by Nick Totem
Armed with two bags full of groceries, Thomas waited at the front door and buzzed the intercom. He planned to cook dinner for Lana to cheer her up. It was just past seven o’clock and the sky was still bright. At the end of the street, a shape appeared familiar to him, a burly figure with a baseball cap. He couldn’t be sure at first as he strained his eyes through his glasses, but he suspected the figure must be no other than Chau the Dog. The door clicked open, and Thomas went in, trying to remember where he had put the detective’s phone number. It had been five months since he talked to Sam Mosqueda, who had told him only that they hadn’t arrested the Dog yet. He must have staked out the art gallery and followed Lana here. What did he want by coming here? Was he still working for Lloyd or on his own? Or was he here because Thomas had filed the charges against him?
“You look like you saw a ghost,” Lana said when she opened the door. She took the bags of groceries from him. “Are you all right?”
“It’s nothing. Just a bit tired, that’s all.”
“Oh, you didn’t have to bring all this. I was going to take you out to a nice little restaurant down the street. That’s the benefit of gentrification in this part of town. But thank you, Thomas. It’s very thoughtful of you.”
“You can clean up. Dinner will be served shortly,” he said, seeing her sweaty gym clothes.
She excused herself, saying that she had just come back from the gym and must keep herself healthy for what was coming.
While she was in the bathroom, he looked through his phone for the detective’s phone number and cursed himself for not having added it to his contacts. He called the police station and left a message for Sam Mosqueda. Then he took a deep breath and started to cook. He sliced and fried the potatoes. The baby carrots and broccoli went into a boiling pot. He opened a bottle of merlot and let it breathe. The New York steaks were to be cooked and quickly seared in high heat right before serving. For dessert, he had bought chocolate fudge. He set up the table and even had a little orchid for the center-piece.
“What an awesome apartment this is,” he whispered to himself.
When Lana came out, wearing a light pink summer dress, delicate and flowing, her hair still slightly wet and clumping, she radiated quaintness and the good looks of a high school home girl. She was taken aback by the setup. “Oh, Thomas. This is unbelievably sweet.”
The meal was a success, not so much because the food was delicious and the wine full of flavor and complementing the food so well, but because their conversation was drifting toward the most tangential things, so naturally, so easily, making them both laugh. They found themselves avoiding her problem. But it was not all tranquility inside the apartment; as the sky turned gray, then shadowy, and finally dark, the menace of Chau the Dog loitering on the street sheared through now and then, causing him to want to probe her. Where could he begin?
“How was Brazil?” he asked.
“Oh.” She diverted her eyes quickly to the chocolate fudge. “It was fun . . .”
“Lloyd flew you there in his private jet?” he said before she could continue, remembering his conversation with Dietrich Gassiot and Dominic’s warning.
“Yes, he did but I came back in coach . . .”
“How is Lloyd then? Have you kept in touch?”
She raised her eyes to him, perhaps catching on to how he was directing the conversation. “No. Not lately.”
“Your relationship with Lloyd seems atypical,” he said, using one of those words he had often read in pathology reports. “After San Francisco, it occurred to me you have a very long, unusual relationship with Lloyd.”
She laughed. “Yes, that and complicated. I think he sees me as a personal cause célèbre, a mission, perhaps even a chance for redemption.”
“Yeah, I thought things between you were still going on even though you said they had ended. But what about you? How do you see it?”
“Partners in crime, nemesis sometimes,” she said and her head dropped as in a prayer, and then she looked up with a fierce look. “One time Lloyd took me to a black tie banquet. A charity event with all the bigwigs in the business. They were kissing his ass, begging to get a piece of the money laundering business . . . Well, I charmed them with my knowledge of their business, financial instruments, derivatives, volatility, leverage, securitization, foreign exchange, backwardation, contango and on and on. I had never seen him happier. And when I had finished showing them I was not like one of their dimwitted wives, or pretty bimbos roaming after their money, I humiliated him as best I could. I contradicted everything he said. Belittled his achievement as nothing more than dirty money. And right in front of him, I flirted with the young men there, though they were scared as rabbits.”
“That’s interesting. He was still okay with you?” he said calmly, trying his best to appear unaffected. It was the first time Thomas heard Lana’s admitting to working with Lloyd.
“It’s a game we play. He bet I couldn’t last without his money. So I disappeared and went to Asia. Coincidentally, that was when I received the invitation to the premier of Cristiano’s symphony . . . I lived on my own for three years, sometimes living off ramen for days, or nothing but baguettes, before going back to Los Angeles. I won the bet.”
There was toughness in her voice, unsettling. But what about right now? Why was she in this dingy apartment?
“After he was done with business in Brazil, I didn’t want to leave. I got to know some of the people there, the usual crowd, and I knew I had to go to Argentina. Well, he gave me another ultimatum, one of many over the years. He would not have anything to do with me again unless I did what he wanted. So here we are.”
“It’s hard to resist you.” Thomas laughed. He refilled their glasses.
But Lana remained serious. She said, “It’s not for want of beautiful women. Money can buy plenty of their company. Maybe the talks I gave him had some effects. I told him he was living like a brute, coming into the world not of his own doing and yet acting like the king of the universe. I reminded him often how we had destroyed Cristiano, a truly immortal soul. We’ll be damned for it . . . Anyhow, it must have struck something in him. He kept coming back to me, perhaps trying to save me to save himself.”
What she said made him feel like a bystander to a great conflict. He really wanted to ask about how they colluded to destroy Cristiano but didn’t want to risk offending her and being expelled from the apartment. Patience, patience, he must be smart. He could only hope she was done with Lloyd. Wanting to change the subject and still thinking about Chau the Dog lurking outside, he said, “I was curious about his associate. What’s his name?”
“You mean the hooligan. The one who tricked you. What did they call him? Something awful. Chau the Dog, if I remember correctly.” She laughed.
“That night. Lloyd said something about having good dog catchers. What did he mean by that?”
Her face turned grave. “Some of his business partners are of the unsavory types . . . Chau the Dog crossed them. There would be consequences . . . Why are you suddenly so interested in this? Are you still sore about the money?”
He was just curious, he told her, and he got up to bring the dishes to the sink.
“The least I can do is clean up.” She pushed him away from the sink.
Moments later, they sat, both facing the street below, where a steady flow of traffic, the shop keepers busy with closing, and pedestrians of all varieties, created a delightful commotion that Thomas enjoyed watching with a glass of wine in his hand. All those frenetic feet speeding along the pavement, all those cars inching along the street, gave Thomas impression that they were clearing out for something terrible, perhaps Los Angeles’s old soul reawakening and reclaiming the very air. Behind the glass wall, the apartment was now peaceful, homely with the faint smell of cooking still lingering. At times, Lana leaned forward to get a close look at something far down, and he couldn’t help stealing a look. Against her short hair, boyish and neat, the lobe of her ear curved gently and
the jawline moved forward, straight and delicate, to where it met the chin, giving rise to a confluence of something magical, blessed by a touch of the divine, and all of that fomented an incredible fragility he yearned to hold with both hands, as if it were a precious chalice, and drink his fill from those lips. Suddenly she turned to him and was about to say something, and she caught his eyes. They held still. A bit longer, perhaps thinking of what if. Then it was shattered, and she raised her glass and said, “To our bunker, comrade.” He mumbled the same and raised his glass too.
A little later, she turned to him and, with serious eyes, said, “Thomas, about Brazil . . . as long as we’re talking openly. I want to apologize to you.” She spoke, looking down the street.
“Why? You don’t have to apologize, of course not.”
“Yes, I should. I should have had an open discussion with you, like a grown up, before going off like that. I felt I misled you.” She now turned to him. “When you paid that hooligan, when you thought I owed him money, I was really touched. And I hoped that I could, I don’t know, perhaps settle down. I had been like that before, in Russia when I met Troy Huntington. He was a surgeon volunteering in Russia. Such contentment. Being around him gave me a strange and yet simple happiness. But then Alexei, a child who needed cleft palate surgery, died and it was all so sad. I just had to get away. It’s a long story, best saved for another time.”
He remembered the photo of her in scrubs among other nurses and doctors. He said, “Don’t worry about it. I understand completely. You have to be sure about the person you’re with. You don’t want to be miserable in a relationship, or even worse, a marriage, like the way I was.”
“Sometimes an intuition just overcomes me, that you, you’re . . .” She stopped mid-sentence, thinking. “Once you have developed a habit, it’s hard to overcome, even though you’re aware of what you’re doing, all the negative consequences.”
“How long did you stay in Brazil?” he asked.
“Six months or so.” She took a sip of the wine. “Then I made my way to Argentina.”
“Argentina?”
“Thomas, I couldn’t help it. I had to go to Cristiano’s hometown.”
“And what did you find?”
“Nothing. His mother had moved away. No one knew where she was.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I was almost expecting to run into him on the street. Can you believe that?”
He didn’t know what to say. They turned to the street again, where the commotion was ebbing.
“I’m so afraid of dying under anesthesia. Darling, do you think I’ll be okay? With the biopsy?” she said as she turned to him; she halted, seeing a look of awkward disbelief, tinged with hurt and confusion. “But you’re a darling. You’re a saint, Thomas. Sometimes I don’t know why you still bother with me.”
She placed her hand over his and gave it a little squeeze, and then those fine fingers went up and touched his face. She leaned toward him, offering her lips.
“You’ll be fine. It’s a very tiny procedure,” he said, and he had an eerie premonition that she was trying hard to be nice, to get under his shell.
So close, those lips of hers were there, full of life and sweetness. And that tiny little mole, seen only when he was close enough to her, was so endearing. He could tear her apart only to absorb all of her and become one with her. Blood rushed and lust stoked up the fire in his groin, but . . . but not like this. Something inside him told him to stop.
“I’d better be going. I have hospital rounds tomorrow,” he lied, desperate to get out of the apartment before losing control, giving in to love and the promise of intoxication, tantamount to a sort of desecration.
At the door she thanked, hugged, and kissed him on the cheek. In the street, time had hurried through and so did the commotion. There was hardly a car or a pedestrian passing by. Desultory steps guided him back to his car. Passing a tree, something tugged at the periphery of his vision, and, still thinking about what Lana had said, he wasn’t aware of it until he had walked past it. With a surreptitious move, he went behind a tree and looked back. A black truck with Chau the Dog in the driver’s seat—Thomas recognized it instantly. It was a different truck to be sure, another black Suburban. Like a shadow, he sneaked away and got into his car. Detective Mosqueda had not answered his message. He was about to drive off, but then his face screwed up at the light in the window on the fifth floor, not knowing for sure if it was Lana’s apartment. Still, Chau the Dog was waiting in the street. For what? Now his mind began to visualize various scenarios, all involving Chau the Dog putting his hands on Lana, and with each scene his anger increased. From under the seat, he took out the Beretta case, removed the gun, and methodically checked the cartridge and the chamber. The gun was loaded and it went into his jacket pocket. With a casual stroll, he walked back to the black truck. Even inside his truck at night Chau the Dog was wearing a baseball cap with his eyes closed and his head leaning back. Thomas tapped on the window, startling the man. The man jerked away from the window.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Thomas screamed.
Chau the Dog recovered the instant he saw Thomas. He rolled down the window a couple of inches.
“You lying piece of shit. I know all about you. She doesn’t owe you any money. Quattleberns hired you and you ripped me off. You owe me twenty thousand,” Thomas hollered.
There was no triumphant smirk on the man’s face as there had been the first time. Instead, the brutishness turned vile and dark, the color of bile.
“Leave girl alone,” Chau the Dog said.
“Fuck you. Fuck you, dog. The cops are after you. How do you like that?” His eyes were bulging, and he was faintly aware that he was bluffing, but he must make sure that Chau the Dog would not come back, never ever come back here again even if he had to use his gun.
“Girl don’t need protection.”
“Fuck you. Cops are on their way. They will shoot you down, piece of shit,” Thomas growled.
The engine revved suddenly and the truck fled from the curb, tires screeching. Thomas drew the Beretta, ran out into the street, and fired two quick shots on the ground right behind the truck to make sure Chau the Dog could see the flashes in the rearview mirror. In a couple of seconds, the truck swerved right and disappeared. The truck’s red tail-light lingered in his mind an instant longer and was gone. He broke out in a cold sweat. He ran to his car, jumped in, and drove away, his tires also screeching, all the time hoping that anyone listening would mistake the gunshots for engine backfires.
31
Thomas found himself insinuating into Lana’s apartment. At first he had been concerned about Chau the Dog coming back, but increasingly he gave in to a sort of fatalism, allowing himself to be drawn there. More than ever, he recognized that if Lloyd could give Lana the comfort of wealth, and Cristiano artistic beauty, then he, Thomas Wilde, would have this apartment, this time here and now, for however long. Not so much asking as telling her, he would merely let her know that he would be coming at such and such time, always with bags of groceries to cook a meal, and pots of orchids, and some delectable desserts. Each time he informed her that he would come, she simply acknowledged him with a yes, or a nod, her face not displaying the slightest emotion or questioning, as if they were now sharers of a vital secret whose exact nature neither knew fully. It was always after work, and a couple of times when she was running late from the gallery, he would grow slightly anxious. During these moments, standing on the pavement amid the throng of passersby, he would experience happiness, a sweet, ripe, terminal sort without any further expectation or wanting. Then, there, around the corner, she would finally appear wearing an apologetic smile, sometimes a loose flowing gown, at other times a tight fitting jacket and trousers, and her hair short, always handsomely beautiful in the waning light of a summer afternoon. And seeing her made his happiness real.
“I’m sorry. I was held up.” She would say after giving him a kiss on the cheek. “The buyer cou
ldn’t make up his mind. Selling art is hard, at least if you’re doing it legitimately. What have you got there? I can’t wait to taste your latest concoction.”
At other times, he would freeze at her door, suddenly overwhelmed by anger and doubt, and he wanted to burst through the door and scream into her face: Are you handling me like all the other men? Like that time in San Francisco? Are you using me? Just tell me the truth. I’ll still be here. I’ll still help you, but just tell me the truth.
Once inside the apartment, Thomas always put on classical music from ancient to baroque to modern, but he never mentioned Cristiano’s symphony.
He asked if she wanted to inform her sister about the surgery. No, she told him. She was determined to go through the whole thing herself. They had had a falling out when she had abandoned the plan they had made together and gone to Brazil. Then the practical matters that Lana herself brought up had to be discussed, such as payments to the doctors and the hospital. From the sale of all her jewelry, she had gathered fifteen thousand dollars. He reassured her that this was enough, because his friends would provide all the services at a discount as a courtesy to him.
One day, he arrived at the apartment earlier than usual; his clinic had not been so busy. The sky was turning dark, and along the sidewalks and the streets, the crepuscular rush was on, people hurrying everywhere. Car exhaust rose from the warm ground. As Thomas was about to enter the building lobby, something far down the street near the traffic light caught his eye. He saw the backs of two people, the burly back of a man wearing baseball cap and a dark blue jacket even on a warm day, and the slim back of a woman with short hair, a black T-shirt and jeans. Among the flow of pedestrians, they seemed to be walking side by side, maybe even talking. Lana? He jostled sideways to get a better look, and then he started to walk briskly toward them. Even from behind, the burly man looked suspiciously like Chau the Dog and the woman like Lana. Were they talking? He picked up his pace. At the corner, they turned and disappeared from sight. Thomas ran full speed now, dodging people. At the corner, he turned and took a few paces, but there was no sign of them. He walked on and scanned the sidewalk ahead, the street, and even the other side. Nothing. Some of the shops were closing, but the restaurants and the coffee shops bustled with customers. Then, as he came up to a pastry shop, he saw her inside, talking to a salesperson—the same hair, black T-shirt, and jeans. Before he went in, he had to stop at the door to wipe the sweat from his forehead and take a few deep breaths to calm himself. He came up behind her.