Marcia Muller: Burn Out

“Maybe it’s got more to do with the fact we’re both quiet.”

“Well, that is a virtue.” He took out a cigarette, lit it, and doused the match thoroughly. With Ramon, I never worried about accidental fires; he was too mindful a man.

“Sara, God love her, she chatters,” he added. Sara was his wife of thirty-some years. “Of course, when I married a Mexican, I knew she would. And chattering’s not such a bad thing; how else would I know what’s going on in the world? Now, that man of yours doesn’t talk much.”

“He’s getting better at conversation.”

“Since he met you. When I first came to work here for him, about a year after his first wife died, he barely spoke at all. A more depressed man I’d never met.”

We sat in silence for a while, Ramon smoking his cigarette, then grinding it out on the floor and putting the butt in his shirt pocket.

“You’re damn depressed yourself,” he said.

I shrugged.

“You want to talk about it?”

“… I don’t think so. Not now, anyway.”

“You change your mind, I’m here.”

The next day I brought Ramon a book on Shoshone tribal customs that my birth father, Elwood Farmer, had given me. Lear Jet glowered at me from his stall. Did he think I should’ve brought him something? No way, not after he’d thrown me.

Throughout the week I had contact with the outside world, of course. Daily calls came from my operative Patrick Neilan, to whom I’d turned over administrative matters at the agency, as well as my office manager, Ted Smalley. Just general reports: everything’s okay here, we wrapped up the so-and-so case, three new jobs came in today. It was all I cared to know about a business I’d nurtured lovingly for years. And that unnerved me.

Mick had relented and located the person who’d been using my credit card: a deliveryman employed by a Chinese restaurant in our neighborhood who frequently delivered takeout to us. Citibank and the police were dealing with him.

There was also a daily call from Hy, who was restructuring the corporate security firm-formerly RKI, now Ripinsky International-of which he’d become sole owner after the death of one partner and the decampment of another. He’d moved their world headquarters to San Francisco, turned over marginal accounts to other firms, and closed unnecessary branch offices, and was busy creating a corporate culture that-unlike the old RKI’s-was free of corruption. His calls further depressed me, although I did my best to hide it. I’d never heard Hy so vibrant and optimistic, but could only briefly get caught up in his enthusiasm. His feelings about his work were so opposite to how I felt about mine that once the calls were over, I wanted to crawl into bed and bury my head under the pillows.

Which I did most nights, falling into a restless sleep that was repeatedly visited by the dream of the pit, as well as an odd new one: an Indian girl standing in the cold shadows outside a large white building. She looked at me in the glare of passing headlights, eyes afraid, and then the earth at her feet cracked open and swallowed her up.

I awoke with the dreams heavy upon me, like a hangover. My hands shook as I fixed coffee and my head throbbed dully, even though I’d had nothing alcoholic to drink the night before.

I took my coffee to the living room and curled up under a woven throw in one of the deeply cushioned chairs by the stone fireplace. Unlike the kitchen, this room was pure Hy: Indian rugs on the pegged-pine floor, antique rifles over the fireplace, and in the bookcases flanking it to either side, his collection of Western novels from the thirties and forties and nonfiction accounts of the Old West. Over the time I’d been staying here, I’d read some of the novels, paged through a few of the nonfiction volumes. But this morning my mind was not on history-at least not anything going back more than five months.

This stay in the high desert wasn’t working out as I’d thought it would. I’d managed to fill up empty hours with useless activity, while avoiding the larger issues: Did I really want to go on sitting behind a desk hour after hour, reviewing client reports, okaying invoices and expense logs, interviewing new clients, assigning jobs, and mediating employee disputes? Did I really want to continue taking on the larger, more complex cases that required me to be on the move a lot and that-too often in the past year-had ended in danger and near death?

Over the course of my career I’d been stabbed, nearly drowned, beaten up, falsely imprisoned, held at gunpoint, and once, ignominiously, shot in the ass. I’d killed two people and nearly succumbed to violent urges against others. Last winter I’d come close to being killed in the explosion. Enough, already.

But taking on a strictly administrative role wasn’t an option for me; I’d go crazy confined to my desk. How could I continue activities that had lost their appeal, where I was just going through the motions?

The agency was profitable and well respected. I could sell it for big bucks to another firm looking to grow, negotiate a deal where my present employees would remain on staff. Take the money and… then what?

I wasn’t cut out for everyday leisure. I didn’t play golf or tennis or bridge, take classes, have hobbies, or enjoy most of the activities retired people do.

Retired people.

My God, I was in my early forties! Given the life expectancy of my birth family-relatives on both sides had lived into their nineties-that was a lot of time to fill up. And that’s all I’d be doing-just filling it up.

Okay, begin a second career. Lots of people did that. But what? My college degree was in sociology, and that hadn’t gotten me anywhere even when my diploma was freshly minted. Consult? That would only put me back in the thick of things. Write a book on investigative techniques, as I’d recently been asked to? No. I’d rather become a neurosurgeon, train as a master chef, or apply to NASA and fly to Mars. None of which was going to happen either.

Investigation was what I knew how to do-and do well-but I didn’t want to work at it any more. At least not now. Maybe not ever.

Hy had suggested I come in as a partner with him, but that wouldn’t work. We’d take our business home with us, and ultimately it would consume our marriage. Besides, an executive position in corporate security wasn’t to my liking; it didn’t provide much involvement with the clients, one aspect that I used to enjoy.

I went to get some more coffee. My headache had faded, and my hands were steady. Back in my chair by the fireplace, I told myself that at least I’d seriously considered the issues I was facing, even if it hadn’t solved anything.

Didn’t have to be done quickly anyway. The business was in good hands, and I had all the time in the world. A solution would come to me eventually. In the meantime, why not fill up the rest of today with pleasurable activity?

I would have liked to go flying, but Hy had needed our Cessna 270B, so he’d dropped me off at Tufa Tower Airport and flown back to the Bay Area. The airport had a couple of clunker planes I could rent for a nominal fee, but Hy had told me they were untrustworthy, and from a cursory inspection I’d concluded he was correct.

Maybe a picnic. Pack a good book, pick up a sandwich from the Food Mart deli, and go-where? Well, the old Willow Grove Lodge had nice grounds and a dock overlooking the lake. It was closed and isolated. The only people likely to show up there would be real-estate agents with prospective buyers, and I doubted that would happen. If it did, I’d concoct some story to explain my presence and leave.

The main lodge and six cabins that were scattered over several cottonwood- and willow-shaded acres looked shabby. True, the cabins had never been in great condition, but their nineteen-fifties-vintage furnishings, smoke-stained woodstoves, primitive kitchens, and underlying odor of dry rot reminded me of the resorts where my financially strapped family had stayed on summer vacations during my childhood. And even after the death of her husband, Rose Whittington had worked hard to keep the place up. Now the cabins’ green trim was blistered and faded, dark brown wood splintered and cracked, composition roofs sagging. Graffiti decorated their walls. Rose’s garden had long gone to the weeds. A developer’s dream: bulldoze it and put up condos or a luxury hotel. The hell with the love and care that the Whittingtons had put into this place over their fifty-year marriage, let alone the happy memories of all the people who’d stayed here.