Ten Days in the Hills (32 page)

Isabel murmured, “Western medicine is very crude.” Charlie’s deck chair creaked as he shifted his position, and finally she said, “Do you mind if I put my pants on?”

“Oh. No. Go ahead.”

Just out of the corner of her eye, Isabel could see Stoney grin at this, but then he said, “So I guess you have the capital and your friend has the expertise.”

“In a sense. I’m looking for investors. We have some interest, but it’s slow. Any new thing is slow.”

“It is,” said Stoney, in a considered way that made Isabel want to laugh.

Then the two men watched her as she stood up with a towel around her, stepped around Charlie, leaned down, picked up her clothes, and crept back to her chair, where she sat down with her clothes in her lap.

Isabel said, “What did you come out to the coast for, anyway, Charlie?”

“Just some sunshine. Weather’s been terrible in Jersey this winter. Not even snow, just wind and cold and overcast, day after day. If you’re living alone and you’re self-employed and you can’t just take off and go look for the sunshine, what can you do?”

On the one hand, Isabel yearned for this old man to get up and go away, but on the other, she realized all of a sudden that he was, in addition to being pretty irritating, very lonely.

He had been sitting upright on the deck chair, his forearms on his knees, leaning a little forward, giving her hope that he would get up and go back to his room, but now he turned and stretched out against the back of the chair, arranging his legs comfortably and putting his hands behind his head. She glanced at Stoney, who glanced at her. She sorted her underpants and jeans a bit, as if preparing to slip into them, as her ass was definitely getting cold, but, still, she felt just a little shy about standing up and putting her things on. “So,” said Charlie, “what do you think about this Paul guy? Your mom been seeing him for very long?”

“I think since sometime before Christmas,” said Isabel. “I guess he had something to do with that kid she was filming the movie with.”

“What movie’s that?”

“She has a movie coming out with Denzel Washington this summer. It’s a thriller.”

“Huh,” said Charlie, reflectively.

“It’s got great buzz,” said Stoney. “Kind of
The Sixth Sense
meets
Fort Apache—the Bronx
with a touch of
Kundun.
”

“What’s that?” said Charlie.

“That was a movie about the Dalai Lama as a boy,” said Stoney.

“So—I look at this guy and I can’t figure out what your mom sees in him,” mused Charlie. “I was watching him do his exercises this morning, and he can corkscrew around in a pretty amazing way, I admit that. But the beard is strange. It gives me the creeps to have it at the dinner table. He might at least trim it. Lots of guys do that.”

Isabel didn’t quite know how to respond to these remarks. Paul had been friendly to her without seeming to be trying to gain her approval, and he was a vegetarian, apart from the yearly organ-meats thing, and he was always helpful around the kitchen. Besides that, he seemed to be neat, very clean, and so self-contained that Isabel suspected that Zoe found him a little frustrating, which was good. She said, “I like him,” by which she knew she meant, and she knew Stoney knew she meant, He suits my purposes with regard to my mother.

“Doesn’t look like he has much money. Your mom could have her pick of guys.”

“I think she’s tried that,” said Stoney, and this remark, too, made Isabel a tad uncomfortable. He added, “You know, deep down this is a pretty straight-arrow town. I don’t think Zoe ever wanted to be a corporate wife, which would have been the typical thing to happen to her. They don’t look like it the way they do in, let’s say, Bloomfield Hills, but it’s more or less the same lifestyle.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said Charlie.

“He’s got his own gig, anyway,” said Isabel. “Lots of middle-aged actresses end up with much younger guys who are so clearly on the make. That’s so embarrassing. I mean, before Paul met my mom, he was hiking the seven holiest mountains in China.”

“Do you believe that?”

“He’s got a slide show.”

“I’d like to see that,” said Charlie.

“Actually,” said Stoney, “I would, too.”

“Mom saw it. She said it was great.” Now that she had begun defending Paul, Isabel could feel herself warm to it. “I guess he was the only person hiking. Every Chinese person he ran across was driving.”

“He has very strange-looking feet,” said Charlie.

“I hadn’t noticed,” said Stoney. Isabel had noticed, though, and Paul’s feet were strange-looking—horny and flat, with splayed long toes. Just that day, Isabel had watched him dive off the edge of the pool into the deep end, and his feet had seemed to grasp the edge of the pool and then launch him. She said, “I guess if you go barefoot a lot your feet don’t look like other people’s feet. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Except,” said Uncle Charlie, “beard, feet, is this sexy? Frankly, that’s what I wonder about. Look at her. She’s maybe the sexiest woman in the world. She’s sexier in person than she is on the screen, and that’s saying something. Just having her around the house gives me a little shock each time I look at her, and it doesn’t matter what she’s wearing. She could be wearing a pup tent. You kids know what a pup tent is?”

“I can figure it out,” said Isabel.

“But he looks to me like a gargoyle.”

“You know what?” said Isabel. “I need to put on my clothes. I’m getting cold. I guess we should stop pretending that we weren’t doing what we were doing, and that you weren’t watching.” She stood up and started to pull on her underwear. Charlie, she was glad to note, did look the other way. After she put on her underwear, she pulled on her jeans and sat down again, but only preliminary to saying, “What time is it? I’m about ready for bed.”

“I left my watch in my room, but it was way after midnight when I came out,” said Charlie. She noticed that he did not say that he wasn’t watching. Stoney cleared his throat. He said, “I guess that would mean that I should go home, too.”

“I thought your floors were being refinished,” said Charlie.

“Well,” said Stoney, “I’ve been going in and out.”

Good save, thought Isabel.

Charlie stuck with them all the way up the steps onto the deck, and even into the main part of the house, where, when Isabel followed Stoney to the front door, Charlie went and opened the refrigerator. Everyone else had gone to bed. She followed Stoney out to his car, the old Jaguar that she disapproved of—though, every time she thought her disapproving thought about old emissions standards, she remembered that any new and less polluting car would have to be manufactured of many polluting materials, so that was a trade-off, and a conundrum, global-warming-wise. Stoney was chuckling. She said, “Why are you laughing? This is not good.”

“Maybe not, but it is funny.” His voice was so familiar. That was its greatest appeal. Its sound in her ear gave her a feeling like she was going to cry, but she didn’t cry. Rather, she threw her arms around him and laid her cheek in the crook of his neck. There was a pause, during which he held her tightly. Then he kissed her on the lips, folded himself into his car, and drove down the hill with a wave. She ran up the outside stairs to her aerie. She could feel the press of the wind now, and when she got to her room, she saw that she had left a window open, and papers had blown around the room. She closed the window and stared down the hill. She could see his taillights for one moment before he disappeared around the corner. She got into bed with her clothes on, and pulled the covers over her, but she didn’t go to sleep—she sat up and watched and listened to the windows rattling in their frames. It seemed as though she and Stoney were in a different movie now—no longer one in which his presence was familiar and sometimes inconvenient, like a large object that had to be shifted from time to time so that she could work around it, but, rather, one in which he could disappear at any moment, one in which any ignorant word or careless gesture on her part could blow him up. Something, maybe the wind, maybe that thought, made her shiver.

It was still windy
when Isabel awoke in the bright glare of her room; she was still clothed, too, though she had kicked off the covers, and she had no idea of the time, because she couldn’t find her watch and her clock had stopped. She could tell nothing by the light in the room. There was always light in her room. When she got down to the kitchen, she was not happy to discover that Paul and Zoe were forking cantaloupe from the same wedge, Simon was eating some multicolored cereal, her father was buttering toast, Elena was spreading her toast with roasted-garlic hummus, and Delphine was eating an omelet with, it looked like, some bits of ham in it. Charlie had a bagel, split open and smeared with cream cheese. It looked all too busy and convivial to Isabel, who had planned to sleep until everyone was gone, grab a cup of coffee, and sneak out. By the clock on the microwave, she saw that it was only seven forty-one. Elena, Delphine, and Zoe all looked at her, and Zoe said, “You okay, Isabel?”

“Oh, I didn’t sleep,” she said, and from behind her hair she saw the quickest ghost of a smile cross the lips of Mr. Charlie Mannheim.

Cassie was reading aloud from the paper. She said, “Okay, I’ll start over. ‘A transgender prostitute who pummeled a 78-year-old retiree during a scuffle in the man’s bedroom was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter Thursday after jurors rejected a more serious charge of murder. James Cid, 31, who uses the name Jamie, wept as the verdict was read in Ventura County Superior Court. Prosecutors had sought a first-degree murder and robbery conviction for the slaying of widower Jack Jamar, arguing that Cid deliberately beat Jamar and stole his wallet before fleeing the area. Cid was apprehended in San Diego County after the March 10, 2000, assault, and admitted in a police interview to hitting and kicking Jamar in the man’s east Ventura home.’”

“Tell me what ‘transgender’ means again,” said Charlie, biting into his bagel.

Isabel said, “He’s had a sex change from woman to man.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Charlie, chewing. “This is such a California story.” He picked up his napkin and wiped his lips.

“There are transgendered individuals everywhere,” said Isabel. “It’s not a California thing.”

“Shh,” said Delphine.

Cassie went on: “‘Outside the courtroom Thursday, three jurors told reporters that prosecutors were unable to prove premeditation or malice, and that the elements for robbery were not proved beyond a reasonable doubt. But jurors also decided the evidence did not support Cid’s claims of self-defense based on the testimony of a crime-scene expert who found blood spattered on the bottom of a bedroom dresser, suggesting that Jamar was on the floor during at least part of the altercation. “There was spirited discussion over what was self-defense,” juror Denise Barnett said. Barnett said that after seven days of painstaking deliberations, during which the jury asked questions and heard testimony over and over again, the group agreed the evidence pointed to manslaughter.’”

“What does that mean?” said Zoe.

“He didn’t intend to kill him,” said Max.

“‘It also found Cid guilty of petty theft instead of robbery.’”

“Robbery,” said Max, “is when you violently steal something, using a weapon or some other sort of intimidation. Theft is just taking possession of something that isn’t yours.”

“‘Barnett and juror Tina Dwyer said they all had different opinions and theories and worked hard just to develop a list of facts they could agree upon. In the end, they said, it was still not clear what actually occurred in Jamar’s bedroom….’”

“This makes no sense to me,” said Charlie. “Was Jamie the prostitute a male or a female?”

“I think he’s a male,” said Simon.

“That’s funny,” said Zoe. “I thought she was a female. I thought she had been James the male but now she was Jamie the female, and that’s why the old guy brought her home.”

Cassie cleared her throat and continued to read: “‘At the trial, West tried to show that Cid beat Jamar, a retired businessman who was known to pick up prostitutes, into a coma and took his wallet after Jamar brought Cid to his Varsity Street house for sex. According to testimony, police officers responding to a possible robbery found a seriously injured Jamar in the bedroom, bleeding from head wounds and wearing only a T-shirt. Jamar’s injuries were so severe, West told jurors, that “officers initially thought Jack was shot in the head.” Jamar, whose teeth were knocked into his stomach….’”

“Oh my God,” said Elena.

“Maybe he just swallowed them,” said Max. “‘Knocked’ is a pretty loaded word.”

“‘…knocked into his stomach during the assault, later died, and prosecutors charged Cid with murder and robbery. But Sheahen told jurors his client, whom he described as a nonviolent individual who suffers from a gender-identity disorder, acted in self-defense after being attacked by Jamar.’”

“See,” said Charlie, “the article said ‘individual.’ My guess is no one knew, or was prepared to say during the trial, whether the perp was a male or a female.”

Isabel found this whole discussion irritating. She said, “It seems obvious to me that Jamie had been a female, was now a male, and was taken home by this career john. Boys can call themselves Jamie. The old guy got violent, and Jamie defended himself a little too strongly, and then the old guy fell and hit his head and died. He had probably already given Jamie some money, and that’s what they said he had stolen. In the picture he’s a man.” She found some bread and slid two pieces into the toaster.