“Ana, I can read you like a book.”
“You are so full of it,” I tell him. “You are the most married man I know.”
“Luckily for you.”
I am dying for a beer but when the waitress comes I order another iced tea.
“Look at you,” I tell my partner. “Can’t take your eyes off her Lycra bicycle shorts.”
“Is that what they’re made of? I thought it was the foreskin of a whale.”
Giggling, “So don’t pretend I’m anything special to you. Just because I’m leaving you forever.”
Suddenly Donnato seems to tire of our little flirtation. He gets that way. He says being a street agent is a young person’s game, although he’s got the tight, honed body of a thirty-year-old. But he has three kids and his heart lies with them. Somewhere along the line being an involved father gained an edge over being an agent, although he still performs both roles with a dedication and intensity most people barely muster for one. You can see the exhaustion come over him like a shade.
“Ana, you’re a terrific agent. I’m really proud of you.”
“Hey …” I am choking with awkwardness, but it has to be said: “You taught me everything I know. I guess this is the time to thank you for it.”
We both look away, embarrassed, catch CNN going on the television set above the bar, and stare at it until the bill arrives; he pays it, and we leave. Back at the office I get the forms from Rosalind and spend the rest of the afternoon composing an eloquent statement on why I should be transferred to C-1, Kidnapping and Extortion.
Just as I am about to leave for a 6:30 p.m. swim workout I get a call from LAPD Detective Sergeant Roth.
“Ana? It’s John.”
He waits. So do I.
Cautiously, “Where are you these days, John?”
“Wilshire Division, crash unit.”
Another silence. I listen to his tense breathing, not knowing what to say.
“You must be a busy boy.”
“I was thinking about you.”
“Only good thoughts, I hope.”
I’ve been standing with the strap of the swimming bag over my shoulder, poised to go, as far from the desk as possible, the curly cord of the telephone receiver stretched taut. They teach you in the academy that anxiety is the same physical response as the body’s flight-or-fight reflex: hearing John Roth’s voice again is producing the exact chemical reaction I would have, to use their example, if a man wearing a ski mask had stepped out of my shower stall.
“I’ve been working a homicide that took place about two weeks ago on Santa Monica Boulevard. A female Hispanic named Violeta Alvarado. No next of kin except for two minors, but a neighbor says the victim was related to an FBI agent named Ana Grey.” He adds, singsong: “It had to be you.”
Tense: “Must be.”
“So then this is a condolence call. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I didn’t even know the deceased.”
I give in to the pull of the telephone. The cord slackens as I sit back down and allow the bag to slump to the floor.
“This is too weird, John. That you would get this case.”
“I know it.”
When John Roth and I first started having sex we used to marvel at how powerful and instantaneous our connection was, as if we were riding a secret current that swept past ordinary pleasures to a lagoon of desire known only to us. We thought we were so inventive and unique and amazing that we used to joke about making an instructional video or posing coupled for an artist; we used to watch ourselves in a mirror and tease each other with pet names, “John” and “Yoko.”
So now, a year or so after the crash and burn, maybe we’re both thinking — me with cold dread — that our connection is somehow still in force; that the universe has brought us together again in a strange and unexpected way.
“We probably have a lot of dead people in common,” John says.
I laugh nervously. He seems encouraged.
“I was calling outside of channels because I thought you’d want to check this thing out.”
“It has nothing to do with me.”
“The lady was insistent—”
Suddenly the flight part of the flight-or-fight reflex clicks in and my foot is tapping up and down as if it had a mind of its own.
“Look, John. It’s weird, it’s funky, it’s whatever, but it’s over. I never even heard of Violeta Alvarado and I really don’t give a rat’s ass, so please don’t call me again. I’ve got to go. I’ve got a meeting.”
I hang up and grip the familiar nylon handles of the bag, heavy with rubber fins and hand paddles, a folding hair dryer, and a mesh sack containing slippery old bottles of shampoo and moisturizer with the writing rubbed off. Crossing the bullpen, I try to concentrate on how good it will feel to hit the water and stretch it out for that first fifty yards. As the workout builds, the fear will dissipate; by the end of the hour I’ll forget about John Roth.
FOUR
FRIDAY NIGHT and I have big plans: grocery shopping and a hot bath. Barbara lent me the hardcover edition of
Ocean View Estates is one of the oldest apartment complexes in Marina Del Ray. It was world famous for a brief moment during the quaint psychedelic era of 1970, when I was ten years old. At one of their notorious swinging singles parties, somebody sprinkled LSD over the potato chips and three people boiled to death while tripping out in the Jacuzzi.
Afterward they changed the name from South Sea Villas to Ocean View Estates, but the singles and transients and corporately owned condominiums remain. Friday nights they still have a “social barbecue” where everyone’s supposed to come out of their huts and gather around some greasy old grills, but dragging my briefcase and four plastic bags of groceries past the pool area, all I see this Friday night is an extended Middle Eastern family right off the boat, women in black veils unpacking bright yellow boxes of takeout chicken, tortillas, rice and beans from El Pollo Loco. My brand-new multicultural training tells me they haven’t got a clue.
My place is located in a cul-de-sac of two-story brown stucco apartment buildings still absurdly called Tahiti Gardens. It is a long way from the parking garage but it’s home. I have lived in these three furnished rooms for seven years. The good part is I have never had to buy a couch.
The mailbox is filled with catalogues and one large brown manila envelope with no return address. I might have gotten to the envelope earlier if I weren’t fumbling with the groceries and desperate to pee. Instead it lies on the counter.
The air is stagnant and laced with the smell of carpet shampoo and Formica scrubbed with scouring powder; I guess latex wallpaper over wallboard over cinder block doesn’t breathe. Shoving the heavy glass doors open, I step onto a balcony to a nice view of the largest manmade marina in the world, six thousand boats moored at neatly laid out docks, a shifting forest of white masts. I enjoy looking at the boats even though I’ve never been on one, letting my eyes wander the riggings and blue sail bags and pleasantly swelled white hulls glazed with golden light. Someday I will learn to sail.
Forty-five minutes later the groceries are put away and I am sorting through the catalogues to decide who to spend dinner with, Eddie Bauer or J. Peterman. The timer goes off and I pull chicken cordon bleu prepared by Boy’s Market — my little indulgence — out of the microwave and settle on a stool at the counter, cozying up to a warm
