One afternoon I stood at my easel painting out beside the harbor seawall. Simon sat on a wicker chair a few feet away from me. Beside him on a small wicker table was a cup of tea. He was wearing a Montecristi Panama hat with a plain black band, a pair of pleated white linen slacks, a white cotton oxford shirt, and a navy blazer. He was reading my copy of Percy’s The Last Gentleman. I thought the title suited him. Just behind us Teru was on his knees beside a nearby bed, planting impatiens as pipe smoke hovered over him like a guardian angel.
My cell phone rang. Normally I didn’t take calls while I painted, but I glanced at the phone anyway.
“It’s Olivia,” I said.
Simon looked up from his Percy, smiled, and went back to reading.
I set the brush down on the easel tray, wiped my hands on a rag, and answered.
After the usual hellos, she said, “What are you doing?”
I told her I was painting a sloop on the harbor.
“That’s good,” she said. “I like to think of you that way.”
“And you? What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m sitting on the balcony, drinking tea and looking at volcanoes.”
“Nice. How’s your father?”
“Actually, I have some news about him.”
“Good news, I hope.”
“Pretty good, yes. You heard about the group that’s coordinating the return of everybody’s money?”
“Sure.”
“They announced the fund manager’s name this morning. It’s Papa.”
“That’s wonderful. He must be doing a lot better.”
“He still has his moments, but this position is exactly what he needs. A chance to finish what my mother started.”
“You sound a lot better, Olivia.”
“You, too.”
“Do I?”
I looked around at the harbor, the mansion, the helipad, the tennis courts, swimming pool, and guesthouse, just a fraction of what Haley had left to me. I still thought of it as hers. All of it. I always would, because the only reward I could accept for loving Haley was loving Haley. So if I was any better, it wasn’t because of the money and the things. I would gladly give up everything to bring Haley’s murderer to justice. But in the months since January there had been no new leads. Haley’s Guatemalan motion picture project, the awful smell I had remembered, and the bomb maker, Jawarski, with his snapshot of me and Haley, had all come to nothing. Every lead had been investigated, and my memories of that night were still vague and untrustworthy. All I could do was wait and hope for something new to break.
But something had happened to me that night in the mountains. I had risked my life to save Olivia, not because my life no longer mattered to me, and not even because Olivia’s life mattered more than mine, but because I had finally remembered that life itself still mattered. I looked over at Teru planting, and Simon reading, and I thought it was good to remember that life had its own value, a value independent of my circumstances. It was good to have something worth fighting for. So I cocked my shoulder up to hold the phone against my ear and went back to painting, and yes, maybe I was a little better.
Then Olivia said, “Malcolm?”
“Mmm?”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Of course you have. That’s what geniuses do.”
“I’m serious. Now that Papa’s so much better, I think I’ll come home.”
I added a bit of white to the sloop’s bow wave. “Makes sense.”
“So you think it’s a good idea?”
“If your dad’s okay with it, you bet.”
“I’ll have to get a job. You know anyone who needs a personal assistant?”
“Nobody you’d want to work for.”
“I thought maybe with your contacts in the movie business…”
“Most of them are jerks, Olivia. Trust me, you don’t want to work in that business.”
“Oh. I see.” The disappointment in her voice was obvious.
I said, “Hang on a minute, will you?” and I covered the phone with one hand and looked over at Simon and Teru. Both of them were watching me. We had discussed Olivia before, what we would do if she decided to come back. I said, “She’s asking about work. You guys sure?”
“You bet,” said Teru, and Simon said, “I am indeed.”
“Okay.” I put the phone back to my ear. “Olivia?”
“I’m here.”
“Listen, about that job, I do have a thought.”
“Yeah?”
“Simon was telling me just the other day he wishes we had a full-time handyman around the place. Then we decided maybe what he really needs is a handywoman. Plus, now that I’m driving more than I was, we need someone to take care of the cars. Especially since Teru went and bought that clunker of a Porsche.”
Over at the flower bed, Teru made a big show of turning his back on me to give attention to the flowers. Simon and I grinned.
“Seriously?” said, Olivia. “You think I could get hired there?”
“I do, yeah.”
“That would be amazing, Malcolm. I was thinking of coming back next Monday. Could you maybe set up an interview with your boss on Tuesday or Wednesday?”
Watching boats out on the harbor while the girl in Guatemala watched volcanoes, I said, “Well, about my boss… Can you keep a secret?”
Critics have favorably compared Athol Dickson’s work to such diverse authors as Octavia Butler (Publisher's Weekly), Hermann Hesse (The New York Journal of Books) and Flannery O'Connor (The New York Times). One of his novels is an Audie Award winner and three have won Christy Awards. His next novel is Free Fall in February, the second installment in The Malcolm Cutter Memoirs, coming in June, 2013.
Athol lives with his wife in southern California. Please visit his website at www.AtholDickson.com, and like his Facebook fan page.
Crazy Cutter will be back next summer
They say only a lunatic would go against the mob. That makes Malcolm Cutter the right man for the job. After all, he’s only been out of the mental hospital for a few months when the cops tell Fanny Gold her son was lost at sea. Fanny doesn’t buy it, so Cutter takes the case. Things turn nasty when the godfather of Los Angeles warns Cutter to back off, because Cutter never backed off in his life. Now the question is, will Hollywood’s favorite billionaire chauffeur and private investigator lose his mind, find the boy, or end up sleeping with the fishes?