Джонатан Келлерман - Crime Scene

“For some reason I had this idea you’d be a vegetarian.”

“Vegan,” she said. “Thirteen years.”

“What happened?”

“Tacos al pastor,” she said.

I asked what she planned to do in Tahoe, other than dispose of furniture.

“Ski. Do yoga. Realistically it’s my last chance to use the house before we sell it.” She paused. “Barb — his first wife — she was the skier. My dad never cared for the cold. I don’t know why he’s held on to it all these years.”

“From what I’ve seen,” I said, “he wasn’t one for purging.”

“Yeah. Although you’d think, a house... He kept talking about renting it out, but he never got around to it. Most of the year it was unoccupied. He went up every few months to check on it. I can’t remember the last time I was there.”

“You didn’t go with him.”

“He never invited me. I’m sure he would’ve let me tag along, but I could tell he needed to get away, so I tried to respect that.”

“Away from what?”

“Me,” she said.

“Kind of harsh on yourself.”

She shrugged. “I pestered him. I knew I was doing it. I wanted him to be healthy.”

I said, “Your brothers are Barb’s sons.”

Tatiana nodded. “She’s a nice lady. She flew in for the funeral. I was touched, but my mom threw a hissy fit.”

“About what?”

“What’s it ever about? She seems to believe she still has an ownership stake in Dad. Their relationship was totally ridiculous. They’d be in divorce mediation during the day then go home and sleep together at night.”

“That’s... different.”

“You think? I know because my mother told me. I was like, ‘I don’t need to hear this, please.’ She told me I had a bourgeois sense of morality.”

“Meaning ‘a sense of morality.’ ”

“It’s the revenge of our generation.”

“What about your brothers?”

“Oh, they’re way more uptight than I am. Charlie’s a lawyer. Human rights. Stephen was in finance, but he quit to open a rock climbing gym.”

“That doesn’t sound uptight.”

“He runs it like an investment bank,” she said. “We don’t fight, but we’re not close. You?”

“I grew up in San Leandro. My folks are still there.”

“Siblings?”

“None to speak of.” I reached for her empty cup. “Another?”

“Please.”

As I stood in line, listening to an accordion-driven version of “Every Breath You Take,” I glanced at the street sign.

We were on the 1400 block of Delaware.

Four blocks east of Julian Triplett’s mother’s house.

I looked over my shoulder at Tatiana.

She raised a hand.

I did the same.

I brought back a Corona and a margarita, giving her the choice.

“We’ll share,” she said, taking the margarita.

“I know how that works with you.”

The band played “Super Freak.”

Tatiana said, “I want to tell you something but I’m not sure I should. Should I?”

“How about this,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me what it is first, and then I can decide if you should tell me or not.”

She laughed. “Okay, I’m going to tell you. I was married.”

“Yes,” I said, “you can tell me that.”

“It doesn’t freak you out?”

“Why would it freak me out?”

“It freaks some guys out.”

“Not me.”

She tilted her head. “Do you want to know why I got divorced?”

“If you want to tell me.”

“I met him in New York. We were married six months, then he came out.”

“That must’ve been a surprise.”

“ I was surprised,” she said. “Later I found out everybody knew except me.”

“I was married, too,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows.

I pointed to a gaunt woman in pigtails near the gelato truck. “That’s her.”

Tatiana balled up the napkin and threw it at me. I ducked and it landed on the asphalt behind me. A girl about seven years old ran over and snatched it up.

“Litterbug!” she yelled. Her T-shirt read LOCALLY GROWN.

She hopped around, waving the dirty napkin, chanting, “Litterbug! Litterbug!”

“Sorry,” Tatiana said. “It was an accident. I meant to hit him.”

“Litterbug!”

The girl’s mother came over to apologize. “Her class just finished a unit on recycling.”

The kid stuck out her tongue at us as she was yanked away. The band began to play “Take On Me.”

Tatiana tossed back the dregs of her margarita. “Smug little twat.”

I said, “Let’s get out of here.”

We walked east, through Ohlone Park.

“I vant to be Ohlone,” she said.

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Good,” I said. “Up for a little walk?”

“Sure.”

Aside from the occasional booze wobble, she was graceful and purposeful, fluid in her movements, shivering against me.

“Here,” I said, giving her my coat.

“Thank you, gallant sir. Nobody’s done that for me since eleventh grade. Where are you taking me?”

Ten minutes later, we arrived at University Avenue.

“You’re taking me to campus,” she said.

“Ah, yes, but: where on campus.”

“Please tell me this isn’t some hopeless attempt to relive our college days.”

“Who said anything about hopeless.”

We tottered happily through the eucalyptus grove, thumping over the bridge spanning Strawberry Creek, encountering bicycle racks and flapping banners but few faces. Mist hung in the trees, diffusing the greenish glow of pathway lighting. I imagined Donna Zhao, trudging home in the dark, bent-backed beneath the weight of her textbooks and notebooks and fatigue. In a strange way, she had brought me here now, to this moment and this place, to the feeling of Tatiana’s arm, lost inside the sleeve of my coat, but gripping me fiercely as she laughed and swayed.

Up ahead loomed Haas Pavilion and the adjoining rec center.

“Where are you taking me,” she said. “For real.”

“I want to show you something.”

We came to a side door. I fished my keycard out of my wallet, swiped it near the sensor. The lock retracted with a clack.

“An old teammate is an assistant coach,” I said. “He got me the hookup.”

“Fancy.”

“That’s how I roll.”

We went down a cinder-block corridor painted in blue and yellow and stenciled with motivational slogans. CHAMPIONS KEEP PLAYING UNTIL THEY GET IT RIGHT. BE STRONG IN BODY, CLEAN IN MIND, LOFTY IN IDEALS. The air burned with industrial cleaner. In the weight room, a few football physiques were grinding out reps with their earbuds in. They paid us no mind.

The practice court itself was at the end of the hall. I swiped in and hit the switches, and the floods flickered on, casting a sickly pall over the waxed floor.

“They take a couple minutes to warm up,” I said.

I unlocked a ball cart and dragged it to the top of the three-point line. Paused, squinting at the rim.

I have a low tolerance for alcohol. I never built one, never developed a taste; during college, when most people learn to drink, I had a strict diet and training regimen. Tonight, I’d consumed half a beer, walked it off for half an hour. Yet I still felt warm, my focus honed somewhat by the pressure of what I was about to do.

I took a basketball, spun it in my hand, breathed in, breathed out.

Pulled up.

Let fly.

It clanged off the back of the rim. Not the splashy opening I’d had in mind.

“I didn’t see that,” Tatiana said.

“See what,” I said, reaching for another ball.

I pulled up.

This time I felt it as it left my hand; I saw myself from the outside, angles in agreement, head and neck, elbow and shoulder, wrist and fingers, collaborating. I felt the weightless instant, when gravity releases its stranglehold, and you float, and the ball becomes vapor, pebbled breath rolling back against the tips of your fingers. I felt it part from me with an understanding of its mission, an extension of me that continued to rise after I had softly retouched the earth; rising and rising, the seams spinning backward in a blur of symmetry and physics; peaking and then descending in a gentle arc, a faithful delivery.