“Mind if you do it yourself?” I ask, and hand him the fan. “I need to take care of something.”
I grab my phone off the table to call my father. It rings, but’s there’s no answer.
“Like I need this drama right now,” I say, poking at my phone.
“Everything OK?”
“No.” I tell Nixon. “Sorry, but I’ve got to go.”
8
Honestly, is a rundown park in South Encanto where I want to be at ten at night, with its rapes and murders and drug deals that end in flying lead and innocent blood? But here I am, French floral lace gown and all—which isn’t exactly camouflage—standing in front of a rotting jungle gym, the tension of gangland on the park’s perimeter ready to go off like a loaded gun. I might as well put the word stupid around my neck in glowing neon, but the pinging blue dot on my phone says my Dad is somewhere nearby, and if I don’t find him soon and get him to a safe place, who knows what could happen?
My surf booties are a big comfort after those biting heels. I feel the squish of neoprene as I scurry into the park—and not a nice part with gardens and lily ponds, which it doesn’t have, anyway—and crunch through dried grass, cracked pathways, and dilapidated toilet structures that make you want to grab poverty by its neck and give it a good wringing. I cross a baseball diamond with a chain-link backstop that looks as if the grill of a truck rammed into it and left a permanent impression and then stop on the pitcher’s mound to check the tracking dot. I have no sense of why Daddy is wandering out here, of all places, miles from his home (and it would not be the first time), other than that he’s totally gone off again. It’s not that he can’t handle himself—he’s a five-time midshipmen middleweight boxing champion—but when he’s facing a gun, little good his fists are going to do.
I sweep the area, my booties and gown now dusty, determining which way to go. Just then, on the street a hundred yards away, a bad-ass pickup, with blacked-out windows, all big and butch and chrome, its knobby tires tacking against the pavement, growls by and slows, and though I can’t see the passengers, I have a terrified sense that eyes are upon me. I crouch down on all fours, heart thumping, about to lie flat, but just before I hit the dirt, a police drone hums overhead, coaxing the truck to inch forward. Seconds later, it bores away.
The tracking dot says I’ll have to go into the thicket up ahead, an area dense with eucalyptus trees and tall brush, and if I take the first step toward it, I’ve officially crossed the border between dumb and absolutely insane. I head down a narrow path between two thorny bushes, my dress catching on needles. It’s really not good at this point, this getup I’m wearing, so I stuff my phone in my cleavage and fold the petticoat in with both arms to make me skinny enough to joggle through the scrub until I reach a clearing. I pull the phone from my boobs. The signal is strong now, fanning across my screen in rippling blue waves. Up ahead, a dirt footpath crosses a ravine and a large concrete drain cutting beneath it. I skitter down the embankment, almost slipping on a wet patch, all alone with the sound of trickling water and the nervous pounding of my heart. I grab the drain’s upper lip, steady myself, and peer inside, nearly gagging as I’m met with the stink of sewer algae and human shit. The red LED blinking at the end of the tunnel tells me that I’m on the mark, but when a pair of opal cat eyes pokes through the dark, it’s clear I’ve been had.
I click my tongue and beckon the kitty. “Come here,” I say, my words all sugared up. “I’m not going to hurt you.” I’m fearful the cat is going to bolt, so I crouch at the drain’s opening with my fingers clipping my nose, begging and breathing in that dreadful smell for a full ten minutes before the darn thing saunters toward me and sweeps my gown. I snatch Daddy’s bio-band off its neck and shoo it away (sorry, I’m a dog person), then sprint back to the car, my petticoat hiked high, supremely irritated, my head stuffed with a load of nasty words that I’m going to unload on the captain when I meet him face-to-face.
I turn the Charger over. The V-8 roars, waking up the concrete before I hit the gas. Fifty feet of hot-scarred rubber ribbons the street, and it’s off to the captain’s for a little intervention.
When I roll up to his house, the lights are on, and really, it’s the first place I should have checked, even after seven texts and five unanswered phone calls. He’s so erratic lately. He could have been in that sketchy park or wandering on the moon for that matter.
I walk right through the front door—which he never locks, even in this day and age of super crime, police attack drones, and random mass killings. It’s almost as if he’s inviting danger with the sick hope that some intruder will take him down once and for all, relieve his pain, and finally set him free.
I’m hell-bent for the den and stomp through the hallway with my petticoat scraping the walls to find Daddy barefoot in a Navy tee and those stupid basketball shorts, slunk in his lounger with a tumbler to his lips, and a bottle of Billy Little’s Reserve at his side. What I’m not prepared for are the holes punched in the den’s wall, which I presume were made by the chalk-dusted sledgehammer leaning against the sofa. Broken drywall is all over the wooden floor. There have to be more than a dozen holes, two of which were punched through to the outside, causing dust and cool bay air to breathe into the room. Jax is engrossed in some TV documentary about Nigerian oil-well fires and the plight of the desert pit viper, and I get the sense that I could jump right in his lap, and he still wouldn’t notice me.
“Jax!” I say, but he doesn’t respond. “Captain J. Xavier Long, U.S. Navy, retired!” I say, holding up his bio-band to emphasize my point. “Is this how it’s going to be? Because if it is, tell me right now!”
“Why, may I ask,” his words slow and tinted with disdain, “are you dressed like a tart?”
“A wedding. I told you that. Do you even hear me anymore?”
“Loud and clear,” he says, iced bourbon to his lips. “And where are my guns?”
“Floating in a far-off universe.”
“Well, then, do me a favor. Call NASA and send a search-and-recovery team up there to get ’em. No guns, no sunshine. Follow?”
I don’t even entertain the so-totally-wrong subject of having guns around someone who’s clinically depressed, so I ignore him and get to the point.
“This thing says you didn’t take your meds,” I say, tossing the band in his lap.
“I’m taking them now,” he says, reaching down and raising the bottle of bourbon. “It’s your uncle’s blend.”
“You know you can’t drink and take antidepressants. And what the eff is going on in here?”
“Remodeling,” he says, staring at the punctured wall. “Rejiggering my view on life.”
“Perfect. How the living heck do you expect me to keep it together when I have to leave for Sydney Monday night?”
“Ah, Christ,” he says, waving me off, his face hazy with booze. “You’re one of the best surfers in the world. Tough as rhino hide.”
“I can’t do it,” I say. “I can’t look after you, train, and keep my head on straight for the Olympics—which, in case you don’t remember, are in six weeks—and handle all the other junk I’m dealing with right now. I just can’t.”
“Then don’t,” he says. “You can’t control the situation, but you can control your reaction to it. Isn’t that what Ruttonjee says?”
This comment pushes me to the brink, across the thin line from love to hate.
“Oh yeah!” I bite back, “Then why the hell don’t you start taking his advice!”
The whole looming lot of it: Daddy’s attitude, his wandering episodes, that bogus doping rumor, which will surely unravel in the coming weeks, has me in an absolute fit.
Enough