Halfway House (4 page)

“He’s gotta be seventy. That would put him there when your dad was a student.”

“I never thought about that.”

The waitress brought Laurie’s coffee and refilled his. Laurie took her time pouring an inch of cream and mixing it with three bags of sugar. She tested it, then added another bag. Bobby suppressed a shudder. He liked his black.

“What happened to him?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Kids talk, you know. Half of the things, heck, most of the things we talked about in high school were exaggerations, gossip and lies. When I think about some of the things we cared about, I cringe.”

“What’d they say?”

“Stupid kid things.” She took a sip of her coffee, grimaced and added another bag of sugar. When she finished she tasted the now milky liquid, grinned, and took another sip. “They said he went crazy. His wife died and he took off.”

“Not so crazy. Lots of people leave when stuff like that happens.” Bobby thought of himself and his actions after Sister Agnes died. Without her, there’d been no reason to stay.

“Oh, he didn’t leave. He only traveled ten blocks. He went to the halfway house.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You know how people talk about UFOs. Or crop circles. Or even Stonehenge? We have our own place like that here.”

“The halfway house?”

“For some reason after people die, their loved ones end up there.”

“I thought the place was for ex-cons and druggies,” he said.

“It is. It definitely is. But people like Mr. Caruthers end up there too.”

“Why? What makes them go?”

“They say—”

Bobby interrupted. “Who are
they
?”

She gave him a sour look and spread her hands. “Everybody. They. Those invisible
they
. I don’t know who. I guess we all pass it on, me included. Look at me now telling you about the halfway house. I am
they
, I suppose.”

She took a long sip of her coffee, turned around to see how close people were, then put her cup down. “Anyway, they say that people go there to talk to the souls of the dead.”

“They
what
?”

“I’m serious. Mr. Caruthers was there for a month as the story goes. Talking to the air. Speaking with the ghost of his dead wife.”

“I’ve seen people there. I thought they were just crazy or going through withdrawals.”

“They probably were. And the story about Mr. Caruthers, well, it’s just a story. Something we swore was true when we thought that being queens of the high school meant we were princesses of the world.”

“We’re all a little naive.”

“Did you go out with my father yesterday?” she asked, changing the subject.

“We didn’t find squat for a board.”

“How is he taking it?”

“He’s not. He’s lost without surfing.”

“You mean you didn’t find anything?”

“We did find a couple, but the ones he wanted were insanely expensive.”

“How much?”

“You don’t need to be—”

“I asked how much?”

“I know what you want to do, Laurie. It’s not a good idea.” Only recently had Kanga come back into his daughter’s life after a long period of absence. They’d only been reunited for six months, and it had been the old man who’d felt the need to redeem himself.

“Bobby boy,” she whispered, leaning across the table and grasping his hand. “You’re not in charge of me. My dad needs something, and I have the power to give it. Do you know how long I’ve dreamed of doing something nice for him? You of all people should know.”

Bobby did know. He’d harbored his own private dreams, but knew that with his affliction that’s all they’d be. He’d grow old and die, his only mother a celibate nun with dogs taped to her walls. But those thoughts were hijacked by the overwhelming knowledge that what Laurie was about to do was the worst thing possible. There was nothing he could do to stop her, though. His best chance at helping these two people who’d become his whole universe was to wait for everything to happen, then try and patch things together afterward. He tried changing the topic.

“Did you get a name for me?”

“I did. Mr. Topic Changer. I bet now you want me to give it to you.”

“Come on, Laurie. This other thing’s between you and your dad. I need the name for a totally different reason.”

In answer, she reached over and snatched a piece of tortilla, sopped it with hot sauce and folded it into her mouth. As he opened his and attempted to speak, she raised her eyebrows. He wanted to scream inside. Women could be so infuriating, even women as pretty as Laurie.

“I can’t believe you’d do this to me. And here I thought you liked me,” he added, trying the sideways imploring smile that almost always worked on Sister Agnes.

“But I do, Bobby boy. I like you a lot. And I’ll like you even more after you help me help my father.”

I like you a lot
. For a guy who grew up not even experiencing the how-you-do’s of dating, those five words meant the world to him. Goosebumps rose along his arm. He rubbed it under the table, a silly smile slipping past his defenses, signaling his defeat.

“Does that mean you’ll help me?”

He nodded. What else could he do?

She clapped her hands. The waitress brought her food and she attacked it with gusto. After about thirty seconds, she paused. “Don’t worry about interrupting. I can listen and eat at the same time. I’m a regular multitasker.”

So it was that Bobby relayed the events of the previous day, talking about the boards, using Kanga’s words and descriptions. He finished around the same time she was done eating.

Then it was his turn. “So what about the name?”

“About that, Bobby. Are you sure you want to talk to these guys?”

“Of course I’m sure.” He’d traveled across the country for this. Meeting Kanga and Laurie were bonuses, but his reason for being in southern California was to restore his birthright.

“They aren’t good people.” She sipped her coffee and stared at him over the rim. “They can hurt you.”

“Only if I let them.”

“Oh, look who’s the tough guy.”

He started to reply, but then let her statement drift. She didn’t need to know about Kansas City. She didn’t need to know about Yuma. She’d never know about Gila Flats. Those things he’d done out of necessity, which he’d never felt proud of, she would never need to know.

Kanga had been up since dawn. Even with alcohol coursing through his veins, his senses dulled, his ambition dampened, the ebb and flow of the tides drew him like he was a bit of human flotsam. He’d scrambled onto a large boulder and sat lotus-style until the sun crested the cliff behind him, all the while imagining he was part of the ocean, moving with the tide, in harmony with the water that covered three-fourths of the earth’s surface. Some people called it Zen. Some called it belonging. He didn’t have a name for it. To label the special connection with the universe that he’d cultivated over a lifetime would only serve to cheapen it.

By the time the first surfer climbed down the path to Jap’s Cove and paddled out to await a perfect morning wave, Kanga had his mind under control. He’d never expected to hear Marley’s name again. Even hearing it spoken aloud had been a tremendous shock. The man had been an anchor around Kanga’s heart. What Kanga had done, what he’d not done, running away, never checking on his old friend’s health, dropping off the face of the earth, were all the shameful decisions he’d been forced to live with. Over the years, Kanga had found his way to a comfortable self-loathing that kept him mindful of what he’d done, but allowed him to live with it.

Until now.

Marley had tracked him down.

Marley wanted to see him.

Emotion stirred the surface of Kanga’s calm. He could run again. He knew places where he’d never be found. He could surf, eat, drink, fuck, and breathe for the rest of his life and never see another gringo.

An image of Laurie slashed across his selfishness, shredding the possibilities. What of his daughter? She’d suffered because of his cowardice. She’d grown up without a father because of his inability to accept responsibility. To leave now would be to return her to the state he’d found her in six months ago, to take away her sole-surviving parent.

Four more early birds paddled out to await the waves. All locals, he recognized them from his comings and goings around the peninsula. One ran a martial arts studio, another worked in a video store, and the other two were longshoremen.

Why do you surf
? He’d been asked that a thousand times. When he’d been younger and filled with young ideals he’d responded
Why do you breathe
?—thinking the answer was deep enough to make Nietzsche applaud. When he’d been middle-aged, he’d been a smartass and countered with
Why don’t
you
surf
? Now, as he began tripping into the dotage of old age, he more often than not left the question alone. There was nothing he could say that could be understood.

One of the surfers left the lineup and hit a wave. Kanga felt his adrenaline rush as he watched the man slip into the wave and Quasimodo—riding hunched on the toe of the board with one hand out and one hand behind him. He climbed and dropped, carving the crest until the rocks of the cove loomed large and dangerous. Then he pearled to stop, the nose biting deep into the water, halting all forward motion by the sheer weight of the ocean.

Kanga felt it all.

Every twist.

Every turn.

Even the S-cut climbs onto the wave and the slashing drops as the bottom turned into the wave’s crest, his muscles twitching as they followed his mind’s eye through the maneuvers. And when the surfer bailed, Kanga realized he’d been holding his breath, enough adrenaline captured in his lungs to leave him gasping.

Laurie and Bobby exited the restaurant and turned left down South Pacific Avenue. Sunken City squatted two blocks behind them, the crenellated and twisted last two blocks of South Pacific Avenue rendering a visual pneumonic of the sheer power the earth can exhibit when angry—this from the Northridge Earthquake. Rummies hid in the crevices. High school kids found low places to do things. Here and there mounds of concrete and asphalt broke the surface.

From their hilltop vantage, Bobby and Laurie could see across the roofs of San Pedro, past Wilmington to Lomita where a tall spire burned yellow as it released pent-up gas from the bowels of the oil tank farm. Rolling straight and true, South Pacific Avenue shot forty-two blocks through the heart of the city, paralleled by Harbor Drive on the right and Gaffey Street on the left. The harbor dominated the right horizon, ships from Asia and the Middle East loading and unloading amidst the metal girders and cranes of the longshoremen. A cruise liner sailed languidly past the squalor of the inner harbor, heading toward Ensenada, Mexico, on a discount cruise. The left horizon rose along the slopes of the hills of Rancho Palos Verdes, whitewashed homes stacked almost on top of each other, reminding Bobby of a picture he’d once seen of Buenos Aries.

There was something special about San Pedro. When Bobby had first asked his way around the city after jumping from the train in Wilmington, he’d called it San Pedro and was immediately corrected by a pimply-faced blonde girl who’d told him to pronounce the name
San Peedro
. He tried it and sounded like a poor imitation of a Mexican; so strange that all the white folks pronounced it that way too.

Each home they passed as they headed down the hill was a single-story California Craftsman. Tropical plants grew everywhere. Mexican fan palms were most common. Rows of fifty-foot royal palms lined both sides of South Pacific Avenue like sentries all the way down to 22nd Street. Storybook green grass covered every piece of unpaved land.

An immense cloud bank hid the ocean’s horizon. A precariously loaded Greenleaf cargo ship pierced the veil and headed for the harbor gate like Los Angeles was the lost island of Kong. Laurie called this weather phenomenon the marine layer, some strange coastal temperature inversion that resembled a storm held at bay. He recalled more of what Kanga had said last night.

Marley especially loved storms. You see, he was a magnificent surfer, and feared nothing. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do. This, I think, is what kept me following him. Where I was afraid to try something, Marley was the first at it. I was always following in his wake, co-opting his courage and
joie de vivre
. I was addicted to the rush. I know it was no excuse for leaving and never coming back, but we lived such a life
.

Then came the storm to end all storms. Did you ever see the movie
Point Break
with Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves? In the end Patrick Swayze hits a gargantuan wave on Bell’s Cove, Australia, and is never seen again. That scene was based on Marley, only it didn’t exactly turn out like it did in the movie
.

By then I was almost as brave as Marley. What I lacked in courage, I made up for with stupidity. We took that wave together. Really it was his, but I’d made up my mind to join him, except sharing a wave, even one that big, was fucking implausible. So I dropped in and stole the wave, my fin cutting across Marley’s foot as it gripped the nose of his board. He went down in a spray of blood
.

A neon green lowrider motored by. The boy in the passenger seat leaned out the window and waggled his tongue through the first two fingers of his left hand. Bobby felt a flash of anger, but Laurie didn’t seem to see the punk. Instead she stared at a skywriting biplane scribbling
I Love You
to some couple down at Cabrillo Beach. If they turned onto 36th Street now, they’d head right there. Instead, they continued along South Pacific Avenue, walking along the edge of the Air Force Base. Called Fort MacArthur, it had been here since before World War II and had originally been an Army base. The entire frontage of the fort was a single unbroken twelve-foot-tall hedge hiding the military housing and office buildings from view.