Angry Buddhist (9781609458867) (6 page)

“What about that job in your office we talked about?” She's already retreating from the marriage fantasy, trying to tamp her pique into the manageable form of a job request.

“If you call in a month or so, we'll see if we can't get that set up. I've got to help Mary Swain get elected first. She's an important woman.” This assessment pierces Nadine, who looks away and thinks about Hard's implication.

Nadine has suffered through enough similar situations to recognize a blow off. What will happen if she calls police headquarters: polite runaround and no job. It wasn't like there was a quid pro quo when they started sleeping together, but the highhandedness, the dismissal, galls her.

She rises and walks to the kitchen a little unsteadily, carrying her empty glass with her. There, she fills it with water from the tap and chugs it down. Despite her admonition that he should not expect to be fed, Nadine had prepared a bowl of melon balls before Hard's arrival, taking the time to scoop out the cantaloupe and honeydew and arrange them artfully in a State of New Mexico commemorative bowl she had purchased on a trip to a tennis clinic in Albuquerque. The melon balls were going to be served with the margaritas but what was the point now? She looks at her recalcitrant soon-to-be-ex-lover and inhales through her nostrils trying to steady her nerves. The post-coital relaxation she was experiencing earlier has vanished. The emptiness she usually feels—the accrual of bad memories, wrong choices and rotten luck—tiptoes back in, and gets comfortable. Taking a salad fork, Nadine spears a melon ball and places it in her mouth. She chews and lets the cool juice wash down her throat. Her stomach gurgles and she remembers she forgot to eat dinner. Glances over and sees the Lean Cuisine teriyaki chicken congealed on a plate next to the microwave.

Through the pass-through window she can observe Hard facing away from her, sipping his drink. Nadine thinks about the Mexican he claims to have killed while working with Immigration. How he seemed to take on a new persona, Hard Plus, just like the Hard she knew, only stronger, more formidable. And how men like Hard never seem to pay a price for their actions but are allowed to repeat them again and again.

Taking the bowl of melon balls, Nadine steps out of the kitchen. She regards Hard from the rear, an Indian peeking out from behind a rock at a settler encampment. Sees the bullet head set on broad shoulders. She can discern the outline of the muscles in his back against the tightness of his khaki shirt. Hard seriously Alpha. She can see why he is a leader, a man with a future and not just in law enforcement but to hear him tell it, in politics, too.

When Nadine stabs him in the neck with the salad fork she misses the jugular vein by less than an inch. Still, there is a lot of blood. He doesn't scream but leaps from the chair, grabs her wrist and wrestles the weapon from her, cursing. Then he roughly shoves her away. When she staggers back, her heel catches on the cheap knit rug and she falls to the floor where she watches Hard press his palm to his neck for a moment, then hold it in front of him, dripping with blood. Hard walks toward the bathroom as Diablo bounds from the other side of the room and barks like someone has fastened an electroshock ring to his little scrotum and turned the dial to ten. Astonished at her own audacity, Nadine remains on the floor as Hard emerges from the bathroom, a bloody towel now pressed to his neck, keeping a wary eye on his tormentors. Top volume shrieking pours from the dog. When Hard makes for the door, the animal bolts across the floor and leaps at him. Still holding the towel to his wounded neck, he kicks the Chihuahua away but this only further animates Diablo, who clamps his jaws on the man's left ankle. It takes a well-placed kick to dislodge him and the Desert Hot Springs Police Chief wisely uses this gap in the action to slide through the door.

There's an advantage in stabbing a married guy, Nadine thinks. He doesn't have much in the way of recourse.

After Hard leaves, she lies down on her bed cradling Diablo and looks at the Taser she had surreptitiously liberated from his belt when he had gone to the bathroom after sex. Why had she stabbed him with a fork when she had had the Taser at her disposal? It certainly would have conveyed her feelings more forcefully. Jam it under his armpit and the man would have thought the Devil had stuck him with a pitchfork. Why did she always do things in half measures? In considering the efficacy of Tasers versus forks, she finds herself reflecting that perhaps she should stop dating for a while since it is obviously causing more stress than she had realized.

As Nadine strokes Diablo's head, she reflects on the threat she has made. What could possibly be gained by calling his wife? As a mostly rational person, she knew the answer: not much. Nonetheless, she is still irate at what she perceives to be the arrogant way in which she has been treated and deeply resents how powerless it makes her feel, how inconsequential. And that only makes her more irate. Although she has already stabbed him in the neck, she wants to hurt him in a more lasting way, a way that goes far beyond insulting his taste in poetry. And then she wants to go to Mexico with him, drink cocktails festooned with umbrellas, and at sunset have sex on the beach while fishermen unload their nets in the dimming distance. Nadine can hardly begin to understand herself. At least she had the foresight to purloin the Taser. It will probably come in handy.

 

T
he hillside home of the Duke family is nestled in the Little Tuscany section on the northwest side of Palm Springs. In the long shadow of the rust-colored San Jacinto Mountains, the house is a perfectly restored exemplar of the mid-century modern style. Relatively modest, especially in contrast to nearby architectural showplaces once owned by such luminaries of yesteryear as Dinah Shore and Bob Hope, the wood post and beam L-shaped one story structure has a pleasing flow. The living room comprises one wing and is walled on two sides entirely in glass through which the garden, the pool and the mountains provide a magnificent panorama. The kitchen is at the fulcrum and the three bedrooms lie at the other, longer end of the house. Built in 1955, it is furnished in a style that quotes from the era, without replicating it. Randall had no interest in mid-century modernism and neither, initially, did Kendra. It was Maxon Brae, a member of the Palm Springs Architectural Conservancy, who prevailed on her to purchase this home when it came on the market. Maxon had informed Kendra that it would only help the family business if they had a house on the local preservationist tour. Insecure about her own non-musical aesthetic sense she signed on to Maxon's vision. As for Randall, he would have been happy to buy a house on a golf course but acquiesced to his spouse and advisor.

Kendra sits on a kitchen stool eating chocolate ice cream from a glass mug with the words
Gerald Ford Invitational Golf Tournament
embossed on it and trying to forget the reason the Palm Springs Academy had called earlier. She can't figure out her daughter. The girl is unusually intelligent, a straight A student taking Advanced Placement courses who writes superbly and until recently played the violin in the school orchestra before deciding it no longer comported with her image of herself, whatever
that
was. And why she would be sending naked pictures of herself to her boyfriend Scott, a weedy high school senior with a vacant quality that Kendra correctly ascribed to excessive dope smoking, was impossible to understand. Brittany claimed he was some kind of computer genius but if that were true, why did the picture scandal erupt? Did he not know the word
encryption
? In the car ride back from school, she had barked at her daughter for a few minutes about the shame she had brought on herself and her family but her intensity drained when the girl offered no defense. They entered the house in strained silence. Brittany headed to her room and Kendra to a calming glass of Zinfandel. The girl is now writing a school-mandated essay on why this kind of moral turpitude, if not held in check, will lead to the disintegration of Western Civilization.

A laptop lies open in front of Kendra and she is reading the latest posting on a blog written by some supercilious jerk calling himself Desert Machiavelli. She has no idea who this person is but she hates him. Desert Machiavelli is brutal toward everyone but it's Randall he's taking aim at today so Kendra is already tense when she hears the word “Mom!” discharged from behind her like a weapon. Turning, she faces an annoyed Brittany. “Why did you write ‘please start your essay' on my Facebook wall?”

“Because it's the only way I know you'll pay attention.”

Brittany makes a sound involving both snorting and coughing distributed in equal measure and intended to convey extreme displeasure. The teenager twirls a lock of magenta-streaked hair. A tight white spaghetti strap shirt is stretched over her nearly flat chest and a black miniskirt rides high on pipe cleaner thighs. In her hand is a paperback copy of
Slouching Toward Bethlehem,
the pages overflowing with post-it notes.

“Do I have to go to that lame party with Daddy tomorrow?”

“The Purity Ball?”

“I have a paper on Joan Didion due at the end of the week and I'd like it to be good.”

“Well, you'd better get cracking because you're going to that event with Daddy.” Brittany's spirit deflates at this news, a phenomenon to which Kendra pays no attention since it happens on a daily basis. “In the meantime, you have to eat something. There's lasagna in the oven.”

“I had some raisins, okay?”

“How many?”

“Three.”

“Boxes?”

“Raisins.”

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“No!”

Kendra regards her daughter helplessly. The two of them have been engaged in a variation of this conversation for the past several years and she is justifiably concerned that the girl has an eating disorder. But Brittany's energy level is high and that stare of hers bores right into you! It has a spooky power, the kind exhibited by certain religious leaders. There are times Kendra can feel her daughter looking through her, past her eyes and into her brain, as if the kid could understand not only what her mother was thinking but what she would be thinking a minute from now. She has discussed this with Randall but he claimed to have no idea what she was talking about. It's not as if Brittany has superpowers or something; there's nothing paranormal happening, Randall said. She's just a little intense sometimes.

But the girl sees everything going on around her. There are times Kendra just has to look away. Through the kitchen windows the ragged mountains are visible in the distance, bronze in the afternoon light.

“You are going to sit at that table and eat lasagna.”

“That's child abuse,” Brittany says. “What if I have, like, ten raisins?”

“You're going to starve to death, Brit.” The hum of a vacuum cleaner drifts in from the living room where the Salvado­ran cleaning lady is working. The woman, a grandmother, does not understand anorexia. It is not something they have in El Salvador.

“I won't starve,” Brittany assures her. “I'm just not hungry right now.” The girl runs her hand through her hair. It does not escape Kendra that her daughter did not appear that different from runway models she had seen on television. But in her view, their haunted, emaciated look does not belong on a high school senior.

“You're going to the Purity Ball with Daddy tomorrow, and you have to eat something at the dinner. Don't make Daddy tell you to eat. Everyone's going to be watching him.”

“Did you tell him about what happened at school?”

“He's campaigning today, so, no. And I'll make a deal with you. I won't mention it to him if you eat some of that lasagna.”

“You swear?” Kendra nods. “Whatever.” Brittany grunts in displeasure as she departs.

Kendra takes another can of the chocolate drink out of the refrigerator. Wonders for a moment if drinking several diet drinks defeats the purpose but Brittany vexes her and that justifies it in her mind. Better diet drinks than vodka, she concludes.

Kendra's cell phone rings and she looks at the caller ID: Private Caller. She doesn't like to pick up the phone not knowing who it is, but Randall has taught her that you never know when it might be a donor so she dutifully presses the Talk button and says hello.

“Kendra?” She doesn't recognize the caller, a woman.

“Who is this?”

“Remember me?” Flirtatious, tense.

Kendra doesn't bother lowering her voice since the only adult in the house is the cleaning lady whose grasp of English is, at best, vague. Then it comes roaring back. Nadine! Oh, god, why is this person calling? What could she possibly want?

“I need to see you.” The air conditioning is frosting the house, but Kendra feels her body temperature leap two degrees. “Please.

“I asked you not to call here.”

The voice says “Meet me for a drink at Melvyn's at 6:00. There's something I want to show you.”

“I can't come.”

There is a long pause on the other end, during which Kendra debates whether to just hang up. This is someone she has no desire to ever see again.

“It can help your husband.”

Kendra hands the parking valet her keys and enters Melvyn's. The place is old school, venerable by Palm Springs standards, which means it evokes the Technicolor era of big-finned cars and unfiltered cigarettes. Framed black and white photographs of dapper Melvyn the desert dandy line the walls, smiling with his famous customers, images of deeply tanned men in suits with thin lapels, women wearing ermine and lots of makeup, everyone looking Rat Pack. A long, tiled bar trimmed with mahogany runs along the left side of the room. The white tablecloths are starched. It's just shy of the dinner hour and the place is nearly empty. Kendra and Randall come here occasionally. If anyone sees her they'll think she's just having a drink with a friend.

Nadine waves from her seat at the end of the otherwise empty bar. She wears a clingy yellow sweater with a scooped front, a blue cotton skirt and tan flats. A small gold tennis racquet dangles from a thin chain around her neck. Kendra sits next to her on an upholstered bar stool.

Nadine's tan masks a tired face. Kendra thinks she looks as if she hasn't had much rest lately. But she smells good. Like lemons. Nadine thanks her for coming. Kendra offers a tight smile, then looks around again, making sure she hasn't missed anyone who might know her. Not that sitting with Nadine is suspicious behavior. She just doesn't want to be blindsided in the middle of their conversation. Two matronly women are getting a head start on a bottle of Riesling in the dining room. They wear expensive dresses, lots of jewelry, and bored expressions.

The bartender approaches, an older guy with a red face and a full head of dyed-black hair. “I'll have another,” Nadine says, holding her glass. “Seven and seven.” The bartender nods and looks at Kendra. She hopes he won't recognize her. His expression says he doesn't.

Kendra orders a Mel-tini, a concoction of raspberry vodka, peach schnapps and cranberry juice. The bartender nods and turns around to mix the drink. “What's this about?”

“You can't be friendly? It's been almost a year.”

“I'm a little stressed out.”

“The campaign?”

“Yes, and other things.”

The bartender places Kendra's drink in front of her on top of a cocktail napkin with a pencil drawing of James Dean printed on it. She takes a sip, then another.

“How's Brittany? Is she still playing?”

“Oh for heaven's sake, Nadine, I shouldn't even be here. But now that I am, I want to be honest with you. This encounter is not really appropriate, so . . . ”

“You're hurting my feelings.”

“I don't want to do that. But I have limited time. There's an event tonight.”

“She has so much potential as a tennis player.”

“She hasn't played much lately,” Kendra says, draining most of her Mel-tini. She's barely eaten today and the drink sneaks up on her. It's a pleasant sensation, one that takes some of the edge off being sucked back into Nadine's orbit, so she signals for another.

“Are you all right?”

“I'm fine.” Then, considerably more relaxed than she was a moment ago, “Brittany was suspended from school for two days.” She has no idea why she's telling Nadine this other than she is overcome with the compulsion to share the information with someone who knows the girl and will be supportive. Kendra finishes the remainder of her drink. She daubs her lipstick with James Dean's face, crushes the napkin and places it in the glass.

Nadine leans forward conspiratorially. “I have a Valium in my purse.”

“I'm okay, really. Do you know what sexting is?

“Sure.”

Kendra thinking
Of course you do.
“That's why Brittany was sent home today.”

“She wasn't doing it with a teacher or anything?”

“No, thank god.”

“I sent pictures of myself to Chief Marvin.”

“Chief Marvin? Is he an Indian?”

“The police chief. You know, in Desert Hot Springs? Hard Marvin?” Kendra looks baffled. Is she supposed to know the person Nadine just referenced? Or care that she sent him pictures? “We were intimate.”

This revelation arrives like a giant metal object from outer space, one that is puzzling when glimpsed on radar and whose meaning is not inherently apparent when viewed with the naked eye, and Kendra cannot imagine what Nadine means by telling her. In the catalogue of possibilities reviewed by Kendra during the drive to the restaurant, reasons Nadine might have wanted to meet, this one had not occurred to her. Further, what interest could she have possibly had in the sexual peccadilloes of Chief Marvin? Kendra assumes Nadine has had multiple sex partners. That Chief Marvin was among them means nothing. Still, she feels impelled to say something so out comes: “Intimate?”

“We had an affair.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“I have emails he sent me.”

The bartender chooses this moment to return. Kendra hopes he has not heard any of the conversation. He serves the drinks and silently slips away. Nadine withdraws a neatly folded piece of paper from her black leather purse and hands it to Kendra.

“Read it.”

Kendra unfolds the paper:

 

From: Harding Marvin < [email protected]

Subject: Sexy You

To: “Nadine Never” < [email protected]

Date: Tuesday October 2 1:23
P.M.

 

You are a glorious sexy girl and I hope you understand that, my sweet Nadine. Can you comprehend how beautiful your smile is? Have you been informed lately how warm your blue eyes are and how they glow with the special nature of your soul? I mentioned to you that when I married I did not need love, but as the battle scars of life have worn on me this is something I don't mind telling you now I want. I love your gentle kisses and your tan lines and your magnificent twin peaks . . .

 

When Kendra arrives at the phrase twin peaks she folds the piece of paper in two and demurely hands it back to Nadine.

“Is that his real name?”

“It's Harding. But everyone calls him Hard.”