Jellwagger’s productivity took a nosedive after lunch. Partly it was because his full stomach exacerbated his fatigue. He could’ve curled up on the floor under his desk and slept for a week if he wanted. More than that, though, he had a tough time digesting everything else that had happened during lunch. Did he just spend an hour with a woman who wasn’t esteemed so much as worshipped in many a legal circle? Even if he could make sense of that, it would still leave the question of why she hadn’t asked about Carla’s gift. Was it possible they knew each other? Sure it was. This firm did represent her in her divorce from Pat Dinner after all.
So much was swirling in Jellwagger’s brain that once in a while he just sat there at his desk and stared at nothing, his concentration split between not falling asleep and going over his lunch with Roz. So many questions flooded his brain, questions he wanted to ask her, Pat, and Carla. Speaking of Carla, Jellwagger forgot to tell her the mission had been a success. He didn’t have the energy to call, so he sent a text saying simply, “Package delivered.” Within five minutes she texted back, “Thanks, dude! Enjoy your weekend!”
It was past two o’clock. He’d been back from lunch for over an hour and still hadn’t done any data entry. Jellwagger took one glance at his headphones. With all due respect to Bruce Willis, the thought of listening to him babble on and on in Freud’s circuitous, dense prose just made him all the sleepier. Nah, our man Jellwagger would have to tough out the next few hours in the fluorescent silence of the office which, for once, was most welcome.
Jellwagger inputted the data like a zombie eats flesh, with neither thought nor energy. Grant shot him an e-mail now and again regarding revisions that needed to be made to certain records. At one point he IMed Jellwagger about a particular attorney’s record being woefully out of date. The implication that it was Jellwagger’s fault was clear.
With no energy came no patience. Jellwagger shot back that with so many attorneys here, plus all the clients, prospects, and referrals he had to keep track of, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in the Valley he’d have the time to do monthly checkups on each and every attorney’s record. Betsy was content if he could stick to it once a year so, he IMed Grant, that was the system he would follow. Apparently that argument didn’t faze Grant at all. Jellwagger watched with heavy eyes as the words kept appearing in the little window until finally he told Grant to go fuck himself. Then he logged off IM and resumed his work, expecting to see Grant marching down the corridor any second. He never did.
All that stuff about updating attorney records reminded Jellwagger of Roz’s assistant, Ignio Peppercorn. He looked him up in the database and was temporarily roused from his exhaustion by two things. The first was that Jellwagger had been wide of the mark when he guessed Ignio to be in his forties or so. Dude was fifty-five. What surprised Jellwagger even more was the fact that Ignio Peppercorn was no mere administrative assistant. He was an attorney who, like Roz, specialized in trusts and estates. He graduated from USC Law thirty years ago and had spent the ensuing decades racking up a bucketful of credentials and merits a la Roz. And he still practiced. Just last year Jellwagger had made an update to his record about a lecture he’d given at some seminar in Philadelphia. Yet, judging by what Jellwagger had seen a few hours ago, the man did double duty as Roz’s assistant, taking her messages and keeping her appointments. Granted, Ignio had a far bigger workspace than any other AA in the firm, but now it was obvious why. Damn! If only Jellwagger had known all this before lunch, he’d’ve asked Roz about it. This was one of the most unusual things he’d ever seen since he started working here. If you didn’t count Stu Dobkins going nuts deep on Grant.
Would he ever see Roz again? Although he couldn’t imagine how or why he would, something tugged at the back of his brain that the answer was a resounding yes.
Whatever. Jellwagger didn’t have the energy to worry about that now. Carla was giving him the weekend off. He hadn’t heard from Pat Dinner, but he was ready to rebuff him if he did. Jellwagger needed his life back for at least the next couple of days. Surely billionaires had enough on their plate to keep them from focusing so much on one data entry clerk.
When he got home, Jellwagger took Chump E. Chips for a couple spins around the block before parking himself on the recliner with a bucket of beers and a bag of microwave ‘corn. Whenever he didn’t have the energy to decide which of his Bruce Willis movies to watch, he always threw in the first Die Hard. The old standby. The one Bruce movie Jellwagger could enjoy regardless of his mood.
Our man was kidding himself if he thought he could stay awake for the whole thing. First he was watching them pull into the Nakatomi building parking garage, and then he was waking up to the sound of his phone ringing. The TV showed the Die Hard main menu. The empty popcorn bag was in his lap, right next to Chump’s head. When he snatched up the cordless, he almost knocked over the half-finished beer. “What?” he said, too groggy to look at the caller ID.
“Oh I’m sorry, baby, did I wake you?”
“I’m not interested.” He hung up, turned off the TV, and closed his eyes. The phone rang again. This time he looked at the caller ID: FIGURES, KATHERINE. Aw shit. He thought the voice had sounded familiar. “I’m sorry, Kit. I thought you were one of those people offering me another credit card.”
She laughed. “Puh-LEEZE! Everyone knows your skinny ass has enough debt.”
“How would you know?”
“Because I was young too. Now were you really asleep? My word, it’s past ten o’clock!”
“What can I say? It’s Friday. The week’s been a bitch from hell.”
“Uh, Jellwagger?” She smirked. “Wow, maybe it has been a long week. You don’t even know what day it is.”
Jellwagger’s eyes went wide as he leaned back and stared at the cottage cheese ceiling. Then he looked over at the vertical blinds letting in cracks of sunlight. “What the fuck?”
“Rise and shine, Jellwagger! It’s Saturday!”
“Holy shit, Kit.”
“How long have you been asleep, boy?”
“I’m too groggy to count past ten.”
She laughed so hard it sounded like she was doubling over. “Oh. My God. No he did not. What the hell happened to you?”
“Fuckin’ A, Kit. Don’t even get me started. But God forbid you should catch me in a bar because I’ve got stories.”
“What happened to you after the other night?”
“Stories happened to me. Was that really just two nights ago? Fuck me, I feel like it’s been a year since you and Connie were giving me shit about Eskimos.”
“The Inuit.”
“See? It’s been so long I can’t even remember what in fuck we were talking about. I feel like I could sleep another week.”
“What if, instead of a bar, you caught me on the beach? Would you talk to me then?”
“Would you be wearing a G-string?”
“Let’s not get awkward, okay? I’m old enough to be…”
“Hell no you’re not!”
“Your big sister. Don’t make it awkward, Jellwagger. We’re friends, right? We’re cool.”
“You’re the one who brought up the beach, darling.”
“I was going to ask you if you wanted to hang out there today. I was thinking Santa Monica, so I could also do some shopping on the Promenade. The weather’s awesome. There’s no marine layer for a change. I’ve been up since six and I’m already bored to tears. Unless you’ve got other plans.”
“I was thinking of taking Chump E. Chips to Griffith Park or something.”
“Bring him to the beach.”
“Nah, I don’t want the little guy to get sand all over himself and then track it everywhere. It’s all good. I’ll take him for a long walk before I leave, let him squeeze out a healthy shit. Then he’ll be fine til tonight.”
“No rush. Go back to sleep if you want.”
“I’m one of those people where it’s like, when I’m up, I’m up.”
“I’m going to putz around here a bit more, then go to the Promenade, get the shopping out of my system. How about we meet at the pier, say, around two or so? Is that cool?”
“Say, Kit. You were just complaining about the marine layer. I take it you live on the Westside?”
“That’s a safe assumption, um hm.”
“Brentwood?”
“Why do you want to know, Jellwagger?”
“The hills of Beverly Hills?”
“Baby, if I lived there, you know I’d be bragging about it. Let’s just say I live in a pleasant neighborhood on the other side of the Hill from you and west of the 405.”
“You have nothing to fear from me, Kit.”
“So are we on for two?”
“We’re on, Kit.”
Only after hanging up did Jellwagger fully process that he’d been dead to the world for a good fourteen hours, by far and away the longest he’d ever slept. He looked down at Chump. The cute pooch wasn’t lying on his back with an occasionally twitching paw, as he did when he was settling in for a long slumber, but was curled up in the small space between Jellwagger and the arm of the chair, his head on Jellwagger’s thigh. This was Chump’s position for when he could catch some Zs but still be ready to hop on down if Jellwagger suddenly wanted to take him for a walk. Speaking of that, Jellwagger should probably take care of that now. Poor guy’s bladder was no doubt fit to burst. And speaking of that, our man’s bladder hadn’t been emptied since work yesterday. He’d been too bewildered during his chat with Kit to notice, but now the nerve endings down there were waking up. He could’ve put out a Southern California wildfire if he wanted.
Jellwagger was getting motivated to push down the recliner stool when he found himself waking up again. With a jolt of panic, with an image of a waiting Kit flashing through his brain, Jellwagger looked at his Indiglo. Quarter past noon.
Shit! If he had any hope of making it down the God damned 405, which could be God-awful even on a Saturday, especially on a Saturday if the weather was awesome, then he had no choice but to skip the shower and take Chump for a quick spin around the block and hope like mad the adorable little Beagle would find the opportunity to purge the system.
It wasn’t looking good until Jellwagger came back around to his dingbat. Chump, perhaps sensing his master’s urgency, found a patch of dirt on the grass strip bordering the curb on which to do his business. It was unlike him to take a shit here as opposed to the middle of someone’s front yard, where he’d have a ton of grass to sniff. Over the years he’d probably fertilized every lawn in a one-mile radius. “You’re being beyond good, Chump,” Jellwagger said as they climbed the steps into the courtyard. He stopped and looked down at him. Chump stopped and looked up with those wide eyes. If Chump were human, he’d be a middle-aged man, but as a dog, those eyes carried as much innocence as they had when he was a puppy. Jellwagger felt a rush of affection that compelled him to pick up Chump and carry him the length of the courtyard to Jellwagger’s apartment. “You’re so good,” he said before giving him a peck on his tiny head. “You knew Daddy needed you to do your thing so he wouldn’t worry about you going in the apartment. You’re so smart, Chump!”
“Hey!”
Jellwagger turned with a start. The courtyard was empty. He looked toward the front of the building, and that’s where he saw Aaron.
I’ve never mentioned Aaron before, have I? Well, what can I say? Thus far Jellwagger hasn’t had much opportunity to be at the old homestead. Coupled with the fact that he could go weeks, sometimes months, without seeing Aaron, you can probably see why I’ve neglected to mention the delinquent twentysomething. But that’s just it. Aaron was more than just a deadbeat, at least as far as Jellwagger’s story was concerned.
When Jellwagger moved into this dingbat many an eon ago, the landlords were this septuagenarian couple who’d since retired and moved away. Aaron was their grandkid, the son of the couple’s daughter, Stacy. After the couple retired, Stacy gave a go at running the place. She lasted maybe two or three years before locking horns with the attorney in Beverly Hills who owned the joint and who’d been giving her hell over the tenant service requests she’d been trying to fill. Stacy still lived in the same apartment, but Aaron hadn’t lived with her in years.
Jellwagger could remember when he first saw the kid. It was a Sunday night. Jellwagger had been living in the dingbat for all of a month or so. He was taking the trash down to the dumpster near the car ports. As he was coming back to the laundry room, where the stairs led back up to the courtyard, Aaron and his mother were coming down with a haul of trash and recycling. Twelve or thirteen at the time, Aaron was hauling a tall trashcan full of newspapers. For whatever reason, the image of passing Aaron going into the laundry room while he’d been exiting it, the newspapers at the top of his stack threatening to slide off, was burned into Jellwagger’s memory.
Over the years it became clear the kid was spiraling down the wrong path. It culminated a couple years ago, on a Saturday morning when Jellwagger had taken Chump E. Chips on a four-mile walk to the Starbucks on Victory and Coldwater. When he came out, he found Aaron sleeping on that same strip of grass by the curb on which Chump had taken a shit a minute ago. And he was still there when Jellwagger and Chump got back. At first our man had been a naïve Jellwagger in thinking that Aaron had been out for a walk himself and stopped to lie down and rest. D’uh!
Aaron was a drug addict. Which drug(s)? Who knew? Point was he’d fallen under some pretty malevolent fucking influences because eventually it came to the point where Jellwagger would be out walking Chump and would see Aaron literally wandering around. He’d be down by the intersection talking to no one in particular. He’d then wander into the middle of the street shaking his empty palm at the honking cars to see if anyone could spare some change.
Bottom line? Aaron was the reason those afterschool specials existed. Just look at the poor fucker. Dude was in his early twenties, and his life was a shambles. His mom had kicked him out. And get this. One time Jellwagger came home from work and went to the mailboxes like he always did. While pulling out his mail, he couldn’t help noticing an envelope on top of the mailboxes, where people sometimes put their outgoing mail. This particular envelope had been addressed to Aaron at his mother’s address. Only his mother had brought it back down to the mailboxes with a hand-scribbled note on it saying Aaron no longer lived there. Now obviously the woman could’ve held onto it and handed it off to Aaron the next time he came wandering by. But she never did. Seeing as how the sender was the district attorney’s office, well, Jellwagger wasn’t that dumb. Since then he’d see Aaron once in a blue moon, usually somewhere along the block talking to himself.
That leads us, like everything else, back to our Jellwagger here, on this fine Saturday in the courtyard of his dingbat. Time to get a status update on you-know-who. Aaron still had his blond hair in a flattop. His T-shirt and jeans were still a good size or two too big for his emaciated frame. The jeans barely clung to what little meat was left on his ass. One extra dimension to this tragedy-on-legs was that he had a forty-ounce Corona gripped by the neck. “Hey!” he said again.
Jellwagger looked at him on the other side of the front gate. Standing in the shade of the dingbat with the condos across the street behind him bathed in sunlight, most of Aaron was in shadow so it was hard to make out his face. The longer Jellwagger stared, though, the more it seemed that Aaron wasn’t even looking at him at all. Not knowing why he did it, Jellwagger raised his hand. “Hi.”
Aaron took a swig of his Corona, wiped his mouth with his forearm, and continued staring in Jellwagger’s general direction.
Suddenly he turned to the wall and started dancing and rapping at it, just as Jellwagger had seen him do to a car window one time.
Jellwagger suddenly remembered he was holding Chump, whose attention was likewise fully focused on Aaron. As soon as Jellwagger stepped in and closed the door, he put Chump down, undid his leash, and said, “I feel sick.”
However sick he felt now, it only got worse a few minutes later. After brushing his teeth and changing his clothes, he hurried out to his car with only twenty minutes to get down to Santa Monica. As our well-rested man was pulling out onto the street, out stepped Aaron from seemingly nowhere. He stepped right in front of Shitty Shitty Bang Bang and started waving his arms in a gesture that can only be described as wild and maniacal. He looked like a deranged bird who’d forgotten how to fly.
His right hand still held the Corona, but it was what his left hand held that made Jellwagger almost shit himself: A gun.
Sparkling in the sunlight was a little silver revolver that Aaron was clearly in love with judging by the grotesque way he smiled at it every few seconds. When he wasn’t smiling at it, he’d wave it in Jellwagger’s direction. While Jellwagger watched the black hole of the muzzle dance in front of his windshield, his cell rang. It was sitting in one of the cup holders so Jellwagger was able to glance at the screen without moving his head. Kit was calling. The dashboard clock read ten minutes to two, so technically he wasn’t late yet. Why would she be calling? His itch to pick up was overwhelmed by the rational side of him that said any movement, especially with his arms, would surely provoke Aaron to shoot. What really drove Jellwagger nuts, besides the whole gun-in-the-face thing, was that he couldn’t understand the vast majority of what came out of Aaron’s mouth. It literally did sound like gibberish.
Then two things happened at once. First, Aaron jumped up onto the hood of Shitty Shitty Bang Bang. And second, he started making sense. “You don’t know me, man! You don’t know me at all! I said you don’t know me! You wanna taste some o’ this shit? You want some o’ this up your ass, dawg? You don’t want some of this. I said you don’t WANT some of this, do you? DO YOU?!”
Then he reverted back to his gibberish and started treating the hood of Shitty Shitty Bang Bang like a trampoline. Without caring if it provoked him, Jellwagger started rubbing his forehead. Unbelievable. Even if he didn’t die, his car most likely would.
Aaron turned and arched his back so that his ass pointed at the windshield. I don’t need to tell you what he did next, do I? You can imagine the ripping fart on your own. After adding his own personal dose of smog to the air, Aaron jumped off the hood with flourish, like a toddler jumping off his parents’ bed.
He spun around to face Jellwagger again, rapping and waving his arms.
Then he stopped and pointed the gun. He pulled the trigger.
Click.
“It’s empty, motherfucker!” Aaron took a long pull from the Corona before resuming the wild gesticulations. “You think I would waste bullets on your punk ass? Do you? DO YOU?! Fuck no!” He moonwalked—yes, moonwalked—to the steps leading up to the courtyard.
Jellwagger watched him dance his way up. Aaron shoved the pistol into his back pocket and made a fist with his free hand that he rapped into like a mic. Now and again, and apparently as part of his routine, he’d back down one or two steps. He was clearly making his way up, but his progress was torturing Jellwagger. He should just floor it right now. Part of him worried it would set Aaron off. If he could deprive that poor kid of any reason to draw his gun and use bullets the next time, then he’d do it. Kit would just have to wait.
When Aaron finally did disappear around the corner at the top of the stairs, Jellwagger tore off. He needed to get Kit on the horn, the anti-cell driving law be damned. While he weaved around cars on Sherman Way to the 405, Kit told him she was still on the Promenade and it might be more like two-thirty by the time she got down to the beach.
Jellwagger’s relief only lasted until the freeway. He’d been heading south on the 405 for all of, I don’t know, a minute maybe? Before the freeway became a parking lot. The gridlock was worse than even he had feared. It was like the night Stefania drove home with him from the Napa Valley Grille. Only this time there didn’t seem to be a stalled car he could blame this mess on. It was simply a matter of more vehicles than the umpteen lanes could handle.
When two-thirty arrived, he’d only gone about five miles. He still had five more miles before the Wilshire exit, and then who knew how chaotic that God damned boulevard would be? He texted Kit that the volume was unspeakable and that he’d be beyond late. It was three when he got off the freeway. Sure enough, Wilshire was just as bad. While parked at the first or second light, Kit called.
“I’m at the intersection of Wilshire and Forever,” he told her.
“Baby, don’t even worry about it. Okay? I’m lounging on the sand with one of those delicious ice blended drinks from Coffee Bean. My feet are absolutely…KILLING ME!...from all that walking around. So I’m going to be here a good long while.”
“Sorry, Kit. I’m really sorry.”
She laughed. “Don’t be. I’m the one who called you out of the blue and woke your white ass. It’s all good. In fact, I’ll be going back up to Coffee Bean for another ice blended. I’ll get you one. You want strawberry-banana or blueberry?”
“Blue’s good. Kit, you’re awesome.”
It was four when Jellwagger finally turned off Pacific Coast Highway into the parking lot next to the Santa Monica Pier that cost all four of his limbs. He had to admit to himself that the day was beautiful. He walked onto the sand with his beach towel slung over his shoulder and kept his face pointing north. You would too. With not a wisp of smog in the air, the view toward the Santa Monica Mountains was crystal clear. Although miles away, they could’ve been right there. Those mountains, by the way, are the Hill that separate the Valley from the rest of L.A., and are the reason the Valley stays so blasted hot in the summers. Over here, on their western end, they protruded on a jut of land that forced PCH to wind its way around to get to Malibu. Yes, Malibu was around that so-called corner of the Hill. For all you Lethal Weapon fans, that’s where Mel did the whole raging drunk driver thing with the sheriff’s deputy he accused of trying to overthrow humanity.
As for our Lethal Weapon, he got on the horn to Kit and asked her where she was in this sea of people. She guided him north along the beach, away from the pier, for a good hundred yards or so until Jellwagger didn’t need her directions anymore. God….DAMN she was hot! He couldn’t possibly miss her now. She was the lone black woman in a sea of white, Asian, and Latino.
Kit was sitting in a foldout chair with a paperback memoir in hand. She slid the bookmark in and closed it so she could get up to welcome our Jellwagger.
“Please don’t get up on my account,” Jellwagger said in a mock formal voice.
Kit gave him what he thought at first would be one of those quickie hugs you exchange with casual acquaintances. Or people you’ve only known for about two days or so. But no, this went much longer. In fact, Jellwagger wasn’t sure he’d ever gotten a hug this big from someone who wasn’t his sister or his mom.
“I’m so glad you came, Jellwagger,” she said, smiling with her huge round black shades that reminded Jellwagger of a fly’s eyes and that showed his double reflection perfectly. “You really didn’t have to. I hope you’re not all, like, thinking this blows while trying to be nice for me.”
“Oh Kit, you’re being silly. Say, is that the blueberry slushy?” It was standing side by side with Kit’s pink strawberry-banana concoction.
“Did you just say slushy?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m from Jersey. That’s what they used to call them at Wawa.”
“Wawa! You forget I’m from Jersey too. Don’t remember slushies, though. Fantastic hoagies.” She laughed harder than Jellwagger thought the joke worth, bending over and slapping her leg. He couldn’t help shooting a furtive glance at her ass. “I remember…” She caught her breath. “I remember when I first moved out here and went to one of those places. Quiznos, maybe? I forget. And I called it a hoagie. I swear that kid looked at me like I turned white!”
Jellwagger spread out his towel, plopped himself down, and started sucking down the blueberry ice blended while scoping out the crowd for hot chicks. As always, they were a dime a dozen around these parts, one of the reasons he didn’t like coming to the beach all that often. Why stick himself in the midst of all those near-naked babes, all of whom would pass their eyes over him like they would any minnow in a pond? It was a form of torment Dante forgot to include in his so-called Comedy. At least this time he had Kit, whose presence served as a sort of balm. They could jabber about Bruce Willis, at least. After telling him not to suck down his drink too fast so he wouldn’t get a headache, she asked him more questions about his screenplay. Had he worked on it since the other night?
“Oh come on, Kit. You serious? I’ve barely had time to breathe.”
“Don’t give me that, Mr. Fourteen Hours.”
“That’s a hundred times the amount of sleep I normally get. It’ll be the next life before that happens again. Life hates me, Kit. That’s it, really. That’s what it all boils down to. The whole shebang. Life hates my fucking guts so it’s kicking my fucking ass.”
“The true mark of a man wallowing in self-pity. And a white man, no less. You try being a black woman in this country and see how you feel. No way would I be caught dead being a victim to anybody or anything. That’s exactly what they want. Every time you do that, you prove their point. Hell to the naw.”
Jellwagger sucked on his blueberry drink some more and looked around before his eyes finally settled on the water. Funny, he’d been out here for years but had yet to see a sunset over the Pacific. A stout Latino woman in her forties in a T-shirt and rolled-up sweats was making the rounds with a cooler strapped to her body containing bottles of water and an eclectic selection of produce. She advertised her wares over and over again, first in Spanish, then in English, her accent so thick that her English was tough to get if this was your first time here. Another thing that struck Jellwagger out of the blue like the no-sunset factoid was that this was the same woman who’d been selling this stuff on this same part of the beach for as long as he had been coming here. No matter how much time went by between beach outings, there she’d be, the one sure thing to make Jellwagger feel like he’d never left.
On her next pass Jellwagger raised his arm and said, “Agua!”
The woman repeated the word as she stepped carefully between the sunbathers on her way to Jellwagger.
“How much?” he asked.
“Two,” the woman said, holding up two fingers very deliberately should Jellwagger not have understood.
“Dos dollars?”
“Si.”
He gave her a five, took two bottles, and told her to keep the change.
“Gracias,” she said.
Jellwagger set the second bottle down next to Kit’s nearly empty ice blended.
“Perfect timing. These drinks do leave me thirsty. All that sugar.”
“That and the fact that the sun’s been beating down on you all day. Two dollars isn’t bad. You don’t want to know what that coffee shop in the Sanwa Bank building charges me.”
“Probably the same as it costs to park here.”
“You’re not far off, madam.” He sucked down more of the blueberry and looked around again. The sight of all these hotties didn’t fill him with despair anymore. Kit really was the distraction he needed right now. “Speaking of cars…”
“Mmm hmm?” Kit finished off her drink. Like Jellwagger with his diet soda at lunch yesterday, she slurped the bejesus out of it.
“I almost lost mine today. That’s right, Kitty.”
“You did not just call me that.”
“Shitty Shitty Bang Bang, my best friend outside of Chump E. Chips, the ol’ standby, the little guy who got me from coast to coast, nearly had a heart attack today because of some kid jumping up and down on it. You’d’ve thought he was auditioning for the Romper Room. I tell ya, Kit.”
Kit laughed, but much more quietly this time, shaking her head and glaring around with her massive shades at everyone but him.
“Gee, Kit. I wonder how much you’d laugh if he’d broken my poor bastard car so that I couldn’t’ve come down here to meet your fine and lovely self.”
“This happened today?”
“Yes’m. Just now.”
“Here?”
“No, silly, at my dingbat.”
“At your what?”
“Okay, hold on a fine moment.” He sucked down more of his drink. “We’re not jiving here, young Kit. Stay with me now. Today something unbelievable happened to me that, thanks to our smug friend hindsight, I should’ve seen coming ages ago. It’s so fucking weird, I’ve been bursting to tell you about it ever since I got here. I just figure, you know, the more people know about this kid and everything, and what happened with Shitty Shitty Bang Bang, the better the chances I won’t have nightmares because I’ll have vented some of it.” He couldn’t stop his voice from shaking.
Kit put her empty cup down and squeezed his arm. The sweat from the cup left over on her hand couldn’t camouflage the toughness of her fingers. Their feel reminded him of stiff leather, like that brand new baseball mitt his father had gotten him when he was eleven.
“Oh my God, I’m sorry, Kit.”
She frowned at him.
“I’m sorry about what I said. The other night. When we first met. In the BonaVista. What I said about women slaves and their white masters and all that. I don’t know. It just came out. I was drunk.”
“Don’t make excuses. What, are you a victim of your drinking habits now? You said something you shouldn’t have. Now you have apologized. I accept your apology. That’s the manliest thing I’ve seen you do. Now.” She smiled and playfully shook his arm. “Spill it, Jellwagger. This kid hopping on your hood.”
And so our favorite Jellwagger gave Kit the lowdown on Aaron, the backstory, the downward spiral, everything. For the first part the story, Kit kept her shaded eyes on him, smiling and nodding. Although, come to think of it, he couldn’t think of what he was saying that was smile worthy. Anyway, around the time he got to what happened today, Kit lifted her huge glasses and propped them on top of her head.
By now it was past five in the p.m. The sun was starting its descent and was shining its light directly into their eyes. If he didn’t know better, Jellwagger would’ve thought she was tearing up. She kept her eyes focused on the water. He couldn’t help feeling something was wrong. Like the slavery thing the other night, he’d said something to make her feel uncomfortable without meaning to. Unlike the other night, she wasn’t volunteering her qualms. The tiniest hint of a smile hung on her lips, only it didn’t come from any enjoyment.
Jellwagger suddenly couldn’t wait to finish the damned story, not just because it was kind of embarrassing, it was obviously making Kit feel uncomfortable. What did he say wrong?
“Damn that loser kid!” Jellwagger concluded. He’d worked himself up into a state of indignation at having been threatened and, yes, perhaps even victimized by that drug-addled weirdo stalking the sidewalk in front of his dingbat. Kit’s aloofness only frustrated him more. “I mean seriously, Kit. You hear me? You with me, Kit?”
“Oh I’m with you, Jellwagger,” she said with barely any emotion while keeping her eyes on the water.
“That’s what I’m saying. He should just…I don’t know…” He turned to the water to see if maybe she was looking at anything specific. Nope. Just the same people and the same water. What gives for Christ’s sake? “He should just jump in the ocean, Kit. Really. Who needs a punk bitch like that? The world doesn’t need him. His mom’s embarrassed by him. I mentioned her, right? Stacy. Nice gal. She was a good manager. Well, she was okay. Connie might be better. But whatever. Stacy doesn’t deserve what her son’s doing to the family crest by parading around Van Nuys like a whacko. He should come down here, right? Today, preferably. And jump into the fucking Pacific and end it all. Fuck him! If he messes with me or my car again…” He noticed people looking at him and decided this was just as good a time as any to stop.
Again with a flat voice, Kit said, “You should’ve got on the horn with the Valley’s finest.”
Jellwagger collected himself. “Kit, why weren’t you there? Why can’t I think of the obvious shit until ten years after the fact?”
Damn, it wasn’t until he shut his mouth that Jellwagger realized what a number he’d done on his nerves. He was panting, his heart was kicking the shit out of his ribs, and his face was dripping with more sweat than the Latina vendor. He sucked down the rest of the blueberry ice blended, slurped it dry, and then went straight for the bottle of water. When he was halfway through it, Kit pulled the shades back over her eyes and stretched her legs. Great, maybe she was coming back to Earth, right?
No dice. They sat there in silence surrounded by the cacophony of families for a good long while.
Jellwagger eventually let his eyes relax on the ripples created by those sailboats out yonder with their white triangles. Kids played at the foot of the water. Only to them would those wimpy waves be a big deal. Jellwagger, speaking of wimps, couldn’t help smiling as he watched the kiddies run back and forth trying not to get knocked down by the white shelves of water curling in on themselves. He got so lost in the scene he forgot about what was sliding down the sky just above.
“Hey Kit, look!” Jellwagger couldn’t help pointing with the same naked enthusiasm as those kids. “Look, Kit! The sun’s about to set. In all the time I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen the sun set. Can you believe that? Just a few more minutes now.”
Kit got up and stared at the water for another long moment.
“Kit, what’s the score?”
“Another ice blended,” she said with barely a trace of emotion.
Kit had been gone maybe five minutes before Jellwagger, having polished off the water, had what felt like the Biblical Flood sitting in his bladder. The closest restrooms were up on the pier, which meant having to leave his and Kit’s belongings for a few minutes. It couldn’t be helped, though. Kit might be standing in line at Coffee Bean for who knew how long. His molars would drown if he didn’t take action.
As always, the pier men’s room was truly a stink hole. Jellwagger had to believe it was cleaned, but the cleaning crew didn’t seem able to keep up with all the locals and tourists who used it. With those walls, originally blue but now a hideous patchwork of blue and the slate gray beneath, the door-less stalls, the litter, and the stink, did it ever get enough sanitary attention?
By the time he was drained, and against his better judgment, he decided another one of those blueberry mothers was a good idea. The Coffee Bean was further down the pier, but before he went there, he squeezed his way through the throngs to the stairs leading back down to the sand. Kit wasn’t back. With that red bikini that glowed against her deep space skin, he’d be able to spot that mystery woman anywhere.
When he hopped into Coffee Bean, she wasn’t there, and the line wasn’t much to speak of. She definitely would’ve been able to get her drink by now. He went back out and took another look-see down at the beach just in case he’d missed her. No go. The sun hovered a few inches above the water. Damn! Jellwagger was going to miss it if he kept looking for her. Maybe he could watch the sunset first, and hopefully by then Kit will have either found him or returned to their spot on the sand.
And that’s when he saw her. Looking toward the sun, down the length of the pier, Jellwagger spotted the black woman in the red bikini standing maybe fifty feet away, looking toward the sun. What the hell was she doing? “Hey Kit!” He figured there was no way she could hear him over the chorus of babble, but it was worth a shot. Jellwagger started making his way through the human density while continuing to call her name.
When he was maybe halfway there, Kit started heading further down the pier. Actually the woman wasn’t walking so much as meandering, as if she were either drunk or just wasn’t sure she wanted to go that far out.
“Kit, what’s the score? Where ya goin’?”
No dice. Despite his best efforts and her leisurely pace, Jellwagger couldn’t catch up with her, let alone get close enough for her to hear him screaming over the throngs. Seriously, what the hell was she doing?
A pack of kids flooded Jellwagger’s path on their way to the Ferris wheel, which had just turned on its lights. Jellwagger had been up here plenty of times in the daytime, but he’d never been here late enough to see it lit up. Not that he could appreciate it at the moment. He hollered Kit’s name while waiting for the kids to pass. By the time Jellwagger could move forward again, she was out of sight. He started running.
There she was! Kit was passing Maria Sol, the two-story restaurant with the flat canary yellow roof toward the end of the pier on the right. This was yet another place Jellwagger had always wanted to try out but never had. Maybe Kit would want to have dinner here, assuming he could catch up with her.
She was coming up to the railing at the end of the pier now, but her pace quickened when you’d think she’d slow down. Just before she reached the railing, which had a smattering of couples and birdwatchers, she did a bee line to the left. Jellwagger was just passing Maria Sol. The crowd wasn’t as thick out here, but the wind whipping his ears made up for that in terms of her not being able to hear him. Of course it was possible she’d heard him this whole time.
What Kit did next elevated that possibility to a likelihood.
Instead of coming to a stop at the railing, she gripped it with both hands and jumped over.
At first Jellwagger didn’t understand what he’d just seen. He froze and figured she was just under the pier somewhere, just messing around or something or playing a game with him. But in the next instant common sense smacked him in the head. There was only one place where Kit could’ve gone.
His shock was such that he had no memory of running the width of the pier. One moment he was making up bullshit alternatives for Kit’s not being in the water, the next he found himself at the railing looking at the foaming turbulence where she’d disappeared. The foam was quickly wiped away by the current.
And then the next thing our bewildered Jellwagger knew, he himself was jumping into the water. He wasn’t going to see any sunset this time.
To be continued...
