Steven Thomas - Criminal Carma

Lincolns don’t drive worth a shit, but they are nice inside.

She wanted to go to the Chart House in Malibu. I swung over to Pacific Avenue and followed it a mile north to where it changed names, becoming Nelson Way and then Ocean Boulevard. A block south of Colorado Avenue, we swooped down onto the Coast Highway, passing beneath the antique structure of the Santa Monica Pier with a light stream of Beemers, Mercedeses, and middle-aged rich guys on Harleys returning to their straitjacketed lives after a weekend of desperate play in the Southern California sun.

Past the little ghetto of multimillion-dollar shacks that sits on the sand below Palisades Park, the world opened up to our left. Beyond its white fringe, the black ocean stretched in a long shallow arc to lace the beaches of Oahu and Japan. To our right, ragged bluffs rose up against the starry sky, hugging the road as it unspooled along the curve of the coast.

At the seaside restaurant an aging valet crept away in the Lincoln while I escorted Evelyn inside with my right hand in the silky small of her back. The maître d’ addressed her by name with a warm smile and a half bow. We were promptly escorted to a window table with a white cloth and candle. Just beyond the plate glass, ten feet below us, the nighttime surf, always exciting, crashed against a boulder breakwater. Farther out, but still within range of the restaurant’s spotlights, smaller rocks were bobbing and diving like seals in the heaving water.

“Where are you staying at the beach?” Evelyn asked after the waiter brought her a beaded glass of chardonnay.

“With friends,” I said, briefly. I was drinking O’Doul’s. “How long have you lived in Venice?”

“I bought the house in November,” she said, and took a pretty good slug of the wine.

“What made you want to move there?”

She looked at me with her eyes liquid, deep, slightly blurred by alcohol. I wondered how much wine she’d had before I arrived at her house. “It’s a long story,” she said.

“We have all night.”

She kept her shining eyes on mine for a few more seconds, then shook her head. “You don’t want to hear about my problems.”

“I’d be happy to listen,” I said. “But I don’t want to pry.” She was either going to open up or she wasn’t.

“I appreciate that.” She placed her hand on mine. I wasn’t sure if she meant my willingness to listen, my discretion, or both.

The food was ambrosial. We started with crisp Caesar salads and crusty bread. She had sautéed Dover sole. I had grilled swordfish. We split a delectable side dish of creamed spinach with baked crumbs on top. She had two more glasses of chardonnay, amber and sparkling in the candlelight.

“I know it’s just a chain restaurant,” she said as we were finishing, “but I love this spot.” She was looking out the window, through our shared reflection, at the waves breaking on the beach beyond the boulders. Two sea lions had swum in and flopped on the sand. “The ocean is so wild and beautiful here.”

“It’s a great restaurant,” I said conversationally. “That was the best meal I’ve had in weeks.”

She didn’t look at me when I spoke, continuing to gaze out the window.

“My daughter was conceived on that beach down there where the sea lions are,” she said quietly, more as if reminding herself than informing me. When I didn’t say anything, she looked over at me. “It was the most beautiful day of my life. There was nothing out here then, just the sea and sky. We spread our blanket where the rocks sheltered us from the road and made love naked in the sun. His family was one of the biggest landowners in the Central Valley, and my grandfather Phelan was mayor of San Francisco at the turn of the century and a United States senator after that, and there we were, screwing like two peasants on the seashore.” She laughed, a bit drunkenly. “I hope I’m not embarrassing you.”

“Not at all,” I said. “When was that? When was your daughter conceived?”

“It was Indian summer,” she said, getting dreamy again. “September 1960. We were married that June, after Terry graduated from Stanford. I had just finished my freshman year. We had a huge wedding at Grace Cathedral. It was the talk of the town. We went right around the world on our honeymoon. We spent two weeks in Hawaii at the Royal Hawaiian on Waikiki. Went to Japan and India and Iran and Egypt. Spent two weeks in Paris and two weeks in London. We were presented at court to Queen Elizabeth.

“That spring, when I was a schoolgirl at Stanford, I would have died before having sex outdoors in a public place. But by the time we got back from that trip, I was a different person.” She paused for a moment, remembering, then went on: “That’s when I first got interested in yoga. In India, on our honeymoon. We went up to the headwaters of the Ganges, where the famous ashrams are. Everyone said the atmosphere was so pure up there you could hear om in the air all the time, and you could!

“Everything about life seemed exciting and magical then. Christina was born the following June, on our first wedding anniversary. That was a miracle to me. I was happier than I had ever been before. Holding her when she was a little baby was like being in heaven. And I loved Terrence so much. He made me feel like the luckiest woman in the world.”

“Sounds like a wonderful life.”

She had been smiling wistfully, drifting in a drinker’s nostalgic haze, but her face changed when I spoke, turning grim. “It didn’t last,” she said. “I caught him with a typist from his office that Christmas. It was downhill from there. We still had some good times and I hung on to hope as long as I could. But he wouldn’t stop. I finally divorced him… too late. Because of him, I lost my daughter… my Christina.”

“What happened to her?”

“She disappeared.”

“When?”

She shook her head. “Let’s get out of here. If you are really interested, I’ll tell you about it, but not here. Take me home.”

She reached for her purse when the waiter brought the check, but I took the leather folder from his hand and paid in cash, then led her out of the restaurant into the cool California night. She was wobbly from all the wine. The looks that I got from the maître d’ and valets ranged from sly to sympathetic to suspicious.

She was so quiet on the drive back to her house that I was afraid she had passed out. But when I looked over I saw that her eyes were open, staring out at the ocean. When I helped her from the car, she leaned her breasts against me and breathed alcohol fumes in my face. Inside, she dropped her wrap on the floor by the door.

“I’m sorry the place is so bare,” she said, gesturing at the empty living room through an archway to our left. “I rented out my house in Bel Air furnished, and I haven’t gotten around to buying new stuff for this place.”

When I prompted her, she resumed her story, first in the kitchen, where she got a bottle of wine and two glasses, then upstairs in her bedroom. It was the usual. After the first affair, her dream of an ideal life was shattered, but there was still a lot to hang on to. Terrence worked his way up rapidly in the Prudential Insurance Company, where he had family and fraternity connections, becoming a vice president in his early thirties. They moved into a series of steadily larger houses, drove ever more expensive cars, and went on elaborate vacations. There were apologies and promises and special gifts each time she discovered a new affair.

She spent her time swimming, golfing, playing tennis, and attending country club dinners and charity dances, consoling herself with increasing amounts of alcohol as the privileged years played out. She doted on her daughter, with whom she rode in Golden Gate Park and at her in-laws’ sprawling ranch.