She giggles. “Yeah.”
We go on talking like that—her pleading with me to come be with her.
“You’d love it up here,” she says in a whisper. “This place will change your whole life. You’ll come to know how big God’s heart is for you. He loves you so much. He loves us both so much. That’s why he’s brought us together. That’s why he’s shown himself to us. He wants you to come find him here. I know that’s what he wants. He is speaking to you. He has chosen you to do his work for him. But first you must come here to learn how to open yourself up to his light and his grace. They can teach you how to best serve God here. They can teach you how to interpret his word. And then you’ll be able to go out into the world and accomplish everything that I know you’re capable of.”
“No,” I say slowly, my eyes squinting to block out the setting sun.
For the first time I’m suddenly aware that it’s almost night, so I should be getting back soon. But, still, I keep talking, pulling Tallulah away from a McDonald’s wrapper she’s busy licking off the sidewalk.
“No,” I continue, my voice sounding oddly foreign. “No, I don’t want to go out into the world. I just want to be with you.”
She giggles again. “Well, I’ll be with you of course, silly. I’ll go anywhere with you.”
I smile.
“I feel so much love for you,” I tell her.
She answers without pausing or anything. “I feel so much love for you, too, silly.”
We go on talking a little while as the sun falls lower and lower into the ocean, oranges and pinks and purples blossoming in rows like flower beds sprawling across the horizon.
I can see the world now.
It is coming through bright and sharp and clear.
It is a gift—all of it.
“Of course I’ll come up,” I tell her. “I’ll rent a car and just say I’m going to go visit my family in San Francisco. I’ll come this weekend. It’ll be perfect. You’ll be able to meet Tallulah.”
She laughs/giggles/sighs.
“Yes, okay, perfect. I’ll get someone to cover my shift on Sunday, and I can take you up to Mount Shasta with your dog. It’ll be so beautiful.”
I feel her body against mine.
We breathe together.
We go on talking about our plans.
We go on talking until the sun has disappeared over the water, and the fading glow is cold and colorless.
We could go on like this all night.
But then someone’s calling my name, and I turn sort of instinctively, my stomach lurching into my throat like I’ve just been caught.
I look kind of frantically all around me.
“Nic, man… Nic Sheff, hey, man, where the hell you been?”
He’s standing right in front of me now.
I breathe all the tightness out of me. I mean, it’s no big deal. It’s just John, this pot dealer/musician guy I haven’t seen since I was dating Zelda.
“Hey, Fallon,” I whisper into the phone. “Let me call you back, okay? I just ran into this old friend of mine.”
I hang up, and then John gives me a kind of handshake-palm slap-finger snap thing.
“What’s up, man?” he says, sounding as much like a surfer-stoner as ever. “You haven’t been around in years. Where you been hiding, man, Reseda?”
I laugh, studying his sun-creased face and scraggly blond beard and the large straw hat pulled down over his eyes. Honestly, I was never really that close with him or anything, but he definitely had a hookup for some of the best weed I’d ever had.
We talk shit for a couple minutes before I hint at the real reason I’m excited to have run into him.
He smiles real big when he’s talking about herb. His bleached white teeth sparkle in the fading light.
“Ah, man, hell yeah, I can help you out. I get my shit from the dispensary now. Check it out, blueberry and mango, shit’s far-out.”
From his bag he pulls out two jars labeled like prescription bottles, handing ’em over to me one at a time.
“Smell ’em,” he says.
He doesn’t have to ask me twice.
“Man,” I tell him, “that’s crazy. It totally smells like blueberries.”
And that’s the truth, it totally does. The white crystals look like stardust sprinkled across the deep green and purple buds.
The other jar smells like mango.
And the shit looks so good. I mean, like it’s not even comparable to that nasty-ass dirt weed I was getting in South Carolina.
“Hell, I’ll take ’em both,” I say. “You wanna come with me to an ATM?”
He agrees, and so we walk over there together, Tallulah growling at him whenever he tries to get too close to her.
I light a cigarette and hand one to John, not really listening to his stories about everything that’s been going on with him.
Mostly I just keep thinking about how perfect it all is.
I mean, God is so good, right?
Mango and blueberry weed.
This beautiful, spiritual girl waiting for me up in Redding.
My life unfolding perfectly in front of me.
“Thank you, God,” I whisper aloud. “Thank you so much.”
John smiles back at me.
“That’s right, man, that’s right. It’s about time you figured that shit out.”
I smile back.
It’s a good fucking life, for sure.
Ch.32
Zelda’s text message told me to meet her at, as she jokingly put it, “the scene of the crime”—the Barnes & Noble on Westwood Boulevard where I used to come see her many, many years ago when we first met, the two of us hanging out after her outpatient group that was just around the corner. There’s something that cuts deep into me about the way she said that. I guess it just reminded me of how goddamn clever and funny she is. I’d forgotten that. I mean, there was obviously a reason I
