A World the Color of Salt

by Noreen Ayres

  Two times I returned to the card while putting my groceries away. I took it up a third time, sitting at the counter in my kitchen, staring at my bird calendar for the new year. January’s picture was a long-billed curlew standing in water. We have curlews in the bay. Their call is a plaintive cur-lee.

  I looked at the postcard again. And said to myself, “This is from Patricia.”

  I could go to the lab and do a fingerprint run. But that would help only if Patricia had had her fingerprints rolled in her lifetime. What are the chances of that? Then I thought, Well, if she has a tattoo and she hung with a felon, maybe . . . Cops check people out all the time: the wife, the girlfriend, the son’s girlfriend, the daughter’s latest, the new second-job business partner. You’re a cop, you’re a paid paranoid.

  But it was six o’clock, I knew Betty and the other Print people would have gone home, and I really didn’t want to mess with their computers. They’d probably changed passwords a dozen and a half times since I used the system anyway.

  I slipped the postcard in an envelope and tucked it in my purse, then got in my car and drove to Huntington Beach instead, to check if Patricia’s car was there, or to annoy her landlady again.

  “I don’t know nothing about her, and I don’t like being disturbed at night,” she said. Lawrence Welk’s family was singing “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” on the TV as she shut the door.

  When I got to the lab Friday morning, I phoned Patricia’s place of work.

  “She doesn’t work here anymore,” a woman told me.

  “Since when?”

  “I don’t know. This is only my third day.” Behind her, phones were ringing.

  Last ditch, I asked, “Could I talk to Annabel Diehl, then?”

  “Who?” she said.

  I said the name slowly, spelling out the last name the way I thought it would be. The woman put me on hold. When she came back, she asked me who it was I wanted again, and then, with phones still sounding in the background, said, “There’s no one here by that name.”

  On my way to Stu’s office I saw Bud Peterson in the hallway and asked if I could run something through the Printrak. He said, “You can, but I hope you don’t want it anytime soon.”

  “As a matter of fact, I sort of do.”

  “Rots o’ ruck. They picked this week to Beta-test the ProFile system,” he said, referring to a computerized mug-shot program that would blow all the others out of the water. “Nobody’s access time is better than three hours.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m kidding you not,” he said, and left, the usual deadpan expression gone from his face, replaced by a slight panic in the eyes. He wanted it, he got it: his jump up the management ladder.

  Stu Hollings wasn’t thrilled. The only thing was, I’d been with the lab four years and hadn’t used up four weeks of the eight for vacation that I was entitled to. He’d been the very one who, when he came in new to his position, called me in one day and seriously urged me to use up my accumulated vacation—the department’s new policy was to clean excess days off the books. Now he was reminding me I’d been out six weeks this year. I wasn’t going to defend my medical. I stood there, not commenting. And then he said, “You took a half-day vacation not too long ago, if I remember correctly.” He started turning pages in a blue three-ring binder.

  “You don’t need to look it up,” I said. “You’re right. I did.” He looked at me, waiting. “This is an emergency. I need the time. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

  “A family emergency? Well, then, of course.”

  “No, it’s not a family emergency. I don’t like making up false excuses. Why can’t we just say it’s an emergency of a personal nature? What’s the difference if it’s family, medical, or a UFO sighting, Stu? Look at my record. You’ll see I’m not frivolous.” I said this kindly, smiling, saying, Come, let us reason together.

  Both hands were laid on his desk near the binder as he sat peering over his wire glasses, his Wilford Brimley pate gleaming from the fluorescent lights overhead. He said, “I don’t like to be told these things.”

  I was standing politely near, but not too near, his desk. One hand was still on the door handle behind me as a brace. I said, “You want me to lie then.”

  “No, I want you to tell the truth. Of course I want you to tell the truth.”

  I took my hand off the doorknob, and I shouldn’t have, for the gesture I used then was palm out, like a traffic cop. He frowned. I said it anyway: “Some things are private.”

  “We’re overloaded here. This is not a good time.”

  “One day. That’s all I’m asking for Monday. I’ll be back Tuesday morning.”

  “No deal.”

  To Joe I can say fuck you. To Stu, if I wanted a job when I came back, I’d better bite my tongue till it bleeds. Okey-dokey, I’d phone in sick from Las Vegas, if that’s the way he wanted it, the world-class idiot.

  Before I left, I went into Joe’s office, closed the door, and sat down. He was “staff” now, not a supervisor, but so well regarded he got to keep his office. He’d taken the whole week off except for today. I thought that was odd, and asked him about it when he called me that first day back after Christmas—why not take the whole week? “Because I’ll miss you too much,” he said. He told me he’d spent Christmas Day with Jennifer and his son, David, and I felt a little pang but didn’t say anything. When he asked what I did all day Christmas, I told him I slept.

  I said, “What do you think of Stu Hollings?”

  “I think he’s fine. I think he’s doing a good job. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  The muscles around his eyes relaxed, and he put both hands together in a prayer gesture and laid them against the side of his face, his elbows on the desk, as he looked at me.

  I said, “I came in to tell you I’m going to take vacation, starting two hours from now.”

  His chair squeaked badly as he leaned back.

  “This office is intolerable without you,” he said. “You can’t go.”

  “I haven’t seen you all day. How can you say that?”

  “I was looking forward to a weekend maybe—”

  “There will be weekends.”

  “It’s one reason I spent the last few days with David. We saw some real wonder wagons at the Coliseum.”

  “The car show?”

  “How ’bout a Benz for fifty-six thousand to run around the mud with? Station wagons with four-wheel drive,” he said, shaking his head. “The Benz, even without a turbocharger, rates with an Audi two hundred Quattro. Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t know if you’re into those things.”

  “I don’t like to window-shop. Can’t buy, don’t try’s my motto.”

  “I should have been married to you the last twenty-five years. Now, tell me, where are you going without me, you heartless female?”

  “I have some business to take care of.”

  “Business.”

  “Well . . . yes. Plus I need to get away awhile. I thought I’d go see a friend in Northern California. Clear my head.”

  “Not of me?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “That’s one I don’t remember ever being accused of.”

  “Joe,” I said, thinking about how I was going to say this, then just saying it: “I almost went out to see Phillip Dugdale.”

  “Oh.” All the cheerfulness went out of his face.

  “See what I mean, then? I need time off.”

  He came out from behind his desk and stood me up out of the chair. “You didn’t, though.”

  His presence felt wonderful, but I warred with myself. I looked down. “No, I stayed put.” A lyin’ little shit-titsky, that’s what I was becoming.

  He kissed me lightly on the lips. “You do what you need to. Vacation sounds like a good idea. I’ll miss you, but time away is good. If I’d listened to Jennifer, maybe I wouldn’t have had my heart squeezing stones a while back.”

  “It makes me kind of
uncomfortable kissing in the office,” I said, pulling away. I had no problem with office romances, as long as they were discreet. Where else are busy people going to find each other? But I said, “I mean, is that okay?”

  “Of course. You’re right. I’ll cool it.” He sat on the front edge of his desk, hands gripping the edge. He seemed bemused.

  I moved to a chair in the corner, the back of my leg touching it for support. In the pocket of my green rayon jacket was a stubby pencil convenient for fiddling with; I pulled it out and tested the wood with my fingernail. “I want to talk to you about something,” I said.

  “Shoot.”

  “I am super-worried about Patricia. She’s seeing one of the Dugdales.”

  “I know. You told me that. Several times.”

  “But Joe, listen to this—she left her job. I phoned there this morning. Joe, she would have told me.”

  Thoughtful for a moment, he said, “People go south on you once they get involved with somebody. I’ve got friends once they’re married you never hear from. I’m not so good about that sort of thing myself.”

  This was different, with Patricia, I told him. I said, “You don’t think it’s a pretty drastic—well, at least, a significant thing to do, leave your job? I mean, you usually think it over, talk it over with somebody first. She was happy there. Three weeks ago she was telling me she was making major bucks. She was doing well. Do you think I should go see her employers? Her former employers?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I mean—”

  “How would you feel if she came to your place of employment, asking questions about you? Low marks on judgment, Smokey.”

  “Even if she’s gone? How could it hurt?”

  “You don’t know the details. I just wouldn’t do it. You asked for my opinion, I gave it to you.”

  “I could ask in a way that wouldn’t jeopardize her.”

  “It’s a good thing you’re not working for me,” he said.

  “Now, what does that mean?”

  “High on creativity, but I’d say sometimes low on judgment. That’s how I’d mark your performance evaluation.”

  “Oh, thanks.” I was genuinely hurt, but I couldn’t show it. “What about initiative? What about quality?”

  “Quality, yes.”

  He stood up from the desk, put his hands on my shoulders, and pulled me to him. “Yes, yes, and yes.”

  Up my arms went, around his neck. I kissed him. In the office.

  When I went out of there, his scent still fresh in my senses, but his words also, I thought, I wonder if I could get along with him, all day, all night.

  I packed that afternoon so I’d be ready to leave early Saturday morning. I packed stuff for a week, even some semi-nice clothes, thinking maybe if I got a cold trail in Vegas, I’d go on up to San Francisco and see an old friend. Then I was twirling my thumbs. What do I do now, between five-thirty and five-thirty?

  I took a chance that Yolanda, Raymond’s girlfriend, wasn’t home from her day-care job yet, and called his house. He’d been doing overlap shifts during the holidays, logging extra hours because Yolanda was really putting the muscle on to get married and he needed the extra dough if they were going to do it, so I wasn’t sure he’d be there, but he was.

  “Ray,” I said, “look, I’m sorry if I shouldn’t call—”

  “No problem at all, Smokes. Yolanda and I, we had a talk. She’s cool now. She’s got it. Friends, she says. As long it’s just friends and nothin’ else.”

  “I won’t ordinarily call anyway. Not everybody can understand.”

  “You in trouble, hon?”

  I said, “Ray, what do you think of accompanying me to Carson tonight?”

  “No can do. That’s why I’m getting to work overtime—they need me out there on the highways and byways. It’s going to be party time till New Year’s. Besides, that is not a smart thing to do. That is not a kinder, gentler city. There was a freeway shooting out there off Wilmington just last week.”

  “I want to find Phillip Dugdale, Raymond. Listen, his brother’s gone from the apartments, moved out, and so’s Patricia. Well, she hasn’t moved out, but she’s left her job and I can’t get in touch with her, and I’m telling you there’s something walla-walla going on.”

  “Why don’t you wait till tomorrow? Maybe I can get away then.”

  “Tomorrow I’m leaving on vacation. To San Francisco.” I didn’t tell him about the postcard.

  “Boy, one operation and you figure you like it out there in the world, huh?”

  “Don’t give me a bad time, Raymond.”

  “Hey, I gotta run, babe. I just got out of the shower. Call me when you get back, huh?”

  “Absolutely. You be careful now, Raymond.”

  “You’re the one going out there in a little Jap car.”

  It was going to be a long night. I turned on the news while eating a microwave dinner. Protesters in Irvine were carrying signs that read PEACE, DUDE.

  Afterward, I went to the bedroom, reached inside a fireplace I never use, and removed my .38 Colt revolver with the stainless-steel barrel that I hadn’t cleaned in a long time. I sat on the bed, a newspaper spread out and the kit with the Gunslick, cotton patches, and cleaning rod in the middle. The gun seemed heavy as I lifted it. I gave away a two-shot derringer backup when I left the force, and now I wished I hadn’t. At the time, I thought it was a silly little gun, a .22 single action, which I never liked, but Bill had given it to me, telling me, No, no, a twenty-two’s all you’re going to need in a situation, close up. At least I could carry it in my pocket holster, and did. I could cock it in there and it would look like I was grabbing a ring of keys. Wearing an ankle backup didn’t work too well with women, at least not for me, and wearing it Texas Ranger–style, tucked in a weak-hand holster in the small of your back, always seemed awkward to me. I gave the .22 to a copper since transferred to Michigan. She invited me to her house for dinner, and I paid her back with that. Her mom stopped by as I was leaving, and I remember her saying, “Are you a lady policeman too?” Yep. We were lady policemen.

  Closing the cylinder, I worked the action. Wow—stiff. I stood up and took the stance. In the mirror, the gun wavered. Out of shape, Smokey. Way out of practice.

  After cleaning the Colt, I slipped it into its rug and found space in my suitcase, then went to the living room to look at the reflections over the bay. The light was off and I left it off. I walked to the window where the gifts were stacked, and pulled back the drapes. Moonlight made the gold paper on the gifts glisten. I hadn’t even given Ray his Mustang. The paper banner with his name on it was still taped to the antenna.

  Out on the bay, white ripples scalloped the surface of the water. It might have been a painting on black velvet, the salt-grass backlit, the outline of ragged pampas off to one side. Below my apartment, a car’s headlights came on, and a possum’s eyes lit up red in the near brush.

  Maybe I’d go knock on Mrs. Lambert’s door, see if Farmer wanted to go for an early weekend walk. Farmer and I, we think well together.

  CHAPTER

  31

  It isn’t that Californians love to drive. We just drive, like we just brush our teeth.

  Still, it surprised me that there were so many cars on the freeway before the light broke Saturday. Weekdays it’s bizarre: You can get on the freeway at 4:45 in the morning and see thousands of taillights shrinking in the distance. Farmer would love it, all those little red bunny tails inviting chase, except to him the red might be Garfield-the-Cat-orange, and Garfield himself might be yellow. Joe and I had an argument once about whether dogs could see color. He called his vet to check. The vet said no. But I remembered reading somewhere that they do, so I called Washington, D.C., and found two scientists who said, yes-indeedy, dogs do discriminate colors, just differently from you and me; and so I collected from Joe a high-priced lunch at the Boardwalk, ordering wine as well.

  I was thinking this and then wondering if I’d have a job t
o come back to, if I’d be having lunch with Joe at the Boardwalk ever again and be making bad jokes about Glop in a Crock-Pot. With county cutbacks in the offing, they could trim a Smokey Brandon and not miss her a bit, though they wouldn’t gain much from the saved salary.

  As my six-cylinder whined up the El Cajon Pass, heading into Victor Valley, the L.A.-syndrome shackles began to fall off, but as I approached Victorville, I thought of the license plate on the Bronco parked at Patricia’s apartment complex, which I later learned did belong to Roland, and wondered why a guy who lives in Huntington Beach, formerly of Garden Grove, would buy a car in Victorville.

  A gray Taurus kept pace with me, I noticed, and I remembered that when I left the lab Friday night, a gray Taurus kept making all the turns I did, even down my street and into my lot, and I thought, Hm, here’s a guy maybe I could carpool with. I could carpool with him all the way up to Vegas, it seemed, if that was the same guy. Picking up speed to test him out, I was flying, and so was he. Then he surged ahead of me and around a big truck and then I saw later he got lodged between two of them and couldn’t pull out for a third one on his right. Ho-hum.

  I drifted right through, or rather, over, Victorville, the city getting so upscale it has its own massive discount stores and a Holiday Inn I could see from the freeway, and a more unattractive shade of turquoise it could not be.

  This is the territory of ugly names: Victorville, Cleghorn Road, Barstow. And out of Barstow, Boron, not the place of covered wagons and Ronald Reagan advertising for Twenty Mule Team Borax, but the locale of a federal prison camp, where, I was reminded, I had a relative. The camp was a former radar tracking station. Now it houses five hundred or so inmates, one of them a cousin on my mother’s side, Daniel Cross, a man I’ve never met. Last time I talked to her, she told me Danny, as she calls him, wound up there on a drug-related charge. I thought, driving by, I should go introduce myself. But why? It’s not that I condemn people who get in trouble, not the way some of my copper buddies do who’re absolutely hard-ass on all miscreants. Who say arrests are a way of life for these people, that the jug’s just another word for a change of scenery. I hadn’t quite reached that point of belief, but the work does give you a different take on life, and even that changes: First you hate ’em, then you cry for ’em. Then you hate ’em, then you befriend ’em. Then you hate ’em. Then you hate ’em. I knew there’d be types in there who’d hold a guy down and pour a strip of nondairy creamer on him, touch it off with a lighter. It burns like napalm. I wouldn’t be stopping there today.