by John Ridley
America-Fong figured Ms property value was going to take a hit having a Mexican living next door. So what do you do? You call him a freak, call DMI, have them send him off to a new place to live. Like the SPA.
Standing right where she was, Soledad settled back within herself. Let Donatell do the work, conduct the interview. She was done with getting her time wasted.
The queer thing about it all, one guy was accusing another of having the ability to see through solid objects. Soledad thought he was lying, but in the world she lived in he didn't sound insane.
The waiter took the order of the Chicken Saag, the Lamb Tikka Masai a. Onion Kulcha. The waiter, taking the order, stared at Donatell. Barely looked away enough to write on the pad he carried. He stared at Donatell like he was clocking one of those Night of the Living Dead zombies trying to figure what was the best way to kill the beast. And on top of all that the waiter was obvious with the speed he took down the order, got away from the table as if he had to rush off to puke. Donatell didn't seem put out. Then again, as before, it was hard to tell what was going on behind that permanent mask Donatell wore.
Soledad, eating some katchumber: "What do we do?"
"About the call? Write it up, turn it in. Surveil the guy."
"Even though the complainant was lying?"
"You know he was lying?"
Soledad gave a laugh. "C'mon."
Donatell, again: "Do you know he was lying?"
"Back in the day the complaint would've been: He's a dealer. A banger. Whatever. Whatever to try to get the cops to do some redlining on the city's dime."
"Do you-"
"I know it's a waste of time when DMI ought to be looking for real freaks."
"Good of you to educate me," big slurp, "on how DMI works."
No matter the damage, the scarring, the flesh around Donatell's lips retained his right and real pigmentation. Darker than his burned skin. He was sort of a reverse minstrel. So badly burned. A few more seconds, a few more, Soledad wondered, and would he have been killed rather than left to live as he is? Does he ever, she wondered, look in the mirror and wish the couple of seconds had broiled him into oblivion?
"Do they bother you?" Soledad asked. "Ones like the waiter. The ones who just stare."
"Two kinds of people. The ones who stare, the ones who don't. The people who stare… hell, I would stare at me. The ones who won't look are the ones I hate. How are they not going to look? I know how my shit is. But they won't even acknowledge me, like, like if they don't look, I don't exist and who the hell am I screwing up their beautiful world with my hideousness? Anyway, you get over it. I scare kids and I can't get laid by anyone but whores I've got to overpay. You learn to deal."
He sucked in some katchumber.
"I used to be," Soledad said, "the same way with my neck. Self-conscious like that."
Donatell laughed, blew slightly masticated food out of his mouth. "That's like a hangnail, O'Roark. That little bit of scarring you've got's like a hangnail."
"Yeah, well, I used to be beautiful. For all I know, what you've got's an improvement."
A little light in Donatell's eyes. If he preferred those who stare over those who don't, he really dug those who could give a good ribbing no different than if all he'd gotten was a bad trim at Supercuts.
Getting back to what's what: "Maybe it's bullshit, O'Roark, but we still do things by the book because that's how the book says to do them. I know you've got issues with that."
"Issues with…?"
"You don't always do things how they're supposed to be done." "You know that?" "I know the talk."
"And I care for talk the way you care for the people who won't even stare."
"You gotta understand," taking up a napkin, whipping drool from his chin, "things are different at DMI. Yeah, I know you've heard the talk; cops here think they're superspies. Most of that, most of that is self-arad…»
"Self-aggrandizing."
"I was never good with big words. Shouldn't even try. We're busted cops and we want to feel good about ourselves. I was MTac. Most of us were. But I'm just talking from my POV for a sec. When I was MTac, I saw things different. Mostly, I saw how the book was written by guys who were safe behind a desk telling us how to take out the freak of the week. You get bad advice a couple of times and you-"
The waiter brought the food. Set it down. Asked if the pair needed anything. When he got their no-thank-yous, the waiter left the table. All of that, his eyes never left Donatell.
Donatell, going on: "Things go bad for you a couple of times, sure, you do what you've got to do to keep you, keep your element alive."
Probing: "Not here. You don't use any independent, thought?"
Donatell didn't, say anything to that.
So Soledad let it lie. Had some saag.
Donatell ate too. It was not the most attractive thing in the world.
After a minute, taking a break: "I think if we go off the page, if we do… different from just doing something on our own, it's more about leadership here," Donatell said.
Soledad kept chewing, gave a quizzical look.
"Not like going head-to-head with a mutie, collecting intel is straightforward. Pretty much It is. But once you've got the intel, what do you do with it?"
"Merits a warrant, you get a warrant. Give it to MTac."
Donatell went back to eating.
Soledad was struck by his lack of affirmation. Being roundabout: "When you talk about leadership…»
"I'm talking about Raddatz. He's got respect coming to him."
"Other cops don't?"
"There're some of us who respect him a lot more… even more, I should say. Even more than others. The reason you did things your own way back on MTac-and I'm not telling you, I'm saying ask yourself: Was it because you couldn't trust your leadership? If you had real reason not to, if you just felt like you couldn't, it was the leadership you couldn't follow. Not when it got down to it. But Raddatz…»
"Him you can follow. No trust Issues?"
"You're lucky enough to work with him close, you see why."
"How many work closely,'" a little something on that word, "with him?"
"Me, Tony Shen."
Soledad gave a shake of her head. Shen she didn't yet know.
"You'd remember him if you met him." "How's that?"
"He makes me look good. Chuck Panama." "Him I know."
"You're curious to him, to Raddatz."
"And is that how I ended up taking a call with you? Are you giving me a field audition?"
"You've got nothing to audition for. How you handle yourself only matters if you're going to be DMI. You really going to be DMI, O'Roark?"
Donatell cast a line, waited for an answer. Soledad ate.
When it was real clear to him he wasn't going to get a response, Donatell joined her in getting back to eating.
Throughout lunch Donatell sounded like a suction filter on a pool. Bugged the hell out of Soledad.
There was one new message on Soledad's integrated cordless phone/digital answering machine. From her mother. The message had barely started playing and already Soledad was reaching to erase it, thinking of what would be a good time to return the call. «Good» meaning a time when most likely her parents wouldn't be home.
Her hand stopped, hung in the air, held up there by her mother's message.
Soledad's mother wasn't calling from Milwaukee, wasn't in Milwaukee. Soledad's mom was calling from the Radisson Hotel at LAX. Soledad's mom was in the city.
Sunset Plaza was a strip of boutique shops and al fresco eateries that lined the north and south sides of Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. Very LA. Very LA in the way folks outside LA think when they think LA: Beautiful people. Expensive cars parked along the curb. Really old guys with their hot young girlfriends who clearly weren't hanging out with their men because they actually had a thing for guys thrice their age. Minimum of thrice. Lot of flamers. The occasional actor who could still do box-office. All very ost
entatious. High-end. And it was all just pretentious enough to give the tourists something to talk about when they went back home to talk about "those people" out West. All in all, Sunset Plaza was about as decent a place Soledad could think to take her mom for lunch. It was also, Soledad hoped, filled with enough "look at that over there" value to intrude on her and her mother's conversation. The crappily little conversation Soledad knew she'd be able to muster.
Things would start badly, Soledad figured, when her mother saw her on crutches. Bring on the worry. Then the "Why are you doing this, why don't you get a regular job" talk would start free-flowing. After.Soledad macheted through that tangle of nonsense, things would really get going southward with all the questions her mom would send at her fusillade-style about the love life Soledad didn't have, the friends she didn't own. Question after prying question about bullshit, bullshit, bullshit…
Driving up La Cienega for Sunset Plaza. Soledad gripping the wheel of her car. Choking it.
God, how she hated this-
Tenser, tenser with each block traveled.
– having a sit-down with family. Having to open up and share because somebody wanted access to her life even though that somebody had given birth to her. Not that Soledad wasn't… appreciative; was that an expressive enough word? Not that Soledad wasn't appreciative of that. Her existence. Thank you very much, Mom, now here's a card for Mother's Day and a bunch of flowers. But why did coming from her mom's gene pool entitle her mother to more than Soledad wanted to give? Jesus…
Her mother had to come to LA, had to come unannounced? Soledad said to herself-and it was hyperbole, sure, but there was a kernel of truth to her emotion- she'd rather go at the worst of the freaks-a telepath- than have lunch solo with her mother.
Sunset Plaza.
Soledad parked in the lot looking south over the city. Clear day. Warm weather. Decent view. LA wasn't all bad.
Soledad limped up the hill from the lot to Sunset, crutched it over to Le Petite. Her mother, Virginia-Gin-already there. Looking good. Soledad thought her mother always looked good. Wasn't just a daughter's assessment. Gin was handsome the way Maya Angelou was handsome. The way, the way early pre-glam-makeover Oprah was handsome. Strong black women whose greatest strength was primarily their intelligence.
The future as Soledad had predicted did not materialize. Her mother greeted her warmly. Said how good it was to see Soledad, made a comment on the quality of the day. She did point out an actor sitting three tables over who'd had a hit TV show six years prior and hadn't much worked since outside of commercials for some kind of snack chip that wasn't made out of potatoes.
Gin said nothing about Soledad's crutches other than to ask: "Hurt yourself?''
"Twisted it running," Soledad lied. What she figured to be the first of many she'd be spinning over lunch as she prepped herself for the continuing cover-up of her leg injury.
But Gin had nothing more to ask concerning her daughter's leg, was more inquisitive with the waiter regarding the specials.
Soledad absentmindedly ordered the Santa Fe salad. She'd had it once years ago. It was decent. She figured it couldn't've changed all that much, and if it had, probably not for the worse.
A thank-you to both ladies from the waiter. He went to place their order.
No assessment as point of entry into a wider conversation about Soledad's love life from Gin to Soledad re: the waiter's looks and what Soledad thought of them. If Soledad found him attractive. If she'd consider dating him. If she wouldn't, was it because she was already seeing someone?
Unusual. Highly unusual, the lack of question asking.
In the time between the food order was placed and its arrival, Gin took charge of the conversation, apologized for coming to the city without forewarning but it just seemed the two of them kept… missing each other.
Signifying. Saying without saying she was on to Soledad's long-running scam.
But Gin abandoned her grievances there. Barely started, she let them go no further. All that came from her were pleasantries. About her flight, about the city. To her daughter, and about life in general.
Lilac.
She thought she smelled it when she sat down. Now Soledad was sure. There was lilac in the air.
Soledad didn't know of any growing on Sunset, The smell had to be drifting down from up the Hollywood Hills. Near the intersection of Sunset and Holloway-six blocks away-in a car that was made in Korea a cover version of a song by Fleetwood Mac played on the radio. Somewhere on the Blvd. a woman cried, but they were tears of joy. For a brief moment a near portion of the entire world was received with exceptional clarity by Soledad.
It wasn't right. The situation was incorrect. A background as a cop wasn't needed for Soledad to know her mother suddenly showing up in LA by herself was messed up. As her mother talked, Soledad half listened, half tried to figure the most natural, the least abrasive way to ask what she needed to know. Except if Soledad was ever nonabrasive, she'd long ago forgotten how to be. Probably about the same time she'd forgotten how to be patient.
So Soledad blurted: "What are you doing here?"
"I came to see you," Gin said.
That didn't come right away. There was a pause ahead of it. Brief, but it was there. The hesitation her mother had taken, the thought she'd put into a simple answer: Gin was lying.
Having spoken enough of them, Soledad knew a lie when she heard one.
"For no reason? You just get on a plane, fly a couple thousand miles-"
"To see you, talk with you. Not over the phone and not in, in vagaries."
"You and Dad splitting up?"
A laugh from Gin. A bitter one.
"If you are, you can, I guess, stay with me if you want."
"I never should have let you be an only child. You needed more family than your father and I could give you."
Soledad didn't know what to say to that, didn't know where it came from.
The waiter stopped by with the Santa Fe salad, the sea bass Gin had ordered, asked the ladies if they needed anything further.
A couple of curt noes.
Soledad fumbled with her silverware. Gin cut her food with a knife, forked a piece and ate. Ate another bite. Then she set the fork at the edge of her plate.
She said: "I have cancer. Ovarian cancer."
The handle of the knife she held, dull as it was, hurt Soledad with the force which her fingers gripped it. Drove it into her palm. Her throat went dry. And her eyes as well. Someone else hearing that, hearing their mother was potentially terminal, most likely their eyes would go slick. Soledad's did the opposite.
Her voice, Soledad's voice was steady. "You should be in the hospital."
"I will be. I'm scheduled to go in Monday."
"You're going to wait until-"
"I wanted to see you. I wanted to tell you." Soledad started to say: You could have called. Except…
Her mother had called. She'd called and called, and Soledad had ducked and dodged.
Soledad felt a slow and steady drip of guilt water-torturing her. She knew she'd fed it for years.
Fucking cancer.
Gin: "I came to tell you… well, I came to say how much I loved you. How proud I was of you.
Was. Was?
"This is… you're, you're sick, and you come all the way out to tell me-"
"… but it sounded so odd, vapid to tell someone you loved them. Under the circumstances." Gin had to fight with that word some. Circumstances. "When you say it like you're making a final declaration. If they don't know it; if the person you're saying that to doesn't already know that you… and it sounded, and it sounded cliche. I'm dying, and therefore I have to… well, probably I'm dying, so I have to tell you that I… but I wanted to tell you."
"Stop it!" Soledad barked loud enough people four tables over looked in her direction. The has-been actor among them. "Stop talking in the past tense. It's like talking to a ghost."
Amazing even to herself; her mother had cancer, the bet wa
s it was killing her, she'd picked flying to LA over going in for immediate surgery or treatment or whatever science was up to that was-in terms of fighting cancer- little better than a good leeching, and the only emotion Soledad could show was anger.
Unbelievable.
The waiter returned, asked the two ladies if everything was to their liking. Soledad's head shook.
The waiter thought one of the meals was lacking and started to go into a WeHo hissy fit.
Gin set the guy right, sent him off. She ate. She put an effort into eating, going to the trouble not hardly out of hunger as much as to give Soledad a minute to collect herself. Food was poor distraction. Gin didn't have an appetite, hadn't since her doctor had sat her down, looked her in the eye and told her with all the compassion of a guy who's told a hundred patients some HMOified version of the same spiel: You've got an illness which could very much end things for you, and it's pretty much beyond us.
Gin pushed her plate away. She looked to her daughter. "What I want to say, I wanted to say face-to-face. I'm going to be selfish, Soledad. I don't want you coming home."
"What?"
"I don't want you dealing with my sickness." In that sentence Gin put the emphasis on "my." "I don't want you watching me waste away."
"You're not going to die."
"You talk as if it were a matter of choice. If I choose to live, I will. That's hardly the way things are."
Except, in Soledad's world it was. In Soledad's world she had to believe it was.
Soledad: "Please quit the bullshit acceptance of the-"
"It's not… bull." Knocking on Death's door. Gin wouldn't sully herself with foul language. "I'm fifty-eight years old. My time is coming. Today. Tomorrow. It is. I can cry, or I can… I can get what I'm able to out of the time I have left. If that means taking a few days, flying to see my daughter… My fear, Soledad, my living fear was that something would happen to you while I was still alive. I didn't want that. I didn't want that as badly as possible. There is something so horribly out of sync about a parent burying their child. And I take comfort In knowing the manner I will end. It won't be by a bullet from a. a thug or some such. Or getting run down by some drunk. This way when it happens it will be just like, like slipping under water."