Final Arrangements (11 page)

Stretch took a long pull of root beer before
eating some more of the tacos. To his credit, he didn't lick his
fingers, or chew with his mouth full.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to come
on like a pompous jerk."

"No," she said. "That's not what I meant. But
it occurred to me whenever we talk, I wind up telling you more and
more about myself but I learn nothing about you. Because you're
hiding behind your religion."

"I am?"

"Yes. You're being phony."

"How can you tell?"

"I can tell by the way you eat. I know you
want to lick your fingers and chew these tacos with your mouth
open. But because I'm here, you're putting on some kind of
show."

He nodded. "You're right."

"Then do it." Shannon took a big bite of
taco, chewed a couple of times and opened her mouth and gaped at
him."

"Whooo!" he hooted. "Now that's the way to
eat!" At which point he stuffed an entire taco into his big mouth,
crunching down contentedly and licking his fingers in the
aftermath. "Shannon--you're smiling," he said.

And she was. "I'm thoroughly enjoying
watching you be real," she said. "It's about time."

"No kidding."

"Stretch, I saw the hippo commercial. And I
understood then that you weren't making up stories."

"Thank God for the hippo."

"Amen to that."

"Hippos are associated with water," he said.
"Did you know the name hippopotamus means flying river horse?"

"So tell me, Stretch, why were you being so
phony towards me just now?"

"When you left for the airport without saying
good-bye, I thought it might have been something I'd done. So I've
been putting on my best manners. I am trying to impress you,
Shannon. To the point I'm about to burst inside."

"If you're looking for a way to reach me, you
can start by being yourself."

"Okay."

"When did you make Jesus your savior?"

"When I was 14," he said. I read a book,
Peace With God
, by Billy Graham. That's when Jesus became my
best friend."

"Tell me more."

He nodded. "I was something of a loner when I
was a kid. When Jesus came into my life, I was no longer alone. I
had my first true friend. Someone to pour out my heart to. Now, you
tell me. When did you accept Jesus?"

"When I was seven."

"Seven?"

She nodded. "I was lying on the couch reading
a children's bible. I think it must have been around Easter. I
remember my mother was sewing. That's when we were still in
Tennessee, when my Dad worked for Union Carbide in Oak Ridge. There
was snow on the ground outside, but the living room was warm and
toasty. I was reading about the crucifixion, and I started crying.
That's when Jesus entered my heart. There was no falling down, or
shouting hallelujah or anything like that. Just the simple
acceptance of a child."

"And a little child shall lead them," Stretch
said. "Nothing wrong with that. But you're not a real Tennessee
farm girl, then."

"My mother was. She grew up on 90 acres of
cows, corn and cotton near Memphis. She used to ride a horse to
school. I spent every summer on that farm with my grandmother. She
boiled her clothes in a big iron pot and lived in a house with no
electricity. They were people of the earth. With unwavering
faith."

"That's as real as it gets."

Shannon looked around. She wondered what her
grandmother would think about her present situation. There were a
great many people about, rushing along Toluca Avenue in their
upscale vehicles. The heavy square buildings across the street,
festooned with humongous billboards announcing this TV show or that
was being produced somewhere inside, lent to the scene a touch of
unreality, of which their own little tableaux, that of two
unmarried persons scarfing down chicken tacos while sitting in a
convertible Mercedes roadster, seemed equally unreal.

"It's not easy being real in a town which
openly considers itself a dream factory. Which means it specializes
in lying," she said. "But you impressed me already."

"When?"

"Earlier. When you went upstairs and came
back clutching the remains of my mother in her cardboard box. The
moment will stand out in my mind forever. And also the way you
dance when you think nobody's watching. The way you bob your head.
It was the first time I ever saw you. I'll never forget it."

"I care about you, Shannon," he said. "I'm
sorry. It's totally the wrong time and place. In fact, we're
totally the wrong two people. You're heading up the corporate
ladder and I'm stuck in the Valley with my pool cleaning business,
trying to decide if I'm called to serve God. But I have to tell
you, even though this seems wrong and impossible, I feel very
attracted to you. I guess the arranged marriage thing has fallen by
the wayside, though. It was a great idea while it lasted. Maybe I
shouldn't have gotten my hopes up."

"Stretch. When you talk like this, I have the
craziest feelings. I feel like I'm falling. Yes, like I'm falling,
and I want to reach out to you, to hold onto you."

"Shannon. You said I avoid talking about
myself. That I haven't been real. You're right. So I'll tell you
something. Even though I know the Lord, I am very lonely. I have
been all alone for the past year. Not that I haven't been around
people. But I've been very alone inside myself. I act like the big
Christian, but lately it's all an act. The truth is, I have been
praying every day like there's no tomorrow. I haven't been
connecting. I haven't been able to feel anything. It's like inside
myself, everything has gone dry. Even though I am able to help
others, I can't seem to help myself."

"Dear Lord," Shannon said. "Stretch, I ...
you shouldn't have told me. It's not fair. We only just met. And
now you've told me this terrible secret about yourself. Right at
the time I'm least emotionally able to respond."

"You're right," he said. "I'm sorry. I never
should have dumped my problem on you."

"We're out of tacos."

"The truck is still there. How many more do
you want?"

"No more. I just said it to try and change
the subject. But it's a subject we need to finish."

"I've been praying to God for an answer to my
life," he said. "And this morning, when I least expected it, I
turned around ... and there you were. And something inside me said,
This is it!"

His words landed inside her like tiny
explosions. "What do you mean, This is it?"

He looked helplessly around, nonplused, as
though hoping for some source of rescue, and finding none, resorted
to the primal comfort and security of sipping his root beer. The
straw hit air and there was a loud slurping sound.

"Sorry," he said.

"Don't change the subject," she said. "You
just said you saw me and a voice told you This is it. I want you to
explain."

He looked at her. "I'm making a total fool of
myself," he said. "So why don't we drop it."

"No!"

He swallowed and said, in a raspy voice,
"Something inside me told me when I saw you, you were for me. And I
felt ... way deep down ... it was true. I can't shake the feeling,
and it's killing me, because the whole thing is so impossible. I'm
probably supposed to be making tracks to seminary, and now here you
are, and my whole insides are turned upside down. There! I've told
you! Satisfied?"

"No. What exactly is it about me you think is
so great?"

"Your eyes. Your hair. Your mouth. The sound
of your voice. The way you carry yourself. And the fact I feel like
there's a little history, since I knew your father, however
briefly. The way your father believed we would be good together. I
don't know how to explain it. I feel connected to you. And the
arranged marriage thing, I think I was just playing along with the
idea, you know, to please your dad, and my parents. I really didn't
think you'd go for it."

"But it was planned for this Saturday."

"That was a fleece. Setting the date like
that. I knew there was no guarantee God would honor that date. I
figured it highly likely you'd think the idea was ridiculous. Or
that we'd hate each other the minute we met. I never dared believe
fully it was real. I think I might have been living out a fantasy.
But now that I've met you, and there's the merest whisper of chance
it might be coming true, the whole thing is so huge I can't even
breathe when I think about it."

She sat there without speaking for what
seemed a very long time. Images came and went. Images of Stretch
and her father playing chess. Images of General Kremsky, like a
movie-star grandfather, with his dentist-perfect teeth and crown of
silver white hair, laughing at a joke she told. Images of her
former boss Bob Archer, on her first day of work, humiliating her
in front of the entire office by sending her downstairs for coffee.
Making her add the sugar and cream. Images of herself redecorating
her new office where Bob Archer used to hold court. Images of Phil,
returning to a smoke-filled AA room, a hangdog look on his face.
Images of herself and Stretch Murphy at a Wednesday night service,
singing their hearts out and praising God in loud, joyful voices.
Images of wedding rings on their fingers. Images of herself in her
first maternity dress.

"I'm just like you, Stretch," she said. "I'm
very lonely inside. Do you know how I met General Kremsky? It was
because one Sunday afternoon, shortly after I'd moved to Pacific
Heights, I was so lonely I was crawling the walls, so I took the
Muni over to Golden Gate Park. I saw this old man with white hair
sitting by himself with a chess board over near the rose garden. He
reminded me of my dad, so I said hello. He invited me to sit down,
and we began to talk. We played a game of chess. We began meeting
regularly after that. I used to take him a nice home-cooked lunch.
Later, unbeknownst to me, he looked into my background and launched
my career."

"You met a world billionaire in the park,"
Stretch said. "And cooked him lunch."

"Yes. And it has changed my entire life.
Before I met General Kremsky, and won his trust, I was just another
fledgling finance world wanna-be. Just another gopher for the big
shots. I was fetching their coffee and crunching their numbers in
exchange for being allowed to see how the game was played."

"But God had other plans. You showed
Christian charity to an old man. You treated him as a human being
even though he was a stranger. Now you're on your way to becoming a
superstar."

"Yes."

"Are you still lonely?"

"Yes. Yes, Stretch. I am. I've been mostly
all alone for the past couple of years."

"And suddenly, your dad dies and we're
sitting here, eating tacos and having a moment."

"An L.A. moment," she said. "True confessions
in Los Angeles. The City of dreamers. Which makes me wonder. This
town is full of fantasies. Are we just projecting something onto
each other? We must be. I hardly know you. Correction. I don't know
you. I don't know anything about you. I don't know where you live,
or who your parents are. Nothing. I don't know if you've ever been
married, or what.

"Do you want to know those things?"

"Yes. No. I don't know. I don't know anything
right now. I only know you're pretty good at one judo move, and you
make funny commercials. And for some reason, I'm leaning on you.
Because I don't have the courage to go to Forest Lawn by myself.
Because my brother was supposed to be taking care of me and he
isn't because he's sleeping off a hangover. So I'm using you. Is it
because I need a big brother? Or is there something more, like you
say, dropping in on us right out of the blue? What are we doing,
Stretch?"

"We're being moved in a direction," he said.
"Don't you see? We're doing what people have been doing on this
planet for the last 6,000 years. We're seeing each other for the
first time. We're waking up from our sleep, and here I am and there
you are and we're seeing each other and we're saying, Oh! There you
are! I didn't know I was looking for you, but now I see you, I know
I was! It's what I've been trying to tell you. When I saw you for
the first time this morning, it was like I had first awakened and
there you were."

"Game, set, and match. Okay. We're going to
Forest Lawn. We're going to make those final arrangements. And then
we're going to do all the other things that have to be done when
somebody dies. There'll be a finding of the will, and a reading of
it, and a sifting through all the junk Dad has piled up in his
house. And somewhere in the middle of all that, we're going to
attend a Wednesday night church service, and you're going to prove
to me you're for real. You're going to introduce me to your
parents, and show me where you live, and all that other stuff we
humans have been doing for the past 6,000 years."

Chapter 8

Stretch turned the key. For all its power,
the roadster started and ran almost noiselessly. They pulled onto
Toluca Avenue and headed east on Riverside, driving without
talking, the sun shining hard on their backs. Everything around
them was brown. The San Bernardino mountains, the smog--everything.
Until they came to Forest Lawn. It was green. Gated, but open, and
welcoming, an oasis in the middle of the city, not some overgrown
half-acre on the outskirts of a small town nobody ever heard of.
This was a show-stopping, tree-shaded park where the people of L.A.
buried their dead with their feet facing to the east, and buried
them in the hope that the show to come would be bigger and better
than anything thus far seen in this life. In a city of dreams,
where hope for something bigger and better never died, there was,
within that expectation itself, enough hope resident in the
people's hearts to carry the entire rest of the world straight into
Heaven.

They parked near the mortuary and got out.
Shannon looked around at the stately buildings, the meticulous
attention to detail, the plantings of various flowers, shrubs and
vines. She smelled fresh cut grass, and enjoyed the sound of a
gentle breeze playing with the waters of a massive fountain reigned
over by slick-stoned nyads from another era. The frenzy of Los
Angeles seemed far away, as though they'd traveled to some other
place in space and time.