Moonlight Water (2 page)

So get at it.

His band, the Elegant Demons, had to have a new song for its upcoming tour. If personal life was hellish for Robbie right then, so what?

The guitar break was coming. He could feel it now, a gentle interlude before a pagan-blast chorus. At the end of the second line, where the verse made mention of the lost lover, he tried a B minor in place of the D major. “Nice,” he said. He crossed out “D” on the lead sheet and wrote “Bm.” Tried it again— “Grabs the ear.” This didn't feel like a great song, but when the band had it going on, when the moment and the music fused with the energy of a huge crowd, any of his songs could turn magical. They were a jam band, not known for their studio recordings but for their break-down-the-wall improvisations.

He took a deep breath and let the tune run through his bones. He coaxed the first phrase along, it was just about there.

The phone outclanged the music. “Shit!” he snapped. But he flipped the damn thing open. Only his wife, the band members, and his manager's office had this number.

“Speak,” said Robbie, the greeting he always used.

“It's Nora.”

“Yes.”

“Georgia and I are on the way. We'll be there in ten minutes.”

*   *   *

He put his guitar in its case, thumped back onto the stool at the counter, and pulled on the beer. This was wrong, all wrong, more of the hell he was denying.

Two days ago his wife, Georgia, had lost the baby—three times they'd tried now, three miscarriages. He'd first gotten the call about the baby catastrophe from Nora: “Get down to the hospital. Georgia's lost the baby, and she wants you.”

He spent the short drive furious at Nora. His wife was in deep trouble. Why hadn't anyone, why hadn't Nora, called him until it was over?

He brushed by Nora toward the hospital bed, ready to yell back at that damned woman, but—

One look at his wife's face stopped all words. He felt like he was inside a walk-in freezer. Her pallid cheeks, her hands lifeless on the sterile white sheets, the chrome IV stand, the tubes, the needle—the thought of the dead child—this region of grief struck Robbie dumb. He had no words for anything as brutal as the life the gods threw at human beings.

Dr. Packard talked to him. He explained. When the doctor discovered that the baby in Georgia's belly, their baby, had no heartbeat, he gave her a shot that forced her to issue forth a dead thing. You couldn't call it a birth. Robbie had no energy for questioning anything. The sorrow, the bitterness, the weariness gonged in his head. Three tries, three miscarriages.

Dr. Packard threw Robbie and Nora out. “There's more bleeding than I'd like. I've sedated her heavily. Go home and let her sleep.”

Robbie gave his wife's hand a squeeze. Though the grief belonged to both of them, they were ice cubes in separate trays. Even her closed eyelids seemed to shut him out.

“Robbie,” Nora whispered, as if to tell him everything would be all right. He shook his head and barged out of the room. He couldn't bring himself to talk. Nora had been their business manager for a decade, and the band's accountant. Robbie liked her fine but had never felt as if he knew her, not really. Georgia's best buddy or not, he couldn't get close enough to hear her rhythm. And recently things with Nora were off, way off.

The next day at Georgia's bedside was a jumble of half-toned memories. Their decade together, Georgia all scarves and bangles and bracelets and gaiety. Georgia the explorer, meditator, practitioner of feng shui, devotee of Pilates and yoga, connoisseur of fine wines. Georgia, who loved to dance, Georgia the whirligig of fun. For years they had everything but the children they wanted. In the last year or so, less fun, but he didn't know why. Hadn't asked, either.

The second half of the day was a shuffle of comings and goings of people who called themselves helpers when their world was beyond help, actions that were useless, occasional words from Georgia. He sat numbly in his bedside chair, unable to talk to anyone, unable to talk to Nora. He felt like he was wandering through endless corridors looking, looking for something he would never find. And the corridors meandered on.

Dr. Packard put an end to it. “Clear out, both of you. Tomorrow after I've checked on her, maybe ten o'clock, I'll call and you'll probably be able to take her home.”

Now the heavy front door of their house opened and broke his reverie. He swigged on the beer.
I'm drinking too much, but fuck it.

 

3

DESTRUCTION

From the front archway, one set of high heels clicked their way, and one pair of slippers shushed, across acres of Mexican tile. Robbie set the bottle on the counter and waited. Two days ago the death of their child. Yesterday silence. What now?

They stopped ten steps away, Nora a step in front of Georgia. “We're in love,” Nora said. “Georgia and me. We want to get married.” She looked hard into Robbie's eyes, Georgia looked at Nora.

Those words stopped his breath and his heart. Robbie couldn't open his mind or his throat.

She went on. “You two … It's been over for a long time.” She waited, as though he might say something. “Things like this happen, you understand.”

He was going to suffocate.

Nora went on and on in a businesslike tone, drivel about financial and legal work to be done—truckloads of it—how her office and their lawyers could work it out.

Robbie couldn't listen. He was fighting for breath. He wanted to charge into battle with Nora, or Georgia, or himself, but he couldn't even move.

He looked into Georgia's eyes and saw grief. She looked down. He forced his body to pull over a chair for Georgia, then took her hand and helped her sit. Nora stood still, watching, but only for a moment.

“Naturally, Georgia wants the house,” droned Nora.

“House is mine,” Rob mumbled.

In California a spouse could keep the wealth he came into the marriage with.

“The lawyers will work it out. There's no reason things can't be settled quickly and amicably.”

Breath finally came in a heaving gasp, as after a blow to the diaphragm.

Robbie willed himself to be quiet inside, and looked around his house, what was in sight and what wasn't. Odd things, the over-sized shower with twin showerheads, the bamboo garden and koi pond. His state-of-the-art recording studio. Georgia's collection of contemporary art, odd, sterile stuff. Except for his studio, Georgia had made the house her own. With his money.

“We think a week is a reasonable amount of time for you to get out of the house. Meanwhile, Georgia will stay with me.”

Robbie realized they were waiting for him to say something.

He looked from the face of his wife to the face of her lover. But his throat wouldn't make words. His mind slashed with violent answers, which fit Rob Roy of the Elegant Demons but were wet noodles in the hands of Robbie Macgregor, husband.

No goddamn words were right. He squatted in front of his wife. She closed the blinds on all feeling and shut him out.

He looked up and tried to peer inside the heart of the woman who was stealing his wife. Nora stood behind brick walls.

“One minute,” he finally muttered.

He held his wife's chin. He felt her head sink onto his hand, but she kept her eyes down. Georgia was no Julee, his first wife of long ago. Julee walked through the world chirping, chatting, and popping her gum. Georgia was a good woman, intelligent, spiritually aware, and maybe the best-looking almost-forty woman in Marin County. So she'd explored herself and found she preferred women.
My fury is stupid.

Robbie prodded himself to full height and shot a look down at Nora. Homely, tough, middle-aged, armored in classy suits and iron-gray hair. Outspoken, honest, hard-nosed. At this moment he hated her. At any time he would refuse to negotiate with her. That's what he had a lawyer for, his best friend, Gianni Montella.

Robbie hurled the words he spoke like boulders. “I'll be gone day after tomorrow.” He let them feel the weight of the boulders. “Anything to say, say it to Gianni.”

Georgia blinked tears downward.

Robbie clenched his stomach to keep from throwing up. He turned and slammed his back to them.

As their shoes clicked and padded away, they sounded out Robbie's silent words all the way to the front door.
I despise you. I despise this house. I despise this too-too Marin County. I despise the music business.
And, even more mutely,
I despise myself as a fool.

At the heavy, carved door Georgia turned. “Robbie?” She waited until he looked around. “It's not just about Nora. It's about you. I can't find you. I lost us.”

He ignored the words. Though she shut the door gently, he heard a slam, one that sounded like it was inside him.

 

4

HOW DO WE GET THERE FROM HERE?

Robbie sat at his own bar, drank two Anchor Steams, and put the third back. He knew what to do—go ask the one person who always had wise words for him. Robbie needed his grandfather, and he needed him big-time. Top of his car down, time for a visit.

In his Alfa he zipped through the tunnel just north of the city and cruised into the world's finest vista—the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay. The city's spires caught light and held it. To the west stretched the vast Pacific. It was a perfect day with the kind of clarity that comes rarely, an extraordinary gift. He could have seen, maybe, a hundred miles out to sea, but he didn't glance that way. He listened to his own heartbeat. That was surprising. The double thump drummed
freedom, freedom, freedom
.

Grandpa, here I come.

Robbie's only relative now lived in the Columbarium, a sanctum of the deified dead in the middle of Pacific Heights. Like a grand old dowager, the Columbarium faced the world in the style of her youth, Beaux Arts, a high-flown elegance.

Her function was simple: She housed the ashes of San Francisco's finest and quirkiest. Here they rested forever, in a fairyland that fulfilled their mannered or freakish dreams.

Grandfather Angus Stuart first brought Robbie here, just after he came home from his stint in the army. Though the Columbarium had a caretaker and guide, Grandfather Angus conducted his own tour. “This is the end you come to,” he said, “when you waste your life on society.” Grandfather Angus was a lifelong socialist and had started as an IWW man, one of Harry Bridges's stevedores during the days when unions ruled the docks.

“Look here now. Here's a man gone to his rest, and on his urn are two martini shakers. Sums up his life, don't it, and a wasted life it was. Here's another'n, gone to his grave with a big cigar and a highball glass for a memorial.” Grandpa snorted in disgust.

“Now this lady, per'aps she wasn't such a wastrel.” Her niche featured a big ceramic baseball in front of a painted backdrop and tiny players surrounding it. “Loved the game, she did, and the Giants. A magnetic key turns on that little light, and the robotic players make motions of throwing, catching, and hitting. Those grown-ups and kids in the bleachers there, they cheer for the team. Nothing beats passion. It's the only reason for being.

“Look here, now, at this niche.” It bore two tobacco canisters behind a glass wall, Balkan Sobranie brand, but no legend bearing the name of the deceased. Robbie was antsy—the place would give anyone the creeps. “Pay attention! I want you to put me to rest here.”

“Grandpa?”

“Yes, right here. When I was a young man, I had two friends, names of Brian Connery and Hamish McDougal. Real mates we was, did everything together. One night we pooled our cash and made the bet of our lives. The headlines had been beating the drums for the big fight between the new heavyweight champion of the world, Joe Louis, and Max Schmeling. Everyone knew a war was coming, and this was America versus Germany, freedom versus fascism, our way versus theirs. Note, Robbie, that it was the first time a black man carried the flag of American ideals.

“It was the purest patriotism to place a bet, and we won a bundle. We celebrated with Laphroaig, and decided to go afloat on that prince of Scotch whisky for a month. Then Brian, he was the thinker, had a different idea. “Two bottles, then let's go buy a spot in the Columbarium.”

“Says I, ‘There's only rich stiffs in that place.'

“‘Exactly,' says Brian. ‘That place needs a workingman to pollute the cologne of the swells.'

“Hamish and me, stinking drunk, we laughed and come down here with Brian and bought this niche. We drew straws for which of us should rest forever among the bleeding rich. I lost.” He fixed Robbie with his eyes. “So you will put me right here,” said Grandfather Angus. “Swear it.”

When Grandfather Angus went to his reward in great age, Robbie dutifully deposited the ashes inside the two tobacco canisters.

Now he stood spread legged before the man who felt like his real father. There were no benches or other seats in the Columbarium, which was a nuisance. Robbie shifted his weight from foot to foot and read the words engraved on the plate below the canisters:

ANGUS STUART, 1910–1995

WARRIOR FOR HIS PEOPLE

DEFENDER OF THE POOR

REST IN PEACE

Robbie had been an agnostic for twenty years, or what he sometimes called a Seventh-Day Absentist. Nevertheless, he said a prayer. Then he held a Sobranie out toward the canister, a toast to the old man. If Grandfather Angus was hovering nearby, nothing he'd like better than a puff of strong Turkish tobacco. But a hint was all Angus would get—no smoking allowed inside the Palace of the Dead.

“Light it,” said a sepulchral voice. Robbie turned toward a head of frizzy hair at the level of his chest. A bony face gazed up at Robbie, skeletal except for the eyes, which were mad, lit with the avidity of the devotee. “It's all right. I have the honor of being the caretaker here. Light it.”