Terminal Island

Chapter Seventeen

WAR DOGS



“You don’t have to come with me,” he says, tying his shoes.

“Of course I’m coming with you,” Ruby says. “I just don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish up there.”

“One way or another I’m going to put an end to this crap. This has gone on long enough. I have a right to see my own mother—I owe it to her. Do you realize she turned down a dream job here because of me? Because of my girl problems? It’s totally because of me we moved away, and she’s probably spent the last thirty years feeling like she was kicked out of Paradise and wishing she could come back. Well, she finally got her chance, and now it’s my responsibility if she’s in trouble.”

“How so?”

“Because she got me out when I needed her to. Do you see what I’m saying? It’s come full circle.”

Henry didn’t say what else he had been thinking: that the island had frightened him off once before, had pried open his head and taken root in his nightmares, and he wasn’t going to let it happen again. He wasn’t a little boy any more.

“Do you intend to climb the fence, or what?”

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but something.”

“Well, I’m not bringing Moxie up there again—it’s too hard for me to film and watch her at the same time. We better see if that desk-girl can take her.” Ruby digs the card out of her purse. “Janet Bixby—‘Bix Bee Childcare.’”

Henry is a little surprised to hear her say this, but he’s not about to argue. “Fine, whatever.”

They go down to the lobby and are introduced to a cheerful, spry old lady in Reeboks who shows them the child-friendly back room where she and Moxie will be playing and doing activities. “Looks cozy,” Ruby says. “I like that there’s no television.” Henry agrees; the place has a warm, homey feel, with plastic tubs of well-chewed toys and books, but the main selling point is the enthusiasm of the caregiver, Mrs. Bixby.

Even as Moxie starts to protest their leaving, the old lady flashes a mouthful of enormous white dentures and says, “Now, you guys don’t worry about a thing. I’ve raised ten beautiful children, and I guarantee that by the time you come back, Moxie and I are gonna be bosom buddies. She’ll be begging to stay, mark my words. Does she have any allergies? Because we’re gonna bake cookies, yes we are!”

A few minutes later Henry and Ruby are free as birds. “Jesus, we should have done this a long time ago,” Ruby says, blinking in the daylight. “I feel like I just got out of solitary confinement.”

“It’s true,” Henry says. “I feel a hundred pounds lighter.”

Without any support network or so much as a babysitter, they’ve hardly had a minute to themselves since Moxie was born. It was so hard at the infant stage that they quickly fell into a combat mindset that tolerated hardships like the lack of a sex life or time alone together as acceptable losses; they were focusing on the essentials, their every waking second devoted to either work or the baby. Hardheads both, they took it as a challenge, and even as things have gotten incrementally easier they’ve kept to this regimen, though there are signs of fraying at the edges: In the last year, Henry has begun sneaking out to strip clubs and bars, and Ruby has begun taking an inordinate interest in yoga. Where they had once been able to talk for hours, their divergent interests have begun making them much more private, internal people. Their orbits have separated. This is upsetting in its way, but easily chalked up to the inevitable cooling that all marriages must undergo. It doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.

“This reminds me of the walks we used to take along Lake Michigan,” Henry says.

“Yeah, I can’t remember what I did with my hands when I wasn’t pushing a stroller—I keep having this terrible feeling like I’ve forgotten something.”

He takes her hand in his: “Here’s what you do.”

“So that’s it.”

The stroll around the bay is the most pleasant time they have spent together since they were first dating, when Henry was still recovering from his surgery after being discharged from the VA hospital. He had met Ruby when chronic pain drove him to seek alternatives to his prescribed medications. She and her mother operated a pain management clinic out of their home, and Ruby was an expert in alternative therapies—it was actually one of the VA doctors who recommended her. Though very skeptical, Henry was willing to try just about anything. The first thing she did was get him off painkillers, to which he was badly addicted. The rest was easy.

The town is just as empty as Henry remembers it, just as still, and they follow the shore past the Tuna Club and the Yacht Club all the way to the Casino without seeing another person. The water of the harbor is glassy-smooth, a window to the shallow bottom. It’s just after nine in the morning.

“God, the light is perfect,” Ruby says, digging out her camera.

Can we please give it a rest? Henry thinks. He hasn’t had much sleep, fretting most of the night over issues both real and imaginary, but which either way can only be addressed by concrete action. He can no longer do what he has been doing all this time: ignoring things. Hammering flimsy patches over them and pretending they don’t exist.

“Do we have to shoot right now?” he asks.

“Well, honey, this is kind of it, isn’t it? I mean, this is what it’s all been leading up to. I kind of have to chronicle your final thoughts, or people won’t grasp the full significance.”

The full significance. Does Henry himself even grasp that? Why he is suddenly so interested in finding his mother, when he has been wishing her away most of his life. In fact, up until this most recent situation, he had almost succeeded. She had become unreal to him, a figment of his past no more distinct than any other childhood memory. In that way, her letters always came as something of a shock: messages from a ghost world he no longer believed in.

Vicki herself perpetuated this sense of time-warp by never changing—by staying exactly the same as she had always been, as Henry remembers her from the earliest years of his life: slightly befuddled, completely out of touch with any aspect of popular culture or the wider world, dwelling only on the memories of her past, which are much more real to her than anything in the present. Disintegrating nicely.

“I think that’s why I’ve always been so mad at my mother,” Henry says as Ruby circles around him, doing some cinema verite maneuvers. “I never quite felt that she saw me—it was more like she was looking through me at something else. This fantasy world of her own.”

“Well, she is kind of out of touch with reality. But then, so are most people.”

“When I was a kid, I bought into all that, though. I thought I was sharing in her memories, that her history was mine, too, and that both of us were like…exiled royalty. Too good for the circumstances we were living in. That our paradise was right around the next corner—always one move away. Always next time.” He shakes his head. “But over the years it sank in that no matter where we moved, things were always going to be the same. The only way to change them was to live in the real world. To stop dreaming and actually do things. And once I knew that, her fantasy life became intolerable to me.”

They follow the beach road and climb the path to the condo complex, surrounded by the drone of cicadas. Resting on a flat outcropping, Henry makes her put down the camera and says, “Honey, I just want to let you know something. I’ve only realized it since we’ve been here, but my life with you and Moxie has…healed me or something. I don’t mean just physically. All of a sudden I can examine the past without feeling all angry and twisted by it—it’s become harmless. That’s why I’ve been dwelling on it so much for these last couple of days: it’s the novelty of being able to look at it objectively, as something separate from myself. To really see it for the first time, you know? The Big Picture.”

Listening to this, Ruby touches the side of his face, studying him with an almost clinical expression. Then she smiles and says, “I love these little ear points of yours.” Henry has an elfin nib of extra cartilage at the top of each ear, what Ruby calls his “faerie points.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Henry says. “I’m trying to tell you I love you.”

“I love you too, you big dummy.”

He kisses her. The kiss lingers, becoming more intense, the two of them settling down into a bed of dry leaves. For a few minutes they lie there, kissing and caressing each other’s clothed bodies, their breaths coming faster and faster.

“Help me,” Ruby says urgently, kicking off her shoes, and Henry strips her pants down over her ankles. As she pulls off her top, he removes his shirt and opens his fly, releasing the pent-up bulge in his underwear. She runs her hand over it through the cotton fabric, gently squeezing to make him groan. Then she tenderly unwraps him and leans forward to take it in her mouth. Henry’s breath hitches at the feel of her warm, enfolding lips, that ocean of bliss. She takes him completely inside her mouth and then, because it’s been awhile, pulls back so as not to finish too soon.

Lowering himself next to her, Henry glides his hands over her belly and under her bra, grazing her pierced nipples. He traces her twining black tattoos with his fingertips and tongue, following them around her navel and down past the seam of her panties to the puckered well of heat within. He slides the panties down and she opens her thighs to his kisses. For a few moments he circles the budding center, tempting her out, then delves in with his tongue, looking up her body as across a smooth landscape, her face turned back in ecstasy, her pale, arching figure a marble Aphrodite half buried in leaves. As she comes, he comes too, pulsing hot against her calf.

Getting dressed, they can’t stop smiling. “You bad man,” Ruby says. “You bad, bad man.”



Topping the hill, they arrive at the gate for the third time in as many days. By now they are not surprised to find the place shut tight against them. All Henry says is, “Unbelievable,” and keeps moving along the fence.

“Where are we going?” Ruby asks.

“I don’t know yet.”

Because it is set on a steep hillside, the property is mostly inaccessible, thus the fence stops at a certain distance up and down the slope. Downhill it is lost in thick brambles, so Henry climbs up. He notices that he is not the first to have done this: there is a well-worn footpath hidden along the perimeter, with crushed beer cans and cigarette butts littering the ground, as if teenagers have been sneaking up the same way—a hopeful sign. In places it is so steep they have to climb hand over hand up the fence posts.

Juggling her camera, Ruby says, “Are you sure we should be doing this?”

“No.”

At the top, the fence ends in a snarl of barbed wire. Above them is all sheer brown rock. But someone before them has dug a passage under the wire, just where it meets the base of the fence. The earth has been scooped away and the metal coils tortured upward just enough to permit a cautious, crawling entry. The Spanish-tiled eaves of the complex are visible through the bushes beyond. Henry doesn’t wait, but lays on his back and starts to squirm under.

“Oh no, I’m not going through there,” Ruby says.

“Why not? Someone else obviously has.”

“We’re going to break our necks.” They are quite high above the gate, at least forty or fifty feet up the steep slope. “How do you know you can get back once you’re over there?”

But Henry is already most of the way through, looking down the far side. “It looks doable,” he says. “There’s a deck and some stairs right below me. Are you coming or not?”

“I just don’t want us to be trapped in there if they call the cops on us.”

“Would you rather wait for me? It’s okay if you want.”

“I think maybe I better. We can’t both go to jail—what would happen to Moxie?”

“My mother could adopt her.”

“Very funny.”

“Okay. Well, then I’m gonna go give it a shot,” he says. “Can you get back down okay?”

“Yeah, I think so. Are you going to be okay?”

“Oh yeah—piece of cake. I’m just going to drop down and see if there’s an easy way to open the gate from this side. Maybe I can let you in.”

“Okay.”

“But if it looks like I can’t, I’m not going to waste time with it—it’ll be too suspicious, and I think it makes more sense for me to just go and find my mother before anybody has a chance to throw me out.”

“I guess so. Are you sure we shouldn’t call this off before it’s too late?”

“I’m sure. It’ll be fine, I promise. See you down there.” Henry reaches through the fence and they clasp hands. “If I can’t get the gate open, feel free to go back to the hotel and wait for me. In fact, you probably should.”

“No way! I’m not going anywhere and leaving you here.”

“You’re the one who said we can’t both get arrested. Look, nothing’s going to happen, but it could take me a while to find her. I might have to hunt around, and if I do find her she’s liable to pitch a fit. Whatever’s going on, I don’t want you standing out here by yourself. If I’m late, I’ll find a phone and leave a message for you at the hotel.”

With deep reluctance, Ruby says, “All right…I guess. If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure. I better go before somebody spots us up here. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Wait! Take my camera.”

She hands it through to him and Henry ducks out of sight behind the weedy ridge. A dirt furrow has been worn into the slope, and he slides down it on his butt until he comes to the top of a concrete retaining wall. From there it is a short drop to the pier-like boardwalk connecting the uppermost bank of condos to those lower down. The view is spectacular and somewhat vertigo-inducing: Spanish-tiled buildings descending the mountain on terraces like outlandish golf greens, with quartz-graveled islands and paths, all overhanging the broad expanse of the sea. There is no one in sight anywhere.

Henry doesn’t linger over the view, but hurries down the walkway to the entrance gate. He is annoyed to find that he can’t get to it—there is an inner gate, a second layer of security. It is not fancy wrought iron like the outer one, but plain chain-link, secured with a hefty Yale padlock. It is hidden from the outside by high hedges.

As Henry stands there in consternation, something crashes against the gate, causing him to jump back in surprise.

It’s a dog—a big black German shepherd. The animal looks ferocious, barking frantically, yet the only sound it makes is a pathetic wheezing. No vocal cords, Henry thinks, astonished. Is that just so the old folks aren’t disturbed?—it seems insane. What if he or Ruby had just climbed over the fence without knowing? What if a kid did? The dog run is recessed like a moat, so that from the outside it is invisible, and there are no signs posted.

That’s a deadly weapon, you a*sholes.

He knows of such dogs being used in war, has heard they have a powerful psychological effect on the enemy. But who’s the enemy here? Where’s the war?

As he starts the camera, other stealth dogs appear, five or six of them, charging up the fenced corridor to silently bay at him. As a security consultant himself, Henry has to shake his head at the overkill. Unless this is the private estate of a Colombian drug lord, he can’t imagine why such measures would be necessary.

Unless…

The dogs are going crazy enough already; Henry doesn’t want to provoke them more, but he has no way to signal Ruby without raising his voice.

As quietly as possible, he calls, “Honey! I’m here!” The dogs go silently berserk. No answer. Cupping his hands around his mouth, Henry tries again, hissing: “Ruby!”

Still no reply. Then her ruffled voice from beyond the hedge: “I’m coming! Give me a chance, will you? God—so much for these stupid Capri pants. They were too tight anyway. Where are you?”

“This is as close as I can get—there are guard dogs in a culvert between us. I gotta go before someone sees me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. I’ll either call or meet you back at the hotel.”

Doubtfully, she says, “All right…if you think so.”

“I do, trust me. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Be careful.”

“I will—you, too. Bye.”

“Bye.”

What Henry doesn’t tell her is that he has the distinct feeling of being alone in here. The complex feels empty, abandoned. It’s a suspicion he’s had since the first day he and Ruby stood outside the fence, but which he wasn’t sure of until he actually came inside. Seeing that padlock clinched it.

But why wouldn’t anyone tell him if it was empty? Why the idiotic runaround? Somebody must know about this—certainly the Sheriff’s Office and the Chamber of Commerce. Could it be possible that they themselves don’t know? Surely everybody knows everything on a little island like this.

And if the place is shut down, where does that leave his mother?

Henry follows the winding driveway, thinking that he must be mistaken, that any second he will encounter an old codger out for a power walk. He remembers what Ruby said about these old folks liking their quiet.

The road bisects the upper and lower ranks of condos, and as Henry looks for numbers on the units, hunting his mother’s address, he is also seeking signs of life—quirks of individual taste like flower pots, welcome mats, window decorations, any hint of differences between neighbors. But it is all sterile as a chain motel.

He discovers that the extensive landscaping is all fake: just scruffy plastic shrubs and trees embedded in concrete. Likewise, the “grass” is green-painted gravel.

Maybe it’s because of the water restrictions, he thinks, but that doesn’t explain the petrified aura of the place, the sense that it is all a dry museum display—it might as well be marked DO NOT TOUCH. The cast-iron lawn furniture is bolted to the ground, immovable; stains on the seats from standing water make it look to Henry as if none of it has been used, or is ever meant to be.

Rot. Rot and solitude. The peeling façade of a shuttered carnival. As an adult Henry is alert to these negative aesthetics, knows when he is in their presence—they give him that bittersweet rush of childhood.

Usually he has to seek them out: Henry is a connoisseur of blighted landscapes and old cemeteries. It’s one of the things that attracted Ruby to him, and he to her—what she calls her “Morticia Addams streak.” The tattoos, the piercings, the whole Suicide Girl motif. Her favorite hobby is collecting grave-rubbings. In spite of all their differences, they recognized this gloomy niche in each other and were ineluctably drawn to it.

Yes…he recognizes this smell.

Going up a gravel path to the nearest building, Henry enters a breezeway formed by the upstairs deck, following it along a row of identical doors and windows. Everything is shut tight. He notices that there are no mailboxes or mail slots—of course not; in a place like this there must be a central pick-up point. So the address is useless.

Damn. Henry is beginning to realize that, once again, he is not going to find what he came for. It boggles his mind. At this point it is almost becoming funny—the joke’s on him.

Trying not to be conspicuous, he peers into the windows as he passes, trying to find a chink in the closed curtains, any glimpse of furniture and life, but they are all drawn against the morning glare. Now you can add Peeping Tom to the other charges, he thinks, cupping his hands around his eyes and attempting to penetrate the dark edges of the drapes. Every window is the same.

It’s all so uniform, so impersonal—there is nothing to distinguish one condo from another. The stylistic conformity doesn’t seem to follow the usual incentives of commerce and class, and brings to mind the hive mentality of communist-bloc urban planning.

Haphazardly taping as he goes, Henry moves on, not certain what to make of all this, but more and more convinced that it’s nothing kosher. After the third identical building, Henry decides to take things a step further:

He knocks. Just at the next random door.

Of course there is no answer.

As he is contemplating what to do next, Henry hears a sound and freezes. It is the blat of a noisy engine coming up the road outside. It pauses at the entrance, sputtering. Then there is the unmistakable sound of the gate being opened.

Oh shit…the dogs!

Henry looks around for someplace to hide. There is not a lot of choice: Everything is laid out in the open, the buildings interconnected and backed up against the steep hillside. There are no trees to climb, nothing that will shield him from a determined dog. The nearest thing to a refuge that he can immediately see is a concrete drainage culvert running downhill under the raised boardwalk, but that would only conceal him from human eyes, not canine noses.

Shaking his head at the stupid predicament, imagining what Ruby would think, Henry puts all his frustration into kicking in the nearest door. He broke down a lot of doors in Afghanistan, but never in civilian shoes—Ow. At the second kick, the bolt gives way with a splintering crunch and Henry ducks inside.

He steps off a cliff into total darkness.