Chapter 38 Four-Month Orgasm
Four-Month Orgasm
The drive from Van Nuys Airport had been shockingly trafficless, L.A. granting Evan one of her small, surprising mercies.
As he coasted through the porte cochere of Castle Heights, the valet leapt excitedly from his director’s chair.
With a dimpled chin and surfer locks, he was stuck in Angeleno purgatory, too handsome to be a valet but not distinctively handsome enough to be a TV star.
Since Evan never allowed him behind the wheel of his three-ton pickup, he was stuck parking foreign cars with boringly smooth transitions and electric hums.
Evan debated how far he should take what Joey had referred to as his rebranding. Maybe give the kid a shot. Approaching, he slowed, saw the kid’s Endless Summer eyes light up.
At the last minute, Evan’s instincts kicked in and he vroomed past and down the ramp, Lucy with the football, leaving the valet gazing forlornly after him.
He parked between the two concrete pillars, mounted the steps to the lobby, and took his customary pause to reset himself inside his alias: boring resident and neighbor, importer of industrial cleaning supplies.
Steeling himself for the onslaught of neighborly concerns that often awaited him on the other side of the door, he closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths.
The smell of Candy lingered on him, sugar and plumeria, bringing him back to the hotel-room sheets and the warmth of her flesh as that country song rasped from the radio.
He pushed through the door, moved swiftly past the mail slots, and ran directly into Mia Hall.
Mia was wearing a sundress.
Another of L.A.’s small, surprising mercies: sundresses in February.
It wasn’t too short but it was just short enough to show the groove of the vastus lateralis muscle at the outside of her thigh.
Her chestnut hair spun in loose curls along her cheeks, a heap of it taken up in the back in a messy bun.
Auburn highlights turned up the volume on the rust-colored flecks in her eyes. A birthmark kissed her temple.
Also? She was wearing a sundress.
Her ten-year-old boy, Peter, stood behind her, holding a Lego school project on a cardboard platter, his eyes lowered with uncharacteristic shyness.
He’d grown some, his limbs not quite matching his body anymore, as if they’d elongated at a separate rate from the rest of him.
He made no move for Evan, neither the habitual “Evan Smoak” battle cry, nor the smash-hug, nor the gymnastic leap into Evan’s arms like a golden retriever in a dog-food commercial.
Instead he looked at the floor and twisted the tip of his sneaker into the marble like Joey used to.
The boy was growing up.
Mia blinked a few times and Evan tried to think of something to say.
They hadn’t seen each other in months.
And Evan thought to tell the boy, Look up at me.
Look at my eyes. That’s how people will know to trust you.
But he couldn’t edify him as Jack had once edified Evan.
It would’ve been an intrusion. And he thought that’s what community was for.
While Evan was lucky to have a few scattered relationships to count after Tommy died, he would never live in a community formed of friendship.
And within such a community would be the only context where he’d be able to do that, to tell a boy he should look up at you for his own good.
Instead, Evan said, “Hello H.”
Peter’s forehead furrowed. His croaky voice, a hint deeper: “Why ‘H’?”
“Because, Hall, if I made you Code Name P then I’d have to call you ‘pee.’”
Peter’s eyes twitched once and then they shot up when the joke landed and he looked Evan in the face and brayed laughter and he was recognizable again, still the child Evan knew.
“Okay, E.”
“E, huh?”
“Yeah. Evil E. Agent E. Like that.”
“Clever,” Evan said. “But who could ever take an alias like that seriously?”
“Who says you should be taken seriously?” Mia said.
He noticed once more: She was wearing a sundress.
Evan nodded in greeting. “Counselor.”
“Mr. Danger.” The old jest about the middle name she’d jokingly assigned him.
She had a vague sense of the lethal work he undertook, had even glimpsed an instance or two firsthand, but they’d dodged ever truly clarifying who he was.
As a DA, if she ever gained higher resolution about Evan, she’d be compelled to arrest him.
“How was your stint with the San Francisco DA?” he asked.
“You know, fighting crime, cape and tights and whatnot.”
“Tactical tights?”
“Lululemon leggings.”
Peter peered over the top of his Lego diorama, his charcoal eyes moving from his mom’s face to Evan’s.
“What’s that?” Evan asked, just to have something to ask.
Peter hoisted the project proudly. “School project for Mr. Cobbledick.”
At the name, Evan felt his eyebrows lift, and his gaze found Mia. Her crow’s-feet had tightened slightly to prevent laughter, but her eyes said, Just don’t.
Fortunately, Peter kept on: “I installed magnets under them to show attraction and repulsion.”
Mia’s mouth twitched playfully. “Mr. Danger could certainly stand to learn about the laws of attraction.”
Evan shifted, a trace of Candy’s plumeria wafting from his shirt.
“If you think about it,” Peter said, “magnets are just wireless Legos on an atomic level.”
“How about if I don’t think about it?” Evan said.
“Then,” Peter said, grinning, “they still are.”
At the pause in the banter, they stood for a moment awkwardly.
Behind the security desk, Joaquin politely pretended not to notice them.
Through the glass doors to the swimming pool, Evan could make out some of the older residents doing water aerobics.
They looked slow and ridiculous, bloated from age and neglect, but the rigor of their movement, their synchrony, elevated the spectacle into something approximating beauty.
“Well,” Evan said, “I should head up.”
“Oh, I didn’t mention?” Mia said, checking her watch. “We have to stop by the HOA for a vote.”
Heat rushed to Evan’s cheeks, an embarrassing display. “You’re kidding.”
“Yes,” Mia said. “I’m kidding.”
“I’m not, Mr. Smoak.” The dreaded voice lofted from behind Evan. “We have a vote tonight at eight P.M. regarding grass length for the landscaping borders.”
Hugh Walters, 20C, long-reigning Homeowners Association president and world-class busybody, oversaw Castle Heights regulations with Stalinist rigor.
Absent his usual black-rimmed fifties-engineer eyeglasses, he was wheeling a shopping cart brimming with flowers, a genocide of peonies.
At his side was his newish girlfriend and newish HOA copresident, Lorilee Smithson, 3F, with Boba, her cousin’s oft-borrowed purse dog, stuffed in a capacious Louis Vuitton.
“Ev!” Lorilee shrieked, crushing Evan in a claustrophobic embrace, her fake breasts inorganically rigid against his chest. “It’s been fore-evah!”
He extricated himself. To hide her amusement, Mia pretended to scratch her nose.
“Do we really require a vote,” Evan said flatly, “on grass length?”
“Every reg alteration requires a supermajority, Mr. Smoak.” Hugh was sporting two days’ growth, which on him looked like cosplay.
“In addition to the Grass Length Initiative, we also have to vote on barbecue-grill restrictions for the balconies. Some of the new residents have been using a, let’s just say, liberal interpretation of our fire-hazard parameters. ”
“Mom, I’m heading up,” Peter said. “I haveta do state capitals.”
“Okay, honey.” Mia’s mouth was pursed. There were few things she enjoyed more than watching Evan in social distress. “I think I’ll stay and … visit.”
“I should go, too,” Evan said.
But when he started off, Mia wove her arm through his, trapping him at her side. Over the plumeria, he caught a whiff of lemongrass, the smell of Mia, his olfactory cortex exploding in delightful confusion.
“How have you two been?” Mia asked, holding Evan firm.
“Our relationship has been a-maze-ing!” Lorilee said. “Who knew it was supposed to be this easy! It’s been like … like a four-month orgasm.”
Bile tickled the back of Evan’s throat.
“We’ve been moving into pure positivity,” Hugh said.
“Everything bad we take in just as information,” Lorilee said.
“Devoid of emotional content. I mean, the other day I dropped a coffee mug in the kitchen and I just stared at it. Normally I’d be upset, a busted mug, shards and mess, oh no.
But instead, I thought about how my normal reactions were about material attachment and I just don’t have to have any. I don’t have to have any at all.”
“Wow, Lorilee,” Mia said, squeezing Evan’s biceps. “That’s wonderful.”
The scent of the peonies was overpowering. Evan wondered if Hugh was going to blanket the duvet with them, Vegas-style.
“We’ve shed our ‘yeah, but’ selves,” Hugh volunteered. “And become ‘yes, and’ people.”
“Yes, and” people annoyed the shit out of Evan, but he elected not to say as much.
“We have, haven’t we, baby?” Lorilee’s gold glitter nail extensions picked at Hugh’s hair attentively, the manner vaguely simian.
“Where are your glasses, Hugh?” Mia asked.
“I got contacts.” Hugh beamed, squeezing Lorilee’s hand. “Her idea.”
“Isn’t he ruggedly handsome?” Lorilee squealed.
Hugh was many things, ruggedly handsome not among them.
Evan said, “I need to leave now.”
“We can ride up together!” Hugh said.
“The cart,” Evan said. “I don’t think we’ll all fit.”
“We can squeeze in,” Mia said.
“I don’t want to inconvenience them,” Evan said, rotating his hand at Joaquin to call the elevator.
Mia, practically bubbling with glee: “I’m sure it’s no trouble.”
“It really isn’t, Ev.”
The car came and Evan helped wheel the cart inside and then stood back in the lobby, enduring Hugh and Lorilee’s protestations as the doors closed.
Mia cracked up.
From the security desk, Joaquin said, “Damn, Ms. Hall. You cold.”
Evan said, “She is an evil woman.”
“Us prosecutors,” Mia said. “We’re accustomed to putting suspects under pressure.”
“What am I suspected of?”
“What aren’t you suspected of, Mr. Danger?”
The elevator returned and they got on.
As it whined upward, Mia tucked her hands behind her, leaned against the grab rail, and stared at him. “‘It’s been like a four-month orgasm,’” she repeated.
“Sounds exhausting.”
“I threw up in my mouth a little.”
“I hope they hydrated.”
“Electrolytes.”
“Deep stretching.”
“Tantric breathing.”
“IV Red Bull.”
Mia laughed her big laugh. Tugging at her bun, she let her hair cascade down around her shoulders, a beautiful mess. “You seem different, Evan.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know.” She squinted at him, the light freckles across the bridge of her nose bunching. “I’m not sure.”
They reached her floor, the twelfth, and she smacked the button to hold the car. An alarm shrilled, not too loud but designed to irritate, no doubt another Hugh-driven safety initiative.
“The break gave me some perspective,” she said. “On us. Whatever we are. Whatever we aren’t.”
Evan was unsure what he was feeling. But it was something.
He said, “And?”
“It’s a lot less confusing. Being apart.”
He waited. The alarm kept blaring. He realized she was anticipating a reply.
“What makes it confusing?”
“It just seems like…” She cocked her head, studied him. Her eyes were deep, soulful, a shimmering brown. “I live in the real world, Evan. And you don’t seem…”
“Real?”
She shrugged. “Not in a mean way. But you know what I mean.”
“If you prick me,” he said, “do I not bleed?”
Her eyes twinkled. It was a cheap word for it but that’s what they did.
“If I tickle you, do you not laugh?” quoth Mia. “If I poison you, do you not die? And if I wrong you—” She caught herself.
He said, “Shall I not revenge?”
“Okay,” she said. “But seriously. No. You’re in your own world. Not the one where the rest of us live.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Like…” Finger to her chin, contemplating. “You’d never make it through a real date, for instance.”
“You don’t think I could handle a date?”
She gave a charming one-shoulder shrug. “You can try.”
Neither of them looked away.
“When might I try?”
“Tonight at eight.”
“Where are you going?”
“To see a Beatles tribute band.”
He swallowed. She tried to cover her amusement with her hand, but her smile was too big for that.
She slapped the button once more, stepping out as the doors slid shut. “It’s either that or the HOA meeting.”
“See ya at eight,” he said.