They dropped John in front of a little house on Sun Valley Drive a small street off of Laguna Canyon Road, then headed for town to pick up some groceries for their celebration.
He stood there for a while, noting the fresh asphalt under his feet, the ivy choking the Chinese elm in his front yard, the wooden fence he'd built to contain the dogs, the old brick chimney and the forlorn face of the house he had once happily called home. Mrs. Gorman from across the street waved at him uncertainly, focusing on him with her weak eyes as if he were someone returned from the dead. He nodded, walked down the driveway and let himself in through the squeaking gate for the first time in almost five months.
The yard was overgrown, in shambles. Luckily, it was hidden from the neighbors by the ivy-covered fence. The lawn furniture seemed to have sunk into an abyss of weeds. The vegetable garden was profuse with zucchini, and pocked by gopher mounds. A ground squirrel, squash in mouth, hurried away toward the woodpile by the side of the house. The needles of a bristlecone pine lay deep beneath the tree, lashed loosely together by a silk skein of spiderwebs and funnels that shone dustily in the afternoon sun.
John sees Rebecca there, under that tree, sitting in a bead chair with a book open on her lap and her long pale legs stretched into a patch of late December sun.
"Wine?" he asks.
"You," she answers.
John worked the key in a lock gone stubborn with disuse. Finally it turned. Then the familiar clunk of the heavy door sucking inward, and the ambience-aged by absence but intact- reaching out to greet him as he stepped inside. Dust. Heavy air. The smell of loss. Shapes of things still firm in their places, matching perfectly the shapes and places in his memory. Sunlight diffused through the dirt of windowpanes. A potent silence. Home.
"Oh," he muttered.
He gathered up the sheets he'd placed over the couch and chairs, the television and stereo, the coffee table and hearth. The covers were heavy with dust, and so were the things beneath them. John had not known until now that motes were smaller than the weave of cotton. He took the sheets outside and tossed them into the weeds.
He walked back inside, leaving the door open, then went into the kitchen. He opened the blinds and windows. The refrigerator still hummed quietly and John was pleased that he had kept the utilities on. Five months, he thought. In the dining alcove off the kitchen he removed the sheets from the table and chairs, then slid open the glass door that faced the canyon drainage creek and dropped them to the patio. The bricks were buried by the bright orange bracts of an enormous bougainvillea growing beside the house. When the sheets hit, some of the bracts lifted up, then floated down in alternating sideways dips, like tiny magic carpets. And he sees her again on that patio, wrapped in a heavy blue robe he has bought for her visits here, with the rain pouring off the roof shingles on three sides of her, and she smiles at him over a cup of coffee as the steam issues up past her eyes and John thinks, yes, those are the eyes I've waited a lifetime to know.
He straightened the downstairs bathroom a little. The toilet bowl was stained, so he brushed it out with some liquid bleach, flushing twice. For Sharon, he thought.
Then he approached the bedroom. He didn't walk right in, but rather hesitated at the threshold and, leaning over it like an inquiring butler, scanned the room for its familiarities, its memories and heartaches. They were dense in there, too packed and coiled and alive for John Menden to confront just now. He kept seeing Rebecca by the planter in the rain.
"Oh," he muttered again. "Oh."
He sat alone on the upstairs deck and looked over the canyon. Vultures and redtail hawks cruised in the updrafts. From isolated stands of scrub oak, heat waves shimmered up again: the dry hills.
He thought about when he had hiked and camped in this arroyos as a boy, when he had found shards of Gabrieleno pottery, arrowheads and a revolver made in 1844. He still clear! y remembered the mountain lion he had seen in 1960. He recalled with minor pride the tiny night snake he had captured, which local biologists assured him was not found in the region. He wondered if his boxes of 35mm slides down in the garage were still good.
John stared off toward the hills, but in his mind's eye he saw only Rebecca. It was important to be here now, he thought, to touch the same places she had touched, to breathe the air she had once shared.
Just before sunset John uncovered the barbecue, arranged it out by the railing overlooking the street, and lit the charcoal.
Joshua came up with his second gin and tonic, watching closely as John started up the fire. "Want that bottle of tequila now?" he asked.
"Later," said John.
"You almost sunk us with that crack to Evan about hating Wayfarer's guts."
"It worked out okay, Joshua. At least they were my word not something you put in my mouth."
"True. My words would have been about the same."
Joshua pulled deeply on his drink.
Downstairs, Sharon boiled water for rice and made a salad. John could hear her knife strokes on the cutting board. He had always liked the sounds of a woman in his house, and he remembered the ones he had been with in his thirty-four years. It was odd, he thought, that you could love someone but not be able imagine yourself with her for very long. The harder you look ahead, the more your vision blurs.
But when he had met Rebecca Harris, engaged though she was, he easily foresaw her presence in his life. She had simply arrived. Up to that point, John had not believed that destiny was anything more than what you decided to do, but the connection he felt to Rebecca made him reconsider. Rebecca wasn't so much a discovery as a recognition.
He had puzzled over this for many nights, wondering if the circumstances of a man's life could conspire to lead him to the one woman destined to join him. It was a corny idea, or was it? Either way, it had happened.
But how could he possibly explain to this woman what he had found, what he knew? It was like having an album of the world's most beautiful music, and nothing to play it on.
Weinstein shuttled between the kitchen and the deck. As John put the chicken on the grill, Weinstein arrived holding his third cocktail, already half gone, John's bottle of Herradura and a handful of limes. He set the bottle and the limes on the railing, then took a seat toward the sunset and drank from his glass.
"I don't usually drink this much," he said.
"You seem to be enjoying it."
"We've got so much to do," Weinstein said thoughtfully. "But no, I don't want to talk about that right now. I want to talk about Rebecca."
John looked at him, then returned his attention to the sizzling hens. Through the smoke, he was aware of Weinstein's eyes upon him.
Joshua drank deeply. "Did her letter surprise you? Had you intuited that she was about to leave me for you?"
John opened the bottle and took a sip of the Herradura. It was warm and sweet in his mouth, and tasted like the desert and the maguey it was made out of. "I knew she had to decide. The time for that had come. I thought she'd stay with you."
Weinstein grunted. "I knew she was leaving. I watched her do it, minute by minute, day by day, month by month. I didn't know who it was. I didn't ask. My father died of cancer when I was twenty-two. It was similar. A slow march, but you understand where it will end. Don't say you're sorry. You can say anything you want about Rebecca, but don't say you're sorry."
John said nothing, but repositioned the chicken on the grill. He took another sip of tequila.
"How come you don't drink that stuff with limes and salt?" Weinstein asked.
"It ruins the taste."
"Is it really hallucinogenic, like they say?"
"No, not for me."
"Does it make you mean?"
"No. It's a green, feminine spirit. It's calming compared to, say, Scotch or gin. Not so angular."
"A feminine spirit," repeated Weinstein. "You fucked Rebecca for the first time on January the ninth, didn't you?"
"That's right."
"I could tell from the look on her face when I saw her that night. Here, was it?"
"Downstairs."
"Bedroom?"
"You really want to know these things, Josh?"
"Yes, John. I want to know them. I have my ways of tending her memory, just like you have yours. What did she do when you finished?"
"She cried."
"Did you cry, too?"
"No."
"How did you feel?"
John sipped again from the bottle as a fresh billow of smoke emerged from the coals. "I felt like I'd finally come home, after long time away."
Weinstein smiled unhappily. "Did you tell her that?"
John nodded.
"You're a real smoothie," said Weinstein. "I never really had that gift myself."
"What gift is that?"
"Telling women the right thing. The thing they want to hear even if they don't believe it."
"Well, I don't know, Josh."
"That's what you are, John-a smooth-talking Romeo."
John took another sip of the Herradura. It was apparent him that Joshua Weinstein was spoiling for a fight, or at least for a way to define John lowly, and believe the definition. Part tending the memory, he thought. It didn't seem right to resist, really, but you couldn't just stand there in your own house, 1 some fellow serve you a plate of shit and pretend to enjoy it.
"An hour ago, it was my stupid honesty with Evan you we complaining about," he said. "Now I talk smoothly. Whatever had that Rebecca liked, you must have had some of, too."
Weinstein took another big gulp of his drink. A visible shudder traveled down his neck. "That's wrong. I've concluded that we are opposites. That, in fact, the reasons she went to you were to acquire what I couldn't supply. Smooth talk was one thing. And cool another. I'm not cool, John. I'm a hot little New York Jew, and nothing can change that. She loved that about me. But what you are, she loved more. You've got the tongue, Menden. You've got the look and the cool. You've got the qualities promoted on cold-filtered beer commercials and ads for sports cars. You've got a touch of something few women can really resist. It's part Hollywood, part myth."
"Don't undermine her," said John.
"Accuracy before sentiment. The truth may not get us far, but lies get us nothing but lost."
"The truth is she loved us both, and for the time it took her to write that letter at least, she thought she loved me more."
"She wasn't fickle. That letter was her heart."
"Well, Joshua, you can decide she left you for a better ape, or that she left you for an ass. The truth is probably somewhere in between. If you want me to take a convenient role and play it out, forget it. I'd just mess up my lines and the whole thing would be a waste of breath."
Dumars entered then, bearing a pitcher of what Weinstein was drinking. She moved through the silence and filled his out-reached glass. She glanced at John with a look of concerned inquisition.
"God, you'd need a blowtorch to cut the vibes up here," she noted. "Remember, boys, we're supposed to be celebrating, sort of?" Then she retreated from the deck without another look at either of them.
"Sharon is aware that she needs a man, and the awareness embarrasses her," said Weinstein. "She's of our generation, the first in this republic to be raised with the notion that love can be found with a housecat, and that men are just enemies waiting to screw women over. Even women younger than Sharon have realized how unworkable that is. But there she remains, on the cutting edge of the ridiculous. Do you find her attractive?"
"Yes. She's got a better sense of humor than you give her credit for."
"There you go again, saying what they want to hear, even when they're not around to hear it. You're a smoothie, Menden."
"Yeah, yeah-you've covered that already, Josh."
"There was a time, and I'm not sure if it's passed, when I wanted to challenge you. On any and every thing a man is supposed to be. I knew I couldn't beat you at being tall. But at everything else, I believed I'd kick your ass. I still believe I would. I'm a better man than you, by almost any standard of measure. If ever you want to contest that, just name your game and I'll there. I've speculated on the most satisfying way of trouncing you. Really smashing the living shit out of you."
"And?"
"It changes."
"Well, I hope dangling me in front of Wayfarer then dropping me in hasn't entered your mind."
Weinstein stared at John for a long moment, then shook his head. "That's business. You couldn't find a more conscientious master than me. What I'm talking now is strictly pleasure. And don't forget-I hate Wayfarer more than I hate you."
"That's comforting, Joshua."
Weinstein finished half his drink in one gulp, set down the glass and pulled the automatic from his shoulder holster. I looked at it for a long moment, as if searching for some new feature he'd overlooked. It was a 9mm Smith with a blued finish and dark walnut grips. He flipped the safety off, then on again
"Could be an old-fashioned gunfight," he said.
"Could," said John.
Joshua set the gun on the deck, then picked up his drink again. "That scare you-a drunk man with a gun?"
"It sure does. Aren't you breaking some FBI rule?"
"You sound like a faggot, whining about rules. Rebecca liked it on the top with me. You, too?"
"How do you like your chicken?"
"That's a dumb question. When's the last time someone told you they like their chicken rare?"
Weinstein picked up the gun again, aimed it at John, flipping the safety off, then on.
John studied him through the smoke. The idea crossed his mind to kick the barbecue over at Joshua's feet and watch him scramble to keep his wingtips from blistering. John knew that Weinstein wouldn't shoot him on purpose, but he was worried that his "master" was revealing himself to be a genuine hazard.
Booze and guns were an even worse combination than booze and cars.
Joshua holstered the pistol, sighed, and drank again. "I'm just blowing off a little steam," he said.
"Good to know," said John. "Just that light little trigger between three highballs and a bullet in my heart."
And that was all it took-one mention of a bullet and a heart-to send them both plummeting back down to earth, back down to the tree-shaded deck on which their dinner was cooking, back down to the house which had heard the laughter of the woman they had both loved.
"I'm a lot more sober than I look. And there's one thing I want to get straight, John. It doesn't have to do with competition. It's just a simple fact that you're going to have to accept. It's a fact that I need to remember. This is the fact-I loved Rebecca more than you did. I loved her more than you ever could."
John watched Weinstein as he said this, noting the blood rushing into Josh's ears, the bob of his big Adam's apple, the insatiable glow of his eyes behind the lenses. This whole thing, he thought, is a crying shame. Every second of every day since Rebecca died in the cold March rain, just a crying fucking shame.
"Yes, you did," he said, looking down through the smoke, his eyes burning with more than the smoke.
"Thank you."
After dinner they turned off the houselights, sat on the patio chairs and watched the stars come out. The night was clear and the moon rose full and white over the hilltop. It was so bright John could read his watch face without pushing on the light. He looked out into the canyon and thought of the nights he'd slept back there, nights just like this with the moon radiant and the ground warm enough for a lightweight sleeping bag. He remembered the puma he'd seen out here, in the first light of a summer morning, lying on a rock outcropping only a hundred feet away, calmly eyeing him. Puma, he thought. Wayfarer.
John wondered if Joshua was reading his thoughts.
"Wayfarer," said Joshua. "You know, we still get to make the code names. Most Fed agencies went computer a long time ago. Wayfarer. I chose it. I'm glad we weren't stuck with barnyard, or crackerjack or evergreen or something. He's fared way beyond the limits, way up river."
"He's our Kurtz," said Dumars. "And you, John, are our Marlow."
Joshua looked at her in the darkness, then out to the hills "There's luck in this business, like in anything else," he said "Luck was what brought me to you, John. I spent five month' after Rebecca's death, putting together my file on Wayfarer. A first, it seemed a distant possibility, but then it became not distant at all. I weighed the circumstantial evidence against what I knew of him, and I saw how it could happen. All of this, and still nothing solid, still nothing that could convict. Sure, I could have questioned him anytime. One shot. One time. And if he was lucky which he is, and smart, which he also is-we'd have come away with less than nothing. Less, because he would be alerted- impossible to surprise."
Joshua had by now graduated from highballs to black coffee. He sipped it, then poured more from the thermos he'd brought up to the deck. "Yes, I looked at you. My curiosity was not connected to Wayfarer at all. It was a way of understanding what had happened to me and Rebecca. I just wanted to see what she had chosen. What I lacked. Your name on the envelope helped quite a bit, so far as ID went. I tracked your grief, your resignation from the Journal, your little sailing trip down in the South Pacific, your purchase of the trailer and your move out to Anza Valley. I observed you at Olie's more than once before our meeting, as you pointed out. So what did I have, except a suspect I couldn't arrest, and a mourning suitor who was disengaging himself from the world? Nothing. Nothing until the luck came in. Then, I had something to work with."
"What was the luck?"
"Oh, it was you, John. But that wasn't apparent at first. I wasn't apparent until I was poring over some Wayfarer intelligence late one night, nothing hot, just the usual kinds of thing! we collect about people who might prove dangerous. And there saw the connection. The luck hit. My ears got warm and my lip: quivered and I began to see the design of things. There is a design of things, John-it is up to us to discern it."
"And you discerned."
"Oh, did I ever. There it was, right in front of me, finally. A little window. I'm reading about Wayfarer. His habits and hobbies. His patterns. Wayfarer sails the Newport to Ensenada yacht race every year. Wayfarer spends every New Year's Eve at a party in Washington, D.C. Wayfarer makes a trophy hunting expedition every spring with two of his friends from the Boone and Crockett record book. Wayfarer flyfishes the Metolius River in Oregon every summer. Then, this oddment: Wayfarer hunts the quail opener every year down in the desert with his friends and daughter. He used to take his wife and son, of course, but no longer. They fly the company helicopter into the Lake Riverside airstrip. He brings his dogs. Dog, dogs, dogs-made me think of you and yours-dogs everywhere I looked. He's got a little home there in Lake Riverside Estates-thirty-five hundred square feet, right on the water. They spend the night, then set out in his Land Rover just after sunup. They hunt the morning, head into town for lunch and a beer at two, then go back out for the afternoon shoot. Every year for ten straight seasons. No variation. Like a clock. On goes my little light. What town do they go to? Anza Valley. John Menden's ground. Oh my, I think-oh my! Is John my luck? Is John my man? My miracle?"
"I've been called a lot of things, but never a miracle," said John.
Dumars laughed along with him, but Joshua did not.
"So I start thinking of you two together, in a way I never had before. You and Wayfarer on the same ground at the same time. Synergy. Lots of synergy. I know by then that you're, well… at loose ends. I wonder if you might need some vengeance for Rebecca. I wonder if he might like you, might have a use for you if you earned it. You two have very similar backgrounds, you know. You two are frighteningly alike, in some ways. So I see that if I could just get you two together-you and Wayfarer-it might be the start of a beautiful friendship. And here he is, scheduled to invade your desert on October fifteenth. That is when I came to you, John. To see if you were cut from the material I needed. You are. So here we sit, approved from on high, waiting to move. October fifteenth is less than two weeks away."
Joshua drank again from his coffee cup, then set it on the ground beside him. He stretched his legs and looked up into the night sky.
"You are going to be Wayfarer's hero," he said. "But you are going to be my Trojan Horse. My eyes, my ears. I'll get you close enough to Holt for you to smell him." John took another long drink of the Herradura. It was beginning to make him feel that all things were possible, which he knew by experience was a dangerous way to feel. He had begun to feel that way with Rebecca, just before she died. He had fell that way before his mother and father lifted off in their little Piper for the last time.
He felt the deep rumble of satisfaction moving inside himself. He sensed the action that he had so longed for, becoming clear. Looking ahead of him, he saw the challenge of justice for Rebecca, the one thing he could offer her.
Looking backward, though, he had the sense that something terrible was gaining on him.
"Wayfarer will be ours," said Joshua.
"And I'll be his," said John.
"I'd like the ring back now."
John brought it from his pocket, the modest diamond that Rebecca had worn in honor of her pledge to Joshua.