E is for Evidence

"I've been in Florida." Good voice, too… just in case his other virtues fail to excite. Reedy and low. He sings like an angel, plays six instruments.

"What brought you back?"

"I don't know. Homesick, I guess. A friend of mine was heading this way so I tagged a ride. Did I wake you up?"

"No, I often walk around looking like this."

A slight smile here, perfectly timed. His manner seemed hesitant, which was unusual for him. He was searching the sight of me, looking (perhaps) for some evi-dence of the girl I used to be.

"I like the haircut," he said.

"Gee, this is fun. I like yours, too."

"I guess I caught you at a bad time. I'm sorry about that."

"Uh, Daniel, could we skip to the punch line here? I'm operating on an hour's sleep and I feel like shit."

It was clear he'd rehearsed this whole conversation, but in his mind my response was tender instead of down-right rude. "I wanted you to know I'm clean," he said. "I have been for a year. No drugs. No drinking. It hasn't been easy, but I really have straightened up."

"Super. I'm thrilled. It's about bloody time."

"Could you knock off the sarcasm?"

"That's my natural way of speaking ever since you left. It's real popular with men."

He rocked slightly on his heels, looking off across the yard. "I guess people don't get a second chance with you."

I didn't bother to respond to that.

He tried a new tack. "Look. I have a therapist named Elise. She was the one who suggested I clean up the unfin-ished business in my life. She thought maybe you might benefit, too."

"Oh, hey. That's swell. Give me her address and I'll write her a bread-and-butter note."

"Can I come in?"

"Jesus Christ, Daniel, of course not! Don't you get it yet? I haven't seen you for eight years and it turns out that's not long enough."

"How can you be so hostile after all this time? I don't feel bad about you."

"Why would you feel bad? I didn't do anything to you!"

A look of injury crossed his face and his bewilderment seemed genuine. There's a certain class of people who will do you in and then remain completely mystified by the depth of your pain. He shifted his weight. This apparently wasn't going as he thought it would. He reached up to pick at a wood splinter in the door frame above my head. "I didn't think you'd be bitter. That's not like you, Kinsey. We had some good years."

"Year. Singular. Eleven months and six days, to be exact. You might move your hand before I slam the door on it."

He moved his hand.

I slammed the door and went back to bed.

After a few minutes, I heard the gate squeak.

I thrashed about for a while, but it was clear I wouldn't get back to sleep. I got up and brushed my teeth, show-ered, shampooed my hair, shaved my legs. I used to have fantasies about his showing up. I used to invent long mono-logues in which I poured out my sorrow and my rage. Now I was wishing he'd come back again so I could do a better job of it. Being rejected is burdensome that way. You're left with emotional baggage you unload on everyone else. It's not just the fact of betrayal, but the person you become… usually not very nice. Jonah had survived my tartness. He seemed to understand it had nothing to do with him. He was so blunt himself that a little rudeness didn't bother him. For my part, I really thought I'd made my peace with the past until I came face to face with it.

I called Olive Kohler and made an appointment to see her later in the day. Then I sat down at my desk and typed up my notes. At noon, I decided to get some errands done. Daniel was sitting in a car parked just behind mine. He was slouched down in the passenger seat, his booted feet propped up on the dashboard, a cowboy hat tilted over his face. The car was a ten-year-old Pinto, dark blue, dented, rusted, and stripped of its hubcaps. The sheepskin car-seat covers looked like badly matted dog. A decal on the bumper indicated that the car was from Rent-A-Ruin.

Daniel must have heard the gate squeak as I came out. He turned his head, pushing his hat back lazily. He some-times affects that aw-shucks attitude. "Feeling better (Miss Kitty)?"

I unlocked my car and got in, started the engine and pulled away. I avoided the apartment for the rest of the day. I can't remember now half of what I did. Mostly I wasted time and resented the fact that I was not only out an office but banned from my own residence.

At 5:00, with the aid of a street map, I found the Kohlers' house on an obscure leafy lane in Montebello. The property was hidden by a ten-foot hedge, the driveway barred by an electronically controlled wrought-iron gate. I parked out on the street and let myself in through a wooden gate embedded in the shrubbery. The house was a two-story, English Tudor style, with a steeply pitched shin-gled roof, half-timbered gables, and a handsome pattern of vertical beams across the front. The lot was large, shaded with sycamores and eucalyptus trees as smooth and gray as bare concrete. Dark-green ivy seemed to grow every-where. A gardener, a graduate of the Walt Disney school of landscape maintenance, was visible, trimming the shrubs into animal shapes.