“You need some sleep, son. Stay with me in the big house. Your bed’s still made up and I ran your truck once a week like you wanted. Becky would like a call.”
Ann bent over and hugged him. “You stay right where you are until my surprise gets here. And guess what? Ray and I are having a party on Friday. Be nice and I’ll invite you.”
Jim asked about the occasion, but Ann was vague and coy, as she often was. A cup of coffee later, Jim looked up to see Ann’s husband, his oldest and finest friend, coming toward the table. Newport Beach Police Lieutenant Raymond Cruz walked across the floor with his usual graceful slowness, his gun, stick, radio, and assorted equipment neat around his waist, as systems-heavy as any cop on the beat. Jim felt a surge of happiness for which he wasn’t prepared. Ray smiled widely, threw open his arms — left hand low and right hand high — and caught Jim in a bear hug. Weir could feel the strength in Ray’s hands as they slapped against his back. It was an embrace of thankfulness. Raymond broke away first, and regarded Weir. “You look busted,” he said.
Jim nodded. “You were right. They took it all.”
A darkness passed through his eyes: Raymond’s first instinct would be to return there and take it all right back. He kissed Ann, bent down to peck Virginia, then turned again to Jim with a look of incomprehension. “How many times did I try to tell you?”
“Too many. I don’t want to hear it again.”
“You don’t want to listen, you don’t want to hear. My friend, dumb as a stick. How can it be so goddamned good to see you?” For a moment he stood there, reading Weir’s face with his bright, clear stare. Then he looked at Ann, who simply, for a moment, beamed.
“Tell him,” she said.
“You tell him, Ann.”
She stepped forward, reached down, and placed Jim’s hand against her stomach. “How’s Uncle Jim sound?”
For just a moment, Weir was speechless. Ann could not conceive. Armies of doctors had told her that, and twenty years of marriage had proven them right. And here, suddenly, what could not happen had happened — the simplicity of miracle showed plainly on her face.
Then she was racing along with the details, using words that once had curdled her with jealousy: seven months to term, a December baby, sick this morning, got to get the house ready, still haven’t picked names.
Jim saw that she already had entered that world where no man could follow, the parallel universe of motherhood. He had never seen such a thorough joy in her. Even Virginia had a sort of giddiness. Raymond’s posture had changed — head a little higher, neck a little straighter — and there was a new roundness to his trim Latin features.
“Annie,” said Jim, “you’ll be the best — uh — second-best mom in the world. It was worth getting skunked in Mexico to come home and hear this.” For as long as he could remember in his adult life, Ann had wanted a child. She had kept the faith.
Ann smiled freshly, as if realizing all over again the blessing that had befallen her. She caught herself, reigned in her joy and proposed breakfast in the morning at the big house, where Jim could “tell us what really happened” down in Mexico. This decided, Raymond kissed her lightly again, then checked his watch. “Back to the mean streets of Newport,” he said. “Glad you’re here, Jim. See you tomorrow.”
He walked across the floor with a final turn back, a smile that was aimed at Jim but strayed quickly to his wife.
Five minutes later, Weir felt the exhaustion hit him. He downed another half glass of wine and stood. “Don’t anybody wake me up before noon.”
He labored wearily down the stairs and into the moist peninsula darkness. The fog was gathering low in the sky and the spring chill still clung to his bones.
But Weir didn’t go to his mother’s house. Instead, he walked right past it, along the little bayfront homes and alleys that had comprised the geography of his youth. The neighborhood was quiet. Squat cottages conferred beneath overgrown hedges of oleander and bougainvillea; tiny yards sat with an air of preferred neglect. Half a block down was Poon’s Locker — the family business that had brought in enough money for Poon and Virginia to raise three kids. It sat solid and darkened, and Jim stopped for a moment to look through one of the double O’s of the neon sign that had hung in the window since 1963. He could see in bare outline the chairs and tables of the coffee shop, the postcard rack by the door — Wet Your Line at Poon’s Balboa! — the trophy fish hanging on the walls, the counter and cash register. With a little effort, he could have conjured Jake, running through the café on some obsessive mission, followed by the curses of Poon.
Half a block farther, he came to Ann’s Kids, the day-care center run by his sister — in lieu of her own family, Jim had long ago concluded. Would she close it by December? It was a small old house with a six-foot chain-link fence around the grounds to keep the tykes in. The yard was concrete and Jim could see the trikes and building blocks stowed neatly beside the front door. It had the look of something soon to become history.
Then past Ann and Raymond’s house — a dinky two-bedroom bungalow with a wooden porch. The veranda was strung over with fishnetting festooned with starfish, abalone shells, sand dollars and cork floats. From the sidewalk, the objects seemed to hang midair, unattached. Ann, he thought, the collector of small treasures.
He walked another three houses down, to where a tall hedge of white oleander formed a wall around the lot behind it. He stood for a minute, took a deep breath, and found the gate hidden in the foliage. He reached over the top, muted the brass bell with his hand, then slowly pushed it open. He stopped just inside. The yard was small and neatly kept, the air touched with the sweetness of the orange tree that blossomed near its center. Spring annuals nodded lazily from their pots. The walkway stones were even and swept. A cottage sat at the far end, lit from within. The wooden door was open but the screen door was shut and Jim could see her sitting in the dining room, back to him, her head tilting against her left hand, and her right holding a pencil to a notepad. Her light brown curls caught the light when she turned and looked in his direction, but the rest of her face remained in shadow. Jim became the oleander. He watched her stand and walk across the living room toward him, a pretty, full-bodied woman in a green silk robe. She stood at the screen door, hands on her hips, looking out. Weir’s desire was to step forward and say something, but he had no idea what it should be, and his legs refused to entertain the notion. From deep inside he breathed a sigh of relief, a sigh that he had not been able to muster for the six months he was in Mexico, a sigh that he had yearned for on each of the thirty-four days he had spent imagining this woman from his cell in the Zihuat jail. Then the porch light went out and the wooden door closed, and Jim could hear the dead bolt sliding into place.
The first call woke him up at one in the morning. Jim lay in his old room, tossing in the penumbra of half sleep, sweating and clammy, his stomach in knots. For a moment, he couldn’t figure out where he was. It was Ray.
“Jim, you and Ann catching up?”
“No.”
“You leave before she got off?”