A Better Goodbye (38 page)

She would need it wherever she went, though she had no destination in mind, just the urge to put L.A. far behind her. She would become another particle in space floating through the unknown, and how, she asked herself, do you pack for that? She began by dragging two canvas duffel bags out of a closet and putting her book of Elizabeth Bishop's poems in one. Her laptop, jeans, a sweater, and some underwear followed. A Hello Kitty notepad, too. But her toothbrush, socks, and a pair of running shoes were forgotten, lost amid her fractured thoughts.

And then she wanted a shower more than anything in the world, wanted to feel hot water cascading down on her so she could wash the blood off her hands and feet and everywhere else it might be. But not with the front door kicked in, no, never. The best she could do under the circumstances was to rinse her hands and arms in the kitchen sink and wipe her feet and legs with a wet towel. It would have been so simple, so basic, if the blood on the towel weren't Nick's.

She wept until she ran out of tears, and then she turned practical. She needed money, even wished she'd taken the cash DuPree and Scott were carrying. They didn't need it anymore, those bastards. But there was no going back, nor could she milk enough out of ATMs to take her wherever her next stop might be. She would have to empty her safe-deposit boxes, but the banks weren't open until morning. A long night awaited her, a night she would rather spend anywhere but in the apartment where everything had begun unraveling.

It was around eleven when she lugged her duffel bags, one full, one empty, downstairs to her car and then eased out of the garage checking for cops, for thugs, for crazy shit she was afraid to imagine. Her ringing cell phone startled her. A glance at caller ID told her it was Sara, no doubt wondering where she was.
In limbo, that's where,
Jenny thought, but she wasn't going to tell that to Sara, who would tell Rachel, and then they'd probably post something on social media and the whole fucking world would know. It was inevitable, but Jenny wasn't going to help.

She drove aimlessly on surface streets, from Venice to Century City and then down to Manhattan Beach. When she'd killed a good ninety minutes, she headed north on Pacific Coast Highway, out of Santa Monica and into Malibu, the ocean on one side of her, low-slung mountains on the other, but seeing none of either in the after-midnight darkness. She made it to Ventura an hour away, turned around and went back to Santa Monica, did another one-eighty and returned to Ventura. Nature caught up with her on her second visit.

Eyes bleary, bladder bursting, she had no choice but to make a pit stop at a Denny's. Before she got back in her car, she caved in to weariness and ordered coffee to go.

“You all right, miss?” a waitress wearing cat's-eye glasses asked her.

“I'm fine,” Jenny said too quickly.

“There's something on your sweater that looks like blood. Right there, the elbow on your left arm.”

“Oh.”

Jenny strained to find an explanation and kept turning up images from Nick's apartment—blood-spattered walls, dead men and a dog, and Nick, always Nick. She fought the impulse to cry.

“Must be from the little boy I babysit,” she said at last. “He gets lots of bloody noses. Allergies, I think.”

As soon as the waitress went to get her coffee, Jenny was out of there.

She cried in the privacy of her car until she fell asleep. When she awoke, she was still in the Denny's parking lot, scared to death the police would be there any minute. Not until she was making her way out of Ventura did she realize it was almost four. Only five hours until the banks opened. But as she rolled toward L.A. on the 101, she dozed off again and would have missed a curve in Agoura Hills if a trucker's blatting horn hadn't awakened her.

The tears and close calls had abated by the time she curled onto the 110 through downtown and exited to drive back and forth across the city on Olympic Boulevard until she thought she would lose what was left of her mind. Then she switched to Pico and did the same thing, waiting for hazy morning sunshine to spread itself over the L.A. basin like rancid butter.

Just before nine, she pulled into the parking lot at the first of the three banks on her list. The drill would be the same at each of them: take the money out of the safe-deposit box and put it in a paper shopping bag from Ralphs. She'd transfer the money to the duffel bag when she got back to the car, but she wouldn't count it until later. She just wanted to be gone.

By a quarter to eleven she was heading north on the 405. Half an hour after that, she was on the 5, weaving in and out of the big rigs that turned the highway into an obstacle course, trusting her instincts to tell her when she found a safe haven. Or maybe she'd never make it there. Maybe the cops would pull her over. Maybe DuPree had friends who would kill her because he was dead and she wasn't. She turned on the radio to drown out the voices in her head and got an earful of country music, Spanish-language stations, and crackpot preachers. When the news came on, she turned it off and drove on.

Her trip carried her beyond fatigue and into country green and cool and lush. It felt safe there as the afternoon shadows grew long, safe enough for her to crash at a motel on the edge of a town she would forget as soon as she left it. But her sleep was restless, wracked with dreams. They were like crumbling photographs that reminded her of how much she missed Nick, and after every one of them, her tears returned.

What she longed for was some tangible reminder of his presence in her life. A shirt with his scent on it, perhaps, or maybe a note he'd written. But there had been no such things in their short, unlikely time together, so she would have to create one. She checked the room's desk and found three sheets of cut-rate stationery alongside a ballpoint pen well on its way to going dry. She picked up the pen and began to write:

Her search for what came next turned empty and unsatisfying. She kept putting words on paper and crossing them out, and soon enough she found herself hoping Nick hadn't come into her life just to rid himself of the ghost that haunted him. She hoped there were other things he would have told her, and that she would have heard him out.

But she would never know, and now the clock beside the bed was telling her to get back on the road even though it was barely after midnight. She folded her unfinished poem and tucked it in a hip pocket of her jeans. Then she threw the pen in one of her duffel bags, zipped up everything but her churning imagination, and headed for the door.

On the street that led to the interstate, she drove past gas stations and fast-food joints closed for the night, and neon lights made seductive by wisps of mountain fog. The neon came from two bars, their parking lots half-filled by pickup trucks and workaday cars. Beyond the bars was a sign Jenny hadn't expected to see so far from what she'd left behind: MASSAGE. It was there and gone as she hit the gas, and once more Nick consumed her thoughts.

He'd told her there was a good guy in every story, and then he'd become the good guy in hers. He had died so she could live. That was his gift to her, and she yearned to repay it with the poem she could feel in the beat of her heart. The words she needed to finish it hadn't come to her yet, but they would. She was sure of it. They would come if she just drove far enough.

JOHN SCHULIAN
was a nationally syndicated sports columnist for the
Chicago Sun-Times
before moving to Hollywood to write and produce TV dramas.
A Better Goodbye
is his first novel. He is a co-creator of
Xena: Warrior Princess
, a long-time contributor to
GQ
and
Sports Illustrated
, and the author of three collections of sports writing. His short fiction has appeared on the websites Thuglit and The Classic and in the
Prague Revue
. He lives in Southern California.

Oh, the stories I could tell you about agents. I had one in Hollywood who said, “At Columbia they're calling me the Antichrist.” At least he was good for a laugh. Not so my last show-biz agent, who left me in a ditch by the side of the road. Imagine my surprise, then, when I realized that the first person I want to thank here is my literary agent, Farley Chase. Without him this book doesn't exist.

Farley came into my life after
A Better Goodbye
had been ushered onto the showroom floor by the legendary Sterling Lord. Though I still have the greatest respect for Sterling, we eventually drifted apart. Just as I was about to stuff the manuscript in a drawer, there was Farley, a mellow soul with a fighter's heart, ready to run with it, knocking on doors all the way.

He struck gold when Ben LeRoy answered his knock. Ben is a literary adventurer, embracing long-shots and defying the publishing industry's predilection for books that are easily categorized. Aided and abetted by the sharp-eyed Ashley Myers, he provided a home at Tyrus Books for the lost souls I created and, by extension, for me. Saying thanks to someone like that is hardly sufficient, but it is the best I can do.

John Ed Bradley, Mike Downey, and Leigh Montville—old friends from my press box days—may not remember encouraging me to take a shot at a novel, but I will always remember gratefully that they did. Likewise, my ex-wife kept telling me I could write one even after we'd washed up on life's rocky shoals. Maybe not a novel like this, but the thought was what counted. Thank you, Paula Ellis.

Once I began putting words on paper, it was an act of courage to phone me because I was damn sure going to read the caller whatever I had just written. Mark Kram Jr., who never backs down in his journalism, remained a steadfast and generous sounding board throughout. Jim McCarthy, a friend since we were kids with baseball dreams, did the same. Not a day passes that I don't wish I could call and tell him the novel he always asked about finally made it into print.

I shamelessly inflicted early drafts on friends far and wide. To Alex Belth, Sonja Bolle, Tom Boswell, Rob Fleder, Jacob Epstein, Susan Haeger, Michael Hill, Christopher Hunt, David Israel, George Kimball (RIP), Paul Levine, Ron Rapoport, Steve Smith, Ken Solarz, Kip Stratton, Jane Shay Wald, and Eddie Wilson, I say thanks for not getting a restraining order.

When I sought criticism, I turned to Clyde Edgerton and Paul Hemphill first, never imagining that Hemp would soon be gone. Gerry Howard offered a single suggestion that inspired me to rewrite a third of my book, which must be some kind of record. Kathy Tomlinson kept everything noir with notes like this: “Nick sounds like a weenie here.” (Not anymore, Kathy.)

Most everything I know about boxing can be traced to Johnny Lira, the former lightweight contender who was never braver than in his losing fight against liver disease. For doses of real life, I couldn't have had better sources than Ted Branson, Ken Caputo, Don Fischer, Jim Nielsen, and Galen Yuen.

And then there were the massage girls who stepped out of the Internet ads and the back pages of
L.A. Weekly
to reveal themselves as flesh-and-blood human beings. Two in particular proved far better than the stereotype that traps them all—bright, insightful, articulate, funny, charming, and irreverent. No names, of course. Just my boundless gratitude.

Copyright © 2016 by John Schulian.

All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

Published by

TYRUS BOOKS

an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

Blue Ash, OH 45242. U.S.A.

www.tyrusbooks.com

Hardcover ISBN 10: 1-4405-9204-7

Hardcover ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9204-1

Paperback ISBN 10: 1-4405-9205-5

Paperback ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9205-8

eISBN 10: 1-4405-9206-3

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9206-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schulian, John.

A better goodbye / John Schulian.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-4405-9204-1 (hc) -- ISBN 1-4405-9204-7 (hc) -- ISBN 978-1-4405-9205-8 (pb) -- ISBN 1-4405-9205-5 (pb) -- ISBN 978-1-4405-9206-5 (ebook) -- ISBN 1-4405-9206-3 (ebook)

1. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)--Fiction. I. Title.

PS3619.C473B48 2015

813'.6--dc23

2015022658

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and F+W Media, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters.