by Hal Ackerman
“The same tube or different tubes?” Her voice was tremulous.
“What do you mean?”
“Do we both go in the same tube or different tubes?”
“You pick.”
“Same.”
“That’s just what we’ll do. Are you ready?”
She nodded, yes.
They breathed, they held hands, they jack-knifed their bodies, and they dove down. Stein counted his fingers off in front of her face as they descended. One, two, three, four. They reached the bottom at ten. The water was less viscous but darker down here. He could sense only the dark shapes of the open pipes. He pointed at the openings in front of them, to the tube on the left. She swam toward it, her hair pasted to her neck like a mermaid. She lost heart for a moment. Stein pushed her by the heels and propelled her in. And he followed.
Stein thought of the seals he used to watch frolicking in the pool in Central Park Zoo, where Stein Senior had taken him on occasional weekends. One cub was Stein’s favorite. He was rambunctious, with whiskers only on one side of his mouth. Maybe the other side had been bitten off or never grew in, but it gave him an air of amused contemplation, as though he were thinking what prank he could pull next. He loved to waddle up along the hot rocks and get behind anyone who was snoozing in the sun, snuffle his snout down in good leverage, and shove his victim rolling fins-over-flippers into the cold water. Elder seals barked at him and tried to discipline him but he was incorrigible, and whenever they got too close, he’d dive into the water himself and become pure exuberant motion. That was how Stein tried to envision himself now, that every moving part of his body was an act of propulsion.
He kept mentally counting. At forty-two his lungs began to implode. He could see, he thought, a lightening at the end of the tunnel. Forty-four. Forty-five. He reached forty-eight knowing it was over for him. He saw himself at the zoo. Where Stein senior had died. At age forty-eight. He visualized Angie standing there with him watching his father die. He knew that couldn’t be possible. She wasn’t born yet when his father died. He dreamed that he tried to yell to her to swim on without him. But the power in his brain shut down. The screen went black.
He never felt himself being grabbed by the hair and pulled through the last few feet of the pipe and lifted out onto the casement alongside the purification tank. He was unaware of the EMT giving him CPR or of the expulsion of liquid from his lungs. He was aware of Lila taking his hand and helping him up to sitting position, and when she saw that he was all right, she nodded to Angie, who was able look at Lila but not at her father until she knew.
Lila helped Stein to standing. His feet squished in his shoes. He could still barely breathe and the world was pixilating through the membrane of placental soap that still surrounded him. “I don’t mean to trivialize what you’ve been through,” Lila said, “but your hair looks absolutely lustrous.”
TWENTY
STEIN WAS NOT AN ARDENT OBSERVER of Nature but it always amazed him when the same kind of tree burst into blossom simultaneously all over the city. In late winter it was the heady mock orange blossoms. In spring the purple jacaranda flowers carpeted the streets. And all through the year, a bunch of other stuff whose names he didn’t know. He wondered how they all got the signal. What was the trigger? He was reminded of this phenomenon now as he drove across the city and saw one after another after another of newly exposed billboards for Espé New Millennium Shampoo.
Each was ingeniously comprised of a three-dimensional reproduction of the bottle, which in itself was a generation of Nicholette Bradley’s sumptuous body. As though she had been regenerated. Become a milkweed, seeds of her new life spread by the wind after death and desiccation. Being surrounded by all these pictures of Nicholette made it harder for Stein to let go of her. He didn’t want forgiveness. There was too damn much forgiveness in the world. Emotional pedestrian crossings. If we learn anything at all in this life it is through enduring the consequences of our worst mistakes. The moment Stein had stopped believing that one man could make a difference, Nicholette had died. He resolved never to forget what Shmooie the Buddhist always said, that we had to keep doing the best we could all the time, even if no one was watching.
What also pissed him off was that he had been yoinked once again—swallowing the whole story about Alex being the new Espé model when obviously she was not—and never catching even a whiff of the lie. At least he had been right (after how many wrong guesses?) about David Hart and Michael Esposito being the killers, so that was something. He had just come back from the homecoming of Goodpasture’s orchids, which had taken place at the edge of the Los Padres National Forest (which in Los Angeles resembles a forest as much as the Gobi Desert resembles a ski resort). The weed had been flown commercially from Amsterdam to Ottawa, Fed Ex’d to St. Croix, yachted to Santa Barbara, taken by HAZ-MAT truck down to L.A. and now, concealed amongst ten freshly cut California Spruces that were loaded onto the open flatbed of a lumber truck which would carry them up north, carefully swaddled in burlap so as not to disturb the cones of gorgeous green sin-semilla that hung from the branches like festive ornaments.
Stein watched the proceedings but had little to say to Goodpasture or Schwimmer, nor they to him. There was muted joy in the triumph. More and more, the fight was exhausting just to get back to even. Stein found it depressing that they were still considered outlaws for aiding people at the end of their lives. Maybe next year when Al Gore was elected president and we put all the Clinton blowjob stuff behind us, the country would get back on track and Stein would feel a part of something again.
Paul Vane was being discharged today from Cedars Sinai, the gunshot wound, as he had accurately self-diagnosed, a mere glancing blow to the heart. He was sitting primly on his hospital bed as Stein entered the room. It was filled with flower arrangements, beautiful, unusual, thoughtfully constructed poems of flowers. In his bright yellow shirt and brown silk pants, Vane looked very much the pistil of the flower. His weight barely made an impression on the hospital mattress. He looked his age. He looked beyond his age. He looked fossilized. He pretended not to have been looking at the newspaper strewn across his bed carrying the sordid tale of his two former lovers.
Stein put his arm around Vane’s shoulder. “You just bet the wrong horses.”
“Story of my life.”
“You only bet the wrong horses. They are the wrong horse.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t feel any different.”
A pudgy bespectacled man shaped like a bowl of mashed potatoes came into the room. He was wearing white, which even Stein could see was an unfortunate fashion choice. He had brought Vane a candy bar and Stein was glad to see the staff was caring and personable. “They didn’t have Twix so I got you Almond Joy. I hope that’s close enough.”
“My two heroes,” Vane announced. He introduced Stein to the man Stein first thought was an orderly but who was not an orderly at all, but the photographer Ray Ramos.
“You did the shots of Alex for the Espé box,” Stein said, recognizing the name as soon as Vane spoke it
Ramos smiled, while he went about the efficient scouting of all the hidden crevasses in Paul’s room where items might accidentally be left behind.
“What was that all about?” Stein persisted.
“That story is best left in the vaults of industrial secrecy,” Ramos said as he puttered.
“I think he’s earned it,” Vane purred.
The story was revealed, and as Penelope Kim so aptly observed, truth kicks fiction’s ass. The plan had never been to replace Nicholette as the New Millennium girl. The plan had been to leak a plan of disinformation that she was going to be replaced and generate the tremendous buzz around who the new girl would be. Of all people, it had been Mattingly who came up with the brilliant idea to make it a fake replacement and to stay with Nicholette. Whether that demonstrated tremendous imagination or tremendous lack of imagination can be debated. The results were that with the arrest of Michael Esposito, Mattingly was
once again the only unindicted survivor and would now be sole owner of the franchise.
The last pieces of information came out, and it was as if a chiropractor had made one last crack, and the pain and chafing that had plagued Stein’s neck at last abated. At the time of the photo shoot for the New Millennium package, Ray Ramos was among the very few people who knew the secret plan. He knew that the shots he did of Alex would never be used, so to save money and not waste good stock, he had used film that had been degraded going through an airport X-ray scan.
“Imagine Ray’s surprise,” Vane elaborated, as he told the story with great relish, looking younger with each level of embellishment, “imagine his surprise when the next morning his gorgeous, eager, young assistant David Hart presented him with twenty rolls of perfectly shot, perfectly exposed images of Alex.”
“Which he knew could not have been perfectly exposed,” congratulated Ramos. “So you had to know something was up.”
“Something is always up,” Vane purred. The question is up whose?”
“Don’t you love him?” Ramos smiled
It was nearly time to pick Angie up at Lila’s. They were going to meet Hillary for lunch and attempt to mediate the standoff. Hillary would have full custody if she got her way. Stein would have full custody if Angie had her way. Both prospects terrified him. Lila had left a note for him on her front door saying that she was out back and that Angie was upstairs waiting for him. Stein punched in the code to her alarm system. She had given him the combination to her wall safe and her internet passwords.
She trusted Stein with everything she had. Inside the dark oak and stucco Spanish entranceway Stein called out Angie’s name. God forbid she should ever answer him without his having to climb a flight of stairs. He climbed the spiral staircase to the second floor. Angie had a funny look on her face when she opened the door.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing. Lila washed your clothes from Amsterdam. Look what else we found.” Sitting on top of the neatly folded pile of laundry was Yosemite Sam’s silver bud holder.
“It’s not mine,” he explained with lame sincerity.
“Good one, Dad. Very original.”
He told her to meet him out at the car.
“If you want to marry her it’s cool,” she said.
Stein nearly wept. She never said anything to him that indicated she thought about his life in any way. Maybe what Lila said about her in Palm Springs was true.
He combed his hair back and tucked in his t-shirt and came out of the house into the yard behind Lila. She was lying on the chaise alongside the pool, with her back to him. She was wearing a big straw hat tied under her chin with a ribbon, sunglasses, a pair of white shorts and a halter-top, sunning herself while reading a magazine and partially absorbing her Italian lesson on her earphones.
A wave of nostalgia for Lila swept over him. He thought about what life would be like with a woman who loved him unconditionally. No financial worries. A stable home for Angie. A strong role model. Lila did not hear Stein approach. He had perfect position two steps behind her. She was defenseless. He could do anything to her he wanted.
If only love was like unleaded gas, and didn’t matter whether you pulled into ARCO or Mobile. You filled up your tank, it ignited your spark plugs, torqued your engine and it got you where you had to go until you were empty again. But with love, all that matters is the pump. And because Stein did not love Lila the way we all yearn to be loved, deserve to be loved, believe that some day we will be loved, he did not swoop her off the lounge and hurl her into the pool, sending her magazine and tape machine flying out of her hands in all directions, her arms flailing at her straw hat, a scream of exultation caught in her throat, her eyes wild with glee.
A preview of the next
HARRY STEIN SOFT-BOILED MURDER MYSTERY
STEIN, STUNG
SPRING 2011
ONE
DISNEYLAND BY DINNERTIME was the rallying cry. Ned Peering had his family up and out of their motel room by seven-thirty sharp and marching to their Range Rover with a jovial hut hut hut. He was a man who mistook enthusiasm for infectious good cheer, and dressed like a member of the Chamber of Commerce too. His wife Barb, a librarian in the Sacramento school district, had grown tolerant of him during their nineteen years together. Tolerant was not what she had hoped for when she married him. She had felt something more powerful and had foreseen that the feeling would deepen and widen over time rather than recede.
Ned’s goal for the week was to visit or at least to pass through as many of the state parks and attractions listed in the guidebook as they possibly could. He excelled at projecting ETAs, not only for a trip’s final destinations but for a series of interim checkpoints along the way, mentally celebrating at each one how nearly perfect his estimation had been. Sanford, their fifteen-year-old son, who was called Skip because he had skipped first and fifth grade, was often right in tune with his dad and would ask, “Did you hit it?” which pleased his father greatly. Like his father, he was wearing Bermuda shorts and a California Angels baseball cap. He enjoyed road trips with his family and was a repository of answers to arcane questions no one would ever think to ask. According to Olympic rules, what is the greatest number of feet that an athlete can have off the ground and still be considered walking?
Sitting alongside him in the back seat—or rather, slouched into an impenetrable C-curve—was his sister, Sabrina the Ice Queen, futilely desired by a long skein of ardent males who had attempted to melt and mate and meld with the delights of her erotically sculpted body. She wore spandex shorts over tights and a leotard. She was like a perfectly mown lawn with TRESPASSERS WILL BE KILLED signs.
Behind the wheel with his window rolled down, Ned breezed his family through the redwoods, secanted through two points on the circumference of Yosemite so he could check that off his list, and began the climb up the eastern side of the Sierras that would carry them down into the San Joachim valley on the way to Los Angeles and Disneyland. But first there was lunch to be had, and he pulled into the pre-designated rest stop within ninety seconds of his ETA, which was exceptional even for him. He glanced hopefully at Barb for a nod of approval but she was using the side view mirror to refresh her crimped blond hair.
There were vacant spots closer to the restaurant but Ned prudently parked in a shady spot under a stand of eucalyptus. His family would be comfortable when they came back to the car, not like these others parked under the direct sun. It was one of the many anonymous good things he did for which he sought no acknowledgment. Country music was playing on the jukebox as they were led to a nice semi-circular booth. It was a family place with a western feel. Dark wood paneling. Large framed oil paintings of men on horseback in the days before the valley had become agrobized, and where in place of wild grass and cottonwoods, now mile after mile of orderly positioned almond orchards stood.
An eighteen-wheeler happened to be maneuvering laboriously into the parking lot odd the weigh scales as the Peerings were being seated. The chintz curtains covering the widows behind their booth happened to be pulled open and it was no more than the coincidence of motion of the truck that caught their eye. It could have been anything, a flock of birds, or nothing at all. There was a belch of black smoke out of the pipe as the diesel engine cut off. Nothing else was remarkable, and there would have been no particular reason to notice the stiff-legged gait of the driver as he checked the security of his load of neatly stacked white wooden boxes, all of uniform size, perhaps two feet-by-three feet, and made his way across the gravel-strewn parking lot to the café.
Skip noticed it had South Dakota plates and his mind immediately spit out its capital, Pierre, pronounced Peer, its exports, wheat and sunflower seeds and that its state’s bees produced the highest yield of honey per colony. Sabrina noticed the driver was tall with raw bony shoulders atop a body that once had been leaner. That he walked like a bronc rider who had been thrown a few times too often, and probably gobbled down
a handful of Advil in the morning with his black coffee, bourbon and orange juice. A man who could teach a woman things she oughtn’t know. On the outside she just looked bored when her mother nodded toward the menu and asked if she saw anything she liked.
They were all on different diets or body times. Skip was still hungry for breakfast and ordered bacon and eggs and white toast. Barb felt lunchy and ordered a steak sandwich. Sabrina didn’t care. Her mother said she had to eat and suggested cottage cheese and fruit. Ned surprised everybody who expected him to have his usual grilled cheese and tomato by ordering a banana split.
“No, dad,” Sabrina said, because she recognized that look in her father’s eye when he noticed that the paper place mats had a map of the states, and foresaw that he was going to suggest a game of naming the capitals or coloring in every state whose license plate they had seen. “I’ll play,” Skip said, which made Sabrina squint at him caustically and ask if he were fifteen going on eight.
Their food came, nestled up and down the length of Mavis’s pudgy right arm. Her uniform color was pastel orange. Her hair had some gray. Ned posed with two utensils held above his banana split like it was a ground breaking. “Last chance,” he crooned. “Can I tempt anybody?” He leveled humorously intense looks at each of them in turn. There were no takers. “You’ve been very quiet this morning,” he said to Barb. She smiled back pleasantly and said she’d been enjoying the sounds and the smells and the scenery and that satisfied him. Sabrina flipped through the ten pages of jukebox selections mounted above their table. “See anything you like?” Ned encouraged, reaching for pocket change.
Her father’s interest instantly sapped hers. “Country,” she said, and stopped looking.
“Country can be good,” her father said with vacant cheer. And then backed up his claim by referring to the person who happened to enter his visual frame.