by Susan Dunlap
What was behind me? Where was the rearview? I checked the side mirror and inched the truck backward, clutching the wheel as hard as I could.
Sirens screamed. The guy was yelling again. I didn’t have time for him. I let the clutch out a little more.
He yelled louder. “What the hell are you doing with my truck?”
I concentrated on the clutch.
“Get out of my truck!”
“Guthrie?”
He was black with smoke. Tears streaked down his cheeks.
He slid in the driver’s side and we passed the pedal so smoothly the engine didn’t even cough. In less than a minute the rig was on its way out, and the fire was receding behind us. The first thing he said was, “I gotta spend some time teaching you to drive.”
“Hey—” Then I was coughing.
“Listen, you were great. But when we’ve got a production company, we can really ramp up the truck gags. I’ve been thinking . . .”
Suddenly, his attention snapped back to the smoky landscape around us. “I gotta put some more distance between those flames and this rig.”
He was in his element, feet on the pedals, arms curved into the wheel, eyes straight ahead, an unconscious smile playing on his mouth. Like the fire never existed at all. Like we were on to the next scene. I was so relieved—giddy with relief—I almost slipped over onto the driver’s seat with him and snuggled under his arm.
He took the corners fast but nothing like he’d be doing in a shoot, moving through the gears the way I did with a standard four on the floor. I was making mental notes of the sequence, of his timing, of the pull of each gear.
“Always learning, eh, Darcy?”
“No novices in Lott and Guthrie!” It was way too early in our sudden relationship for that kind of commitment, but I didn’t care.
“Listen, this isn’t pie-in-the-sky stuff. There are great drivers—not like me, but, you know, good ones—”
I laughed.
“And there are great high fall artists—not up to your standard—” Even at this speed, his eyes never left the road. “But the combo—no one’s doing that, at least not like we can. We can cushion the roof of this baby so you could hit it at forty feet moving—piece of cake.”
He pulled over near the gate. In the side mirror the fire looked like a funnel cloud, just not moving. He gave me a quick kiss, and then, as if choreographed, we both jumped out to check the rig for fire damage. All stunt doubles are careful—at least those who have a long life in the business—but no one’s more obsessive than those of us who do high falls. One loose tie-down overlooked, and splat. We’ve all heard the tales of catcher failure, wind not factored in, or more bones broken than we even realized we possessed . . . of death. I surveyed the trailer shell with that same professional obsessiveness while Guthrie squat-walked underneath where an ember could still be smoldering near a gas line and blow us into the Bay.
Even with my help, the check took an hour. By the time he declared the rig okay, the fog was moving in for the night.
“Another couple of minutes and I’d’ve been working by flashlight,” Guthrie said, emerging from under the bed. He straightened so slowly it looked like he was being cranked up by gears.
He slipped his arm around my shoulder and we leaned back against the siding. We stared at the fire’s black plume against the gray fog. The heat of his body flooded into me so only my right hand was still cold and I reached up to slip my fingers through his.
“You’re a different man than the guy who was so down on himself yesterday.”
“You suggesting I’m unpredictable?”
“I’m applauding.”
“You’ve got your guy Leo to thank.”
What did Leo say? I can’t ask. Tell me!
As if intuiting my thoughts, he repeated the sutra, “All my ancient, tangled karma I face up to.”
“Avow.”
“What?”
“You fully avow the karma, but I guess it’s the same thing.”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to believe I wasted all this time avoiding it. I sweated for weeks at a ranch in a hole in the desert trying to deal with it. And then I have one chat and all of a sudden it seems so clear that facing up to it is the answer. How could I not see that before? It’s crazy.”
“But us, being together, that’s crazy, and yet it’s not. It’s like you run toward a cliff for an hour and then in one step you’re over.”
“Pleasant analogy, that.”
I shrugged, scrunching closer under his arm.
“Whatever you—”
In a split second he’d shot a foot away from me. “Whatever I did? You want to know?”
“I didn’t say—”
“But you do, don’t you?”
“Hey, where’d this come from?”
He turned, strode off toward the fire. Really unpredictable!
I raced after him, grabbed his arm, turned him toward me. “Yeah, I want to know. Because whatever it is, it’s okay. No, wait! Don’t start that business of my not being able to say without knowing first, just fucking tell me. Did you kill someone?”
He looked down at me and our gazes locked. “I used to think that ‘worse than death’ was hyperbole. Now I know better.”
I just buried my face in his chest and pulled him tight to me. I realized he was shaking. In that moment it was as if I was both present and also looking down on the scene. And then, providing the backdrop to his grief, like an over-the-top movie set, were the fire and the sirens and the flashing lights, and it was almost too much. “How?”
“I let him die.”
You stood there and watched him die? “How?”
“I walked away.”
“So, you were a bystander?”
“I was in it up to—as high up as you can go. I could have . . . but I didn’t. If I had . . . but I didn’t. Because, see, I wanted to save my own skin. It’s the old story about guilt. A thousand plots make this point. My ancient twisted karma.”
A deafening bang came from the pier. Fire shot up.
“Lucky you got my rig out of there when you did. That fire’s going to eat up the pier. Look how fast it’s coming—”
“Omigod, Gary’s car! I jumped out of it to get the truck. It’s still back there! Gary’s Honda!”
“Flip me the keys!”
“They’re in the car.” I ran full out, but he was taller, faster. Smoke was filling my mouth; I could taste it. By the time I rounded the corner onto the pier, Guthrie was nearly at the door.
A police car—light bar flashing—sped toward us.
“Deal with them!” I yelled.
The cop screeched up five yards from the car. Guthrie was at his door before he could get out.
With a last burst of power, I dashed for Gary’s car, swung in, and did a 180, pushing the passenger door so it popped open right next to Guthrie. He leapt in and I hit the gas.
We rounded the corner, laughing.
He leaned over and kissed me sideways. I could just see over his ear to drive. “We’re going to make one helluva team!”
I pulled up next to his truck and reached for him.
My cell phone rang.
I shrugged it off and pulled him to me for a long, giddy kiss, the kind we’d be sharing a lot after triumphs by Lott and Guthrie.
The phone started up again. I shrugged and clicked it on.
“Darcy!”
My brother John, I mouthed.
“There’s been a—”
“Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“—a fire—”
“We all waited for you. We sat around the table, Darcy, waiting for you. You get us all here and then don’t show.”
“I can still—”
“Too late.” The phone clicked off. I could picture him stabbing his thumb into the button and slamming the phone shut.
“Oh, shit, it’s after eight.”
Guthrie was staring at me. “What?”
“I was sup
posed to be at Mom’s at seven. Shit. There was a family meeting; they all think I arranged it. They’re . . . pissed doesn’t begin to describe it.” I squeezed his arm. “I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No. Trust me, you do not want to face this scene.”
He was deciding where to move the truck as I headed for the freeway. I made it almost to the gate before admitting I needed a few minutes to get myself together before heading onto the bridge. I pulled over and checked messages and got an earful.
7:46 P.M. “Darce, you okay?” Gary asked. “Call me. My car, is it okay? If you haven’t driven it into the Bay, you’re still in deep shit with everyone. Seriously.”
7:48 P.M. “Jeez, Darcy”—it was Gracie—“Jeez! I hope you’re okay—I know you’re okay—but where the hell are you? Call me before you call anyone else.” I heard what sounded like a snort. “You’re not going to want to talk to anyone else in this family. Believe me. Jeez!”
8:00 P.M. Mom: “You know I trust your judgment and don’t worry about you. But Darcy, you call me right now and tell me you’re okay.”
I called. Then I headed across the bridge, deposited Gary’s car in the slot by his office, and checked messages while I trudged back to the zendo.
Only one: 8:10 P.M. From Guthrie. “Listen, your brother’s a cop, right? I need to meet him tomorrow, first thing. Early, before there are people around. Palace of Fine Arts. 6:00 A.M. I’m turning off my phone. Sorry to be . . . Love you.”
8
JOHN SQUEALED TO a stop by the zendo at 5:45 and I slid into the passenger seat. Fog lay over the city like foam on a crash set. His lights were on, but by the time he reached the corner he was out-driving them.
“Gonna be worse in the Marina,” he grumbled.
“Guthrie’s not from here; he wouldn’t have known.”
“He could’ve checked. Hell, he could’ve just hauled himself over to Mom’s last night when we were all there.”
Outside, the world was gray, momentarily broken by spots of white as a car passed. The fog muted out so much that in the vacuum the engine roared.
“Why not your zendo? Why didn’t he come there instead of dragging us across town?” My brother was clearly at his grousing best. “Is he staying in the Marina and just making it easy on himself?”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“Why are you so sure? What do you know really about him, anyway?”
I was asking myself that very question.
Trying another tack, John asked, “What is he when he’s not working?”
“I don’t see him then.”
“Not even curious? Give me a break. But of course you don’t ask. You care about him, so you need to believe in him. How many times have I pointed out, when you care about someone, in your mind he can do no wrong?”
“Not true,” I protested. “Not any more.”
He grunted, and I was happy to let it go. He was entitled, I figured. Hadn’t he dragged himself out here for me? Besides, I knew he was right. I was always trying to be objective about people I cared about . . . but, damn, it was hard. How could I not jump to their defense? Hell, I didn’t even let people badmouth him, despite the litany of good reasons.
But he’d set me to worrying. I’d assumed Guthrie slept in his truck, at the set. Don’t assume, Leo always said, meaning look at any event with fresh eyes.
“Fog’s going to be so thick at that end of the Marina we won’t be able to see the Palace from the street. We’ll be lucky to make out the lagoon. Whatever made your boyfriend choose there of all places?”
Why was Guthrie focused on this area? “Yesterday, Gracie and I followed him over here, but we lost him behind a party or demonstration of some kind.”
“Swans.”
“No, it was people.”
“Swans,” John repeated. “What I said was what I meant. City’s threatening to relocate some of the ones in the lagoon again. That always sends the fur and feathers wackos into the streets with signs. It’s been going on for years. Don’t you remember? Mike dragged you to one of their protests—I chewed him out good.”
“Hey, Mike didn’t drag me. He went along because I needed a ride.” I couldn’t help but smile. “He never told you that part, huh? Not that there was any danger. A hundred or so people, high-end houses behind us, swans and ducks in front. Biggest danger would have been falling in the water and that’s probably two feet deep. Mike ran into a girl he’d met when he worked with Dad a few blocks from there the summer before. I had to hunt him up to get my ride home.”
My oldest brother was shaking his head. “You just never can see him as less than perfect, even now.”
“What?”
“There you were, a kid taking honors classes, into track and gymnastics and dance and God knows what else. Half the time you didn’t even make it home to dinner. How’d you have time to get so passionate about swans? Was it Mike who fed you stories about the swan danger? So he could run into this girl?”
“I may be naïve, but you are the master of conspiracy theory. Why would Mike go to all the trouble of doing the setup and carting me over here, on the chance of meeting a girl he liked? He was star quality. All he had to do was pick up the phone.”
“But he didn’t. How do I know? Because that demonstration was a couple of weeks before he left. I scoured the city for the girl. I’m surprised you don’t remember me asking you what he said about her. You never saw her, remember? You took his word about her. But there was no girl.”
“No girl you found.”
“Will you stop! Stop believing your picture—”
Don’t assume! Had I assumed about Mike? How much? Omigod, had I always assumed? It was too much to deal with, especially now, in the car with the brother who’d be only too ready to pounce. “You’re right.”
“What?”
“You’re right, John.” It shocked me as much as it did him. “Maybe there was no girl; maybe he just got sick of me and the swans.”
“Or maybe something else.”
“Yeah.” Game over.
Finally he muttered, “Damn fog.”
At least he’d stopped bitching about Guthrie. Worried as I was about him, I was thankful for this small respite. The fog was blowing thick across the windshield. The wipers were on high but couldn’t push it back fast enough.
“Those were the days,” he said, “working with Dad. He didn’t run his own business yet, and so he was pulling in a lot of overtime. Man, were we wiped out by the time we rolled into the house. But, I’ll tell you, it was the perfect summer job. Dad offered it to Gary but after one summer he was too good to smudge his hands.”
“Gary said he didn’t want to be accused of working a job that ought to be union.”
“He was nineteen! And clueless! How’d he ever know he was gonna be a hotshot lawyer back then?”
I wondered but let it drop and John seemed glad to also. For him, reliving happy family memories was a peace offering. But it was also an idealized picture of the family. I’d heard a lot of this before, but I was glad to let him settle into a better frame of mind.
He turned into the maze that made up the Marina district. I gauged we were blocks away from our destination, but it was just a guess.
“But by the time Mike got there, Dad was top dog. Those were the days! Running three or four crews, heaviest thing he’d be hoisting was a clipboard. You just about had to make an appointment to catch up with him. And you know Mike,” he said in that way we fell into talking about him, as if we’d seen him yesterday and he’d be dropping by tomorrow. “He gets along with anyone. He liked it so much he took the fall semester off. By the end of his time there, before the quake, he could have handled any job on the site, maybe not journeyman level, but well enough. Dad was figuring he’d be an engineer or maybe an architect. He took it hard when Mike just walked away . . . I mean from the job.”
As opposed to when he walked out the door and disappeared. Dad had taken tha
t hard, too, but what with all the reconstruction after the Loma Prieta quake then, he was gone working dawn to dark.
“Did your guy bother to mention what corner he’d be on? Unless he’s got himself surrounded by light bars there’s no way we’re going to see him.”
The thought had struck me, too. The park’s two blocks long and another wide with a lagoon in the middle and the reconstructed Greco-Roman temple behind that. “He’ll be looking for us.”
We turned left. The fog suddenly seemed less compressed, as if it were released from the narrow passage between buildings and was spreading over the lagoon.
“This is it. Let me out.”
“Hang on. Let’s see if we see him.”
I reached for my phone. Before I could peer through the contacts list, John recited Guthrie’s number. “Amazing.” I dialed. He lowered the windows, but there was no ringing, only icy gusts. “Maybe he’s got his phone turned off.”
“So it doesn’t disturb the people across the street inside their houses? Dream on.”
“Hell, just let me out! We’ve gone the length of the park. I’ll start back on the path here and meet you back at the far corner.”
“We’ll drive back. If he doesn’t show, then we get out.”
I nodded, though, of course my brother didn’t see me. Out the window, I knew, was the lagoon with its demonstration-worthy fowl tucked sleeping among the grasses at the scalloped edges of the water. Bushes sprouted around the building and the water. Trees overhung. A walkway followed the water’s edge. Not a place where noise carries.
John slowed. “You hear anything?”
“Zip.” Still, Guthrie couldn’t miss our car.
“This guy . . . How do you know—”
“If he’s reliable?”
“If he’s anything.”
“If he wasn’t reliable, he wouldn’t have work. Movie companies don’t waste money on stunt doubles who oversleep.” Guthrie’d always been dependable. Except yesterday. Except now. “Let me out!”
“Wait, I’m turning around.” He hung a U, his headlights shining off the cars parked beside the park, showing the white of the fire hydrant, the chrome of a car on the grass.