The Devil Went Down to Austin

Page 33

"I think," Maia said, "that you should leave."
The Buffett song ended to deafening applause.
Pena checked his watch. "You're right. I'd better get back to my clients. We've got a night dive scheduled after the concert—going to check out an old observatory mirror and a few concrete sculptures sunk at eighty feet off Starnes Island. Sure you don't want to come along? Either of you?"
Before Maia could strangle him with our quilt, I said, "Treat Ruby well, Matthew. Listen to her."
He looked at me as if I'd just slipped into another language. "Whatever you say, Navarre. Enjoy the evening."
Then he melted back into the crowd, people around him fawning over his backstage pass.
Maia followed him with her eyes. Her face was pale, tightly controlled.
I asked the question I'd been trying to avoid for two days. "Did you tell him about Hawaii?"
Maia's eyes reproached me. "No."
"Then how?"
"How does a shark smell blood, Tres? I don't know."
Hawaii, four years ago, had been Maia's and my last vacation together as a couple.
We'd spent a week on the west side of Oahu— drinking, walking on the beach, making love. And then I'd gotten the bright idea it would be fun to dive the Mahi shipwreck off Waianae.
I remember Maia forcing herself through the scuba class, coming up shaky after every practice dive, even the pool sessions, but successfully conning me into believing she was fine. She made it through the skills tests, even convinced our instructor, who was no slacker for safety, that she could handle open sea. We didn't know the kind of terror she'd been suppressing until she hit de^> water— sixtyfive feet under—and panicked.
We fought to get her to breathe and not shoot to the surface. Through the mask, her eyes had been the size of silver dollars. As we made our emergency ascent, she'd purged the contents of her stomach through the air manifold, then clawed my regulator out of my mouth and breathed on it, forcing me to grope for my backup.
For another diver, the failure might not have been so personal, but Maia Lee never retreats, never surrenders. She was raised on stories of her greatgrandfather who survived the Long March, her grandfather who survived reeducation during the Cultural Revolution. For Maia, admitting defeat to a phobia is unthinkable.
We'd flown back to San Francisco twentyfour hours later, Maia curled into her plane seat, intensely quiet, as if she were trying to compress the Mahi dive into her safebox for darkest memories. For months afterward, whenever she looked at me, I saw a tinge of resentment—shame that I'd witnessed her moment of vulnerability.
The fact Matthew Pena had so quickly read that fear, had played up the part of his own life that would maximize her discomfort, filled me with dread. What worried me more was Maia—the fierce pride that had made her push through scuba lessons, deny the warning signs, get sixtyfive feet under before realizing she couldn't handle it. I was worried what would happen if she handled Matthew Pena the same way she handled scuba.
The second song ended. The crowd yelled.
Jimmy Buffett told Austin hello. He wished us all a very merry pina colada, then began something I knew—"Coconut Telegraph."
There'd been a time in Maia's Potrero Hill apartment, cooking green pepper and ham omelettes, coffee percolating, Maia barefoot, in linen white shorts and one of my Tshirts. This song had come on and she'd forced me to dance through the breakfast nook, ended up spraying me with the champagne she was using for mimosas.
The memory passed between us. Her expression softened.
"You want a drink?" I asked her.
"You don't know how much."
We joined the beer line, made uncomfortable small talk while we waited, listened to the Buffett set in progress. The band played "Little Miss Magic" while we tried very hard not to look at each other, not to give each other any cue that we remembered what this song had once been our sound track for.
We got our beers. By the time we made it back to our borrowed quilt, the song had ended and a new peal of excitement had broken out down by the stage. A couple was making their way toward the front in a spotlight. They wore full wedding regalia—the bride in a white silk dress that must've been a thousand degrees inside.
Off mike, the whole audience heard Jimmy Buffett saying, "When—just now?"
Then to the audience, his face grinning on the big screen, "Got a special dedication to the newlyweds, folks."
A big cheer, which got even more riotous as the audience realized the song he'd just begun was "Why Don't We Get Drunk (and Screw)." The bride disappeared below the audience. Maybe she fainted. Somebody knocked the groom's gray top hat off.
I had no special memories associated with this song, which was either reassuring or disappointing, depending on your perspective.
Maia caught me staring at her, tried to look annoyed. "Yes?"
"Nothing. I just—" Stop. Regroup. "What happens next for you— after you clear Garrett of all charges, get Pena sent to the asylum?"
She didn't look happy with the change of subjects. "My choices may be limited."
"Terrence call you again?"
"We've agreed to part company. My junior partnership is over. How amicable the split is, how it affects my chances at a job in another firm—Terrence claims that's up to me."
The "Get Drunk" song wound down. The cheering kept going. Jimmy Buffett yelled, "
Well what did you think I was going to play?"
More cheering.
Maia looked at me like she was choosing her words carefully. "Tres, I may want to look outside the Bay Area."
My heart slowed. "Such as?"
She circled her arms around her knees. "I want to defend people who deserve defending for a while. Coming out here—I may have been trying to tell myself something. I can see why so many Bay Area people have moved to Austin."
I stayed quiet.
"Nothing is certain, Tres. And you are not to get any ideas about my motives."
"No. Of course not."
"You would not stay in San Francisco for me. I would definitely not move here for you."
"Understood."
Something hung in the air between us—fluttery and unformed as a new cobweb, vibrating with the breeze. I was afraid to speak for fear it would rip.
The band started their next song. Jimmy Buffett sang about boat drinks.
I looked down the hill for Garrett, whom I'd momentarily forgotten about. There was no longer a girl on his lap. Next to him stood a biker—a guy in his fifties, with an enormous belly, grizzled beard, and a greasy gray ponytail tied with leather strips. His arms were flabby and lobster red, bulging from a leather vest that had the word DIABLO and a cartoon devil face stitched above the breast. The biker was pointing, his eyebrows raised, his face grim, as if making sure Garrett had heard his point.
Now Garrett looked shaken.
I was on my feet, pushing past a couple of guys with beers in their hands, not bothering to see if Maia was following me.
When I got to Garrett, the biker had vanished into the crowd. Garrett was staring into space, all his enthusiasm for the concert gone.
"You okay?" I demanded.
Garrett nodded, dazed. The parrot waddled back and forth on his shoulder, eyeing me accusingly.
Maia came up next to us.
"Who?" she asked. "And what did he want?"
"Nothing," Garrett said. "A friend of Clyde's. He was saying— he asked if I needed any help. That's all."
He was lying. I hadn't been brothers with him all my life and not learned to tell.
"Look," I said, "if there's a problem . . ."
Maia put her hand over mine.
She was right. It did no good to push.
Buffett kept singing about warm climates, but Garrett didn't seem able to focus. The little bit of spirit the concert had managed to instil in him had drained away.
After another verse, he mumbled, "God help me, but I think I need to leave early."
He asked if he could stay with me out at the dome for the night. I told him he could. I didn't ask why.
As we made our way back to the parking lot, the cheering and music getting farther and farther behind us, I tried not to think about what Garrett had said earlier—about coming here just to plan his funeral.
CHAPTER 29
When my eyes opened the next morning, it was already full light. John, Paul, George, and Ringo beamed down at me from the poster on Doebler's ceiling. Cheers, mate.
Feel like crap today, yeah?
I crawled out of the bed sheets, which were conspicuous for the absence of a sleeping feline.
The last things I remembered from the night before were Maia and Garrett arguing defence strategies in the living room, Robert Johnson curled contentedly in his longlost mommy's lap, the parrot scuttling along the railing of the sleeping loft, looking by no means certain about his new feline housemate. I didn't remember going to bed at all.
I found exercise clothes and snuck downstairs. Garrett's sleeping bag was empty. I didn't see Maia either, but there was a bodyshaped impression in the other sofa, indicating she'd stayed the night. Robert Johnson was curled on the kitchen counter, a bowl of familiar tan liquid next to him.
I took a sniff. Sure enough—Maia's cafe au lait for kitties, Robert Johnson's favourite.
I dipped in a finger. Still warm.
The parrot was sitting next to the cat. Apparently they'd come to some sort of truce.
"Mornin', boys," I said.
The parrot eyed me, then waddled over to Robert Johnson, put his beak close to the cat's ear, and whispered, "Go away."
I blinked. I was afraid if I stayed there any longer, the three of us would start having an intelligent conversation, so I picked up my keys and went out the front door.
The sky was overcast with ugly clouds, the air heavy with humidity. It was going to be a killer of a day—storm or sauna.
I crunched my way down the path toward the lake. The water was teal, a weird reflection of the clouds, as if the world had turned upsidedown.
At the concrete slab, Maia Lee had beaten me to the practice routines.
She was wearing Jimmy Doebler's clothes—his green Ocean Pacific swimsuit and a large white polo shirt. One dead man's wardrobe fits all.
Her hair had been brushed out and reponytailed. Her face was fresh, alert, no worse for her long evening. She practiced barefoot, her black espadrilles set neatly on the base of the kiln.
The morning was quiet except for the rustle of the plastic over Jimmy's pottery shelf, the sleepy drone of crickets.
Maia was in the middle of a Chen form—slow, fluid movements punctuated by bursts of speed. Tiger stance. Punch under palm. A quick attack sequence of fists and snap kicks, then back into slow motion with White Crane Spreads Its Wings.
I did my stretches, rolled my head around, and got a sound like sugarcane snapping. I ran through some stances to get the burn into my leg muscles.
Maia crouched into Snake Creeps Down—her front leg fully extended, her weight on the back, low to the ground. Her spine was perfectly straight, her back hand forming a bird's beak, front hand a palmstrike to the ground. She held that position, which was not easy to do.
I stood there admiring her until I realized she was inviting me to join.
I walked to the slab, sank into position. Maia unfroze. Together, we finished the form.