Voodoo River

CHAPTER 18

I t was twenty minutes after six when I left the General-Everett lot, picked up my car from the Shell station, and drove to the Lucky Market on Sunset. The traffic was heavy, with plenty of horn-blowing and fist-shaking, but I drove without a sense of personal involvement, as if I were somehow apart from the world around me. I parked in the Lucky's lot, went inside, and selected two baking potatoes, green onions, a very nice Porterhouse steak, and three six-packs of Falstaff beer. Nothing like a well-balanced meal after a hard day at the office.

I pushed my cart to the registers and stood in line behind an overweight woman with a cart filled with Dr Pepper, chicken parts, and jumbo family packs of Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Puffs. The Cocoa Puffs were open, and the woman was eating them dry. She would reach into the box and pluck out a handful and put them into her mouth and then repeat the process. The woman stared blankly into a huge display of Purina Dog Chow, and the process seemed without conscious thought or direction. Automatic eating. A little girl maybe two years old stood in the cart surrounded by the Frosted Flakes and the Cocoa Puffs, bouncing up and down and going ga-ga-ga-ga. The overweight woman ignored her. Maybe that's what I needed to do. Ignore what went on around me. Maybe I could become Elvis Cole, Zen Detective, and let the ugly realities of life flow around me without affect, like water passing over a stone. A client hires you under false pretenses? No problem! Withholding evidence from the police during a homicide investigation? No big deal! A guy gets zapped because you shoot off your mouth? Those are the breaks! The road to inner peace through Cocoa Puffs was sounding pretty good. Of course, you probably had to eat Cocoa Puffs to achieve this state of grace, and I didn't know if I was up to that.

When I got closer to the cashier there was a little four-pocket TV Guide rack above the Certs and the chewing gum, and Jodi Taylor was staring at me from the covers. She was sitting on one of the Songbird kitchen stools, surrounded by the guy who played her husband and the four kids who played her children, and everyone was smiling. The slug line on the top of the picture said "America's Favorite Family." Funny. I had just left Jodi Taylor, and she had looked small and frightened and nauseous. Amazing how pictures lie, isn't it? The overweight woman was already gone, else I would've asked to try the Cocoa Puffs.

I drove home and let myself into the kitchen. It was just before eight and the house was quiet. I opened a Falstaff, put the others in the refrigerator, and left the meat and the potatoes and the onions on the counter. I brought my suitcase upstairs, put the dirty things in the hamper and the clean things away, and then I changed out of the travel and client clothes and into something more suitable for a gentleman of leisure: sweatpants and a Bullwinkle T-shirt. No maiden to save, no dragon to slay, no client to serve. There would also be no money coming in, but what's that to a tough guy like me? Maybe Pike and I would go river kayaking in Colorado. Maybe we'd run with the bulls in Pamplona. Why not? When you're between jobs, you can do things like that.

Halfway through the sorting and changing I discovered that most of the Falstaff was gone. Leaky can. I went back downstairs, opened another Falstaff, then got KLSX on the radio for Jim Ladd, the best disc jockey in the universe. Jim was playing George Thoro-good. What could be better than that? I went out onto the deck and stoked the Weber. The sun was down and the air was cool and smelling of mint and honeysuckle. George finished, and Jim put on Mick Jagger singing about his lack of satisfaction. I layered mes-quite charcoal into the kettle, splashed on the starter fluid (EPA approved), and fired up. The flames rose tall and orange and a wave of heat rolled over me, and in that moment of warmth I wondered what Lucy Chenier was doing. I had more of the Falstaff and thought that it might be pretty nice if Lucy were out here on the deck with me. Maybe we'd spent the day at Disneyland, and now we were back and feeling good about it. We'd be a little bit sunburned and a little bit tired, but Lucy would be smiling. She'd stand at the rail and think the view was fine, only she'd find the desert nights chilly and I'd put my arms around her to ward off the cold. I had the rest of the FalstafF. Funny. Thought I'd just opened the can.

I washed the potatoes, slit the tops, and wrapped them in foil. I put them in the oven at five hundred degrees. They were small and wouldn't take long. I took the steak out of its package, stabbed it with a fork a zillion times on each side, then sprinkled it with pepper and garlic powder and soy sauce. I washed the green onions, chopped them, then mixed them with a container of non-fat yogurt. Everything was ready to cook. Your basic fast meal. Of course, since I was unemployed, fast wasn't a requirement. A nine-course Julia Child extravaganza would have been appropriate. Goose in aspic, perhaps. Or oyster-stuffed quail in chili poblano sauce. Maybe Pike and I should head down to Cabo San Lucas and go after billfish. Our friend Ellen Lang might like to go. So might my friend, Cindy, the beauty-supplies distributor. I opened another Falstaff.

The cat came in while I was thinking about it, and hopped up onto the counter the way he does when he's hoping I won't notice. You could see his nostrils working, smelling the steak. I said, "Bet you missed me, huh?"

He made a little cat nod.

I carved a piece of steak, then put the cat and the steak on the floor. He sniffed once, then went to work on the meat. I said, "I missed you."

I was sitting on my kitchen floor, drinking beer and petting the cat when the doorbell rang, and there was Jodi Taylor. She was wearing a gray sweatshirt over jeans, and no makeup. Her hands were in her pockets, and she looked closed and pensive, not unlike she had in the motor home. Awkward. I said, "Well, well. The TV star." It was only my fourth beer, wasn't it?

She said, "I hope you don't mind."

"Why should I mind? It beats getting lied to." Maybe my fifth. I held up a hand, shook my head, and stepped back. "Forgive me for saying that. I'm feeling sorry for myself, and I've been drinking. It's a boy thing."

She nodded.

"Please come in." I showed her in, only moderately embarrassed by the Falstaff and the Bullwinkle shirt. "Have you eaten?"

She kept her hands in her pockets. "I'm not hungry. I feel bad about what happened and I wanted to talk about it."

"Okay. I was just about to put a steak on the grill. Do you mind talking while I eat?"

She said of course not and followed me to the kitchen. "Oh. You have a cat."

The cat looked up from his piece of steak, lowered his ears, and growled. "Don't try to pet him. He doesn't care for people and he bites."

She moved away. The cat stopped growling and went back to work on the meat. I said, "Would you care for a drink?"

"That might be nice. Do you have scotch?"

"I do." I put ice in a short glass, then dug around for the Knockando.

"Do you live here alone?"

"Yep. Except for this cat."

"You're not married?"

"No."

She looked around at my home. "This is very nice." Like she wanted to talk but didn't know how to begin.

I held out the glass and she took her hands from her pockets to accept it. I went back into the kitchen, opened the oven, and squeezed the potatoes. They were soft. I put them on a wooden trivet on the counter, then removed the little bowl of yogurt and green onions from the fridge. I brought the steak and the steak tongs outside to the grill. Jodi Taylor watched me do these things and followed me out onto the deck without speaking. Her face was creased and intent and I hoped that she wasn't thinking me a drunk. She said, "I love the way barbecues smell. Don't you?"

She held the glass with both hands, and I saw that the glass was already empty. Nope. She wouldn't be thinking me a drunk. I brought out the bottle of Knockando, refreshed her drink, then put the bottle on the deck rail. "Your mission this evening, Ms. Taylor, is the care and handling of this bottle. You are to replenish your drink at your discretion without asking for my permission or awaiting my action in same. Is this clear?"

She giggled. "I can do that."

I smiled back at her. "Fine."

I put the steak on the grill. The coals were a fierce, uniform red, and the meat seared nicely with a smell not unlike the hamburgers we'd cooked at Lucy Chenier's. Put her out of your head, Elvis.

Jodi said, "I'm sorry about what happened."

"Forget it."

"I want to apologize."

"Accepted, but forget it. It's over. It's time to move on." Would Lucy like Cabo? Stop that!

The canyon was quiet except for a couple of coyotes beyond the ridge. Below us, a single car eased along the road, its headlights sweeping a path in the darkness. The sky was clear and black, and the summer triangle was prominent. Jodi said, "This isn't easy for me."

I turned the steak and prodded it with the tongs so the fat would flame on the coals.

"My dad died in 1985. My mom died two years after that. They were everything to me."

"Uh-huh."

"I know who my mom and dad were. My dad was Steve Taylor. My mom was Cecilia Taylor. Do you see?"

"Yes."

"I loved them more than anything. I still do."

Something dark flicked by overhead. An owl gliding along the ridge. Jodi Taylor had more of the scotch and stared at the flames licking the meat. "There are things about Louisiana I want to ask." Her voice was soft, and her eyes never left the flames.

"All right."

"Do I look like her?" We both knew who she meant. Jodi sighed when she said it, as if, in the saying, she had started down a path she had long avoided.

"Yes. You could be sisters."

"And my birth father is dead?" Her eyes never left the flames, never once looked at me as if, by refusing human connection, the questions were unreal and of no more substance than those questions you speak to yourself in the moments before sleep.

"Yes. I spoke with his younger sister."

"My aunt."

I nodded.

"Do I look like her?"

"No." The steak was done but Jodi Taylor seemed poised upon some internal precipice between painful things, and I didn't want to upset her balance.

"But you saw a picture of my birth father?"

"You don't look like him. Your birth father's family is light-skinned, with fine features, but you look like your birth mother."

I flipped the steak again. "Are you sure you want to hear these things?" In the restaurant she had said no; in the restaurant she had been adamant.

Jodi Taylor blinked hard several times and had more of the scotch. The cat crept out onto the deck and sat downwind, barely visible in the dark. Watching. I often consider, Does he wonder at the human heart? Jodi said, "I feel like I'm being pulled apart. I feel guilty and ashamed, as if I'm betraying my mom and dad. I never so much as thought of my birth parents, and now I feel that if I can't find some peace with this it's going to get larger and larger until it's all that I am and I won't be me anymore. Do you understand that?"

I took the steak off the grill. I put it on a plate and stood in the night, looking at her.

She said, "I didn't want to pay that man. I said it doesn't matter. I said no one will care about these things." Her eyes were filling again.

"But Beldon and Sid convinced you."

She nodded.

"They frightened you, and they made you ashamed."

She blinked harder. "God, I'm scared. I don't know what to do."

"Sure, you do."

She looked at me and took more of the scotch.

I said, "Why did you come here, Jodi?"

"I've got two days off before we start shooting the next episode. I want to hire you again. I want you to take me down there. I want to see where I come from, and see who I am. Will you do that for me?"

Lucy Chenier .

"Yes."

She nodded, and neither of us spoke again.

We went inside with the steak. I guess Cabo San Lucas and the billfish would have to wait. The human heart bears greater urgency.