The moon glowed steady and cool.
It didn’t look like anyone on Sea Breeze Court had survived. Lily couldn’t bear the idea of her sister being buried in this rubble. But she wouldn’t be, would she? She and Sal had quite clearly broken up.
She dug her phone out of her backpack and turned it on. She held it up to the moon, feeling like an early hominid asking for sanctions from the nature deities. Then she tried Vicky’s number. She held the phone as far from her ear as possible and listened to the landscape, hoping to hear the ringtone—Space music? Wolf calls? Just beeps?—coming faintly from under the wreckage.
But nothing.
Just moonlight.
11
Lily lay on the uncomfortable couch, her back aching, and stared at the framed print of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Travis had seen real Van Gogh paintings in Paris. He’d written that the difference between looking at a Van Gogh print and looking at the original was as great as the difference between looking at a piece of chocolate and tasting it. Lily hoped so, because she just didn’t see much in those creepy and slightly ridiculous sunflowers. Globs of yellow, blue, and brown paint. They looked as deranged as the painter seemed to have been. Who can’t think about his ear when looking at one of his paintings?
The sunflowers trembled and the black plastic frame rattled against the wall. The entire couch shuddered. Another aftershock.
Lily stood and paced through the flat, stopping at the kitchen window. Moonlight washed the backyard in silvery light. Soggy blossoms covered the branches of the plum tree. Beyond the tree, tangles of wintering-over vegetables filled two raised beds. It would soon be time to begin spring cleanups in her clients’ gardens.
“Let someone else do it,” she said out loud. Then she looked over her shoulder, as if afraid someone had overheard her abandon.
Lily pulled her phone out of her pocket and tapped in Tom’s number. She should have called him earlier in the day. He’d be asleep now. Maybe that’s what she wanted: to catch him in an unalloyed state. She wanted the boy, the one who’d sledded with her when they were children, not the man who was so angry with her.
“Hey.”
“Where are you?”
“Joyce’s flat. There was another aftershock just now.”
“You okay?”
Lily opened the back door and stepped out into the moonlight. She grabbed a handful of plum blossoms and squeezed. Rainwater ran down her forearm.
Tom waited.
“She’s gone. She didn’t make it.”
It took Tom time to digest. Then all he could manage was, “No.”
She understood. Vicky was a scream stuck in her throat. There were no words. And yet she had to find some. “It just doesn’t seem possible.”
“Yeah. I was sure she’d—”
“Well, she didn’t.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.”
He listened to her tears for a moment and then said, “I’m buying you a plane ticket. SFO has reopened. You can take the ferry over.”
“I have to find her.”
“But you said…”
“Her…you know, remains.”
“You can go back and do that in a few months. When things settle down.”
“I need to find out what happened. I can’t just leave her…her story…out here alone. I found where Sal lives.”
“Who’s Sal?”
“Vicky’s girlfriend. I told you about her. She’s the caretaker for some university researchers’ hyenas.”
When she’d first told him about Sal and her job, he’d laughed and laughed, and then said, “Only in Berkeley. If it’s even true.”
“Her entire street was demolished.” Lily squeezed her eyes shut but couldn’t block out the picture of Sea Breeze Court, the slick mud and random fragments of people’s lives.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again and then moved back into action mode. “I’ll buy the ticket.”
With her eyes still closed, Lily reached for her husband: his easy smile, the cowlick on the left side of his hairline, his loose gait. He’d been shortstop on the high school baseball team, and she’d loved the way his thighs looked in his uniform, especially when he squatted, dropping his mitt to the dust on the ground between his legs, scooping up a hard-hit ball. That image of him could still hold her, seemed symbolic of the straightforward way he approached life. His calm, low voice could ease any distressed old lady who’d locked her keys in the car. His big square hands could pick any lock. He was so good at problem solving. She’d once jokingly told him that he should run for president, and he’d laughed out loud, liking the compliment, apparently believing that he actually could handle the world’s problems. And just like that, her admiration curdled. What she used to admire as his confidence she grew increasingly to think of as a kind of folk arrogance. He started so many sentences with, “It’s simple. Those guys just need to…”
“I miss you,” she said, and it wasn’t a lie, just a very complicated truth.
“Come home.”
Lily wished she heard desire in those two words. For her. But she didn’t. She heard only his aversion to the gaping unknown.
In the morning, Lily took a cold shower and set out. She needed to face the possibility that Vicky and Sal had somehow patched things up, that they were both on Sea Breeze Court the morning of the earthquake. But until she had definitive evidence of some kind, Lily wasn’t giving up on finding her sister. Someone, somewhere, had to know something. Kalisha said they buried the bodies where they found them. She would look for a fresh grave in Vicky’s backyard. Maybe the psychic was right after all: maybe the “goof” was buried at home. By the time she reached the top of the ridge, the sun burned bright and warm. She turned onto Ridge Road.
A faint knocking sound grew louder the closer she got to Vicky’s house. She soon realized that the sound was coming from inside the garage. Just as she arrived, the drumming stopped and the garage door began to lift open, a foot at a time. Lily backed up several steps before peering into the dark cavern, bracing herself for the creepy guy with the blade nose.
She saw the shiny chrome of a motorcycle leaning on its kickstand just inside the opening. Beyond, amid piles of outdoor equipment and household detritus, what appeared to be an upside-down double kayak lay across two sawhorses. A shadowy figure let go of the manual garage door opener, walked around to the backside of the kayak, and resumed beating the hull with his hands.
Was he living in Vicky’s house? How’d he even get inside?
A voice bellowed out of the garage. “What the hell! No way!”
As he moved to the front of the cavern, and then out into the sunlight, Lily saw what she expected to see: freckled ropiness, a guitar pick Adam’s apple, slit eyes, baby-fine hair. Her body stiffened in defense. She tried to find better words than, Get out.
But it wasn’t him. There were no freckles, no prominent Adam’s apple. This person was shorter, stockier, with clear skin and a thick head of short hair.
Lily’s vision tunneled. Vertigo swept through her body, tingled, and then evaporated her head. She collapsed onto the driveway pavement.
“Whoa! Hey! What are you doing here? Are you okay? Lil? Say something!”
She pressed her palms into the gritty driveway pavement and struggled to stay conscious but barely succeeded. The vertigo dizzied her head and nausea swam out her limbs.
Vicky sat next to her, leaned against her. “Man, am I shocked to see you.”
“You…” Lily whinnied. “You shocked to see me?”
That feeling when you wake up from a nightmare and realize the horror wasn’t real—that feeling, magnified by ten.
“Well, yeah. I mean, how did you even get here? Wait. You didn’t come out here to look for me, did you?” Vicky snorted back a guffaw.
Lily managed to lift her hea
d. Look at her sister. Who was suppressing laughter.
“You look bad,” Vicky said. “Real bad. Let me get you a glass of water or something. Maybe a shot of vodka? Ha ha.”
Lily reached up and touched her sister’s face, half expecting her hand to go right through a ghost. Her voice was still a wheeze. “A man was here yesterday.”
Vicky looked at her with astonishment, as if Lily’s appearance was the bombshell. “Yesterday?”
“At your house.”
“You were here yesterday?”
“He said you were gone.”
“Yeah, I’ve been staying with Sal.”
“What do you mean you’ve been staying with Sal? I went to her house. Or tried to. Her entire street is wiped out.”
“She’s staying out at the hyena compound, in the toolshed.”
“I thought you two split up.”
“How do you know about that?”
“I saw the note on your kitchen table.”
“When were you in my kitchen?” Vicky looked flabbergasted.
“A man was here. He said you were dead.”
“Oh. Paul. He still believes that shit?” A big grin.
“This is so not funny, Vicky.”
Vicky blew a raspberry. “Whoa. Wow. No, I could see how it wouldn’t be funny. To you.” She snorted back another chortle. “No, I’m not laughing. I mean, I am. But you know me. It’s what I do. I mean. Are you okay?”
What Lily wanted was to let the vertigo, nausea, iciness, and bone-weariness just take her. She wanted to lie back on this hard cement and pass out. Take a nap and wake up to sanity. How could she have forgotten how crazed conversations with her sister could be? And this one already promised to be a doozy. She forced herself to push aside the shock.
“Do you know this man?”
“Sure. He’s my neighbor. He’s Gloria’s husband.”
“Who’s Gloria?”
“Paul’s wife. My neighbor.”
“What was he doing in your house?”
“That’s a good question!”
“How did he get in?”
“Oh, he has a key.”
“Why does he have a key?”
“Paul is head of the neighborhood association. You know the type, only place they have any power. Anyway, before the earthquake, he asked me to set up a Wi-Fi network for the street. So I did. That’s how I got to know Gloria. I gave him a key so that if the network went down, and I wasn’t home, he could come recycle the equipment.”
“Why did he tell me you were dead?”
Vicky pointed at the camellia, blooming with deep red flowers, next to the open door of her garage. “Careful. Bees.”
“I can tell when you’re not telling me something.”
“It’s not worth telling. Gloria told him that. To protect me, so she says, though I think she was mainly protecting herself.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Simply put, Paul is pissed off at me.”
“Because you have his equipment?”
Vicky laughed. “No, I don’t have his equipment.” She used air quotes on the last word and ramped up her laughter. Then she faked a fresh realization. “Oh, his electronic equipment! Yeah, sure, I have it, but how can I give it back if I’m dead? Anyway, it’s just one stupid router and one outdated laptop. I don’t think he quite believes Gloria that I’m dead. He’s using the equipment as an excuse to stake out my house. The good news is that I know for a fact he’s making a trip to San Jose and won’t be back until late tomorrow, at the earliest.” Vicky grinned.
“He told me you were dead!”
“Yeah, I agree. That’s intense. Uh, Lil? You really do need to be careful. The bees out here are feral. I’m just saying, because in California they’re out year round, those that are left. We have wasps, too. The whole stinging gamut.” She used her finger to pantomime a stinger and made a buzzing sound.
“Never mind about the bees!” But Lily did reach into her pack and feel around for her epinephrine auto-injector. She closed her fist around the plastic tube. “It’s not just this Paul guy. Why haven’t you called since the earthquake? I’ve been out of my mind with worry.”
“God, I’m really sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I just figured you’d know I was okay. Besides, I lost my phone.”
“You lose your phone about three times a year.”
“So you should have known I was okay, that my phone was just lost. With the earthquake and everything shut down, I couldn’t exactly replace it.” Incredulously, Vicky’s tone slid into defensiveness. As if Lily were the crazy one. “You came all the way out here to find me? Wow.”
“You could have borrowed a phone to call your family.”
“I’m sorry. I just didn’t—I mean, it didn’t occur to me—I’m really sorry.”
“So you and Sal are back together?”
“No. We’ve just been having a little postapocalyptic fling. Kind of like breakup sex, only it’s lasted for a couple weeks. She’s really, really mad at me. Oh, shit. Hold on a minute. I have to finish this up before the glue dries.”
Vicky rushed back into the garage where she bent to stir a wooden paddle in a metal can. She smeared some of the thick, black goo on the tops of two skateboards. Carefully grasping them by the edges, one in each hand, she pressed them against either side of the bow end of the kayak’s hull.
“So anyway, besides playing dead for Paul, I’ve been sort of hiding from my landlord. He was sending me all these threatening messages, so I closed out my email account a couple of weeks ago.”
“I thought you owned your house.”
“I sold it last year. The buyers bought it as investment property and I’m renting from them. It’s a good deal for them because I take care of the place. And yet they’re still evicting me.”
“They’re evicting you?”
“They say I haven’t paid rent in eight months.”
“Have you?”
“I guess not. I was planning on moving out, as requested, but then the earthquake happened. Bonus days with Sal! I knew she’d be out at the hyena compound because she goes in to work at five in the morning. Meaning, she’d have been safely there when the earthquake hit. She was so glad to see me! She couldn’t hide her relief that I hadn’t gotten knocked unconscious, or worse, by a crashing bookshelf or something. In fact, she was so happy to see me that—”
“You don’t have bookshelves.”
“Smart, right? Anyway, she let me stay for a while. She has a generator and is pumping water from a stream. How could she turn me out? Then she did. I can’t stay here. The Floreses gave me a deadline of midnight tomorrow. So I opened a new email account and put everything on Craigslist.”
Lily could barely keep up. “Why’d you sell the house in the first place?”
“I needed the money.” Vicky floated her hands off the two skateboards. “Excellent. We have adherence. Believe me, once dry, nothing can compromise the stick of this glue.” She walked over to the Harley and touched the place where a burst of sunlight glinted off the chrome. “A guy’s coming to see the bike in a minute. For a second, I thought you were him.”
“You love that bike. You and Sal were going to ride across the country.”
“I guess the earthquake put an end to that plan. She’s a beaut, though, isn’t she? Nineteen sixty-six Harley Electra-Glide with a shovelhead engine.”
“The earthquake didn’t put an end to that plan. Whatever you did to Sal put an end to it.”
“She’s crazy.”
“You were just crowing about having bonus days with her.”
“Disaster-induced happiness.”
“You said you loved her.”
“I do. I mean, I did. But I made a mistake.”
“About loving her?”
“No. A be
havioral mistake.”
“Can’t you fix it?”
“I guess you could say I made a series of mistakes. At a certain point the critical mass of mistakes makes them insurmountable.”
Vicky sagged, a quick little emotional collapse, and then she rallied. “Check out my wheeled kayak! I’m making it land-worthy.” She picked up two more skateboards from the floor of the garage, smeared the tops with the glue, and pressed them on either side of the stern hull of the kayak. This was twelve-year-old Vicky, the kid Lily grew up with in the heart of the country. You could never tell if she was a hundred paces ahead of everyone or a hundred paces behind.
One of the honeybees zipped over to Lily and buzzed around her head. Adrenaline propelled her to her feet. Anything with a stinger—yellow jackets, bumblebees, hornets—could kill her. She stepped into the garage and put her hand on the sleek white leather seat of the Harley. “What about your royalties from Ziggle?”
“A thousand new games have superseded that relic. But I’m working on a new one! It’s called Dark Matter, and—”
“Do you have anything, any money, at all?”
“Stone-cold broke.”
Lily knew the Alfa Romero and luxury homes were myths, but she’d believed her sister to be wealthy. “So, what are you going to do?”
“Do?” Her sister spoke as if getting evicted and being stone-cold broke weren’t problems that needed to be addressed.
“You could come back to Nebraska with me.”
Vicky looked at her for a long time, as if for once she were choosing her words carefully. “Wild horses couldn’t drag me back there. You know that. Don’t even try.”
“How pissed off at you is this Paul guy?”
“Stop with the suspicious sister thing, okay? You came out here to rescue me but you’re going to have to let go of that. I don’t need rescuing.”
“Oh, Vicky.” Dumped by the love of her life. Broke. Homeless. Stalked by the head of the neighborhood association. But no problem. She had everything under control.
“Thank you, though,” Vicky said. “Can I hug you?”
The Evolution of Love Page 8