Good Morning, Darkness Read online

  Then he rang up Laura at work. She answered with that sleepy voice of hers. “Good afternoon, this is Laura.”

  “How ‘bout dinner?” Scott tried to sound sexy.

  She hesitated before answering, but he didn’t make anything of it. She was probably preparing for a client. Then she said, “I would like that.”

  “I’ll pick you up around six-thirty.” He couldn’t wait to see her.

  The clerk, impatient, glared at Scott in a way that said he hated cell phones and hated the people who used them even more. Scott slipped the phone into his pocket, then paid for the champagne in cash, something he rarely did. He was jazzed.

  He got back into his car. What else? A ring. He was prepared for that one. He knew she’d love it. His grandmother had given it to him before she died. He was only sixteen at the time, but by some miracle, he still had it in his sock drawer, fourteen years later, in a cracked leather box embossed with gold. It had a great history, something about his grandparents fleeing the Nazis to Switzerland and stopping at a jewelry shop in some mountain town in France. Grenoble, he thought. Before he picked up Laura, he’d call his mother to get it straight. Laura loved stories like that.

  He had twenty minutes before he had to show a house in Brentwood. He dashed home to put the roses in water, cutting the ends at an angle like he’d seen his eldest sister, Martha, do.

  He stopped. His heart was pounding. He hadn’t felt this stoked since surfing the Banzai Pipeline in Oahu. That was awesome, but how many years ago was that—two? three?—way too long between mega rushes. What had he been doing with his life?

  His eyes drifted slowly around his apartment, a beige affair with Berber carpets and motel furniture left over from a fraternity brother who’d moved out. His surfboard leaned against one wall. He’d never gotten around to hanging pictures, not wanting to put up posters like a teenager but also not wanting to take the time to figure out what else to hang.

  He’d have to give all this up. He laughed at himself. Grow up, Scott! But was he doing the right thing? Was she the right girl?

  Yes. The answer was clearer to him than anything in his entire life. Yes, he would ask her to marry him.

  * * *

  I’m not a pervert. I don’t go sneaking around peaking into people’s windows. But if someone leaves their blinds open after dark, or if they get up early in the morning and open their sliding glass doors to let out the dog, I look. It’s impossible not to.

  So about eight months ago, I noticed a young woman who got up as early as I do. She lived at the end of the Marina Peninsula in an older two-story Craftsman that was covered with bougainvillea like a pink cloud. She lived in the rental unit over the garage. It was pretty nice. She had huge windows that looked out over the channel and a deck on top with planters of white roses and lavender.

  The morning I noticed her, she was in her kitchen making coffee in a white tank top. She was in her late twenties and very pretty, with long dark hair parted in the middle. She looked like a princess. But she seemed lonely. She had that look I see in women her age. Doesn’t matter if they’re rich or poor, single or married, they all get it. Like life has disappointed them.

  Her light was the only one on at the end of the peninsula, so naturally my eyes were drawn to her. There was something about the way she moved, graceful, like she was still sleeping. I set my fishing rod down on the toe of my boot and stood mesmerized. While she waited for the water to boil, she fed a mourning dove that perched on the bougainvillea outside her window. The bird took it right out of her hand. She left the kitchen, then came back with a hairbrush. She stood brushing her hair, looking out at the ocean. It seemed to give her pleasure. If she’d looked in my direction, she would’ve seen me, but she didn’t. She looked off toward Catalina as if waiting for the mist to clear so she could see her homeland.

  From then on, when I came down to the jetty I looked for her, and there she was. Her routine was always the same. Coffee, bird, brush. On warm mornings she’d pull back her hair and pile it on top of her head, arching her long neck, stretching her arms and her shoulders. She smiled and closed her eyes as if imagining someone kissing her neck. Not that I thought about kissing her neck. It wasn’t like that. I just enjoyed watching her—like watching the egrets in Grand Canal wading in the mud at low tide.

  My friends call me a philosopher. I like to look at things and think about them. That’s what it was with her—she made me think about stuff.

  Sometimes I worried about her living all alone and looking so sad. It’s never made sense to me the way white people want to live alone. Even though I have to watch where I step when I walk through the house, and most nights have to sleep on the sofa, I can’t imagine coming home and not having people around, my kids and the neighbors’ kids, my wife, her sister, my two cousins, and whoever else has showed up for dinner. It makes me nervous, thinking about these lonely ladies, like when we begin to have a lot of small earthquakes. I wonder how they’ve been so hurt that they’d rather be alone than to risk their hearts and bodies. Maybe they like it. I like to fish by myself. Maybe it’s the same, but somehow I doubt it.

  After I found the arm, I didn’t see her no more. I tried to pretend that she’d moved in with that handsome guy I saw sometimes, the one who drank his coffee with one hand while feeling her breasts with the other.

  I was afraid to admit what I knew was true. The girl and her arms had been separated.

  * * *

  When Scott called Laura, she heard the excitement in his voice. She figured he’d gotten a job promotion, or a new motorcycle or some other toy, maybe one of the vacation bonuses that his office doled out to motivate their salespeople. She didn’t ask. She wasn’t even curious. She knew he liked to tell her such things in person, drawing out the telling like a ringmaster holding the spotlight while the house lights go down.

  She liked Scott. She liked his boyish energy. She liked being treated so well. Perhaps she even loved him.

  She put on a short black dress with spaghetti straps. She had small breasts so she knew she could get away with it. Funny, she thought, the unwritten rules: Large breasts had to be strapped in; small breasts could breathe under thin chiffon and no one would think twice.

  This dress made her feel like she was wearing nothing at all—empowered yet exposed—and that’s exactly how she wanted to feel when she told him. She wanted to be vulnerable and strong. She wanted to feel his hurt, and she wanted to appear her most beautiful when she hurt him.

  It was a small revenge for what he did to her in her dream.

  * * *

  As he entered the restaurant, Scott over-tipped the valet, the doorman, and the maître d’. He wanted everything to be perfect. He got a table on the terrace and ordered a fancy wine.

  She was so beautiful in that black dress that looked like a slip, her hair loosely piled on top of her head, her eyes blue as tropical water, her mouth red, her bony shoulders fragile and seductive, her only jewelry a single black pearl he’d brought her from Tahiti, its pear shape falling in the crevice between her breasts.

  He wanted to give her the ring so he could watch it on her long, graceful hand as she lifted her wine goblet and ate dinner, but he knew you were supposed to wait until after the meal, down on one knee before the waiter brings coffee and dessert, before you order champagne to celebrate.

  They ate in silence. She ordered Chilean sea bass in mango sauce, he the rack of lamb.

  As the waiter took away their plates, Scott felt his heart beating rapidly and sweat gathering inside his shirt collar. But he didn’t take off his sport coat. He didn’t quite know where to start. He’d prepared a short speech, something about coming of age, taking his place in the community, sharing his life with the perfect woman, but now it seemed so clichéd. He wanted words that were more genuine, that told her how happy she made him.

  Then she said, “Scott, I have something to tell you. Perhaps it isn’t the right time, but I don’t suppose it ever will feel like the ri
ght time.”

  “Go on,” he said, after his initial surprise. It occurred to him that maybe Laura was pregnant. A bit of a shock, but what could be better? They’d start a family right away. That sure would make his mother happy. Or maybe she was going to propose to him. He loved how she continued to surprise him, her secrets, her little revelations. He waited as she paused, searching as she always did for the right words.

  “You know how much I think of you—”

  “No, tell me,” Scott said, his smile crooked, a smile he’d perfected in front of the mirror as a teenager to pick up girls, a smile that had become part of him, that he now used to sell houses. “You know I can never hear enough about me.” That got her to smile back, which flooded his body with warmth.

  “You’re wonderful,” she said. “You’re generous and kind and handsome—”

  “And a sexual athlete.”

  “That too. You’re the greatest guy I’ve ever met.”

  “Gee, thanks,” he said, not used to blushing, his body tingling all over. He felt a flash of heat in his groin and wanted to leap over the table and take her right there.

  “But I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

  It was like someone had slammed a two-by-four in his face, his ears suddenly pounding, his dinner burning in his chest, threatening to erupt. He was speechless.

  “It’s not that I don’t care for you. I do. But I don’t feel comfortable anymore. I think we should stop before things get out of hand.”

  “Out of hand?” he nearly shouted. “How can things get out of hand? I want to marry you.”

  It was her turn to be surprised, but she shook her head and said, “No, it’s too late for that.”

  “Too late? What are you talking about? You’ve been fucking someone else?” Several diners looked over at their table with raised eyebrows.

  “No, nothing like that. Calm down, Scott. There’s no one else.”

  “Then what? I don’t understand. Tell me.” A shiver went through him; he felt he might lose control, as if he were driving on ice.

  “I had a dream.”

  Scott paused, then laughed too loudly. Everything would be all right after all. “So . . . you had a dream?”

  “Not just a dream. It was horrible. Last time you slept over.”

  A nastiness crept over him, something akin to jealousy. He pushed it aside. She was obviously upset. He should listen. “What was your dream about?”

  “I dreamed you killed me.”

  Scott paused, then laughed warmly, confidently. How he loved her, her face so serious, her neck, taut and defenseless. He wanted to reach over and kiss that spot that drove her crazy, where her neck joined her shoulders. “It’s a metaphor, don’t you see? It’s so obvious. You’re afraid if we marry, you’ll lose part of yourself, that some part of you will be killed off.” He took her hand. “That won’t happen. I promise you.”

  Laura slowly slipped away her hand. “In my dream, you became obsessed with me, stalked me, then brutally murdered me.”

  The word murder stung him, took his breath. “I can’t believe it,” he sputtered. “You’re more afraid of commitment than I am, and I’m the playboy of L.A. I'm the guy Hefner publishes for.”

  The corners of her mouth turned down in a slight frown. “When I look at you, even now, I see your face just as you were about to kill me, your eyes filled with loathing. I don’t want you ever to hate me that much. I couldn’t bear it.”

  He saw her lips tremble as she folded her arms across her chest, her hands cupping each shoulder. Her fear stabbed deep into his heart. “Laura, darling. I love you. I could never hate you. It was just a dream.”

  “It wasn’t just a dream. It felt real.”

  “Forget about it, sweetheart.”

  “I can’t forget about it. Besides it doesn’t matter if it was just a dream. I’ll never feel comfortable around you again. Not really. I’ll always wonder when you’ll start hating me . . . when you’ll hate me enough to murder me.”

  Again, that word. He suppressed a small ulcer of anger blooming beneath his ribs. He had to make her believe him. “Laura, I’m here, in the flesh and blood.” He paced his words deliberately. “All I can think about is how much I love you. I want to marry you. I want to have children with you. I want to live with you until we’re old and ugly and our dentures clack together when we kiss. I was going to ask you tonight. I have the ring in my pocket.”

  He reached into his sport coat, pulled out the cracked leather ring box, and opened it. An antique diamond ring, simple and exquisite. He set it in the middle of the table for her to look at, then reached over and gently caressed her left hand.

  Her fingers were shaking, cold as ice. He looked deep into her eyes. “Who are you going to believe? A dream or me?”

  * * *

  I got caught once. The guy who lives in front is a famous sculptor from Belgium or someplace. A heavyset guy with crazy white hair and a white handlebar mustache. He owns the place. I don’t know what he was doing up so early that morning. Maybe he woke from a dream all inspired and wanted to start work.

  He uses the sandy lot beside his house as his studio, which is always covered with logs and half-finished pieces, heavy chunks of wood bolted on top of one another. Over on one side of the lot is a cheap shed filled with his tools.

  As usual, I was standing by the Japanese boxwood hedge watching the girl, the pink dawn reflecting in the kitchen windows. It made her face look like it was floating in the clouds. Like a goddess brushing her hair, smiling down on a poor Mexican fisherman.

  Then the sculptor saw me. He was barefoot and wore cutoff gray sweatpants. His naked chest was matted with gray and white hair, and his shaggy eyebrows were pinched together over his eyes. He saw I was watching her. He picked up an ax resting by the shed, gripped the handle with both hands, raised it high over his head, and slammed it down into a log. His body quivered. He looked up and glared at me.

  I backed up and ran.

  Later, I wanted to go back to explain myself, to tell the guy I wasn’t a Peeping Tom, that I didn’t touch myself while I watched the girl, or even later when I thought about her. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t like that, that she was like the morning to me, sacred and beautiful. He might understand. He was an artist. But then he might not and he was a scary fucker.

  I stayed away for about a week, fishing a mile north by the Venice Pier. But then I started feeling like I was depriving myself of something. I was acting like I was guilty and I didn’t do nothing. That made me mad, like when people look at us Mexicans like we don’t have a right to live here, like we’re rats or something. I figured the worst he could do is call the police, and I’d blend in with the other fishermen and they’d never know who it was.

  So I went back to fishing off the marina jetty and to my predawn walk past the million-dollar homes, past the egrets in Grand Canal, past the girl brushing her hair. I didn’t stay as long watching her, just long enough to get that feeling you get when you watch an eclipse or a meteor shower, a feeling like awe, like there’s something out there that’s beautiful and unknowable.

  I never saw the sculptor again. Not in the morning. I suppose he thought he scared me off, or maybe he knew I was harmless, not worth waking up so early for.

  Then a few weeks later I found the arm.

  * * *

  “Just because you don’t believe her dream, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t believe it. Sounds to me like she’s really scared.”

  “There wasn’t any fuckin’ dream. She just wanted to break up with me and came up with this lame excuse.”

  Scott wasn’t much of a drinker, but it seemed like the thing you were supposed to do when you got dumped—go to a bar with a friend and get blasted, maybe go home with someone who wouldn’t rip your heart out. He called Peter Flynn, a loan officer at Bank of America he’d befriended a few years ago, a dull, pasty-faced fellow, but really nice, the kind of guy you don’t mind spilling your guts to, who’
ll watch you get drunk and not make you feel like an asshole, and who won’t remind you of it for years afterward. They went to an Irish pub on Lincoln Boulevard called Brennigan’s, the kind of place that opens its backdoor at six a.m. for the real drinkers, the ones who wake at five in the morning, dry-mouthed, hearts fluttering, dressed in the clothes they’ve had on for two days, who stumble out of bed to find a drink to dull the pain. It was the kind of place where the drinkers all looked sixty, leaning on their elbows, sitting on their bar stools like pigeons in the rain. It was the kind of place that felt like you stepped into an abandoned subway station, grimy and dark, like it was the home of every bad thought and feeling you’d ever had.

  Peter’s eyes got big when they entered the bar, but when Scott headed for a booth in the corner, he shrugged and followed. That was the type of easygoing guy he was.

  Neither of them seemed to have the stomach for drinking. Scott was too keyed up, and Peter didn’t even like the stuff. They sipped their Dos Equis letting the tequila sit, waiting for a moment of courage.

  “I just want to know why she broke up with me,” Scott whined. “Is that so much to ask? When you send a sweater back to J.Crew, don’t they ask why you’re returning it? Don’t you owe them an explanation? Don’t I deserve an explanation?”

  “She isn’t a sweater, Scott. She’s a woman. She has her reasons. If she doesn’t want to tell you why, that’s her business. Accept it. You’re not going to change her mind.”