Naomi Hirahara: Santa Cruz Noir

Then they led me out to the cottage they were renting for nearly four hundred dollars under the current market for houses in the Santa Cruz County area. The girl wasn’t with them.

U-Haul had the usual queue. I couldn’t wait to drive back to the cottage to set up my desk. I’d made sure to leave space in the living room to house the library I’d need for the six months.

The girl was sitting on my couch when I opened the door. “You took too long,” she said.

“You’ve broken-and-entered my cottage. Are your parents home?”

“You seem stressed out. You shouldn’t get stressed out. Although I suppose that’s what your kind does?”

“My kind? ”

“Why, yes. The lower middle-class is always stressed out,” she said.

I dropped my eyes. I couldn’t look at her. “I need time alone to set up my office,” I said.

“It’s too bad you probably can’t afford a new laptop. This space could do without the clutter of older technology. But, chacun à son gout , as my mother says.” She stood up and I escorted her out and locked the windows and dead-bolted the door this time.

“When people around here want to chill out, they go to Natural Bridges Park,” she said over her shoulder. “You should, too. Relax.”

I unboxed my books and set up my old iMac on the old secretary’s desk I brought with me. I had a laptop too. A MacBook Air. Sure, it was a few years old — that just proves they last. I was muttering to myself again. I took out my old iPod and speaker out of a box and put on something old too. There was nothing on that iPod newer than 2006. I mean, my phone has newer things, but this particular device didn’t.

Little girl wasn’t even there and I was still justifying. I picked up my phone and dialed Sharon’s cell phone. I left her a message. Could she meet me somewhere so we could have coffee and chat? There were a few things I wanted to go over.

The phone rang. Sharon said to meet her at the book café.

“Oh. I’m so sorry,” she said the moment she arrived. “Madison is hanging out over there? She did kind of like to use it as a life-sized dollhouse. I’m so sorry. We’ll speak to her.”

“Thank you,” I said, and took a sip of the hot chai I’d ordered. “I think it’s great that she takes an interest in people, but I’m here to do research and promote this new program and that’s going to really fill my time.”

“I so understand. I do apologize for her. Madison doesn’t have many friends.”

Yes. Yes, I might have known that. “Where does she go to school?”

“Oh, we homeschool now. It’s really better this way — especially since the accident.” Sharon barely registered my raised eyebrow; she was practiced. “Madison did have a really good friend. They used to love gardening together. Well, one day Ashley and Maddy were climbing trees to catch butterflies. And Ashley missed a branch and stepped on one that was too small for her. Maddy was always telling her she was too fat to climb the trees. It broke and she fell out of the tree. Dead. Maddy said she couldn’t catch her. It happened too fast.”

“I’m so sorry.” What else could I say? Jesus. It’s not what I thought going out to coffee would be about. “Madison does seem very adult for her age.”

“Yes, I know she does.”

I chickened out going further. There was no way of not sounding like an asshole. I drove back to the cottage to finish setting up my desk. Madison was on the doorstep. At least she wasn’t inside.

“Your mother tells me you are homeschooled,” I said.

“Yes. For now,” the girl replied. “I’ve had a few tutors — the last one lived here, in fact. The other is around here somewhere. Anyhow. Yes. It suits me much better.”

“So is that why you keep hanging around my cottage? Because you used to come here for lessons?” I tried to keep my face from giving me away.

“My parents are busy. I manage our property for them since I’m home more often. I pay the gardener and the maid. I order the groceries. We have to make sure you’re a good fit for this place.”

“I signed my agreement with your father and mother,” I said.

Maybe I was hoping she’d see reason. I kept forgetting she was ten. This time I just closed the door and dead-bolted it behind me. I thought I could hear her mouth-breathing outside the door. I turned on music to drown her out and finished setting up my new temporary home.

In the early evening, before it went dark, I decided I’d take a walk into the village.

I saw Bradley pulling up the drive as I walked down our little hill of driveway. He waved good-naturedly and rolled down the window. Did I need a lift? I politely declined. There was no sign of Madison or the mother.

I walked clear down to the beach. It was a sweet two-street downtown filled with old-time-y quaint buildings. Present history clearly started at a specific time in architecture, by design. As darkness fell, my hair tangled in the salt air, I felt an uneasy veneer of displacement. I’d read that Capitola was once an Indian village — the Soquel people — driven out, of course, by those who sought to “better the land.” They were on my mind as I walked back up the hillside. That, and the knowledge that no matter what I did with my life now, I would never be able to afford to buy a house anywhere in my native California; I would always feel driven out.

When I got back, there was a small tray on the porch with a lacquered black box on it and a note. A monarch butterfly painted on the top. I put water on for tea, placed the tray on the coffee table, and read the note: Don’t agree to be a tutor. It isn’t safe here.

I looked over the message with the fortune-cookie-sized advice several times. I didn’t know the handwriting. It didn’t look like Bradley’s or Sharon’s when I checked their signatures on the lease agreement for comparison. I opened the black box and it contained a small crucifix necklace with a butterfly where the body of Christ would be.

I drank my tea and showered before bed. I put on my new necklace.

I was sitting in my kimono on the couch, staring at the same page of a book for what seemed like hours, when there was a knock on the door. It was Bradley. Maybe he found out about the Madison stuff and was here to apologize too.

“Hi, Bradley. What brings you out here?”

“Madison told us over dinner,” he said, “how impressed she was with you and your book collection and what you’re working on for the university. We know you’re probably busy, but we also know that college budgets are tight. We were wondering if you’d be interested in tutoring Madison in exchange for lobbing off a few more hundred from the rent. Think about it and let us know?”

In truth, it would bring down my rent considerably. Bradley’s offer meant my rent would actually be reasonable for six hundred square feet. I thought about the note I received. It was probably from Madison herself. I had a feeling I’d be seeing her all the time anyhow. Might as well get paid for it.

I said yes.

“Excellent,” Bradley said. “You can start tomorrow. Just an hour a day would keep her on track with her studies.”

I saw Bradley out. There was a small tray with another box and note on the ground by the planter.

“Secret admirer, huh?” said Bradley, as he whistled off across the driveway toward his house.

I opened the second box. It held a tiny petrified cocoon that had been made into a perfect lapel pin. I opened the note, my heart racing.

Protect yourself. And don’t look too closely in the backyard.

I went inside and found a flashlight. I immediately went to the backyard. I saw nothing out of the ordinary, but there were large mounds of dirt in the rosebushes that looked as if something had been buried there. I went back inside and locked up the house. I locked up the rooms and slept on the couch. It was buttressed by a wall and seemed like the safest place. I hardly slept at all.