Farewell, Amethystine

10

Three sixty Longerville Road was a largish lot surrounding a small whitewashed California bungalow, set way back from the street behind a large green lawn. I walked up the concrete path to the open porch and pressed the doorbell. After an appropriate wait, I knocked. I found myself hoping that the young man would answer his door. I didn’t want him to have come to harm.

I didn’t want to slip my BankAmericard down past the bolt of the door either. But I did. There was a slim chance that someone would see me, but it was unlikely. This was a working-class neighborhood and there wasn’t a postman in sight.

Another tiny home. The living room had a small couch and matching chair. The carpet was barely green and quite worn. Everything was in its proper place and there wasn’t even a magazine on the coffee table.

From there led a small hallway that took me to a kitchen painted yellow and white. Again, there was little of the personal to the room. The young man’s solitary existence was made apparent by the two plates in the cupboard.

The bedroom was small too. A single bed, unmade, and a bookshelf over a blond-wood desk. The books on the shelf were science fiction, accounting reference manuals, and three volumes about Japan. There was a Playboy magazine, three comic books, and a stack of typewriter paper in the side drawers. The pencil drawer had three pencils, one fat pink eraser, and a Bic pen.

The small night table next to the head of Curt’s bed was the only truly revealing thing in his house. There was a small package of three Trojan condoms, a nearly empty half-pint bottle of Night Owl whiskey, a prescription bottle of benzodiazepine, and, in the little drawer, a personal diary. There was only one sentence written on the first page.

There was also a phone on the night table.

“Proxy Nine, how can I direct your call?”

“Jackson Blue’s office, please.”

“He’s the senior vice president,” the young man explained patiently.

“Uh-huh.”

“What is it that you want, sir?”

“I want Jackson Blue’s office.”

“I’m not sure if he’s in today,” the operator stipulated.

“But I bet Monique, his receptionist, will know.”

“Um... well, I guess... hold on.”

The phone went silent for two minutes by my whiteface Gruen watch. Then there were a few clicks that led to another ring.

“Jackson Blue’s office, Monique speaking.”

“Hey, Mo.”

“Mr. Rawlins!” I could imagine her berry-black heart-shaped smile. “How are you?”

“Fine. Yourself?”

“Good. I’m about to have a baby and P9 is giving me three months’ maternity leave. Can you believe that?”

“Sounds great. By then you’ll be so bored you’ll probably want to be back on the job.”

“I guess,” she said with more than a little skepticism. “Jackson’s not here. He’s up in Seattle at a tech conference about transistors or somethin’. You want to leave him a message?”

“Naw. I’ll just call him later. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, darlin’.”

The next call was to Mofass Enterprises. Their switchboard operator didn’t try to hold me at bay. Instead, she put me right through to the president.

“Hello?” Mrs. Blue answered.

“Hey, Jewelle.”

“Easy.” That one word was friendly and inviting. “How you doin’?”

“Workin’ hard and feelin’ fine.”

“Feather said that her brother and his family are with you.”

“Yeah. It’s good to see ’em.”

“Are they gonna stay down here?”

“Looks like it. How’s your li’l family?”

“Everybody’s fine.”

“I called to ask you a couple’a questions.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“First, what’s Jackson doin’ way up in Washington?”

“He says that there’s natural resistance in most transistors and he was wonderin’ if in the delay... What did he say?... If the resistance could be used to predict and control multiple currents of data.”

“Smart as a whip and still superstitious.”

“My hero,” she agreed. “You need his number up there?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I was gonna ask ’im what he thought of Amethystine.”

“Why call Jackson? I’m the one sent her to you.”

“She said that she worked for him first.”

Jewelle laughed and then said, “Yeah. He didn’t even know he was schemin’ on her, but I did.”

“So, what’s her story?”

“She’s like a cowboy outta the Wild West, Easy. Been on her own since her parents abandoned her and her little brother and sister. She did anything and everything she had to, to keep them kids fed and protected. She kinda reminds me of Jackson in one way. I mean, she’s more or less self-learned. In another way she reminds me of you.”

“Me how?”

“She ain’t scared’a squat.”

“How come she came to work for you?”

“That’s a hard question. On one hand, she knew that I wouldn’t let her keep workin’ with my dog of a husband, and, on the other, she wasn’t afraid of me at all. But in the end I think she just likes bein’ around women on the job.”

“You trust her?”

“Honey, I don’t trust Jackson... but I love him.”

“Okay, let me put it like this, can I believe what she’s saying?”

“Oh, yeah. Amy don’t play. She might not tell you everything, but whatever she does say you could take to the bank.”

On the way down Central, headed for Watts, I took a left on Florence, almost on a whim. Two blocks down, on the south side of the street, stood a bright-green three-story building with yellow trim along the windows, front door, and edges. A big sign across the top floor read BOOKS AND THINGS.

Parking in front of the unique structure, I walked up the four concrete stairs to the entrance. A small sign on the yellow portal said COME ON IN.

The first floor was the bookstore proper. To the right were ten floor-to-ceiling shelves, each of which contained at least five hundred books. At the back of the room were magazine racks and shelves that had everything from National Geographic to Spider-Man.

The left side of the room was furnished with three long tables having six chairs and one long bench for each one.

There were five youngsters sitting at various tables either reading, writing, or both reading and writing.

Paris had told me that he wanted to set up an area in his bookstore for young scholars: local kids who had things to learn and needed a place to concentrate.

“Yeah, Easy,” he’d said, years before, in the old bookstore that used to be across the street. “I wanna give ’em a place that’s quiet, that don’t have no TV or radio. A place where the only chores they got is sharpenin’ they minds.”

Between the bookshelves and the study area stood a high podium-desk, where Paris was installed.

Seeing him sitting there, looking upon the neighborhood intellectuals from on high, I remembered another thing he’d said.

“I’m’a sit on ’em like a mother hen, makin’ sure they keep their minds on their work.”

“Hey, Paris,” I said, walking up to the podium.

“Easy. Hey, man, good to see ya.”

“I heard about your new store. This place is gorgeous.”

“Thanks, brother. You know I try.”

“How much it cost you?”

“The building was twenty thousand and the work it needed was around ten.”

“What’s the mortgage?”

“I bought it for cash,” Paris said, lowering his voice.

“Damn.”

“Had a business deal turned out right.”

“Business with Fearless Jones?”

Just hearing these words made him circumspect. He looked left and right and then even studied the children sitting across the way.

Paris was as much of a coward as Jackson Blue. Because they were the two most intelligent men I knew, I figured that their excellent brains picked out dangers that we mere mortals could not perceive.

“Let’s go out back, Easy.”

The short man jumped down from his stool and called out, “Myrna.”

“Yeah, baby?” She came around the corner of one of the shelves. Myrna Salt was the color of rust-tarnished sand. She wore thick-framed glasses and a yellow-and-bronze-checkered pants suit. Short, she was still an inch taller than her boyfriend.

“Hi, Easy,” she greeted.

“We goin’ out back to talk,” Paris said.

“Okay. I’ll watch the cashbox.”

“Hey, Myrn,” I layered in.

“Easy,” she said with pursed lips.

There was a small but lovely lawn at the back of Books and Things. Two round tables, yellow with green canopies, were set in opposite corners. We went to the far table and settled in.

Paris went right back into the conversation started at his desk. “Fearless met this rich old white lady named Toni Tricks, no lie. She had this nephew wanted to take her money and put her in a home. Fearless wanted to help her, but he needed a little research of the law first. That was my job. She was very generous.”

“Looks like it,” I said. “Fearless buy himself somethin’?”

“A good time for about three, four months.”

“So he could use a few bucks,” I suggested.

Rather than the laugh I expected, Paris gave me a serious gaze.

“What?” I asked.

“Fearless in jail, man.”

“Jail? What for?”

“They stopped him for vagrancy. When the cop grabbed him and he pulled back, they added resisting arrest.”

“How long?”

“Must be two months now. I been cash poor and he told me not to call you.”

“Why not?”

“Pride.”

Fearless had a couple of dozen wartime medals in his sock drawer — more than proof of that dignity.

“Can I do anything else for you, Ease?”

“Yeah. You got a copy of that book Papillon?”