“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he screamed at the bright GPS display on the dash of the rented Lexus, the fifth such outburst in the last half hour. He could actually feel his blood pressure rising, a tingling, electrical sensation in his fingertips as he drummed them on the steering wheel—piano black, with an optional heating element that might have made sense back in St. Louis—and he thought about the beta blockers his doctor had prescribed specifically for the LA traffic. They were ensconced safely in his carry-on, locked in the trunk, and perfectly inaccessible unless he dared take an exit ramp onto some unknown, doubtless gang-ridden street.
He had been assured that not only was flying into Ontario cheaper than LAX or Burbank, it was practically speaking not much farther than either alternative. But today, the traffic had started slowing almost the minute he left the airport. By the time he hit Pomona, it had slowed to twenty-five, by West Covina fifteen, when it was moving at all. The accursed GPS showed the 10 Freeway into downtown LA a solid mass of red and estimated a seven-hour drive to Santa Barbara, and he scanned the AM radio for some explanation until he happened upon a honeyed baritone describing in loving detail a cataclysmic wreck downtown involving seven passenger vehicles and a tractor-trailer, three of the former ablaze. The reporter was hovering above the pandemonium in a helicopter and sounded energized if not positively thrilled at the standstill of the various freeway lanes, casting aspersions at the passing rubberneckers, whom he described as “looky-loos,” an unfamiliar phrase that filled Jerry with still more unreasonable anger.
When his phone trilled, he picked it up without bothering to check the caller’s identity. “What?” he said. “What do you want?”
“Jerry?” said an unfamiliar voice, sounding a bit shocked.
“Sorry. Not your fault. Having a hard afternoon. Who’s this?”
“Paula Rigby. I heard you were coming into town.”
Paula Rigby. His blood pressure rose a bit higher, and he could feel his face flushing. Inexplicably married to his uncle’s sleazeball lawyer, she was one of the most fascinating women he’d ever met. Classy, smart, well-read, well-dressed, she was also tall and willowy with a lovely long throat, and she smelled nice, something sharp and floral that seemed to come from her pores rather than from any sort of chemical potion. That she was married to a sleazy creep like Rigby was unbearable. That was the way it always happened, wasn’t it? The loveliest creatures ended up with thuggish jerks who treated them like shit, while nice guys like him went unappreciated.
“Jerry?” she said. “Are you there?”
“Right. Sorry, I’m driving.”
“I don’t want to cause a wreck or anything.”
“No, I’m fine, it’s this damn stop-and-go. I’m not going to get into Santa Barbara until midnight at least.”
“That’s what I’m calling about, I want you to stay with us.”
“That’s fine, I’m going to stay with my uncle.”
“Jerry, he’s not up to having any company. And we’re only half an hour away, I promise it’ll be better than that musty old house, the whole place smells like a sickroom these days anyway.”
“I don’t want to put you out. I can stay in a hotel.”
“Don’t be ridonculous. It’ll be fun, I promise.”
Ridonculous. She was even funny! He knew it was hopeless, he was going to do anything she told him to. “Okay.”
“I’ll text you the address.”
The traffic in downtown LA had thinned considerably by the time he hit the 170, and it was only eight forty-five when he pulled into the Rigbys’ driveway up in the hills above Ventura. Paula opened the front door and waved, and he got halfway out and called to her. “All right if I park here for now?”
“It’s fine, Rigby’s stuck in LA overnight. Need help with your bags?”
“I’m good,” he said. He felt like a seventh-grader with a crush on a sophomore. Stupid to get so excited at the news that Rigby wouldn’t be there. What did he think, that she was going to creep into his room in the middle of the night and confess that she’d always found him irresistible? He happened to know that the Rigbys were practicing Catholics, and a small wave of shame washed over his soul.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. He slung his bag over his shoulder and approached the front door, where Paula wrapped him in a warmer hug than he might reasonably have hoped for. He tried for an expression of friendly but indifferent insouciance as he returned it.
Once she’d shown him to the guest room, she led him into the kitchen, where she poured him a glass of red wine—Shiraz, she said—and served him a plate of assorted cheeses and fancy crispy wafers to spread them on.
“These are delicious,” he said, wishing he could think of something witty or articulate to say instead.
“Oh, it’s nothing. I thought maybe I’d take you to dinner, since it’s just the two of us. The kids eat early.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t. But I don’t really have any grown-up food to fix, and you must be starving. It’s, what, ten-something your time?”
He was, in fact, starving, and he could picture himself eating the entire plate of cheese and making a fool of himself. Maybe in a restaurant, he could muster some of the suave persona he knew dwelt inside him.
The restaurant was west of the Rigbys’ neighborhood, down in the flat part of town not far from the ocean, in a former house, and the sun was low in the sky when they took their table on the deck behind the house. “This is the best food in Ventura, has been for a long time,” Paula said. “So, you got stuck in the same jam Rigby did?”
“Is that what happened to him?”
“He was coming in from Vegas.” She rolled her eyes in disdain on the last word.
“Traffic was getting better by the time I got there.”
“Well. Maybe he just felt like spending the night in LA. Who knows.”
“It was pretty hairy starting from when I left Ontario.”
“You flew into Ontario?”
“You make it sound terrible.”
“No, it’s just so far away, and the 10 is a miserable drive.”
“Wouldn’t have been so bad if passing through downtown hadn’t been such a mess.”
“How come you didn’t just take the 605 to the 210? You would have backtracked a little, but you still would have saved time.”
He knew she wasn’t attacking him, and he admired her resourcefulness and know-how, but he felt defensive nonetheless and had to force himself to stifle the instinct.
“Just went where the GPS told me to go,” he said.
“I’m sorry, we get so obsessed with traffic around here everybody thinks they’ve got a better way for you to get anywhere.”
“So, what looks good?” he said, reaching across the table and tapping her menu.
The waitress appeared at his shoulder before she had a chance to answer and asked the same question in the same words, which caused him to snap his head in her direction in shock. Did this young woman have the temerity to mock a customer to his face?
But Paula laughed. “Don’t give him any grief, Sherry, he just had a rough day on the freeway.”
“I’m sorry,” the young woman said, putting a friendly hand on his shoulder.
“It’s okay,” he said, anxious to seem like the good sport he had never really been able to force himself to be.
Paula asked about the preparation of the fish special, and as the two of them batted the subject back and forth he considered Paula’s special gracefulness. Even next to this attractive young woman, she stood out as something very special, and he was regarding her pale throat with longing when he noticed the women snickering, not unkindly.
“Hello, Jerry?”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll have the KC strip, medium well.”
“Gotcha,” the waitress said, and started to turn.
“Wait,” Paula said. “Medium well?”
On her face was a friendly, teasing smile, but his face began to get warm. His ex-wife had been this way, never let him order a steak the way he wanted it. He liked it gray, but he couldn’t bear to have Paula think the less of him right now. “On second thought, medium.”
The waitress smiled and jotted down the change, and when she left Paula apologized. “I’m sorry. But Rigby does the same thing, and I can’t stand to watch him eat it.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Just force of habit.”
Back at the Rigbys’, she asked if he wanted to go to sleep or watch a movie with her. He was exhausted from the trip and sleepy from the food and wine, but he said yes.
“I had one picked out, but it’s kind of a chick flick. If you want to pick something else, that’s fine.”
“Whatever you want to watch is fine with me,” he said as she handed him his fifth glass of wine of the evening and steered him toward the big couch in what she referred to as the media room, one that faced a gigantic television screen. “I’ll probably fall asleep halfway through anyway.”