by Craig Nova
Farrell’s accountant, Myron Lee, was an obese man with full cheeks like a hamster, shiny skin, and who wore rayon shirts that seemed to put off a variety of financial stink. Myron called to say that the closing for the vending machine company was all set.
In the afternoon, before rush hour, which was the hottest part of the day even in September, a woman in a small U-Haul truck, with its orange and silver stripes, like the American flag of transience, drove through the break in the privet hedge. Farrell’s window had a view of the drive that branched to his house and then to the house next door. He stood at his window, counting the days before that card would come.
The woman’s posture, her hands on the wheel of the truck and the ease with which she drove, made him hesitate. The movement seemed to be competence personified.
The list of the morning’s words was on the counter, printed from a website for people with a stutter. The little man, or whatever it was that caused trouble, seemed to wake up.
Hubcap, humbug, lemon . . . tight fit . . .
“Humbug,” he said.
She got out of the small truck with the orange advertisements on the sides, and put her hands on the hips of her tight-fitting blue jeans as she faced her house. The woman had a glow, since her skin took the light with a perfect absorption. Like pale makeup. She wore a T-shirt that said over her chest, Children’s Hospital, UCLA. She had light brown hair, in a chignon, freckles across her nose, and the posture of a dancer.
Her shoulders were square, and her jeans fit perfectly. She turned one way, as though limbering up, and finally walked toward Farrell’s house, her lips in the morning light the color of perfectly ripe raspberries.
Farrell considered that he saw new people all the time, and so why should a particular one make the light seem brighter, or the colors more distinct, or leave that odd sensation which, with just a little encouragement, turns into a subtle vibration, almost neural, not trembling but with a little encouragement could be.
She put her face, with that spray of freckles across her nose, to the window of Farrell’s kitchen, and then she tapped on the glass with the neatly trimmed nail of her index finger.
He pointed at himself and mouthed, “Me?”
She mouthed, “Yes. You.”
The door opened with a hush.
She stood in the roses, which now at the end of the season still resisted those cold mornings, and the fragrance of them was like paradise. She breathed deeply, kept her eyes on him. He couldn’t tell if it was the scent of the roses or her skin, in that heat of the day, that seemed to linger. She had a small mustache of sweat on her upper lip.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m your new neighbor. Rose Marie.”
She put out her hand. Her palm had a warmth and a caressing effect that was out of all proportion to a neighbor introducing herself. He thought, You are too alone to even notice this. This is not for you.
After she let go, he realized he had already taken some infinitely small thing, just in the touch. She trembled, too. He was sure of it. A moral quality showed in her movement, in her smile, in her ease with herself, although it was perfectly imbued, too, with a sultry instinct. Maybe the moral quality had something to do with that T-shirt with the Children’s Hospital logo.
“Quinn Farrell,” he said. “Everyone calls me Farrell.”
She sighed.
“Don’t these roses smell wonderful,” she said.
“I always think it’s like paradise,” he said.
She looked at him, considering. He winced.
“I mean, like a good place . . .” he said.
“Paradise,” she said. “It’s nice to think so, isn’t it?” She swallowed. “What do you think it’s like?”
“Paradise?” he said. “Well, I don’t know. I’ve never been, but I’ve come close a couple of times.”
“You mean someone almost killed you?” she said.
“Well, you know,” he said. “It’s LA. A lot of people around here have crazy ideas.”
She went on looking at him.
Then she took another deep breath and said, “Well, are you going to help me with my things in the truck? I had someone lined up, but, well, you know . . .”
“I’ve got a business appointment . . .” he said.
“Oh,” she said.
“But you know what? It will keep . . .” he said.
“You don’t look like someone who’s late very often,” she said.
She kept her eyes on him and gave him a two-hundred-watt smile.
“I don’t know. There’s always a first time,” he said.
“The first time?”
That smile again.
“Was it a boyfriend who was supposed to help you?” Farrell said.
More of that smile.
“Wouldn’t you like to know . . . ?” she said.
“Okay,” Farrell said. “I’ll give you a hand.”
“Good,” she said. “Yeah. It was a boyfriend. Or someone I used to live with . . . He may come around sometime . . .”
“I didn’t mean to p-p-pry,” Farrell said.
“Tell me another,” she said.
How polite, how considerate, he thought, that she ignores the stutter.
Rose Marie’s movement had a sense of a cool cleanliness or an impossible to describe grace. It reminded Farrell of a swan he had seen at the edge of a lake, its locomotion seeming to take place without effort.
Farrell said, “I’ll give you a hand.”
“Are you good with three-dimensional things? I’ve got a sofa I don’t think is going to go through the door.”
“You know what the trick is? You turn it on its side so it goes through the door like an L.”
He swallowed.
“It’s a . . . tight fit,” he said.
“Yeah. It is a tight fit,” she said.
“Tight fit,” he said.
When they bumped into each other, with the sofa, chairs, a table, and rugs, it was the most natural thing in the world, and when she reached around a corner to find his hand, her scent, like a fresh pond, was right there. That small line of moisture along her hairline and on her upper lip was gin colored. She smiled and wiped her brow.
“Hot, isn’t it?” she said. “You know, I thought you were going to sit there in your kitchen while I struggled with this.” She gestured at her things in the living room, the brown boxes with brown, shiny tape, the sofa, and a leather chair. “But I’ll be damned. You’re a gentleman.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Farrell said.
“Modest, too,” she said. “All I ever meet in this town are vain assholes.”
The freckles across her nose reminded him of an innocence, and how long had it been since he had felt something like innocence? No, not innocence. Something really dangerous. A moral presence. Dignity. He stood there with an ache.
“Something wrong?” she said.
“No, no,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a gentleman,” she said.
“Are you flirting with me?” Farrell said.
“No,” she said. “Not really. Just a little fun.”
“Okay. Sure,” he said.
“You can figure it out,” she said.
He moved a rug, a chair that had been made for comfortable reading, a brass light to go with it, the metal shade a little tarnished but all the more domestic for that, and some boxes of books. The top opened and there was The Peloponnesian War, Tacitus, The War with Hannibal, and The March Up Country.
Uh-oh, he thought. Real trouble.
“There’s a great moment in The War with Hannibal,” he said. “About the town that goes over to the Carthaginians.”
“The town cuts a deal with Hannibal,” she said, “when it looks like he is going to win. Then the Roman’s show up.”
“Yeah,” Farrell said. “That’s it.”
“Some mistakes are forever,” she said.
He nodded, yes
, yes, yes. That’s all he had. A history of other people’s mistakes.
“You remember what happened to the town?” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “The men went out to fight the Romans. The women with their kids stood on the wall of the town, and when it was clear their men had lost, they threw their kids over the wall and jumped.”
“Well, I would have done the same. Given what the Romans had in mind . . .” he said.
“So the lesson is you want to be careful who you get involved with, right?”
Yes, he thought. He considered Mary Jones. Was she on the bus? That should have been a warning, that Terry put her on the bus, but maybe someone like Mary Jones would like the bus.
Farrell gestured to the logo on her shirt.
“What’s that?”
“The Children’s Hospital?” she said. “It’s where I work.”
“What do you do?”
“Me? Oh, it’s hard to say exactly.”
She turned her grayish eyes on him. How had she managed to get her hooks into him, just by moving a sofa, some cardboard boxes, a rug, and a box of kitchen utensils?
His Camry sat in the circular drive that went by his front door. She took it in, just like that, and said, “If I judged by what kind of car you drove, I’d say you were a cop. You can’t get more anonymous than a gray Camry.”
“What do you drive when it isn’t a U-Haul truck?”
“A Subaru Legacy,” she said.
“Same thing,” he said.
“I have it because I’m too busy to really care,” she said. “But I think you have yours for a reason.”
Bingo. Shit. “I guess you could say that. Cars, people make such a big deal out of them.”
They sat on her sofa in the middle of her living room, close together, not uneasy.
“All I can give you is a glass of water,” she said. “But I’m not sure where the glasses are.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I told you about the meeting. Business.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“Sure,” he said. “What are neighbors for?”
When he was at the door, able to feel her presence on his back, she said, “There’s one last thing. Come over to the truck.”
“What’s that?” he said.
“A lot of people get freaked out,” she said.
He raised a brow.
“You don’t look like that kind,” she said. “Here’s the last thing.”
The habitat, which sat on the bench seat of the U-Haul, was a large fish tank. Inside, like a pile of patched inner tubes, sat a Burmese python, and even though it was coiled, it was probably about ten feet long, thick in the middle.
“How much does it weigh?” said Farrell.
“About thirty-five pounds,” she said. “Before eating.”
“Arrogant?” he said. “Like, ‘Where’s my rat? You’re late.’”
“Well, condescending. It helps if two people move it. The snake slides from side to side if you tip the tank.”
The python moved a little when they opened the door of the U-Haul, and its locomotion had a fluid quality, like oil. Its eyes were tinted green, as though the cold oil of the creature’s essence was colored with antifreeze, as a way of allowing for its existence, since it seemed cold, not so much to the touch as in attitude. Well, he thought, who would have thought she’d have a thing like that?
“So,” said Rose Marie. “There it is. I guess you want some explanation.”
“So long as it doesn’t get out of this tank and come over to my house.”
“It gets out,” she said. “Come on. Help me carry it upstairs. There’s an extra bedroom where we can put it.”
“You don’t look like the python type,” he said.
“Is there a python type?” she said.
“You know, guys with glasses like coke bottles. Women with tattooed arms and a nose piercing.”
That smile again.
“You haven’t got a tattoo, do you?”
“Give a girl a little mystery,” she said. “No, it’s this way. The ex-boyfriend had it. You know, he was always disappearing and forgetting about it. He’s an anthropologist, and he picked up just like that one time and went to India. Which wouldn’t have been so bad for a month, but when he was there, in India, he took off his clothes and walked into a band of macaque monkeys. He spent a year with them. He knows more about monkeys than anyone on earth. What I got left with was Scooter.”
“Scooter?”
“That’s the python’s name. And what was I going to do with it? Kill it? Let it go? You think that’s a good idea . . . ?”
“You could ask people in Florida,” he said.
“That’s just what I mean,” she said. “I don’t know if it could live off of Mulholland Drive, in the brush, but I don’t think we should find out, either. I could sell it, but then someone might let it go anyway, when they got tired of it. So, I’m stuck with it. A rat twice a month. Come on. Give me a hand.”
They lifted the aquarium, carried it upstairs, the snake sliding one way and then another as the glass box was tilted on the stairs. They left it in a bedroom on the floor.
“The boyfriend was always vain about the way he dressed, but after spending time with the monkeys he was worse. The monkeys judged each other by the way they looked. He started thinking that way, too.”
“So, the boyfriend is back now? Around here?”
She just looked at him.
“Yeah. Maybe he will come around to get Scooter.”
“Don’t people get frightened when they see it for the first time?” he said.
“Sometimes. But this is LA. What don’t people see here?”
“LA,” he said. He shook his head.
“You want to watch when I feed it?” she said.
“That’s all right,” he said. “I think I’ve got the idea.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” she said. With an effect like having a bottle of perfume waved under his nose, she winked.
“Since you don’t mind me p-p-rying,” he said.
“I didn’t say that,” said Rose Marie.
“I’ll take a chance then,” he said. “What went wrong?”
“With the ex-boyfriend?” she said.
She spent a moment, her eyes on the python, as though its sluggish coils were evidence of things she thought she had forgotten, and then, with surprising candor, she willingly told Farrell that the ex-boyfriend had been so charming as make you want to take off your shoes, but without warning he morphed into a man so angry that they had to pay a carpenter to fix the holes he made in the walls.
“So I couldn’t take the . . .” she said.
“The fury,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “That right. The fury.”
She spoke as though the word was a thing, an object she could hold in her hand, like a piece of pipe. She leaned close, bringing that scent of skin and hair, and said, “Thanks for the help.”
“Sure,” he said. “Any time. Just let me know when it gets out.”
She smiled and said, “Okay.”
He walked back to his house, but on the way he checked the car. He kept an extra set of keys, in a black magnetic box, attached to the bumper of the Camry, and when he came out of the house, on most days, he put his hand there, just to reassure himself the box was still there, although when he did, he felt the residue, the oil and grease that collected on it, as though the soul of Los Angeles was somehow perfectly melded with the exhaust on the freeways. The grease on the key box almost reassured him, since it seemed to be a confirmation of everything he knew about the city.
He wondered what picture would be on the postcard. A grizzly? Mountains with snow on them the color of a bride’s dress? The card better come, thought Farrell. He didn’t forget things and he wasn’t going to forget this. Two to three weeks. That would be twenty more shooting days.
4
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG FOR Nikolay and Pavel, two ex KGB emp
loyees, or whatever was used now in Moscow, to appear after the closing for Coin-A-Matic. Farrell guessed that the previous owner of Coin-A-Matic hadn’t told the truth about them, but then who would tell a prospect buyer that a shakedown of three hundred dollars a month for protection was part of its normal business expenses. So, that’s what you get, thought Farrell, for trying to appear legitimate. He should have known by his accountant’s voice when the accountant had said, “You want to do this? Own this outfit? I don’t advise it.”
“I’ll take a chance,” said Farrell.
“Sign here,” said the accountant.
Farrell wondered if the accountant, Myron Lee, took his short-sleeve rayon shirt home and washed it every other day, or if he had a collection of shirts that always seemed to be on their second day. Myron twitched when he spoke, a heft of one shoulder, as though what he was thinking gave him a little shock. He blinked and told a joke when he was uneasy, as though a laugh helped.
Farrell signed. Myron Lee said, “Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“We’ll see,” said Farrell.
“Sometimes you don’t want to see,” said Myron.
Myron twitched. Tucked his chin down so his wattle quivered.
“There were two lawyers who had just won a big case. They went to the beach.”
“And?” said Farrell as he put his copy of the signed agreement in his jacket pocket.
“So, they are on the beach and see two figures in the distance. They get closer. The lawyers see it’s two women. They don’t have any clothes on. One lawyer says to the other, ‘Maybe we can screw them.’ The other lawyer says. ‘For what?’”
Farrell’s laugh was sincere, but a little bleak.
“Good luck,” said the accountant. “I’ll be here to do the books.”
The building for Coin-A-Matic had been built for small manufacturing, made of cinder blocks with a double door in front so trucks or vans could go in and out. It used to house something called Movie Air, which made large fans that made a breeze for a movie set, or could be set up so an actor’s hair would heave a little at the right moment. The fans had been about eight feet across, and the propellers inside looked as though they had come from an airplane, like a De Havilland Beaver. The building cost little to rent, since it was in the clutter belt south of Santa Monica Boulevard. Not dead yet as a neighborhood, but on life support. Just the way Farrell liked it. No one took anything too seriously in a place that was on the verge of becoming a slum.