L

Milk-Chocolate Parts

Faced with the landlord surprise, Jack decides that he’d better see Audrey off. He wanders back to the tile steps feeling like he’s been caught having a party while his parents were off on vacation. And then he realizes that this is not a metaphor at all – he has had a party, has screwed one woman in Thompson’s shower, another in his bedroom. His mistress in his bedroom. After wearing his best clothes. Jesus. By any measure, he has broken the house-sitter’s code.

            Jack closes the front door and spies Thompson’s shoulder over the top of the great white couch. He’s about to tap said shoulder when he hears snoring. Though seated in an upright position, ostensibly watching ESPN, Thompson is sound asleep.

            Poor guy. Must have been a hell of a flight. The thought is followed by its logical succedent: Where’s the wife and kids?

            Jack realizes he’s pretty pooped himself. He stops by Thompson’s room to pick up a bathing suit and towel, then trudges to the roof for a session in the hot tub, followed by a nap on the chaise lounge.

            “Are we assuming that sunburn red cancels out pumpkin orange?”

            Jack is surprised to find himself still on the roof, his shoulders tender from UV assault. He rolls over to find the adjoining chair occupied by the more standard version of Thompson: shaved and sharp in blue jeans and a red Guayabera shirt.

            “But I gotta tell ya, even for an Oompah-Loompah, that orange chick was hot. Where’d you dig her up?”

            Jack mutters the phrase “Monkey Tribe,” under the assumption that this will explain everything.

            “You’re babbling, my friend. Hey, can I buy you dinner? You know, for not burning down my house?”

            Jack sits up and rubs his eyes. “Sure. Sounds good.”

            “Fantastic,” says Thompson, finally making with the GQ smile. “Can you dash through the shower in fifteen minutes? I am damned hungry.”

            “Um, sure.” Jack stands, revealing a skin tone that looks like a salad of radish and marmalade.

            “And for God’s sake,” says Thompson, “wear a long-sleeve shirt.”

            Subjecting his burnt back to the shower spray is a trial, but later, cruising Highway One in Thompson’s Carrera, the wind blows under his shirt, tickling his tender hide in a delightful fashion. A few miles south, they pull into the Seascape neighborhood and a resort called Sanderlings, where they sit at an outside table under a parasol heater. Their vista takes in a large cliffside lawn bisected by an artfully winding path. The ocean beyond serves up a million diamonds of dappled sun.

            “They do weddings out there,” says Thompson. He’s quiet for a few seconds, then snaps into a digression. “They had this big storm a couple years ago, and even after it cleared out the waves were crazy and high. Some bride in Monterey was posing at a spot near the rocks when a wave rose up and just took her away. She drowned, a half-hour after getting married.”

            Jack remembers the story, and it still gives him the chills. Thompson’s attention shifts to the waiter.

            “Hi. How about some crab cakes to start, and I’ll have the Forest Meridian Chardonnay. Jack?”

            “Oh, um. Can I get a double latte?”

            “Absolutely,” says the waiter. “I’ll be right back.”

            Thompson takes a sip of water and gives Jack an appraising look. “Beyond the orange skin, mi amigo, there is definitely something different about you. You’ve become a Santa Cruzan, haven’t you?”

            Jack has been running a low-level inner debate that just now is coming to a head. He’s got enough dirt on this dude to sink a Senator. For once in their sketchy, one-sided relationship, he can say whatever the hell he feels like.

            “I think it’s more that I’m getting laid.”

            Thompson lets out a laugh loud enough to upset the conversation of a family dining across the patio.

            “Oh-hoh! My friend Jack. You’ve been playing the beach mansion for all it’s worth.”

            Jack sees the not-so-subtle jab at his lack of babe-landing skills, but also realizes that it’s absolutely true. “That’s the oddest thing of all. Audrey – the orange one – she seems to have fallen for me before she had any idea about the house. Hell, before she had any idea about me. It really confused me.”

            “Ah-hah! I know that feeling. You are automatically suspicious of a woman who likes you, because obviously she has no taste in men. Right?”

            Jack laughs. “That it so it. And then, somehow, a second one came along.”

            Thompson slaps the table, jangling the silverware. “You nailed two chicks in my household? Where’d you find this one?”

            “She was visiting friends in town. I met her on the beach, right outside.”

            “Woo-hoo! Nothin’ like home delivery. Details? Details?”

            This is one of those locker-room conversations, thinks Jack. Details, details. “She had this air of class about her. Maybe even a little stiff, so you make certain assumptions.”

            “Like she does it missionary only,” says Thompson. “And she weeps afterward. And then writes about the experience in her journal: ‘Jack and I made love this evening. He was so tender.’”

            “Wow. You’re like, a student of the gender.”

            “I love women – they’re so pathetic.”

            “Well, anyways, once in the bedroom, this one was a banshee: screaming, swearing, ripping clothes…”

            “Oh!” says Thompson. “The naughty librarian, nothing better. Was she Catholic?”

            “Close. British.”

            “Really?”

            “One of those posh London accents. Like… Elizabeth Hurley.”

            Thompson’s smile begins to shrink.

            “It was Brigit.”

            Jack’s ready for a long walk home, maybe even a pop in the nose. What he gets is a whole bunch of nothing. Thompson stares at the table, rubs his chin, breathes in like he’s going to say something but doesn’t. Finally he rises, turns carefully from his chair and walks down the path to the wedding site, settling on a bench that faces the ocean.

            The waiter arrives, looking puzzled.

            “Um… he’ll be right back,” says Jack. The waiter leaves their beverages. He has seen this scenario before – his restaurant seems to be a hot-spot for breakups – but he can’t imagine that Antonio Banderas out there just got dumped by this schlub.

            Jack sips at his latte, trying to figure Thompson’s response. This utter neutrality was not even on the list. Five minutes later, he’s halfway through his latte and Thompson seems to have turned into a bronze. Jack heads down the path and stops at the end of the bench, a safe distance away. He’s about to say something when he finds rivulets tracking Thompson’s face.

            “I’ve lost her,” he says.

            “Well sure. When she found out you were married…”

            “Esmerelda. I’ve lost Esmerelda.”

            Jack eventually convinces Thompson to eat something. He picks at a plate of pesto ravioli as Jack lays into an Idaho trout with rosemary potatoes. He is much encouraged when Thompson’s eyes glimmer and he lets out a laugh.

            “You and Brigit. Damn, Jack. I didn’t know you had it in you. Was it kind of a revenge fuck?”

            “Oh yeah. She insisted we do it in your bed, in front of your family photos.”

            “Man! Women. What did she do when she found out about me?”

            “Jumped in the ocean.”

            “I’m flattered. And you jumped in to save her? And she was so grateful she jumped your bones?”

            “Yep.”

            “You know, I think you did me a favor. I needed to clear Limey Girl from the situation – but any attempt at direct communication would have been one more step toward divorce.”

            Jack gazes over the cliffs, where the faint green light of a ship is inching across the black horizon.

            “How did she find out?”

            “Bloody fucking cell phone,” says Thompson. “That’s the one contact I allowed Brigit. Toward the end she was getting pretty desperate, and a wife notices how many times a day her husband ignores an incoming call. And, a guy’s gotta take a shower sometime, right? So I’m in Milan, merrily scrubbing away at the hotel, and a text message buzzes in. Ezzie launches into spy mode at the same time that lovely Bridgey launches into nude photo attachment mode. She also scrolls through three preceding messages – all of them highly suggestive, and Thompson is officially FDA-rated dead meat.

            “Ezzie is scary-cool in situations like this. She wanted so bad for Sanja and Nikola to enjoy the rest of the trip that she managed not to let on. When we arrived at JFK, she sent the kids off to a playground, turned to me very calmly and said, ‘Here’s the deal: I know about Brigit. I’m taking the kids to Madison to stay with my folks. You’re going the hell home, and you will wait to hear from me. As far as the kids will know, we’re just extending their vacation. Do all of this or I will call a divorce lawyer to-morrow.”

            “Wow,” says Jack. “Ice in the veins.”

            “She is a mightily strong woman. And I am up against it.”

            Thompson pierces a square of ravioli and chews at it like he’s ingesting some bitter-tasting medicine.

            “I’m not sure I’m getting this,” says Jack. “Wasn’t there trouble in your marriage already? Isn’t that why you were with Brigit?”

            “That’s the usual assumption. But no. A couple of little kids do suck a bit of the romance out, but nothing tragic or unexpected. Nothing to… God, Jack. It’s Ezzie, and Nikola and Sanja. I can’t… I feel like I can’t breathe.”

            Thompson is butting up against tears again, and you can tell he’s sick of the fight. His jaw tightens up, and his eyes wander around the patio.

            Jack finds himself thinking like Ben. What does this person need right now? What can I do to help him? He takes another bite of his trout (he is really enjoying this trout) and takes a long time to chew it, giving Thompson time to get somewhere else. Jack looks inside and notices a large fishtank in the lobby, a trio of orange clownfish conducting a pas de trois against the dark rocks. He clears his throat, feeling like he’s about to give a speech.

            “Thompson, I feel like I owe you an explanation. You left one person here to look after Big… um, your house, and you have come home to someone who’s much different.”

            Thompson smiles, well aware of Jack’s ploy. “For one thing, I left a Caucasian and came back to a cantaloupe.”

            Jack laughs. “You got me there.” Then he considers where this story begins. “You told me to check out the Aptos Coffeehouse. So I did, and I ran into a guy I’d seen on the beach the night before. His name was Ben, and he was a life coach.”

            “…and that is how Audrey and I ended up arriving at Big Brown with orange skin.”

            Thompson raises an eyebrow. “Big Brown?”

            Jack laughs. “Yeh. That’s what the locals call it.”

            “Isn’t that a racehorse?”

            “Coincidence. As you may suspect, it’s not exactly a term of endearment.”

            “Like ‘Big Brown Dookie.’”

            “Somethin’ like that. Funny, though. They like it a lot better once they get inside. Ben’s the biggest convert of all.”

            “Ben sounds pretty fucking cool.”

            “Oh, he is. Without seeming to have done much at all, he has utterly transformed my view of life.”

            “I think it’s pretty amazing, Jack. When I saw you in Depoe Bay, I thought, God, this guy looks pathetic. And it occurred to me that a few weeks in ‘Big Brown’ might do you some good. But holy shit! I don’t think I’ve ever had a month like your month.”

            “I somehow doubt that,” says Jack.

            “Well, okay. A month I can remember. Hey! Can we hitch a ride?”

            He’s calling to a young Latino driving a golf cart beach shuttle. The trailer is occupied by an elderly couple, with room for more.

            “Sure!” says the driver. “Gotta go right now, though.”

            “Just paid our bill,” says Thompson. “Come on, Jack – and bring your drink.”

            Jack gathers up his Long Island iced tea and jumps on board. They face sideways as the cart drops into a canyon covered in pampas and cypress trees. They come out at a concrete pad before a wide beach, the near horizon peppered with fires in concrete rings. Thompson slips the driver a ten and leads Jack to a ring at the far edge, accompanied by two white beach chairs.

            “That’s what I love about this place,” says Thompson. “They always assume you’re a guest, and treat you accordingly. And I tip accordingly, which nicely seals the deal.”

            Jack focuses past the fire on a thin white stripe that represents the breakers.

            “I fucked you over pretty good, didn’t I?” says Thompson.

            Jack is struck nearly dumb, but quickly recalls his pledge to ballsy honesty.

            “Yes.”

            “In fact, my friend, you may be responsible for my impending divorce. Follow me on this. When all that shit came down at C-Valve, I truly expected the hammer to finally get me. Hell, maybe I wanted the hammer. I saw a lot of people at Enron tossed overboard while I slipped through unscathed. But Jack Teagarden – there was a man so tortured by conscience that he wanted the hammer even more than I did. I began to suspect that, this time, I didn’t even have to lie my way out. All I had to do was nothing. And it worked. After that, I believed that I was bulletproof – that no matter what crimes I committed, there would come along a Jack Teagarden to save me. The very week of your so-called layoff, I went on that trip to Portland and met Brigit.

            “Now, please understand this: I’m an extremely good-looking man. Over the years of my marriage, I have fought off many an offer. But dammit! A man gets tired of saying no to perfectly good pussy. ‘Oh, pussy? No thanks. Been tryin’ to cut down.’ So the redhead with the fine white ass and the Spice Girl accent makes me an offer, and for once I accept. And I’ll tell ya, it was powerful. You screwed two women this month, you know how it feels. Wasn’t it powerful?”

            “Yes,” Jack admits. “You fucker.”

            Thompson takes a moment to luxuriate in his Manhattan. “Yes. I was a fucker. I deserve every epithet you can come up with. And I owe you for fucking Brigit. Now, if she starts any trouble, I’ve got something to hold over her head. It ain’t much, but I’m desperate.”

            He takes a moment to laugh at his own pathetic situation.

            “You know, I have always had it easy. I could give you this epic sob-story about growing up poor in San Antonio, with parents so goddamn Mexican I couldn’t stand it. A maid and a gardener, for Christ’s sake. A maid and a gardener! But fuck all that, because I knew early on that people liked me for no particular reason. My good looks and charm made them feel better about the world in general, and that’s all I really needed. When they found out I was also good at math… Fuck! Every goddamn college in the country wants a good-looking Latino with a spreadsheet for a brain. I used what God gave me – I used it in spades.

            “Now, if you plot this Great American Dream on a grid, this story should end at a blonde white girl with a tight ass and a talent for blow jobs. I went to the University of Wisconsin, which was fucking beautiful, because it’s like a thousand miles directly north of San Antonio. Many years later, I’m celebrating my freshly minted MBA with a drunken cruise in downtown Madison. It’s getting late, we’re all desperately hungry, and Becca, a white blonde girl with a tight ass and a talent for blow jobs, says she knows this late-night tapas joint. I’m consuming a sangria and some dish having to do with lamb and paprika when this old guy starts playing flamenco guitar, this old woman starts singing in Spanish, and upon this tiny, much-abused stage appears the most gorgeous assemblage of milk-chocolate parts that the world has ever seen. And her dancing! I am absolutely no expert, but even as performed by homely women, flamenco is unbelievably sexy. She came out afterwards to watch the other dancers, I left my table – much to the chagrin of Becca – and bought her a drink. You’d expect some exotic story, but she was a Madison girl, born and bred, one of the few old-money black families you’re bound to find, had just received a bachelor’s in dance from my very college. She took one of those semester-abroad things to Spain, and came back absolutely obsessed with flamenco. At this point, she was working on something pretty provocative, taking a basically improvisational art form and applying it to an evening-long story based on a play by Federico Garcia Lorca. Ruffled a lot of feathers in the flamenco community. As our conversation deepened, this was the thought that formed in my mind: You have found someone better than anyone else you will ever find. And that open-mouthed laugh that seemed to embrace the world, those long, graceful fingers that lit upon my arms like butterflies. I spent my summer taking in these small aspects of her, and falling in love.

            “A couple of months later, my career took off so quickly that we had to make some fast decisions. Another geographical irony, eleven hundred miles directly south to work for Enron in Houston. For Ezzie, the move offered some appealing enticements, notably a much stronger Hispanic culture that offered many more venues for her work. She also knew that flamenco didn’t offer the kind of steady income that was at least possible in ballet or musical theater, so maybe having a newly rich boyfriend wouldn’t be so bad. Or, a year later, a rich fiancé. Or, a year later, a rich husband. Five years later, she was pregnant with Sanja, and ditched the whole thing for motherhood. Then came Nikola, then came the scandal, then came California. Nowadays, she figures when the kids are off to school, she can start back in to flamenco, and someday she wants to start her own troupe. Unless.”

            That last word says a lot, along with Thompson’s gaze, his brown eyes reflecting the orange coals of the fire. He hasn’t really said much about the kids, but perhaps the guilt there is too great, even for a bulletproof man. Jack offers him another out.

            “So, is it all right if I wait till tomorrow to move out? I’ve got a bit of loading up to...”

            “No,” says Thompson. “You like the place, right? I mean, it’s been good for you, right?”

            “Well… sure.”

            “Why don’t you stay? In fact, I’ll pay you to stay. Forty dollars a day, a little walking-around money. And dude, don’t worry – I won’t be crying on your shoulder. I’m going back to work on Monday, and I’m sure it’s gonna be hella busy. But… it would be nice to have someone else around the house. It’s awfully… big.”

            Jack doesn’t know what to say, but just then a meteorite etches the sky with a long green streak.

            “Holy shit! Did you see that?”

            “I think I did,” says Thompson. “And I wished on it, too.”

            “What did you wish for?”

            “Can’t tell you. Ruins the wish.”

            Jack thinks about it. Why the hell not? Whatever’s in the air around Big Brown has been good for him. Respond to things in a real fashion, said Ben.

            “You got it.”

            “Fuckin’ ay,” says Thompson. “See? God even sends meteorites just so Thompson Flores gets his wishes.”

            Jack laughs. “You are a cocky son-of-a-bitch.”

            “And the more you insult me,” says Thompson, “the better I feel.”

M

Apologetic Syllables

Thompson keeps his word, almost too well. He is a ghost in his own house, disappearing before dawn, not returning till after midnight. Jack knows this pattern well: overwork as a distraction. And a procrastination. Because work is eternally noble, that tireless pursuit that one undertakes because the world demands it, because one must pay one’s bills, because the children require food and health care and IPods. That’s why it makes such a solid rationale when you’d really like to avoid an unpleasant task, like facing the wife you have just betrayed, like beginning the painful process of retracking four lives that have just been derailed.

            On the more selfish side, Jack is glad for the freedom to behave just as he had as a house-sitter: to lollygag, to walk along the waves, skipping rocks; and to let his brain ramble like a leashless terrier over the second half of his life. That’s how he thinks of it. This is intermission. His life as an accountant is now over, and his task is to pick a new identity for Act Two. He gives Ben the credit for leading him to this idea, because it is not an idea he could have had two months ago.

            Meanwhile, Jack has yet another date with the thrift stores, because Ben has instructed him to assemble his own tuxedo. In his Internet searches, he discovers that the tuxedo, like Jack, is in a period of flux. For a while, people were entirely forgoing the classic bowtie, opting for an unadorned collar buttoned to the top. (He recalls David Letterman picking out Tom Hanks at the Oscars and saying, “You couldn’t wear a tie?”) The new trend is a standard necktie, worn with a standard collar, but tucked into a matching vest. Jack suspects that this will play right into his strategy.

            He begins by rifling the racks of suit jackets at three different thrift stores. He has nearly lost the thrill of the hunt when he strikes gold: a classic tux jacket with single-breasted notched satin lapels. The lining bears a tag from a rental shop, just over the likely reason for its exile: a large white stain, anathema to prom dudes and bridegrooms but no care for Jack. The cost is an entire 15 bucks. The jacket is a little tight in the shoulders, but for 15 samoleans Jack will just have to deal.

            From there it’s on to retail. Jack locates a discount men’s store where he finds a snow white vest with a fetching crosshatch pattern. The box also contains a matching bowtie and the trendy midget necktie, pre-knotted, with a clasp for easy hookup. At an adjacent department store he finds a snazzy pair of Italian dress pants. In the area of shirtness, he makes his play for rebellion. He purchases a black dress shirt, hoping to shake up the salt-and-pepper in a spicy fashion.

            Ben arrives at Big Brown in a classic tux, underpinned by a low-cut silver and blue vest with matching bowtie. The surprise is a gray felt fedora, with a hatband made from the same fabric as the vest, and a plume fashioned from the last six inches of an ostrich feather. As they head off, Ben offers an encouraging critique of Jack’s class project.

            “Somewhere beneath that nerdish exterior lies an artist. You have rejected the norm and gone for your own unique melange. I am mightily impressed. So what’s your analysis of my creation?”

            “Hmm,” says Jack, pretending great deliberation. “Classy and retro. The conservatism surprises me, but the little touches – especially the peacock feather – are very nicely done.”

            “Excellent! Just what I was going for.”

            Ben is clearly in a good mood, but it’s different than his usual. The trip over the Santa Cruz Mountains is a quiet ride, and his mind seems fully occupied. They pull into the clean metal-and-glass skyscrapers of downtown San Jose, each building sporting a red corporate logo, like a handkerchief in its top-floor pocket. Many of the names are vendors that Jack used to see on his quarterly reports.

            Ben works his way to a parking garage and circles all the way to the top. Jack gets the strategy right away: why hunt around for a space when there’s an elevator anyway? It also affords another cool view: the white webs of the federal building across the street, the new Hilton rising like a stalk next to the convention center, the stout, regal Fairmont standing sentry over the green oval of Cesar Chavez Park. They leave the elevator at street level and walk north along the light rail tracks, crossing at the cobalt cube of the San Jose Rep and entering a Thai restaurant. The walls are covered in bamboo screens and tropical-looking art. The hostess leads them to a table in the corner, which is already occupied by a dark-haired woman in a black pantsuit. She spots Ben and flashes a broad smile.

            “Hi! I’ll have you know, I’ve been waiting an entire three minutes. You owe me, buddy.”

            Ben kisses her on the cheek and sits. “What say I buy you dinner?”

            “Oh! Big spender.”

            “This is the aforementioned Jack. He’s a virgin.”

            “Hi,” says Jack. He takes her hand for a moment and sits down. “I think he means opera virgin.”

            “I should hope so! I’m Barbie.”

            “Barbie’s with the opera.”

            “Yes!” she says. “And tonight will be a perfect beginner for you, like an appetizer plate. Some mozzarella sticks, some oysters, a veggie platter. Ha!”

            Barbie talks with the energy of a New Yorker, her words gathering force and speed until she has to release the pressure with a puppy-dog yelp of a laugh. She has a round face, a broad nose, and dark eyes that squint when Ben makes her laugh, which is often.

            Ben recommends the mango fish and pad Thai; being no fool, Jack goes with precisely that. Ben’s also pushing the Thai iced coffee.

            “This being opera, I want your nerve endings wide open,” he says. “So Barbie, they’re not going to miss you at the dinner?”

            “Oh! I just can’t do these things. Too much small talk, and Lord knows I don’t need the calories.”

            Ben laughs. “Barbie and I are tennis partners. It’s my job to run her utterly ragged, so she can maintain the integrity of her wardrobe.”

            “He’s a slavedriver! I can’t even remember the last time I won a game. Ha!”

            Jack takes a few sideways glances to figure Barbie’s figure. She’s large-breasted, which sometimes creates the illusion of fat-ness, but her stomach and hips seem to be what you would call “well-trained.” She is, indeed, a big-boned gal. When she places a hand on his, he thinks he’s been caught.

            “It’s so nice to meet a fresh recruit, Jack. But I’ve really got to go. Post-opera, Mister Ben?”

            “The Wailing Wall?”

            “Ha! I’ll be there. Bye, boys.”

            She walks away, looking a little rushed and nervous. Jack settles down to his pad Thai. The peanut sauce connects with all the right taste buds.

            “Barbie’s on the production staff,” says Ben. “I knew she couldn’t stay – that’s why I offered to buy her dinner. Ha! But she’s so busy I have to grab some face-time whenever I’m able. Hope you don’t mind.”

            “No, no. God, I love this stuff.”

            “Had the feeling you would.”

            They’re far ahead of schedule, so they dawdle over dessert – sticky rice with yet more mango – as Jack updates Ben on Thompson’s pending tragedies.

            “Egad. He has really dug himself a pit, hasn’t he? Well, if it gets you a little more beach-time, what the hell.”

            “I must admit, that was my exact thought.”

            By the time they finish, the air outside has taken on both cold and moisture, draping halos over the streetlights. They navigate the circle of palms outside the art museum and pass the Fairmont to find a parade of elders heading down Market in formal wear.

            “Like a geriatric senior prom,” Ben chuckles. “The gala dinner is at the Fairmont, and then they hike to the California Theater for the performance. I call it the March of the Penguins.”

            “That’s good!” says Jack. “You are a witty devil, young man.”

            “Young man!”

            Jack is thankful for the crowd. The tux is still a new idea for him, and he feels like a wolf who has found his pack. They cross to First Street, round the corner at Original Joe’s restaurant, and wind up outside the California, at the northern tip of the nightclub district. Jack has seen the impressive vertical sign dozens of times, the letters spelled out in white bulbs, but has never given the interior much thought.

            And what an interior. The entrance hall is high and mighty, bathed in golds and reds – a broad Persian rug underneath, a high ceiling ribbed with beams of Oxford brown, long chandeliers emanating Italian light. A crowd gathers around a man playing a large organ. It sounds like a carousel. Someone in the crowd shouts “All skate!”

            “The California is an old film palace, built in 1927,” says Ben.  “That’s why they have the Wurlitzer here. This place sat fallow for decades, until the city and David Packard, the computer heir, decided to return it to its original grandeur. And this,” he gestures toward the hall, “is just the beginning.”

            They climb the broad staircase to find a mob of socialites in the upstairs reception area, sipping champagne and chatting up what seems like an actual storm. Ben stops to study the crowd, launching into lesson mode.

            “In understanding your cause, Jack, I realize that I have spent a lot of time on the rastafarian/bohemian/beatnik side of the equation, and I didn’t want you to think that there weren’t similar delights to be plucked from the land of the hoity-toit. There are, of course, many people who are here mainly to be seen.”

            “And to have their cleavage seen,” says Jack.

             “Yes! But I would bet that even the sixty-year-olds with the teenage breasts have a sincere affection for this artform, because there is passion in opera, and violence, and good old-fashioned smut! Not to mention heartbreakingly beautiful music. Be forewarned, however. Do not listen too intently; don’t get intellectual about it. Just soak it in. I think you’ll like it.”

            They head downstairs to a side entrance. The theater’s interior is so stunning that Jack can’t quite maintain his balance. He decides to keep his eyes on his shoetops until they are safely seated. Once there, he lifts his gaze to the ceiling and finds one half of an African sun, rays of gold, orange and brown slithering toward the stage like desert snakes. The proscenium arch is outlined with Hellenic figures in gold plate. The ceiling over the balcony is covered with rough geometrics, painted in Western shades of green, brown, rusty red.

            “This theater is…”

            “Yes it is,” says Ben. “Seventy million dollars’ worth. And wait till you hear the acoustics.”

            Jack glances at his program, filled with foreign words. He expects to be entirely lost.

            “I expect you might feel a little lost,” says Ben. “Now, just to be clear, if you were at an actual opera, they have translations above the stage – supertitles – so there’s no reason you can’t follow the story. With a recital, however, you are sadly out of luck. Fortunately, you are seated next to a genius.” He pulls a small notepad from his breast pocket. “I brought this with me, and I will sketch a few notes as we go along. You will find a handy floor light next to your seat.”

            “Oh. Okay.”

            The audience starts applauding, for no apparent reason, but then the conductor, a white-haired man with finely rimmed glasses, pokes his head over the railing of the orchestra pit. Two tall men walk to center stage, both wearing dark suits, and the conductor starts the unseen orchestra into a slow, sweeping intro. To Jack, it sounds like a sunrise. The black man, looking a bit like the pop star Prince, sings in a high voice to the other man, who has an olive complexion and curly hair, and responds in a lower voice. It seems as if they are telling stories to each other. Ben hands him a note: They’re talking about a hot chick.

            The next performer is a slender Indian woman in a gown of burnt orange, singing from an opera called La Traviata. She begins with a stunning fusillade of notes that rankles Jack’s ears – he’s not used to such high, piercing sounds. Then she stops suddenly, and goes into a dreamy, waltz-like ballad. Ben’s note reads, She’s hot for a guy, but doesn’t want to give up her independence. Jack thinks immediately of Audrey.

            The next piece is from Il Trovatore (which sort of sounds like “troubador”) and features a chorus of two dozen singers. The men are in tuxes, the women in various ensembles of black. Two of the men push carts onstage holding anvils. This seems very odd, until the refrain arrives and the men pound on the anvils with hammers. Jack recalls the tune from a TV commercial; the familiarity gives him a small thrill, an island upon which his hard-working senses can rest.

            At the end of the anvil song, a slender woman in a spangled white dress comes out to sing to the chorus. What’s with all the skinny women? he thinks. Aren’t opera singers supposed to be fat? The woman has dark, angular features and an Italian-looking nose with a slight hook, giving her the appearance of a sexy witch. Next to the white chocolate of the Indian woman’s voice, hers is a dark mocha, and she seems to be telling them a story filled with foreboding. Ben finally scrawls a note and passes it Jack’s way: Downtrodden rebels led by a charismatic witch. And yes, you’ve heard the Anvil Chorus before.

            It goes on this way for an hour and a half, different people singing, Ben summarizing the action. The music grows on Jack, and he begins to understand some of the things that the singers are after. Many of their notes have little lives all their own, growing and lessening like restless creatures. The best singers fashion their songs into conversations, as if they are simply talking in music and this is a perfectly normal way to behave.

            Soon they are down to the final piece. A man and a woman enter the stage; the man carries a chair, which he places at a spot that seems to be preordained. The man has a medium-sized torso and legs, but his chest is quite broad; he has thick, slightly wild brown hair, and the kind of neatly trimmed beard that seems typical of opera singers. The woman is short and busty, dressed in a blueblack sequined jacket and a long, dark skirt with a slit along one leg. She has thick, dark hair arranged in a fanciful up-do, dark eyes, a broad nose. When the man comes to take her hands she smiles, her eyes squinting pleasurably. He gestures toward the chair; she sits to listen to him.

            The man’s voice – what they must call “tenor” – has a bright resonance that stands out from the others. With a gun to his head, Jack would say that it has a “ping,” an electric quality that slices through the air. He reaches the crest of the song, a melody that rises and falls like an arch, holding his arms as if he’s about to embrace someone. Ben passes Jack a note: Trying to impress hot neighbor-chick with life story.

            He ends with a grand flourish. After the applause, the woman rises to tell her own life story. But of course, thinks Jack. This is every first date I’ve ever had. She is timid, unsure, but her emotions seem to take hold of her; as her singing rises in force Jack notices something extraordinary about the woman’s voice. It’s nearly radioactive. It doesn’t merely slice the air like the man’s voice, it spins wildly, like those whirligig rockets that shoot away from the center of pyrotechnic explosions. The woman shapes her phrases like the other singers – lessening, growing, slipping away, returning from nowhere – but she gives no indication of working at this, and somewhere through the Italian words, Jack understands her completely. She is smitten with this new man, but also afraid – that he will discover some dark, secret thing about her, that she will scare him away. As a poker player would put it, her “tell” is her tremendous passion – it’s not entirely appropriate to the moment. She seems to realize this herself; at the end of the aria, she rambles into a string of small, apologetic syllables.

            The audience responds with thunderous applause; several people down front stand from their seats. The woman keeps her eyes on the tenor, staying in character. It must be very difficult, thinks Jack, to take all that love without exploding into ecstasy. Finally, the orchestra starts back up, and the man sings a swaying melody, the tone of which is something like, “What are you worried about? Everything will be fine!” (Oh yeah, he’s in love.) The woman joins in, and then they do an unusual thing: they link arms and walk offstage. Even after they’re out of sight, they continue to sing, the woman rising to a high final note, the man just beneath her. The notes go on and on, and when they finally cut off the audience lets out a roar, punctuated by individual exclamations of “Ho!” and “Woo!” A woman behind them yells “Brawvee!” which makes no sense at all. The man and woman return onstage for their bows; after a moment, they’re joined by the rest of the evening’s performers. The audience rises, section by section, until they’re all on their feet.

            The applause goes on for a long time. Jack finds his arms tiring out, and as he lets them dangle for a moment he realizes that he has not yet received his note from Ben. When he looks to his left, however, he finds Ben transfixed by the scene, clapping wildly, tears streaming down his cheeks. This opera is strong medicine, thinks Jack. He shakes his arms and goes back to clapping.

            They follow the crowd as it oozes from the theater, and Ben cuts left to the restrooms – a welcome vision for Jack, who has watched 90 minutes of opera directly following an enormous Thai iced coffee. Back in the hallway, Ben leads him outside to a patio area covered in squares of blue-gray granite. Ben stops to study a wall fountain, rivulets of water murmuring a tall rectangle of black stone.

            “That last piece,” says Ben. “Puccini. La Boheme. The Garret Scene. Most astonishing stretch of melody in opera. Three ‘hit songs,’ one after the other: ‘Che gelida manina,’ ‘What small, cold hands’; ‘Mi chiamano Mimi,’ ‘I call myself Mimi’; ‘O soave fanciulla,’ ‘Sweet, beautiful girl.’ The poor poet Rodolfo discovers a neighbor girl, Mimi, whose candle has blown out. He tells her of his life. ‘I am a poet. How do I live? I live!’ She tells him of her life as a seamstress, and all the sweet little things that bring her joy: the rooftops of Paris, the first light of spring, rosebuds in a vase. What she doesn’t mention is that she is dying of consumption, which is why she pays such close attention to these small things. And then poof! Rodolfo and Mimi are in love, and they run off to the Café Momus to join their friends. Love happens very quickly in the opera. It’s partly a technical problem. It takes much longer to sing words than to speak them, so everything must be compressed. But still, it’s always a… surprise… when it comes.”

            Ben is lost in the fountain, an unfocused stare attached to a non-functioning face.

            “Ben? Is there… I mean, all evening, you’ve been… Ben, what the hell is wrong with you?”

            Ben snaps out of it, and laughs at Jack’s outburst.

            “I’m not entirely certain, but I think I’m in love.”

            Now it’s Jack’s turn to lose focus. This is nowhere close to the answer he expected.

            “How? I mean… Really?”

            Ben throws up his hands, helpless.

            “Her name is Gina Scarletti. She lived next door to me, when we both had families. Now her kids are all moved out, and her husband passed away a few years ago. She’s a gorgeous, gorgeous woman – classic Italian, Sophia Loren with a Bronx accent. All those years ago – I mean, you can imagine how dreamlike that part of my life seems to me – Gina and I indulged in a playful, over-the-hedge flirtation. Nothing unseemly, just a little break from our all-encompassing marriages. After the fire, I lost track of her. I guess I didn’t really want any reminders.

            “So there I am at the jam party, partaking of my hookah next to the fireplace. You and Audrey were off fucking in the secret garden – and don’t deny it, I saw you take her there. So I’m just sitting there people-watching, and the crowd in front of me seems to part, and who should appear but Cleopatra, dressed as Gina Scarletti. Or perhaps vice-versa. I have never seen anyone so beautiful in all my life. We talked for hours. And get this: she lives two houses down from Terra! I must have driven past her front porch a hundred times. She runs a training center for horses – show-jumpers. You’ve probably seen all the little fences and hedges. A New York Sophia Loren Cleopatra who rides jumping horses. I have got to be making this up.

            “Hours, hours later, we were out on the lawn and down to a single musician, a mandolin player. Poor guy was half asleep, but somewhere in his dreams he was playing an old country waltz. I took Gina’s hand, she curtsied, and we waltzed around the lawn like we’d been doing it all our lives. She was so light in my hands, like an armful of wind. The sky began to brighten, and our mandolin player leaned against the porch and fell asleep, the instrument still in his hands. I looked over Gina’s shoulder, saw a sliver of sun over the hilltop, and I kissed Cleopatra. We walked to her house and fell asleep on the couch.”

            Ben is eyeing the fountain again, as if it contains a high-def replay of the scene he’s just described.

            “I’ve seen her several times since and…” The tears creep in on Ben’s voice, forcing him to push at his words. “I never expected this, Jack!”

            He sits on the ledge before the fountain and wipes at his eyes.

            “Big goddamn baby,” he mutters.

            Jack doesn’t know the proper response to tears of joy, so he sits next to Ben and stares at his hands. A door opens, followed by the tapping of high heels on granite. Jack looks up to find Mimi. Mimi! The woman with the radioactive voice.

            “Yaknow, I warn you and warn you about the garret scene, but you never listen. Ya big softie!”

            The woman leans down to kiss Ben on both cheeks. Her hair is spangled with glitter. She turns to reveal banners of blue eye-shadow. Stage makeup. A little bit scary.

            “He could never handle Puccini. That Giacomo could take a Scandinavian fisherman and make him weep like a menopausal mother-of-the-bride. Ha!”

            Jack freezes. What kind of funhouse has he been thrust into?

            “That was… you?”

            “Barbie’s the best,” says Ben. “Best goddamn singer I’ve ever heard. And you didn’t even know it was her, did you?”

            “I… No.”

            “Ha!” says Barbie. “Our little plan worked.”

            Jack scratches his head, feeling murky.

            Ben rises from the ledge and smacks Jack on the shoulder. “Never assume that someone you meet under mundane circumstances might not be capable of extraordinary things.”

            “You tricked me.”

            “Yes. But we did not lie. I simply asked Barbie to be a little vague about her job description. All the assumptions were yours.”

            Jack can’t help himself. He stands and gives Barbie a kiss on the cheek.

            “You were glorious.”

            Barbie begins to blush. Given how many times she must have heard similar compliments, this seems odd.

            “Also,” says Jack, “Uncle Ben is in love.”

            “No!” Barbie squeals. “You are? Really?”

            “Stool pigeon!” says Ben. “Rat fink!”

            “Crybaby!” says Jack.

            The three of them sit before the Wailing Wall as Ben tells the story once more.

N

The Size of a Pencil

He wakes up. Three devils watch him from the opposite wall. He has grown accustomed to their morning sneers, their wild hair and mascara’d eyes. Since Thompson’s return, Jack has been sleeping in Nikola’s room, across from a poster of the punk group Green Day. How an eight-year-old has developed this attachment is a mystery. But the bed is incredibly comfortable (no doubt thoroughly researched by Esmerelda the supermom), and Jack has never slept better.

            He is conscious, however, that he is sleeping among shadows. Nikola should be here, hammering away on his Guitar Gods video game, ignoring his mother’s commands to get ready for school. Whenever Jack considers these absences, he develops a painless but bothersome pressure in his forehead that makes him squint. He thinks of the pleasure-squint belonging to Barbie the opera singer, and decides that this is something much different. He has become a human barometer.

            Jack stands in the shower, looking out over the beach. Sometime this month the false exhibitionism stopped bothering him. In its place he found the shower’s central idea: a chance to embrace the outside world even as one prepares to enter it. He lathers the soap between his hands, raising it to his nose to take in the aroma. He has developed a fixation for handmade soaps, this one a lemon verbena purchased at a farmer’s market in Soquel.

            The barometer begins to hone in on its target. An overheard answering-machine message revealing that Esmerelda has hired a private tutor, determined to keep the children in Madison through the holidays. And Thompson, despite his great show of emotion at Sanderlings, has apparently done nothing about it. Jack realizes that none of this should be his concern, but the forehead barometer says otherwise. Arriving on the first floor, he is surprised to find Thompson next to the whitewater, wrapping himself in a windbreaker, laptop case lolling at his feet like an affectionate puppy.

            “Wow,” says Jack. “You’re still here.”

            “Yeah. Got a presentation at eleven, and it was easier to polish the spreadsheets at home base. How you doin’? Is the bed and breakfast meeting your expectations?”

            “Where do I begin?” says Jack. He’s about to follow with laudatory details, but Thompson will soon be out the door and the barometer needs feeding. “Hey, I know work is pretty crazy, but have you had a chance to talk to Esmerelda?”

            Thompson gives him a cold stare. “What’re you, my mamasita?”

            Jack begins to melt into an apologetic stance, but then Thompson busts out laughing.

            “Dude! You are such an easy mark. Don’t ever lose that gullibility, man. It’s beautiful! See ya.”

            And he’s out the door, getting into his Carrera, repeating the word “mamasita” and chuckling. Having successfully dodged the question. Jack feels like a sitcom wife, left at the door without a goodbye kiss.

Despite the squinting, these are good days. Ben is largely absent, spending his every free minute with Sophia Loren de las Salinas. This has left a large space in Jack’s days, but he finds himself embracing it, his mind simmering with a slow warmth. His thoughts feel simultaneously slower to arrive and sharper when they get there. It could be that he has become a shaman. As Barbie would say, Ha!

After his two standard two bagels and mango nectar, Jack fetches the pressure washer from the garage and attends to his morning chore: turd removal. He wheels it onto the deck, attaches the hose and cranks up the preposterously annoying engine. He holds the wand until the hoses work out all their air bubbles and then takes to the railings, where the seagulls love to congregate and shit. After that, he runs the deck two planks at a time. He’s nearing a cutout in the house wall when he realizes that he’s cornered a salamander, a yellow-gray critter, four inches long, flicking his tail in great alarm. No wonder, thinks Jack. This has got to be like a class-five hurricane. He sets down the spray wand and picks him up. Being a salamander, he doesn’t put up much of a fight.

 “Sorry, little dude. We gotta find you a new place.” He carries him to the edge of the deck and drops him onto a spread of ice plant.

“Come back in half an hour.”

At noon, the day turns fairly amazing. A bright late-fall sun breaks through the fog to pull the temperature into the low seventies. Jack abandons shirt and shoes – inordinately proud of the tan that he has developed – and walks toward the cliffs of New Brighton. The waves have lain out an even spread of medium-sized rocks, many of them in the shape of perfect skippable discs. What’s more, the waters of Monterey Bay are remarkably quiet, smooth as a lake. After a couple of warmup tosses, Jack winds up on a big yellow-brown stone, leans far over and tosses a hard sidearm. The result is stunning, a dozen even skips that cover the length of a football field. He’s pretty certain that he could not actually throw a rock that far without the help of the water. He’s pondering the physics of this thought when he spots a tiny square of paper flapping around on the sand. It seems to be alive. He leans down to find a monarch butterfly, struggling to work the wet sand from his wings. Jack imagines he’s been ambushed by a breaker.

He recalls an urban myth about touching a butterfly’s wings – that this somehow disables them – so he digs in from either side and carries the butterfly aloft on a mound of sand. He walks uphill past the break line and sets the pile down, then blows on the butterfly until he comes to rest in a scoop of warm, dry sand.

“Dude! Be patient. Let the sun do its work. You’ll be fine.”

His next client lies a hundred feet away. A pack of pelicans are conducting bombing raids on a spread of water; directly landward of this commotion, Jack finds a strip of silver the size of a pencil, flopping on the sand. The anchovy looks quite alarmed (although, of course, fish always look alarmed), and Jack realizes he must act quickly. Out there, this one might serve as an appetizer to a pelican, but out here he dies for sure. Jack leans down to pick him up, then carries him toward the water.

“Dude! Try to stay away from the big birds.” And he tosses him in.

Toward the cliff’s edge, Jack finds another perfect stone. It skips twice, then rockets off of a wave like Evel Knievel. At the base of the cliff he finds White Horse’s latest creation, a thin seven-foot  column of rocks, and as he’s meditating on this he thinks, Shaman? I’ve become St. Francis!

He finds a rock and moves it around on the top of another rock, until he senses something, like a bolt slipping into a latch. He lets go. The rock stays in place. The barometer in Jack’s temple ticks forward. A bath of warm mango nectar floods his frontal cortex.

Late that night, Jack prepares for bed, the friendly devils of Green Day eyeing him curiously.  Jack hears the click of the front door. He attempts a trick of telekinesis, drawing Thompson toward the coffee table, where he has “accidentally” left out the case that holds a DVD of Esmerelda’s performances. A minute later, he hears the familiar grind of guitar strings, the stamping of feet.

Jack is so thrilled at this new talent of his that he fears he won’t be able to sleep. After twenty minutes, the music clicks off. He hears the beep-tones of a cell phone, followed by Thompson’s voice, colored with anxiety.

“Hello… Ezzie?”

Silence. Too much silence.

“I miss you too.”

The barometer opens up. The squint retreats from Jack’s eyes. He bids the three devils good night, and drifts away like a rescued anchovy.

O

Chinese Puzzle Box

“Look. I realize I have no right to ask this, but could you…? Could…? Shit! Would you take me on a romantic date?”

“Hi Audrey.” Jack is feeling grateful for caller ID. “Any specifics on that?”

“You don’t know? I wanted you to just know.”

Jack takes a second to analyze this request, but his brain is not getting far.

“Jack?”

“Look. Audrey. I am always delighted to hear from you, but you gotta admit, this is a little outside your usual behavior. So rather than expecting me to read your mind, could you just… tell me what you want?”

            “Just tell you? Just like that? Just ask for what I want? That’s insane! Dinner, in a real restaurant. I’d like you to dress up nice – no tie, no suit, just nice. And then, most of all, I’d really love it if you would dance with me.”

That last one seems highly unlikely. But Jack knows that he is never, ever going to say no to Audrey LaBrea.

“So when would you like to…”

“Two hours?”

“Really? I mean… really?”

“Um… yes?” Audrey’s voice sounds like the voice of someone who is chewing her fingernails.

“Will you have any respect for me if I admit that I, in fact, am doing nothing on a Saturday night?”

“Will it get me a date?”

“Yes.”

“I will respect your brains out, honey.”

“Well then!”

“But until I give the word, let’s pretend that I am a lady.”

“Of course.”

Ill-informed about Monterey restaurants, Jack negotiates a rendezvous at the Sanderlings. The drive down is foggy and chill, so he rules out any ideas of patio seating. He’s waiting next to a gas fireplace outside the entrance, enjoying a salted hot chocolate, when Audrey makes her appearance, wearing a long purple coat with a fake fur collar that frames her face in the manner of a czarina. Jack greets her with a half-dozen white roses. Audrey responds with a smile she’s been saving since high school.

“The lady requested romance?”

“Yes. But I didn’t expect the gentleman to go for extra credit.”

“Get used to it, honey.”

He kisses her and takes her inside, where they’re seated across from the fishtank. The orange clownfish seem like old friends.

“Red or white?” he asks.

Audrey sniffs at her roses. “Unless I miss my guess, they’re white.”

“The wine.”

“Oh! How about red? I want to feel toasty.”

Audrey removes her coat to reveal a little black dress, with the emphasis on “little.” Jack finds the oxygen getting a little thin. When the waiter arrives – a Japanese man named Jun – Jack orders a Stag’s Leap cabernet.

“Very good!” says Jun. “I’ll be right back.”

“You know wine, too?”

“I am entirely faking it, honey. But Thompson has a lot of Stag’s Leap around the house, and it seems to be good stuff.”

“Okay,” says Audrey, laughing. “I’ll stop peeking behind the curtain.”

“Thank you. And speaking of peeking, that dress… Well, if I was gay, I’d say it was fabulous!”

“If you are gay, you’ve been doing a tremendous job of faking it.”

“During sex, I just imagine that you’re Ben Affleck.”

Audrey laughs for a long, long time. It almost seems like she’s using it for therapy. The barometer ticks on.

“So how did you find this place? It’s lovely.”

“Had a meeting here with a heartstricken friend.”

“My compliments. I love the ultrasuede shirt, by the way. It goes so well with your eyes! Oh Jack, I don’t know if I tell you enough, but… I know I’m undependable, but I like you so much that I don’t want to see you too much, because I’ve seen the terrible things that familiarity does to people. Isn’t that awful?”

More puzzle pieces. But he has his instructions, and psychoanalysis is anything but romantic. He sees the word swordfish and decides that he would like to eat exactly that.

He hadn’t really investigated the dancing part, but it turns up right on schedule, nonetheless, adding to the growing veneer of his romantic competence. A three-piece jazz combo kicks up in the lounge, not thirty feet from their table, and Jack notices Audrey’s attentions drifting that way all during dessert. After signing the credit slip (feeling grateful for the per-diems he’s been getting from Thompson), he stands and says, “Would the lady care to dance?”

“The lady would,” says Audrey, and they stroll to the lounge, a tasteful cubbyhole of blonde woods and pastel paintings of tropical birds. Audrey deposits her purse at a table and proceeds to a broad square of hardwood next to the piano.

Jack doesn’t know much of dancing. He went to a few dances in high school, and did manage to find the occasional female to join him in the sea of couples. But they never did anything terribly creative. It was largely an excuse to wrap your arms around a member of the opposite sex, to feel their breathing, smell their hair, touch their limbs, and to sway in a nondescript clockwise drift, careful not to bump into the other couples. A few of his schoolmates – largely the music geeks and cheerleaders – were into the retro swing craze then sweeping the teen population. Their kicks and whirls seemed to Jack like a foreign language, and he envied their grace and rhythm.

With Audrey, doing not much is really not a bad alternative. He’ll stand there and stare at her if she wants him to. But he suspects she’ll want more. He does know enough to at least strike the right posture: left hand holding hers, right hand resting on her waist. He has never actually done this before, but he’s pretty sure he saw it in a movie. It does make a certain sense – it gives him the feeling of steering them forward, like a small ship. Predictably, things with Audrey are never going to be that simple.

“Will you spin me?”

“I’m not sure I know how.”

“First, lift my hand to about six inches higher than my head. Then, draw it forward, away from us, and follow my spin. You might also give a little push on my waist to give me a little momentum. One, two, now!”

Jack feels more like follower than leader, but the trick seems to work. Audrey completes the spin and returns, his right hand settles back on her waist. She smiles.

“Good boy! I think you might be trainable.”

After a few more spins, she introduces a second move. They separate, facing each other, and join hands. Jack pulls her into a spin to his right, holding his left hand over her head, and pulls it back down to wrap her in his arms. After a pause, she spins back out to the starting position.

This is when the barometer ticks forward and Jack begins to get ideas. Wrapping, then unwrapping. Audrey is a Chinese puzzle box; it is Jack’s job to tie her into knots, and then to undo those knots. On their next foray, they wind their linked hands around each other’s necks, then release and run their hands along each other’s arms, until their fingers catch together. The barometer recognizes immediately that this has led them away from the starting position: he is holding her right hand in his right hand. He solves this imbalance by pulling her into a spin along his front, releasing his hand so he can receive her arrival – left hand to right, right hand to left. Two times later, Audrey changes it up. They repeat the neck-wrap, but they hold the position, walking a half-circle, tango-like until he stops and she continues, walking around his back, accepting his left hand with her right and returning again to the starting position.

Each time Jack accomplishes a move, he is greeted by a wider smile. The band keeps playing, the blood moves quicker, and Jack begins to create. At the starting position, he crosses hands with Audrey (enjoying her look of surprise) and spins her around, creating a whirl of arms over her head like the spokes of an umbrella. Then he steps to one side and walks her around, ending with an accelerated spin that leaves Audrey breathless. Next, he places her right hand behind her back, reaches around to take it with his right and unwinds her like a top. Then he realizes that he can turn a spin into a double or a triple just by speaking the number to his partner. Losing himself in the flurry, he begins to do things that he can’t explain. In the midst of a spin, he passes her hand to himself, behind his back. A little later, he decides that he should spin at the same time that Audrey is spinning, and somehow the geometry works, contrasting orbits that cancel each out.

After that, he begins to discover the nuances. His leads become more forceful, assured. He reels her further out and brings her in faster, catching her waist and letting the gravity carry her around. He begins to understand the position of his feet, squaring them to the task. He learns to savor the time between spins, holding Audrey closer, pressing the back of her hand to his chest, changing up the pattern of his steps and feeling Audrey match them, as if she, too, has a barometer. To smile, to laugh, to steal a kiss. As the band plays the final, tinkling stretches of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” he tells her that she must have faith, then braces his knee and lowers her into a dip that touches her hair to the floor. Her expression is half panic, half ecstasy as he holds her there a full three seconds.

“Absolute trust,” he says. She relaxes and smiles. He kisses her and pulls her back to her feet, acknowledging the ache in his legs. They return to their neglected table, where their Irish coffees have gone completely cold. Audrey refuses to let go of his hand.

“How did you do those things?”

“I had no idea I could do any of that.”

“Give me a tender, tender kiss.”

Which he does, their lips barely touching, then pressing together for a lovely second. When he pulls away, she opens her eyes.

“Now I want you to come to Monterey with me.”

An hour later, they are pushing into the familiar animal territories of intercourse when she places a hand on his chest. “Slowly, gently. Not always, honey. Just tonight.”

In the morning, Jack comes downstairs to find a humble living room with cream-colored carpets and walls of Tuscan orange. A pile of photography books, neatly fanned out on a coffee table made from a slice of redwood burl. A wreath of seashells over the fireplace. Pastel posters from art and wine festivals. And the best thing of all, a fresh pot of coffee and a coal-black mug from the Monterey Aquarium, holding down the corner of a neatly written letter.

Dearest handsomest Jack:

I want to thank you so much for last night. You are a phenomenal man, and the way you learned to dance so quickly – unless you’re taking secret lessons at Arthur Murray, I think it’s some kind of miracle.

I must now admit, I was using you for a bit of therapy. My rather colorful last name comes from Tiger LaBrea, my third husband – the last man to court me before I lost my belief in romance. He was a newspaper reporter in Las Vegas. Last week, I learned that he had been shot and killed, apparently for a story he wrote on gambling-industry corruption. I was devastated, and I suppose I wanted to revisit some of that romance. Tiger loved to dance.

I am amazed at your humanity, your warmth and elegance, and I believe that once I come out from this cloud of grief, I will have to acknowledge the idea that I am falling in love with you. Give me a call in a few days, and this time the dinner’s on me.

Love—

Audrey

PS I’m running late. Could you feed the pigeons? (Gray container next to coop.)

            Jack reads the letter a second time, then fills his coffee mug and carries it onto the small backyard deck. Against the fence he finds what looks like a dresser with all the drawers taken out, covered in chicken wire. A dozen stout-looking pigeons in various combinations of blue stand stock-still in the foggy air. Jack finds a large metal scoop in a covered wastebasket full of grain, fills it up and tips it into a metal feeder hanging on the chicken wire. The grain spills into a trough-like device inside the coop, and the pigeons scramble for position, grunting and flapping. Ah, thinks Jack. Now I am their god. Now they love me as much as Audrey LaBrea.

            The word “love” strikes a membrane in his forehead and rings out like a drumhead, sending a chill across his shoulders and down through his thumbs. He digs the scoop back into the grain and presses the lid back into place.

P

A Cleansing Galumph of Bloodrush

His next meeting with Ben comes on a Sunday afternoon. A thick fog hangs over town, turning everything mystical and Londonesque. Jack walks the front of the Safeway, hands stuffed into his jacket, enjoying the smell of the Christmas trees still rolled up and bundled on the walk. Then he hears the sound of jazz, which seems like a pleasant enough idea, until he realizes that it’s live jazz, and this means that he will have to listen to that corny singer again. In a time when he has learned a certain positivity toward so many things, why does he hold on to a petty hatred of this man’s singing? Or is it right to dislike bad things? He makes a note to bring this up with Ben.

            Jack steps inside just as Ray, the singer, starts in to butchering an old Cole Porter song, “True to You in My Fashion.” The original is sharp, deft, witty. Ray’s version is a piece of roadkill that has attached itself to the fender of a Jeep and is now being dragged through the mud. And now (his thoughts growing more bitter by the moment) Jack finds that Ben is nowhere to be found. He orders an Indian Malabar from Cher, whose everbright smile makes valiant battle against his oppression. The photos over the brew stations have been replaced by children’s drawings. After he finds his cup under a turkey dressed as a ballerina, Ray steps aside for a cornet solo by John, which immediately improves the atmosphere. As Jack stirs the sugar into his brew, he spots an older gentleman across the room, grinning at him broadly, wearing a blue plaid shirt that seems familiar. When the man lifts a two-fingered salute, Jack realizes that something may be up. He circumnavigates the bar to inspect.

            “Is that… Is that Ben?”

            “It is,” reports the familiar grumbling baritone. But the voice comes from a forest that has been clear-cut.

            “You shaved!”

            “I did?”

            “What for?”

            “Best reason of all,” says Ben. “Mah woman requested a clearer landing approach.”

            Jack sits down and stares. “Wow. You look twenty years younger.”

            “Well! There’s another benefit.”

            “I don’t know if I like having a life coach with no facial hair.”

            “Ha! I may not be hirsute, but I remain astute.”

            “You’ve been sitting here rehearsing that.”

            “Yes. So. How is my fellow young man?”

            “Doing pretty well. But tell me, should I feel bad for loathing Ray’s singing?”

            Ben gives a glance to the far corner, where Ray has taken up a fresh assault, rolling forth Cole’s notes with all the panache of a soiled gray carpet.

            “You mean Ray, the middle school principal, who devotes his free time to Habitat for Humanity?”

            “Oh, you’ve gone and ruined it for me now.”

            “Doesn’t change the fact that he’s a lousy singer,” says Ben. “And believe me, no one with ears would disagree with you. But it does make it easier to take. You see how that works? No one’s all good, no one’s all bad. And you can loathe Ray’s singing all you want, as long as you’re not cruel enough to tell him to his face. I mean, look at him.”

            Ray ends the last phrase and the corners of his mouth lift into a beatific grin. Jack takes a swallow from his Malabar, thinking about a plethora of things he might discuss with Ben, but finds that his friend is lost in the guitar intro to “Stardust,” stroking his chin as if he still had a beard.

            “I was thinking about proposing to Gina.” Ben smiles and turns to take in Jack’s response. Jack is fairly certain that he looks stunned.

            “Really?”

            “Yes. Really. So what do you think?”

            “You want… my opinion?”

            “Yes. Everyone gets a vote. Am I being a foolish old man?”

            Even minus the beard, Jack finds this position intimidating, so he decides that he needs a time-out. “Excuse me,” he says, and goes near the band – where Ray is preparing to do awful things to Hoagy Carmichael – to fetch a cup of water. But it’s ice water, and he drinks it too fast, and it gives him a small case of brain-freeze. When it clears, Jack realizes that this is precisely where he will find his answer. The barometer. He lets his eyes fuzz out to an empty focus, and allows his thoughts to swim around like clown fish in his frontal lobe. Halfway back to the table, he feels the words approaching his mouth.

            “I don’t know much about how love… operates,” he says, sitting down. “All I really know is, I don’t think that there are any iron-clad rules to the phenomenology. It is perfectly reasonable for someone to go thirty years with no romantic connection whatsoever, and then to reunite with someone and propose to her within a month. And I would never think of you as a foolish old man.”

            Ben offers a look of admiration and surprise. “Perhaps today, I should be paying you.”

            Jack laughs. “So what’s the count on this little poll of yours?”

            “One for, none against,” says Ben. “You’re the only one I’ve asked.”

            And this, for Jack, is an astounding piece of information.

            Jack is about to enter Big Brown when he hears a voice from the heavens.

            “Jack! Dude!”

            He looks up to find Thompson’s head and shoulders edging over the railing. He is shirtless, and a stream of smoke is trailing from the top of his head.

            “Yeah!?”

            “Come on up! Oh, and bring a couple of beers!”

            “Um… okay!”

            Jack makes the convoluted trek to the rooftop (thinking elevator, elevator) and finds Thompson in the hot tub, smoking a cigar the size of a small zeppelin. The tip has developed an ash two inches long, but Thompson is too happy to notice.

            “My man!” He takes one of the beers and gives it a long pull.

            “Ah! Thanks, man. Hey, remember when you left that DVD of Esmerelda in the player last week?”

            “Oh. Sorry. After all the stories, I got curious.”

            “No! No problem. In fact, the opposite: it inspired me to get off my ass and give her a call. We’ve been talking every day since, and get this – I’m going to Madison for Christmas! I’m gonna see my kids!”

            “Thompson! That’s fantastic!”

            “It certainly is.” Thompson settles back in the water and savors a drag from his cigar. The ash is now three inches and teetering. He points it at Jack. “Hey! You know what? Let’s go celebrate. Let me take you to Capitola for some seafood.”

            “Sure.”

            “Ready in an hour?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Fan-tastic,” says Thompson. He turns to retrieve his beer, and the enormous ash falls into the water. Jack thinks of mentioning it, but then, that’s what filtration systems are for.

            Jack cannot help replaying the old thought: hanging out with the cool kid, rolling into Capitola Village in Thompson’s Porsche. There were several years during which Jack could have purchased a similar car, but he never believed he could carry it off. A biker with an enormous Fu Manchu backs out of his space just in time for Thompson to roll on in. There’s a full hour left on the meter, plenty to get them to the 8 p.m. cutoff. And this, thinks Jack, is what it’s like to be Thompson Flores. He leads them into a restaurant with moss-green walls and Italian menus printed in cursive. Jack gets chicken breasts stuffed with chunks of portobello mushroom. Thompson orders grappa for both of them, and Jack downs three glasses with dinner. By the time they’re finished with the spumoni, Jack’s feeling a little light-headed. Heading outside, he gives Thompson a punch on the shoulder, very boy-like, and Thompson punches him back. Jack notices all the good-looking women on the street, most of them checking out Thompson, but two or three saving their looks for the clean-cut sidekick.

            They venture next door to the Fog Bank, a saloon covered floor-to-ceiling in well-worn varnished wood. A band wanders over to their instruments, and soon the air is filling with edgy blues, the kind associated with extremely hip black people, the city of Chicago, summertime barbecues and trips across the country on a Harley-Davidson. Thompson gets a pitcher of beer and tips his mug in Jack’s direction.

            “To my sexy flamenco-goddess wife.”

            “Hear hear.”

            Thompson downs his beer in three swallows and fills it back up. “Goin’ to Madison! Goin’ to see my babies!”

            “Awesome!” says Jack. He realizes he’s getting drunk now, and losing vocabulary. “Awesome!”

            “Yes!” Thompson takes another long drink, then folds his arms and studies the floor, which has filled with dancers.

            “Man! Lots of talent in this bar.”

            “Talent?”

            “Har! The Boy Scout, he does not know his urban lingo. That’s the word we dawgy dawgs use to describe comely females: ‘talent.’”

            Jack scans the bar and catches several appealing fragments: halter-top cleavage, curve of shaking ass, slice of breathless smile. Men feed on these portions all their lives and are never sated, says his brain, sounding strangely like a Chinese philosopher. And this is what comes from his mouth:

            “Dude!”

            “Allow me to pour you another beer,” says Thompson.

            “But I haven’t finished this one.”

            “So finish that one. Keep up!”

            Jack – who will later realize he’s got to kick this habit of following orders – downs the final half in a chug. The carbonation rises into his nose, making him laugh. When he recovers, another full mug has made its way into his hand.

            “Hey Jack. I feel like dancing.”

            “Sorry. I only know how to lead.”

            Thompson breaks up laughing, exactly like a drunk guy.

            “You are a card. How about those two over there? By the wait station. Curvy, curvy blonde – that one’s mine. And the slender brunette in the cowgirl hat? That’s yours.”

“You mean you’re just going to go up and talk to them?”

            “That’s usually the best approach.” He crosses the floor in three big strides, teeth to the front. At his first word, both girls smile. The back of Thompson’s head bobs slightly, in the manner of a car dealer giving a pitch, and then he’s off with the blonde, bumping parts and laughing. She gives off a milk-fed radiance: bright blue eyes, grippable seal-like geometrics. The brunette places her hat on the bar and walks his way with a devilish smile. She’s got a light complexion, dark eyes and long, straight hair – a taste of Shania Twain.

            “Hi. I’m Bobbie. You’re Jack. Your pal says you could use a dance.”

            Jack would disagree except that he doesn’t. He follows Bobbie into the crowd and soon they’re twisting and shaking to a jump tune, lost between the guitarist’s sharp edges and the singer’s hallelujah shouts. A couple of minutes later, the drummer rallies them into a tornado of sound and brings it down with a breakfast-cereal crunch. Bobbie gives Jack a well-exercised smile and brushes her hair back. The drummer counts into a slow, crawly blues.

            “Do ya slow dance, Jackie?”

            “Do I!” He takes Bobbie’s right hand with his – like they’re shaking on a deal – and pulls her into a spin. He realizes this is a move he’s never done before. To Bobbie’s great credit, she follows easily, and comes back smiling.

            “Wow!”

            Great teeth, thinks Jack.

            “I hope you don’t mind being thrown around a little.”

            Bobbie lets out a happy growl.

            “Oh, you’re in for it now,” says Jack, and takes her into a double spin.

            It hardly seems possible, but an hour later they’re still at it. Jack’s limbs feel so loose they’re about to fly off, and he and Bobbie are sweating up a mutual storm. They’re dancing close as the band winds up a slow, slow ballad. Jack holds Bobbie’s waist, reading the movements of toes, feet, legs, pelvis through the fibers under his fingertips. The band cuts off, leaving the singer to a single ghostly line, and then they announce a break.

            “Shew!” says Bobbie. “Let’s get some air.”

            “Sounds good,” says Jack. He fans himself with a hand to illustrate.

            They take a small back door onto a balcony overlooking the lagoon. A pack of ducks and gulls float in their direction, hopeful for handouts.

            “Oh! The air feels so good. I haven’t danced like that in years. You’re an excellent lead, Jack. Do you take classes?”

            “Um… a couple.” He has a fleeting thought of his red-headed teacher – but his thoughts are soon re-focused on the pair of lips pressing against his own, which feels quite pleasant. Bobbie backs off suddenly and covers her mouth, as if she’s concealing Exhibit A.

            “Oh, Jesus. I’m so sorry!” After she recovers her bearings, she sets her elbows on the railing and fixes a sad gaze on the Venetian-style cottages across the beach. “It’s so true – all the good ones are taken.”

            Does she know about Audrey? “I’m… sorry?”

            “Oh, no, it was all me.” says Bobbie. “No need to apologize.”

            He’s deciding whether to say that he wasn’t apologizing when Bobbie places a hand on either of his pectorals.

            “Your fiancée is such a lucky girl.”

            “I’m sorry?”

            “Now come on, Jack. Don’t ruin my impression of you. You’ve really got to behave now or…”

            She turns to re-establish some distance but catches her heel on a plank and stumbles forward. Jack catches her and they’re kissing again, this time much more operatically. Then Bobbie is off and talking again.

            “I am so sorry, oh shit I am drunk and I’m being a bad, bad girl. Look, I better leave. Thanks, Jack. Thank you, thank you for the dancing, and you, um, give me a call if you get divorced someday. Not that I want that! Bye, honey.”

            She gives him a kiss on the cheek, slips through the doorway and is quickly swallowed by the crowd. Jack stands with his back to the railing, stupefied, entranced by the full moon over the roof. Three minutes later, a whiff of cigarette smoke drifts over from the next balcony and Jack finally gets the idea. Thompson got Bobbie to dance with him by telling her that this was his last night out before his wedding. He’d like to be pissed off, but the ruse is so beautiful he starts laughing instead, like a crazy man, scaring away all the ducks and gulls.

            He’s still chuckling when he re-enters the bar. He looks for Bobbie, and is not entirely surprised  to find no sign of her. What is surprising is the complete lack of Thompson, or the curvy blonde. The only thing left is the cowgirl hat, a chocolate-brown number with a braided black band, sitting atop the bar like an abandoned pet. Jack considers the ethics of the situation, then takes the hat by its brim and heads outside. Ransom.

            The unkindest absence of all comes from the Porsche, which means that Jack is walking home. He places the cowgirl hat atop his head. It’s a little small, but he tries to balance it as he tracks the long uphill out of the village.

            At New Brighton Beach, he cuts across the railroad tracks to the parking lot, and is about to descend the stairs when he’s greeted by an old malady: a form of cardiac arrhythmia that locks his heart into an accelerated beat. The only remedy is to take a seat and wait it out. Coated silver by the moon, he sniffs the hat, which is too new to have much Bobbie to it, and has the usual, terrible thought: what if his heart never slows down? What if he dies right here? But the thought has lost its edge from overuse, and it’s no surprise when his heart delivers a cleansing galumph of bloodrush and kicks back down to a normal rate. Soon he’s off to the beach, slogging the wet sand as his Italian dinner sits on the bottom of his stomach like a chunky piece of furniture. The sight of Big Brown is quite a relief.

            As he boards the deck, Jack catches a faint light seeping from the living room. The barometer clicks on with a whirr, hindered only slightly by grappa and beer, and tells Jack to slow down. He creeps up to a tiny gap in the vertical blinds and peers in to find Thompson sitting on the great white couch, his head flung back in pain.

            Or… not. Just above the coffee table, Jack finds the broad white moon of a female ass, and a satellite of tousled blonde hair bobbing over Thompson’s lap like a piston.

            Jack finds the sight both titillating and amusing – his own private porno – but he senses that he might feel differently in the morning. For the moment, he decides that he should sneak through the side yard and take a nap in his car.

Q

Clenching of Innards

He wakes at the first hint of light. Someone has placed a set of encyclopedias on his stomach. He could be wrong about this. When he opens the door and struggles to his feet, he realizes it may be an inside job. He feels like he’s about to give birth to two large bricks, or a typewriter. He waddles to the door and up to Nikola’s room to sleep.

            Or not to sleep. He lies on his side and shifts around until he’s comfortable, but a few minutes later the bricks congregate against his ribs. So he turns to the other side, shifts again – and again the bricks. He pops an Ibuprofen, to no effect. His stomach begins to produce ungodly sounds, like a hot spring at Yellowstone. He pops two Rolaids, to no effect.

            A couple of bleary, blurry hours later, the sun fires a dozen stripes through his Venetian blinds, and he begins to shiver. Not the playful shivers that make your mouth go huh-vuh-vuh. These are rabid creatures, coursing from toe to shoulder in waves of ticcing fiber. He issues commands for this behavior to stop, but the troops are in full rebellion, running back and forth like little hyper insects.

            A half hour later, a brief respite allows him a trip to the restroom. The world is terrible, out of focus. He can barely stay standing long enough to finish peeing. Fluids, he thinks. Fluids. He stumbles downstairs to the fridge and finds the last half-carton of orange juice, takes heaping swallows whenever the dreaded shivers leave the field, whenever the bricks force him awake.

            Minutes later – or an hour – he has to pee again. This time the standing is more difficult, and he realizes that he may have to throw up. This is not an unwelcome idea. He recalls a case of food poisoning that cleared up directly following a vigorous puke. He assumes the position, embraces the porcelain god, feels the upsurging magma, the ab muscles in rebellion, the throat turned inside out and… nothing. So these are the dry heaves, he thinks. Fucking useless. All the horrible loss of control, all the awful clenching of innards, none of the results.

            After a minute – or an hour – he levers himself to his feet, pees some more, and staggers back to bed, where he is immediately beset by the biggest wave of shivering yet. He fears it will never stop, and finds himself emitting full-body groans, just like the ones you hear in movies from desperately ill people. This is not just bad, he thinks. This is bad acting. He knows by now that this is a virus, stomach or intestinal. It is likely the sickest he has ever been.

            The shivering stops. The sweating begins. It pours off of him in sheets. Uncomfortable as hell. He grabs a towel from the dresser, strips off and wipes himself down. Three minutes later, he is newly soaked. Fluids. Fluids. He drinks the orange juice dry. Opens the window, lies naked on the bed. The breeze is cool, but has absolutely no effect. He sweats. He makes calculations. He needs to be naked, but he also needs to leave the door open. If he passes out, if this fever turns bad, if Thompson comes home, he needs to be able to see his condition. Call the paramedics. He will not be one of those tenants discovered behind a locked door only after his carcass starts to smell.

            A few minutes or hours later, he wakes to the sound of tearing plastic. A man stands at his bedside, opening a small bottle, offering him a cup of liquid. It’s strong, cherry with a touch of licorice. The man speaks the words “saltines” and “orange juice.” Jack moans and shifts his bricks. The man disappears.

            When he wakes, the window is dark. He finds saltine crackers on the nightstand and chews three of them down. He opens a carton of orange juice and drinks half of it. It feels like liquid gold. It occurs to him that the sweating has stopped; this thought carries the force of a biblical miracle. He tries to stand. His legs ache terribly, as if he has been running laps up and down the beach. The shivering. He drags himself to the window and closes it, pops an Ibuprofen to some effect, then returns to bed and manages an hour of sleep before baby brick 1 and baby brick 2 wake him up again.

            Jack spends the next day almost entirely in bed; he begins to sweat again, but chases it off with the Nyquil. His muscles continue to ache from the previous day’s shivering, so he pops an Ibuprofen. His stomach gurgles; he takes a couple Rolaids. His nightstand is a pharmacy, a squad of medicinal soldiers awaiting their assignments. At noon, he finally has a decent bowel movement, and the bricks begin to fade.

            The next morning – is it Wednesday? – he gathers enough energy to shower, and to shave his three-day beard, to dress and to look something like a human being. He spots the cold sores at the corner of his lip – fucking inevitable – and drafts a tube of Blistex for his nightstand. Then he heads downstairs and finds Thompson eating toast.

            “Oh… hi.”

            “Dude! Good to see you up. I was worried about you. Stomach flu?”

            “Um… I think. Thanks for the Nyquil and… stuff.”

            “No problem.”

            “Oh, and… was I…?”

            “Butt naked! Yes. Can’t blame you. You were burning up, bruddah. Nothing I haven’t seen in a locker room.”

            “I… I…” He has talked too much now, and feels winded. “Better go… back to bed.”

            “Hey Jack. When you get back up, could you take a look at something?”

            “Sure.”

            “Cool. I’ll leave it on the table. Now go to sleep, buddy.”

            “Yeah. Will.”

            Jack turns and begins the Everest-like trek back up the stairs.

            When he wakes back up, two hours later, he feels the energy again, and realizes that he needs to get up and about. The bed is turning magnetic, and he needs to work up some circulation. He takes another shower – feeling a little excessive about it – and puts on some jeans and a sweatshirt. He’s about to leave the house when he recalls Thompson’s request, fetches a manila envelope from the kitchen table, then pitches it onto the passenger seat as he gets into his car.

            At the coffeehouse, he feels like a Cro-Magnon trying to navigate modern English. But he does manage to obtain a magic Peruvian and a can of mango nectar. Fluids. He uses the nectar to down another Ibuprofen, takes a sip of the Peruvian for a chaser and opens the clasp on the manila envelope. He pulls out a sheaf of papers.

            Numbers. More than he’s seen in months. He takes another sip of coffee and smiles.

            “It’s a quarterly analysis. They’re way behind on everything. First they had to scour all the books after that SEC fiasco, then they had to re-format the system to fit the new procedures, and then they had to accommodate Thompson’s so-called second honeymoon. Also – and this is my favorite part – it turns out that yours truly was the lynchpin to the whole department, and they just haven’t found a way to make up for my loss.”

            Jack punctuates this last point by firing a stone over the water. It spells a perfect low arc, spinning like a flying saucer, touches lightly to the surface and takes ten evenly portioned skips.

            “Amazing!”

            “Isn’t it though? Numbers! I am digitally, narcotically high.”

            “No! I mean that throw.”

            “Oh. Thanks. Not exactly a talent that you can brag about. It gives away the fact that I have way too much time on my hands.”

            “But what if you had all that time and you really sucked at skipping stones?”

            “Point taken.”

            “The quarterly is so far behind that they gave Thompson absolute discretion to contract out the work. He doesn’t even have to tell them who’s doing it, since the department has to double-check the work anyway.”

            “Why does everyone trust that guy?”

            “I don’t know, but it’s nice for once to be the beneficiary.”

            The beach is veiled in low-lying clouds of gun-metal gray. Every few seconds a random raindrop strikes his jacket. Jack spots another stone and picks it up, rubbing the sand from its surface.

            “Oh, um,” says Ben. “Any idea what time it is?”

            Jack digs his phone out of his shirt pocket and flips it open.

            “Well for heaven’s sake.”

            “What?”

            “Apparently, I left this thing off all week.”

            He turns it on. A swirl of red smoke gathers and dissipates, revealing the company logo, and then it flashes to his main screen.

            “One thirty five.”

            “Oh. Thanks. I have an appointment at four. So let me ask this: Any sense that Thompson is using this assignment to buy you off again?”

            “I don’t… think so. What with the beach vacation and me screwing his mistress, I think we’re pretty even. And to come up with something this complicated for a buyoff – that would be like one of those wacky JFK theories.”

            “Maybe,” says Ben. “But maybe it just inspired him to lean in your direction. And to take a chance by using an illicit source like yourself. No offense.”

            “None taken.”

            “As opposed to a more standard contracting firm.”

            “Hmm.” Jack slips the edge of the stone against his index finger, is about to let it fly when the flat space between the breakers closes up. “Well. I also offer a certain insider’s knowledge of the company. And of course, all of these procedures are the ones I was pushing for.”

            He stops to look at the rock. It’s a white quartz. A perfectly round, moon-shaped white quartz.

            “Holy shit.”

            “What?”

            “The night I got sick. Thompson’s wife agreed to let him visit for Christmas, and we went to Capitola to celebrate. The last time I saw him, he was dancing with this blonde, and then when I got home, the blonde was giving him a blow job.”

            “Holy shit,” says Ben. “Wow.”

            They return to their strolling. Ben seems very intent on analyzing this latest development. Jack wonders if Ben has a barometer.

            “This housemate of yours is… complicated.”

            “You’re being very generous. But there is a juicy paradox here. For a low-down dawg who cheats on his wife, he can be surprisingly thoughtful. At the awful awful hell-point of my illness, he apparently went out to the store, bought me some orange juice, saltines and Nyquil and delivered it to my bedside. This despite the fact that I was contagious, sweating like a pig and buck naked.”

            Ben takes a few steps, shaking his head.

            “Wow. Wow.”

            “So I guess you’re right – at least part of this offer is driven by guilt.”

            “Yes.”

            Jack sees a trough smoothing out between the breakers and fires the white quartz. It flies low to the surface, takes a thirty-foot skip over a wave and settles to a stop in a little trail of dimples. Then he has a heart attack.

            He freezes, suspecting arrhythmia, but then he remembers the phone tucked away in his shirt pocket. It’s vibrating. He digs it out, flips it open, and realizes they’ve just come astride a gap in the cliffs, which has opened up his reception. The vibrations continue, and the screen totes up the messages: 8, 9, 10…

            “Holy shit.”

            Ben steps up to investigate. “Is it radioactive? Is it gonna blow?”

            “No. But it’s up to sixteen, seventeen… Oh, I guess that’s… Whoops! Eighteen, nineteen…”

            “Holy shit. What is it all?”

            “I have my suspicions. Tell you what. Why don’t we find a good resting spot, and I will give you a recitation.”

            Ben claps his hands together. “Splendid!”

            A few minutes later, they arrive at a set of wide steps next to the pier for the Concrete Boat. Ben takes a seat halfway up.

            “Oh,” says Jack. “Is this it?”

            “I think it’s suitably theatrical.”

            Jack stands in the sand before the lowest step and flips open his phone.

            “Thank you, thank you.”

            “I wasn’t clapping.”

            “That’s all right. I’d like to start with a work I have titled ‘Shitload of Text Messages.’ It’s sort of a found poem.”

            Jack punches the first message:

            “Ah! Audrey: Howz trix, shweet shtuff? Like to take me up on that dinner?”

            “Yes! Woo-hoo!”

            “Please! Quiet in the hall. Audrey again: Yo, Bubba. Free food & u might get lucky. OK, u WILL get lucky.”

            “Yoo!”

            “Silence! Audrey: Tiny red dress, lots of leg, lots of cleavage, no panties.”

            “Ow!”

            “Horny old man. Whoa. Brigit: Hi. Long time no c. Been busy. How u? Audrey: What up, honey? UOK? Brigit: Testing? U there? Audrey: Bebe! WTF! Pay attention to me. Brigit: RU OK? Brigit: Too weird 4U? I guess I understand. Audrey: Jesus Jack! Where the hell RU? Audrey: Well fuck u then.”

            “Ha!”

            “Audrey: I’m sorry. But I’m horny, dammit! Brigit: I thought we could at least be friends. Verizon Wireless: New Tigers Woods Golf, now avail… Whoops. Audrey: Will suck yr cock like sucking ice cream through a straw.”

            “Yes!”

            “Brigit: Bloody hell. I give up. U CA boys are fucked up. Audrey: OMG, RU sick? Now I’m worried. Let me know if u need anything. XXBJ.”

            Jack snaps his phone shut, and Ben serves up a proper applause. “Author! Author!”

            “Quite the social experiment,” says Jack.

            “Yes. All the little self-propelled assumptions. Notice the endings, where Audrey landed back on genuine concern and Brigit opted for dismissal.”

            “You really like the idea of me and Audrey, don’t you?”

            “I just like the idea of Audrey. And my second piece of advice is: take the job.”

            Jack leans against the seawall, careful of creosote. “You think so?”

            “You’ve made some remarkable changes, my friend. Now that you’ve pushed yourself against all these lifestyles, I think it would be good for you to have a taste of your old life and see what you think.”

            “And what of the fornicating Latino?”

            Ben wags a fingers. “Be very careful messing in other people’s marriages. You never know what’s really going on there, and how they’re going to react to outside interference. Besides, you never know. Maybe seeing those kids will set him straight.”

            “I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. I’m beginning to think that Thompson is just a wild raging dick. I’m beginning to think that, given the chance, that boy would screw Audrey, would screw Cher the barista, might even screw Gina Scarletti.”

            “Anybody would screw Gina Scarletti.”

            “Says the horny old man.”

            “I am.”

R

Key Lime Tarts

            Hi. Sorry no response. Been sick all week.

            Oh God! So sorry I went off like that. Can u forgive me?

            Absolutely.

            Its just that guys disappear on me sometimes.

            Wouldnt have left phone off so long but it was a bad bug.

            Better now?

            Much.

            “Is this the home of Audrey LaBrea?”

            “Ohmigod! Are you okay?”

            “Yeah. All better now. Well – tired.”

            “I’m so sorry! I told you to fuck off, didn’t I?”

            “You did.”

            “You don’t know how many places a woman’s mind goes when she’s not getting a response.”

            “Ha! I do now. But you figured it out by the end. You get bonus points for that.”

            “Good!”

            “You still have to take me to dinner, though.”

            “How about tonight?”

            “This is so sudden!”

            “Yeah-yeah. Drama queen. It’s just that I’ve got something special in mind. And it’s right in your ‘hood.”

            “Coolness. When do you want to roll by?”

            “How about six?”

            “Pigeons?”

            “Nope. I keep them home in the winter.”

            “Okay then. You and me. No birds.”

            “Seeya. Um, housemate around?”

            “Nope. Gone for the holidays.”

            “Good. I want to scream.”

            “Mother!”

            “Drama queen.”

            Jack has just begun to dig in to the blessed numerals of C-Valve when Ben calls to request an emergency meeting. He zips up in his Miata, hardtop thankfully attached. When Jack hops in, Ben hands him a cup of coffee that turns out to be fresh-brewed Peruvian.

            “Suh-weet!”

            “Good listening requires wakefulness.”

            “Confucius? Gibrahn?”

            “Haas. Benjamin.”

            The comment turns out to be irrelevant, considering the lack of anything coming from Ben’s mouth that Jack might listen to. He drives them silently into Santa Cruz, silently up Graham Hill Road, past Roaring Camp Railroad and into Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. Then he walks them silently past the ranger station, silently past the picnic area and into a small amphitheater built around a fire pit. The benches are constructed of logs, a quarter of them chopped out to provide a seat and a back support.

            Ben gestures Jack to the front log. He settles in at a reclining angle, feeling like he’s at the dentist. Ben perches on a tree stump which seems to have been placed there precisely for people to perch upon. Behind him rises an enormous redwood. The base is hollowed out, its cave-like inner walls charred black, an example of the tree’s remarkable ability to survive fires. Trying to ignore the dampness seeping into his Levi’s, Jack decides that the irony is too obvious to point out.

            “Yes,” says Ben. “I noticed the fire tree. Didn’t plan it that way.”

            Jack sees no need to respond, since the man can obviously read his thoughts. Ben launches into his story sans prologue.

            “She talked me into a ride. It was inevitable. She was nice enough to give me an aging mare, Christeltine, wide-backed and comfy like an old couch. Next to Gina’s mount, an auburn jumping filly with the grand appellation of Fajamur’s Rose, Christeltine looked like a horse made of mud, but still she was more than I deserved.

            “We rode across Old Stage Road into Foothill Estates, full of ranch houses interbreeding with McMansions, which is not as bad as it sounds. At the top of the uppermost court there’s a path that cuts between two properties and through a gate into the foothills. Gina reassured me that the landowner was a client, and had granted free passage to all equestrians in the area.

            “By this time, my buttocks were really barking, but I was determined to keep going until we reached some paradisiacal spot. Fortunately, it didn’t take long in arriving. We crossed the face of the hills, all the grass turning that lovely pure green from the rains, the trail cutting through in a strip of sandstone blond, and then we boarded a ridge that seemed to extend from the hills like an index finger. At the tip of the finger stood an enormous live oak, witchy branches elbowing their way to the sky in all directions. We stopped underneath to look out over the Salinas Valley, the broad swale of forlorn, plowed-over rectangles, the frame of green hills at either side, a tiny slip of blue at the ocean tip, a sky fanned over with horsetail cirrus. It was like a paragraph from a Steinbeck novel, and I could hear the old rascal saying Now!

            “I managed to sidle old Christeltine up to Rose’s vastly superior frame and wrap an arm around Gina’s waist. She leaned over and gave my cheek a feathery kiss.

            “Here I wax poetic. Quoth I: ‘I would never, ever have dreamed this in a million years, me and the impossibly beautiful Gina Scarletti on top of the world.’

            “‘Especially not on horseback,’ she said, and laughed that husky laugh that turns sexagenarians into adolescent butter.

            “And quoth I: ‘Gina, I know I’m tempting fate by attempting to extend a miracle, but do you suppose we could make this last a little longer? Perhaps until the ends of our lives?’

            “Having no other safe way of doing it, I had placed the ring on my pinkie finger, and then secured it in place with an utterly phony bandage. For the previous hour, in fact, said ring had been digging into said pinkie with great enthusiasm, helped in great part by my amateur death-grip on Christeltine’s reins.

            “All worth it, of course. As I unwound the bandage and revealed that rock, Gina fell right to pieces. Her eyes angled up at the corners with great delight, but then they filled with water, her face folded in on itself and she began to sob. Naturally that set me off, old sap that I am, and we just sat there for the next ten minutes, leaning our heads together, crying our eyes out.

            “Eventually I managed to capture a breath and force out some words. ‘Do I take that as a Yes?’ She gave me her answer with all the subtlety of an umpire calling strike three: ‘Yes!’ Then quoth I, ‘We are so pathetic!’ Which sent us into uncontrollable laughter. And if you’ve ever sobbed and laughed at a run like that, you know how exhausting it is.

            “I wouldn’t have blamed the horses if they had bucked us off and run for their freedom. But we had stopped over some lovely deep grasses, and they seemed quite content to stand and nosh. We eventually recovered our senses, I managed to get the ring onto Gina’s finger, and we straggled home. When we arrived, we settled the horses into their stalls, collapsed on Gina’s couch and shared a brief smile before falling asleep. When I awoke – full darkness blanketing the windows – it occurred to me that I might have dreamt the whole unlikely episode. But then Gina came to, and gave me a big fat kiss.”

            Ben is a gifted storyteller, and by the end Jack is feeling a little teary-eyed himself. The only thing he can think to do is to hop over and give Ben a high-five (something he was never very good at) and then to give him a manly bear hug. He manages to say, in a Jewish mother’s voice, “My little boy, getting married!” which cracks them up good, and then they drive into Felton for a pizza.

            So what r u up to? Seeing anyone?

            Yeh. Shes erratic, but never boring. What about u?

            Me 2! Sort of an old flame. Hes very kind.

            Im so glad we both have someone. I hate it when these things get unbalanced.

            Not that these things happen much!

            I hope not! Would give me a heart attack. But it sure was fun.

            It was smashing, honey.

            I love when u text in Brit.

            Its me first language. Yank.

            Jack guides Thompson’s Porsche into a parking garage, and he and Audrey descend to Cedar Street. A block east, the shops along Pacific Avenue are fairly booming with commerce, the Christmas rush fully underway. Audrey wears a long scarlet coat to go with the tiny scarlet dress, to go with the hair, the candy-colored lipstick, the high FM pumps. She is RED, and Jack, in a black suit and red tie, takes her hand, hardly believing that this package of lusciousness is allowing herself to be seen in his possession. When they stop at the intersection, she spins to plant a kiss firmly on his lips. He is a figure in a fashion commercial, the lights of traffic teasing the periphery of his vision. A man in a pickup lets out an old-fashioned hoot and Audrey breaks off, laughing.

            “I’m sorry. I’m just… All that radio silence last week. You scared me, honey, and now I’m afraid I can’t control myself.”

            “That’s very unfortunate,” says Jack, not meaning a word. He takes her elbow and guides her across the street.

            “You didn’t help matters any, driving me here in a Porsche. Are you trying to make me uncontrollably hot?”

            “You are already uncontrollably hot, honey.”

            “Why thank you. You got some kinda blackmail on this dude?”

            Jack’s feeling brazen. “I witnessed Mr. Flores receiving a blow job last week from some blonde coed. He…”

            She puts a finger to his lips. “Not right now, honey. Save the nasty for later.”

            Says the Queen of Nasty. He’s feeling oddly impatient. Perhaps it’s the constant stage-direction, the constant randomness. Wasn’t he ecstatic just three minutes ago?

            They arrive at Audrey’s choice, a cozy little bistro called Café Limelight. The walls are high and burgundy. A kitchen counter runs the length of the room. A blonde in a yellow dress is setting up her keyboard.

            “Suzanne?”

            “I looked up her schedule on the Web,” says Audrey.

            They rush over and clog up the kitchen traffic by giving Suzanne boisterous Monkey-style hugs.

            “What a treat!” says Jack. “You sing, we eat.”

            “You’re rhyming!” says Suzanne. “I hope I last through dinner. I just drove up Highway One and boy are my arms tired.” The lack of laughter sends her down that dreaded path of joke-explanation. “You know, because of the windy… roads.”

            “Oh yeah,” says Jack. “Yeah, that’s a workout. We’d better find a table and leave you to your work.”

            “Thanks. And thanks for coming.”

            The café is run by a married couple, genuine foodies who invest their dishes with small, thoughtful touches. Jack gets a focaccia sandwich with salmon and red peppers, with a side of pickled mushrooms. Audrey gets a Caesar salad with locally caught anchovies and parmesan cheese grated right at the table. They follow with key lime tarts topped with custard, and meanwhile find their occupation in starting the applause at the end of Suzanne’s songs (dinner crowds being not always attentive to their musicians).

            In her charming, off-beat manner, Suzanne introduces the next song. “I think it’s time for me to play you a Christmas song, but I really only know one. So if you don’t like this one, you’re out of luck.”

            It’s something called the Christmas Waltz. Jack’s never heard it, but it seems to register with Audrey, whose emerald eyes get big with recognition. She turns to Jack and says, “Dance with me.”

            Jack wonders how they’re supposed to waltz in such a small space (and how he’s supposed to waltz at all), but Audrey seems content to sway on the one and the three, in a few square feet next to Suzanne’s amplifier. Jack moves his hands to lead Audrey into a spin, but she stops him, resting her head on his chest and holding him tighter. He brushes his face against her hair, which smells like vanilla and cinnamon, and kisses her at the end of the song.

            After that, Audrey is strangely silent, holding Jack’s hand under the table, kissing him on the cheek, sipping from a glass of dessert wine. Suzanne finishes her set with the anti-romantic “Hallelujah,” takes Jack’s check for another CD (this one headed, almost treasonously, for Portland) and hugs them both farewell. She is driving the next morning for Eureka, working up the coast to spend Christmas with her family in Seattle.

            As they exit onto the sidewalk, Audrey stops, pregnant with words she cannot speak, her eyes flashing with mad thought.

            “Where? Where? Have to find… Oh! I know. Come.”

            It’s yet another ride on the Audrey Express. She pulls Jack south across Mission, then a block east to the town clock, which looks so traditional it ought to be on Disneyland’s Main Street. She leads him onto the ledge around its perimeter and gives him another of her devastating kisses.

            Audrey pulls back and smiles, looking at him so intently that he feels a little hypnotized.

            “This is shocking news, Jack. Jack. I love you, Jack. I’m in love with you.”

            He marvels at the ease of his response.

            “And I’m in love with you.”

            “Are you? Are you really?”

            Jack smiles, and kisses her on the tip of her nose.

            “Of course.”

            “Thank God!” says Audrey, and slings her arms around him.

            Jack peers over Audrey’s shoulder. It’s nine-fifty-two, December 16.

S

The Cowgirl Hat Conspiracy

It’s Christmas morning, and Jack is bathing himself in numbers. He realizes that some people would look askance at this, would whisper the word “workaholic,” but let them celebrate their way – all he wants for Christmas are long columns of integers. Until his cell phone rings.

“Thompson! How’s the great white north?”

“Unbelievably freakin’ cold, my friend. I had completely forgotten.”

“You’ve been Californianized.”

“And I’m a Texan. And a full-blooded beaner.”

“Well I wouldn’t say that.”

“But it’s true!”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t say it.”

“Smart man, gringo.”

“So how are things going? How’s the wife and kids?”

“Ah, Jack. I can’t tell you how good it is, watching those little velociraptors tear into their presents. They’re so damn cute, I can barely believe I made ‘em.”

“And the wife?”

“I have won her over. So much so that they are all moving back, as of January tenth.”

“Fantastic!”

“And you have to move out.”

“You bastard! Kidding, kidding. I couldn’t think of a better eviction.”

“Thanks, man. You having a good Christmas?”

“Yes. I’m working.”

“I knew it!”

“And, I’m almost done.”

“Wow. That is phenomenal. I knew you were the one to get us out of this shithole. I have got to figure out how to get you back full-time.”

“Maybe an alias and plastic surgery?”

“On the other hand, it’s Christmas! Have some fun, wouldja?”

“Audrey’s coming over this afternoon.”

“Ah, the Oompah-Loompah with the fine ass. I want you to screw her in every room of the house. I want those pheromones floating around when my wife gets home.”

“Yes, sir! Hey, and congrats again. Glad to hear things are working out.”

“Thanks, dude. See ya!”

“Ciao!”

Jack folds his phone and immediately wonders where he picked up a word like “Ciao.” A half-hour later, his right hand is dancing over the number-pad on his laptop, just like old times. He flips a page on the spreadsheet and realizes that it’s the last – and that it only contains one entry. Several finger-twitches later, he is entirely done with the project. He misses it already.

He looks up for the first time in quite a while and discovers an astounding amount of sunlight flooding the windows. He checks the clock, finds that he’s got two hours before Audrey, and gets up to pull on his sweatshirt.

After a week-long storm that pounded the coast with rain and left dustings of snow on the coastal mountains, the beach looks like it’s been scrubbed clean by a hundred thousand housemaids. The sunshine is brilliant, the water as flat and calm as a koi pond. The storm has left little mounds of rocks every hundred feet, and Jack finds bits of sea glass, tucked among the pebbles like hard candy. He was only planning a brief hike, but the introduction of treasure keeps him going, all the way to the cliffs of New Brighton. There he finds enough rock-stacks to populate the state legislature, and wonders if White Horse was out here during the rainstorm. He crouches beneath the tallest and tries to fit it into the screen of his camera phone. When he sees the results, he indulges in a hearty curse.

“Damn!”

“Not workin’ out for ya?”

His eyes are fixed on the nothing-looking blobs on his phone screen. “I swear these things are protected by a curse. They refuse to show up on photos.” He punches the erase button and looks up to address his interloper, a thin woman with milk-white skin, oval-shaped eyes and long, straight hair. Failing to come up with a name, he announces their place of meeting.

“The Fog Bank!”

“Bobbie,” she says. “And you’re Jack.”

“Um, yeah. So what brings you to the White Horse Jenga pile?”

“You know White Horse?”

“Sure. He’s a legend.”

Bobbie smiles. “And yet, you didn’t notice that he was in that band we were dancing to?”

“No shit!”

“Rhythm guitar.”

“I guess I had more important things to look at.”

“Uh-oh. Smooth talker.” She smiles broadly, re-introducing him to those dimples. As if to catch him in the act, she says, “So how was the wedding?”

“Hmm. Which direction you headed?”

“All the way back to Rio del Mar. This walk is my Christmas tradition, before my family stuffs me like a piñata. We call it the Cliffenbock.”

“Ha! A noble brew – and a long hike! But I’ll need most of it to explain that night. Shall we?”

It takes a half mile and a thorough cross-examination before Bobbie accepts Jack’s story. In a sense, he respects that. He’s already seen too many idiot girls buying everything that Thompson has to sell.

“So back then, you and Audrey were just dating. And now you’re more serious.”

“She’s coming over for Christmas supper.”

“My timing sucks.”

“Your disappointment flatters me.”

“Finding a non-gay man who can dance is not that easy.”

Jack laughs and pauses to pick up an aqua-colored chip ribbed with bottlecap threads. He hands it to Bobbie.

“Thanks!”

“For your troubles. For your friendship.”

“Stop being so nice, Jack. You’re breaking my heart.”

Thankfully, she appears to be kidding. He finds a perfect disc of black stone and scores a seven-hopper on the smooth water.

“Oh, sure,” says Bobbie. “You can skip stones, too. Is there anything you’re not good at?”

“Well right now I’m not very good at being employed. Hey, how’s your curvy blonde friend?”

“Oh, Kirsten? I’ve only seen her once since then. She is wildly in love. I’m surprised you didn’t know.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause she’s hung up on your friend. Tony Banderas.”

“Um. Pardon?”

“Sounds like a pain in the ass to me. He always has to come over to her place. At least until the divorce comes through. I know he’s your friend, but I don’t trust that guy.”

Jack laughs much too loudly, trying to hide his great surprise. He suddenly feels like he’s treading in dangerous waters, and had best keep his mouth shut.

“Yeah,” he says. “There’s a reason he’s getting divorced. Or two. Or three.”

“That’s what I told Kirsten. Sexy man, but much too smooth. Watch out, sistah! Hey, this is totally off the subject, but have you seen my hat? I thought I left it at the Fog Bank, but…”

“I’ve got it.”

“You do! Well that was kinda silly.”

“I was kinda drunk.” Jack bends down to fetch a postage-stamp square of green glass. “And it just looked so… lonely. Plus, I had this vision of roaming the countryside, trying it on the heads of different women until I found my Cinderella.”

Bobbie slaps him on the shoulder. “Watch it, prince. You’re getting a little too charming. Any chance I can get it back?”

“Excellent chance. Follow me.” He takes a sharp left, and soon they’re climbing the back deck of Big Brown.

“Holy crap. So the story is true. I told Kirsten she must have been hallucinating.”

“Yup. It’s Big, and it’s Brown.”

“And frankly,” says Bobbie, “kinda ugly.”

“I have mixed feelings about it myself.”

“So why do you stay here?”

“It comes with a beach.” They round the corner, and Jack looks up at the enormous chocolate walls. “Plus a boatload of intangibles that I really can’t explain.”

He asks her to stay on the porch while he fetches the cowgirl hat from his front closet. When he returns, she’s writing something on a small slip of paper. She hands it to him, then takes the hat and places it on her head.

“Ah! Now I feel complete. That’s my phone number. If things don’t work out with Audrey. Or even if they do; you can never have too many friends.”

“Sure.” Jack tucks it into his pants pocket. “It was great running into you, Bobbie. Have a great Christmas.”

“You too, Jack.” She looks off into a middle distance, as if she’s processing something, then returns to Jack. “Could you… give me a few spins for the road?”

“Spins?”

“It’s a big porch. We could probably manage it.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Jack takes Bobbie’s hands, finds an old Bonnie Raitt tune running through his head and leads her into a series of the moves he learned with Audrey. He feels the same remarkable sense of balance and gravity from their meeting at the Fog Bank, and is soon tossing Bobbie around the tiles with abandon. They begin to laugh at their own synchronicity, and they keep going until Jack runs out of ideas. He warns her ahead of time, imagines the song coming to an end and drops Bobbie into a dip. Balanced across Jack’s arm, the world an upside-down kaleidoscope, Bobbie sees a beautiful redhead, perched on the second step with a pet carrier, wearing a look of extremely pressurized calm.

“Hi,” says Bobbie. “You must be Audrey.”

“I ordered these little message carriers online.” Audrey holds a small aluminum tube with a clip to one side. She hands Jack a pen and a tiny slip of paper. “So the idea is, we write down our Christmas wishes, and Mamet and Cigarette will fly them to the heavens.”

She leans down to write something. Jack writes, I want Audrey to forgive me for dancing with strange women on my porch. Audrey takes the slips, folds them up and tucks them into the tubes, then clips the tubes onto the right leg of each pigeon. Then they stand and, on the customary count of three, loft their charges skyward. The birds circle twice and head southeast along the shore.

“I never get tired of that,” she says. Then she swats Jack on the arm with surprising force.

“What the fuck were you doing? Don’t make me get jealous. I fucking hate that, so don’t even get me started.”

Jack keeps his arms at the ready, in case she goes for another strike.

“Do you want an explanation? Or is that just going to piss you off even more?”

Audrey sits in a patio chair and folds her arms very tightly. “Is it a good story?”

“Yes.”

“It better be.”

“After Thompson found out he was going to see his kids at Christmas, he took me out to celebrate. We ended up at the Fog Bank, where Bobbie and I did some dancing. And I ran into her just now on the beach.”

“And just had to take her to the house?”

“Yes. I had her hat.”

“Why?”

“She left it at the bar.”

“And you should have left it there, because that’s the first place she would have looked for it. But, you took it home, because really you wanted to see Bobbie again. Am I right?”

Perhaps it’s because he’s tired of having no good answer to the Cowgirl Hat Conspiracy, but Jack feels his blood rising. “So let me get this straight. At a time when you made your appearances in my life whenever the fuck you felt like it, I was supposed to sit next to the phone and await your summons? You’re awfully fond of your independence, sweetcakes, and that’s just dandy, but you have to let other people have theirs, too, or it really doesn’t count.”

Audrey stomps off to the railing and releases a filthy, muttered stream punctuated by the letters F and K. And K. Jack thinks it best to leave her alone for a while. After a minute, she turns and yells.

“This is what I fucking hate! This is how it starts. One person says I love you, the other agrees, and then everybody proceed directly to the bickering and mutual disrespect. I have had way too much of this shit!”

Jack advances to a safe middle distance, which places him next to the tiki god.

“This shit is exactly what it’s about, Audrey. We have to learn how to fight.”

“How about discussing?”

“No. Fighting. I love you because you’re passionate, and I want to fight with you. Be real with me. And tell me this: Am I going to see more of you now? Are you going to stay connected? Because when a woman tells me she loves me, that’s what I expect.”

Audrey takes a long breath, and seems to calm down. “Are we going to be exclusive?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then – yes.”

“Good! Now, are you going to kiss me?”

Audrey shoots him a simmering look. “Oh, I’m going to do a lot more than that.” She begins to remove articles of clothing as she charges in Jack’s direction.

“Jesus Christ!”

“Exactly,” says Audrey. “’Tis the day of our Savior’s birth.”

“Well thank the Lord. How did we end up in the hot tub?”

“Hell if I know. But what I do know is, if you ever have the opportunity to go straight from fighting to fucking, you should always take it.”

“Jesus. I think I hurt my ankle.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised.”

“I love you, Audrey. And I’m sorry about the… incident.”

“Next time you dance with another woman – preferably at some public event where I, too, am in attendance – try not to look so damn good while you’re doing it.”

“Can’t help it. I had an excellent teacher.”

Audrey gives him a wary look. “You’ve been hanging out with Thompson too much. You’re starting to talk like a dawg.”

“Yikes!” Jack fishes his sweatshirt out of the water and tosses it onto the rooftop with a splop. “Speaking of, the wife and kids are moving back home in a couple of weeks. Which means I’m out.”

“Aah! I’m gonna miss this place.”

“I get the feeling I might be back. I have discovered some things about Thompson that do not bode well.”

“A dawg’s a dawg, honey. Never changes. That’s why I stick with monkeys. And in case I forgot to mention it, I love you, too."

Jack kisses her. “Thank you.”

“Because you’re a monkey’s monkey.”

“I’m honored.”

Audrey wraps Jack up in her arms and stretches her legs into a ballet pointe just above the water. “But since your time is running out – and since I have a few days off work – you mind if I spend a few days here at the mansion?”

“Did you bring any clothes?”

Audrey lets fly with a witchy cackle. “Who the hell needs clothes?”

T

Munchies, Smokes, Drums

Considering the subterfuge he is being forced to undertake on behalf of his philandering host, Jack is feeling much more at ease driving the Porsche. It’s a gorgeously sunny afternoon, and he’s downshifting the upgrade at the south end of the Pajaro Valley, the somber green hills spotted with broccoli crowns of live oak. He’s on his way to the great New Year’s Spectacular at Terra and Ivan’s, and the owner of the Porsche isn’t due home till the second.

            He tops out onto a long straightaway bracketed by strawberry fields, the gray-green stacks of the Moss Landing power plant looming on the horizon. This particular piece of road comes with a musical trigger: “Me and Bobby McGee,” some line about losing a girlfriend in Salinas. He pictures a baby-faced Kris Kristofferson, driving this same stretch, sometime in the early sixties, never dreaming that the lines he was putting together could someday touch the lips of a million singers, notably one named Janis.

            This thought, like so many others, veers onto Audrey – the days spent in slow motion at Big Brown, like a couple of rich newlyweds. He had always wondered if their chemistry would fade without the elements of surprise and gymnastic sex, and now he has his answer. They spent languid hours together, making unhurried love, drifting into easy pursuits: a full ten frames of bowling, a DVD and popcorn on the great white couch, a rainy-day soak in the hot tub, the long beach-walks that you read about in personal ads. Not that the surprises were completely gone; at the end of one beach-walk, she pulled him behind one of White Horse’s larger constructions for a virtuosic blow job.

            He figures that this last thought is what has led him onto the shoulder, until he realizes that he’s not on the shoulder. The sudden thumping is coming from a flat tire on the Carrera’s right side. He pulls to the shoulder, exclaiming, with an operatic intensity of feeling, “Oh fucking great!”

            He rolls to the flattest spot on the turnout and sits at the wheel, rearranging his priorities. Arriving at party on time – gone. All bets off. Take care of the car, Jack. Jack. Right – jack.

            He flips the trunk release and steps out, the breeze of a passing truck whipping his hair. Surveying the trunk, he spots a handle near the frame and yanks it, relieved to find that the tire-shaped hump in the floor actually does contain a tire – one of those junior-NASCAR temporaries that hardly befits a Porsche. He undoes the brace, lifts out the spare and deposits it next to his right front tire, which is now as flat as the bottom of a tennis shoe.

            Jack. Lug wrench. Both sides of the trunk contain built-in compartments. He flips the left-hand latch, opens the panel like a door on a hinge and finds a burgundy leather pouch. A pouch that might contain tools. He pulls a zipper along the top to reveal a messy array of DVDs in jewel cases. The cases bear white file-folder labels, each of them marked with the name of a woman: Shari, Therese, Juliana, Meghan, Johanna, Brigit (Brigit?) and, at the far left, Kirsten. The bag contains one other item: a bottle of Viagra.

            “Holy shit,” says Jack. He re-zips the pouch, returns it to the compartment and closes the panel. Then he opens the right-hand compartment, finds the jack and lug wrench, and sets to his work. Priorities. All bets off.

            The temporary spare and its red-letter warnings confine him to the driving style of a 65-year-old school principal, so the early evening is nowhere near as fun as the late afternoon. This is especially true of the farm road, with its rain-puddle gouges and metal ridges parading as speed bumps. Terra and Ivan’s driveway is stacked up with cars, so he parks near the entrance, in a patch of tall weeds behind a long-drydocked motorboat. He inches around to the passenger door and is pulling out a sushi platter and a bottle of Gewürztraminer when a new-model white VW Beetle pulls in and parks at the other side of the entrance. The driver looks like Audrey, but the car doesn’t match.

            “Hi Jack.”

            It’s Brigit. (Brigit?) She stands in the center of the driveway wearing a red Santa-hat and a pink ski jacket, holding a bottle of peppermint schnapps. It’s Brigit.

            “Going to give us a kiss then?”

            He sets the sushi and wine on the ground and walks slowly toward the mirage. Brigit sets down her bottle and spreads her arms. Jack hugs her and kisses her on the cheek. She kisses him on the lips and smiles.

            “If you could see the look on your face.”

He manages to separate himself, as if he fears falling under some voodoo spell.

“I don’t… understand. You’re… What are you doing here?”

“I’m here for the party, you goof.”

“Okay. Um… Why?”

She wraps her arms around herself and laughs, then takes off the Santa hat and gazes skyward.

“What an awful lot of stars you have in Salinas! Gorgeous. Oh, um… well. I’m here to see Thompson.”

“Okay. Why?”

She slaps him on the chest and laughs. “You haven’t figured that out by now? ‘Old flame’? ‘Very unexpected’?”

“You’re really not telling me…”

“I’ve hit the jackpot… Jack. It’s quite stunning. The impetuous fool hopped a flight to Portland one day, took me out to dinner and told me that he’s divorcing his wife. We’ve been chatting ever since, and now he’s talking about moving to Portland.”

“I can’t believe it,” says Jack.

“I know! It’s such a…”

“I can’t believe that you’re one of the idiots.”

“Beg pardon?”

“I had you pegged as a smart girl who got fooled. Once. Now it turns out you’re an idiot. And you know I think I’ve finally got this thing figured out. For every raging-dick superdawg like Thompson, there have to be thirty-two complete fucking idiot women to fall for his act.”

Brigit’s eyes are wide with insult. “How dare you talk to me like…”

“Oh! You Brits are so charming. You actually say things like ‘How dare you.’ That is so adorable!”

“I… I would never expect this from you, Jack.”

Jack waves toward the approximate direction of Wisconsin. “That asshole is in Madison right now, begging his wife for mercy, making plans for her and the kids to move back into the mansion.”

Brigit produces two precise blinks. “I would assume he wants to get everything back to normal before he informs her of his long-range intentions.”

Jack brings his face closer to hers, like a baseball manager arguing with an umpire. “That cock-and-bull story he gave you, Bridgey? That’s the same one he gave to the Santa Cruz bimbette he’s been screwing all during the holidays.”

“I…”

“On the way here, I discovered a stash of DVDs in the trunk of Thompson’s Porsche, marked with the names of three dozen women. What do you suppose those are? Movie rentals? Oh, but don’t worry. One of the names is Brigit.”

Brigit begins crying.

“Look, I’m sorry,” says Jack. “You caught me off-guard. This nasty little… pageant keeps growing on me. I guess it…”

Brigit begins sobbing. Jack goes to touch her shoulder but she smacks him away.

“I thought you were a gentleman. But I don’t suppose a gentleman goes about shagging his friend’s lovers.”

The sheer illogic hits Jack like a splash of ice water. He raises an index finger at Brigit’s nose, and tries his best to speak calmly.

“Look. As a guy, I kind of like that horny bastard. It’s one hell of a show, and forgive me but driving his Porsche, living at his beach house and screwing the occasional leftover mistress beats the hell out of my old life. But if you think I’ve got enough imagination to come up with thirty amateur pornos in a burgundy leather pouch – next to a bottle of Viagra, I might add – you are giving me much more credit than I deserve. Meanwhile, I’ve got a party to go to. Ta!”

He fights the urge to slap her silly, then fetches his wine and sushi and heads for the front porch. He’s so intent on the conflict behind him that he almost runs into the giant serpent that seems to have swallowed the front walk. It turns out to be a long tubular tunnel, constructed of plastic camping fabric stretched around five-foot hoops. The mouth of the great beast has suctioned itself to the front door, so he assumes it’s the only way in.

Jack assumes a Grouch Marx stoop and ventures inside, carefully balancing his sushi and wine. Toward the end, the tunnel grows increasingly dark. The porch climb is a game of blind man’s bluff, but eventually he locates the front door, gropes for the knob and pushes his way inside.

Seated on a large pillow, surrounded by lava lamps, is Willie. He wears a lime-green warmup suit, and his hair is greased and spiked upward like a growth of cactus. The rest of the ensemble includes oversized circle spectacles, pointed Vulcan Spock-ears, a red clown’s-nose and, around his neck, a large clock on a chain, in the style of the rapper Flava Flav.

“Dude! You’re late. Late I tell you. You are so late. Here – have a toke on this. It’ll make you not care about being late.”

He hands him a pipe shaped like a penis.

“Hey!” says Jack. “I remember this one.”

“We call him Dick Johnson. Sucking cock ain’t so bad when Dick’s on the job. Omigod! I am such a homo.”

“Don’t ask don’t tell. That is quite  a tunnel out there.”

“Thanks! I found it at an Army surplus store. I guess they used it for training or something. This is the first time I managed to get some use out of it.”

Jack finishes a healthy toke and has already half-forgotten his fight with Brigit.

“Hey, so where do I go from here?”

Willie waves his fingers, like a magician in mid-conjure, and opens a curtain to his left, revealing a dark tunnel three feet high.

“Follow the signs, O traveler. Especially the sign to the munchies, because you probably don’t want to cart that sushi around. Unless you’re trolling for a whale. Har! Hey, can I grab a couple of those? I’m hungry.”

Jack tips up the plastic cover; Willie grabs a tuna and a California roll. He heads through the drapes and receives a shock when his knees start making sounds like small firecrackers. He reaches down to discover a wall-to-wall carpet of bubble-wrap, then continues forward, crackling as he goes.

Fifteen feet on, he butts up against another curtain, pokes his head through and finds a small compartment that seems to serve as an intersection. An LED flashlight dangles from the ceiling, illuminating a signpost affixed to a Christmas tree stand. The post holds four arrowed signs reading Munchies, Smokes, Drums and Playroom. Jack follows the munchies sign, a slight leftward shift, and enters another tunnel, this one a foot deep with Styrofoam packing peanuts.

He comes to another curtain and enters a low, dark room lit entirely in red: red lamps, red Christmas lights and the kind of red flashers that you would find on a cop car. The room is ringed with large cushions, and upturned milk crates serving as tables. At the far end is a long, low coffee table covered with platters of food.

As Jack is setting down his sushi, a figure unfolds itself from the far side of the table. At first it appears to be an extremely large snake, but the scales turn out to be the red sequins of a floor-length evening gown. The wearer owns an extremely lengthy physique, a quality somewhat furthered by a high bouffant of fire-engine red. The face is large, also, and equine, adorned by horn-rimmed spectacles with flashing red lights, a long Roman nose and a generous mouth done up in cherry-red lipstick. The voice that arises from said lips is surprisingly deep.

“Sushi! Fish are ugly. If fish could really see each other, they would never breed. Maybe that’s why the female fish lays down the eggs somewhere, and then the male fish comes along later to spread the sperm. They can’t stand the sight of each other! But I do like to eat them. Because they’re ugly. And they taste good.”

“You’re Terra’s brother, right?”

“Yeah. They call me Troll. I have no idea why.”

“So you’re in charge of the food?”

He blinks several times, as if Jack has asked the most preposterous of questions. “Is anybody really in charge of anything? There’s no control in this world. All you can do is react. We’re all just a bunch of valence electrons looking to land somewhere. I’ll bet there are other civilizations. That’s what the Northern Lights are about. Signals.”

This last thought freezes Troll in his tracks; he seems to be too enchanted with the image to speak or move. Jack takes it as an opening.

“I think I’ll head for the smokes.”

Troll snaps back into motion, as if Jack has flipped a switch.

“What a fantastic idea! Follow me.”

Jack follows Troll’s sequined butt through the peanuts, through the intersection and rightward into a tunnel containing hundreds of black balloons. When they surface at the far end, Jack finds that he can stand up, which is a great relief. The space here is a full ten feet high, if only four feet wide. The length is a matter of some speculation. The ceiling is lined with theatrical spotlights, shooting multicolored beams into a thick band of smoke. Jack and Troll wander about 20 feet before they find Ben, sitting in an arm chair, next to a patio table wrapped in aluminum foil. Ben is taking hits off his hookah pipe, and wears a bright orange safety vest and hard hat bearing the logo of the Caterpillar Tractor Company. Sitting on a barstool next to him is Ivan, wearing a Mickey Mouse hat with fake whiskers attached to his cheeks. Stuffed between the fingers of his oversized white gloves is a remarkably obese joint -–what a devotee might call a “fatty.” He passes it to Troll, who takes a grateful hit.

“Ben!” says Jack. “So how come no one told me there was a theme?”

Ben takes a deep pull from his hookah and tries to sound mysterious. “Every Wonderland needs an Alice. Have a hit, Alice.”

Jack takes a drag and proceeds directly to a fit of coughing.

“Oh!” says Ben. “Sorry. No flavored tobacco tonight. We’re all pretty determined to get wasted. Speaking of, let’s open up that wine!”

“Feed your head!” squeaks Ivan, nibbling at his gloves.

Ben takes out a Swiss Army knife and makes quick use of its corkscrew attachment. He takes a healthy swallow and proclaims, “That’s sweet!”

“Gewürztraminer,” says Jack, proud of his elocution. “I like my wines sweet and white.”

“Like your women.”

“Amen.”

“I myself prefer a zesty Italian chianti.”

“A well-aged chianti.”

“Touché.”

Troll slams a hand on the table. “Please! Two languages at a time. Chianti sounds like a new sportscar. Gewürztraminer sounds like a villain in a science-fiction movie. You’re tearing me apart!”

“You’ll have to forgive Troll,” says Ben. “When he gets intoxicated, his line of discourse is like a feather in a high wind.”

“Hey! That’s my job.” Willie pops through the smoke, scratching at a Spock-ear.

“You’ve abandoned your post,” says Ben. “You kwazy wabbit.”

“I’m lonely.”

“Understood. I…” Ben stops and cocks an ear. “Methinks I hear drums.”

“Monkeys!” says Willie.

“Girl Monkeys,” Ivan squeaks.

“Have to it, men!” says Ben. Troll leads the charge, clomping forward in a pair of size-15 pumps, and the rest is something like a football squad running an obstacle course. The stretch of tunnel to the drumming area seems to be empty, except for faint beams of light striping the floor. Once they break the beams, however, the secret is revealed: a long line of electronic porch frogs that set in to croaking like it’s high mating season at the swimming hole.

They re-emerge in what was formerly the TV room – the only room in the house that seems to have been left at its normal proportions. A logical decision, considering the now-familiar gathering of congas, djembes, bongos, toms and percussion accessories. The walls are laced with white Christmas lights, but the three lamps have been de-shaded and outfitted with blacklights. This has an especially haunting effect on Terra, who is done up entirely in white: a Victorian bridal dress, a tiara with trailing veil, elbow-length cocktail gloves and whiteface geisha makeup. The lights have a different effect on Constance, who is done up completely in stripes of red and white: striped hose, striped skirt, striped sweater and one of those goofy-high top hats, like the one worn by the Cat in the Hat. Thanks to the blacklights, she is only half there.

The two of them work a samba pattern over the congas. The boys scatter to their instruments. Jack takes a first stab at Ivan’s new dombek, which offers a resounding bass at its center and pleasant ringing qualities at its rim – an even wider pitch-range than the djembe. He’s deep into a chaotic solo when Audrey pops through the entrance and springs to her feet. She is dressed as a belly dancer: a top of spangled copper rings, bare midriff, a gold-colored skirt riding dangerously low on her hips, and sheer veils trailing all around. Jack abandons his dombek to plant her with a freeway kiss. When they’re done, she rewards his attentions with a blacklit Cheshire Cat smile.

“Are you enjoying our Wonderland?”

“Oh I am, definitely. But who are you?”

She shakes her hips, setting her spangles clattering. “I’m the dragon lady.”

“The Jabberwock! Kind of a stretch, but all things considered…”

“I breathe fire,” she says. “So be careful. Who’s the British lady out front?”

Jack has already worked out his calculations, and is quick with his response.

“That is one of Thompson’s mistresses.”

“Plural.”

“Multitudinous. She apparently believes that he will be showing up tonight. Which is news to me – but then, I’m not sleeping with him.”

“You’re about the only one. Come on, sugar, let’s drum.”

Audrey heads for the percussion basket, ties on the goat’s-hoof anklets and plays her part, gyrating around the room, making sure that her hips get as much work as her feet. Jack hides his erection behind a large conga as the tempo speeds up into a windstorm. Twenty minutes later, the whole thing collapses under its own rapidity.

“Oxygen!” shouts Terra.

“Food!” shouts Ivan.

“Appendectomy!” shouts Troll.

Jack follows Audrey’s golden ass through the hall of frogs. They emerge at the intersection, where they discover a blonde girl kneeling at the signpost. She spots a belly-dancer crawling her way and unleashes a rather stunning big-toothed smile. She has cutesy baby cheeks and eyes of radiant sky-blue.

“Hi! I’m new here. What would you recommend?”

“Are you sober?” asks Audrey.

“Stone cold.”

“Ah, a pity. I’d recommend the smoking room. Crawl this way.”

So now Jack is crawling behind the blonde. Not quite the golden ass of Audrey, a bit on the economy size, but the tight jeans are working hard to provide him with a pleasant view. A view that he’s seen before, rising as a full moon over Thompson’s coffee table. Holy shit! He’s surrounded.

They drift through the smoke  to find Ben and Gina in the armchair, making out like teenagers. Gina wears a chocolate brown cowgirl jacket, a crisp white blouse, wraparound leather miniskirt and black stockings leading to coffee-colored cowgirl boots with gold trim. Jack is growing increasingly understanding of Ben’s enchantment.

“Hey you two,” he calls. “Get a room!”

Ben breaks off their kiss and laughs. “We’d have a room, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”

Gina unleashes the husky laugh that Ben talks about incessantly. “Ha! All those years, I wondered what was going on at that hippie-house down the road, and I gotta tell ya, it’s even loopier than I expected.”

She’s family now, so Jack gives her a kiss on the cheek. “Welcome to the Monkey Tribe.”

“Thank you!”

“Now we need something for Kirsten to smoke.”

Ben offers up the ceramic penis pipe. “Willie left this one fully loaded. Feel free.”

Kirsten takes the pipe by the scrotum and threatens to turn into a girl made entirely of Jell-O.

“If you’ll forgive the… aesthetics,” adds Ben.

Oh she’s familiar with the aesthetics, thinks Jack.

“So Kirsten,” says Audrey. “Don’t mind my asking, but who are you here with?”

Kirsten wraps her lips around the penis-head, then talks through her exhale, producing a voice that might very well belong to a Jabberwock.

“I’m meeting Thompson. He told me to meet him here. Confusing directions!”

Ben laughs. “Old Stage/New Stage?”

“Oh my God! I must have done three laps before I got it right.”

Ten minutes later, Audrey is chewing on a shrimp cocktail when she begins the expected interrogation.

“So you know Kirsten?”

Jack takes a time-consuming mouthful of egg roll. “Not that I don’t love any chance to bring this up, but Kirsten is pals with Bobbie, the woman I was dancing with on the porch.”

“Ah! And you also know the Brit in the driveway?”

“I ran into Thompson and Brigit in Oregon. Which is how I got my house-sitting assignment, which is how I met Ben, which is how I met you.”

“Hmm. A rather pivotal personage in our personal histories.”

“Watch it, honey. You’re alliterating all over the buffet.”

Audrey toothpicks another shrimp and chews it down, ruminating all the while.

“Being Thompson’s chief of staff, have you ever thought of warning these women?”

“Ben seems to think it would be a bad idea. And he’s probably right. I gave it a try with Brigit earlier; having just driven from Portland in pursuit of her delusions, she reacted as if I were something she had just stepped in.”

Audrey ruffles a hand through Jack’s hair, a token of affection for which he is most grateful.

“Judging by the presence of both of them,” she says, “I believe our man Thompson has a death wish. Hey! Before the shit hits the fan, let’s check out the playroom.”

“After you.”

Audrey kisses him on the neck. “I know why you want me to crawl in front of you, and I want you to know that I greatly appreciate it.”

They return to the intersection then keep straight on into a long tunnel covered in ping-pong balls. Audrey puts an extra waggle in her get-along, and Jack encourages her with a spank.

The playroom is another midget-cave, six-foot square, lit with colored disco lights, underlain with mattresses. The mattresses are covered with foot-wide plastic playballs, maybe thirty in all, with a pair of three-foot beach balls to act as king and queen. Audrey dives forward, scattering spheroids in all directions.

“This is fantastic! Omigod!”

Jack slides in after, more intent on playing with Audrey.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Do you suppose there’s much privacy to be had here?”

“Are you nuts? Not that I don’t appreciate the idea, but someone could come busting through those curtains at any second.”

“Which makes it all the more exciting.”

“Jack! What have I done to you? You used to be such a Boy Scout.”

He lowers the strap on Audrey’s top and nibbles on a nipple. “Boy Scouts gotta earn their merit badges some way.”

“You are a bad boy and don’t stop that because it feels wonderful.” She reaches down to stroke his crotch, but stops when she hears a high-pitched whimpering.

“Is that you?” asks Jack.

“Well I’m sure glad it’s not you,” says Audrey. “Wait a minute. If this is the back bedroom, then the window should be right behind this curtain.”

She finds a spot where two blankets overlap, pulls them apart to reveal Venetian blinds, then peeks between two of the blinds and lets out a gasp.

“Oh my God!” she whispers.

Jack slips in next to her and takes a look. Brigit is standing with her hands on the edge of the hot tub. She’s still wearing the pink jacket, but her panties and jeans are around her ankles, her white ass aimed at the Salinas foothills. Thompson, clothed in a long woolen coat, is fucking her from behind.

“Juh-ee-sus!” whispers Audrey.

Hearing Brigit’s familiar pantings, Jack feels an odd twinge of jealousy. This feeling lessens greatly when Audrey takes his hand and slides it beneath her golden skirt.

The climax of their hurried session arrives with the wail of a saxophone, followed by a steadily expanding drumbeat. After reattaching all of her clothing, Audrey takes a peek out the window and discovers that their personal porn stars have vacated the carport.

“Show’s over,” she says. “Let’s go drum!”

Jack finishes buckling his belt and smiles, then waves her into the tunnel.

“You’re insatiable,” says Audrey.

After ping-pong balls and frogs, they enter the drum room to find a short, stocky man with spiky blond hair standing at center, blowing free-form variations on a baritone sax as the Monkeys maintain a rolling beat. Audrey grabs a pair of hand cymbals and continues her belly-dancer act. Jack feels a tingle of possession, knowing that those fleshy acres are all his. He sidles next to Constance, who is working a pair of congas like a short-order cook flipping hotcakes, and taps at a pair of bongos as he gets the lowdown.

“His name’s Mack,” she reports. “He came from Modesto with Terra’s cousin Shannon – the shy djembe in the armchair.”

Jack sifts through the blacklight fuzz to find a handsome, big-boned Irish girl in the far corner with a head of thick burgundy hair and a fetchingly upturned nose. She pats her drumhead every few seconds, like a swimmer dipping a toe into the water.

“Willie did this with electric guitar once,” says Constance. “It works well as long as you stick to one instrument. This guy rocks!”

Mack has worked himself into a Coltranean lather, bending backward to release a long scream to the ceiling, then tucking himself back together to drop sweet little blurts into the stew, sweat beading up on his forehead. Freed of the chordal restraints of bandmates, he must be in riffer’s heaven.

Jack lends a lusty eye to Audrey, who is swinging her hair like a banshee as she punishes a tambourine. The illicit sex and costumery has delivered her to a realm even further out than her usual extremes, and he loves her even more for that rare capacity. He flexes his fingers and sets to work on his bongos.

With the novelty of the saxman, the session continues for another half-hour. Mack takes a deep inhale and blows his way through a final fusillade, hands flying over the keys, then literally screeches to a halt and stands bent over, gasping for breath. The Monkeys abandon their instruments to pound him appreciatively on the back.

Long lost in his rhythmic pursuits, Jack is surprised to find Brigit kneeling next to the armchair, chatting with Shannon. He feels very uncertain as to where he stands in this situation. He has dared to mess with a British woman’s delusions and now, thanks to Thompson’s outdoor ministrations, has been proven “wrong.” With Kirsten somewhere along these catacombs, he may soon be proven “right” – and it’s very dangerous to be right. He notes that Constance and Willie have met at the tunnel entrance and are about to assume a crawling position, so he rushes in beside them and tries to lose himself in the herd.

Sated with pot, sex and drumming, Jack is now craving food, so he returns to the munchies room and finds that several others have beaten him there. He locates a salad of chicken curry, mushrooms and beans and falls in love, perching on a cushion as he wolfs down a heaping bowlful. Mentally speaking, he has had just enough pot to be dabbling with that time-wormhole phenomenon, but otherwise seems to be floating along rather nicely. But where the hell is Thompson?

“So Ben tells me you’re his A-one pupil.”

Gina Scarletti has shuffled next to him with a plate of eggplant casserole. She smiles, causing her dark eyes to arch upward in a most fetching fashion.

“I suppose I am,” says Jack. “Did he give you any reasons?”

“He says that you see things that the average person doesn’t. And you’re amazingly adaptive.”

“I wish there were some things I could see at this party.”

“Ha! Judging by your date, I’d say you’re seeing plenty.”

“Amen, sister,” says Jack. “But there are other things. Demons in the walls.” He waves his fingers, spooky-like.

“Ah. So can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Am I doing the right thing? Marrying Ben?”

“No.”

This serves to widen Gina’s eyes – yet another touching effect.

“To call what you are doing ‘right’ is to compare it to an answer on a history test. It demeans the size and wonder of the thing. You are not just getting the best man in Northern California, the most evolved human being that I know, you are getting someone whose very spirit grows miles wider whenever the subject of Gina Scarletti comes up. And, in a way, you’re saving his soul.”

Gina hides half of her face with a hand, feigning embarrassment. “You certainly have a way of putting things.”

“Thanks. I’m also stoned. But also grateful. You have shed a ton of light on the life of a great man, and we are all enjoying the fireworks.”

Gina kisses him on the cheek. “Thanks, Jack.”

“You’re welcome. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see about getting much more stoned.

“Before you find the demons in the walls.”

“Exactly.”

Jack trudges through the Styrofoam snow to the intersection, where the floor is losing the battle to ping-pong balls, black balloons and packing peanuts. He is arrested by the image of two butts – one red and spangled, the other bearing a long coat-hanger mouse’s tail – gathered at the entrance to the front tunnel. A steady crackling emanates from said tunnel, as if someone were rhythmically stomping on a pile of leaves.

Jack approaches the pair and asks, “What goes here, lads?”

“Shh!” says Ivan. “You don’t want to interrupt the show. Here…”

He offers the lower curtain-crack (the upper being occupied by the red queen). It takes a few seconds for Jack’s eyes to adjust to the eery lava-lamp glow, but gradually he makes out a pair of thick white legs, spread in a vee across the mouth of the tunnel, and a darker figure like a tree-trunk between them, pounding away like a battering ram as the bubble wrap cries out in fits of static.

“Ho-lee shit,” Jack murmurs.

“Whatever are you looking at?”

It’s that posh British accent again, always tickling at his ear. He realizes that he has just been vested with tremendous power. He is the only thing standing between Brigit and the truth. Make some horrible ruckus, tackle limey-girl to the ground, and the awful vision of boyfriend’s dick pounding another’s pussy goes away, an unfounded myth. Jack steps aside and cedes the peephole.

Brigit bends to the spot, levels her eyes to the gap and peers in as Jack ticks off the Five Steps of Carnal Shock. Eyes adjust. A smirk at the sight of a humping couple. Sudden identification of Latino male buttocks. Increase in heart rate and respiration.

The next step is the wild card: big flaming confrontation or crestfallen retreat? Brigit goes for the latter, breathing in hard pants, wiping her face with a hand and racing toward the smokes tunnel. The intersection turns into an audio chamber. The left channel brings an accelerating drumbeat of popping bubble wrap; the right a high-pitched sobbing; the left a duet of moaning female and grunting male as orgasm arrives; the right a mournful whimpering.

“Bra-voh!” whispers Troll, eye still fixed to the upper gap. He sees Jack and says, “What’s wrong with Spice Girl?”

“Nothing I can fix. Because I’m right.”

“Yaknow,” says Troll. “Sometimes you don’t make sense.”

Red queen and dormouse trundle off to the munchies room for a post-coital snack. Jack considers his situation, and realizes that sooner or later he has to go after Brigit, because even though he’s right, he’s all she’s got.

The barometer cranks up to full squint as Jack crawls into the black balloons, thinking what a perfect symbol they make for smokers’ lungs. Brigit is nowhere among them, so he continues into the colored fog, detecting a cat-like mewling from the far end. He finds Audrey in the armchair, Brigit strewn across her lap like a Pietá. It’s the redhead menage a tois of his dreams, only Brigit is hardly up to it, her head nestled against Audrey’s bare shoulder as she cries out all her stupid mistakes. The similarity of the two is uncanny; a psychoanalyst would have a field day with this. He crouches beside the chair to get the lowdown from Audrey.

“How is she?”

“From what I’m assuming just happened, better than I would be.”

Brigit lets out a fresh gush. “Oh Jack! You were right. Oh God oh God oh God. Could I be any more of a…of a…” And then back to Audrey’s shoulder.

“Besides the sheer logistics,” says Audrey, “I’m wondering how he’s doing this physically.”

“A little pharmaceutical assistance,” says Jack.

“Oh that’s just lovely.”

Brigit raises her head and aims a red-hot stare down the tunnel.

“Fucking bastard! Too bad I can’t fuck his house-sitter again.”

She returns to her principal occupation of moisturizing Audrey’s shoulder. When Jack lifts his eyes to Audrey’s face, he can see the little bits of revealed truth striking her surface like asteroids.

“Only knew her from Oregon?”

“I…”

“Leave, Jack. Get out.”

“Are you…”

“We’ll be fine here, without you, Jack.”

He backs through the fogged spotlights like a rock star being booed off the stage. For two weeks, one time in his entire life, he was a dawg, and now he will be punished. He takes a last glance at the belly-dancer belly that he may never touch again. It really is a shame.

He crawls as morosely as one can through the black, black balloons, and emerges at the intersection to find Kirsten curled up next to the signpost, sound asleep. He sits next to her and notices that one ample white breast is hanging out of her low-cut sweater. After some deliberation he reaches over to see if he can pull her sweater back into place, but Kirsten grabs his hand and pulls it directly to her nipple.

“Naughty boy!”

Seeing that her eyes are still closed, he says, “Kirsten? It’s not Thompson.”

“That’s okay.” She cultivates a sleepy smile. “We just had some tequila shots, and I just feel like fucking everybody. I think I just fucked some bubble wrap!”

She giggles, then seems to droop back toward sleep. “Awfully tired, though.”

“Honey? Can I get you to crawl a little further?”

“Will you fuck me?”

“Sure. Right after we crawl.”

“Hoh-kay.”

She flops onto her hands and knees like a drunken seal, then slogs her way through the ping-pong balls. At long last she makes it to the playroom and swan-dives onto the mattress.

“Fuck now?”

“Sure, honey. But first let’s get you a pillow.”

“Ooh! Nasty!”

“Right.” He finds a cushion against the wall, lifts her head and slips it underneath.

“Silly!” says Kirsten, grinning into the cushion. “S’posed to put it under my ass.”

“I’ll be right back,” he whispers. “I’m going to get you some toys.”

Kirsten raises one fist and says “Yes!”

By the time Jack hits the ping-pong trail, she’s already snoring. Then he hears the sound of angels singing.

After the frogs announce his approach, Jack pokes his head into the drum room to find three white bowls on a table, glowing in the blacklight. The white queen, the March hare and the mad hatter run short, thick rods around their edges, producing pure beams of sound that mix and blend in the air. Then the rod-bearers begin to sing along, matching the tones of the bowls and then drifting high and low to create grand choral harmonies. A male voice quivers in and out of dissonance, creating an edge that sounds like Scottish bagpipes.

Ah, thinks Jack. A balm for my wicked, wicked soul. He settles on a couch, dangles his arm over the side and is surprised when his fingers settle on the tip of a bottle. Even more surprised when he fishes it up and finds his Gewürztraminer, still half-full. The bottle speaks to him. It says, Drink me. So he does.

Jack comes to at the sound of Mack’s saxophone, running up and down the angel-chord like a caffeinated mountain goat.

“Oh my God!”

This declaration comes from a woman just entering the room: burgundy-haired Shannon, the sax-player’s girlfriend.

“I was crawling past the signpost, and someone reached out of the wall and grabbed my ass! When I turned around, all I could see was this crazy smile, and this man asked me if I wanted to fuck. Like he was asking me for the time! So I… I got here as fast as I could.”

Terra raises a finger very queen-like and says, “There is a dawg loose among the monkeys!”

A short scream emanates through the tunnels, and soon the frogs are announcing another entrance: Constance, minus the mad hat, her blonde hair flying all over the place.

“Dammit! Dammit!” She stands and claps the dust from her clothes. “I went to get some munchies, and some A-hole was hiding under the table. He grabbed my leg, and then made several very specific anatomical suggestions. When I realized it wasn’t you, honey – no offense…”

“None taken,” says Willie.

“…I scrammed on outta there.”

“Okay,” says Terra. “It’s obvious we’re not going to have any peace till we find this character. Why don’t we spread out through the tunnels? If anybody spots him, just let out a monkey-yell and wait till the rest of us get there.”

The Monkeys express their unity of purpose by letting out high-pitched chimp noises. Jack follows the caravan, feeling a little too drunk to be very effective, and takes a left toward the playroom – mostly because he has to use the adjacent bathroom. When he pops in among the playballs, he finds Gina Scarletti, playing with a Slinky.

“Hey. What’s all the hubbub?”

“Apparently,” says Jack, “there is a pervert afoot.”

“Thompson.”

“Oh. Ben’s told you?”

“The man’s a legend.”

“Well, after screwing his way through two mistresses, he is now prowling the tunnels looking for more.”

“Ah. The demon in the walls.”

“Exactly. And the demon’s got Viagra.”

“Oh,” she says. “That’s just lovely.”

“So where’s Ben?”

“At my house, getting more wine.”

“All things considered, maybe you’d better go there too.”

“Ye-es. There’s a back way to my house through the garden. God, what a jerk.”

“Amen.”

He escorts Gina to the intersection (thinking it more seemly this time to crawl ahead of the woman). Gina takes a left toward the front door; Jack continues to the smoking room to check on his redheads. He hasn’t heard any monkey noises, so perhaps Thompson has given up on his quest.

The smoking room is bereft of anything – even smoke. Jack sits in a chair at the foil-covered table to catch a breath. He takes a pull from the hookah pipe and gets nothing. Then he notices that the curtains behind the table have been messed with, revealing a strip of window glass. He pulls on one side of it and finds a rather stunning sight.

An impressive fire fills the spirit garden pit, unleashing long whips of orange flame. Just over the fence, he sees the silhouette of Gina Scarletti’s hair. She holds up her hands to either side in a posture of surrender.

On the far side of the fire is Thompson Flores, fully naked, his skin colored orange by the flames, his right hand stroking a massive erection. He teeters in Gina’s direction like a Frankenstein’s monster, wearing a look of demonic possession. Whether from sheer fright or the surrounding fences and bushes, Gina appears to be frozen in her spot.

Jack shakes the window, searches for handles or latches, but can’t seem to get it unlocked. He’s too far away to be heard, and a dash through the tunnels would take too long.

When he looks back outside, he finds that Thompson has shifted his attention – and for good reason. Audrey has appeared before the statue of Lakshmi, dancing like Salome as she pulls the veils from her outfit and tosses them, one by one, to the ground. This, thinks Jack, is precisely what I deserve.

Audrey undoes her top and flings it to the ground at Thompson’s feet, beckoning him forward with the general motion of a backstroke. When he turns to look back at Gina, Audrey calls him again, then turns around, bends over at the waist and pulls off her skirt.

This, finally, is too much to ignore, and Thompson walks her way, like a man in a dream. By the time he arrives, Audrey has dropped to her knees. She welcomes his cock with both hands, and gives it a couple of pulls before inserting it into her mouth. Thompson arches backward in ecstasy, eyes toward the stars.

Jack has always made fun of dramatic types who use the phrase “like a knife through the heart,” but now he knows exactly what they mean. He can’t seem to breathe, and has the sudden urge to punch a fist through the window.

Which is when a phantom-like streak of pink flies from the bushes and a shower of red sparks explodes over Thompson’s head. He takes a single step and keels over, crashing to the ground. Jack realizes he’d better get out there; he speed-crawls the murderously convoluted tunnels, sprints across the lawn and bursts into the garden.

Thompson is out cold, flat on his back over the concrete pentagram, his forehead marked by a lightning-shaped line of blood, his penis still straight as a flagpole. Audrey, still naked, kneels at his side, a finger to his throat.

“Pulse is okay. He’s breathing all right. We’d better get him a blanket. My God, would you look at that thing?” She gives his erection a slap; it bobs back and forth like a punching clown. “Fucking asshole. Hi honey.”

Jack wraps her in a hug. “You are even more amazing than I thought.”

“I am really sorry about the fellatio. I was working on short notice.”

Brigit pops in next to them. “And I am really sorry about that garden gnome.” She unzips her pink jacket and offers it to Audrey.

The Monkeys arrive one at a time, and Audrey has to tell the story several times over. Constance arrives with a blanket for Thompson, which forms a low-lying tent over his still-hard member. Ben shows up five minutes later, surprised and ashamed that he wasn’t there in his fiancée’s moment of need, but Gina seems to have recovered.

Jack fetches Audrey’s golden skirt, then leads her off to the fireside to warm her up.

“For a second there, I thought you had dreamed up the ultimate payback.”

“It did cross my mind,” she says. “But don’t worry, I’ll get over it. Brigit filled me in on the details: knight in shining armor, live sex show, revenge fuck, one-time thing…”

She gives his cheek a light slap. “But no more of that! I do not henceforth want to be the green monster.”

“Deal.”

Audrey looks back at the slumped form on the pentagram. “Meanwhile, what do we do with the porn star?”

“Well. Assuming he imbibed as much tequila as Kirsten, I think he’ll be out for a while.”

Terra arrives to hijack their conversation. “So he probably… won’t remember a lot of this?”

“Nope,” says Jack.

“And he’s… sort of at our mercy. Or lack of same.”

Audrey smiles. “What are you thinking, white queen?”

Terra’s eyes glint in the firelight. “It seems that Constance, at her tutoring center, does a lot of art projects, and she happens to keep her supplies in her van, and among said supplies she just happens to have a box of permanent markers.”

“Ooh!” says Audrey. “The white queen is eee-vil!”

Through the saving graces of a hay-cart, and the sliding properties of a woolen blanket over hardwood floors, the Monkeys are able to drag Thompson into the playroom and lay him out along the mattressed floor. Terra brings in a bright desk lamp, providing an operating-room clarity, then whips aside the blanket. Thankfully, the erection has subsided.

The female Monkeys gather at all corners of Thompson’s impressive physique and set to their work. Audrey chooses the nether strata of the abdomen, drawing an arrow toward Thompson’s dick and labeling it Weapon of Mass Destruction. Constance uses his chest to construct a brief timeline of the night’s events: 8:30 p.m.: shags Brigit in carport; 10 p.m.: screws Kirsten in front lobby, and so on. Terra applies a series of insults along his legs: Too bad such a looker has to be such an asshole!

Gina, who used to work as a nurse, spends this time tending to the point of gnome impact on Thompson’s temple. After they turn him over, she inscribes a heart on his left buttock that reads T.F. loves T.F. Upon the right buttock, Shannon pens Viagra: The Evil Blue Pill. Brigit uses Thompson’s broad back to write a letter of apology to Esmerelda: I fell for him twice, and I believed his lies about you. I hope you can forgive me, but I do believe you’re better off without him. I have been an awful person, and I promise never to do something like this ever again.

Kirsten lies five feet distant, buried by playballs, snoring away like a buzz-saw.

“Found his clothes!” says Ivan. He tosses a series of damp articles into the room.

“Well,” says Audrey. “We definitely should get him dressed. Best to keep him from discovering our work for as long as possible.”

The logical manner of delivery is the Porsche. After three cups of coffee, Jack navigates Highway One, careful of the temporary tire, while Audrey enjoys the distinct privilege of following them in the Hummer. Thompson shows small moments of wakefulness, but only enough to shift his position on the passenger seat.

They pull up to Big Brown as the sky is lightening with pre-sunrise. Jack undoes Thompson’s seatbelt and is swinging his legs out when Thompson snorts awake. Audrey dashes from the Hummer to run interference, popping between them and putting a hand on Thompson’s cheek.

“Morning, honey. We had to drive you home.”

Thompson manages a bleary smile. “Did we have fun?”

“Oh, we sure did, honey. You fucked me in the ass right in front of the whole party. It was quite a show, you porn star.”

Thompson grins, which causes his eyes to close. “Sweet!”

“Now I want you to try to stand with us, honey. My friend and I are going to help you inside.”

Jack pulls up the hood of his sweatshirt to hide his face. They prop up one shoulder apiece and shuffle Thompson up the tiled steps, around the whitewater and onto the great white couch. Audrey pulls a blanket over him as Jack goes to the kitchen for grocery bags. He’s halfway up the stairs when Audrey calls, “What are you doing?”

“After that graffiti job you Monkey Girls just did, I am not staying here.”

The two of them manage to pack up Jack’s possessions in a matter of ten minutes, and are soon headed out the door.

“Farewell, Big Brown,” says Jack. “I’ll miss ya.”

“I will too,” says Audrey.

They pile into Jack’s compact and are ready to go when he stops and puts the car back into park.

“Sorry. Forgot something.”

He returns to the Porsche, opens the trunk and leans inside. Audrey takes a moment to flip down the car visor and make use of the built-in mirror.

“Yikes,” she mutters. “Lost cause.”

Jack hops in and hands her a leather pouch. She turns it over to find a Porsche logo.

“What’s this?”

“That,” says Jack, “is insurance.”

Jack remembers frighteningly little of the drive back to Salinas. He does recall hitting that same straightaway and singing “Me and Bobby McGee,” but the rest is a blur.

He wakes up in the playroom between Audrey and Kirsten, and for just a moment he thinks that something exotic has happened. But the epic party comes back in a flood, and he kisses Audrey to consciousness. They pop out of their cave to discover that they can stand, that Wonderland is undergoing a thorough deconstruction. All blankets and curtains have been folded and stacked, tunnel floor materials swept into Hefty bags, motion-detector frogs lined up along the conga drums, and all that remains is a skeleton of small red-and-white fences, the kind used in horse-jumping competitions.

“So now you know,” says Terra. She exits the bathroom in jeans and a plaid shirt. “Actually, loading those fences into my truck is the next assignment. But first, let’s get you some fresh-brewed coffee!”

Audrey smiles. “You are a goddess.”

“Queen, goddess – it’s all the same to me!” Terra recites, and promenades to the kitchen.

Audrey and Jack sort their way through the fences to the dining room table, somewhere near the former munchies room. Brigit sits at a table with Ivan and Troll, chewing on scrambled eggs and sausages.

“So Jack,” she says, trying out a Mafia accent. “Did you take care of that thing for me?”

“Bada-bing!” says Jack.

“The body has been disposed of,” says Audrey.

“Thank goodness!” says Brigit, in British. And may I once again issue thirty-two brands of apology for all the havoc that I have wreaked. Me and my bloody ginormous piehole.”

“Yes,” says Audrey. “But enough! I am officially finished hearing about Jack and other women.” She grabs Jack by the ear. “Isn’t that right, Mister Teagarden?”

“Yes, mistress.”

“Good.” She releases him and gives his ear a kiss.

“God,” says Brigit. “Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall when Thompson strips off for his shower?”

“I can’t imagine,” says Ivan.

“I should certainly hope you can’t imagine!” Terra sweeps in with a pair of steaming mugs.

“Oh! That reminds me,” says Jack. “I have some souvenirs.” He heads for the playroom and returns with the leather pouch, then sorts through it and hands two DVDs to Brigit.

“I’m just guessing here, but I’d say that Thompson was a bit of a hidden-camera freak. If it makes you feel any better, you’re the only one who got two DVDs.”

“I’m so bloody honored. I suppose I would be smart to toss these before I get another beau.”

“And here’s one for Audrey,” says Jack.

Audrey stares at the case, wearing an extremely puzzled expression

“Don’t worry,” says Jack. “I’m also betting he has cameras all over Big Brown. He must have caught us doing a few ‘scenes.’”

“Well!” she says. “I am both flattered and completely creeped out.”

Jack lifts out one last DVD and holds it like a winning raffle ticket.

“I swear it’s not me,” says Troll.

“I don’t know,” says Ivan in his pirate voice. “Ya looked pretty sexy last night.”

A big blonde train wreck staggers from the playroom, shading her eyes from the sunlight. “Where’s Thompson?”

Terra walks over to help her toward the kitchen. “It’s a long story, honey. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll get you some coffee.”

“And later on,” says Audrey, “we’re gonna watch some videos!”

The Monkeys, being polite monkeys, fight hard not to laugh.

U

Cioppino and Mineral-Talk

            He’s back to the Starbucks in Cupertino, and back to the numbers: the spring-training stats of the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics. Barely enough to whet the appetite of his deprived left hemisphere (he’s been reading a book on brain function), but he’s afraid to look at the stocks. It’s too close to the pathos of his pre-Aptos life, and it’s already scary enough just being here at this same table, gazing across the street at that same Calderian fountain. He does find some satisfying sense of mathematical process in earned-run average and on-base percentage. Perhaps he could get a job with the Bill James Baseball Abstract.

            He is not drinking an Americano. After the coffee bar at Aptos, he would not be caught dead with one. He’s drinking a chai. This serves as a spicy little reminder that he is fundamentally a different person. This and the occasional spicy text message from Audrey. He will never, ever see the world in the same way. He thinks of the burning house, in the falls at Multnomah. He thinks of the Imp of the Perverse. He thinks of Ben saying, “Don’t you dare.”

            Still. He finds himself at war with several real-life enemies. The door that Thompson opened with his exquisite quarterly analysis has not been slammed shut, thanks to the artistic endeavors of the Monkey Girls. He envisions his immaculate report circulating the halls at C-Valve, its creation credited to some phony accounting consultant dreamed up by Thompson.

His severance package runs dry in two months, which will severely curtail his ability to throw money into the black pit that used to be his house. Thanks to the global plunge in housing prices, his suburban ranch-style abode – smack in the center of what was once the most costly real estate in the world – is now worth less than the money he still owes on it. He is not alone. Foreclosures pepper the Valley like rapidly breeding feral cats. After severance comes unemployment insurance. Whether this will be enough to fund an already-questionable enterprise, is… questionable.

Meanwhile, what will he do with his life? He wants to be worthy, he wants his talents to be exploited. He wants to contribute. Even the lofty endeavor of making love to Audrey LaBrea is not quite enough.

Jack returns the sports section to the newspaper holder and deposits his cup in the wastebasket. Then he heads for De Anza Boulevard – named for a Spanish pioneer – and the dreary walk home. He’s just passing the library when his cell phone goes off. He finds a bench near the fountain and answers.

“Hey! Ben!”

“How’s the Silicon Valley outcast?”

“Ha! Yeah. Just thinkin’ about that.”

“Good! We’re on the same wavelength. Hey, any chance you could run by the house tonight? Seven o’clock? Gina gets these urges to prove her heritage, and tonight it’s cioppino. I think we’re gonna need some help.”

Even as he speaks, Jack is forming the kind of agenda fully rationalized by this offer. To drive the hill early (to beat the traffic), to walk the beach, to grab a Peruvian at the coffeehouse.

“I’m there! Only… where’s there?”

“That’s right! You’ve never seen the place, have you? The address is seven ninety eight Lusterleaf Drive. You take State Park off the highway, and…”

“Stop right there. I’m at the library. I’ll look it up.”

“Oh, you crazy kids and your Internet. But give me a call if you get lost. It’s a little tricky.”

“Will do.”

A dinner invitation might seem pretty pedestrian, but for Jack it offers the opportunity to answer a mystery. So open about every other aspect of his life, Ben has never had his A-one pupil over to his place of residence. Jack takes the familiar route toward Big Brown, heads left at the turnoff instead of right, zips through the intersection at the Safeway, finds Lusterleaf three blocks uphill and takes a right. The street follows a serpentine path into the Aptos hills, offering stunning vistas of the beachside neighborhoods across the freeway. Just before the surface turns to gravel, Jack spots a dirt driveway to his left marked 798. He follows it down, around and up to a three-level structure of steeply angled roofs and cedar-shake siding.

When he arrives at the top of the front steps, he finds a large deck running in a backward el along the length of the house. The surface is cut out every 15 feet to make way for five different trees: a live oak, a madrone, a big-leaf maple, a bay and a redwood. The live oak is massive, spreading its branches over the corner of the el in a protective umbrella. As he nears the porch, Jack notices the condition of the surface, coated with a golden tan stain that makes the wood look like new.

The wide front door is hewn from redwood burl, treated with a dark varnish that gives it the look of unsweetened chocolate blushing in embarrassment. The door is bracketed by tall, narrow windows emanating a blue light. Looking closer, he finds that the light comes in circles. Ben opens the door and catches him in his study.

“Yes! Bottles. Cobalt. Can’t tell you how much pretentious French water I had to buy to fill up these cabinets. Then I sealed up the back with Plexiglas. You should see them in the morning when the sun cuts through. Yowza!”

“Hi Ben,” says Jack.

Ben laughs. “Forgive me. I turn into a freakin’ tour guide around here.”

Jack finds his nostrils filling with tomato, garlic, oregano and ocean.

“Wow! That… Wow!”

“We’re just about to eat. Come on in and greet the girls.”

Jack notes the plural, which is quickly explained by the sight of Suzanne Brewer at the counter, filling a wine glass. Out of her usual retro gear – into a pair of jeans and a white sweater – she looks like a drab cousin of herself.

“Suzanne!” Jack storms over to give her a hug. Gina Scarletti, shadowing the stovetop, feigns annoyance.

“Not even married yet, and already being ignored.”

Jack’s not biting. He needs to hear of musical adventures. “Going north or south?”

“North,” says Suzanne. “Ben came to Mr. Toots last night and insisted I stay in town for this dinner.”

“I’m so sorry I missed you! I haven’t checked your website for a while.”

“No sweat.” She lifts her fingers in a spell-casting wave. “We will get you eventually.”

Jack U-turns to give Gina a kiss on the cheek. “Sorry, Gina. How are you?”

“Well now I’m fine. Hmm. I think it’s about ready.”

Jack takes note of the stove area, which is surrounded by walls of brick the color of sunshine. “Wow. Pretty cool.”

“Salvaged from an apartment building in Tacoma, Washington,” says Ben. “Circa 1913. They had a fire five years ago – too much water damage to salvage the joint. Got those bricks for a song.”

“Wow,” says Jack. “So you did this all yourself?”

Gina chuckles. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Tell you what. Why don’t we do this buffet-style? Everybody grab a bowl.”

Jack fetches a bowl from the table and Gina fills it up, ladling from the bottom of the pot where all the sea-creatures lurk. His first few bites draw calamari, mussels, clam and some kind of whitefish. The broth is a thick, creamy red with an irresistible tang.

“Mamma mia!” he says. “This is heaven.”

“Grazie,” says Gina. “Once in a while, a gal’s gotta prove she’s Roman Catholic.”

“So where are you headed next, Suzanne?”

Suzanne has to wait until she finishes with a chunk of eel. “San Rafael. This groovy hippie bookstore where they host regular concerts.”

“God bless Marin County. Geez, I might just drive up. I been trapped in Silicon Valley, and I’m starved for culture.”

“I’d love that!”

“Besides, I don’t know too many musical geniuses. I’m just trying to tap into your power.”

“Power’s feeling pretty weak lately.”

“Suzanne has had some auto misadventures,” says Ben.

Jack offers an empathizing wince.

“I am so going to pay you back for that alternator,” says Suzanne.

“You are not going to pay me back,” says Ben. “And that’s an order.”

“Jerk,” says Suzanne. “Always forcing his generosity on people.”

The talk continues as the bellies expand, further assisted by Caesar salad, tiramisu and a quartet of cappuccinos that Ben proudly concocts with his home espresso machine. At the peak of group satiation, Ben makes a small theatrical production out of folding his hands, and returns to his tour-guide patter.

“Well! Now that we’ve got you too stuffed to make a run for it, I have a little show-and-tell. Please – follow me.”

He walks them around the corner and flips on the light, revealing a room with some astounding features. The back wall, ten feet high and thirty long, is covered in two-foot squares of slate, gray and black with hints of russet, sienna, occasional veins of green. The colors change as you walk past, like oil spilled on asphalt. Running along a horizontal line at the midpoint of floor and ceiling is a series of checkerboarding squares – one under, one over – displaying surfaces of vibrant, otherworldly color.

“Welcome to the batcave,” says Gina.

“Forgive her,” says Ben. “I spent many more years with this wall than with Gina, so she is painfully jealous. In fact, I spent most of the ‘80s on this. Each of the squares holds a particular mineral found in the United States. As part of my post-traumatic therapy, I ventured to various dig-your-own sites across the country, then brought my treasures back here for slicing, polishing and fitting. Did all the work right in this room. I have since moved the equipment to the garage, for which Gina is very grateful.”

He approaches the first square, a cloudy pink resembling frozen grapefruit juice. “Rose quartz. The Grafton Mine, New Hampshire.”

The next square offers lava-lamp rings of black and green, a deep hue the color of shamrocks. “Malachite. Bill’s Gems and Minerals, Magdalena, New Mexico.”

Square number three is a sky blue, ranging to the kind of purple that same sky would offer up an hour after sunset. “Labradorite. The Woodward Ranch, Alpine, Texas.”

Number four serves up rings of blood red, cream white and several shades between. “Carnelian, a variation of chalcedony. Place called the Rockhound – a bed and breakfast, believe it or not, in Gila, New Mexico.”

The fifth square is a bright yellow, with shadings of pumpkin. “Limonite. Tempe, Arizona, the Fat Jack Mine. The place was, quite literally, a dump: piles of crystals that gold miners tossed aside on their way to the good stuff.”

He leads them through ten more squares, then sits them around a long glass coffee table spotted with white, green and brown. Gina serves them a dessert wine in tiny glasses.

“I hate to pack any more information into my small, small brain,” says Jack. “But what’s the deal with this table?”

“Ah yes!” says Ben. “Got this from a shop on the Oregon Coast. A young lady there took bits of sea glass and encased them in clear casting resin. From what I understand, you pour the stuff into a mold, let a layer of it dry solid, then scatter bits of glass and pour another layer, et cetera. It is, however, extremely toxic. You have to be awfully careful.”

“Awesome,” says Jack.

The cioppino and mineral-talk have left everyone a little sluggish, and the conversation comes to a halt. Ben lets the pause have its way for a while, then sets down his glass and places a hand on either knee.

“All this rock stuff has little to do with the reason for this gathering. But for anyone who sees the house for the first time, it’s a bit of a necessary evil.”

“Nonsense,” says Gina. “He cherishes any opportunity to show off his rocks.”

“There are so many places to go with that comment,” says Jack. “But I am just going to pass.”

Ben breaks out his trademark laugh, a husky growl. “I thank you for your discretion. And now, it’s time for me to spill my guts, and tell you a story that may have considerable bearing on your respective futures.”

There is, actually, one connection between this story and the story of the wall. Rocks. Soon after the fire, I rented a cottage near San Gregorio, and I made it my assignment to walk the beach every day. I think you know, beaches are tonics, and I sorely needed to keep moving or die. I began to tire of the beach at San Gregorio, though, and I began to wander south, eventually to discover the beach where we do the house-burnings. For a man desperately seeking respite, that beach was a godsend. The sandstone cliffs were high and grand, and blocked out the treacherously evil world, leaving me alone with my thoughts. And I began to find some fascination with the rocks that washed up at the ocean’s edge. I began to take interesting specimens home, and found a guidebook so I could put names to their faces. Rocks were something I had never really considered before. I began to notice that a lot of my fellow rockhounds were older men, and came to the conclusion that this interest was related to an increasing awareness of mortality. Rocks are the oldest things that we come into contact with, and they are everywhere around us.

You’ve seen how it is on that beach. The surf can be savage, especially in a storm. I found additional diversion in the objects that washed up. Pieces of sea glass, the occasional Japanese net float, life jackets, surf boards, a paddle, a buoy – one time an entire rowboat. Having no desire to drag a boat up a trail, I left it there, and the next day it was gone. I indulged in the happy vision of some local teenager finding it on Pescadero Beach and rowing it all around the lagoon.

On a day in late autumn, I was walking along the shore, returning to the trail, when I spotted a yellow rope sticking out of the sand. Well! Naturally I had to inspect, and when I gave it a tug, up came one corner of a fishing net. Well of course then I had to find out what was in the net. Problem was, the net was buried in a layer of rocks just beneath the sand. I set to work digging it free, but I kept jamming my fingertips against the rocks. It was pretty brutal. And it was getting dark. And cold. A jogger cruised by, giving me a look like I was crazy. Then I caught a sharp edge with my index finger and began to bleed.

None of this mattered. Certain treacherous thoughts kept me from leaving that beach. If I came back the next day, the net, like the rowboat, would be gone. If I read in the papers about some surfer digging up Jimmy Hoffa’s mummified corpse. Or a Japanese sub from WWII. Or a monstrous fish long thought to be extinct.

So I dug. And I pulled on the net. And dug some more. And shook my aching fingers, tossed aside a thousand pebbles, and cursed. And dug some more. I was almost set to call it a night when I gave a powerful, pissed-off yank and it all came up: sand, rocks, fishing net, and one blue-and-white, mid-sized plastic cooler.

Well whoop-di-freakin’-do. Right? Local Man Unearths Pastrami Sandwiches. But of course by then I had to know the exact depth of my defeat, what species of moldering, chitter-infested former picnic lay inside. So I held my breath and gave the latch a tug. A quick check with my keychain flashlight revealed beer. To be exact, a twelve-pack of Budweiser. My relief at the absence of spoiled foodstuffs introduced a very bad idea into my head. I was going to get something for my labor.

I rescued a can from the soggy, disintegrating carton, reached for the tab and found nothing but smooth surface. So I turned it over and found the same thing. It was like finding a baby with no belly button. Then I noticed how light it was – not at all like something holding a liquid. I tried the flashlight again, and found a seam across its midsection. I gave a nudge here, a tug there, then grabbed the bottom half as I unscrewed the top. I pulled the two halves apart and discovered that each contained a tightly packed roll of paper. Prying the top roll from its container, I saw the face of Benjamin Franklin and nearly passed out.

I lugged the cooler to the top of the trail, set it on my passenger seat and drove home. When I arrived, I had to remind myself that a man carrying a cooler is not an unusual or suspicious sight. Once inside, I locked myself in the bathroom, shut the window and counted my booty. Two hundred and twelve thousand dollars.

The next day, I worked up the nerve to abandon my cooler – deep in the corner of my bedroom closet – while I went to the library at Half Moon Bay to search the newspapers for any crime that might match up with my treasure. I found nothing. Then I checked out every book I could find on crime in general and bank robberies in specific. When I got home, I allowed myself one quick peek at the green, just for reassurance. I immediately made it a rule: one peek only, once a day, and only when no one else was around.

About one thing, I had already made up my mind: I was keeping it. Screw this bullshit Boy Scout ideal of turning it in to the authorities. This came nine months after the fire, and it provided more than just a little karmic payback. It convinced me that the world was not composed entirely of treachery and disaster, that to every great tragedy there might be an unexpected windfall, a sunny day that takes away your breath. Maybe a beautiful woman who makes your heart do gymnastics. And that these – or even the possibility of these – were the reasons you went on living.

So I took my robbery books to the general store, ordered a huge cup of java and dove in. The patterns were immediately clear. Those who gave themselves away did so in the classic ways: rivalry with cohorts, too many witnesses (too many mouths) and, primarily, ostentation. Blessed with a situation in which I was absolutely alone in the world, and had no witnesses to my find, I had only one problem to prevent: no showing off. And I had one quite famous example to follow: The Great Train Robbery, in which the British perpetrators kept their secret for decades simply by giving away no sign of financial gain.

I kept my job. I kept my little cottage. For the big layouts, I continued using my checking account. But for everyday expenses, I dipped into the cooler. Groceries. New tires. Dinner on a Saturday night. Only a psychic could have detected a difference in my spending patterns – and even that could be explained by a larger-then-expected insurance settlement.

Meanwhile, my checking account grew, and eventually I was able to move to Aptos, to take on the mortgage payments for this house, to pay for tuition and textbooks, and eventually to earn my psych degree at UC Santa Cruz. After that, I became a life coach.

Suzanne and Jack are both feeling a little astonished and disoriented – and halfway expecting Ben to confess that he made it all up. This is not the kind of thing that happens in the life of a real person. It’s apparent from Gina’s bemused expression that she has already heard the story. Ben is taking in their reactions with an excited attention; he has obviously had few opportunities to relate this particular series of events. He takes a sip from his wine and plants it on the table, signalling the second phase of his presentation.

“So here’s where I get all Wizard of Oz on your ass. I have had occasion to give out portions of my cooler fund to noble causes. One of these was Barbie, when she first moved to New York to further her career. The money comes with the understanding that it will be used in the same manner that I used it. Just for the everyday stuff. You want a new car, you save up your own money, and write a check from your account. No spending large amounts of cash. No ostentation.

Jack realizes that Ben is giving them instructions. He feels a flush of heat rising to his face, and takes a sip of wine just to have something to do. Ben shifts so he’s facing Suzanne across the table.

“Suzanne, I don’t need to explain my decision to include you. You are extraordinarily talented. Your pursuit of your dream is both inspiring and courageous. It was the news of your recent travails, in fact, that inspired me to fast-forward this meeting. I was originally going to wait until after the wedding. But when I saw how dire your situation was…”

“I…” That’s all she can get out, because she’s crying.

“I’m giving you twenty thousand dollars. I’m giving the same amount to Jack.”

Despite proverbial mandates regarding gift horses, Jack is unable to keep the word from his lips. “Why? I mean, why me?”

“Well may you ask. Your cause is not so clear-cut as Suzanne’s. But I do believe there’s something equally of value at stake. I realize that our New Year’s escapades cost you any future you might have had with numbers. But I think that you don’t appreciate your own talents. I am a pretty keen observer of human intuition and empathy, and am generally able to recognize those who have exceptional skills in these areas. That’s you, Jack. I believe you were a savant just waiting for the right opportunity to blossom – for the right disaster to thrust you out of your comfortable existence. The way you took in all of these different lives – the monkey, the burner, the opera patron – mulled them over, adapted to them, understood them. In an earlier time, you would have been drafted into a life as a shaman.

“So that’s what I’m doing. I’m drafting you. And I know all about your house, your mortgage, your severance deadline. That’s why I want you to move here, to this house. I’ll be moving to Gina’s ranch, but we’d prefer to hang onto this place till the market improves. So we’d like you to be our caretaker, to keep my mineral squares polished – and to keep a room open for Suzanne, whenever she’s in town. Meanwhile, I would ask that you take some classes in psychology, occupational therapy, sociology. Find your niche. You have talents, Jack, and I’m betting the remainder of my treasure on your devoting those talents to the betterment of your fellow Californians. Is this all acceptable to you?”

This should be a difficult and complicated decision. This should take days. But the barometer in Jack’s head has lined up to perfection, and the gathered light from 15 mineral squares is brewing inside his brain.

“Yes.”

Ben raises his glass and stands. Suzanne and Jack follow.

“To your futures. Your brilliant futures. Gina – the containers?”

Gina goes to the pantry and returns with two ordinary-looking red aluminum toolboxes.

“So not that I don’t appreciate it, honey, but any reason for this fancy-ass lunch?”

Jack gazes past Audrey’s shoulder at the pier outside. A squad of sea lions are waddling along a series of rafts, begging scraps from the Cannery Row tourists.

“What? Can’t spend a Benjamin or two on my honey?”

Audrey smiles in her most appealing fashion. “I’m just concerned about your near future.”

“Came into a windfall,” says Jack. “I’ll be staying at Ben’s place for the next couple of years. Rent-free. And I’m going back to school.”

“Psychology?”

Jack halts a forkful of salmon. “Someone told you?”

“We’ve all known it, Jack. For a long time.”

Jack laughs. “Well I wish someone woulda told me.”

Audrey chuckles. “We didn’t want your girlfriend to get jealous.”

“Numbers?”

“Long may she weep.”

V

Beltaine

Jack sits in a big leather armchair, reviewing his mineral squares like a king surveying his crown jewels. What makes him feel even more imperial is the occasional glimpse of Audrey, shuttling between bedroom and bathroom, trying on clothes. The day’s activities are both formal and casual, and Audrey is taking a bicameral approach: one distinct outfit for each. Every three minutes, Jack is treated to a new ensemble, like a pasha reviewing his harem. But Jack has a major disadvantage: he is so enchanted by the contents, he couldn’t care less about the packaging. This is not a problem for women. He has watched gal-pals critiquing each other’s dresses with a frankness that would send a Marine into tears.

Between outfits, he reads from a psychology textbook, Mind in Motion. He was able to get in just under the wire for an introductory course at Cabrillo College, and he can’t quite believe his luck. The instructor, Paul Giacometti, is also the author of the textbook – but no vanity project here, it’s used in colleges across the country. The man is brilliant, and brilliantly funny. For a three-hour evening class, this is crucial. Plagued by a down-cycle that hits every day at 7 p.m., Jack occasionally nods off, anyway, but retains every shred of the lecture, as if he’s just taking it in through the barometer.

The students are accustomed to excitable continuing-ed types – going back to school being much more stimulating than having been there all your life. Even so, he’s in danger of developing a reputation. He chats with “Dr. G” after class, totes around elective books from the library, and gives class-time answers so elegantly constructed they may as well be converted to sonnets. He almost feels like he should tone down his participation so as not to be labeled a showoff (or, God forbid, a “tool”).

“Jack,” said Dr. G. “Yours is an exceptional mind. God knows how you’ve come from the world of accounting with so many intuitive skills. But I have learned not to be surprised at anything accomplished by the human brain. I want you to do me a favor, however. I know it’s tempting to back off during classtime, so you won’t be seen as a teacher’s pet. Well, to put it in modern parlance, screw that. I want to challenge these kids. Anytime I can take these ideas into a dialogue with a talented student, it makes things that much more interesting. Who knows? Maybe we can fool them into thinking they’re watching something on YouTube.”

Jack is amazed at the feats performed by the human brain, and how quickly it has taken the place in his heart previously reserved for numbers. As he waits for Audrey, he re-reads the account of an author who suffered a stroke and lost all of his language skills. The man painstakingly reconstructed them, using a completely different section of the brain, and then went back to writing novels.

“So?”

She stands at the end of the frosted glass table, wearing a black floor-length gown. The fabric gathers at the center, just beneath her décolletage, and falls in smooth folds to either side, a series of arched upside-down V’s, one within the next. Jack is having a hard time finding his breath.

“That’s it. That’s the one.”

It’s the first of May, so naturally the weather is stunning.

“What is it with you and that song?”

The trigger between Kris Kristofferson and the Moss Landing straightaway has become so automatic that Jack doesn’t even know he’s singing. And there’s one other connection. This is the spot where the Imp of the Perverse made his first appearance, daring him to slam into the grill of that approaching truck. Do that now and the carnage includes Audrey. How horrible would that be? Throw in two beloved daughters. He still can’t imagine how Ben made it out alive.

“Jack?”

Now he’s whistling.

“Wow. Sorry. I get so deep in my head these days I just end up being… rude.”

Audrey snakes a hand into Jack’s hair and gives him a scalp-scratch. “My absent-minded professor. Considering what day it is, I’ll let you pass.”

“It’s momentous. Monumental.” Jack slips into a weepy falsetto. “My little boy, getting married!”

Audrey gives his scalp a push. “Goofball. I love you.”

She does this all the time – inserts the three magic words where you least expect them. It never fails to send a buzz through his neurons.

“Why, if I wasn’t driving…”

“You’d what? What exactly would you do?”

“I… I…”

“Oh, yeah. Big talker. So easy to just begin your sentences and let the resident pervert fill in the blanks. Well I’m not driving, so I’m going to do this.”

She undoes his fly, pulls out his prick and gives it a few tugs.

“I might even do this.”

Audrey arranges herself so she won’t muss her dress, ducks her head under Jack’s arms and gives a few tentative licks before swallowing the head.

“Now I know who you are,” he says.

“Mmm?”

“The Imp of the Perverted.” He adjusts his left hand on the wheel, wraps his right around Audrey’s upraised ass, and tries his best to focus on the road. Meanwhile, he works up a story to tell the police, should that become a necessity.

“Audrey, have you ever thought of getting married again?”

Audrey turns her head to respond, looking very much like she’s talking into a microphone.

“Is this really the best time to discuss this?”

“You have a distinct rhetorical advantage.”

“Good point.” She gives him a squeeze, then continues her ministrations between phrases.

“I do not believe… that ‘the fourth time’s a charm’ is the generally accepted proverb… Besides, you and I… have such a deep gravitational pull… that I am not particularly concerned about making it official… Let’s give it… mmm… another year and talk about it then. By the way…” She pauses both activities in order to catch her breath. “I am not telling this story to our grandchildren.”

The combination of artful fellatio, thoughtful discourse, the open road and the buzz from Audrey’s vocal cords has Jack close to coming.

“Audrey… darling? We’ve got three lanes now. I think if you add some handiwork…”

Jack pulls to the center lane, just in case, and he explodes into Audrey’s mouth. She stays there a while, determined to keep him clean for the day’s activities. Finally satisfied that she has dispensed with every available sperm, she carefully tucks him back into place, just as a highway patrol car passes them on the left. The driver, a steel-jawed white guy with the requisite police mustache, gives a brief blast on the siren. The catch in Jack’s breath goes all the way back to that sex-talk from his sixth-grade Sunday School teacher, but when he looks over, the cop is giving him a shit-eating grin and a hearty thumb’s-up.

Now he’s got another challenge: keeping to the road as he and Audrey suffer one of those uncontrollable fits of laughter. Once he recovers, Jack finds sand dunes to his right and realizes they’re in Seaside, ten minutes past their turnoff.

“Looks like we’re taking the back way, honey.”

Audrey puts on a miffed expression. “I don’t know what it is lately with you and directions.”

The road from Monterey to Salinas has become one of Jack’s favorites, a series of long, serpentine curves whose roadsides remain green for most of the year, thanks to the invading fogs. They have taken it twice before from Audrey’s place to the Monkey Tribe. Their little escapade, however, has cost them the cushion that Jack so carefully built into their schedule, so they pull into the farm road at the exact time reported on the wedding invitation. Both sides are filled with parked cars all the way back to Gina’s house, so they have to park there and take a hurried pace toward Ivan and Terra’s.

As they near the hedges at the end of the drive, they hear live music. Jack spots Suzanne, seated behind her keyboard at the far left corner of the lawn, wearing yet another early-sixties dress, a black stripe working a spiral from shoulder to hem against a white background. The lawn is striped in white plastic folding chairs, twelve rows of ten each, with a wide center aisle. The left and right margins are ringed by White Horse’s rockstacks, a half dozen on either side, the size of humans. At the front, he has created a wide altar, ten stacks lined up together like the pipes of an organ, fronds of pampas stationed like flags at their bases. At the end of the aisle stand two figures, facing each other, the left fashioned from light-colored rocks, the right from darker specimens. Just to clarify the point, someone has affixed white and black ribbons to their respective “necks.”

The place is packed. Jack and Audrey slide into the back right-hand row. Jack notices that the rockstack to his right is festooned with wildflowers, their stems inserted into every available crevice, and takes a look around to see that all the other stacks are similarly outfitted.

“Beautiful flowers!” says Audrey.

This causes the woman in front of them to turn around. It’s Constance.

“Thank you.”

“Oh!” says Audrey. “It must have taken you forever. They’re wildflowers, right?”

“Yes! Only, wildflowers don’t keep like florist flowers, so I had to gather them all this morning. Fortunately, I’m kind of a buff, so I know all the local colonies. Let’s see…” She points to Jack’s rockstack as she names the varieties. “California poppy, buttercup, Indian paintbrush, iris, larkspur, the very specific Point Reyes meadowfoam, and, believe it or not – that plain little yellow one there – the common monkeyflower.”

“Genius!” says Jack.

“I thought it was a nice touch. We had to take an extra trip to Moss Landing to get it – it’s a marsh-dweller – but really, I had to have it. You might have guessed this, but the strewing of flowers is a pagan tradition for both weddings and May Day, and we wanted to keep it as local and native as possible. Except for the flower-girl petals – but even those are from Gina’s rose bushes.”

Willie ducks his head into the conference and offers a not-so-subtle stage aside. “I am so glad you two came along. She’s been dying to tell someone all this stuff.”

Constance slaps Willie on the head and then kisses the spot that she slapped. The music stops, and an extremely cute, befreckled redhead proceeds to the head of the aisle, carrying a large wicker basket.

“Oh!” says Constance. “That’s Terra’s granddaughter, Erin. Isn’t she a doll?”

Erin nods toward Suzanne like a pro, and Suzanne lights into an unexpectedly Mozartean divertimento, providing just the right playful air. Not happy to be a mere postal carrier of petals, Erin dances and spins down the aisle, tossing handfuls of red and white into the crowd, occasionally landing a few on the actual bridal path. As she reaches the end, she turns the basket upside-down, gives the bottom a thorough spanking to unloose all hangers-on, then accepts her hard-earned applause and sprints offstage to her waiting mother.

Suzanne waits a few seconds, nods toward someone in the farmhouse window, and launches into one of her originals, “David.” The intro is a slowly rocking boat, built on the particulars of Suzanne’s lush chords. She enters as if she’s halfway into a conversation, asking questions of a one-man audience.

i am afraid

i have nothing of worth to bring you

they all say

i couldn’t be the one

i am alone

with no one to come beside me

all have forsaken

and left me with my thoughts

The chords are thickening and building like stormclouds and now they burst into chorus, Suzanne releasing long, angelic notes.

but you see beyond my broken reflection

you see behind my lies

you see beyond our limitations

you see my heart

The words are too direct for poetry, but set upon the fingerbeds of the keyboard they become poetry. Jack has never quite understood this process, and resolves to do some reading on it. Suzanne settles to an instrumental, working the chorus in broad, spaced-out strokes, and Terra appears at the front porch in a dress of kelly green, white and green ribbons woven into her blonde ringlets. As she descends and crosses to the altar, Jack realizes it’s the dress of the white queen from the New Year’s party, dyed green. She comes to a stop between the matrimonial rockstacks and raises her arms, evergreen ribbons trailing from her sleeves. The music stops.

“May the place of this rite be consecrated for the forces of nature. We gather here in a ritual of love, with two who would be wedded. Ben and Gina, please come forward and stand before us.”

She reaches into a velvet sack at her waist and extracts two brass discs connected by a leather strap. She dangles them from the strap, lines up their edges and strikes them together, sending a high, sweet tone over the lawn.

“Would you please stand?”

As he rises, Jack is surprised to hear neighing, and the stamping of hooves. He turns to find two tall horses at the end of the driveway, their manes braided with ribbons of red and green. The far horse bears the auburn coat that must belong to Fajamur’s Rose. Its companion is a chestnut with a white diamond at the center of his forehead.

Suzanne launches a repeat of her chorus as the horses advance to the aisle, revealing their riders. Atop the chestnut is Ben, wearing a black western suit with a felt hat, a vest with embroidered patterns in gray, a long silver watch-fob, and a bolo tie looped through a rhombus of turquoise edged in silver. He looks remarkably calm in the saddle, thanks to much personal tutelage from the bride.

Atop Fajamur’s Rose, naturally, is Gina Scarletti, wearing a cream-colored pantsuit with ivory cowboy boots, a gold necklace with a jade pendant, and a white duster with Celtic curlicues in moss green. Her hair is tied back with a scarlet scarf that trails behind her in the wind.

“The scarf is a Celtic thing,” whispers Audrey. “The bride always wears one article of scarlet.”

“Blood,” says Jack. “The maidenhead.”

“No maidenhead today. Although her name is Scarletti.”

“Touché.”

The horses arrive at aisle’s end and settle in as Suzanne returns to the conversational tone of her verse.

i am aware

of your creative hand

but I don’t understand

why you’d form me to your plan

i am amazed

as you draw me closer to you

and my performance yields

to your consuming love

She returns to the chorus, then weaves it all into a grand, peaceful fade of sound as Ben and Gina smile at her from their mounts. Terra begins the applause – mostly to let everybody know it’s okay to clap – and the congregation follows.

Ben dismounts. He hands the reins to a teenage blonde in British riding gear, who leads the chestnut to a spot at the far right. The groom offers Gina a hand down (though she hardly requires one), and she hands the reins to a brunette, similarly attired, who leads Fajamur’s Rose to the left. Terra unties a stick from her waist and extends it toward Ben, who digs into his vest pocket, extracts two gold rings and slips them over the tip.

“A willow wand,” whispers Audrey.

Ben and Gina stand before their effigy rockstacks and face each other. Ivan, clothed in a dark green robe, comes to take the willow wand and hand Terra her bodhran. She lifts the two-headed tippler and brings it down over the drumface, unloosing a brief roll of thunder before each of her declarations.

“Be with us here, O beings of the air. With your clever fingers, tie closely the bonds between these two.”

Roll.

“Be with us here, O beings of fire. Give their love and passion your own all-consuming ardor.”

Roll.

“Be with us here, O beings of Earth. Let your strength and constancy be theirs for as long as they desire to stay together.”

Now she strikes the bodhran with three resounding thumps.

“Blessed Goddess and Laughing God, give to these before you, your love and protection. And all those gathered shall say, ‘Blessed be.’”

The response is a dud – only a dozen in the crowd realize they’re supposed to repeat the phrase. So Terra restates it.

“And all those gathered shall say, ‘Blessed be!’”

The congregation shouts back like they’re at a pep rally: “Blessed be!”

“That’s better,” says Terra. She hands the bodhran to Ivan, takes back the willow wand and returns to Ben and Gina, who are trying very hard to look at each other without laughing or crying.

“Place your right hands over this wand and your rings, his hand over hers.”

They do. Ben takes the opportunity to sneak a kiss.

“Now, now,” says Terra. She sets herself and speaks to the couple.

“Above you are the stars. Below you are the stones. As time passes, remember: Like a star, your love should be constant. Like a stone, your love should be firm. Be close, but not too close. Possess one another, but be understanding. Have patience with each other – for storms will come, but they will go quickly. Be free in the giving of affection and warmth. Make love often, and be sensuous with each other. Have no fear, and do not allow the ways or words of others to give you unease, for the Goddess and the God are with you, now and always."

Terra raises her eyes toward the audience and says, “The handfasting ritual now calls for a pause of five heartbeats.”

She places a hand on her chest and waits, then takes a ring from the wand and hands it to Gina.

“Is it your wish, Gina, to become one with this man?”

Gina smiles and answers, “Yes.”

“Then place the ring upon his finger.”

She does so. Terra hands the second ring to Ben. The ring holds a green gemstone.

“Is it your wish, Ben, to become one with this woman?”

The enthusiasm of his “Yes!” brings titters from the audience.

“Then by all means,” says Terra, “place the ring upon her finger.”

He does so. Terra holds their hands together and addresses the congregation.

“Do any say nay?”

She waits two heartbeats, then raises her arms to the sky. “Then, as the Goddess and the God and the Old Ones are witness to this rite, I now proclaim you husband and wife.”

Ben doesn’t wait for an invitation. He jumps to Gina’s side, drops her into a dip and gives her a good working-over, to a burst of applause and hoots. Ivan dashes behind the altar, jimmies with something, and two dozen burly pigeons take to the air, circling the farm three times before departing for Monterey.

“Well!” says Jack.

“The whole damn coop,” says Audrey, and smiles.

Suzanne starts into a stride piece that turns out to be “Makin’ Whoopee.” Ben and Gina separate and race to their respective mounts. They saddle up and trot away down either side of the lawn, then meet up at the head of the driveway and gallop away toward Gina’s house.

“Fan-tas-stic!” says Jack. “What a show.”

As the dustclouds settle, Terra gives the bodhran another roll, and Suzanne stops playing.

“Friends! We are not finished. Our resident artist, White Horse, constructed this ring of rockstacks as a one-time installation. He now asks that we destroy them. But please do not bury any small children!”

Terra sets down the bodhran and stands behind the bridal stack as Ivan stands behind the groom. They count three and send them crashing together in a merry clatter. Troll and White Horse see to the altar, toppling the dozen component stacks toward the matrimonial pile. All around the lawn, the guests shout with glee as they knock their stacks to the ground. Jack turns to get in on the fun, but finds his stack has been neatly dismembered by Constance and Willie, who are now hopping around it in a victory dance.

“Goddamn Monkeys,” he mutters.

The crowd is near-riotous with destructive energy, but fortunately other activities have been prepared. Next to the gate of the spirit garden, the Monkeys have erected a Maypole. The pole itself turns out to be a ten-foot bay branch that Ivan discovered, freshly fallen, while hiking in the woods. They have posted the base deep into the ground and affixed two dozen multicolored ribbons to the tip. After much coaching from Terra, they manage to get one person assigned to each ribbon, twelve of them parading in a clockwise circle, the other twelve walking counter as they weave in and out of the opposing traffic. A few pileups ensue, and much giggling, but soon they strike a good rhythm, and as Suzanne kicks in with a mazurka the rainbow weave works its way quickly down the pole. Jack spends five minutes navigating a ribbon of lollipop red, then waves Audrey over for relief. Audrey hands it over to Constance, and returns to find Jack giving Suzanne a secret salute.

“All right, pal. What’s this thing between you and Suzanne? You seem awfully chummy lately.”

“We’re planning a bank robbery. Gonna take the money and hide out in Cancun.”

Audrey slaps him on the rump, which really is no punishment at all. A welcome distraction arrives in the person of Gina Scarletti. Audrey goes for the ring finger.

“It is an emerald. Stunning!”

Gina, who’s been smiling for hours now, manages to smile even wider. “When you marry a rockhound, a boring old diamond just ain’t gonna cut it. Fits the May Day thing, too. Nice work with the pole!”

Jack kisses her on the cheek. “You’ll be happy to know, there were no fatalities.”

“Thank goodness.”

“Hey Gina?” says Audrey. “I was curious… You’re pretty new to all this hippie-dippie Monkey stuff. How did you settle on a pagan wedding?”

Gina laughs. “First, may I say how happy I am that none of my devoutly Catholic relatives are alive. But you know? I’m kind of secular to begin with, and then I had a long talk with Terra, and when she showed me those vows… they’re gorgeous. I did make a couple of changes. Some of the language was a little too Dungeons and Dragons. And there was this reference to ‘non-believers.’ I get enough of that crap from the Catholics. The other thing was, so much of our wedding traditions are pagan to begin with. Like the cake ceremony – the knife represents the man entering the woman…”

“Yowza!” says Audrey.

“I know. And the tossing of the garter was the way that an outgoing priestess would pick her successor. Oh look! Here comes the cake now.”

“Have you and Ben made any agreements?” asks Jack.

“One smudge apiece.” She trots to the table, where Ivan is preparing an enormous burnt almond cake for penetration.

After the Maypole ribbons have reached their end – a squad of four guests gathered around the pole lacing the last few feet by hand – Willie and Troll dig the pole out of the ground and hoist it onto a pair of brackets on the garden fence. It looks like a prize fish. Then they rake the dirt while others bring rocks from the ruined stacks and build a ring ten feet in diameter. The rest of the Monkeys attack a woodpile under the carport and eventually assemble a huge stack of timber at the center of the ring.

When everything’s set – Willie and Ivan lurking with cans of lighter fluid – Terra stands before the ring, plays a roll on the bodhran and throws in one of her keening soprano yelps. The party guests -–many of their formal outfits gone completely to pot – gather before their priestess like a football squad awaiting a pep talk.

“The Beltaine – bel for ‘lucky,’ taine for ‘fire’ – was lit on May Day in Ireland and Scotland to celebrate the conquering of the dark by the light, as the months of sunshine finally arrived to warm the fields. The Druids believed the Beltaine to be a magical act, an attempt to bring the sun’s light down to earth. The May Day celebration signalled a time of fertility and unbridled merrymaking. Monkeys?”

The Tribe unlooses its usual squealing chatter.

“Thank you. And later, young and old would spend the night making love in the Greenwood. Or perhaps, the Scarletti Ranch.”

She stops for the expected hoots and hollers.

“Most would say that our bride and groom are in the September of their lives. But tonight, at least for one night, we invite them to revisit the green landscapes of spring, a time of new and invigorated love. Huzzah!”

The crowd echoes “Huzzah!” Ivan and Willie pour their lighter fluid along the base of the pile, and Terra uses a long barbecue lighter to begin the blaze. Amid the shouts, Jack hears Terra say, “And let’s hope to God the fire department got my message.”

Beer and wine and herb circulate through the gathering as they stand around the Beltaine, talking, laughing, yelling, dancing. At sunset, most of them have disappeared inside, to a very promising pot-luck buffet. Jack finds Ben standing near the garden gate, watching two stripes of tangerine, the sun sinking below the horizon, the fire sinking into coals.

“Oh Captain my Captain!”

“Young man knows his Whitman,” says Ben.

“I shorely do.” He gives his mentor a hug and holds it for a while. “I can’t tell you how happy I am for you.”

Ben smiles. “Multiply that by ten, and you have the groom’s happiness. That creature in white atop that monumental piece of horseflesh. That’s my wife, for Christ’s sake.”

“You are one lucky bastard.” He claps Ben on the shoulder and turns to study the coals, a broad ring of pulsing orange hearts.

“Ben, I don’t know if I ever told you the story…”

“How you were going to kill yourself?”

Jack laughs. “You’re a goddamned Jedi, old man. Yes. I was going to hurl myself over the Multnomah Falls.”

“Wow! Pretty dramatic for an accountant. Why didn’t you do it?”

“I had one leg up on the wall when a beam of sunlight landed on a rock mid-falls. It looked like a burning house. I think what saved me was curiosity. I had to figure out if that meant something.”

Ben looks at him with something like wonder, the fireglow murmuring in his eyes. “That’s it, then. You are a shaman.”

“But…” Jack pauses to assemble what he wants to say. “I guess I wanted to thank you for saving my life. When I saw your grief at the beach that day, when you told me ‘Don’t you dare,’ I knew that I would never respond to that impulse again.”

Ben throws a pebble into the coals just to kick up a spark. “That’s funny. Here I thought it was you who saved my life.”

“Really?”

“Really. I knew you were a special one the moment I saw you on the beach, watching that wounded bird. I’ll bet you didn’t think I remembered that.”

“No. I didn’t.”

“I thought, that man is both troubled and magical. And as I worked with you, and brought you to all these strange new worlds, I took the fascination in your eyes and used it to rekindle my own spark. Even the insightful and enlightened among us can forget to look at things with fresh eyes. It was soon after your entrance into my life that tremendous things began to happen to me, concluding with the vision of Gina Scarletti dressed as Cleopatra. Perhaps without my new eyes, I would not have seen her.”

“No,” says Jack. “You would have seen her if she were dressed as Ichabod Crane.”

Ben lets out the old husky laugh. “The prophet speaks. But the thing is… I was ready for her. I was prepared to consider the previously unthinkable idea of being utterly happy.”

Ben puts his left hand on Jack’s elbow, and with his right gives him an old-fashioned handshake, the gesture of his generation.

“One more thing, young Jack. I know that this career-switch will cause you some consternation. It’s a little scary, re-making yourself. And you probably think that making love to Audrey LaBrea is not enough to justify your existence. But let me tell you this: making love to Gina Scarletti is more than enough to justify my existence. So I think you’re wrong.”

He stops and cocks an ear toward the house.

“What?” says Jack.

Ben takes on the look of a starving man who smells barbecued ribs. “Drums!”

“Well let’s get to it!” says Jack. He turns toward the porch.

“Wait!” says Ben. “They say that a man going on a long journey, or a dangerous undertaking, can better his chances by jumping three times, backwards and forwards, over the Beltaine.”