No Footprints (3 page)

‟I need a favor,” I said.

‟For you, of course.” His grin implied complicity, our special connection, the way it used to be. I couldn't help but smile back, if just because
here was the old Mike I remembered.
For you, of course,
had been a standing joke between us so long I'd forgotten the origin.

‟Drive back across the bridge again, as slow as you can.”

‟To see if she's there?”

‟It's crazy, I know. Looking for a woman who's
not
wearing this jacket anymore.”

‟But it'll haunt you if you don't?”

‟Yeah.”

He cut underneath the freeway and back onto the roadway. Even on a clear day there's only ocean to be seen to the west, and now with the fog and dark there was nothing. He drove in the center lane while I tried to see past him, between vehicles in the three lanes on the other side. But an elephant could have been trotting down the east walkway and I'd have missed it. I wanted to check out the red jacket on my lap, but I didn't dare take my eyes off the walkway, elephant or not.

‟Why the disguise?” I asked him suddenly.

‟I wanted to know if you'd see through it.”

‟Odd timing, that.”

‟You'd have spotted me right off any other time. Catching your subject when they're distracted—choosing your moment's part of the disguise.”

‟Disguise is a two-way thing?”

‟Isn't acting?”

‟Yeah, but not that much. It's not like you can go into the audience seat by seat seeing who's distracted and who's not. And shooting a movie, well, you've got to be aware of what the audience will think—in the case of stunt work, what they'll assume—Damn! You sidetracked me. Steered me right into one of my favorite little sidings, stunt talk. It's one thing to do that with Mom, or John or any of the other sibs, but
me?
”

He flinched but I couldn't tell if it was a reaction to hurting me or to being found out. Later, I'd probably think back on this and be more hurt—secrets used to be things we kept from the rest of the family—but tonight it was just a minor bruise. Traffic was light by now and I could see the east walkway most of the time—the empty walkway. ‟So, where did you learn that?”

‟Watching people.”

‟When were you watching people?”

He looked over at me surprised. It was such a real expression that I suddenly understood that all the others weren't. ‟I've always watched people. Didn't you know that? Most people don't pay that much attention. Even you.” He hesitated. ‟You watched bodies, how they moved, but you didn't watch people. Didn't have to. I did it for both of us.”

I shivered. He saw it. ‟Hey, if I hadn't, you would have been grounded every other day. You can't deflect questions if you don't know the questioner.”

‟You were the master.” He had saved my tail
a lot
when I was the wild kid. It'd seemed cool—then. ‟But it still doesn't explain the disguise.”

‟What you're really asking isn't about me, it's why your jumper would put on a look-at-me jacket to hurl herself into oblivion.”

Again, it wasn't my question. Again, I slid into the siding. ‟It makes no sense. But, okay. Why care how she looked? Who was she dressing for, the bridge cameras?”

‟A lover out with someone new? Make 'im guilty. Show 'im what he lost?”

‟And then jump out of despair? Very,
very
B movie.”

‟But she wore red. Someone less observant than you wouldn't have noticed what she had on under it.”

‟Which wouldn't have mattered, because she'd be dead! She wasn't planning on me pulling her back—and doing it by her jacket. She wasn't faking, Mike, she was on the other side of the railing. She'd already thrown her purse over.”

‟To conceal her identity?”

‟Sure seems like it. Can't you go any slower?”

‟Yeah, if you don't mind that van driving into our back seat.”

‟Let him go around.”

Another time in these couple months since his return I'd've hesitated, picked my words carefully in a way that marked the difference from how we used to be. Now I peered past him and said, ‟Why
did
you conceal your identity?”

Mike laughed, started to speak, then seemed to reconsider. ‟Thing is, Darce, I don't want to be spotted, to be the focus again. I know there had to be some mention of me when I got back, after being kept in the news all those years. I had to do payback. But now—”

‟What's that? Slow down!”

He pumped the brake. Behind us horns blared. ‟Is it—”

‟No. Just the patrol cart! I don't know why I'm wasting my time when I can barely tell a cart from a woman. I should forget this and check out that jacket. Can you drive with the overhead light on?”

‟Not in a convertible. Check the glove box.”

Of course there was a flashlight. The car belonged to my brother Gary, and he hated to be without anything. There was also a knife, small water bottle, and what appeared to be a hatchet for a hobbit. The light was surprisingly bright. It showed the tight weave of the wool, the thickness of the gold braid, and the shine on the brass buttons. ‟Label says Hartoon, London. But it could've come from anywhere, right? Designer boutique? Local resale shop?”

‟As opposed to her flying in from London to go off the bridge? Yeah.”

‟I didn't hear an accent, not that you have to be English to live there.”

‟Or visit and put down a credit card.”

Franticness and exhaustion pulled at me. What messages could there be in what I was holding on my lap? I inhaled slowly, concentrated on feeling the breath leave, did it a couple more times till I could really see again that brief time before I grabbed her and the scuffle began. ‟You were driving by, you blew the horn. She turned toward, and for an instant here's what I thought, that she was like some girl who'd been carrying a torch for you all these years and suddenly there you were, beeping at her. And then she realized you weren't—not at her.” I paused. ‟Were you?”

‟No way. I was looking for you. Trying to see where you were on the bridge, gauge how long it'd be till you made it to the end. Her? I never saw her at all. Just you.”

I nodded, not that he noticed. ‟Okay. But her—if you're on the brink of jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, you'd've already squeezed dry every hope you had. If a horn sounded you wouldn't look up. You'd go about your business—the business of killing yourself. But she didn't.” I remembered her strange parting words. ‟You know what she said to me? ‛I did one decent thing in my life and you ruined it.'”

‟
You saved her fucking life!”

The jacket was on my lap. It was at least something concrete to deal with. I ran my fingers over the soft wool. ‟Funny,” I said, ‟I wouldn't have expected it to be soft.” I stretched the two small pockets that would have come at the bottom of her ribs. Empty. There was a slit pocket over the left breast, only an inch deep. ‟Wait, what's this? Paper.” I had to pull it out between my first and second fingers. It was just a scrap of ordinary white paper—office paper—folded over and over into a narrow strip. There was nothing jotted down on it. It looked familiar in the way common things do.
‟It's so little to go on. But we've got to find her. We can't let her go home, put on a different jacket, and try again.”

‟Very little.” The old Mike would have jumped in, eager for the challenge, sure he could have made it work. But now? Now, I realized, he was considering.

‟What's holding you back?” I needed to know. Otherwise, I'd have to admit to myself that this guy sitting next to me, inhabiting my brother's body, was a stranger. He was the guy who'd lived somewhere else for twenty years, not the kid I'd grown up with. ‟What?” I prodded.

It was a moment before he said, ‟Nothing. I'm in.” I heard the words but could tell he still had one foot on the outside. He continued, ‟What've we got? Let's assume she's local, like you first figured. That narrows it to what, a million women?”

‟We've got this paper,” I reminded him. I unfolded it. ‟Wait!” I grabbed for the flashlight. ‟There is something on it. Or
was.
Damn, why don't people write in ink? Pull over!”

‟What is it?”

‟Number. Looks like phone, but it's so smudged. Two oh . . . Two eight? One? Seven? I don't—”

‟I'll do it,” the old Mike said.

‟But there could be a hundred possible—”

‟I'll work it out.”

‟But—”

‟Hey, I've got ways. Connections. You'll have the top ten by dawn! That's when you Zen types like to get up, right?”

In spite of everything I grinned. This was old Mike! Making it work was his gift.

The first few bars of Audioslave's ‟I Am the Highway” played.

‟Your phone?”

He glanced down. ‟Mom.”

‟Oh, wait. We can't tell her about this, not right before your birthday dinner—”

Mike had been told, by more than one of us, but there was no way he could grasp the effect of this day. He hadn't watched the stilted attempts at jollity, the cautious choice of topics unconnected to the past, us oh-so-carefully avoiding mention of the increasing time that had passed, the decreasing likelihood of his ever being found . . . alive. The type of thing the family of the woman on the bridge would have faced if she'd succeeded. But, being Mike, he'd intuited a lot and was intent on this year's celebration blotting out all the bad years.

He clicked on the phone. ‟Hey, Mom. What's cooking?” It was his old-time greeting, the joke being the same beef stew she always kept ready for us, our friends, and pretty much anyone any time. I could picture her smiling in a way she hadn't the whole twenty years he'd been gone. We couldn't undermine that. I glanced over and he gave me a thumbs up.

‟Darcy's gotta do some Zen stuff,” he said. ‟You know how it is, nothingness isn't nothing. She's going to drop me at the cable car—Hey, there's one coming! Heat up a big bowl for me. Bye.” He pulled over and was out of the car before I could speak.

It wasn't till he was hanging on the outside of the Hyde Street car, waving, that I realized he'd bolted before I got a chance to find out how he planned to go about translating that slip of paper into a name and address.

He could tell me now. After all, all he was doing was hanging on to the cable car pole. I rang his number.

He didn't answer.

I dialed Mom. ‟Hi. Listen, when Mike gets there—”

‟Mike's coming?”

‟You just . . . Isn't he?”

‟Not that I know of, honey. But if he does I'll tell him to call you. And you'll remember the rhubarb pie, right?”

‟Yeah, Mom, his favorite. I'll have it there before you put the salmon on. It'll be a great day, won't it?”

‟The best.”

I hung up. If she hadn't called him, who had? What had they said to make him burst out from behind the wheel and run for the cable car?

I slid over, pulled the seat a couple notches forward, and headed to North Beach to leave the car. But my driving was off, my hands grabbing hard to the wheel, and suddenly the tears I'd held threatened to burst out. It wasn't just about the woman in red, but the brother who'd just been sitting next to me.

By the time I dumped the car I was glad to double-time it down Columbus ignoring the tables of outdoor diners scarfing pizza like it was just another fine night in North Beach. Who could blame them? The scene on the bridge wasn't replaying in their heads.

I headed through the courtyard into the building. The zendo—meditation hall—on the ground floor was dark. I hurried upstairs and found Leo—Garson-roshi, the abbot—sitting cross-legged in his room, waiting for me.

Leo might have been sitting zazen there on his futon. His legs were crossed in full lotus, a position of torture for most Westerners, except for those who'd grown used to it over years of facing the wall. But he wasn't turned to the wall now. He was indicating a teapot.

I nodded, lit the burner under a pan of water, and when the bubbles almost—but not quite—danced, I poured it into the black iron pot on the tray in front of him, as I had done countless times since I'd become his assistant. The little black pot was old and rounded on the bottom and I had
to hold the handle to the side and brace it just so to keep from sending the boiling water over the floor and him. It took all my concentration, which was exactly the point. Other times I'd grumbled silently, but tonight I was thankful to be pulled into this bubble of calm, doing this one small manageable task, saving one person from scalding. As he intended.

I turned off the burner, steadied the pot, and sat on a
zafu
, a black disc of a cushion, across from him. ‟How'd you know?”

‟Your brother called.”

He looked across at me. ‟How are you?”

In a formal Zen interview,
dokusan
, this question sparks an instant response. How are you?
Who
are you?
What
are you? What are you this very instant without past or future, just now? But this time I replied to it as the query of a friend. ‟I don't know.”

‟‛Don't know' is a high state.” He was answering as the Zen master. He meant not knowing is not basing your reaction on past, on future, on assumptions. Not assuming. It's about being poised to move in any direction. Not knowing is reality.