Emerging in the court again, their attention was captured by the hurrying hungry clouds, which devoured the red skeletal Sutro TV tower as they watched.
“Pa, are clouds alive?” Tommy asked.
“They act that way, don’t they?” Wolf agreed. “But, no, they’re no more alive than, say, the ocean is, or mountains.”
“They’re made of snowflakes, aren’t they?”
“Some of them are, Tom. Mostly high, feathery ones called cirrus. Those’re made of ice flakes, you could say, tiny needles of ice. But these we’re looking at are just water, billions of billions of tiny drops of water that sail through the air together.”
“But drops of water aren’t white, Pa. Milk clouds would be white.”
“That’s true, Tom, but the drops of water are tremendously tiny, droplets you call them, and at a distance they do look white when sunlight or just a lot of sky light hits them.”
“What about small clouds, Pa, are they alive? I mean clouds small enough to be indoors, like smoke clouds or paint clouds, clouds of flakes or paint flakes. Grandpa can blow smoke clouds like He showed me.”
“No, those clouds aren’t alive either, Tom. And you don’t say smoke flakes or paint flakes, though there might be flakes of soot in heavy smoke and you could blow a sort of cloud of droplets—droplets, not flakes—from a spraypaint can, but I wouldn’t advise it.”
“But Grandpa told about a little cloud of paint flakes flying off a picture.”
“That was just in a story, Tom, and an imaginary story at that. Pretend stuff. Come on, Tom, we’ve looked at the sky enough for now.”
But the day, which had started in sunlight, continued to grow more and more lowering until, after their visit to the Japanese Tea Garden, whose miniaturized world appealed to Tom and where he found a little bridge almost steep enough to be a ha-ha, Wolf decided they’d best head for home.
The rain held off until they were halfway across the Golden Gate If Bridge, where it struck in a great squally flurry that drenched and I locked the car, as if it were a wet black beast pouncing. And although they were happily ahead of thick traffic, the rain kept up all the way to Goodland Valley, so that Wolf was relieved to get his Volks into the sturdy garage next to Cassius’ old Buick, and hurry up the pelting slippery hill with Tommy in his arms. During their absence, things had smoothed out at the old man’s place, at least superficially; and mostly by simplification—the Martinezes had both departed early to their home in the Mission after getting dinner into the oven, while Tilly, who’d been going to stay for it, had decided she had to get to her place to see to its storm defenses so there were only the four of them that ate it.
By this time the rain had settled down to a steady beat considerably less violent than its first onset. Wolf could tell from Terri’s manner that she had a lot she wanted to talk to him about, but only when they were alone, so he was glad the Golden Gate Park talk both lasted out the meal and trailed off quickly afterwards (while the black cylinder on the mantelpiece and the green leopard painting under it stood as mute signs of all the things they weren’t talking about), so they could hurry Tommy, who was showing signs of great tiredness, off to bed, still without night light, say good-night to Cassius, who professed himself equally weary, and shut their bedroom door behind them.
Terri whipped off her dress and shoes and paced up and down in her slip.
“Boy, have I got a lot to tell you!” she said, eyeing Wolf excitedly, almost exultantly, somewhat frightenedly, and overall a bit dubiously.
“I take it this is mostly going to be stuff got from Tilly today?” he asked from where he sat half-reclining on the bed. ‘That’s not to put it down. I’ve always trusted what she says, though she sure loves scandal.”
Terri nodded. “Mostly,” she said, “along with an important bit from Loni I’ve been keeping back from you, and some things I just worked out in my head.”
“So tell,” he said with more tranquility than he felt.
“I’ll start with the least important thing,” she said, approaching him and lowering her voice, “because in a way it’s the most pressing, especially now that it’s raining. Wolf, the hill under and back of this house—and all of Goodland Valley for that matter (they really should call it Goodland Canyon, it’s so constricted and overhung!)—isn’t anywhere near as stable as your father thinks it is, or keeps telling us it is. Why, every time a heavy rain keeps on, the residents are phoned warnings to get ready to evacuate, and sometimes the highway police come and make them, or try to. Wolf, there have been mudslides around the Bay that smashed through and buried whole houses, and people caught in them and their bodies never recovered. Right in places like this. There was a slide in Love Canyon, and in other places.”
Wolf nodded earnestly, lips pressed together, eyeing his aroused wife. “That doesn’t altogether surprise me. I’ve known about some of that and I certainly haven’t believed everything Cassius has to say about the stability of this hillside, but there seemed no point in talking about it earlier.”
She went on, “And Tilly says the last times there’ve been warnings, Cassius has gone down and stayed at her place. We’ve never heard a word about that. She says it looks like it might happen again, and we’ll have to be ready to get out too.”
“Of course. But the warnings haven’t come yet and the rain seems to be tapering off. Oh, I guess Cassius is pretty much like the other residents in spots like this. Won’t hear a word against their homes, they’re safe as Gibraltar, anyone who says different is an alarmist from the city or the East or LA, an earthquake nut, but when the rains and warnings come, everything’s different, no matter how quick they forget about it afterwards. Believe me, Terri, I could feel that myself when I drove back this afternoon and rushed up this soggy hill with Tom.” He paused. “So what’s the other stuff?”
She started to pace again, biting her lip, then stopped and eyed him defiantly. “Wolf,” she said, “this is one of those things I can’t talk about without cigarettes. And if you don’t like it, too bad!”
“Go ahead and smoke,” he directed her.
As she dug out a pack, ripped off its top, and lit up, she confessed, “I started smoking Tilly’s when she was telling me things at her place, and when she drove me back here, I picked up a couple of packs on the way; I knew I’d be needing them.
“Well, look, Wolf, before Loni left she told me, after I’d agreed not to tell you, that one of the reasons she was leaving early was that your father had been… well… bothering her.”
“You know, that doesn’t altogether surprise me either,” Wolf responded. “Depending, of course, on how far his bothering went and how she behaved.” And he told Terri about seeing Loni sunbathing yesterday morning and how Cassius could have as easily seen her too, and probably did, finishing with “And, Terri, it was really a most stimulating sight: sweet black-masked nubility sprawled wide open to the wild winds and all that.”
“The little fool!” Terri hissed, quickly supplementing that with, “Though why a woman in this day and age shouldn’t be able to sunbathe where and whenever she wants to, I don’t know. But Loni didn’t, wouldn’t, tell me exactly how far your father tried to go, though I got the impression there was something that really shook her. But she and I have never been terribly close, as I think you know. That’s one reason why it became important what Tilly had to tell me on the subject.”
“Which was?” Wolf prompted.
Lighting another cigarette and puffing furiously, Terri said, “When we got to talking over lunch at her place, the conversation somehow got around to your father and sex—I guess maybe I hinted at what Loni told me—and she came right out with (remember how rough she often talks), ‘Cassius? He’s an indefatigable old lecher!’ and when I tactfully asked her if he’d made advances toward her, she whooped and said, ‘Me? My dear, I’m much too ancient for him. Cassius, I’ll have you know, is only turned on by the college freshman and especially high-school junior types.’“