By the time it happened, Fin and Nell had already finished their second drink. He turned to her and she looked as sad as he felt after all the fire had vanished.
She gazed into his eyes for a moment, and she astonished him by reading his mind. By saying what he felt.
“I know” Nell said, nodding. “For a little while, before it disappears, you can really pretend, can’t you? That life’s a beach, after all.”
Fin was awfully glad he’d matured. In the old days he’d have married her for that.
CHAPTER 15
After work that day, Jules Temple sipped Chablis and soaked in the hot tub until sunset, the hot tub belonging to the apartment building in Sunset Cliffs, an old residential area by Point Loma where he rented a two-bedroom unit. He had the hot tub all to himself, and from the hillside vantage point, he watched as the sky blazed and fired the sandstone cliffs below, burnishing them to the color of old gold. Those golden cliffs at sunset reminded him of his mother’s antique-jewelry collection: another small treasure his father had given to charity rather than to his only child.
Jules was not a worrier and never had been, but the phone call from Nell Salter was troubling. There was so much riding on the sale of his company that the most remote threat to the negotiations was of concern. He’d been mulling a few scenarios involving the theft of his truck and the toxic exposure to the Mexican driver, but no scenario made sense.
Jules had never been one to project, nor to fret unduly as to the consequence of actions, even impulsive ones-as his father had often pointed out-so he decided to stop fretting for now. Tomorrow he’d go to the yacht club and get some free legal advice about some vexing scenarios he’d conjured. For now he was just going to enjoy the view, the wine, and the tub.
One day soon, he’d have his own house with a view of the Pacific, and his own hot tub where he could soak naked, either with or without female companionship. And he’d also have a decent car, like a red Mercedes 560SL, instead of a yellow Mazda Miata that he was almost ashamed to drive. Then he could start to live the way he’d been meant to live, if his father hadn’t taken his only child’s birthright to the grave.
Jules wasn’t sure if he’d truly hated his father, but he loathed the old man’s memory. The only time he wished the old man was alive was when he’d accomplished something, such as selling a business that had increased his cash investment tenfold in only a few years, and in the teeth of a global recession. It reminded Jules that he’d have to hide the capital gain or his ex-wife would be after him for more child support.
It pleased him to compare himself to his father, a man who’d never been able to accomplish much, content to be a salaried lawyer at a law firm. Jules believed that he’d got the entrepreneurial spirit from his grandfather, but what had happened to his grandfather’s legacy? Gone to charities, because the grandfather had trusted his son to do right by his descendants.
What could he have accomplished, Jules wondered, if only he had inherited his father’s house? It had fetched more than two million dollars because of the glorious bay view, and the executor, an old friend and colleague of Harold Temple, had seen to it that Jules did not so much as get his mother’s silver coffee service. He got his five-year monthly stipend and nothing more.
So Jules wished that Harold Temple could be alive if only to see what his son had accomplished, all alone, from his own hard work and quick mind. The old man never would have believed it: a blue-collar industry of the worst kind. But the right industry for someone as imaginative as Jules Temple.
It’d been easy to beat out his competition, childishly easy. Just as it would be when he put the profits-not all, but a good portion-into a topless dancing establishment that would be the talk of San Diego. He’d show the doubters an amazingly profitable operation.
His reveries were interrupted when one of his neighbors, an elderly woman in a puckered pink swimsuit, dropped her towel on a lounge beside the hot tub, and said, “Mind if I join you?”
Her flesh was dead white and veined, like his father’s during those last years. Jules had never introduced himself to any of his neighbors and wasn’t about to start. Now he couldn’t enjoy the view or the wine or even the jasmine-scented evening air. She disgusted him.
“It’s all yours,” he said.
After having been awed into silence by the sunset, Fin and Nell got back to chatting, and gave their table to a pair of diners, a twenty-something pair of lovebirds who did more kissing than dining. Fin and Nell moved closer to the bar and perched on high stools at a little cocktail table. By then, they’d switched to vodka martinis, and after he’d completely lost count of his drinks Fin decided they were more bombed than Bosnia.
His chin kept slipping off his hand as he listened to her whine boozily about the sexual harassment she’d endured throughout her tenure in law enforcement. That was after she’d listened to him whine boozily about the injustices he’d suffered at the hands of ex-wives and talent agents.
When his dimpled chin fell out of his hand for the third time, she said, “How many martinis’ve you had, anyway?”
“As many as you.”
“We shoulda stuck to piña coladas.”
“Too sugary.”
“You gotta drive soon,” she said, slurring slightly. “Maybe we oughtta get something to eat.”
“Certainly,” he said, slurring worse.
“I don’t usually drink like this,” Nell said. “I don’t usually talk like this. So much, I mean.”
“I know,” Fin said, his eyelids drooping. “It’s because I’m so easy to talk to. Women tend to talk to me like I’m one of the girls.”
Nell blew a puff of breath upward because her hair kept falling across her eyes. “Why?” she asked. “Are you gay or something?”
“I probably am,” Fin said somberly, “except for the sex part.”
“Nobody cares what anybody is,” Nell said, spilling some booze on the table. “You get to a certain age, all you care about is, does the guy have AIDS. And does he cuddle good.”
“I know how that is,” Fin said, sympathetically. And this time his elbow slipped clear off the cocktail table. “When I used to go to singles bars, I’d wear my San Diego Blood Bank T-shirt just to show all the lonely nurses and schoolteachers that I’m a clean donor.”
“I knew you’d go for nurses and schoolteachers,” Nell said, accusingly. “The care givers, right?”
“I’m the cuddly care giver,” Fin said, defensively. “Remember my first ex-wife, the good sergeant? She wore those confrontational stockings with seams in them even before Madonna did. And call me a silly goose if you want to, but I don’t think it’s romantic when a female wears scary eye makeup and does one-arm pushups in her teddy just before she jumps in bed at night. The most tender thing she ever said to me was ‘Let’s get it on.’”
“Was she like that?” Nell was genuinely shocked.
“When we got divorced she got all the dishes she hadn’t thrown at me. Living with her was more risky than clerking in a Seven-Eleven store.”
“I really didn’t know her very well,” Nell assured him.
Fin said, “I think I married my second ex-wife because she was the opposite of the sergeant. She loved the great indoors and prescription drugs, but hated people and avoided them. The Witness Protection Program has better mixers. It was because of her that I had a test done and found out that I have a very low sperm count. I was glad ’cause any baby she gave birth to would end up being Howard Hughes. Compared to her Salman Rushdie is a party animal. Did I mention my practically nonexistent sperm count? That nobody has to worry about?”