Further Out Than You Thought (29 page)

Fifi stuck her head out the window. The salt air blew her long hair back, flattening her face so she was all eyes, black nose, and lips. She looked like a white seal. She stayed there, blinking against the wind, and Gwen thought she saw her smile. Valiant was still out. “He lives over here,” Leo said, and she took the first exit and drove up a hill.

Leo hugged his knees to his chest. “Why didn't you tell me? You could have, you know?”

“Tell you?”

“About your mom. You told him but you couldn't tell me?”

“You were sleeping.”

“Or trying to.” His look was petulant. Sad eyes, the tight jaw. “You can tell me things, Gwen. I'm here for you.”

She wanted to believe him. It was why she had stayed with him, she knew—because, despite his erratic tendencies, his eccentricities, he was steadfast. So why hadn't she told him the truth?

He turned from her. She watched the road. What was she guilty of? Everyone has a mask.
A face to meet the faces that you meet.
It was timing, she told herself. She was coming clean with the world now—showing her true face. She wanted to explain, but found she couldn't—couldn't put this shift into words. Words were flimsy, surface reflections, the world as one saw it in still water, marred by the slightest wind. And she was deep beneath the water in her own slow, thick world. Her words would come out in burbles not even she could understand.

The road traced the edge of a cliff; it went on and on. “The long and winding road, huh?” she said, talking against the silence.

Valiant gasped and sat up. He blinked open his eyes. “Fuck.” He looked out the window. “Jesus, we're here. I was dreaming. We were on a ride, in a car-thing, you know, on a track.”

“A roller coaster?” Leo said.

“Only it went just in a circle. We wanted to get off and they wouldn't stop it. The guy who ran it was laughing and it went faster and faster, until it launched us, the three of us in the car, and the car was a magic carpet and we could go anywhere. We were off the track.”

“Where'd we go?” Gwen asked.

“We didn't get that far,” he said, laughing, and then coughing too long. “We each wanted to go different places, I think. But it was okay. We had all the time we needed.”

His house was the last on a cul-de-sac, and it looked out over a canyon. She imagined that flaming car from Valiant's youth screaming down the hill and soaring into the canyon, imagined the fire spreading for miles. All that light and heat and power. A god—or a goddess—unleashed. She pulled to the curb and parked the car.

“That's my room,” Valiant said, pointing to an upstairs window with a royal blue curtain half drawn across it. He hadn't always been obsessed with darkness, then. He'd been just a boy once, one of the few black boys in San Clemente. Baseball and bubblegum. Maybe even girls? He'd said he'd tried them for a while, but it was hard to picture.

They got out of the car. Fifi found a spot in the middle of the yard and peed. Valiant rang the bell and they all waited in the cool, suburban morning. A robin hopped along a fence. Overhead, a flock of gulls circled. One could see the ocean from here, she supposed, if it weren't for the low clouds.

A woman opened the door. She was dark-skinned, short and pear-shaped, wearing a bright, floral housedress. Her salt-and-pepper hair was in rollers under a hot pink scarf. She lit up when she saw Valiant, and her eyes filled with tears.
“Meu Angelo, meu bebe,”
she said. “I was worried. I've been calling, didn't you get my calls?” She hugged him, coming up not quite to his shoulders. He picked her up and squeezed her. She turned her head, Gwen thought, away from his smell—cigarettes, tequila, and vomit, days of not showering. They all had to stink. They'd probably grown accustomed to it.

“Maria, I want you to meet Gwen. Gwen, Maria.”

Gwen put her hand out, and disregarding it Maria pulled her to her pillowy chest. She smelled of dryer sheets, of powder and perfume. She let Gwen go and took Leo into her arms. “
Meu caro,
it's been so long.” She pulled back and looked him over. “What are those,” she said, “knickers?”

“Part of a costume,” Leo said, blushing.

“Theater?”

“Something like that.”

“Maria,” Valiant said. “I was hoping to stay, for just a while. A few days.”

“
Naturalmente,
Angelo, you'll stay. You take a hot bath, I wash those clothes. You have a bag in the car?”

Valiant shook his head. “Just Mary,” he said, and Leo carried her over and set her on the stoop. “For you,” Valiant said.

His mother beamed and hugged him to her again. “You stay as long as you like. I'm making coxinha.”

“And pão de queijo?” Valiant said. Gwen thought he might jump up and down.

“Come inside,” she said to Gwen and Leo. “You want some cookies, tea?”

“No thank you, Mrs. Valente. We should get going,” Leo said.

“All right, love. It's good to see you.” She turned to Gwen, held her in her gaze. “Thank you, dear.”

“For what?”

“For bringing my boy home.” Her eyes brimming again, she turned and went into the house.

The three of them stood in the quiet, as if no one were willing to break it.

“Well,” said the Count at last. “I guess this is it.”

“What are you talking about? You're coming back,” Leo said.

The Count nodded and tried to smile. He gave Leo a big-hearted hug. And somehow she knew this was it. The last time she would see him.

“It's been fun,” he said.

“Shhh,” Gwen quieted him. It was too much. All of it. She wasn't ready. “We have time,” she said, as if saying the words would make them real. Looking out, toward the ocean at the low-hung layer of clouds, her chest felt heavy. She should have been there more for him. He was right—she'd been selfish. She turned so he couldn't see her tears.

He put his arm around her, bent to her height, and rested his head on her shoulder. “Hey, kid. It's okay. You two will make amazing parents. You will. Think of what a spiffy job you've done taking care of me.” He gave her a squeeze and whispered into her ear. “My camera's in the car. I want you to have it. Develop the film and send me copies.” Unable to speak, she nodded.

Like the Count that he was, he took a step back, bowed, and kissed her on both cheeks. “Your baby, girl or boy, will be a knockout.” He put a finger under her chin and lifted it. “Those Grace Kelly cheekbones. You should have been—”

“A movie star?” He nodded. “I don't know,” she said. “I think it's better this way.”

She wanted to give him something. A present. “Someday,” she said. “I'll write a novel, about us. The three of us.”

“All right,” he said, smiling for real now. “That sounds all right. But promise me one thing.”

“Anything.”

“It has to have pooping in it. No one ever poops in novels.”

They all looked at Fifi, on the side of the yard, pooping on the pansies.

THE CAR FELT hollow without him. She pulled away slowly. They were heading back down the road, toward the ocean. The street curved, but just before the house was out of sight, she stopped. She could see, in her rearview mirror, the stooped figure of Angelo Valente. He was leaning on the railing as he climbed the few steps to his front door. She wanted him to look toward them and wave, but he didn't.

She watched the door close behind him, and she drove down the hill.

Leo reached under his seat and pulled out a small plastic baggie. “Ready for another trip?” he said. “An uncharted waters sort of trip?” He shook the baggie and the shriveled brown pieces danced inside it.

She looked at the bag and then at him. “Not really.”

“Really.” He was grinning like the Cheshire cat, as if he were already lit. He opened the bag and sniffed. “Smells innocuous enough.”

“You brought that into Mexico? What were you thinking? Or do you think?” She tightened her grip on the wheel, faced the road because she sure as hell didn't want to look at him.

“It isn't like it's cocaine. They're mushrooms, for Christ's sake. They're a vegetable. Or else a fungus. Is a fungus a vegetable? My point is, we might have been cooking a risotto for all the border patrol knew.”

He was turning a piece in his fingers. “Amazing how inedible this looks,” he said and popped it in his mouth.

“You remembered, didn't you, at the border. You'd forgotten about them.” She was putting it together—his sudden look of terror and the fact of the mushrooms. And she'd been worried for Fifi. She was glad she hadn't known.

“Oh, God, I'd forgotten.” He was chewing, chewing, his mouth puckering and his eyes watering. “What do we have to drink?”

“Here.” She reached behind his seat and handed him her last gallon jug of water, half full.

“Will wonders never cease,” he said and washed the mushrooms down. He'd long ago learned not to touch her water, learned firsthand that the goddess could be fierce. Still, he had enjoyed the comment. She snatched the water from his hands.

He took his time chewing another few pieces, as if he were
trying
to taste them. He swallowed them dry. “They really do taste like shit,” he said, beaming, and he dropped the baggie in her lap. “For you, my dear.”

“Are you serious?”

“Jesus, Gwen. Since when did you turn prude?”

She stopped the car in the middle of the empty, winding road. She looked at him.

His face was blank. “What?”

“Really, Leo?” she said. And then it dawned on him.

“So you're pregnant. God, Gwen. What'd you think, I forgot? It's not like it changes anything. Think of all the hippies that dropped acid pregnant. Their babies were fine. You yourself were born in the Summer of Love.”

A car behind her screamed to a stop, honked. She drove on.

“That doesn't mean my mom did drugs.”

“This is just mushrooms. It's a—”

“A fungus, I know. A fungus from a cow pie. Lovely.” She put the baggie of mushrooms in her purse.

She turned down the main drag to the ocean. “Make a left here,” he said. “And a right. We can park at the end of my old street. The beach access is free.”

They drove down a row of apartments that looked like they belonged to the seventies. At a beige duplex, he told her to stop. She pulled over, yanked the parking brake up. It was the apartment he'd grown up in, he said, where his mom still lived.

“Why haven't I been here?” Gwen had met his mom before, but it was at the Italian deli down the street. She'd loaded Leo up with parmigiana and salami, olives and pasta, so much food they'd lived off it for a month.

“It's small,” he said. “Two bedrooms. Brown shag carpet wall to wall. I didn't think you'd want to see it.”

“She needs to look at your cut. Let's go up.” She killed the engine and opened the door and—before she could stop her—Fifi jumped from the car and bolted toward the apartment. Leo caught her at the bottom of the stairs. Holding her tight, he got in the car with her.

“Start the engine, will you?”

“No.” Gwen stepped from the car and crossed the lawn. She shouted back at him, “You need antiseptic, something. You said she was a nurse.”

“She is.”

“Well—”

“No.” Jutting out his jaw, he was a toddler embracing the word. “No. I told her I'd be on the news, and I went to Tijuana instead. My son the bum, she'll say.” He laughed it off. “And anyway, I can feel the mushrooms. The world is blooming! Come on, Gwendy, let's go to the beach.”

“It's
your
arm,” she said, and got in the car and started the engine.

Looking back at the apartment, she pictured his mother alone in her apartment, glued to her TV, waiting to glimpse her son. “I bet she'd just be happy you're alive,” she said, and released the parking brake. She drove to the end of the street and parked the car in a cul-de-sac in front of a little Spanish-style church.

Without a word of explanation, Leo was out and running down the stairs to the beach. She pulled a sweater, a sundress, and a bikini from her suitcase and did a quick car-change. She tucked her notebook into her purse, put Fifi on her leash, and locked the doors.

She had the feeling she was in a strange land. The sea was misty and still, and descending the cement stairs was like walking through a series of veils. She could make out the faintest notion of the pier through the mist, and as she turned down the sidewalk she saw, taking shape further on, the little seaside shops—a bikini/T-shirt shop, Pizza By the Slice, a mini-market, and a café with a wooden sign that said
ESPRESSO
hanging from the awning. She was saved.

There were round tables for two on the sidewalk and she sat at one alone. Leo had vanished into the fog. She might as well enjoy her coffee; after all there was nowhere she had to be.

She sat in the white, wet light, thinking of the mushrooms in her purse and the baby inside her. Things inside things. Hidden. The town was hidden, the ocean, too. And the people—that was it, she realized, what was so odd: she hadn't seen a single person. The street was deserted. A few cars had passed her, but she was alone on the sidewalk, alone at this café with her little white dog. It was a Saturday morning, so where were the people? Were they in their homes, afraid the riots might spread, break out in this beach town of surfers and bikini girls and older, retired folks? The thought struck her as ridiculous.

A girl appeared—as if she were the result of a magic trick—out of the thick air. Wearing black-rimmed glasses, her dark hair cut in a pageboy, she was bookish, with a hint of the mischievous in her smile. She'd make a good stripper—one with a literary pseudonym. Anaïs, or Colette, Gwen thought, watching her jot her order—a triple espresso and a croissant—on her small pad.