I had just finished setting the last wineglass on the shelf above the sink when I felt Daniel’s arms around me.
“It’d be fun, Copper,” he said. “We’re good together.”
I turned around and looked in his eyes.
“Most of the time we’re even excellent, Danno,” I said. “I love you.”
“So, Berkeley, then. Won’t it be great? San Francisco a bridge away?”
I kept looking at him as visions of cable cars danced in my head. I’d only been to San Francisco once, and I’d never been to Berkeley. But Daniel knew Berkeley well. He went to sixth grade there when his father spent a year at the university, and he had spent some summers there, too. I think I knew Daniel wanted to go to grad school at Berkeley before I knew his last name.
“You can get a real job there, too,” he said.
I pulled away from him. “A real job?”
“Oh, come on,” he said. “You know what I’m talking about.”
Did I? All of a sudden I wasn’t so sure. Okay, being the Calendar Girl for the Las Vegas Light wasn’t the same as being a correspondent for the New York Times, but at least it was on the path.
“I mean you can work for a more prestigious paper. It’d be a step up.”
I couldn’t help thinking about David Nussbaum. He’d pretty much expressed the same idea a few days after I met him.
“Las Vegas is a small media market, but it’s got a global reputation,” he’d said. “It’s a great resume builder—a good place to be from.”
“So are you going to leave?” I’d asked David. “Is that your plan?”
“I have no idea,” he’d said, and now that I knew about his soon-to-be ex-wife, I thought I understood why. That was around the time he’d shut off the water to her backyard garden.
“I don’t know if I want to leave yet,” I said.
“Well, it’s not for another six months,” Daniel said, sitting back down in front of my laptop, “and hell, I don’t even know if I’ll get in.”
“I like Las Vegas,” I said.
“I know,” Daniel said, without even trying to conceal his exasperation. “It’s not what you thought.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And I have stuff to do here that’s very important to me.”
“Getting your face cut? Hanging out with old whores? Having your apartment trashed?”
Ordinarily, barbs like that would have found their mark, but somehow I felt like laughing.
“Exactly!”
Maybe Las Vegas really had done something to me.
“Right now, though, the important thing is Christmas,” I said. “I still have to buy stuff for Richard and Jason McKimber. And serve turkey to the homeless. And go see Nicky.”
Daniel didn’t say anything.
“You can stay here,” I said. “Or I can drop you at the Golden Nugget if you’d rather play poker.”
He let out another one of his signature huge, long-suffering sighs. “Let’s get going,” he said. “You’re going to need a Sherpa to carry the ham.”
I must have been crazy. I loved Daniel and he loved me. He had just asked me to live with him, for Christ’s sake! I thought that was my over-the-rainbow dream!
And what sane person would ever choose Las Vegas when offered a view of the Golden Gate? I didn’t just like San Francisco when my parents took me there. I loved it. We stayed at an entrancingly excellent hotel on Union Square, and we took a ferry to Sausalito. We ate at Fisherman’s Wharf, walked around Chinatown, visited museums in Golden Gate Park. If Berkeley was even half as lovely, I was sure I’d adore it. I had always loved college towns, and Berkeley had to be one of the best. It probably had bookstores on every corner and the gold standard in coffee. Why was my heart not leaping at the thought of living there?
Suddenly, two signs appeared in my mind’s eye. One was a rusty old motel arrow with lights around the edge and red neon letters flashing “VEGAS.” The other was a tasteful granite gatepost with “The University of California” spelled out in nicely chiseled glyphs. Six months before, if Daniel had asked, “Which will it be?” I would have laughed at him.
“Like you think I’d pick Vegas?” I would have said with honest incredulity.
So I guess I couldn’t really blame him for being surprised now. I was surprised, too, when I thought about it.
:: :: ::
I was actually sort of embarrassed to be a volunteer at “Christmas at the Crossroads,” because there were too many of us folks in clean suburban clothes. I felt like a fair-weather do-gooder standing there supervising disposable utensil distribution. It was a job that didn’t need doing, and I couldn’t help thinking about the other 364 days when there was no food on this corner, and the people we were serving had to fend for themselves.
It gave me the same feeling I’d always gotten back at St. Mark’s in New Canaan when we collected money for a mission somewhere in Africa. We’d watch a movie showing emaciated, fly-covered, huge-bellied kids dying of AIDS or starvation. Then everybody would toss a bill or two into the plate, chant a prefab prayer, and zoom over to the country club in their BMWs for oysters on the half shell and prime rib.
I remember my dad saying something like, “You don’t help poor people by becoming poor yourself, Copper.” I’m sure he had a point. And maybe something was better than nothing, but it never appeased my guilty conscience. I’ve always thought it would be better to make a real, long-lasting difference to one person than serve turkey drumsticks once a year to a hundred. That’s the job Daniel and my mother had been assigned. I was taking a stab at world hunger with a basket of plastic forks.
“Christmas at the Crossroads” was a joint project of the United Christian Charities of Southern Nevada, the Alliance for the Homeless, and a variety of other churches and do-gooder clubs around the valley. Channel 13 showed up, and I kept expecting to see a photographer from The Light. It might not have rated a whole story, but ladies who lunched spending Christmas with bums who foraged was a pretty good holiday photo opportunity. I was on my knees refilling my fork basket from a big box under the table when an unexpected voice fell on my ears.
“Copper! Is that you down there?”
I pulled myself to my feet. In between a lanky-haired guy in a grungy army jacket and a bald man covered in tattoos was a familiar smiling face.
“David! What are you doing here?”
“Well, Merry Christmas to you, too. Aren’t you going to offer me a fork?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I just didn’t expect—”
“David!” my mother called from the drumstick station. “Merry Christmas!”
David waved. “Merry Christmas!” he called back.
I could see Daniel’s face beyond my mom’s. It was wearing an easily recognizable “Who the hell is that?” look. Figuring the forks could take care of themselves for a minute or two, I started moving in the same direction as David.
My mother was already making introductions by the time I got past the mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce.
“Yeah, I graduated in ’01,” David was saying to Daniel.
I looked at the two of them. I had known they were cut from different cloth, but seeing them side by side was still a jolt. Daniel was nearly a head taller than David, for one thing, but I had never really realized there was such a difference in height. David never seemed short to me, and Daniel never seemed quite that tall. Their clothes were another contrast. Daniel was wearing a stone-washed waffle-knit shirt and long pants with legs that zipped off when the weather called for shorts. David had on a white button-down shirt, corduroys, and a windbreaker. They looked exactly like what they were. Daniel, who still had a slightly sunburned tan, looked like he just got back from a trip through a rain forest, and David looked ready to pull out a notebook and start interviewing somebody. It made me wonder what kind of impression I was making. I had
my hair down and was wearing a red turtleneck sweater and black corduroy slacks. I guessed I looked like different things to different people. To my mom and dad, I was still the family baby, and I was pretty much still that to Michael, too. To Daniel, I was at least a little more grown-up. I mean, we did things together that would be labeled “adult” if they were on videotape. But somehow he still saw me as a kid, even though he was less than a year older than I was.
And what was I to David? I wondered. Was I a coworker? A potential roommate? Whatever it was, I didn’t think he saw me as an equal. I was just the Calendar Girl, after all. David didn’t have to fetch lattes for anybody but himself.
I was still wondering why David had shown up at the turkey feed when he reappeared at the fork station.
“I have something for you,” he said.
“What?” I said. “Don’t tell me you got me a Christmas present.”
He smiled. “Not exactly. It’s something from Ed Bramlett.”
I rolled my eyes.
“He really wanted you to get this before Monday,” David said, holding a manila envelope toward me. “Said it was life or death.”
“It’s probably anthrax,” I said. “The guy hates me.”
“Well, don’t shoot the messenger,” David said. “And anyway, I’m doing you a favor. He wanted your cell phone number, but I told him I’d deliver it.”
I stopped handing out forks long enough to peek inside the envelope. Inside was a sheaf of xeroxes and printouts of Web pages, similar to the smaller stack Ed had given me the other day. I caught a glimpse of Julia Saxon’s smiling face before I closed the envelope and slid it into my backpack.
“Thanks, David,” I said. “Really. Want some dinner?”
“No, thanks,” he said. “I usually have Chinese on Christmas. Ancient family tradition.”
“By yourself?” I said. “I mean, you could join us for—”
“No, not by myself,” David said. “It’ll be me and Clint Eastwood this year. I’ve got Magnum Force on DVD. And a big bottle of fancy vodka that Alexandra Leonard gave me. She doesn’t drink, and she’s very generous with her holiday swag.”
“Drinking alone on Christmas,” I said. “Pretty sad.”
“I told you. It’ll be me and Clint.”
“Even sadder.”
“You’re just jealous,” David said, and as he walked away, I had to admit he was almost right. Chow mein, vodka martinis, and Dirty Harry really did sound like more fun than another roundtable at the vicarage. Even with Daniel in attendance.
:: :: ::
After we’d finished passing out every last turkey wing, we all drove over to Sunrise Children’s Hospital. Sierra had headed there an hour earlier, and when we finally arrived at the right room, we found her ensconced in a recliner, smiling as she held her new son.
“This is a first!” Michael whispered as we drew closer. “They haven’t let her hold him before!”
Nicky was sound asleep under a white blanket.
Sierra shifted so we could see his face.
I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t what I saw. Somehow, “abandoned baby” had made me brace myself for the worst. I had been expecting to be overcome with a flood of pity for an innocent victim of unspeakable abuse. “I’ll love him no matter what,” I had been telling myself. “And I’ll help him love himself.”
But it was a perfect angel whose face peeked over the blanket. His skin was the color of coffee ice cream, and his lips formed a perfect Cupid’s bow. His eyes were closed, their long lashes dark against his cheeks.
“He’s beautiful,” I said, and I swear everyone else said it at exactly the same time. “He’s beautiful!”
And then I just stood there, memorizing my new nephew. I looked at Sierra, too, as she smiled down at the little boy. When I finally managed to tear my eyes away from mother and child, I looked at Michael. He was transfixed, a look of wonder in his eyes. I glanced at my parents. They were holding hands. And as I watched them, I felt Daniel take my own hand.
We probably stood there like that for only a few minutes, but it seemed like an enchanted eon. I just kept staring, completely mesmerized. Until this moment, he’d been an abstraction, an idea, a thought. Now he was real. I watched as he turned. His left hand popped out from under the blanket. Sierra leaned forward a little and kissed it. I wanted to do the same, but just then the nurse came back.
“X-ray time,” she said, lifting the child from Sierra’s arms. We all watched Nicky roll away in a special baby gurney.
Daniel and I stayed long enough to hear that Nicky was gaining weight at a nice rate. His heart surgery was scheduled for the week after New Year’s, and his doctors expected an excellent outcome.
“He’s going to be absolutely fine,” Sierra said, and I couldn’t help thinking that Nicky was going to take his new mom with him on the road to well-being. She looked happier than I’d seen her in a long, long time.
“So what do you think of my new nephew?” I asked Daniel as we crossed the hospital parking lot to the Max.
“Cute,” Daniel said, but I could tell the glow had already worn off, and he was back to feeling sulky.
“Thanks for coming with me,” I said. “And if you don’t want to go to the McKimbers’—”
“Just drive to the grocery store and start shopping,” Daniel said. “Let’s get this over with.”
As I had predicted, it wasn’t hard to find a supermarket with open doors. The shelves weren’t quite as well-stocked as usual, but I still managed to fill up a cart with a huge ham, a couple of salami nightsticks, boxes of crackers, bags of chips, jars of salsa, a log of cheese, three bags of cookies and one of chocolate Kisses, some bottles of sparkling cider, a pound cake, a cherry pie, and several cans of chili, olives, smoked oysters, and nuts. I was about to head for the checkout stand when I realized that the heap of food wasn’t going to look very festive in a bunch of plastic Food 4 Less bags. Fortunately, the store had a special on plastic laundry baskets, and I unearthed a roll of red ribbon in an already marked-down pile of Christmas leftovers. The basket was so heavy by the time I loaded it up at the side door of the Max that I was actually glad Daniel was there to lift it.
“I was right,” he said. “You did need a mule. That thing weighs more than my backpack when it’s fully loaded for two weeks in the jungle.”
Chapter 19
As we drove over to the McKimber residence to deliver the Christmas basket, I wondered how much of my motive was altruism and how much was guilt over stealing Victoria’s tape recorder and camera. Mostly guilt, I decided, but Heather certainly had something to do with it. I couldn’t figure out how she buffaloed me so easily, but I wished she gave lessons.
The house on Chantilly Court looked pretty much the same as it had the first time I visited, except the garage door was closed. Victoria’s Taurus was in the driveway, and Heather’s black truck was next to it. I parked across the street in the same spot I’d occupied on my last visit.
“Okay,” I said. “Operation Santa is now underway.”
Daniel hefted the laundry basket out of the Max. It sagged alarmingly under the weight of all those cans, jars, and hunks of meat, but a semester spent lugging scientific paraphernalia through rain forests had served him well. He looked great, even when sullen.
“I’m going to go back and wait in the car after I set this thing down,” Daniel said as I punched the doorbell. “This is your party, and I don’t want to interfere.”
I was about to say, “Chicken!” when the door swung open to reveal two Penthouse-quality breasts outstandingly displayed in a red spandex V-neck. That’s what Daniel saw, anyway. I saw Heather.
“Daniel!” she exclaimed, locking eyes with him and flashing him a lingering ruby-lipped smile. “Merry Christmas!” How she could make a holiday greeting sound like an offer to unzip a guy’s fly, I don’
t know, but she didn’t do it when she greeted me.
“Hi, Copper,” she said. “Richard’s lying down, but Jason and I are about to have a snack.”
Daniel followed Heather’s lead, and we stepped inside the front door into a tiled entryway.
The smell hit me first. It reminded me of a time in high school when I left my gym bag in the trunk of my dad’s BMW over spring break. Ordinarily, that would have been no big deal, but the can of Vienna sausages I had stashed inside the bag had a teensy hole in it. When I got back from a trip to Cape Cod, my happy nuclear family was on the brink of fission. My dad had hijacked my mother’s Camry, and Mom was fighting mad. One whiff of his car, and I couldn’t really blame Dad.
While not quite as bad as that, the miasma inside the McKimber house was enough to make my stomach lurch. I glanced at Daniel, and the look on his face told me that he was fighting the heaves, too.
“Whoa!” he said, but it wasn’t because of the smell. He was trying to keep his balance. I looked down. We were walking on broken glass, something sticky, and assorted trash.
“Watch your step,” Heather said. “I’ve been cleaning up, but there are still a lot of hazards.”
The living room was dim because all the shades were drawn and the lights were off, but I could see that the place looked worse than mine right after the burglars struck. Lamps and shelves were tipped over. Trash was strewn everywhere, much of it consisting of fast-food containers, beer bottles, and Coke cans. The windowsill sported a row of empty Jack Daniel’s bottles lined up like trophies. An empty doughnut box on the coffee table was full of used Kleenexes, and next to it, cigarette butts overflowed from an old pizza carton. The TV still worked, though. It was on, and a bony geek was bouncing on a mini-trampoline with a pyramid on his head, explaining how to flush toxins from your body.
“I’ve cleared a path,” Heather said, and we followed her single file into the kitchen, carefully sidestepping a congealed splat of something I told myself was chunky vegetable soup.
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