Follow the Money

12


When I got home, the lights were on in my apartment. It was still daylight out, but the lights were on. I stood in the doorway, trying to recall the details of my morning. Had I turned them on without realizing it? Reached for the switch out of habit? Given my hangover, anything was possible.

But the threat from the day before came back to me for the first time since I was standing at the bar waiting for Morgan to show. Maybe it hadn’t been a friend of Matt’s from prison. Maybe it had been someone on the outside, someone who had found me. It didn’t seem rational. It only seemed possible. It could have happened, but it was unlikely. The most reasonable explanation was that I’d left the damned thing on myself in the midst of my drunken stupor.

In any event, I was too exhausted to dwell on it for too long. I was too exhausted to dwell on anything at all. Instead, I set my alarm and collapsed from exhaustion and illness. But my sleep was fitful. I was besieged by images of Morgan and Liz and tormented by my own sense of irresponsibility. I found myself walking among ghosts, each with their movements controlled by long strings extending upward and disappearing into a sky as gray as concrete. They came along the bank of a river, and then floated across it. But I could not float. Instead, I found myself submerged, drowning, choking and gasping. I could not seem to swim no matter how I struggled. My clothes grew wet and heavy and drug me slowly into the abyss as my arms flailed upward grasping for the ghosts that floated by above me, grasping for their strings, the air, or sky.

When I awoke to the screech of the alarm, my body felt more rested but my brain did not. I showered for a long time. I rolled my head back on my neck and recalled the feeling in the dream of being submerged, sucked into the deep, helpless to do anything but drift along hoping for salvation. But once out of the shower, I felt human again. I felt some space between the present and the night before.

I picked up Liz at the dilapidated building in West LA where she worked. It was more like a donation center than a law office, and in fact it served as both. She was waiting out front, leaning against the big metal collection bin. I asked her what people put in it when she got in the car.

“Clothes, mostly. But really anything that will fit through the door in the side. We found a crate of oranges in there once.”

“If you come across an extra soul, set it aside for me,” I said. She laughed, a genuine laugh.

We took Veteran up to Sunset Boulevard and headed west, through Brentwood, to where Sunset begins to wind its way into the Pacific Palisades, cutting its final serpentine path toward the ocean. The Palisades is nothing but multimillion dollar homes, and we drove all the way through them, down to the Pacific Coast Highway, and then turned north.

The party was in a trailer park overlooking the ocean. Unlike most trailer parks, a doublewide in this one would cost more than a decent house in most parts of the country. But it was still a trailer park.

There was a chorus of voices above the techno music when we walked in. People lounged on couches and roamed around throughout the trailer, coming and going through the sliding glass door that led out to a deck. It had the feel of a strange college party, but everyone was forty or fifty and drinking good wine.

Liz introduced me to a dozen people, one of whom was walking through the room with a baking sheet full of chicken wings he’d just taken out of the oven. Everyone was a nonprofit lawyer, busy each day making the world a better place. I looked for the bags under the eyes, the premature gray hair, the surly, cynical expressions of most of the lawyers I worked with, but found none. Everyone seemed healthy, well-adjusted, almost happy. It was disturbing. I’d forgotten such people existed.

“Liz, darling, so glad you could make it.” A man spoke from behind us. I turned to see a thin, gray haired man with his arms open, ready to hug whatever came in his path. He was immaculately dressed and groomed. Liz hugged him. “And who is this?” the man said, looking at me.

“This is Oliver Olson.”

The man stuck his hand out. “Oliver, I’d hug you too, but then they’d get me for sexual harassment!” The man laughed. Liz laughed, so I laughed too.

Liz turned to me and said, “This is Randy Scheffer. I’ve been doing a lot of work for him this summer.”

“We’ve been threatening these f*cking credit reporting agencies with a massive lawsuit all summer. It’s great. I’d love nothing better than to drive them under.” Randy laughed again, looking at me. “Forgive my French, I’ve probably had too much wine already.” He winked at us and smiled. A man walked by and handed Randy a full glass on his way past.

“So what do you do, my young Oliver?” Randy asked.

“Liz and I go to school together.”

“Oh God!” Randy exclaimed, never losing his wide smile. “You poor straight bastard. And you looked like you had so much more sense than that.” He shook his head and bowed it slightly. “Tragic. Just tragic.”

“Ollie’s spending the summer at Kohlberg & Crowley,” Liz interjected.

“Oh, that’s unfortunate.” Randy smiled and slapped my shoulder. “You must really like to torture yourself.”

“Oh, hey,” Liz exclaimed, “Randy is the guy I was telling you who went to school with that one lawyer who defended your guy.” I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head.

“You know. The guy who defended your client. What was his name?”

“Oh!” I finally made the connection. “Oh yeah, Garrett Andersen.”

“Oooh, Garrett Andersen.” Randy smiled. “Yeah, I know him. Not well, I mean I went to school with him. I see him around, too. If you know what I mean.” Randy raised his eyebrows and stared at both of us. We did not know what he meant. “Have you met him?”

“No,” I said, “I’ve never even seen him.”

“Well, I saw him at a fundraiser just a few weeks ago. That man is as hot as ever. It’s too bad he’s such an arrogant prick.” Randy leaned in a little closer. “Still, he’s a hottie. I only wish I’d had gone out with him in law school when I had the chance.”

I must have had a strange look on my face because Randy smiled. “You didn’t know he was gay?”

“No.”

“Well, let me tell you, he may come off straight, but that man is as queer as a Mormon at Mardi Gras.” Randy patted me on the shoulder again, nodded at Liz, and said, as he walked away, “I’m only eating seven more of those chicken wings and then I’m cutting myself off.”

“Wow,” I looked at Liz, “the wings aren’t so great, but the gossip’s top notch.”

“That’s so funny.”

“I know.” I watched Randy from across the room. “I wonder what else he knows.” I put another wing in my mouth and went to find out.

An hour later, when I finally managed to corner Randy and ask him, all I got was, “He loves anagrams” and “He’s smart as hell. Supreme Court clerk, you know. But beyond that, he really is an outstanding lawyer.” Join the f*cking chorus, I thought.

We lingered outside on the deck where a fire burned in a small adobe kiln, casting more light than heat and serving mostly to add atmosphere. There were lemons and oranges hanging from the trees. I stared up into the night. The sky was dark and clear but starless, the rest of the universe obscured by the smoke and dust and lights of Los Angeles. Liz leaned against me. There, beneath the night sky, on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean, I could feel her breathing. A soft breeze came in off the water and I imagined for a second that there were ghosts tied to strings walking among us.