Day Seventy #2
Lally tilted her head, confused. “What is he doing, then?”
“He’s made more than one trip to a local Dairy Queen, if you know what that’s about.”
Lally shook her head. “I don’t. I guess he likes ice cream.”
“Other than that, he’s…”
Lally was not a fan of the dramatic pause.
Harlan looked her square in the eyes, like he was bracing her for what he was about to say. “Digging.”
“Digging?” Lally giggled. He said it like he was the Fonz. Digging his time alone? It was not at all what she thought he would say. She imagined Jesse perhaps having an affair, or something like that. Wasn’t that what these investigations usually uncovered?
“Digging,” Harlan repeated. “In the backyard.”
“You mean, like a hole?” The thought of it was almost absurd. It wasn’t really like Jesse to do physical labor. Was this a metaphor? What might someone dig up on her, if she had been assigned such a tail?
“It seems he started a few days ago, maybe a week. He’s making pretty good progress.” Harlan took her hand in his; they were meaty and warm. He looked at her, clearly hoping she could see where he was going with this. “I’m sorry.”
Lally dipped her chin. Sorry for what? Whatever it was, Harlan had the wrong idea.
“Jesse always wanted a pool. Maybe that’s what he’s doing.
It was an ongoing discussion with Norman.
They went back and forth on it, but Norman didn’t want to put up the fence that zoning laws and insurance would require. It ruined the…fueng shoo.”
“Feng shui,” Harlan corrected, and she felt her face grow red. “Lally, you don’t dig your own swimming pool. That’s psychotic behavior. You hire a company with trucks and a backhoe.”
“But maybe for just like a small one.” Lally gestured with her wineglass, nearly sloshing her pinot over the side. “A plunge pool.”
Harlan disagreed. “Not even a wading pool.”
“Well, then what are you saying?”
Harlan’s eyes looked pained. “Why else does a person dig?”
Lally knew what he was trying to say. She’d seen enough episodes of Dateline on late nights in hotel rooms. You dig to bury a body.
But that just didn’t sit right. First of all, Jesse was lazy, physically anyhow, had been as long as she’d known him.
No, it had to be something else. On the other hand, he wouldn’t be putting in a swimming pool unless he knew Norman was out of the picture. Even that explanation was damning.
“I need to arrange a way to meet him. Observe his demeanor up close. I’m not getting a lot sitting in my car with binoculars.”
“Have you seen him go anywhere?” Lally asked. “Besides Dairy Queen, I mean.”
“Oh!” Harlan reached into his breast pocket for his phone. “I followed him to the Integratron.”
“The Integra-what?” He was making less sense by the minute.
“The Integratron. It’s this strange UFO-like structure built in the desert. You go there for sound baths.”
Lally pressed her palms against her eyes. Her head was spinning, either from this news, her crush (although in the moment, that was fading), or the cheap wine. “When?”
Harlan futzed with his phone. “Just the other day. Here. I recorded some of it.” He played an audio file and a haunting noise unfurled out of the speaker, like coyotes wailing a plaintive cry.
Lally leaned in—she couldn’t not—and listened very carefully, aware she was falling into a trance.
She wondered suddenly if she was in danger.
If Harlan hadn’t somehow roofied her in this strange, out-of-the-way bar.
“What is that noise?”
“Bowls,” Harlan replied.
“Like for soup?”
Harlan laughed. “They’re singing bowls. I think made out of quartz crystal. I can rewind the recording if you like. They gave us a whole tutorial at the beginning of the session.”
“Are you supposed to record the sound bath?” Lally wondered aloud. Living in Venice Beach as she had, she’d brushed up against enough of this hippie-dippy nonsense to know that must be frowned upon. “I’m surprised they didn’t confiscate people’s phones.”
“Oh, they do. That’s why I always carry two.” Harlan pulled a second phone out from his pants pocket and held them both up for her to see. “I’ve become rather adept at doing things on the sly.”
Lally pushed her drink back a few inches on the bar, worried about the roofie anew. Then she heard the faintest whisper over the bowls.
“Norman is not here.”
Startled, Lally sat up on her barstool. “Was that the bowls?” In addition to singing, did they also reveal secrets in a chorus of celestial hums?
Harlan laughed again. “No, no. That was me just making notes for myself to share with you. Jesse was clearly there on his own. I just wanted that on record for you to hear.”
Lally understood, but it seemed like Harlan was not good sound bath people; she doubted you should be talking during the experience.
She could only imagine his frustrated neighbors begging him to stay still.
She hoped he hadn’t interrupted anyone else’s experience on her behalf.
Then again, she could never date a good sound bath person.
Knowing the protocol suggested a fastidiousness that she could not accept in a man.
She wondered how Jesse behaved in the Integratron, and asked.
“Oh, perfectly normal from what I observed. As far as one can behave normally in such a place.” Harlan saw Jesse purchase something in the gift shop, but most of the time they were lying on their backs.
Lally recoiled at the idea of a gift shop, which seemed surprisingly crass.
Harlan scratched his stubble. “I wish there was a better way to observe him. Someplace I could keep my eyes open.”
Lally thought diligently, resting her chin on her hands as she did, even closing her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, Harlan was staring right at her. “Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said sheepishly, collecting the Missing flyers before offering them to her. Lally tried her best to read his awkward discomfort. Had he been staring at her?
“Jesse teaches college,” she blurted. “Maybe you could audit his class?” It was meant to be helpful, her suggestion, but Harlan looked panic-stricken.
“Oh-kay,” Harlan replied, stretching the word as far as he could without breaking it.
Lally looked down, allowing her hair to hide her eyes. “I mean, if you want.”
Harlan hesitated. “School was not really something I enjoyed the first time around. But I suppose I could give it a go.”
Lally placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “I’ll bet you were a great student.” It was the most outright flirtatious she’d been yet, and she just as quickly smoothed his shirt and retreated.
Harlan’s face grew flush, but he didn’t otherwise stumble.
“My whole class read To Kill a Mockingbird, what is that, like eighth grade? And then the teacher let us watch the movie. A lot of the kids were upset when Atticus shot the mad dog, wondering why he did such a thing. The teacher turned the question back on the class, and I proudly raised my hand and said it was because the dog was infested with rabbis.”
Lally tilted her head before a grin crept across her face, and then she couldn’t help but laugh. “You said rabbis?”
“Yes. With unshakable confidence.”
“Not rabies.”
“There was only one Jewish kid in my class, the town optometrist’s son, and everyone pointed at him and laughed, even though it was my idiot mistake.
I guess because he’d just had his bar mitzvah, so his being Jewish was front of mind.
” Harlan took a long slow sip of his scotch.
“I feel bad to this day, if I’m being honest. So classrooms were never my thing. ”
Lally cupped her hands over her mouth to keep from laughing further. She waved to the bartender and asked for menus. “I’m going to get something from the dessert case. The only problem is I can’t decide between a slice of the coconut cake and the Boston cream pie.”
Harlan didn’t hesitate. “Could we get a slice of the coconut cake and the Boston cream pie? Two forks.”
Lally smiled, instinctively covering her mouth with her hand.
“Don’t do that,” Harlan said, gently lowering her hand. “Hide, I mean. You have a beautiful smile.”
Lally could feel herself blush. “Old habit. I had braces for years. Norman used to say I had summer teeth.”
Harlan leaned forward and cocked his head in a way that made him look like a spaniel. “What are summer teeth?”
Lally did her best to sell the joke. “Som’re here. Som’re there.” Harlan didn’t laugh, so she pointed in opposite directions to drive the punch line home. Still, no laugh.
“Maybe we should let him stay missing just for that.” Harlan eased back onto his barstool and exhaled. “I’m sorry. That was inappropriate. I have an older brother. He teased me mercilessly. I guess I’m a little sensitive.” He then quickly added, “We will find him, your brother.”
The desserts arrived along with two forks rolled in paper napkins; they wasted no time diving in.
“Thank you,” Lally said as she took her first bite.
“For saying we’ll find him? It’s why you hired me.”
Lally meant for standing up for her, but she couldn’t say that outright. So she hid her smile a second time, this time for fear her teeth were smeared with Boston cream pie.