Nora Jane (7 page)

“Oh, I know about that. Sister Celestine said it was from painters riding in airplanes all the time. She said that’s what
things look like to them from planes. You know, I was thinking about that flying up here. We flew over all these salt ponds.
They were these beautiful colors. I was thinking about those painters.”

“I’ll have to let you tell Aunt Helen that. She’s really defensive about A.E. right now. That might cheer her up. Now, listen
here, Betty, hasn’t this gone far enough? Can’t you put that gun down? They put people in Alcatraz for that.” She was weakening.
She was looking away. He pressed his luck. “Nobody with legs like yours should be in Alcatraz.”

“This is what I do,” she said. “I’m an anarchist. I don’t know what else to do.” The gun was pointing to the floor.

“Oh,” he said. “There are lots of better things to do in San Francisco than rob a bookstore.”

“Name one,” she said.

“You could go with me,” he said. He decided to pull out all the stops. He decided to go for his old standby. “We could go
together ‘while the evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table. Oh, do not ask what is it.
Let us go and make our visit.’”

“I know that poem,” she said. “We had it in English.” She wasn’t pointing the gun and she was listening. Of course he had
never known the “Love Song” to fail. He had seen hardhearted graduate students pull off their sweaters by the third line.

He kept on going. Hitting the high spots. Watching for signs of boredom. By the time he got to “tea and cakes and ices,” she
had begun to cry. When he got to the line about Prince Hamlet she laid the gun down on top of the computer and dissolved in
tears. “My name isn’t Betty,” she said. “I hate the name of Betty. My name is Nora Jane Whittington and tomorrow is my birthday.
Oh, goddamn it all to hell. Oh, goddamn everything in the whole world to hell.”

He came around the desk and put his arms around her. She felt wonderful. She felt as good as she looked. “I’m going home and
turn myself in,” she was sobbing. “They’ve got my fingerprints. They’ve got my handwriting. I’m going to have to go live in
Mexico.”

“No, you aren’t,” he said. “Come along. Let’s go eat dinner. I’ve been dreaming all day about the prawns at Narsai’s.”

“I don’t want any prawns,” she said. “I don’t even know what prawns are. I want to go to that chocolate store. I want to go
to that store Sandy told me about.”

Many hours later they were sitting in the middle of a eucalyptus grove on the campus, watching the stars through the trees.
The fog had lifted. It was a nice night with many stars.

“The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,” Freddy was saying, but she interrupted him.

“Do you think birds live up there?” she said. “That far up.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I never thought about it.”

“It doesn’t look like they would want to nest that high up. I watch birds a lot. I mean, I’m not a birdwatcher or anything
like that. But I used to go out on the seawall and watch them all the time. The seagulls, I mean. Feed them bread and watch
them fly. Did you ever think how soft flying seems? How soft they look, like they don’t have any edges.”

“I took some glider lessons once. But I couldn’t get into it. I don’t care how safe they say it is.”

“I don’t mean people flying. I mean birds.”

“Well, look, how about coming home with me tonight. I want you to spend the night. You can start off your birthday in my hot
tub.”

“You’ve got a hot tub in your house?”

“And a redwood deck and a vegetable garden, corn, okra, squash, beans, skylights, silk kimonos, futon, orange trees. If you
come over you won’t have to go anyplace else the whole time you’re in California. And movies. I just got
Chariots of Fire
. I haven’t even had time to see it yet.”

“All right,” she said. “I guess I’ll go.”

* * *

Much later, sitting in his hot tub, she told him all about it. “Then there was this card tacked up over the stove from this
girl. You wouldn’t believe that card. I wouldn’t send anyone one of those cards for a million dollars. We used to have those
cards at The Mushroom Cloud. Anyway, now I don’t know what to do. I guess I’ll go on home and turn myself in. They’ve got
my fingerprints. I left them all over everything.”

“We could have your fingers sanded. Did you ever see that movie? With Bette Davis as twin sisters? And Karl Malden. I
think
it was Karl Malden.”

“I can’t stay out here,” she said. “I don’t know how to take care of myself out here.”

“I’ll take care of you,” he said. “Listen, N.J., you want me to tell you the rest of that quote I was telling you or not?”

“The one about the trees dying?”

“No, the one about the lice.”

“All right,” she said. “Go on. Tell the whole thing. I forgot the first part.” She had already figured out there wasn’t any
stopping him once he decided to quote something.

“It’s from Heraclitus. Now, listen, this is really good. All men are deceived by the appearances of things, even Homer himself,
who was the wisest man in Greece; for he was deceived by boys catching lice; they said to him, ‘What we have caught and what
we have killed we have left behind, but what has escaped us we bring with us.”

“Am I supposed to say something?” she said.

“Not unless you want to, come on, let’s get to bed. Tomorrow we begin the F. Slazenger Harwood memorial tour of the Bay Area.
The last girl who got it was runner-up for Miss America. It was wasted on her, however. She didn’t even shiver when she put
her finger in the passion fruit.”

“What all do we have to do?” Nora Jane said.

“We have to see your chocolate store and the seismograph and the Campanile and the Pacific Ocean and the redwood trees. And
a movie. At least one movie. There’s this great documentary about Werner Herzog playing. He kills all these people trying
to move a boat across a forest in Brazil. At the end he says, I don’t know if it was worth it. Sometimes I don’t know if movies
are worth all this.”

The tour moved from the Cyclotron to Chez Panisse, from Muir Woods to Toroya’s, from the Chinese cemetery to Bolinas Reef.

It began with the seismograph. “That needle is connected to a drum deep in the earth,” Freddy quoted from a high-school science
lecture. “You could say that needle has its finger on the earth’s heart. When the plates shift, when the mantle buckles, it
tells us just how much and where.”

“What good does that do,” Nora Jane said, “if the building you’re in is falling down?”

“Come on,” he said. “We’re late to the concert at the Campanile.”

They drove all over town in Freddy’s new DeLorean. “Why does this car have fingerprints all over it?” Nora Jane asked. “If
I had a car this nice I’d keep it waxed.”

“It’s made of stainless steel. It’s the only stainless steel DeLorean in town. You can’t wax stainless steel.”

“If I got a car I’d get a baby blue convertible,” she said. “This girl at home, Dany Nasser, that went to Sacred Heart with
me, had one. She kept promising to let me drive it but she never did.”

“You can drive my car,” he said. “You can drive it all day long. You can drive it anyplace you want to drive it to.”

“Except over bridges,” she said. “I don’t drive over bridges.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It always seems like there’s nothing underneath them. Like there’s nothing there.”

* * *

He asked her to move in with him but she turned him down. “I couldn’t do that,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to live with anyone
just now.”

“Then let’s go steady. Or get matching tattoos. Or have a baby. Or buy a dog. Or call up everyone we know and tell them we
can’t see them anymore.”

“There isn’t anyone for me to call,” she said. “You’re the only one I know.”

In August Sandy found her. Nora Jane was getting ready to go to work. She was putting in her coral earrings when Tam Suyin
called her to the phone.

“I was in Colorado,” he said. “I didn’t get your letter until a week ago. I’ve been looking all over the place for you. Finally
I got Ron and he told me where you were.”

“Who’s Pam,” she said. “Tell me about Pam.”

“So you’re the one that broke my window.”

“I’ll pay for your window. Tell me about Pam.”

“Pam was a mistake. She took advantage of me. Look, Nora Jane, I’ve got big plans for us. I’ve got something planned that
only you and I could do. I mean, this is big money. Where are you? I want to see you right away.”

“Well, you can’t come now. I’m on my way to work. I’ve got a job, Sandy.”

“A job?”

“In an art gallery. A friend got it for me.”

“What time do you get off? I’ll come wait for you.”

“No, don’t do that. Come over here. I’ll meet you here at five. It’s 1512 Arch Street. In Berkeley. Can you find the way?”

“I’ll find the way. I’ll be counting the minutes.”

* * *

She called Freddy and broke a date to go to the movies. “I have to talk to him,” she said. “I have to give him a chance to
explain.”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “Do whatever you have to do.”

“Don’t sound like that.”

“What do you want me to do? Pretend like I don’t care? Your old boyfriend shows up at eight o’clock in the morning…the robber
baron shows up, and I’m supposed to act like I think it’s great.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Don’t bother. I won’t be here. I’m going out of town.”

He worked all morning and half the afternoon without giving in to his desire to call her. By two-thirty his sinus headache
was so bad he could hardly breathe. He stood on his head for twenty minutes reciting “The Four Quartets.” Nothing helped.
At three he stormed out of the store. I’m sitting on her steps till she gets home from work, he told himself. I can’t make
myself sick just to be a nice guy. Unless that bastard picks her up at work. What if he picks her up at work. He’ll drag her
into drugs. She’ll end up in the state pen. He’ll put his mouth on her mouth. He’ll put his mouth on her legs. He’ll touch
her hands. He’ll touch her hair.

Freddy trudged up Arch Street with his chin on his chest, ignoring the flowers and the smell of hawthorn and bay, ignoring
the pines, ignoring the sun, the clear light, the cool clean air.

At the corner of Arch and Brainard he started having second thoughts. He stood on the corner with his hands stuck deep in
the pockets of his pants. A white Lincoln with Colorado plates pulled up in front of Nora Jane’s house. A tall boy in chinos
got out and walked up on the porch. He inspected the row of mailboxes. He had an envelope in his hand. He put it into one
of the boxes and hurried back down the steps. A woman was waiting in the car. They talked a moment, then drove off down the
street.

That’s him, Freddy thought. That’s the little son-of-a-bitch. The Suyins’ Pomeranian met him in the yard. He knocked it out
of his way with the side of his foot and opened Nora Jane’s mailbox. The envelope was there, in between an advertisement and
a letter from a politician. He stuck it into his pocket and walked up the hill toward the campus. He stopped in a playground
and read the note.

Angel, I have to go to Petaluma on business. I’ll call tonight. After eight. Maybe you can come up and spend the weekend.
I’m really sorry about tonight. I’ll make it up to you. Yours forever.

Sandy

When he finished reading it he wadded it up and stuck it into a trash container shaped like a pelican. “All right,” he said
to the pelican. “I’ll show him anarchy. I’ll show him business. I’ll show him war.”

He walked back down to Shattuck Avenue and hailed a taxi. “Where’s the nearest Ford place?” he asked the driver. “Where’s
the nearest Ford dealer?”

“There’s Moak’s over in Oakland. Unless you want to go downtown. You want me to take you to Moak’s?”

“That’s fine,” Freddy said. “Moak’s is fine with me.”

“I wouldn’t have a Ford,” the driver said. “You couldn’t give me a Ford. I wouldn’t have a thing but a Toyota.”

Moak Ford had just what he was looking for. A pint-sized baby blue convertible sitting in the display window with the sunlight
gleaming off its chrome and glass. The interior was an even lighter blue with leather seats and a soft blue carpet. “I’ll
need a tape deck,” he said to the salesman. “How long does it take to install a tape deck?”

At six-thirty he called her from a pay phone near her house. “I don’t want to bother you,” he said. “I just want to apologize
for this morning. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m not okay,” she said. “I’m terrible. I’m just terrible.”

“Could I come over? I’ve got a present for you.”

“A present?”

“It’s blue. I bought you something blue.”

She was waiting on the porch when he drove up. She walked down the steps trying not to look at it. It was so blue. So very
blue. He got out and handed her the keys.

“People don’t give other people cars,” she said. “They don’t just give someone a car.”

“I do whatever I need to do,” he said. “It’s my charm. My fabled charisma.”

“Why are you doing this, Freddy?”

“So you’ll like me better than old Louisiana Joe. Where is he, by the way? I thought you had a big date with him.”

“I broke the date. I didn’t feel like seeing him right now. Did you really buy me that car?”

“Yes, I really did. Get in. See how good it smells. I got a tape deck but they can’t put it in until Thursday. You want the
top down or not?”

She opened the car door and settled her body into the driver’s seat. She turned on the key. “I better not put it down just
yet. I’ll put it down in a minute. I’ll stop somewhere and put it down later.”

She drove off down Arch Street wondering if she was going crazy. “You don’t have to stop to put it down,” he said. He reached
across her and pushed a button and the blue accordion top folded down like a wing, then back up, then back down again.

“Stop doing that,” she said. “You’ll make me have a wreck. Where should I go, Freddy? I don’t know where to go.”