A World the Color of Salt (10 page)

Six months after the shooting incident, Bill died, and the heart went out of me for toughness. That kind of toughness, anyway. I don't want to be pushing and shoving anybody. I don't want to use violence. Somebody has to sometime. But not me.

And so when I saw Raymond needling his way through the crowd, raising the drinks up over his head, I thought, Good for you, Raymond, that you did that kind thing, getting us those drinks like a waiter. Good for you being here, and good for you trying to include me in police work, letting us in on the news of the Dugghh-dales. Feeling gushy, as I always do when I drink. Wanting more to drink, Raymond not stealing any, so I could continue feeling warm and lovey instead of sad and lonely. Then Raymond said, “Guess who's here?”

“Not Joe Sanders.”

“Your bud, Billy Katchaturian.”

“Oh, Billy's not so bad,” I said. “I'm a touch critical at times. He does his job.”

“You must be drunk,” Raymond said. “Trudy's talking to him. She said come say hi, she's got something to tell you.”

“About the Dwyer case?”

“I don't know. Just something.”

It was a wonder he knew what he was answering at all, head cocked so he could look Patricia in her pretty, dimpled face. I left Patricia in his good hands and forged my way through to the kitchen, where I could see Dollie Anderson holding a plateful of deviled eggs at a precarious angle, talking to someone
in earnest. Throughout the evening, I'd see Bob or Dollie and I'd remember that they were first friends of Joe S. until a falling out. And I was selfishly sorry, because I missed Joe. I wanted him so to be there. Sometimes it seems like you can wish somebody at a place hard enough, it will really happen. But not tonight. Joe wasn't coming tonight. Not to Bob's. Bob used to work at the lab. We all used to party at his house, with its long pool, hot tub, huge patio. Now he's a private investigator, doing very well despite dozens of PIs in Orange County. Dollie works at the Orange County Law Library—a wonderful place, she says, because it's funded by everyone, via court filing fees, and therefore more directly belongs to everyone. She could stump for it. Joe would say at least he missed
her
. He never told me what the problem was, but I heard from others that he suspected Bob of doing a favor for someone at a high level in the DA's office by altering evidence on a blood-alcohol test involving a fatality. A terrible breach. I wish it were impossible to be true, but I know it is not. All human beings, as Joe will tell you himself, are flawed, and some are more flawed than others. But this night I didn't know the story to be true, and I gave the Andersons the benefit of the doubt, something which Joe did with most people. He was a hard guy to understand sometimes.

I looked in the dining room. Trudy wasn't there. I pushed on into the family room. There was Billy, sipping wine and staring at a painting of blue whales on the wall.

“Hello, Billy. I hear Trude's here. Seen her?”

“I'm all you'll ever need, doll.” He stood as close as he could get without me giving ground. I couldn't help but laugh.

I had to tip my head up to say it, but I did: “Billy, grow the fuck up.”

“Ow.”

“Well, really,” I said, but I smiled.

I started away when he called me back. He said, “Trudy says Joe told her something. You want to know what?”

“I'll ask Trudy, thanks.”

He sauntered over. I moved off.

I couldn't find her. I went back to where Patricia and Ray were, on the way putting down my margarita glass and picking
up somebody else's half-finished wine abandoned on a side table. My nose didn't tingle yet.

Music started playing out on the patio. I recognized the song, a Don Henley, remembered that I liked his sexy voice. Raymond was swinging his shoulders. I knew he was about to ask Patricia to dance. He asked me instead. Maybe shy. Him. “Not yet, Raymond,” I said.

“Aren't you a little bit drunk yet, Smokey, my pal?”

Patricia looked at me and said, “Smokey? Where'd that come from?”

Raymond loved this. “You mean you don't know about her? Well, let me tell you . . . no, Smokey, you tell her. You're holding out on your friend.”

“What—tell me,” Patricia said.

“Oh, it's nothing. Raymond's got a weird sense of humor.” Then to Raymond I said, “Dance with her. Keep you out of trouble.”

A smile crossed his face. As they moved out onto the floor, Ray in his red knit shirt that stretched nicely over his pecs, the pants that fit tight over perfect buns, I thought, I really am a lucky woman, to have friends like this, and realized I was out of liquor.

Getting drunk's a fun thing to do. You're not supposed to say that, not supposed to like it. I wish I didn't; I'd keep my nose cleaner. But at Bob and Dollie's party, they had good booze and a new CD player, and I was long overdue. After all, Raymond said I needed a party. Thing was, it took only those two and a half drinks to souse me up good, and I wound up back in the dark end of the patio, dancing with Billy K.

Strange how much better some people look when you're drunk. He smelled nice and felt good. In the fast numbers he found chances to hold me too tight and I should have known better. On the first slow song—an old Carly Simon, her sweet, plaintive voice singing about the boys in the trees—he pulled me into him, and I was amazed and somehow relieved at how good it felt, body-to-body. Held me so he read me, both of us anticipating the next movement almost like a challenge, who could move least and yet know. I shut my eyes and just enjoyed
the sensation of a warm and living body next to mine, he anticipating me, me anticipating him, the music disengaging us from the world. Maybe I was wrong about Billy. Give him the benefit of the doubt.

Another fast dance, and now I was smiling at Billy. Having a good time, not trying to second-guess. I saw Patricia and Raymond dancing too, Patricia looking a little awkward dancing with someone so much shorter, but happy. When I caught her eye, she made Raymond ease over.

She leaned out toward me and said, “Hi, Smokey-y-y,” drawing out the name. “You were holding out on me, you stinker.”

“Oh, please,” I said.

Billy was taking this all in, grinning at me too. The smile he smiled then was not one I liked. But it was a party, and these were my friends and colleagues, and what the hell, who needs secrets?

I laughed and said, “Goddamn it, Raymond, you told!”

Billy pulled me close and I felt how hot his body was. He put his damp face to mine, and left his cheek there. He said, “I'd like to see how you got your name sometime.”

“Hmph, forget it.”

“You could show me,” he said. He eased me into him, groin-to-groin like magnets, and though I pulled away I felt lightheaded. His leg was where it shouldn't be, and my arm of its own accord crept higher around his neck. I was drunk, I was tired, I wanted to be with Joe. Weak, and, yes, lonely. And I went home—goddamn me—with Billy The Fuck Katchaturian.

I was still lit when Ray and Patricia drove by Billy's at two
A
.
M
. and Raymond came up to the door and rang the bell, asking if I was all right. Billy and I hadn't even made it to the bedroom. We'd done it on the living-room floor with two giant pillows for help and his white, big-eyed cat watching from the end table. I had most of my clothes on when we fell asleep.

When Ray came to get me, I said, “Bless you, Raymond,” and when I held up my hand for him to pull me up, I said, “Bless you, and as my grandma said, who was from Missouri, good on your ol' head.” Then, “I'm drunk, Raymond,” and I began to cry.

“I know you are, Smokey.”

Then I saw Patricia. She looked like a Barbie doll. I felt very sad. I said, “Hi, Patricia. Can we go home?”

Billy tried to argue with Ray, then gave up and was saying something to me, the words like oatmeal on the airwaves. I kept telling Patricia she was
so
pretty, and how glad I was she became my friend. It was the first time I saw a worried look on her face. The first time she didn't end a sentence with a giggle.

She said, “We're taking you home, Samantha,” and glared at Billy K.

So much for Fridays. The whole weekend was mine to worry about how I was going to deal with things post–Billy Katchaturian: rumor control, Billy himself, and the coursing fear of contamination. Casual anything doesn't mean what it used to. In any case, it was an utterly stupid thing to do.

I thought about going back to bed and awaking with a new nightmare. Instead, I got in the shower and stayed long past the limit imposed by my raised awareness about water shortages. The steam made my brain feel like a pea in weak Jell-O. I turned off the water and forced my legs to work. Center tilted off for me though; the edge of a hangover dizzied me whenever I made a move, and I wondered if I'd better stay near the utilitarian ceramic. I toweled myself off and sat down on the bed for a moment. Maybe I'd just go into the office. Trudy might've left a message on my desk. What could she have wanted to tell me? If Firearms or Fibers or Prints came up with something, they'd report it to Joe first, who'd report it to Svoboda, which would mean I could call him, but I didn't think results would be in yet. Unless it's an officer-involved shooting, God forbid, the cases get in line. It can take weeks to get anything back.

I downed aspirin and microwaved coffee while I fumbled through the last two days' mail. There was the hospital bill in a piss-yellow envelope. I couldn't deal with that. There was a magazine renewal, two freebie newspapers, junk, junk, junk, and my brother's peculiar loops on a cheap envelope whose glue didn't stick. I didn't want to read his letter, but I opened it to the first fold. My brother is a nag: I don't keep in contact
with our parents enough. They worry. A phone call once a month wouldn't hurt. But he's eleven years older and had a different relationship with them than I did. We could easily have had different parents altogether, and one day Nathan could have just come up to my restaurant table and said, Hi, I'm Nathan Montiel and I think for the hell of it I'll be your brother.

For a living he does some invisible thing with play money in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He supports more ex-wives than I can keep track of, along with this year's future ex, who reminds me of an unfunny Lily Tomlin. Her charm is that she brings to the union an inherited and lucrative construction business. You'd think with all his money he wouldn't hand-write me letters, but I guess he assumes I'll be more likely to read them if they are in his own inimitable hand. “Sammi,” this one started out—no Dear—“I'll be in California December 23. We can get together.” No “Would you
like
to get together?” or “Do you have
time
to get together, and, by the way, how are you doing?” I turned it over, telling myself I'd read it later.

I didn't really want to go into the office, but I couldn't settle down. Get a grip, I told myself, and just then my head decided it definitely needed to be on a pillow. The pale green one on the couch looked good. Lying there, I decided I'd think about something else for a moment, no bad stuff. That lasted about two seconds.

I got back up and opened the drapes and slid the glass door open too. As I looked across the bay, I tried to remember there's another whole world out there, one not independent of human conflicts certainly, but at least placidly unaware, though there are frauds and thieves among the birdlife too—the starlings, or the brown-headed cowbird that lays its eggs in the nests of others and forces surrogate parenting.

The sun was casting an all-over yellow light that took the edge off objects. Already the temperature was eighty on the small thermometer tacked to the window frame. I reached behind an easy chair for my field glasses, which rested on the floor, then stepped out on the balcony, my big red towel still wrapped around me.

I sat on the painted stool I keep out there, and looked over the bay. Some days seven-foot tides cut in from the Pacific,
and in a few hours they can drop to almost nothing, exposing hundreds of acres of mud and marsh. Through the lenses, I watched the shore birds probing the glaze with their scythe-shaped bills.

Every few minutes, a gashawk noses across the blue—that's environmentalist talk for
airplane
. Because of noise-abatement requirements, pilots must lift off from the airport “high-nose,” cut the engines to the minimum to stay aloft, and then make a complicated turn to cross over Back Bay so they won't wake the sleeping rich in Newport or disturb the honkers. It's a disaster waiting to happen; but, for me at least, the eerie floating planes in that vacuum are just as pretty as birds, in a way.

I've come to know more about birds and ducks than I ever thought I would, living by the bay. Waterfowl are drawn from their flyways by the freshwater runoff from Santiago Peak and Modjeska, which form the nearly six-thousand-foot Saddleback Mountains. Within the mix of fresh and saltwater, sea creatures gather. Grebes and gulls. Surf scoters—also called “skunk heads” because of their black-and-white coloring; they feed off shellfish and grunt while they do it. Pintail ducks, their hind ends struck upright out of the water for as long as thirty seconds while shopping in the dregs. I've seen canvasbacks, shovelheads, mallards, ruddies, teals, widgeons, and buffleheads all in the same inlet, and a black-and-white duck with a red eyepatch I haven't identified yet. I can tell a snowy egret from a cattle by its yellow slippers, and an adolescent gull from a grown one, I think. Well, maybe not. And there are godwits and willets and the beautiful white avocet with black-tipped wings and an upward-curving bill; and underneath the water there are dozens of mollusks and creepy-crawlies in this wondrous living laboratory.