by Susan Dunlap
‘Comes and goes, yes.’ I interpreted. ‘But still …’
‘Looked better before?’
‘True dat.’
He flashed a pale smile at my lack of bedside manner, the lack he’d insisted on in the past. Then, I’d promised him I’d be the one person he could trust, the truth teller. I asked, ‘Did the doctor say this might happen? Or to worry if it did?’
‘Offered me pain pills—’
‘Which you did not take, right?’
‘Pain.’
I nodded. Pain, he’d said more than once, can be a tool for concentration. Makes it hard for your mind to wander happily in speculation, to replay scenes of triumph or regret, or hope for fish tacos for dinner when your toe is throbbing. Throb – pay attention. Throb – pay attention. ‘There’s a limit, though. Even for you.’
‘Not there yet.’
‘I can call the doctor.’
‘Just here … Tomorrow.’
Reluctantly, I nodded. So I’d missed any medical advice Dr Nezer Deutsch night have offered and wouldn’t get another shot at him till morning. Damn Gracie and her sudden trek to Vegas.
The tea I’d brought him this morning sat untouched. I reached toward it but he stopped me with a glance. I wanted to make him more tea, to help him drink, to straighten his blankets, to do … something. I sighed.
‘Go.’
But I couldn’t. It took all my restraint not to reiterate the dangers of his situation with his assailant running around free to have another go at him. But I’d said it once. He’d considered it as much as he was going to. And yet …
I poured water from his pitcher into the cup he hadn’t touched.
His eyelids fluttered.
‘Leo, tell me one thing.’
His eyes opened. ‘Nothing you don’t know … healing on schedule. No more health chat.’
‘Fair enough.’
He eased back, eyes fluttering toward closed.
‘Hey, not yet. One thing: tell me where you’ve been going on the last Wednesdays of the month?’
Nothing changed – his expression, his breathing, the way his body lay. My question had been as far out from leftfield as Ro Westcoff’s to me. Did Leo even grasp it? I was about to rephrase it when he said, ‘No.’
‘No?’
‘Can’t tell you.’
‘Why not?’ The words were out before I could stop myself.
‘Not now.’
‘You can’t tell me anything?’
‘Trust me.’
‘I do, but Leo, this situation is dangerous!’
‘Yes.’ He struggled in the blankets. I reached to help but he waved me off and managed to prop himself on one elbow. ‘Go. Stay with your mother. I don’t want you here.’
‘Because it’s dangerous?’
‘Go.’ He let out the word with an exhausted breath, and with it collapsed back down on the futon.
I said, ‘Fat chance.’
He didn’t answer, didn’t shrug a reply. Just let his eyes close.
This interview was over.
I straightened the blankets over him and walked out. I left his door open, as I would my own across the hall. But one thing I knew was that he would do what he would do. And he wouldn’t answer any question he chose not to, which meant he was not going to tell me another thing.
Frustrated, irritated and not a little unnerved, I decided to do the sensible thing and get coffee.
The courtyard was emptying – people had jobs to go to. Renzo had a cafe to run. As I stepped outside I spotted Snell walking toward Columbus, looking straight ahead of him. At Lila Suranaman. From my angle of vision I couldn’t be sure, but his interest appeared not entirely professional. She was, of course, a strikingly lovely woman with a sultry sway to her butt, which was what Snell seemed intent on investigating.
Beyond the gate from the other direction men’s voices sparred. One low, one loud, rasping. Familiar.
My brother was chewing out the poor homeless guy from our courtyard.
‘Let him be, John!’
He did a double-take, muttered something and, to my surprise, did indeed let the man go on his way.
And turned on me. ‘He was sleeping outside your window! He could have—’
‘He didn’t—’
‘You don’t know who he is.’
‘Leo probably does. John, he’s not the first man to sleep here. The courtyard’s protected and warm, at least as warm as San Francisco gets in February. And – you know this is true – Renzo probably slips these guys a cup of coffee and something to eat and checks them out in the process.’
‘Still—’ It so pained my brother to admit he was wrong.
‘You want to do something for Leo? For me? Then keep an eye on Leo while I do just what you want me to – go to Mom’s.’ By which I meant the beach a couple blocks from there, but that I didn’t specify.
What could he say?
I put out my hand for his car keys.
Half an hour later I pulled up in front of the house I grew up in. Mom was on the phone, but Duffy, the Scottie still known as ‘Darcy’s dog,’ raced up to me, wagging his stub of a tail. I’d inherited him on a location set a couple years ago when his previous owner made an emergency exit minutes before the sheriff arrived. Duffy had flown back to New York with me and made more friends there than any decently reserved Scottish Terrier would tolerate. He accompanied me to movie sets, a couple times getting his own director’s chair. And then I’d moved back to San Francisco and he’d found Mom. Whatever any person thought about him being ‘Darcy’s dog,’ in Duffy’s mind I was a courier who had guided him to his true abode. Mom was home a lot. All of us adult kids and now my sister Katy’s teenagers stayed here at times. Someone was always coming through the door, allowing him to pretend he didn’t want to be fussed over. There was always a pot of beef stew scenting the kitchen. On the couch in front of the television there were two indentations.
I grabbed his leash.
Mom put down the phone. ‘Want company?’
‘Sure,’ by which I meant ‘no,’ and yet when you’re the last of seven, you never turn down the chance of your mother’s full attention.
Unwilling to display pleasure, Duffy trotted face straightforward between us, alert for vermin threatening the sidewalks of San Francisco, prepared to protect his herd of two from the peril of salt water.
The briny smell of ocean grew stronger as we neared the beach. Damp wind scraped my skin as if shearing off the layers of excess. I thought of all the times I’d taken this walk as a babbling, cartwheeling child, a younger teenager desperate to say the clever, the astute, the adult thing to my four-years-older brother as we ran to the dunes for ‘serious talk.’ After Dad died, I’d walked here with Gracie, when she couldn’t talk at all or couldn’t stop the flood of words, and taken short, uneasy walks with Mom, when she just stared out into the sea. When I came home after avoiding the city for nearly twenty years, the whole family built a fire on a secluded part of the beach and roasted marshmallows.
I unsnapped the leash. Duffy stayed where he was; he’d never acknowledge a strap controlled his behavior.
Mom is a listener. I think I’m her favorite, but I suspect all my sibs believe that of themselves. Still, Mom and I sense the signals of each other’s movements. At times like this we jig and jag as one, chat and walk together in the pool of silence. It wasn’t till we crossed The Great Highway onto the sand that she said, ‘So?’
‘So?’
‘So, woman comes to walk on the beach with a dog. Woman’s got something on her mind.’
The wind shoved a clump of hair in my face. I pushed the red curls back behind my ear, pretending they would stay there. ‘I’d decided my career was over and I’d have to go to L.A. or Toronto. Then, out of the blue, I landed a great gig. And now I’ve probably blown it.’
She made a come sign with her hand and I gave her the rundown on the gag, Dainen Beretski’s renown, and of the agent’s assistant’s warn
ing, toned down in case I didn’t get canned, and my parting comments to Beretski.
Mom nodded. There was nothing to say. And she didn’t say it! She focused on a fast breaker spewing water within inches of our feet. Neither of us moved. It had been a game when I was a kid. Then the rule was the one who chose the wave couldn’t move. We sloshed home a lot.
‘You haven’t mentioned Leo.’
‘Surely John told you.’
‘Surely.’ She smiled in that way she had of acknowledging the idiosyncrasies of one of her offspring and the annoyance of another without herself taking sides. ‘And?’
My phone rang.
‘You want to—’
‘It can go to voicemail. Leo. Someone attacked him. I can’t tell whether he’s too out of it to be worried or …’
‘Too Leo?’
‘Exactly.’
‘The cops sent a crime scene unit. I guess I should be glad for that much. But they’re not really interested, and a reporter’s too interested. He’s got a bug up his ass about Leo having some meeting one Wednesday a month. I asked Leo and he won’t say what it is. I mean, Mom, he’s been bludgeoned and he refuses to reveal his mid-week assignations.’
‘Maybe that’s what they are.’
‘Oh, I don’t think—’
‘He’s a cute guy, Darce.’
I stopped dead and turned toward her.
She grinned. ‘Gracie and I agree.’
‘You discussed Leo’s desirability with my sister?’
She laughed. ‘I did. I said, “If I were younger …” Gracie said she is younger.’
Jesus! ‘And?’
‘Well, you know, Gracie’s got a lot to do.’
It was the family joke that there would always be enough in the way of epidemics to keep Gracie too busy to buy a house, clean her car, get a life.
I was still staring at her as Mom said, ‘You Buddhists aren’t celibate. He’s a middle-aged single man. You’ll soon be his age. Are you planning to be on the shelf then? So, why wouldn’t he be seeing someone? He doesn’t have to tell you about it. And certainly not a reporter.’
My phone rang again. Mom hesitated again.
‘It’s not John’s ring. It’ll keep.’ It could, I thought, be Beretski, in which case it wasn’t likely to improve my day. ‘And there’s this girl Leo met in Japan – she’s not Japanese – who he wouldn’t let into the monastery when he was abbot up there. And you know that monastery’s not exactly a spa. Last I saw her she was slithering out the zendo door.’
‘Well, case in point! He’s a cutie. I always wondered if you—’
I crossed my hands in a NO! sign. ‘He’s my teacher. I need to make my romantic mistakes elsewhere.’
‘Jes sayin’!’
This was not the conversation I’d intended to have. And not one I intended to continue. I glanced around for Duffy, ready to call him back from danger or a fracas. But he was right there between us, providing not a bit of distraction. I turned to Mom. ‘So, where’s Gracie? Her secretary said she’s in Vegas but she doesn’t know which hotel. At some conference but she hadn’t decided what. That’s flaky, even for Gracie.’
‘Incommunicado? At least you know she’d not off with Leo.’
‘Mom!’ That trip of Gracie’s was peculiar but I should have known Mom wouldn’t say so. And yet there was something a little off in her tone. ‘Mom?’
She took the leash and bent down to attach it. Duffy stiffened. We wouldn’t be crossing the street for another eighth of a mile. Looking at Duffy’s back, Mom said, ‘She’s been … I don’t know … off. She’s never gone off like that before, at least not since the city cut funding for the flu study and that was five years ago.’
‘Early menopause?’
Mom snapped to standing, ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Don’t let her know you even had that thought. And no. Maybe this weekend away was just what she needed.’ She looked pointedly at me. ‘I’m not speaking of it.’
I nodded. Me bring up hormonal fading with my doctor sister? Fat chance.
My phone rang again. I looked questioningly at Mom. ‘Go ahead,’ she said.
With relief all around, I answered it, just as it was clicking off.
Then I checked for messages. Two. Both from the same number.
Dainen Beretski.
In the first, he said, ‘Call me.’
The second message was the same, but the words were more clipped.
This wasn’t an issue I wanted to deal with in the wind, on the sand by the whoosh of traffic on The Great Highway. I pocketed the phone, walked back to the house, hugged Mom, who was saying something about making a new pot of stew because John and Gary might swing by late tonight after something or other out this way, and headed for the privacy of the car.
TWELVE
I slid into the car outside Mom’s house and called Dainen Beretski. It sounded like I’d caught him in a war zone. ‘Beretski!’
‘Darcy Lott!’ I shouted, feeling like Alexander Graham Bell.
‘Heard you’re interested in moving up to stunt coordinator. How about it?’
Really? Wow! WOW! ‘Yes.’
‘Meet me in the war room. Seven o’clock. Hang on.’ More shouting. ‘Broadway and wointinh.’
‘What?’
‘Mowtinooosh.’
Damn, I could not miss out on the big change of my career because I muffed the address. ‘Street number?’ I asked, hoping the place was on Broadway rather than mowtinooosh.
He repeated it, clearly. I heard, hung up and whipped back in the house to tell Mom.
I parked John’s car outside the zendo at quarter after five, hurried upstairs to check on Leo, thank John for keeping an eye on him in my absence and ask if he would stay this evening. Leo was sleeping quietly and, across the hall on my futon, John was snoring.
At 5:30 p.m. I stood silent for a minute, then stepped into the courtyard and hit the clappers three times to announce the evening sitting, walked into the meditation hall, replaced the clappers, bowed to the altar and took the front seat – not the abbot’s seat which is never covered by anyone but Leo, but the cushion on the far side of the altar. I sat facing into the room.
The size of evening zazen group seemed barely affected by Leo’s attack. I’d suspected Roman Westcoff might be trolling, but apparently his ‘never give up’ gave up in the face of another forty minutes of sitting cross-legged. The only addition was Lila Suranaman from a strip club on Broadway, looking smaller and more nervously out of place than ever as she walked in. She bowed to the cushion nearest me, sat, swirled to face the wall and exhaled slowly, as if she’d cloaked herself in safety, at least for a while.
When the doan – timekeeper – rang the bell at quarter to six, there were eight people in the zendo. A couple hurried in minutes later and took spots near the door. A bit after 6:15 p.m. – minutes before the end of the sitting – a thick man in a dark hoodie poked his head in, surveyed the room and left.
My breath caught. The hoodie?
I wanted to race through the door after him.
I eased to my feet and walked quietly – not that ‘quietly’ exists when moving in a silent room – past the altar, pausing to bow, then behind people sitting on the far row of zabutans and through the door.
The hallway was empty. As quietly as I could, I raced up the stairs and peered into both bedrooms, the bathroom and even the closet.
Nothing untoward.
Downstairs, the bell rang. Through the door I heard the rumble of moving bodies and the scraping of chairs as people got up and prepared for final bows. Then I heard the final chant, dissonant voices merged sweetly by the distance. I hurried back upstairs and glanced in Leo’s room again. He looked to be asleep, but a watery smile played on his lips.
I checked my hair and face, changed the black T-shirt I’d been wearing all day for a cleaner version. John grunted, rolled over but did not wake. I left him a note.
The zendo was dark, the hallway dim, and even the street
seemed after-work empty until I spotted Tully Lennox haltingly hurrying toward me as if half of him opposed the trip. He glanced over his shoulder and then toward the empty courtyard, seemed relieved, hesitated and kept coming. The man reminded me of Duffy about to snatch a piece of stew meat from a plate abandoned on the floor.
I stepped out into the courtyard just as Lila stood up beside a planter box, pausing to check a Christmas cactus she’d planted as a gift to the center.
Outside the courtyard wall, on the sidewalk, well behind Tully, Renzo raised a palm to stop me. And so I watched tall, tentative Tully Lennox approach waiflike Lila. I couldn’t hear his words. She seemed to be straining to catch them. But the storyline was clear. He didn’t put his arm around her shoulder, though everything in his stance showed his urge to. They walked toward Columbus Avenue, not touching, but in step and close to each other as if the air between them was touching. And as one, their shoulders relaxed.
‘Nice, huh?’ Renzo said a minute later.
I nodded.
‘I’m going to bring the abbot soup and John dinner.’
‘Renzo, what did you do with your life before we moved in here and took it over?’
The second unit production room was not on Lombard Street, or within walking distance of our location on Russian Hill, of course. The movie company had done well to get permission to leave their trucks there overnight in an area on the route to downtown and jammed with tourists. The city wants movies made here. San Franciscans love movies that show their city, and even more their neighborhoods. They just don’t want to give up parking spaces to get them.
So the production room was inconveniently blocks away. It huddled in a low brick building a couple blocks from San Francisco Bay, a place that preserved the cold. The walls were insulated only by the printed-out lists for various crews. They covered one full and sizeable wall on the bay side of the room and two on interior walls. The remaining wall formed a backdrop for desks and clutter. And the middle of the room was stacked with cameras, banks of lights, individual lights and a set of rails on which a camera would ride to parallel the action.
There weren’t enough windows; they hadn’t been open. As I made my way across the room the smell of lunch meat and sweet rolls gave way to a hint of sneaked tobacco. On a table someone had sketched figures in grease pencil. Nearby, someone had used a glue gun. The smells were momentarily distinct and then interwoven like strands in a game of cat’s cradle.