Silver Lake (3 page)

“We’ve met,” Tom said to Carlo.

“Have you?” Robbie asked.

Carlo said, “I don’t think so. Not that I remember.”

“Not that you remember,” Tom said.

“Have you?” Robbie asked again, addressing Tom.

Tom didn’t speak. He was fixing his stare on Carlo.

But finally Tom said, “My mistake.” And then: “If this mechanic doesn’t come in five minutes, I’ll walk home. I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

“You’re not,” Robbie said, and it was true. He was enjoying talking to this Tom Field, quite a bit.

Tom looked at Carlo again, and Carlo appeared to nod before retreating to his desk. Tom drifted toward the wall of the office decorated with framed photographs and dry-mounted computer-assisted renderings of Stein Voight projects. On another wall, rough schematics of the (hopefully) current project were tacked up.

“Tom thought about becoming an architect,” Robbie said.

“Did you?” Carlo asked.

Tom was lingering in front of photographs of a project that went up five years ago, another tricky property that required siting the house so it would back out onto the Ivanhoe Reservoir while saving a pair of listing eucalyptus trees, accommodating them with holes through the two stories of decking. The entire house, generous in the eaves, glass-walled, powered by solar panels and built with reclaimed wood, turned into a kind of sophisticated tree house that Robbie and Carlo considered their best work.

However, Tom looked dismayed. He said, “I hope you’ll forgive me.” He said, “I like windsor chairs and fainting couches. I like shingled siding and bay windows and shutters. Every house should have a big front porch.” He said, “Maybe I was born at the wrong time.”

A tow truck pulled up outside and he dashed out to point the mechanic toward his car. He was gone a full minute before the two men spoke.

“He just wandered in,” Robbie said.

“Did he?” Carlo asked.

“I feel sorry for him. No friends, no money. You don’t like him.”

“It’s not that,” Carlo said, and looked as though he wanted to add more but held back.

“You think he’s got a grift going,” Robbie said.

Carlo shrugged.

“Nobody should be alone,” Robbie said.

“You’re quoting my father now?” Carlo asked.

“Did you notice the scratch on his face?”

“He’s looking for someone to take him to London. New York for a shopping weekend.”

“No, see, that’s the thing. I don’t think he’s your typical party boy,” Robbie said. “I don’t get that sense.”

“He just wandered in? He has his price,” Carlo said.

“I don’t think so,” Robbie said. “He’s curious—”

“He
is
curious.”

“I mean that he’s curious about the world.”

A short while later Tom returned and said all that was wrong could be fixed with a new fan belt. The mechanic had the part in his truck, and Tom was good to go. Uno problemo. He was short what he owed by twenty-three dollars and change, so he gave the mechanic a credit card, which the mechanic called in to his garage, and the card was declined.

Robbie glanced at Carlo, and Carlo withdrew his money clip. Perhaps this would seem an extravagant gesture to some, but Robbie knew Carlo could read him well enough and knew it would please Robbie to help Tom. Again Tom went outside and said he’d be right back to discuss how he’d go about repaying the loan, and of course it occurred to Robbie that Tom might not return this time. However, he did reappear, dangling something in one hand that resembled a garden snake, the snapped fan belt. Maybe Tom wanted to make sure the men knew he hadn’t been conning them.

Tom said, “I’ll write down your address here and send you a check. Don’t wait too long to cash it though.”

The three men stood again by the door. They shook hands and Tom turned to leave.

“So Tom,” Robbie said.

Tom was likely a man without a date book, he probably didn’t answer his phone, and his sleep cycle would always be too irregular to follow. They would make a plan, Tom wouldn’t show up. And yet he was a fellow map enthusiast and deep allegiances had been based in less. What he needed was obvious and not expensive in the scheme of things.

“You mentioned you play tennis,” Robbie said.

“Once upon a time,” Tom said, “in a galaxy far, far away.”

“We should find a fourth and play doubles sometime.”

“A fourth?” Tom asked, peering beyond the men into the office as if a doubles partner might be lurking in the shadows.

“Or we could switch off playing singles,” Robbie suggested, and he glanced at Carlo.

Cued thus, Carlo said, “That might be fun.”

“Tennis,” Tom said as if the word were foreign. “Tennis when?”

“Sometime soon,” Robbie said.

“Soon,” Tom echoed and turned to leave again.

Robbie looked at Carlo, and Carlo hesitated a beat but gave his assent, an almost imperceptible, reluctant arcing of an eyebrow.

“What about this afternoon?” Robbie asked. “We’ve got a court booked.”

Tom looked at Carlo again and said, “You’ve already been so kind. I wouldn’t want to ruin your Saturday.”

Robbie was waiting for Carlo, as well, but Carlo didn’t respond, and so Robbie said, “You wouldn’t be ruining anything. Carlo wasn’t even all that eager to play today—Carlo? Would you mind terribly if Tom here and I took the court? You said you had some more gardening—”

“Oh, gosh no,” Tom started to say, “I wouldn’t want to—”

“That would be fine,” Carlo said softly.

“No,” Tom said.

“Honestly,” Robbie said to Tom, “he would rather putter.”

“It’s fine, it’s true,” Carlo said. “I have some things I’d love to do around the house.”

Tom flashed his goofy grin at Robbie and said, “I might be terrible.”

“Oh don’t worry, it doesn’t matter,” Robbie said, and once again he studied Tom Field and tried to guess his age and settled on twenty-seven. Robbie never actually asked Tom, but later the police would confirm his estimate.

• • •

A
N HOUR LATER,
Robbie met Tom in Griffith Park. Robbie had gone home to change but Tom apparently had not. When Robbie drove into the parking lot, Tom was standing at the open trunk of his banged-up jalopy (its front fender was held on with duct tape), withdrawing clothing from a duffel bag and changing out in the open, without apparent vanity or concern about all the tennis players and hikers coming and going. Robbie was driving a recently washed new car, the foreign wagon that the two men had selected for its safety ratings and reinforced chassis, which educed from Tom an ooh-la-la.

“Nice ride,” he said as he pulled a T-shirt over his head.

“Carlo was in a bad accident last spring,” Robbie explained, “and we wanted something sturdy.”

“An accident,” Tom said.

“Fortunately no one was hurt,” Robbie said.

The upper four tennis courts in Vermont Canyon were ringed by hills dried gold after an arid summer. Occasionally, preceded by a labrador with a stick in its mouth, a hiker emerged from a trail and headed down the main dirt path. There was no wind, and the dead stillness meant that as the men began to play, their syncopated shots reverberated around the bowl of hills.

It took Tom time to recall his game. Between rallies, he had to tug up his wrinkled cut-offs, and then he would bounce the
ball three times before whacking it across the court as if striking a piñata. He had no backhand to speak of and ran around to his forehand, and yet despite his drooping attire and spastic ground strokes, Tom hunted down every ball. He may have been the less fit player—he was panting between points—yet he ceded no corner of the court, and Robbie found it difficult to hit a winner. In this doggedness, there was something appealingly boyish about Tom, at once earnest and playful. Eventually they played points but didn’t keep score and whenever the mood suited him, the server opted instead to receive.

On a change-over, they swigged bottled water.

“I’m excited to have a new hitting partner,” Robbie said.

Tom rolled his eyes.

“Oops,” Robbie said. “Another kind of partner.”

They switched sides to share the burden of the angled sun. Then they rallied again without conversation, or the rally was in itself a form of banter. Tom issued involuntary grunts. The longer they played, the more he came into net. Several times he guessed which way Robbie would try to pass him and punched out a professional-looking volley. Quickly his game improved.

At the next change-over, Tom said, “I’ve been trying to come up with my next career move.”

“And what have you decided?” Robbie asked.

“That I want to become a court painter.”

“A court painter—like what, a
tennis
court painter?”

“No, silly,” Tom said. “You know, a court painter. All you have to do now and then is make a portrait of a princess with some spaniels or a king with his hand on a map, and the rest of
the time, you get to work on whatever you want. Ruins, mountains, lakes. Think about it. It’s a great gig.”

“So all you have to do is find a court.”

“Right. How hard should that be?” Tom asked.

And during another change-over: “Do you think there’s anything wrong with wanting to make pretty things?” Tom asked.

Robbie shrugged, no, why not?

“I’ve been going around to all the galleries to check out the scene, and all the art they’ve got up, blech, it’s so ugly. I think you make the world better by adding beauty to it,” Tom said, “not more ugliness. But no one seems interested in beauty any more. Are you?”

“Oh, definitely, certainly,” Robbie said.

“Well, baby, at least that makes two of us,” Tom said.

Little by little, Robbie found out more about Tom. He preferred rhyming poetry to free verse, tart-fruit desserts not chocolate ones, country music more than pop. His grandmother liked to have him read to her at night, the classics, but fell asleep early in the evening, although Tom kept reading aloud while she snored. But what about Tom’s actual parents? He didn’t mention them. Nor did Robbie discover why (beyond wanderlust) Tom had moved to Los Angeles. Nor what Tom hoped would change in his life once he arrived, or if change was what he sought. He could have been seeking escape or rescue, but escape or rescue from what exactly? What, at base, did Tom want for himself?

Robbie didn’t ask too many questions. Mostly Tom talked and Robbie listened, which seemed to please Tom, as if all he wanted was someone with whom he could hold forth. No, not a
mere someone—he appeared to like Robbie. He was beginning to confide in Robbie.

After about an hour and a half of tennis, Tom said, “Lately I’ve been thinking that at any given moment in time, there can only be a maximum of two or three things you find beautiful in the world—out-and-out, breathtakingly, devastatingly beautiful. I mean two or three things you think truly possess grace.”

“What makes you say that?” Robbie asked. “Why only two or three?”

“Because any more than that, and you wouldn’t be able to function. You’d wander around with your mouth open all the time. You’d go manic.”

If Robbie understood what Tom was saying (and he wasn’t sure he did), he did not necessarily agree. But he asked, “What’s on your current list?”

“Eucalyptus trees,” Tom answered. “Bosc pears in a white bowl. A man’s back. What about you?”

Robbie didn’t know how to respond, so he said, “I like your list. I’ll borrow it, if you don’t mind.”

Tom was looking at him sideways, the way he had back in the office. He was gaunt except when he grinned, and then his face became lunar. He formed a pistol with his first and middle fingers and tapped Robbie twice against his sternum.

“What?” Robbie asked.

Tom tapped him again, bouncing off his sneaker.

He said, “I did know it was an architectural firm I was walking into and not a café or furniture store.”

“Did you?” Robbie asked. “Then why—”

With his thumb and forefinger, Tom tweaked Robbie’s left nipple once and then again.

Robbie was caught off guard. He pulled back, flustered, wondering what kind of signal if any he’d been sending that Tom would hit on him, a little miffed that his overture of friendship might be misconstrued, annoyed in general at guys always on the prowl, who viewed married men as fair game. Or maybe Tom wasn’t making a pass but merely being cocky. That could be all. Robbie returned to the baseline and sent the next several shots sailing wide or long.

A short while later, at the end of one of their longer rallies, Tom framed the ball and knocked it over the fence, over a short retaining wall, and into the adjacent slope. In all likelihood, the ball was lost, but Tom dashed through the gate, hopped up onto and over the retaining wall, and proceeded to rummage through the brush. Robbie joined him outside the court but didn’t go over the wall.

“I think it went more that way,” he directed Tom.

And sure enough, Tom disappeared and stood up with the lemon tennis ball plus some dried weeds in hand. When he hopped back over the wall, he ended up standing next to Robbie, close, and as he handed him the recovered ball, Tom leaned forward, his mouth barely open but open enough to kiss Robbie. As if to be polite, Robbie kissed him back, briefly, extremely briefly but long enough to get it, to understand the specific way someone like Tom was sexy: Tom the eternal summer kid, barefoot in the backyard. You lay in the hammock with him and he smelled of stolen cigarettes, and then he had his hand down your shorts, but the next day he pretended not to know you, and you
would spend the next hundred years searching for Tom Field in every man you met and tried to love.

The police would inquire about a sexual relationship or anything proximate to one, and Robbie would not mention the kiss.

He turned around and headed back onto the court and, once through the gate, pivoted back toward Tom still on the other side of the chain-link, and said, “I shouldn’t, Tom. I don’t. We don’t.”

“You don’t,” Tom said. “Everyone does these days.”

“Not us.”

“Never?”

“Not in twenty years,” Robbie said.

“Get out. Twenty years? No way.”

“It’s fine for other people, their deals, whatever,” Robbie said. “It’s not our thing is all.”