Hal Ackerman - Stein,stoned

“You just solved a big case.”

“It’s shampoo. Who gives a shit?” He sighed out one last deep pocket of air that even Roland Dupuis’ blow to his guts hadn’t dislodged. “Nicholette Bradley, the girl who died. I could have prevented it.”

“Stein, how?”

He realized that Lila had no idea what had happened last night after he left her at the warehouse. She listened now to the events unfold like she was hearing Alice in Wonderland for the first time. “Is any part of that really true? You know I believe anything you tell me.”

He nodded with rueful weariness that it was all true. “I just don’t know what to do next.” She kneaded his neck and shoulders. “Thanks. That feels good.” His chin dropped toward his chest. “Nothing I do changes anything for the better. Nicholette. Angie. You, for that matter.”

She resisted the urge to follow up on ‘you for that matter,’ and asked what the matter was with Angie.

“She’s always so angry at me. For things I did. For things I didn’t do. For existing.”

Lila got up onto her knees for better leverage. Her fingers probed deep into his back and knotted shoulder muscles. Her chin was close to his ear. “Listen to me. Number one, your daughter is a bright, sensitive, emotionally mature young woman.”

“This is Angie we’re talking about?”

“All of my friends have teenagers that are either in rehab or should be in rehab. They drink, they shoplift, they do drugs, they’re having sex.”

“You’re telling me this to make me feel better?”

“I’m saying you have a good kid. At this age, derision is the purest expression of love. And you are its legitimate target. If she thinks she has no effect on you, then later when adolescence is over and she rejoins the human race, she’ll always doubt her power. She’ll choose the wrong men to test herself. She’ll be hurt and disillusioned and she’ll blame you for everything that went wrong in her life because you didn’t accept her when she was horrid to you.”

“So the lesson is to be grateful that she’s abusing me?”

“Exactly.”

“What would I do without you?”

The bath towel came not quite down to her knees. Her legs were tanned and waxed. The champagne was disabling her inhibitions. “It wouldn’t take a Boy Scout to untie this knot.”

“Lila, you know we shouldn’t.”

“What are we saving up for? We die in the end anyway.”

“I do love you, you know that.”

“Yes,” she said with bored indulgence. “You’re just not in love. As if you had a clue.”

“Do you think I’m afraid to fall in love?”

“Stein, you’re afraid to fall into giving a shit.”

“You know what would happen if we slept together?”

“Yes, I’d be thoroughly addicted and ruined for other men.” With sweet humor she turned him to face the full-length mirror. “Look at yourself! Do you think you’re some exotic rodeo boy who has to warn women they may get hurt? You’re a balding, paunchy, fifty-year-old, divorced single parent. You drive a Camry. You got a birthday card from AARP. You’re from the demographic group called normal. Get over it.”

“Maybe I’m just worried I’ll disappoint you.”

She turned off the light.

“Lila-”

“Don’t think, Stein. It takes you to bad places.” She let the towel drop.

There was a knock at the door.

Lila yelled through the door. “If it’s room service, come back later.”

There was another knock. This time more insistent. Stein disengaged from Lila and went to the door. The man who stood in the threshold was definitely not the room service waiter.

“Well, well,” said Stein.

“Who is it?” Lila asked.

“Where the hell have you been?” Stein berated the visitor. “I called your hotel half a dozen times. They don’t have any Doctor Schwimmer registered there.”

“I’ve heard from our mutual friend,” Schwimmer said.

“Goodpasture?”

Schwimmer looked pointedly at Lila, meaning they shouldn’t talk in front of her.

“There’s nothing she wouldn’t wring out of me in five minutes. You may as well say what you have to say.”

“He’s in Amsterdam. He needs you to fly there right now.”

“Now?” Stein drew his head back and shook it for ironic effect. “Amsterdam, Holland?”

“There isn’t time for burlesque reaction,” Schwimmer said in his annoying, humorless way. “Are you on the bus or off?”

The Klm Royal Dutch passenger jet rose up off the tarmac at LAX, banked over the Pacific, and established its flight plan that would take it across Canada, Newfoundland, the North Atlantic, then down over Western Europe into Amsterdam. The aircraft weighed seven hundred thousand poundsat take off, carried forty-eight thousand gallons of fuel and consumed four gallons per each mile during its eleven-hour flight. There were three hundred eighty-seven pillows and blankets, six tons of food and equipment, three hundred and ninety-one frozen meals. Thirteen liters of hard liquor had been loaded aboard plus two hundred forty-three liters of wine and beer, sixty-seven of tea and eighty-four liters of coffee. The captain was Jan Verheoff. The film was Jumanji. Stein did not watch it.

He thought that he had to be insane to be flying a quarter of the way around the world on a whim. At first he had flatly refused. Schwimmer had not begged or cajoled or offered the crown to Caesar a third or second time. He had shrugged his shoulders, as if to acknowledge Stein’s response was neither a surprise to him nor a matter of much importance but rather a diplomatic courtesy that had to be observed before putting the real plan into motion. Stein had to follow him down the hall through the lobby and into the parking lot to get a reaction. “You put a Stop Payment on my check? You disappear? You don’t tell me one goddamn thing that you know. Then you expect me to fly across the universe because you say he says he wants me there? This is bullshit!” In the end, with all of Stein’s ranting and railing, it was obvious to anyone half-listening that he already knew he was going.

Lila had risen to the occasion like a friend. Like a really good friend. Like- he hated to acknowledge it because it made him feel like he was taking advantage of her or squandering a good thing-like a steady, solid committed long-term life companion. She made the drive back to Los Angeles utterly guilt-free, devoid of complaint, knowing not to ask for any more information than she was given.

Once back at Stein’s she had packed a suitcase for him while he tried to find his passport. She had made a list of things she would take care of, which included collecting his mail, taking care of Watson and providing a contingency plan for Angie to stay at her house in case Stein was detained in Holland. She even headed off what appeared from his facial expression-tilted head, soft smile of wonderment-was going to be a sentimental declaration from Stein. “In moments like this,” she said, “love is better than being in love.” Stein agreed and loved her more for knowing that any declaration he made would have come out of a moment of weakness, and would be enforceable maybe legally but not in any way that really mattered. The practical side of her added, “Of course how many moments like this are there?”

Dr. Alton Schwimmer’s social affect had undergone no miraculous conversion now that he and Stein were officially allies. He remained dour and irascible. He had dispensed information in the tiniest doses, as if it were a precious commodity that needed to be husbanded over a long winter. Stein had still been unable to pry a gramsworth of new information from him-just that everything would be made clear when he arrived. He had given Stein two envelopes containing small quantities of Dutch currency and the telephone number of a taxi whose driver would be expecting Stein’s call and who would know where to take him.