Grave on Grand Avenue Page 24

  “Rush,” Garibaldi says, holding out his handcuffs.

  Great, I get to do the honors.

  I secure the cuffs on Xu carefully. I don’t want to do anything to harm those hands. I do the same to Cece and Fang Xu. All of this feels surreal. I gently push down each one of their heads as I guide them into the backseat of Garibaldi’s vehicle.

  “Main headquarters?” Sally asks, and Garibaldi confirms it. From the look on his face, the DA can’t believe that he has to spend the next few hours dealing with the lovebirds.

  “Rush,” Garibaldi says, “I can take it from here, but if Ms. Pram wants to ride with us . . .”

  Yeah, you probably want her on your lap. “No, she’s fine,” I say. “I got her.”

  Nay prattles on and on while I navigate the Green Mile down Sherman Way and eventually to the 170. Her monologue is comforting, familiar. I’ve missed it, for sure.

  “I’m actually working on a feature story right now,” she announces. “Star-crossed lovers. Cece and Xu were separated by their birth countries’ politics, unsupportive family members, but now they are together again. For however long it lasts.”

  As I transition from the 170 to the 101, I glance at Nay’s open plastic bag, which she has placed on top of the emergency brake. At the top is a book with a worn cover. A translation of Don Quixote.

  Nay follows my gaze. “Yeah, I found it at a used bookstore in Van Nuys. I’ve been reading stuff about Cervantes, too. Did you know that he was held by pirates for five years?”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “These nuns had to negotiate his release. He died there, in the convent. Flat broke without a coin to his name. He was all hunchback and had only six teeth.” Nay shudders when she imagines the toothless master writer.

  “In the book, Don Quixote dies, you know. He renounces all the things that he was chasing before. All the knightly stuff. Do you think that he was right, Ellie? Because all of that seems pretty damn cool.”

  We finally arrive at PPW, where Nay’s planning to stay up all night to write her magnum opus. “I need to get it down while it’s fresh in my mind,” she says as she slides out. She gestures toward the flowers in the back. “Oh, you’d better put that in water right away.”

  “I have someplace in mind for it.”

  * * *

  After dropping Nay off, I remain in the loading zone to send a text to Cortez. All this stuff has gotten me in a mood for romance. I don’t know whether I’ll get a reply.

  I go up Figueroa all the way to First and make a right. And then another right on Grand Avenue at the concert hall.

  I place the bouquet at the bottom of the stairs. I have no idea where Mr. Fuentes is buried, but this is where it all happened. Is Eduardo floating above, with God? Or is he here, watching over his daughter, his grandchildren, and his nephew, RJ?

  I know that the flowers won’t stay here long. In probably a half hour, or maybe just a matter of minutes, some security guard or flak like Kendra Prescott will come along and remove Xu and Cece’s wedding bouquet and toss it in the trash. But that won’t matter. Because for a moment, this moment, Eduardo Fuentes was thought of. Remembered. And absolutely no one can take that moment away.

  It’s dark now and the streetlights, timed to go on at the absolute latest moment, have finally brightened. It’s rush hour and traffic is heavy, as usual. Jurors, released from their day’s duties, cross the street from the courthouses. Attorneys pull boxes of files on rollers. A homicide detective, wearing a powder blue dress shirt and red tie, is among the crowd, his eyes on me.

  I take hold of Cortez’s hand and pull him up the stairs, out of public view.

  “I want to hang out with you. And not as just a friend,” I tell him.

  “No games?”

  “No games.”

  Cortez kisses me. And I kiss him back.

  NINETEEN

  “Really, do we have to do this?” Noah asks me as I park the Green Mile underneath an oak tree. It’s about four o’clock on my day off. I picked up Noah after school so that we could meet Dad here in Griffith Park.

  “You know he loves this place.”

  We get out of the car and there it is, the familiar whiff of horse dung from the neighboring pony rides. We walk away from there, toward the white building with a steeped roof and green trim. There’s a window for tickets and a sign, LOS FELIZ PASSENGER STATION. Three kids stare through the bars of a gate at a small locomotive and train cars.

  “You better look like you’re having fun. We owe him this much,” I say as we find a shady spot across from the mini–train station.

  Noah lets out an audible sigh. He knows that if he hadn’t spilled the beans to Puddy Fernandes, none of this craziness would have been unleashed. It ended okay, in the sense that it eventually led to the arrest of the two Old Lady Bandits (neither of whom turned out to be ladies, and only one of whom really qualified as being old). Cortez got most of the glory for those arrests, but I didn’t mind. I wondered whether Ron Sullivan and his nephew had implicated Fernandes—or me and Lita—in any way. Cortez didn’t mention it, and I’m certainly not going to ask him about it.

  Noah wrinkles his nose when he notices the ride called the Simulator, a “roller coaster” designed for really little kids, three years and younger. It’s supposed to look like a space rover, but actually more resembles a giant computer printer from maybe the eighties or something. The side door is open, revealing a row of seats with seat belts.

  “That thing gave me nightmares,” Noah says.

  “I remember. What was up with that?”

  “Well, they close the door on you in that thing and it jerks around. If that isn’t child abuse, I don’t know what is.”

  A hybrid parks next to the Green Mile.

  “Hi, Dad,” I call out.

  He walks toward us, tugging at his pants pocket. “Do you need money for some tickets?”

  “Ah, can’t we just watch?” Noah is desperate to get out of this.

  “Watch? Watch? No Rushes just sit back and watch.”

  The three kids and their mother sit in one of the train’s open-air cars. The locomotive engineer is in the front seat, and the train has started to move forward.

  “Too bad,” Noah says. “I guess we missed the train.”

  “There’ll be another one coming.”

  “Oh, joy.”

  “In the meantime, get us some Push-Ups.” Dad gives Noah a ten-dollar bill from his wallet.

  That temporarily appeases Noah, who makes his way to the snack bar in between the train station and the pony rides.

  Dad joins me on the low brick planter underneath the tree. The train, with its four passengers, winds through the tracks through a man-made idyllic landscape that looks nothing like LA.

  “I’ve always wondered about him, you know,” Dad says.

  “Who, Noah?”

  “No, I’m talking about my father.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve never mentioned anything to Lita or your mother.”

  The air gets very still.

  “When I found out that I had high cholesterol in my forties and could do nothing to lower it, I started thinking about him again. Did I inherit this from him, his side of the family? What is he like? Is he an ENFJ like I am?” Dad asks, referring to this Myers-Briggs personality test that he’s really into. I’ve forgotten what the letters stand for. “I look like him,” Dad declares.

  “Yeah, you do,” I agree. “But you’re going to be way better-looking when you’re his age. He obviously doesn’t take care of himself.”

  “Now that I’ve seen him, I feel okay. Even better than okay.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve always wondered if he ever thought of me. Or if I was forgotten. Even worse, reviled.”

  “Dad!”

  “M
y mother always referred to it as an indiscretion. I’m happy to know it was deeper than that. They were in love.”

  “They were.”

  “So, in that sense, I wasn’t a mistake.”

  “Dad, don’t even say that.” My father will never, ever be a mistake, especially not to me.

  Noah comes back with the Push-Ups. He notices the somber expressions on our faces. “What happened?”

  “We’re just hot,” Dad says, accepting his Push-Up. “After the ice cream, it’s Simulator time!”

  * * *

  Later, Dad has to go back to work to finish a few things, so I drive Noah back home.

  “Do you think he’ll be back?” Noah asks.

  “Who?” I reply, knowing full well who he is talking about.

  “Grandpa.”

  “Don’t call him that.”

  “But I’ve never had a grandfather. At least not one I really remember.”

  “Find a surrogate, then.”

  “What, a fake one?”

  “No, someone who will take the place of one.”

  “And who could that be?”

  I think about all of our older relatives, our neighbors, our family friends. No good candidates come to mind. And then I think of someone in my own life. “One of these days, I’ll introduce you to someone. His name is Father Kwame and he’s supercool.”

  When Noah hears Father, he’s immediately turned off. His run-ins with priests at his Catholic high school have left him highly suspicious of clergy.

  “You’ll see,” I say.

  “Yeah, I’ll see.”

  As we turn onto my parents’ street, I notice a Lexus driving in the opposite direction, and spot a familiar-looking woman in the passenger seat. “Was that Lita?”

  “Looked like her,” Noah says, without curiosity. As soon as the front door is open, he immediately goes upstairs to his room.

  Mom, meanwhile, is sitting on the couch, her legs splayed apart as if she’s been shocked by some news. “Lita has a new boyfriend,” she tells me.

  “Oh, yeah?” From the corner of my eye, I notice Grandma Toma sitting quietly on the piano bench.

  “He’s Nisei,” she says. I know what Nisei means. Second-generation Japanese American, like Grandma Toma.

  “That’s nice,” I say.

  “He’s a retired accountant. A widower.”

  “Well, you should be happy for her. I guess you won’t be seeing her as much now.”

  “He has a second house in La Quinta.”

  “Fancy. Maybe if you’re nice to Lita, she’ll invite you over there sometime.”

  Mom stays frozen on the couch, still trying to process how her wild mother-in-law has snagged a very respectable widower.

  I quickly say my good-byes. Before I leave, I raise my hand to high-five my grandma. She doesn’t quite get how to do it, and instead shakes my hand awkwardly as if she is meeting me for the first time.

  * * *

  I decide to stop by Osaka’s.

  “Hey, the gang’s all here,” I say, when I see both Nay and Rickie at our table.

  “We’re not all here. Still don’t know what’s going on with Benjamin,” Nay says. She’s wearing her glasses, which means she probably did pull an all-nighter last night.

  “You know something,” Rickie comments, his hands full of edamame.

  “She does.” Nay sniffs. “Or else she’s getting some. Maybe both.”

  Nay’s wrong. I’m not getting any. At least not now. After an hour’s hot and heavy make-out session last night with Cortez, I’d pulled myself away for some air. My chin was chaffed from his afternoon shadow. We actually talked about taking things slow. And then proceeded to make out again for another hour.

  As for knowing something about Benjamin—technically, he should be the one telling them. I’ve leafed through enough of Lita’s old self-help books to learn all about codependency. I shouldn’t be speaking for Benjamin; I should let him do his own talking. But who cares, anyway.

  I tell Nay and Rickie about what’s been going on with Benjamin’s mom, and they react pretty much the way I thought they would: they’re pissed as hell.

  “Why didn’t he tell us? What, he didn’t think that we could handle it or something?” Rickie says.

  “And why did he only tell you? Have you guys gotten back together?” Nay narrows her eyes at me.

  “Remember, my mom had breast cancer.” You don’t really get it until you go through it, I think. But I don’t say it in exactly that way to Rickie and Nay. “He probably thought that I could relate.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Nay says.

  Rickie nods, looking uncharacteristically reflective.

  “What hospital is she in?” Nay asks.

  “St. Vincent’s.”

  “Well, let’s go. Before visiting hours are over.”

  * * *

  I’m not sure how Benjamin’s going to react to the three of us arriving bearing gifts from the Korean organic market in Little Tokyo, but a part of me thinks that he’ll be cool with it. Maybe he always expected me to be his messenger. Codependence sometimes has its role.

  We get off of the hospital elevator on Mrs. Choi’s floor. Passing a full waiting room on our way to her room, we spot the Choi clan inside.

  Rickie’s the first to get to Benjamin. “Hey, man, sorry to hear.”

  Benjamin accepts Rickie’s hug. And Nay’s, too. She can’t help a dig. “You shoulda told us.”

  “I heard that you were kind of distracted yourself,” he says and smiles.

  Sally’s in the room with her husband and Camila. In the cushiest seat again is Benjamin’s grandmother, who motions me to come over.

  “What does she want?” I ask Benjamin.

  “She wants to give you something. She made me go into Little Tokyo to buy it.”

  I crinkle my nose, wondering what it can be. I approach, bobbing my head.

  She presents me with a long box, like a shoe box cut in half lengthwise.

  “Ca-su-te-ra,” his grandmother says.

  Okay, doesn’t help me much, but I just repeat it and bow with a smile, mouthing my thanks. After accepting the box, we move to the other side of the room.

  “What is it?” I ask Benjamin. I look to Benjamin for my translation.

  “It’s like pound cake. The Portuguese brought it over to Japan.”

  “The Portuguese?” I say. “Like from Portugal?”

  “Ah, yeah, that’s usually where Portuguese are from.” Although Benjamin is in worryland, he still can be snarky. Which is a good sign.

  I start to laugh. Softly at first, like when something’s caught in your throat. And then deeper, from my belly.

  Benjamin both frowns and smiles at the same time. “What’s so funny?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” I say, because it really does seem like we will have all the time in the world.

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