Descending Son

by Scott Shepherd

  Rice’s eye drifted back toward the doorway. “How many years has Lena been with the family?”

  “Ever since I remember. So at least thirty.” But Jess was never one for small talk. “How long has my father been like this?”

  “A few months,” Rice said. “Damnedest thing. Severe anemia, abnormal platelet count. Absolutely no response to drugs. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear someone was poisoning the man right under my nose. It’s been difficult to make an exact diagnosis.”

  “After all this time?”

  “I’ve had patients for over a year and not been able to tell you what’s wrong with them.”

  “I wouldn’t go advertising that.”

  Rice flashed that smile which Jess was certain opened more than its fair share of doors. “I’m sure you’re aware of the trials and tribulations of modern medicine, Jessie. We’ve taken giant steps forward in diagnostic techniques and research to identify obscure diseases and germ cells. Consequently, we’ve developed some remarkable vaccines and medicines to combat these maladies. But the body is an amazing instrument—it constantly tries to improve on itself. It throws up a wall to fight off one particular bacterial strain and does a damn good job of it. But it gets caught looking when the next disease comes along and bores through that wall, whereas the previous one lay down at its feet.”

  “So my father is just a casualty.”

  “Not if we can build that wall strong enough.”

  “Why isn’t he in one of his hospitals? God knows he owns enough of them around here.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t tried to persuade him. Walter is convinced if he checks in, he’ll never check out.”

  “That sounds like my father.”

  “Nothing would please me more than to have him at Meadowland. I could keep an eye on him better.”

  “You work at the hospital?”

  “Actually, I’m Chief of Staff.” Rice immediately caught his expression. “I had my lucky share of breaks. Starting with your mother. She came in for a minor procedure a few years ago and I assisted. Kate was impressed by whatever she thought I did and obviously said good things to Walter.”

  “I did more than that. I raved about you.”

  Both men turned to see that Kate had entered the kitchen.

  “What minor procedure?” asked Jess.

  “Female thing. Run-of-the-mill. And don’t give me that look. None of us had heard from you in two years by that time.”

  Jess didn’t respond. He knew he had no right.

  “The hospital was being mismanaged,” she explained. “Walter was constantly complaining about it. I convinced him to give Edward more responsibility.”

  “I wouldn’t blame him for doubting that decision right about now,” Rice said with what Jess would classify as false humility.

  But Kate refused to hear anything along those lines. “You’re doing everything you can for Walter. We all appreciate it, Edward. So much.”

  Jess was done with the plaudits. “How long does he have, Dr. Rice?”

  Rice hesitated before answering. “I wouldn’t be leaving town so quick.”

  From the resigned look on Kate’s face, Jess surmised that this pronouncement wasn’t newsworthy.

  Rice got to his feet. “I’ll check in before the party.”

  “Thank you, Edward. For everything.”

  Rice gave her a reassuring hug and said goodbye to Jess and that he would show himself out. The moment the doctor left the room, Jess whirled on his mother.

  “Party? What party?”

  “The one Clark James is throwing for your father’s birthday tonight.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t have come if I told you.”

  “Damned straight.”

  Kate took Jess’s hand. “You’re here, Jessie. At least go to your father’s party. You heard the doctor—it’s more than likely his last one.” She squeezed his hand tight. “I really think your father would like to have you there.”

  Normally Jess would have chalked that up as the Bullshit Statement of the Decade. But he couldn’t stop thinking of Walter’s whisper in his ear and the fear in those bloodshot eyes.

  His father had been scared to death.

  So when Kate repeated her plea for him to attend the party, Jess gave the only possible response. And it was an honest one.

  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  6

  The developed community started on the Florida coast and was refined in the Arizona desert. It was in full force by the time it hit the Coachella Valley as real estate barons decided to expand Palm Springs into smaller townships with names like Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells, Palm Desert, and La Quinta. Each had a number of planned developments, sporting cookie-cutter but pay-through-the-nose-for-them houses with adobe roofs and white sandblasted walls surrounding a signature golf course designed by a retired PGA player or A-list links architect. Retirees spent their golden years trolling fairways by day and living in clubhouses at night, mixing it up with timeshare holders who got one week a year under the desert sun, along with Angelinos and frozen Canadians rich enough to afford a second home.

  That was the Palm Springs Jess was happy to leave behind. Still, he had to admit that despite whatever problems his family posed, and there were plenty, he did like the neighborhood he grew up in. It was more than just being affluent—it had a sense of character and integrity. Each house was distinct and blended into the gigantic mountains, surrounding sands, and desert flora as if it had been there since the beginning of time.

  In Palm Springs proper, the town took on a post-Dustbowl feeling. The houses were distinctively smaller, their occupants way down the tax basis chart. The homes and businesses had not changed one iota since the fifties, when they were built.

  Jess navigated the SUV past homes where children ran through sprinklers to keep cool. Other houses had inflatable pools set up in their front yards. More than a few had pickup trucks advertising businesses—this was where the hotel and country club workers returned at night, the heart and soul of the Valley whose denizens tended to the rich man’s needs and the tourist’s every want.

  Eventually, the homes disappeared and the road split into just plain desert. If Jess drove four more miles, he’d pick up Interstate 10, where he would have to decide whether to head back to Los Angeles or turn right and mosey on toward Arizona. He slowed down a mile before the junction and pulled into a dirt driveway. He drove under a neon sign that would have read “The Sands” if it had been night, lit up, and the capital “S” weren’t gone.

  The motel had a couple of dozen rooms and four cars in the parking lot. A placard above the office read, “Free TV, Internet Available.” Jess parked next to a yellow sixties Mustang—someone’s pride and joy as it was the only thing without five coats of dust on it. He got out of the SUV and walked inside the office.

  The only thing missing was Norman Bates. A nudie calendar hung on one wall. Appropriately, it was from 1992. The owner must have had a crush on the half-clad Miss October or was extremely lazy. On another wall, Star Wars posters hung on either side of a Marvel Comics dartboard. Above the desk was an old-fashioned peg bar full of iron keys with wooden room numbers.

  Jess approached a man who didn’t believe in treadmills but had a lot of faith in Corona and Budweiser. He was bent over fiddling with a television. His wide jeans had unfortunately slipped way too far below his waist, which made Jess grin.

  “I thought it looked bad outside.”

  Benji Lutz, all 240 pounds of him, turned and hitched up his pants. He returned the smile. “Jess. You should’ve said you were coming.”

  “Why? You would’ve demoed the place?”

  Benji laughed. “Just because of that, you don’t get the Friends and Family discount.”

  Jess drained his beer and tossed the empty can over his shoulder. It clanked off the rim of a metal trash can and dropped to the ground beside its twin.

  “Now I remember why you didn�
�t make the basketball team,” said Benji. He tried to punctuate his statement with a seated sky-hook and his can landed beside the two dead soldiers.

  “Least I hit one out of two,” Jess countered.

  Benji popped open a third beer and offered it to Jess, seated in the rocker beside him. Jess waved it off.

  “Probably should keep my head clear for my dad’s party.”

  “That sucks.” Benji took a big gulp. “The news about your dad, I mean. Not the party.”

  “No. The party is going to suck too.”

  “Sounds like he’s pretty sick.”

  “Doesn’t look good.” Jess glanced up from the motel porch at the night sky. The Sands might not be an establishment with four stars but there were a million visible ones above. A perk when you’re out in the Middle of Fucking Nowhere.

  “What happened, man?” asked Benji. “You just blew out of town right after that summer. No one heard word one from you.”

  “That was kind of the plan.”

  “You like LA better than the desert?”

  “I don’t like it at all.”

  “So why live there?”

  “You’re going to have to start charging me by the session if you want me to answer that.”

  Benji chugged and chucked the beer. Total air ball. “I stink.”

  “But you were a hell of an offensive tackle.”

  “Certainly took enough hits for you. Enough to deserve a phone call before you split.”

  Jess walked right into that one. “Sorry.”

  Benji began to reach for another beer, but then curiosity got the better of him. “You really run a messenger service?”

  “For the time being. You still subscribing to The Amazing Hulk?”

  “It’s The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man.”

  “That just answered my question,” Jess said with a chuckle.

  “Don’t knock my stories, man. They’re doing awesome shit at Marvel these days.”

  “Maybe you oughta get a job working for them.”

  Benji made a grandiose gesture taking in the entire Sands Motel. “And give up all of this?”

  Both men busted up.

  Benji was the first to recover. “So how long you in town for?”

  “Not sure. I’ll swing by James’s house and take things from there.”

  Benji blanched. “Clark James?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You didn’t say the party was at his house.”

  Jess avoided his old friend’s gaze. “I might have neglected to mention that.”

  “Yeah, you did.” Benji popped the top off another Bud. “That ought to be really interesting.”

  Until Jess dashed up the interstate for La-La-Land, Benji Lutz knew him better than anyone. Certainly than any member of the Stark clan. Not only had he covered his ass on the football field for three years, he’d also blocked a lot of interference for him with both the Stark and James families. Benji was probably the only person besides Lena Flores that he trusted or felt he could ask anything.

  Even the question he’d been dreading.

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Tracy?”

  Jess finally looked back at Benji and nodded.

  “Let me put it this way.”

  He took a big swig of Bud, then waved the can pointedly at Jess.

  “You’re going to be real sorry that you left.”

  7

  Clark James’s house was an eyesore. At least that was Jess’s opinion. It appeared overnight above Palm Springs, paying no heed to neighborhood association or architectural restrictions. As far as Jess was concerned, a Tudor mansion had as much business in the desert as a polar bear. But James’s most famous role was playing a patriarch in a gothic horror film that had made gazillions. He actually bought the New England monstrosity featured in the movie, had it carted across the country, and plopped atop the hill. The print media ate it up and it had been featured in numerous photo spreads over the past decade and a half.

  The actor threw infamous all-night parties that somehow the paparazzi always seemed to know about. Jess suspected it was James himself who clued them in. The actor may have been a relative newcomer to the Coachella Valley (fifteen years were dwarfed by the Starks’ half-century residency) but he made damn sure everyone knew he was around. With Sinatra, the Rat Pack, and even Bob Hope dead and buried, Clark James had ascended to the throne of Palm Springs royalty.

  Walter Stark’s birthday celebration was just one more big bash. A couple of photographers were perched within two feet of the valet parkers. Flashbulbs popped, digital cameras clicked, and hundreds of shots were snapped with the hope that one picture could sell for a few grand. If the shooter was lucky enough to get a wardrobe malfunction or a flight of fisticuffs on film, the price could command five figures from the right tabloid. Jess was tempted to tell the paparazzi to keep their Nikons trained on him—the odds of him getting into a fight were fifty-fifty. He thought better of it when he realized the press didn’t give a shit. They had no idea who Jess was.

  The valet parker opened the driver’s door, took Jess’s car key, and gave the dusty SUV a quick once-over. The valet’s look of disdain spread to Jess’s five-year-old sports jacket and khakis.

  “Put it by the servants’ entrance for all I care,” Jess told him. He made his way inside before the valet tried to park him over there as well.

  The entryway was tall enough to launch the space shuttle. Jess passed on the flute of champagne offered by a tuxedoed waiter and squeezed past a dozen partygoers clamoring for glasses off the tray. He knew most of these dolled-up women and men in slick suits were James’s hangers-on and probably couldn’t identify his father in a lineup. (The truth be told, Jess had hardly recognized the old man himself that afternoon.) Jess would bet that very few of the guests were close friends of his parents.

  Jess moved down a hallway that had gigantic framed one-sheets of Clark James’s films on both walls. It actually made him appreciate the photographs in his parents’ living room. The ambience of the house he grew up in usually felt like an icebox, but at least there was a modicum of class about the place.

  The living room was jam-packed. Most men were wearing dinner jackets. The women were trying to out-dress each other—most of them by seeing who could be the most tastefully underclad.

  “Wow. Mom said you’d be here but I was absolutely sure you wouldn’t show.”

  Jess turned around. A stunning redhead in her early twenties and a designer gown that left little of her flawless body to the imagination had come up behind him.

  “Nice to see you too, Sarah.”

  “You just in town for the party or you sticking around for the reading of the will?”

  “The body’s not cold yet. In fact, I’ve got a news flash for you—it’s still breathing.”

  Sarah took a healthy sip from her champagne flute. “Semantics.”

  “A little heartless?”

  “Coming from my brother who ran out on us seven years ago and dropped off the face of the earth, your opinion means shit.”

  It had only taken two minutes with his sister for Jess to see how long seven years could actually be. When he had left Palm Springs, Sarah had been a sophomore in high school who had kissed maybe two boys and had only started to develop the curves she now flaunted. The only person she talked back to was her mother (like any red-white-and-blue-blooded All-American girl).

  Now, the beauty in front of him exuded sexuality, defiance, and a whole lot of dislike for her wayward brother. Jess couldn’t help but wonder how much of this was due to his absence or Sarah having to live under the Stark roof as the eldest child by default.

  “I guess I missed the my-baby-sister-started-drinking stage.”

  “Only by half a dozen years. I’ve also had sex.” She uttered the last word in a conspiratorial whisper and finished off the champagne with a flourish.

  “Looks like someone needs a refill,” a baritone voice said.

&
nbsp; “Absolutely,” said Sarah, waving the champagne flute.

  The man whose face graced the movie posters in the hallway had joined Sarah and Jess. Clark James was silver-haired with eternally youthful skin at what had to be sixty-plus years old. Even if you’d never seen one of his films, you knew he had to be a movie star—he had that commanding presence of a matinee idol from days gone by. Jess knew he had retired a few years ago after a big film had gone bust, but James was still as much in demand as when he made his debut four decades earlier.

  James flagged down a server and exchanged the empty for a fresh, full glass.

  “It was really kind of you to arrange all this for my father,” Sarah said in a buttery-up tone.

  “I’ve known Walter forever. I’m just sorry he’s been so ill.” James’s voice boomed through the living room; he couldn’t help his theatricality. “But I do think the old man is rallying for the occasion.”

  The actor glanced across the room where Walter and Kate were greeting guests. Jess was surprised to see his father out of the wheelchair. Walter was actually up on his feet and his color was better. He still wasn’t wearing his age well but Jess had to admit that it was a definite improvement over his condition earlier that afternoon. “Seems like it,” Jess agreed.

  Clark James took notice of Jess for the first time.

  “You remember my brother, Jess?” asked Sarah.

  James overacted, which many critics would tell you was his natural tendency. “Ah, the prodigal son returns.”

  Sarah made a big production out of a sudden realization. “Silly me. Of course you two know each other. Your daughter and Jess…”

  Jess cut off his sister. “I’m sure Mr. James isn’t interested in reminiscing. Besides, it’s Dad’s night.” He extended a hand toward James. “Thank you for hosting this, sir.”

  “My pleasure. You’re just in time. I was about to toast your father.” James gave Jess a healthy pat on the back and then crossed the room to join the Parents Stark.

  Jess glared at his sister. “You’ve become quite the bitch.”