work. She go away up the street. She gone.”
I laughed. “You saw a little girl come look at the building, then go away? And you want money for that?”
“You said—”
“Right. Well thank you. The check’s in the mail.”
I ended the call and made a note to block the number when I sat down. In the old days I’d be doing something like that once a week. Giving out my number to people who might have information they would feel more comfortable giving out later, when no one was around—then blocking it when they got to thinking they had a friend on the force who would fix their parking tickets or get their aunt out of jail. I did not miss those people. Black or white, young or old, these baffled, violent men with their unhappy, shouting wives, hermetically sealed off from their dreams by drugs, poverty, and fate—and laziness, too, often, along with short fuses and shorter attention spans and a bitter yearning for the easy life that guaranteed that theirs would be anything but.
I kept walking, and after a time I found myself on Main, passing places like Rick’s Tavern and the Coffee Bean, iBod and Schatzi, Say Sushi and Surf Liquor, environments that had been a casual part of my existence for years. I’d even met Amy in a bar not far from here. I’d been killing an evening with a colleague when a couple of drunks started working a table of women. The deal with a bar’s being cop-friendly is the understanding that—should anyone not realize that the place often contains off-duty policemen and that good behavior is therefore mandatory (for non-cops, at least)—it will be made clear to them. So I got up, walked by the other side of the women’s table on the way to the men’s room, and communicated via a pointed finger that the guys’ attention would be better deployed elsewhere. One looked like he wanted to make something of it, but his friend got the message, and they left without a fight. There was a fresh beer waiting for me on the counter when I got back. So it goes.
Several months later I dealt with a minor collision a few miles away. One car was inhabited by a pleasant man in his early seventies who was profoundly stoned and admitted his culpability even before he fell down on the sidewalk. The other contained a woman I recognized as having been at the table in the bar. She was sober, calm, and cute. She’d never even noticed me in the bar, but she had by the time this incident was sorted out. I was brisk and efficient with the public. She liked that, I guess. As I came to understand, Amy Ellen Dwyer valued the brisk and efficient above most else.
A couple weeks later, I was back in the bar, and so was she. Facial recognition occurred in both parties, and I briskly and efficiently stopped by to say hello. Though hitting on the victims of crime was viewed by many as a key perk of the job, it lay outside my own personal experience and I expected nothing to come of it. The women left while I was out back sharing a joint with the cook, but when I returned to the bar, I found she had left her number with the bartender.
“Call me,” the note said. “Without delay.”
We met up a few days later and had one of those dates where you start one place and then find yourself in another, and then another, not remembering how or why you moved—because the talk just seems to keep coming and this sense of freedom, of not having to stay put to protect your position and mood, seems to be at the heart of the evening. In the end it became kind of a game, each of us suggesting somewhere more obscure or offbeat to go next, until finally we found ourselves sitting side by side on a bench in a very touristy location and realizing that it felt okay because we didn’t feel much like locals either that night, but as if our lives and selves were in the midst of being freshly minted before our eyes. They were.
When you meet someone you love, then you change for good. That’s why the other person will never know or understand the earlier you, and why you can never change back. And why, when that person starts to go, you’ll feel the tear deep in your heart long before your head has the slightest clue what’s going on.
It was hard not to think of that evening now that I was here, and of others that had come after it, good and bad. I dropped down Ashland to Ocean Front, headed up past Shutters Hotel, under the long ramp road from the pier up to Ocean Avenue, then onto the concrete path on the beach itself. There’s a run of buildings just up from there, right down on the sand, some of the earliest houses built in the area. They’ve always looked strange to me, incongruous, faux-English mansions behind fences on the beach, squatting in the shadow of the high bluffs like imps on the chest of someone who sleeps.
The lights on the pier were all on now. I got out my phone and called Amy’s number.
“Hey,” she said. “Sorry I haven’t checked in. Got hung up at Nat’s. Only just left. You know what she’s like.” I didn’t say anything. “How are things back at the homestead? Got the place warmed up?”
“I’m not in Birch Crossing,” I said.
“Oh?”
“I’m in Santa Monica. I flew down this afternoon.”
There was a pause. “And why would you have done that?”
“Why do you think?”
“No idea, hon. Sounds kind of wacky to me.”
“Hardly seen you this last week. I thought it might be nice for us to meet up. Check out the old haunts.”
“Babe, that’s a really sweet idea, but I’ve got like a ton of work to do. Need to get my ducks in a row for the meeting tomorrow.”
“I don’t really care,” I said. “I’m your husband. I’m in town. Come meet me, for coffee at least.”
There was silence for maybe five seconds. “Where?”
“You know where.”
She laughed. “Well, actually, I don’t. Not being a mind reader.”
“So pick a place,” I said. “And be there soon.”
“You’re really not going to tell me where?”
“You choose. And just go there.”
“Jack, this is a dumb game.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not.”
chapter
THIRTY-ONE
On the pier, groups of tourists strolled in the softening light, coming in and out of souvenir stores or suspiciously eyeing restaurant menus. I leaned against the rail and waited, the knot in my stomach getting tight and tighter. Twenty-five minutes later, I saw a woman walking down the ramp from the Palisades. I watched her come onto the pier and move purposefully through the crowd. She was in her mid-thirties but looked younger and was very smartly dressed. She glanced neither left nor right but headed straight to where she was going. She held something in her right hand, something that looked so wrong as to be trick photography, and I realized there had been things I’d misunderstood.
I let her go by, then got up and followed.
By the time I got to the end, she was leaning on the railing, looking across the water back toward Venice, a yellow glow surrounding her from the lamp at the corner of this section of the promenade. There were other people nearby, but not many—we had passed the restaurant sections and stores, were almost as far as possible from land. Most people got to this point, nodded at the sea, and turned to head back to where they could buy stuff.
Amy turned around. “Hey, you found me,” she said. “You’re good.”
She looked strange. Taller, yet more compact. As if she had edited or improved her form, become Amy 1.1, without consulting me on the development process.
“Not really,” I said. “This was the only place that made sense.”
“Exactly. So what’s with the cloak-and-dagger?”
“I just wanted to see if you could remember.”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Jack. We came here on our first date. You proposed to me on this actual spot. We…well, you know. I’m hardly going to forget.”
“Good,” I said, feeling tired and sad, unable to completely remember what I’d thought the point of the exercise had been. I leaned on the rail next to her.
“So what’s up?” she said. “It’s lovely to see you, obviously, but I’ve got miles to go and promises to keep and
