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  “No,” she said. “The Econo.”

  “The Econo?”

  “Please.”

  “The kids are done eating and homework is light. Give me ten.”

  “I’ll get number twelve.”

  She was waiting for him at the door of room twelve of the Fallbrook Econo Suites when Brian knocked. Her heart thumped crazily and her nerves buzzed. He came in, set a bottle of wine on the table, and Evelyn attacked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Iris Cash lived in a freshly painted green bungalow with white columns, a spacious front porch and late-season flowers still nodding in the planters. A pumpkin carved with a toothy grimace stood on the railing, candlelight steady within. Patrick parked in the steep short driveway and set the brake and looked at the house. It was up on Skyline in an older part of Fallbrook and when Patrick got out of his truck he could see the rooftops of downtown and the cars on Main, headlights on in the near darkness. He went around and got the bouquet off the passenger seat.

  She met him at the door wearing a forthright smile and a snug yellow dress. Her hair was up. She made a fuss over the flowers, which were sunflowers, protea, and purple statice. Once inside Patrick liked the burnished walnut floor, the stout beams and wrought-iron brackets above, the framed paintings and photographs, the built-in bookcase.

  “Mom said I’m supposed to put those in a vase for you,” he said.

  “Right this way.”

  “Great house.”

  “I grew up on a farm so I like the old things.”

  “You’re the farmer’s daughter.”

  “Except I don’t like farming and don’t want any part of that life.”

  “I feel the same way, except I do have a part of it.”

  “You have a disaster to deal with. That’s a little different.”

  In the kitchen she handed him a heavy cut-glass vase and Patrick filled half of it with water. She handed him a pair of curve-bladed pruners and Patrick looked at them and figured he was supposed to trim the flower stalks. Advanced manners were something he hadn’t learned, having gone from high school straight into the Marines then to Afghanistan. He’d graduated from a laptop to a machine gun in a matter of months. So he’d also missed a lot of everyday things, like how to balance a checkbook or make something to eat other than a sandwich. Or how to pick out cool clothes or order a decent haircut. Or how to talk to a pretty woman without your blood pressure spiking. “Maybe just like an inch or so?”

  “Perfect. I see you got your head fixed. The stitches, I mean.”

  “Good as new, Iris.”

  She showed him the house, though he got just a peek of her bedroom. The house reminded him of an old TV show or maybe a magazine feature on the homes of yesterday. There was no stainless steel and few hard edges. Lots of fabric and curves. He liked the aerial photograph of the Cash family farm that hung in the dining room. Also in the dining room stood a majestic china cabinet, lit from within. “Great-grandma’s,” said Iris. “Handmade. Mom let me have it early.” Through the cabinet windows Patrick saw plates and bowls of all sizes, flower vases, platters and mugs. Iris’s place reminded him of the Norris home, although some of Iris’s artwork was modern and baffling. He wondered what Iris would make of the big portrait of his grandfather and great-uncle glaring down from above the mantel. He pictured her standing in that room in the yellow dress she now wore, and in his imagination she drew all the light and the room was dim—she alone was specific and clear.

  They walked into the backyard. Small copper lamps threw light in neat low circles. Patrick saw a brick patio with a picnic table and benches beneath an arbor that was owned by a fat grape vine twinkling with lights. Downhill was a small lawn with a good-sized magnolia tree in the middle and more lights dangling in the low branches. The fence was overgrown with bougainvillea. Patrick looked at all this, surprised to be interested in it. The ordinary really could be awesome. The picnic table was set with a fancy cloth, utensils, two bottles of wine, and four glasses. “Do you like red wine or white, Pat?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “But which more?”

  “Oh, both about the same.”

  She smiled and handed him a corkscrew. “Then maybe you could open that white and we’ll have a glass before dinner.”

  “No screw top? Just kidding.” Although he wasn’t. Opening wine bottles was another skill that, as an eighteen-year-old on his way to becoming a platoon machine gunner, Patrick had not learned. He found the foil cutter and folded it out and got the heavy metal wrapper off. The opener was pretty much self-evident. The pop of the cork surprised him and he felt a quick bolt of adrenaline shoot through him. “Look, I didn’t dive for cover!”

  She looked at him uncertainly.

  “Just kidding,” he said. “Again.”

  He poured two glasses, slopping some on the nice tablecloth and trying to mop it with his finger. Iris lit candles and turned on music that played through a pair of tiny speakers. They sat side by side at the picnic table, looking out over the rolling hills of Camp Pendleton. It stretched all the way to the beach, which he pictured, wincing as he remembered the brawl with the MPs. He could feel the now smaller bandage up there, obnoxious on his skin. He banished the incident from his mind and concentrated on what was before him: the U.S. Naval Weapons Station, the railroad tracks stitching to the coast, the broad black sky above. He could feel Sangin reaching back for him through Pendleton, where it had all started—enlistment, training, deployment. From here Pendleton looked peaceful and sparse, a face put on for civilians, not at all like the war machine it was.

  “We’re not in Kenton, Ohio, anymore,” said Iris. She told him a few things about her childhood and she used good words, which made it easy for Patrick to see: the endless cornfields with the farmhouses built up close to the straight flat roads; the barns and outbuildings farther back; the streams wandering by, sheltered by green thickets of poison ivy and sumac, copperheads, water snakes, and turtles. She told him that summers got so hot the asphalt edges of the roads would bubble and melt and stick to your shoes. She had a big black horse named Elmer and he was gentle as could be. And after he died she got a yellow mare named Calliope. There in Ohio, said Iris, it was all about the Browns, the Reds, and the Indians, and, of course, the Buckeyes. If she never saw Kenton again it would be too soon.

  “Except to see family,” she said. “It’s funny, though—I have good memories of a place I never want to go back to. Mom and Dad, they were married to the corn crop, but they sure got us kids around after harvest. We went to D.C. and New York, Boston, Chicago, all through the South, to St. Louis and Denver. Then later to L.A. and San Diego. Patrick, I took one look down at San Diego when our plane was landing and I knew I was going to move close to there. I was twelve. Here’s another funny thing. Years later, when I came out here just after college, I drove around the whole county for two weeks, looking for just the right place to find a rental and a job. And of all the extra cool places in San Diego County, I picked Fallbrook, which is the most like Kenton. Oh yeah, I’m a brave one. Not exactly Magellan!”

  “It all comes down to what home means,” said Patrick, startled by his lameness. He now felt required to say halfway intelligent things. “I mean, you know it when you see it, like you did. But I never had that. I never went to a place and knew it had to be mine. I got to see places too—mostly in the West. I liked it all. My favorite city was Missoula, no ocean but tons of rivers. My main thing was the fish. Besides the Pacific and any river that has fish in it, my favorite place was the Grand Canyon. And my favorite place in the Grand Canyon was halfway down it, where I could see up to the top and down to the bottom in one look. But I never thought of moving there.”

  “They say it’s harder to stay than to go. I’m glad you stayed. I’m staying, too. I’ve got a trip to Kenton planned soon, and I already can’t wait to get back.”

  She took his hand and Patrick felt a strange rush go through him. Not the terrible bone-freezing excitement o
f combat, but something warm and unrelated to self-preservation or death. It made him uneasy. He fished his phone from his pocket and showed her the pictures of the carburetor from Fatta the Lan’, before he’d refurbished it, broken it down in the bucket of solvent, then reassembled and put it back in place in the Mercury.

  “Nice,” she said.

  “And check these.” Next he showed her the fishing pictures of Ted and Glorietta Bay and the swells and the big snapper that had just about done them in. He wasn’t surprised how many fish pictures there were. “Sorry. I always take too many of the fish.”

  “You’re proud.”

  “That thing weighed twelve and a half pounds.”

  “Was it good?”

  “Oh, man, it was illegal good.”

  He put the camera back and she took his hand again and again he felt that wholesale foreign rush go through him. Cruzela Storm sang a love song. When it was over Iris went to the kitchen and returned with a heavy red French oven. Patrick stood and when she leaned to set it on the table her honey hair fell forward and Patrick couldn’t take his eyes off the play of the candlelight on her extended arms, the bend of her body in the yellow dress. She wore padded mitts. She set the lid upside down on the table and steam roiled up from the pot. Iris stripped off the mitts, glancing at him. “Caught you looking.”

  “I can’t not.”

  She smiled and brushed her hair off her face. “Please kiss me.”

  Patrick wasted no time on this direct order. It was a young couple’s kiss, awkward, then strong, then hungry. Patrick felt weirdly, blessedly anchored. Time passed. Without breaking the kiss he blindly tapped his fingers around the tabletop for a mitt and found one. He set the lid back on the pot with a sharp clank. “It’ll keep,” he said.

  “I won’t.” She led him inside and across the hardwood floor and down the small hallway to her room. There it was dark except for a small lamp by the bed, and the room smelled clean and there was a window with nothing but hills and sky beyond it.

  “I’m not super good at this yet,” he said.

  “No worries. I’ve done it a million times.” They were both grinning when she turned off the lamp. “Now I’m the one just kidding.”

  They undressed each other cautiously. Patrick released the backside bra hook with only minor struggle. Her whispers were warm in his ear and he got meanings but not words. He whispered back calmly, crazily ready, biting his tongue for painful distraction. Her bed was a foreign country, its surfaces and smells clearly no part of Patrick. The new nation welcomed him. Invasion. Surrender. Occupation. Oh, Iris. Nothing like this, ever. Window in wall, sky in window, stars in sky. Again and again, then sunrise.

  She handed him a cup of coffee. “Never been this wrecked for work before,” she said, kissing him lightly on the lips. Sway of Iris, scent and dream-blur, out the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  At ten o’clock that Thursday morning Cleo from Friendly Village Taxi called Ted to say that their semiregular fare, Lucinda Smith, would be ready for a ten thirty pickup. Ms. Smith had asked for “the big guy” if he was available. The image of Lucinda’s pretty, dour, sunglassed face came into focus in Ted’s mind’s eye like a close-up in a movie.

  “I am available!”

  He gunned the taxi. In the rearview he saw Mr. Hutchins’s hoary old head rock against the backseat. With only minutes to spare, he sped Mr. Hutchins to the board-and-care downtown to visit his wife, refused the man’s money, then sped over to CVS for breath mints. On impulse he picked up a TV/DVD combination from a display by the checkout line, with a sweet thirteen-inch screen and a remote—$99! Lucinda would love it.

  Ten minutes later Ted pulled into a guest parking space across from her building and shut off the engine. Her condo was on a golf course outside of town. Beyond the condo he could see the course and one of the greens and a man striding toward a ball with a club in both hands. It was a warm day and there were wispy cirrus clouds high in the blue.

  A moment later Lucinda stood amid the potted plants and flowers on her front porch, fiddling with her keys. The sunlight bounced off her shiny black hair. Down the steps she slowly came, sunglasses on, purse slung over a shoulder, reusable shopping bags wadded in one hand, her usual joylessness apparently in place. She wore jeans and a loose black T and flat black Chinese slippers. She climbed in and shut the door.

  “Major Market, then Rosa’s.”

  “You got it. I’m truly honored you asked for me.”

  Ted backed into the quiet street. In the rearview he saw her looking at him—at the back of his head, anyway—through her blackout glasses. “I wish they hadn’t told you that.”

  “Oh?”

  “I asked for you because you hardly talk.”

  “I’ll hardly talk all you want. Don’t worry. I’m just happy to have the work is all I meant.”

  “If you say so.”

  Ted put on his own sunglasses. He drove three wordless miles to Major Market and let her out at the entrance. “I’ll pick you up here.” She shut the car door and walked away. She moved like someone wishing not to be seen. She was inside, pulling a cart from the line when the automatic doors slid shut. What was devouring her? He felt it strongly but couldn’t identify it. It was something powerful, too, it felt like she’d left some of it right here in the cab. Anger? Fear? He often wondered if people sensed the same thing in himself. He parked in the shade where he could see her come from the store, resting his arm on the TV/DVD player box on the seat beside him.

  She came out with a bag in each hand. Ted pulled up and stopped curbside, offering to handle the bags for her but she swung them into the backseat ahead of her and closed her own door. He pulled out of the lot and got onto Main, headed for Rosa’s Mexican restaurant.

  “Keep going,” she said.

  “What about Rosa’s?”

  “Drive past the air park and the tennis club and turn at the high school.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You weren’t going to talk.”

  “But I need to have a destination.”

  “Rosa’s.”

  “We already drove past Rosa’s.”

  “Please just drive.”

  Ted followed Mission out of town, past the Econo Suites and the deli and the nature preserve at Los Jilgueros. “A jilguero is a goldfinch. Oops.” She was looking at the back of his head again.

  “I was rude. You can talk if you have to.”

  “What’s bothering you?”

  She sighed and went quiet again. Ted thought he’d lost her. Why couldn’t he just keep quiet? Because the same forces that made him want to do something also made him want to say something, he thought. He turned on Stage Coach and drove by the high school and Duke Snider Field and Warrior Stadium. He came to the stretch of Stage Coach that the locals called “Holy Hill,” where many of the churches stood. The Baptist was Ted’s favorite because of the weekly aphorisms on its marquee. This week’s was a good one: WHERE WILL YOU BE SEATED FOR ETERNITY? SMOKING OR NON SMOKING? Ted imagined sinners writhing in flames. “I’ll probably end up in smoking,” he said.

  “See you there.”

  “Look at the hills out there. Black from the fire. Somebody set it.”

  “That would be a heavy burden.”

  “To set a fire?”

  “I would think.”

  Ted looked south to where the ruined foothills stood against the pale blue sky. The Fallbrook air looked clear and clean but the burnt smell still hovered. “Are you new here?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have a job?”

  “Please. Please don’t.”

  There was so much Ted wanted to ask but he didn’t want to scare her off. He followed Fallbrook Street into town and picked up Mission again at the post office and headed down the hill to Rosa’s. “Go around one more time,” she said. “The same way you just did.”

  “I have to charge you. No, never mind. I won’t.”

  She ignored him. In
the rearview he watched her pull a cell phone from her purse and dial from contacts. She ordered a number ten and a Fanta. Ted heard Lucinda putting her phone back into her bag and when he looked up at the mirror she had taken off her sunglasses. She was looking down, and from the small motion of her shoulders Ted could tell she was doing something with her hands. He heard the hiss of aerosol spray. Her shiny dark hair hid her face. A moment later she lifted her head and looked in the mirror at him. Her eyes were brown, beautiful, and charged with grief. “Life is like a day,” she said. “It has light and dark. You can rearrange them for a while but the portions never change.” She slid the clean sunglasses back on.

  “No, they don’t. That’s why you need a place to go where the dark can’t get you. For me it’s on a boat with my brother. His name is Pat and he’s a war hero. I may be working with him someday.”

  “You understand, then. Where the dark can’t get you. I like that. I changed my mind. Go to Las Brisas.”

  He made the loop again in silence and parked at Las Brisas taqueira. They watched the shoppers come and go from the little grocery with the soccer posters in the windows and the chilies hanging on the eaves. Lucinda came out a few minutes later with a white plastic bag. A few minutes later, parked behind the narrow garage below her condo, Ted lifted the TV/DVD player in one big hand and—with no privacy partitions in the taxis of the Friendly Village—reached back and set it down on the seat beside her groceries and lunch.

  “This is for you.”

  “I—”

  “It was on sale at CVS and it looks like fair quality, for the price.”

  “Look … Ted…”

  Ted felt the thrill of his name spoken in Lucinda’s voice, coming from Lucinda’s mouth, carried by Lucinda’s breath. “Remote and everything, you even get batteries.”

  “I can’t take it. Give it to someone who can really use it. I can’t. Thank you, but I can’t.”

  Ted felt like he had been dumped into deep water with an engine block chained to his ankles. “Maybe you could just put it somewhere out of the way for now, then give it to someone later. Christmas is coming up. I can put it in your garage here—”