Chapter 16 - Rocco
Chapter 16
Rocco
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
My eyes blink open, the bright California late-morning light making me wish I could immediately close them again. But I can’t.
I’m in the middle of Sunset Boulevard.
What the hell happened? Did I fall asleep at the wheel? I can’t believe I made it to Tucson and back in a day only to crash at the bitter end.
Bea.My stomach twists.
I turn, and she seems okay, thank god, looking alert in the passenger seat. No blood, no injuries I can see.
“What the hell—”
Loud knuckle thumps on the driver-side window interrupt me.
“Mierda! You two okay?”
A fellow morning motorist on Sunset has pulled over to check on us, a big hulking man in a sporty tracksuit who’d be well-suited for a WWF ring. He makes me look delicate. “What a flaming asshole! Hit and runs are the worst. I couldn’t make out the plate, but it was a taco truck. Needle in a haystack in this town. Either of you hurt?”
I glance back over at Bea. Her expression is hard to read, but she shakes her head.
The man keeps going: “That prick sheared your bumper clear off. I took it off the road for you on my way over here. No biggie. You can probably get it reattached. Could have been way worse than some cosmetic damage, though. That taco truck blew the light completely. If you’d been another five feet ahead, I might not be talking to you right now. Still got a little end-of-the-year luck!” He gives a thumbs up, then leans in closer. He’s squinting at me, brows wrinkled, a look I know too well. His brain is working hard. “That white hair was throwing me, but I know you. Rocco, right?”
Busted. But . . . there’s no quick retort about my age.
And wait—he said end-of-year luck.
Not beginning.
Are we . . . back?
That tracksuit of his transcends time. He’s blocking most of my view, and I’m afraid to look out Bea’s window.
Afraid to get my hopes up if I’m wrong.
“It is indeed.” One thing at a time. Deep breath. I turn the car on, and thankfully, Delilah roars to life. “Thank you for stopping to check on us—we really appreciate it. Car’s still running okay, too. You’re right, we really lucked out.”
I glance back over at Bea, who’s staring off into space. Maybe it’s the lighting, but her skin looks paler than usual.
“Maybe you two wanna drive to a hospital? Get yourselves checked out? Just to be safe.” The motorist has eyes on Bea, too, and is looking concerned.
“You’re right, we’ll do that,” I lie, ready to move along. Find the answers I need. “Thanks again, really. Happy holidays!” I wave him off with a big grin, and then watch as he crosses the lane and climbs up into his large Chevy Tahoe.
A sleek, rounded, non-boxy Tahoe.
I had a Tahoe in my early twenties, and they didn’t make them like this one.
Which means . . .
We’re back.
We must be.
Before I can shout the news to Bea, she’s already out of the car, picking up the bumper from where the friendly motorist left it by the side of the road. She leaves the Styrofoam, takes just the silver bumper and carefully places it in the back. Then she returns to the passenger seat. We stare at one another for a moment, and I can see it in her eyes.
She knows, too.
“Do you see where we are?” She says finally, pointing out her window, and of fucking course—The Roxy. Where else would we be? “We did it, Rocco. We made it back!”
She leans in and kisses me. A kiss that feels just as powerful as her words.
Did that happen?
Did we really just time travel?
We must have. Because if that was all a weird fever dream, why the hell would Bea be making out with me right now? In pre-accident 2016, we’d been hotly—and not the good kind of hot—arguing over why she’d been acting so cold to me on set. Nothing that would ignite a kiss, let alone one as deep as this.
We pull back, eyes wide open, watching one another up close. “Can two people share the same dream in a moment of trauma?” I ask.
She hits me with a classic Bea smirk that gives me all the same sensations I’ve been feeling during our week gallivanting around in the past.
It was very real. No question.
“Let’s see if Delilah can make it to my place. I need to see it to believe we’re back. Plus I need some rest after that road trip. Or maybe just a strong Irish coffee. Double whiskey, double espresso.” I put Delilah in drive and push the gas pedal. She moves, albeit with a slight rattle in the front, and we start cruising down Sunset.
Bea nods along, but she’s looking dazed again, her eyes focused outside the window. At our world, our time.
“I was going to suggest you stay at my place, but I know you need to get your bearings straight, too. How about you hang out as long as you’d like, go home when you need your own space. And then we can take Delilah to my body shop later this week and get her back in shape. My treat.”
More nodding. A few silent minutes pass. And then, “I guess we had to be back in LA after all for the . . . magic to happen. I can’t believe you only stopped once to fuel up. Very impressive.”
“I’ve always loved a good road trip. I don’t have much time or reason for it these days, so I was glad to do this. You missed an epic sunrise through the desert. I only got it from the rearview mirror, but it was beautiful. You looked too peaceful to wake, though.”
She cozies up to my arm as we drive the rest of the way to my place without speaking. Tragic Kingdom is still in the tape deck, playing at low volume. There don’t seem to be any words right enough for this moment.
I’m relieved. Stunned. Happy. Confused. Worried that whatever this was, whatever we were, will fit differently in these modern times.
Pulling up to my house—it’s here, it’s actually fucking here!—my mind goes straight to The Surveyor. The initials I’d scratched onto the side of it, low down, where I’d never checked before now. More potential evidence that what happened wasn’t a dream.
That we really did go back in time.
Together.
“Can we go look at something? I left an inscription when we came here, over on that rock.” I’m eager, my whole body buzzing with the need to know. Bea nods, but she’s still not all here with me. It’s like she woke up to a seventeen-year reprogramming on her dad. I can’t even begin to imagine what her mind, her heart, are going through right now. I’m certainly not going to push. Not about him. Not about us.
Bea gets out of the car and follows me to my trusty overlook.
“Would you like to do the honors?” I ask when we get to the edge, stopping right in front of the rock. “Tell me if you see TS on the side over here, along the bottom.”
She starts toward it and then stops, turns back to me. “Let’s do it together, okay?” She leans in and gives me a fluttery kiss on my cheek, then pulls me toward my rock.
We both squat down, looking.
Looking more.
More still.
Nothing.
The disappointment is crushing. What the hell is going on? Are we stuck in some kind of twisted loop? Am I alone in this—in my head? It’s just been a long, elaborate dream this whole time after all?
Bea smiles at me, puts her hand out, and spits into it.
My mouth drops. “What the heck was that? Do I need to take you to the hospital? Maybe that crash really did bump your head.”
“No, silly. You’re just not looking closely enough.” She swipes her hand along the bottom of the rock, nearly at the ground. Scrubbing her fingers around in circles.
Gradually, the T and S start to appear.
“I thought I saw it but had to be sure before I got too excited. So . . . is this proof enough then? What do you say?” Before I can respond, she wipes her dirty hand along the front of my shirt. Grinning. “Sorry. I’m just so giddy.”
Glancing down, I realize the T-shirt I’m wearing—dirt smeared, thanks to Bea—is one I’d nabbed from my old place, vintage Fila. Bea’s in her original outfit, the tight jeans and loose black sweater she’d worn the morning everything started. No rhyme or reason, nothing we’d tried to plan for, at least not consciously; I’d grabbed the first thing I saw before heading out for the hospital. But the Fila shirt, it traveled through time with me.
I stare at the T-shirt, the rock, Bea. Nothing makes sense, or maybe all of it does. It’s too much: the evidence, the questions. I claw a hand through my mangy curls—white curls, I realize. Shoot. I’ll have to deal with that. Immediately. “This is stratospherically bizarre. I know we were operating as if we were time traveling, but seeing the actual evidence is . . . blowing my mind.”
Bea continues grinning at me, that haze of hers long gone now.
Because this proof confirms what matters most for her.
She’d made amends with her dad.
That really happened.
I can’t know if these letters were here before today—if this future would always have been our future, that past always our past. Just like we can’t know for sure if she was there with William in the hospital the first time around, or if we rewrote things, had a proper redo.
But it also doesn’t matter, does it? Because the end result is the same now.
We were there with him. Last night. Seventeen years ago.
Just like we’d been here a few days before that.
“We weren’t imagining it,” she says simply, that grin growing even wider. She does a happy little twirl, then turns and starts walking back to a beat-up Delilah.
I don’t want her to go.
It’s an instant, visceral, full-body reaction.
“You’re leaving already?” I ask, following behind her like an overeager teenager who doesn’t know the right thing to say, is incapable of playing it cool. He just wants. So badly. I’m not used to that, wanting this much.
But I’ve spent almost every waking hour with her these past few days.
The idea of being without her, even back here, now, feels desperately lonely.
Bea turns, takes a breath before leveling me with those wide gray eyes. Her dad’s eyes, I realize. “I think it’s best I get home, really sit with my thoughts, you know? After . . . everything. A whole lot of everything. It’ll be good for you, too. We’ve had the most incredible adventure, Rocco. The best of my life. But let’s just reacclimate, reconvene in the morning. There’s no rush, right? We’re back. We did it. We have all the time in our world now to figure this out.” She takes me by the arm and pulls me in, wraps herself around me. “This is just a ‘see you soon.’ ”
I go in for a kiss. My hands against the back of her neck, her arms snug around my waist. She sighs into me, and I breathe it in deep. The magic is still there. Very much so. No time stamp could change that. Not for me. Not now.
I’m too far gone.
I pull away first, even though I don’t want her to go. But it’s what she needs. “You’re right, although I’m going to miss the hell out of you, even for a night. And call me when you get home, please, so I know you didn’t go time traveling again.”
She tilts her gaze up at me, a little smile on her lips. Those lips that only knew how to frown at me a week ago; earlier this morning, really, at least in this time. I don’t ever want to go back. “Will do. And I’ll see you tomorrow? Lanie’s big holiday bash, if I’m doing the math on my days right.”
Shit, Lanie’s party. The real world in high-def, and so soon. I’d forgotten about it entirely. I nod.
“And then,” she continues, “we’ll need to get Delilah fixed, like you said. I wasn’t that out of it! You’re a good man, Rocco. Delilah thanks you. I do, too. We’re both happy to ride with you anytime.”
With that, she hops into the driver’s seat, turns on the car, and takes Delilah down the driveway and out of sight.
Well, shit.
How am I going to function for the rest of the day? How does one reacclimate post, you know, fucking time travel.
I walk back to the rock, plop myself down. My fingers mindlessly rub along the initials as I stare out over the ocean below. I’m relieved this view is mine again. Glad that much hasn’t changed.
I hope nothing else has either—aside from these letters and our goodbye in Tucson. I hope we kept everything else exactly as it’s always been.
Please, dear god. Universe. Whatever powers that be.
I hear a clanking sound, and turn to see Tony on his back porch, wielding a big metal watering pot. Tending to his giant succulent garden. He probably has over a hundred of them. The biggest succulent devotee I’ve ever encountered.
I’m frozen for a moment, watching him, deliberating.
Should I say anything? Go fishing? It was seventeen years ago, during his more experimental days . . .
Only one way to find out.
“Hey, Tony! Need any help?” I call out as I’m already walking over. We haven’t seen one another much lately, not with all the time I’ve devoted to Murder in the Books. Lots of smiling and waving as we pass by one another, with an occasional stop and chat out here in our driveways.
“Nice to see you, brother!” He puts his pot down, comes in for a hug. “Always happy to have another set of hands.”
He starts off toward the garden then, and I follow his lead, contemplating how the heck to connect this endeavor to what transpired in ’99.
“Just adding a couple of new aloe plants today,” he says when we reach his neatly edged plot, pointing to a freshly dug corner. “Some nice new friends.”
“Great! Were there . . . aloe plants here originally? During the wilder heyday of this hill—before my house came along?” Smooth, I hope. A subtle transition to the old days.
“Nah, this place was a bare, dusty old hilltop. Just me and the Airstream for a long while—over on your side of the hill, actually. Before I sold off some of the land so I could finally afford to build my pad. Back then it was just me and the views, food over the fire, sweet tunes, and a revolving door of adult beverages and brain fuel.” He jabs me with his elbow and gives an emphatic wink. Yes, Tony, I know there was a copious amount of drug intake here on these grounds.
Time to go in for the real fishing expedition: Does he remember meeting two trespassing hooligans, perhaps in the last days of the old millennium . . . ? “It’s a shame,” I start, clearing my throat, “it took me so many years in LA before I discovered this place. What was it like . . . in the late nineties? What was I missing?”
“Late nineties? Eh. Much quieter by then. The scene had moved on. We got old. I pretty much just hung out and got some producing gigs here and there when I could. The seventies and eighties were the golden era up here. You know Christopher Cross?”
Yes, of course I do, and I also know this story about their magical studio time together—one of his favorites. The first anecdote I heard the day I moved in, as a matter of fact. But I continue to nod and smile like it’s the first time I’ve heard it.
“I’d been riding like the wind on the tails of that ‘Yacht Rock,’ as the kids are calling it now, you know, but nobody really cared by the time the nineties rolled around.”
“Right. But . . . did you ever have people poking around up here then, because they’d heard the old stories? Music buffs and the like?”
He squints out toward the ocean, quiet for a beat. Somber thinking face on, the gears slowly churning. “Hm.” Another pause. “That’s funny. I do remember one particular couple that found my place. Big fans of that whole Laurel Canyon scene. I let them stay for a night or two. They seemed a bit . . . lost. So, we broke bread, had some drinks by the fire, but that’s really it. Nothing momentous. I’m sure there are many more folks interested in you and your location. Speaking of, happy to go in on a bigger gate if you’re feeling like it.”
He remembers us then. I shouldn’t be surprised, not after finding the letters on the rock, but I am. I don’t think anything about this could ever not be shocking.
I smile at him. “Nah, I think I’m far enough off the Hollywood grid up here. And I love that the fence at the bottom of the road makes it feel like you might be heading up to a serial killer’s old mansion.” Tony gives a hearty laugh. “But thank you, for the offer.”
“It’s all about optics, you’re right on. Who needs a fancy castle gate if the overgrown earth is intimidating enough? We’re wild and strange up here. Best way to be, my brother.”
We continue to chat for a while as we plant, about everything and nothing. It’s nice to have this time to decompress. A brief reprieve between the past and the future.
Once the plants are in, Tony murmurs a blessing to them, and we part ways.
Back to the house.
Back to reality.
* * *
First order of business once I’m home is my phone.
Dead still, even though I know I’d left the coffee shop with a decent charge. But of course, I left the coffee shop days ago. Or I did, but I also didn’t.
Time-travel math is impossibly hard.
I thought I’d be more relieved, being back inside these walls. But the house feels so . . . empty. What was once my precious fortress of solitude now feels entirely too quiet. I miss Bea. Her voice. Her laugh. That dirty, perfect smirk.
Damnit, Rocco, it’s only been an hour. Get yourself together!
I refocus, find a charger in the living room, and plug my phone in. The instant string of dings and alerts that follows is astounding. Even for me, on a busy day. You would think I was an actual influencer! Other than my restaurant reviews, I’m mostly off social media, much to my team’s chagrin. Tom’s, especially. Drives him nuts. Call me old-fashioned, but it’s just not my thing. Never has been. And, as I like to remind them all, it hasn’t exactly held me back from landing the big gigs.
Tom, though . . . shit. How’s that going to unfold?
Too much to process right now.
I scroll through my messages. There are seven texts from an unknown 323 number in the last few days.
So . . . yeah. Can’t believe that happened last night.
I was more than a little tipsy,but . . . it was fun.
How are you feeling about it?
Rocco? Hello?
You have nothing to say about it?
Not sure why you’re not responding. It’s, uh, not like you can ghost me, lol
Alright then. Left you a VM. Guess I’ll . . . wait to hear from you?
Uh. Shit.
There’s a lot to unpack here.
Clearly a woman.
Most certainly somebody I hooked up with.
But . . . who? And how?
There was no one in the picture. There hasn’t been, not for a few months. I’ve been too in this role. Tuned the rest of the world out, stayed in my cave with the exception of seeing Rudy and Lucy. So how did she pop up?
The timeline . . .
Oh god.
What did we possibly screw up? Is this the beginning of the ripples?
It seems impossible, though, that anything we did could have landed me a random hook-up seventeen years in the future. Bea was right to worry as much as she did. Damn. Who knew screenwriters were so on point with time traveling?
I search for the number in my call log, and—bingo!—a voicemail. More definitive evidence. I hesitate for just a beat, then jab my finger at the play button.
Hey, Rocco, maybe you lost your phone, or maybe it broke, but I would really, really love to talk about what happened. I know it was spontaneous, and probably the last thing either of us was expecting to come of this. But itwas . . . nice? And it made me think. About us, and the past. Where to go from here. So. Yeah. Either way, I’m just glad we’re back on speaking terms. The kiss was a topper, I suppose. So . . . yeah. I just want to talk. Clearly. Make sure we’re on the same page. Sorry for the long message. Bye.
That voice.
I’d know it anywhere.
Piper.