“The fight.”
“The rumble. After it was over her sister ran down the embankment with rocks in both hands and threw them at us ’cause we’d just wailed on her brothers. Then Janelle, she was maybe like four or five, she’s got these two oranges and she’s going to throw them but she changes her mind. Blue dress and cowboy boots. Looks at us, drops the oranges, says something about her brothers, and runs away.”
Jesse was picking now, a muted aquatic twang when he pushed the tremolo bar. “First time I saw her was at the ’Piper. Playing a set on a dead Sunday evening. In she walks with some girlfriends. I played straight to her for the next hour. Directly to her. Forgot to take my break. Just her and me in that room. I sat with her and her friends after. They bought me drinks. I was freakin’ in love with her by midnight. Still am.”
At the same time, Andy and Black both leaned over and pulled small beaten notebooks from their pant pockets.
Black saw what Andy had done, dropped the notebook in his lap, and picked the Twilight Zone intro on his high E string.
Andy smiled and made a note of Jesse forgetting his break the first time he played for Janelle. Pot made you pay attention to the small things. All immediately fascinating. Most pointless.
“What did you write?” Andy asked.
“I wrote ‘in love with her by midnight.’ It came with this A-minor riff. A lot of stuff I write in Laguna does. I think it has something to do with the ocean, or maybe the hawks. Or maybe this dope I get from Ronnie Joe. Listen.”
He strummed some chords and sang “in love with her by midnight” in a melody over them. Then again, but a different melody. Then another one. Andy was amazed anyone could do that, just invent three different melodies in thirty seconds. Black was full of music like Andy was full of words.
“What part of the song is it?” he asked.
“Who knows? Chorus, maybe. You know, hook line for the radio. Sing it loud enough to hear in a car. What did you write down?”
“You, forgetting your break when you first saw Janelle.”
“I wanted to sing my way right into her pants.”
“Guess you did.”
“Later, yeah.” Black played the A-minor riff again, looking through a stained-glass window back toward Big Red. “I wasn’t alone there. In her pants.”
“No?”
“No. I told her she was free. I meant it. She had a dude. She’d been hooked up with him awhile, and I think it was a long while. Hardly talked about him. Never told me his name. Never told me what he did or what he looked like or anything. The only time she even mentioned him was if she couldn’t be with me. Once a week. Maybe twice. Then we’d be together three straight weeks and it was like there was no other guy. Then, well…she’d have to go.”
“Go for how long?”
“An evening,” said Black. “Sometimes part of a weekend day. She’d come up here after she was done. She’d be quiet. Not unhappy, really. But subdued. Still.”
“Numb?”
“Maybe,” said Jesse. “But not stoned. Not drunk. Just…calm.”
“You never saw him?”
“No. Never asked. Never followed her. Not my thing. People are free, you know? Free as they want to be.”
“Maybe she wanted to be less free,” said Andy.
“I don’t think so. She had a thing with Cory, too. He’s a bro. It was good karma for all of us. Least we thought it was.”
“She didn’t want limits and rules and security?”
“Not Janelle.”
Jesse plucked the opening notes of “Pretty Woman.”
“She was pregnant,” he said.
Andy’s heart dropped and flipped. Damned pot was bad enough, but then this ton of information. “Who was the father?”
“She didn’t know,” Black said quietly. “Maybe me. Maybe the mystery dude. Maybe Cory Bonnett. She was scheduled for an abortion on Friday afternoon. I was going to take her in.”
Andy’s heart rushing in his ears again. He remembered Meredith and him at the clinic in Santa Ana. Dr. Degaus Delineus. Suction. Over fast, but Meredith white and weak for hours. Dazed for days. Empty and distracted and tearful for weeks. So long to get over it. And he too foolish and young to understand what she was going through. What it meant to her body and her soul. What it meant that he hadn’t asked her to marry him and have the child. Andy felt the spiraling descent of regret long avoided. Not that he should have married her. Not that she should have had the child. But that he should have known. Known what she was going through. Known what it meant. Known what it was like.
No, not what it was like-what it was.
He looked out the window. Felt like a small pale child being tossed back and forth by the gods through a dark and violent sky. The damned pot could clobber you with the past if you didn’t look out. It would change your memories. Or change your version of them. Their shape. The revised history would slide right in and you’d think it had been true all along.
“She was going to have dinner with your brother the night she died,” said Jesse. “Your other brother, the minister.”
“David? No way, man.”
“David and a friend of hers named Howard. I never met Howard. I talked to David a few times, though. He came to one of my gigs. He and Janelle were really tight. I don’t know if it ever went off, the dinner. But that’s what she told me she was going to do.”
“Were you invited?”
“No. After that, she was off to see the other guy. Mr. Mystery Man. To tell him what was growing inside her and what she was going to do to it.”
Andy stood and went to the window. Drew in some cool sea air. Felt his nerves settle. Like the hackles of a dog going back down.
“What did Janelle do for money?” he asked.
“Modeling.”
“How often?”
“In the year I knew her I think she went out on one or two shoots,” said Jesse. “Up in L.A. Gleason/Marx Agency.”
“You don’t make a year’s worth of food and rent in two shoots. She had a car?”
“Nice little VW. Powder blue. Just a year old.”
Powder blue, thought Andy. The marijuana plucked him out of the guest cottage and set him down in the packinghouse. Light slanting through the wallboards. Wind huffing outside, shaking the metal roof. Pigeons rustling in the smell of old wood and creosote.
Powder blue sweater.
Black-red around the empty neck.
Janelle’s legs faint blue, too.
Unholy shit.
“She making payments on the car?” Andy asked absently. Hard to get his head back into this moment. Like a record skipping, taking him back, taking him back, taking him back…
“Free and clear,” said Jesse.
“How did she buy a new car?”
Jesse shrugged. “She had cash coming in, but I don’t know how or why. She didn’t offer and I didn’t press. She had some nice things. And she was generous. Bought me this. It was used, but it’s a fine instrument.”
Jesse ran his fingers over the strings of the white Stratocaster.
Andy wondered at the shattered complexity of Janelle Vonn’s life. Felt like every new thing he learned about her made her less understandable.
“You told my brother Nick all this, I take it.”
“Hell no,” said Jesse. “Not the pregnancy or abortion. Not the dude she was with. Not the dinner with the reverend. None of that.”
“Well, why not?”
“I don’t have a problem with the truth, but I do have a problem with who I tell it to. I don’t dig the pigs. Sorry your bro is one of ’em, but I have my reasons. I didn’t tell him, so I’m telling you.”
Then a light knock on the door and Jesse said, “Come in.” A young blond woman put her head inside, smiled at Jesse. “Hi, Jess.”
“Gail. Come on in.”
“You sure it’s okay?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
She giggled and came in, still smiling. Denim jacket with a bright rainbow embroidered on a pocket flap. Flannel shirt and jeans with big holes in the knees. Suntanned kneecaps, bare feet. A toe ring. Round face, smooth straight hair past her shoulders. Skin like milk chocolate.