by Meg Gardiner
‘‘To clear his name? What do you say, one spin around the block? I bet it’s been a long time since you were on a bike.’’
‘‘You’re still hawking the line that Brand didn’t do it? Who do you blame, the Mossad?’’
Harley looked up. ‘‘Don’t answer that, Kenny.’’
‘‘Why shouldn’t I?’’
I said, ‘‘Yeah, why shouldn’t he?’’
‘‘Evan’s a legal journalist. That’s how she met your father, interviewing him for a magazine article.’’
He said, ‘‘She’s not interviewing me. We’re just jawing. ’’
She set down her glass. ‘‘All communications with the press are to go through my firm. I’m not kidding.’’
He grinned. ‘‘You like to strap on real clangers, don’t you, Harley?’’
Her cheeks pinkened. ‘‘Save it for the locker room, would you?’’
The grin spread. ‘‘Hey, it’s okay. Don’t get your jock-strap in a twist.’’
I stared at him with bewilderment. Were these jibes meant to tease Harley about her sexuality, or about lawyers? Were they meant to impress me? Or were they a mental tic, equivalent to Kenny grabbing his genitals to make sure they were still there?
He got up from the table, saying to Harley, ‘‘If she’s a writer, it means Blackburn has unlimited bandwidth to tell his side of the story. Maybe it’d be good to let me even things up.’’ He winked at me. ‘‘Last chance for that ride.’’
‘‘No, thanks.’’
‘‘Your loss. Catch ya later, Gidget.’’
He took the helmet and headed back through the bar toward the restaurant.
My mood had dried and curled up at the edges. ‘‘Harley, what was that all about? Did you set it up for him to stop by?’’
Her hand went through her hair. ‘‘I thought it would be a good chance to cool down the rhetoric, let Kenny get back on the right footing.’’
‘‘Rhetoric? That was innuendo, and it was rough.’’
‘‘It’s okay. If you haven’t noticed, nothing in life ever goes right for more than ten seconds at a shot. It’s why lawyers earn such a handsome living.’’ She held out her glass. ‘‘Pour me some more champagne.’’
When I left the Paradise, I drove to Jesse’s house. The sandstone on the mountains glowed gold under the sun, and thunderheads burled into the sky. The inland valleys were getting lightning.
Jesse lived on the beach, down a drive that curved between Monterey pines. The house was pale wood and glass, with a cathedral ceiling and a wall of windows facing the surf. When I drove up, Adam Sandoval’s Toyota pickup sat in the driveway. I found Jesse and Adam sitting outside on the edge of the deck, wearing surfer swim trunks, warming their feet in the sand. Breakers frothed up the beach.
From the back, from a distance, Adam and Jesse looked similar. Swimmers’ shoulders, rangy limbs, California skin tones. Only closer could I notice the differences— Jesse’s scars, and the stillness in his legs. The injury had taken almost all the movement and sensation on his right side, and about half on the left. He could walk, barely, with braces and crutches. He got to the water by scooting backward on his butt.
I crouched down behind him, slipping my arms around his neck. His skin was hot from the sun. He tilted his head back and I kissed him.
He said, ‘‘Adam’s been showing me his new dive gear.’’
He nodded toward a mask, fins, and a spear gun. Adam was accomplished at spearfishing, did it free diving. He cooked the catch pretty well too.
Jesse smiled. ‘‘The diving off Kauai is spectacular. There’s still time for you to get your scuba certification before we go.’’
I kissed him again. ‘‘Good try.’’
‘‘Honestly, you’d love it.’’
‘‘No, you love it. Bottom line, I’m not spending my honeymoon in flippers.’’
‘‘But flippers are my favorite turn-on.’’
Adam stood up. ‘‘You kids.’’
Jesse said, ‘‘Adam agrees that my porn outbreak at the office was probably caused by a computer worm.’’
‘‘Charming experience, isn’t it?’’ Adam said.
I said, ‘‘Explain to me exactly what a worm is.’’
‘‘It’s malicious computer code, similar to a virus. It replicates itself and spreads without your control. It might delete files, or send documents on your hard drive to random addresses it generates.’’
‘‘So Jesse’s computer may simply have had an unlucky address?’’
He found his crucifix and slipped it around his neck. ‘‘Could be.’’
‘‘Then let’s hope that’s the end of it.’’
‘‘Yeah,’’ Jesse said. ‘‘Except our IT guy couldn’t find any evidence of a worm on my machine.’’
The breakers crashed and ran toward us, hissing over the sand.
Adam picked up an envelope of snapshots. ‘‘Look what I found. Photos Isaac took. I hadn’t seen them before.’’
I leafed through them—casual shots of Isaac at the beach, and with girls in bikinis, and at the computer start-up where he worked. They looked prosaic, full of sunny normality. Right before the light snapped off.
‘‘They’re great,’’ I said, handing them back.
With care, he returned them to the envelope. ‘‘I finally started going through his things. Boxes his colleagues packed up from work. Until now, I just couldn’t. . . .’’
Pain pinched his face.
Jesse pulled the wheelchair close. Hands on the edges of the seat, he hoisted himself up.
‘‘Tell her the rest,’’ he said.
Adam rubbed his fingers across his forehead. ‘‘I found something perplexing. Notes Isaac made about a problem at work.’’
Isaac had worked at Firedog, Inc., an Internet firewall company. He was a programmer, an athlete-geek like Adam, and when he died, Firedog lost its scrappy spirit. Eventually, the market imploded, they sold their technology to investors, and closed up shop. One of those investors, I recalled, was Mako Technologies.
‘‘Going through Isaac’s things, I found a scratch pad with Mako’s phone number and notes about a hassle of some kind. It sounds like Mako was on his back about some missing paperwork.’’
In the back of my mind I heard Harley Dawson. This incestuous town. Everybody knowing one another, dealing with one another, hurting one another.
‘‘But it seems like more than paperwork, it seems like . . .’’ He looked at Jesse.
‘‘Missing records,’’ Jesse said.
Slowly, I turned toward him. He didn’t look perplexed. He looked grave.
‘‘And it took you five minutes to tell me this?’’ I said.
That’s when the doorbell rang. It was the police.
I opened the front door. ‘‘Hello, Detective.’’
Chris Ramseur, Santa Barbara PD, looked surprised. ‘‘Evan. Long time no see.’’
He had the face of a jaundiced English teacher, thoughtful and canny. His tie and oxford shirt made him look weary. I ushered him in.
‘‘I have news.’’ He stared at Jesse and Adam coming through the patio doors.
‘‘Chris,’’ Jesse said.
Ramseur gazed unblinking at Jesse’s chest, as though looking at his legs might be dangerous, like Lot’s wife taking that fatal glance back at Gomorrah.
He said, ‘‘I wanted to tell you in person. We got him.’’
Jesse looked as though the floor had dropped away beneath him, clear to China. Adam put a hand on his shoulder.
‘‘Brand was arrested after a fight outside Harry’s. And you’ll love this: He tried to bluff his way out of it with a fake diplomatic passport from British Honduras.’’
‘‘Belize?’’ I said.
‘‘Yup. Anybody can order one of these out-of-date passports online and use it to impress women at cocktail parties. You just can’t claim diplomatic status with it.’’
Jesse still looked dumbfounded. I took h
is hand.
‘‘So now his lawyer’s bitching that the officers arrested him while he was arranging to turn himself in,’’ Chris said. ‘‘He’s ranting about the statute of limitations, habeas corpus. Oh, and that Brand’s innocent.’’
Jesse said, ‘‘When’s the arraignment?’’
‘‘He’ll be in court tomorrow. Are you up to it?’’
This time his gaze did go to Jesse’s legs, and jerked away.
‘‘Up to it?’’ Jesse said. ‘‘You couldn’t stop me with a bullet.’’
We celebrated, drove to the harbor and hit Brophy Brothers. Jesse took his graphite crutches so he could get up the stairs to the bar, and we sat on the balcony while the music hopped and the crowd jostled, waitresses swerving between the tables. Below us in the marina, the commercial fishing fleet rocked on water gone purple with shadow. Beyond the breakwater the ocean shimmered in silver light.
Adam got drunk quickly, a light drinker knocking back tequila shooters. I didn’t ask him any more about the missing paperwork, because his mood had lifted to sweet heights. He started talking physics with intoxicated passion. But I knew what Jesse was thinking: There’s no such thing as coincidence.
Adam was explaining time dilation using a shot glass and a saltshaker. ‘‘Accelerate toward the speed of light, and time passes more slowly.’’ He held the shot glass like a spaceship. ‘‘You hit light speed, you’re going so fast through space, you have no speed left to move through time.’’ He looked at us crookedly. ‘‘See? At light speed, time doesn’t pass.’’
He turned the glass to reflect the sunset off Jesse’s hand. ‘‘Light never ages. Look at it, jefe. That shine there, it’s eternity.’’
When we got up to leave he hugged me and put his hand over his heart.
‘‘Maybe this rock will go now. This stone that sits in my chest.’’
‘‘I hope so,’’ I said.
Jesse got to his feet, pushed up, and set the crutches. He was six-foot-one and I loved to see him tall. Loved it when he leaned against me. It felt like dance time, a Hollywood hold, and its rarity gave me a pang. Adam wasn’t fit to get behind the wheel, so I drove his truck home for him, and rode with Jesse back to the beach house. In the car, I asked him about Isaac’s notes.
He said, ‘‘I haven’t seen them, but they say something like, ‘What shares?’ and talk about double-checking that everything had been sent to Mako.’’
‘‘What do you make of it?’’
‘‘Mako invested in Firedog the way they did in a bunch of start-ups. Angel funding, cash in exchange for a chunk of stock. It sounds like Mako couldn’t find the Firedog stock certificates and Isaac was trying to figure out where they were.’’
‘‘And you’re thinking what I’m thinking?’’
‘‘That it isn’t a fluke. But I don’t know what it is.’’
The tires hummed over the road. I said, ‘‘Why does Adam call you chief?’’
‘‘Jefe? A play on my name, I guess. And because I captained the team.’’
He wouldn’t say the obvious: and because Adam looked up to him.
At his house I put music on, Marvin Gaye. Jesse took a Viagra, which, if it wasn’t a miracle, came close. It had given him back a reliability in lovemaking that he thought he’d lost because of the spinal cord injury.
We went to the bedroom and turned off the lights. Jesse knew what I wanted and let me have it, standing by the window, moonlight hard white across his face. I unbuttoned his shirt, pulled my own shirt over my head, and wrapped myself against his smooth skin. He swung an arm around my back. His eyes were dark, a smile on his lips, his mouth coming down and kissing me, a long, hard, old-fashioned kiss. My heart hammered and my loins ached.
He pulled back. ‘‘You looked like this our first night.’’
‘‘Naked and smelling like tequila?’’
‘‘Enchanting.’’
‘‘It was dark,’’ I said.
‘‘Let me flatter you, Delaney.’’
I kissed him again. He wouldn’t be able to keep his balance much longer.
‘‘You made me breathless,’’ he said. ‘‘You were magical.’’
Nothing beats the mountains on a summer night, the city laid out like a blanket of diamonds below, the stars blazing, this man I craved actually wanting me.
It felt like high school. Leaving a party with a guy, going for a drive. We were working together at a local firm that summer, me practicing and Jesse on summer break from UCLA law school. When I asked him why he didn’t have a date for the party, he looked downcast. He said he was a lonely teenaged broncin’ buck with a pink carnation and a pickup truck . . . which made me think he was sad about a lost love, some college sweetheart who had let him down. And endeared him to me all the more.
Nobody around, night and the sharp scent of chaparral, the stars turning down until they sank into the ocean. The breeze fresh on my shoulders when he peeled off my blouse, his mouth on my skin. Me fumbling to unbutton his jeans while we grappled against the tailgate of his pickup.
‘‘Some magic,’’ I said. ‘‘I had the word Ford etched on my back afterward.’’
‘‘You never complained. To the contrary, you complimented me. You said I had a prizewinning butt.’’
‘‘Is that so?’’
‘‘Ass of the Decade,’’ he said. ‘‘Words I cherish.’’
I smiled at him, smelling the ocean on his skin, feeling his heart pound in his chest. The mountain was a singular event. Just that once, before he got hurt.
He said, ‘‘You miss it?’’
Oh, damn. His hands were on me, his eyes on me, his hips pressed against mine, swaying now, his wiring shortcircuited, nothing to be done about it. No lies to tell, because he had a sharp ear for insincerity, and I hated the truth.
‘‘Of course I miss it.’’ I ran the back of my hand across his cheek. ‘‘But I don’t miss you, babe. I have you.’’
I wasn’t saying it. How I desired him right now, as he was. And how I fought the wish that he was whole, that we could recapture it, just once. It killed me.
He said, ‘‘Lie down with me.’’
We moved to the bed and I lay next to him.
I started working my lips up his chest, kissing, teasing his skin with my mouth and teeth and tongue. Saturate him with sensation in the places he could feel it. I lifted his arm and kissed the inside of his wrist, working my way up to his neck, his face. His mouth.
He said, ‘‘I love you, Evan.’’
‘‘You, too, teenage broncin’ buck.’’
We both kicked off our shoes. Man, I dig those rhythm and blues.
At first I thought it was the wind that woke me. The Monterey pines were scratching against the roof. The clock said two fifteen.
But it was Jesse, dead asleep beside me, breathing hard, his hand clenching the blanket.
Talking in his sleep. ‘‘No. Help him. Don’t . . .’’
I shook him by the shoulder. He was hot, his forehead damp with sweat.
‘‘Jesse, wake up.’’
His eyes flicked wide and he grabbed my arm. ‘‘Don’t you leave—’’
‘‘Hey.’’ I pressed my hand against his shoulder. ‘‘It’s me.’’
Recognition squared away on his face, and he let go of my arm. He stared at me, but even in the dim moonlight I could tell he was seeing something else entirely.
‘‘Jesus Christ.’’ His chest rose and fell. He covered his face with his hands. ‘‘It was the crash. The noise wouldn’t stop, and the light kept spinning. And Brand was standing over me, this big man without a face, staring down to see if I was dead.’’
I wound my arms around him and stroked his hair.
‘‘Then he went to Isaac, but he wouldn’t help him; he just walked away.’’
‘‘It’s over,’’ I said.
But like the night, the dream would return.
He dropped back to sleep before I did. About three a.m., I got up for a
drink of water.
The house was built around an open plan, the living room, dining area, and kitchen all one space under the cathedral ceiling. His laptop was on the dining table, and I could see the screen from the kitchen sink. He had been online earlier, and the computer was still connected. Seeing it, I felt a twitch.
The screen was displaying a color photograph. I walked to the table. It was a News-Press archive photo, showing Jesse standing on the starting blocks at a swim meet. He looked voraciously confident, with all the certainty of bulletproof youth. Below the photo flashed the words, You have a message waiting.
This was wrong.
I looked toward the bedroom door. He was exhausted, and I knew if I woke him again, he wouldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. I stared at the screen. I could leave it alone. I could shut down the computer. I couldn’t stand it.
I clicked on message waiting. Jesse Matthew Blackburn:
You’ve had an amazing life. How’d you like for people to read all about it? How’d you like them to know everything?
Everything.
Do you want your woman to know? Think she’ll stay?
We don’t either.
I felt as if I had bitten down on aluminum foil.Don’t turn that dial, bucko. We’ll be right back.
There was only one possible meaning to this, and the earlier intrusion. It was a threat.
The Web browser quit. Boom, it disappeared, and the computer froze. When I rebooted and opened the browser, the history page had no reference to the site.
I headed back to bed. But I didn’t sleep.
6
The day dawned cloudy. Jesse dressed in silence, putting on a white dress shirt with a blue suit. The maroon neck-tie whipped as he knotted it. He could barely get down a cup of coffee, though I drank almost a whole pot.
‘‘Write down the message, word for word. I’m taking this to the police,’’ he said.
I held my coffee mug, feeling chilled. ‘‘What did they mean by everything?’’
‘‘Somebody’s threatening to blackmail me.’’ He packed the laptop in its case. ‘‘And you know who I think it is? Kenny Rudenski.’’
He looked up, eyes fierce, and saw my anxious face. His expression softened.
‘‘Ev, you’re not actually worried that they have something on me, are you?’’