“That dude is a fucking angel.”
“He really is one,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s what I just said. A for-real angel.”
There was more than half a pint of Jim Beam in the glove compartment. We sat there with the heater on and the windows steamed up, eating Cheerios and croutons from the bag for feeding ducks and finishing the bottle of whiskey.
“I’ll admit it,” he said. “Nothing ever tasted so good.”
We were quiet all the way home in the rain. He drove. I kept wiping the steam off the windows. I asked him not to tell my kids or Jesse about all the charges or about the cop. It was a disturbing the peace problem, ok? Cool, he said. We didn’t speak after that. I didn’t feel guilty or ashamed, didn’t worry about the trouble I was in or what I was going to do. I thought about Jesse being gone.
I tried to call Cheryl before I went to Jesse’s, but she hung up on me, tried again but the machine was on. I was going to drive but worried about parking in their neighborhood. I was worried about walking in their neighborhood too. I guess it says something that I left my Porsche in the office garage, walked the seven or eight blocks to their apartment.
The downstairs door was graffitied plywood behind metal bars. They buzzed me in to a dusty marble foyer, lit from a star-shaped skylight four stories up. It was still a beautiful tile and marble building, with a sweep of stairs, faded mirrors in art deco frames. Someone slept against an urn; figures with their faces averted passed me on the stairs, all vaguely familiar from the courthouse or jail.
By the time I got to their apartment I was out of breath, sickened by smells of urine, cheap wine, stale oil, dust. Carlotta opened the door. “Come in,” she smiled. I stepped into their technicolor world that smelled of corn bread and red chili, limes and cilantro and her perfume. The room had high ceilings, tall windows. There were oriental rugs on the polished wood floors. Huge ferns, banana plants, birds of paradise. The only furniture in this room was a bed with red satin sheets. Outside in the late sun was the golden dome of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, a grove of tall old palm trees, the curve of the BART train. The view was like a vista in Tangiers. She let me absorb this for a minute, then she shook my hand.
“Thank you for helping us, Mr. Cohen. Eventually I’ll be able to pay you.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’m glad to do it,” I said, “especially now that I’ve read the report. It’s an obvious distortion.”
Carlotta was tall and tanned, in a soft white jersey dress. She looked around thirty, had what my mother used to call bearing. She was even more of a surprise than the apartment, than Jesse, well maybe not Jesse. I could see how the combination of them would be disturbing. I kept staring at her. She was a lovely woman. I don’t mean pretty, although she was. Gracious. If we did end up going to trial, she would look terrific in court.
This would turn out to be only my first visit. I came back every Friday after that, walking, no, rushing from my office to their place. It was as if I had taken some drink, like Alice, or was in a Woody Allen movie. Not where the actor climbs down from the screen. I climbed up into it.
That first evening she led me into the other room which had a fine Bokhara carpet, some saddlebags, a table set for three, with flowers and candles. “Angie” was playing on the stereo. These tall windows had bamboo blinds and the slight wind made shadows like banners on the walls.
Jesse called hello from the kitchen, came out to shake my hand. He was in jeans and a white T-shirt. They both glowed with color, had been at the estuary all day.
“How do you like our place? I painted it. Check out the kitchen. Baby-shit yellow, nice, no?”
“It is fantastic, this apartment!”
“And you like her. I knew you would.” He handed me a gin and tonic.
“How did you…?”
“I asked your secretary. I’m the cook tonight. You probably have questions to ask Maggie while I finish up.”
She led me to the “terrace,” a space outside the windows, above the fire escape, big enough for two milk crates. I did have dozens of questions. The report said she claimed to be a teacher. She told me about losing her job at a Lutheran high school, about being evicted. She was frank. She said the neighbors had been complaining for a long time, because there were so many of them living there, because of loud music. This had just been the last straw. She was glad her ex-husband took the three youngest to Mexico.
“I’m completely mixed up, messed up, right now,” she said. It was hard to believe her because of her beautiful calm voice.
She briefly told me what happened at the airport, taking more blame for it than Jesse had given her. “As far as the charges, I am guilty of them, except the marijuana, they planted that. But the way they describe it is sick. Like Joe did kiss us both, but from friendship. I don’t have any sex ring with young boys. What was sick and wrong was how the cop was beating Jesse, and how others stood there watching it. Any normal person would have done what I did. Although, thank God, the cop didn’t die.”
I asked her what she was going to do after the trial. She looked panicked, whispered what Jesse had told me in the office, that they had decided not to deal with it until the trial.
“But I can get it together. Get myself together then.” She said she spoke Spanish, thought about applying at hospitals for jobs, or as a court translator. She had worked for almost a year on a trial in New Mexico, had good references. I knew the case, and the judge and lawyer she had worked with. Famous case…an addict who shot a narc five times in the back and got off with manslaughter. We talked about that brilliant defense for a while, and I told her where to write about court translating.
Jesse came out with some guacamole and chips, a fresh drink for me, beers for them. She slid to the ground and he sat. She leaned back against his knees. He held her throat with one fine long-fingered hand, drank his beer with the other.
I will never forget it, the way he held her throat. The two of them were never flirtatious or coy, never made erotic or even demonstrative gestures, but their closeness was electric. He held her throat. It wasn’t a possessive gesture; they were fused.
“Of course, Maggie can get a dozen jobs. And she can find a house and her kids can all come home. Thing is they are better off without her. Sure they miss her and she misses them. She was a good mother. She raised them right, gave them character and values, a sense of who they are. They are confident and honest. They laugh a lot. Now they are with their Daddy who is very rich. He can send them to Andover and Harvard, where he went. Rest of the time they can sail and fish and scuba dive. If they come back to her, I’ll have to leave. And if I leave, she’ll drink. She won’t be able to stop and that will be a terrible thing.”
“What will you do if you leave?”
“Me? Die.”
The setting sun was in her brilliant blue eyes. Tears filled her eyes, caught in the lashes and didn’t fall, reflected the green palms so that it looked like she was wearing turquoise goggles.
“Don’t cry, Maggie,” he said. He tilted her head back and drank the tears.
“How could you tell she was crying?” I asked.
“He always knows,” she said. “At night, in the dark when I’m facing away from