I see Vince’s BMW parked on the sidewalk out front and decide to pay a visit. Once I climb the stairs to his condo, it’s clear that he’s there; I hear his cough underneath a frantic smear of guitar jazz, broadcast at high volume from his Bose system. The music, if it can be called that, seems like a fresh take on that old public service announcement: “This is your brain on drugs.” The man’s raspy cough suggests that he has COVID.
I push Vince’s doorbell three times, pause, and then hit it again—our old code for each other—but he doesn’t answer. Along with the guitar jazz and Vince’s cough, the incessant crowing of the two roosters, across the street at The Patch, add a shrill counterpart. I always thought that roosters were designed to squawk at an impossibly early time in the A.M. and then be done for the rest of the day, but these guys never quit. What an instinct to have bred into you, and consider a rooster’s anatomy—the power packs in their voice boxes, and their cast iron throats. Do their relentless cries indicate the degree of their horniness? Imagine the level of cacophony if every time a man ogled a girl or a woman he was forced to crow like a rooster.
I pounce on the bell again and finally Vince shouts: “What the fuck? Is the sky falling?”
He pulls open the door, unmasked. The left half of his face is spread with lather, the right shaved clean. Vince affects a sidewise posture at the door, his shaved side aimed forward, as if he could bluff me into not seeing the Foamy side. The way he’s standing, he looks a little like a one-eyed-jack without any of the regal trappings. Actually, he’s barefoot—his toenails, thick and jagged as the blade of a serrated knife—in boxer shorts and a wife-beater tee with a long drool of coffee stain, just south of his throat. He lifts a hand towel that had been draped over his right shoulder and wipes off the lather. The result: a perfectly split personality—Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Even his mustache is divided between a five-day bush and the faintest suggestion of its twin.
I stand well back from the door. He looks me up and down and I listen to the cries of the roosters.
“You going out on a date, Vince?”
He grins at me. “No, my date’s come here.”
“Fat chance.” I can see track marks on his arms. At least that’s what I think they are. “I want to talk.”
“Talk’s cheap, Pina.”
“Well, that’s all you’re getting from me. Get your ass dressed, put on a mask, and come out here.”
“A little demanding today, are we?” he says, and turns away to produce his three-note, sandpaper cough. “Give me five minutes.”
“Don’t tell me you have COVID now.”
“I don’t know.”
That’s as close to an affirmative as I’m going to get from Vince. I’m struck by a moment of sorrow for the man. Although I never was in love with him, we shared seven years of our lives. At his best Vince was a boon companion who looked after me, from time to time, with a measure of consideration. Such partners go whichever way the wind blows, and this grief, if it can be called that, concerns my spurious hope that he and I shared more than a string of good times. There is also the simple human shock in noting the extent of his disintegration. This longtime doctor with a swagger has cashed it all in for a season of oblivion.
Vince has a teak bench outside on which he never sits; he’s cluttered it with neglected succulents in chipped crocks. I looked after them when I stayed here, but I doubt they’ve been watered in months. Somehow they go on living, which make them the perfect companions for an addict.
I push a few pots aside to make a place to sit. I’m puzzled with myself for not recognizing the depth of Vince’s addiction earlier. Was it willful ignorance on my part? For years I wrote off his flirtations with doom as a doctor’s experiments with enhancements. It all seemed part of a game he was playing because, as far as I knew, it only involved prescription medications. Of course, at the time, I kept myself stewed into the deep night, on alcohol and weed. We engaged in a form of parallel play, and I was lonelier than I’d ever been. Vince, who betrayed me any number of times, didn’t offer the ideal refuge for a youngish widow.
His five minutes turn into ten and, after I hit his doorbell again, I squirt my hands with disinfectant, as if that’s going to keep the fucker’s COVID at bay. I back away from the door and step halfway down the stairs.
The jazz guitar assault ends and Vince appears in the doorway, masked and still barefoot, in dirty jeans and a Mexican football jersey that reads: Caliente.
“Put on some shoes, Vince, we’re going to talk on the street.”
He turns obediently on his heels, without a word, and comes back a moment later in a pair of ancient huaraches. I lead him down the stairs, his persistent cough reminding me to take two steps to his one. I assign Vince a spot on the stone wall across the street from the complex, and I park myself on the wall fifteen feet north. The wall, extending behind a row of Osage trees in their bare winter glory, is high enough that I am able to dangle my legs. It’s an evocative sensation, and for a moment I feel girlish and almost forget why I am sitting here.
Vince clears his throat and spits to his left; thankfully I’m sitting to his right. “So what’s with the wild hair up your ass, Pina?”
“Would you like me to cut to the chase?”
“By all means.”
“Alright, tell me about your relationship with Jesus.”
Vince pulls down his mask and absently scratches the side of his nose, before blowing it into a soiled handkerchief. “You know I’m not a religious person, Pina.” He makes a show of fixing his mask back in place.
“Fuck off, Vince, and tell me about your connection to the dead waiter. Was he your dealer in Sonoma?”
“Who says I had a dealer?”
My heels kick against the wall. “Take a look at yourself, man. You’re as fucked up as the day Charlie and I peeled you off the sidewalk in the Tenderloin.”
“Hey, I’m having a minor setback.”
“Whatever you say, Vince.” The ability to delude ourselves may be more distinctive to humans than opposable thumbs, and addicts have a special advantage in this regard. “Tell me about Jesus,” I demand.
Vince nods several times as if he’s considering a new ploy. “Thing with Jesus,” he says, and breaks off coughing. After spitting again, he continues: “Thing about Jesus, according to what I’ve heard, is he stopped dealing drugs. The problem with that is that it doesn’t get you out of debtor’s prison.”
“Did he help with your connection?”
“Help is a dubious word in this context, Pina.”
“Let’s not fuck with semantics here, Vinnie. So you used to have your lunch over at The Girl and the Fig and Jesus would wait on you.”
“Sometimes. You know, The Girl was never my favorite. Did you hear the restaurant just closed down? They were afraid of protests once it came out that they forced a waitress to change her Black Lives Matter facemask, or some such bullshit.”
“That’s beside the point.”
“Anyway, I prefer the Swiss Hotel . . .”
“I don’t give a fuck what you prefer. Tell me about your relationship to Jesus.”
“Nothing to tell.” Vince pulls a crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds from his jeans pocket and shakes out a bent cigarette. When he flicks his Bic, the flame shoots so high it catches not only the cigarette but also of one of his fingertips. He doesn’t seem to notice. As soon as he inhales he begins coughing again. Now he shakes the hand with the singed digit.
“You keep on, you’re going to burn yourself up, Vince. You think smoking is a good idea with your croup?”
“Who are you,” he manages between hacks, “Pina the healer?”
“You were telling me about your thing with Jesus.” I find myself dangling my legs again and quickly stop.
Vince shrugs. “What thing? I was telling you exactly nothing. Jesus brought me my Hendricks martini, my chicken liver pâté and, if I had an actual appetite: a burger with Gorgonzola melt. Nothing special.” Vince flicks his lit cigarette stub into the street.
“Okay, who was the connection he set you up with?”
“Why are you giving me all this grief, Pina? I’m not feeling so well.”
“Who was it?”
“Look, it wasn’t exactly somebody attached to a name, and the somebody changes faster than you can keep up with.”
I have no idea where I’m going with these questions but sense that Vince knows more than he’s letting on. “So where did you meet these somebodies?”
“Fuck, Pina. Enough.”
“Where?” I’m surprised he just doesn’t get up and leave. There’s nothing compelling him to stay, but he seems to have lost his will. “Where did you meet them?”
Vince faces me blankly, his eyes dim. “You know that bodega in Agua Caliente where they grill chickens every weekend. Right down the street from there. A guy comes out of the shadows as soon as you walk down the street.”
That might be useful information, but not for me. I need to strike another vein. “Tell me about Sally.”
“Who’s Sally?”
“Don’t go dumb on me, Vince. It doesn’t become you.”
Again, Vince lifts his mask and scratches the side of his nose. “Oh you mean, Charlie’s daughter?”
“When did you last see her?” It’s a decent gambit, like asking, when did you last beat your wife?”
He gazes at me, with a little more light in his eyes, to try and find out what I know. This tells me that my shot in the dark hit pay dirt. “When did you last see her?”
“I don’t know. It was a while back.”
I’m dangling my legs again. Who gives a fuck? I’m on a roll. “How often does she come by?”
“Who says she comes by?” Vince shakes out another cigarette.
I decide to stay quiet, to wait Vince out. The flame of his Bic shoots high again and, again, singes one of his fingers. “Okay,” he says, after exhaling, ”she comes by when she needs something.”
“And you give it to her.”
Vince’s eyebrows rise and he blows out a trio of smoke rings. “For a price.”
I’m disgusted, but don’t want to show it. I stop myself from picturing him manhandling a desperate young woman, less than half his age. Whatever burst of sympathy I had for Vince a while earlier is fully dissipated. “Okay, which one of you wrote my name multiple times on the back of a restaurant check?”
He looks aside. “I know nothing about that.”
“And the carving on Jesus’ back?”
“You know me, Pina, I can’t stand the sight of blood.”
“You fucking quack.” If I weren’t obliged to keep my distance from the prick, I’d waltz over and kick him in the nuts.
The house is empty except for the five long stemmed tulips that Charlie arranged in my favorite glass vase when I was out yesterday. He brings flowers from time to time and I always think that it is the kindest thing. I never remember to pick up flowers. Charlie doesn’t make a big thing out of it; he arranges them as soon as he comes in the door and puts them on the dining room table. Suddenly our haphazard lives are civilized. I stand a moment now in front of the tulips—our first of the early California spring. These creamy white spirits, angling east and west, north and south, on their live stems, framed by a brightness of green leaves, suggest odd concepts like purity and virginity, concepts that have grown defunct in my middle age, in the midst of a pandemic.
The last couple of days Charlie and I have been like ships passing in the night. I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s a feeling I had when I first moved to Sonoma, nearly a year ago, after the pandemic first surfaced. I’m so lost I even go in to say hello to Roscoe, but he’s not there. Charlie’s been taking him out lately on walks. I have no idea what his plan is. Maybe he’s getting the parrot ready to release into the wild. Wishful thinking.
My options are limited; I haven’t had the attention span to read a book. Since I first heard about the killing of Jesus and the way my name got mixed up in it, I’ve done my best to sidestep a slurpy quicksand of shame. It comes with a degenerating sound loop: I’m not responsible for this. It just happens to be my name. I haven’t done anything wrong. Or have I? Haven’t I done everything wrong? Isn’t this my karma? Isn’t this what I deserve?
I am determined to alter my circumstances: I pick up the Irish novel I’ve been trying to read for the last two months—The Story of Lucy Gault, by William Trevor—and lay back on the bed. The object of reading is to get inside somebody else’s head, to be diverted by somebody else’s story. So far, Lucy, a girl of indeterminate age, hides from her parents when they are about to move from Ireland to England. She packs a bag of sugar sandwiches. While I wonder if I’ve ever had a sugar sandwich, the book slips from my hands.
In the dream I was clearly too old to be climbing a tree, especially without clothes on. It appears that I was running from something, some person or force, perhaps a charging St. Bernard or a natural disaster. I sat in the crotch of two branches trying to figure out who or what was chasing me but, first, I needed to determine who I was, if not myself. I found it to be a tricky question. There was nobody to consult. I feared that I could be anybody, maybe even an historic figure, perhaps a mythological character, frozen in time. I pronounced the term womanchild aloud, and then said, womanchild naked up a tree. My voice sounded sprightly and rigid at once, like a song played on school bells of varying pitches.
It seemed odd that a naked middle-aged girl, who’d climbed a tree because something was chasing her, would be more in her head than in her body, but that seemed to be the case. The body was made of sticks and stones, while the mind comprised a supple amalgam of fluid and glands. Although this womanchild didn’t feel fevered, she had a thermometer in her mouth. At first it tasted of glass, if glass has a taste, but then the tongue, long and swollen, picked up a tinge of berry.
What we see affects how we taste. A couple of branches away a cedar waxwing nibbled on berries. If the bird saw me, or this persona, he didn’t care. The womanchild in the tree was glad to be invisible, but then she thought: maybe I’m not here at all. Not only did the bird eat berries, he shat them, dropping little purple bombs. I, if it was truly I, decided it be great to trade places with him. Do nothing but eat berries, shit purple grenades, sing songs more tuneful than school bells, and fly off whenever the spirit moved me. A phone on another branch rang. Somebody must have seen a womanchild, scamper naked up a tree, and reported it to the police.
It’s Charlie on the other branch. “Can you come down to Barking Dog in Boyes Hot Springs?” he says.
I want to tell him about being up a tree, but think better of it. “The Barking Dog?” I ask.
“Yes, the coffee shop. Right now. There’s been a break in the case.”
I put on my shoes and, while I pee, take my temperature. Normal, I say, in a voice no longer made of school bells, although I feel anything but normal.