Chapter Two
The twelve-mile journey back to Coronado should have been straightforward but it had taken ninety minutes. The trip had started without promise. Isobel had torn a fingernail as she fumbled with the key in the ignition. It had broken and split down to the cuticle and it had taken all her resolve to hold back the tears and drive.
Clenching the steering wheel, she had crossed over to San Diego County and into the thriving town of San Ysidro, where English was rarely spoken. A first and last port of call for cross-border travellers, by day the streets buzzed with Mexican day-trippers filling shopping bags with US branded clothing. Now the malls stood closed and the pavements empty.
The fear from her interview had given way to nausea that, in turn, became simmering anger. As darkness set in, only the neon lights of San Ysidro shouted out to the passing motorists, flashing by in an annoying blur of red and green. The blue interstate sign marked “North” jumped out at her as she drew level with it, and she jerked the wheel down to the right, only to find she had taken the wrong freeway.
She followed the signs for San Diego, using her instincts to correct her mistake, to eventually find herself headed into downtown, having half- circled the city. Her upper body stiffening yet further from the tension, she again cursed her own misjudgement in agreeing to Ryan’s suggestion of using his pickup.
The dashboard clock showed ten when Isobel turned onto the Coronado Bay Bridge. As she reached the brow she could still make out the red turrets of the Hotel del Coronado, San Diego County’s most iconic landmark. It presented a castle-like profile against the grey sky, belonging more to the Swiss Alps than the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
A look to the left offered an uninterrupted view down to Tijuana, a fluorescent spectacle in the distance. But Isobel’s focus stayed straight ahead, her only distraction the frequent blue suicide counselling signs with their toll-free number for those intending to make the bridge their final stop.
Monday night, much like every night in Coronado, offered little for serious night owls. Only the Irish-style pub favoured by the Navy SEALs gave signs of merriment. Those looking to party had already made their getaway, either over the bridge or, if they preferred hard action, down south to take their chances in Tijuana.
The lights no longer shone in the cafés and restaurants that lined Orange Avenue. A few still showed signs of life, but only from the staff who cleaned tables and set up for the early morning starts. Coronado oozed quintessential Republican California, now cocooned in silk nightdresses and soft slippers.
The sound of dry rubber scraping the glass pulled Isobel from her reverie; the rain had stopped and the moon shone clear through the disappearing clouds. Though only half a mile from home, she pulled the Chevy off the road and onto the concrete forecourt of Coronado’s only gas station. She ordered an over-the-counter decaf, and nursed it behind the wheel as a fight raged within her.
She tapped her phone into life. A string of missed calls from Ryan popped onto the screen, broken up only by a text from her friend Maria in London, demanding “Call me now got some hot goss.” Isobel laughed, sure that Maria would draw the line at a six a.m. wake-up call, no matter how juicy a titbit she had to impart.
Isobel drained the last of the coffee and fired up the pickup. She closed her eyes and sighed, wanting nothing more than the miserable night to end, and to avoid the inevitable scene with Ryan.
Any hope that Ryan had turned in early died as she drew to a halt. Low-level lights lit up every window. To those who knew Coronado, you could not beat the location. The property stood behind a white picket fence across from the beach yet close to Orange Avenue, the heartbeat of the town. But the house itself would hardly turn a tourist’s head. It consisted of a modest single-story wooden affair with a blistered clapperboard front, an exterior that, in all respects, had seen better days. In sunlight, it bore all the hallmarks of a tired rental property in need of a dash of investment and a dollop of TLC, a far cry from the country estate she had fled back in England. The compact rental she had exchanged for the convenience of Ryan’s Chevy barely fitted in the token driveway.
No welcome waited as she entered, her arrival drowned by the sounds of a college basketball game blaring out from the TV. She hit the main light and Ryan’s head appeared over the couch.
“Comfortable?” she asked, as he sprang to his feet.
Seven years younger than Isobel, with his boyish good looks and blond highlights, he could have passed for being in his late twenties. He wore an LA Dodgers hoodie and blue jeans, fashionably torn at the knees. The debris of an evening spent slouching and snacking on the couch littered the room. Isobel’s resolve to avoid an argument deserted her. She brushed past him and pushing his outstretched arms aside grabbed the remote and hit the off button. Stray potato chips crumbled under her feet. She stood motionless, staring at the blank screen with her back to him, before spinning round.
“Juanita came over this morning and this place is already a tinker’s tent.”
“Chill out. It’s nothing I can’t fix in five minutes.” He put his hands to her cheeks. “Now what gives? I tried to call you all evening. I’ve been getting more and more worried.”
“It looks like it, glued to the idiot box.”
She pushed his hands away and began collecting up the mess around her—a near-empty wine bottle, a pizza box, a men’s lifestyle magazine. A film script lay open on the table. His hands went to her hips as she stooped over the low table.
“Babe, what’s with the attitude? Saturday morning things rocked.” He leant over and kissed the back of her neck. “Remember?”
She remembered: how they overslept and he had joined her in the shower, ignoring her half-hearted protests about running late. They had made love for so long that the hot water ran cold. Now their giggles and shivers seemed a lifetime ago.
“A lot has happened since Saturday morning.” He pulled her to him but she pushed him back. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re a pothead?”
He laughed. “A what? Now I know you’re kidding me.”
“I spent two hours this evening in the custody of the police or the border guards or God knows who, being grilled and humiliated, and all because of you!” She could see she had startled, perhaps shocked him, with both the revelation and the accusation. But she could almost feel the blood simmering beneath her skin, and she continued her onslaught. “How could you let me go across the border in your damn truck when you’ve been carrying dope around in it?”
“Hey, hey. This is horseshit! Calm down, tell me about it, start to finish.” He took her by the hand. “Come, on, let’s sit down.” He grabbed a glass and poured the last of the wine into it. “Here, take this, it cures most ailments.”
Isobel gave a half smile and immediately gulped down what he offered. On her empty stomach the alcohol flowed straight into her bloodstream and she could feel an almost immediate calming effect. She recounted the events of the evening, his concern mellowing her mood. He listened with intensity, asking questions and seeming to want to be sure of the accuracy of every detail. He consoled and caressed her as she relived the fear, reassuring her that she had been treated unforgivably and that she had handled herself well. He had opened another bottle while she talked.
He took her chin in his hand. “Listen up now. Forget those jerks- offs at the border. Shit happens. It’s nothing to do with what we’ve got going together.” He kissed her forehead. “Like they said, a routine check, that’s all. It could have happened to anyone.”
Isobel sensed an attempt to throw a veil over her ordeal. “But it happened to me. And there is nothing routine about having someone watch you take a pee,” she added, but more softly.
Ryan missed her change in tone. “But they had nothing on you and they knew it. They just wanted to cover their fat asses by having you sign that form. You didn’t need to, and you were kinda stupid to let them bully you into it.”
“Not do it?” she exploded. “With the threat of deportation hanging over my head? Not to mention some policewoman’s fingers groping around inside me? It’s easy for you to say that now.”
“Can’t you see that was all a bluff? They wanted to put the fear of God in you, that’s all.”
“Well, they did a damned good job of it. And the reason they could do it was because of that shit in your truck, or are you telling me they bluffed on that too? That stuff got in there somehow, and you know how it did.”
Ryan leant back and indulged in a theatrical sigh. “Okay, let’s back the fuck up and see if we can get some perspective here, if you can just quit lecturing me. Can you do that?” He helped himself to the last of the nachos, and she folded her arms and waited. “We’re in California— carrying a handful of weed is not a lynching offence. And I make my living in Tinsel Town, remember? You can’t go to the men’s room at a church social without seeing someone shooting up or snorting up.
Everyone’s on some kind of shit, even if it’s just alcohol.” As if to reinforce his point, he reached for the wine and filled her glass. “But I didn’t know anything about pot that some knucklehead might have left in the Chevy. If I had, I never would have let you use the van. I just wanted to be helpful, for Christ’s sake. But however it got there, I’m sorry.”
It ranked as an apology of sorts and Isobel decided to settle for it. She stood up from the couch and went to the window, as if to put some distance between them. Her mind was back in her student days, seeing again her mother’s look of shame when the local magistrate had sentenced a sobbing Isobel for possession.
“I’m not telling you how to live your life, but I don’t want drugs anywhere near me. What you do in LA is up to you, but in this house— ”
“What kind of asshole do you take me for?”
She let out an ironic laugh. “That’s not the first time someone’s used that line on me.” The memory of her last ill-fated choice of a lover re- fuelled her anger. “In the morning, I want you to move your gear out.”
“What gear?”
“The things you’ve been leaving here each time you show up. Shirts and shoes, that guitar you never play, and everything else. Juanita’s washing as many of your clothes as she is mine, and she’s not been slow to tell me.”
“So now it’s about a few dollars for laundry?”
“No, it’s about me. I’ve just come out of one nightmare back in England and I need my own space, at least for now. Plus I’ve got Maria coming over next month to celebrate my birthday and I want her to stay with me when she’s here.”
He made a sweeping gesture around the room. “Your house, your rules, babe.”
They stood in silence, facing one another. Isobel put her hands to the back of her neck, held her head back and let out a heavy sigh. The anger she had brought back from the border now vented, she wanted reconciliation. She stepped forward and ran her fingers through his hair. “Let’s not argue anymore. I’m shattered after everything today. I need to get some rest.”
“You want me to go right now?”
“I need some time to think about things, that’s all. Everything has happened so fast these last two months. Give me a couple of days—”
“And you’ll call me?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“It’s exactly what you’re saying.” He pulled her hand from his hair. “Do you think I’m some cheap gigolo that you can call whenever you want a fuck?”
In her mind she had offered an olive branch and he had spurned it. She brushed past him, picked up the glasses from the table, and moved to the kitchen. He followed her movement and when she turned from the sink he stood with his arms at shoulder height, his hands gripping either side of the doorframe.
“Well, do you?” he asked, almost spitting out the question. She tried to push past him but he held firm, blocking her exit, his hands now on her shoulders. He squeezed her gently, temper evaporating with his touch. He smiled, and his face lit up, with that mischievous look of his that first attracted her to him across a lobby bar. The same way he had held her gaze, her defences melting, the night he sheepishly suggested a “quick night-cap.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”
“But you said it,” he said, disappointment clear on his face.
The antique clock that Isobel had brought with her to America, her only reminder of a home left far behind, struck midnight. Like a gavel in a courtroom, it signalled the need for a time out. She looked at Ryan, sorrow and need in her eyes. He took her hands and kissed the top of her head.
“I’m sorry about the mess and about what I said. You’re my princess, you know.” He pulled her into his chest. She let her body sink into his, and hugged him around the waist.
“It doesn’t matter about the state of the place. It never did.” She put her hand to his groin. “Let’s go to bed. We can talk more in the morning.”
She had made love clinging to him without thought to her own pleasure, only wanting to be held. Afterwards, she had drifted into sleep entwined with his body, no longer angry or afraid. At some time during the middle of the night she had woken from a fitful slumber and Ryan’s comforting had moved on to more lovemaking. She remembered being kissed from head to toe, his tongue snaking in and out of the crevices of her body, then being stripped of her nightshirt before he rose above her. She had neither resisted nor encouraged him, only mumbled about tiredness and he had responded: “No worries, babe, I’ll do all the work.”
She awoke to bright sunlight streaming through the white shutters of the window that faced the ocean. She rolled over and reached out but found herself alone. “Ryan?” she said, the fog in her mind clearing, thinking first he must be in the bathroom. But the only water she could hear were waves breaking along the shores of Silver Strand. The first day of March had arrived and the violent storm that had hit Coronado had continued on elsewhere. The island had returned to its natural state of year- round sunshine.
She threw back the covers, naked, and sprung from the bed. Sounds of high activity now banged and clattered in from the direction of the kitchen. Cupboards clanked open and closed, coupled with telltale signs of glass and china clinking. She could smell fresh bread. It had been three days since she had been grocery shopping, so she knew that he must have sneaked out to the bakery. She brushed speckles of sleep from her eyes as her thoughts returned to her fit of temper the previous evening. She pressed her face into her hands at the memory. “Ryan, darling, come back to bed,” she called out, waiting for the noise to cease and the powerful tread of his footsteps to echo against the polished wood floor.
He did not answer. Her jeans and blouse lay crumpled under her feet and she picked them up and threw them over the back of a chair. She grabbed a bathrobe, impulsively discarded it, letting it fall to the floor in a flurry of white. Instead she pulled on a red silk wrap that barely covered her hips. An atomizer of perfume lay on the dresser and she gave a quick dab to her neck, and the top of her thighs. As she stepped into the lounge she could see that Ryan had been busy with more than just shopping and cooking. His clothes and other belongings had been gathered up, and in the process he had cleared away the general mess she had walked into the previous evening. She could hear the sizzle of a frying pan and the distinctive smell of smoked bacon hit her. She started forward but stumbled against her overnight bag. She delved into it to retrieve the cowboy’s poncho she had bought in Rosario. “Ryan, you had no need to do all this. Now leave the cooking, I want you to try something on.”
A smiling face appeared from the kitchen, but not the one she expected.
“Juanita, what are you doing here?” she blurted out, dropping the present and hastily pulling her wrap tight.
“But you got my message, señora? When I arrive yesterday Mr. Ryan is busy with his computer. I tell him that I come today, because I did not want to be an annoyance with my cleaning.”
Isobel let out a sigh. “Very thoughtful of you, but I wish you had called me.”
“Of course, señora. To call you is better, but Mr. Ryan, he tell me that he should let you know.”
Isobel’s mind went to the string of missed calls from Ryan that she had not returned, consumed as she had been by anger. And now, she realized, whatever his responsibility for the marijuana, she had attacked him unnecessarily over the state of the lounge and he had neither corrected her nor dismissed her for her hasty assumptions.
“Has Mr. Ryan—Ryan, I mean—shown up?”
“Perdóname, I do not understand.”
“Do you know where Ryan is now?”
Juanita offered an apologetic shrug. “I do not know, señora. When I arrive I see no one. Only you, in the bedroom, and I do my best not to disturb you.” Isobel scanned the room again and Juanita’s eyes followed her lead. “Is everything okay, señora?”
“Yes, of course. The clothes in this room, where are they?”
“I saw no clothes, only your shoes.”
“Sorry, I meant my shoes. Is there any coffee?”
“Of course, but I can also make you tea if you wish it.”
Isobel followed Juanita into the kitchen, searching around for any message or sign to indicate where Ryan might be. The key to his Chevy had been taken from the wall hook and replaced by the extra door key she had cut for him. She fingered the key and for a moment she could not speak. She stood motionless. Juanita touched her shoulder, compassion in her eyes, but said nothing.
Isobel turned her face away, and returned to the bedroom, carrying her coffee. Ryan filled her thoughts, and she meandered around, unsure what she was looking for, other than perhaps hope. She went into the narrow closet. The jacket and trousers he had left on his last visit, the tie she had bought him but he had never worn, no longer hung where she remembered. She pulled the hangers from side to side, before falling back against the wall, realizing he had taken everything. Or almost everything. On the top shelf, too high to see other than a few inches of dangling strap, lay his guitar. She laughed at the irony of it. He had forgotten the one thing he claimed he treasured, an instrument she had yet to hear him play.
She returned to the bedroom dragging her bare feet under her. She lifted the pillows, wondering if he had left a note. She looked around some more before she spotted a stray sheet of paper next to the bed. She must have knocked it to the floor as she awoke from her slumber. It carried a simple message:
Sorry to shoot off, babe—didn’t want to wake Sleeping Beauty. I need to head back to the smog first thing. I’ll call you.
Isobel slumped to the bed. I’ll call you? Had he taken her at her word, moving his belongings out and giving her the space she had asked for? Or was this good-bye?