"Who were you growing up — back of the class, athlete, goody-goody?"
"I blended — unremarkable, neither here nor there."
Richard is on the table with his shirt off, his pants down, feeling more than naked — small, nervous. And there's Lusardi, tapping his fingers on a prescription pad.
"Did you ever have anxiety attacks before — would you like to have something for them?"
"Is that what this is — anxiety?"
"To some degree, sure. You're mortal, you've failed, you're not the person you wanted to become, your mother doesn't love you, your father doesn't know who you are, everyone has it better than you."
"It's not like I'm a loser. I did something. I made money. I made enough money to make a lot of people happy. In fact, I've probably made more money than my brother."
Lusardi feigns shock in an exaggerated way. "And now that you've done that — what? It sounds like you finished that part of things a while ago."
"I'm uncomfortable," Richard confesses, putting his shirt back on.
"Climb a wall."
"What?"
"You have hit a wall, now climb it — literally." Lusardi opens his Palm Pilot, looks something up, and writes down a couple of phone numbers. "They'll teach you."
"Very funny."
"I'm a hundred percent serious. Make the mental physical, and the physical mental, and things will improve. I can't make you feel better. It's not within my power."
"If I were your relative, what would you tell me?"
"I would tell you that you need to do something — I would tell you to try everything. You need to be brought back to life. Don't even wait until tomorrow, begin again right now, begin again every moment. Do you believe in anything?"
"I don't know," Richard says.
"Do you pray?" Lusardi asks, and Richard says nothing. "Think about it." Lusardi hands him the piece of paper with the numbers of rock-climbing schools and leaves the room.
The sadness Richard feels is so deep, so whole, it is as though he himself is sadness — that's what he held on to, that's what he kept for himself. He feels his failings, each like a claw digging in. He feels the limits of his personality, of his fear, of his ability to know himself, to know what he already knows.
And his butt is sore; the soreness seeps through his bones. Maybe he does have cancer, maybe he should let them biopsy his nut, but at the moment he's had enough.
As he leaves, the receptionist calls after him: "Don't forget, you've been validated. Have a nice day."
He wants to turn around and correct her, he wants to say "violated," he wants to say, "I'm a dead man, dead men don't have nice days." He wants to say something.
"Do you need a follow-up?" she asks.
"I'll call," Richard says.
WHEN HE gets home, Cecelia is standing in the driveway, behind a rope of yellow plastic CRIME SCENE tape.
"We're not allowed in."
"It's our house."
"There's a man in there who told me to go outside."
"That's crazy." Richard walks into the house.
"Sorry, sir, you'll have to stay outside."
"Who are you?"
"One of the day men," he says, like it's a 1960s singing group, The Day Men, like The Highwaymen, and The Journeymen.
"It's my house."
"The first thing I'm going to have you do is take your car out of the garage."
"Is this a hijacking, are you holding us hostage? No one said you could come in."
"Your garage is the closest thing to the hill; it could go in at any moment, and that looks like a very heavy car."
Richard goes outside, pulls the car out of the garage, parks at the curb, and goes back into the house.
"I feel better now," the man says. "A lot of cars go over the edge. Sorry about the CRIME SCENE tape. I didn't mean to scare you, but I ran out of CAUTION tape and had to take what I could get. Look, it's your house, I can't stop you from being in it, but I can tell you that it's not over yet. I was just stopping by to check. It's not like I have nothing better to do: with all the rain, I'm sure I've got some mud slides. By the way, I like your pictures. I thought they only had paintings like that in museums. Guess I was wrong."
Cecelia comes into the house while the man is still talking.
"What I'm trying to tell you is that it's time for you to go." And with that, the man leaves.
Cecelia starts to pack. She takes out her vacuum, her mop and bucket and fills the bucket with her favorite supplies, as though they can't be replaced — her rubber gloves and her extra pair of work shoes.
Richard picks up the phone and calls the Four Seasons. "I was hoping to make a last-minute reservation," he says. "The name is Novak. Arriving in about an hour and staying, well, I'm not sure, a few days, maybe a week."
"The usual suite?"
"That would be fine." He knows what they're getting at — they think he is his ex-wife's assistant. It's fine, he'll get good service and they'll keep an eye out, waiting for her to show up.
"Bill it to the company?"
"Let me give you another card — personal."
When the ex-wife comes to L.A., she's usually too busy to see him. They always make a plan; 90 percent of the time she cancels before she even arrives, and the other 10 percent she cancels at the last minute — but she always calls.
Richard begins going through the house, rushing in a progressive panic, taking things he decides he can't live without: his laptop, and his flat-screen monitor, his cordless mouse, the bag that he started packing last night. He stuffs a few more things into the bag: a tie — just in case — a sport jacket — for the same unknown reason — a better pair of shoes.
Cecelia has her head in the refrigerator, pulling out the perishables, pulling out his food for the week, packing it in ice. She drops something — the salmon that is supposed to be for dinner tonight — it lands on the floor and rolls. It rolls across the floor, rolls downhill, rolls flipping over and over, like it is swimming downstream. There is no reason why the salmon should be rolling except that the house, which was previously on an even plane, is now off kilter.
Cecelia and Richard watch the salmon roll over and over all the way across the floor, until it gets stuck on the leg of a chair. While they are watching, the phone rings — Cecelia picks it up and hands it to Richard. "It's for you," she says without saying hello.
"Was that your wife?"
"My housekeeper."
The crying woman is on the phone; she sounds terrible.
"What happened, did something happen? You sound horrible."
"I was thinking of taking you up on your offer, if only for a little bit."
"My house is falling down. It's a disaster. Did you see the thing about the flying horse on TV? That was me, my house, it's falling into a sinkhole."
"Does that mean I can't come over?"
He pauses. "No, of course not," he says. "It just means that you probably shouldn't come here. I'm packing up and going to the Four Seasons; do you want to meet me there?"
She doesn't say anything for a minute. "I'll meet you in the lobby," she says.
"Give me an hour." He hangs up.
"You really are something," Cecelia says. "Phone calls from women and everything, almost like a human being. Do you want me to go down there with you and get you set up?"
"I'll be fine."
"Now, you know, I can't make your breakfast or clean up after you at a hotel, they have their own people."
"I know."
Richard realizes that he has no idea how Cecelia gets to and from work: she just appears and disappears.
"Are you all right to get yourself home, do you want a ride somewhere?"
"Oh, I'm not going home. I'm going to enjoy myself. Maybe I'll go shopping, maybe I'll go down to the Farmers Market and get myself a lemon-meringue pie."