Don Winslow: The winter of Frankie Machine

They sit there, drink coffee, consume fat and sugar, and watch the winter storm now brewing on the edge of the sea.

Dark gray sky, thickening clouds, a wind building from the west.

It’s going to be a ripper.

After the Gentlemen’s Hour, Frank starts on his busy day.

AllFrank’s days are busy, what with four businesses, an ex-wife, and a girlfriend to manage. The key to pulling it off is to stick to a routine, or at least try to.

He has tried-without conspicuous success-to explain this simple management technique to the kid Abe. “If you have a routine,” he has lectured, “you can always deviate from it if something comes up. But if youdon’t have a routine, theneverything is stuff that comes up. Get it?”

“Got it.”

But he doesn’t get it, Frank knows, because he doesn’tdo it. Frank does it, religiously. Actually, more than religiously, as Patty reminded him the last time he was at the house, to fix a drip under the kitchen sink. “You never go to church,” she told him.

“Why should I go to church,” Frank asked, “and listen to some priest whoschtupps little boys lecture me on morality?”

He got that word from Herbie Goldstein and prefers it to the alternative words. Frank doesn’t approve of profanity, and somehow saying it in Yiddish is less vulgar.

“You’re terrible,” Patty said.

Yeah, I’m terrible, Frank thinks, but from the last few times he’s balanced her checkbook, he’s noticed she doesn’t give as much to the church as she used to. The priests should know what Italian husbands have always known: Italian wives will always find a way to punish you, and it’s usually in the wallet. You piss her off, she’ll still do the job in the bedroom, but then she goes out and buys a new dinette set. And never says a thing about it, and if you got any brains at all, you won’t, either.

And if the priests have any brains at all, they aren’t going to get in that pulpit and bitch about the shrinking receipts in the collection plate, because they’ll start seeing nickels and dimes in there.

Anyway, church isn’t part of Frank’s routine.

His linen-supply business is.

The first two hours of his post-bait shop day are spent driving around to the various restaurants he serves, making what he calls “happy calls”-that is, talking to the owners and managers and making sure they’re happy with the service, that their orders have come in right, that the tablecloths, napkins, aprons, and kitchen cloths are spotless. If the restaurant is also a fish customer, he goes into the kitchen to say hello to the chef and make sure he’s happy with the quality he’s getting. They usually go into the walk-in refrigerator, where Frank inspects the product personally, and if the chef has any complaints, Frank writes it down in his little notebook and takes care of it right away.

God bless cell phones, Frank thinks, because now he can call Louis from the car and tell him to get some fresh tuna over to the Ocean Grill inside the next twenty minutes and make itgood this time.

“Why do you write it down if you make the call right away?” the kid Abe asks him.

“Because the customersees you write it down,” Frank tells him, “and he knows you take his business seriously.”

By one o’clock, Frank has visited a dozen or so of the best restaurants in San Diego. Today, he works his way from south to north so he’ll end up in Encinitas to meet Jill for lunch.

She’s a vegetarian, so they meet at the Lemongrass Cafe off the PCH, even though the restaurant isn’t one of Frank’s customers and he doesn’t get comped there.

She’s already seated when he gets there.

He stands in the foyer for a second, looking at her.

For so long, he and Patty thought they couldn’t have a baby. They’d resigned themselves to the fact, then boom.

Jill.

My beautiful daughter.

All grown up now.

Tall, pretty, shoulder-length chestnut hair. Dark brown eyes and a Roman nose. Dressed casual but smart in blue jeans and a black sweater. She’s readingThe New Yorker and sipping on a cup of what he knows is herbal tea. She looks up and smiles, and that smile is worth everything in the world to him.

They were estranged for a long time after he and Patty split up, and he doesn’t blame her for being bitter. Those were tough times, Frank thinks. I put her and her mother through a lot. Through most of college, she barely spoke to him, even though he paid all the tuition and room and board. Then, at the end of her junior year, something just clicked in her. She called and invited him to lunch, and it was awkward and shy and totally terrific, and from there they slowly built their relationship back up.

Not that it’sFather Knows Best yet. She still harbors some resentment, and can be a little sharp from time to time, but they have a steady Tuesday lunch date, and he won’t break it for anything, no matter how busy a day he’s having.

“Daddy.”

She sets the magazine down and stands up for her hug and kiss on the cheek.

“Sweetie.”

He sits down across from her. The place is your typical Southern California hippie-Buddhist-vegetarian joint, with natural-fiber everything on the tables and walls, and waiters who speak in whispers, as if they’re in a temple and not a restaurant.

He looks at the menu.

“Try the tofu burger,” she says.

“No offense, sweetie, but I’d rather eat dirt.”

He sees something that looks like it might be an eggplant sandwich with seven-grain bread and decides to go with that.

She orders soup with tofu and lemongrass.

“How’s the bait business?”

“Steady,” he says.

“Have you seen Mom lately?”

“Sure.” Like every day, Frank thinks. If it’s not her checkbook, it’s the car needing maintenance, and there’s always something with the house. Plus, he pays the alimony every week, in cash. “You?”

“We did the dinner and shopping thing last night,” Jill says. “Part of my continuing, albeit futile, campaign to get her to buy an article of clothing that’s not black.”

He smiles and doesn’t mention her sweater.

“She dresses like a nun since you left her,” Jill says.

Well, at least we got the obligatory mention ofthat out of the way early, Frank thinks. And, just for the record, sweetie, I didn’t leave her-she kicked me out. Not that she didn’t have her reasons, or that I didn’t deserve it.

Just for the record.

He doesn’t say it, though.

Jill reaches for something on the seat beside her, then hands him an envelope across the table. He looks at her curiously.

“Open it,” she says. She’s beaming.

He takes his reading glasses out and puts them on. Getting older is a bad idea, he thinks. I should give it up right away. The stationery is from UCLA. He takes out the enclosed letter and starts to read it. Can’t finish, though, because his eyes start to mist up. “Is this…”

“I got accepted,” she says. “UCLA medical school.”

“Sweetie,” Frank says. “That’s fantastic. I’m so proud…happy…”

“Me, too,” she says, and he remembers that at her better moments she is totally without guile.

“Wow,” he says. “My little girl is going to be a doctor.”

“Oncology,” she says.

Of course, he thinks. Jill never does anything by half. When she jumps in, it’s always at the deep end of the pool. So Jill isn’t just going to be a doctor; she’s going to cure cancer. Well, good for her, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she does.

UCLA Medical School.

“I don’t start until fall,” she’s saying, “so I thought I’d work a couple of jobs this summer, then get a part-time job during the school year. I think I can swing it.”