Roll with the Punches (17 page)

"Why not? People do it all the time."

"Not me.”

He gave me a measuring look. "You seem relieved."

"Huh?"

He shrugged. "He's wandered off. Pardon my bluntness, but isn't that a perfect excuse to put him in assisted living and not have to deal with him anymore?"

"What the—! Who asked you? See, I work for a living. I can't be here every minute. And
I
didn't lose him. He
took off
." The police operator finally picked up, and I barked out all the pertinent information into my phone, including Dad's driver's license and license plate number. I'd memorized them long ago.

Dal's eyes were unreadable. "Was he alone this morning?"

Hanging up, I turned on him, blood in my eye. "You mean did I leave him alone just to give him the chance to wander off so I'd have an excuse to commit him? Boy, are you a snake." I stomped into the house to get my purse and an apple.

He was waiting in the yard, an eyebrow raised, when I got back outside.

I burst out, "Look, everyone says he's fine. The doctor said he should stay home, and he agrees. So we're trying that. He doesn't want a keeper, but he takes off when he's left alone. At least in one of those assisted living places, we could locate him. But why am I talking to you? According to you, whatever I do with him is wrong." I got in my car and slammed the door. My butt bruises screamed. I’d forgotten to bring an ice pack.

He stood impassive in the yard, arms crossed.

I wrestled with my seat belt, still grumbling. "He was so obnoxious that his companion left today. But I'm the one to blame! The doctor assured me—" The seat belt would not unroll. "—all Dad needed was a normal life." Tug. "At home to get past the stress—" Tug. "—of Mom's surgery and my sister's moving." I looked up and he was gone. I fought the damn thing for several minutes and got as manic as my sister on prom day.

Then suddenly he appeared at the driver's side window and shoved three more cold Cokes at me. "Move over. I'll drive."

"This is my car, and someone needs to be at the house in case he comes home."

"The neighbor's right next door, and you're too mad to drive."

"A minute ago you blamed me for leaving him alone," I complained, scooting over painfully. I hated women who always handed over the steering wheel whenever a Y chromosome entered a car. But I was too hot and frustrated for more protest.

The seat belt worked like silk for him, and he swung the car into the street. "Is there somewhere we should check, some favorite place where he might spend three hours?"

I held a Coke to my rib cage, then took a swig.

He said, "Some restaurant? A library? A bar? The beach?"

"That's it!" I said. "The beach. He loves the beach. There are only a few thousand miles of that to search."

*
      
*
      
*

Driving down the 5 freeway in my unairconditioned car, Dal turned dark sunglasses on me. "Corona del Mar?"

"I guess. It's closest." How far would Dad drive without Mom?

Pause. "You know your dad's driver's license and license plate number by heart?"

"Sure. The license plate's HCL, hydrochloric acid, plus 927. Nine minus two equals seven, and it’s all matching fall colors.
9
and
H
are brown,
C
and
2
are orange, and
7
and
L
are gold." Open mouth, insert crazy shoe.

Dal opened his window and some loose black hair whipped around his pursed lips.

Unfortunately, my solution to big problems was to talk. And with him driving, my mouth went berserk. "Yes. Numbers and letters have colors. Especially when I’m stressed." I shrugged. "Synaesthesia. Probably some holdover from my childhood wooden blocks set or my Crayola wrappers, but really useful for memorization. The high school chemistry periodic table looked like a Christmas tree to me. My best friends learned my color code. We all got A's.”

Why was I telling him this? I hadn't told anyone since high school. My mother didn't even know it. But Dad could be anywhere, and my fingernails were already chewed to the quick.

Dal didn't say a word. The car was stifling. I rolled down my window and the noisy breeze buffeted both of us and killed discussion as we passed commercial Santa Ana, heading south. Last time I'd gone this way, I'd met James. Oh, that kiss. That marvelous kiss.

"Shoot. Sig Alert on the 55." Dal pointed at the traffic buildup and stayed on the 5 freeway going south. "So did you sell it to the rest of the school?"

"What? Sell what?" In my daydream, James was still kissing me in Technicolor.

"Your secret for memorizing the periodic table."

"Of course not." My wildly blowing hair obscured passing strip malls. "Why would I sell it? God, what if Music Man's not at Corona?"

"Why not?"

"At Corona?" I asked. The wind was loud.

"Why didn't you sell it? The secret? It was your secret, right?" He finally rolled his window up as we turned south on Jamboree.

I rolled mine up, too. "Of course it was mine." This was stirring up echoes of Yvette’s plagiarism accusations. "Are you trying to make an enemy? 'Cause it's working.”

He shrugged. "Hey, hey. Relax. I just, well, at that age, I would have. We sold all kinds of stuff as kids. And sometimes we swiped stuff off the neighbors to sell. Rakes, flower pots, lawn gnomes …"

I fanned myself in the stuffy car. "Okay. A) That would have been against school rules, and B) the code was meant to help my friends do better on the test than everyone else and who charges their friends? C) Most of the rest of the school was too stupid to learn it, and D) there was no social advantage to being known as a crayon wrapper savant." I sighed. "Besides, I never thought of selling it.”

"A crayon wrapper savant?" He laughed, his voice deep. "Was that list multiple-choice, or did all of the above apply?"

"I'm a writer and a librarian," I said stiffly. "I make lists. I deal with facts and lists and plot lines really well, but aging parents give me the willies."

He nodded. "Yeah, parents bite."

We sailed down Jamboree. "Does your dad hate the doctor, too?"

"Hah. No, but my whole family's ganging up on me. I'm the oldest, but they think I need to get a job like theirs, like nine to five was everything. I'd rather be a hog butcher."

I nodded. "I thought only youngest children, like me, got that from parents."

"Nah. Siblings bully everybody." He looked grim. "You're more of a raccoon than me. How do you deal with it?"

"Raccoon?" I flipped down the car mirror, looking for mascara smudges. None. "Look, I don't usually eat all that garbage Dad eats. I'm closer to a veg—"

He laughed. "No. Raccoons are clever."

"Excuse me. Foxes are clever. Raccoons are pests."

He shrugged. "In your culture. In mine, the raccoon plays dead to trick a village of crayfish into thinking they'll get to feast on his body for supper. They welcome him in, and he eats them instead."

"Like a Trojan horse with a black mask?" My stomach dropped.
Hog butcher
?
Trojan raccoon
? I'd just seen a made-for-TV movie where a whole family of upstanding citizens included a secret ax murderer, who came to town as a hero, then killed people off one by one. This Sioux raccoon story sounded cute, but the theme was the same—kinda scary.

"Sort of, only with more teeth and blood," he said.

"Blood?" My skin prickled. This guy was moving in with my father, with a stack of strange, dangerous-looking tools and an admitted hoodlum childhood. Well, he
was
my mother's friend's son. But Mom had way too much faith in her friends, whose children were frequently delinquents. She'd unknowingly tried to hook me up with two parolees from the dot-com bust, one pothead clown and two alcoholic/gambler multiple divorcés. What if—? But no. Surely, Dal couldn't be that dangerous. But I was Music Man's guardian. I couldn’t take a chance here. So I'd just have to grill Dal like a salmon on a cedar plank. Easy. No rushing.

"Hog butchers? Bloody raccoons? What’s with you and blood?" I asked. Hmm. I'd rushed that just a bit. But how else did you separate an ax murderer from the rest of us?

"I've handled my share. Too much, actually." He sighed and looked at the giant blimp hangars on the closed-down Tustin Marine Corps Air Station. "Is that all that's left of that air base? Wow.”

Handled his share of blood
? His hands were rough, tanned a dark brick color from working outdoors. I shifted uneasily on my bruised butt and surveyed the hangars.

Aha! The Marines. "Oh. So, you just got out of the service, maybe been to Iraq, and now you're changing careers?"

He sighed, "No. No service. By the way, do you have a tire jack in this car?"

Agghh. Was he checking out his weapons? "Why?"

"Just in case. Your back tire's bald."

Okay. I was just wigging myself out. "So what do you do anyway?"

He sighed. "Lots of stuff. I'm sort of—trying to finish a BA at a—"

"In what?"

He looked pained. "Architecture. The family business. Dad insists I need a master's degree now that I'm finally free …It's just …I'm thirty-six years old and literally back at the drawing board. Who wants to be in school at forty?"

Free? From what? The state pen and the orange jumpsuit? "You don’t have a BA?" I squeaked.

Dal shrugged and fingered his earring. "What I've got's Mickey Mouse.”

Like from correspondence school in jail? The pieces started to fit.

"Ohhhh." I slipped my hand inside my purse and found my cell phone and my Swiss Army knife. Now that I looked closer, he did have a bit of the slouched, hangdog look of an inmate. Except for the deep tan. Oh, God help me. He'd been on a chain gang.

A plan, I needed a plan. I'd stay cool just long enough to find Music Man, then flee the car. And walk twenty miles home with Music Man the Shuffler. Right.

"So," I asked casually, unrolling my window again. "Those tools in the garage—are they for carpentry? Plumbing? Amusement park building?"

He glanced at me as we passed Fashion Island. "Uh, stuff. I make stuff."

Like license plates?

He said, "And I've been doing a lot of volunteer work.”

Volunteer work
? Perfect code for doing laundry in San Quentin. God. That's why he'd remarked about my memory for license plate numbers! They were his line of work. I felt a sudden chill despite the heat and the acrid smell of wood smoke filling my head.

"What do you write?" he asked.

Easy, now. "Stuff." I turned away, puzzling how to get him out of my father's house as fast as possible. Hmmm. Render his room unlivable? Remodel? Bug spray? Pink carpet? Meanwhile, I'd have to find a way to get him out of my car.

Except what if Dal's plan was already in motion. Like that raccoon, maybe he'd already kidnapped Music Man today and tricked me with this wild goose chase to the beach, so he could kill both of us, dump us in the water, and take the house right out from under my mother. In the current market, it was worth over a million bucks. Maybe he'd done this before and was a chronic house stealer. And the raccoon story could be just to get me scared, like on those TV movies.

Calm down
. I closed my eyes and pictured myself in the safe arms of not-an-ex-con James, and the second best kiss of all time.

"Try me," Dal said, turning left on Pacific Coast Highway. "I read a lot. Are you published?"

Everyone knew inmates read a lot. I focused back on James.

Dal said, "I just finished a Reynard Jackson novel. It was great. Do you read him?"

Oh man. That just tore it. He did not deserve pink carpet, and I had had it with this whole frustrating day. I barked out, "Why does everybody always ask that? Like I can't be considered a writer unless I'm published. It's like saying a woman can't be considered a woman unless she's won a beauty contest. How ridiculous! To devalue the artistic process in favor of some stupid, practically randomly dictated outcome like publishing. How would you like it if someone said you can't be an Indian unless your name is Geronimo and you're a big chief? I mean I
am
published, but nobody's ever heard of my book, okay?"

I took a breath and my mouth took me down in flames. "And can't anyone ever ask something intelligent? Like what I'm working on now? Or what my favorite plot is or how I came up with my favorite character? It's like if I see you're Indian, so I ask if you're a Navajo. I bet you get that all the time. 'Are you a Navajo?' Or 'Got any wooden nickels?' 'How's life on the reservation?' Oh yeah. Or 'My grandmother was a Cherokee princess. Your ancestors were probably my ancestors' servants.'" I paused for breath. "My aunt's friend is a Paiute. She's heard them all." I held up my hand in mock Indian salute at him. "How!"

Driving on, beak leading, jaw set, he looked confused and angry. But if there was smoke coming out of his ears, I couldn't see it for the fiery tendrils still escaping my own nose. My tirade had been pretty out there, pretty awful, but I would not apologize. No, I wouldn't. With a back as stiff as Marla's late return fee policy, I folded my arms and watched Corona Del Mar sail by until we got to the state beach and parked.

I burst out of the car and hobbled around the parking lot as fast as my bruised butt would let me. But Music Man's car wasn't here. Still fuming at life, I didn't even glance at my favorite ocean, but checked out the few beach inhabitants as waves of sand born off the beach by the evil northeast wind stung my legs.

Bottom line: Zero big, tall, stooped old guys were anywhere around. Damn. I slumped back toward the car in defeat. And embarrassment.

Dal started it and honked at me as I wiped sand out of my eyes. I really couldn't face him, not yet. I waved him on and struggled up the steep path to the main road on foot. He honked again, driving slowly and keeping pace with me up the hill. I ignored him. Hey, I was a strong woman. I could find Dad on my own, right? I didn't need this random guy's help, no matter what his past was like.

He chugged past me and pulled over to the curb.

I slogged ahead, and suddenly saw Music Man ahead of me, inching his way up the hill from the beach, stooping way over to lean on a cane that had collapsed down a good foot. How had we missed him on the way down? I hurried up to the old guy and got there just as Dal loaded him into the car. I slouched into the back seat. Hadn't we played this game before on the way to the donut shop?