Slipstream

by Leslie Larson

  He and Jewell both worked full-time every summer, so they’d spent a lot of time together. They’d delivered coffee and doughnuts to seminar rooms in the morning, cheese and crackers in the afternoons. They’d flipped burgers at beach parties for incoming freshmen, made thousands of sandwiches for the cheerleading camps that were housed in the dorms when classes weren’t in session, drove the catering van all over town on university-related business. The two of them had a lot in common. Both were paying their own way through college. Both their fathers had spent time in prison. Neither of them could sit still. They shared the same dark humor, a love of kung-fu movies, and enormous appetites. Which was why Eli didn’t blink while Jewell quickly demolished her heaping plate of food, then reached across the table for the tower of toast he’d stacked next to his own overflowing plate.

  “How’s your uptight girlfriend?” he asked.

  Jewell held her napkin to her mouth. To her surprise, her eyes filled with tears.

  “Uh-oh. Wrong question,” Eli said.

  Jewell grinned miserably and forced herself to talk. “I don’t know. Things are messed up, I guess. It’s mostly her ex-girlfriend. They’re always talking on the phone, you know. Discussing Rachel, their kid. Making arrangements, dropping her off. Who’s going to do this and who’s going to do that. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I feel like something’s going on. I mean, I know they have this kid and all, but really.” She searched Eli’s face, embarrassed but also relieved to be talking. “I feel like there’s still something between the two of them. Like it never really ended.”

  Eli nodded. Jewell could tell he was freaked out that she was on the verge of tears; she was usually so tough. He’d seen her go through no small number of lovers over the past several years. With the others, men and women both, Jewell had been more than ready to move on when the time came, but it was different with Celeste.

  “You going to drink that?” Eli said, pointing to one of the four glasses of milk she had lined up on her tray.

  She pushed one toward him. He drained it solemnly, as if he were downing a shot of whiskey to calm his nerves. “How long have you and Celeste been together?” he asked, not bothering to wipe the milk from his upper lip.

  “About a year and a half.”

  Eli raised his eyebrows. “And how long was she with her girl—the other woman?”

  Jewell drank one of the glasses of milk herself. She felt relieved yet nervous, as though she’d finally made a doctor’s appointment about an ailment she’d been ignoring.

  “Four years,” she said.

  She leaned forward, eager for Eli’s reply. He fingered the straggly hairs on his chin.

  “I’m in over my head,” Jewell prompted, since Eli didn’t seem to know what to say. “I don’t know what it is about Celeste. I’ve just never felt like this before. I keep making an ass out of myself. Even I hate myself. I know I should just get out of there, but I can’t. I just can’t see leaving.”

  Eli tugged so hard on his stringy beard that his chin stretched like putty. “Celeste’s a little self-centered,” he said. “I don’t think she appreciates you.”

  “Really, you think so?”

  Eli nodded solemnly. “Yeah, I do.”

  Jewell chewed her lips. How could she explain how wonderful it felt just to be in Celeste’s presence, to watch her move and speak? What a miracle that they actually lived together, that Celeste came home every night and woke next to Jewell every morning?

  “You’re right, it’s fucked up,” Jewell said. She pushed one of the two remaining milk glasses toward him and took the other herself. “Cheers,” she said grimly.

  They clanged glasses and shot back the milk. “What’s new in the news?” Jewell said, nodding toward the newspaper that was folded beside Eli’s tray. “Read me something distracting.”

  “A big storm’s supposed to move in tonight,” Eli said, visibly grateful that the heavy part of their conversation was over. “The storm door is open and a series of systems is lined up across the Pacific.”

  He turned a few pages, reading to himself, while Jewell watched a student from the next shift wheel out a big bowl of fresh fruit for lunch.

  “There was trouble out at the airport again yesterday,” Eli said. “They had to close down a whole terminal.”

  “What happened?”

  “Metal detector was unplugged and nobody knew it. Bunch of people went through before they figured it out, then they had to ground some planes because there were people on them who’d walked through without getting screened.” Eli shook his head and smiled like the whole thing delighted him. “Big mess,” he added. “People going crazy.”

  “My uncle works out at the airport,” Jewell said absently.

  “He a pilot?”

  She laughed. “This is my family, remember? He’s a bartender. Works one of the bars out there.” She reached across and stabbed one of the extra sausages Eli had piled on a saucer. “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing. Just watching you eat.”

  “Why?”

  “No reason. I just like to watch you pack it in.”

  She put the whole sausage in her mouth and grinned at him while she chewed.

  “Impressive,” Eli said.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll tell you what, all this tightened security is a bunch of shit,” he said, turning back to the paper. “It’s not going to do a damn bit of good. You watch. Something’s going to happen. They’re laying people off right and left, things like that. Well, it isn’t so simple. You pull something loose over here, something else is going to give over there. It’s all connected. Little things you don’t see.” He speared a sausage himself and chewed ferociously.

  Jewell gazed vaguely over Eli’s shoulder, out the window where students were passing on their way to class. “I think my dad’s out now,” she commented, switching gears without warning.

  “Huh?”

  “My dad. I think they released him. I think he’s supposed to be out by now.”

  Eli nodded. Jewell didn’t need to explain to him, since he, too, had complicated family connections as a result of several generations of wild and wayward hearts. Jewell had half-siblings she barely knew, more stepmothers and pseudo-uncles than she could remember, and a huge cast of indeterminate relatives who had played nothing but brief walk-on parts in her life. It was one of the things that Celeste, who came from a big but tightly-knit clan of Argentinean Jews, couldn’t understand. Eli didn’t blink an eye, though. He was living with his mother, his three young half-sisters, and the girls’ aunt. His own father had spent the last eleven years in a Texas prison for assaulting a police officer.

  “You going to see him?” Eli asked.

  “Ah, jeez. I don’t know.” Jewell was her father’s oldest, born when he was twenty-one, the same age she was now. “Probably not. It’s been years since I’ve seen him. I have some good memories of him from a long time ago, but he’s basically a fuckup. Probably by the time I got around to connecting with him he’d be back in jail anyway.”

  Eli used the last piece of toast to swab his plate clean. “You know how to get in touch with him if you decide you want to see him?” he asked before shoving the toast in his mouth.

  “I guess I could call my uncle. He usually stays in touch with him.”

  “The same uncle who works at the airport?”

  “Yeah, the same one. He’s my half-uncle really. He and my dad have the same father, but my dad’s a lot younger. They weren’t brought up together. I think my uncle just bails my dad out of trouble every now and then.”

  “Doors are opening!” the cashier shouted from the front of the dining room. She unlocked the doors that had been closed after the breakfast shift, and a mob of students stampeded in.

  “Animals,” Eli said, shaking his head. “You going to class?”

  “I don’t think so. I need to work on my final project. Plus I have to pick up Celeste’s kid this afternoon.”

  “What? Ar
e you kidding?”

  She smiled broadly. “Nope, we’re one big happy family. Anything to help.”

  4

  Logan Wylie didn’t like the sound of the new ping his beat-up Toyota was making as he headed east on the Pasadena Freeway toward the San Gabriel Mountains. He backed off the gas, listened, stepped on it, listened again. Plus he was almost out of gas. He did a quick calculation of how much money he should have by the end of the week and figured, real fast, that he was going to come up short. Even if the engine didn’t need work, which was unlikely considering it had over two hundred thousand miles on it and was burning oil like a motherfucker.

  Still, it was a beautiful day. One of those late-fall mornings that could have been spring, the air was so bright and transparent. Everything sparkled. No smog at all. It was so clear the mountains rose up: right there. You could see all the details: the rivulets and canyons creasing the broad shoulders, the dark green scrub and white boulders. To the west, the city spread flat to the coast, the square blocks cut by the wider roads, all the buildings white and clean in this light. Even the fucking freeway looked beautiful, winding through the trees. Logan felt good.

  Traffic was light. He passed a slow-moving pickup loaded with rakes, lawnmowers, and leaf blowers. Probably headed for the same ritzy San Marino neighborhood he was. He checked his watch, saw that his timing was perfect. His problem, he told himself, was that he was always getting sidetracked. Too much in the moment, which could be a good thing if you didn’t take it to extremes. But everything interested him, got his attention. Always had, from the time he was a little boy. People and things, they just grabbed him. Which was why it was hard to keep his mind on track. Stick with the program. Stay clean, stay sober, one day at a time. Get a plan and stick to it. That’s what he was working on.

  The phone in the pocket of his jacket rang the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth. For a minute he was flummoxed; he’d forgotten about this latest perk from the Salvettis, the client where he was headed. They needed to be able to get in touch with him if there was a problem. He fumbled with the buttons, his truck swerving as he steered with one hand. The phone kept ringing. He thought whoever had called him would hang up by the time he found the right button, but they were still there, breathing into the open line when he answered.

  “Hello?” he said again. He felt the person waiting on the other end. A smartass, then, or somebody trying to trace him. Could they put a trace on a cell phone? Just when he was about to ask who the hell was calling, the person hung up. He drove for a while with the phone in his hand, disappointed.

  The wind was picking up; the tall palms up ahead nodded and tossed. A bank of clouds sat offshore, blanketing the horizon. No reason he couldn’t call someone himself. He’d spent an evening programming numbers on the speed-dial; now he just had to remember who was which number. The Salvettis were number one, that much he remembered. It was only fair, since they’d given him the phone. Two and three were his brother, at home and at work, though he didn’t remember which was which. He’d programmed in his oldest daughter, a student at UCLA, as well as his second wife, who lived in Orange County with his son Stephen. His first wife lived in Northern California; she probably didn’t even have a phone. His third wife was in rehab; he didn’t have the number, not that he’d call her if he did. The kids he’d had with her, Tony and Heather, lived with their grandparents, her folks. He’d programmed his lawyer, his case officer, and the pizza joint down the street from the residence hotel where he was staying. Since that still didn’t take up many spaces, he’d put in the weather and the time. He’d written down the names and corresponding numbers on a slip of paper at home, but it didn’t do him any good now.

  Logan eyed the gas gauge, the dented dash, the dirty windshield. He’d have to hit somebody up for a little advance, but who? He took a chance and pressed number three, listened to the phone ring five times before it picked up.

  “Tommy?”

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  Logan could hear voices in the background. Glasses clinking, someone talking over a loudspeaker.

  “It’s me, man. Your bro. How you doing?”

  “Hey, Logan. What’s up?”

  Logan heard the caution in his brother’s voice. The problem with Tommy was he was so damn suspicious. Maybe because he was the oldest kid, but he was always expecting the worst. It’d been Tommy who’d picked Logan up from the facility when he was released two months ago, who’d driven him over to pick up his truck where it’d been parked all that time, and who’d set him up at the residence hotel.

  “Nothing, man,” Logan said. “Just tooling around. Thought I’d call up and say hi. Give my cell phone a little test drive. I’m heading up to San Marino for a job. Great day! I was just thinking about you, wondering what was up.”

  “That’s twelve-fifty,” Tommy said.

  “What?”

  “Hold on a sec,” Tommy said. Logan heard him thank someone, heard water run and change rattle together.

  “Okay,” Tommy said when he came back to the phone. “What were you saying?”

  “Well, I was just thinking how I need a plan,” Logan replied. “How I need to find something and stick to it. Take a class or something. Maybe learn to repair something like copy machines or refrigerators, you know. Then I can save up and maybe move out of here, get a place in the foothills like I always wanted. I’m thirty-nine, man. Guess it’s time to decide what I want to be when I grow up. What do you think?”

  After a silence Tommy said, “Listen, Logan. I’m at work. Is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine, man. I just wanted to check in with you.”

  The phone broke up so that Tommy’s voice was chopped off, like someone was playing with the button of a walkie-talkie. Logan only caught a few words. “You’re not coming in,” he shouted into the phone. “I can’t hear you.” His truck swerved. The car in the next lane honked.

  “Call me later,” Tommy said before his voice drowned in an ocean of static.

  Logan tossed the phone onto the seat next to him. Tommy could be a good guy, but he could also be a dick. Self-absorbed, always worried about something. He tended to ride your ass, even though his own life had been far from perfect. Being a bartender in an airport wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of success. Better not to rely on him too much. Logan gave himself a pep talk: get on your feet, get some money together, straighten things out. Take one day at a time, make all the appointments, go to the meetings. Stay clean. Stay on track. Keep your eye on the prize.

  His exit came up and he curved off the freeway, onto the empty, quiet streets of San Marino. Jeez Louise, these people had money. The mansions were set far back from the street, their massive yards perfectly manicured by armies of Mexican gardeners. Logan checked out the tile roofs, the gated entrances, the expensive cars resting in the driveways. Everything cool, quiet, relaxed. That was the life.

  The cleaning woman answered the door, gave him a look. Who was she to act like she owned the place, like she knew he was up to no good? Everything about this gig was just like the fucking movies. The fancy house, the maid, the frustrated wife, the rich but impotent husband. More than impotent, since the poor bastard couldn’t move anything from the neck down. Logan fit in perfectly: the handsome con, the grifter on the make. Although he wasn’t, really. Couldn’t afford to be, though it sure was tempting.

  “Wait here,” the cleaning woman said. She’d been buffing the floor of the huge entryway. The tile was the creamy beige of pulled taffy, each one shiny and spotless. She frowned, like she thought he’d pocket something the minute her back was turned. He watched her short, squat body as she headed up the wide stairway.

  Floor-to-ceiling windows opened to the garden, lush with banana trees, birds of paradise, jacarandas. The house was Spanish style, with open-beam ceilings, sparse furniture, area rugs in muted colors, big ceramic vases full of fresh flowers. Not bouquets of carnations or roses, but the fancy kinds of arrangements rich people
had: huge things with bare branches and moss, flowers Logan had never seen before. Everything was spotlessly clean. After being locked up, the silence and the good smells were heaven. Even now, in the residence hotel, he got sick of other people’s noises, of the looks they gave him and the smell of their bodies. If he lived here, he’d spend about three weeks just walking from room to room. He’d sit on the patio, take a cruise in the Jag, spend an evening by the fireplace. At night he’d lie down in one of the big beds upstairs and listen to the silence.

  “She come down,” the cleaning woman said. She started waxing again, ignoring Logan. Her husband, who did the yard work, was a lot friendlier. Fuck her. Logan cruised straight into the living room and sat down on a leather couch the color of buttery caramel.

  Still, Logan wouldn’t change places with the guy upstairs, Mr. Salvetti, for anything. Sure, the guy was loaded, but what good did it do him? His wife had explained: something had fallen on him at one of his construction sites, had severed his spine. The poor bastard couldn’t feed himself, button his shirt, work the TV remote. Unlike Logan, he couldn’t open a beer, play with his own dick, raise his finger to ask the waitress for a refill of coffee. He couldn’t get up before dawn and head for the desert, couldn’t throw down his sleeping bag and look up at the wide black sky and streaks of stars. Which was exactly what Logan had done as soon as he was released. Two days, just him and the coyotes. Nope, all Salvetti could do was lie on his back and stare at the ceiling.

  “Logan, hello,” Mrs. Salvetti said, sweeping into the room. She was looking a little rough that morning, but not bad. Not bad at all. Her white-blond hair was still damp, brushed back from her face. She reminded Logan of a greyhound, with her narrow face and sharp nose, the high-strung way she moved. She was thin the way a lot of rich women were, like she lived on salad and bottled water. Tan, with a jangle of gold bracelets on each wrist. Her eyes were a light, watery green.