For the next few weeks, he goes back to Blockbuster before work, on break, between jobs. She has to return the movie sometime – two days, right, then late fees? He grows convinced that she has sworn off rentals, that she leaves the house only at inopportune times, that she saw him in the window leering like a stalker and was frightened into moving.
But one Sunday she reappears. Without figuring out what he is going to say, he rushes up to her in the parking lot, and only then does he stop and ask himself, What are you doing? She appraises him, panting and speechless, and before he can utter so much as a syllable, she bursts into laughter and says, ‘Okay, lunch. But somewhere public in case you’re an ax murderer.’
Lunch lasts through dinner. Engrossed in conversation, they forget to eat, the food no longer steaming on untouched plates. She works at a day-care center. Her smile makes him dizzy. She touches his arm, once, when laughing at something. He tells her his story, unedited, in a single breathless burst, how he was six kinds of stupid when he went into the Hall but has since gotten it down to three or four. He tells her about the Couch Mother and the Saab Grandfather and the Superintendent Warden, how they all gave him consideration before he really deserved it, how that probably saved his life, and how he hopes eventually to do the same thing for other people. He tells her he wants to build houses someday. She says, ‘Dreams are a dime a dozen. But sounds like you actually have the backbone to get there,’ and he burns with pride and says, ‘Stamina.’
She lets him see her to her car, and they pause, nervous in the biting October night. Her door is open, the interior light shining, but she stands there, waiting. He hesitates, desperate not to blemish the perfect evening.
‘If you had any guts,’ she says, ‘you’d kiss me.’
There is a second dinner, and a fifth. When she invites him over for a meal, he changes outfits three times, and still, to his eye, his clothes look worn out and blue-collar. As she sautés mushrooms, he patrols her apartment, picking up a sugar bowl, eyeing the rows of matching candles, fingering vanity curtains that are there only to provide a dab of lavender. He pictures his bare mattress, his cabinet lined with cans of SpaghettiOs, the poster of Michael Jordan thumbtacked above his garage-sale desk and realizes that no one ever taught him how to live properly.
That night they make love. She weeps after, and he is convinced he did something wrong until she explains.
She is very different from the girls he met during his tenure at 1788 Shady Lane.
At the movies one night, she giggles at his whispered joke, and the muscle-bound guy in the row in front of them turns and says, ‘Shut up, bitch.’ With a quick jab, Mike shatters his nose. They rush out, leaving the guy mewling in the aisle, his friends looking on helplessly, clones in matching college football jackets. Outside, Annabel says, ‘I’d be lying to say I didn’t find that charming and exciting in a fucked-up sort of way, but promise me you won’t ever do something like that again unless you really have to.’
That’s her – reverent and irreverent at the same time.
Confused, he acquiesces.
Later that week, exhausted, he dozes off at the shirt press and burns a tux vest. The customer, a coked-out dickhead in a blue Audi, shows up on his way to his black-tie event. ‘Do you have any fucking idea how much that tux cost?’ Mike apologizes and offers to file a damage claim. ‘And what the hell am I supposed to wear tonight?’ The customer grows irate, leaning over the counter, jabbing a finger into Mike’s chest. ‘You stupid fucking clown, you couldn’t pay for that with what you make in a year.’ The guy shoves Mike, and Mike sees the angle open up, the downward cross to break the jaw, but instead he takes a step back. The guy’s rage blows itself out, and he departs, peeling out and flipping Mike the bird. Mike still has a job, his knuckles aren’t bruised, and there are no cops to contend with. For days he basks in this small triumph.
He is becoming socialized.
But still he fears Dinner with the Family. Her father is a bankruptcy lawyer. Her older sister is a domestic machine who produces baked goods and offspring at an alarming rate. Her brother has a Subaru and a weave belt. He gives to charity and complains about taxes, the kind of guy who probably played multigenerational baseball at the park around the time Mike and Shep were boosting Bomb Pops and urinating on Schwinns.
Mike minds his silverware, his elbows, his napkin in his lap. He thinks of those few domestic memories he has held on to – sage incense in a yellow-tiled kitchen, his mother’s tan skin, the dust-and-oil smell of the station wagon’s cloth seats. He feels uncomfortable, unworthy of sitting here at a nicely set table in a nice home. The parents, none too enamored, seem to agree. When her father passes the butter, he asks, ‘Where did you go to college?’ and Mike smiles nervously and says, ‘I didn’t.’ The rest of dinner is consumed by stories of successful friends and neighbors who never went to college and were successful anyway, the two other siblings swapping anecdotes while the parents chew and sip and shoot each other shrewd glances. Annabel has to contain her laughter at the absurdity of it all, and when they leave, she says, ‘I will never make you do that again.’
The next week, at dinner, she fiddles with her watercress. Her face is tight and flushed and quite unhappy. He braces himself for the speech he has been fearing. And sure enough she comes at him hard. ‘What are we doing here?’ She tosses down her fork with a clatter. ‘I mean, I don’t want to do this whole casual-dating thing—’
‘I don’t either.’
She bulldozes ahead, undeterred. ‘—where we agree we’re allowed to see other people—’
‘I don’t want to see anyone else.’
‘—and I pretend I’m okay with it.’
‘I’m not okay with it.’
‘I’m too old for that shit. I need security, Mike.’
‘Then marry me.’
This time, finally, she hears.
They don’t drink a drop of liquor at the ceremony but feel drunk with joy. The service is brief, some pictures after on the courthouse steps, Mom and Dad doing their best to muster smiles.
As he helps her mother gingerly into the car at the night’s end, she pauses in a rare unfiltered moment, dress hem in hand, and says, ‘The thing that doesn’t add up with you – you’re so gentle.’ He replies, ‘I spent enough years being not.’
He works hard, is promoted to foreman. In what is the single best day of his life, their daughter is born. She was to be Natalie, but when they meet her, she is Katherine, so forms must be reprocessed to ensure she has her proper name.
They settle into an apartment in Studio City. Prints of water lilies, matching linens, little seashell soaps for the bathroom. Through their back window, they can see the Wash, where the L.A. River drifts through concrete walls.
Out of the blue, Shep calls from a pay phone. It has been months – no, over a year. Both times he and Annabel met were excruciating, Shep’s hearing putting a damper on what little conversation could be summoned. Annabel is protective of Mike, all too aware of the costs of the sentence he served, and Shep doesn’t understand her; she is simply beyond his frame of reference. Mike remembers only long silences and sullen sips of beer, him in the middle, sweating worse than he did at that first dinner with her family.
Given Shep’s hearing, this phone conversation, like all others, is awkward, filled with starts and stops. Shep has heard that Mike has a daughter, and he wants to come by. Kat is five months old, and Mike is nervous, still adjusting, but cannot bring himself to say no.
Shep arrives two hours late, well after Kat is down. ‘Can I spend the night?’ he asks at the door, before saying hello. ‘I have a thing going on with my place.’
Mike and Annabel manage nods.
From his pocket Shep withdraws a gift – a wadded, unwrapped onesie sized for a three-year-old. Mike hates himself for wondering if it is stolen. He rubs his fingers over the butterfly pattern. It is the softest thing he has ever seen Shep hold.
Shep puts his feet on the coffee t
able and lights up, and Annabel says, apologetically, ‘Would you mind not smoking in here? The baby.’
‘Right,’ Shep says. ‘Sorry.’ He walks to the window and leans out, blowing into the wind.
Annabel says to Mike, ‘I think I’m gonna grab some sleep while I can.’
Mike goes over to Shep, wanting him to say good night, to be polite, to be gracious. He rests a hand on Shep’s back, still ridged with muscle. When Shep flicks his cigarette and turns, Annabel is starting to pull out the couch bed, and he says quietly, ‘Don’t bother. I’ll just sleep on it like it is.’
‘It’s really no trouble.’
He pauses a moment, processing. ‘Couches are more comfortable,’ he says. ‘I sleep on a couch at home.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Okay.’
They stare at each other, Shep pinching his St. Jerome pendant between his lips.
‘Well,’ she says. ‘Good night.’
Shep nods.
The bedroom door closes. Shep says, ‘Go get a drink?’ and Mike says, ‘I’m pretty beat. The baby has us up a couple times a night, and I got work at five.’
Shep asks, ‘Can I have a key?’
At three in the morning, the front door opens and closes loudly; Shep never hears doors well. Annabel wakes with a start, and Kat fusses through the monitor.
Mike stumbles out into the living room. Shep says, ‘Alcohol? Bandages?’
Drawing closer, Mike sees that his cheek has been badly raked by fingernails. He tilts Shep’s head, sees the white flesh glittering through the blood. He gets one of the matching hand towels from the bathroom and soaks it in warm water. When Shep pats on rubbing alcohol, he doesn’t so much as flinch. They have done this many a night – staying up, whispering, cleaning wounds. For a moment Mike is lost in the sweet familiarity of the ritual. But the footsteps and movement wake Kat fully. Annabel emerges from the bedroom, pauses on her way to the nursery. ‘What happened?’
Shep says, ‘Crowded bar. I was having trouble, you know . . .’ He gestures to an ear. Mike has never known him to speak directly about his hearing problem, and he isn’t about to start now. ‘Guy was playing with me. Sneaking up. He had a lot of friends. He sucker-punched me. The rest didn’t go down how they wanted. His girlfriend jumped on my back somewhere in there. Cops showed up, so I split. It wasn’t my fault.’
Someone bellows outside, ‘You fuckin’ asshole, get out here! We’re gonna kill you!’
Kat is crying now in the nursery.
Mike says, ‘Did you hear that?’
Shep says, ‘What?’ Mike points to the window. Shep crosses and sticks his head out. An instant later a bottle shatters against the wall near the window. The yelling, now a chorus, intensifies.
The phone rings, and Annabel snatches it up. ‘Yeah, sorry, Mrs. McDaniels.’ She points at the ceiling, in case Mike has forgotten where the McDanielses live. ‘Everything’s okay,’ she says into the phone. ‘Just some drunk out there. We’ll handle it.’ She hangs up, says to Mike, ‘I don’t want this going on here,’ and disappears into the nursery.
Shep withdraws his head from the window, wiping beer spray from his face. ‘Couple of his buddies must’ve followed me home,’ he says. ‘I’ll handle it.’
Calmly, he goes outside. Sitting on the couch, Mike lowers his face into his hands. There is a crash. And then another. Then silence.
A moment later Shep reappears. ‘My bad,’ he says.
‘Look,’ Mike says, ‘maybe you should split before more guys show up.’
‘What?’
‘I think maybe this isn’t the best time . . .’ He is grasping for words, stuck between a blood-sworn loyalty and what he owes that grandfather from the park who bought his soul for fifteen grand. He considers the Couch Mother, the superintendent, Annabel, Kat, himself. Obligation makes for tough sledding.
Shep says, ‘The guy came at me. I was defending myself.’
Shep is a lot of things, but he is not a liar.
Mike thinks about his mother’s faint cinnamon smell, his meandering graveyard walks, and Kat asleep in the next room. He will not – cannot – let anything put that child or her future at risk. And yet Shep is Shep, their friendship battle-tested like no other relationship Mike has ever known. Life is unfair; Mike knows this firsthand. But in this moment he hates that he is now on the high end of the seesaw, enjoying the better view.
He is sweating, unsure of himself, filled with self-loathing. He says, ‘I know that, but it’s not . . . safe. I mean, I got a baby now. The neighbors. I’m still trying to figure this whole thing out, you know?’
Shep snaps off a nod and stands, his face betraying nothing. Feeling like a heel, Mike walks him down. His broad frame cut from the slanting yellow of the streetlights, Shep heads toward the Wash, Mike a half step behind. A narrow footbridge extends across the river. Black water rustles against concrete banks below. Mike is hustling to keep up, calling after him – ‘Shep. Shep. Shep.’ – sure that Shep is, for the first time ever, mad at him.
But halfway across, when Shep finally hears and turns, his face shows no anger.
Bugs ping off the lights overhead. The eastern horizon has moved from black to charcoal. They are centered above a river moving invisibly beneath them.
Mike clears his throat. ‘You told me once . . . you said, “You can be whatever you want to be.”’ He wants to cry – he almost is – and he doesn’t understand himself. It is as though his face is having its own reaction to this while his heart stays resolute and hunkered down. ‘Well’ – he casts his arms wide – ‘this is who I want to be.’
Shep’s mouth moves a bit, forming something like a sad smile. Blood shines darkly in those claw marks beneath his eye. He says, ‘Then it’s who I want you to be, too.’
They both seem to sense the finality in those words, in this moment. The wind comes up, cutting through Mike’s jacket. Shep offers his hand, and they clasp, gripping around the thumbs.
‘You’re my only family,’ Shep says.
He walks off before Mike can reply.
Mike watches Shep’s shoulders fading into the early-morning dark. He bites his lip, turns back into the wet wind, and starts for home.
NOW
Chapter 15
Mike stood before the closet, finally stripping off that button-up shirt. One-thirty A.M., and he’d only just finished installing a second heavy-duty lock on Kat’s window. Despite his prompting, Kat didn’t want to sleep in their bedroom, and he could tell by the set of Annabel’s mouth that she found his request a bit over the top as well. He wasn’t so sure about an evidence-free home break-in anymore himself. But still, additional lock aside, he got a prickling beneath his skin when he contemplated the view of the dark backyard through Kat’s window. He could have pressed the point and made Kat move, but he didn’t want to give in to his fear that way. Or force them to give in to it.
He folded his dress pants, worked at the beer stain with a thumbnail, then gave up. Neatly folded clothes stared back from the crammed shelves. All those shirts. Such a long way from the communal dresser of his childhood. He regarded the closet with something like survivor’s guilt.
Annabel sat on the bed behind him, kicked off her high heels with a groan, and rubbed her feet. ‘I’m just saying,’ she remarked, picking up the thread of the discussion they’d interrupted a half hour ago, ‘They had an agenda, those detectives. When she was on the phone back there – Elzey – I didn’t like her expression. How animated she was. And the way they came back out swinging at you.’
Down to his boxers, he turned. ‘Something was off with those cops. No question. They’re not gonna help us. We need to figure out how to protect ourselves.’ He paused, wet his lips. ‘Maybe I should call him.’
‘Him? Him him?’ She leaned back on her elbows, shook her head vehemently. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Uh-uh. He scares me.’
‘He would know what to do.’
‘Or how to escalate things. Besides, you haven’t talked to Shepher
d in years.’
Except for the Couch Mother, Annabel was the only one who ever referred to Shep by his full name. Mike used to think it stemmed from her discomfort with Mike’s past, not wanting to use the abbreviated name from the stories. But he’d figured out it was more of a maternal nod to the given name, to the boy – a mother’s sympathy for that thin-necked kid who didn’t jump when someone dropped a lunch tray six inches from his nose.
‘And the way you left things,’ she continued. ‘What makes you think he’d be there?’
‘Shep would be there,’ Mike said firmly.
‘We have other friends. Terrance next door. Barry and Kay—’
‘What’s Barry gonna do, portfolio-manage them into submission? This isn’t the kind of problem you call people like our friends for.’
‘Then why don’t you talk to that private investigator, Hank? I mean, isn’t that what a PI’s supposed to do? Find out information on people? Look – just think about it. I don’t think we want to release the bull into the china shop. Yet.’
‘Hank’s sick. I told you.’
‘Hank never struck me as big on pity. You don’t think it might help him to have something to do?’ She pulled free a hairpin, shook out her mane. ‘I’ll go in to school tomorrow with Kat and update the contact and pickup lists, make sure they keep a close eye on her, all that.’
‘And talk to her—’
‘Of course. We’ve had the stranger-danger talk a million times, but I’ll go over it again. Now, come here. Unzip me.’
She held up her hair, exposing the light down of her nape. He drew the zipper south, admiring the slash of flesh, and she shrugged out of the dress and draped it over the upholstered chair in the corner. They took the duvet off together as they had every night for years – fold, step, fold, step – a marital square dance. And then she went into the bathroom and emerged with her toothbrush poking out of her mouth and his sporting a bead of paste. Leaning over to tug off his socks, he paused, and she popped his toothbrush into his mouth before returning to the bathroom, wearing a clown mouth of foam. The everyday physics of intimacy.
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