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She dug through her bag pretending she had an ID. “It’s here somewhere. I’m certain of it.” She moved her face so close she could smell the old sticks of Juicy Fruit gum in the bottom. “Give me a second.” Her cheeks felt hot. She shoved her wallet into a dark corner at the bottom and looked up. “I’m sorry. My wallet isn’t here.”
“I can’t serve you any liquor without an ID.” Why did his voice sound like he was hollering on the ship’s loudspeaker? “Can I get you something else?”
She glanced at the board, then at her bag. “No wallet,” she lied, then walked away without looking back. She straight-armed one of the swinging doors, and the air hit her flushed face.
At the back of the boat, the seats were sheltered from the wind and spray. She sat down on a bench where she could lean her head back against the side of the ship and hide. Seagulls drafted alongside the boat and the mainland was a distant outline of dusky hillsides, where pinpoints of light began to sporadically wink back at her. It was still light out when the ship’s overhead lamp flickered on. The light was bright and white, so she opened her bag and pulled out her book, then reread the last page she’d read on the bus.
Someone came around the corner and stopped—a yellow shirt. She pulled the book so close she couldn’t read a word. The change jingled in his pocket as he sat down next to her.
How do I pretend I’m not the moron who was just carded?
He set down a plastic glass between them and sipped a beer.
Was she supposed to reach for it? If it wasn’t for her … well, she would just die … again. She shifted and looked down at the lonely glass.
“Are you going to let the ice melt in that wine?”
She lowered the book. “What?”
He handed her the plastic glass. “This is for you.”
“Oh. Thank you.” My God, but he was good-looking, and watching her with eyes the color of blue ice. “It’s good. Thanks.”
“That’s heavy reading you’ve got there. Is it for an economics class?”
“No.”
He laughed. “What kind of girl reads Wealth of Nations for fun?”
She closed the book and looked at the front jacket, then at him. “It’s a shame really. I had nothing else to read. I left all my Barbie comic books at home.”
“With your wallet?” he shot back.
“Yes.” She had to laugh, too. “With my wallet.”
“Okay,” he said. “I deserved that Barbie comment. I didn’t say that right at all, did I?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“And here I was trying to impress you.”
“You were? Why? Do I need impressing?”
He watched her for a long few seconds. “Maybe I was wrong again.”
“Maybe buying me a drink was impression enough. That was very sweet of you.”
“You looked thirsty.”
“Did I?” She laughed softly. “I thought I looked embarrassed.”
“That, too.” He sipped his beer and glanced out at the water.
She stared down at the drink in her hands and felt every awkward second of silence. “So what do you like to read?”
“After what I just said, I’m surprised you aren’t asking me if I can read.”
“Actually, I was thinking your reading material might be the kind that has staples in the centerfold.”
He burst out laughing. “I deserved that.”
“You probably did.”
“You’ve got a great sense of humor.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I don’t think I’m going to answer that. I’ll just get into more trouble.” He stood up. “I’d like another beer before they close. Do you want another drink?”
“No, thanks.”
She was smiling, probably a goofy smile that told the entire world what she was thinking. He was coming back. She sipped her drink at the railing, watching the island and the glimmering lights of Avalon, home after her mother moved them there when Laurel graduated high school. Moving was tough when she’d lived in a place where her friends had been her friends since they’d all played in a sandbox together. In a new town, Laurel was suddenly the outsider. All those lights before her and not a friend among them.
“We’re almost there.” He walked toward her, a dripping beer bottle in his hand.
“That didn’t take long.”
“No line.”
She felt different when he looked at her—like he was doing now—as if she weren’t a friendless, lonely thing. She longed to say something clever and memorable.
“Okay.” He braced his arms on the railing next to her, his beer in his hands. “Time to come clean. You didn’t leave your wallet at home.”
“No.”
“So, I’m guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” There was a softness around his eyes and mouth, no judgment or censure.
“You could say that.”
“How minor?”
Laurel contemplated lying. In the right clothes, she looked at least twenty, but wanting to be older didn’t make you older. She faced him. “I’m seventeen.”
He choked on his beer. “Seventeen? You’re kidding.”
“No. I’ll be eighteen soon.”
He watched her, probably half hoping she would suddenly age five years, then swore under his breath. His gaze dropped to the drink in her hand. Without a word he took it and tossed it in the water.
She drew back from the rail and crossed her arms in front of her, equally silent, her body brittle, her knees locked.
He looked surprised at what he’d done, but not apologetic.
“You paid for the drink,” she said. “You can do what you want with it.”
He lifted his hand toward her cheek, almost approachable again, almost apologetic, and standing close enough for her to smell his aftershave. “You’re in high school?”
“No, I’m in college.”
“At seventeen?” Clearly he thought she was lying.
“I skipped the third grade. I graduated high school just after I turned seventeen.” She could almost read the word “jailbait” in his expression.
The loudspeaker crackled on. “Attention, please, we are now arriving at the Avalon dock, Catalina Island. Make certain you have all your personal belongings. All passengers will disembark on the starboard side of the ship. For safety, please securely hold the hands of all young children as you leave.” The loudspeaker cut off.
She gave him a direct look. “Do you want to hold my hand securely as we disembark?”
He didn’t laugh.
“I guess my age killed your sense of humor.”
For just a moment she thought he wanted to say something kind to her, but a group of young kids scattered away from the nearby railing and jumped up and down, shouting, “We’re here! We’re here!”
“We’re here,” she said over their noisy little bouncing heads. The kids ran around them in rambunctious circles. She broke eye contact, and when she looked up again he was shaking his head.
“I’m sorry.” He walked away and never once looked back.
She stood there, empty, embarrassed, ashamed, and upset. Maybe because of him. Maybe because of her. Listlessly, she picked up her thick book with its conservative literary jacket and dark, unaffected type. The things you could hide … She slipped off the paper jacket. Hot pink lettering glared back at her from the real cover—TheAdventurers, by Harold Robbins. She dropped the other jacket into a nearby trash can, tucked the book under an arm, and made her way toward the gangplank.
Behind the hills the sunset glowed pink, and a noisy hum came from the crowds. Pole lights lit the dock and shone down on the boarding ramp. Only a few hundred feet down the dock was Crescent Street and the heart of town. Local boys sold newspapers and, for fifty cents, offered to cart suitcases in red wagons to side-street hotels and cozy island inns. The crowd split around girls in white shorts and sandals who handed out flyers with discount coupons for abalone burgers, lobsters, and pitchers of draft beer at two for one.
But nowhere in that crowd below her did Laurel see a tall, handsome man in a lemon yellow shirt. He had disappeared as if he had never existed. And for her, he didn’t exist. Not really, because she didn’t even know his name.
Victor checked the clock on his desk, stood—his foot on a floor button that buzzed his secretary—and effectively brought the magazine interview to an end. The interviewer’s questions had just gone in a direction he disliked. “I have another appointment.”
“But I have more questions, Mr. Banning … Victor. It’s only five thirty. You know this is our cover story.”
Victor laughed at him. “I wouldn’t be talking to you if this weren’t your cover story.”
The door to his office swung open and his secretary recited, “The car’s waiting, Mr. Banning. You’re running late.”
The journalist still sat there, a tape recorder on the arm of the chair and a shiny Italian pen in hand. He wore a clipped beard and his dark curly hair in a ponytail, which fell halfway down the back of a five-hundred-dollar suit.
Victor came from behind his desk. “I see I’ve reduced you to silence, which is best. We don’t speak the same language, son.” He left the young man juggling his pad and recorder, stammering for him to wait, and headed down the hall toward his private elevator.
The article would label him a corporate villain. At his center he was a hardscrabble oilman born in a boom-or-bust era, and the polar opposite of a journalist out to cauterize enterprise and whose radical point of view smacked of being all too trendy. An ill-fitting sobriety emanated from men like him, a languidness in the face of the real and vital things that changed the world around them.
That reporter’s Berkeleyesque scorn was detectable even when cloaked by a professional voice. With high degrees from expensive schools, his kind persuaded courts to stop the building of freeways, put hundreds of people out of work, boondoggled, and stopped progress to save a damned frog. Victor could have respected them if they were actually doing it for the frog, but men like him were faux avant-garde—the ultimate luxury for those who already had everything.
Victor and men of his ilk made things better for everyone: gas stations with car washes and streets fitted with drains so they wouldn’t flood; tax dollars that fed the public schools and highways, and opportunity for golden equity in land and homes with values that rose monthly.
Later, at home, he took an overly long shower—an attempt to wash off the grit of an interview that implied what he had accomplished in his life was all wrong. His annoyance was difficult to shake off. The seeds of it stayed with him even as he traveled north along the 405, Harlan at the wheel of his Bentley.
In the distance, covered in a green veil of haze, were the rolling hills connecting San Pedro to Palos Verdes. Victor could remember those hills when they were just purple wildflowers, waist-high mustard, and a crumbling Spanish hacienda with its scattering of guest ranches, land deeded before California was ever a state. Now streets with expensive homes cut along those hillsides, looking as pronounced as veins on the arm of a growing economy.
It was change. It was good. So he told himself he didn’t mind articles written about men like him—a generation hungry for success and power, winners who carried with them accomplishment and the pride of building something out of nothing, instead of making a brouhaha out of nothing in order to sell magazines.
Lately he’d been the topic of too many articles, and the human interest ones made him clam up faster than today. Perhaps he was annoyed now because he’d had a touchy interview for Look six weeks ago. Newspapers and magazines sent women reporters for human interest stories, armed with his family history and seeking an angle that was lonely, silly, and romantic—something his life was anything but.
Victor had been married twice and in love only once. He’d worked most of his life, hardest when he had a wife and young son. Anna died with no warning, and he couldn’t remember crying for her, a woman forbidden to him whom he’d married after a long chase.
His son was a stranger, barely three when he buried Anna. Victor remembered thinking he had nothing in common with Rudy other than bone and blood and the same last name. His son cried every time Victor came home—took one look at him and ran away, disappearing for hours in some nook of the monstrous Pasadena house that belonged to his wife’s family.
The day Victor found his son cowering in Anna’s closet symbolized their dismal relationship: the father who had been locked in a closet and his son who sought refuge in one. It was a long time before Rudy could sit in the same room with him, longer still before he accepted that Victor was the man who fathered him.
Victor had spent his childhood fighting for acceptance. Not even for his son would he fight for acceptance again. Soon he recognized in his own son’s expression his father’s look of failure. He and Rudy were doomed from the start. The Banning curse had skipped a generation, and nothing Rudy ever did changed Victor’s opinion that he was a weak young man, destined for nothing. The only thing his son ever had the strength to do was walk away from Victor and stay away.
The second wife also walked away from Victor, and he never regretted that. She was a convenience—she’d done the chasing. The women and marriages, even the affairs were long gone, and he was left now with his only progeny, Cale and Jud.
The radio phone between the car’s seats rang, his attorney calling with news. “Jameson’s kid agreed to sell the painting.”
Victor didn’t move. “How much?”
“Half a million.”
“Cut the deal,” Victor told him in a voice more even than he actually felt. To finally win was almost a physical thing, live and sweeping through him like some kind of drug. “Any word on the other pieces?”
“That Seattle gallery claims they’ve lost track of the client.”
“Then we need to find the client.”
“No one will release the name, Victor. It’s been thirteen goddamn years and I can’t even buy that name out of those people.”
“Raise the offer another quarter of a million,” he added. “And the commission another ten percent. That ought to prod somebody to locate who bought those paintings.”
After making arrangements for delivery, he hung up and rested his head against the back of the seat while Harlan turned the car into the Loyola parking lot. In an instant so real he would never be able to explain it, Victor caught a whiff of Arpège and sat forward sharply. On the seat across from him were the images of his son and daughter-in-law, an echo of another time and clearer than any memory should be; they held hands. Rachel was pregnant and Rudy didn’t look like a failure.
“The game’s already started.” Harlan opened the back door.
The images across from Victor evaporated in the overhead glare of parking lot lights, but what they represented stayed with him and made him pensive and touchy. Once inside the gym, they took seats in the middle of the crowded bleachers. By 9 P.M., Loyola was losing, so Victor sent Harlan to get the car and stood hidden in the shadows of the bleachers.
He watched Cale trot down the basketball court, weaving in and out of the other players with long-legged agility and a sure-footedness that helped him score three points. With that single basket, the energy in the gymnasium changed. The crowd noise grew louder; they were on their feet. The university band began to play with the crowd clapping and singing, “Down on the corner … Out in the street.”
Rudy had played basketball, too, but was never good enough and spent his games mostly on the bench. Victor could have missed every game and it wouldn’t have mattered.
But this game changed in under five minutes. Dorsey cut quickly, stole the ball, dashed past his opponent, his grin as big as the sections on the basketball. Then he became all business and shot the ball in the opposite direction, right to Cale, who let the ball fly. It arced through the air, then hit the rim with a deep thud, bounced, and went straight up in the air.
Nothing moved in that gymnasium but the ball. It came down on the rim, swirled around and around. On the edge of defeat or victory, players jumped up, arms reaching for the ball. The ball fell into the net and the white numbers on the scoreboard flipped: 89–87 Loyola.
