Double Solitaire

by Craig Nova

  “Open the door,” she said to Andris Dolman.

  The habitat went into the front seat. She slammed the door, then turned on her heel and walked away from the car. Andris got in behind the wheel, started the engine, never looking at either one of them, and then backed up, turned, and just before he went through the hedge, he flipped Rose Marie the finger.

  Rose Marie put her hand on Farrell’s forearm, just rested it there, and kept her eyes on the dust that lingered in break in the hedge.

  “He shouldn’t have called me a bum,” Farrell said.

  “I know, I know,” she said.

  She went on staring, as though the pieces of a puzzle were left on a table, and it would take a little time to put them together.

  “Don’t be angry,” Farrell said.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said.

  She shook her head.

  “I need a moment to think,” she said. She stood in the yard, seemingly calm, but considering that change in atmosphere, that miasma of threat, of violence, or worse, the anger behind it.

  She looked at Farrell and said, “You’re up to something that leaves you in a rage. You won’t trust me. And I shouldn’t be angry? Well, that’s great. I take you to see the kids. I open my heart to you, I deal with your thugs coming around some sketchy business, and what I get from you is silence. You were ready to put Andris in a hospital. And I’m not supposed to be angry? Did you see what happened here?”

  Farrell put out his hand, tried to take hers.

  “I need to go back to being alone,” she said.

  “You mean that?” he said.

  She looked back.

  “Give it a little time,” she said. “I don’t want to mean it. You know that. But . . .” She gestured to the hillside, the sky as though the presence of Los Angeles was somehow part of the problem.

  “Don’t you see?” she said. “I don’t know if I can live with this much anger.”

  Her fear stopped him and made him alert, as though he was listening for the beginning of an earthquake. Immobile, uncertain, only aware of some change.

  Then she went into the house.

  22

  WAITING, AS FAR AS FARRELL was concerned, was a little like death, since, as he saw it, waiting was a sign of the absence of something that should be there. He considered Rose Marie and knew that he had already allowed his sense of himself to blend at the edges with some aspect of her, a smile, a touch, the time they’d spent together in bed, and that he was able to be a certain way when he was with her, but now that she seemed to be gone, that had vanished. So he was afraid that not only had he lost her, but also that he’d lost a part of himself he had grown to like. He wondered if it was the same for her. Waiting left him homesick for something that existed only when he was with her. If he had to say what his hope was, it would be that she knew what he was thinking.

  She left her house and went to work. He picked some roses, wrapped them in newspaper, and left them on her step. When she came home, she picked them up, glanced in his direction, and went inside.

  YouTube videos seemed to help Farrell with the waiting, or at least made the hours pass in a more invisible way. That’s the thing about time, as it appeared to Farrell, slow when you want it to be fast, fast when you want it to be slow. And brooding is like being in a river, a black one to be sure, that always goes downhill.

  The video he watched was of a whale on a beach in Oregon, filmed in the seventies. Too big to bury or to cart off. And someone had the idea of putting dynamite under the carcass and setting it off. Yes, thought Farrell, is that why I’m watching? Have I put dynamite under my own whale? What happens when it goes off?

  * * *

  At the Hollywood Bowl fountain, Braumberg was tired, his eyes filled with an expression that Farrell recognized. Braumberg’s exhaustion was what saved him from terror. The fountain bubbled behind them.

  Farrell said, “I need to know how many shooting days you have left.”

  “It’s over,” said Braumberg. “We’re done. Or Terry’s part is done.”

  “All right,” said Farrell. “That’s what I needed to know.”

  “You have no idea how brutal a shooting schedule. You have so many days, and that’s it. What happens if you get cut off before you have enough to edit what you’ve shot?”

  “But Terry’s done?” said Farrell.

  “Yes,” said Braumberg.

  He hesitated as he reached for Farrell’s hand.

  “I want to thank you for holding off on whatever you’re going to do. I’m not going to ask, but I want to thank you. At least the picture is done.”

  Farrell nodded, as though he was looking at his last meal.

  “But here’s an odd thing,” said Braumberg. “Maybe I am tired, but I don’t think that’s it. That girl, Portia Blanchard, you know who I mean?”

  “How could I forget?” said Farrell.

  “She is fantastic. We’ve seen the dailies and the camera loves her. She takes light in a way that is uncanny. People have come to look. We are going to use her in two new pictures. A bigger role. Just incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it. Enough to make me think of magic.”

  * * *

  At the pastry shop, Du-par’s in Studio City, Shirushi looked tired, too. She sat in her jeans and a short-sleeve shirt, her eyes bloodshot, her hands holding a cup of coffee.

  “So,” she said. “What gives?”

  She said this with an air of mystification and keen suspicion, not to mention something like fear.

  “This is between us,” said Farrell. “Right?”

  “Maybe,” said Shirushi. “Maybe.”

  “I think you should look in the Mojave Desert. In a place called the Yarrow Ravine Rattlesnake Habitat.”

  “That could be a pretty big place,” said Shirushi.

  “At the end of the road there is a dry river.”

  “An arroyo,” said Shirushi. “Is that what you mean?”

  “Yeah. You go along that for exactly three tenths of a mile and you will find three stones, about ten feet high, that look like three perfect footballs. And next to them are three Joshua trees. About a hundred yards to the south, you will find some disturbed dirt. You know you are in the right place when you see an old Jeep. A Willys.”

  “No kidding,” she said.

  “There may be some personal items there. Like a toothbrush or something. I’d be sure to check it for DNA samples.”

  The display cabinet to the right of the booth where they sat was filled with bright raspberry tarts, cakes with white frosting and decorated with strawberries, and next to them were apple pies and then loaves of bread, a pile of croissants. Shirushi looked at them and then back at Farrell. He wondered just how much she would take before she arrested him, or if the attachment from the old days, when she arrested him for those motorcycles, still left them bound together. Like cousins, he hoped.

  “All right,” she said.

  “How did you make out with Karicek?” said Farrell.

  “We found his car, but not him. On Mulholland, halfway to Malibu. Still, we looked around and there was something in the bushes . . . is that what you thought?”

  “Yes,” said Farrell.

  “That’s what you thought. Young woman, just a girl really. Her jacket came from a store in Anchorage. So, we are in touch with the Alaskan state police. But if we don’t get more, or if we don’t pull in Karicek, we’re going to have to get you involved. You understand?”

  “Yes,” said Farrell, “I do.”

  “A confidential source gets you only so far,” said Shirushi.

  She looked at him for a while.

  “I’ll be in touch,” she said.

  “Three stones, just like footballs. Along an arroyo. Three Joshua trees.”

  She nodded.

  * * *

  Farrell left more flowers on Rose Marie’s door step, and when she came home, she picked them up and stood, her eyes on his house. Then she walked across the yar
d to Farrell’s door and tapped, the sound at once inquisitive and delicate. So, he thought, maybe she felt it, too, that sense of missing a part of oneself. Maybe she had come to find it, that cloud of warm understanding, so hard to mention but so palpable in fact.

  “I thought you weren’t talking to me anymore,” he said.

  “The kids miss you,” she said. “They ask about you.”

  “W-w-hat do you tell them?” he said.

  “This and that,” said Rose Marie.

  “This and that,” he said. “What kind of visitors are you inviting to talk to them?”

  She blinked, then stood a little closer, as though comfort was so close she could almost step into it.

  “A pro, a guy from the Harvard Medical School who works with terminal children came to talk to them and they told him to get fucked. I don’t mean this figuratively, between you and me. I mean they said, ‘Go fuck yourself.’”

  “They meant something to me,” Farrell said.

  “They could tell,” she said. “They’re like tuning forks . . . you know, if you have an emotion, they sort of vibrate in harmony with it . . .”

  “Oh, Jesus,” said Farrell. “You are getting New Age on me.”

  “Well, you know what I mean,” she said. “Can I come in?”

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said. “Details. It’s hard to describe.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Like being upstairs, under the skylight . . . and other things.”

  “So,” she said. “You’re working that end of things, huh? Upstairs? Gold sparkles, or something like them from my heels upward . . . and I thought I was over anything like that.”

  She brushed her hair back.

  “Yes,” she said. “There were other things.”

  She pushed against him.

  “You know,” said Rose Marie. “We have to talk first.”

  Farrell wondered if she knew that she seemed to be carrying with her a part of himself. Or maybe she had come to collect a part of herself. They stood next to each other.

  “So, you’re ready to hear it?” he said.

  It all came out. Everything.

  It took a while. The refrigerator hummed, the roof ticked as it cooled, and every now and then the kitchen faucet dripped, the water hitting the stainless-steel sink with a steady tip tip tip. Farrell didn’t stutter. The details came out, one after another.

  Rose Marie kept her eyes on his face, nodding a little from time to time. He finished and she went on looking at him.

  “You think I am shocked by this? You think someone who lives in a world where kids die young is surprised by trouble like this. No. I’m not shocked and I am not surprised.”

  “But. . . ?” he said.

  She went on looking at him. Then she closed her eyes as she thought it over, and when she opened them, she said, “I want one thing from you. Just one.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “I want you to realize how ugly this is and that it is going to stop. No more.”

  “You don’t think I know how ugly this is?”

  They looked at each other, the touch of their glances as soft as perfect understanding.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  Then she sat down at the kitchen table. The iPad was there and she glanced at the YouTube video paused on the screen.

  “So, you’ve got to wait,” she said.

  “That’s the hard part,” he said.

  She tapped little arrow to make it play and the video started.

  “What’s that? Looks like a whale?” she said.

  “Yeah. That’s right,” he said.

  “Jesus, what’s in those boxes?” she said.

  “Dynamite,” he said.

  She glanced at him.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “No. I am most definitely not sure,” he said.

  The people in the video put the dynamite as far under the whale as they could, and after that they ran a wire to a detonator, not one with a plunger but a little switch. The camera was behind the guy who turned the switch. Nothing happened. At least for about one heartbeat. In a starburst, or a harsh cloud of sand, the whale rose into the air, separated into chunks about the size of a VW Bug, and kept going up for a minute. When the pieces came down, they landed as though it was raining chunks of blubber, but so heavy as to flatten cars that had been parked along the beach by people who had wanted to see what was going to happen. The crowd moaned at first with a sensual delight at the explosion, and this moan changed into screams of horror as the pieces of the whale began to fall.

  “How long is it going to take?” said Rose Marie. “How long are you going to have to wait?”

  He shook his head.

  “I wish I knew,” he said.

  Farrell moved the video back to the beginning. The whale appeared on the beach with its slick but scarred skin, as though you had shined your shoes and then hit them here and there with a hatchet.

  The explosion under the whale had the shape of an enormous flak burst, a center with a dark, roundish bloom of violence. Farrell thought of the big bang. Was that the basic form in the universe, that bang, that explosion?

  * * *

  It took a couple weeks, but the guy with the gray beard and the bandana headband who delivered the Los Angeles Times in the truck with the cow horns, pulled into the yard and threw the papers, one for Farrell and one for Rose Marie. The man had a large joint in his ashtray, and after he threw the papers, he took a hit, then went out the break in the hedge. Rose Marie came over with the paper.

  The headline read, “Terry Peregrine, star of the new blockbuster picture due in the fall, dies in single car, high speed accident at Cholame . . .”

  Rose Marie said, “Single car, huh? All by himself, right? Isn’t that where James Dean died?”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s where he died.”

  Rose Marie put down the paper.

  “I’d guess they questioned him about the British girl,” Farrell said. “They must have come by his house to ask about her. Or maybe his lawyer started to work on the terms for giving himself up.”

  “To your cop friend?” said Rose Marie.

  “For now she’s a friend,” he said. “At least it looks like it. She probably turned over the collar to Homicide. And then there are the cops in the Mojave. I’d guess the jurisdiction is a little unclear.”

  He turned the page of the paper, where there was a picture of Terry Peregrine. Young and attractive. It’s a hard lesson, as the Buddhists say, to know the difference between how things appear and what they are.

  “And the girls?” said Rose Marie.

  “Braumberg saw the dailies. Portia is fantastic. The camera just loves her. He’s going to use her in a new picture.”

  “And?” said Rose Marie.

  “Terry’s accident isn’t going to hurt the picture. Not one bit. Romantic lead dies like one of the legends . . .”

  “Romance,” said Rose Marie. “You just can’t beat it.”

  “Let’s h-h-ope,” said Farrell.

  “The hospital is going to get some money,” she said. “I heard this producer is making a major contribution.”

  “I wonder how that happened,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said. “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

  “A little arm twisting at the right moment will do wonders.”

  “And what about the girls?”

  “I guess any connection with Terry disappeared.”

  “You guess? And you talked to your pal, the cop, to go easy on the girls?” she said.

  “What’s to go easy about?” Farrell said. “What’s a little shoplifting among friends?”

  * * *

  The next week the delivery guy with the red bandana and the joint the size of a small cigar pulled through the hedge and threw two copies of the paper into the yard.

  Farrell had his spread on the table in his kitchen when Rose Marie came in.
r />   “So,” she said. “You’ve already seen it?”

  The main headline, the one at the top said, “Wanted man found on the beach in Santa Monica.” The sub head was, “Obvious suicide. Had been in water for weeks.”

  “I guess he had good reason,” Rose Marie said. “After all, he was going to be sent to Pelican Bay.”

  “Have you ever seen Pelican Bay?” said Farrell.

  “Just pictures,” she said.

  “The pictures don’t do it justice,” he said. “But I think it was more than that.”

  * * *

  He met Shirushi at Pink’s, and they sat at a picnic table in the back and ate chili dogs. Shirushi took small bites, and every time she did, she stopped to consider Farrell.

  “I could ask about how you knew this shithead was going to look for the body of a girl from Alaska, but I’m not sure we’d get anyplace. Of course, I could arrest you, and cause trouble, but I’m not sure about that.”

  “That’s right,” said Farrell.

  “Don’t be too sure,” she said. “So?”

  “You want to have it tied together. Of course,” said Farrell. “I understand.”

  “You better,” she said.

  Farrell took the postcard with the picture of the bear on it out of his pocket. He turned it over so that the message, with hearts and smiley faces for dots above the i’s, was visible. The handwriting had a hint of the pathological, of the devious and the stupid.

  “Postmarked from Alaska,” said Shirushi. “How do I know Terry sent him up there?”

  Farrell took a credit card record and airline receipt from his pocket and pushed them over. The ticket to Anchorage on Terry’s card was in Karicek’s name. The date of the postmark was the same as the ticket.

  “Well, well,” she said. She put the credit card record and the airline’s receipt for a ticket in her handbag, along with the postcard.

  “You know,” she said. “I could ask you where you got this, but it’s all . . .”

  “Moot,” said Farrell.

  “Moot?” she said. “What are you? Going to law school at night? Moot . . . well, here’s what’s moot. Terry’s dead and so is his brother. There’s nothing more, really.”