The Gold Coast

75

Jim relaxes. In fact, when Tashi lets him down and lets go of him, he almost falls. When he recovers from the little blackout he tries to pick up one of the rocks and heave it at the I. Magnin’s, but Tashi stops him. Tash takes the two rocks, underhands them back into the shredded garden. “For Christ’s sake, Jim! What in the world is wrong?”

Jim sits down and starts to shake. Tash crouches beside him. He can’t seem to breathe right anymore. He’s hurt something inside, every breath spikes pain through him. “I—I—” He can’t talk.

Tash puts a hand on his shoulder. “Just relax. It’s okay now.”

“It’s not! It’s not!” The hysteria floods back.… “It’s not!”

“Okay, okay. Relax. Are you in trouble?”

Jim nods.

“Okay. Let’s go up to my place, then, and get you out of sight. Come on.” He helps him up.

They walk uphill, along the lit sidewalks through the dark of Newport Heights, and reach Tashi’s tower. A police car hums by, and Jim cowers. Tash shakes his head: “What in the hell has happened?”

Up on Tashi’s roof Jim manages to stutter out part of the story.

“Your breathing is all fucked up,” Tash observes. “Here, lid some of this.” He gets him to lid some California Mello. Then Tash stands in front of his big tent and thinks it over.

“Well,” he says, “I was planning on taking a farewell trip anyway. And it sounds like you should get out of town for a while. Here, just sit down, Jim. Sit down! Now, I’m going to stuff another sleeping bag, and get you a pack packed. We’ll have to buy more food in Lone Pine in the morning. You just sit there.”

Jim sits there. It’s possible he couldn’t do anything else.

An hour later Tash has them packed. He puts one compact backpack over Jim’s shoulders, picks up another for himself, and they’re off. They descend to Tashi’s little car, get onto the freeway.

Jim, in the passenger seat, stares at the lightflood of red/white, white/red. Autopia courses by. Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, his stomach begins to unknot. His breathing gets better. Somewhere north of L.A. he jerks convulsively, shudders.

“My God, you won’t believe what I did tonight.”

“No lie.”

Jim tries to tell it. Over and over Tashi exclaims “Why? But why?”

And over and over Jim says, “I don’t know! I don’t know.”

When he finishes they are on an empty dark road, up on the high desert northeast of L.A. Jim, shivering lightly, jerking upright from time to time, falls into a restless sleep.