Ganesh smiled and shook his head. “Not really.”
He was thin and dark and intense, perhaps as intense as his paternal grandfather, who as a New Delhi street performer had tamed cobras with the usual flute, but also sometimes with just his hands, caressing them into a stupor at the risk of a lethal bite. Grandpa might or might not have been a snake charmer. He might or might not have stroked and tickled cobras into a trance with his bare hands. There were those who said that Ganesh had been born and raised in Boston, into a family that had run restaurants for three generations, and that the closest he had gotten to India was watching Bollywood musicals in his twelve-seat home theater. With his thick black hair and lean good looks and large, expressive eyes, Ganesh had all the success with women that he could handle, but he was not above tapping his cultural heritage—real and imagined—when he felt that the new beauty who attracted him would respond to an extra layer of exotic personal history. No one, not even the women, took offense at or disapproved of Ganesh’s biographical elaborations, because he was unfailingly ebullient and entertaining and likable.
“This old dude on the tape,” he said, “was he Bibi’s uncle or something?”
“Her grandfather,” Pax said. “Nancy’s dad.”
“Wow. More like Grandpa Munster than Grandpa Walton. Was he an alky or a serious mushroom-eater, or what?”
“He was a retired Marine,” Pax said. “Never met him. He died before I showed up. But Bibi loved him. The music is really loud.”
“Isn’t it great? You can’t help moving to it,” Ganesh said, jiving in place. “You didn’t say not to listen to the tape, so I listened.”
“That’s all right,” Pogo said.
“I thought if it was a little damaged, I could do a transfer and clean up the sound. But it was clear. Clear and crazy. The old dude was flyin’ on something, man, higher than Jet Blue could ever take him. He totally creeped me out. I had to put on this music to stop the centipedes crawling through my blood. He must’ve creeped out Bibi, too. Although it doesn’t seem to have screwed her up any. How is our radiant Kaha Huna, by the way?”
Kaha Huna was the mythological Hawaiian goddess of surfing, sand, and sun. Ganesh wasn’t being jokey or ironic when he referred to Bibi as a surfing deity.
Pax and Pogo had agreed not to broadcast Bibi’s condition in the beach community. Perhaps in acknowledgment of the dread they would not otherwise discuss, they felt superstitiously that the more surfers who knew about her brain cancer and coma, the sooner she would die.
“She’s good,” Pax said, and Pogo said, “She’s cool.”
Bobbing his head in agreement but also to the music, Ganesh said, “She’s sacy, she’s stylin’. For a while I was in love with her from a distance. Maybe I still am. But I always knew I wasn’t good enough for her. Are you good enough for her, Pax?”
“I’m gonna try to be.”
“You better be.”
“Thanks for this,” Pax said, indicating the tape recorder in his hand. “Appreciate it.”
“De nada,” Ganesh said. “It was fun taking it apart and putting it back together. Just a knack. I can fix anything.” He tapped the recorder. “Except I couldn’t have fixed Grandpa Marine. That old dude was a serious head case.”
In the Honda once more, putting the key in the ignition but letting the engine rest, Pogo said, “Grandpa Munster?”
“That’s just Ganesh being Ganesh.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’ll know in a minute.” Pax switched on the tape recorder.
They had a good view of the sunset from Cameo Highlands. A magical Maxfield Parrish blue for the base color of the sky. Clouds on fire, orange and scarlet, blazing from San Clemente in the south to Long Beach in the north. The sun balanced on the sea, a fat round bead of blood.
The electronic key fit the oval hole, the wasp in the Lucite glowed like a lamp filament, and the pneumatic steel door whisked open. Because the chamber beyond the threshold had a high positive pressure, a gust of sanitized air blew across Bibi and chased the fog off her shoulders and back. As she stepped inside, none of the wolfish, shadowy stalkers lunged at her, which made her wonder if their purpose was to guard this building or rather to herd her into it if she failed to enter of her own will. Behind her, the door slid shut with a whoosh.