by Jill Barnett
On the top floor, he unlocked the loft doors with the anticipation of a man obsessed. Too many emotionless years had passed. Months sped by without him ever coming to the loft. He wasn’t even sure when he’d last been there. But the painting was delivered yesterday.
At first, all he saw inside were shadows of huge canvases, until the flick of a switch flooded the rooms with too-bright fluorescent light. Painting after vibrantly colorful painting lined the walls. Too often in the past, he had walked in and expected to see Rachel standing there, commanding attention, wrapped by her work and a crowd. The scent of Arpege was sometimes all too real to him. Perhaps that was why he’d stayed away, just to prove he could. He owned all of her paintings but two. In life, he could never own a single cell of her.
Rachel hadn’t liked him on sight, which made her more evocative. A woman who was all light and flame was wasted on his son, a dreamer and a failure. The fire in her was so strong it should have burned her right up. Instead, she burned the men who helplessly loved her, who were bewitched like moths to the flaming sparks of passion all around her.
He was one of them. Rachel Espinosa entered his flesh and blinded him with an intensity that damaged the soul, even though his had been damned long before he ever met her. A black obsession overtook him and nothing mattered, not even that she was his son’s wife.
Unpredictable, wild, Rachel was that and more, and some part of him needed to see if he could control her. She struck him breathless, with an alchemy of passion and lust and addiction. Rachel was the one woman he had ever loved. Her elusiveness and mystery fueled the challenge he used to select the women in his life.
He wanted someone who didn’t give him a second look. With every elusive woman he conquered, Victor gained what he couldn’t in his childhood. He won. He couldn’t stay away from Rachel then any more than he could stop his obsession with her paintings. His obsession grew into a living, breathing thing. Throughout the years he stayed away from her for long periods of time, not because the flame burned out but because she scared him, and he needed some control.
She never needed to tell anyone her secrets, least of all him. But Rachel had reasons for everything, dark soul that she was, a powerfully mystic creature who rose from the darkest depths of existence, and no one could read her miasmic thoughts.
Life changed when the truth came out: she and Rudy were dead; the boys came to him. He saw something of himself in Jud, but Cale was all Rudy.
The temperature in the loft was constant, the air perfect for storing Rachel’s work. Victor studied the newest painting. It leaned against a far wall until it could be hung. He moved forward and back, looked at it from all angles, but saw no answers there. Rachel was as unreadable in death as she had been in life.
His thoughts spun back in time, to her face and her voice, to her standing there with an odd, Cimmerian expression, and still, to this day, he would have liked to have heard why Rachel waited so long to tell him that one of the boys was his son.
15
Loyola University Graduation
It was the third day of a hot spell—something that rattled the natives—so they flocked en masse to the sempiternal beaches of the Pacific, or to the Angeles Forest, where mountain lakes ran cool and clear. On that unquenchable weekend in late May, the families of graduates—those kids schooled as Kennedy’s new generation of Americans and now Nixon’s lottery draftees—sat on hard folding chairs inside the confines of rumbling college campuses and sweltered.
Jud was running late when he pulled the MG into the crowded Loyola University parking lot, so he parked on the grass and ran, shrugging into his suit jacket. Over the speaker system came the names of the graduates. Near the chapel stood the stage and troops of chairs, the families seated behind rows of black-capped graduates.
“Cutting it close,” Victor said when Jud found him.
“Traffic,” Jud lied.
A sudden swell of laughter rolled through the crowd, reaction to a streaker running between the students and the podium, wearing only a cap and all his naked, youthful glory, his hair and face sprayed the school colors. Every grad came to his feet, whistled, and cheered, and the streaker stopped, made an exaggerated bow, and fists raised in the air like a champion boxer, he disappeared between buildings, just ahead of the security guards.
“Tell me that’s not Cale,” Victor said.
“Can’t be.” Jud laughed. “There’s no girl running ahead of him.”
Victor eased back in his seat. “No need to move, my dear. Jud will take the seat next to you. This is a friend of Cale’s.”
Looking as fresh-faced, striking, and delectable as she’d been on the boat, Jailbait sat next to Victor. First she frowned—she’d obviously heard the exchange about Cale—then appeared as confused and surprised as he was. The clean, fresh smell of her—flowers, candy, and innocence—hung in the torpid air. He sat down hard, but spoke casually. “Laurel, right?”
She looked as if to speak would be a complete disaster, but any number of emotions came over her expression in waves, and her face was reddening. The image of her flaming face at the snack bar came back to him. Her hurt expression when he walked away from her. The sound of crying as she ran down Crescent Street.
“You’re Jud?” She found her voice.
“I’m Jud.” He started to take her hand but stopped. He couldn’t touch her. Victor was watching them. His brother was an idiot. The last thing Victor needed to see was Cale with a girl. And Cale’s girl was Jailbait? Hell, the whole day was screwed.
“You look so familiar.” Her voice was light; she wore a pasted-on half smile, her eyes dark with meaning beneath a small crease between her brows.
“Cale and I look a lot alike.” Jud leaned forward. “All the Banning men look alike.” He tapped the program against his leg. “So. You’re Laurel. Cale talks about you all the time.”
“Does he?” Victor and Jailbait said in unison. She laughed, but Victor didn’t. Damn his brother . . . damn, damn, damn. It shouldn’t matter to him who Cale was falling for. But he cursed his brother for exposing this of all girls to Victor.
Laurel. The name fit her. Long ago, they gave wreaths of laurel branches to poets, heroes, and the victors of athletic contests, as symbols of glory and the crowning prize for the winners.
“You know, I can’t help feeling as if I’ve seen you before,” she said casually.
“I don’t think so. You’re probably thinking of Cale.”
She was quiet for a few long seconds, then said, “Wait . . . I know. You look like a fighter I saw once.”
Jud laughed out loud, and remembered why he’d first liked her. “I’ve walked into a few fights.”
Feedback spiked out from the speakers. At the podium, they were trying to get some kind of order back in the ceremony, and the chancellor began calling names. When his brother hit the stage, Jud cheered, then said, “Cale said there’s a three-hundred-dollar pot going around for the first person who mooned.”
“Thank God your brother didn’t.” Victor was serious. Laurel looked stunned. “Cale would never do that.” Jailbait knew his brother better than his own grandfather, and Jud wondered just how well Cale knew her. It bothered him, this girl and his brother, and for lost minutes his mind went somewhere else.
To overloud applause, Will Dorsey bounced up on stage as if it were a basketball court, inches of his bare legs showing below the gown. He’d do it, Jud thought. He’d moon. He’d flash.
Behind them, Mrs. Dorsey said, “Oh no . . . someone stop him.”
Will took his diploma, walked down the steps, unzipped his gown, and jerked it open with a broad grin. A loud cheer went up. Dorsey stood on the bottom step, wearing basketball trunks and his uniform tank; a placard with big letters spelling DIVISION CHAMPIONS hung from around his neck.
Time moved glacially as the sun bore down onto Jud’s head. His sweat was like clothing, covering most of his skin, while thoughts of the girl next to him became a treacherous road his mind
had been down before. Victor was talking with her, and it was like watching the spider with the fly, she innocently answering his grandfather’s questions about Cale and not knowing that every word was a nail in her coffin.
The graduation finally ended with an abrupt swarm of caps sailing in the stagnant air and enough noise to make the ground shake. Cale came loping up. Victor shook his hand, one palm on his shoulder. “You made it.” At least Victor didn’t sound overly surprised.
“I made it,” Cale said flatly and turned away. “Jud!” He grabbed him in a bear hug and they beat each other on the back.
“Congratulations.” Jud ruffled his hair and Cale swiped at him. “I’m glad it was Dorsey who pulled that prank and not you.”
“Yeah, well, I figured you couldn’t take it if I did.”
“Good thinking,” Victor said. “Those classmates of yours are your future. Business connections that could be for life. Years from now you’ll be remembered as someone they respected, not the class clown.” He was perfectly serious.
Jud exchanged a look with Cale, while Laurel still stood to the side, and Jud thought they must be an odd sight, a family run by a man who had so much and gave so little of himself, and who wasn’t exactly the life of the party. Together, none of them were. Too much tension. Too much unsaid. Too much that wanted to be said but never was.
“So what do you think of my girl?” Cale wrapped his arm around Laurel.
Victor merely looked at them. The lapse of silence was not for the faint of heart, and Jud thought Laurel was holding up well.
“Your grandfather and I have been having a nice chat.” She smiled up at Cale, their arms linked around their waists, and Jud had to glance away. He looked at everything but what he wanted to look at.
“Yes. We have been talking,” Victor said in a tone Jud recognized. But Cale was so high on the day and the girl, he didn’t have a clue anything was going on. The dark undercurrent of Victor was there, as dangerous to Cale and this girl as black ice, but then Jud had always been able to see their grandfather clearer than his brother.
“Everyone’s heading over to the reception at the Bird’s Nest.” Cale checked his watch. “We should go. After that, we have a round of parties.”
“When do you have to be out of the dorm?” Victor asked as they walked.
“Tomorrow.” Cale and Jailbait held hands, his brother looking down at her often enough to make watching uncomfortable. His brother was in love, and this time Jud’s urge was to protect the girl.
Inside the reception, Jud stood in line at the wine table but really wanted something harder to drink. Victor was talking to the chancellor. Cale and Laurel still stood by the door inside a knot of students, most of them lanky members of the basketball team and their dates. A few minutes later Jud settled in behind them. “Laurel?” He held out a plastic glass. “I thought you might like a white wine.”
Cale saw him first. “Thanks, Jud.” He leaned over her and said, “See? I told you he was okay. Take it. Go on.”
She hesitated, then took the glass without looking at him.
Cale laughed, misunderstanding, and squeezed her shoulder. “Laurel, Laurel,” he said. “No one here cares how old you are.”
The look she exchanged with Jud said it all. And his brother stood there completely in the dark. For a minute, part of Jud was unbelievably angry, yet he knew he had no right to be. That she was with his brother was some kind of stupid fluke. She was just a girl in a world of millions of girls. She was jailbait.
For some perverse reason, he couldn’t walk away and stood there longer than he had any right to, talking with Cale about anything he could come up with, watching her because something he couldn’t name made him stay. And when she and Cale finally left to celebrate, he followed them to the door, the jolly big brother, and stood there until there was nothing to watch but the empty horizon.
Jud lay in bed that night, the heat and still air creating the kind of dead silence that made sleep impossible. The sky outside his window was moonless and black, the room dark, but Jud knew he wasn’t as much in the dark as was his brother. Wisely, Laurel had said nothing, but had looked like a deer caught in headlights whenever he was nearby. Her face and anything else about her should have been none of his concern. Victor, however, was everyone’s concern, or should have been. Cale was a fool to believe it would be different this time. Someone had to save her.
“Not me,” Jud vowed. “Not me.” She was Cale’s girl and his brother’s newest complication.
Cale was wildly in love, blinded with it. Laurel came into his life at a time when his future had been whittled down letter by rejection letter. When he’d finally summoned the courage to tell her about the rejections, she hadn’t thought less of him. She just believed in him. He couldn’t believe, so he clung to the girl who could. To be near her and not touch her was agony. An uncontrollable compulsion made him have to watch her, and he always wanted her. It was constant and much more than passion, an innate driving need, as if she exuded something chemically that was impossible for him to resist. The imprint of her body against his stayed with him. At night, he closed his eyes and saw her image as clearly as if in photogravure. Nothing, it seemed, could dull the intensity of Laurel, who had seeped deeply into his tissue until he was incurable.
Together they left the last graduation party on foot, stumbling from tequila shooters, beer chasers, and too much celebration. It was 4 A.M. when they wobbled arm in arm across the grass toward the dorm.
“You drank almost as much as I did tonight,” he said.
“Did I?”
“You’re supposed to hold me up.”
“I am,” she said, and he caught her before she fell, both of them laughing like fools. He held her to him and should have recognized the sudden ticking sound, but in an alcohol fog, he merely stood there, looking around.
The sprinklers came at them from six sides. Laurel screamed and tried to drag him away. Hell, it was probably still close to eighty outside, so he pulled her down to the wet grass and they rolled, she screaming, then laughing, each trying to soak the other, kissing sloppily as the sprinklers rained heavily over them and their laughter died.
Wet, muddy, and green, Cale lay on his back, mouth wide open.
Laurel sat up on one elbow “What are you doing?”
He waited for the sprinklers to pass, then sent a thin stream of water straight up into the air a good two feet. “Spitting water.”
“I can do better than that.”
He laughed. “Yeah? You’re on. Strip spitting.”
Laughing, she fell back, took in a mouthful of water, and beat him by a good five inches. “I grew up in Seattle. Take your pants off.”
When they were down to their underwear she stood, grabbed her clothes, and ran.
“Wait! You lost!” He went after her, letting her beat him up the stairs of his building.
Inside his apartment they were alone, standing in the dark, the moving boxes stacked like towers around the place. Once they started touching, kissing, he couldn’t stop. He never could. Her taste, her skin, her breath all drove him to the edge. She was afraid of going all the way, afraid to let him inside. Even in bed she would stop him. She always stopped. Always. But tonight she didn’t.
With school over, Cale could no longer hide in his dorm. Back at Newport, it felt strange to see his grandfather for two days in a row. Avoiding him now wasn’t going to be easy. Cale could sleep in and miss breakfast, but not dinner. Tonight, Maria had made tamales and mole, because they were his favorites. With his grandfather’s indigestion, the smell was probably enough to put him in a shitty mood the moment he walked in the door.
The old man wasn’t scowling when he walked down the hallway toward Cale, sitting in the living room drinking an icy beer. His brother was out, so it was just the two of them home that night. Cale was apprehensive, ready for their usual conflict. But he watched his grandfather, maybe with clearer vision because the emotional scale between them was lev
el. They hadn’t had a fight yet.
Victor’s hair had grown whiter since Christmas, his face more tanned. The lines of that face were familiar; he saw them every time he looked at his brother or in the mirror. Clearly, he was looking at himself forty years away. It struck him then that his grandfather didn’t move like a man his age. His stride was firm, his shoulders straight, and his step determined. Victor Banning moved like a man who had somewhere important to go.
“Cale,” his grandfather said curtly. Like a summons. Or a reprimand.
“Victor.”
“Glad to see you remembered where your home is.”
“It’s good to see you, too.” Cale swore he would not get into an argument on the first night home.
His grandfather sat on the sofa and crossed his long legs. It was seven at night and the old man had been working all day, yet he didn’t look like it. His hair was in place. He was wearing a silver gray custom suit, paired with a white shirt as crisp as if it had just come out of the laundry box. His cuff links were lapis and he wore a blue silk tie. Victor handed him an envelope.
The return address was printed in the left-hand corner in raised letters: Keck School of Medicine of USC.
God. . . . They had screwed up and sent the rejection letter here. Cale unfolded the letter, hating the fact that Victor had gotten it before he did, and hating more that he knew what it said. His stomach was somewhere near his throat. This was Cale’s deepest shame, exposed to the man who would never let him forget it. His dream would die here and now, and his uncertain future would be sealed.
War raged in Vietnam, stiff-shouldered generals and military advisers were on the nightly news, talking about body counts. Youth rioted and marched, fled the country, and raged at the unfairness. You couldn’t legally drink a beer, but you could die for your country. Worse yet, you couldn’t vote against the man who sent you to die. In the freest country in the world, no freedom existed for its young men.