by John Decure
“Stand back, Deshaun,” she orders me. “Give her some breathing room, for goodness sakes.”
I do jus’ that. Try to say something to both of them to explain, but instead I just sputter like my lawnmower when the plugs need to be changed out. That Mr. Big Stuff advice I handed down to Sadie last night about being realistic? Well, it’s hanging over my head now, pressing down—as if I could just run away to Louisiana, and not look back.
As if! You are so much smarter than that, man!
Life just doesn’t work that way, not in my experience. Nothing is ever that neat and easy. Nothing good, at least, nothing right. I let go of the whole idea of the money right then and there. Snapped out of my funk.
“I didn’t mean to scare you, ma’am. I apologize if I did.”
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Fellows,” the prosecutor Bradley Aames says, calmer but with an edge, a hidden advantage, like she’s holding an invisible hammer.
“Uh-huh,” I say, still holding the subpoena.
“I’ll be sure to touch base with you before you testify. And thank you, ma’am.” She nods at Ida Mae.
Then smooth as silk, she glides out the door. Had to know how good she looked in the eyes of any man who could see. That would include me, and I couldn’t help but watch her go, skipping across La Brea to a midnight-blue, very fine Chevy muscle car, a Chevelle that sounds like a row of bass drums in a parade when she starts it up.
“Crazy day,” I say lightly, turning back inside, already working on formulating the words I’ll need to soothe the wife’s nerves. Gotta come up with something firm and believable, I tell myself, a fresh game plan that’ll make everything alright. It better be damn good, too.
“Un-hmm.” Ida Mae’s jus’ standing there, cross-armed, not budging, and instantly I know she’s way, way beyond any convenient explanations I may cook up. Too smart, and who knows how much she’s heard between me and both of my visitors? That rear door to her office was open the whole time, and she’s nobody’s fool, my Ida Mae.
No, you may as well ease off the fast-talking formulations. Maybe you could try playing it straight, genius.
And… oh my, it’s even worse than that! Ida Mae? She’s jus’ checking what’s… in my hand.
“What’s in the envelope, honey?”
Nothing to say, man—when she calls me honey, I know I’m under her thumb.
14
CRAIG WEAVER, MD
Change is good, I like to tell patients. A sign of life, of growth. Hope.
This time when I went to Malibu, it was different from the last time. This time, I wasn’t responding to a phone call from a breathless apologetic stranger asking if I could help his roommate—well, his friend—well, her name is Bradlee Aames and she’s got your business card Dr. Weaver, so I just figured…
This time, the call came from Bradlee herself, and she sounded not the least bit excited. So this time, I had a better idea what to expect. Okay, so that was the little lie I was telling myself.
The phone woke me out of a dream. I was in a grassy meadow, peacefully flying a kite, but then a gust of wind picked me up, tore me off the ground, and thrust me high up into the clouds until suddenly, the kite was gone and I was falling, straight down, fast and hard and bracing for impact. But there was nothing beneath me, just the sensation of descending forever, into nothingness…
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Uh, sleep. I mean, sleeping. What time is it?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry. Hey, you sound a little out of breath.”
“I was… having a dream.”
“Huh. This is quite a moment. I just woke a shrink from a dream. I mean, how many people can say that?”
“No big thing,” I said. “One time I was out driving and saw a guy stuck on the side of the road, no one around, so I pulled over to help. The guy? My mechanic.”
She laughed. “I love it.”
Jesus—if you could catch me coming out of a deep sleep, I was quite the charming bastard, it seemed.
We were supposed to talk when she needed it, when her stress-level rose and it seemed her mind was slipping into instability. My idea, my friendly offer. All part of the plan. Although the hour was absurdly late once again she wasn’t having an emergency; apparently she’d effectively anticipated one coming. Or so I surmised. So, okay then, we were meeting in the absolute dead of night; so what? She’s a quirky girl.
Despite my misgivings about the trial and Rue Loberg testifying for the board, I was impressed with Bradlee’s judgment. Her discretion.
Maybe this can work, I told myself. Whatever this is.
Of course, past-midnight meetings with a woman that probably suffers from depression or psychosis or an anxiety disorder or even all three—well, you could search through every medical journal in the land and never find a methodology quite like this one. So hey, I’m an original, half-asleep charming bastard.
Rumbling up Pacific Coast Highway, smooth and pale with streetlit glare, as devoid of life as a dry riverbed on the moon. I tried to review a mental checklist of things to say, of how to proceed; yet, despite my best efforts, my mind kept fixing on what might be termed nonclinical observations.
Female objectification. Or would one term it personal infatuation?
A wedge in the dark hillside to my right flashes by, and I think of full breasts; two trees in silhouette bring to mind a heart-shaped derriere. Deep thoughts from a guy with my training and experience. I knew that on an elemental level I wanted to help as a clinician, but on another level, I was kidding myself.
I pulled into the lot of the all-night diner she’d chosen, rolling my passenger window down so I could hear the gravel crunching beneath my tires. The damp air swiped across my face like a wet rag. Yeah, guy, the voice inside me said, that rag’s going to be wrapped around your heart in no time. You’re out of your depth, Craiggy.
My jeans felt starched and a half-size too small. Or maybe I just hadn’t worn them in a while. Should I unzip the jacket to show off the surf wear-label tee I’d so carefully selected? Ah, crap—the logo was on the back; it wouldn’t even matter. Unless I took my jacket off and… walked in backward? Brilliant.
Clinical observation: Craig Weaver lacks confidence with women.
Acknowledging this deficiency, I paused by the door to the joint and said a simple prayer before entering.
God, please allow me to summon my best self, from wherever that self may be stashed. Make it available to me, God, make it apparent. If only for an hour.
The café was the kind that trades in nostalgia: white vinyl, black and red trim, lots of chrome. An old-style fifties counter. Lots of seats in a row, but no customers. Jukebox music: a bygone classic about a little runaway playing softly.
She waved me over to a corner booth. A bucket seat curved around her snugly, a scene suggesting Fay Wray wrapped in King Kong’s giant open hand. My psychological training rendered an instant interpretation of the image: Bradlee was attractive, an object of desire, while Kong symbolized her psychosis, holding her captive in its dangerous, powerful grip. Was I about to battle Kong for her sanity? Beauty and the beast, and Dr. Craig to the rescue. Oh, please. What an overanalyzed overdramatization.
We studied our menus but only came up with an order of two coffees and ice waters with lemon, which plainly would not do. I tacked on an apple pie a la mode to appease our waitress, a grumbling older gal who eyeballed me as if I were up to no good just by being in the place, in this female company, at this hour. The fact that we were the only customers amplified my every move.
“I like your take-control style, Craig,” Bradlee remarked as I stacked our menus behind the vintage song-selector in our booth. I couldn’t tell if she was serious or mocking me.
Bradlee told me she’d been out surfing Malibu. I asked her if she thought such a thing was safe, considering what happened the last time. She pointed out the fact that she’d done it a hundred other times without a problem. And that I wasn’t her dad. I said I
wasn’t trying to be, and that she was being rude for suggesting that I was. She shrugged.
“Sorry. Guess I have trouble opening up sometimes.”
“How can I help?” I said, which sounded so forced I wanted to kick myself.
“No need to psychoanalyze me. Not yet, at least.”
I told her I had no intention of doing that. We could talk, that was all.
As seems to be the norm in every restaurant in America, just as we seemed on the edge of something real passing between us—a spark of truth, a meeting of the minds—that goddamned waitress materialized at my elbow with our coffee and pie. When she said she’d be right back with our ice waters, I told her to take her time. Matched her dirty look with something approaching white-hot hatred.
“You look a little tense,” Bradlee said.
My next line of zippy patter was dissolved by the acid on my tongue. “Aren’t you the astute observer.”
“Okay. Maybe you should’ve met me earlier to slide a few,” she said with an eye-roll.
I hoisted my coffee and drank. First for the heat, then for the act of it, the sheer distraction. My hands were grateful for something to do. Half a cup later, the stuff hit my nervous system. I retracted all my vicious thoughts directed toward our waitress, the wonderful caffeine goddess who’d just transported me.
“Good coffee?”
“Not good, the best.”
“Feeling better?”
“Not fully awake, but I’ll get there.”
The ice waters were delivered, along with the check. “Anything else, just holler,” the waitress told us.
“More coffee soon,” I said. “It’s spectacular.”
But she’d walked away and didn’t hear me. Or acted like she didn’t.
“Great ambience, this place,” I said lightly.
“You’re adding a lot to that bottom line, Doctor.”
The waitress returned and dutifully refilled me, for which I offered my profuse thanks as she groaned and went away.
“Well, I do want to tell you about tonight,” Bradlee said. “But I feel a little odd doing so. A little… raw.”
“Why do you think that is?”
She drummed her fingertips on the tabletop.
“What?” I asked.
“You sound like a therapist again.”
“Sorry, it’s what I do. I’m just used to asking questions.”
She swirled a spoon in her coffee but didn’t take a drink. “Maybe you could tell me a few things about yourself, you know, to even things up in the revelations department.”
I asked her what she wanted to know.
“Another question, Craig.”
“Sorry. Instinct, I guess.”
“Okay, fine,” she said. “I’ll answer your question with a question. I want to know why you look at me that way, but you don’t do anything.”
Then she sat back a little, nestling into the booth. Right in King Kong’s grasp.
I looked around. All the empty booths looked right back. White speckled tabletop—why the hell did I order apple pie? I despise apple pie. I should’ve given our waitress, the Hover Queen, a twenty just to leave us alone, that would have done the trick. Just keep the coffee coming, but only if I raise my cup. The rest of the time? Stay away. The Hover Queen would understand the stay-away bribe for what it was, would appreciate my honesty.
“More coffee?”
“Sure,” I said, holding out my cup.
“Anything else—”
“—I’ll be sure to alert you.” I slapped a twenty on the table. “This is for you to leave us alone, unless I give you the signal.”
“I’d like to give you a signal all right, but fine, have it your way!”
The waitress stalked off muttering unkind things about her ungrateful customer as that same customer got busy flipping her off dually, with both hands from beneath the table and with great feeling. Bradlee seemed entertained by my discomfort, which I thought I was hiding better than I was.
“Next time we’ll find someplace more intimate to talk,” I said. “Like, in line at the movies.”
“You mean, on a date.”
I slurped at my coffee without accounting for the refill. Too hot; it burned the roof of my mouth.
“You okay, doc?”
“More cream.” I gasped, clutching at my water glass.
For her part, Bradlee Aames simply sat there, looking smart and lovely and well above my station in the human sexual pecking order. “You don’t want to talk about yourself, it’s okay,” she said.
“No, no. For starters, a date would, uh, be great,” I said, rubbing my smoldering gums.
“Try not to sound so enthusiastic. I’ll get a big head.”
I was making this way too difficult. Harpooning my chances. The key to getting through this, I knew, was to be brutally honest with myself, to remove my desire. Beginning with a simple premise.
Face it, dude, you’ve got no shot with this girl, no shot whatsoever.
That tack actually worked; having nothing to lose, as I had nothing really to gain, I felt my man-on-the-move persona crumble, and along with it any pressure I’d been under to impress Bradlee Aames, to make her want me. But the problem is, what follows a complete dissolution of personal want or need, what comes after like a latent side effect, is a void. Feeling left behind. Empty. Hollow. A leftover ache.
“Hey, Craig Weaver. Still with me?”
Her hand came out and touched mine.
“My do-gooder inclinations are not noble, not in the least,” I said.
She seemed amused with my confession. “So? Join the club.”
She wanted to hear me talk about me. “Don’t tell me about your favorite color, or whether you thought the moon landing was faked. You’re a handsome, young, educated professional. What I’d like to know is why you’re still single.”
To be sure, she was only being playful, and I appreciated the gesture. But it took me in a different direction altogether, on a course that for better or worse, seemed inevitable. While I can’t remember the exact words I spoke—what was it? Perhaps the hour of night, the coffee, the attention coming from this odd and intimidating but quirky and very beautiful woman, and a sense of nothing-to-lose, what-the-hell insecurity swamping me—I can’t say for certain. Perhaps these factors coalesced, all at once, into a potent bullshit antidote, and I found myself talking straight and true and without the usual cloak of distance and intellectual density. This is more or less what I told her.
Back in the day, I was a hot-shit guy with plans: A year in the Peace Corps after graduating from Berkeley with honors; medical school, preferably Harvard, my father’s alma mater; and what the hell, with my stellar grades I’d be attending on a scholarship; a well-timed, glibly self-satisfied marriage proposal to my blonde-haired, blue-eyed cutie of a sweetheart Deb, maybe springing it on her while cruising the Grand Canal in a Venice gondola or as the helicopter hovered over the fiery maw of Mauna Kea. My life is hands-down fabulous, I used to think. All I’ve gotta do is show up every day and I’m set.
Turns out my self-satisfied attendance wasn’t enough, not by a mile. It all took an epic nosedive when Deb got a part-time job waitressing at an upscale steakhouse and fell in love with the owner—the married-with-three-kids owner, who was actually insane enough to reciprocate. In my rage at being dumped, I had my own moment of insanity, ringing the manager’s wife’s doorbell one afternoon when she was home alone and telling her the name of the motel two miles away where her husband could be found at that precise hour with the object of his affections. Thought I was pretty slick, too, until the police came to campus the next morning and plucked me out of pre-med chemistry to interview me. It seemed my actions had set off a chain of events. Deb made it to an ICU still alive but with six bullets in her. The crime-scene photos they showed me were horrific, like a form of latent punishment. The one I remember best was like a top-down portrait, husband and wife hastily reunited and posing for eternal posterity. Both of
them staring face-up at the ceiling on an unmade queen, their stiff limbs stacked end over end, like kindling awaiting a hot match.
You could say that incident changed me. Forever. By a single instance of acting on impulse, I’d orphaned three innocent children and essentially murdered their parents. Deb dropped out of school; the bullet that nicked the base of her spine caused her left side to droop, requiring multiple surgeries, and the cheerleader’s glow that was her most visible feature drained out of her cheeks for good. I dropped out of the human race for a while, kissing off med school. My father stopped talking to me; I was such a “grave disappointment,” Mr. Everything just didn’t have it in him to shoulder that burden. I left home, got a job working for the Southern Pacific railroad, overslept, and came in work late several times, which got me fired. Didn’t even realize that the disrupted sleep patterns were a symptom of major depression, but the boss who canned me walked me to my car, gave me an extra hundred bucks of his own, and made me promise to get evaluated. Got some treatment through my dad’s insurance plan—which painfully indentured me to him at the time, but I didn’t want to live anyway, so what was a little more pain? It’s a miracle I ever made it back, but fixing on med school and studying hard for my entrance exams provided the best distraction I could find at the time, and really, pursuing my education was what saved me.
“So, for me,” I said, “impulse control is a personal challenge I take very seriously.”
Bradlee smiled as if she knew I wanted to kiss her—and that the fabulous internal braking system I’d just touted would halt any such spontaneous gesture dead in its tracks.
Like a good sport, I smiled back.
“Thanks,” she said. “For the backstory. I just thought you’d say you were too busy to get out much.”
I slapped my forehead like I’d forgot. “That too.”
“You’re funny.”
How was the surfing tonight? I asked.
“Not bad. Not good, though. Inconsistent.”
“What’s it feel like, being out there in the dark, all by yourself in that limitless space?”
A noisy sports car downshifted on PCH as it blew by the diner. Bradlee watched it go before turning back to me.