Clandestine

"Fifty-fifty. It's a racket like any other. Listen, how would you and Michael like to go for a ride tomorrow? Out to the country somewhere, just get in my car and go. I've got a convertible."

There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally, Doc said, "Sure, kid. Why don't you pick us up at noon?"

"Until then," I said, and hung up.

I drove to Beverly Hills.

Lorna's office was in a tall building attached to the StanleyWarner Theater on Wilshire near Beverly Drive. I parked down the street and walked there. I checked out the rear parking area first; I was afraid Lorna had already left for the day, but I was in luck: her '50 Packard was still in its space. Hardworking Lorna—still on the job at six-thirty.

The sky was turning golden, and people were already lining up for the first evening performance of "The Country Girl." I waited an hour by the parking entrance, until the sky turned a burnished copper and Lorna turned the corner onto Canon Drive, staying close to the building, jamming her heavy wooden cane into the space where the wall met the sidewalk.

When I saw her, I felt the old shakiness grip me. She walked head down, abstracted. Before she could look up and see me, I committed to memory the look on her face, her hunched posture and her light blue summer dress. When she did look up, she must have seen the love-struck Freddy Underhill of old, for her drawn face softened until she realized this was 1955, not 1951, and that walls had been constructed during the interim.

"Hello, Lor," I said.

"Hello, Freddy," Lorna said coldly. Her manner stiffened, she sighed and leaned against the marble of the building. "Why, Freddy? It's over."

"No, it's not, Lor. None of it."

"I won't argue with you."

"You look beautiful."

"No, I don't. I'm thirty-five and I'm putting on weight. And it's only been four months."

"It's been a lifetime."

"Don't do that with me, goddamn you! You don't mean it, and I don't care! I don't care, Freddy! Do you hear that?"

Lorna gave herself a shove and almost toppled over. I moved to steady her and she swatted at me clumsily with her cane. "No, goddamn you," she hissed. "I won't be charmed one more time. I won't let you beat up my friends, and I won't take you back."

She hobbled into the parking lot. I stayed behind, wondering if she would believe me, or think me insane, or even care. I let her get all the way to her car. I watched as she fished her keys out of her purse, then ran up and grabbed them out of her hand as she began to unlock the door. She started to resist, then stopped. She smiled patiently and put her weight on her cane. "You never listened, Freddy," she said.

"I listened more than you know." I countered.

"No, you didn't. You just heard what you wanted to hear. And you convinced me you were listening. You were a good actor."

I couldn't think of a retort, or a dig, or a plea, so I just said—moving a few steps backward to give myself objectivity—"It's on again. I've connected Eddie Engels to a woman who was murdered recently. I'm going to see it through, wherever it takes me. Maybe when it's all over we can be together."

Lorna was perfectly still. "You are insane," she said.

"It's been hanging over us like a plague, Lor. Maybe we can have some peace when it's over."

"You are insane."

"Lorna—"

"No. We can never be together again; and not because of what happened four years ago. We can never be together because of what you are. No, don't touch me and don't try to charm me or sweet-talk me. I'm getting in my car and if you try to stop me I will make you regret we ever met."

I handed Lorna the keys to her car. Her hand shook as she took them from me. She fumbled her way into the car and drove away, spewing exhaust fumes on my trouser legs.

"Nothing's ever over, Lorna," I said to the air. But I didn't know if I believed it.

We drove east on the San Bernardino Freeway with the top down, away from the stifling, sun-blinded L.A. streets, past successions of interconnected working-class communities spread through terrain ranging from desert sand flats to piny woods. I was at the wheel, Michael was beside me on the front seat, and Doc was sprawled in the back, his long legs propped up on the passengerside doorjamb, where Michael wrapped a protective arm around his ankles and beat time to the big-band boogie-woogie coming from the radio.

The air that whizzed past us got hotter and thinner as we climbed the winding roads of a fir-covered forest. Lake Arrowhead was nominally our destination, but none of us seemed to care if we ever got there; we were lost in games of silence—Doc and I each knowing that the other knew, but knew what? And unwilling, as yet, to push it any further. And Michael, craning his long neck above the windshield, getting full blasts of summer air, gulping it in as fuel for what I knew had to be a brilliant imagination.