"Why would you think that?" he asks. He puts some more of the gel on his fingers, rubbing it through thick, blondish hair, darkening it.
"Your mom mentioned that you didn't feel like coming," I say, quickly, offhand. I sip the drink.
He looks at me in the mirror, his face clouding over.
"No, I never said that. I just had this paper to do and, um, no." He combs his hair, inspecting himself. Satisfied, he turns away from the mirror and looks at me, and as I'm confronted with that blank stare, my decision not to pursue it is made.
We meet Rachel in the main dining room. She stands by the piano, talking to the piano player. She has a purple flower in her hair and the piano player touches it and she laughs. Tim and I walk over to the white baby grand. She turns around, her eyes flat and blue, and she flashes a perfect white smile. She touches her shoulder and moves toward us.
"Rachel," Tim says, a little reluctantly. "This is my dad. Les Price."
"Hello, Mr. Price," Rachel says, holding out her hand.
"Hi, Rachel." I take her hand, noticing that she has no polish on her fingernails even though they are long and smooth. I tentatively let go of her hand. She turns to Tim.
"You both look nice," she says.
"You look great," Tim says, smiling at her.
"Yes," I say. "You do."
Tim looks at me, then at her.
"Thanks, Mr. Price," she says.
The maître d' seats us outside. There's a warm night breeze. Rachel sits across from me and she looks even more beautiful in candlelight. Tim, clean-shaven, wearing an expensive Italian suit I bought him over the summer, his tan darker than Rachel's even, his hair combed back slickly, complements Rachel unnervingly, almost as if they were related. Tim seems comfortable with this girl and I'm almost happy for him. I order a Mai Tai and Rachel has a Perrier and Tim has a beer. After drinking the Mai Tai and ordering another and after listening to the two of them drone on about MTV, college, videos they like, a movie about a deformed girl who learns to accept herself, I feel relaxed enough to tell a joke that ends with the punch line: "May I please have some mouthwash please?" When both of them confess to not understand it and I need to explain it to them, I move on.
"What's that stuff in your hair?" I ask Tim.
"It's Tenax, Dad. It's a gel for your hair." He looks at me with mock exasperation and then at Rachel, who smiles at me.
"Just wanted to know," I say idly.
"So what do you do, Mr. Price?" Rachel asks.
"Call me Les," I tell her.
"Okay. What do you do, Les?"
"I'm into real estate."
"I told you that," Tim tells her.
"You did?" she asks, looking at me blankly.
"Yeah," Tim says sourly. "I did."
She finally looks away. "I forgot."
An image of Rachel, naked, hands on her breasts, lying on my bed, flashes past my line of vision and the idea of taking her, having her, does not seem unappealing to me. Tim pretends to ignore my constant staring but I know he's watching me watching Rachel, very carefully. Rachel flirts boldly with me and I keep debating whether to flirt back. Dinner comes. We eat quickly. More drinks are ordered afterward. By this time I am comfortably drunk enough to lean forward and smile suggestively at Rachel. Tim is so deflated it doesn't even seem like he exists.
"Did you know that Robert Waters is here?" Rachel asks us.
"Who?" Tim asks sullenly.
"Come on, Tim," I say. "Robert Waters. He's on 'Flight Patrol,' that TV show."
"I guess I don't watch enough TV," Tim says.
"Yeah, right," I snort.
"You don't know who Robert Waters is?" Rachel asks him.
"No, I don't," Tim says, an edge in his voice. "Do you?"
"I actually met him at Reagan's inauguration," Rachel says, then, "God, I thought everybody knew who Robert Waters is." She shakes her head, amused.
"I don't," Tim says, plainly irritated. "Why?"
"Well, it's kind of embarrassing." Rachel smiles, looks down.
"Why?" Tim asks again, a fraction of coldness evaporating.
"He's here with three guys," I say.
"So?" Tim asks.
"So?" Rachel laughs.
"One of them tried to pick up on Tim today," I tell Rachel, attempting to gauge her response because at first there isn't one but then she starts laughing and then I'm laughing with her. Tim is not laughing.
"Me?" he asks. "When?"
"At the bar," Rachel says. "Today on the beach."
"Him? That guy?" Tim asks, remembering.
"Yeah, him," I say, rolling my eyes.
Tim blushes. "He was nice. He was a nice guy. So what?"
"Nothing," Rachel says.
"I'm sure he was real nice," I say, laughing.
"Real nice," Rachel repeats, giggling.
Tim looks at her, then sharply at me since I'm to blame, and then back at Rachel and his face changes as if he understands something might be heading toward something else and this realization seems to relax him.
"I guess you two would notice," Tim says, still smiling at her, then, grimly, my way. He lights a cigarette, taunting me. But I only smile back and pretend not to notice.
"I guess we would," I say, patting Rachel's arm.
"Come on, Tim," she says, pulling back a little. "They like you. You're probably the youngest guy here."
Tim smiles, takes a deep drag on the cigarette. "I haven't noticed how many 'young guys' are here. Sorry."
"You shouldn't smoke," Rachel says.
"I told you, Tim," I say.
He looks at her, then at me. "Why not?" he asks her.
"It's bad for you," she tells him earnestly.
"He knows that," I say. "I told him last night."
"No. You told me not to smoke because 'we're in Hawaii,' not because it's bad for me," he says, glaring.
"Well, it's bad for you too and I find it offensive," I say with no effort.
"I’m not blowing it in your face,” he mutters. He looks over at Rachel to save him. "Am I bothering you? I mean, jeez, we're outside. We're outside."
"You just shouldn't smoke, Tim," she says softly.
He gets up. "Well, I'm going somewhere else to finish this cigarette, okay? Since you two don't like it." Pause, then, to me, "Are the odds pretty good tonight, Dad?"
"Tim," Rachel says. "You don't have to. Sit down."
"No," I say, daring him. "Let him go."
Tim begins to walk away.
Rachel turns in her chair. "Tim. Oh God."
He walks past a couple of small potted palms, the piano player, one of the fags, an old couple dancing, then in, then out of the dining room.
"What's wrong with him?" Rachel asks.
The two of us don't say anything else to each other and listen to the piano player and the muffled conversations that float out of the dining room, the background sound of waves breaking along the shore. Rachel finishes a drink I don't remember her ordering. I sign for the check.
"Good night," she says. "Thanks for dinner."
"Where are you going?" I ask.
"Please tell Tim I'm sorry." She begins to walk away.
"Rachel," I say.
"I'll see him tomorrow."
"Rachel."
She walks out of the dining room.
I open the door to our suite. Tim is sitting on his bed, looking out over the balcony, curtains billowing around him. The room is completely dark except for moonlight and, even with the balcony doors open, permeated with marijuana.
"Tim?" I ask.
"What?" He turns around.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
"Nothing." He stands up slowly and closes the doors leading out to the balcony.
"Do you want to talk?" I have been crying.
"What? Did you ask me if I wanted to talk?" He flips on a light, smiling at me with a tainted smile.
"Yes.”
"About what?"
"You tell me."
"There's nothing to talk about," he says. He paces beside the bed, slowly, deliberately, trudging.
"Please, Tim. Come on."
"What?" He throws his arms up, smiling, eyes wide and bloodshot. He takes off his jacket and tosses it on the floor. "There is nothing to talk about."
I can't say anything except "Give me a chance. Don't ruin my chances."
"You don't have any chances to ruin, dude." He laughs, then says again, "Dude."
"You don't mean that," I say. "Nothing. There is nothing," Tim says, less sternly than before. He stops pacing, then sits on the bed again, his back to me.
"Just forget about it," he says again, yawning. "There's . . . nothing."
I just stand there.
"Nothing," he says again. "Nada."
I wander around the grounds of the hotel for a long time and I finally end up sitting on a small bench situated above the sea, next to a floodlight shining down into the water. Two manta rays, drawn by the intense light, are swimming in circles, their fins flapping slowly in the clear, lit waves. There is no one else watching the manta rays and I stare at them swimming tirelessly for what seems to be a long time. The moon is high and bright and pale. A parrot squawks from across the hotel. Tiki torches burn with gas flames. I'm about to go to the front desk and get another room, when I hear a voice behind me.
"Manta birostris, also called manta ray." Rachel steps out of the darkness, wearing sweats and a revealing T-shirt with the words LOS ANGELES on it, the flower from earlier still in her hair. "They're relatives of the shark and the skate. They inhabit warmer ocean waters. They spend most of their lives either partially buried in the bottom mud or sand of the ocean or swimming just above the bottom."
She steps over the bench and leans against the floodlight and watches the two large gray monsters.
"They move by undulating their large pectoral fins and they steer with their long tails. They feed primarily on crustaceans, mollusks, marine worms." She pauses, looks at me. "Some manta rays weighing over three thousand pounds and measuring twenty feet across have been caught. Because of their size they are greatly feared." She looks back into the water and continues speaking, as if reading to the blind. "Actually they have a retiring disposition. They only cause boats to capsize and kill humans when they're being attacked." She looks back at me. "They leave these large eggs that have a dark-green, almost black, leathery covering on them, with little tendrils at each corner that fasten to seaweed. After they hatch, the empty cases drift to shore." She stops, then sighs heavily.
"Where did you learn all that?"
"I got an A in oceanography at UCSD."
"Oh," I sigh, drunk. "That's . . . interesting."
"I suppose so." She looks back at the manta rays.
"Where have you been?" I ask.
"Around," she says, looking off, as if absorbed by something invisible. "Talk to Tim?"
"Yeah." I shrug. "He's okay."
"Don't you two get along?" she asks.
"As well as most fathers and sons," I say, guessing.
"That's too bad, then," she says, looking at me. She moves away from the floodlight and sits next to me on the bench. "Maybe he doesn't like you." She pulls the flower from her hair and smells it. "But I guess that's okay because maybe you don't like him either."
"Do you think my son is handsome?" I ask.
"Yes. Very," she says. "Why?"
"I just wanted to know." I shrug.
One of the manta rays rises to the surface and splashes at the water with its fin.
"What did you talk about with him this afternoon?" I ask.
"Not a lot. Why?"
"I want to know."
"Just . . . things."
"What things?" I press. "Rachel."
"Just things."
We watch the manta rays. One of them swims away. The other one drifts uncertainly in the floodlight's glare.
"Does he talk about me?" I ask.
"Why?"
"I want to know."
"Why?" She smiles coyly.
"I want to know what he says about me."
"He doesn't say anything."
"Really?" I ask, mildly surprised.
"He doesn't talk about you."
The manta ray floats there, paddling.
"I don't believe you," I say.
"You have no choice," she says.
The next day, Tim and I are on the beach, under a calm, seamless sky, playing backgammon. I am winning. He is listening to his Walkman, not really interested in the outcome of the game. I roll double sixes. He gazes listlessly at the beach, his face drained of emotion. He rolls the dice. A small red bird lands on our green umbrella. Rachel walks up to the two of us, wearing a pink lei and a small blue bikini, sipping Perrier.
"Hi, Les. Hi, Tim," she says happily. "Nice day."
"Hi, Rachel," I say, looking up from the backgammon board, smiling.
Tim nods without looking up, without taking off his sunglasses or removing the Walkman. Rachel just stands there, looking first at me, then at Tim.
"Well, see you two later," she stammers.
"Yeah," I say. "Maybe at the luau?"
Tim doesn't say anything. I move two men. Rachel walks away, back up to the hotel. I win the game. Tim sighs and leans back against the chaise longue and takes off his sunglasses and rubs his eyes. Maybe the odds have not been good from the start. I lean back, watching Tim. Tim looks out at the sea, warm, stretching out like a flat blue sheet to the horizon, and maybe Tim is looking out past the horizon, his eyes disappointed at finding even more of the same flatness, and the day begins to seem colder even if there's no wind and later in the afternoon the ocean darkens, the sky turns orange and we leave the beach.
5
SITTING STILL
I do not pull back the curtains of my window until somewhere in New Mexico. I do not open them when the train leaves New Hampshire and moves down through New York and I do not open them when the train pulls into Chicago or after that, when I board another Amtrak train, the train that will eventually take me to Los Angeles. When I finally do open the curtains in the small compartment, I am sitting on my bed and staring at passing images beyond the window as if they are a movie and the clear square window a screen. I watch cows grazing beneath overcast New Mexico skies, endless rows of backyards, pale laundry hanging on lines, rusted toys, bent slides, crooked swing sets, clouds growing darker as the train passes through Santa Fe. There are windmills in fields, which begin to turn faster, and yellow daisies that lie in clumps on the side of wet highways, which tremble as the train hurtles past, and I'm moved to start humming "This Land Is Your Land" to myself, which leads to taking the dress I'm going to wear to my father's wedding out of the suitcase and laying it out on the small bed and staring at it until the train stops in Albuquerque and I'm immediately reminded of the Partridge Family and a song they sing.
My father tells me about the marriage when he visits Camden in November. He takes me into town and buys me a couple of books, then a tape at the Record Rack. I don't really want the books or the tape but he seems unusually persistent about buying me something so I oblige and try to seem excited over the Culture Club tape and the three books of poetry. I even introduce him to two girls I run into at the Camden bookshop who live in my house and whom I don't like much. My father keeps tightening the scarf around my neck and complains about the early snow, the cold, how nice L.A. is, how warm the days are, how comfortable the nights seem, how I still might get into UCLA or USC and if not UCLA or USC maybe Pepperdine. I'm smiling and nodding and not saying too much, suspicious of what his intentions are.
At lunch in a small café on the outskirts of town, my father orders a white-wine spritzer and doesn't seem to mind when I order a gin and tonic. After we order lunch and he has two more white-wine spritzers he begins to loosen up.
"Hey, how's my little punk rocker doing?" he asks.
"I'm not a punk rocker," I say.
"Oh come on, you look a little, um, punk." He smi
les and then, after I don't say anything, asks, "Don't you?" his smile slipping.
Suddenly feeling sorry for him, I say, "A little, I guess."
I finish the drink, chewing on ice, deciding not to let him carry the conversation, so I ask about the studio, about Graham, about California. We eat quickly and I order another gin and tonic and he lights a cigarette.
"You haven't asked about Cheryl," he finally says.
"I haven't?" I ask.
"No." He takes a drag, exhales.
"Yes. I have."
"When?"
"On the way into town. Didn't I?"
"I don't think so."
"I'm pretty sure I did."
"I don't remember that, honey."
"Well, I think I did."
"Don't you like her?"
"How's Cheryl?"
He smiles, looks down, then at me. "I think we're getting married."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"That's, um, so, congratulations," I say. "Great."
He looks at me quizzically, then asks, "Do you really think that's great?"
I lift the glass to my mouth and tap the side to get the ice at the bottom.
"Well, it's, um, slowly dawning on me that you might be serious."
"Cheryl's great. You two get along." He falters again, refrains from lighting another cigarette. "I mean, when you met her."
"I'm not marrying Cheryl. You are."
"When you give me that type of response, baby, I know how you really feel," he says.
I start to touch his hand across the table, then something in me stops myself.
"Don't worry about it," I say.
"I've been so . . . lonely," he says. "I've been alone for what seems like forever."
"Uh-huh."
"You get to a point where you need someone."
"Do not explain this to me," I say quickly, then with less harshness, "because you don't have to."
"I want your approval," he says simply. "That's all."
"You don't need it."
He sits back in his chair, puts down another cigarette he was about to light. "The wedding is in December." He pauses. "When you get home."
I'm looking out the window at hard, cold snow and gray clouds the color of asphalt.
"Have you told Mom?" I ask.
"No."
At lunch on the train, the waiter sits me at a table with an old Jewish man who is reading a small, frayed black book and keeps muttering to himself in what must be Hebrew. The Jewish man doesn't look anything like my father though the way he's holding himself right now is reminiscent of the behavior of many of my father's friends who work at his studio. This man is older and has a beard, but it is the first time since that lunch with my father that I have been this close to a man during a meal. I don't eat too much of the sandwich I order, which is paper thin and stale, or the lukewarm vegetable soup. Instead I finish a small cup of ice cream and drink a Tab and am about to light a cigarette when I realize there's no smoking in the dining lounge. I nibble at the sandwich, stare out over the crowded dining car, noticing that all the waiters are black and that the train's passengers are mainly old people and foreigners. Outside, a sepia landscape passes by, small adobe houses, young mothers wearing cutoff jeans and halter tops hold small red babies up to the train, waving listlessly as it passes by. Empty drive-ins, huge, seemingly deserted junk lots, more houses built of adobe. Back in my room, staring at the dress, my Walkman on, I'm listening to Boy George sing "Church of the Poisoned Mind," a song on the tape he bought me in town last November.