Stein Stung Page 13

  “This is getting a little heavy for me,” Matt said, and excused himself to the coffee bar.

  “I think I better make sure Matt is okay,” Angie said, and attempted to make a sitcom escape.

  “You better stay right where you,” Stein ordained.

  “Let her go,” Hillary said. Her tone had become conciliatory.

  Angie gathered up her purse, which she had clumsily dropped alongside Stein’s chair, and whispered for him not to say anything about the murder.

  “I should have seen it coming,” Hillary said. “It’s clear that she prefers being with you to me.”

  “It has very little to do with me, you can be sure.” Stein glanced in the direction of Matt’s departure.

  “He’s gay,” Hillary said, thriving on what she always believed to be her superior inside information. But then her combative posture dissolved. “This is our fault, Harry. We have failed as divorced parents as badly as we failed as married ones.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “Look at her. She lies. She manipulates. It’s all a product of what we’ve done to her.”

  He could see tears forming. “Hill. I don’t like what she did any more than you do. But on the other hand, a little lying and manipulation is a pretty small price to pay, considering some other stories I’m sure we’ve both heard.”

  “Of course you can afford to flaunt your generosity now that you’re the desired parent.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Hillary. Nobody’s flaunting anything. This is your custody week. You should take her.”

  “I suppose when you get married you’ll be filing for sole custody.”

  “Who said anything about married?”

  “Are you telling me you and Lila won’t be getting married?” Hillary was like a child reprieved from certain dismay. “You don’t think you’ll be staying there?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just don’t know what my plans are.”

  “Well, that’s better than being certain you’re going to get married.”

  Hillary took a sip of Harry’s white wine. “I’m sorry. Do you mind?” she asked.

  “No, it’s fine.”

  She studied the glass for a moment after setting it down on the damask tablecloth. Her index finger traced a line down the cool condensation on the graceful curve of its perimeter. “There were things I could have done while we were married, things I should have done, that could have helped. A lot of what happened between us was my fault, Harry. I let you do all the heavy lifting.”

  Jesus, he thought. Where is this coming from?

  “I’ve been seeing somebody,” Hillary confided.

  “Yes, I’ve heard you’ve been fairly active in that arena.”

  “I don’t mean dating. I mean as in under the treatment of.”

  “You’re seeing a shrink?”

  “Don’t you think it’s about time?” It was the first time in years he had heard her laugh. “There can’t be one winner in a relationship,” she went on. “I thought there could be. I thought it had to be me. Because if it wasn’t me then it would have to be you. I mistook your understanding for weakness. I apologize for that.”

  “There’s no need …”

  “Maybe you’ve moved on, Harry. And that’s good. It’s probably what I need to do.” She kissed him on the cheek, her lips lingering for that one tiny extra beat, by which a woman means to convey to a man either you can have me … or you just missed your chance forever.

  ***

  The encounter with Hillary left Stein unsettled. Feeling her undefended vulnerability reminded him of the girl Hillary had been, out of the surf at Santorini, topless, with a ring of seaweed and coral around her neck, her beauty as bright as a sun captured inside the sun.

  Lila’s car was in the driveway. Stein pulled in behind it and tooted the horn to be sure she was home and there would be an orderly transition of supervision. Stein pointed to his watch as Matt and Angie climbed out and made a vague pantomime gesture meant to convey to her that he’d be back soon. When Angie asked where he was going, he made some vague semi-verbal grunt about some things he had to do.

  ***

  When he needed to be Stein again, not anybody’s father or lover or friend or redeemer, he always came back here to the former Chez Stein. He wondered what his former neighbors wondered about him. The occupants of the other four units were all a generation younger. The girl next door was new; he still hadn’t met her though he knew a lot about her. The gay couple, Ryan and Ramón, used the back door mostly, where the garages were, so he hardly saw them. The married couple diagonally across was a little bright-eyed and Mormony for his taste. They had matching Audis with sequential personal license plates that read ZESTY 1 and ZESTY 2. The only person he really knew there was Penelope Kim, and she was still away.

  Sex with her could always be as matter-of-fact as a milkshake and sacred at the same time. She was an original. She had kayaked down the Amazon, witnessed torture by the Khmer Rouge, been the secret lover of the founders of three religions. All these experiences had given her an air of sad knowingness. She was a sheer piece of silk whose only defense was transparency and the power to disappear.

  He let himself inside his old place and closed the door behind him. Nothing had changed since the last time he had been here. Nothing moves in a house except what is moved by the people living there. There were still odd pieces of furniture. A magazine rack in the middle of the floor without the rocking chair that had once been alongside it. Stein felt like he was returning to a desiccated chrysalis or looking at the ruins of Pompeii. Its life had exhaled, retracted from home to four rooms. The envelope he was hoping would not arrive until next month had been delivered. It had a bold red border around its entire perimeter, and in large bold letters, the words RESPOND WITHIN TEN DAYS. He knew what legal document was contained within. His landlord had refused Stein’s offer to go month-to-month. This was an order to renew the annual lease or vacate.

  Two films ran side by side in Stein’s interior Cineplex. In Living with Lila, his life was happily enmeshed with a woman who actually loved him, who saw him for exactly who he was and accepted it all. A trusted friend, a loyal partner, a discreet confidant, a co-parent whom Angie was crazy about, and beyond that, the safety net of financial stability, not that he would ever use it, but it was there.

  In Life without Lila, he lived here. Watson’s collar hung on a nail above the front door. These were his holes in the walls. There was the chance of the girl next door. Or of women he had yet to meet.

  A third possibility interposed itself, triggered by the oddly haunting exchange he had just had with Hillary. What was that about? Did she want to get back with him? Could all the king’s horses and all the king’s men put Humpty Dumpty back together again? He could hear Angie’s “No” thundering through the mountainside.

  He understood it would pull the rug out from under her a second time, undermine all the stability she had carefully rebuilt by balancing herself astride two unsecured platforms. On the other hand, what if her posture were an act? Angie was so good at hiding her true feelings, it was possible that deep down the thing she most longed for was her parents’ reconciliation. Wasn’t that the secret dream of every divorced kid? He closed his eyes for a moment and pictured life with Hillary. But no. Fool me once, shame on … somebody. Fool me twice, shame on somebody else. However that saying went.

  There was one course of action. It was sitting up there like a big fat piñata of an obvious answer. Two people in the world knew him and loved him in spite of it. They were the nucleus of his life. Period. Lila was one of them. He needed to make that nuclear wall a solid thing. He took the apartment lease in hand, and in a ceremonial act as metaphorical and life changing as when he had stomped on the wine glass or tossed the shovelful of dirt on Stein senior’s coffin, he tore the lease asunder. He signed the INTENT TO VACATE form. He took the picture of him in bed with John and Yoko off the wall, left his keys behind him, and drove back to Li
la’s with the intention of asking her to marry him.

  It wouldn’t even be an ask. He would drop it into a conversation about some other activities they were planning. As in, “Yeah and probably that week we should find the time to get married. You don’t want anything big, right? We’ll go to city hall.” He would add those last two sentences because she would think he was kidding at first, and he wanted her to get that he was serious and he meant it. It would give her a chance to register the rapture of Stein’s saying what she never thought he would say. Followed immediately by the stark horror that this might actually become her life, this possibility that she wanted too much to believe could really happen and had made the compensating lowering of expectations to reduce the pain of disappointment. And then to finally say okay in the same offhand tone that he had asked. As an important but not gigantically important part of their upcoming itinerary.

  The closer Stein got to Beverly Hills, the more he attuned himself to be alert for signs of retreat. He did not want to imprison himself to a spontaneous romantic whim. But quite the opposite occurred. The closer he got, the more enthusiastic and calm he felt, and pleased in a profound way that he had made the right decision. Lila was engrossed in a spirited conversation with Mercedes when Stein came home. Lila saw the smile on his face but had no idea of its significance. She remembered there been a phone call for him and handed him the message she had taken down.

  “Good news?” she asked.

  The message was from Jarlene Moody. When Stein called her back, the news she had was not good news. Not good news at all.

  Chapter Nine

  Apologue

  My mother was a queen and I am a queen. I was nurtured in a queen’s chamber. Catered to. Cleansed. Fed a steady diet of royal jelly. One of my sisters was born in a royal chamber, too. Our destiny was to meet. Oh, yes. We met. And she is no more. Her will was weak. Her body snapped under mine. The battle was ghastly and short. Only my mother the queen now stands in the way of my destiny. I seek her out. She knows why I have come. I place my young, fertile body against the aging brittle shell of hers. There is room for only one of us. She tests my will and I hurl her down. I would do what is needed but allow her to choose exile. She signals her followers. They leave in tens, in thousands. I will never see her again. The past is gone. There is only the future.

  The scent of my pheromones becomes the new tone key of the hive. It is my colony. My entourage will anticipate and attend to my every need. My sole purpose will be to become an object of desire. There will be an evening, warm and gentle, when I will make my virgin flight into the world. The air will be dizzy with fragrance, none more erotic than my own. He will find me. He will be drawn to me out of the air. He will descend upon me in flight. When I have taken from him every cell he has to give he will fall away and I will be taken by another. He will encircle me, beating his frantic wings. He must have me. Yes, I will say to him, yes and yes. And when he is done there is another who must have me or die. And he will have me or die. A dozen males will have me. And when I return to the colony the future is within me. I will never again return to the outside.

  I will lay eggs. Filling every chamber with my legacy. My genes. My pitch. Legions of incomplete females and stingerless males. From the moment they break through the wax, their lives will be a succession of services to me all the days of their lives. They will clean the nursery. They will tend the brood. They will construct new comb to store honey for the winter. Their wings will beat in unison and keep the colony at perfect temperature. They will search for nectar and pollen that will feed us. They will explore for miles. They will return with unerring accuracy. They will ride on currents of light and fluctuations of heat and magnetism, scent and ultra violet. They will guard against invaders. They will fight for me to the death. Tens of thousands may die that I shall live. So it must be. I am the future. I am the life. I am the heartbeat. I am the essence. I will lay two hundred thousand eggs this summer and the next and the next. Among them shall be the one who will be destined to supplant me. If she lives.

  The queen is dead. Long live the queen.

  Chapter Ten

  In the short time Stein had been away from the Central Valley an amazing transformation had taken place. The entire landscape was now awash in glimmering white. Those bare trees, the black, branchy hallucinations of war dead that Stein had driven through just a week ago, were now all in blossom. Cinderella had molted her rags and dressed for the ball. She was illuminant. Bejeweled. And there was a scent in the air: not instantly intoxicating like lilacs, but quietly pervasive. Above the sight and above the scent was an incessant, steady hum, as though earth had a room tone. Stein kept looking up for the power line transformers. But there were no transformers. The hum was the bees. Fourteen trillion of them, he had been told. Trillion. More than half the bee population of the entire country had been shipped to this two-hundred-square-mile quadrant to perform the largest man-made pollination event on the planet.

  As staunchly as Stein disdained air-conditioning, he made sure his windows were up. Lila had not been thrilled with Stein’s leaving the day before Valentine’s Day. Despite her wanting to indulge his anticommercial attitude, she was an old-fashioned girl at heart and this would have been their first Valentine’s Day together. Still, she held her tongue and insisted he take her car.

  Given the rushed and overwrought circumstances and the need for his hasty departure that very next morning, Stein had postponed the discussion of marriage to a time when they could give it its proper clear-cut moment. The needle on the REGRET–RELIEF graph tilted more in the direction of relief, he could not help noticing.

  He fumbled with his left hand for the electronic window switch. He never knew where the hell it was. He pressed the control lever for the door locks instead. The loud metallic clomp startled him and he quickly toggled the switch to undo whatever he had done. His fingers searched like four blind worms to be sure that there was no air space between the glass and the top of the window frame. The car was going eighty. At this velocity, if one little bee got sucked into that vortex it would get shot at him, stinger first, like a pygmy blowgun and put his eye out.

  He could not dissolve the image of Aloysius Frank Monahan lying flat on that metal slab, the look of terror embedded so deeply into his face that even Jarlene Moody’s reconstructive skills could not erase it. Stein knew exactly what thoughts had etched that look into the driver’s countenance. It was his mind screaming at him: All our life we knew this was exactly how we would die and here it is happening and there is nothing we can do about it.

  When that bee had crawled into Stein’s ear years ago, it left an indelible prophetic message on his brain that his death would come at the hands of bees. And so he had avoided them. The Holocaust images that had always plagued him were seeing his people walking docilely into boxcars to their own death. Yet here he was doing the same, only faster. Some inexplicable compulsion was propelling him at eighty miles per hour into the dream of his own death, the greatest concentration of bees in the Western world. He was General Custer leading the Light Brigade at Gallipoli. He had to be out of his fucking mind.

  He would come out of this dead or no longer afraid of bees. Jarlene Moody’s voice echoed through his head: “Fear of death is often the cause of death.”

  ***

  Jarlene opened the door at the first knock and looked disoriented to see Stein. She too had changed. She looked her age now. Smaller and stooped. “He was shaving and he just blacked out. He found himself on the bathroom floor. Bleeding. With no idea how he got there.”

  Stein thought of Sig Kroll telling him about planned obsolescence. If your battery’s guaranteed till Christmas don’t expect it to crank on New Year’s Eve.

  “Who’s out there?” Moody’s reedy voice oboed from the adjoining room.

  “No one. The doctor will be here in a minute.”

  “Is it Stein?”

  Stein waited deferentially until she yielded permission for him to go in.<
br />
  “Just, you know, don’t kill him, if you can possibly help it.”

  Stein entered slowly. Renn was tilted back in a reclining chair. He wore a robe. Underneath the robe he wore a shirt and a necktie. That was a good sign. The twin-pronged rubber oxygen tube stuck in Renn’s nostrils like the Greek letter Pi. That was not a good sign.

  “I’m surprised you came,” Renn said.

  “I happened to be in the neighborhood.”

  Renn’s attempt to laugh sounded like clogged plumbing. He took some deep breaths out of the oxygen tube and stabilized himself. “Luckily we always keep a canister.”

  Stein didn’t know what Renn’s battery life was so he jumped right in to the Final Jeopardy! question: What was this deal Hollister made with Henny Spector to rent out depleted bee colonies? Renn struggled to sit up higher. Stein leaned in to help but Renn angrily waved help away. The effort threw him into a paroxysm of wheezing, which was followed by a sharp rap at the front door. Before Renn could answer, Dr. Cartesian strode into the room with an air of imperial command. He was tall with a craggy, architectural face. His curt nod of the head at Stein left no doubt of its meaning.

  “He was just about to tell me something I came up here to find out.”

  “Mr. Stein, please,” Jarlene insisted. She stood at the kitchen door urging him to leave her husband be. She had set out a glass of iced tea for him on the thick wooden kitchen table. All the years of good upbringing don’t get washed away by disaster—they’re instilled as the way to meet disaster.

  “Thank you,” he said. He sipped it slowly to play for time.

  “Sweetener?”

  “No, it’s perfect.”

  “I wish you hadn’t come.”

  “You called me.”

  “I mean the first time. You’ve opened such a kettle of fish. Oh, I don’t even know if I meant that. I can’t blame you for what’s been happening.”

  “I’m swimming in mothballs, here, Mrs. Moody. What is happening?”