Necessity

27

What surprises her about Charlie Reid’s place is that it isn’t a hole-in-the-wall apartment.

It’s a decent respectable little house in a cul-de-sac in Reseda. Electronic garage door opener. Azaleas and rose bushes on the front lawn and citrus trees in the high-walled back yard where he does his barbecuing.

In the kid’s bedroom there’s an 8? 10 glossy of Mike and the other kids in the band-Mike hunched over his saxophone looking vulturish, pale eyes hooded like his father’s. Thinner than she’d expected; but the shoulders are wide and he’ll fill out.

She strolls through the house with a drink in her hand. He’s out there cooking the steaks and the foil-wrapped corn and potatoes. He doesn’t seem to mind leaving her alone to her explorations. Does it mean he has no secrets?

She makes her way back to the patio. He’s peering skeptically at the coals. Then he hears the door and looks up at her and likes what he sees: his face brightens. It gratifies her that he approves of her appearance; she spent a bit of careful time deciding what to wear. She’s got on a torquoise squaw blouse and a casual khaki-hued prairie skirt and sandals to match. A Zuni necklace of silver and stones; a beaded belt. She didn’t want to look severe or glitzy or too anxious: but she wanted to draw his eye and she has succeeded.

He says, “Be a while yet. I like to cook them slow.”

“Everything’s so neat and tidy.”

“Cleaning lady was here yesterday,” he says. “I should’ve moved into a smaller place when Mike went away. Probably could get a fair penny for this dump. But I can’t be bothered. Eight percent mortgage and I couldn’t find any place cheaper to live and at least the kid’s got a place to stay if he feels like coming home to see the old man between semesters.”

“Does Mike fly?”

“Some. He got his license two years ago. It’s not a passion with him. He’ll be a Sunday flier.”

“Do you mind?”

“I don’t make the mistake of thinking of him as an extension of myself. He’s got his own life.”

He’s flipping the steaks over. There’s a lot of sizzling. She can smell hickory smoke from the chips he’s sprinkled on the coals.

“What happened to his mother?”

“She was someplace up in Oregon last I heard. Waitressing in a lobster place.” His shrewd glance flashes toward her. “I guess you want to know why I got custody of Mike. She’s a drunk. Happens to a lot of Air Force wives.”

You don’t have to tell me about that, she thinks. My mother and my sisters were just about the only sober women in the-

Stop it. You haven’t got any sisters. Your mother was a housewife and your father was a plumber and you grew up in Phoenix and Chicago, and they died twelve years ago in a four-car pileup. You have no family. For Ellen’s sake-remember that.

“Does Mike ever see his mother?”

“He tried to. For a while. I never put restrictions on it. But it got so he couldn’t stand seeing her boozed up. He writes to her now and then. In a letter you can pretend nothing’s wrong.”

She takes his empty glass inside and mixes him another bourbon and water.

On the kitchen wall hangs a ristra of red tongue-searing chili peppers. There aren’t any curtains. It is unabashedly a man’s kitchen.

She’s still unnerved from this afternoon-the reporter’s wallow in mob-style murder. She feels jumpy. Things keep blundering around inside her, hitting taut cords.

Through the kitchen window she watches him step back from the barbecue and clench his eyes against the smoke.

It’s silly to be coy with him. What’s the sense in delaying any longer? He’s not going to be a pushover for soft lights and bedtime games. Whatever his answer would be then, it’ll be the same now. Get it over with.

She’s rehearsed it long enough: the story in detail. It’s part truth, part fabrication. There ought not to be any questions that can take her by surprise. There’s no excuse for procrastination except fear; and she’s got to set fear aside out of concern for Ellen and the deadline, less than a month now, that hangs over her like a boulder perched on the lip of a cliff.

At the edge of the flagstones there’s a patch of mint. She breaks off a sprig; rinses it with the garden hose and pokes it down amid the ice cubes in his drink.

He tastes it and shows his approval.

She moves to one side to get out of the smoke; the wind keeps pushing it around. She senses he is aware of the sexual tension. She reclaims her own glass from the redwood table and thinks about another drink.

But that would just postpone it. And let’s not forget the rules of the new game: never drink enough to make the head fuzzy or the tongue loose.

Come on. It’s Ellen’s future you’re farting around with. Blurt it out.

She says: “I had a motivation for learning to fly. It wasn’t just for fun.”

“No?”

“There’s something I need to do and it requires an airplane.”

Her abrupt determination seems to amuse him. “Smuggling wheelbarrows?”

“What?”

“Sorry. Old joke. Go ahead.”

She takes a breath. “I’ve got a daughter-fourteen months old. I’m having a custody fight with her father.”

“Must be painful.” An upward glance: the concern is genuine. “Sorry to hear it.”

She tries to decide how to phrase it. Prompting her, he says, “Your little girl got something to do with learning to fly a plane?”

“I wanted to be my own air rescue service. My daughter’s.”

“You’re serious now.”

“The son of a bitch has got my kid, Charlie. I want to get her back.”