“That is brilliant. That is better than anything I could possibly — It’s
“That’s all right. It wasn’t all bad.”
“I suppose,” she said, flushing a little. “Anyhow, Ray, I’m sorry. I act badly when I’m frightened. I’ve spent too much time sitting in my room being frightened.”
“Maybe we can fix that.”
“I think you can. I know you can. This morning I know you can do anything.”
“Thanks.”
“Isn’t it a beautiful morning?”
“It’s almost a beautiful afternoon.”
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go for a ride.”
I got in the car, and she pulled out and headed down Hawthorne to Rosecranz, then swung north on Vista del Mar, and we went cruising up the coast with the big silver tanks of the refinery on one side and the waves along the other. People say the weather’s always perfect in L.A., but what they really mean is always sunny. Most of the days aren’t actually perfect. That one was. Even the oil tanks looked pretty, and then we’d left them behind, and off to our right the waves were loping along, the edges like fine silver chains, seeming to braid and unbraid themselves. I come from way inland, and that stuff always stops me.
“It’s worth it,” she said. “Oh, it’s worth the risk. I should have done this days ago.”
I said, “You’re not telling me that’s all this heap’ll do.”
“No. I guess I’m not.”
“C’mon, then,” I said.
She eased her foot down on the gas, and the big car surged smoothly forward until the needle read 85. It wasn’t anything for that car. She held it there for a minute, then said, “That’s as far as I go, for now,” and eased it back down to 60.
“This is some car. What are you laughing at?” I said.
She said, “You. You just sitting there with your face in the wind like, I don’t know. Some big dog. I don’t mean that in any bad way. It’s just, you’re always trying to be so tough, and here you are just riding along in the sun and enjoying it so much.”
“It’s a nice day.”
“Isn’t it?”
“It’s not a bad car, either.”
“I’d like you to have something.” She picked her purse up from the floor under her knees, set it on her lap, and started rummaging in it one-handed.
“Don’t run us off the road,” I said.
She held out a dollar bill, folded twice. “Here.”
“What’s this?”
“It’s from yesterday. I wish you’d take it back.”
“What for? You—”
“No, please. Please don’t say whatever you were about to say about, I don’t know. Services rendered or goods delivered or whatever hard-boiled wisecrack it was. I wish you’d please just take it. Because I think I was very ugly to you, and if I at least didn’t make you give me a dollar, then, well, I don’t know, then whatever it was was something else. Nicer. Not just me trying to make a monkey of you.”
“What would it’ve been? Without the dollar?” I said, taking the money. “Thanks.”
“I don’t know. Something just silly and, I don’t know, sort of high-schoolish. I was still a nice girl in high school. Not the kind of nice girl who’s never done anything, but I hadn’t done everything, and I was still nice to people. I had a beau and I was true to him.”
“Yeah? Was he nice too?”
“Very nice. He was my own true love.”
“You had one of those?”
“Yes. Just one.”
“They say that’s all you need.”
“They say.”
“What was nice about him?”
“He was inquisitive.”
“I guess that’s good. What happened?”
“Well, after a few years, I guess he sort of stopped being nice. He was a nice boy, but he didn’t turn out to be a nice man.”
“What did you do?”
“I guess I stopped being nice, too. He was my own true love, and I wanted to keep him company.”
“Then what?”
“Then it was over. My God, to think about me being still nice. How long has it been since you were a nice boy?”
“I don’t know that I was ever particularly nice.”
“Please don’t say that,” she said. “It can’t be true. You’re nice now, in some ways.”
“I think I’m about as nice now as I ever was. I used to be dumber.”
“I can’t imagine you being dumb. But I can imagine you being nice in an angry, rough way, and sort of serious. Maybe too serious. Were you always a big reader?”
“I never finished high school.”
“I know that. Mattie told me. That’s not what I’m talking about, that’s just you being hard-boiled again. Were you a reader?”
“I always liked books pretty well.”
“Why didn’t you finish high school?”
“I went out on the road. How’d you know that about the books? Mattie?”
“No, I guessed it about you. You look at everything as if it was a problem you had to study up on.”
“I do, huh.”
“Yes. You have this patient look, like you’re listening very carefully to find out how we’ve all screwed everything up, so you can fix it.”
“Sounds charming.”
“Were you the one in the family that always thought it was his job to fix everything? And then, when everything started going to hell, you tried to stop it and couldn’t?”
After a moment I said, “You’re a good guesser. What makes you say things went to hell?”
“Because you went on the road before you finished high school. You wouldn’t have, not so young, if you could still have stood it there. If there was anyone left there who could care for you.”
“I guess we all did what we needed to.”
“You must’ve had to leave all your books behind,” she said softly.
We were silent.
“You know,” I said, “you’re right. I would’ve.”
“You never read any yourself?”
“All I could get my hands on,” I said, and she laughed. I laughed, too.
“But you would’ve tried to stop me reading them,” she said. “You would have tried to improve my mind.”
“I wouldn’t have had the nerve to talk to you.”
“Maybe I would have talked to you. Do you think we’d have liked each other? Back when we were nice kids,
