Fire and Rain

  “I have my sources,” she said, smiling, and she felt a power inside her she hadn’t known in years.

  13

  MIA WOULD HAVE USED any excuse to see Jeff again, so when Chris said he needed to take some order forms over to the warehouse, she volunteered to do it for him after work.

  Rick opened the warehouse door for her. “Hey, Mia,” he said.

  She handed him the forms, peering toward the rear of the long building, realizing she had no reason to walk back there.

  “I’m starving,” Rick said. “You up for some pizza? We’ll see if we can get the workaholic to join us.” He nodded toward the back of the warehouse.

  “Sounds great,” she answered, pleased.

  She followed Rick through the maze of furniture to the rear of the building, where Jeff was working at the computer. A lamp burned on the bookcase above the table, and the light that spilled from it was sharp and beautiful on the angles of his face.

  Rick stood at the end of the table. “How about a break?” he asked Jeff. “We’ll go out for pizza.”

  Mia held her breath, waiting for his answer. Jeff pushed another few keys on the computer. The hum of the window fans was hypnotic, and she wasn’t sure how many seconds had passed by the time he looked up from his work. “I’ll be here another couple of hours,” he said.

  Rick picked up a set of car keys from the table, tossed them high in the air and caught them with a flourish. “Looks like it’s you and me, Mia.”

  He didn’t seem disappointed, but she was. The bas-relief of the window was waiting for her at home, and she was tempted to back out of the invitation. But she was hungry. Her work could wait.

  They drove to Valle Rosa’s one small, uncrowded pizzeria, where they sat at a corner table. Mia had no problem at all talking Rick into ordering the vegetarian pizza.

  “So,” he said after the waitress had served Mia’s lemonade and his beer. “Jeff says you’re a pretty good sculptor. ‘Accomplished’ was the word he used.”

  “You mean he actually talks about something other than work?” she asked. “He’s always so quiet.” She wished she could have heard those words come out of Jeff’s mouth herself. Had he said anything else about her?

  “He’s thinking.” Rick sprinkled some salt on the red table top and began drawing a pattern in it with his fingertip. “At first I thought, this guy’s pretty weird. I even felt scared the first day I worked with him. We were alone in that warehouse, and I thought, What the hell are you doing, Smythe? You don’t know this dude. He could be a depraved ax murderer, for all you know.” Rick rolled his eyes. “At first I was trying to make conversation with him. We were clearing that space in the warehouse and his silence was making me nervous, so I started filling it with all sorts of mundane shit, but he didn’t say a word back to me. I don’t even think he was listening. Finally he sat down at the table with a pad and pencil and got this faraway look in his eyes, and I knew I’d better not disturb him.”

  Rick paused for breath, and Mia realized she didn’t know this young man sitting across from her at all. He was far more animated than she’d expected, far more wired. He doodled in the salt as he spoke, every once in a while glancing up at her, and each time she was surprised by the Caribbean blue of his eyes.

  “So I sort of walked around the warehouse feeling like a jerk, you know?” He shook his head and took a swallow of beer. “Completely useless. After—God—two hours maybe, he called me over, and he had twenty or thirty sheets covered with figures and equations and stuff I’d never seen before. I had to admit to him it was all over my head. And he said, ‘No, it’s not. You’re extremely bright.’” Rick laughed. “And I said, ‘How do you know that? All you’ve seen me do is push goddamned furniture around.’ And he smiled—finally—like I wasn’t sure the dude had any smile muscles, you know? And he said that he could feel my intelligence and that he was certain I have what it takes to work on this project.” Rick sat back, a little smugly, and raised his glass again to his lips.

  “So,” she said slowly, “I guess you two are working well together, then.” She couldn’t imagine a more mismatched duo than Jeff Cabrio and Rick Smythe. Jeff, who was bright and cerebral and sullen and mysterious, and Rick, with his ebullient, child-like openness and his—there was no other word for it—simplicity.

  “Oh,” he said, “we’re awesome together.”

  Their pizza was delivered and she looked at it dubiously. The cheese was thick. Pure fat. She should have ordered a salad. She took a slice onto her plate and blotted the oil from it with her napkin. When she looked up, Rick was smiling at her.

  “You are not ordinary,” he said.

  “And you are?” She pointed to the salt on the table, and he laughed.

  Taking a triangle of pizza onto his own plate, Rick continued with his story. “So anyhow, Jeff sat there and taught me what he was working out. I swear to you, Mia. I mean, I’ve got a master’s degree—I’m no imbecile—but this guy…” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Somehow he’s got me understanding what he’s coming up with. Once he explained it, I could follow it. He’s creating concepts that never existed before. He’s putting two and two together and getting five, and he can prove to you why he’s right.” He lifted the slice of pizza to his mouth, but set it down again without taking a bite. “It’s going to work, Mia. I mean, I lay in bed at night, and I can’t sleep ‘cause I just keep thinking, God, this is actually going to work.”

  She swallowed her mouthful of pizza. “You’re in awe of him,” she said.

  “Hell, yes, I’m in awe. I’m so fucking excited I haven’t even gone to the beach since he got here.” He finally took a bite of his pizza, wiping his mouth with his napkin before he spoke again. “God, I can’t stop talking. You’re going to think I took an upper or something.”

  “It’s interesting.” She wasn’t lying. She liked hearing about Jeff from the person in Valle Rosa who probably knew him best.

  “Well, speaking of the beach, I was wondering if you might like to go tomorrow. It’s Saturday. I can afford a couple of hours off, and you look like you could use some sun.”

  She sat back, surprised, and for the first time since arriving at the restaurant, a little uncomfortable. Was he asking her out? Until this moment, she had thought of him as nothing more than her link to Jeff. She didn’t want to think of him in any other way. He was attractive, yes. A good-looking California boy, the kind of guy Laura liked. Used to like.

  “I’m in Valle Rosa to work, I’m afraid,” she said, as if it were something outside her control. “I need to sculpt tomorrow, but thanks for asking.” The thought of her body in a bathing suit nearly brought tears to her eyes, and she swept the image quickly from her mind.

  “You and Jeff are so alike,” he said. “All work and no play is not a healthy way to live, girl.”

  She laughed, enjoying the comparison to Jeff.

  “Well, if you decide you’d like a break, let me know.” He took another slice of pizza and sat back on the bench. “So, what’s happening with Chris and Carmen? Everyone’s agog, you know? Everyone thinks it’s pretty fascinating that Chris is living back at Sugarbush.”

  She looked at him blankly. As far as she knew, nothing was happening with Chris and Carmen.

  “You know they were married, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “They were San Diego’s hot couple. On all the magazine covers. You know Chris was a Padre, right?”

  “Of course.” Chris Garrett was a famous name from her teens and her early twenties, although it had taken her more than a few days to place it when she first started working for him, and a little longer to remember that Carmen had once been his wife. She couldn’t see them as a couple. She pictured Carmen in a flouncy, white, off-the-shoulder Mexican dress, a blood-red rose between her teeth, and Chris with his Birkenstocks and T-shirt and those all-American-boy looks that seemed to make it hard for anyone to take him seriously as mayor.

&nb
sp; “I don’t think anything’s happening between them now,” she said. “I don’t see them talking much. You’d never know they were once husband and wife.”

  “Well, she dumped him pretty good.”

  Mia stopped her glass halfway to her lips. “Dumped him? Why would she do that? He’s so nice.”

  “Too nice. Chris screwed up his arm back in ‘87 and that was the end of his career. So she dumped him.”

  Mia cut herself another slice of pizza and pressed her napkin to the cheesy surface. “You’re saying she left him because of his arm?” She thought, uncomfortably, of the chilly parallel that scenario had to her own life.

  “You tell me.” Rick set down his pizza, and took off on another one of his rapid-fire monologues. “Take a look at Sugarbush,” he said. “Worth a couple million bucks, wouldn’t you say? Chris was loaded. Carmen made a fair amount of money herself, true, but Chris was far wealthier in his own right. That came to a screeching halt when he got sacked.”

  “So, you’re suggesting it boiled down to greed? Neither of them seem particularly interested in money.” She didn’t want to hear any of this. She didn’t want to know that Carmen was capable of cruelty, or that Chris had been hurt at her hands. “And people don’t get divorced when one partner is injured or loses a job. That’s when he would have needed her most, right?”

  Rick grinned at her. “Are you as sweet and naive as you seem Mia, or is it all an act? Wake up, girl. It’s another world we’re talking about here. Marriage for someone like Carmen was just a means to an end, a rung on the ladder. She stuck with Chris as long as he made her look good and could bring home the bucks, and they could fly off to Puerto Vallarta or wherever for the weekend.” He handed her another napkin. “Still have a pocket of grease right there.” He pointed to her pizza, and she rested the napkin on top of the cheese. She was no longer very hungry.

  “Carmen was pregnant when Chris screwed up his arm,” Rick continued, “and she held onto him until after the baby was born and then gave him his walking papers.”

  A baby? Mia felt thoroughly thick-headed. Chris had never mentioned being a father. “They have a child?” she asked.

  “Not really. They have a vegetable.” Rick winced at his own words, and smacked the side of his face with his hand. “Whoa, Smythe, unkind,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that.” He looked apologetically at Mia. “Yeah, they had a baby boy, and he got really sick a week or so after he was born. He’s in an institution. Carmen ignores him, but Chris visits him every week.”

  “I had no idea Chris had a son.” Mia shook her head, bewildered. “And I absolutely cannot picture Carmen ignoring her own child. She’s been so good to me. She cut the rent on my cottage in half when she realized I couldn’t afford it, and she’s the one who told me about my job. And she can’t be all bad if she’s let Chris live at Sugarbush.”

  “Yeah—in a fucking outbuilding.” Rick pushed his empty plate away from him. “It’s for show. She knows the press eats that sort of thing up. ‘Carmen Perez lets Chris Garrett come home after his house burns down.’ She’s cleaning up her public image. She’s as shrewd as they come, trying to kiss up to the people who still think of her as a bitch for dumping Chris.”

  Mia scowled. “I don’t see how anyone can look at someone else’s life and make those sorts of judgments.” She thought of the woman who had given her the tour of Sugarbush, who had wanted to make her comfortable. Carmen did seem a little cool, perhaps. Aloof. But she was thoroughly different from the spirited, controlling woman Mia remembered from “San Diego Sunrise.” This new Carmen had struggled against something big, something threatening. Maybe it took one woman to recognize those signs in another. “I’m sure there’s more to the whole thing than meets the eye,” Mia said. “I’m sure there’s plenty the press doesn’t know.”

  “Look what she’s doing with Jeff,” Rick argued. “He’s asked to work in privacy, and she’s badgering him with questions. It really bugs him.”

  Mia shrugged. “He’s news and she’s a reporter.”

  “God, women” Rick shook his head, but he was smiling. “You always stick together.”

  OUTSIDE THE RESTAURANT, A boy of about eight or nine sat on the sidewalk, cradling a cardboard box filled with kittens between his knees.

  “Hold on.” Rick stopped Mia with a hand on her arm. “I know a man who needs a cat to call his own. What do you think?” He knelt next to the box and drew out a small gray tabby.

  Mia knelt next to him and lifted a sleek black kitten from the box. “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s not home much.”

  Rick brushed a strand of long blond hair from his eyes. “This will give him something to come home to, and with the mouse problem in this town, how could he say no?” He looked into the hopeful face of the young boy. “Are they free?”

  The boy nodded.

  “This one or that?” Rick asked Mia, holding out the tabby.

  She raised the black kitten into the air and imagined the dark air of mystery it would possess as a full-grown cat. “This one,” she said.

  They bought litter and a litter box and a few cans of food.

  “We could take it over to the warehouse,” Rick said, as they got into his car, “but he really hates being interrupted.”

  “I’ll take it with me,” she offered, as if she were doing Rick a favor. “I’ll give it to him when he gets home tonight.”

  IN THE BACK OF her closet hung a storage bag filled with clothes she hadn’t worn since before the surgery. She removed a short-sleeved, pale blue sweater from the bag and grimaced as she pulled it over her head. It was going to be obvious, she thought; she should stick with the oversized T-shirts she usually wore.

  She had to stand on her bed in order to see her chest in the wall mirror, and she spent five minutes turning this way and that. He wouldn’t know. The prosthesis looked surprisingly natural.

  The kitten slept quietly on her thigh as Mia sat on the floor, watching for Jeff’s arrival from her bedroom window. She thought again of Rick inviting her to the beach. If Laura had been sitting next to her, he wouldn’t have given Mia a second look. It had always been that way, even when they were very small. She could still remember overhearing her kindergarten teacher, a woman who had taught Laura two years earlier, whispering to a classroom aide: “It’s hard to believe they’re sisters. Laura is such a beautiful child, and Mia’s so plain, although she’s certainly a cheery little thing.”

  Laura had been very popular in school. Mia had her own circle of friends, but until Glen, rarely dated at all. At the dinner table, her mother and Laura would giggle as they commiserated over who they could fix Mia up with, and Mia would laugh along with them, wanting to feel a part of that beautiful mother-daughter team. She supposed it was her own fault that she hadn’t dated. Even when Laura hadn’t been standing next to her, she’d felt her sister there, neat and polished, tossing her hair, smiling with a coquettish self-confidence Mia could only imagine.

  Jeff arrived at his cottage close to ten, and Mia sat by the window a few minutes longer to give him time to settle in. She looked down at the sleeping kitten. Pretty impulsive, she thought. What had she and Rick been thinking? She knew why she’d done it: it was her chance to see Jeff tonight. But perhaps dropping an unsolicited cat in his lap wasn’t the best way to go about it.

  She gathered together the bag of food, the litter box and the kitten itself and set out for Jeff’s cottage. The night air was cool, and stars filled the sky. The crickets were strangely quiet, though, and she could hear nothing from the shadowy canyon other than an eerie, rustling breeze.

  Jeff must have seen her coming. He turned on the porch light before she had a chance to knock and opened the door, staring at the kitten in her arms.

  “That’s not for me, I hope.”

  Mia laughed. “Afraid so. Rick and I thought you might like some company.” She held the skinny black kitten out to him as if trying to tempt him with a piece of candy.

&nbsp
; After a long moment, he reached out to take the kitten from her, lifting it into the air and looking into its yellow eyes,

  “I don’t want any attachments,” he said, but he drew the cat close to him, nuzzling its head beneath his chin. The kitten let out a long, squawky meow.

  Mia smiled at the contradiction between Jeff’s words and his actions and held up the shopping bag. “We brought you a litter box and some food.”

  He shook his head, a resigned look on his face as he stepped back to let her into the cottage. She set the litter box on the living room floor and began tearing open the bag of litter.

  “I was just about to have a glass of wine,” he said. “Want one?”

  She emptied the litter into the box. “A little late for that, isn’t it?”

  “Well,” he said, pouring wine into a glass on the dining room table. “I’ve gotten into the probably dangerous habit of having a glass before bed. Helps me sleep. I don’t sleep too well these days.”

  “Neither do I.” She took the glass he offered and sat down in one of the old upholstered chairs in the living room. The room was clean, Spartan; the blue walls looked freshly painted.

  Jeff put the kitten on the floor and disappeared into the kitchen. When he returned, he was wadding up a length of tin foil into a small ball. He winked at Mia as he sat down on the floor, his back against the sofa.

  “Let’s see what you’re made of,” he said to the kitten. He threw the ball of foil across the room, and the cat scampered after it, batting the foil around on the carpet for a moment before picking it up in its mouth and carrying it back to Jeff.

  Mia stared, open-mouthed, and Jeff smiled his almost-smile. “Good cat, Mia,” he said, throwing the foil ball across the room again.

  “I’ve never seen a cat fetch before,” she said.

  “Animals are like people. They live up to your expectations of them.”

  She thought of Rick, of Jeff telling him he was extremely bright.

  “You have to name her,” she said.