Aftermath of Dreaming(122)

Driving home from the museum, I make it halfway before I am unable to resist any longer. I dial his cell phone and listen to Andrew’s silent voice mail message pick up. Fuck. Okay, I shouldn’t have called him anyway. I just need to be patient. Or seriously consider a plan B. A mile later, I press the redial button and his voice comes on the line.

“Where are you?” Like he already knew I was driving around, able to meet him.

“On Beverly near Fairfax, why?”

“Come to Crescent Drive at little Santa Monica, I’ll meet you at the gas station there.”

I turn my truck around. We drive toward each other, describing the rush-hour obstructions we weave through, the web of our words pulling us together at its center point.

I pull in to the gas station, look at the cars at the pumps, but don’t see him. Traffic on little Santa Monica is oblivious and insane.

“I’m here, where are you?” I stop my truck a good distance from the pumps. I have no idea what I’ll say if a serviceman walks over.

“One street over on Canon—meet me here.”

I don’t understand what we are meant to do once we meet so publicly.

As I turn onto Canon, Andrew says, “I see you.”

“Where?” I swivel around in my truck, searching for him.

“Behind you, the dark Mercedes-Benz.”

I spot an “affordable” version of that car just behind me. “That one?”

“No, the f*cking big one, you think I’d drive that piece of shit? Two cars back.”

“Oh.” I look farther back, but still can’t find him. I feel pursued, a cops-and-robbers game, but we’re on the same team.

“Head north, cross Santa Monica, turn right, and pull in by the park there,” he says.

I feel the thrill of a cop forcing my actions, directing my drive. It makes me tremble behind my knees and farther up. And this cop is Andrew.

Life in L.A. is a constant car chase, so having one with Andrew doesn’t seem strange. Although really it is more of a car following. When I pull into a space by the park, he comes into view. Behind me. Approaching. Close. I wonder how he was able to stay invisible for so long. He is in my rearview mirror, then next to me in a parking space, his Mercedes engulfing my vision like his force does my life. When he gets out of his car, a giant no longer contained, the air splices into Technicolor, the traffic a soundtrack to his smile. Then he is up in my truck next to me, so close and real and big and I haven’t seen him in what feels like years and like seconds. I kiss his lips and neck and face, his well-cared-for skin, so unlike anyone’s I have known, as if the years settled like stardust into his cells, plumping them to become a soft radiant shield.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” he says, glancing around through the windows. “Take Rexford north.” I half expect him to duck down.

We are robbers now from the cops, driving through Beverly Hills on a mission whose goal I’m unsure of. Andrew directs me through a series of complicated turns in the hills above Sunset, then stops us at the end of a cul-de-sac in front of a house hidden by a stone wall and a dense line of trees. No one is around.

“Do you know the people who live here?”

“No.” He looks startled, as if he might without knowing it. I realize this was a choice of anonymity he made, not the protection of a close-lipped friend. “Here. I know it took weeks to get it, but I hope it’ll help.” The envelope Andrew hands me is sealed. “It’s all I could get for now. Let me know if you—”

“Thanks, Andrew. I really will pay you—”

“Stop, I don’t want your money.”

A gray cat crossing the street stops upon seeing us, paw suspended midair, then walks on.

“When you asked me, I felt very paternal toward you. I wanted to help you. I always have.” He looks embarrassed and proud, like a major highway with a gentle yield that enables you to come on.



Once I can no longer see Andrew’s car receding, I stop at the red light at Santa Monica and Crescent, open the envelope and count three thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. The light turns green, and I drive with it on my lap, a piece of his protection left for me.

The city is deep into Friday night. Cars are no longer solo-filled for work, but hold pairs and groups. Andrew is driving home to his wife and daughter and son. The daughter whom he won’t know when she’s my age, I suddenly realize. Unless he reaches eighty-four lucidly, the age he’d be when she’s thirty. I wonder if he has thought about that, has let himself imagine how much of her life he’ll see and which of her years he’ll miss, as I at times in the past sixteen years have tried to imagine my life with my father in it.

And what happened to the dreams my father must have had for me when I was young? Where did he put them when he left and lived in Florida? Underneath, probably, deep down inside where he couldn’t find them. But maybe they flew up into the air when he died and merged with the sunlight so they could find me here in California where they have settled into my cells and will redirect their growth correctly.





36




Our phone calls have been platonic since Andrew gave me the money a couple of weeks ago, so I can talk to him without worry that it’s hurting anyone, we’re friends, there’s nothing wrong with that.