"There it is," he said. "Be it ever so humble."
"This can't be right," Stacy said, staring at the slip of paper in her hand.
They got out, moved to the walk-in gate, and rang a buzzer. After a moment, a man's voice came through the speaker, squawking angrily, "Who is it?"
"We're here to see Cris Cunningham," Stacy said.
There was a long silence, and then without further comment, the electric lock buzzed. They pushed open the walk-in gate and moved onto the three-acre estate. They walked up a brick path toward the imposing house. A hundred yards to the right, an Olympic-size pool glistened in the afternoon sunlight. Dragonflies hovered. On their left, an empty tennis court shimmered with late-afternoon heat. Dusty brown birds did showy aerobatics over the huge lawn before climbing abruptly, then landing in the leafy elm trees.
The front door opened, and a tall, thin, gray-haired man moved out of the house. He stood defiantly on the front porch. His unfriendly glower was muted by his slightly comic wardrobe: a lime-green shirt over dark green golf slacks. As Stacy neared him, she thought his body posture sent a mixed message. Like a defeated general, he seemed both overbearing and apologetic.
"Yes, what is it?" he said warily as they approached.
"Is this Cris Cunningham's house?" she asked.
"And you are…?" He let the question hang in the unfriendly space between them.
"I'm Stacy Richardson, and this is Dr. Wendell Kinney, from USC. We wanted to talk to a man named Cris Cunningham. We understood this is his address."
"He isn't here right now," the gray-haired man said.
"I see. When do you expect him?"
"I'm Richard Cunningham, his father. What's this regarding?"
"It's about…" She looked over at Wendell. "If he's the one we're looking for, I really think we should speak directly with him. Although it's also possible we have the wrong person."
"How so?"
"The man we're looking for doesn't really seem like he belongs in this neighborhood. He's sort of…"
"Rundown?" Richard said sadly, then nodded and relaxed his posture slightly. "Why don't you come wait inside?"
He led them into a large entry hall with polished hardwood floors and a curving staircase. A huge chandelier hung above the foyer dangling expensive crystal. He led them into a den. The room was furnished in the warm colors and textures of an old tavern. Prints of horses hung above red leather couches and antique wooden tables. Outside, intense afternoon sun filtered through dense oak trees and fell without heat in dappled patterns on the emerald-green carpet.
"Would you like something to drink?" Richard asked.
"Ice water, if you have it," she replied, and Wendell nodded.
"The maids take Sunday off. I'll be right back."
Richard Cunningham turned and moved out of the den, leaving them standing alone, looking at the masculine decor. Behind the bar was a large framed color photograph that was almost four feet by three, mounted under glass. It froze a moment and a memory. In the photo, a lithe quarterback in the powder-blue-and-gold uniform of the UCLA Bruins was crossing the goal line. The number 9 on his jersey was full to camera. His gold helmet glinting in the Coliseum sunlight was turned away, looking toward the coffin corner of the end zone just inside the marker. In the picture, the quarterback held the ball tightly in both hands, slightly in front of him, while stepping through the outstretched arms of a USC Trojan tackier. The Coliseum scoreboard was out of focus but readable in the background: USC 9, UCLA 7. There were fifty-three seconds left in the fourth quarter. It was a picture of the moment before victory.
"That was Cris," Richard Cunningham said, strangely using the past tense.
They turned and looked at him as he handed them cold glasses of water. "He won the game." There was a soft, wistful quality to the way he said it, as if the memory was too fragile to address forcefully, hanging only by a very slender thread in his mind.
Also on the back wall behind the bar were a Silver Star and a combat ribbon from the Gulf War, in a frame with a picture of a young, extremely handsome blond man with Marine-short hair.
Stacy recognized the decorations from her years as an Army brat. She looked hard at the Marine, but didn't recognize him at all.
"This is Cris?" she asked.
"That was taken the day he graduated from Special Forces Recon training," his father said. Again his voice contained the wistful echo of faded memories.
"I got this address from the police," Stacy said. "They have an alias database on people with police records. The man I'm looking for was using the name 'Lucky.' The Pasadena police had a Lucky in their files. He'd been arrested for vagrancy and plain drunk in Old Town, up by Colorado Boulevard, four years ago. They said his real name was Cris Cunningham and gave me this address, but I don't think this is the same man."
Richard Cunningham shifted his weight slightly. "After Kennidi died, he was drunk all the time. He left home and was sleeping in doorways. I'd go find him, but he wouldn't even look at me. His wife, Laura, divorced him. Then he left town on the rails." Richard looked suddenly very fragile. "Cris doesn't look like that picture anymore," he said.
"Who was Kennidi?" Stacy asked.
"His four-year-old daughter. When she died, it changed him." Richard paused, then corrected himself: "It destroyed him."
"I'm sorry," Stacy said softly.
"Why do you want to see my son?"
"He was at a place called Vanishing Lake, in Texas. The man he was traveling with died of a new, fatal disease. It could be contagious. We don't know yet what the incubation period is, but he needs to be checked immediately, and we need to take a sample of his blood."
Richard stood, silently dealing with this information. Then he nodded, as if it was just another chapter in his family's horrible medical odyssey.
"He left early this afternoon. His mother took him to the doctor and the dentist. They should have been home hours ago, but I think I know where they went" Then he added, "I've been kind of worried, so if you want, we can go check. I'll lead you there."
The clothes from his past life were too big, and draped him like oversized memories. He had been standing beside the grave for an hour. His mother had finally gone back to the air-conditioned visitors' center to wait. He was looking down at the small brass plaque that silently screamed his daughter's name in uniformly correct ten-inch-high letters:
KENNIDI BISHOP CUNNINGHAM BRAVE BEYOND HER YEARS 1991-1995
He seemed rooted there, looking for something meaningful, but he could find no elevating factors. The remembered taste of the "heart starters" he had snuck from his father's bar that morning consumed his thoughts, intensifying his need for a booster. As he stood looking down at the grave, he no longer wanted to blame himself for his daughter's sickness, but self-loathing hovered on the shifting winds of grief and loss. Then his thoughts jumped. Perhaps when he'd started drinking, he'd really only been looking for a way to escape his golden life. Had it been intentionally self-destroyed? Had he been afraid to raise the bar one notch higher, as he had time after time since elementary school, until even heroics in the Gulf War weren't enough to validate him? Had Kennidi's torment been his escape? Had he ducked out on his life using her death as his exit card? Was it possible that he was that hollow, or that selfish? Why, he wondered, did he have such an emptiness? Why was it that nothing he did fulfilled him?
He had begun to suspect that he had lived his life in pursuit of the wrong things, but how could he find the strength to redirect himself or even know what to aim at? His life before Kennidi died had been about trophies and medals; now it was about self-pity and despair. He had jumped out of his comfortable life almost in desperation, but the chute hadn't opened. Instead, he had experienced four years of free fall with his silk canopy streaming uselessly above him, flapping and tugging at his shoulders like ghostly memories. There was almost no time left; the ground was coming at him fast. The impact would be sudden and devastating. He had no solution.