Empty Mile

CHAPTER 7

Around eight o’clock in the evening several days after the Elephant Society picnic, Gareth called me on my cell and asked if I could do him a favor. A job for one of his hookers had come in but he had a date and needed someone else to drive her. I wasn’t desperate for the fifty dollars he offered, but I wanted an excuse to get out of the house, to do something that didn’t involve Stan or my father. So I said I’d do it. If nothing else it was a distraction from worrying about whether or not Marla was ever going to call.

The drive up to the lake in the dark was brutal and I was glad when I pulled into the parking area and saw the lighted windows of Gareth’s bungalow. I went into the office and found him sitting behind the desk, wearing a dark suit and drinking a can of beer.

“Thanks for helping out, dude. I do not want to blow it with this woman.” He handed me a business card. “Her address. When you’re finished tonight come over, I want you to meet her.”

I read the card. It had her name, Vivian Gelhardt, her address, and, at the bottom, the title Environmental Friend.

“Environmental Friend?”

Gareth rolled his eyes. “No one’s perfect. She’ll tell you all about it if you ask her.”

“I’ll see how I’m feeling.”

“Sure. Here’s the place for the girl.”

He handed me a scrap of paper with the scrawled address for a house on the Slopes.

“Just drive her up there, make sure she gets inside okay, wait in the car till she’s finished, then drive her back here again. Shouldn’t be more than an hour. Here’s your dough.” As he passed me the money he held my eyes and said, “We’re going to be good friends again, Johnny. You’ll see. I bet in a while we’ll be spending a whole lot more time together.”

We went outside and Gareth pointed down the line of cabins.

“She’s in the last one. I’ll see you at Vivian’s.”

He walked off toward his Jeep.

The girl was waiting when I knocked on her door. We said hello but not much else. She spent most of the trip puckering her lips at herself in the rearview mirror.

The Slopes sat high above town on the north face of the Oakridge basin. Between them and the residential areas behind Back Town there was a wide, steeply climbing belt of Bureau of Land Management forest through which a long, narrow road cut its way, connecting Oakridge’s richest residents with the common folk below. Once we’d passed through town and entered the forest the dark wrapped itself around us like a blanket and there was nothing to see from the road except a solid black wall of trees and the occasional entrance to a fire trail.

The house I took the girl to was built to look like it had been made out of mud bricks. It had a five-car garage and a garden that was separated from the street by an adobe wall. The plants in the grounds were lit here and there by gentle baby-spots. I watched as the girl was buzzed through the gate and made sure she got up the driveway and into the house. Then I just sat and waited and an hour later she came out again and I took her back to Tunney Lake.

I didn’t really have any great desire to spend time with Gareth, but I didn’t feel like going home either. Plus I was vaguely interested in seeing what type of woman could bear to be with him. So I checked Vivian’s address on her card and made my way across Oakridge and back up to the Slopes again.

The house was on the first cross street at the top of the road through the forest. It was a two-story log cabin the size of a large suburban house, made from pale wood that had been stripped of bark and varnished. Over the front door there was a semicircular panel of stained glass that threw a fan of blotchy colored light onto the fieldstone path leading across the lawn from the street.

Gareth answered the door when I knocked. He had a drink in his hand and looked relaxed and at home in surroundings that were very much more salubrious than those of his own home. He led me through an open foyer of bare wood and hanging Indian blankets that gave directly onto a large open living area. The décor here was Rustic Frontier-rough-woven rugs on the floor, two long couches in earthy, natural fabric facing each other over a chunky coffee table.

Gareth raised his eyebrows and whispered, “Not bad, huh?

I’ll tell you a secret, Johnny. I’m in love with this woman.”

I looked at him, thinking he had to be joking, but his expression was perfectly serious. A woman with a glass of white wine in her hand entered from a door at the far end of the room. She folded herself onto one of the couches.

“Vivian, this is my friend Johnny.”

We said hi and Gareth got me a drink and then sat next to Vivian. I sat across from them on the other couch.

Vivian was about ten years older than Gareth. She had sharp features and dark blonde hair. Her gaze was direct and her voice had the harsh edges of a German accent. She spoke before I was properly settled in my seat.

“Gareth tells me you stole his girlfriend.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“But things hurt just the same, no?”

“I suppose so.”

“Something always remains, some piece of emotional grit that you can never quite get rid of, I think.”

Gareth gave an embarrassed laugh. “Viv, give him a break.”

She took his hand and kissed it. “If you wish, my broken one.”

If Gareth really was in love with this woman then it looked to me like it was a one-sided relationship. She seemed fond of him, but it was pretty obvious she knew he wasn’t what she needed.

In an effort to prevent the conversation from revisiting my part in Gareth’s past I asked her about herself. “What’s an Environmental Friend? Some sort of Greenpeace organization?”

Vivian changed gears abruptly. Her eyes lit up like she had a fever and I realized I was almost certainly going to regret the question.

“An organization? Bah! I am not one for organizations. It is a state of mind. An approach to life. It is one of the things I am.”

“Cool.”

“Yes, it is very cool. After university I left Germany. I vowed I would never go back and I have kept that vow. You cannot imagine the claustrophobia of Europe, the catastrophic rate at which the so-called cultured countries are covering themselves with concrete.”

“I lived in London for a long time.”

“Ach, what a pigsty. You know what I mean, then. I met my ex-husband in San Francisco and we lived there for a long time. You cannot live in that city without becoming passionate about the environment. No European can, at least. The harbor, the fog, the hills, the coast. So much beauty, so big and so wild. But what did I see? The same destruction I had witnessed in Europe. So I made a commitment to myself that I would not accept it like everyone else. And that is why I call myself an Environmental Friend. Because I am not blind to environmental concerns.”

“Do you work in the community, that sort of thing?”

“I have done.” She waved dismissively. “But that was in another life. After I divorced my husband I moved here, and in Oakridge there is less to fight against. I struggle now in smaller ways, in the philosophy of what I consume, in the letters I write to the town council.”

“You don’t like the council?”

“They are not wholly bad, they can be persuaded in certain things-the glass recycling bins you see around town are my doing. But they are like every other commercial entity. They believe that to survive you must keep getting bigger, that you must expand and expand. It does not dawn on them to put their energies into devising a sustainable status quo.”

Gareth, who had grown a little uncomfortable during Vivian’s speech, stretched and asked no one in particular what time it was.

Vivian looked at him with disapproval. “Gareth, I think, does not see the world in terms of its beauty. For instance, he would support the council if they were to build a road to his cabins.”

“Of course. Jesus…”

“Money, ach! That lake is a jewel. It should be protected. First a road, then a thousand people a day, then hot dog stands and the damn Coca-Cola logo. Let’s have a Starbucks too! No, a road would ruin it.”

She stood up abruptly and held her hand out to Gareth.

“It’s time you took me to bed. I’m tired of talking about myself. Goodnight, Johnny. Please lock up on your way out.”

Gareth winked at me. “I’ll call you, dude. Thanks for tonight.”

After Vivian and Gareth had gone upstairs I sat for a moment feeling the big room around me, listening to the silence and to the short bursts of laughter that came muffled by wood from Vivian’s bedroom. Then I got up and went out to my pickup.

It was cold outside now and on the drive home I felt empty and alone. It seemed everyone tonight had the solace of a warm body next to them, even if it was mercenary, like Gareth’s hooker and her john, or as mismatched as the pairing of Gareth and Vivian. I fiddled with the controls of the heater, but it wouldn’t work, so I zipped up my jacket and drove faster than I should have to get home.