Part 6 (1/2)
”What's wrong?” she asked, as perceptive as ever.
”Nothing,” he lied.
”Bit of a headache from all that rum in the eggnog?”
What troubled him was not a hangover, but the queer, unshakable feeling that he was going to lose Julie, that something out there in a hostile world was coming to take her away. As the optimist in the family, he wasn't usually given to grim forebodings of doom; accordingly, this strange August chill frightened him more than it would have if he had been regularly subject to such disturbances ”Bobby?” she said, frowning.
”Headache,” he a.s.sured her.
He leaned down and gently kissed her eyes, then again, forcing her to close them so she could not see his face and read the anxiety that he was unable to conceal.
LATER, AFTER showering and dressing, they ate a hasty breakfast while standing at the kitchen counter: English m.u.f.fins and raspberry jam, half a banana each, and black coffee. By mutual agreement, they were not going to the office. A brief call to Clint Karaghiosis confirmed that the wrap-up on the Decodyne case was nearly completed, and that no other business needed their urgent personal attention.
Their Suzuki Samurai waited in the garage, and Bobby's spirits rose at the sight of it. The Samurai was a small sports truck with four-wheel drive. He had justified its purchase by pitching its dual nature-utilitarian and recreational-to Julie, especially noting its comparatively reasonable price tag, but in fact he had wanted it because it was fun to drive. She had not been deceived, and she had gone for it because she, too, thought it was fun to drive. This time, she was willing to let him have the wheel when he suggested she drive.
”I did enough driving last night,” she said as she buckled herself into her shoulder harness.
Dead leaves, twigs, a few sc.r.a.ps of paper, and less identifiable debris whirled and tumbled along the windswept streets. Dust devils spun out of the east, as the Santa Anas-named for the mountains out of which they arose-poured down through the canyons and across the arid, scrub-stubbled hills that Orange County's industrious developers had not yet graded and covered with thousands of nearly identical wood and-stucco pieces of the California dream. Trees bent to the surging oceans of air that moved in powerful and erratic tides toward the real sea in the west. The previous night's fog was gone, and the day was so clear that, from the hills, Catalina Island could be seen twenty-six miles off the Pacific's distant coast.
Julie popped an Artie Shaw CD into the player, and the smooth melody and softly bouncing rhythms of ”Begin the Be guine” filled the car. The mellow saxophones of Les Robinson Hank Freeman, Tony Pastor, and Ronnie Perry provided strange counterpoint to the chaos and dissonance of the Santa Ana winds.
From Orange, Bobby drove south and west toward the beach cities-Newport, Corona Del Mar, Laguna, and Dana Point. He traveled as much as possible on those few of the urbanize county's blacktop byways that could still be called back roads They even pa.s.sed a couple of orange groves, with which the county had once been carpeted, but which had mostly fallen to the relentless advance of the tracts and malls.
Julie became more talkative and bubbly as the miles rolled up on the odometer, but Bobby knew that her spirited mood was not genuine. Each time they set out to visit her brother Thomas, she worked hard to inflate her spirits. Although she loved Thomas, every time that she was with him, her fear broke anew, so she had to fortify herself in advance with manufactured good humor.
”Not a cloud in the sky,” she said, as they pa.s.sed the Irvine Ranch fruit-packing plant.
”Isn't it a beautiful day Bobby?”
”A wonderful day,” he agreed.
”The wind must've pushed the clouds all the way to j.a.pan piled them up miles high over Tokyo.”
”Yeah. Right now California litter is falling on the Ginza.”
Hundreds of red bougainvillea blossoms, stripped from their vines by the wind, blew across the road, and for a moment the Samurai seemed to be caught in a crimson snowstorm. Maybe it was because they had just spoken of j.a.pan, but there was something oriental about the whirl of petals. He would not have been surprised to glimpse a kimono-clad woman at the side of the road, dappled in suns.h.i.+ne and shadow.
”Even a windstorm is beautiful here,” Julie said.
”Aren't we lucky, Bobby? Aren't we lucky to be living in this special place?”
Shaw's ”Frenzies” struck up, string-rich swing. Every time he heard the song, Bobby was almost able to imagine that he was in a movie from the 1930s or '40s, that he would turn a corner and encounter his old friend Jimmy Stewart or maybe Bing Crosby, and they'd go off to have lunch with Cary Grant and Jean Arthur and Katharine Hepburn, while all kinds of screwy things would happen.
”What movie are you in?” Julie asked. She knew him too well.
”Haven't figured it yet. Maybe The Philadelphia Story.
By the time they pulled into the parking lot of Cielo Vista Care Home, Julie had whipped herself into a state of high good humor. She got out of the Samurai, faced west, and grinned at the horizon, which was delineated by the marriage of sea and sky, as if she had never before encountered a sight to match it. In truth it was a stunning panorama, because Cielo Vista stood on a bluff half a mile from the Pacific, overlooking a long stretch of southern California's Gold Coast. Bobby admired it, too, shoulders hunched slightly and head tucked down in deference to the cool and bl.u.s.tery wind.
When Julie was ready, she took Bobby's hand and squeezed it hard, and they went inside.
Cielo Vista Care Home was a private facility, operated without government funds, and its architecture eschewed all of the standard inst.i.tutional looks. Its two-story Spanish facade of pale peach stucco was accented by white marble corner pieces, door frames, and window lintels; white-painted French windows and doors were recessed in graceful arches, with deep sills. The sidewalks were shaded by lattice arbors draped with a mix of purple- and yellow-blooming bougainvillea, from which the wind drew a chorus of urgent whispers. Inside, the floors were gray vinyl tile, speckled with peach and turquoise, and the walls were peach with white base and crown molding, which lent the place a warm and airy ambience.
They paused in the foyer, just inside the front door, while Julie withdrew a comb from her purse and pulled the wind tangles from her hair. After stopping at the front desk in the cozy visitors' lobby, they followed the north hall to Thomas's first floor room.
His was the second of the two beds, nearest the windows, but he was neither there nor in his armchair. When they stopped in his open doorway, he was sitting at the worktable that belonged to both him and his roommate, Derek. Bent over the table, using a pair of scissors to clip a photograph from a magazine, Thomas appeared curiously both hulking and fragile, thickset yet delicate; physically, he was solid but mentally and emotionally he was frail, and that inner weakness shone through to belie the outer image of strength. With thick neck, heavy rounded shoulders, broad back, proportionally short arms, and stocky legs, Thomas had a gnomish look but when he became aware of them and turned his head to see who was there, his face was not graced by the cute and beguiling features of a fairy-tale creature; it was instead a face of cruel genetic destiny and biological tragedy.
”Jules!” he said, dropping the scissors and magazine, nearly knocking over his chair in his haste to get up. He was wearing baggy jeans and a green-plaid flannel s.h.i.+rt. He seemed years younger than his true age.
”Jules, Jules!”
Julie let go of Bobby's hand and stepped into the room opening her arms to her brother.
”Hi, honey.” Thomas hurried to her in that shuffling walk of his, as if his shoes were heeled and soled with enough iron to preclude lifting them. Although he was twenty years old, ten years younger than Julie, he was four inches shorter than she, just barely five feet. He had been born with Down's syndrome, a diagnosis that even a layman could read in his face: his brow was sloppy and heavy; inner epicanthic folds gave his eyes an oriental cant the bridge of his nose was flat; his ears were low-set on a head that was slightly too small to be in proportion to his body; the rest of his features had those soft, heavy contours often a.s.sociated with mental r.e.t.a.r.dation. Though it was a common shaped more for expressions of sadness and loneliness, it no less defied its naturally downcast lines and formed itself into a wondrous smile, a warm grin of pure delight.
Julie always had that effect on Thomas.
h.e.l.l, she has that effect on me, Bobby thought.
Stooping only slightly, Julie threw her arms around her brother when he came to her, and for a while they hugged each other.
”How're you doing?” she asked.
”Good,” Thomas said.
”I'm good.” His speech was thick but not at all difficult to understand, for his tongue was as deformed as those of some victims of DS; it was a little larger than it should have been but not fissured or protruding.
”I' real good.”
”Where's Derek?”
”Visiting. Down the hall. He'll be back. I'm real good. Are you good?”
”I'm fine, honey. Just great.”
”I'm just great too. I love you, Jules,” Thomas said happily, for with Julie he was always free of the shyness that colored his relations with everyone else.
”I love you so much.”
”I love you, too, Thomas.”
”I was afraid... maybe you wouldn't come.”
”Don't I always come?”
”Always,” he said. At last he relaxed his grip on his sister and peeked around her. ”Hi, Bobby.”
”Hi, Thomas. You're looking' good.”
”Am I?”