by Daniel Riley
Billy picks her up at noon on Sunday, just as the fog’s burning off. He’s still without his license, but he’s borrowed his mom’s Bug. It has a hundred thousand miles on it and requires a push start. Suzy in the driver’s seat, Billy shoving at the passenger door. A little nudge until they hit the slope and she kicks it into second gear. They brake at the stop sign and the engine holds, then they turn onto PCH and off toward the center of town, off without trouble. Small satisfactions, each required, before she asks what she’s needed to ask since before she stepped into the car: “So, what did he say?”
“He said it seemed like something he could do.”
“Is that exactly what he said?”
“He said, after not being open to it at all, ‘That seems like something I could do.’”
“Those are carefully chosen words. ‘Seems.’ ‘Could.’”
“Look, there’s nothing for us to do but go.”
“Do I even have us pointed in the right direction?”
“Yeah, just stick on this. We’re headed south.”
“Am I getting on the 405?”
“Just listen to me: stay on PCH until I say to turn.”
“’Cause this would not handle the freeway.”
“It’s been driving freeways for twelve years. It’s fine.”
“You can hear the grit in the oil. The engine’s gonna fall out of the fucking bottom of this thing if I push it above forty.”
“Listen, Suzy, just shut the fuck up about the car, please. I’m putting my neck out here. I’m trying to do what you want. This is a bad situation and I got us a car.”
“Just tell me where we’re going. I can’t stand driving like I’m blindfolded in the trunk.”
“We’re going up on the hill. We’re going up to the Peninsula.”
They stick on PCH, just as Billy said they would, down through the beach cities, and when the highway narrows, they turn onto the twelve-mile rim that circumnavigates the Peninsula. They take a long, heavy right through a bamboo forest that leans Billy across the gearshift and into her. They move past the Spanish-tiled shopping center and through the uniform colors of the township’s homes—white stucco, green trim, orange roofs. They push through to the edge—two-hundred-foot cliffs, gilded in high light, wiry brush tickling the sculpted sheer walls of cliff face like hair on an athlete’s abdomen. A pair of bobbing wet suits and boards trickle down the cliff at a low angle, the gradual descent of the surf trail like a long escalator.
The two-lane road follows the notches of the cliff line, winding out with the points and in with the bow of each cove, back out and in, dangling at relative intervals, sagging in low curves. The road is old in the straightaways and more recently paved at the curves. Previous iterations of the road can be seen discarded farther down the slope, having broken off and ridden mudslides toward the water. Elbows of older road that give the effect of cartoon motion lines. They’re more than halfway around the Peninsula when Billy tells her to turn up, to climb. They follow a series of switchbacks that draws them higher, from the cliffs up to the summit. It all feels vaguely familiar to Suzy, as though she’s done it before. As they rise, the world itself seems to rise with them. The island offshore, typically shrouded in haze, shows itself and climbs the wall of water.
“You’ll tell me when to turn?” Suzy says.
“The road ends at his house.”
“This isn’t what I expected.”
“I would’ve guessed you wouldn’t have guessed.”
“I was thinking maybe Gardena. Chino. Long Beach,” she says.
“Racist.”
She starts to grin but stuffs it back in her face.
“We’re basically there,” Billy says, and then they are. She registers the familiar property fence, and the months collapse like a badly baked cake. She’s right back where she was on the Fourth.
“Hamlet. Hamlet, Mr. Honeywell,” she says.
“Wow, good memory. He would not be stoked to know you had his name on the tip of your tongue all along.”
“This is the guy.”
“Is that clock right?” he says, meaning the hands on the dashboard. “What’s your watch say?”
“Twelve twenty-five.”
“So this thing’s fast. We’re early.” He sits silently. He bites his nails.
“You wanna just wait?” Suzy says.
“We agreed to twelve thirty. He keeps a tight schedule.”
Suzy lets the Bug idle. They can’t afford to shut it off while they wait at the gate, or else it won’t start back up. She listens to the texture of the oil, and she counts a minute measured in the clicks of Billy biting his fingernails.
Then an intercom in the bushes comes to life, a swarm of static. “You just gonna sit there?” it says. And the gate opens inward.
The paved named road does end at the gate, and then it shifts from blacktop to dirt, a redder dirt than she’s seen at the beach, redder, she reasons, because of proximity to the sun. They follow the road slowly up to the front of the house. The property spills down the side of the hill, and the fence vanishes into a cypress farm. Animal cages sprout like capped mushrooms from the vast lawn.
“That’s what I was talking about,” Billy says. “Way back.”
“Larry the Lion,” Suzy says.
“Lion, panther, tiger, pig. Who knows what else.”
She takes the path slowly to the front of the house and feels a vestigial rush of embarrassment on account of the crappiness of the car. There’s a Porsche parked off the front steps—the Bug is all wrong here.
The house is white, low and boxy, a ranch stacked on a ranch, two stories, with bright-white wooden siding and square wooden columns, a series of long boxes like the modern homes of Wright and van der Rohe, but skeined with warm white wood, white window boxes, green shutters and trim. A porch wraps itself around, all flats and corners and right angles. The first floor wears a visor, the rim of a roof that wraps the house as well, one home squatting atop another. The front door is green, and as Suzy cuts the engine, a man appears in its frame. El Jefe.
It’s so warm, the sun so unobstructed at this height, that the heat scratches at her skin like wool. She feels her pulse in her throat, but it’s slow and heavy, the tempo of a fading record. She and Billy step out of the car and shut their doors simultaneously. And before she even has a chance to approach, the man waves the two of them along the porch and out toward the back.
He doesn’t speak, but they follow close behind. He’s barefoot and in khakis and a green Lacoste polo, and all she really sees is his height. A basketball player at a New England prep school is the impression. Even without seeing his face, Suzy knows he’s handsome. The rich hair makes it certain. The pool is lined with paving stones, and there are three seats around a table beneath an unpopped canvas umbrella. He works it open, cranks its wings wide so that they provide a canopy of shade. He sits and crosses his legs tight at the thighs and knees and calves, gummy legged like Cary Grant. He’s got an actor’s tan and golden hair, parted without product. His eyes are fixed on Suzy—he’s staring at her, blank in expression, squinting into the bright blue. Suzy stands with her hands on her hips, feeling every impulse in her blood to turn away, to look at the pool or the side of the house or something, but she goes on looking right back at him, squinting like he does, snapping one eye shut and then the other, so that she doesn’t blink with both, wetting one eyeball at a time, and overselling it, one big stew wink after another.
“Well, Mr. Honeywell,” Billy says, “thanks for doing this. I think it’ll make everyone feel better.” Billy moves toward an empty chair. Honeywell holds steady, patient as geology. Which is when Suzy cracks up. A big, low, throaty giggle that sounds to her own ears like Grace’s. That makes her fold at the waist and laugh at her knees, a toppling weight of funny. She’s never laughed like this, but the whole thing makes Honeywell break, too. And when he starts laughing, it comes out lower, rocks rolling around in a dryer. Suzy grabs the seat and sits, mat
ches his crossed legs, reaches over the glass table and offers her hand. “Suzy Whitman,” she says. “Pleased to meet you finally.”
Honeywell takes her hand and crushes it. He says, “Jack Honeywell. But you already knew that.”
Billy hangs dumbly at the edges, and Honeywell snaps to him and says, “Billy, sit the fuck down.”
“This is Suzy,” Billy says, slipping back into the scene.
“Are you fucking deaf?” Honeywell says.
“I don’t think so, sir.”
“Let’s get at it, I need this to be quick. My wife and girls will be back from church in thirty minutes.”
Suzy and Billy wait for him to go on.
“Well, you asked for the meeting. What do you want?”
“Suzy and I were—”
“I’m out,” Suzy says, cutting him off. “I never wanted in in the first place. But I did what you guys asked—”
“And you were paid for your services.”
“It’s really pretty straight, the way I’m thinking of it. I know there’s one more thing you want me to do. But then after that I want your guarantee that that’s the end of it.”
“Your two weeks’ notice?”
“Is that when this is? Two weeks?”
“No, it’s next weekend. But I’m wondering if you’re thinking about it the way I need you to be thinking about it. This is a business, and businesses have rules, standards of practice. I just want to formalize this conversation. A guy leaves my company, he gives his two weeks. That’s within his right, and it’s within the business’s. He’s not technically obligated to do anything, but he does it anyway because that’s the social contract, the professional courtesy. He does everything in his power to tie up the loose ends of his accounts. To make the handoff, the transition, as seamless as possible. To find a replacement. What are you doing to make this work?”
“It’s not my responsibility any longer,” Suzy says. “I walk away and Billy can find someone new.”
“Look, I don’t want this to be a problem. I just want you to think about those who’ve treated you well these last many months. I need you to keep some skin in the game. Otherwise, what’s gonna keep you from getting greedy with the information you have? You know where I live. You know where I work.”
“I don’t know where you work. I didn’t even know your name until five minutes ago.”
He turns to Billy, and Billy shrugs, like, I don’t say shit. Honeywell looks at her harder. “That surprises me,” he says, and Suzy expects him to latch the door on the matter. But instead he starts in: “I’m a twenty-five-year veteran of IBM. I was transferred here eight years ago, on my own accord. Know why I moved out? I was on a flight to L.A. with a pair of pretty young stews, just like yourself. And we were lowering in over the Southland and I was on the left side of the plane. ’Bout an hour out of sunset, and the golden light was coming in as it does. And out the window I see this big old hook of land, swinging out into the ocean, and I asked one of the stews—she was based in Sela just like you—what I was looking at, and she told me, ‘That’s the Peninsula, Mr. Honeywell.’ And I watched it out my window for the last five minutes of the descent, getting closer to the ground all the while the top of the Peninsula stayed up in the clouds. Know what I mean? You’ve seen it like that, I’m sure. So I drove up here my day off, bought this hunk of land practically sight unseen. Worked out the transfer to the L.A. office after I flew back to White Plains. Divorced my wife. Married that stew. Chained her up in the basement, and the rest is history.”
Suzy shifts in her chair, scoots her ass up closer to the vertical of the backrest. Straightens her spine, but holds her squint. Honeywell dabs his mouth with his wrist like he’s whisking away blood.
“That’s sweet,” Suzy says.
“Company man,” he says. “Sixty-minute drive each day and night. Work during the week, the girls on the weekends. Take ’em sailing. Take ’em golfing at the club down the hill. Just put in the hard court out by the cottage, right around back. Leveled out the grounds, the girls are getting pretty good. You play tennis?”
Suzy shakes her head. Billy does, too, but the question’s not for him.
“The court’s been a good thing. A lotta the local cops have been coming over to break it in. Free is cheaper than joining the club, you know? A bunch of feds live up here, too. Office is way up in Westwood, doesn’t make much sense. But it is what it is. And it’s funny, those guys can’t get enough of the new court. They just learned to play, caught the bug. Plus, I think it’s the shading from those cypresses—see ’em? From our cypress farm on the low end of the property. Planted a few and they give this nice elegant shade to the court. A lot of those fed guys, some have been to Europe. And they’ve taken their wives to places like Spain and France and Italy, you know? And they say the reason they moved up here was ’cause it reminds them of this little stretch of Italy on the Amalfi Coast. This little thumb called the Sorrentine Peninsula. The thing they go on and on about is how my property reminds them, more than any other thing they’ve seen in America—and these feds have seen a lot of America—of the grounds of the little hotels along the Amalfi Drive. The honeymoon they spent there. The best days of their lives. They love it.” He’s frowning and he holds a moment, and then he says with marked disdain, mocking some idea, some thing: “You dig?”
There’s not much left for Suzy to say, except to spit it out, to mow over the subtext of the monologue. “So we’re good, then? We’re on the same page?”
“You tell me,” he says.
“I do your run. I get on with it.”
“I know everything there is to know about you,” he says. “And now you know everything there is to know about me. That’s a partnership. That’s trust. I hope you really, truly understand.”
It is so warm. She shuts her eyes and watches the red veins in her eyelids shape themselves into a cooling picture, a picture of her father and mother shoveling snow. It’s a strange, impossible image—Wayne may never shovel again. But he just might live. And so should she—she should do what it takes not to die.
“I’m glad we’re in agreement,” Suzy says, and rises from the table. Her legs are rewaking. They feel like the television looks on a broken channel. Suzy worries that a step might buckle her knees, might drop her to the ground. So she stands there, sort of lording it over him. And it’s his turn to start laughing. He laughs until he’s coughing, and she hears a thousand cartons of cigarettes in his throat.
“Come with me,” he says, standing. “Before you go. We’ve got a small amount of time.”
They don’t have a choice. They both get it. Billy inserts himself between them, and the three work as a train around the kidney of the pool and along the side of the house, where Suzy catches a first view of the tennis court, way up on the slope, but also a view of a path that leads seemingly straight up. There’re steps in the side of the hill—stone and dirt, leveled off ploddingly. What must be a hundred, a hundred fifty steps into the sky.
“Come on,” he says. “From what I know about you. About you and Schuyler Glen and Vassar and Yale, about Grace and Edith and Wayne, and just, you know, generally how you feel about Sela del Mar”—Suzy watches Billy’s head droop—“I just think you’ll be happy to have seen the view.”
The steps are stone and red clay. They’re lined by olive trees and oleander bushes. The steps are of awkward design. They’re too large to be taken one stride at a time, and they’re too tall for Suzy to ascend without lunging. One-two-UP. One-two-UP. She presses on her knee at each big push. She feels a heat in her hair, the strands growing redder like toaster coils. She feels a cool proclamation of sweat on her neck.
They pull even with the tennis court, shaded by the ring of cypresses. It looks just as she imagined. But there are so many steps left, and they take them quietly, mostly. Billy’s and her sandals crunching the sand, Honeywell’s bare feet turning the red of unfired ceramics. The more steps they take, the more steps seem to emerge. As it di
d in the car on the drive up, the island at their backs rises on the ocean along with them. Soon the court is well below, the same view she had that summer in high school when Wayne took her and Grace to see a tennis exhibition at the Aud in Buffalo. They sat in the last row, and theirs was the view of hawks trapped in the arena. They’re way up above the house and the court now, and the steps are finally eroding in number, reducing, so that Suzy can count them all in a single glimpse, twelve, and then seven, and then three two one.
The flat up top is laid out with the same paving stones as the pool. And as with the tennis court, the flat is circled by cypress trees. They’re splayed in an arc, like a womb, but open at the entry, spread like legs. There’s a plain granite bench before them, and a little pediment of stone with a bowl on its top, and the bowl is filled with water.
Honeywell moves toward the water and says, “Have some.” He cups his hand and pulls the liquid to his mouth. “Natural spring. Way up here. I built the path and then the pump to pull it out of the ground.” Suzy and Billy stand catching their breath, don’t move any closer. “Come on, there’s no fucking LSD in it, promise.” Billy takes a handful first, and when he stays alive, Suzy dips her hand in. It’s warm—cool out of the ground, but heated all this closer to the sun. The water tingles her tongue and gums like mouthwash, and it tastes like pennies, like a split lip. Honeywell moves to the edge of the flat and considers the view—across the dip of the Peninsula, out onto the water, all the way to the island. “I come up here,” he says, “to do my thinking. My big thinking. I don’t go to church with Gwen and the girls. This is my shit, this is the thing I believe in.” Suzy is alone in her sensations. Her heart is still pumping down through her stomach, out toward her fingers. A puff of breeze freezes the sweat on her arms and back. That lingering sting in her mouth, someone else’s blood. But still, she finds herself following along with what he’s saying.
“This is the one belief system I buy into,” he says. “The one for which I can be God and Gabriel. I make the rules and I deliver the message. Do you understand what I’m saying?”