His eyes widened in alarm. “You call that nothing? I say that’s some bad juju, girl, and you’re nervous. I can tell. And you should be. I’ll keep a lookout, and you keep that gun of yours loaded. There’s some fucking maniac they’re calling the Monster running around the city. You can’t be too careful.”
“No, you really can’t be too careful.” Melody felt a sudden emptiness in her stomach. Not hunger or hangover but a vague, painful void originating from someplace else. It was the feeling of being alone. “Thanks. Do you want some coffee? Rosemary tea?”
“I’m good, thanks. Hey, do you know somebody with a black Jeep?”
“No. Why?”
“I see one around sometimes. Parks outside. Maybe you have a secret admirer and he brought the flowers.”
Melody’s thoughts stuttered, then stopped. Sam had asked her if Ryan drove a black Jeep. “I don’t know anyone with a black Jeep. Maybe he lives around here.” Or maybe he’s watching you.
Teddy puffed up his narrow chest. “I told you, I’ll keep an eye out. If you need anything, give me a shout, I’m always here unless I’m surfing.”
“Thanks. Stay safe, watch out for the men in gray suits.”
“For sure. And you watch out, too.” He swept into another theatrical bow and went back to the courtyard, his gait swaying a little.
She watched Teddy start on the lemon trees with his pruning saw and clippers, then retreated to her bedroom, turned her phone back on, and picked up the texts from Ryan, which had started early this morning.
I’m so sorry about last night, Mel. Give me a shout.
Mel, call me.
Mel? I’m really sorry, please call me.
Meet me? My place 2 nite?
Mel? I’m SORRY.
There were more, but she didn’t bother reading them. She took a deep breath, then composed a short text back to him.
Thx for the roses. Don’t ever break into my apartment again or I’ll kill you.
She almost pressed send, her finger poised on the key, just a few millimeters away from taking a stand. Time dragged as she stared at the face of her phone and the text bubble that contained all her fury in a few simple words. She knew where the anger came from, but she’d never seen it in print and it was strangely liberating. To hell with it. He’d scared her more than once, he’d hit her, and now it was payback time—even if it was an idle threat made in the heat of the moment. It would probably make him laugh, which humiliated her and made her angrier all at the same time.
Jim the Scrub Jay suddenly appeared at her bedroom window and tapped insistently with his stout beak. He was looking for his morning peanuts. She pressed Send, hoped she wouldn’t regret it, and went to the kitchen to get Jim his breakfast. He was such a funny, resourceful bird—he stuffed his mouth full of peanuts, flew to the sweet gum tree, stashed them in the hollow where the trunk split, and came back for more.
Her phone blatted out a text alert, startling her and Jim, who dropped a big mouthful of peanuts and flew away.
What roses? What are you talking about?
Chapter Eleven
AFTER MELODY LEFT, SAM FINISHED HIS coffee over the obituaries, a ghoulish habit he’d acquired recently, then swallowed some aspirin and walked through the house he and Yuki had purchased with a VA loan. They’d furnished it nicely with a joint account bolstered by her job as a graphic designer and made grand plans for their life together. The den, now a weight room, would become a nursery when they decided to have kids. The unremarkable backyard would be reimagined with plantings and a tiled patio. There would be a grill station, a firepit, and seating for all the guests they’d have over on the weekends. Maybe a pool one day.
There wasn’t an ocean view in this part of Mar Vista, but the house was close enough that you could smell the sea and feel its dampness, especially at night. It was a damn good starter home for West LA and a fine place for a young couple to build a future. That was all before he’d signed up for his second tour.
Yuki had insisted he stay in the house because it was familiar, it was home, and it would help his recovery. But it wasn’t home without her, it was just a house. A roof over his head with an empty refrigerator and a half-empty bed.
He slipped into his running shoes and did a few stretches against a wall, trying not to think of his future, as remote and uncertain as it was. Dr. Frolich had suggested that he might find solace in imagining better things in the coming days and months, but he couldn’t muster a positive vision. He couldn’t muster any vision at all. He wasn’t sure if that was from lack of imagination or fear of it.
At least he could still run. He could run forever. He would take his usual jagged route, side streets off Bundy Drive to Brentwood, then down San Vicente Boulevard to Santa Monica and the ocean, roughly eight miles each way.
The Los Angeles morning was bright and warm, the sky cerulean, smudged with a few streaky clouds. The sun hadn’t quite burned off the marine layer yet—that damp, ocean-borne haze tourists always mistook for smog—and he could feel its weight, its presence as he eased into a jog. He blocked out the sounds of traffic, construction, car alarms, and leaf blowers and focused on the sound of his feet slapping asphalt, his breath echoing in his head. After four miles, his pores opened up and he started sweating, flushing out the toxins from the night before. For the last time. At least that was the plan.
When he got to Brentwood, he cut through the grounds of the West Side Veterans Affairs campus, which seemed appropriate. The lush, three-hundred-plus-acre grounds were home to empty, derelict buildings that ironically hadn’t served veterans in decades. It did serve lots of other interests by leasing storage facilities to movie studios, a baseball stadium to UCLA, an athletic complex to Brentwood School, and a laundry service for hotels. There were vague plans to renovate part of it into housing for the multitude of homeless veterans in LA and eventually provide other services. What a great idea, using VA property to help veterans. Why hadn’t anybody thought of that before?
On San Vicente, he paused to drink some water and catch his breath under the exotic umbrella of a coral tree, a subtropical transplant in a city filled with transplants, both botanical and human. Sweat was now coursing freely down his face, painting dark splatters on his Army shirt. He was almost to the ocean. He did have a future after all—make it to the ocean.
Several joggers bobbed in place at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. An underweight young brunette in hip, expensive workout wear glanced at him, then did a double take. He got that a lot. There weren’t many people walking around with two faces.
Then again, she might not have even noticed. She could simply be aghast at his comparatively ghetto running attire and the unseemly amount of perspiration he was producing. He occasionally saw a fair athlete on his runs, but the majority of them were dabblers who didn’t work hard enough to sweat much because they weren’t conditioning for survival, they were conditioning for vanity. The real agenda here transcended physical fitness, and the superficial mattered most. San Vicente Boulevard and adjoining Adelaide Drive were picturesque meat markets abundantly stocked with prime cuts. And in their world, he was probably offal.
The woman looked vaguely familiar, but that didn’t mean anything. Sometimes every stranger looked familiar to him, and sometimes everybody he knew looked like a stranger. And it was Los Angeles—she could easily be an actress he’d seen on TV.