Sleeping Tigers (17 page)

“What’s your pleasure?” the woman lisped around a silver tongue stud the size of a June bug.

“I’m looking for Cameron O’Malley. Do you know him?”

The woman dug her hands into the front pockets of her jeans. “Cam, he’s the man,” she said, flashing a mouthful of silver.

A tongue stud and braces? With this much hardware, the woman could receive her favorite radio stations. I asked her if Cam was working today, but she squinted at the question, suddenly suspicious, and didn’t answer. She just stood there, her metal bits sparking in the sunshine.

“I’m his sister,” I explained. “I was just passing by, and thought I’d say hello.”

“I haven’t seen you before,” she said.

“I haven’t been living in the area.” I smiled, playing the polite guest at a dinner party. “I just moved here from Boston. That’s where Cam and I are from.”

“I knew that.”

She did? Now it was my turn to look suspicious. “How long have you known Cam?”

The woman shrugged and dug her hands deeper into her pockets, safeguarding whatever secrets she kept in there. Not that much would fit. Those jeans had to be a size 0. “Oh, me and Cam, we go way back,” she said. “Since right after him and that Nadine split.”

“You knew Nadine?”

“Yeah, she hung out. Cam, he was always good to her. Gave her free falafels. Sometimes she had the humus plate, though,” she added judiciously.

“My brother’s a generous man,” I agreed.

A young Asian man stepped up to the counter and rapped on it with his knuckles. “You got the Falafel Special today?”

“Every day,” the woman replied.

“Okay, then. I need one of those specials and a large lemonade.”

The woman got busy. She was surprisingly efficient. After the man had walked off with his meal, she swiveled towards me, chatty again. “Cam’s like, my main squeeze. Or he was,” she amended. “That was like, ancient history. A month ago.”

I nodded, trying to look sympathetic. Boy, Cam really knew how to pick them. What was wrong with him, that he couldn’t date a woman his own age? Or his own IQ, for that matter. I asked when she’d last seen my brother.

“We usually tried working the same shifts so we could hang out,” she said. “Then, two days ago, Cam suddenly turns on me, says I’ve been this major drag. ‘So go,’ I says to him. And he did. Just like that! Said something about there being a journey within himself, and he could only go it alone. I couldn’t tell him what to do anymore, he says. Huh. Like he ever fucking listened to me anyway.” She plucked a piece of lettuce out of one of the metal bins and munched on it.

Two days ago? Cam must have broken up with this woman right after getting my message saying I wanted him to come see me in San Francisco. “He hasn’t been to work since then?” I asked.

“Nope. And I’ve been swamped.”

I glanced at the empty counter. Well, all things were relative.

The woman was still talking. “Boss says we gotta replace Cam, but Cam always knew when to order inventory and stuff. Nobody else can do that. So I told the boss to hold off on firing him. Your brother’s done runners before. He always comes back. Only this time he can kiss my ass.” She pouted, perhaps in anticipation.

“Any idea where he went?”

The woman began haphazardly swabbing down the counters with a gray rag. “No. All he told me was this job was his ball and chain.” She scrubbed harder.

If this job was Cam’s ball and chain, Nadine must have felt like a dungeon. “Look,” I said finally. “If you see my brother around, tell him that his sister needs him. Say it’s urgent, okay?”

The woman’s gaze drifted in my direction. She had clearly lost interest. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay. Real urgent.”

I drove back to Cam’s street and parked a block away from the house so that he wouldn’t spot my car. If I entered through the greenhouse, nobody could spot me and warn him that I was coming.

The plan was nearly perfect, except for the high metal fence separating Jon’s back yard from the yard next door. I hadn’t counted on that. Years of playground duty paid off, however: I got a toe hold in the wire and climbed the fence, swinging myself over the top and landing with a soft thud in the mossy shade of a rhododendron bush.

The greenhouse door was unlocked and the house was silent. A forlorn yellow tea cup sat on the kitchen counter near the empty sink. There was no sound other than the rattle of the eucalyptus leaves in the tree outside the window. The house had the musty, abandoned feel of a house whose owners are on vacation. Where could they all be? It was nearly six o’clock in the evening.

“Hello?” I called. I wandered from the kitchen to the foyer and stood beneath the teardrop chandelier. The glass shuddered slightly above my head as I moved to the foot of the stairs and called again. “Hey, anybody home?”

There was a faint shuffling sound. Val appeared at the head of the stairs. She was swaying slightly, wrapped in a tattered Navajo blanket, droopy-eyed and snuffling. She was either sick, coming down from a high, or suffering from her vegan diet. Maybe all of the above.

“Who’s there?” she said.

“Oh, hey, Val. It’s just me. I’m looking for Cam.”

Val clutched the blanket around her neck, but it gaped open from the waist down. She was naked beneath it, the V between her legs so light with blonde hair that at first I thought she was wearing pink leggings. “You’re too late,” she said.

“What do you mean?” My skin prickled with alarm.

“Cam’s gone.” Val leaned on the wall. The blanket fluttered open, her body emerging from within its fraying folds like a pink pupa sliding out of its cocoon.

“You’d better sit before you fall down,” I coaxed, ascending the stairs slowly until I stood on the step beside her. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

Val sat down but misjudged the distance. Her butt met the step with a painful sounding thump. “Not sick. Alone again,” she moaned, dropping her head into her hands.

“You’re not alone. I’m here.” I touched Val’s hand. “And the others will be home soon, won’t they?”

Val scuttled away from me, sliding her rear along the landing until she was hunched against the wall. Her blonde hair was matted close to her head. She had a tiny skull beneath all that hair and her face had seen too much sun. The skin was dry and slightly wattled beneath her double chin.

“Nobody’s coming home,” she insisted. “I’m alone again! Just like last time.”

Now I was really feeling panicked. Val seemed so certain. “Val, what are you talking about?” I kept my voice light. “You live with friends. Of course they’ll come home.”

Val started pounding her fist on the wall. A small dent appeared in the plaster as the ancient wallpaper gave way. “I! Am! Too! Alone! Again!” she shrieked with each punch, then collapsed, folding her body forward and pressing her face against her knees.

I stroked Val’s back while she cried, wondering how she stood the itch on her bare skin. Val’s story oozed out: Jon had bought everyone plane tickets. But Val had no passport. And that was just too bad, Jon said, since he’d advised everyone to keep their passports up to date, always, in case of emergencies like this one.

“What emergency?” I frowned, my heart pounding.

“Cam’s emergency. Cam was in trouble, Jon said.” Val raised her head and glared at me. It was dawning on her that, since I was Cam’s sister, this latest twist in her life could be my fault. “Cam had to leave the country. They all did, to save him.”

“Save Cam from what?” I could hardly breathe.

“That girl coming around here with his baby! She catches up to him, Cam’s going to be screwed, Jon said. He won’t be able to stay clean.”

“Where did they go?” I stood up and gripped the railing, as if I could leap down the stairs and start chasing Cam right now, the way I had when we were kids playing tag.

“To the mountains. The Shepherd wants everyone to cleanse themselves in the purest air, especially Cam. And he wants them to serve the earth. He bought them all tickets to Nepal and everybody signed up to be an eco volunteer.”

I had no idea what an “eco” volunteer was, but it must have something to do with plants, knowing Jon’s passion for plants over people. “Are you serious? Nepal? That would cost thousands of dollars!”

Val nodded, morose. “Jon bought them all tickets,” she repeated. “All except me. And I’m the one who needs cleansing more than anybody.”

She wept while I rubbed my temples and tried to focus on what to do next. Why did it surprise me so much that Cam had pulled this disappearing act? Irresponsible, self-absorbed brat. What kinds of drugs did he use, to make him behave this way? Even his homeless girlfriend had been thoughtful enough to leave me a note.

Well, I wouldn’t make things easy for him. I’d find a way to contact him. I wouldn’t leave Berkeley without making one last attempt to find Nadine, too. There was a slim chance that she hadn’t gotten her act together to leave for Oregon. I reached down and touched Val’s oily hair. “Look, I’ve got to go. Will you be all right?”

“Sure. Why shouldn’t you leave? Everybody else does.”

“Is there anyone I can call to come over? Do you have friends here in town?”

Her voice was muffled, exhausted. “You’ve met my friends.”

“Maybe it’s time to get new ones,” I said gently.

“Oh yeah?” She raised her head and curled her lip at me. “And maybe you should just piss off.”

By the time I arrived at People’s Park, the light was fading. It would be dark in another hour. I made my way slowly into the thick brush edging the park, following a narrow path towards the scent of cooking fires. The shadows were long, the grass was damp around my ankles, and the clacking of the tree branches made me jumpy.

Small knots of people were gathered around a bonfire in the same spot where I’d first talked to the naked flamingo man and the woman in the Hawaiian shirt. I searched for them among the faces flickering in the firelight, lingering on the fringes of the crowd, reluctant to draw attention to myself. Everyone was drinking, the bottles glinting in the firelight as they were passed around.

I finally approached a bull-necked woman standing on the sidelines. “Hi,” I said, feeling the terror of every new child on a school yard. “I’m looking for someone, and I was wondering if you’ve seen her.”

The woman wore fingerless wool gloves and a frayed tweed jacket; she was missing a front tooth. She drew back when I spoke, startled. “I don’t hear so good out the left side,” she apologized.

I repeated myself and described Nadine. “I think she was staying here with a man called The Admiral.”

The woman nodded. “The Admiral, he and your girl packed up two, maybe three days ago. Ain’t been back since. You can check with Sister, though. Sister keeps track.”

“Who’s Sister?”

The woman gestured towards the opposite side of the fire, where I spotted the woman I’d spoken to that first day. She wore the same Hawaiian shirt and remembered me, too, when I squatted beside her and asked if Nadine had left the Park.

“Packed up to go north,” Sister answered. “Went off with a truckload of folks. There’s a farmer comes around here every few weeks. Says he gets tired of pissing money across the border to Mexicans when he can get red-blooded American workers with college degrees. He comes here to fetch people and drives them far as Portland, sometimes.”

I thanked her and turned to leave, but Sister grabbed my wrist between two fat fingers. “Nadine weren’t a bad girl,” she added. “She found a good home for that baby with family, she told me. Knew better’n to try and raise it up herself.”

Talking about Paris made me miss her. I thanked Sister again, and told her that I was the one who had the baby now. Sister beamed. “Nadine’s nobody’s fool,” she said.

I hurried out of the park. Several hundred feet into the brush, though, I realized I had taken a different path. Well, it had to lead out to the street. I kept walking, ducking my head to avoid the branches, my heart beating hard as cracking sounds popped in the undergrowth all around.

Finally, I heard the comforting, belligerent honks of the fog horn in the Bay. I forced myself to stand still and focus on the sound until I was certain of my direction. But then I heard the sound of footsteps behind me and panicked. I dashed through the brush, pinwheeling my arms to clear away the branches until I burst out onto the sidewalk.