on the counter. He stirs the pot until the roux is dark as peanut butter then adds the rest of the ingredients, jumping back when the pot spits back oil and minced vegetables. He finishes with enough white, black, and red pepper to raise the dead. It’s her aunt’s recipe, shipped west with Emily when she moved to California.

  It’s a long stall until his girlfriend comes home, but Jesse loves waiting in her house among her stuff. It’s a catalog of everything Emily holds dear—furniture, pictures, clothing, dog. Him. He tastes the soup three times to convince himself he’s got it right.

  At lunchtime Jesse takes Carl to the beach and eats a leftover burrito while the dog sniffs around. He’s still a little wary of the setter, but thank God, dog and man have made a somewhat, semi-steady, kind of peace. Or so Jesse hopes, trying not to show his nerves in front of the animal. The dog canters down the strand, ears flowing, muzzle snapping at the waves. To Jesse’s relief, he trots back on call and they troop up the stairs and back home.

  Dinnertime is still hours away, so Jesse puts on a record and cleans the kitchen. The floor and counters look like a crime scene, but he gets it done, then moves on to the living room. Pushing a vacuum cleaner around the floors, he’s careful not to bump against the Meissen figurines on the side table: a shepherd and his lass that were her mom’s. A quick way to see Emily lose it is to break one of her things, a twist in her behavior Jesse’s still getting used to. Still, their sometimes fights only add balance to the day. Like negative space in a painting, light and dark working together to make a whole.

  After dinner, they walk to town for ice cream. She has a finger curled through one of his belt loops. Jesse slows his pace so Emily can keep up beside him. He could do this for miles and years.

  Jesse’s birthday comes on the last day in July. Isabel and Emily have planned a daylong visit to Big Sur. It’s a Wednesday and the women use the Escalona telephone to call in sick to their employers. Dressed in sarongs and brightly colored leis, they dance a lurid hula around Jesse while he’s on the phone with Little Mitch. He mugs alongside them, fancies up his phone conversation with a sickly stammer and an assortment of gargles and groans.

  The party continues at the dining table with breakfast mimosas and beignets and sugary birthday kisses from the ladies. Marty demurs. He’s beached himself belly upward on the couch after an all-night haul from L.A. A firm of Valley orthodontists is looking to fund his current project—Trouble Bubble Gum, replete with trading cards of the Watergate witnesses and prosecutors and a comic strip of Nixon done over as an eye-patched Bazooka Joe.

  “My medics, you gotta love ‘em,” Marty calls out to no one in particular. “They got mister-macho sideburns and backyard tennis courts and wives who bop around in walnut-paneled Country Squires. Right-thinking sons of the republic, and i
n their heart of hearts, you know they feel exposed. They want tax shelters and offshore disbursements. They want refuge from the hungry reach of Uncle Sam. And from how they clocked the cuties sipping Galliano at the Café Fig last night, they want a little laissez faire. Abide with me, I tell them, I’ll show you the light and the way—plus eighteen points on every buck from dollar one, hundred percent off the books.”

  Jesse spies the silver tips of Marty’s boots flashing a fervent jiggle over the sofa’s padded arm. Cocaine, sly son-of-a-bitch, direct from an orthodontist’s drug locker. “You’ve gone to school on them, your new best friends,” Jesse says. “I bet you know them better than they know themselves.”

  Marty stomps to his customary seat at the head of the table. “I follow the old tried and true. Information is money and I want the keys to the bank.”

  “I don’t see where you’ll find a nickel in that business,” Isabel says. “Nixon’s done for, and then who’ll care?”

  “Tricky’s like plutonium, his half-life is forever,” Marty says. “Gone from office, we’ll sell to the nostalgia crowd.” He swipes a beignet from Jesse’s plate. “You make your birthday wish?”

  Isabel steadies her palm against Marty’s thigh. “That’s for lunchtime, honey, with the cake.”

  “Oh, come on,” says Marty. “What is this, the Army? Drill at 0-1200?”

  “We’ve been on this all week,” Emily says. “All planned the way we like. When you were with your dentists out of town.” An angry blush colors her neck and cheeks. Luminous, Jesse judges, lit by the velocity of what she’s feeling. He sits back and lets the bubbles in his glass tease his throat. Everything, anger included, can be shaped into the celebration.

  Marty produces a weary smile for the entire table. “Hell, don’t we want to try some wishes now?” he says. “Wishes now, wishes later—let’s pile them on, why be mingy?”

  Emily faces Isabel who shrugs in mock despair. “OK, but not out loud,” Emily says. “They won’t come true.”

  “Beautiful,” Marty says. “The realm of serious attention. Silent only.” He presses his fingers to his lips as though in prayer.

  It’s decided they’ll hold hands and Jesse stretches out to Emily and Isabel on either side. As if by command, his friends lower their eyes and calm their breathing—calling up their wishes for him, he can’t imagine what. In the fairy stories he loved as a boy, wishes were granted with spite and mined with deadly traps and snares. Only the clever prevailed to see their fantasies come true. Jesse closes his eyes, smelling champagne froth and frangipani and female sweat. At eight or nine, he’d tear through the pages until the ending brought relief. The valedictory always the same: happily ever after.

  I was flayed that morning, with intricate nasal chemistry and grit caking my pupils from post-party rebound and fatigue. My mood was less than airy, I admit. Should have given regrets, cashed in on the couch. But I bore down and did my honors as a friend. Christ, twenty-one. You want to make witness, don’t you, see your pal through. Besides, the ladies had cooked a Provençal picnic of tapenade and pissaladière. The cake was out of M.F.K. Fisher, whole wheat flour and fresh lavender and brown sugar glaze. How could I pass by my chunk of that?

  The women led us on a hike in the Ventana Highlands, a scrubby trail above Big Sur. Bel carried a small machete, took us through manzanita groves and fire-charred undergrowth that smelled of creosote. It seemed to me she pushed us through the meanest route there was. She grunted every time her blade hit wood.

  Emily wore flip-flops, a bikini top and sarong, and tore full-speed uphill despite the heat. Brought her back to summers in the Garden District, she told us, excepting this was dry and hardly merited a fuss. She gave us stories of her girlhood, nuns and pralines and gigging frogs with Cousin Luther, sneaking Sazeracs at Galatoire’s before she made eighteen. She never once let free of Jesse’s hand. I slipped well out of earshot in the rear.

  Carl, I can’t say why, chuffed round my ankles as though I was his god. I’d never shown him much more than my boot, and his lousy judgment made me sad, so much wasted loyalty and affection. He dragged me on his leash two miles of trail, slobbered my fingers when I stumbled or fell. Let’s not build too much on it, OK?—they crave the salt.

  While the others set up lunch around a picnic blanket, I climbed atop the tallest boulder on the bluff. The cliff sheared hundreds of feet to the ocean and there were dozens of rocks as black as cancer grinding through the surf—an ugly death for anyone inspired to take an extra step. The sunlight, Jesus, it sledged off the waves and landed on the brain with force. The natural violence California manufactures without thinking.

  Forgive me, I had a mighty whiz over the side, one of those luscious streams stretches on for minutes, hours, days. Did wonders, pinked me up body and soul. Standing cock in hand in the out-of-doors binds you with the ages, a cell-memory, I’m thinking, of life in the cave.

  “Enjoying the scenery to its fullest?” Isabel had slipped behind my back while I was still exposed. The others and the dog were a few steps farther along.

  “You might dig it too if you had the appropriate machinery,” I called over my shoulder. I added a small waggle to underline my point.

  Isabel appeared only modestly impressed. “I know how to pee outside. I was a Girl Scout once upon a time. I just don’t consider it an art form.” I plinked a finale and tucked and zipped, stepped down from my perch. “Everything can be art, baby, if you put your mind to it.”

  Jesse interrupted for toasts and poured out Dixie Cups of Côtes du Ventoux. Emily had tied pigtails in his hair and threaded colored ribbons through the strands. He had the peppy look of a show pony. “Here’s to journeys,” he said most earnestly.

  “Journeys,” Isabel and Emily chimed in. Everyone was waiting for me, even Carl gazed fondly upward.

  “Happy birthday, partner,” I said. “Great days coming.” Touched glasses with my friend, had me a slug of fruity red. “Now—where the fuck do you intend that we should go?”

  Once voiced, a worthy idea is like a bully, won’t let you squirm loose until you submit. There was a debate, of course, a puny struggle over jobs and obligations, but by cake-and-candle time—amazing, by the way, with a fine crumb and mossy as a field in June—we’d booked ourselves a trip to New Orleans by car. That was Jesse’s contribution, New Orleans for Sazeracs. He was pleased with himself, stood grinning at the Pacific, his ribbons frisking in the wind.

  I lay my head on Carl’s dozing flank, watched the clouds shred into tiny pieces. The women rested in the shade of a stunted tamarack and their quiet talking spun on the breeze. How right and good to see my boy take charge. Twenty-one. The world of men.

  They come upon the Mississippi in the hot, wet moonlight, looping a roundabout course along the city’s edge to view the tanker lights upon the water and to smell the famous mud. Leaning over the convertible’s back seat, Marty sprinkles soda pop onto the levee, baptizes their arrival in the true blood of the South. Ever since they crossed the Texas border he’s limited his diet to Dr Pepper and Moon Pies and Goo Goo Clusters. To understand the land of Dixie, he declares, you want to be half-whacked on sucrose.

  The Savonne house is ringed by wrought-iron fencing, the rails in the shape of corn stalks intertwined with morning glories. Isabel is instantly charmed and gathers everyone to have a closer look. There, in the black metal, she tells them, you can see the maker’s stubborn hand—life so irrefutable it’s wiggling. “Goddamn gate still has a lock,” Marty says as he cuts across the lawn toward the house. “And spikes.”

  Dewey Savonne is waiting out on the gallery. He’s a big man, still in a suit despite the late hour and the weather, and he scoops his daughter off her feet to squeeze her hello. Jesse recognizes the hearty stance from the movies, the posture of someone used to running orders down the line. Mr. Savonne has a shipping business at the Stuyvesant docks. He settles his daughter on the floor stoutly, the way his men must dump their sacks of grain.

  “
You’re the boyfriend, I believe,” he says to Jesse. “She told me you were a tall one.” He lobs a glance at Jesse’s ponytail and puka-shell necklace, the silver stud in his left ear. “Wish I knew why you boys want that girly look. I’m as tolerant as the next man, but help me, didn’t your people raise you to dress more carefully than that?”

  Emily slaps her daddy on the arm. “Be good. You promised.”

  “So I did. Sorry, son, I’ve got a mouth on me. You’re welcome to ignore me as often as you like. It’s a pleasure to have you and your friends to visit.”

  “Pleasure’s mine,” Jesse answers and Dewey pounds a bruising welcome on his back. Physical surplus will be the order of the day in New Orleans. The man’s face is swollen with fatherly good cheer.

  Unaccountably, Marty is on best behavior and shakes hands as wholeheartedly as a Rotarian. He shadows Dewey into the living room, asking for a cold drink and following his host into the kitchen. Without waiting for an invitation, Isabel explores the downstairs rooms.

  “That wasn’t halfway bad,” Emily says. “Daddy likes you.”

  From the kitchen comes the rumble of Marty and Dewey’s laughter. “If you say so,” Jesse says.

  Over the living room mantel hangs a silkscreened portrait, Emily’s mother, the resemblance undeniable. She’s dark and lissome like her daughter and done up in a beaded hat and pearls. The face seems fearless, with lurid shadow lines in fuchsia and green. “Andy Warhol did it from a photograph,” Emily tells him. “In ‘67 most of her friends were ordering up Warhols and Mommy decided she would too, wig and everything. She didn’t care how treatment had ruined her or what the painting cost. Twenty thousand dollars, and since the funeral I don’t think Daddy’s looked at it except sideways once or twice.”

  His girlfriend is flushed and wet-eyed as though memory has notched her up a few degrees, but no, she slides against him, curves her tongue into his ear. “This sultry weather’s got me thinking. I’ve got a bed upstairs that’s never had a boy in it,” she says. “And a cheerleader’s outfit from St. Sulpice Academy that still might fit. You should catch me with my spangles and pompoms.”