Ghost Lights (3 page)

“I knew this couple that when their basketball-playing kid went away to college—and this guy was like seven feet tall—
they went out and got a dog two days later. Thing was though, the dog was a hundred-and-sixty-pound English mastiff. Came up to their chest level. True story. Remember Cal Shepard? From Samo?”

“The kid that drooled,” he said, nodding.

“Cal Shepard did not drool. He was a popular jock. That was Jon Spisiak.”

“A kid that drools in high school,” he mused, shaking his head. He stood at the open refrigerator looking in. It was almost empty. “You don’t have bottled water?”

“And I wouldn’t even say Jon drooled per se,” she said, and gestured at a white watercooler in the corner. “It was more like he had extra saliva. Oh. So Sal’s coming over, by the way.”

“The new boyfriend from group? This is great. I can submit him to the rigorous screening process.”

“He’ll fail. I have to warn you.”

“Of course. They always do.”

“But more than usual. Trust me.”

“What. Is he a protester? A militia member?”

“He used to be a cop. Now he wears fatigues and sometimes a balaclava.”

“Guy wears a balaclava in L.A.?”

“He took me up to Tahoe once. He wore it then. A black one. He looked like a paraplegic ninja.”

He was following her into the living room, where a leather couch and chairs surrounded a low glass table.

“What, he wants to keep his face hidden?”

“I dunno, Dad. Ask him yourself.”

“I can’t ask him about the balaclava if he’s not wearing it.”

“OK. I’m like officially tired of this subject.”

“Touchy!”

She spun her chair slowly and stopped, picked her mug out of the cup holder. He sat down opposite.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Anyway. I look forward to meeting him.”

“So T. still hasn’t been heard from.”

“No. And I think it’s time your mother moved on.”

Casey blew across the surface of her tea.

“I realize she’s loyal,” he went on. “But who knows what’s happening with him. You know? It could be anything. Maybe he had legal trouble she never knew about and a secret account in the Caymans. Right? Change will be good for her. Something new.”

Casey nodded and sipped.

“It’ll be hard,” he went on, and drank his water, “for her to know how long to wait before she makes key decisions, lets people go. There’s that young guy that works there, that she hired a while back. And then the financial situation. I say find a good lawyer and pass the buck.”

“She filed a missing persons report,” said Casey softly. “And she’s been calling the embassy every day.”

“The U.S. embassy? In Belize?”

He heard the front doorbell ring.

“That’ll be him. The father of your grandchild.”

“What?”

“Kidding.”

“I’ll get it,” he said, and rose.

As usual she was right; as soon as he pushed the button to open the door he knew the guy was a loser. Tamped-down anger, free-floating rage.

“Hey, welcome,” he said affably, and stood back.

“Who are
you
?” asked the guy.

“My father,” called Casey from within. “Hal, meet Sal.”

“We rhyming,” said Sal flatly, and rolled past him with no gesture of greeting. Hal had seen his share of bitter disabled guys and was inured to it—more or less preoccupied with this new information about Susan, he realized, turning from the door as it closed. His wife who was consumed with anxiety about the real-estate guy. The extent of her affection for Stern, the transparently maternal attachment, if examined by a professional, would likely prove rooted in some psychopathology related to the accident.

“I should get back to the office,” he told Casey, and extended a hand to Sal. “It was nice to meet you.”

Sal did something with his own hand that looked like a gang sign. A poser, thought Hal, as he stooped to kiss Casey’s cheek. Understandable, but hardly deserving of respect. Before he was paralyzed he had been a cop, likely a swaggerer and a bully since almost all of them were, but now that he was spinal-cord injured he identified with the same underclass he used to dream of bludgeoning.

Outside Hal passed the suitor’s conveyance, a battered hatchback in gunmetal gray that featured a bumper sticker calling for the rescue of POW/MIAs. It was parked half on the driveway and half on the lawn, and the right-side tires had ripped up a fresh track in the turf.

Law-enforcement officers were not his favorites among the varied ranks of persons who chose a career in public service. He recognized that the job carried with it certain personality requisites, such as a predisposition to violence, and that the demand
for violent enforcers was embedded in the system, as was the sup
ply of violent offenders. By some estimates, one out of twenty-five Americans was a sociopath.

And that was higher than anywhere else on the globe: this great nation was a fertile breeding ground for psychos. Or rather, as the economists would put it, the U.S. of A. had a comparative advantage in antisocial personality disorder.

And hey: these guys had to have incomes, just like everyone
else.

At the very least one in fifty.

Casey, of course, could not be dissuaded from her choices, having become stubborn and intractable after the accident—a development he had come to accept for the strength it lent her. This boyfriend choice, like the others, had to be left to play out. Still it was difficult to believe she had been on the telephone with the cop-turned-homeboy using that tender voice. Slipping behind the steering wheel, Hal repressed a shudder.

Remember: she is grown up. He often had to remind himself.

Also, she carried pepper spray when she went out at night. She had taken a course in disability martial arts.

Susan had to be frustrated, he reflected, driving. She likely felt responsible for what had happened to Stern. This feeling of responsibility was completely irrational, of course, but he knew it well. When regret was strong enough, guilt rose up to greet it. Maybe she thought she should have kept Stern from traveling alone; maybe she thought she should have persuaded him into therapy or grief counseling. Not that this would even have been possible.

They should talk more, Hal and Susan. They lay down to sleep at different hours, they rarely went out, lately there had been more distance between them than he wanted.

An old lady with a walker stepped out in front of his car; he swerved and hit the curb hard.

• • • • •

T
he car had to be towed. He called Casey, and Sal came to get him.

“I appreciate this,” he told Sal, mildly humiliated.

Sometimes a sociopath helped you out.

They drove together to a rental car agency, Hal shooting sidelong glances at Sal’s hands on the controls. The fingers bore small tattoos between the knuckles, which he was relieved to see were small plantlike designs rather than, say,
LOVE
and
HATE
. Looked like pot, possibly. There was a stale smell in the car—sweat, grease and cigarettes. He cracked the window, then rolled it all the way down. The dash was covered in stickers: rock bands, possibly, to judge by the graphics. Of course the names were unfamiliar to him. Blood, skulls in cowboy hats, sheriff’s badges and guns, tigers and poppies and roses and faux-Gothic lettering.

Some of the paraphernalia was Mexican, some American, but all of it was equally encoded. Loud music played, a polka beat with electric guitar and an accordion. A
narcocorrido
if he was not mistaken: he had learned about these on National Public Radio. They celebrated drug kingpins.

Sal was moving his head to the beat and seemed to be muttering the lyrics.

“So your Spanish is fluent?” Hal said loudly, and smiled.

Sal nodded and flicked his fingers against the wheel, still mouthing.

“You grow up in L.A.?”

“East. I used to be police,” said Sal. “L.A.P.D.”

“Casey told me.”

“She tell you I got shot by a friendly?”

“She didn’t tell me that part.”

“Yeah. This little kid, his first day on the job.”

“Jesus,” said Hal, shaking his head. “That’s . . .”

“Fucked-up shit,” said Sal, and went back to hitting the steering wheel and jutting his head forward in an embarrassing rhythm. Thankfully they had already reached the car place.

She has to be kidding, thought Hal as Sal screeched out of the lot touching his forehead in a mock salute.

He called the office from the car-rental counter. He had to take the rest of the day off, he said: car accident, and half the afternoon was already gone. Then he tried Susan’s office and got the answering machine.

He wished he could go back to Casey’s apartment, but that was inappropriate and would come off tedious and doting. Also very possibly Sal had gone back there also. No, he had to make his own entertainment. He would drive home in the rental and relax, take the dog for a walk.

•

H
is street was silent—neighbors dispersed to other parts of the city, in their compartments of earning. The branches of trees were still, there was no breeze at all, and pulling into the driveway in the rental car he had a curious impression: nothing was moving.

The car shifted into park, he sat beneath a giant maple. The leaves had turned red. After he turned the key to shut off the engine, even he was still. He concurred in the stillness of the scene, half by choice, half by temperament. There was a kind of soft suffocation in it . . . time, he thought, passing forever in front of him and not passing at all.

A young man was coming out the front door. It was Robert, who worked with Susan, shrugging on a jacket as he closed the door behind him.

“Robert!” he said, but since he was inside the car the sound of his voice was trapped. He opened the car door and Robert glanced up from his feet, startled briefly before he smiled. Hal stepped up and shook his hand.

“Hey,” said Robert. He was handsome—far nearer to what Casey should have for a boyfriend than, say, Sal was. Although Robert, like Tom Stern, erred on the side of a prep-school caricature. No doubt he had rowed for Yale. “Hey! Yeah! So how you doing, man? I’m here on courier duty. Susan’s working at home today.”

“You looking for a new job yet?”

“I am. I wish I wasn’t.”

“I know. Unfortunate.”

“It’s a tragedy, is what it is.”

“You don’t think maybe he, you know, chose to leave? Numbered accounts, like that?”

“Hey, you gotta think that way. Right? Being the IRS and all.”

“Occupational hazard, I guess.”

“Seriously, I considered it for a minute or two. But nah. He’s basically a good guy. And I mean there are projects we’re right in the middle of. I’m talking, with him not being here? Like literally millions of dollars are getting washed down the drain.”

“Have you met my daughter?” asked Hal, aware this was a non sequitur. When he hit the curb something had jarred him—he thought the shock of the crumpling fender had torqued his neck, possibly. Suddenly he was feeling lightheaded.

“Casey? Sure. Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know . . . ,” said Hal vaguely, and all at once they were awkward. “Anyway. Good luck with the job search.”

Inside he heard the shower running. A sealed manila envelope lay on the dining room table, along with the mail. The dog must be upstairs with Susan. But climbing to the second floor, he shivered with a passing chill—the house felt wrong. He and Susan needed to go away somewhere, he thought: since the accident they never traveled much, fearing Casey would suddenly need them.

“Susan?” he called, and the dog came galumphing out of the bedroom.

“In here,” came her voice, and he went into the bathroom, where the mirrors were steamed.

“Ran into Robert on his way out,” he said to the shower curtain.

“Uh huh? What are you doing home, honey?”

“Car accident.”

She pulled back the shower curtain. Her face was flushed; she looked lovely.

“You OK?”

“Maybe a little headache. No big deal. But I have a rental.”

“No one was hurt though?”

“Zero casualties.” He reached out and kissed her. “You smell so good.”

“It’s the shampoo.”

He wanted to go to bed with her. He held her and kissed her more, water falling on both of them.

“Oh, Hal, not this second,” she said. “I’m all wet.”

“That’s fine with me.”

“Later. I promise.”

He let her go and stepped back, his hair plastered.

“You look cute,” she said, and swatted the wet mat of it before she pulled the curtain closed again. He gazed at the blur of her form through the blue plastic, which was covered in raised dots. He could barely tell what she was doing. One of her arms stretched up and back again. Had she put a hand up to adjust the nozzle? Her movements were shrouded. Equally she could have been reaching for a razor. She could be anyone, seen through this filter, doing almost anything. She was unknown to him.

“So what happened, exactly?” she asked through the curtain.

“I swerved to avoid a pedestrian.”

He turned around and went into the bedroom, sat down on his side of the bed. The stillness from outside was with him here, ongoing. In the doorway stood the dog, watching. Their bed linens were still wrinkled and mounded from the morning; the triangle of sheet he sat on was warm. She must have been napping. But then, when Robert arrived, she would have risen. Why was it still warm now?

Maybe the dog had been sleeping there.

Hal’s stomach felt nervous.

In a minor panic he pulled back the coverlet, checked the sheets. Nothing, of course. Paranoid.

Usually—only on weekends of course—she took a brief afternoon nap on her own side of the bed, just as they kept to their own sides at nighttime, but it was warm on his side today. Still, it was a trivial anomaly. A young man coming out of his house at midday and for this he was suspicious? He had turned into a middle-aged cliché. Suddenly a blip in the routine had become a conjugal violation.

He stood and began to straighten the blankets, unthinking. The dog lay down, head on paws, in the hallway. He finished with the coverlet and the pillows, hospital corners because he kept on perfecting them mechanically, at the same time struck by the phrase:
cuckold
. But someone had to do it. The bed had to be made. A bed unmade in the afternoon seemed decadent, even ugly.