“I’ve hesitated to call.” It was Mick Coury’s mother. “I know you have to have a private life, I just . . .”
Candler heard a clicking that might have come from her throat. “What is it, Mrs. Coury?”
She described her son’s incoherent speech. “He’s skipping his medication. If his father hadn’t chosen this particular evening to visit, I might not have gotten him seated long enough to notice. His father insisted I call. He’s in town one afternoon every other week, but he thinks he knows . . .” She let the sentence drift away. “I let Mick go out, anyway, to Alonso’s. Mick’s an adult, after all, and I try to respect his decisions. Besides, he took the pill at, oh, about five fifteen, and I thought I should let him go, but I’ve been fretting about it, whether I’ve inadvertently given him permission to cheat on his medication.”
Candler guessed that Mick was at the same garage apartment where Karly Hopper had climbed the stairs. He could picture her taking those steps up to the landing, the cutoff jeans, the yellow halter top. “I’ll see if I can have him called out of the party,” he said, “at least temporarily. I’ll phone you right back.”
He didn’t like asking favors of the Barnstone, but he only rarely hung out with the Hao brothers, and he didn’t want to miss it. The Barnstone lived in Onyx Springs, near the Center, and she didn’t seem to have any social life that his request might disrupt.
“Surprised to hear from you this time of the evening,” she said.
“It’s about Mick Coury.” He explained the circumstances as he maneuvered freeway traffic. The morning’s accident did not keep him from the fast lane. “The thing is, I’ve been drinking and shouldn’t drive right now.”
Billy Atlas smiled evilly at the lie.
“I could dictate a quick note,” Candler went on. “The key is to make Mick leave the party temporarily, take responsibility for—”
“I catch your drift,” she said. “You can owe me.”
Her last sentence was almost enough to stop him, but he rattled off a message, called Mrs. Coury again, and by the time they reached the exit for Liberty Corners he had taken care of the business.
“Don’t let me get drunk,” Billy said, as soon as Candler clapped his phone shut. “I start my new job—and life—tomorrow.” He put his palms together and pushed strenuously, his face turning crimson. Isometrics.
“I don’t actually like Mr. James Candler,” Karly said, making a pouty mouth and holding the expression while she took a bite of pizza. They were sitting in a circle on Alonso’s carpet, talking about the counselors. This was a favorite topic, and it took many shapes.
If you had to be stuck on a deserted island with one counselor, which would it be?
Which counselor would make the best president of the United States?
If you could save only one of them from a terrible fire, who would you save?
Today’s topic was marriage. Rhine brought it up. He wanted to marry Karly, and he reasoned this was a good step: the introduction of the general subject. He had an outline for approaching Karly, and the introduction of the general subject was the fifth step. Purchasing the suit had been step one, putting her name on his old cycle helmet had been step two, hygiene was step three, using his line from Casablanca was step four. Giving her a ride home on his cycle was step six. There were fifty-seven steps altogether, ending with kissing etc. on wedding night.
By this time, Mick felt better, not less medicated but more accustomed to it. He knew why Karly didn’t like Mr. James Candler—he wouldn’t flirt with her. Mr. Bob Whitman, who must be sixty-five or seventy, flirted in a grandfatherly way, and Mr. Clay Hao flirted in a distracted, friendly way. Even Ms. Patricia Barnstone commented on Karly’s appearance in a racy, joking way. But Mr. James Candler would not flirt, and that hurt her feelings.
“What he is,” she said, “is mean.”
“If you can’t say something nice,” Alonso put in hoarsely, rocking back and forth on the floor, his head nodding, the pause growing long before he finished with, “say something else.”
The pizza man had arrived while Alonso was in the bathroom masturbating. They heard him, but they were used to it—all but the pizza guy, who said, “You got an animal in here?” No one discouraged Alonso’s frequent masturbation. His counselor was satisfied that he finally understood the requirement of privacy. Alonso had been at the Center longer than Mick, longer than any of the others. None of them, including Alonso himself, knew for how long. He was forty-two years old, but his face was unlined and open, and he looked almost as young as Mick and Rhine, who were in their twenties. Karly was twenty-one, but whether she looked older or younger, Mick could not say. She looked the age of actresses in movies when they were the stars of the show and every single thing about their lives mattered. What age was that?
Mick had paid for the pizzas. They did not talk about Crews disappearing and Rhine busting a window. If Maura were with them, she would make wisecracks and tease Rhine. The rest of them weren’t teasers. Rhine had to break the window to answer the phone. What else was there to say? Someone from the facility had called the Center, and a counselor, Mr. Bob Whitman, showed up. All he wanted to know was the precise time that Crews walked out. He distributed their pay and let them go home early.
“Since there’s just one woman counselor,” Rhine said, “can we pretend the men are women? Otherwise, the men all have to choose Ms. Patricia to marry.”
“Ms. Patricia Barnstone,” Alonso said.
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” Rhine replied. It always got a laugh.
“That is so funny,” Karly said.
“Go ahead,” Mick said. “If all the counselors were women, who’d you marry?”
Rhine furrowed his brow and nodded. “I’d marry Ms. Patricia.”
“Ms. Patricia Barnstone,” Alonso put in.
“Then why’d you make the men into women?” Mick asked.
“To have a choice,” Rhine said and turned to Karly. “Your turn. You never answered. You can make Ms. Patricia a man.”
“Ms. Patricia Barnstone,” Alonso said again. Then he added, “I’d marry Mr. Clay Hao.”
“He’d have to be Ms. Clay Hao,” Rhine said.
“He couldn’t be Clay and be a woman,” Karly said. “I know, I’m a woman.”
“How ’bout we call him Janice Hao?” Mick said. “Jackie Hao?”
There was a way to make this funny, but his brain wouldn’t cooperate. This was his experience on his meds: he recognized the existence of a punch line but he couldn’t name it. Some people, he guessed, were always like this. Which led him to think that the meds were designed to emulate stupidity.
“Which one?” Rhine asked. “Janice Hao or Jackie Hao?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mick said.
“It matters what your name is,” Rhine insisted.
“You aren’t even marrying him,” Mick said. “Alonso is.”
“You have to pick a name for him before he can be your bride,” Rhine said.
Alonso nodded, smiled. “Mr.—”
“Ms.,” Rhine said.
“Ms.,” Alonso agreed, “Ms. Karly Hao.”
The room erupted in laughter. Alonso laughed especially long and hard, holding his belly. Only Rhine failed to find it funny. He reminded Karly that it was her turn.
“I’d marry Mr. James Candler,” she said. “I’d be Mrs. Karly James Candler.”
Mick was surprised by this. “You said he was mean.”
“No, I didn’t,” she said, smiling. Those teeth. “You’re so silly.”
He couldn’t contradict her. “It wouldn’t work out, though, one of us marrying one of them.”
Alonso’s phone rang.
“That’s right,” Rhine said. “Get that out of your head.”
“Ms. Karly Hao,” Alonso croaked again.
“Eve
rybody knows that,” Karly said.
“Aren’t you going to answer that ringing?” Rhine asked.
Still laughing, Alonso shook his head.
Rhine leapt up and ran to the phone.
“Yes, Mrs. Coury,” he said. “This is Rhine.” He turned to the others, covering the receiver with his hand. “It’s Mrs. Coury.”
Mick got up so quickly that it made him lightheaded. He steadied himself and the room settled as well, the blurring of color reconciling into familiar shapes. On the wall, a poster of Britney Spears stared at him. She was in black leather, her breasts ready to burst from a vest, a portable microphone at her lips, held in place by a wrap around brace that hooked over her ears. Mick remembered not liking Britney Spears, back in the before days. Music, anymore, was hard for him to evaluate, even his own reaction to it. Britney Hao, he thought, but that wasn’t funny.
“He’s coming, Mrs. Coury,” Rhine said. “He’s crossing the room. Here he’s stepping in. Not there! The doorway is the part that doesn’t have tape. Good-bye, Mrs. Coury. This is Rhine.” He handed the phone to Mick.
“How’s the party?” she asked. Her voice was light, like balloons bouncing off the ceiling, rising, bouncing again.
“All right. Why are you calling?”
“Mr. Candler wants to talk to you.”
Mick glanced over at the others. They were watching him. “What about?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Did he call you or you call him?”
She didn’t answer immediately. “We talked.” Concrete had entered her voice. It became as heavy as Mick’s head.
“You called to tell him I wasn’t . . .” He turned away from the others and whispered into the phone. “. . . taking my medication.”
“Okay, guilty. Call your lawyer. Arrest your poor mother.”
“Do I have to go now?”
“He seemed to think it’s important you see him tonight. He’ll meet you at the Donut Hole. I suggested there so you don’t have to drive to the Center and back. It’s only a few blocks from Alonso’s house. You can go right back to the party.”
“Fine,” he said, feeling miserable. His friends didn’t know to look away. It was Alonso’s nature to gawk, and Rhine was enjoying it. Only Karly was smiling. She did wish the best for him, didn’t she? He returned the phone to its cradle. It was an old-fashioned phone with a dial. Alonso had trouble with push buttons.
To the group, Mick said, “I’ll be right back.”
“Of course, you will,” Karly replied. “Don’t be silly.”
Before he met Lolly, Candler had gone to Toad’s Tavern to dance and meet women. On two occasions a dancing partner walked home with him when the bar closed. He enjoyed the sex, but neither encounter led to anything. Each woman admitted after intercourse that she was already attached to a man. Candler’s disappointment made him feel unsophisticated and a dolt. He had been raised in Arizona by a pair of Midwestern artists who were more Midwestern than artistic in their parenting, and moments like these made him believe he would never truly be a Californian.
To make things worse, Liberty Corners was so small he kept running into them. One was married. The other worked in the bank and had a boyfriend. She showed up at his house early one evening to make him promise to never talk about their fling with anyone. After he promised, she took his hand to lead him to his bedroom for a goodbye session. He declined the offer. “But I need to flush you out of my system,” she said. Candler changed banks.
As a younger man, whenever he was not in a relationship, he actively pursued women. He was not shy and he enjoyed their company, but he was also by nature monogamous. He never fooled around during the years he lived with Dlu, and even in the early stages of dating, he didn’t look at other women. He liked thinking about the woman he was seeing, imagining what it would be like to travel with her, live with her, what she would think of the books and movies and art he loved, and even, yes, what children they might produce.
Only three or four times had he wound up in bed with a woman when he had no intention of a possible future with her. Most recently, a woman from work—the technician, Kat—insisted he join her for dinner at her house. They had been working with a client who kept them an hour late, and Candler made an innocent comment about grabbing fast food on his way home. Kat was adamant. She retrieved her two kids from day care, and while she made pasta, Candler read to them. By the third book, they were sitting on his lap and resting their heads against his chest. He fell in love with her kids while they nestled upon him.
Kat had a boyfriend, an economics professor at San Diego State, who was not the father of her children. Candler later met this professor. He was young and black and had a narrow beard like a shoelace that traced his jaw and chin. He was not present for dinner, and when Kat returned from putting the kids to bed, she wore a terrycloth robe. “Cole and I have an open relationship,” she said. She had braces on her teeth, and they took on significance Candler couldn’t name when the robe loosened, revealing that she was naked underneath. “You want to spend the night?”
Candler followed with a string of stupid questions: “Me? With you? In the same bed?”
She nodded and smiled, and Candler wore one of Cole’s shirts to work the next day. He and Kat had had sex a few times since then, and he drove her kids to the zoo one Saturday while she completed a training session. She liked sex with him and told him as much but made it clear that Cole was her real boyfriend.
After returning from London, Candler had buzzed for Kat to come into his office. He told her about meeting Lolly. She seemed happy for him until he explained that he could not sleep with her anymore. She wrinkled her brow and said, “You’re so serious.” She laughed. “It’s just life, James.” Her response upset him. He had practiced his speech for hours on the return flight, and he was prepared for almost any response except amusement. Before he could gather his wits, she put her hand on his thigh and rubbed the thin material of his pants. “I hope you two are very happy,” she said and laughed again, displaying her braces. He still had her boyfriend’s shirt.
He liked the naughty thrill of going to bed with a woman for the first time, but he wasn’t cut out for casual relationships. He was good with women (meaning: they liked him) but he was traditional in his desires and conservative in his methods. The only married woman he ever slept with was the one he met at Toad’s, and she had claimed to be separated from her husband. Later she said, “We were separated by a few miles, anyway.” Her husband had been in the Laguna Mountains on a camping trip.
Another bit of mischief he genuinely enjoyed, which would soon end, was being a different person in the Corners than in Onyx Springs. No one who knew him from Toad’s would be surprised to hear he had been racing a car on the freeway that morning or that he punched a guy on the jaw. He had a swagger when he walked about in the Corners, which evaporated when he got to Onyx Springs. He was a something of a flirt in the Corners, and there were women who stopped him in the grocery to say they looked forward to dancing with him again, to thank him for the drinks from the night before, or who ducked down aisles to avoid him.
As for the people he knew in Onyx Springs, their opinions of him varied. Kat (her full name was Katherine Eleanor McIntyre) might have thought he took himself too seriously, but she liked him; there were even times she imagined she could love him. She knew that he was the youngest of three siblings and believed this explained why he always wanted to please everyone. She was big on birth order. Rainyday Olsson might have conceded that he was stuck on himself, but she would have immediately added that he was her favorite coworker, mainly because he took the time to talk and joke with her, and because he was smart and cute but also a mental klutz. Candler’s clients, for the most part, appreciated him, and if one maybe wished he flirted with her and another wished he had not forced him to leave a party, they nonetheless be
lieved Mr. James Candler was helping them, and they looked forward to seeing him. Even the War Vet, who had only worked with Candler for three days, trusted him as he did almost no one but the men in his unit, and he felt reasonably good about placing his life in Candler’s hands. John Egri was pushing Candler for the directorship, telling anyone who would listen that he was level headed yet shrewd, a man full of ideas but with plenty of heart. Privately, he understood that his reasons for advocating on Candler’s behalf were more complicated. Without any particular justification, he disliked Clay Hao, who was the natural choice, and placing Candler in the seat ahead of Hao felt like an appropriate final flex of his muscles. If he could free himself of his own propaganda concerning Candler, Egri might have called him superficial (by which he would have meant childish) and syrupy (by which he would have meant naive, sentimental, soft), but, hell, Candler liked to laugh, didn’t he? He could appreciate a woman in a short skirt without calling out the political correctness police. He understood that scotch tasted best when you were supposed to be sober and working. He was an actual man, wasn’t he? A rarer find in their line of work than most people knew. Clay Hao resented Candler’s ascension but he did not let that affect his personal feelings toward Candler, who seemed to Hao a decent man with a good sense of humor. He had done well with the clients until Egri began privately advertising the directorship to him. Except for his sexual relationship with Kat McIntyre, he was thoroughly professional and pleasant to be with, especially away from work, at a bar or a ball game. One time they had gone to a concert, Clay and his wife, along with Candler and a woman who lived on the Haos’ block, a setup that Clay’s wife had plotted. Their neighbor was oddly intimidated by their conversation and unforgivably dull, but Candler was polite to her and he loved the Drive-By Truckers, and four or five times, he made Clay’s wife laugh, and there were few things that Clay Hao liked better than the sound of his wife’s laughter. Patricia Barnstone wouldn’t offer a negative opinion of Candler unless he had done something recently to piss her off, but deep down she thought him narcissistic and bland, like some tepid soda that had lost its fizz. Oh, he was okay, but his roots were so shallow that one good breeze would knock him over.
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