All That Was Happy (3 page)

Something awoke her--a scratching sound
outside the car. She opened her eyes. It was dark, but the parking
lot was well lit--and empty. She’d fallen dead asleep. Her mouth
was thick and dry and her eyes felt scratchy and heavy, as though
they wanted to close again. Somewhere in the middle of her dark,
dreamless snooze, Bernie had come out, seen her sleeping inside her
vehicle with a gun in her hand, and coolly driven off. She
remembered the last time she’d seen him at the warehouse--had it
been over a week? He’d been his usual self, constantly on the phone
in his huge corner office, the one with the couch, barking orders
to his secretary Nolene.

Nolene. It was her. The sweet young thing had
taken Bernie for herself. Nolene, a nice enough young girl, a
college girl according to the agency, a girl who should have been
working someplace else at something more important but who’d chosen
instead to fill the Office Manager position for Bernie. Nolene, a
girl with an Irish name but Hispanic good looks, a girl who
admitted to singing in her church choir but who’d one day shocked
Beckie by showing her a tattoo of two snakes intertwined in the
middle of her back--who’d been working for Bernie for only the past
six months, who’d come highly recommended from the temp agency. Why
hadn’t she seen it? Nolene wasn’t a temp anymore--she’d just been
promoted to permanent. Nolene was pregnant with Bernie’s child. The
thought of this, of a baby coming into the world with Bernie’s chin
and nose, and perhaps Nolene’s hair and eyes, was too much. Beckie
took the gun and inserted it into her mouth, feeling the acrid
taste of the metal on her tongue, the ugly hardness of the short
barrel on her teeth. She thumbed back the hammer, impressed with
the smooth turning of the cylinder which brought into play the live
round which would, momentarily, go rocketing through the roof of
her mouth and into her brain. The hammer clicked into place and set
the trigger. It was only a sixteenth of an inch away from releasing
the bullet. She touched the trigger thoughtfully, lightly, amazed
that this tiny sliver of steel could unleash a force that would end
everything forever. She closed her eyes. She’d count to three and
simply do it. One. Two.

The scratching sound again. What was it? Was
someone in the parking lot with her? It was annoying. She wanted to
be alone to kill herself. She didn’t want some idiot witnessing
it!

The scratching continued. Her ears tracked
the source. It was coming from a cardboard box set next to the
light post. The box shook--there was something inside it.

There was a terrible booming coming from
somewhere. She realized with a start it was the beating of her own
heart, going a mile a minute. She removed the barrel from her mouth
and took a shuddering breath, feeling raw.

She got out of the car, still holding the
gun, and approached the box. Something was inside, scratching to
get out, something not powerful enough to escape a simple cardboard
box. But what was inside? A kitten? A snake? A rat? It could be
anything! The box moved and she flinched. Gripping the gun with one
hand, with the other she took the edge of the closed box flap and
pulled it open, standing back, ready to blast the hell out of
whatever sprang out.

A dog stared back at her, tail wagging
furiously. The tiniest dog she’d ever seen. A teacup Chihuahua!

“
Awww,” Beckie said.

She’d never liked dogs, and had no use for
the fools who did. But she couldn’t just leave this tiny,
shivering, hairless creature sitting in the box, to fall prey to
whatever insidious event might occur at some later time in the
parking lot. She knew for a fact that the Valley was infested with
gopher snakes and overpopulated with barn owls, one of whom would
surely track onto the tiny sniveling beast at her feet. The thought
of the horned, feathered machinery of the owl converting this
living thing into a compact ball of hair and bones by morning made
up her mind for her.

“
I’m going to pick you up,” she said.
“But if you bite me, I’ll put you back in the box and blow your
head off.” The creature allowed itself to be picked up. Her hands
curled around its tiny rib cage and she felt its heart fluttering,
felt the heat from its shivering body as its adrenaline flowed fast
and hard, caught up in the excitement of the rescue, the release
from the box. She got back in the roadster and set the beast on the
seat, but it immediately sought solace in her lap.

“
I don’t like you,” she said. “But I
feel sorry for you. I’ll get you something to eat but what happens
after that I can’t promise you. It all depends on what I feel like,
and I better warn you, I feel pretty awful. So don’t go planning
out your future and imagine yourself all curled up in a little ball
at the foot of my bed tonight.”

She fired up the Mercedes and backed out of
the parking spot. As she drove through the back streets towards the
freeway, she wondered if she’d done the right thing by picking up
the dog. A day ago, she would have asked Bernie what to do. He’d
have known how to handle the discovery of the dog in the box. Then
again, maybe not. Bernie probably would have simply backed over the
box on his way out of the lot and left it for his janitor to sweep
up. In any case, she wouldn’t be getting his input. In spite of her
realization about Nolene and all that it implied, illogically,
through her veil of anger, she felt somehow closer to Bernie than
ever before, as though all she had to do was call him and he’d come
tearfully back to her. The feeling dissolved in the darkening
shadows as night marched slowly forward across the city, flushing
out emotions she wanted no part of, feelings of being frightened--a
fear of not making it to morning. Or of making it, and not knowing
what to do then.

She was alone.

No, not quite. She now had a dog. It wasn’t
much, but it was a lot more than she’d had an hour ago. She punched
in a number on the cell phone and waited for the answer.

“
Dr. Black’s service,” the operator
said.

“
This is Beckie--I just tried to kill
myself. I put a gun in my mouth. I didn’t kill myself because of
the Chihuahua in the box.”

“
Hold, please,” the operator
said.

“
Beckie?” Dr. Black said. “Do I need to
call an ambulance and have them come to you? Are you in
trouble?”

Beckie gripped the wheel and drove fast up
the southbound onramp to the massive 405 freeway. “I was in
trouble,” she said. “That is to say, I nearly killed myself but
didn’t. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I don’t know if I’m
going to kill myself or not. I almost did, and it was a lot easier
than I thought it would be. If I’m going to kill myself in the next
few minutes, I suppose it will be death by speeding into a bridge
abutment. I can take the car up to a hundred and eighty and then
just turn into the nearest pile of concrete. I guess that’s one
option.”

“
Beckie, I’m at The Sandcastle, in
Paradise Cove, do you know the place?”

“
Yeh, I know it,” Beckie said, “it’s
where they used to shoot The Rockford Files.”

“
Why don’t you drive out and join me
for a drink? We can have a bite to eat and take a walk on the
beach. There’s a lovely full moon coming out. Will you join
me?”

“
What kind of a shrink are you?” Beckie
said. “I’ve never heard of a doctor inviting a suicide case for a
drink and a walk on the beach.”

“
I’m just a friend,” Dr. Black said.
“Can you come?”

The freeway was lightly trafficked--the big
Mercedes would make good time.

“
In an hour,” Beckie said. “And I’m
bringing a friend.”

“
A friend? What’s her name?”

“
It’s a he,” Beckie said. She blew out
a breath and broke into long, deep sobs. “He’s just a little guy
somebody abandoned. He’s sort of in-between names right now. I
guess we’re both sort of in-between nowhere and
nowhere.”

“
I’ll see you in an hour,” Black said.
“I’m looking forward to meeting your friend.”

“
Wait,” Beckie said. “I’m going to give
my friend a name. It isn’t right that he doesn’t have
one.”

She looked down at the dog, who continued to
shake uncontrollably in her lap. A name drifted into her mind from
somewhere out there, and the name fit perfectly.

“
Okay Doctor,” she said. “My friend has
a name--I’m calling him Mr. Boopers.”

“
I’ll see you in an hour,” Black
said.

Turning off the Santa Monica freeway onto
Highway 1, Beckie felt the glow of familiarity, enjoying the feel
of the roadster as it sailed along the ocean. Mr. Boopers continued
to shake, and do small things with his paws, twitching an ear or
two repeatedly in the process of adjusting.

Mr. Boopers was right to be a little nervous.
After all, he’d had a tough day, and there was no telling when or
how it would end.

Chapter
4

“
We call ourselves WE,” Dr. Black said.
“WE is an acronym for Women Empowered--we’re a support group of
women who live in Santa Monica and the Palisades who are dealing
with issues surrounding men. We deal mainly with divorce and abuse.
We meet here at The Sandcastle once a week.”

The fast hop down the 405 to the Santa Monica
Freeway behind her, Beckie, in the big roadster, had made record
time up the Pacific Coast Highway to Paradise Cove Road, a narrow,
winding finger of asphalt which transferred her from the bluff to
sea level and the entranceway to Paradise, the way guarded, not by
a gate of pearl or any such material, but rather instead by the
more typically hum-drum guard kiosk, where Beckie had picked up her
ticket to paradise and idled past a jumble of trailer homes and
into the parking lot of The Sandcastle, which perched at the edge
of the oceanic eternity of the Pacific, and was privy to, on this
particular night, the thundering of storm-inspired sizable waves
sparkling under a refulgent full moon. The spray of the waves,
aided by a stiff offshore breeze, reaching her face even from her
sheltered position behind the restaurant, had inspired her to open
her trunk and pull out a heavy windbreaker and, as an afterthought,
a large straw beach bag before she’d proceeded into the comfortable
square archeology of the restaurant, a popular place, not known for
its food, but rather for being where it was, which was on a
beach-access portion of the Malibu coastline, beach access being a
rare thing, as most of it had been purloined previously from the
public by the rich and famous--who inhabited their Herodian lairs
strewn like golden dominoes along the beach--and whom the public
generally adored and therefore allowed them their slight indulgence
of stealing a bit of beach.

Black, extending her hand in invitation to
Beckie to join them in the restaurant booth, introduced two
women--Scotia and Betty.

“
The tradition started last Fall,”
Betty--a well-appointed, matronly type--said, “when a few of us in
the group decided that we needed to take at least one night each
week and devote it to something more important than watching our
husbands act out their rage fantasies on Monday Night Football, or
worse, massage their greed glands while watching Regis Philbin and
his geek parade insult the nation’s intelligence. We start with
drinks and dinner and, weather permitting, we take a nice stroll on
the beach after--which I think we’ll do tonight, albeit it’s a bit
windy. As everybody here knows, I always go wading after dinner, no
matter how cold or windy it is--it’s my way of challenging the
universe, or something. But anyway, we’re glad you’re here--I think
you’ll find the food here is decent, and the conversation’s wide
open--no holds barred.”

“
I’m glad I came,” Beckie said. “I
haven’t had anything to eat all day--I probably wouldn’t have--I
can’t really enjoy eating when I’m alone.”

“
I feel like a good scotch and a decent
steak,” Beckie said to the waitperson. “Load the potato, oil the
salad, burn the T-bone and rock the scotch.”

“
Beckie just got served her divorce
papers,” Black explained to the other two ladies in the booth. The
women eyed Beckie attentively, their faces suffused with a loving
support that put a lump in Beckie’s throat. “After which,” Black
added, “she tried to commit suicide.”

Beckie had to give the group credit--nobody
flinched.

“
Beckie, perhaps you’d like to share
your story with the group,” Black said.

The waitperson materialized, slapped down a
napkin before offloading a tall, sweating scotch, along with a
simple tossed salad. Beckie sipped carefully, feeling the burn,
almost not daring to speak.

“
My husband Bernie is the worst person
in California,” she said. “After twenty-nine years of marriage,
with no warning, he had me served with divorce papers. The only
sign something was coming was his failure to kiss me good-bye
before he set off to work this morning. I just found out that he’s
having a baby with his hot young Irish-Hispanic office
manager.”

This admission, which would, by any normal
standard, be a real conversation stopper, instead solicited various
comforting cooing responses from the women assembled, the effect of
which caused Beckie’s tears to flow freely.

“
I just don’t think twenty-nine years
should be written off like that,” she cried. “It isn’t fair--I gave
my entire life to him. What was I to him? Just somebody to help him
with his laundry and keep the books at his business until he was
rich enough to dump me and rob the cradle?”