Admission (5 page)

I SAT ON THE SHAKY
propeller plane that was flying over the rolling hills of Napa Valley and heading toward Redding. I had flown in to San Francisco from Chicago’s O’Hare, making a half-hour layover before this hour-long trip up north. During my short stint in Illinois, I had used a number Kirby gave me to call Bruce Atkinson. I confirmed that he was still living in Redding and made sure it was okay to come see him. He acted fairly natural, though it had been years since we’d spoken.

I couldn’t stop thinking of Alyssa.

We had spent another hour talking in Starbucks, sharing a few memories and shedding more light onto our current lives. Alyssa said nothing else about her marriage, and I didn’t ask. By the time she said it was late and she needed to go, I had fallen in love with her again. On my drive back to the hotel, I realized I had never fallen out.

She gave me her phone number and e-mail and told me to call or write sometime. We ended the night with another hug, a lasting and meaningful hug. I didn’t get much sleep that night, and prevented myself four times from calling that number. I had to do the same the next morning.

But now, even though I was on my way to visit a buddy I hadn’t seen in years, I could not stop thinking of Alyssa. The
thought of seeing Bruce and this all-expenses-paid expedition to find a long-lost college buddy suddenly felt insignificant. All I wanted to do was start over again with Alyssa.

But I knew it wouldn’t be as easy as that.

A 217-foot-tall blade rose high above the bridge and into the fading light of the sky. I had never been to Redding, California, and had never heard of the Sundial Bridge. Obviously Bruce wanted me to take it in, even though he was late to our meeting. I walked across the bridge several times, looking down at the calm flow of the Sacramento River.

Bruce had told me to meet him around five. There was a small restaurant at the edge of the bridge that had outdoor seating. At five-thirty I decided to get us a table. The weather was probably as perfect as it could get, with a light breeze and eighty degrees and a sky full of pockets of clouds resembling cotton balls. I was working on my second Diet Coke when Bruce finally walked up, an hour late.

“Dude, I’m sorry, man,” he said as I stood and watched him approach.

He gave me a big bear hug and then let me go. Back in college Bruce was tall and scrawny. If anything, he now looked taller and skinnier. He still had a boyish face with a loopy grin and long, wavy hair that needed cutting about two months ago.

“Been a long time,” I said.

“You bet. Sorry I’m late—I had this parakeet and it got out of its cage. The thing is possessed, man, I’m telling you. I got it saying ‘Redrum,’ can you believe that?” Bruce bellowed out a laugh. “The thing is seriously possessed. It got out and ended up flying away.”

If I hadn’t known Bruce I would have asked him if he was feeling okay.

“Where’d he go?”

“Up.”

We sat, and he looked around to find a waiter.

“You already got something? Watcha got?”

“Diet Coke.”

“Oh, all right. Sure. Hey, over here.” He waved over a young girl. “What beers do you have on tap?” He ordered a Coors Light, exhaled, and looked up at the sky. “Man, I’m tired.”

He didn’t act remotely surprised that I was sitting across from him after an absence of eleven years; it was more like we were friends who saw each other every day and were bored with one another.

He glanced at me. “You lose weight since college?”

I nodded. “Probably trimmed twenty pounds or so.”

“Exercise?”

“That and a diet that consists of more than burritos and beer.”

“Right on,” Bruce said in his unique vocabulary that apparently hadn’t changed in the past decade. “I’m on that burritos and beer diet myself. But I never gain much weight.”

Bruce was a combination surfer dude and stoner. He was the sort of guy who would have a baby face at fifty and couldn’t look angry if he tried. The long bangs made it worse, along with his catchphrases of “right on” and “totally.”

“So what do you think?” he asked, nodding at the bridge just to our right.

“It’s incredible. Sorta Blade-Runneresque.”

“Yeah, it was all the talk for the longest time. People around here don’t have anything else to do except talk about a bridge. They’ve gotten used to it.”

“How in the world did you end up in Redding?”

He laughed. “How much time do you got? Long story.”

“I have plenty of time.”

“Yeah, no doubt. I don’t know if you remember Pam—this girl I was pretty serious with after college.”

“I haven’t seen you since college.”

“Right on. Really? Seriously?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

“Well, Pam—we were pretty hard-core, and her family lived out here. I met her, believe it or not, at Shaughnessy’s. Like a year or so after college.”

“You stayed around?”

“Yeah. Actually got an apartment in the same building we lived in. Sad, right? I know. Totally sad. I mean, I didn’t know exactly what to do. I applied to some schools and even started teaching for a while but—whatever. It was nothing. I met Pam, we started dating. She graduated from a local college in the area—I forget which one. Anyway, after graduating she wanted to move back home. And this was home.”

“So you followed her?”

“Yeah, sure. We actually moved in with each other. For a few years. I got the whole pressure of marriage and all that, and it was all pretty stupid. Anyway, things took a turn for the worse. Pam actually moved back to Illinois. I still see her parents every now and then. Weird, huh? I mean, I’ve got no ties to California at all.”

“So what are you doing?” I asked, more curious than ever.

“I do sorta everything. I was roofing for a while. Doing construction. You know I bought my own house? Yeah. But after Pam left I sold it. Got an apartment. And that stupid parakeet. I had a dog but it died. Got run over. The apartment isn’t much. Hey—do you need to spend the night somewhere?”

“No, that’s all right.”

“Whatever. Come on. When are you leaving?”

“Probably in a day or so.”

Bruce nodded and drained the remainder of his beer. “You smoke?”

“No,” I said.

“Man, I want one. Most places around here, you can’t smoke. How lame. They probably won’t even let me smoke outside. California, you know?” He ordered another beer. “So, like, what are you doing here?”

It had taken him awhile before he thought to ask me.

“I’m actually doing a—what should I call it? Favor? Project? I don’t know. I’m helping a guy who is looking for his daughter.”

“I didn’t do it!” Bruce sounded off with a laugh.

“Yeah, I know. The girl ended up going missing—she didn’t show up for her classes at college. Her father thinks she’s with Alec.”

“With Alec? Really?”

“Yeah. So he asked if I could try to find him.”

“You an investigator or something?”

I laughed. “No.”

“What do you do?”

I explained to Bruce about my company in Colorado Springs. I didn’t go into too many details. Bruce wasn’t one of those who necessarily cared about details.

“So like—the guy just said, hey, can you find Alec for me?”

“Yeah, something like that. He said he’d pay me.”

“Right on.”

“You ever hear from Alec since college?”

Bruce nodded. “You know—I think someone might have contacted me about him. Like a few months ago. I told them I hadn’t seen him in a long time.”

“Nothing? Not a phone call or anything?”

Bruce thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. It’s hard remembering much. You ever have problems with your memory? Sometimes I wonder if I should get mine checked on. But they’ll probably ask me stuff that I don’t want to tell them, you know?”

“Still smoke every now and then?” I asked him.

“Well, you know. You know how it is.”

I didn’t know, to be honest, but I nodded and took this as a yes. The guy who once claimed that he would only wear clothes made out of hemp still probably got stoned on a regular basis.

I had a feeling Bruce was not going to be much help, but I was still glad to be sitting across from him. I told him that David Kirby said hi.

“Kirby? Right on.”

Bruce wanted to go out later to one of his haunts, a casino bar. I didn’t have much of a choice, so I went along.

“So tell me. How are you doing?” I asked him. “How are you
really
doing?”

“This is it, man. My life.” He wasn’t done drinking.

“Gamble much?”

“Moving to California was a gamble.”

“Pay off?”

“No,” he said, lighting up a cigarette. “I lost. Big time. Maybe I’ll wise up and eventually move on.” His eyes looked like slits, like he had a bad sinus infection. He was chalk white and his skin looked stretched over the bones.

Later on, as he started to obviously feel the booze, he was harder to talk with.

“So you came here for what?” he asked. Already he’d forgotten.

“Looking for Alec.”

“Yeah? What’d he do?”

“The question is where is he?”

“Not around here.”

“You haven’t seen him recently?”

“I haven’t seen my mom recently.”

“Think.”

“I get in trouble when I try to do that,” Bruce answered.

“He hasn’t called or anything?”

“A while ago maybe—I mean, I don’t know. I told you—you didn’t need to fly across the country for me to tell you that again.”

“Maybe I wanted to see you.”

“My memory’s bad. But it ain’t gone. Eleven years is a long time, you know.”

“Good memory.”

“I was the last to say good-bye. I remember that too.”

“What are you drinking?” I asked.

“I’ve been into Jack and Coke these days. Really sweet. Really need another. What do you want?”

“Beer is fine.”

“You’ve been nursing them all night,” he said.

When he came back with the drinks, he picked up where he’d left off. “Remember that hole of an apartment we lived in?”

“Scary,” I said.

“It’s pathetic. All this time and I’m still living in a two-
bedroom apartment. Like life’s been playing, but someone hit the pause button for me.”

A woman a hundred pounds overweight walked by with pants that looked as tight as Spandex.

“See? See that? That is why this is a beautiful town.”

“Maybe we should talk over breakfast,” I said.

“This is it right here.” He toasted to me and drained his glass. “This is life. You know? Some things never change.”

But they do. And I think Bruce knew that too.

The drive to his apartment was blurry with rain and slow with incomprehension. It was difficult getting anything out of Bruce, who was halfway passed out on the passenger seat beside me, then waking up to drink from a bottle of vodka he had found in his backseat. He kept offering me a sip.

“Just a swig, man.”

“I’m driving.”

“Man, you’ve changed.”

“When did I pound vodka in college?”

“Your memory’s as bad as mine.”

“Just tell me where to go.”

He slipped in Pearl Jam and cranked it. “You know—I’ve always wondered something.”