The Truth About Delilah Blue (4 page)

It wasn’t a good time for Victor’s invisible car drama. She itched and crawled and ached to stand under a scalding hot shower and cleanse her skin of the afternoon’s humiliation. Instead, she peered closer to where he was pointing, to a spot just to the left of the door handle. “What am I looking for?”

“This. See this?”

“That speck?”

“White paint. From the Prius. I’ve calculated the trajectory of its passenger door. And if you look closely, you’ll see chipped paint on the edge of the Pruis’s door—exactly the same height where it struck mine. And it’s much bigger than a speck.”

“You need to stop obsessing and come back inside.”

He leaned over at the waist and ran a finger along the side of the car. “
Jesus
. The metal is damaged. Dented right in! It’ll have to be punched out, buffed, probably even painted.” He began scrubbing at the car door with the heel of his hand, his jacket sleeve brushing against the paint.

“Dad!” She reached out to stop him. “Your jacket.”

He examined his now grimy cuff. “It’s not too bad. The cleaner should be able to get it out, don’t you think?”

“Hopefully, but you should be careful with it. It’s your leading-man suit, remember?”

It was twelve years ago, a short while after they’d arrived in California. They were late for a movie in West-wood—
Beethoven
—to be followed by burgers and shakes at Hamburger Hamlet. Victor was not yet familiar with Los Angeles and had parked the Datsun—in its more pristine, prespecked days—too far away and, with only ten minutes to spare before the film began, he had taken hold of his daughter’s hand and begun to jog.

Even through the eyes of an eight-year-old, Victor looked overdressed, marching flat-footed the way he did along the city streets on a Saturday, dressed in his impeccably cut navy suit and white shirt, with jacket tails and chartreuse tie flapping behind him as he rushed. But Victor was Victor—ever the preener. No occasion was too casual to risk being underdressed. Besides, he’d lost weight from jogging through the hills and was thrilled he could fit into the indigo Hugo Boss he hadn’t worn in years. It played up his blue eyes, his brand-new California tan.

He’d slowed down at an intersection, unsure if they were headed in the right direction. As they waited for
the light to change, a couple dressed in matching pastel T-shirts, carrying maps and cameras, stopped and whispered to each other with great excitement. They moved closer and the husband said to Victor, “I know you.”

Lila would never forget the way her father’s hand squeezed hers, tighter than ever before. Her knuckles pinched into one another painfully and she tried to pull away, but couldn’t. “We’re in a hurry,” Victor said curtly.

The wife, a heavily built woman with short, umbrella-shaped hair, said, “You were in that movie.
Pretty Woman
.”

They’d thought him a film star. From that moment forward, he and Lila had joked about the suit, calling it his leading-man suit.

It wasn’t until the couple had toddled off in a haze of disappointment that Lila had asked, “What about
Beethoven
?”

“I’m trying to find the theater.”

“Are we lost?” Lila had asked.

“We most certainly are.”

“How lost?”

He looked up at the hills, then across town in the direction of the Pacific, before staring up at the sky. He squinted as a snarl of dark clouds crept in front of the sun, not quite blocking out the light. The look on his face was one Lila would never forget: horror and relief. Guilt and sorrow. He bent over to pick her up and started marching in the opposite direction. “Wonderfully and terribly lost.”

N
OW
,
STANDING ON
the parking pad in his desecrated suit, Victor nodded. “I remember.”

“Come. Let’s head back inside and I’ll pour you a nice drink.”

He smiled, reached for her hand, and clasped his leathery fingers around it. Another father might pull his daughter near, wrap his arms around her, and mumble loving words into her hair. Not Victor. Physical closeness had never been listed in his emotional catalog. The man loved her, she had no doubt about it, but his emotions overwhelmed him. Embarrassed him. He patted her hand, then dropped it.

With her father waiting in the living room, Lila wandered into the kitchen, a long galley boasting plywood cupboards with red plastic knobs and matching red tiles on counters and walls. The rust stain in the big white sink paid homage to a tap that hadn’t stopped dripping since they moved in, and a few of the floor bricks were cracked so deeply it seemed as if weeds might burst through at any minute. She loved the cabin’s unrefined feel. From the moment they’d first set eyes on it, it was that kind of house. Inside out. Backward. Askew. A favorite T-shirt you pulled on in the dark.

She reached for a handful of ice cubes, dropped them into her father’s favorite glass, and drained what was left of the Balvenie Doublewood over the ice. With nothing but about a half inch of single malt scotch in the bottom of the glass, she looked around the room for another scotch to top it off with. There was really no choice. The only remaining scotch in the pantry was the watery-looking Dewar’s. It would have to do.

There was a knock at the door. Holding her father’s drink, Lila opened it up to find an angry-looking man on the stoop. He was vaguely familiar—in his mid- to late thirties, bald on top with what remained of his hair curled down to the shoulders of his
PLANET ORGANIC
T-shirt. Eying
the scotch glass in her hand, he grunted and said, “That explains a few things.”

“Can I help you?”

He held up a two-page note, handwritten and stapled. “Did you leave this under my wiper?”

She recognized her father’s elegant script. The note was unsigned. “You’re the owner of the Prius?”

“Do you realize it’s full of threats? I could take this to the police and have you people investigated.”

She reached for the note. “What kind of threats, exactly?”

“Could have you arrested even. My lawyer wants to have a look at the letter.”

“You do realize you dinged my father’s car? It’s vintage. Original paint.”

“So your father wrote the note? Good to know for when I’m filing the deposition.”

“He’s just a little sensitive about his vehicle. If you could give his car a bit of distance, it’ll make life easier all around.”

He stuffed the note in his pocket. “I’m hanging on to this.”

“Just, please, next time you’re in the neighborhood—”

“Most other folks welcomed us with wine or flowers. Your father threatens my hybrid.”

She looked from his bald spot to the house next door and back again. The one with the dog that woke them up before six that morning. And every morning for the past week. “You’re the new neighbor?”

“Keith Angel, and believe me, I’m regretting this move as much as you are right now.” He started walking toward his property. “Tell your father no more notes.”

“No more dings. And while you’re here, can we do something about the barking? I’m not getting any sleep.”

“Don’t drink if you aren’t sleeping,” he shouted back as he hiked up the incline onto his property, huffing with effort. “People don’t realize alcohol’s a stimulant a few hours later. It’ll actually wake you up.”

His dog, a slender red-and-white animal with a curly tail and pricked ears, yipped and danced as he crossed his yard.

“No, it won’t,” Lila called before downing her father’s scotch and choking on the biting taste. “I’ll already be up from your dog!”

S
EPTEMBER
8, 1996

She couldn’t have known it would be her last September in Toronto, those stifling days and cool nights back in 1996. It was a Sunday. Delilah was eight, sitting cross-legged on a wooden bench inside a darkened bus shelter near the west end. A pair of headlights lit up her father’s impeccably trimmed beard as he trotted farther and farther from the stalled car in an effort to get a good cell signal, motioning for his daughter to stay exactly where he’d placed her. She shivered in the thin blouse and jeans she’d worn for an afternoon of picking apples and running through corn mazes at a fall fair north of the city; but Victor had refused to allow her to wait in the warmth of the car lest someone driving with his eyes shut plowed into the trunk.

Even after hours of feeding handfuls of mystery pellets to donkeys in Schomberg, and chasing his daughter through a haunted barn in his white button-down shirt, pressed jeans, and
loafers, Victor managed to look just as crisp as when he picked her up from her mother’s that morning. He slipped his phone into his pocket. “Can’t get a decent signal. Let’s go find a phone.” He scooped up his daughter.

Victor began marching forward, then paused in front of the stalled Datsun. Scanning the barren, industrial surroundings, he wondered aloud, “You think the car is safe here?”

“Safe from what?” Delilah asked.

He didn’t answer. Just shook his head and started down the street. “We’ll be quick. Nip into the nearest restaurant or bar so I can call your mother before she gets the police involved, then we’ll call for a tow truck.”

“Are kids even allowed in bars?”

“The alternative is spending the night in that bus shelter.”

Delilah ran her fingers along the prickly edge of her father’s

beard. “Don’t worry, Dad. I won’t tell her about your bar.”

“It won’t be my bar,” Victor said with a sigh. “Though I suppose we can keep it quiet. Let’s not rile your mother over nothing.”

The first place they happened upon had a rooftop neon sign of a woman in a miniskirt who bent over, exposing her neon bottom, then stood back up again with an “oopsie” kind of smile, before repeating her indiscretion over and over again. When Delilah asked if this was a bar with a phone, Victor grunted and kept walking.

After another two blocks of closed tile showrooms and electrical parts dealers, the sidewalk lit only by the glow of a rusty moon, Victor led them up the steps of a place called Hogan’s, which, from the outside, appeared innocuous enough with its phony log cabin construction and cedar-shingled roof. A western-themed menu was displayed behind glass at the entrance, and the only thing lit up in neon was a small purple
cowboy boot beside the door, which was fashioned out of splintered planks.

They stepped inside to hear U2 playing on a jukebox by the empty dance floor. “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” A tired older woman with eyes lined in kohl pencil, dressed in a flowered blazer and peasant skirt, leaned against the bar, trying to attract the attention of a baby-faced biker. Behind the bar stood an elephantine man with a mustache protruding like charred tusks beneath a bulbous trunk nose. He pulled beer glasses from a mirrored shelf and polished them, his vigorous scrubbing causing great gelatinous waves to thunder down his T-shirt. He looked up and nodded as they passed.

“Sweet mother of God,” whispered Victor. “We’ve stepped into
A Confederacy of Dunces
.”

“What’s that?” Delilah asked.

Without answering, Victor led them to the back and began feeding coins into the pay phone. Delilah slid into an empty booth and eyed the mess on the table—a near-empty plate of nachos and two sweaty glasses containing about a half inch each of swampy brown liquid. She rested her chin on the dirty table and poked one of the liquor glasses with her finger. The dregs of the cloudy liquid sloshed and burped against the sides of the glass. She looked up to see a young boy staring at her. A tall, weedy waitress with crowded teeth and a chin that jutted out like an open cutlery drawer kept rushing past him, gathering up dirty dishes, and ordering him to go back out to the car and tell his daddy she’d be out in just a minute.

He was more fetus than boy, as if his features hadn’t had sufficient time in the womb to fully develop and, after a premature birth, he’d been pickled in a jar of vinegar in the hope that his nose and cheekbones would ripen into a fully human face. He blinked slitted eyes. “I’m Deak.”

She didn’t much feel like sharing her name. Most kids laughed when they heard it so what was the point? She nodded toward the dirty glass in front of her. “How much will you give me if I drink it?”

“You’re not going to live to see your own titties grow.”

“Give me five dollars.”

“It has food floating in it. And anyways all I have is a quarter.” He dug in his front pocket and held out a grimy coin.

“Fifty cents and I’ll do it.” She picked up the glass. Her tongue darted out and touched the lipstick-stained rim.

Deak slid his money back into his pocket and made for the door. “Okay. Forget it.”

“No, wait. I’ll do it for a quarter.”

“Deal. But you have to drink it all.” Delilah wrapped both hands around the greasy tumbler as if warming her fingers on a steaming cup of cocoa. Bringing the glass close to her face, she stared into it, humming tunelessly for a few moments, before tipping back her head and pouring the lumpy sap down the back of her throat. She slammed the glass on the table and swallowed, then stretched out a hand and waggled her fingers. “Pay up.”

Not even ten
A
.
M
. and the day was filthy with heat. A slender woman in an antique lace skirt, white tank top, and battered ballerina flats meandered along the avenue and stopped, her posture so plumb the top of her head may well have been strung from the sky. She looked around at the streetscape—sun-bleached up above, fading into a dingy potato-colored haze closer to the ground—blurred just enough that she thought her eyes had gone funny and tried to blink the neighborhood back into focus.

With bronze hair wrapped into a braid and enormous black sunglasses shielding her eyes, she ducked under an awning and peered through the window of a gallery. Her ninth that week. Third that morning. Last in West Hollywood. After one final drag, she dropped her cigarette to
the sidewalk, pushed her sunglasses up onto her head, and waded into the watery darkness of the shop.

The gallery assistant looked up from his
People
magazine and appraised her from his perch behind the desk. As elegant as was her gait, there was something sensual about the swing of her limbs, the rocking of her hips. As she passed him by, she eyed him. It felt like being snapped with a rubber band and he sat up taller, sucked in his belly.

She stopped. “Are you the owner?”

“Me? No, I’m his assistant.”

She moved on.

Life-size sculptures crowded the center of the room, with drawings and paintings lining the walls. Prices varied from the $47,000 bronze sculpture of an old man the assistant dusted just prior to the woman’s arrival, to the series of inexpensive pencil sketches the gallery owner’s pampered niece had eked out last month at college.

The woman wove her way through the statues, looked up briefly to ask the price of a small lithograph. When the assistant told her she frowned, looked again. “You’re not charging enough. It’s insulting to the artist.”

When he shrugged, she moved toward the walls. She looked moneyed, the assistant thought to himself. Had that thrift-store patina of the very rich. Only those living paycheck to paycheck pulled out their finery to check out the gallery. The others, the ones that might drop a hundred thousand dollars in an afternoon, were nearly impossible to spot. Her scuffed ballet shoes raised his hopes, creased as they were by years, possibly decades, of use. Every suburbanite and her sister owned them these days, but the assistant knew only the very fashionable, and, hopefully in this case, very flush, had been wearing them all along.

She drifted closer to his desk, staring all the while at the art lining the long brick wall. She passed the corner and came upon the graphite sketches. For a moment she appeared unimpressed. Not surprising—the assistant was certain the owner’s niece was a talentless hack. He wondered if he should speak up lest she think he had bad taste; let her know that the display was nothing more than nepotism and that she’d be better off checking out the pricier pen and inks on the opposite wall. He was, after all, on full commission.

The woman moved closer to one of the sketches and her posture changed. Stiffened. She turned, palefaced, toward the assistant. “What do you know about this nude?”