Later, at home, he took an overly long shower—an attempt to wash off the grit of an interview that implied what he had accomplished in his life was all wrong. His annoyance was difficult to shake off. The seeds of it stayed with him even as he traveled north along the 405, Harlan at the wheel of his Bentley.
In the distance, covered in a green veil of haze, were the rolling hills connecting San Pedro to Palos Verdes. Victor could remember those hills when they were just purple wildflowers, waist-high mustard, and a crumbling Spanish hacienda with its scattering of guest ranches, land deeded before California was ever a state. Now streets with expensive homes cut along those hillsides, looking as pronounced as veins on the arm of a growing economy.
It was change. It was good. So he told himself he didn’t mind articles written about men like him—a generation hungry for success and power, winners who carried with them accomplishment and the pride of building something out of nothing, instead of making a brouhaha out of nothing in order to sell magazines.
Lately he’d been the topic of too many articles, and the human interest ones made him clam up faster than today. Perhaps he was annoyed now because he’d had a touchy interview for Look six weeks ago. Newspapers and magazines sent women reporters for human interest stories, armed with his family history and seeking an angle that was lonely, silly, and romantic—something his life was anything but.
Victor had been married twice and in love only once. He’d worked most of his life, hardest when he had a wife and young son. Anna died with no warning, and he couldn’t remember crying for her, a woman forbidden to him whom he’d married after a long chase.
His son was a stranger, barely three when he buried Anna. Victor remembered thinking he had nothing in common with Rudy other than bone and blood and the same last name. His son cried every time Victor came home—took one look at him and ran away, disappearing for hours in some nook of the monstrous Pasadena house that belonged to his wife’s family.
The day Victor found his son cowering in Anna’s closet symbolized their dismal relationship: the father who had been locked in a closet and his son who sought refuge in one. It was a long time before Rudy could sit in the same room with him, longer still before he accepted that Victor was the man who fathered him.
Victor had spent his childhood fighting for acceptance. Not even for his son would he fight for acceptance again. Soon he recognized in his own son’s expression his father’s look of failure. He and Rudy were doomed from the start. The Banning curse had skipped a generation, and nothing Rudy ever did changed Victor’s opinion that he was a weak young man, destined for nothing. The only thing his son ever had the strength to do was walk away from Victor and stay away.
The second wife also walked away from Victor, and he never regretted that. She was a convenience—she’d done the chasing. The women and marriages, even the affairs were long gone, and he was left now with his only progeny, Cale and Jud.
The radio phone between the car’s seats rang, his attorney calling with news. “Jameson’s kid agreed to sell the painting.”
Victor didn’t move. “How much?”
“Half a million.”
“Cut the deal,” Victor told him in a voice more even than he actually felt. To finally win was almost a physical thing, live and sweeping through him like some kind of drug. “Any word on the other pieces?”
“That Seattle gallery claims they’ve lost track of the client.”
“Then we need to find the client.”
“No one will release the name, Victor. It’s been thirteen goddamn years and I can’t even buy that name out of those people.”
“Raise the offer another quarter of a million,” he added. “And the commission another ten percent. That ought to prod somebody to locate who bought those paintings.”
After making arrangements for delivery, he hung up and rested his head against the back of the seat while Harlan turned the car into the Loyola parking lot. In an instant so real he would never be able to explain it, Victor caught a whiff of Arpège and sat forward sharply. On the seat across from him were the images of his son and daughter-in-law, an echo of another time and clearer than any memory should be; they held hands. Rachel was pregnant and Rudy didn’t look like a failure.
“The game’s already started.” Harlan opened the back door.
The images across from Victor evaporated in the overhead glare of parking lot lights, but what they represented stayed with him and made him pensive and touchy. Once inside the gym, they took seats in the middle of the crowded bleachers. By 9 P.M., Loyola was losing, so Victor sent Harlan to get the car and stood hidden in the shadows of the bleachers.
He watched Cale trot down the basketball court, weaving in and out of the other players with long-legged agility and a sure-footedness that helped him score three points. With that single basket, the energy in the gymnasium changed. The crowd noise grew louder; they were on their feet. The university band began to play with the crowd clapping and singing, “Down on the corner … Out in the street.”
Rudy had played basketball, too, but was never good enough and spent his games mostly on the bench. Victor could have missed every game and it wouldn’t have mattered.
But this game changed in under five minutes. Dorsey cut quickly, stole the ball, dashed past his opponent, his grin as big as the sections on the basketball. Then he became all business and shot the ball in the opposite direction, right to Cale, who let the ball fly. It arced through the air, then hit the rim with a deep thud, bounced, and went straight up in the air.
Nothing moved in that gymnasium but the ball. It came down on the rim, swirled around and around. On the edge of defeat or victory, players jumped up, arms reaching for the ball. The ball fell into the net and the white numbers on the scoreboard flipped: 89–87 Loyola.
Pom-poms flew into the air and the university cheerleaders tumbled across the wooden floor. The crowd cheered and stomped their feet so loudly you could barely hear the time buzzer. Players and coaches swarmed all over one another, and a teammate ripped Cale’s jersey in two and ran around him, holding the torn piece with his number, twenty-three, high in the air. They shouted, “Banning! Banning! Banning!”
Victor didn’t know he was smiling. He felt something he couldn’t ever remember feeling for Rudy. Maybe a hundred feet stood between Cale and him. They hadn’t spoken since Christmas. He placed one foot in front of the other, closing the distance.
“Cale!” An attractive young blond girl raced down from the bleachers and across the court, her ponytail flying, her long tanned legs running straight toward the knot of Loyola players. She wore a Mount Saint Mary’s sweater and flip skirt, and flung her arms around Cale, who caught her and spun her around, laughing as she kissed his cheeks.
Victor stopped, unable to move forward. Another girl he can throw his future away on. Cale hadn’t learned a thing from last year, from any years. Victor turned away in disgust and walked out of the gym without looking back. He wasn’t there when Cale set his roommate’s girlfriend down and tugged affectionately on her ponytail. And when Cale slung a towel around his sweaty neck and looked around the gym for the one person in his life to whom winning was everything, Victor was already on his way home.
The Island Theater was housed inside the old casino and always busy on the weekends, so Laurel studied the coming attractions on posters lit with small strings of Hollywood lights. A group of girls her age joined the back of the line, chattering. Shannon worked part-time at her mother’s shop, so Laurel stepped out of line and moved toward them, then waited for a pause in their conversation. She tapped Shannon on the shoulder. “Hi.”