The Last Good Guy

15

When we got back home, I was surprised to find the Irregulars and Penelope Rideout arrayed around the picnic table under the big palapa, apparently deep into cocktail hour.

Sundays are ceviche night at Rancho del los Robles. I gathered that Penelope had arrived earlier, unannounced, then honked from the gate until Dick had let her in. When Penelope saw the festivities shaping up, she’d offered to fetch the ceviche from our usual source, Rosa’s Restaurant downtown. Thereby earning an invite to stay for dinner. She sat between Dick and Liz, one of Liz’s “industrial-strength” margaritas in a stemmed balloon glass before her.

Penelope wore a summer dress on this summer evening — periwinkle, I believe the color is called. Hair up on one side, held by a flowered comb. Her white phone sat on the table in front of her.

They had saved me my place at one end of the table. I sat and hefted one of the two large pitchers of margaritas, poured away. A festive paper tablecloth and mason-jar candles, faintly fragrant.

Inspired by the drinks, Violet launched into a story of seeing her first and only bullfight in Tijuana a few years back — a novillada, or novice contest, that was particularly sickening if you were pulling for the bull, which she was. She had been furious at her date for bringing her to such a pointlessly gruesome spectacle and had broken up with him before they’d reached their Tijuana hotel, where she had then moved her things into a separate room, and the next day taken the Amtrak Surfliner all the way from Imperial Beach home to Santa Barbara.

“I thought you were living in St. Louis,” said Liz.

“Exactly,” said Violet, smiling. “But I was staying with friends in Santa Barbara that summer and I had to get away from that guy as fast as possible! And I still remember the name of the bullfighter who was the big draw that day — Adan Coreas. There are so many things that I’d like to forget, but once they get into my head...”

The ceviche was great, as usual — fish, shrimp, scallops, and octopus. Everyone had their stories. Even shy Frank offered up some harrowing tales of crocodile-heavy rivers and big jungle snakes and riding La Bestia up through Mexico to the United States. He had the Hispanic flair for understatement. A small boa of constrictor, maybe twelve feet. I caught Penelope looking at me, twice. Just after checking her phone. I looked back at her in the candle glow, her burnished bare shoulders and the light on her hair, and eyes that had taken on the color of her dress.

After dinner, Ping-Pong. Liz a good and graceful player, as many tennis players are. Violet’s ponytail flew every time she looked behind her and up, for that airborne threat she seemed to fear. Penelope had fast reflexes and accounted herself well with her partners. Within the summer dress her body was beautiful. Burt’s team won every game, which it almost always does. Once in a while I can take him in singles. Tonight, I kept myself on the disabled list, though it wasn’t easy.

Then the Irregulars vanished and Penelope took up her place at the table again. We tried to make light conversation, but, set against the obvious pain and peril in our worlds, the small talk was awkward and witless.

She looked down at her phone for maybe the fiftieth time. “I brought some things over for you,” she said. “I’ll get them.”

From her yellow Beetle she carried two large shopping bags, each a bright floral design. She set them on the table at her place across from me, and remained standing. The Ping-Pong exertions had knocked her hair loose, and curls dangled over her forehead in some disorder. The candlelight wavered on her face and gave her eyes a theatrical quality.

“This is a bourbon I’m told you like.” She displayed the bottle using both hands, hamming it up like a game-show model. Set it on the table facing me. Then looked into the bag with a thoughtful expression, as if considering the order of things.

“This is a box of chocolates.” She propped the chocolates against the bourbon. Inside the bag, she moved something with one hand so she could get to the next item.

“These are oranges, pears, and peaches. All organic. See?” She carefully set them on the table.

“This is just a sixer of Bohemia from Vons,” she said. “My favorite. Now, this... I really hope you like this. It’s to take the place of the one they ruined out in the desert. I got the XXL, but I can exchange it. If you don’t like it I’ll get you a different style. I’ve always liked snap-button Western shirts. Though I haven’t ridden a horse since I was a girl.”

She smiled goofily and shrugged. The shirt was folded neatly, with the plastic collar brace still in it. The colors were muted and rich. She propped it up against the bourbon opposite the chocolate.

“I like it,” I said.

“For more practical things.” She set aside the empty first bag and tugged the next one into place. Then presented the booty. “Behold: antibacterial ointment for your wounds. And a bottle of rubbing alcohol. I know you must already have these, but you could be running low. I’d be more than happy to change your dressings before I leave tonight. Thus, three different kinds of bandages, from butterflies to the big square pads with adhesive on the edges. Cotton balls. And painkiller spray made from aloe. Plus, I thought some of these cold-hot stick-on dealybobs would come in handy, but not over broken skin, of course. Now, this is therapeutic massage oil, says right on the label. I am volunteering to treat you with it, when you’re up to such a thing. I hoped it wouldn’t embarrass me to give this to you, but it kind of does. I’ve never given or received a massage in my life.”

She smiled, a little embarrassed, by the look of it. Just like she’d said. “And there you have it.”

“Treasure beyond compare,” I said.

“Well, at least some stuff you need.”

She studied her gifts in silence. Cut me a look, still embarrassed. Set the meds and bandages and cotton balls aside, then pushed them toward me.

“I don’t know what to make of you,” I said.

She came around and sat down next to me. “If you can turn, I’ll touch up that face of yours and explain me to you.”

I turned. Up this close, Penelope Rideout was authentically beautiful. She set one of the candles on the table next to us. The smell of melting wax mixed with her light scent.

“I’m not bad at this,” she said. “My mother was an RN. And Daley was just one endless accident when she was little. Nothing serious. Let’s start with the ding in your head.”

Her hands came at me and I closed my eyes. Felt the rasp of the bandage, the dab of cotton, and the cool alcohol around the stitches. They’d shaved a good-sized island of my scalp.

“Like my haircut?”

No reply. The stink of ointment and the light swipe of her finger.

“Everything I told you about my husband, Richard Hauser, is true,” she said. “I know because I made him up.”

“Explain.”

“In the beginning there was the accident. It happened in March of 2009. We were living in Eugene and we were a happy little family. Mom and Dad went to dinner for date night. Their date night was Thursdays. I made us girls chicken potpies and I did homework. I was a senior in high school. Daley sat next to me on the couch, watching videos on her gadget. She was four. It was raining hard, and windy. On the way home, Dad went off the road in our van and down an embankment and into the Willamette. The van slammed down into the rocks and the windshield broke and the van got swept around and sank. They both died. There, the forehead’s done.”

Her face up close. Eyes bright and analytical, in assessment, as they often seemed to be. Then her hands came at me and I closed my eyes again. Felt her fingers on my brow, applying the dressing.

“As soon as the troopers told us what had happened, that’s when the fog set in. I could hardly even see through it. Way later, it got better. But it never lifted all the way. I still look at things through the fog sometimes. I tell you this unhappy story so you know what it was like to be me. Penelope Jane Rideout, eighteen. I got a good lawyer, a lot of insurance money, legal custody of Daley, the house, the cars, the investments, everything. All through the fog. I didn’t know how to do what I was doing. But I did it anyway. And the vultures started circling.”

And I understood. Things got quiet again. I felt the sting of alcohol on my right eyebrow, and the warmth of her breath on my face. “That’s an awful cut, Roland.”

“Awful people.”

“Let’s try an easy-change dressing.”

“We’ll show them.”

“You make fun of things when they hurt. I like that about you.”

“You invented the husband to scare off the vultures.”

“I had to. You can’t imagine how craven some of them were. Men who were married but unhappy. Men who were happy but willing to leave their wives and children. Men who were already grandfathers. Men who cried. Men who became violent. Men who unzipped. Men who would not go away. There were good men, too. More than a few. But they didn’t understand me at all. I was just a girl sleeping with her little sister, chewing on my nightgown sleeve when the fog came in and the tears wouldn’t stop.”

She was still working on my right eye, so I opened the left.

“Who was Richard Hauser?”

“A boy I liked in kindergarten. There were several years and cities between us before I swiped his name and bought myself an engagement ring. It’s a half-carat of cubic zirconium. I think that’s so funny. I don’t know why. But it makes me smile all the time. Very few people can tell the difference. I’m frugal — I mean, cheap. It cost me four hundred bucks instead of ten grand.”

She held up her left hand to show me her thoroughly counterfeit ring. And the maybe-gold wedding band alongside it.

“Clever. Why did your family move so much?”

“Dad and Mom. Work.”

“A publications director and a nurse.”

“Always a job for Dad and plenty of offers for Mom. They were grass-is-greener people. Always better somewhere else. When Daley was born they really sped up. Maybe they felt trapped. Every year a new city. Greener grass.”

I recognized some of that in my own parents. And Dad was career Navy for twenty years, so he had to go where they sent him. Scratched that itch for him. Mom the same way. Would still rather go than stay. I grew up in Navy towns, San Diego being the largest and longest.

She placed her hands on my cheeks. “Turn your head to the right.”

Which left me with both eyes open, facing my home, a century-plus-old fortress of adobe brick, with just a few lights on and its usual air of entropy, if not neglect. It deserved better.

“The hard part about faking marriage is digging up an occasional real man when you need one,” she said. “Socially, of course. I’ve managed. But really, people are always so willing to take other people’s word for things, don’t you think? I mean, it’s really much easier to believe what someone tells you than it is to follow every little suspicion down the bunny trail to see what’s really going on. Look at the couple with nine children locked up in the house, hardly fed them, chained them to the beds and starved them. Relatives? Neighbors? Nobody said one thing. Because they wanted to believe the family was normal, like the mom and dad said it was.”

I felt the cooler air as the bandage came off, then the swipe again of alcohol and antibiotic. Heard the rattle of paper as Penelope opened a new dressing.

“Good as new up here,” she said. “I’ll work on that back of yours, if you can hack it.”

I unbuttoned my shirt. She stood and came around behind me to help get it off.

“You have a nice body, Roland, but it hurts just looking at it.”

“Glad I don’t have to see it.”

“Well, time to get tough, hombre.”

I tried to let my mind wander as she lifted off one bandage after another, picked away at dried scabs and the newly surfaced grit. The mind won’t wander at times like this.

“Ever married, then?”

“Nope.”

“You’re sure?”

I felt her hands stop moving. “Now you don’t trust me.”

“You’re too good a liar to trust.”

Silence.

“Look, Roland Ford — I just told you something true about myself. My big bad. Maybe that was stupid. Some people are better off the less they know. They prefer it. Insist on it. I hope that’s not you. I chose you because you dig to the bottom of things and don’t quit until you’re there.”

“At the bottom.”

“Yes.”

“Is that even good?”

“It’s what I need.”

“What else are you hiding?”

I felt her slap on a fresh bandage. She came around and studied me. Hooked a strand of hair behind one ear. Drilled in with those flat blue eyes of hers. Her judgment look. Then the flash of her never-distant temper.

“It must be tiring being you,” I said.

“Now what?”

“Your anger. Your deceit.”

“Mister, if this was a movie and I had a knife, this is where I’d throw it past your head and it would stick in the tree trunk behind you and shiver back and forth. And I’d have your full attention and my anger would have produced good results.”

“Plenty of knives in the kitchen,” I said.

A staredown. Her weighing things. Then a split decision. Close on the judges’ cards. Her face relaxing in slow gradients.

“You’ll trust me someday,” she said. “You just watch.”

Then behind me again, picking away at my wounds with what felt like slightly reduced empathy. I was glad she didn’t have a knife. Not a word between us.

It seemed to take hours, and I was happy for it to be over. She sprayed on the topical painkiller and it cooled things off a little. She helped me back on with the shirt. Sat down across from me as before and buttoned me up. Leaned in closer. Eyes on me, her critical squint.

“There’s nothing I can do about this lip,” she said. “It’s going to have to heal on its own.”

Kissed it softly.

The yellow Beetle putting down the drive. Memories blowing in like a rainstorm.