by Brian Finney
Felicia worshipped Susan. Susan genuinely seemed to think of Felicia as a friend. It was always left for Todd to issue any orders on the rare occasions they were needed. Felicia is one of those exceptional workers who anticipate their employers’ needs most of the time. Susan called Felicia Lici and insisted that Felicia call her Susan, not Miss Kirby.
I catch myself thinking about Susan in the past tense and tell myself to stop being morbid.
I remember the morning when Todd joined Felicia and me in the kitchen and told us that he and Susan had had a “falling out.” “I’m sorry to tell you that Susan is no longer living here.”
Felicia looked shocked. “But why, Señor Granger?”
“She no longer wants to live here.”
This was hardly an explanation, but neither Felicia nor I was in any position to press for details.
“I will miss her.”
“I will, too,” Todd said with what seemed like genuine sadness.
Felicia was devastated by Susan’s departure. For the rest of that day she kept bursting into tears. “Why not Señor Granger try to talk with Susan? He’s a good man. He will miss her muchisimo.” But it’s clear that it’s Felicia who misses Susan, not Todd, who rarely mentions her name. Of course, that could be a way of hiding his hurt from us. Or from himself.
Susan would never let Felicia do anything personal for her, like make her a cup of coffee or take her clothes to the cleaner. “You’re employed by Todd,” Susan would tell Felicia, “not me.” Felicia cooked their dinners most weeknights, and Todd chose the menu. Susan often joined Felicia to do the Thursday shopping at the Costa Mesa farmers market. Felicia told me that Susan knew many of the sellers by name (“Hi, Dave,” she’d call out. “I want some of your ripest dragon fruit.” “For you, darling, nothing but the best.”) She and Felicia would have lunch under the umbrella-covered tables there, usually, according to Felicia, favoring the sushi food truck (Susan had the appetite of a bird). And she’d carry half the purchases herself back to the car. She sure humanized the household.
As I drive south I’m wondering what made her leave Todd? What happened between them that made her return to the job market when she’d seemed so happy living a life of leisure and fulfillment? Todd made it sound like the breakup was Susan’s choice. But I’ve learned never to trust either member of a couple to truthfully explain their breakup. The past always gets reshaped to suit the present.
Do I see Susan as my model self? A woman who seemed to derive complete satisfaction from living on her own terms without getting caught up in the whirl of money and possessions? Do I see her as my better self? Am I looking as much for my missing self as I am for her? If she is as admirable as I believe, was her breakup with Todd a sign that the man she obviously cared for had crossed some kind of line of hers? Because Susan was no compromiser. She knew what she wanted from life and would not hesitate to split from someone who didn’t live up to her expectations. What might Todd have done to drive her away?
✽✽✽
The car radio is playing Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie.” I remember the video of the fight the two get into (he’s singing, “You push, pull each other’s hair, scratch, claw . . .”). He’s abusive. He’s also a very emotional being, which is why he hits her and then swears he’ll never do it again (“though I know it’s lies”). How unlike Gary and me. I can’t imagine him ever losing his cool. King of bland. But what about my part in it? That’s probably why we’ve been together as long as we have.
Come to think of it, my parents had a pretty bland relationship. There were none of the fireworks that sometimes erupted in the homes of my high school friends. If my parents disagreed about something Dad would call time out, they’d sit down at the kitchen table, and each would give the other five uninterrupted minutes in which to argue his or her side. I saw them almost contorting themselves to reach a compromise. God forbid that they should end up with opposing opinions. That would have been too threatening for them. I try to imagine what would have happened if one of them had lost it and gone off the deep end. It might have been a lot healthier. But they seemed to think that a truly angry outburst would set them on the primrose path to divorce.Maybe Tricia got her aggression in opposition to them. Somehow she managed to cultivate the art of listening to her own feelings and acting on them. Selfish? Maybe. But decisive. A woman who seems to have no doubts. I, on the other hand, took from my parents a compulsion to doubt authorities and authoritarian stances of all kinds.
Still, at the time I admired my parents’ determination to work things out in a civilized way. I admired their keen social conscience, their insistence on thinking beyond their own needs and desires. But now I see them as stranded by the flash flood of life, bewildered by the fast-moving waters of my digital generation sweeping past them. They’ve never criticized Tricia in front of me, but I wonder what they really think about some of her values. Most likely they find some way of rationalizing away whatever she throws at them.
Mom was always very anti-war. She condemned even America’s repulse of Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in the Gulf War. She blamed the Pentagon’s inflated budget for America’s failure to take care of its poor and disadvantaged. Her bumper sticker read PEACE POWER—
a perfect image of her confusion, seeing that peace involves renouncing power. Mom and Dad met on a peace march. Together they got petitions signed, organized bake sales, and the like. They believed that they could curb the power of the corporations and the Pentagon.
I inherited their liberal outlook, but not their belief in acts of resistance. Recently Dad said to me, “Look at how Obama got himself elected with millions of small contributions. We can change everything if enough Americans believe we can.” But look at what happened after 2008. Party warfare. Washington gridlock. Accusations of socialism (a current term of abuse), of appointing death panels for the elderly—the list goes on. And now everyone is forecasting a landslide for the Republicans this coming Tuesday. Dad: “Pollsters are always wrong. You wait and see. I put my bet on Americans’ common sense.” I’m waiting. But I don’t share his optimism, even while I wish I had his sense of commitment.
Work calls.
✽✽✽
I arrive at the Granger mansion, all 8,000 square feet of it, perched at the end of Bay Island’s natural promontory, surrounded on three sides by the sea. At night the glimmering lights from the houses on the mainland add to the illusion that the mansion is floating on the water.
The estate includes Todd’s own private beach and dock, a swimming pool surrounded by cushy lounge chairs, and endless rolling lawns with deck chairs and barbecue pits. When he invited me to his Halloween party I got to see the place at night, the patios lined with long firepits that lit up the seawater lapping at his white sandy beach.
It takes me about five hours to take care of Todd’s indoor plants. Most of the containers they’re in are precious and fragile. In the bedroom, for example, there are two large Italian amphoras colored with a turquoise-and-terracotta drip glaze, that contain purple phalaenopsis orchids. In the entrance hall a porcelain Chinese fishbowl on a rosewood stand holds a scented Arabian jasmine with its clusters of white double flowers that turn green at the center. Although Todd says it’s not necessary, I’m nervous enough about water spills to insist on moving the containers to a sink or a tarp when I water the plants or change them. So everything takes longer than it should. Todd pays me for twice-weekly visits. Monday I take care of the plants on the upper two floors. Fridays are for the ground floor.
When Todd or his brother Dan is at home, I feel compelled to spend (unpaid) time chatting with them. I like Todd, though I don’t worship him the way Felicia does—and no wonder, he’s been very good to her. He gives her generous year-end bonuses—she confided to me that he gave her $2,000 last year, significantly more than ever before. He even bought her a secondhand car several years ago, and he helped get her son into Balboa Target School. Felicia is fiercely independent, so she never mentions
her financial problems in front of Todd. But he knows, and he never fails to help her out.
Once all the plants on the rest of the ground floor are trimmed and watered, I knock on Todd’s office door. He calls to me to come in. I find him sitting at his desk, and I think, as I often do when I see him, what a handsome man he is, especially for a guy in his early fifties. He could be a model or an actor. He wears his full, slightly graying hair swept back, accentuating his piercing gray eyes, tanned face, and perfectly shaped white teeth. He mostly wears Dolce & Gabbana suits over a white shirt with contrasting patterned cuffs and collar. His upright posture and relaxed smile exude confidence and success.
“Hi, Todd,” I greet him. I gesture at a huge plant in the corner. “I’m going to swap that red ginger for something different I brought you today.”
“Susan gave me that for my birthday last year. You’re not thinking of dumping it, are you?”
I’m surprised at his bringing up her name, something he has avoided for the past three months.
“I know. I helped her choose it for you,” I reply. “I’ll keep it for you until next year when it’s ready to bloom again.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
I screw up my courage to ask him the next question, the one I promised Felicia I’d ask.
“Felicia told me that she hasn’t heard from Susan since she left. She and Felicia normally talked to one another weekends. Have you by any chance heard from her?”
Todd looks uncomfortable. I feel as if I’m treading all over his feelings. This detective work doesn’t come easily.
“Not a word.” Now he won’t look me in the eye. I feel bad. But the investigative me has a nagging doubt—is he telling the truth? A professional detective would push this further. But I care too much about Todd’s feelings to do so. Stuck in the middle again.
Todd’s brother Dan walks in. I don’t like him. He’s smarmy in his regulation dark blue suits and red tie. Actually I find him downright creepy, and, when we’re alone, he makes verbal passes at me that he disguises with stupid jokes. “Would you step away from the freezer? You’re melting the ice cubes.”
Dan is married and cares too much about his political career to risk an extramarital scandal, which makes his verbal come-ons all the creepier. I also hate his politics. He’s a Republican state senator, running for governor. Like most politicians, he stands for whatever he thinks will make voters like him. The main plank of his platform is to get tough on illegal immigrants. As Felicia tells me, this puts every immigrant, legal and illegal, into the crosshairs, because it subjects the entire Mexican American community to more frequent searches and arrests for no good reason.
This is more than politics for Felicia. Her undocumented cousin, Miguel, works at Cal Fowl, an Azusa poultry processing plant. When Felicia told me how they kill the chickens I thought, that’s a job that only an illegal immigrant would be willing to do. He would have to enter a half-life of evasion and fear should Dan get elected.
“Hi, Todd,” Dan says, and to me: “How is our garden rose today?” I want to punch him. He’s appropriating a term of endearment that only Todd uses for me.
“Enjoying my day in the sun,” I reply. I move to the ginger, spread a tarp on the floor for it, and start to ease it out of its container.
Dan turns to Todd. “I need to talk to you about the campaign. Jill tells me we need to start paying some of those overdue bills.”
“I told you not to worry about it,” Todd says. “I’ll have Bob write a check.”
“What would we do without the Supreme Court,” Dan quips.
“Or the Founding Fathers,” Todd rejoins grinning.
I have a vague idea of what they’re talking about. It has to do with a Supreme Court decision made last January that allows corporations to contribute huge sums to political campaigns in the name of free speech. To me the idea that corporations have voices, as if they’re actual humans, seems totally weird. But what do I know? My main source of news is NPR when I’m in the car. Admittedly that seems like half my life, but still, my information comes in arbitrary snatches of stories that I catch partway through as I turn on the car and are cut short when I get wherever I’m going.
Todd turns to me. “I’d really like to have a new purple cattleya orchid for my desk. You’re going to scold me for throwing my money away, aren’t you?”
“I only do that when you want to replace perfectly good dormant plants with new ones. Sure, I’ll get you a cattleya.”
Todd explains to Dan: “Jenny takes my plants home and nurses them as if they were my kids.”
“Maybe she’ll give you that treatment someday,” Dan responds.
Todd ignores his brother’s crude insinuation.
Having finished replacing the plant, I excuse myself and leave them to their business and make for the kitchen to pass on to Felicia the outcome of my questions to Todd.
✽✽✽
On my way to my car I pause in the driveway to check my social streams. Social media makes me especially schizophrenic. It’s full of posturing, narcissism, and insecurity. At the same time, it’s my generation’s medium. I often ridicule what I read there. But that doesn’t stop me from using it. My problem is not so much with the medium itself, as with the temptation it offers, its invitation to its users to expose themselves to the world, to become dependent on the “likes” of others. That leaves me torn between ridicule and pity. With social media, as with too many things, I seem unable to make up my mind exactly how I feel about it.
Here’s Amy, my college roommate, now dating a software wiz, on Twitter: “omg. im done with texting today” (who cares? I bet she’s not done). My fourteen-year-old cousin June tweets: “I don’t want guys to put me on a petal stool.” (I guess that’s how we all add to our vocabulary by repeating phrases we’ve overheard.) I switch to Instagram. Scrolling down I come across a selfie taken by Amy. A headshot. It’s clear to anyone who knows her that she has manipulated (or more likely had manipulated for her) her image: the mole on her chin has been removed, her eyelashes darkened, the color of her pupils altered from gray to blue, her cheekbones highlighted, and her teeth whitened as if she’s starring in a toothpaste commercial. She’s added a hashtag: “#hotnightwithmyBESTguy.” I don’t get it. Who’s she trying to kid? I turn off my iPhone and get in my car. Time to grab a salad at Taco Bell and then head north.
✽✽✽
On Friday afternoons the 405 going north, like every other frigging freeway in the area, slows to a maddening series of stops and starts. Most of the male drivers around me look too tired to inspire my sexual fantasies. Or am I the one who’s too tired? On the car radio KCSN is in the middle of “No Line on the Horizon” by U2. That wakes me up instantly. (“I know a girl, a hole in her heart . . .” That’s me). I’m headed for the Century City headquarters of Total Surveillance, LA’s largest (and most expensive) private investigative agency. There I will spend four tedious and instantly forgettable hours in a cubicle fast-forwarding through surveillance tapes looking for evidence that only occasionally shows up. For $12 an hour! What is it with me? $48 minus deductions for giving up my evening. Why am I still just getting by doing such menial work? What is wrong with earning good money? Why do I subconsciously distrust the whole world of money? Earning the derisory amount of it I do only facilitates the accumulation of wealth by the one or five percent.
After Total Surveillance comes another stimulating late evening with Gary of no fixed address, who bums off his friends, including me. Gary spends all his time playing military video games. Nothing, including me, seems to turn him on more than a new video game. One of the few ways of distracting him is unfastening his pants. What’s wrong with him? He should be wanting to unfasten mine. No, wait. What’s the matter with me? I should be dropping him, not his pants. Instead I keep on making up to this couch potato as if he were God, or next best, George Clooney.
As if by Pavlovian instinct, I turn on KCRW at the top of the hour, just in time for th
e news. At a rally in Burbank, GOP gubernatorial nominee Dan Granger predicted victory: “This is a very important election. It is the battle for the soul of California.” I ask myself, what the hell does Dan mean by the soul of California? What does he know about souls, seeing that he appears to lack one of his own? He talks about erecting an economic barrier to keep employers from hiring illegal aliens, as if Mexicans were invaders from outer space.
The tall tower of Total Surveillance fills my windshield. Its blank reflective facade predicts the blank experience of the hours, weeks, years I’ll be spending inside it. I pull into the underground parking lot with its low-level lighting, unnerving absence of humans, and hot stale air. I make for the stairway to give myself what exercise I can.
I settle into one of eight identical cubicles in the near-empty office, position my iPod headphones over my ears, and select Taylor Swift’s Speak Now. Then I get to work reviewing security tapes. My first video in the pile left for me is marked RAUL PEREZ. It consists of two hours taping him each of the last five nights. An attached note informs me that Perez works in a warehouse downtown. He claims that his left leg was severely injured when a load on a forklift tipped over and fell on him. He walks with a severe limp, for which he’s collecting workmen’s comp. As it happens, a supervisor reported seeing Perez walking in the parking lot without a limp. The warehouse owner hired Total Surveillance to prove that Perez wasn’t as badly injured as he claimed.
The clock on the tape shows it’s 10:07 on the first night. I press PLAY. The gate of Perez’s apartment building opens, and the suspect emerges, walking his German shepherd on a leash. Sure enough, he is hardly limping. He releases the leash, takes a tennis ball out of his pocket, and throws it. The dog chases after it, and Perez breaks into a jog with barely a sign of a limp. I’m annotating the tape to mark the nine-minute segment in which Perez appears when I feel a presence behind me. I pivot my head and see the broad figure of Grant Poole, the CEO of Total Surveillance. Despite the disparity between our positions, Grant and I have always had a strange rapport. I pull off my headphones and swing round to face him.