The Day I Killed James (4 page)

I couldn’t even feel James move with me, because that would just have been too much. Too intensely personal. I might have exploded. As it was, I felt every nerve ending exposed. I felt skinless. But it was a pleasurable exposure.

I felt it.

And it had very little to do with lust. In fact, there was something strangely pure about it. Like religion.

If I had felt it any more strongly, I might have cracked like a china cup. It was like a pressure inside me, like an old steam boiler, and I just lay there hoping it would hold. Hoping
I
would hold.

And then I knew I’d had all this, and I hadn’t even been there to notice. I’d been so possessed by my own anxiety over Randy that I’d been absent from what I now saw as a significant event. I had to notice now, after the fact. Try to re-create what had once been placed right in my hand.

You know what it was like? It was like I finally looked up and saw the whale.

My best revelations have a bad habit of stumbling home a few hours after curfew.

I made this deal with God. Even though we’d never spoken before. Like the man said about atheists in fox-holes. Or, actually, about the absence of them.

I said, Walk him through the door in one piece. Right now, okay? I know, that would be a miracle. But that’s what you do, right? Aren’t you the guy in charge of miracles?

Okay, so give him back now. Pull strings, do what you have to do, I don’t care.

And here’s what I’ll do for my part in the deal. I will never, ever, as long as I live, fail to appreciate his goodness again.

I mean, if I live to be 100 and he’s still alive and kicking at the ripe old age of 104, I swear not for one minute of all those years together will I take for granted the blessing of James.

What do you say, God? Have we got a deal?

The following morning James washed up onto William Randolph Hearst State Beach in San Simeon.

That was the first day I shaved my head.

Journal Entry _________________________

Day I’m writing this: Thirty-one days after “The Day”

Day I’m writing about: Today

This morning I woke up sweating. It wasn’t light yet, so I sat up in bed in the dark. And sat and sat. But nothing changed. Nothing ever changes.

So I left a voice-mail message telling Dr. Grey that I’m leaving myself.

It went like this:

“Dr. Grey.

“I know this is going to come as a shock to me, but I am leaving me. Perhaps I’ll say I could not have seen this coming, but truthfully things have been wrong between me for some time. Time heals and I’m sure in time I’ll build a new life without me.

“Please cancel my regular appointments, as I will be nowhere around.

“Oh. Did I mention that this is Theresa?”

After I hung up the phone, I sat some more. But like I said before, nothing ever changes.

I left a note for my absentee father. Then I started to pack.

PART TWO

ONE

Disdain Gets Them Every Time

Theresa Anne Eagan lay on the hot metal of her car hood; the sun baked her face and outstretched arms. When she raised a cigarette to her lips and took a long draw, the heat of it in her lungs completed the package, nicely pushing that envelope of discomfort.

She purposely parked here—in a dirt lot, up a hill from the paved employee parking—because it was not easily seen from anywhere. Close enough to the Roman Pool to hear the guides deliver canned, well-practiced farewells to their tour groups, but only as a one-way awareness. Like a fly on a wall. A hot fly on a hot wall.

A voice startled her slightly, a close voice. But startled her only on the inside.

“Annie.”

She betrayed nothing of her surprise, didn’t twitch or raise her head. In fact, she didn’t even open her eyes. “I’d have to guess that’s Art.”

His voice again, from beside her left arm. “There’s a party down in the guide trailer. You should come down.”

She didn’t respond. Just took another hot draw.

“Todd’s birthday. There’s cake.”

“What kind of cake?”

“Chocolate with chocolate frosting.”

“First significant thing you’ve said all morning. I’ll be down in a while.”

“Why do you come up here? You don’t want anybody to know you smoke?”

“Everybody knows I smoke.”

The diesel roar of a tour bus coming around the circle, headed back down the hill. The metallic complaint of its gears, the stench of exhaust.

“Then why do you come up here?”

“To be alone.”

“Oh, right. I get it. I can take a hint.”

Annie opened her eyes. Raised her head to address him. As if taking him in for the first time. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“You shouldn’t lie in the sun so much.”

She lay back again and closed her eyes. Took another draw and then let her arm droop off to the side, dangling in the air beside the hood of her hot car. Hoping he would go away on his own.

“I mean, it’s a great tan. But you’re gonna get skin cancer.”

“Promise?”

Art laughed, a short, nervous bark. “You say the weirdest things. I get to guard your Tour One next.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing.”

“It is. I love to listen to you talk. I love to look at you. In fact, I think I love
you.
” He said this last with a flourish, dropping to one knee and taking her hand. She pulled it away. Turned her head and frowned at him from behind her sunglasses.

“If you really loved me you wouldn’t make me talk it. You’d trade and let me guard.” The prized guard position involved very little work. Just walk in the back and be sure the group stayed together. Which explained why it was so prized.

“If that would improve my image in your beautiful eyes.”

“You’re not going to give me your guard, Art. Don’t toy with me.”

“It’s yours.”

She sat up. Raised her sunglasses and looked at him full-on. She did seem to like him a bit better already. He drew to his feet, a patch of brown dirt on the knee of his gray polyester uniform pants.

She noticed he held a piece of cake in a napkin. He noticed her notice.

“Want some?”

“Yeah.” She reached her hand out for it, but he drew it back.

“Just a bite. If you want a whole piece you have to come down to the trailer.”

“Okay, a bite, then.”

“Okay, but it’s crumbly. It’ll get all over. Here.”

He held it up to her face, and she reached out and took a bite, no hands. “One more,” she said with her mouth still full.

“No. You have to come down.”

“Damn it, Art.”

“A deal’s a deal,” he said. “Wait till I tell Todd I had you eating out of my hand.” And he disappeared down the hill.

She shook her head and lay back down. Drew again on the cigarette. But it was depressingly close to the filter now, so she took the pack out of her blazer pocket and lit another from it. She didn’t need chocolate cake that badly. She just needed to be alone.

But at least she didn’t have to talk the next tour. Already the day was looking up.

“Welcome to Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument. A place William Randolph Hearst called La Cuesta Encantada. The Enchanted Hill. My name is Arthur Friedman, and I’ll be your guide this afternoon. That lovely young woman with the modern haircut at the back of the tour is my partner, Annie Stewart. If you have a problem as the tour goes along or need a translation brochure, drop back and talk to Annie. I envy you that already.”

Annie stood behind the fifty-two tourists at the Hello Spot, smiling behind her sunglasses in a way she hoped looked interested.

Art, unlike most guides, gave the same tour every time. And she was already bored with it. And she found his stridency enervating. But at least she could follow along in silence, thinking her own thoughts. Which, just at the moment, were no more significant or complicated than, Yo, Art, if they don’t speak English, how are they supposed to understand that I can give them a translation brochure?

Meanwhile his voice droned in the background of her heavy, nearly immobile thoughts. Asking for no flash photography, for the group to stay on the tour mats and touch nothing except the concrete or iron handrails.

A burst of laughter from the crowd, which meant he had just used his usual line, “I’m the only art in the Castle you can touch.”

Then the group was moving, teeming around both sides of the fountain like water flowing uphill.

Up the stairs, then right to C Terrace, where Annie leaned on the cast concrete railing and stared out over William Randolph Hearst State Beach.

And hoped briefly that nobody would need anything.

Just underneath the main terrace, on the steps to the left of Sekhmet, the ancient Egyptian sculpture, Annie heard Leander’s voice for the first time that day. She knew just where he was standing, from experience. Knew his usual Day Security post, on the main terrace, at the foot of the ridiculously ornate Main House, in the shade of a Hearst-imported magnolia tree.

She moved partway up the stairs, stopping with a view of both the terrace and the tour group below. And looked at Leander. Art had a long, complex spiel about Sekhmet, so she was in no hurry.

But to her disappointment, Leander was talking to his girlfriend from Gardening.

Annie didn’t like his girlfriend. Not because she was his girlfriend so much, but because she didn’t treat him well. Because he looked at her with those gleaming, unguarded brown eyes, not knowing that she described her relationship with him as “no exclusive thing” when out of his earshot. Annie regularly wrestled with an urge to tell him, though that was clearly not her place.

The Tour One directly in front of hers cleared the area on its way into the Assembly Room, leaving Leander and the girl alone on the concrete terrace. He grabbed her and began to dance. It looked almost like a waltz: long, stately strides that swirled them around and around and, at one point, brought them dangerously close to the fishpond surrounding the main terrace fountain.

He was a little smaller than she always remembered him, and a little darker. And it wasn’t his features exactly, but the animation of them. The way he smiled at that girl. Which she did not deserve. On one wide sweep he saw Annie and waved to her over his girlfriend’s shoulder. She smiled and nodded rather than wave back, because she didn’t want the group to know her attention was fully elsewhere.

Then the waltz turned into a broadly executed mock tango, their arms outstretched and cheeks pressed together. Annie couldn’t help but smile, despite her ambivalence.

Leander stopped briefly, leaned back, picked a flower—first glancing around to convince himself that nobody but Annie was watching—and held it to the face of the girl, who opened her mouth to receive it. Their cheeks pressed together again, the flower clenched tightly in her teeth.

Annie became aware of Art glancing sideways at her as he spoke.

Art finished his speech, and the group poured around Sekhmet like herded cattle, anxious to take a break in the shade. Leander’s girlfriend ran back to her work. The tourists sat on the hard concrete benches and fanned themselves and smoked and looked up at the Castle in wonder or revulsion or more likely both. And Art talked. And Annie sidled into the shade next to Leander, nearly shoulder to shoulder.

“Hey.”

“Hey, Annie. You didn’t see me pick that flower.”

“What flower?”

“Thanks. You got lucky today. Two guards.”

“Art gave me his.”

“Get outta town! No way.”

“I’m telling you.”

“He’s just a nice guy, or what?”

“More like the ‘or what,’ I think.”

Leander laughed.

And then Annie had nothing more to say. It happened this way. Because she didn’t know him. He just reminded her of someone, and yet he wasn’t that someone. Not at close range. And because she had never been good at talking for real anyway.

So they just stood in the shade.

When the group massed into a bulky line headed for the Main House, Annie took her place bringing up the rear. Just before she pulled level with the house, just as the last tourist’s back disappeared through the cool concrete doorway, she looked over her shoulder.

There he still was, standing in the shade, hands clasped and dangling in front of him. And he smiled at her.

You could do better, she told him in her head.

She didn’t mean he could do her. Just that he could do better.

Her hands slid into her blazer pockets, touching the pack of cigarettes and a pile of loose change. She pulled out a quarter and, turning fully back to face the terrace, levered her thumb under it and flipped it into the air. Praying it would make it all the way to the pond. Because he was watching. As it arced end over end, the aim and distance looking good so far, she made a wish.

I hope Leander doesn’t get hurt.

The quarter landed in the water with a satisfying plunk.

He shot her a thumbs-up. “Three points,” he called.

“I hope I get my wish.”

“You will,” he said. “I’m sure you will.”

He smiled.

She smiled.

She ducked through the concrete archway into the Assembly Room.

She spent her day off at the Cove, as the locals called William Randolph Hearst State Beach. Sunning until she was too hot to bear it, then dipping into the ocean and swimming out beyond the waves until her temperature came back down. Shaking her head as if to whip water out of her hair, purely out of force of habit, then lying back down on her towel, feeling the drops of salt water evaporate one by one. Drinking Coronas and smoking too much.

Heaven, until Art showed up. Which he did about one time in four, because she was here regularly enough that it paid to cruise by and look for her car.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Do I get a choice?”

She could hear and feel him sit in the sand at her left side. “Which do you think will get you first? Melanoma or lung cancer?”

“I don’t bet on the races, I just watch them.”

A beautiful moment of silence. She sat up to take a long slug of beer. Opened her eyes to the small commercial fishing boats anchored offshore, the pier on her left, with San Simeon Acres, the motel zone, beyond. And to her right the Point, a high wooded peninsula of Hearst land. For the moment, gloriously undeveloped.

“Lot of speculation about you in the guide trailer.”

“Don’t you guys have anything better to do?”

“No. It’s what you get for not telling anybody anything about you. People make stuff up. You should hear some of the things.”

She wiped sweat from her brow. Ran her hand through her hair. Again, force of habit. It wasn’t even long enough to lie flat. Lay back again and closed her eyes. “Okay, I’ll bite. Tell me some of the things.”

“That you just got out of jail.”

“Good one.”

“True?”

“No.”

“That you almost died of cancer, and that’s why your hair’s so short. From the chemo. But then somebody pointed out that you have to take a physical for this job.”

“Is that all?”

“I’ve barely scratched the surface. Most people think you’re gay.”

“That figures.”

“Why does it figure?”

“I have short hair, and they don’t happen to see me with anybody.”

“
Are
you gay?”

“Well, not at the moment, Art. But keep pushing at me. It’s not out of the question.”

Another beautiful silence. She could feel him shift around. When she looked over, he’d settled back onto his elbows. Wearing cutoff jeans and no shirt. Skinny and pale. She hoped he was smart enough to wear number forty-five sunblock.

“I knew you weren’t. Because I see the way you look at Leander. Rumor has it you’ve got a thing for him.”

She didn’t bother to answer.

“
Do
you have a thing for him?”

“No.”

“Well, even so. If you were gay you wouldn’t have a guy’s name tattooed on your chest.”

She reflexively rolled onto her stomach.

“Who is this James?”

“Just a guy I used to know.”

“Where is he now?”

“Nowhere.”

“Nowhere?”

“Or everywhere. Depending on how you want to look at it.”

“You give such elliptical answers. It’s really hard to ask you questions.”

“And yet you just keep doing it.”

He jumped to his feet. “Right. Sorry.”

Before he was two steps away she called after him, “Wait. Art. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“No, you’re right. I should leave you alone.”

“Art, it’s okay. I’m sorry. Really. The last thing I want to do is hurt your feelings.”

He waved over his shoulder as he walked off down the beach.

She lay on her stomach a moment with her head in her hands. It didn’t work. It never worked. Maybe it never would. You had to hurt them to keep them away, and if you didn’t keep them away, they’d get hurt. She’d tried it from just about every angle, and it seemed there was no way out.

In the morning she sat with Todd in the fog, at a picnic table on the dirt hill behind the guide trailer. He gave her half of his cinnamon roll.