Stromsoe remembered how the strobe lights had beveled Hallie Jaynes’s lovely face into something exotic and unknowable.
It was so easy to see her now:
“You look good,” she had told him.
“You do too.”
“We miss you.”
We.
“You’re the one who left.”
“Oh, Matty, you’re much better off without us,” she said with a bright smile. “Mike doesn’t know how to apologize. He doesn’t know what to say. I wish we could laugh again, you and me.”
She looked both radiant and famished. It was an appearance he would see a lot of in his generation as the decade wore on. Looking at her for the first time in almost two years, he realized that she had moved past him in ways that until now he hadn’t known existed.
“She was different,” Stromsoe said to Susan Doss. “So was Mike.”
He told Susan how Mike had gotten taller and filled out, grown his wavy black hair longer, wore a loose silk suit like the TV vice cops wore. His face had changed too, not just in breadth but in a new confidence. His sense of superiority was the first thing you saw — the quarter smile, the slow eyes, the lift of chin. He looked like an angel about to change sides.
“They were there with three other couples,” said Stromsoe. “The dudes were older than us by a notch or two — early thirties, good-looking, Latino, dressed expensive. Versace and Rolex. The women were all twentysomething knockout gringas — extra blond. I was there with some friends from school and we ended up sitting across the dance floor from Hallie and them. I could hardly take my eyes off her. You know how it is, that first love.”
“Sure,” said Susan. “Richie Alexander. I wrote poetry about him. But I won’t quote it for you, so don’t ask.”
Stromsoe smiled and nodded. Susan had freckles on her cheeks and a funny way of holding her pen, with her middle finger doing most of the work. Atop the garage, the crew commenced nailing the plywood to the roof frame and Stromsoe felt his nerves flicker.
He told Susan that on the drive home to his Fullerton apartment that night, he had lost his old faith that Hallie would come back to him someday. It was obvious to him that she and Tavarez were knocking on the door of a world in which Stromsoe had no interest. He had seen enough cocaine use at his high school and in his extended college circle to know the large sums of money attached. He had seen the white powder do ugly things to almost everyone he knew who used it. It made them pale and inward. Everything they did was for the high.
He didn’t tell Susan that when he had imagined Hallie becoming like that — an inversion of everything about her that he loved and lusted for — his heart had hardened against her. But it had broken a little too.
Stromsoe believed back then that people soon got what they deserved.
Now he did not.
Now, sixteen years later, Stromsoe understood that Hallie had become everything he had feared, and that Mike Tavarez had gotten much more good fortune than he had ever deserved.
Tavarez had demonstrated that coke was venom to body and soul, and that anyone who ignores this fact can make many, many millions of good Yankee dollars.
Hallie had demonstrated how right Mike was. She was his first customer.
When they finished the lunch Susan pushed the paper plates away to make room for her notebook. She had brought the plates with her today, and Stromsoe wondered if she had sensed his anger yesterday over Hallie’s dish.
“I didn’t see her again until the night I graduated from college,” said Stromsoe. “That was June of ’88. After the ceremony a bunch of us went to the Charthouse here in Newport. We took up two long tables on the far side. Steak and lobster. Cocktails and wine. We blew enough money that night to live on for a semester. Hallie came in around midnight. I saw her spot me and I watched her come through the tables toward us.”
Sitting in his courtyard now, Stromsoe could as good as see her. She was smiling at him but he could tell something was wrong. She walked carefully. She had lost weight. She wore a pink trench coat over a black-and-pink floral-print dress. Her hair was up and her earrings dangled and flashed.
Up close he saw that her face was clammy, with sweat beads at her hairline, that her pupils were big, and behind her pretty red lips her gums were pale.
“Congratulations,” she had said, then hugged him. “I’m back at Mom’s and Dad’s after a little tiff with Mike. I saw your announcement in their mail pile. Not raining on your parade, am I, Matt?”
“Not at all,” he’d said.
She touched his face. “I miss you.”
Stromsoe got her seated and ordered her a soda water but Hallie told the waiter to make it a Bombay martini, rocks with a twist. She drank three of them in short order. He introduced her to his friends. The guys smiled and glanced knowingly at Stromsoe when they thought Hallie wasn’t looking. The women were actively disinterested in her. She made several trips to the ladies’ room.
Hallie ordered a double at last call, took one sip, then collapsed to the floor.
Stromsoe carried her back to the restaurant manager’s office while one of his friends called paramedics. She was conscious but stupefied, trying to focus on Stromsoe as he lowered her to a couch and wrapped a blanket around her. Her eyes were swimming and her teeth chattered.
“Ohhh,” she whispered, closing her eyes.
He smartly smacked her cheek. “Stay awake, Hallie. Look at me and stay awake.”
She was half awake when the paramedics got there and took her away. Stromsoe followed them to Hoag Hospital in his old Mazda, called her parents from the waiting room. His hands were shaking with anger at Mike while he talked to Hallie’s mom.
It took the doctors two hours to stabilize her. Inside Hallie boiled a witch’s brew of Colombian cocaine, Mexican brown heroin, Riverside County methamphetamine, Pfizer synthetic morphine, and Bombay gin.
“She was okay,” said Stromsoe. “Too much dope. Too much booze. It wasn’t until later that I saw the really bad stuff.”
Susan looked up from her notepad.
The day after Hallie had gone to the hospital Stromsoe had gotten a call from Sergeant Rich Neal of the Newport Beach police. Neal told Stromsoe to meet him outside Hallie’s room at Hoag at 2 P.M. sharp.
Neal came from her room and shut the door behind him. He was stout and florid and asked Stromsoe what he knew about Hallie’s drug problem. Stromsoe told him what had happened at the Charthouse. Neal asked about Mike Tavarez and Stromsoe confirmed that he knew him, and that Mike and Hallie were a couple.
“The parents think he supplied her with the drugs,” said Neal. “They think he did that work on her body. She says no. What do you think?”
“He probably gave her the drugs. I don’t know what bodywork you’re talking about.”
“Ask her about it,” said Neal. “Where is he? Where’s Tavarez right now?”
“I have no idea.”
Neal asked Stromsoe about other friends of Hallie’s, other boyfriends in particular. He asked if Stromsoe had met Mike Tavarez’s parents and the answer was yes, Rolando and Reina, he’d spent some time in their home back in high school, eaten dinner with them on rehearsal nights, and sometimes he and Mike would just hang out there on weekends, shooting pool and drinking sodas, maybe ride their bikes or, when they got older, go for a drive. Stromsoe had always liked quiet Rolando and large, expansive Reina.