Heat?
“Don’t feel any.”
See that blue-eyed kid in the Dodgers jersey?
“No. You want this or you want to talk all fuckin’ day?”
Not for me to touch. See the Bongo Man down at Main Beach. He’ll instruct. If you pass the boy in the Dodgers jersey, could you bathe him for me, get out the dirt in all his secret little places?
“Have your own fun.”
Oodles of cuddles, Mal.
I heard the rapid-fire chatter of a camera motor drive as I turned away. Never saw the camera. Never saw him.
I sat on a picnic bench in the shade of the eucalyptus trees at Laguna’s Main Beach. I listened to the Bongo Man working a pair of waist-high drums, bit-a-bit-a-DUM, bit-a-DUM, bit-a-DUM. He was a pale white guy — early twenties, probably — with tan dreadlocks down to the middle of his back and beads braided into the locks and a red tie-dyed shirt with an orange sun on the chest. He had his back to the blue Pacific, of course. Instead, he faced through sunglasses the little playground, where he could watch the boys and girls on the bars and swings and slides, watch them naked in the outdoor shower stalls where Mommy and Daddy rinsed them off before trekking back to the car... Bit-a-bit-a-DUM, bit-a-DUM, bit-a-DUM...
Where do they get these fake Rastas, anyway? He’d set out a glass jar on the boardwalk in front of him for tips. There were a couple of dollars in it — seed money, I guessed — but that was about it.
An old man in a straw hat stopped and smiled at me. He was well dressed: blue oxford cloth shirt, tan trousers, loafers. He had a camera hung around his neck by a strap. I could see the little rods of sunlight that came through the straw mesh and dappled his face. His cheeks were abundant with gin blossoms and his eager blue eyes were outlined in watery pink. His teeth were yellow.
“Fine day, isn’t it?”
“For what?”
“Just being alive. Mal, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Cleveland, friend of Shroud.”
“Lucky him.”
“Guess you might want to take a stroll?”
“Whatever’s needed.”
I headed down the boardwalk beside him. He couldn’t take his eyes off the playground. I studied him and saw that the clothes that had looked so crisp and conservative at first were in fact stained and dirty. He was like Moulton Creek — kind of presentable until you looked harder. A girl and her puppy and mom came toward us and Cleveland knelt down to pet the dog. He smiled up at the mom and told the girl he used to have one like that when he was a boy and it was his favorite one ever. Called him Noggin, because his head was so cute. He stood and crossed his arms paternally, looking down on them. I knelt and pet the dog, too, always a sucker for puppies. Cleveland took my picture with the dog and the girl.
“You two have a wonderful day,” he said.
“Thanks,” said the girl.
“We will,” said the mom. She looked at the old man fondly, and me a little guardedly, then put her hand on her daughter’s back and guided her down the walk.
“That’s a lovely age,” he said.
“Um-hm.”
“Going live, eh?”
“I’d like to pay up and get the hell out of here, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, I don’t touch it. Just be on your way down the sand now. When you get to the wall with the peace signs on it, set your treasure on the rock that looks like an engorged member. You can’t miss it. I call it cock rock. Keep walking and don’t look back. When you get to the cement stairs, take them up to Coast Highway. Don’t look back from there, either. We’ll take care of everything else. Just a second, Mal.”
He lifted the camera and snapped a couple more shots of me.
I bumped past him rudely and jumped off the boardwalk into the sand. I had him in my mind and I’d come back for him when the time was right — a week from now, a month, a year. I’d come back for him: guaranteed, absolutely, without doubt. And I’d come back for the perv in the bushes at Moulton Creek, too. A hundred yards south I hit the wall with the peace signs, and saw the outcropping of rocks. Sure enough, one of the formations nearest the sandstone cliff looked something like a penis, if you used your imagination a little, if you had an imagination like Cleveland’s. I looked around. Some boogie boarders out over the reef. Some sunbathers south fifty yards. A boy flew a kite with a green dinosaur on it. I set the shopping bag down on cock rock and continued down the sand. When I got to the stairway leading up to PCH I took the steps three at a time and arrived on the highway just a few seconds later, with my pulse throbbing hard in my neck and my heart aching to administer justice to Bamboo Man, Bongo Man and Cleveland. I headed north two blocks, then jumped somebody’s fence and crept along to the back where his yard overlooked the water. I parted the palm fronds like an explorer and looked down at the beach.
I could see the rock but the bag was gone. No obvious suspects. Nobody at all.
So I went back out to PCH and ducked into a taco joint. I ordered up a shot and a beer to go with lunch. I ate the tacos and felt a little sick. Then I ordered up two more drinks. There. When I came out the sunlight was golden and slower and all things possessed the unique specifics assigned by the Maker in an age more graceful than ours. I watched my shoes advance below me and believed they were guided by moral feet.
I hustled back down to Main Beach but Bongo Man, Cleveland and my bag were all gone.
Melinda’s home — my ex-home — was cool inside, redolent with the smells of Mel and Penny and Moe. Moe rubbed against my leg as I stood on the hardwood floor of the living room and looked back out the front window to the lawn, where the FOR SALE had its back to me, and I wondered what had led Melinda to list the place. Money? I doubted that — she had some savings, and I had made it clear I would continue as an investor should things not work out between us. Things clearly were not, and I was temporarily without a job, but she knew I’d be good for the money if she could hold on a few months. Didn’t she? Even if the mortgage was that big a problem she could always get a roommate. No, I thought, it wasn’t that. All I could come up with was that she and Penny were too traumatized by my accusal to even stay in a home they had once shared with me. I wondered at the depth of the wound I had laid open in them — in the wound that Jordan Ishmael, to be accurate, had laid open in them — and realized that I really had no understanding of its gravity. Had he even thought it through? How could his despising me justify the pain he brought to them? It was beyond me. I did not understand. It was more than sad to see that for sale sign there, a sign that said to all passersby: this life failed, these people ruined, this house ready for the next suckers eager to try.
“I don’t know, Moe,” I mumbled.
He rolled over onto his back and wagged bis tail. My wasted bird dog, reduced to a shameless household pet. That’s what happens when you don’t hunt a hunter. I guess I couldn’t blame that on Jordan Ishmael.
I knelt and pet him for a while, thinking about the life I had once had between these walls. A woman who loved me, a girl who had come to like me, a job, a dog. And as if my sudden passion for Donna Mason was not enough to ruin all that I had had here, there were the photographs that exploded the world all around me — with Melinda and Penny and everyone else I knew in it. And that, I could and did blame on Ishmael.
By two I was back in my apartment, dealing again with I. R. Shroud.
I. R. Shroud: Reports all good. Payment received.
Maclass="underline" Don’t appreciate the Kodak moments one fucking little bit. Very disappointed by you.