“The floor slanted.”
“It did not.”
“Not even a dog wants to sleep on a slant.”
Amy kept her look straight ahead, clenched her teeth, kept in the string of words that came up from her anger. Her complexion felt flushed, but if she had looked in the mirror then she would have seen her face drained, pale. That was partly because she didn’t wear any makeup, hadn’t for the past few months — except those times when for no reason outside herself she’d given in to feeling inconsequential. Then she used all the usual devices to exaggerate the size and perhaps the power of her large blue eyes. But only her eyes.
Plain pretty without makeup, the most impressive kind of prettiness, really. More intelligent looking, Amy thought, and, as well, another shucking-off step toward independence, naturally facing things.
She was an only child and considered herself fortunate for that. Seldom having to share attention, getting spoiled with one sort of love almost made up completely for not having had a father since she was ten—half her life.
As she understood it then, and still, father had become unbearably discontent. Father had left everything but one suitcase. Father had divorced her mother and, without ever being asked, had sent postal money orders for various amounts from various Eastern cities. He never visited, and only during her fourteenth and fifteenth years had she especially felt the need to know him.
But she never went to him and only remembered vaguely what he looked like. He disliked having his photograph taken, her mother recalled.
Amy’s maiden name was Stone. By no means an eponym.
Even in pregnancy there was a lanky sort of immaturity about her, her movements and postures, which seemed to convey an indifferent attitude. The opposite was true. She was vital, extremely suggestible, and almost always too quick to respond. Whenever she spoke or listened, her eyes widened and fixed on the other person, as though that allowed her to say or hear more.
That was one of the many things Peter liked about her.
Peter was twenty-two. The second eldest son of an Armenian farmer, whose crops were mainly celery and children. Typical of his extraction, Peter had an abundance of dark, deep brown hair, speckled black eyes, thickly lashed. A sensual look. His mouth also contributed to the impression. The bridge of his nose was prominent enough to make him appear all the more interesting. He was not a large man. Solidly boned, though. Strong.
Being second eldest in his family had its advantages. Peter didn’t have to be totally concerned with the farm; perhaps he could look forward to something else. As a boy he’d always been intrigued by color and drawing. Later at San Jose State College he had concentrated on what seemed a polarity of subjects: concerned with what he might have to do and what he hoped to do. He majored in agriculture and minored in art.
Did passing well, dutifully, in modern farming.
Better at putting color to canvas, huge stretches of canvas for furious slashes of color, adamant, virile, the abstract shapes of his emotions — sometimes — and at other times, more diminutive but equally powerful work: bright, joyful landscapes of his feelings. Like that in life too, he was extremes. Brooding and gypsy melancholy one moment, affable and laughing the next.
Amy frequently called him a purebred manic-depressive.
For her benefit she once used a Magic Marker pen to label the lids of his eyes “glad” and “cry.”
It was not Peter’s galvanic moods that irritated Amy. She believed his spontaneity, up or down, showed how unusually sensitive he was. It was one of the many things about him that she admired.
What she could not tolerate was what she called his Armenian macho. Ironically, that also had been one of her original reasons for loving him. She had enjoyed being necessary to him in an abiding way. It had made her feel in place, secure.
That was before she saw the liberated-female light, before she was brought to realize that she was another victim of gender. How blind she’d been, how much she’d been used, limited, how grateful she was to know better and how sorry for every woman who didn’t. Amy became so fanatical about the feminist cause it got to the point where it seemed Peter couldn’t say or do anything without committing an offense.
He was often guilty. But it was difficult for him to admit or even recognize that. An Armenian male naturally assumed the controlling role in his family. It was also expected that he would worship his wife.
When Peter explained that to Amy, she’d told him she’d gladly forfeit worship for equality.
Side by side, they were now on the Coast Highway, headed for Mexico. The first day of two weeks of stopping anytime and anywhere they wanted, and maybe, if their money held out, they might make it all the way to Puerto Vallarta, or even Acapulco.
One of Amy’s sometime wishes was to be on the beach at Acapulco. She had always pictured herself there in a skimpy bikini, a turn-on. Now she would have to settled for sitting swollen in the sand in a smock.
“Hungry?” she asked.
“No. You?”
“No.”
Their stomachs grumbled. They laughed.
“Pick a place and we’ll stop.”
She rolled the window down a bit to see better. She noticed two, three likely restaurants but let them go by.
“I could fix us something to eat on the way.”
He preferred that. It would be less expensive. But this was supposed to be a vacation. Besides, he knew what friction it would have caused if he had suggested it.
Amy read his thoughts. She glanced down at his free hand, imagined it touching her as it had and would. She felt herself anticipating it.
Stop, she thought, and the word came out. “Stop … here.”
He shifted down, pulled in and parked in a space close as possible to the Seaside Supermarket. They went in together to buy the makings for sandwiches and some soft drinks.
In the rainy afternoon light that made everything seem older the woman lay on her side of the bed with the crocheted afghan over her. She was in her fall-to-sleep position, with her legs drawn up, hands pressed flat together between her thighs. She felt tired, had been dragging around all day. Also irritable. The way she usually got just before her period, although that couldn’t be because she’d finished her last only a week ago.
She tried to put everything out of mind.
Three sounds were predominant.
The beat of drops on the roof. The shrieks and laughter of her children, son, four, and daughter, six, playing in the backyard. And the monotonous tumbling of the automatic clothes dryer. The dryer had been going practically nonstop since she’d decided to hell with the rain and for her sanity’s sake let the children go outside to play. Each time they came in soaked to the skin she stripped them and threw sneakers and all into the dryer. As many as four changes a day. Not a bad mother, she told herself.
Smart too, she thought. If not for her they might be in real trouble now, like those families whose houses were in danger of sliding down. She’d been against getting that house up on Mulholland, no matter how good a buy it was. She had stood her ground and they had stayed where they were: on a street off Beverly Boulevard north of Whittier. The last house on a cul-de-sac. She preferred calling it a cul-de-sac rather than a dead end.
For one reason “dead end” was too close to the truth. The rear of their lot bordered on the slope of a cemetery. Rose Hills Memorial Park, second in size, statuary and grave sites only to famous Forest Lawn. Fortunately, that part of the so-called park was higher than their house, and the rest of it lay beyond out of view. Anyway, they had become so accustomed to it, even the many bouquets and growing flowers at the graves on the hillside no longer reminded them.
The clothes dryer began buzzing to let her know it had completed its cycle. At the same time she realized the children were inside, shouting for her. They came into the bedroom, and she was about to scold them for tracking when her daughter said she’d brought a surprise, presented it in her open hand.
“Where did you get this?”
“From the lady.”
It was a ring. It appeared to be authentic, a round-cut diamond of about five carats flanked by two baguettes.
“What lady?”
They would show her, were eager to show her. They’d had lots more fun playing outside today.
At the back of the backyard was a coffin.
An expensive coffin of brushed bronze. Sitting there in the rain. It was open. Tufted white satin inside and what remained of a woman who had been dead ten years. In a white silk crepe dress. The rain had made the material almost transparent. Another ring, this one with a large emerald stone, had fallen down a fingerbone to the tip where it and the tip lay loose.
Two, three more coffins were partially exposed, slipping out of the saturated earth at the foot of the hill.
8
Lonnie “Spider” Leaks was in automatic, doing with his body but not with his mind. That way, like a machine, he couldn’t feel low, get bad or anything — just work. Something he had learned to do while in slam.
His job at the supermarket was lugging boxes of groceries out to people’s cars. It was the second job since he’d been let out of San Quentin three months ago, a year early for ordinary behavior. His parole officer had made him quit the other job at the Bim Bam Car Wash in Balboa. At the car wash Spider had started as a wheel and bumper scrubber inside the conveyor, and because some guys kept not showing up for work he got to be one of the finishing crew that wiped and shined with chamois in the sun and had a chance for tips.
Then someone at the Bim Bam got busted for booking numbers and horses. Not one of the brothers, either. The white manager.
Spider’s parole officer, a sixty-some-year-old named Mrs. Graham, wouldn’t stand for Spider being even close to trouble such as that. No matter that Spider had stayed mainly straight, caused no hassles, even passed up some easy chances — she had to lose that job for him and tell him he was better off being a box boy.
BOX BOY.
That was what it said after his name on his time card.
As for things going on, practically everyone there at the supermarket was into some kind of ripoff. A couple of guys in the meat department left every day with five or six pounds of top sirloin or filet mignon wrapped in plastic and taped to their lower legs under their trousers. In the receiving department, some of the clerks intercepted and put whole cases of imported stuff into the trunks of their cars. Like olives and cheese and chocolate. And the check-out girls had ways of cashing in for themselves, especially whenever it was really busy. There was no way, however, for Spider to get away with anything much more than a dime Hostess cupcake or a box of crackers.
Once when he had a toothache because a big filling that had been done by a San Quentin dentist came out, Spider asked around for aspirin and no one had any, so he went to the store’s Health and Beauty Aids section. He found bottles of Bufferin there but only in the 100-tablet economy size. His tooth was aching so much he opened a bottle and took a couple. The aisle captain, Lyle Stratford, saw him do it and told him he’d have to pay for the Bufferin. Spider turned his head away so as not to be heard when he mumbled, “Fuck you.” Then he had to act compliant, a price to be paid along with the ninety-five cents. Spider was sure the ninety-five cents went into Stratford’s pocket. Anyway, no way was Spider going to get himself back into slam for any Bufferin.
Spider was twenty-seven. He had spent eight years, or nearly one of every three of his days, in a penitentiary. According to the black average that ratio would double when he got older. Spider’s last stretch in Quentin was his longest. Five years. For armed robbery. He’d taken part in hijacking a truckload of what was supposed to have been furs that turned out to be cheap wool coats.
At times Spider had carried a gun, but he’d only shot at things, practicing, never at a person. He figured if everyone was as afraid of a gun as he was, a gun was good to just have. He got his ominous name from having arms longer than they should have been and, as a kid, being best at climbing fences and other such vertical structures.
Chances were Spider would never have gotten into trouble with the law if he’d had any of the stereotypical black abilities. But he wasn’t at all musical, for example, didn’t have the head, hands, feet or voice for it. One thing he always wanted to be was a disc jockey, but he wasn’t really glib enough. And he wasn’t outstanding at any sports.
The only sort of so-called typical thing was he looked fine in clothes. Lean and mean, it was said. Unfortunately. Because for Spider to dude himself up right required more money than he could make being anything he could just naturally, legally, be.
At the moment Spider was being strong, carrying out over a hundred pounds of groceries, including sacks of charcoal briquettes, for a frizzy red-headed fat lady and her chalky-skinned husband, who got into the car and made Spider wait in the rain while he tried three pockets before coming up with a thirty-five-cent tip, counting five pennies.
It was then that Spider noticed the blue Mustang drive in. He recognized it as the one that belonged to the rich white chick Lois Stevens, the friend of Felicia. Felicia Artez was one of the check-out girls, a comfortably built Mexican. Earlier that day Felicia had mentioned to Spider that she had connected for some methamphetamine. As usual Lois had supplied the money for it. She and Felicia and Spider would go to Felicia’s apartment later, drop some of the speed and ball maybe, probably. They’d done it before.
Spider watched Lois get out of her car and go into the market. She saw Spider but didn’t acknowledge him, which he thought was cool of her.
Spider was glad to see Lois for another reason. After work he had to go down to San Diego to report to his parole officer. Now at least he wouldn’t have to ride the effin’ bus.
9
For thirty years that piece of coastal property had two houses on it, located as far as possible off the highway so as to be directly overlooking the beach and water.
One of the houses was large, twenty-some rooms, the other less than a third that size. There had also been a restaurant on the highway there. A small seafood place. It was an eyesore, had changed hands often and no owner had ever made enough from it or cared enough to want to help the wooden building fight the quicker deterioration that came with being near the ocean.
In 1967 the larger house was sold to an anonymous buyer, who never moved in. A year later the smaller house was purchased by someone and left vacant. The restaurant went shortly thereafter, its owner glad to make a little more on it than he’d ever expected from a buyer who, represented by a real estate broker acting on behalf of another broker, remained unknown.
All three transactions complete, titles cleared and transferred, it came out then, and the former owners bit themselves for not having held on for more, at least twice as much or more.
Lots 10938, 10939, 10939A of Orange County tract 673 had been patiently, cleverly acquired by one large business.
Within six months the property was transformed and there stood the Seaside Supermarket.
On its own private bluff.
The coastline at that spot scalloped out as much as a thousand feet. All along the edge it was a sharp drop of nearly two hundred.
Between the market and highway was a blacktop parking area for five hundred cars. To help circulate customer traffic a double-lane drive ran around the rear of the market, but after business hours a heavy chain was strung across to prevent anyone from using it. Splendid view of the ocean, out of view from the highway, it had become a nighttime place for loving in cars. What spoiled the good thing was that too many people left evidence of their ardor.
The supermarket itself was mainly cinder blocks and glass, a rectangular-shaped structure 120 feet deep by 280 feet long, hoping to make up with size for what it lacked aesthetically. An impression of spaciousness, increased by height — a single story equal to two and a half.
Despite its ample dimensions, like so many buildings throughout Southern California it did not give a feeling of permanence. It
seemed unsubstantial, as though put up hurriedly with little faith in the future, short-term prosperity in mind. A California habit, perhaps the remnant influence of gold rushes and earthquakes and certainly persuaded by the climate, usually so mild.
Royal palms. Groups of them helped soften the market’s corners. Other landscaping was limited to semitropical spear-leafed shrubs, defiant full-grown growths set in beds covered with layers of wood chips, so they hardly ever needed tending.
The northern end of the building was solid, windowless. The southern end had a high, extra-wide opening for stock delivery. There were two doors in the rear, an emergency exit and a way in and out for employees only.
The front, the face of the place, made it appear light and open. It was almost entirely glass, large sections of heavy gauge plate glass that ran from ground to roof. Entrance-exits for customers were located extreme left and right. A special mesh gate was used to protect the glass front from outside. It was electrically controlled. From its housing along the edge of the roof it rolled out and down all the way and automatically locked itself in place. Once the gate was in down position it was impossible for anyone to enter or leave the market without switching on the automatic control mechanism. That required a unique magnetic key. Identical steel-mesh gates also made the side and rear doors impenetrable.
The mesh gates were not part of the market’s original design. They had been installed a year after completion, because young men defying law and death at three in the morning included the parking area in their version of a Monaco-style race course. Twice cars had screeched around, fishtailed and crashed through the market’s front panes.
Since the gates were put in, several times there had been trouble of another sort. Employees got locked in and had to call the manager at home to come let them out. Once a pair of muscular stock clerks and a good-looking blonde checker got left inside on a Saturday and had to spend the weekend in there because the manager was out of town. Considering what they could eat, drink and do, they made the best of it.
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