by Don Lee
He steered the van to the side of the highway and rolled to a stop. He sat there for a good ten minutes, the engine running and burning gas, trying to decide what to do.
His cellphone rang. He took it out of the pocket of his khaki pants, saw that it was Jeanette calling, and flipped the phone open.
“Are you on your way?” she asked him.
He knew he shouldn’t do it, that he should just proceed to Longfellow Elementary School, where they were meeting to carpool, but he also knew that he would forever regret not taking this opportunity to see Mallory.
“I might be late,” he told Jeanette. “I’m having a little van trouble.”
“You broke down?”
“I guess you were right about those noises.”
“You’re never going to find a garage open today,” Jeanette told him. “It’s a holiday. And they’ll charge you time and a half if you need a tow.”
“I’ll see if Rodrigo’s around. He knows cars. Maybe it’s nothing. I’ll try to catch up with you guys in San Bruno.”
He was sorry to lie to Jeanette, but after her outburst about Caroline, he thought it best. He fully intended for the visit to be brief—fifteen to twenty minutes at most—and join Jeanette and Joe for much of the observance ceremony.
He got back onto the highway, made a U-turn, and swung down the road to the entrance of the Centurion Resort, where a young man in a uniform stepped out of the security booth.
“I’m here to see a guest, Mallory Wicks,” Yadin said.
The guard stared dubiously at Yadin, at his dented, rusting, rumbling van, at the gray smoke curling up from the undercarriage.
“Could I get your name, sir?”
“Yadin Park.”
The guard went inside his booth and tapped on the keyboard of his computer and then came out again. “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t have a guest named Mallory Wicks at the resort.”
“Did she check out already?”
“No one by that name was or is registered as a guest at this Centurion.”
Yadin was surprised by the hotel’s discretion. She wasn’t that famous anymore. “I know she’s here,” he said. “I know you’re supposed to protect her privacy, but I’m an old friend of hers—a musician.”
A car pulled up behind Yadin’s van. “Sir,” the guard said, “we don’t have a guest named Mallory Wicks here.”
“Look, I’m not a fan or a stalker or anything. Honest to God, I’m an old music buddy.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave the property.”
Yadin considered taking out the cassette tape that was in the pocket of his windbreaker and asking the guard to have it delivered to Mallory. It contained all the songs he had recorded for his album. It seemed vital and momentous to him, getting her imprimatur on the new songs. That was why he had woken early and compiled the separate tracks onto a single cassette. Hers was the only opinion that mattered to him, even after all these years—or maybe it was precisely because of all those years, the passage of them, what they had missed and what they could’ve had and what they had each gone through in the intervening time. He wanted to come to a rapprochement with her about the way things had ended, closing a circle that had been left agape in regret, and the cassette, her approval of the new album, seemed—without his being able to articulate exactly why—a means to do that.
Yet he knew how pathetic the request would appear to the security guard, asking him to deliver the tape—another aspiring musician desperate for a break. The guard would surely drop it in the rubbish the minute he left.
“My girlfriend works here,” Yadin said. “She’s a housekeeper.”
“What’s your girlfriend’s name?”
Yadin thought better of it—he didn’t want to cause Jeanette any trouble. Moreover, if he used her name, she might find out about his visit. “Never mind,” he said.
“Turn around before the fountain, please,” the guard said.
Yadin drove forward. In his side mirror, he saw the guard speaking into his walkie-talkie, and as he neared the fountain, a second uniformed guard—holding his own walkie-talkie—stepped out toward the road. Yadin steered his van around and exited the resort, watched by the two guards the whole way.
He turned left onto Highway 1, then made another left into the Colony Estates, the development of McMansions surrounding the resort’s golf course. When he first moved to Rosarita Bay, he had carpeted some of the houses for subcontractors. He thought he could park inside the development and cut through a fairway on foot to the hotel, but there was a guardhouse here, too.
He went south to another development called Cypress Point, spotted a security booth, and didn’t bother going to the gate, circling around at the stoplight.
He had made a mistake. He shouldn’t have mentioned Mallory’s name at all to the guard at the Centurion Resort. He should have simply said he was going to one of the restaurants, or the golf course, or the coastal trail. The Centurion was supposed to allow everyone access to the latter. There was an ongoing lawsuit about it, Yadin now recalled. The California Coastal Commission had sued the hotel over stipulations in the Coastal Access Initiative, which required the Centurion to provide the public with not only beach access but also a couple dozen parking spaces that were on-site and non-valet.
It was too late to insist on this now. He drove up to the edge of town, traversed the outlying neighborhood of Rio Rancho via Montecito Avenue, and went down Vista Del Mar Road until it dead-ended in a dirt lot. He parked and started walking toward the coastal trail, but then returned to his van. He grabbed his aluminum clipboard case, hard hat, and an orange safety vest that he’d been issued when the church was picking trash for Adopt-a-Highway. With his tie, he thought he might be able to pass for some sort of utility official.
He hiked down the path along the ocean. After three-quarters of a mile, the trail began to border the golf course, and he kept an eye on the golfers in the fairways, on the off chance that Mallory was out playing a round. It was a protracted walk. He hadn’t known the course was so long. Eventually he came across a driving range, then a putting green, then the clubhouse, where people were eating breakfast on the patio.
Finally he reached the grounds of the hotel proper. It was an impressive, mammoth structure, cresting a cliff. He had never seen it before, even from a distance. He stepped onto the walkway near the bluff. Hesitant to go inside, he lurked around the windows of the restaurants and various rooms on the ground floor, trying to peer through the panes. Around a corner of the hotel, a gardener was trimming hedges, and he stopped and straightened up when Yadin approached.
Yadin held up his clipboard. “Routine inspection,” he said.
He slipped through a side door and went down a corridor. It appeared he was outside of the spa. Guests were coming and going through a doorway, wearing identical white robes with hoods and pockets, resembling monks, though very pampered ones. Yadin drifted through the lobby, near the openings to the restaurants, down hallways. He wished he could just pick up one of the house phones and ask for Mallory Wicks’s room, but he knew the operator would tell him no one by that name was registered at the hotel. He continued roaming down corridors. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting. What, really, were the odds that he would run across Mallory this way?
A man in a black suit nodded to him as they walked past each other in the hallway. Yadin took a few more steps, then heard behind him, “Excuse me, sir.” He turned around slowly, and the man asked, “Could I ask what your business is in the Centurion?”
“I’m doing an inspection.”
“What department are you from?”
“PG&E,” Yadin said after a moment, perhaps sounding a little too hopeful. He realized he had made another blunder. Without the clipboard, hard hat, and safety vest, he could have gone incognito as a guest or visitor.
“Has there been a report of a problem?” the man asked.
“No. Just a routine inspection.”
“
I’m the chief of security. May I see your ID?”
Yadin glanced down at the breast of his safety vest, as if genuinely perplexed that an ID badge was not clipped to it. He patted his pockets. “Must’ve left it in the truck.”
“Why don’t we go to your truck, then. Is it down near the loading dock?”
“You know, I’m finished with the inspection,” Yadin said. “Everything seems fine. I’ll see myself out. Sorry to trouble you.”
“Could you follow me, please?”
He took Yadin down to the lower level, where the guard who had stepped in front of the fountain was in the security office, reviewing a bank of closed-circuit monitors.
“Is this the fellow who tried to see Ms. Wicks?” the security chief asked him.
“I’m a friend of hers. I swear,” Yadin said. “Can’t you just call her?”
They called the police department instead, and in due course an officer arrived. It happened to be Siobhan Kelly. “Yadin?” she said. “What’re you— Doesn’t Jeanette work here?”
“Jeanette who?” the chief of security asked.
Yadin subtly but vehemently shook his head at Siobhan.
“I was thinking of someone else,” she said.
“But you know this man?”
“He belongs to my church,” Siobhan told him.
“I see,” the chief of security said, momentarily mollified—perhaps he was a religious man. “We won’t press charges, but I’m afraid I’ll need you to issue him a formal trespass warning.” Then, to Yadin, he said, “Sir, your name has been entered into our global database. You are not welcome at any Centurion property ever again. Is that clear?”
The security chief and the guard led Yadin and Siobhan up the stairs—they didn’t insist on handcuffs, at least. They entered the lobby, and Yadin could see Siobhan’s white and blue squad car parked out front. She would take him, he assumed, to the police station. He didn’t know whom he could call for a ride back to his van. Jeanette and Joe, obviously, were out of the question. Rodrigo? Esteban? His only friends—if they could be considered friends; they were more like acquaintances, he had to admit—belonged to the church, and he dreaded having to explain to any of them why he had been at the Centurion. He was anxious enough about Siobhan, whether she would agree to keep this incident between them and not tell Jeanette.
“Yadin?” he heard in the lobby.
They all turned around, and there, standing beside the concierge’s desk, was Mallory, dressed in a golf outfit and running shoes, holding a tote bag.
“Mallory,” he said.
She came up to Yadin, stared at him for a moment, then dropped her tote bag and embraced him.
Involuntarily, his hands rose and encircled her waist, and he felt her body, sylphish yet strong, the knobs of her breasts pressed against his chest, his fingers on the ridges of muscle that ran down her spine, the curve in the small of her back that scooped to the edge of her butt. He smelled her shampoo, her lotion—or was it perfume? Some sort of supernal amalgam of rosemary, jasmine, chamomile, and perhaps evening primrose. He was overcome by all the sensations of holding Mallory again, after all these years. He clung to her, and didn’t want to let go.
He had been unsure how she would react to seeing him again today. He had been prepared for hostility or histrionics, even for Mallory to slap him and have him thrown out. He hadn’t been prepared for unmitigated affection.
“Please accept my apologies for the misunderstanding,” the security chief said to them.
“We’re very sorry, sir,” the guard said. “We’re very sorry, Ms. Wicks.” He picked up her tote bag and held it out for her.
Siobhan, mystified, stared at Yadin and Mallory, said, “All right, then,” and trundled to her car, her flashlight and baton swinging from her gun belt.
“What on earth?” Mallory said when they were alone. “What was that about?”
“They didn’t believe I knew you,” Yadin said. “I heard you were in town. I wanted to see you before you left.”
“You live here?”
“For the last four years.”
She knocked her knuckles against the top of his hard hat. “Is there an explanation for this getup?” she said, and laughed. “Let’s have breakfast and catch up. Do you have time?”
He needed to hurry off to the cemetery, yet Mallory was being so relaxed with him, so warm, it made him want to linger. “Maybe I can stay for a cup of tea?” he said.
She took him to La Barca, one of the three restaurants in the hotel that overlooked the ocean. They were seated at a table near the windows, and Yadin removed his safety vest and windbreaker and placed them, along with his hard hat and clipboard, on the adjoining chair.
A waitress attended to them immediately, and, without consulting the menu, Mallory ordered coffee, black, two egg whites scrambled with spinach, olive oil only, no butter, one slice of applewood-smoked bacon, baked, not fried, and no potatoes, no toast. When Yadin asked the waitress only for decaf herbal tea, Mallory insisted he get something more. “I’m pigging out,” she said. “It’ll make me self-conscious if you don’t eat with me.”
Yadin looked at the selections on the menu—uncertain what would be safe for him to ingest—and their prices. Everything seemed to be over twenty-five dollars. He ordered the seasonal fruit and berries.
After the waitress left the table, Mallory appraised him happily. “You look good. Older, obviously, but it suits you. You’ve lost so much weight.” Her voice was the same, still inflected with her childhood Georgia accent.
“I’ve been on sort of a special diet,” he told her.
“And your skin is so smooth.”
“They made me get some work done a while back.”
Before the release of his second album, his manager, prompted by hints from Inland Records, had Yadin submit to a five-month regimen of Accutane, originally a chemotherapy drug, that was prescribed to treat cystic acne. The medication was extremely powerful, with the possibility of dangerous side effects, including suicidal tendencies, Crohn’s disease, and birth defects. To prevent the latter, Yadin was advised not to let women accidentally handle or touch his pills, even the slightest brush, and never to have unprotected sex with anyone while on the Accutane. He got headaches and joint pain during the protocol, and he was sometimes woozy, but it was worth it. His acne vanished. He was cured. Before the release of his third album, his manager had Yadin undergo a series of cosmetic procedures—dermabrasion, laser skin resurfacing, collagen injections, and chemical peels—to flatten out his acne scars.
“I thought they were just airbrushing your promo shots,” Mallory said. “Like mine.”
“You saw photos of me?” he asked. There hadn’t been many.
“I’ve kept track of everything you’ve done, Yadin. I have all your albums. They’ve all been magnificent.”
For twenty-three years, he had been following Mallory’s every move. He had never imagined she was keeping tabs on him, too.
“You’re not going to say how I look?” she asked.
“You look fantastic, Mallory.”
“Well, I should. I’ve had a lot of work done myself.”
She was unrecognizable from the girl he had known. At the time, she had been intrinsically pretty, but not remarkable—a little overweight, flat-chested, a bit awkward and mousy. Her transformation began the moment she signed with MCA in Nashville. All of a sudden she was dyed and blow-dried, waxed and polished, heavily made up and watting a shimmering smile. She got breast implants, though thankfully not grotesque ones. Underneath the pudge, she had always had a petite frame—only five-three, with small bones—and the surgeons were careful to make the new boobs proportional to her body, somewhere between a B and a C cup. They might have given her butt implants as well. She became renowned for showing off her sculpted tush, wearing bodysuits and hot pants onstage. In addition, she must have subjected herself to an extreme weight-loss and workout program. On the red carpet for premieres and award shows, in st
ilettos and dresses with slits, she was toned, her muscles long, not a nip of body fat on her.
The images changed over time. Her weight and shape fluctuated. There were paparazzi shots of Mallory looking bloated, inadvisably walking down a beach in a bikini, corpulent thighs pitted with cellulite. There were further photos of her as she entered and left courtrooms over her four divorces and multiple lawsuits (breach of contract by a former manager, failure to pay a plastic surgeon). At one point, she had to file for bankruptcy herself. She was in and out of rehab. There were mug shots of her as she was booked twice for DUIs and once for domestic violence (she split open the back of her husband’s head with a woodcarving of an elephant). For a while, she was regularly caught misbehaving. There were photos of her in dark sunglasses and low-slung hats after trashed hotel rooms and tantrums and the dissemination of a sex tape with a married costar.
She became someone who was unreal to Yadin, a cartoon. Yet he hadn’t seen much of Mallory in the headlines in the last decade, as much as he searched. The sole exception had been six years ago, when she released a new album, another cheesy pop country record that was viciously, universally panned (“a true disappointment,” “unlistenable,” “a maudlin, lugubrious piece of tripe,” “an insult to musicians everywhere,” “possibly the worst album in the history of recorded country music,” “can only hope, for the sake of all of us who would like to preserve our hearing, never mind our sanity, that Mallory Wicks will never release another album”). Granted, it sold over a hundred thousand copies.