Sex and Death (30 page)

But I know that our lives are much quieter now and that there is a different kind of stillness in our house. Maddy gets tired earlier than before and we go to bed at different times and we do not share the computer any more. Now we have our own devices, amazing cellphones with hand-held video screens, and we use these to usher ourselves into our own unique versions of sleep. It does not feel strange. The kids go down and we clean up the kitchen together and we take our showers. Then we sit for a couple of minutes before she says, ‘I think I'll go up now,' and we kiss. In separate rooms, we choose the shows we want to see and the pictures and the sounds we select bring us a specific comfort. They help us rest. I think she watches old sitcoms or YouTube episodes of
Grand Designs
or
House Hunters International
, but I am not entirely sure. I never ask and I know she is not interested in my sports teams or wherever I go when the games are over. When I come upon her in bed, I try not to disturb her, or even touch her body, as I take my place beside her. We both have to be ready to go in the morning.

This house has served us well and we have never regretted our decision. All the old character is still there in the walls and the mouldings and the place is filled with the histories, the trace elements, of other people who came through before we arrived. Some nights when I have the fire going, I can imagine them, the former residents, generations of strangers, staring into this exact same spot and stretching out their hands towards the heat and
the light. But they are all gone and this place belongs only to us now. We have made it the way it is. Our particular actions and inactions, our most intimate longings and revulsions, have come together to form a daily domestic shape that only we designed and only we can fully recognise.

But I go back sometimes and I see us at the beginning of everything. We are together in the mirror of the motel bedroom and we are seven months pregnant with Jack and we cannot help ourselves. Then the wall dissolves and now I am looking down from above and I can see him too, just a few feet away, his hand in the air, waiting for a signal. At other times I picture him sitting silently in his own kind of quiet room, the cell where they keep him today. I imagine a cot and some books and the stainless-steel toilet. Mark and I and Maddy and Lila and Jack: we do not know where we are in the arc of our lives – old or young, safe or exposed, closer to the beginning or the end, brushing up against death or far away from it. We do not know if the decisive moment has arrived or if it is yet to come. Led only by what we desire, we go out into the world and we make our way. And then we sleep, each of us in temporary beds that will one day be occupied by other people.

‘So it is you,' she said, coming up alongside as I was getting myself a glass of Zinfandel.

I'd only just stepped into the party and not even had the chance to check it out. She was younger than myself, with curly sandy-blonde hair and a good figure; a little shy-looking maybe, but that only made her all the more attractive. My type for sure, but nothing about her was familiar. I glanced over my shoulder to check it was me she was addressing.

‘Don't remember me, do you?' She kind of laughed, but like she'd just realised something stupid. She looked away a second before turning back again, and it was in that movement that I saw the girl I once knew.

‘Arlette?' Must have been near fifteen years since I'd spoken that name, but the memory of her came back to me. A girl I'd run around with one summer. Sexy. Young. A little bit high most of the time.

‘Ray,' she replied, and the way she studied me, like I was something surprising to her, something she'd misplaced, it was intense; this could get interesting, I thought. And so I smiled at her, but she was still too absorbed to smile back.

‘Always imagined maybe I'd bump into you one of these days,' she said. ‘You're looking old.'

I'd first met her on Haight. An afternoon – that crazy summer of '67 – when I'd driven across the bay to visit an esoteric bookstore a guy at work had told me about. There she was on the
sidewalk, trying to make a buck reading tarot. Her hair was loose and long, down-to-her-ass long, and her fingers flipped the cards on the grey paving. She was sitting cross-legged, in a long Indian skirt and a bunch of ethnic jewellery – beads and bangles, and these heavy silver rings on her skinny fingers. Like a little kid playing dress-up who no one had told not to speak to strangers. When I came out the store she was still there, and she looked up and smiled. Her face was very open, very young, and two bucks didn't seem like a lot to talk to this girl. I offered her a ride along the coast after. We smoked a few and watched the sun go down. She was sleeping on a girlfriend's couch in the Upper Haight, everything she owned in an army duffel bag almost as big as herself. I helped her carry it up the stairs to my apartment when she moved in.

‘I teach their daughter dance,' she said now. ‘And you? How do you know them?'

‘I play squash with Ted.'

‘You play squash?' she said.

‘You teach dance?' I countered.

She shrugged and smiled. There was a reserve to her manner that was new, but when she smiled it disappeared again. It was a nice smile. Her lips were full and glossed, her teeth straight. She'd changed a good bit since I'd seen her last – matured into her features, lost the skinniness, changed her hair – and it suited her well.

The mention of squash had made me draw in my stomach instinctively. I keep myself pretty trim, eat healthy – vegetarian for the most part – but for all the squash I play there's a bulge I just can't seem to shake any more. I'm vain enough that these things bother me – like the way my hairline is receding, or the grey in my beard – even if I know that for a guy of my years I'm looking pretty good. I still keep my hair long, though mostly I wear it tied
back now, and my beard I keep neat; I take care of my appearance. Today I'd dressed nice for the party; a slim-fitting shirt unbuttoned at the neck, Levi's, a string of Himalayan prayer beads.

It was Ted's party. An architect I'd met on the courts down at the Y. We'd had a few games together. He was a good player and we were well matched. He laughed easily, even when I beat him, which is a trait I admired because hell I wish I could take losing so lightly. He and his wife Marion, a professor of women's studies, had just bought a house up on Stanford Avenue. ‘We're having a housewarming potluck Saturday,' Ted had said, last time I'd seen him, wiping at his forehead with a hand towel as we headed back to the changing rooms. ‘Want to come along?'

I knew it wouldn't really be my scene. Architects and academics from the university, all of them talking gender politics and timber cladding, their noisy kids ducking through our legs and knocking over plates of food. I'd planned on bringing a date, a recently divorced yoga instructor called Judith who I'd been seeing on and off, but she'd cancelled on me that morning because her cat had vomited; I had a feeling already things weren't going to work out with Judith.

So I was a bit bummed to be going alone, and might have backed out but it was my first day off after a string of double shifts and I figured I'd just swing by, check it out.

‘So what are you doing these days?' Arlette asked, talking over the noise of the party.

‘Working in a vegetarian kitchen,' I told her. ‘Rosa's Pantry?'

‘You're still cooking?' she said, surprised.

It's true I used to hate the job. It was only meant to be something I'd do until something better came along: I was working on a poetry chapbook, thought I might take up carpentry, considered enrolling on an anthropology programme, I wanted to travel. But I never really got my ass in gear to change anything, and anyhow I'd come round to kitchen work over the years. You can be pretty
Zen about food preparation. And Rosa's is a co-operative so really it's more than just a job.

‘But hey, I don't wanna talk about me,' I told her, because what I really wanted to do now was steer our conversation round to her. ‘Let's talk about you.'

‘Oh,' she said, blowing out through her lips like her story was hardly worth telling. ‘Oh, yeah, okay.'

I suggested we go out to the deck because it would be easier to talk out there. I eyed Arlette's hips, how they swayed to the music, as we moved out through the crowded living room.

With the trees and the hills and the bay sparkling down below, the view from Ted's deck was impressive. The air smelled of warm eucalyptus. Anyone would have felt a little envious with a view as phenomenal as that; I'd have liked a place up in the hills myself. We leant against the railing. In the back yard beneath us they'd set out a yellow Slip 'N Slide on the grass. There were kids in bathing suits screaming excitedly as they slid down the hill. A red setter ran up and down alongside them, barking maniacally, its dopey energy relentless.

‘Looks like fun,' I said.

‘Sure does.'

Her glass was near empty again so I fetched a bottle to refill it.

‘God, I always drink too much at parties where I don't know anyone.'

‘Doesn't everyone?' I reassured her, topping up my own glass.

Her smile really was pretty.

It turned out she'd become a dancer. She'd trained in New York and had only been back on the West Coast a couple of years. It explained why we'd not run into each other before now. ‘I did shows in NYC for a while,' she said. ‘It was fun but I'm too old now. Too old to dance professionally anyhow. So now I teach.'

‘You're looking great.' She lowered her head at the compliment. ‘I like what you've done with your hair.'

‘It's a perm,' she said self-consciously, then a moment later a thought struck her. ‘I was still a hippie back when you knew me, wasn't I? Wow! I cut my hair soon as I got to New York. It was a whole different scene over there.'

‘Still reading tarot?'

‘Tarot!' She couldn't help laughing.

I caught her eye as she looked back up and there was a flash of something, of the attraction there'd once been between us, I could tell she felt it too. I was feeling good about the way things were going. ‘Yeah, you read my cards,' I reminded her. ‘Told me I was gonna meet a beautiful girl who'd break my heart.'

‘I did?' She coloured, then a moment later looked unsure. ‘I said that, really?'

I kept my gaze on her. Shrugged in place of answering.

‘Wasn't your heart that got broke though, was it?' she said matter-of-factly, and then she relieved the moment's tension with a laugh. ‘Honestly, the tarot? I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I just needed money.'

There were a lot of young girls like her in the city back then. Run away from small-town life, from parents who didn't care or cared too much, looking for something that didn't feel like everything they'd known up until then. They didn't have a clue. For a guy like me, it was like being handed a platter at a party.

I'd been in the Bay Area a while already, long before the place was swinging. Came to take an engineering major at Cal, largely because it was what my father had wanted to study, but then I got stuck on the idea I didn't want to be the realisation of his failed ambitions so I dropped out. I was young and stupid. He cut my monthly allowance and never really forgave me. I had rent to pay and the only work I could find was in kitchens. On my nights off I'd go out and visit jazz clubs and try to meet women. I
wasn't the kind to settle down, I knew that already, I liked variety. After a while of this I was wanting something new and maybe I would have quit town again, moved on someplace else, but then the scene started to change and suddenly everything got kind of crazy and fun. These young kids began to arrive. I liked their music, the attitude, I liked their drugs. And most of all I liked the girls. It wasn't hip to cross your legs back then, even the shy ones were easy.

Arlette used to keep that tarot deck of hers in a little Indian purse around her neck, along with some of her other fortune-telling junk – a dowsing pendulum, baoding balls, dumb little crystals. She'd read strangers' cards when we were out. Nobody cared if she was making it all up. It was a nice summer we spent together. She was fresh, uncomplicated, good in bed. So it took me by surprise when one morning I woke up and she'd cleared out – the armchair was still pulled up next to the wardrobe where she'd climbed up to fetch her duffel bag down, but her clothes, her journals, her toothbrush from the tooth mug by the sink, all of it was gone. The only trace of her was a tarot card she'd left on my dresser. I couldn't tell you now what it pictured; honestly, I think I tossed it in the trash. I assume she meant something by it, but at the time the gesture seemed juvenile, a little corny. Other than that, no note, no explanation. I wasn't used to having a girl leave on me. Normally I was the one who broke things up, getting out before it all got too heavy. I figured she must've run away back home. Maybe she'd met another guy. I figured maybe a letter would arrive in the post. I was kind of pissed about it for a week or two but the fact of the matter was there were plenty other girls out there.

‘So, are you married?' I asked. ‘Kids?'

She shook her head.

‘But you've got a guy, huh?'

‘No,' she said simply, and in that moment she looked away
like I'd made her uncomfortable. I was annoyed I'd broken our easy flirtation. She shook her hair back over her shoulders and straightened up. ‘Can I get some more of that wine?'

As the party started winding down, we realised we were amongst the last guests left out on the deck. I suggested we take it elsewhere.

She left me waiting a moment for her answer and then said, ‘Yeah, all right. Let me just run to the bathroom.'

Leaning on the deck rail, I finished my wine and watched the sail boats far out on the bay.

I was trying to think what I could remember of her. Small things I'd had no cause to recall for years: how she liked her food spicy; that she'd been named after a Belgian grandmother, or maybe it was an aunt; riding the Tilden Park Merry-Go-Round together on acid. It had been fun talking with her again, time had passed easily, but I couldn't help noticing that she was different from how I remembered her. She seemed more guarded. And for a dancer she came across as, like, a little tense, if you know what I mean.

After some minutes, I realised Arlette had been gone a while so I figured I'd go in and find her.

The living room was less crowded now, potluck table looted, a Carly Simon song playing on the stereo.

That's when I saw her – at the door, about to leave. One foot already past the threshold, her jacket on, pocketbook over her shoulder. Evidently Ted's wife had hindered her; she was telling Arlette something, laughing, their daughter hanging on to one of Arlette's hands.

I could have stepped back out onto the deck. Maybe I should have let her go, she obviously wanted to, but it was a matter of self respect; when a girl's already walked out on you once you're not going to just stand back and let her pull that again. There was a full moment before she saw me, and when she did, her face flushed
with a guilty expression. ‘You two know each other?' asked Marion, surprised.

‘Used to,' said Arlette, ‘a long time ago.'

‘That's wild.'

The daughter dragged Marion away soon after, and I turned to Arlette with a smile. ‘Ducking out on me?'

‘No, no,' she said, evidently embarrassed. Then she laughed. ‘Actually, yeah.'

She didn't live far. ‘You want to just follow?' she suggested. She was a careful driver, especially considering the wine she'd drunk.

When we pulled up and parked she turned off her engine but didn't make any move to get out.

I locked my own car, then stepped up and opened her driver door, thinking maybe that was what she was waiting for. ‘You okay?'

‘I'm great,' she replied, and yanking her keys from the ignition she swept herself up from her seat.

I don't know what I'd expected but her apartment surprised me some. A boxy conversion on the first floor of a family house. She had her own entrance round the side of the building. It was very clean, everything in its place, but it wasn't exactly homely, more like it was someone else's apartment she was just staying in temporarily.

If you'd have asked me before that evening where I'd have pictured Arlette, I'd have bet you she was living someplace nice, with a guy who loved her, a couple of beautiful kids, maybe a puppy dog.