Civil Twilight

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“I NEED A FAVOR, Darce. An easy one, this time.”

“What, and ruin your reputation?”

An instant passed before my brother let out a hoot. “Where are you?”

“At the zendo. I’m doing that car stunt downtown tonight, the one on California and Market. I want to get down there and scope out the street. It’s”—I didn’t want to say
dangerous,
not to him—“a one shot gag and—”

But he was talking over me. “I need you to . . . hang with a client . . . just an hour or two. Take her window shopping, to the beach, for a walk, get her mind off things.” When it comes to attorneys, my brother Gary’s a virtual Goliath’s nightmare. Which means when one of his Davids calls at 3 A.M., he’s there, pronto. Gary’s a hero to his clients—and to me. He’s always taking huge chances—financial and legal—and when he says there’re things I don’t want to know, I believe him. He’ll go to prison himself to protect a client’s rights, but window shopping? Not hardly.

“So, what are these terrible things she can’t be thinking about: Indictment? Jail?”

“Divorce.”

“Hey, if she needs a hand to hold about that, she’s in the right place.” He’d had three of his own.

He started to say something, but must have thought better of it.

“Besides, you don’t handle divorces,” I pointed out.

“This is different.”

“Different
how?
Divorce and what else?”

“Listen, are you going to do this for me or not?”

He was my nearest and closest brother, but the truth was all I really knew about him were the parts of his life that could be easily discovered, not the nooks and nuances of who he was. Until recently, I’d steered clear of San Francisco and my entire family. Now I was cautiously feeling my way back.

“Okay, okay. Sure.”

“Great. I appreciate it. I mean it.”

“So when do you need me?”

“Now.”

“
Now!
The shoot’s at six-thirty! It’s almost five now!”

“She’s waiting at Washington Square. Her name’s Karen Johnson.”

Jesus. “Okay.” What was I thinking? “But only for an hour,” I added.

“. . . Darce?” His tone had changed.

“Yeah?”

“Rabbits it.”

Our old childhood signal was barely out of his mouth when he clicked off. So I couldn’t ask him just why I shouldn’t mention it, particularly to the one for whom the code had been created in the first place—our oldest brother, John, the cop.

WHEN I FIRST spotted her, she was on the steps of Saints Peter and Paul Church, staring at Washington Square as if the park were the most fascinating, delightful spot imaginable. Turning, she smiled at me as if I was just what she’d been waiting for. It was an appealingly disingenuous expression and one that automatically made me suspicious. The eggshell blue linen tunic and slacks she wore looked expensive, as did the cut of her subtly streaked blond hair. Her face work was as good as I’d seen on any movie set. A first lift, as opposed to the nibble your own ear look of a third or fourth. It gave her the aura of a coddled twenty-something, one at odds with the lines already re-establishing themselves between her brows. But her hands nailed her age as over forty. Sinews in them revealed a past that involved heavy work; one pinky was twisted halfway around so the nail faced away from the other fingers. She had a salon manicure, but two nails were chipped and had been clipped short and chipped again.

“You’ve got to be Gary’s sister,” she said.

“Right.”

“I figured. You have the same walk.”

“You’re kidding.” I run miles every other day, I take aerobics, dance, kill myself on machines in the gym. Gary works his butt off, but he’s sitting on it the whole time. Only metabolism and missed meals keep him
thin; his muscles have to be hanging three-toed from his bones. “That’s not exactly a compliment. His office is a block from here. Bet he didn’t walk with you, did he?”

She did a flash assessment and laughed. “Prove me wrong. He said you were a big-time jock—you’d take me running.”

“He told
me
to take you shopping.”

“Really?” she said, as if that added to the challenge. Then she caught my eye and laughed harder, the way my sister, Gracie, and I would over Gary’s foibles.

Who was this woman? And why did she need a babysitter? Why hadn’t Gary just told me what was going on? Now I was dying to know. Considering how he’d set it up, he was all but begging me to pry. But I was tilting toward liking Karen, didn’t want to cause her more distress than whatever she already had. Damn Gary! “Where do you want to go? Embarcadero? Marina Green? I’ve only got an hour, but I’ll see that you get back to Gary.”

“Somewhere high up with grass and big trees and shade. Where would you take a tourist who wants the best view of the city?”

Ours is a knockout city and we San Franciscans are ridiculously proud of it. Few things please us more than an appreciative tourist. “High up, trees, great view: you’re talking Coit Tower. From there, you can see the entire city, the Golden Gate, Alcatraz, Berkeley, the works. I have to warn you, though, the run up’s an extreme sport.”

“You’re on.” With that, she pushed off like a sprinter, her worn running shoes at odds with the elegant linen pants that billowed out as she cut across Washington Square Park.

Behind us evening rush hour traffic crowded Columbus Avenue, heading toward the onramp for I-80, 101, 280 and Route 1 along the Pacific. The sky was clear—unusual for July in San Francisco—the air just a bit too warm for decent running, as she’d find out when that burst of energy
evaporated. I could have paced myself to follow along until that happened, but, well no, I couldn’t make myself come in second. I came abreast of her crossing Stockton and started up the gentle incline without breaking stride. “I misjudged you.”

“You’re not the first.”

“Who’re the others?”

She eyed me, and a moment later laughed. Then she picked up the pace.

“What’s Gary handling for you?”

“Divorce.”

“Gary doesn’t—”

“Doesn’t what?” she snapped.

I jolted back, then to cover my shock, skirted wide around a guy in chinos and tweed jacket arguing with himself, or sporting a Blue Tooth I couldn’t see. Gary does an odd of combo civil and criminal suits, but he steers clear of divorce cases. Unless he suddenly, for some bizarre reason, had changed.

“Sorry, Darcy,” she said when I circled back to her. “I didn’t mean to sound so abrupt. It’s just . . . well, you know, the usual. Big stuff to me, old hat to the rest of the world. I was so undone over the weekend I imagined I saw my ex, Matt, here. I just wish there was a divorce debit card I could swipe through and have the marriage deducted from our account.”

“I understand, believe me. It’s never easy. I was married for a couple years—no kids, no goods, no bad feelings, and even so it was hard.” Nothing between us, because, as my husband had explained to his attorney, my favorite brother Mike had been missing for years and there was a hole in my life no one else could fill. In fact, the guilt, the grief, the ever-present not-knowing and imagining gnawed at all my brothers and sisters—and I didn’t want to think how much it ate at Mom. “We’re not great successes at marriage in my family.”

My explanation wasn’t quite the truth, and neither was Karen’s, I was sure. Oddly, that felt like a connection.

She must have felt it, too. “Don’t blame yourself,” she said. “Things happen.”

The street was as steep as they get without being stairs, the sidewalk narrow. I hung behind, giving her time alone. Who was she? Had the divorce unhinged her? Damn Gary, why couldn’t he have told me more? My gag was at 6:30. I needed to be on the set, doing a walk through, checking under the hood, double-checking the brakes. When I flipped on the ignition it would be too late.

We crossed an alley and took the two steps up to the sidewalk. Ahead, Greenwich grew even steeper. A little red Smart Car coughed as the driver downshifted and swung into the tight turning circle that ended the block at the park. “The park,” I called out as I came up beside her and started up the red stone steps into the sudden greenness. Only pride kept me from panting. Her breath, too, was coming fast, but she wasn’t complaining, nor slowing down. Telegraph Hill Boulevard, the two-lane loop to Coit Tower, bisected the stairs. As we ran in place, cars whipped by on the straightway, but when they rounded the next curve their drivers would find themselves idling in a line, waiting for the few parking spots by the tower.

“You are in damned good shape, Karen.”

“And you.”

“I have to work out every day to keep ready for work. What’s your excuse?”

“Muscle memory.”

“From?”

“Another life.” She caught her breath, and again, and for a moment I thought she’d pass over my question. “I had a job years ago, hauling stuff up a cliff. For months. I’d see that old concrete building in my dreams. At
the end of the season I looked like an anatomy text picture. Every muscle outlined. But not anymore. Then I’d’ve left you in the dust, girl.”

“Where was that impressive job?”

She tightened and then gave her head a shake, laughing the way you do when you’ve suddenly realized something that’s perfectly obvious. “Alaska. I’ve done my share of uphill employment. I was hauling fish in Sue—in Alaska. Luckily, I’ve had easier jobs since.”

“You’d have to have. But listen, don’t worry. Whatever’s going on, Gary’ll take care of you. He’s the best.”

“I know. That’s why I hired him.” She hesitated. “Darcy . . . it’s not as if we’re friends . . . ”

“Yet,” I said.

“Right. I . . . wanted to . . . ”

I glanced over, but suddenly she wasn’t there. She was in the middle of the roadway.

Brakes screeched.

“Karen!”

The car was between us.

I raced around it. “Karen!”

She was standing over a teenager in jeans and T-shirt, lying on her back on the sidewalk, clutching a phone.