Lester began to feel as inauthentic a man as was possible, living in a marriage he no longer felt, working as a law enforcer when he’d never been able to face any man down on his own, to serve or protect anyone without the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department behind him. He began to imagine leaving Carol, just packing up and renting an apartment on the other side of town. But then he would think immediately of Bethany and Nate, their small round faces looking up at him in mute disbelief just before they cried, and cried. Also, he would be responsible for supporting two households. There would be child support, maybe even alimony, and the mortgage payments too, none of which, combined, he would ever be able to handle with his salary.
But this was not the whole story of why he stayed, and he knew it. Sometimes, while out on overnight patrol, driving down the dark empty streets or back roads at three or four in the morning, his dispatch radio turned low, sipping a cool coffee, he knew what it was, and he would allow himself to acknowledge that bright Saturday morning in his boyhood in June, the used white station wagon their father had bought for his move to Brownsville, Texas, parked in front of their house on Natoma Street. It was the trunk and two suitcases on top. It was the way the late-morning sun made everything almost too bright to look at, the white wagon and its whitewall tires, his father’s white button-down shirt, the way his gut always pushed his belt buckle out, which was bright too. It was Lester’s twelve-year-old brother’s T-shirt as he helped their father tie the canvas to the shining chrome rack. It was the smell of coffee and biscuits coming from the house, the way his mother had made everyone breakfast as though this was a normal Saturday morning. It was the way she’d served them plates of eggs, pouring the boys juice and milk, their father coffee, all the while asking her husband sincere-sounding questions about his new job with the border patrol in Brownsville, as if he didn’t already have a job in Chula Vista, as if he was moving to Texas for them. But mostly it was the way she stayed in the house when it was time for their father to leave, the way he patted her shoulder once on his way out the door, like she’d just gotten some bad news he had nothing to do with. Lester sat on the porch steps and he could feel the whole quiet house at his back. And his father just stood there on the bright sidewalk, his hands on his hips, a package of Tareyton’s straining against his heart pocket, and he looked at sixteen-year-old Lester sitting on the steps like he was waiting for his firstborn son to do the polite thing and stand and see him off. His father glanced at the house behind Lester, then looked at him again, nodding once, as if to say, “Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it.” Then he shook his youngest son’s hand. Lester’s brother began to cry, and their father turned as quickly away as if it was something private he wasn’t supposed to see. It was hearing the wagon’s engine start up, watching the car pull away from the curb and move past the adobe row houses in the open sunlight for the stop sign at the corner of Las Lomas. It was seeing just the side of his crying brother’s face as he watched the car grow smaller, his thin shoulders jerking up and down, his hands hanging loose at his sides. It was looking back at the corner and seeing no car at all. It was how hot it got that day, the way you could smell the old paint in the trim boards, the dog shit in the adjoining yard, the dry concrete of the sidewalk, the lumber from the building supply warehouse across the street.
For almost a decade with Carol, all the heat and light of that one day was enough to keep the cool regret of his own marital decision at bay. But everything changed when he walked into that little house on the hill in Corona with a suit from the civil division, Kathy Nicolo Lazaro appearing in her terry-cloth bathrobe, her toenails painted pink, her hair wild, her small dark face all incredulous but brave about the news they delivered. Lester had felt a wanting rise in him so deep and immediate his throat flushed, but still he couldn’t look away from this Mrs. Lazaro as he watched her take in the bad news about her house, as he stood there in his uniform and gun belt, his desire so fierce it could almost be a noise in the room. And that changed too, his feeling there was no room to move. With his hunger for Kathy came the new belief that maybe it wasn’t too late. And this feeling only grew when on a hard wide bed at the Eureka Motor Lodge she actually took him inside her, took in his hunger with a hunger of her own that was dark and slick and more heated than any day in Chula Vista. Regret seemed to slide away from his stoop, and with her absence came a picture in his head of having a place of his own, a house where his children would have their own rooms. Maybe a house on a hill in Corona. Kathy had hinted at this scenario, the fact her house had three bedrooms. Then Lester would only have to deal with child support payments and maybe half the mortgage on the house in Millbrae that wouldn’t be his anymore. He could manage that. Maybe it was time he did take Captain Baldini up on one of his memos and go for his sergeant’s stripes and the raise in salary that went with it. And with a sudden heat in his face Lester thought again of shirking off Alvarez; that wasn’t smart. Maybe he should drive down there now and slip a note under Alvarez’s door, offer his apologies and explain that circumstances beyond his control had kept him from reporting in. And that would be accurate, wouldn’t it? But that would take too long, and Kathy might show up while he was gone.
Lester went back inside the cabin and in the light from the fire in the stove he wrote her a note on the back of a grocery bag:
It’s almost eight. Don’t go anywhere, Kathy Nicolo. I’m off to make a call to work.
I love you.
Les
He put the bag on the table. Then, to draw her attention to it, he placed the empty wine bottle on top. He swung the fire door shut on the stove, then went out to the clearing lit by the stark light of the hissing Coleman lantern, picked it up, and walked back up the trail to his car. He hoped Kathy’s Bonneville would pull into the turnoff road right then. But the road was dark and quiet, the cracked asphalt covered by a fog bed that, when he drove through it, rose swirling over his hood and windshield like spirits. He felt momentarily that he was somewhere exotic and dangerous, and he thought of the Iranian colonel, the photograph of him at a party with one of the richest sons of bitches in the world, a man with his own secret police force. The night Lester paid him a visit, the colonel had seemed to be in his walking-around clothes, but Lester had noticed how finely tailored the pants had been, the shirt too. And when Behrani spoke, his words were clear and unhurried, like a man used to being listened to. It would be hard for Alvarez to resist a slick bastard like that, Les thought, and as he drove through the fog up the coast highway, keeping his eye out for Kathy’s Bonneville in the opposite lane, he wondered just how far this thing could go. Would he be charged simply with conduct unbecoming an officer? Maybe receive a letter of reprimand? Or a day’s suspension without pay? Or could it get hotter than that? Would his threat to Behrani be interpreted as the extortion it was? Leave this property or else? But you needed evidence or corroborating witnesses for that kind of charge, so he was probably in the clear on that count. Still, there would be the dark spot in his file, which might very well hurt his chances with the Civil Service Board.
On the coast road in Montara, Les pulled the car into the lot of a gas station convenience store and used an outside phone to call the department in Redwood City. He left a message on Alvarez’s voice mail, apologizing for missing him and saying he would be in the lieutenant’s office first thing tomorrow morning. He hung up, then called the number that until this moment he had associated with home. He wanted to talk to both his children, even if it meant waking them up. Nothing too lengthy or serious, just tell them he was working and that he loved them and would see them tomorrow sometime. But on the fourth ring, the machine picked it up. He hadn’t expected that. He pictured Carol probably reading a story to one or both of them, and he felt wounded at this image of her, holding herself up for the children. Then he heard her cheerful voice tell him the Burdon Family couldn’t come to the phone right now, please leave your name and number or call us back. Les waited for the beep, but the silenc
e that followed felt like a black emptiness he could not imagine speaking through to his son and daughter. He hung up, then felt like a fool because Carol would surely know it was him. A car passed on the beach road behind him and he turned quickly to its sound, but it was a black El Camino with mud-splattered wheel wells and he stood there and watched its taillights get engulfed into the fog. He could hear the surf out on the beach. He looked up the highway but saw no more headlights piercing the mist.
Something was wrong.
But then everything was wrong; he shouldn’t be standing at some outdoor pay phone hoping for Kathy to drive by. And they shouldn’t have to rendezvous at a place like Doug’s fish camp either. Not tonight, squatting in some poker shack as if they were both on the run. Lester stood in the electric light of the pay phone and watched the fog move along the sandy surface of the parking lot. His hunger had vanished, but now he felt scattered and shaky, not quite rooted in his own feet. Nothing was rooted. Everything was suspended in midair until Kathy’s presence—and then what they would do next—made it all move again. He could go inside the store for a chili dog or cup of coffee, but he knew the owner from night patrols, a big gray-bearded man who liked to talk and would never take Lester’s money but seemed instead to expect conversation as payment. And usually Lester didn’t mind this. The man was intelligent and genuinely warm, and speaking with him felt rarely like a waste of time. But Lester didn’t want to talk. You had to look into a person’s face then, let him look back into yours, and he didn’t feel capable of either.
He was beginning to feel something was truly wrong. No longer demons of the Whore 24. And no longer simply the image of his daughter’s face peering up at him so still from her bed. The stillness he felt was the kind a deer goes into right after the hunter’s boot breaks a fallen twig; it raises its head and sniffs the air, the unlucky ones taking the moment to turn their glistening dark eyes to the trouble they smell, to the bright orange vest, the oiled bore of a large-caliber exit out of this life.
Lester got into his Toyota and pulled into the fog of the coast highway, heading north for Point San Pedro and Corona. The fog was so thick his headlights were reflected off it and he had to drive slow, and careful.
I’M NAKED AND MY BREASTS ARE FLATTENED AGAINST A BED OF smooth black stones in shallow water on the beach. It’s low tide and the small waves push me forward when they break, then pull me back, and I can feel the stones under me but instead of being cool and wet now, they’re hot and dry, and I want to stand and leave, but my body is too heavy and the beach in front of me is as gray as ash and sticking out of it, in dozens of places, is Lester’s black gun, the handle grip or barrel. Hundreds of them. And toys too, half buried in gray sand: old Frisbees, plastic bats and rubber balls, and a red tricycle, its wheels mostly covered. My throat is a scorched pipe to my stomach. The waves roll me and now they’re hot too, and I begin to cry and the water pulls back, dumping me into the gray sand full of guns and toys. And the waves are taking so long to come back I think they must be pulling up into one huge wall of water. I can feel the still air at my back and I dig my hands into the sand and drop my face to it and wait for the final crush of water, my whole body stiff, but nothing comes. Nothing happens. I hear birds. Seagulls. I raise my head and see my husband and Lester walking together on the gray sand. Their shirts are unbuttoned, both of them tanned, even Nick, who has lost some weight. I call his name, but my throat is so dry no sound comes. Then they see me and they both start fucking me, taking turns. Then Lester pulls out and comes onto my hip and side. And he keeps coming. And it starts to cover me, weighing me down, and doesn’t stop, and now it all begins to harden and I’ve become a stone, a smooth white stone among all the black stones. And the air smells like spiced tea.
SOMEONE TOUCHED MY wrist and I saw the colonel’s wife bending close, looking at me. Her brown eyes were a little bloodshot, and she looked at my upper arms and touched the bruise. She shook her head and said something softly to herself in her language, then she pushed my hair back out of my face and smiled. “Please, you must for drink this.”
There was a tray on the chair by the bed, a clear glass of hot tea, a saucer full of sugar cubes, and a plate of sliced kiwi fruit, green with tiny black seeds in it. She sat on the side of the mattress and reached for the tea, but my stomach curled in on itself and my mouth filled with spit and I had to scoot past her to the foot of the bed and in the bathroom I threw up. Nothing but liquid. Then I heaved air twice, my ribs and throat hurting, and I rested my forehead on my arms. I still felt a little drunk. I closed my eyes but there was tilting dark. I opened them, remembered talking to Franky, getting nothing from him. And I was at the mall drinking there. And there was a woman crying in front of me. A cash register. A boy with a skinny neck. I wiped my mouth with toilet paper, then used it to clean the splatter on the rim. I sat on the lid, which was covered in thick lamb’s wool, the kind rich people put on the front seat of their cars, and I wanted to press the flush handle down but I felt too weak right then to turn around and do it. The sink and mirror in front of me were so clean they were almost too bright to look at. I lowered my head and looked at the thick gray carpet on the floor. I tried to remember what this floor looked like when it used to be mine. My throat was dry as sand but I felt too shaky to drink. I remembered driving up the hill seeing the house, everything a white swirl.
The colonel’s wife knocked softly on the door and I must’ve answered because she walked in carrying a fresh towel and a rose-colored bathrobe. She rested them on the sink, pulled the shower curtain aside, and started the bath water running. She turned and looked down at me the way mothers do with young kids who are sick, and she smoothed my hair away from my face. It felt so good and bad that my eyes filled up and I had to look down.
“Please, have bath for to relax. I’m for us cooking. Perhaps you will wish to eat.”
She closed the door behind her. I stood to lock it, but I stood too quickly and the room seemed to pull me down and back. Through the door, I could hear water running in the kitchen sink, the colonel’s wife speaking over it in their language. Then I heard the lower voice of the colonel and I remembered him as a blur against the gray light, unloading Lester’s gun, putting it in his pants. Did I dream that? I didn’t know. A black sky opened up inside me. I felt so suddenly afraid, so far away from the solid feel of a real moment in my old life that I couldn’t move. I had a feeling about my chest, and I touched my fingers to my sternum. I could feel a tenderness: the barrel of Lester’s gun, and I started to cry and I remembered the fat woman crying, me pointing the gun at her through the glass. And through the bathroom door I could hear silverware being pulled from a drawer. I could smell cooking meat, tomatoes and onions, and I thought I might throw up again, but I was too weak to get on my knees so I leaned my hands on the sink but nothing came. I looked into my reflection, saw the tear trails over the accountant’s daughter’s blush still smeared so pink into my cheeks, my eyes flecked with red veins, swollen underneath, my hair sticking out; I was so dirty, so deserving of everything bad that had ever come my way or ever would again. I jerked open the mirrored cabinet door. On the clean glass shelves were white boxes of Band-Aids and cold cream, tubes of antibiotic lotion, a jar of French aspirin, two small maroon boxes with Arabic or Persian writing on it, an alphabet of snakes. And on the lowest shelf, a brown plastic prescription bottle to Mrs. N. Behrani: Halcion. It was three-quarters full and my heart was beating in my fingertips, in the palm of my hands, my bowels loosening. I pressed down on the cap, turned, and pulled it off, my hands trembling, a chill up my arms and back, my nipples erect against a shirt I’d stolen from a girl, somebody’s daughter, one I would never have, a son either. Family waste. My road was a circle of shit, rising up to the west only to fall back to the east, to this, to taking off all my clothes in a stranger’s house, in the house of my father who was always a stranger to me, stepping naked over the carpet, running water in the sink. No more running, the tablets going down my t
hroat like little embryos of solution. No enemy voices in my head, just a surrender to my cupped hands under the sink faucet as I drank and swallowed, seeing the cleaning calluses on my palms and wondering who will take over my clients’ cleaning? This is what I thought of as I stepped into the water that was so hot goose pimples came out on my skin; I was thinking: who will keep the houses and offices clean of filth? Who will be there to take on everyone else’s grit and dust and bad news? I lowered myself slowly in, my spine softening in the heat, my hands clammy on the porcelain bath. With my bare foot, I pushed the faucet knob in and shut off the water. Through the bathroom door I could hear Mr. and Mrs. Behrani speaking in that tongue that sounded older than the earth. No longer malicious voices to me. No great malice to accuse anyone of. Water dripped from the faucet into the bath and for a while I listened to each individual drop as it hit, the plimp of them. Their plimp, plimp, plimp. I began to count them. When I reached thirty-six, I started over, each drop a year getting sucked by gravity into everyone else’s years, and thirty-six may as well be a hundred. I closed my eyes to a darkness that no longer moved, and I kept counting but did it from 1957 this time, ’58, ’59, and I hoped the colonel’s wife wouldn’t blame herself too badly. I hoped she’d lay me down on her brass bed in my and Nick’s old room on those nice carpets—’70, ’71—she’d wrap me in lamb’s wool, and try to make me up as beautiful as her daughter. And they’d stand around me in the candlelight and speak in their old tongues. Mothers and daughters. Blood and breasts—’90, ’91, ’92—and the milk is for everyone. Please drink.
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