Hailey's War (30 page)

She handed me a beer and said, “Have you thought any more about what to do with him?”

I had—more than that, I'd decided—but couldn't say so. “Tomorrow we'll brainstorm.”

She nodded. “Sounds good.” She set her bottle down. “Can I hold him again?”

I handed him over. Serena took him in her hands and bounced him gently. “Don't you worry,” she said to him. “Your Auntie Warchild and Auntie Insula aren't going to let anything happen to their littlest homeboy.” She kissed the top of his head. I snickered.

“What?” she said.

“‘Auntie Warchild and Auntie Insula,'” I said. “We've gone crazy.”

“A long time ago,” she agreed.

We put Henry in his makeshift bassinet to sleep. I lay back on Serena's bed, my head at its foot, and took my first sip of the Corona, felt it trace a cold path down deep through my chest. “Ahhh,” I said, eyes half closed.

“No shit,” Serena agreed.

I opened my eyes again and looked up at her print of Halong Bay. It was an image so clean and pure I imagined Serena willing herself to touch it and suddenly be there.

“Warchild?”

“Eh?”

“Have you ever thought about going to Vietnam?”

She gave me a quizzical look. “To do what?” She rolled the neck of her beer bottle in her palms.

“To see it. It's a tourist destination. The war's been over a long time,” I said.

“Are you saying you believe me now, about my dreams? You never did before.”

“What I believe doesn't matter,” I said. “You're interested in Vietnam; you ought to go someday.”

“You mean, like, on vacation?”

“Yeah. Not a big fact-finding mission. Just walk around, see the people, eat the food.”

“Homegirls don't do that shit,” she said. “I mean, Jesus, it's on the other side of the planet.”

I rolled over onto my stomach. “For God's sake, think of the things you do every day. You're a shot caller in a gang, for crying out loud. You're telling me you couldn't make a reservation, get on a plane?”

“And the money's coming from where?”

I shrugged. “The usual ill-gotten gains. Start a jar, stuff a couple tens and twenties in it every time you have a particularly good week.”

She took a hit off the beer and studied me, her eyes hooded and speculative. “Would you come?”

“You don't need me,” I said. “I'm not ruling it out, but Vietnam's not my deal, it's yours. Whether or not I could go with you, you should go.”

“You always got this crazy shit on your mind, stuff that no one else thinks about,” Serena said.

A little after midnight, Henry's crying woke me. I told Serena, “Stay here, I'll
get him.”

“'Kay,” she said, burrowing back down under the covers.

I got up and went to the bassinet, sat on my heels and scooped Henry up, blankets and all. I picked up his bottle on the way out of the darkened bedroom.

Serena's girls were used to sleeping through nearly anything. The two in the living room didn't stir as I turned on the light over the stove and, one-handed, poured water into a pan, topped off Henry's bottle with formula, and put it on the stove to heat. All through this, he cried. Pettish little sounds, not loud wails. I bounced him and made clicking noises with my tongue.

When Henry was fed and quiet, I composed a note.

The streets were quiet, but nonetheless I obeyed all traffic laws, signaling
my turns and staying within the speed limit, as was appropriate for someone driving a stolen Honda with a kidnapped infant. Even so, I was glad to get off the main roads and begin the climb up into the hills. I had one stop to make before I took Henry to what I hoped would be his permanent home.

CJ usually chained the corrugated-tin gate at the head of his rough dirt driveway at night, but I remembered the combination for the lock, drove through, and parked. Overhead, a black silhouette passed low: a hunting owl. A nocturnal creature, like me, and like my cousin as well. There was light on the dry grass behind the house, clearly coming from the back windows, and the faint sound of music.

I unstrapped Henry from his car seat and lifted him out, closed the car door, and walked up onto the deck. Then I hesitated. The music was clearer now, and I didn't think it was on the sound system; it sounded like the piano in the living room. The pianist was running lightly through bits of jazz, just pleasing his own ear.

CJ's relationship to the piano had followed a fairly typical arc. When he was a child, his mother had made him learn to play it. As a teenager, he'd rejected it in favor of the strap-on sex appeal of the guitar. As an adult, he'd come around to the pleasures of its rich nineteenth-century sound. And, of course, women loved to watch him at the keys.

It was this last part that gave me pause. It was possible that there was someone in there with him, a female someone. I didn't want to
walk, uninvited, into the middle of that. But I'd come too far to simply leave.

I walked around to the sliding glass door. He was at the piano, and as far as I could see, he was alone, and so deep in concentration that I could have watched him indefinitely.

I tapped on the glass with my knuckles. The music stopped. CJ looked over his shoulder and did a double take.

“What the hell?” he said when he'd opened the slider. “I didn't know you were back in town. You should've called me. Come in.”

I did. CJ, eyes on Henry, said, “Who's your friend?”

“Him? I'm just babysitting for a friend.”

“Babysitting.”

“Yeah.”

It wasn't much of an explanation, but CJ didn't pursue it. He gestured toward the couch and said, “Can I get you something to drink? The bar's pretty well stocked up.”

“Just water.”

“You sure?”

“I'm sure, just water.”

“What about him? Do you need me to heat a bottle or something?”

“No, thanks. He's fine.”

CJ went into the kitchen and I heard him opening the refrigerator, then the rattle of ice. I waited on the couch. His living room was cluttered as always. There was a deck of cards on the coffee table and a girl's sandal half under the couch. A painting, apparently a recent acquisition, leaned up against the wall, waiting to be hung. It depicted the narrow, crowded street of a Chinatown. It could have been the work of someone famous, or the amateur effort of one of CJ's friends.

He came back with a bottle of Asahi in one hand and a tall glass in the other. It wasn't tap water. Bubbles crawled up the side of the glass, and it was stacked with ice, then a wedge of lemon.

“Pellegrino,” he said.

I'd almost forgotten how CJ did things for the people he loved, always with a little extra touch of generosity.

He took a seat on the piano bench, sideways, with his long legs casually spread, and said, “How is it that you're down here again? Don't you have to work, up in the city?”

“I set my own schedule, remember? I've been taking some time off lately.” I paused. “Look, if you're thinking about the money you lent me—”

“No, that's not why I asked. Don't worry about the money.” He waved my concern off. “As long as you're down here, maybe you and I—”

“I'm going back north tomorrow morning,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Tomorrow?” He was casual about it, but I heard the veiled hurt in his words, that I would come and go so quickly, without making plans to spend any real amount of time with him.

“Sorry,” I said again. This was where I should have said,
Please come up and visit me
, but I already knew I wasn't going to be in San Francisco.

I changed the subject. “You know, it's Saturday night. Why don't you have a date?”

He shrugged. “You can't always party,” he said, then shifted position and started into “Lush Life” on the piano.

I leaned back and listened to him play. I wasn't optimistic about the days to come, that Skouras's men weren't going to catch up with me one way or another. That was why I'd come here to see my cousin. But I couldn't say anything important. If I launched into some reminiscence of old times or told him how vital his love had been to me, from my unlovely preadolescence to this moment, he was going to realize something was up.

Abruptly CJ got tired of his own talent, stopped playing, and stood, looking at Henry. “Can I hold him?” he said.

“Sure,” I said.

“If he's sleeping, and it'll bother him …”

“No,” I said, moving over to let CJ sit next to me. “He had his eyes open a minute ago. He's just being mellow.”

I gave Henry up and CJ took him gingerly. He touched the baby's
mouth with one finger, and Henry sucked at it, hopefully, opening his gray eyes again.

“I think he's hungry,” CJ said.

“No, if he were hungry, he'd cry,” I said. “He's fine. You're doing fine.”

“What's his name?” CJ asked.

“Henry.”

He took his attention off the baby to give me a curious glance. “Like your old man.”

“You just saw me three months ago,” I pointed out. “Do the math, CJ. He's not my kid. It's not possible.”

CJ said, “I don't think the world has yet found the limits of what you're capable of, Cainraiser.”

A little later, in CJ's spare bedroom, Henry slept in another makeshift
bassinet while I stretched out in the graceful white iron bed. And failed to fall asleep. After some time, I gave up, rose, and padded barefoot into CJ's room.

The ambient light in there was a little better, because the uncurtained window faced the waning moon. In its dim light I could see my cousin lying on his side, his back to me, maybe sleeping, maybe not. Carefully, I lifted the covers and slid in behind him.

“Don't trip,” I said quietly. “S'me.”

“Knew that,” CJ murmured.

I lifted the hair off the back of his neck and kissed the nape, the body's most unguarded area. He smelled of Ivory soap, like he had at age twelve, and that was one small point of continuity in our vastly changed lives. He didn't smell of anything
pour homme
. He never would.

“Hailey,” he said, “I know something's up. Tell me. Maybe I can help.”

“No,” I said. “I don't want you worrying about me.”

“I always worry about you.”

I felt his weight shift, as if he was about to roll over and face me, but I put my hand on his shoulder and exerted a light warning pressure:
Don't
. We were Orpheus and Eurydice; if he brought us face-to-face, something was going to happen that shouldn't, even if it was just me breaking down and telling him the truth.

“Ask me something else,” I said. “Anything.”

“Say my name.”

“CJ,” I said obediently.

“No,”
he said, disappointed in my obtuseness.

I put my mouth close to his ear.
“Cletus,”
I whispered, and felt him smile.

“Better,” he said.

I reached over his hip and took his hand. “Go to sleep. I'm right here.”

“Never long enough,” he said sleepily.

Like Serena, CJ woke briefly when I got up, again using Henry's crying as my
excuse. Like Serena, he was asleep again by the time I left the house, Henry in my arms. It was dawn, and down the hills I could see a faint outline of the tall buildings of the real Los Angeles, the city I hadn't been to for over a year. Golden, godless, avoided, beloved: my Nineveh.

Even in war, there are territories that aren't to be intruded upon, and religious
sanctuaries are one of the most important. So, in the bright late-December morning that followed my long, interrupted night, I stood on the steps of the Baptist church that Luke Marsellus had rebuilt. I had only been inside as far as the narthex, where I'd politely asked one of the ushers to tell Mr. Marsellus, as soon as the service was over, that Hailey Cain was waiting outside to speak to him.

Henry was being good as gold. I only wished I had a hat for him. It was a nice temperature out, maybe sixty degrees, but I wondered if the full sun was bad for him, at his age. So I kept my back to the sun, putting Henry in my shadow.

The church service broke, and the parishioners emerged onto the church steps, into the sun. Then the usher appeared at the top of the steps. Next to him was Marsellus.

He was a very tall man, with large, lambent eyes and a physical gravitas that made people watch him covertly. He left the usher behind and came down the stairs until he reached my side. “You,” he said.

“Mr. Marsellus.”

“I'm told you want to speak with me.” He had a low voice, like suede, and there was very little of South Central left in it.

I nodded. I couldn't read anything off his tone and bearing.

“About?” he said.

“Half of it's what you'd expect,” I said, meaning an apology. “The other half's going to take a little explaining.”

Marsellus looked into the distance and rubbed his chin with his
hand, considering. Then he took a cell phone from his jacket. “I'm going to call someone to pick you up and take you somewhere we can talk. I'll be there later.”

He didn't specify how much later and it wasn't my place to ask. But I said, “The baby's got to come with me, wherever I go.”