“I tried some once and couldn’t even type,” said Andy.
“That’s pretty much the point. I got some dexies that’ll cut the fog.”
“No. Thank you. I just want to read these letters.”
“Then stay and read them.”
“Why don’t you say her name?”
Lynette’s face reddened as she turned it away from him. She released the ponytail and a curtain of smooth black hair fell over her eyes. “Because it hurts to hear it.”
Because you left her to your brothers, thought Andy. Yeah. That would hurt.
ANDY READ Janelle Vonn’s letters while Lynette loaded up a small pipe with black crumbs and dabbed at them with a wooden match. She watched him silently as she smoked and Andy felt as if he were on display. It was usually him that made other people feel that way with all his questions. But no questions was worse. Lynette was trim and catlike with her bare feet tucked under her thighs and her eyes steady behind the hair. She finally set aside the pipe and melted into the couch.
Asleep by ten. Andy was maybe halfway through the letters. Some were four and five pages and he read them slowly. Bulletins from the great beyond.
Janelle was connected to everything. Neck deep in the Laguna LSD crowd. Neck deep with the Sheriff’s Department narcs. Neck deep with David, and Jesse Black and even Representative (R) Roger goddamned Stoltz and his asphalt cleaner empire. Neck deep with Cory Bonnett, who owned a store called Neck Deep. Neck deep with football coach Howard Langton and all the Miss Tustin people until they kicked her out like a leper. But neck deep was a terrible modifier because it made Andy think of Janelle in her baby blue sweater with the empty turtleneck. Up to her eyeballs…up to her elbows…up to her ears. He still couldn’t get that horrific picture out of his mind.
He covered Lynette with a blanket from a closet, then boxed up all the letters and cards and snuck out the front door with them.
IN THE Journal building he ran copies of them on the big Xerox machine, light flashing under the cover with each slow pass. Called home and Teresa said “Come and get me.” Voice thick with smoke.
Almost an hour and a half later he was back on the road with the letters in the box beside him and the copies in his briefcase and the coastal fog making halos around the streetlights on Newport Boulevard.
Lynette was still asleep on the couch. Andy set the box of letters on the floor. She had bunched up the blanket around her throat with both hands. A small automatic pistol had fallen to the cushion by her head. Andy plucked it up with a nervous heart. In the kitchen he popped out the little magazine. Five.22 longs. Shit. One in the chamber, too. Set it on the counter by the toaster and the Cap’n Crunch.
He shook Lynette gently by the shoulders. Weird girl, he thought. Felt like she weighed under a hundred. Won’t say her sister’s name but she’d shoot you for the letters.
“I’m leaving,” he said.
“Stay.”
“I can’t.”
“Get out.”
“Okay. The gun’s by the cereal.”
ANDY GOT HOME at two-thirty. Teresa was deep in sleep, didn’t want to be touched. He set the stack of copies on his typewriter stand in the laundry room, sat down, and kept reading.
His eyes moved while his imagination created scenes. He was not aware of the gentle sweet smell of the dryer or the insanely funny song of a mockingbird in the oleander bush outside. As he read, Janelle’s voice came clearly to him and he could picture her.
Roger showed me the apartment today.
He saw Roger Stoltz holding open the door of a sunny apartment overlooking the bay in Newport. Saw the look on his face when she stepped in. Proud. Hopeful.
Really a trippy place. Big window and the bay and sailboats all blue and white. Says it’s a gift for as long as I want it. No strings attached.
Saw Janelle take in the view, then turn and smile. Janelle trying to act happy. Trying to figure how she could let him down without breaking his soaring little heart. Without waking him from the dream that connected them.
Without making him furious.
Andy read it again and watched it again.
He heard the dialogue between Janelle and Stoltz. Not a lot of words. Almost formal. The age difference, he thought. Stoltz late thirties and Janelle sixteen. He saw Janelle’s beauty and health, the shine of her hair and the sparkle in her eyes. He saw the fullness of her next to Stoltz’s sparse, ascetic frame. How was it that her damage didn’t show? He noted Stoltz’s brisk mustache. The affected leather jacket. His eager eyes. Andy saw the blue ocean through the window behind them. The tide was ebbing and a pelican casually rode the onshore breeze.
A moment later Andy sat up. His arms were stiff and his temple was sore from where it had rested on his hands. Some of Janelle’s letters had spilled onto the floor.
He looked out to the first light of morning. Wandered into the kitchen for more coffee. Called Nick. Nick picked up on the first ring, said he’d been up most of the night.
22
NICK WALKED INTO the Tustin Union High School varsity locker room before first period. A little woozy from lack of sleep. Like he was half dreaming. Three hours of del Gado’s tapes the night before, to bed at 1 A.M. but slept lousy. Then up at five for two more hours of tapes. Hadn’t said more than two words to Katy or the kids.
Nothing solid on the tapes. Janelle and Black. Janelle and Cory. Janelle and her sister, Lynette. Janelle and a bunch of other names Nick didn’t recognize. Small talk. Party talk. Gossip. Nothing. But the sound of her voice made her seem alive and Nick kept picturing her at the Thanksgiving dinner all those years ago. And at David’s church.
Lobdell had taken the morning off to take his son to the doctor. In addition to behaving badly, Kevin was never hungry and he was losing weight. Grades falling and he was sullen and mean and tired all the time. He’d dropped out of sports last year. Too bad because he could tackle anyone alive and hit a baseball a mile. Lucky said maybe there was a medical explanation for Kevin. And said he’d talk to Price Herald, the Laguna drug dealer, if he had the time.
The morning was cool and clear and the campus stirred Nick’s memory in a good way.
The locker room hadn’t changed much since he went all-CIF for the Tillers in fifty-five and fifty-six. Smell of soap and mildew and liniment, of old drains and sweat. It was quiet now, no lockers screeching open and banging shut. No coaches bellowing over towel fights and screaming students. Just the steady drip of the old showers and the echo of the drip.
Nick confirmed that the Tiller record board had been updated. His single-game rushing and season rushing records had both fallen just last year. He was still on the board for two second places, which made him proud in a modest way.
He found the locker he used for all three of his varsity years. The padlock looked exactly like the one he’d had, a black Master. He remembered the combination-38-28-34-because a classmate had once told him those were Marilyn Monroe’s measurements. The locker room made him think of the playing field and the field made him think of the crowd and the crowd made him think of Katy. He’d played those games for the contest, but also for her. He imagined her bouncing around in the red, black, and white of the Tustin cheerleading squad. Saw her midair in an off-the-back jump, with the stadium lights beaming down and her hair flying up. Now it seemed like an old cliché. But then it was life itself.
Howard Langton, the offense coach, watched Nick approach through the safety window that separated the staff office from the lockers. Stood and swung open the door.
“Thanks for the time, Howard,” said Nick.
“You’re welcome, Nick. Come in. It’s been what, five or six years since that homecoming game?”
Langton’s hand was as strong as the rest of him looked. Like he’d been carved out of something. Compact and handsome except for a bent nose. Not much neck. Monika would have called him a no-neck monster. Buzz cut, sweat shorts, white tennis shirt with an American flag pin.