Along with the rest of the graduates’ relatives, he and Kelly went down onto the pitch to meet up with their hero of the moment and to immortalize that moment in ones and zeros. Marshall duly pantomimed turning his tassel. He started to do it again, but paused in midturn to hug a pretty Asian girl. “Sorry about that,” he said as he went back to posing. “She was in my writing class this past quarter.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Colin answered. “If I’d come up here by myself, I would’ve wanted to hug her, too.”
Kelly poked him in the ribs. “You want to tell me some more about that, mister?” she said in a mock-fierce growl.
“Didn’t say I would’ve done it. I said I would’ve wanted to,” Colin explained. “I’m married, but I’m not blind.”
“Hmm. Let’s see how much deeper you can dig yourself in here,” Kelly said. “What you’re telling me is, it’s all a question of impulse control. You can have the impulse, but as long as you don’t do anything about it, you’re golden.”
After some thought, Colin cautiously nodded. “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’m saying. An awful lot of policework is catching the jerks who go ahead and do the first thing that pops into their heads. If they’d stop for five seconds to wonder what happened next, half the cops in the country’d be out of work. But they don’t. Chances are, they can’t.”
Marshall made vague waving motions. “Listen, guys, I gotta go give the gown back and get my receipt for it. See you in a few.” He headed off towards an exit already crowded with new graduates. Eyeing that crowd, Colin suspected returning the gown would take more than a few. Waiting till tomorrow, though, would bring on a fee. The University of California system missed few tricks when it came to revenue enhancement.
The UC system did let you keep your mortarboard and tassel. Colin prayed such untrammeled generosity wouldn’t bankrupt it.
In due course, Marshall made it back. He was usually the most even-tempered of Colin’s children, even when he wasn’t stoned. Now, though, he looked and sounded irked. “Boy, that was fun,” he muttered darkly.
“I bet,” Colin said.
“Sure looks like they could’ve organized it better,” Kelly said. A beat later, she corrected herself: “Sure looks like they could’ve organized it.”
“There you go!” Marshall said. He turned to his father and spoke in serious tones: “You should keep this one.”
“That’d be nice.” Colin could hardly have sounded dryer. All the same, he was most sincere. He wasn’t sure how he’d survived one divorce. If he had to try to survive two. . He shivered as if a goose had just walked over his grave. An awful lot of cops’ marriages failed. That was one reason why eating your gun was an occupational hazard of the trade.
“I think so, too,” Kelly said pointedly, and took his hand. Colin didn’t need to worry about things falling apart right this minute, so he didn’t.
“Where do we go now?” Marshall asked. He’d got done with college at long, long last. Too much to hope for to expect him to have any real notion of what came next.
“Well, I got us reservations for the China Pavilion, but they aren’t till six,” Colin answered. “We have some time to kill first.”
“You did? How?” Marshall, cool Marshall, actually seemed impressed. The China Pavilion was downtown Santa Barbara’s best Chinese restaurant, and the race wasn’t even close. The place was always jammed.
“I’ll tell you how-I did it three months ago, as soon as I was sure you really would get your sheepskin,” Colin replied. Marshall just gaped. Advance planning was almost as alien to him as it was to a drive-by shooter with a head full of crack.
To use up the afternoon, they went to the Santa Barbara Zoo. It wasn’t the kind of place that would drive the San Diego Zoo or even the one in Los Angeles out of business any time soon. It was small and funky: one of FDR’s swarm of WPA projects. Nobody nowadays would built a zoo like this, but nobody in the 1930s had worried about that. Animals prowled or dozed in concrete enclosures. Peanut shells littered the walkways (the signs at the concession stands warning about peanut allergy were relatively new, though). You weren’t supposed to toss the monkeys peanuts, but people did anyhow. Colin thought it was terrific.
When they got to the China Pavilion just before six, it was as crowded as usual. More crowded than usual, in fact: along with prosperous locals (almost a redundancy if you weren’t going to school here-prices knocked the China Pavilion out of most starving students’ price range), the restaurant was full of parents celebrating with their kids.
Sure enough, though, the receptionist ran a perfectly manicured finger down her list and nodded. “Yes, your table is waiting, Mr. Ferguson. Please come this way.” She grabbed menus and led Colin, Kelly, and Marshall to a table by the window. “Is this all right?”
“Couldn’t be better,” Colin said.
“Someone will be along to take your drink orders soon.” The receptionist swayed back to her station.
Colin asked for Laphroaig over ice. Kelly and Marshall both chose Tsingtaos. If you were going to drink beer with Chinese food, why not Chinese beer? And the brewery in Tsingtao dated from the days before the First World War, when the Germans ran the town. Say what you wanted about Germans, but they knew how to make beer.
Marshall eyed the menu with astonished respect. “Boy, this place is even more expensive than I remembered,” he said, and looked a question at his father.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not like you graduate every day,” Colin said. For quite a while there, it hadn’t been as if Marshall graduated
A waiter-a Hispanic guy, like most people in his line of work in Southern California-brought the drinks. “You folks ready to order dinner yet?”
“I think so,” Colin answered. Courses revolved around crab and duck. Marshall grinned in anticipation. His old man hadn’t been kidding about ignoring the cost for a night. After the waiter hustled off to the kitchen, Colin said, “This is why God made plastic.”
His son and his new wife snorted on almost identical notes. “Aliens must have grabbed hold of your brain, Dad,” Marshall said. “That can’t be you talking.”
Colin was the kind who paid off his credit card balance in full every month. Except for his mortgage, he owed nobody in the world a dime-and he’d lived in his house long enough that he wasn’t far from waving bye-bye to the mortgage, too. Even when he was going through his divorce, he’d paid the lawyers on time. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d done it.
Like a bear bedeviled by mosquitoes, he shook his big, square head. He didn’t want to remember the divorce now, not while he was out having a good time with Kelly. But he couldn’t very well forget it, not when he saw Louise’s face every time he looked at Marshall. How much of life was rolling with the difference between what you wanted and what you got? A hell of a big chunk, for sure.
Then the food came. He couldn’t imagine a better, or a more delicious, amnesia inducer. No, he couldn’t afford to do this every day, or even very often. All the more reason to enjoy it when he could.
He’d reached blissfully overloaded nirvana when Kelly touched his hand. “Look outside,” she said softly. “It’s raining.”
It never rained in June in Southern California. Sure as hell, though, the sidewalk and the street out there glistened with water. Cars went by with their wipers and lights on. He couldn’t forget about his divorce. The supervolcano insisted on being remembered, too.
II
In the Year Without a Summer, back two centuries ago now, it had snowed in Maine in June. As a matter of fact, it had snowed in June as far south as Pennsylvania. Rob Ferguson knew more about the Year Without a
