The Blue Hour (15 page)

To kill me or save
me, Hess wondered as he made his way back through the waiting room

• •
•

Back home he called
Barbara, certain that he wanted to say things, uncertain what they were.

"How are you,
Tim?"

"I feel strong."

"Do you really?
Or are you just being strong?"

"It hasn't been
bad. Thanks for the letter and the flowers."

"I felt
helpless."

"I didn't call
because I was kind of out of it."

A lifetime of booze and
cigarettes had caught up with Hess after the surgery. Delerium tremens,
nicotine withdrawal, three days of mostly unremembered paranoid lunacy that he
pieced together afterward from doctors, nurses and friends. At one point he had
fled the IC unit, popping IV lines and catheters on his way to freedom. Three
orderlies had brought him down.

He heard her breath
catch. "I was so worried."

"Come on, Barb,
cut it out," he said gently.

"I can't help it. I'm
just so sentimental about you, Tim. I know it's ridiculous. But I can't talk to
you without feeling like I'm sixteen again. That's so trite but it's so true.
First love, and all that. I feel like I let it get away."

"We had
different things to do, Barbara. It's okay we did
them."

"Yeah, I
guess."

He pictured her like she
was when they'd met, bright and pretty, with a smile that would stand up to the
decades. And her feet always on the ground.

"I just wanted you to
know I was okay, not to worry. You hear things, rumors get started."

There was a long silence
then, which Hess felt obligated to fill.

"To tell you the
truth, though, I've been... thinking some thoughts I never thought before. I
mean, forty-odd years as a deputy and I never worried about dying. I never
really thought about it. I had guns pointed at me and knives thrown and plenty
of threats from unhappy creeps. Then, I get a routine scan as part of a
physical and there's a spot on my lung the size of a pencil eraser. And that
scared the hell out of me. I've got as good a chance as anybody else, Barb, but
it can take you down pretty fast. And if it does, I want you to know that of
all the people I've known in my life you're the best. You're the best human I
ran across on earth. Not that I was in the kind of business where you run
across a lot of really good ones. I didn't mean that like ... you know how I
meant it. Anyway. True story."

"Oh, Tim..."

He could see the tears
filling Barbara's dark eyes with diamonds.

"If you need some
TLC, Tim—you know, anything at all—you can get it here. I still like to cook. I
spend a lot of time with the kids and grandkids, but that leaves me lots of
time alone, too. I'd like the company."

"I'll take you
up on that."

"No, you won't. I
thought about it a lot, Tim. After we broke up. I thought about why it
happened. And what I came up with was this: you were afraid to slow down. You
were afraid to take a few less units at school, take a few less patrol shifts,
and just be. Be with yourself. Be with me. Be in the world. And you're still
that way now, you're still afraid if you slow down you'll miss something."

"I'm afraid if I
slow down I'll die."

"I didn't mean
it like that."

"But you're
exactly right."

"It's not true. If
you slow down, you'll be happier. You'll understand more. People will mean more
to you. And you'll mean more to them. It's not so bad, Tim. It's just a matter
of sitting still. Being you. Just being."

"It's a flaw in
my character, Barb."

"Well, you know what
they say about smelling the roses. Or the coffee. They change it every few
years. If 1 were you, I'd slow down and smell the ocean on my skin when I'm out
riding those spooky waves at the Wedge. You still do that?"

"I did last
summer. Not since the surgery."

"I can remember when
you loved those waves almost as much as you loved me. And I can remember when
you loved them more, too."

For all her optimism and
refusal to engage her darker side, Barbara was, Hess knew, a clear seer.

"Maybe that
could give you something to slow down for."

She blew her nose. Hess
remembered teasing her about crying over anything—TV reruns, radio ads,
newspaper articles. He had actually found it irritating once that Barbara had
been decent enough to cry over things he would only crack wise about—tough cop
that he was, enforcer of the law, prince of the suburbs, badass with a gun. I
have been a fool, he thought. So many times. And what am I now but a hollow old
man filled with poison on the off chance it can save my life?

"If you ever
need me I'll be here, Tim."

His heart was a gathering storm and all he could say
was thank you.

• • •

He tried to believe what she said. That evening he
stood on the sand at the Wedge and watched the mountainous waves form on the
jetty rocks, lunge toward shore and finally break in hollow caverns that huffed
spray out the barrels like breath from a dragon. It was big enough to keep the
crowds down, and Hess recognized a few faces out there in the turbulent soup
between sets. Mostly kids now, he saw, which is what he was when he first
braved this wild and unpredictable break, a wave that no other wave on earth
could prepare you for. He could feel the reverberations coming up through the
sand into his feet.

The evening had gone gray
and humid and there was little breeze so the water was smooth. The spectators
on the sand were all standing. Plenty of cameras on tripods, huge lenses. When
it was big like this the waves spat enough spray into the air to make a salty
mist over the water and the immediate beach. The lifeguard boat bobbed just
outside the breakers. Hess could see another set of waves starting to form on
the distant rocks and thought the rescue boat was in a perilous place. They
rarely bothered with the Wedge—it was either big enough to capsize the boat or
not breaking at all. Hess wondered what had brought them here this evening.

The water was surprisingly
warm around his ankles as he stood there and waited for a lull in the waves. He
was aware of people looking at him because he was old, and maybe because of the
scar. When the last wave of the set had broken Hess waded in backward up to his
knees then turned and dove flat into the receding brine and rode the backwash
out into the deep Wedge bowl.

It always impressed Hess
about the Wedge, how close you were to the beach while ten-foot waves picked
you up and charged toward shore with you. Up on top of one was a scary place to
be until the speed replaced the fright. Then you had the barrel covering you
and the touchy problem of getting out before it snapped your neck on the
bottom. But you couldn't try to bail out too soon, either, because then you
faced a long drop before the power of the wave was dissipated and that's how
you got tangled up in the heart of the fury and held under for longer than you
could stand. Hess didn't know exactly how many necks, backs and shoulders the
Wedge had broken, but he knew it was a lot.

There were five people in
the water around Hess and they all started swimming out at once. A jolt of
adrenaline went through him as he followed, feeling his legs stretching out
behind him, the weight of the big fins on his feet, the movement of his arms
through the water. It had been a year.

The first wave lurched up
and peaked and Hess watched a scrawny kid shoot across the face, tucked up
high, skipping across the water on his hands like a waterbug. Hess dove under
and felt the powerful tug on his fins.

A stocky young man Hess
had seen before caught the second wave of the set, but he took it late, too
close to the peak, and the whole thing just collapsed on him like a dynamited
building. Hess glided under it. He knew it was the kind of wipeout that you
couldn't slide out of, it would take plenty of air to ride out the whitewater
roller coaster to shore. He wondered if a lung and a third would do it, then
figured it would have to.

When the next wave rose
before him Hess realized he was exactly where he needed to be to catch it. Two
of the other guys made for it too, then cleared out in a rare act of respect.
Hess let the rising water draw him up the face, let his fins float up over his
head. At the last second he turned toward shore, kicked once hard and leaned
his back into the wave as it took him. A vertiginous lift. A surge of speed.
Tiny people below. Beach towels as postage stamps. Rooftops in the distance. It
had him completely, tons of charging water eager to possess him. He dropped his
left hand, palm down, and planed along. This was the real magic of it for Hess,
the part that was never quite fully believable—how a 200-pound man could ride
the bottom of his own hand like this, feel the water resisting, feel it rushing
beneath his fingers, feel the wake spraying off the heel of it. A tiny portable
surfboard, connected to one's self. Then he could see the lip far above him
starting to crest and he bent his right shoulder back hard to keep himself
locked in as long as he could. Spray in his face, he glanced down at the people
on the beach and at the jetty behind him and the harbor beyond the jetty and
the sky above the harbor. Then the roaring cylinder broke over him and the sky was
replaced by rifling water and he was deep inside for a second or two, still
happily gliding along on the palm of his hand until the wave finally caught him
and drove him down toward the sand.

A moment later he found
himself in the soft whitewater, being deposited on the shore. He sat there for
a moment in the sand like an infant while the water receded around him. Some of
the people on the beach were clapping.

He took off his fins and
stood. He smiled back at the crowd—what a strange feeling to smile—and knew he
could do it, he could beat this thing inside him with a little luck, a little
applause, a little nod from God on high.

His heart was pounding
strong and his lung and a third were full of good salt air.

Big Bill Wayne, erect in the captain's chair of the panel van, steered
through the great master-planned community of Irvine toward Interstate 5.

He looked out at the
identical homes, the clean streets, the streetlamps glowing in the dusky summer
evening. Orange County,
California,
he thought: home to the Happiest
Place on Earth, a baseball team called the Angels, an ocean called the Pacific
and over two and a half million people, many of whom are beautiful women who
need the company of men.

And I'm a part of this place.

I, Big Bill
Wayne—alluring blond bachelor and lover of women.

First he cruised the
parking lot of a giant entertainment complex known as the Big One. It had
twenty-one screens and a bunch of restaurants. The parking lot was large, outdoors
and not well lit. He parked and followed a couple of nice-looking women toward
the complex, aware of their perfumes trailing back to him, attuned to the
click of their shoes on the asphalt. Like most women together they talked incessantly
and paid him no attention whatsoever. He got into one of the long lines behind
them and moved closer.

His knees felt weak and
his heart was pounding as he tried to strike up a conversation about movies.
One of the girls had brown eyes that shone like candlelight. The conversation
seemed to be going well until one of them made a joke he didn't hear, then they
both laughed and turned their backs on him. And that, he thought, is the
essence of what I hate most about women: the way they can change their minds so
fast. He felt the white cold fury rise up inside him. He knew it would come
because it always had and it always did. It grabbed his heart and made his
muscles ready and brought a very sly smile to his face.

Bill followed a crowded
walkway to a bar called Sloppy Joe's, which was advertised as a replica of
Hemingway's favorite bar from Key West. The hostess was lovely.

He paced slowly along the
bar, hands held behind his back and head slightly down like a man with heavy
ideas. In the mirror behind the bar he admired his long coat and vest, his
golden flowing hair and thick mustache.

He looked at the women's
faces, too. So challenging, their eyes, so haughty. He toured the perimeter of
the place, analyzing pictures of the handsome writer—many with women—and
wondered if writing a book would help him form relationships.

But it troubled Bill that
writers needed to have a conscience to write good books, because he knew for a
fact he had no such thing. He'd heard about it all his life—the way you were
supposed to have feelings that guided you, helped you decide if what you did
was right or wrong. Conscience.

It was easy to understand
what you were supposed to feel. Parents and teachers, priests and cops, doctors
and judges, TV and movies were all eager to tell you how to feel. But if you
never actually felt it, if your actions generated absolutely no clear sense of
either right or wrong, if those ideas were simply not present inside you, the
way that some people are born without certain organs, then all you could do was
fake it. And sometimes it was difficult, manufacturing the illusion of those
emotions upon your face for someone to read correctly. Well, no use feeling
sorry for yourself.