CHAPTER 30

Liz made Bento ditch the shorts in favor of jeans. His legs were still eggshell pale from too many summers without sun. After much trial and error, they settled on a charcoal gray shirt. A flapping tail, Liz insisted, remained the mandatory fashion. She also made sure his beard had at least three days of growth. They’d washed and waxed his rental car the day before, but looking at it again he stopped kidding himself. The finish was still on the drab side. It’s good enough, said Liz, who followed him to the car. She gave him a hug. “Great cologne,” she whispered into his ear.

“I love you,” he said.

“I know.”

The sun was low when he pulled up to a standard little one-story stucco home just south of the airport. It was surrounded by a mix of flowers, mostly bougainvillea, with a pint-sized lawn. As he stepped out, an airliner passed close and low, its jet screech loud enough to inflict pain. Norah opened the door in blue shorts, tennis shoes, a white, short-sleeved blouse, and a compelling smile. Bento noticed a few stray blonde hairs falling over her left eye. It was good to be alive.

He followed her into a modest living room, its TV tuned to a local news channel on low volume. A middle-aged woman who looked like she knew something Bento didn’t rose to greet him. She was what they call a “handsome” woman—pretty but past menopause. Faintly African American, no wedding ring, a pleasant smile. Norah introduced her as Gloria.

“Ned, come out here,” Gloria called out. Norah’s father was nearly as tall as Bento, with wavy gray hair that covered most of his ears. Firm grip. He also smiled a kind of secret smile as he studied Bento, tilting his head to the side. Bento had seen Norah use the same gesture.

“Norah won’t tell us how she met you,” he said. “It’s aroused my curiosity.” The father seemed comfortable in his own skin. Maybe a little too comfortable.

“You are such a jerk!” Norah told him, but she didn’t seem really annoyed.

“Don’t tell him,” Gloria urged Bento. “He deserves to suffer.”

Bento, looking at the father, pressed his palms together, making a little Buddhist teepee of silence.

“We met online,” Norah said. “We’re both committed to Satanism and world peace . . . Bento, grab that, will you?” A fair-sized cooler sat on a small dining table, along with picnic blankets. Bento was touched by her painstaking preparations but too tongue-tied to say it until they were inside the car. He asked if she had room in the cooler for wine.

She found the bottle in the backseat, studied the label, smiled, and made a space for it in her cooler. Later Bento would learn you weren’t supposed to chill red wine. She was too nice to say anything. Had he been a standard middle-class guy she probably would have teased him for his ignorance.

“Thanks for not mentioning how we met,” she said.

“Bill collectors are like priests. You can tell me anything.”

“If my dad knew a collection agency was after me he’d try to lend me money, and he’s practically as broke as I am. They’re underwater on that stupid house. If it were three blocks away they’d have torn it down.”

“Who’d have torn it down?

“The city. Houses too close to airport noise get torn down. Eminent domain. They decide for you. Nice, huh? We can still make the death list if they make any runway changes. Meanwhile the airport buys us double-pane windows. But forget all that. You all psyched up for the Bard?”

“Thou art more lovely than a summer’s day,” he said.

“You talk funny.”

“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May—”

“Oh shut up,” she said, pleased.

“I love it when you tell me to shut up,” he said.

“You know what I like about you?”

“Beats me.”

“You don’t ask the standard twenty questions. ‘What school did you go to, what was your major,’ all that crap.”

“I prefer to find the existential heart of you,” he said. “It’d help if you get liquored up.”

“Silly boy. Changing the subject, there are mostly families at these things, but it’s fun. You’ll see.”

“Changing what subject?” he said. “I didn’t know we had a subject.”

“Good point. But I guess this is sort of a date. And date conversation, it’s mostly, I guess, jokey insinuations, vague double entendres, stuff like that. Till they get married and stop talking to each other.”

“Then let’s skip the irony part,” Bento said. “Let’s speak, you know, straight talk. No ambiguity. You game?”

“You mean the whole night?”

“Why not?”

“Sure.” Pause. “I feel naked without my irony.”

“Me too,” he said.

“And it’s way too early to get naked.”

“Agreed.”

“Wait a minute,” she said. “What’d I just agree to?”

He pulled into a large parking lot next to the park and turned toward her just as she pushed her hair away from her eye. She smelled faintly of flowers. All around them pedestrians of various ages paraded past, toting camp chairs, coolers, and other picnic paraphernalia. Her lips were open just a tad. Her eyes looked straight at him and off in the distance at the same time. They leaned toward each other and kissed, touching only lips, maybe a smidgeon of tongue. He wasn’t sure whose.

It was an untroubled, far less nervous Bento who carried the cooler out toward the bandstand.

HER LEGS crossed in yoga fashion, Norah briskly pulled stuff from the cooler—baked chicken pieces, potato salad, and fruit, plus napkins, towelettes, silverware, and corkscrew. Her fingers were strong, almost stubby, built for hard use but with a touch of baby fat. She was exquisitely sexy but only vaguely aware of her power. She seemed to have decided long ago, So what? It doesn’t really amount to much. He would try to engrave this angel in his memory, so no matter what happened from here on in, he’d always have this fleeting image to call on, what I’m seeing right now.

The unpaid actors were terrific, evoking laughter and goodwill just as Shakespeare planned it four hundred years ago. Bento and Norah had one blanket beneath them, and when it got chilly and dusk turned to dark they draped the spare over their shoulders. With faint traces of chicken-grease on their fingers they held hands.

BACK IN Norah’s living room the sun was rising. She leaned forward, lips close. “Tell me the truth. Is my breath okay?”

He sniffed seriously, as though inspecting a milk carton. “Like you just brushed almost,” he announced.

“Really? It feels like yuk.”

“If your breath is yuk, give me yuk or give me death.”

“Wait a minute. You said almost. It’s really awful, isn’t it?” She pulled back. “You lie about anything else?”

“Your breath is fantastic, I swear. But I lied about something. When I agreed we shouldn’t, you know, rush things.”

“Things? What things?”

“Sex things.”

“Ohhhhh.” She nodded. “So you didn’t mean it?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

“Damn,” he said.

“Rain check?”

He took her in his arms. “It’s not raining now.”

She kissed his cheek. “They’ll be up. Wait for better circumstances, okay? I’m barely awake anyway.”

“Okay, I’ll just sit here and wait.”

“Oh shut up.”

Norah owned the jalopy lot, and it was marginally profitable. She’d ended up on Bento’s collection list only after surrendering her own apartment in the Marina so she could help her father and Gloria stave off foreclosure on a home that would never be worth much anyway. They’d borrowed against it in a doomed attempt to keep his business from going under.

Norah grew up mostly with her mother in Missoula, Montana, where her mom’s boyfriend liked to slap her ass and fondle it with fat, insistent fingers until she could break away. The state university was in Missoula, and there wasn’t enough money for her to live elsewhere, so she spent years holding off the creepy boyfriend while she raced toward her degree in design. She escaped in a fourteen-year-old VW bus, heading out in the dead of winter. It was night, absolutely still except for the sputtering of the engine. Old VWs don’t generate much heat, and the cold was so extreme she grew light-headed. There were few signs of life in the darkness, but she knew the area was sprinkled with fascist militia strongholds. Her heart beat faster as she gently coaxed the bus over black ice on the curves. Even with the pedal to the floor the engine coughed. Going up the pass there were times she feared she might roll backward. If her bus stalled she was sure she’d never survive the night in such outer-space cold. Finally at the top of Lolo Pass she came to a diner with all its lights on. It stood like a supernatural presence, as though she’d found a bright oasis on the far side of the moon. Seating herself at the counter, she ordered coffee, shaking so badly she could barely get the words out. The middle-aged waitress told her it was forty-five below out there but wouldn’t say much after that. It was as though there were only two people left in the world and the other one had no interest in talking to her. After finishing a second cup, Norah, still at the counter, cradled her head in her arms and waited for morning.

Eventually she and her weak engine made it all the way to Santa Monica. She walked barefoot out on the warm sand, watching the surf smash the beach, thrilled by its power. Sinking to her knees, she sobbed with relief and passion, tears streaming. She was home at last.

A week later she bluffed her way into a job as an animator for a small computer games company. She’d always been a good design student, but now she discovered she was a master of illusion. It was a force within her. When business improved, the company hired more artists, and training them was one of her duties. Four of the trainees were grim-faced souls from Moldova, which has the highest per capita intake of alcohol on earth. They had manners of stone, never apologizing or expressing gratitude.

After a while the owner decided hiring immigrants for the office was moving the mountain to Mohammad. He got rid of them one at a time as he forged contacts with Indian business entities and sent more and more work there. But video games referenced all sorts of cultural factoids that the Indian artists, like the Moldovans before them, found unfamiliar despite their bewitchment with all things American. Chief artist Norah was on the phone half the day with terribly polite neophytes in Bangalore who always said they understood what was needed but often didn’t. Although unaware of it at the time, she was training her replacements. Somehow she’d failed to read the signs.

“Just talking about it I know how dumb I sound, but I couldn’t imagine being fired,” she told Bento. “Crazy, isn’t it?” She defended her boss. He was a nice guy, but all his competitors were making similar offshore deals, and if he failed to follow the mob he’d be outbid every time. “I’d have lost my job anyway,” she explained.

BENTO TRIED several times to reveal his convict past to Norah, but he couldn’t get the words out. How should he tell her? When? “I think soon,” said Liz.

But he’d worried for nothing. Norah ran a background check as soon as he left the car lot. “I was so smitten I felt creepy doing it. I almost didn’t.” After their Shakespeare date she was just as worried as he was, worried he wouldn’t tell her. So when he did, she was jubilant. He couldn’t remember anyone ever being so happy to learn he was a two-time loser.

“You were smitten? Really?”

“You must not be paying attention,” she said. “Don’t you remember? I asked to kiss you good night.”

“You still smitten?”

“Oh no-o-o,” she said. “Jesus, why do you think I’m doing what I’m doing?”

“Just being polite maybe.”

“God, you’re dumb.”

He kissed her. “Wait, wait, stop, don’t move, don’t talk. Shhh. Ah, too late.”

She shuddered and grabbed his shoulders. After a while she kissed his ear and said, “No, right on time.”