Chapter Twenty
To Danny Predmore the weather in L.A. felt like that of a warm spring day in Michigan. It heightened his mood as he stepped out of the airport terminal into the balmy, coastal air. Once behind the wheel of his rental car, he immediately lowered the windows to clear out the stale odor of cigarettes, then decided to leave them down while he drove — it was that warm.
Though he did not detect anything particularly noxious riding the incoming breeze, he wondered about what pollutants he might be breathing in. On approach to LAX, he had noticed an immense, dirty-brown cloud hanging over the Metroplex. Of course, he’d seen bad air before, growing up during the polluted sixties in the shadow of the Chevy complex, and also over Southwest Detroit where he had worked for years. But somehow, this place did not seem as bad as he had been led to expect, especially considering the palm trees and the warmth. It was 64 degrees — in January! He would not see a day like this in Michigan until April at the earliest.
So, with both front windows down and the Hertz map laid out on the seat next to him, Danny aimed the green Ford Taurus down the freeway toward Anaheim. He was booked at the Best Western near the Convention Center.
There was city everywhere, as far as his eyes could see. And traffic, too. He was also well acquainted with freeway driving, had been since his teen years, but he had not seen anything quite like this. The sheer volume of it was staggering. He was beginning to understand the genesis of the term “freeway madness.” People seemed courteous enough though. No one appeared ready to run him off the road for not signaling his intention to change lanes or some other inadvertent error. But, then again, it was only a little after three o’clock on a Saturday, no doubt a light day and time for freeway traffic.
Seeing the Interstate junction sign, he stole a glance at the map. He had to turn south onto the 605. About ten more miles to go and he would be there.
In the four-and-a-half hours he spent in the air, Danny did a lot of thinking. He thought about work and how Vic had been riding his backside lately. Again, he wondered how he was going to succeed this year with the company’s expectations for his department set in the stratosphere. Ironically, Base Line Industries would profit immensely even if his team only succeeded in hiring half the people his business plan called for. But Danny’s personal income would suffer if he missed the numbers by a mere ten percent. Much more than that and he could probably count on being replaced.
Sometime back, he remembered actually enjoying his work. Now, he could not even recall what a happy career felt like. This was particularly vexing because, without exception, in a recent company survey, every staffer his team hired this past year put job satisfaction as a “top three” career priority. His mission, indeed the mission of the entire company, was to make certain those priorities were achieved. So, everyone coming into the company could expect to have present and future job satisfaction. Everyone would have a happy career — except him! Too bad that irony did not seem to register with his superiors, especially not with Vic DeSalvo.
Feeling depressed over this recognition, when the flight attendant came by, Danny asked for a beer, which he then quickly drained as an antidote for his troubled state of mind.
His thoughts turned to Julie. Her letters made it seem as though she had evolved into a markedly different person. She had had a year-and-a-half of living apart from him and apparently used it to make some real improvements in her life. She had become more physically fit, more energetic, and more content with herself after finally landing a career of her own. She had even gone back to college to work toward her degree. In fact, from his still far-off viewpoint, it looked pretty impressive. With this realization, Danny felt the reverberations of a dissonant chord being struck somewhere near his heart. Given her new persona, Julie might no longer see him as her equal. In her eyes there may no longer be much consideration of the past, of the twenty years of her life he had occupied. She may very well have abandoned her need to look back. She might even prefer to keep everything associated with her old life buried deep in the frozen Michigan ground, him included. Yet, because of what she had hinted at in her last letter, he maintained a glimmer of hope that new life could again spring forth for them as a couple, that his past mistakes were indeed not fatal, their winter, not interminable. He only hoped that, by the time the sun rose a week from today, it would shine down warmly upon the two of them, bright with the hope of a brand new season for their relationship.
Of course, his personal journey had brought him through some changes as well. He had put considerable distance between himself and the person he had been during their married years — especially so in the past two weeks. And, at least from his viewpoint, these changes made him a better man — more balanced and, presumably, more desirable. He hoped that Julie might also see him in this light, not simply as the flawed man she used to know, although he had no idea how to help her isolate present reality from two decades of experience. Unfortunately, when divorce separates two individuals, their opinions, being much more deeply rooted, generally stay attached. At least he had taken the time and effort to set the stage with his letters.
Still, no matter what the outcome of the week ahead, he was not going to change back. A long time in coming, this new Danny was the Danny he has always wanted to be — a Renaissance Man, fully renewed. And just like Julie, he had nothing whatsoever to look back for.
His hotel room was small but cheerful, decorated in pastels and sea moss greens. The one window overlooked an outdoor courtyard and swimming pool, neither of which was in use this afternoon.
After hanging his shirts and suits, Danny took a shower and shaved. Then, after wiping his face with a washcloth, he studied his reflection in the harsh fluorescent light from the overhead fixture. He wished he did not look so pale. As it was, no youthfulness remained in his visage. And, in spite of all the work he had done to get his body in shape over the past two weeks, he still had nearly ten extra pounds to shed, mostly from around his waistline. Here and there, a gray hair sprung from his chest, too many now to pull out. His once-youthful blond hair, fine as silk thread, had long since darkened and was now receding. Standing back to survey the entire picture, he worried that he had lost so much over the years that Julie would not be interested in what he presently had to offer, especially since she had been working non-stop for a year-and-a-half on her own appearance and could probably still turn heads.
But he could not do a single thing about the fact that he was aging, or that his youth had departed. Frustrated, but not to the point of despair, he vowed to perish all such worrisome thoughts on this painful subject.
After doing so, he dressed in a pair of khaki slacks and a navy-blue sport shirt — a decidedly ordinary outfit. What he did have to offer could no more be defined in terms of clothing than by a measure of youthful, physical attractiveness. His proposition was a matter for the heart alone to consider. There was no point in trying to dress it up with fancy clothes. Fortunately, however, he had recently put a fresh shine on his shoes, and the cleaners had pressed a single, straight crease into his trousers. First impressions were still important.
Leaving the Best Western, he avoided the freeway and drove instead along Harbor Boulevard toward Costa Mesa. The hotel desk clerk told him how to find Julie’s house; she said it would be easy since all the streets running off W. Balboa Boulevard were numbered in reverse sequential order. He also figured that, somewhere along the way, he could find a flower shop.
It occurred to him that he had not been so anxious about seeing someone since he’d been a teenager. Even with Julie, things had been different the first time around. There was no real anxiety or apprehension then, at least none that he could remember now, nearly a quarter-century later. Back when they had first met, the two of them flowed together naturally, like they were meant for each other and nothing could possibly pull them apart. But something had. And now, oddly enough, he felt a sense of oppressive angst over seeing her again, like they might cross each once more, and the slightest provocation would produce the same disastrous results that occurred before. And the worst part was, he remained clueless regarding how to realign himself with her in such a way that they might fit together harmoniously again, with no lingering animosity between them.
He mentally struggled to put a handle on his feelings and, after a moment’s consideration, came up with “threatened.” That was it — he felt threatened. Only he did not know what specifically was posing a threat to him or his potential future success with Julie. If it was he, himself, in the person of the old Danny, he figured he had a good chance of overcoming the odds and rekindling her affections. But if it were an outside threat — maybe another man for instance — a much tougher challenge might be awaiting him.
Fortunately, before he drove himself crazy with such thoughts, he saw a large, painted sign for the Fountain Valley Florist. He hoped yellow roses were in season.
Minutes later, bouquet in hand, Danny emerged from the flower shop, got back into his rental car, and continued the journey southward. So far, California did not look so much different from the metro-Detroit suburbs where he grew up — except for the bright sunlight, the exotic vegetation, the palm trees, and all the foreign cars. Harbor Boulevard, one long commercial strip, resembled Van Dyke Avenue or Woodward, and peeking down the cross streets, Danny could see cookie-cutter houses, no doubt built during the postwar boom. It was remarkably like home.
He turned south on 55 and continued eyeing the scenery as he approached Newport Beach and the Balboa Peninsula. Here in Costa Mesa the atmosphere seemed a little more up-market than that of a few miles back in Santa Ana. Driving along with his windows still down, Danny sensed he was getting close to his destination. There was fresh humidity in the air, intensifying with every breath. Then, as he piloted the Taurus over the edge of the mesa, he saw the montage below. His eye went immediately to the water. Sparkling like a sea of diamonds in the late afternoon sun, the Pacific rose up to meet the horizon. Danny’s heart suddenly became a huge lump in his throat.
Five minutes later, he glided to a stop just past his wife’s villa. Pausing to take one last peek at himself in the mirror, he smoothed his hair, grabbed the bouquet of flowers, and headed for her front door.
Julie was not expecting visitors and, this being Saturday, she immediately suspected some religious proselytizers had come to call. Or perhaps it was someone out selling magazine subscriptions or collecting for charity. It was a good day for any and all such activities. But she was not in the mood to fight off “Witnesses” or to explain why her budget would not permit any new expenses at present. So, regardless of the cause, she thought it best to simply not answer. She did, however, try to steal a glimpse of whoever it was by peeking out her living room window. The bell rang again. Unfortunately, when she peeked out, only a pair of brown men’s shoes could be seen in the gap below the iron porch door. Her angle of view and the bars of the gate obscured everything else.
Finally, after the doorbell rang for the third time, she felt obliged to yield to his persistence, if not to her own curiosity.
When she opened the door to the porch and saw Danny standing there, seven feet away, her pulse quickened. Her insides lurched upward, temporarily preventing her from speaking. She simply stood there motionless, gaping at him across the sun porch.
“Hi, Jul,” Danny said, one hand behind his back concealing the flowers.
“Danny!” She blurted out, while reaching into her pocket for the key to open the gate. “Here, let me unlock that for you.” The heavy mechanism clanked. She studied his face.
“What on God’s earth are you doing here?” She managed a smile. It was the little wry smile of a kid experiencing her first sour ball, an expression he had seen on her face many times before.
“I came to brighten your day.” He handed her the bouquet.
“Oh, my,” she said, accepting the yellow roses. “They’re beautiful. I don’t know what to say. This is all so...so surprising.”
“You don’t have to say anything at all. Just let me look at you for a moment.” They remained in the entryway of Julie’s sun porch. Danny looked her over as if judging a racehorse, close-up. She immediately became self-conscious, remembering that she had not fixed herself. She was clothed in jeans and an old knock-around flannel shirt.
“You look fantastic.”
“You think?”
“Absolutely.”
“You don’t look so bad yourself,” Julie told him. “What are we doing standing here? Come inside.”
She followed him into the living room. With her free hand, she grabbed her computer off the chair and set it on the TV cabinet. She pointed to the chair and suggested he make himself comfortable while she put the flowers in a vase.
“I hope I can find one big enough. It’s not often I get a dozen roses.” She could not remember the last time. She banged a couple of cabinet doors in the tiny kitchen and then ran the water.
She called to him across the snack bar, “You didn’t really answer my question, you know.”
“What question was that?”
“The one about what you were doing out here, two thousand miles from home.”
“Just dropping by, like I said I would.”
Julie set the cut-glass vase on the bar and began inserting the roses, one at a time, trimming the stems with kitchen shears.
“I believe you’re BS’ing me Danny. You know that?”
“Maybe I am — a little. But I’m still here.”
Her curiosity was moving upward and off the scale. “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”
“Okay, I’ll come clean. But only because you’re wearing my favorite shirt.”
“This old thing?”
“Yeah. I gave it to you for Christmas some years back. Remember?”
She had forgotten. “Right. I’ve always liked it too.” That at least was true. She finished arranging the roses, came back into the living room and sat down in a chair across from him. “So...?”
“Okay. It’s both business and pleasure. I have a three-day recruiting seminar to attend in Anaheim, starting Monday. Then, a couple days of vacation.”
“You’re here for the whole week?”
“Right. Till Sunday afternoon.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“Well, you certainly did that. What can I get you to drink?”
“What are you having?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been drinking coffee all day. I’m in the mood for something else, maybe some orange juice or something.”
“Sounds great. I’ll have some too.”
This was strange, she thought, while arising to get the glasses and pour the juice. Danny never asked for orange juice before, except at breakfast.
“I like your house,” he said, getting up and following her as far as the snack bar.
“It’s not much, but it’s cozy.”
“Maybe you can show me around.”
“You’ve already seen most of it.” She handed him a tumbler, nearly full of O.J. He raised it to her.
“Here’s looking at you kid,” he said with a tough guy inflection, not really sounding like Bogart.
She giggled a little. “Come on, follow me. I’ll show you the rest of the place.”
She had no worries; everything was still pristine from her marathon cleaning session of yesterday. She led him through the living room and into the hall. Danny watched her as she walked. Thinner than the Sunday paper, he thought. But she’s as foxy as ever.
Stopping by the bathroom, she pointed to the doorway. “This was my first decorating effort after moving in. I wanted to make it look like California from around 1970.”
“Fantastic. I love it.” He walked in and took a closer look at one of the watercolor beach scenes hanging on the wall.
Julie shook her head. He never used to like orange and yellow, especially together, she thought.
“Over here’s my bedroom. I did this up with a Country French theme in mind.”
Danny walked in. He whistled. “You’ve got a gift for this. I’m really impressed.”
“No kidding.”
“I’m serious. I see you’ve still got the owls to keep you company.”
“Yup. Lots of good memories there.”
She led him across the hall and pushed open the door to the spare room. “This used to be a garage, but about twenty-five years ago, it was converted to a second bedroom. I use it for storage.” She pointed to the vinyl curtain. “The washer and dryer are back there.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Yeah, no more lugging the clothes down the basement and back again.”
“It’s great.”
“The laundry room?”
“No, no, the house. It’s perfect for you.”
“I think so too. And it’s wonderful having the beach so close, especially in summer.”
“What are you talking about. It feels like summer now.”
“No, Danny, this is winter. It’s January, remember?”
“Right, right, what was I thinking?” He banged his forehead with the heel of one hand.
They sat back down in the living room. Julie felt awkward. She was running out of innocuous things to say. Sooner or later he might ask how her job was going. She did not have a suitable response at the ready.
“How about dinner out tonight?” Danny asked. “Unless you have other plans, that is.”
“No, no…I mean yes — sounds great!” He had already broken her somber mood and cut through her two-day funk.
“Well, I haven’t eaten a thing since the crummy snacks on the plane, so let’s go now. We’ll beat the rush.”
“I need to change first.”
“Okay, if you want. But I think you look perfect already.”
“At least let me wash my face and put on a little fresh makeup.”
“Sure. I’ll just wait here.”
She handed him the TV remote. “You can watch something while I get ready.”
“Thanks.”
Julie hustled into the bathroom. She flicked on the hot water tap and clipped her hair back in preparation for washing-up. She could hardly believe he was here. It did not seem real.
Waiting for the water to warm a little, she applied some underarm deodorant. Too bad she didn’t have time to jump into the shower. She wanted to rid her mind of the ickiness she had been feeling before Danny arrived, rinse her earlier woes completely down the drain, at least symbolically.
Quickly, she washed and dried her face and then inspected herself in the mirror. She beheld her narrow chin for about the millionth time. Two large, slightly sunken eye sockets stared back at her until she regarded her high cheekbones — one of her better features. Then she took in the tiny lines around her mouth that seemed to be multiplying. A proper make-up application should take about fifteen minutes, but she didn’t want to leave Danny waiting so long. She wondered if a rush job would be flattering enough.
Get a hold on yourself, she thought. You’re losing it — again! She listened but could not hear the TV.
“Danny,” she called, cracking the door open, “Feel free to help yourself to some more juice if you want.”
“Thanks, but I’m okay, Jul.”
“I may be a few minutes.”
“No problem. Take your time.”
While rearranging her cosmos, Julie’s mind flipped through a hundred questions: What is he really up to? Why didn’t he let me know he was coming? Why is he so different, so polite, so accommodating? What if he wants to get physical later, and I have to fight him off? I couldn’t handle that again. And why hasn’t he so much as touched me, or offered me a hug, or a handshake? Not that I’d have wanted a hug, of course, a handshake would have been fine — appropriate, actually. What should I tell him about my job?
By the time she had her lipstick on, she was starting to sweat again, so she applied more deodorant. She brushed her hair and took one last look in the mirror, turning for a profile exam as well. She had no chest whatsoever in this shirt. What could Danny possibly like about it?
“Okay, I’m ready.”
Danny was right where she had left him; he had not turned on the tube.
“This is a nice place to sit and think,” he remarked.
“It’s my favorite.” She grabbed her coat off the rack.
“It would be mine too.” He got up to leave with her.
“What were you thinking about?”
“It’s funny,” he replied, making eye contact with her.
“What?”
“It’s been a year-and-a-half since we’ve been together and before coming out here, that seemed like a lifetime to me. Now that I’m here, it seems more like yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” Incredible. She was still in lifetime mode.
“Right. Except that you, my dear, are much more beautiful here in your natural setting.”
“Oh, stop it, Danny. You’re being ridiculous. Let’s just go eat.”
“Okay, but you have to pick the place. I’m not yet up on the local hangouts.”
“Then we’ll go to the Abalone Grill.”
“Sounds perfect.”
“Shit, Danny. How the hell would you know? By the way, I hope you brought a jacket with you. It gets cold around here at night, especially in winter.”