Pacifica

by Jill Zeller

  Her name was Susan and she was the daughter of a mayor or a senator, small and round, with sunny golden hair and a pouty, elfin face. She looked like a fragile angel but I’d heard enough of her biting commentary about the party guests to know she was an accomplished gossip.

  “Where is Loretta, do you suppose?” Sipping her champagne, Susan scanned the crowd over the rim of her glass. “She’s usually the queen of the play. The center of attention. I haven’t seen her for the past half hour.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Loretta often vanished for long moments. I always assumed she was off with a guest or two, showing them one of the bathrooms she had just remodeled or Dennis’s new automobile.

  Susan leaned closer, her breath in my ear. “And what about your friend, Dr. Dudek. How is it he never appears? We are all dying to meet him.”

  I never bothered to correct people when they called Milo a doctor. In my opinion he deserved to be one. “He’s a private person.”

  “Oh, certainly.” Susan’s voice did not betray empathy. “Loretta speaks of him constantly. I think she’s quite taken with him.”

  Not having heard Loretta speak two words about or to Milo since we had first met, I didn’t believe Susan. But a moment later her words had the effect I knew she was hoping for.

  Milo and Loretta? Together? A heaviness lay in my stomach. Why should I care? I was in no position to judge anyone, with my history of affairs, but it bothered me. And I wasn’t in love with Milo. I loved him, but as a trusted friend. Perhaps, I thought, feeling foolish, I had hoped he was in love with me.

  If my thoughts showed on my face, Susan could easily see them. It didn’t matter. She had already drawn her own conclusions and likely I was the last one to know.

  An aching weariness filled me, followed by a wave of nausea. I said good night to Susan, who wished me well as she watched me leave.

  I stopped outside Milo’s room. In the dark hallway I could see a line of pale amber light under his door. There was no sound from within. I pictured him in there, lying on his bed, reading, thinking, or sitting quietly in the chair by his window. I raised my hand to knock, then let it fall.

  It was none of my affair, even if it was true.

  The next morning I slept long, the sun high in the sky and the air hot and breezeless. On the breakfast tray outside my door was a note.

  Exciting plans for today. We are going to the Canyon to watch DW shoot a battle. Come to my room. L

  I picked at my grapefruit and toast. Going into the hot and dusty canyon to watch men racing by on horseback was not appealing. I just wanted to lie in bed, watch shadows dance on the walls as the sun climbed the sky. I had been in Los Angeles for nearly two weeks, and it was as if a shroud of listlessness had fallen over me.

  It was time to move on. Take control of my destiny, as I once had.

  I dressed, in casual skirt and shirt, but did not pull on sensible boots for walking in the tall dead grasses of the California hills. Today I would plan my next move, and I needed to talk to Milo.

  Loretta’s room on the east side of our wing was the largest bedroom I had ever seen. Tall windows on either side of her bed looked out over the woods and canyon below, and open curtains permitted a hazy light to fill the space. Massive wardrobes lined one wall, a white dressing table opposite, all draped and littered with apparel and the paraphernalia of beauty. The room smelled of coffee and powder and tobacco.

  Loretta lay on her bed in a white satin robe on her stomach, bare feet in the air. Her red hair glowed against the starkly pale ivory sheets and pillows. A pang hit me, and I wanted to draw her, using pastels to capture the one spot of color in all the lack of it.

  Before her was a book, a script, probably. She drew from her cigarette and squashed it out in a saucer on the bed.

  “Oh, I’m so glad you didn’t take my note seriously. We are NOT going to the valley to watch horseplay.”

  I asked, “Have you seen Milo this morning?”

  The question came out before I could stop it. Innocent enough, I hoped, as I did want to see him.

  “Yes. We had breakfast together. While you slept.” Loretta smiled and sat up, and her voice betrayed nothing. I decided then that Susan the busybody had her facts—if one could call them that—all wrong.

  “I was hoping we could go to the port, to ask about his ship, or shipmates.” I sat down on a wire chair with a fluffy seat, pulled up next to the dressing table. The mirrored table top doubled the dizzying array of perfume bottles, rouge, powder, creams, pencil sticks.

  “That’s perfect!” Loretta clasped her hands together. “I was planning a drive for us, actually, a few stops on the way, and we can go on to San Pedro.”

  Getting up she came toward me, rested her hands on her dressing table and gazed at herself in the mirror. “Oh, I look ghastly. The detrimental effects of the party season.”

  “I’ll tell Milo.” I got up, but she grabbed my hand.

  “Wait a minute. Don’t go. I’ll be ready in a flash and we can tell him together. I’m sure he’ll be so excited.”

  Excited was not a word I would use to describe Milo Dudek’s reactions, but I wasn’t about to tell Loretta that.

  So I lingered as she scooped dresses from her closet, rejecting each one before settling on a navy blue suit. She chattered endlessly about people at the party I had no memory of, the studio, her director and fellow actors, how she worried about getting fat, or old.

  Nothing about Dennis. Nothing about Milo. Nothing about a studio plan to document my time in Mexico.

  “You don’t have to be at the studio today?” I suspected, from what I’d heard at the parties, that an actor’s schedule was unpredictable and grueling, dependent on sun and clouds or the director’s whims.

  “Oh no,” Loretta daubed rouge on her cheeks, blended it into her ivory skin with skill. “My filming sessions are ‘in the can’ as they like to say. I’m free as a bird until next week.”

  She was ready surprisingly quickly, a skill I assumed she learned in theater. We found Milo in his room with a medical text he’d dug up somewhere. His reaction, as predicted, was muted, just a parting of the lips, and, I thought, his smile delayed by a few seconds.

  Loretta slid in behind the wheel of a white vehicle with blue upholstery, and Cecil jumped in her lap. Astonished that she would drive us, I sat beside her, and she gave me a glance from under her wide-brimmed hat, colored glasses lowered on her nose so she could look at me over the rims.

  “Dennis taught me. So much more fun than Merlin. He drives so slow!” Merlin did oblige us with the crank, and watched us mutely as we drove away.

  “And there’s always a very nice man around to crank her for me,” Loretta chimed over the roar of the engine.

  “I can crank her for us,” Milo’s voice came from the back. And I wondered at Loretta’s remark—it seemed a little insulting to Milo.

  “But no, dear.” Turning around as we hurtled down the street, Loretta shook her head. “You are a guest in the car. Guests do not crank.”

  I held my hat to my head as Loretta wove the auto around streetcars and horse-drawn wagons. It seemed moments before we were back in downtown Los Angeles, heading toward the train depot.

  Taking a turn, Loretta parked the auto to one side of an elaborate set of red-painted oriental archways. Turning in her seat, she waved her hand.

  “Welcome to China City.” Getting on her knees, she gazed over my head toward the narrow unpaved street beyond the gateway. “Mysterious, unforgiving, delicious. Come with me, my friends, and be amazed.”

  I could smell pungent cooking oil, and wafts of incense. Beyond the arches, Chinese walked in flowing black pajamas like the ones Merlin wore. The narrow street led us through a warren of smoky brick buildings. Before several of the dwellings were stands of vegetables and fruits, barrels of stringy noodles and white rice, live chickens in cages.

  Leaving Cecil behind in the front seat, our first stop was a noodle shop, where Loretta treated
us to a soup of green leaves and noodles. Then she led us along a narrow alley and into a dim store of shelves stacked with silk embroidered robes, soft flat shoes, delicate porcelain tea services. The odor of incense was sharp and almost nauseating. A bowing man whose face was crazed with wrinkles pulled trousers and jackets from the shelves and laid them before Loretta on a glass case filled with jade jewelry.

  Milo stared into the case as if entranced. Seeing this, the shopkeeper opened the case and laid a velvet display of rings, necklaces, bracelets before him.

  “Fine jade. Best jade. You like? You want?”

  Picking up a ring of gold with a carved jade dragon, Milo turned it, looking carefully at the work.

  “How much?”

  The price was exorbitant, but Loretta and I watched with admiration as Milo bargained down, even starting to walk out of the store.

  My mind seethed with curiosity. This was a woman’s ring. Had he bought it for Loretta? Under my ribs my heart warmed with a bite of jealousy. Glancing at Loretta, I saw her half-smile and eyes bright before she turned away to point at a pink silk robe and purchase it.

  Along another alley, into the dim canyons of China City, Loretta led us. I was glad to have a guide, because I felt as if I could be lost forever in this capsule of the orient.

  She stopped us before an alcove leading to a red door. To the right of the door stood a life-sized stone statue of a woman draped in oriental garb, eyes closed, smiling.

  Pressing her hands together, prayer-like, Loretta introduced us to the statue. “Qwan Yin, mother of peace.”

  Before Qwan Yin was a brass bowl filled with dried herbs, and sticks of incense burned at her feet. A stillness seemed to fall over us, blanking out the sounds of wheeled carts and the chatter of foreign voices.

  Putting her hand on the door, Loretta smiled at us, and tilted her head. “Come inside with me, to experience something truly amazing.”

  Was this an opium den? I had read of such places, heard of them hidden deep in New York City’s Chinatown. I sensed Loretta had a preference for narcotics, especially after she had supplied me so obligingly with Dr. Liu’s tonic.

  I shook my head. “I’ll wait here, I think.”

  Loretta laid a hand on my arm. Milo stood near, saying nothing. “It’s not what you think, dear. Just come, just inside the door. That’s all you need to do.”

  Her voice, coaxing, soft, was all Milo needed, and so he drifted in behind her, and I followed, feeling foolish about wavering outside the door like a curious child.

  I entered a narrow vestibule, dimly lit by distant candlelight. The place smelled of old wood and incense. Loretta nudged me, pointed to her shoes, which she was slipping off her feet. I did the same.

  The floor was of rough stone. Loretta walked noiselessly through a doorway into the main room, Milo following. Waiting behind, I looked into the room.

  It was a narrow space, walls painted red, lit by dozens of candles in sconces and adorning a distant figure of gold. On the floor were not cots for reclining while smoking opium, but rows of small pads draped with red cloth. On one knelt an elderly woman in a simple blue jacket and black pants, her back to us, facing the icon at the far end.

  The gold figure at the far end of the small room was a large Buddha, gazing down at us from a dais of embroidered cloth, under an arras festooned with brightly colored cloth flags.

  From a dim corner a bell chimed. Milo stopped halfway down the narrow aisle, but Loretta knelt on one of the pads and bowed her head.

  I waited beside a red column trimmed with gold paint. My heart thudded under my ribs. Somehow, deep in my Catholic blood, I felt that I was committing a sin walking into this pagan temple. My father was a casual Catholic, my mother giving confession fervently in her hypocrisy of sin. My brother and I went to public schools, as Papa believed we needed to understand the world in which we lived. But even with this layman’s view of life, I still trembled whenever I entered a place of worship that did not contain at least a statue of the blessed Virgin.

  The place was silent; none of the sounds of China City penetrated here. Hot, close, and reeking of the sweet incense sticks burning at the crossed feet of the Buddha. Nausea washed through me. Turning I crossed the little vestibule and walked into the air and sun.

  Leaning against the cool brick wall, I inhaled, breathing in the aroma of cooking fires and fish. A passing couple, man and woman in conical hats, glanced at me, then away and hurried past. The woman carried a smaller version of Cecil the fluffy dog in her arms.

  A moment later Milo was at my side, looking at me, eyebrows lowered, intent. “Nola, are you feeling ill?”

  I gathered up a smile from somewhere. “The temple walls were closing in on me. Resentful oriental spirits.” I touched his arm. “I’m fine now.”

  Milo’s solemn expression showed he didn’t believe me. “You should not be pushing yourself to keep up with her.”

  A hot little bead burned in my chest. “What do you mean?

  He pressed his lips together before answering. “I just mean you aren’t fully recovered yet. I can see that you are tired, you sleep a lot. All this—” He waved his hand, and I knew he meant the parties and the Purfoys themselves, as well as the twanging energy of the city enveloping us. “It’s too much.”

  Milo sighed, and I knew that he meant those words for himself as much as for me. I took his hand, squeezed.

  “Milo, you’re not—I mean, Loretta, she’s quite beautiful and warm. It’s hard to resist her charm.”

  A flush of pink covered his cheeks. He looked away and I knew the gossip was true.

  “Oh, Milo.” I could think of nothing else to say. He knew what he was doing. And I was not one to judge, having taken that road myself with Arthur, in a life that now seemed to have belonged to someone other than Nola Lynch.

  When Milo turned to look at me again, I saw something in his face I couldn’t quite understand. He took quick deep breaths, and I began to see that he felt afraid.

  “We should go now.” I held his hand tightly. “Loretta needs to do what we want for a change, and take us to San Pedro, to find word of Leopardo.”

  As if she heard us, or knew we were out here together, Loretta appeared through the doorway. Smiling, she slipped on her dark glasses, sighed deeply.

  “The temple is the best place in the world. I go there to renew, find my spirit again. It’s so quiet, so different from anywhere else in the entire world.” Her voice was soft, and I couldn’t see her eyes, but I heard a hard, almost desperate hint in her words.

  Slipping between us, she took our arms. “So, now to the harbor, right?”

  2

  Two hours later the Pacific ocean lay before us like a rippled sheet of blue steel. A breeze poured softly over me, and far out on the horizon lay a rolled rug of gray fog. Ships massed the southern-facing port of San Pedro, both sail and steam. A passenger vessel hugged up to one of the wharves, but it was not Leopardo. Nearby a new terminal was under construction.

  Loretta led us to the shipper’s office, a dusty room of travel posters, ship rosters, passenger lists and sailings. Every desk clerk was occupied by a traveler, but we didn’t have to wait. Seeing Loretta, a man behind the counter swept through the gate and welcomed us, took us into a back office and settled us down with coffee. We waited only a few moments, Milo pacing back and forth, until another man, portly and ruddy in a tweed suit and stiff collar, entered the room.

  “Miss Carré. So gratified to see you again. Will you be traveling to Japan again, or China? Perhaps the Philippines?” All this time the man held Loretta’s hand, and she smiled sweetly. I wondered what was it like to be fawned over by every person you met?

  “Ah, the Philippines. The Orient line visits all the islands, starting with Hawaii, the Solomons, and finally the lovely old Spanish city of Manila.” The travel agent waved his hand at brightly-colored posters lining the walls. He leaned close to Loretta, his blue eyes sparkling. “We offer a special travel package, t
he Coast Daylight to San Francisco for the opening of the Panama-Pacific Exposition, then by ship to the Orient!”

  “Thank you, Mr. Sigismond. But we are not here for travel.” Loretta set down her coffee cup. “It all sounds very lovely, but my friends need to inquire about a ship, the Leopardo, shipwrecked off Acapulco, wasn’t it?”

  She glanced at Milo, who nodded.

  If Mr. Sigismond was disappointed that Loretta was not going to sign up for a cruise this very moment, he hid it well. For a portly man he moved very quickly behind his desk and shuffled through papers.

  “I know it’s here. The report.” He laughed to himself. “My wife tells me I keep records like a fishmonger, piles and piles. Ah.”

  With a flourish he produced a sheaf of paper from under a glass paperweight. “But I find everything! Never lost.”

  Pulling a pair of glasses from his jacket pocket he frowned over the document. My heart thumped under my ribs. I could feel it in my muscles and bones. Why would I be so excited and frightened to hear news of the ship? Memories of Asher and Arnold, and Mrs. Pantone, their hapless aunt—and Etienne, the ship’s boy who loved to read, flowed through my mind. What had happened to all of them? Had they made it safely home?

  “Yes, yes,” Mr. Sigismond murmured, nodding. A long silence followed as he read.

  I was on the edge of my seat. Milo’s hand fell onto my shoulder, and I could feel him shaking. Like orphans, I thought, waiting for word of our parents’ fate.

  Laying the papers down before him, Mr. Sigismond spread his hands on the desk, his face solemn, nodding to himself.

  When he finally spoke I thought I would hit the ceiling. I caught a deep breath, held it.

  “She was floated again.” Mr. Sigismond smiled. Then his glance fell on me and Milo. I could see a shrewdness there, swift guesses filing through his mind.

  “Limped into Acapulco Bay, where she was fitted with the aid of the U.S. Navy and deemed ready to sail for home.”

  He waited, eyes on me, sharp and blue.