It was eight-thirty when I pulled into my driveway and parked my busted Acura in the carport next to Alexa's rented BMW. I knew her car was still at the Venice Auto Body Shop for repair because the fender guy called the house about a parts problem and I happened to pick up the phone.
Alexa still hadn't mentioned that she crashed her car and that really bothered me, but if I brought it up, I knew it would trigger another argument.
Inside I found Alexa at the desk in the alcove closet we'd converted into her home office. She had papers strewn everywhere. I'd never seen her work space in such disarray. The old Alexa was organized. This new one could never seem to find anything.
'Hi,' I said as I entered.
'I wish you wouldn't move things on my desk, Shane. I had all this stuff exactly where I needed it. Now I can't find anything.'
'Alright,' I said. 'I'm sorry.'
I hadn't touched her desk, but I didn't want to fight about that, either. I went into the bedroom and changed from my black gunfighter's outfit into jeans and an old LAPD sweatshirt.
Then I got a beer and headed outside to the backyard for some perspective.
I was sitting out there trying to sort through everything, when Alexa came out and put a hesitant hand on my shoulder.
'I'm sorry.'
'It's okay.'
'You didn't move anything on my desk, did you?'
'No, ma'am.'
She rubbed my neck for a minute, then came and sat beside me. 'I can't organize my thoughts like I used to. I do things, and half an hour later I find myself doing them again.'
'Honey, it will get better.'
'When? When is it gonna get better? Part of me wants so badly to hold on to this job because I love it, and part of me knows I'm screwing up so badly I don't deserve to be there.'
This was the opening I'd been waiting for, but I wanted to come at it another way. For the moment, I changed the subject and said, 'I got rear-ended on my way home. Gonna have to get the Acura fixed. I was thinking I should take the MDX to Venice Auto Body on Ninth, then go to that rental car place on the corner of Ocean, and get something to drive until it's fixed.'
I saw her stiffen. I already knew the place on Ocean was where she'd rented the replacement BMW. Venice Auto Body was where her car was being repaired. If I went to either of those places, she knew she'd be busted. I held my breath while we sat in silence.
She inhaled deeply. 'Shane, I need to tell you something. That car out there in the garage. It's not mine. It's a rental. I crashed my car, too. The first convulsion happened when I was driving home last week. Nobody got hurt. I hit a tree two blocks from here. That's why I've been using a department driver to chauffeur me.'
I reached out and took her hand. 'I was worried about you driving when you first told me about the convulsions.' 'And you're not mad?' 'Why should I be mad? You couldn't help it.' She thought about that, and then turned to face me. 'You knew already, didn't you?'
Her blue eyes were so beautiful, I was always amazed at the many ways she could look at me-sometimes with childlike innocence, other times with sexual mischief and sometimes, like now, with razor-sharp understanding.
'You knew. I can't believe you knew,' she repeated.
We sat holding hands silently, for a moment.
'And you didn't say anything?'
'No.'
'Why?'
'Because I understood. It wasn't about me, it was about you.' 'I sure hit the jackpot when I found you,' she said, and laid her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her.
We sat like that, feeling a closeness we hadn't felt in a long time.
Then, from out of nowhere, she said, 'I'm sorry I haven't wanted to make love in a while. I know that bothers you.' 'It's okay,' I said, still holding her.
'We could go inside. We could do it now,' she offered tentatively.
'Is that what you want?' I said.
'Not really.' She smiled sadly. 'I'm never quite in the mood anymore.'
'Then we should wait,' I said. 'It's more important that we talk.'
'I used to be so sexual,' she said sadly. 'Nothing feels the same anymore. It's not you.' 'I know.'
'I'll find my way back, Shane.' 'I'll be right here.'
We continued to sit like that for almost an hour, feeling close, feeling sad, feeling strangely different.
Chapter 15
'There were two years, I think it was the fifth grade and half of the sixth, where I stopped being Secada Llevar and became Sally Levitt. I put blond streaks in my hair and tried to become a Valley Girl.' Scout wrinkled her nose and her voice shot up an octave. 'I'm like totally amped for those bodacious dudes. They're the bomb.' She smiled. 'My parents put up with Sally Levitt because they understood how lost I was. I felt so brown. So not part of it. Nobody looked like me. Not my dolls, nobody on my favorite TV shows. I was a bracero' s daughter trying to make it in this mostly white, press-on-nail middle school, so I understand Miguel Iglesia wanting to be Mike Church. A lot of Hispanic kids go through that. I certainly did.'
'Only with him, it's not a stage,' I said.
'That's because he's big and mean enough to force a result. I couldn't hold it. I wasn't Sally Levitt. I didn't understand her. My blonde streaks all turned orange in the YWCA pool. It was a cheesy disguise, and I knew it. Worse still, I saw the disappointment in my parents' eyes, so I moved on. I had to discover who I was and eventually I came to love that person. A happy ending.'
I sat there listening to Secada, thinking about how fragile identities really were. I was forged by loneliness and anger as a boy and then transformed as an adult by a family who loved me. In a millisecond, a bullet had altered Alexa's core, changed who she was and how she thought. It sliced through her mood center, setting in play new thoughts and emotions.
Secada looked over at me and seemed to sense my dark mood. 'What about you? Didn't you ever have an identity crisis as a kid?'
We were parked across the street from Aubrey Wyatt's Bel Air estate, sitting in the front seat of a new maroon Cadillac I'd borrowed from the drug enforcement motor pool. The leather smelled sweet. The gelled paint and polished chrome fit this ritzy neighborhood. It was ten-thirty the same evening. I had left Alexa working at her desk, and Scout and I were half an hour into an unauthorized stakeout.
'My whole upbringing was an identity crisis,' I told her.
'Come on. It couldn't have been that bad.'
'It was what it was. It doesn't help to talk about it.'
We sat in silence. I felt her gaze fix on me.
'I don't blackmail or bite,' she said.
I don't know why I was hesitant to take this next step with her; why I was reluctant to share my personal backstory and feelings. Maybe it was because I knew there was a strong attraction between us. Talking about my childhood, my early fears, was like letting down a fence, and allowing her to come closer. Close enough to see my shortcomings. That act of trust would put her in another category, and it was one I wasn't sure I knew how to deal with. It felt dangerous, yet at the same time, exciting.
'Do you think I'm coming on to you?' she suddenly asked.
'Are you?'
'I don't mess with my partners, especially married partners.'
