Elsinore Canyon (11 page)

Over in the corner, Dana let her head sink over her knees. She hugged her drowned phone. Polly might still come back. She waited three minutes, then dipped an eyelid out from behind the sofa. “Doofus,” she whispered sharply.

Hours later, with the ascendant sun replacing the stars in the heathered sky, she drove out the Elsinore Canyon exit in her beat-up Volvo, and took the Coast Highway south. On the passenger seat lay a pile of digital devices: the broken phone, another phone, the tablet, a laptop. She adjusted the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of her face. Droopy and discolored, blue circles under her eyes and her skin pebbly from coffee and lack of sleep. She set her chin in grim approval. On the move at last.

I rocked myself gloomily in bed. Maybe I didn’t need to punch my monitor. Maybe Dana was just being her high-spirited self, except in a way I’d never seen. Maybe this was what happened when she was unleashed, whirling out years of angry fantasies in the brief interval between Father Henry and a Stanford dean. Stuff she would have merely talked about if her mother were alive or even if her mother were dead but her aunt and father were still separate, stuff she needn’t have gone and
done
if it weren’t for that. A polar bear costume, billboards. Heck, there was a method to it. Dana knew how to get ahead of her critics. She knew what it meant to be crazy like a fox. And who didn’t love revenge? She wasn’t driving drunk or doing motorcycle stunts. I texted her a bland how-are-you a couple of times a week, to which she always replied, “Alive.”

No, I fought back as I sweated against my pillow. Something was wrong with her soul. Any morning now I was going to drive down there and make her tell me what was on her mind. For a month I had distracted myself in every way possible. I had tuned my car, reviewed paraplegic toys and sports, and tried adaptive forms of surfing, scuba diving, target shooting, and archery. I had groomed my uncle’s horses and explored the trails and wilds near his ranch, on horseback and ATVing. Whenever my mind went back to Dana I physically hurt. I managed to get some relief through one occupation that I could do anywhere: dreading life.

The whole UCSD thing was a fake. All my classes picked out, a dorm, all the entrances and walkways plotted out for accessibility, the classrooms, the offices, the food joints, the common rooms, my routines. The beaches of San Diego: the Shores, the Cove, Windansea, foot of Tourmaline, Crystal Pier, Mission. But I didn’t know fuck. It must be the same for everyone, but I would be doing disability in a new city among new acquaintances. A few certainties indicated the day-to-day existence I would have at UCSD. I was a loner, not a joiner, I had my secret mission to cure myself, I knew that a wheelchair could be a chick magnet, I was devoted to Dana, and I didn’t want to be a paraplegic anything. That is, I wanted to surf and study, but I didn’t want to be a paraplegic surfer or a paraplegic student.

Those decisions I had reached years before, but now, as I stood on the brink of freedom from grandparents and Father Henrys, they were forcing me to think. There was no denying it: everything came back to Dana. How did I want her to feel with me? Proud, and comfortable. How did I want to pull it off? Casual yet capable. The amazing Casual-yet-Capable Man, rolling the streets in his chinos and cotton shirts! I pushed away things that made my life feel contrived and crowded, the Jules Verne technology, the Gilligan’s Island technology, the totally pathetic and stupid technology, the events with volunteers in t-shirts. I wanted to live and share my life in an intimate and spontaneous way like everyone else, but unlike everyone else I couldn’t stop killing my chances by over planning and obsessing—and yet. I learned to cook some simple dishes. I bought fashionable shoes in which I would never walk, and I set my knees at a rakish angle in my wheelchair. For Dana.

A fool’s hope kept these worries at the front of my mind and assured me that life was normal, that I hadn’t either seen a ghost or been royally punked; that my geographical separation from Dana in the fall wouldn’t lessen our intimacy; that I needn’t wonder whether she was on or off with Phil; and that the experience in the adobe wasn’t an eruption of evil that was destroying Dana and driving her away from me.

My computer jangled me awake. I pulled my blankets over my head—the jangling stopped.
Friday. August. Nothing.
I hated getting jerked out of non-REM sleep. The noise started again. Eight insufferable jangles. It stopped. Then it started again. I swung into my chair in the weak light, rolled to my desk, and punched a pulsing icon. My widening eyes cracked the crusts on my lids as Dana’s face wiped onto the screen.

I heard myself croak softly. “Holy shit. Is this live?”

Dana appeared to be outdoors somewhere. With a tentative smile, she leaned closer to whatever electronic camera. “Horst. Sorry I woke you up.”

It was the first time we’d spoken since that night in the adobe. I forced out the cobwebs. “Dana? Is that really you?”

“It’s me!”

“What’s up?”

“Can you talk right now?”

“Am I allowed to ask how you are?”

She laughed. “Yes.”

“Well holy shit! I’ve been worried sick about you.”

“Hey, I woke you up. If you need to, umm.”

“No, I’m fine. Can you—can you lean back? Let me see where you are.”

“I’m at the Beach Bean.”

“Just show me you’re okay.”

Dana shook her head teasingly and reached towards the screen. I was hoisted for a fast, shaky 360 of the outdoor section of a coffee shop on the Coast Highway that I knew well. A tumble over her hair, a jiggly landing, and she looked at me again. “Now I’m waving at you.” She waved.

“I just wanted to make sure no one was…”

“I’m fine, Horst.” Her smile lightened. “I’m fine, you wonderful thing. I’m sorry for the sleep raid. Can you meet me today, in L.A? I’m going to Wilshire Mac and a few other places.”

“What time?”

“Whenever you can get down. I’ve escaped them. I’ll tell you all about it. Listen, I need a friend, I need some advice.”

“I think you do.”

“I know what you’re thinking, but it’s something else. Forget the shit I’ve been doing for the past month. Really, forget the stories, I’ll explain everything. Horst, I’m sorry. I need you to forgive me for acting like an idiot and making fools of my friends—”

“I never thought that, Dana—”

“I did. How soon can you be here?”

Within an hour I was skimming south on the 101 against thick green hills, then across the 126 through flat, dry farms and roadside drive-thrus, and then down the wide valleys of the I-5. Del Taco, morning radio, an open roof. So this time it was Dana who named the new trick in our relationship: the sleep raid. I smiled.

Gale crushed out her cigarette as she cruised down the Coast Highway. This appointment, she was informed, was for a serious matter, and her views of it were serious. They could throw all the “appreciation” in the world at her. She still wasn’t going to break a sweat to conjure explanations out of Dana. She glanced at her GPS. Godforsaken place. Her phone buzzed. “Yeah.”

“You on your way to Spago?” said Rosie.

“Tsh. Yeah.”

“So what about this? Do we or don’t we?”

“We do, we do.”

“She’s creeping me out.”

“Which one, Dana or the doctor?”

“Both, but—Dana.”

Gale glanced in her side mirror to see a 1970 Hemi Cuda a car-length behind her. Jee-zus, yes it was. Rubber on road. “Fuckin’ cherry.”

“Gale?”

“I can maintain.”

“I’ll hang in if you hang in, but she’s creeping me out.”

They clicked off. The Hemi pulled up alongside Gale, and she adjusted her speed to check it out. Some things were so basic and easy to figure. She simply had to make things go her way, that was all there was to it. No one else was going to.

Dr. Claudia met them at the crap joint twenty minutes later and the three of them took a table in a dirty, deserted patio where they could smoke until the cops showed up.

Dr. Claudia leaned in, hoping against hope for a favorable answer. “So you haven’t gotten anything?”

“She’s not really talking. If we try to get her going on something serious she clams up.” “Or says she’s depressed and starts babbling.”

“So, there’s no difference.”

“We played for seven hours straight last night.”

“Manic,” Dr. Claudia muttered. She managed a haggard smile, but her eyes seemed about to burst.

“She’s ready for more. She wants to show a screener in your media room tomorrow night, with a little party.”

“A little party.”

“The household, us, Phil and Polly, maybe a few other people.”

“Wait, that’s…that could be great. What are you saying?”

“She was hyped up about it last night.”

“Then keep her on it. Don’t let her do her bipolar thing and blow it off. It’ll make a huge difference to her father.”

“Sure.” “We’ll try.”

“Well, heck, she might even be feeling better. Can you get enthused?”

“I’m enthused,” said Rosie.

“All right.”

“I’ll be supplying the screener.”

“Wonderful. She does go in for those things, doesn’t she? Acting, pretending.”

“Yeah. Of course she also goes in for Dominic Cooper.”

“Could you get him?” Dr. Claudia smirked.

Rosie licked Djarum flavoring off her lip. “Yup.”

Dr. Claudia tightened her mouth. “She also likes Phil Polonius.”

“Not exactly news.”

“I wish she’d get back with him.”

“So does he, probably.”

“So does Dana’s father,” said Dr. Claudia. “I wonder why it isn’t happening. Did you happen to ask her?”

“She shut up about Phil.”

Dr. Claudia looked pained. She leaned in again, taking another snatch at hope. “You know, just in case, I think she needs to take that trip to Costa Rica. Are your passports up to date?”

It was just after eleven when I cruised by Wilshire Mac. The streets and sidewalks were teeming. People dressed up, enjoying themselves, out to see and be seen. Ah yes, I would be performing for the public on a day like today. Drawing stares for doing ordinary things as if they were circus acts. Wheelchair Guy Gets Out of Car—something I can do as easy as swinging a keychain. I maneuvered along the skinny sidewalk and looked for Dana’s car. Nada. Should I wait outside for her? Wheelchair Guy Waits for Friend. That’s right, fuckface, and she’s a total babe.

I wheeled into the store. Canyons of Mac guts and accessories, no friend in sight. I wheeled to a tiny elevator and rode up. Gloomy, grimy air, the stairs probably worse. I had become a fastidious prick since my accident—none of that Pathetic Wheelchair Guy with soup all over his shirt for me. Polished rims, not a spoke out of place. I wheeled out a few feet, then stopped in my tracks. On the other side of the room was a girl with pale blonde hair, gold-freckled arms and long legs, a white dress with purple flowers. She hunkered at a computer terminal, sucking her lip into her mouth as she typed. A freaking Vermeer, beautiful and absorbed in her task and so blessedly, gloriously normal-looking. My strange, doubtful Dana was fine. Her neck turned. Her eyes fastened on me, stars shining from a milky sky, and she ran to me in a burst of joy. “Oh my
God!”
I set my brakes and stuck my hands out to catch her. “It’s been forever!” Her arms were all the way around me, her head burrowed into the hollow of my shoulder. “Oh my God, oh my God!” She pulled away. “Guess what?”