Ian dashed across the lawn, squeezed inside around his mother, and stopped dead staring at the metal folding table next to their back window. Sure enough, a small black pager was slowly rattling its way to the far edge. Ian could only watch it for a moment, but just before it was about to drop to the floor he snatched it. He turned it around. Its screen pulsed pink. The clock was already ticking down.
Chapter Ten
DR. BAXTER WALCOTT WAS setting out the lasagna he spent two hours preparing, a long time to spend on a dish that was essentially cheese, noodles, and meat, but Baxter didn’t care. His daughter Sarah loved his lasagna, and he loved that Sarah loved it, so he was more than happy to make it when she visited.
He placed the ceramic dish on a hotpad in the center of their large wooden dining table, covered it with a glass lid, and sat a towel over that. Three place settings were clustered to one side of the table, Sarah’s at the head, his wife Sheila’s to one side of her, and his own to the other. He set out plates and silverware and then an oversized wine glass at the head of each place setting. He still liked to think that wine was a special treat for Sarah, although he guessed it had lost its luster now that she was in college and could get whatever booze she wanted. Not for the first time did Baxter shove thoughts from his head, thoughts of liquored up Cali-boys thrusting cup after cup of high-proof poison into Sarah’s hand in the drippy basement of some dodgy house party. No sir. Not his daughter.
The monthly dinners had been Baxter’s idea, and one that he had proposed to the family upon Sarah’s departure to UCSD almost two years ago. Although the dinners were ostensibly a chance for Sarah to come home for a night and catch up with her parents, they were also for Sheila, whom he felt he was seeing less of because of his work. With the draw in three days, there was a real possibility of longer and stranger hours at the hospital, and he wanted to enjoy the calm before the storm.
He was uncorking the wine when his wife’s car drove past the front windows. He heard the garage door opening a moment later. It amazed him how he could look up at almost the exact time his wife was driving by, as if he sensed it. Perhaps he did. When Sarah was in high school, he’d often wake up moments before he heard her come in late. Now, of course, with her gone, he never knew her comings and goings. Her freshman year she had sometimes pleasantly surprised him at work for lunch, and other times she would stop off at home occasionally, but this year she visited less. Perhaps it was a natural progression, but Baxter would insist upon these monthly dinners as long as all three of them were able. They were about much more than food.
At almost the time Sheila opened the door from the garage, Sarah rang the doorbell. Walcott still thought it odd that his daughter rang the doorbell at her own house, but Sarah always did it now. He shouted for her to come in just as Sheila turned the corner to the kitchen and kissed him on the cheek. She looked surprisingly fresh, and he knew that she had put on makeup in the car on the way home. Her blond hair hung flatteringly around her shoulders. She colored it recently, refusing to allow any gray to show despite Baxter’s insistence that she looked just as beautiful with it as she did without.
Sheila was carrying garlic bread, balancing precariously atop a fresh load of junk brought from her ailing parents’ small ranch house twenty minutes away: a bedside lamp, several books, and a shadowboxed display of military medals, no doubt her grandfather’s. Every time she came from them she acquired more of their possessions. Baxter wasn’t sure why they felt the need to unload all of their things on her. It was as if they were having one last massive yard sale, except that it had lasted for three years now. He never had to deal with his own parents in this manner. They died when he was in medical school in St. Louis, first his father and then his mother shortly thereafter, and so he always stepped lightly around the subject of his wife’s parent’s care. Was their longevity a blessing or a curse? He silently chastised himself. It was a blessing, wasn’t it? She smiled at him and looked at the table spread.
“She’s going to love it,” she said.
“Of course I love it,” he heard Sarah call as she wiped her feet at the door. “I smelled the lasagna from the porch, dad.”
Sheila ran to her daughter with exaggerated, mother-hen attentiveness. Sarah submitted to all her kisses and rolled her eyes, but her smile was genuine.
They took their traditional spots at the table, said a quick blessing in which Baxter kept his eyes open and looked back and forth from his wife to his daughter, and they dug in to the food.
“Room looks different,” Sarah observed, eating a hunk of garlic bread with one hand and pushing a strand of hair behind her ear with the other. She wore a pair of delicate glasses that nicely set off her eyes. Her face looked like a picture. Every glance seemed an unintentional pose, like she moved in a series of snapshots. She was getting dangerously beautiful.
“You know your mother, she’s always moving things,” Walcott said. And suddenly he was reminded of Nikkie Hix. What if Sarah was in Nikkie’s place? The sweet nausea of catastrophe avoided tapped at Walcott. Thank God his daughter could simply be a normal college girl.
“Do you hate it?” Sheila asked, looking around at the room. Sarah laughed.
“No mom, it looks good. And yes, it still feels like home.” Sheila was constantly worried that Sarah would come home and not recognize the house. “I love this place. It’s so much better than our apartment,” Sarah said.
“Well this is a house, honey. It took us eight years to get it like this,” Sheila said.
“How are Alice and, ah,” Baxter said, he always forgot that other one.
“It’s Annie. Annie and Jessica, dad. What’s this, two years now I’ve lived with them?”
“You have a lot of friends,” Baxter began, and trailed off. Sarah had already forgiven him. She knew about her dad and names.
“Jess found a cockroach two days ago in our bathroom. A baby one,” Sarah said, shivering. “Gross. Just gross. Boys are supposed to have that stuff. We’re girls.”
“What did you do?” Baxter asked, smiling.
“We used a can of bug spray on it and put a bucket over it until Jess’s boyfriend could come and get rid of it. I had to leave the apartment.”
“A whole can?”
“Yeah. David said they come up through the drains, so we put cups over all the drains when we aren’t using them. I want to move.”
“Just the one?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, honey, maybe it came in through the window. Are you sure it was a cockroach?”
“It was a bug. Or something.”
“Well, see how it goes the next couple of weeks before you start packing.”
“Dad.”
“What?”
“This is serious.”
“Oh I know. Terribly.”
“No bug talk at the table. How is Nick?” Sheila asked. Sarah had accidentally let the name drop in one of her phone conversations. Sheila had picked up on it instantly.
“Oh, fine. I haven’t seen him for a few weeks.” Sarah said, suddenly concentrating on cutting her lasagna into smaller portions.
“I see. Not working out?”
“I dunno. He’s a nice guy.”
“Uh huh.”
That was all they would get out of her.
“Your grandparents gave me a bunch of notepads to give you,” Sheila said, shaking her head. “That and a desk lamp. It’s in the kitchen.”
“I’m all right.”
“I know.”
“Is the lamp nice?”
“No. It’s a sort of stained porcelain tulip lamp. If you could take it to the trash on your way out, that would help us out a lot,” Sheila said, smiling sadly.
“How are they doing?” Sarah asked, half looking up at her mother.
“They’re hanging in there.”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine, sweetheart.”
“Growing old. It’s hard,” Sarah said.
“It can be.”
<
br /> Baxter refilled the wine glasses.
“It was nice when you stopped by work last week,” Baxter said. “Let me know next time and we can get lunch. Like we used to.”
“No problem. Is there still that place nearby?”
“The deli? It’s a coffee shop now, but there are others.”
Sarah nodded and took her wineglass up, she twirled it around and watched the legs drip down the inner rim.
“Who was that guy you were with? Does he work at the hospital?”
“What guy?”
“Really short blonde hair. Cute. I saw him talking with you.”
Baxter stopped his fork midway from plate to mouth, but Sarah seemed not to notice. She was absently watching the wine in her glass, unconcerned. Baxter took a sip of wine and let it rest on his tongue. Sheila looked up at him. He swallowed.
“Probably just a patient. Doesn’t sound like an employee.”
“I think he goes to UCSD. What’s his name?”
“You know I can’t give out patient information. It’s private.”
“Oh come on dad. A name. I’m just curious. I think I’ve seen him around.”
Baxter itched at his nose and was suddenly aware of his hands. To make them seem more natural he reached for the lasagna plate and took up the spatula. He looked intently at the food and then at his daughter.
“You do know who I’m talking about,” Sarah said, smiling.
“It’s nobody Sarah. Just a patient. And trust me, he doesn’t go to UCSD.”
“What’s wrong with you dad?”
“Johnnie—John. It’s John.”
“Johnnie John?”
“No. Yes. John. He’s a patient of mine.”
“Well, put in a good word for me, eh? He’s got great forearms.”
Baxter said nothing.
“Dad. I’m just joking. C’mon. I’m twenty. You do know I like boys, right? Mom, tell him I’m joking.”
Shelia started laughing. Baxter managed a poorly mustered smile.
“All right, I’ll talk to him myself, if I ever see him,” Sarah said, after a moment more of her father fiddling with the lasagna.
“No, I’ll tell him. Don’t—just leave that one alone. For me. Okay?”
Shelia’s smile changed into a something more questioning, one eyebrow half-cocked. Sarah leaned back in her chair and looked at him for a moment through narrowed eyes. He had been too hasty in replying. He already knew that this would rebound against him tenfold. He had just propelled what might have been a passing interest into full-blown curiosity.
“Why?” she asked simply.
Baxter’s mind raced; he was in damage-control mode.
“It’s just medical issues. I can’t talk about it. He isn’t the most... stable of men,” he said, choosing his words carefully, acutely aware of Sarah’s awareness of his doing it. “I really cannot discuss confidential patient matters. You know this.”
Sarah shrugged and went back to eating.
“Really, it’s no big deal,” he lied, trying to backtrack. “He’s just not... he’s not a good man.”
“Wow, dad. All I did was see him through the glass doors.”
“I know.”
Sarah let out a big breath. Sheila puffed out her lower lip. They all went back to eating.
“How’s the car holding up?” Baxter asked, a few moments later. “That service light still beeping?”
“I was going to ask you how to make it stop. It drives me crazy. Every time I start the damn thing.”
“I can’t turn it off. Dealer has to do it.”
“Well that’s convenient, isn’t it?”
And so they moved on. But Sarah never forgot her father’s reaction, and Baxter knew it. His daughter wanted to meet Johnnie Northern. Captain of Blue. As he kissed her goodbye and told her to start the new school year strong, he prayed that Frank Youngsmith was well on his way to dismantling the organization before Sarah had any chance to get involved with the likes of Northern. What a pathetic outside shot that was. Daughters were like pendulums: if you pushed them away from a thing, they came swinging right back. Or perhaps she might forget about it. Perhaps it was nothing but passing conversation. He pondered this as he fell asleep later that night, trying to will his mind into peace, but his dreams unsettled him and he awoke tired.
Sarah saw him on her way back from her Age of Lincoln pro-seminar not even one week later. The class was a once weekly, four-hour beast that she, as an American Culture Studies major, was required to take some time in her undergraduate tenure. She put it off for the first two years, and she didn’t want the notoriously difficult class hanging over her senior year, so she bit the bullet. Now, almost a month in to the first semester, she was quite sure the class was going to kill her.
Because of the shortening fall days it was nearly dusk when Sarah got out of the class and began the long walk back to her car. The San Diego weather was characteristically beautiful and best enjoyed just then, when the dark was cooling but the breeze was warm. She turned on to Gilman Drive, the main campus thoroughfare, and walked while idly watching people flit about the student center to her right. Exhausted and distracted, she allowed her mind and eyes to wander, but then she saw him watching her.
He was sitting on one of the many cut-concrete slabs strewn across the campus that functioned as benches. He was dressed simply, in a dark and smooth t-shirt and jeans. Sarah immediately looked at his shoes, as she was prone to do, and saw that he wore faded boat shoes and no socks. In the waning half-light he looked very dark. Only the blond sheen of his close-shaved hair and a hint of blue in his eyes stood out at a distance to differentiate any of his facial features, and yet Sarah knew it was the man she’d caught her father speaking to before stopping in to visit. He was lightly running his right thumb over his lower lip, as if lost in thought about her without even knowing her. It seemed insane that her old, lovable fud of a father could be associated with this young wolf. Closely associated, if the way she’d seen them speaking was any indication.
If she had ever talked to him before, or indeed if she thought he had ever actually seen her before, she might have thought he was waiting for her. But he was a total stranger, so the effect of seeing him watch her was disquieting—and flattering. At first she looked behind her, thinking that perhaps his gaze was focused elsewhere, but then she turned back around and saw that his thumb had stopped moving.
“You’re Baxter Walcott’s daughter,” he offered after a moment of her standing in place. She could hear the smile in his voice and see the white flash of his teeth as he spoke. “I recognize you from pictures, in his office. I believe I was told to stay away from you.”
“I was told the same about you,” she said, suddenly aware of how she was standing and of the odd sound of her voice. He laughed briefly, a sound that bubbled up and then went down just as quickly, like the settling of boiling water when the pot is removed from the stove. Dangerously disarming. She stepped forward.
“What... are you doing here?” she asked, immediately disliking how it came out.
“I’m waiting for a friend.”
Sarah perfectly masked the touch of disappointment she felt that he should not be there solely for her. She dared not ask whether the friend was male or female.
“I think I’ve maybe seen you around campus before,” she said, moving closer still. He watched her for a moment in silence before sliding slightly over on the bench, leaving the decision to her. In several delicate moves she sat down and positioned herself an acceptable distance from him. She smelled a hard, clean scent like cold water coming from him.
“I grew up here,” he said, gesturing vaguely with the back of his head at the gathering dark behind him, his eyes still on her. “But I’m not around much anymore, unfortunately.”
“Why not?” she asked, lowering her voice to match his.
“Work. I have to move about a lot.”
“What do you do?”
“All sorts of things. Differen
t things for different times.”
“What about right now?”
“I guess I’m in between jobs.”
“Don’t know why he would have said to watch out for you,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “My dad, he’s not very comfortable with any man that might be near my age, no matter who he is.”
He cocked his head a bit and looked right into her. She could see the tips of his teeth just a touch below his upper lip.
“What did your father say about me?”
“Nothing. Just to stay away. So naturally I came up to meet you.”
Northern nodded.
“You ever think maybe you should listen to him?” he asked, smiling in the dark.
“I’d like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character on my own.”
As she spoke his eyes drifted briefly behind her to where a taxi cab had pulled up to the curb. His expression never changed. She looked behind her.
“Is that them?”
“That’s him. Sorry Sarah, I have to go,” he said, slowly rising. “I’ll see you again.”
From the bench, she watched him meet the man who emerged from the taxi. She faintly heard their greetings; they met like business associates might, but then she heard Northern call the man Max, and then watched them embrace like brothers. She saw Max nod several times in a conversation she could no longer hear, and suddenly knew that he, like most people, probably deferred to Johnnie Northern.
Although she thought often of their meeting, and although she always looked for him again whenever she was out, especially coming home from her seminars, it would be nearly a month before she saw him again.
Chapter Eleven
IAN SAT AT THE small metal dining table of his mother’s house, his back to the open window and the old woodshed beyond. With his right hand he idly flipped a pack of cigarettes end over end. His left hand he absently squeezed, doing the physical therapy exercises that were once a part of his daily routine after the surgery, out of habit. He watched the pager as it sat quiet, but now alive, its pink screen silently ticking down.
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