"I remember. I still walk with a limp, thanks to a National Guardsman's bayonet in my hip-among other reasons."
Pretorius sat back and gazed at the ceiling. "A radical in '70. An executive in '89. If you knew how anything but uncommon that story is. At least she's not with the DEA."
"And while we're on that subject, I have formed the impression you don't say no to recreational chemistry"
"It doesn't hurt anybody, man."
"No. Ain't nobody's business but your own; couldn't agree more. Being a Jew in Nuremberg in the thirties didn't hurt anybody either."
He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "Doctor, you are a big, soft, inflated Bozo the Clown doll in the climate of today, and Mr. St. John Motherfucking Latham is going to knock you all over the courtroom. So I say to you, Run, baby, run. Or be prepared for a sea change in your life."
Mark made a helpless gesture, started to stand. "One more thing," Pretorius said.
Mark stopped. Pretorius looked to Sprout. She was a shy child, except with those close to her, and the lawyer had an intimidating way-he intimidated her dad, anyway. But she faced Pretorius, solemn and unflinching.
"The question that needs to be asked is, what do you want, Sprout?" Pretorius said. "Do you want to live with your mommy, or stay with your father?"
"I-I'll abide by her wishes, man," Mark said. It was the hardest thing. he'd ever said.
She looked from Pretorius to Mark and back. "I miss my mommy," she said in that precise, childish voice. Mark felt his skeleton begin to collapse within him.
"But I want to stay with my daddy."
Pretorius nodded gravely. "Then we'll do what we can to see that you do. But what that will be"-he looked at Mark-"is up to your father."
Seven o'clock turned up on schedule. Susan-he was fairly sure it was Susan-marched to the front door to flip over the sign to SORRY-WE'RE CLOSED just as a woman materialized and pushed at the door from outside.
Susan resisted, glaring. Mark came around the counter wiping his hands on his apron and felt his stomach do a slow roll.
"It's okay," he managed to croak. "She can come in." Susan turned her glare on Mark. "I'm off now, buster." Mark shrugged helplessly. The woman stepped agilely inside. She was tall and striking in a black skirt suit with padded shoulders and a deep purple blouse. Her eyes had grown more violet over the years. The blouse turned them huge and glowing.
"This is personal, not business," she said to Susan. "We'll be fine."
"If you're sure you'll be okay alone with him," Susan sniffed. She launched a last glower at Mark and clumped out into the Village dusk.
She turned, Kimberly, and was in Mark's arms. He damned near collapsed. He stood there a moment with his arms sort of dangling stiffly past her like a mannequin's. Then he hugged her with adolescent fervor. Her body melted against his, fleetingly, and then she turned and was out of his arms like smoke.
"You seem to be doing well for yourself," she said, gesturing at the shop.
"Uh, yeah. Thanks." He pulled a chair back from a table. "Here, sit down."
She smiled and accepted. He went around behind the counter and busied himself. She lit a cigarette and looked at him. He didn't point out the LUNGS IN UsE-No SMOKING, PLEASE sign on the wall behind her.
She wasn't as willowy as she had been back in the Bay days. Nor was she blowsy from booze and depression as she had been when their marriage hit the rocks and she self-destructed at the first custody hearing, back in '81. Full-figured was what he thought they, called it, glancing back as he waited for water to boil, though he had it in mind that had become a euphemism for "fat". She wasn't; voluptuous might have put it better. Whatever, she wore forty well.
… Not that it mattered, not really. He was still as desperately in love with her as he'd been the first time he saw her, thirty years and more ago, tricycling down their southern California tract-home block.
The lights were low, just a visual buzz of fluorescents above the deli counter. Mark lit candles and a sandalwood stick. The Windham Hill mob was history. The tape machine played real music. Their music.
He brought an earthenware pot and two matching mugs on a tray. He almost tipped the assembly onto the floor, slopping fragrant herbal tea on the red-and-white checkered tablecloth as he transferred the pot to the table. Kimberly sat and watched him with a smile that held no mockery.
He spilled only a little of the pale amber liquid as he poured and handed her a mug. She sipped. Her face lit. "Celestial Seasonings and old Bonnie Raitt." She smiled. "How sweet of you to remember."
"How could I forget?" he mumbled into the steam rising from his mug.
A rustle of beaded curtain, and they looked up to see Sprout standing in the gloom at the back of the store. "Daddy, I'm hungry-" she began. Then she saw Kimberly and came flying forward again.
Kimberly cradled her, telling her, "Baby, baby, it's all right, Mommy's here." Mark sat, absently stroking his daughter's long smooth hair, feeling excluded.
At last Sprout relinquished her hold on Sunflower's neck and slid down to sit cross-legged on the scuffed linoleum, pressed up against her mother's black-stockinged shins. Kimberly petted her.
"I don't want to take her away from you, Mark." Mark's vision swirled. His eyes stung. His tongue knotted. "Why-why are you doing this, then? You said I was doing well."
"That's different. That's money." She gestured around the shop. "Do you really think this is any way for a little girl to grow up? Surrounded by smut and hash pipes?"
"She's all right," he said sullenly. "She's happy. Aren't you honey?"
Wide-eyed solemn, Sprout nodded. Kimberly shook her head.
"Mark, these are the eighties. You're a dropout, a druggie. How can you expect to raise a daughter, let alone one as… special as our Sprout is?"
Mark froze with his hand reaching for the pocket of his faded denim jacket-the one that held his pouch and papers, not the one with the Grateful Dead patch. It came to him how great the gulf between them had become.
"The way I've been doing," he said. "One day at a time."
"Oh, Mark," she said, rising. "You sound like an AA meeting."
The tape had segued to Buffalo Springfield. Kimberly hugged Sprout, came around the table to him. "Families should be together," she said huskily in his ear. "Oh, Mark, I wish-"
"What? What do you wish?"
But she was gone, leaving him and her last words hanging in a breath of Chanel No. 5.
The stuffed animals sat in a rapt semicircle on the bed and in shelf tiers along the walls. The light of one dim bulb glittered in attentive plastic eyes as the girl spoke.
Mark watched from the doorway. She had not pulled the madras-print cloth to, indicating she didn't want full privacy. She spoke in a low voice, leaning forward. He could never make out what she said at times like this; it seemed to him that the length of her sentences, the pitch of her voice even, were somehow more adult than anything she managed in the world outside her tiny converted-closet bedroom, in the presence of anyone but the Pobbles and Thumpers and teddy bears. But if he tried to intrude, to come close to catch the sense of what she was saying, she clammed up. It was one area of her life Sprout excluded him from, however desperately he wanted to share it.
He turned away, padded barefoot past the dark cubicle where he had his own mattress on the floor to the lab that took up most of the apartment above the Pumpkin.
Red-eye pilot lights threw little hard shards of illumination that ricocheted fitfully among surfaces of glass and mechanism. Mark felt his way to a pad in the corner beneath a periodic table and a poster for Destiny's gig at the Fillmore in 1970's long-lost spring and sat. The smell of cannabis smoke and the layers of paint it had sunk into enfolded him like arms. His cheeks had become wet without his being aware.