Alan Russell - Burning Man

“I thought your doctor wanted you to stay through the weekend and then evaluate your condition on Monday.”

“That was before my miraculous recovery.”

“You haven’t told him you’re checking out, have you?”

“It might have slipped my mind.”

“I hope you’re not pushing it.”

The concern was in her words and her face. It had been a long time since someone had cared for me like that.

“I’m not. And FYI, the only reason I didn’t check out this morning was that I didn’t want you to freak out.”

“FYI, I like that.”

We smiled for one another, and then Lisbet picked up the bag in which she’d brought my presents. She seemed surprised that it wasn’t quite empty but then remembered what was inside.

“I almost forgot,” she said. “Sylvia Espinosa called and wanted to know if I’d like her to send me a copy of today’s University Times . I told her that since I was going to be driving by the campus, I’d stop and pick up a few copies.”

She handed me a paper. Instead of looking at it, I casually put the paper aside. “Thanks for thinking of me.”

Lisbet and I had fought over the article, and I wanted her to know she was more important than any case. Instead of holding the paper, I held her.

“I’ll let you play nurse tomorrow if you come to my place for an early dinner.”

“I’ll let you play doctor if you order Thai food.”

“That’s what you call a no-brainer. If you’re lucky, I might even share my pad Thai with you.”

“Panang curry with shrimp on the spicy side,” she said, “a seven or eight, and an appetizer of spring rolls. And don’t count on my sharing with you without some creative begging on your part.”

“I don’t mean to brag, but I do look sexy in a sandwich board soliciting handouts.”

“You found my kryptonite.”

The two of us walked to the elevator, and we made good use of our wait time for the car. Our kiss was long and leisurely and when we finished, Lisbet said, “You seem to be coming along in your physical therapy.”

“I’ve been practicing on all the nurses.”

She feigned umbrage and we kissed and made up. When Lisbet had first visited me in the hospital and seen my burned face and damaged lips, I told her that my physical therapist was insisting that I do a lot of kissing to assist my lip recovery. That had made her laugh and gotten me a kiss. Even though my lips were still raw and cracked from the fire, they were on the mend, and I was convinced Lisbet’s lips were working miracles.

As the elevator door opened, I started to loudly hum “The Shoop Shoop Song,” which got the desired effect of Lisbet’s laugh. I loved it that she got all of my references without explanations. I didn’t need to sing the words; she already knew the lyrics, and she already knew the meaning behind my kisses. As the door closed, she blew me a kiss. I felt good but maybe just the tiniest bit guilty. There had been no lie in my kiss, but there might have been a little dissembling. The truth is, I couldn’t wait to read the newspaper article that Lisbet had brought. Cops can fall in love, but they’re still cops.

I hurried back to my room and then tore into the article. When I finished reading, I decided that I wasn’t going to wait until morning to check myself out of the hospital.

Both my doctor and Sirius’s vet wouldn’t have approved of our doing stakeout duty, but the two of us were doing just that.

When we’d arrived at the cemetery, I’d scouted the best viewing area for the Garden of Angels. I’d brought binoculars, which allowed us to park outside the grounds and still be able to have a good vantage spot. Before settling in I’d checked Rose’s grave marker. My business card, with work, cell, and home numbers on it, was still taped to her cross.

Sirius doesn’t mind stakeout duty as much as I do because he invariably sleeps through it. Any cop will tell you there’s nothing as tedious as working a stakeout. Einstein once explained his Theory of Relativity by saying, “When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.” Einstein’s explanation of relativity makes sense to me. When you’re doing a stakeout, time slows. It’s watching and waiting, but mostly it’s just waiting.

Maybe Rose’s mother hadn’t had classes that day. Or it was possible she never looked at the student newspaper. There was no guarantee she was even a student at Cal State, Los Angeles, and even if she was, the idea of her showing up was probably just wishful thinking on my part. She had left Rose in a cardboard box at night to fend for herself. That didn’t make her mother-of-the-year material. Why would anything in the way of maternal responsibility kick in now? Her baby had been dead for almost two weeks, and any grieving she might have done was likely to have played out by now. And anyway, self-preservation would probably keep her away. The farther she kept from Rose, the less chance she’d have of ever being discovered.

There were those reasons and dozens more for Rose’s mother to not show up. There was only one thing that made me think she might appear at her baby’s grave: Rose’s pink bootees. I wanted to hate the woman, and I felt the need to arrest her, but she hadn’t abandoned her child in the way my mother had me. I was left to die, while Rose was left to live. My survival was a fluke; Rose’s death was a terrible accident. But it was still a crime. And it was my job to redress it.

I checked the time: half past nine. We’d been in the car for more than an hour. Even Einstein probably would have agreed it felt like at least eight hours. I kept rubbing my hands. I had forgotten how cold the desert can be on a cloudless January night. It felt more like Siberia than Southern California. The cold wasn’t playing well with my body, in particular those parts of my flesh that had burned. It felt like I was on fire again.

That wasn’t something I wanted to be thinking. I didn’t want to jinx myself. During my stay in the hospital I hadn’t awakened on fire, hadn’t been tortured by my old nightmare. It seemed almost too good to be true, but maybe I wasn’t the burning man anymore. Or it could have just been the heavy-duty pain meds I was taking.

Sleep-especially sleep without my pyre-was sounding better and better.

More time passed. In my two hours at the cemetery there had been no visitors to the grounds. That made sense, of course. The cemetery was closed. Besides, no one in their right mind would visit on such a chilly, dark evening.

My hand kept reaching for the ignition key, but each time I pulled it back. I tried to check the time no more than once every five minutes, but kept falling short of that mark. It was that damn relativity again.

I’ll leave at 9:45, I promised myself.

A few minutes later that time came and passed, but I still didn’t leave. It was easier for me to make a new promised departure time. I’ll take off at 10:00, I told myself. At 10:05 I pretended that I’d meant 10:15.

At 10:08 I noticed the headlights. The car was an old American sedan, a Buick, but the light wasn’t good enough to make out its driver. The car slowed at the driveway leading to the cemetery and then passed by it. I let out a lot of air at the false alarm.

Four minutes later the car was back. This time it pulled into the driveway. Instead of parking out back, the car came to a stop in the shadows about halfway down the drive.

Sylvia Espinosa’s article had been very specific about the location of the Garden of Angels. The car was parked near the pathway that led to it. The driver turned off the ignition.

I raised the binoculars. The driver was sitting in the dark, and the night prevented me from being able to see much. The shadow in the driver’s seat didn’t move for a long time. There wasn’t a second shadow, and there were no steamed-up windows, so the driver hadn’t pulled in for a make-out session.