– My dad killed himself in one of the more deliberate and grotesque manners imaginable and I'm laughing about it with one of the guys I'm paying to clean his brains off the wall. I'm doing great.
I turned and leaned my back on the deck rail and shrugged.
– Well, as long as you're OK then.
She smiled.
– Totally inappropriate.
– At least he left a note.
I didn't say anything, too occupied at the moment with working my Scotch-Brite pad over the speckles of blood on the surface of her dad's desk.
She picked another almond from the large bowl of them on the table next to the wingback chair near the hallway door.
– I mean, I knew he was sick. But. But I'm glad he left the note anyway. So I know for sure why he did it. Sort of.
She dropped the almond back in the bowl, picked out another.
– You think anyone would lie about that? I mean, no one would lie on their suicide note, would they?
I replaced the lamp I'd taken from the desk, minus the silk shade that had been sprayed, and looked over at her.
– You want to be a little more enigmatic with your questions? Seriously, if you try a little harder I might get curious or something.
She studied the almond between her fingers, rotating it.
– No. I don't mean anything. He was sick. He was going to die. Soon. Painfully. I know why he did it. I just never read a suicide note before. It made me wonder. I guess. But no. It all makes sense.
I adjusted the silver pen-and-pencil set on the desk and lined it up with the antique in-and-out box and an absurdly detailed model of a freight vessel, its deck stacked with tiny cargo containers, Chinese characters on their sides.
She tossed the almond in her mouth and chewed.
– Makes sense as only a person making their head explode can make sense, I mean.
I walked to the section of bookcase that was in line with the open bathroom door.
– He had some nice books.
She watched me.
– Yeah. He loved his books. Well, he loved having a den with lots of books on the walls anyway. He never actually read them. He loved how they looked, but if it wasn't business-related or on the topic of fishing, Dad didn't have time to read much.
She dropped her voice an octave.
–
She brushed curly dark hair from her forehead, bit her lip.
– Is that bad, that it kind of makes sense to me? What he did? Should I be worried?
I misted the spines of the books and watched white speckles appear over dozens of them.
– Fuck do I know. I just work here.
– Right, I forgot, you're the retard who doesn't know how to say the right thing.
She picked up another almond, moved it toward her mouth, stopped.
– Should I be eating these things?
I looked at the bowl of nuts, well out of line with the bathroom door.
– Urn. Truth?
– No, lie to me, that would make me feel so much better.
I wiped my cheek on my shoulder.
– I doubt they could get hit with anything over there.
She started to put the nut in her mouth.
I turned back to the bookcase.
– But then again, this is my second day on the job and I'm the same lame fucker who made fun of how your dad wasted himself. So you might not want to listen to someone so clearly retarded.
She dropped the nut back in the bowl.
– Yeah, you got a point.
She got off the chair and walked over to me and looked at the books.
I misted them again and she reached out and touched the tip of her finger to a white spot that had appeared on a photograph on one of the shelves: a sunburned man with a thick moustache, large arms and shoulders, standing on a dock next to a striped marlin, well over 200 pounds, hanging from a tackle rig.
– Damnit. Goddamn it.
– What the fuck are you doing?
I helped Po Sin muscle the bagged and gutted mattress down the hall to the front door.
– Working.
He stopped, pausing in front of the door that led into the den, watching the girl as she took several books down from the shelves and boxed them.
– Looks to me like
He looked at me again, shook his head, and backed toward the front door and out into the sun.
We leaned the mattress against the van and I pointed back at the house.
– She wanted to go through them herself. She said she didn't want to keep the fabric-covered ones because she could see some of the marks.
Po Sin rested his ass in the open back door of the van and it dropped on its shocks.
– Fuck
I raised my hands over my head.
– You said talk to her!
– I said apologize, I didn't say engage in a damn
– She wanted to talk, man. What am I supposed to say?
Po Sin turned his head and looked through the ranked cedars to the clogged traffic on the PCH.
– Gonna take forever to get home.
I kicked a rock.
– Yeah.
He pushed himself up, the van bounced, free of ballast.
– Giving a fuck, Web, that's not exactly the MO you've been working under for some time now.
I watched traffic.
Po Sin watched it, too.
– And people in her situation, they are prone to acting in ways they would not under normal circumstances. Start doing shit like talking to the help about their personal tragedies. Situation like that can become quickly awkward. People can all of a sudden realize they are not acting like themselves and freak out on everyone around them. And people employed to eliminate evidence that their loved ones ever existed can make attractive targets when they lash out. And that can make the job much more difficult than it needs to be. And this is my livelihood here. My business that I built from the ground up. And I don't need to have it getting all fucked up because some shell-shocked young woman mistakes your disinterest in pretty much anything for some kind of blase charm, and ends up getting more deeply injured than she already is and has an inevitable emotional detonation and refuses to pay her fucking bill. I have enough problems, thank you.
– Don't worry, I know he's a disaffected asshole. No danger of me getting sucked into his emotional black hole or anything.
We turned from the traffic.
