April Smith - Good Morning, Killer

I smiled and sipped my decaf. It was clear to me this was Andrew Berringer’s patented getaway romantic weekend, for those girls nervy enough to make it past the big rock at Leo Carrillo Beach. All right. We would be making love (glancing at my watch) within the hour, and then I would simply walk away and become part of the crowd.

I was still smiling while Andrew retrieved the coconut-scented candle he seemed to know was kept in the armoire drawer and closed my eyes and let it happen while his thick fingers cleanly worked the tiny buttons of my white silk shirt. We knelt on the bed and kissed, and there arose in me an easy affection for the guy; I understood him, I thought — a loner who knew what he did and did not want in his life. Although I had been there only a couple of times, the way he ordered things inside his father’s house — baseball cap collection, weights, garden tools, pots and pans — stayed with me. It seemed a wishful gesture from a man whose daily task was to pull people out of the muck.

He drew me down on top of him and said things that took us away from Cambria, California, to an indeterminate meeting place where isolation and kindness merge. It was a lovely ride and there were no toll payments. We took care of each other.

As we dozed in the wavering white candlelight, Andrew’s barrel chest began to heave, at first in small convulsions, then uncontrollable sobs. He lay flat on his back and sobbed.

“What’s the matter, Andy?”

He could not answer. Wherever he was, he was in there, deeply. His hands lay palms-up, empty, and his knees and feet were splayed, body open to the grief that seemed to fall on him like rain.

“Talk to me, baby,” stroking his wet cheek.

All he could do was put a heavy hand over mine and press my palm to his heart as if to say, Don’t go, but the lowing animal intensity of his strangled voice, the repeated cries and inability to stop were scaring me by degrees, as the warm serenity of our lovemaking was slowly chilled by layers of rational thought insisting through a drowsy haze that something was seriously wrong.

He began to shiver. It was cold in the room. I covered his body with the brittle blanket and got up and pulled on a T-shirt and fussed with the thermostat. Instantly a gas fireplace in the corner roared into flame. When I turned, Andrew had gotten out of the bed and was standing at the open door, buck naked, staring out at the parking lot.

I laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Where are you going, buddy?”

“You can hear the ocean.”

He seemed so completely dream-bound that my anxiety rose to a panic. My fingers tightened around his hard wrist, breast up against his arm, legs braced, as if he might slip loose and run.

“Listen,” he insisted.

A rhythmic whisper carried from across the road, tiny, like a fountain in the neighbor’s yard.

“I’ll bet that water’s chilly.” I was thinking of jellyfish, billowing and diaphanous in the bitter gloom. “I’ll bet it’s fifty degrees.”

It was getting damn chilly standing in the open door, half starkers. The other rooms were dark. The motel office was closed, but rose-colored lights strung along the roof were shining in the mist, and the sky was powdered with stars.

“What is it, hon? Do you want to get some air?” I asked. “Let’s get dressed and take a walk.”

It did not matter that it was one in the morning. We could pick up the highway at an unspecified point, like the beginning of that movie where a woman is running along the white line of a darkened road, wearing nothing but a raincoat.

Andrew’s hands moved over his sticky groin.

“I have to take a shower first.”

“How about a bath?”

We turned from the doorway.

“Did I tell you that my dad committed suicide?” he said.

He was fifty years old, a strapping, handsome guy — had the boat, the house on the lake, everything going for a beautiful retirement except one thing: when he drank, he did it to excess.”

We were wedged into the motel bathtub, facing each other, his legs on the outside, mine on the inside. My feet were on his belly. He rubbed the puckered soles absentmindedly as he spoke. My thumb massaged his ankle. The shower curtains were pushed back carelessly and the door was closed, mirrors dripping with steam. The only source of light was the coconut candle on the vanity, now half melted into the shape of a woeful ghost.

“On a Saturday night he went out with some pals to this place that used to be down in Venice, isn’t anymore — a whole group of guys met, a number filtered out, Dad stayed, another group filtered in. They drank until the place closed and went in two cars to another party supposedly somewhere up in the Palisades Highlands.

“On the way over there, the other car, the one his friends were in, starts driving erratically, and a third car, driven by civilians, starts honking and getting into the mix, so at a stoplight, they all stop — everybody stops — and my old man gets out. He’s this big guy, right?” Andrew paused to cup hot water, let it draw down his reddened face.

“So my dad instructs the civilian driver to pull over. He was always a team player, standing up for his buddies, you see. He goes up to the driver and he’s got his gun out. Big, big mistake. He’s going to pull this guy out of the car. He’s not in uniform, he’s drunk, the civilian doesn’t know what’s going on, his friend cell phones the cops. They have a vehicle in the area, and they swing over in seconds, and they seize my dad. Take him into custody.” “Where was this?”

“Pacific Palisades. LAPD.”

I nodded.

“In trying to get the story from a bunch of inebriated witnesses, all they focused on was that my dad had a gun and tried to pull this guy out of the car. So they book him for attempted car jacking and put him in jail.

“I’m a rookie, I’m living with two roommates in a dive off Pico, and I get the call from my lieutenant on a Sunday morning. ‘Your father’s in jail.’ Not only in jail but on a felony charge. You have to remember, nothing like this ever happened to my dad. This is like Sandy Koufax robbing a bank. It just doesn’t happen. Turns out, they called the office, verified his status as a captain in the Santa Monica Police Department, and now I go over there to bail him out.

“He’s okay, he’s sobered up, a little chagrined but not majorly, or so I think,” Andrew said, wagging a reproachful finger. “So we go and have breakfast at Rae’s, and I drop him off at his house and go play basketball. That’s what I do. I play basketball.” He took a jagged breath.

“When I go back to the house later on, I find he’s penned a note, indicating that he wants me to have all his possessions”—Andrew’s voice cracked—“because I’ve been such a good son … And he says he’s going down to the beach.” He waited. I held on to his shins.

“So I call the department and I say, ‘You’ve got to find him, he’s going to blow his brains out,’ and they did find him at the end of a strand, he’s sitting on a rock, two uniforms approach and talk to him, and he’s not responding, and he pulls out his service weapon, and he did kill himself.” Again he lifted cupped hands like a chalice and water ran down his face.

“I’m so sorry.”

“All his life my dad wanted to be a police officer. He thought that at the end of his career he would go out under a veil of shame, and he couldn’t live with that. It got to the point very quickly where he decided to take his own life.” “It wasn’t only that.”

“What?”

“How did he feel about retirement?”

“He wanted to retire. Planned for it for years.”

“You can still be afraid of what you want.”