As they pulled the door open, an aide handed Nina a paper bag full of dirty pants. “He had two accidents today,” she remarked, carefully noncommittal. Nina took the bag. Bob looked up at her with a worried expression. “Mommy, don’t break my heart,” he said, watching her face. She smiled and patted his hot cheek, hustling him outside, chastising herself for her impatience.
On the way to the parking lot, she ran into an old friend she hadn’t seen for ages.
“Well, look at you,” Diana said.
Nina hugged her, remembering how much Diana favored flowery perfumes. “When I told you I was pregnant, you never said a thing about being pregnant yourself.”
“I was scared,” Diana said. “I’d already had two miscarriages and began to think I’d never have a child. Her name’s Cori.” They stopped to watch Diana’s curly-haired daughter gather up her backpack.
“So you settled down,” Nina said.
Her old friend waved a set of flashy rings. “He just wouldn’t let me alone. Good thing. He teaches chemistry at the community college.”
“You always said you’d never marry.”
Diana corralled her daughter and nudged her toward a red minivan. “Yeah, surprise! I turned out normal. How about you?”
“No surprise. I didn’t.”
Diana tilted her head. “So what if you never go about things the way other people do. You’re exceptional. Not abnormal.”
“I decided to get everything out of the way at once, be a single mother, go to school, work like a cur. That way, I’ll have earned the right to a long commitment to some quiet loony-bin spa by the time I’m thirty.”
“I gotta scoot.” Diana started the battle to get her daughter strapped in. “Let’s gossip soon.”
“You back at work?”
“Part-time until the little gal’s ready to launch. Two more years. I couldn’t find full-time child care I can trust that would have her.” Diana latched the seat belt across her daughter’s car seat with a sigh.
“It’s like getting them into a good college, applications, interviews.”
“And then they reject you or your child, or your private financial status.” Diana shrugged, slamming the door against her cranky child. “I discovered passable child care involved dark rooms with peed-upon plastic mattresses, watery peanut butter, and drunken college students. I realized, hey, I can do that and pay nothing.”
How nice for her, Nina thought. Diana had a partner to help and an option to stay home with her daughter. How might that feel? No doubt good, no doubt fortunate.
“Take care,” Nina said, strapping Bob into his own car seat. He had a new book to study, so he let the process happen peacefully for a change. Suddenly starving, she climbed inside her car, rustling around in the MG’s glove compartment for a snack. She found nothing to eat there, only an old brochure for a restaurant she could never afford. Disgruntled, she raised her head to another unwelcome vision.
Richard Filsen leaned against the brick wall of the church that bordered the parking lot, smoking a cigarette.
CHAPTER 2
STANDING NEXT TO RICHARD WAS HIS PERENNIAL ASSOCIATE and right-hand boy. At first she couldn’t remember his name. Oh, right, Perry something. Perry Tompkins. He had been a couple of years ahead of her in high school.
She considered ignoring them, pulling away, going home.
No point. Richard, now having dragged himself out of whatever pit he lived in, was back.
She got out of the car.
“Must be something real pressing to get you to church,” Richard said. “What, no kiss?”
Richard Filsen. What a day for meeting up with old friends. Although he lived in the area, somehow she had managed to avoid any run-ins for the past several years. He obviously hadn’t given up his fanatical bicycling. He looked as lean as ever, and she had heard he was as mean as ever, too. His eyes looked more deep set than she recalled, and his cheekbones stood out like rocky crags. His hair was shorter than she remembered; it could pass for stubble. Maybe it gave him some aerodynamic advantage on the road? Otherwise, he looked like an important man who had spent the morning in front of a jury, in a well-cut wool suit with a perfectly matched red Hermès tie.
“I hear you won that class-action suit against the oil company up in Hayward. You must be really pleased about that. Lots of buzz. Congratulations.”
“How good it is that you remember how to be civil.”
“Let’s start there, okay? Meantime, I’m in a rush. What—”
“Working hard, eh? And you were always gonna be a lawyer someday, I hear. Meantime, you look like you could use some sleep. You’ll need cosmetic surgery in a few years if you keep digging at that frown line on your forehead.”
Nina ignored the insult. “Hello, Perry. You still slaving away on behalf of Richard’s greater glory?”
“Hi, Nina. How goes it?” Perry held his attaché and didn’t look happy, but then again Nina had never known him to look happy. Working for Richard for years must have something to do with that. One of those short, smooth-faced men who never age, Perry was a good detail lawyer who kept the interrogatories flowing and the calendar current for Richard, who did all the court work. Perry had married a court clerk and had four kids early in life. His nose hadn’t left Richard’s grindstone ever since.
Perry’s relationship with Richard had that quality of the antisocial husband finding a sweet, sociable wife—together they created the semblance of one well-adjusted human being. You could talk to Perry; he was reasonable and prompt. Richard didn’t talk. He acted. Often badly.
Nina couldn’t imagine why Perry still worked for Richard. He might make one whole person on his own. Didn’t he know that?
She had met Richard on the Fourth of July several years before on the beach at Seaside, watching the fireworks. Returning from a barbecue in Palo Alto, she had passed the beach just as the show started, and a car pulled out right in front of her, leaving a parking space that was too good to pass up. So she stood at the fringes of the crowd, all alone in her tank top and blue jeans, shivering and looking up at the display, excited as a deprived child.
“Pretty, huh?” he’d said, walking his bike, an Italian racer that must have cost thousands, up to her. “It’s why war movies are so entertaining. What a world.” Over six feet tall, he looked incredibly fit in his black biker shorts and red racing shirt.
“Yeah, it’s pretty,” she said. “I mean, not war. Fireworks.”
“You come here often?” he teased after several moments passed in silence and the bombardment continued.
“I love the ocean.” Beyond them, high-tide waves swept up the beach, catching some of the gawkers off guard.
“Swimmer?”
“Surfer.”
“I always wanted to learn.”
“That’s what people say who find the thought intimidating.”
He laughed. “I’d trust you to teach me. I’m a cyclist.”
“I see that. Nice bike.”
They talked. Absorbed by the spectacle, but also uncomfortably aware of the proximity of a good-looking male, Nina warmed up even more when he provided her with a wool blanket for cover. As they walked back to the parking lot, he invited her to dinner the following night at Casanova’s in Carmel.
She should have recognized the name of the place as a warning. Inside, the hostess led her to a patio area that appeared to be entirely peopled by lovers. Couples drank, snuggled, and whispered over candlelight.
Neither of them finished the food they’d ordered. Instead, they talked and talked over glasses of the wine he had picked. He raised his glass in a toast, touching her hand fleetingly. He knew the moves, and she was lonely. The chemistry between them increased exponentially with each glass—Clos du Bois, a sauvignon blanc, she remembered, and remembered her private vow at the time that someday she’d make more than minimum wage and drink this wine all night long.
Richard, a criminal defense attorney with his office in Seaside, got his nam
e into the local paper on a regular basis. He regaled her with tales of the hookers and drug pushers and petty thieves who made up his practice then, and it was fascinating, all of it, especially his attitude.
“Somebody’s got to do it,” he said with a shrug. “Protect their rights and keep them from being stomped on in the great purple-stained wine barrel of the law. I’m practical. They pay me, I do my best for them. They don’t pay me, they can fuck themselves.” He leaned over and said conspiratorially, “Besides, I like messing with the system.”
“What do you get out of it, though? Besides getting paid? I mean, it’s a stressful way to make a living, isn’t it?”
“It’s fun, sweetheart. I don’t do anything unless it’s fun.”
“Fun how?”
“Beating the bastards.”
A few weeks after they’d started sleeping together, Richard began disappearing, telling her he was entering various cycle races around California. They met only at night because after work he needed to put in fifty miles on the bike.
At first he couldn’t keep his hands off her, but soon she noticed he seemed to be feeling her flesh in a funny way in bed, as if he were a doctor or something. “You ought to work out in the gym,” he told her. “Any more than fifteen percent body fat is bad for your health.” His kitchen was filled with nutritional supplements and the best Osterizer money could buy. She gagged on the stuff and found herself secretly heading for the nearby Burger King for lunch after one of Richard’s breakfasts.
Aside from his bicycle and his protein and that first blowout dinner during which he had romanced her, Richard didn’t like to spend money, and they began to have arguments over it. He was so frugal he reused his paper napkins. The heat never came on in his apartment, and he expected Nina to buy most of the dinners.
Full of brutal insights he seemed obliged to share, he often told her she was deluded or in denial about her life. Maybe she was, but his criticisms brought up her own stubbornness and she stopped listening. She still lived with her mother. He didn’t like her mother. After a few excruciating meetings he pegged Ginny as a manipulator. “She’s gonna keep you at home forever if she has her way.”
“Not true,” Nina said. “She loves me. She supports me. She worries but she never pressures me to behave in a certain way.”
“I see what you don’t,” he said flatly. “Apron strings flapping in the wind. Get some distance.”
He put down her brother, Matt, as an unregenerate troublemaker. “I’ve seen his type before.”
“His type?”
“He’s fucking lazy. He doesn’t want anybody setting him straight.”
The trouble was, Richard was right about Matt, who was smoking a lot of pot and drifting and had dropped out of college. “Matt’s got a good heart, Richard.”
“I love how much you love your family, Nina.”
What did that mean? she wondered. That she was an idiot? Since he didn’t like her family, she tried to make the best of it, especially since he was such an expert and reliable lover.
Soon enough, for her, the relationship was entirely built around sex. It made for a special, narrow, intense attachment between them that Richard seemed to appreciate. And that was enough for almost three months.
“We can make a life together in spite of your family,” Richard said one night as they lay in bed, her head on his shoulder, his hand on her thigh. “You’re gonna do great things. We can go to Christmas dinner and make nice if we have to. You can rise above your family. Everyone’s family’s a big mess.”
After that, Nina cried a few times and made a cyborgian pros-and-cons list when she felt strong. Then she invited Richard to dinner at the local Chinese joint. They ate dim sum and drank tea. Richard had just gotten back from a long bike ride and talked about getting to bed early.
“Richard, you’ve been wonderful to me,” Nina said, thinking, you’ve also been not wonderful and that’s why we’re here tonight. Her heart cracked, but fortunately her voice did not. “But—it’s not working out. We have to move on.”
He set his tea down hard. “You’re dumping me?” he said, after an outraged silence.
“We don’t have anything in common outside of bed. You don’t like my family. You disapprove of my politics, my clothes, my haircut. I see no future for us. Do you?”
“I feel blindsided.” He tapped a finger against the table, distracting them both momentarily with its hypnotic rhythm, allowing him time to think. “You and I,” he said finally, “we’re the same: ambitious, driven, athletic, sex-obsessed.” He raised an eyebrow. “True?”
“In some ways we are the same. In other essential ways, no.”
“Oh, sweetheart. You invent obstacles! You like the chase, the dramatics.”
Shaking her head, Nina said, “My mind’s made up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You need me.”
When she stood up to leave, he surprised her, pulling her back into her chair.
“Let me go, Richard.”
“You just listen—”
“Let go or I’ll scream,” she said calmly.
“You won’t.”
“Help!” she shouted. “Help me!”
The other diners turned to stare. They frowned at Richard.
“Shut up! They’re looking!”
“Then get your hands off me.”
He let go. “Show them it’s okay.”
She smiled.
Her fellow diners relaxed. Knives, forks, and spoons clattered again, tentatively.
“You have no right to treat me this way!” Richard said, his whispering voice crackling, hot as a forest fire. “I deserve your respect. I deserve your love!”
“You have no right to treat me this way,” Nina whispered back, giving a nod to her nervous fellow diners.
A few of the more sensitive ones swerved toward her, watching.
Nina stood up.
“This is not over.” Richard had collected himself and looked as smooth and together as usual.
“Oh, yes, it is.” Nina left the restaurant shaken, pulled out of her parking space, and headed toward Pacific Grove. She drove several blocks listening to the radio before tuning in to her surroundings. In her rearview mirror she spotted Richard, face grimly set, in his car following her.
She sped away.
He caught up and lingered two car lengths behind, as if she wouldn’t notice.
Nina took side streets only locals knew.
Richard wound up the side streets behind her. He edged up behind her car, flirting with it, too close for safety.
She slowed down. He slowed down.
He knew the only places she might go. He knew where she lived with her mother. She could drive to the sheriff’s office or her house. Unsure, she drove to the house.
He pulled up right in front. She jumped out of her car and ran into the house. Then she turned off the porch light and peeked through the window at him.
He was out there, staring as if he could x-ray the curtains.
Her mother and her brother, Matt, had turned in. Nina turned off all the lights.
Richard remained in the car, his face obscure in the darkness. She wondered what he might be thinking and realized she didn’t know.
She didn’t know the guy at all.
All night, every hour she got up to peek through the curtains and saw him sitting, watching, resenting her.
She smelled the salt air, thinking about how much she loved her life, wondering how she had hooked up with such a frightening person.
At four o’clock in the morning, exhausted, unable to keep up her vigil, she fell asleep.
Only to awaken to a tapping at her window.
After pulling on a robe and putting her feet into slippers, she pulled the curtain aside just far enough to see Richard’s mad face staring back at her.
“Bitch,” he mouthed.
She let the curtain flap into place.
He tapped again.
Harder.
Scare
d, unwilling to show her weakness, she ignored the next three rappings, each successively louder. When she had her emotions controlled, she hurled open the window suddenly. “Richard, you want to go to jail? This could ruin you.”
He said nothing. She heard him breathe.
“I’m calling the police.”
After that, she heard nothing outside. She didn’t feel an urgent need to call, although she felt afraid. She watched for a sign, unable to see anything in the darkness. Only when the California sun finally began its yellow, relentless march across the landscape did she hear Richard’s car fire up.
She peered through the curtains, watching him head away toward the ocean.
Finally, she slept.
But that night did not signal the end of Richard’s pursuit. He called Nina’s mother, Ginny, to gripe when Nina didn’t answer her phone. He turned up on his bicycle at Matt’s new job in a fast-food joint to quiz him about Nina. When Matt gave him nothing, he told Matt he’d get him fired. Nina’s phone rang constantly. She answered. Richard hung up.
“Time to leave town, Nina,” her mother advised. “Give him time to get weaned and find somebody else to pester.” Nina jumped at a friend’s offer of a family cabin at Fallen Leaf Lake, near Lake Tahoe. Up there for a few precious summer weeks, where the squirrels scrabbled and she could take an old rowboat out on the calm waters, she unwound, quit crying, and started living again.
She moved back to P.G. and applied to the Monterey College of Law. Richard’s stories had engaged her, and she knew she wanted to go into some kind of law, though the idea of criminal defense seemed too intimidating.
Soon after, she discovered she was pregnant.
She went to a counselor and decided abortion was not for her.
And now, more than four years later, here came Richard, smiling at Bob with a vulpine look she hadn’t noticed before, something she had seen on other extreme athletes. She couldn’t now imagine what in the world she had found sexy about him.
Richard stubbed out the cigarette butt against the building and dropped it, then, to her horror, walked swiftly around to Bob’s side of the car, peering inside. “Good-looking little guy, isn’t he? Handsome, like his daddy. C’mon, hey, roll down the window. Hi, there, Bob.”
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