Shining City

by Seth Greenland

  “I can’t relate to victims,” Xiomara/Jenna said as she garnished a chimichanga with salsa before placing it in her mouth.

  “Me neither,” Lenore said. “I want to read about women characters with balls.”

  “Madame Bovary killed herself, too,” Jan said.

  “Who’s Madame Bovary?” Madison asked. She was new to the business, having arrived recently from Denver to study acupuncture. Her curly black hair fell into her eyes as she looked at Plum.

  “Didn’t you go to college?” Mink said.

  “I was a science major,” Madison explained.

  “She was this French housewife,” Plum said, “in a really boring marriage. She had an affair with this guy …”

  “And let me guess,” Mink said. “The ho kills herself?”

  “That makes it a classic,” Lenore said. She was being sarcastic. “What’s with these women?”

  Although everyone had liked the food, it was decided that if the book group was to continue, they would have to be more astute in their selection of reading material next time.

  As they were clearing the table, Lenore said “Maybe we should read Erica Jong. She was a big deal back in the seventies. Anyone know her?”

  “I wasn’t born in the seventies,” Alicia said as she ferried a large tray of uneaten burritos to the kitchen.

  “I wasn’t born in the nineteenth century, but I tried to read that Tolstoy book,” Lenore said, walking inside with a tray of glasses.

  “Are there Cliff Notes for Erica Jong?” Mink asked. She was standing in the kitchen, scraping the remains off plates into a plastic garbage bag. Lenore offered to check. Jan mentioned a book about a woman who worked for the British Foreign Service in the Middle East in the early twentieth century. She climbed mountains, translated Persian poetry, and was instrumental in the drawing of national boundaries after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Although only three of the eleven people in attendance had heard of the Ottoman Empire, it was agreed that the next book would be Desert Queen, a biography of Gertrude Bell.

  “Does she kill herself?” Mink asked.

  “I’ll check,” Jan said.

  “Even if she does,” Lenore said, “at least it’s not because of a bad relationship.”

  The book club was a welcome distraction for Marcus. He enjoyed the discussion, despite its limited scope, and he went to bed with a mild sangria buzz. When he got up to urinate in the middle of the night, he remembered to take two aspirins to avoid a potential hangover.

  The next morning Marcus woke up feeling fine. Still in pajamas, he put on a bathrobe and went downstairs, hoping the temperature would be cooler. Autumn in Los Angeles could be indistinguishable from summer. It had been in the high eighties for the previous week, and they had run the air conditioners every night. He immediately felt a blast of warm air when he opened the front door. The plastic-encased copy of the Los Angeles Times was not in its typical place near the house. A quick scan revealed it lying near the curb. Must be a substitute paper boy, Marcus thought. The regular guy unfailingly placed it near the front door. He picked up the paper and flipped to the weather page as he walked back toward the house. It was going to be in the nineties today, but he forgot about the heat the second he felt the barrel of the gun in his back.

  “Don’t make a sound, brah.”

  Marcus did not have to look over his shoulder to see Tommy the Samoan. The man was like a solar eclipse. Briefly, he wondered how someone that size could possibly hide. Marcus knew he shouldn’t have counted on Bertrand Russell to warn him. He liked the fucker.

  “Walk toward the truck slow.”

  A black Yukon was parked across the street from the house. It was moving now, making a U-turn and pulling in front of them. The windows were tinted and he couldn’t see who was driving. He had the wild thought that Kostya was nearby and would leap from behind a tree and save the day. But this illusion was abandoned the moment Marcus climbed into the backseat of the SUV. The Samoan got in beside him.

  The driver was a white guy in his twenties, with a highlighted and gelled haircut, a good-looking kid who probably wanted to be a model. He wore aviator dark glasses, and a silver skull the size of a dime dangled from his right ear.

  “We should have jacked his Benz,” the kid said to Tommy.

  “It’s my show, Memo,” Tommy the Samoan said. Marcus perked up at the name. Memo. Wasn’t that the guy Tommy said tried to seduce his fiancée? Unfortunately, the two thugs appeared to have smoked the peace pipe. Memo slammed the car in gear and jammed the accelerator. The G-force threw Marcus against the seat. He wondered where the kid got a name like Memo. This guy looked like his name should have been Brandon.

  “Where are we going?” Marcus asked as they sped away from Magdalene Lane.

  “Malvina want to talk to you.”

  “We talked already.”

  “Don’t make it worse, brah.”

  Marcus settled into the seat. He knew it was hopeless to try to escape. Tommy the Samoan had a large gun pointed at him. What was Malvina’s game? If she wanted him smacked around, she could have just ordered Tommy to take care of it. He wished he hadn’t told her to kiss his black ass. Arrogance never got you anywhere. Marcus was surprised when the Yukon eased onto the 405 heading north. He thought she lived in the basin. He worried about how he would feel standing in front of her in his bathrobe and pajamas. It was daunting to negotiate with someone while dressed in pajamas. But as the car began the long climb through the pass at the north end of the Valley, he had an entirely different concern. The fear had started slowly at first. Then it began to metastasize until it suffused him. It dried his lips, made his breath shallow. For a moment he felt lightheaded.

  “We’re not going to Malvina’s, are we?” Marcus tried to keep the escalating terror out of his voice, but his vocal cords were strung as tight as the rest of him and it was a losing proposition. Tommy the Samoan didn’t answer. He just swung his great head slowly from side to side as if to say you idiot. The movement shook the little Star of David hanging from his ear. Marcus wished he could conjure some Yiddish words to throw Tommy’s way, as if they would magically defuse the situation, but he was coming up blank. Right now the only one he could think of was putz.

  They drove past Castaic and Santa Clarita and into the mountains, the Yukon straining as it labored up the long incline. Marcus knew how it went. Malvina was going to have him killed. Today was the day he would die, and he had done nothing to prepare. How do you handle death once you realize it’s imminent? Do you go with dignity, or break down and beg? No one who begs gets what they’re asking for. All they do is increase their own suffering. No, Marcus would not do that. If philosophy had taught him anything, it was to not fear death. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs, and tried to calm himself. This made him think of Amstel, who had given him the breathing tip he had used to such great effect with his wife, his beloved, who he would never see again. What did Hegel say? Death is pure being, and in death an isolated individual is raised to universal individuality. Suddenly universal individuality was a lot less attractive than it had seemed when he had encountered it as a college student between the clean pages of a book.

  “You ever read any philosophy?” he asked Tommy the Samoan, by way of making conversation. If he could engage the man, perhaps the story would end differently.

  “Don’t talk, brah. Not now.”

  Marcus considered Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurring. He wondered if, when he next recurred, he might use better judgment. He hoped so. He would hate to have to eternally recur through this again. Schopenhauer believed that to live is to suffer but death is unreal. Marcus wished that pain was unreal. None of the great minds wanted to address that. It was one thing to pontificate about an abstraction, something where there could never be a definitive answer. But where was the essay on what it felt like to be kidnapped and shot? As far as Marcus knew, no one had ever weighed in on the subject. He longed for a copy of A History of Western Philosophy
. It was 895 pages long and could definitely stop a bullet.

  Memo pulled the SUV off the freeway and continued north on an access road for a few miles before heading west into a canyon. It was the Angeles National Forest. Marcus flashed on the last time he’d been here. At least they weren’t going to where he’d left the body; they had passed that exit several miles back. He thought about whether this was retribution for what he’d done, but knew that was ridiculous. There was no retribution. Things just happened. Then other things happened. All you could do was try to stay out of the way for as long as possible. It all caught up to you eventually.

  They were climbing again now, past rock outcroppings and through pine trees. His ears popped from the altitude. Memo had the air conditioning on, so Marcus couldn’t tell how hot it was in the mountains this morning. He wondered if Jan would know he was gone yet.

  Now they were bouncing along a dirt road surrounded by chaparral. Tommy was holding the gun in his left hand, absently scratching his face with the barrel. One pothole and the big Samoan could blow his own head off, ending everything right there. Marcus thought about grabbing the gun but knew that even if he tried, a single thump from Tommy’s paw would immobilize him.

  “What are we waiting for?” Memo said.

  “Just drive,” Tommy said. “I tell you when we stop.”

  “I got an audition later.”

  “Oh, yeah? For a job?”

  “An industrial.”

  “Say what?”

  “Like a movie, but for a company. These guys make outboard motors.”

  “So you’re like a dancing spark plug?”

  “Fuck you.”

  The conversation was jocular, but Marcus sensed a strain of genuine hostility in Tommy’s ball-busting. He wondered whether Memo knew that Tommy’s girlfriend had reported the attempted seduction.

  “You should come with me,” Memo said. “I hear they’re looking for an elephant.”

  Tommy did not reply. Marcus tried to make eye contact, to reestablish the relationship they’d had during their late-night chat. But Tommy was giving him nothing. They rode along in silence for another five minutes until Tommy told Memo to pull over. They slowed to a stop at the side of the road. Memo opened the door and got out. Tommy stared at Marcus.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, brah.” Marcus sensed that the man seemed troubled at having to kill him. But it didn’t make him feel any better. When would the insurance policy kick in? Did they need to find a body to collect? Tommy told him to get out of the car.

  Marcus felt the warm sun on his face. The altitude made the temperature cooler. He could smell the pine, the earth. It was a beautiful day. He was sorry he wouldn’t make it to the bar mitzvah, but at least it would be paid for.

  “Start walking,” Tommy said.

  Marcus headed into the woods. He thought about running, knew he should zig-zag if he ran, but there was no way he could escape. He regretted being barefoot and in pajamas. He wished he wasn’t going to die in pajamas. And he didn’t want to be eaten by little animals. Lifeless on the forest floor; picked clean by chipmunks. That would be horribly undignified. Suddenly, Marcus was feeling less accepting of his fate. He stumbled on a root, twisting his ankle.

  “Shit,” he said, and stopped walking.

  “Keep moving.” Memo was right behind him.

  Marcus tried to put weight on his leg. His ankle was tender. He could walk, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to. They hadn’t reached wherever it was they were going. Perhaps if he could stall, something might intervene, an earthquake, a party of hikers—any distraction that would give him a chance at survival.

  The blow that sent him sprawling to the ground came from nowhere. There was blackness behind his eyes, a dull ringing in his cranium. The pain radiated up through the top of his head and down his neck and shoulders. He felt as if a tree had fallen on him.

  From another room, Marcus heard Tommy’s voice: “What the fuck, Memo?”

  When he opened an eye and saw Memo standing over him with a gun, he realized he’d been pistol-whipped. His hair felt wet. He touched it with his fingers. Blood.

  “Get up and keep walking,” Tommy said. Marcus staggered to his feet. He thought he saw Tommy glare at Memo, the kid puffed up from the violence.

  “You gonna pop your cherry today,” Tommy said.

  “Fuckin’ A,” Memo said.

  Marcus lurched forward. His head throbbed. His big toe had started to bleed. He must have cut it when he fell. The pine needles were soft under his bare feet, the morning sun getting hotter. The three of them walked deeper into the woods, Marcus in the lead, the flaps of his bathrobe swaying as he staggered along. After five minutes, they came to a clearing and Tommy told him to lie on the ground.

  Marcus looked at him, trying one last time to forge some kind of tenuous human connection. But the big Samoan was serving ice. Marcus had vowed not to beg, and if this was how it was all going to end, there was nothing he could do. He sank to his knees. Instinctively, he grabbed two handfuls of pine needles. What could he do with them? Throw it in their faces? The pine needles were dry in his hands, useless. He did not want his penultimate earthly act to be a spasm of impotent aggression. Marcus lay down now, his face on the forest floor, the pine needles brushing his cheek. He heard Tommy’s voice.

  “You want to do it, right? Then get up close so it’s clean.” Memo would be the shooter. Marcus prepared himself, his final moment of consciousness, the epistemological limit, unification with the universal.

  The thunderous boom of the gunshot resonated against the mountains and up to the endless sky.

  And Marcus Ripps was dead.

  Only he wasn’t. Marcus heard a thudding sound and looked over his shoulder to see Memo sprawled on the forest floor. A wet rose bloomed in the gelled hair, and blood watered the dry ground.

  “I think you gonna miss that audition,” Tommy said. Then he removed the gun from Memo’s dead hand and jammed it in his own size 54 waistband.

  Marcus took in the tableau from his prone position: the Samoan, massive against the looming mountain, the gun, the dead man deep in the craggy wilderness. A hawk soared overhead, looking for a kill. Marcus glanced at Tommy. Had the guy snapped? Was he going to kill the two of them? Or was his captor only interested in exacting brutal revenge on Memo for the deeply ill-advised attempt to cuckold him?

  “You all right?” When Marcus replied yes, he was, Tommy told him to get up. Marcus stood and brushed himself off, his ears still ringing from the gunshot. He wanted to celebrate being alive, but the corpse at his feet made that problematic. Memo’s eyes were open. A fly skittered along his face. What was the etiquette in this situation? The kid had brutalized him, but it was still unsettling to see him laid out with a hole in his expensive haircut.

  Tommy’s voice penetrated the reverie into which Marcus had fallen. He was suggesting that they walk back to the road. Marcus looked around uncertainly. The man’s entire manner had changed, the threatening countenance gone. This was the guy who had been dandling the family dog in the middle of the night.

  “You want a ride home?”

  When they were seated in the front seat of the Yukon, Tommy removed the remaining bullets from the gun. Producing a bandanna from the pocket of his jeans, he wiped it clean. He placed the weapon on the seat between them and ordered Marcus to put it in the glove compartment. Marcus did as he was told.

  “Why’d you bring me up here?”

  “Take care of Memo.”

  Tommy stuck the key in the ignition. Marcus was still trying to fathom his role in the day’s events. But he liked the sound of the engine starting. At least he was alive.

  With his nervous system shot, Marcus did not enjoy the ride back. But he managed to retain what Tommy said he would tell Malvina: you got the drop on Memo and flew. I chase you through the woods but you slip away. You not in business tomorrow.

  When Tommy turned onto Magdalene Lane he said “One more thing, brah. You get
the idea to talk to cops, them your prints on gun.”

  So that was it. Marcus was the alibi, a clever insurance policy for Tommy in the event someone found the body. Were Marcus to even consider telling the police what had happened, this move would serve to keep the impulse in the deep freeze. Why couldn’t he ever be the one who was thinking three steps ahead?

  The truck from the security company was parked in front of the house when Marcus climbed out of the Yukon. The burglar alarm was being installed. Good timing, he thought. Tommy rolled down the window and said “Shalom.” Then he was gone.

  Marcus found Jan in the kitchen, where she was unloading the new dishwasher.

  “Where were you?” Her face was taut. It wasn’t like Marcus to just take off. She noticed blood caked in his hair. “What happened to your head?”

  “I better ice it.”

  Jan got out a baggie and stuffed a dozen ice cubes in it. She handed it to Marcus, who sat down and applied it to the nasty lump that had formed. She looked at him as if to say Please tell me this isn’t as bad as I think. After determining that Lenore was not within earshot, he reported everything that had happened. The churning anxiety she experienced as she heard the story of his close escape was elbowed aside by immense relief at its outcome. She had listened incredulously at first, but when Marcus finished, tears had formed in her eyes, and now she was hugging him. He rubbed her back, comforting her.

  Both of them knew the limit had been reached. Neither of them had the appetite for a war. Smart Tarts was over. They would vacate the Beverly Hills-adjacent apartment. Marcus would inform the work-force. Jan would take the Web site down and remove all traces of the business from the Internet.

  Lenore received the news with the same equanimity she had displayed when Jan initially told her about the business.

  “It was a swell ride,” she said. “I’ll miss the ladies.”

  Chapter 20

  The autumn morning on which Nathan Ripps became a bar mitzvah transpired under a blue sky so glorious that Jan’s Philadelphia relatives, who were religious people, told Marcus that it must have come from God. The Santa Ana winds were blowing, and the smog that typically encrusted the Valley had vanished with their powerful gusts. The San Gabriel Mountains were clearly visible to the east, the Santa Monica range to the west. It was a day when the San Fernando Valley could be imagined fresh and new. They had engaged a photographer, a young woman wearing a pants suit, her black hair in a thick braid, and she arranged Jan’s relatives on the sidewalk in front of the synagogue in various combinations to have their pictures taken.