ANDY BECKER CRUNCHED along a gravel walkway toward one of the guesthouses behind Big Red in Bluebird Canyon.
Wednesday, a week after Janelle Vonn in the SunBlesst packinghouse. Light breeze, warm in the sun but cool in the shade. Seagulls crying over the beach. A hawk in the canyon pivoting just ahead of its own shadow, a flash of sun on its wings. Smell of ocean and sage and marijuana smoke.
The weather-beaten slat cottage sat at the far end of a mostly brown lawn. One of three, all similar. Wood silvered by the sun. Roof shingles warped. Stained-glass windows-hummingbirds and flowers. Small stands of plantain and giant bird-of-paradise for privacy. Beyond them rough hills sloping into the sharp blue Pacific.
Andy was about to knock when the cottage door slapped open. The window glass rattled. A young woman, batik sheet around her and nothing else, marched past, never looked at him. Bare feet on the gravel, orange hair flying, headed for the main house. Andy looked back at the girl and the big slouching home, barn red in the clear morning light. Big Red, all right. Paint peeling, blankets for curtains. Rain gutters askew.
Jesse Black stood in the cottage doorway. Hair a mess, jeans slung low and loose, a red plaid flannel shirt hanging out.
“I’m the writer,” said Andy. “Thanks for meeting.”
“You were at the ’Piper last Thursday,” he said.
Andy offered his hand and Black lightly knocked his fist against it. Black looked past him toward Big Red, then back at Andy. His eyes were dark and lively. Dark stubble on a pale chin.
“Come on in.”
Andy stepped through the narrow door into a tiny living room with a small couch. Throw rugs and beanbags. To the left a galley-sized kitchen. Sink and refrigerator and small counter. Cupboards and a window. Down a very short hallway Andy could see another room and what looked like the foot of a bed.
But mostly what he saw were instruments. The well-used Martin with the pickup over the sound hole leaned in one corner. An old f-hole Epiphone and a small amplifier in another. A white Stratocaster sitting upright on the couch. Beside the couch a Sears Silvertone electric with the amp built into the case. A ukulele stood beneath a window facing north up the coast. Maracas. A tambourine. Two recorders and a harmonica on the kitchen counter next to a plastic bag half full of grass and rolling papers.
“Busted,” Jesse said without interest.
“I’m cool.”
“I didn’t have that out when your brother was around. The whole compound was under FPA.”
Andy waited.
“Full Pig Alert,” said Jesse. Didn’t smile but his eyes did.
“That’s halfway funny,” said Andy. “It’s the cartoons of pigs dressed like cops getting shot and stabbed that bug me. Because he’s my brother.”
“Yeah, it’s all bullshit. One side against the other.”
Black motioned to the couch. Took the Strat and plunked himself onto a bright yellow beanbag. “I don’t get why you want to talk to me. Your articles about her already came out.”
“I’m interested for myself,” said Andy.
“You mean for a book or screenplay?”
“No. For me. I liked her. I’d known her since I was twelve. I mean, never well, but still…”
Black strummed the electric. Unplugged, it made a distant sweet sound like it was underwater. “She talked about you. You wrote the obit for her mother. She showed it to me. It was more than just an obituary, though. You got the mother’s misery. But you knew the difference between pathos and tragedy. I grooved on it.”
“Thank you. Most people don’t recognize the difference.”
“And you wrote that thing about her family. Now that was awesome. Got the stupid animal brothers and the innocence of Janelle and her sister. Changed the names and places, but you got the truth of it down. A lot of people knew it was her.”
“Not everybody,” said Andy. “But, yeah. A lot of people.”
“People wanted to help her after that.”
Black strummed a change that Andy recognized from the Sandpiper set last Thursday night. “Smoke?”
“Sure.”
Black set the guitar down and went to the kitchen counter. “This sinsemilla is dynamite.”
“I’ve heard about it. You and Janelle smoke a lot?”
“No. She liked acid. Leary turned her on to a dose of genuine Sandoz and she took to it. Not every day. Maybe once a week. Liked a little tequila, too.”
Black rolled a joint in less than a minute. Tight, slender, and filled all the way to the ends. Torched it with a Bic. A sweet green smell and Andy felt the smoke fill his lungs and the instant tilt of his senses.
“Those were good songs at the Sandpiper,” said Andy. “Even without knowing Janelle I would have liked them.”
“Outtasight.”
“‘Imagine You’ blew me away.”
“Came in a rush. Wrote it in a couple of days. Right after I heard.”
They passed the joint in silence. Finished half and let it go out. Jesse cranked open a hummingbird stained-glass window. Took the Stratocaster and sat back in the yellow beanbag.
Andy looked north out a clear window to Main Beach and the lifeguard stand and the boardwalk. Waves lazy on the sand. A vulture shot across the sky startlingly close to the window. Could have reached out and touched him.
The door slammed open and the orange-haired girl swept in. Sheet still clinched around her with one hand and a beer in the other. Had to put down the beer to get the roach to her lips, the lighter to her sheet hand, and walk back out. Not a glance at either of them.
“Crystal,” said Jesse.
“Bummin’.”
Jesse shrugged. “She’s a good keyboardist. Kind of possessive, though.”
Andy could see the vulture, smaller now, framed in the window of sky. “I saw her. Janelle. After it happened.”
“I’m glad I didn’t.”
Andy felt his heartbeat echoing in his eardrums. Same thing every time, first few minutes of a high. The sinsemilla was stronger than any he’d ever had before.
“I’m not sure why I put myself through it,” said Andy.
“I’ve tried not to picture her that way,” said Black. “It’s bad enough to see that kind of thing in a book or something. But if it’s someone you loved, almost impossible.”
“The first time I saw her was by that packinghouse. This was, man, fourteen years ago. Something like that.”
“The fight.”
“The rumble. After it was over her sister ran down the embankment with rocks in both hands and threw them at us ’cause we’d just wailed on her brothers. Then Janelle, she was maybe like four or five, she’s got these two oranges and she’s going to throw them but she changes her mind. Blue dress and cowboy boots. Looks at us, drops the oranges, says something about her brothers, and runs away.”
Jesse was picking now, a muted aquatic twang when he pushed the tremolo bar. “First time I saw her was at the ’Piper. Playing a set on a dead Sunday evening. In she walks with some girlfriends. I played straight to her for the next hour. Directly to her. Forgot to take my break. Just her and me in that room. I sat with her and her friends after. They bought me drinks. I was freakin’ in love with her by midnight. Still am.”
At the same time, Andy and Black both leaned over and pulled small beaten notebooks from their pant pockets.
Black saw what Andy had done, dropped the notebook in his lap, and picked the Twilight Zone intro on his high E string.
Andy smiled and made a note of Jesse forgetting his break the first time he played for Janelle. Pot made you pay attention to the small things. All immediately fascinating. Most pointless.
“What did you write?” Andy asked.
“I wrote ‘in love with her by midnight.’ It came with this A-minor riff. A lot of stuff I write in Laguna does. I think it has something to do with the ocean, or maybe the hawks. Or maybe this dope I get from Ronnie Joe. Listen.”
He strummed some chords and sang “in love with her by midnight” in a melody over them. Then again, but a different melody. Then another one. Andy was amazed anyone could do that, just invent three different melodies in thirty seconds. Black was full of music like Andy was full of words.
“What part of the song is it?” he asked.
“Who knows? Chorus, maybe. You know, hook line for the radio. Sing it loud enough to hear in a car. What did you write down?”
“You, forgetting your break when you first saw Janelle.”
“I wanted to sing my way right into her pants.”
“Guess you did.”
“Later, yeah.” Black played the A-minor riff again, looking through a stained-glass window back toward Big Red. “I wasn’t alone there. In her pants.”
“No?”
“No. I told her she was free. I meant it. She had a dude. She’d been hooked up with him awhile, and I think it was a long while. Hardly talked about him. Never told me his name. Never told me what he did or what he looked like or anything. The only time she even mentioned him was if she couldn’t be with me. Once a week. Maybe twice. Then we’d be together three straight weeks and it was like there was no other guy. Then, well…she’d have to go.”
“Go for how long?”
“An evening,” said Black. “Sometimes part of a weekend day. She’d come up here after she was done. She’d be quiet. Not unhappy, really. But subdued. Still.”
“Numb?”
“Maybe,” said Jesse. “But not stoned. Not drunk. Just…calm.”
“You never saw him?”
“No. Never asked. Never followed her. Not my thing. People are free, you know? Free as they want to be.”
“Maybe she wanted to be less free,” said Andy.
“I don’t think so. She had a thing with Cory, too. He’s a bro. It was good karma for all of us. Least we thought it was.”
“She didn’t want limits and rules and security?”
“Not Janelle.”
Jesse plucked the opening notes of “Pretty Woman.”
“She was pregnant,” he said.
Andy’s heart dropped and flipped. Damned pot was bad enough, but then this ton of information. “Who was the father?”
“She didn’t know,” Black said quietly. “Maybe me. Maybe the mystery dude. Maybe Cory Bonnett. She was scheduled for an abortion on Friday afternoon. I was going to take her in.”
Andy’s heart rushing in his ears again. He remembered Meredith and him at the clinic in Santa Ana. Dr. Degaus Delineus. Suction. Over fast, but Meredith white and weak for hours. Dazed for days. Empty and distracted and tearful for weeks. So long to get over it. And he too foolish and young to understand what she was going through. What it meant to her body and her soul. What it meant that he hadn’t asked her to marry him and have the child. Andy felt the spiraling descent of regret long avoided. Not that he should have married her. Not that she should have had the child. But that he should have known. Known what she was going through. Known what it meant. Known what it was like.
No, not what it was like-what it was.
He looked out the window. Felt like a small pale child being tossed back and forth by the gods through a dark and violent sky. The damned pot could clobber you with the past if you didn’t look out. It would change your memories. Or change your version of them. Their shape. The revised history would slide right in and you’d think it had been true all along.
“She was going to have dinner with your brother the night she died,” said Jesse. “Your other brother, the minister.”
“David? No way, man.”
“David and a friend of hers named Howard. I never met Howard. I talked to David a few times, though. He came to one of my gigs. He and Janelle were really tight. I don’t know if it ever went off, the dinner. But that’s what she told me she was going to do.”
“Were you invited?”
“No. After that, she was off to see the other guy. Mr. Mystery Man. To tell him what was growing inside her and what she was going to do to it.”
Andy stood and went to the window. Drew in some cool sea air. Felt his nerves settle. Like the hackles of a dog going back down.
“What did Janelle do for money?” he asked.
“Modeling.”
“How often?”
“In the year I knew her I think she went out on one or two shoots,” said Jesse. “Up in L.A. Gleason/Marx Agency.”
“You don’t make a year’s worth of food and rent in two shoots. She had a car?”
“Nice little VW. Powder blue. Just a year old.”
Powder blue, thought Andy. The marijuana plucked him out of the guest cottage and set him down in the packinghouse. Light slanting through the wallboards. Wind huffing outside, shaking the metal roof. Pigeons rustling in the smell of old wood and creosote.
Powder blue sweater.
Black-red around the empty neck.
Janelle’s legs faint blue, too.
Unholy shit.
“She making payments on the car?” Andy asked absently. Hard to get his head back into this moment. Like a record skipping, taking him back, taking him back, taking him back…
“Free and clear,” said Jesse.
“How did she buy a new car?”
Jesse shrugged. “She had cash coming in, but I don’t know how or why. She didn’t offer and I didn’t press. She had some nice things. And she was generous. Bought me this. It was used, but it’s a fine instrument.”
Jesse ran his fingers over the strings of the white Stratocaster.
Andy wondered at the shattered complexity of Janelle Vonn’s life. Felt like every new thing he learned about her made her less understandable.
“You told my brother Nick all this, I take it.”
“Hell no,” said Jesse. “Not the pregnancy or abortion. Not the dude she was with. Not the dinner with the reverend. None of that.”
“Well, why not?”
“I don’t have a problem with the truth, but I do have a problem with who I tell it to. I don’t dig the pigs. Sorry your bro is one of ’em, but I have my reasons. I didn’t tell him, so I’m telling you.”
Then a light knock on the door and Jesse said, “Come in.” A young blond woman put her head inside, smiled at Jesse. “Hi, Jess.”
“Gail. Come on in.”
“You sure it’s okay?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
She giggled and came in, still smiling. Denim jacket with a bright rainbow embroidered on a pocket flap. Flannel shirt and jeans with big holes in the knees. Suntanned kneecaps, bare feet. A toe ring. Round face, smooth straight hair past her shoulders. Skin like milk chocolate.
“This is Andy.”
“Peace, Andy,” she said. “Hey, Jess, I got some knockout sinsemilla from Ronnie Joe.”
“Roll one up.”
“Already did. And Dr. T. said there’s a thousand hits of Orange Sunshine on their way to Laguna.”
“You might not want to talk about that right now,” said Jesse. A mildly amused glance at Andy. “This guy here, he’ll put it in the paper. Or worse.”
Gail lit the joint and offered it to Andy.
“No thanks. See you at the funeral, Jesse.”
“Later, bro.”
JANELLE VONN’S casket was a deeply burnished Honduran mahogany with gold hardware. It was draped with one large arrangement of white roses. The coffin stand legs were solid with more white roses, as were the cross behind the pulpit, the altar, and the railing. Andy smelled the flowers the moment he walked inside the Grove Drive-In Church of God.
David eulogized Janelle to an overcapacity crowd. Even the folding chairs weren’t enough. His words were brief and powerful.
Andy listened to his brother. Heard the radiant strength in David’s voice. What a gift. Wondered if David had made it over to Janelle’s for dinner with her and Howard. Not what David would want widely known. But it would be an interesting moment when he asked David that question. If he’d had dinner with Janelle that night, then David would certainly have told Nick already. It was probably old news. Would be nice to have been cc’d on that one, Andy thought. Not that he could do anything with it.
But Nick’s mind would surely blow when he learned what Andy had learned. Mystery lover. Pregnant. Unless that was old news, too. The autopsy would reveal some of it.
Jesse Black performed “Girl of the North Country ” and “Imagine You.” The music was dreamy and pure and you could hear the crowd breathing. Then sniffing back tears. The audience wasn’t sure whether to clap, but when the applause began it mounted quickly and ran long. Black nodded once and walked out a front exit with wholesome Gail and orange-haired Crystal trailing behind him.
Andy sat with Teresa on his left and Nick on his right. As he looked around, what struck him most and hardest was how few of these people had even met her. She was a celebrity in death that she’d never been in life. An event. A symbol. An entertainment.
Journal stand sales had gone up 162 percent over the five days following her death, peaking with the Wolfman profile on Saturday. Subscriptions up, too. The Journal had capitalized. Janelle Vonn and related stories had run above the fold, right up there with Johnson and the war and the Russians and the space program. Display advertising orders had increased 26 percent, most of them for first-section placement, where the Janelle stories ran. The Times and the Register numbers were up, too, but not like the Journal’s.
So, they had given the people what they wanted. They’d kicked ass. Andy had kicked most of it himself. And here they were, all those people, asses kicked and showing up at a funeral for someone they never knew. Because of his words on a page. And a picture of a schizophrenic with a hairy hand.
But if he hadn’t served up Janelle piping hot and fresh for them each day, someone else would have. Andy shook his head and looked down at his church shoes.
When it was over they joined the throng moving outside to their cars for the short drive to Angel’s Lawn and the grave.
Andy watched in numb silence as they lowered Janelle’s coffin into the hole. Only later, while he stood alone by Clay’s grave under a leafless sycamore, did the tears come heavy and hot.
THE BECKER family home stood pale against the trees in the cool October night. Andy parked next to David’s blue Kingswood Estate station wagon. Behind Roger and Marie Stoltz’s new white Cadillac. Nick wouldn’t be there, which was fine with Andy.
It wasn’t until after dinner that he got David alone in the study, closed the door. David was pale. He plopped into Max’s big leather club chair. When David’s strength left him it was like a house of cards collapsing. Andy poured a couple of ample scotches from Max’s library bar, skipped the ice and water.
David mostly nodded his confirmation of Jesse Black’s story. Yes, Janelle had a secret man. No, David had no idea who he was or what they did. Yes, she was pregnant and planning to abort. No, Janelle really didn’t know who the father was.
Of course he’d told Nick all of this.
“Did you see her that last night?” asked Andy.
David sipped the drink. Looked at Andy with a level expression. “We were going to have dinner,” he said. “But Janelle changed her mind on Monday. Canceled.”
“Nick know about this?”
“If Jesse told you, he must have told Nick. I haven’t.”
“Why?”
David looked down, scuffed the old wool rug with the toe of his wing tip. Drank again. “I don’t want it known, unless it would help in some way. I don’t think it would put me in a good light.”
“Why?”
“Think hard, Andrew.”
“Proximity.”
“That’s all it takes. In my…calling.”
“Was Barbara invited to the dinner, too?”
“Of course she was. See, Andy, that’s what I mean. All I’m going to get from that broken dinner date is suspicion and innuendo. I don’t need it.”
“Who’s Howard?”
“Langton. Janelle’s friend. She lived with his family after they busted her brothers and you wrote that article. And yes, just so you know, Howard’s wife, Linda, was also on the invite list. In fact, the four of us had had dinner two or three times with Janelle and a date.”
“Why’d she cancel?”
“She didn’t give a reason.” David leaned back. Closed his eyes. Twirled his drink glass, then set it on his thigh.
“What did she do for money?” asked Andy.
A faint shake of his head. “I don’t know, Andy. Am I supposed to know everything you need for an article? Come on.”
“Amazing,” said Andy.
“What?”
“That you could be her minister for so long and know so little about her. That I could write probably ten articles about her over the years and know so little about her. That Jesse Black could hang with her for almost a year and know so little about her.”
“She only gave what was asked for.”
“Why?”
“Because so much had been taken.”
“And there wasn’t much left?”
“I think there was a great deal left. A great deal. She just hadn’t learned yet that the more you give away the more you have.”
David pulled himself upright and walked out of the room. Andy poured another scotch. Could hear David saying his goodbyes.
HIS PARENTS and the Stoltzes were in the darkened living room watching the late news. Andy sat on the sofa between Max and Monika. Noted that Roger and Marie Stoltz got the good recliners closer to the TV. His father’s blue and his mother’s white. And it wasn’t just because Stoltz was a United States representative now. Andy remembered that Thanksgiving so long ago, the first night he’d made love with Meredith. The Stoltzes sat right where they are now, he thought, holding court.
The day’s American casualties in Vietnam were a reported twenty-two dead. Total for September was five hundred and thirty-nine. For the “conflict” it was eighteen thousand four hundred and eight. Enemy dead today was twenty-six. President Johnson said American resolve would not waver and would never break. Two newscasters discussed the logic of destroying a village in order to save it. Then a commercial for new Oreos with creamier filling.
“Eighteen thousand four hundred and eight,” said Max. “Americans. Roger, you mean to tell me that a strategic nuclear bomb on Hanoi wouldn’t end this war slick as a whistle?”
“Moscow would strike back.”
“Then bomb Moscow, too! It’s Kalashnikovs that are killing our boys.”
“We all know that,” said Stoltz. “And rhetorically that’s an interesting stance. Practically, it will never happen.”
“You’re right,” said Max. “I thought Dick Nixon would run on that plank if anyone would. But no. He doesn’t have the balls for it.”
“He’s got to get into office first,” said Stoltz. “Look what happened to Goldwater.”
“Dick will win it this time,” said Marie.
“Roger,” said Monika. “I’m just glad you’re our man in Washington now. Keep up the good fight.” She smiled. Big and beautiful. And a rarity, thought Andy.
Stoltz smiled, too. “Business has never been better since Max and Marie started running it.”
Andy felt his anger rise at Stoltz. Automatic. Always had been. But it wasn’t for anything he could ever put a finger on. Maybe his voice, his easy sincerity. His casually handsome face, the dumb/dashing aviator’s mustache. Maybe something to do with the way Stoltz got Clay into the language institute, then the CIA, then killed. Or how he got David into Anaheim First Presbyterian right out of San Anselmo’s, when there were so many extra ministers waiting. Or arranged the congratulations letter from Nixon when Nick graduated from the Sheriff’s Academy. Or put Andy’s disillusioned and heartbroken father to work at his goddamned chemical plant while the representative spent half his time swilling at the public trough in D.C.
And made his mother smile.
It annoyed Andy that Stoltz had infiltrated his family. Just like Stoltz brayed about the Commies infiltrating his government. The International Stoltz Conspiracy.
“I heard you got some more contracts for Orange Sunshine,” said Andy.
“That’s right,” said Stoltz. “Last month your father and Marie nailed down San Bernardino County. Thousands of miles of asphalt to clean. And they’re paving thousands more.”
“That’ll take a lot of rotten oranges.”
“More of those to come, too.”
“I liked it better when Orange County had orange trees instead of bulldozed groves,” said Andy. “When people like Max Becker had good work. When my mom used to smile.”
“Enough, Andy,” she said.
Stoltz nodded. “He’s right. I hate to see the groves go, too, Andy. But people need somewhere to live. And the Florida oranges are just as good for juice. At least we’re using the last of the fruit.”
“America will fall like overripe fruit into our hands,” said Max.
“You watch, you’ll see,” said Stoltz.
“Satan’s hands,” said Monika.
“Every Soviet prediction since nineteen-seventeen has come true,” said Marie.
Andy stood, kissed his rigid mother, and ran a hand over his father’s shoulder. Nodded to Marie. Shook Stoltz’s hand, saw the scratches and a scab just below the thumb when he let go.
“You people are all crazy,” Andy said, and walked out.