Days have gone by with little talk about my name being knifed into the back of a poor waiter named Jesus. I think both Charlie and I are pretending the whole business was a bad dream that we shared. I’ve made no attempt to contact Vince; the fragile truce between Charlie and me can’t sustain much more stress and, frankly, I can’t feature Vince as a killer; he’s always struck me as too weak-willed for even verbal conflicts. 

Charlie’s gone into a shell, spending most of his days and evenings holed up with Roscoe in the second bedroom, where he not only works with the parrot on who knows what, but attends daily Al-anon meetings on Zoom. Charlie seems more disturbed by his daughter’s addiction than by the chilling business surrounding the murdered waiter, and the horrid business of my name being associated with the killing. Last night at dinner Charlie said he’s found some comfort in the three C’s of Al-anon: I didn’t cause it; I can’t cure it; I can’t control it. Is there a lesson in that formula for me to apply?

Late this morning Charlie comes out of Roscoe’s room and tells me about the insurrection at the capitol. We sit down to lunch with the television on and watch it together for most of the afternoon. On the sofa we snuggle close and hold hands. What we’re watching is truly unreal. I have to remind myself that it’s a life event; the outcome is unclear. This is not the same as being at the movies—a place that Charlie and I have never been together. I reflect for a moment on this oddity and even say to Charlie how curious it is that we’ve been through so much together and yet have never held hands in a theater. Perhaps Charlie misunderstands me because he says what I’ve just been thinking, rather harshly, “This is not a movie, Pina. This is happening right now in our nation’s Capitol.” I know it is unseemly to have hurt feelings at a time like this, but I do.

We no longer speak. The indecent spectacle—a mass of white cretins breaking into and trashing the undefended Capitol during a joint session of congress to certify Joe Biden’s election to the presidency—numbs us, as loops of the same videos play and Charlie switches the channels between CNN and MSNBC. I watch him hold onto the remote control and think of how much Vince loved the device. I’ve never seen a woman hold onto a remote control device with the same urgency as these men do. It is as if they’re gripping their last vestige of power. One time, when the batteries went dead in the device and there were no replacements in the house, Vince looked like a broken man. Another time, as I watched him clutch the damn thing, I said: “It’s a good thing you have two hands, Vince, one for holding the remote and the other for grabbing your dick.” 

After switching channels endlessly and not finding what he wants, Charlie starts shouting at the screen: “Where are the police? How about the National Guard? When are they going to arrest Trump and Trump, Jr., and Giuliani for inciting a riot?”

We listen to the talking heads for hours. Charlie insists on switching to Fox News to see how the hard right is characterizing the event. When we discover that most of the talk is about Antifa infiltrators provoking the violence, Charlie roars again at the television screen before turning it off.

Misery loves company. I remember at age nineteen or twenty, when I was routinely depressed five days of seven—and I admit this now with outrage at my callowness—that I took some comfort in the tragedies of others—floods, earthquakes, political disaster—and even thought that if the whole world went to hell it would be a balm to me not to suffer alone. And I am ashamed to say that now, as Washington burns, I am enjoying, if not comfort, at least, a bit of distraction from my own insecurities. 

I meet with the kook of a detective, Augie Boyer, at his request, beside the plaque of the Revolutionary War veteran in the Sonoma Mountain Cemetery. When I get there he’s sitting on a large stone eating an apple, his facemask, dangling from an ear, a canvas briefcase at his feet.

He stands and tips his Giants cap; the red blades of his hair point in all directions from under the cap. Then he secures his facemask in place. “Augie Boyer. Thank you for coming, Pina.” 

As Charlie told me it would, Boyer’s facemask bears a haiku:

The old detective

needs a magnifying glass

to read the tea leaves.

He’s not sure what to do with his half-eaten apple. I should tell him to finish it, but I enjoy his discomfiture. He’d like me to turn away for a moment so he can bury the fruit in a pocket of his brown leather bomber. He’s a funny guy to be a detective. Charlie told me he used to be stout, but now he’s stringy looking, a vegan who stays away from French fries. He looks like the sort of dude who has a collection of vintage gum machines at home. Nothing he loves more than to feed pennies to the machines and spin the gears that drop gumballs. 

“Hope you didn’t have trouble finding the spot,” he says, holding the apple by its stem.

“No, I’m particular fond of Captain Smith’s monument.” I do turn away for a moment and, poof, when I look back, Boyer, empty-handed, is scratching his nose.

I nod to the two plaques commemorating the Revolutionary War veteran, who is said to be the only known vet of that war to be buried in California. One of the plaques is from the Daughters of the American Revolution, the other from the California Society Sons of the American Revolution.

“You know,” I tell Boyer, “I’ve stood here a couple of times puzzling out this guy’s dates. I’ve also done a bit of research on him. Born in 1768, he was eleven when he joined the Virginia Navy as a mate and served with his father on The Hazard. Apparently, he sailed around the globe eight times, including a voyage to Canton, China with a cargo of 63,000 seal and otter skins picked up at the Farallon Islands.” How I remember these factoids, I don’t know. Charlie would be proud of me. 

“I love that he went from the Hazard,” I continue, “to become captain of the Albatross, a merchant vessel, which was wrecked somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. How big a space in his psyche did the names of his ships occupy? That’s what I want to know. Captain Smith lost everything on the shipwreck of the Albatross, including his journals. Imagine what they may have told us. He died in 1846, down the hill in an adobe on First Street East. His host, Jacob Leese, General Vallejo’s brother-in-law, asked him if he’d consulted with himself about leaving this world, and he answered that he hadn’t.” I have no idea why I’ve told the detective all this—just to postpone the inevitable inquisition, I suppose.

 “Ah,” Boyer says, “You have enough on the captain to write a novel. You’re venturing into forensic archeology, here. That’s a field I wish I’d gone into.”

 “Why didn’t you?” 

“Oh, that requires a lot more education than a guy like me could stomach. Shall we take a little stroll?”

I nod and the detective leads me up Palm Walk to Laurel Lane, and then we follow Toyen.

“We’re going to visit the grave of an Italian-born stonecutter named Luigi Basagilia. As a matter of fact, I’ve done a little research on him. The guy never learned English. His foot was crashed in a quarry accident and he had three toes amputated. He spent the rest of his life sunk in a depression.”

“Why are we visiting his grave?”

“You’ll see. I’m sorry that you’ve been pulled into this case, that your 

name . . . ”

“Maybe this business has nothing to do with me,” I say. “Maybe it refers to another Pina. In Italy it’s not that uncommon a name. It’s a diminutive for Agrippina, Jacopina, Giuseppina, and, in my case, Crispina.”

“But in this country? Have you ever met another Pina?”

I didn’t bother to answer. At the stonecutter’s grave I wince as I see my name carved five times into the granite stone. It’s been rendered with a steady hand in wide looping letters, just the way Charlie described it on the back of the restaurant check.

“Somebody’s really got you on the mind,” the detective says.

“Or the name of someone else,” I counter.

“You have to admit he has a solid technique.”

“A professional stonecutter,” I suggest. “That should narrow your search.”

“If only. Do you know how many stonecutters are in Sonoma County now that everybody and his mother have a granite countertop? At first I thought the clean handwriting took your old boyfriend Vince out of the running, but it’s occurred to me since that he may have had an accomplice. Any thoughts about Vince in this regard?”

“He avoided conflicts at all costs.”

“Until he didn’t.”

 “You really suspect him of murder?”

“I think Jesus was his local dealer and that Vince may not have liked what he was peddling.”

 “What about my name?” I holler. “Why the fuck is my name mixed up in all of this?”

 “That’s the thing that’s got me stumped. Vince certainly seems to be obsessed with you.”

I imagine Boyer’s half-eaten apple turning brown in his bomber pocket. “Vince’s interest in me intensified only after I left him.”

“That’s the way it often goes—seller’s remorse.”

“I was never his property, detective, and if anybody did the selling it was me.”

“Point taken. And I take it you felt no remorse.”

“Only that I didn’t leave him sooner.”

“An exemplary character witness,” Boyer says with a wink. “But you don’t think he had anything to do with the killing?”

I shrug. “I have no idea how desperate these addicts get when they don’t find the heroin to their liking.”

“Or Fentanyl, as is more likely the case.” 

The detective pulls a joint in a tube out of his briefcase. “Hey, I hear you’re a smoker, Pina. I brought another doobie for you.” He pulls out a second tube and hands it to me. “The joint’s clean, been in the tube for two days.” Now he yanks out a little spritzer of disinfectant and aims it at my open hands. “Better safe than sorry.”

I slip the joint from the tube and allow Boyer to light it. He has a funny way of smoking; he tugs on his joint three times before inhaling deeply. After exhaling he says, “Go light on this, Pina, this is Forestville Fuckface, a supercharged Sativa that I’ve enhanced with kief. I like to say that it turns thinking into a spectator sport in which the smoker is both athlete and observer.”

“You don’t seem to be going light,” I say, before taking a full toke.

“Well, I’ve become an elite athlete at this sport.”

 I point to Luigi Basagilia’s gravestone. “How did you happen to find this up here?”

“Oh, this cemetery is one of my favorite stomping grounds. This place, more than any cemetery I know, tickles my forensic archeology funny bone, my FAFB,” Boyer says with a laugh. “In the old days when I was still a carnivore I’d come up here with a couple of meatball sandwiches and a bottle of Guinness and spend the afternoon exploring. The only disheartening thing about those times is that I discovered I had more in common with the dead than the living. This time I had a hunch that I’d find something up here. I wasn’t looking for your name, per se, but perhaps the knife. Something.”

“I see what you mean about this stuff,” I said after taking a couple of more tokes.”

“Yes, this weed turns into a kind of truth serum. Try and lie when you’re high on it and your nose will grow.”

”My nose is already long, detective.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet. Let’s try it out. Tell me a lie, Pina. Tell me that you think Vince is an honorable man; that you have an abiding love for Charlie’s daughter Sally; tell me that you haven’t thought of poisoning Roscoe, and that Charlie doesn’t repeat your name in triplicate when he’s being affectionate, just a couple of times less than the handwriting on the restaurant check and the carving on the tombstone.”

“I’m not going to tell you any of that,” I say.

“That’s good, Pina, your nose won’t grow any longer.”

“Don’t tell me you’re looking at Charlie for this crime.”

“Looking. I like that, Pina. It’s right out of NYPD Blue. Let’s just say my eyes are open.”

The strange man is beginning to frighten me. “How about me? Do you suspect me detective?”

Boyer pulls a yellow legal pad out of his briefcase, along with a felt tip pen. “Would you mind writing your name five times, Pina?”

“You really think I’d carve my name into somebody’s back, detective?”

Boyer strokes his chin. “Well, if you happened to have murdered the man, I’d say all bets are off.” He sprays the pen with disinfectant and hands it to me.

I shake my head, suddenly pissed to be wasting my time with this doofus detective and his charade. Nonetheless, I take the pen and write my name five times on the legal pad.

“Very interesting,” he says. “The backward slant of your signature bares no resemblance at all to the samples of your writing I’ve seen.”

“Where have you seen my signature?” I demand.

“Public records. I’m always interested in the phenomenon of people who are not a suspect but turn themselves into one. How much time did you spend, perfecting that backward slant, Pina?”

“I don’t have to talk with you. You’re not a cop,” I say, stepping away from Boyer.

“No, you don’t. I’m curious why you did.”

With that, I head back down Toyen and, turning back once, I see Boyer nibbling on his apple. 

Furious now, I walk down First Street West into town, past a couple of empty wine tasting gardens, and fucking tourists everywhere, waiting for the party to start. I notice a line in front of The Girl and the Fig—people lining up for takeout. That’s when I hear the voice: “Pa-pina . . . Pa-pina.”

Fucking Aubrey, the last person in the world I want to see.