Читать книгу Out Of Control - Janice Macdonald - Страница 12

NICK WAS SO RELIEVED at not only making contact with Daisy, finally, but actually setting up a time to meet her that he couldn’t focus on anything that required sitting quietly at the computer. Laguna was still waiting to be explored, and it seemed a perfect time to find out more about the world Frank Truman had once inhabited.

He left the apartment, strolled around the tree-lined streets for half an hour or so, people-watched the bronzed and beautiful from the vantage point of a sidewalk café and walked some more. On a side street off Pacific Coast Highway, he came to the restaurant Daisy had mentioned. He walked into the courtyard filled with a jungle of greenery. The front door was locked, but he could see through into the sleek glass and chrome dining room and part of the kitchen beyond where a chef was working.

The chef saw him and waved. In one of those bits of serendipity that occasionally brighten the day, the chef, it turned out, was none other than Toby Fowler, and he was only too glad to help in any way he could.

Thirty minutes later, Nick had drawn at least one conclusion about Daisy’s ex-husband. After listening to him hold forth on everything from the most flavorful wood to use for smoking meat (apple) to where in Laguna to meet “the hottest chicks,” (Main Beach), Nick had decided that, for all the talk about other women, Toby was still struggling with unresolved feelings for his ex-wife.

One clue was his apparent inability to stop talking about her. No matter the topic, everything eventually led back to Daisy. He watched Toby sharpen a lethal-looking knife—Daisy hadn’t wanted him to buy it, of course, which was further proof, according to Toby, that she knew nothing about running a restaurant. As Toby talked, Nick tried hard to reconcile Daisy, the golden child in the paintings, with Daisy the ex-wife of this stocky, muscled man with the bleached blond crew cut. Somehow he couldn’t quite manage it.

Toby was rattling on about how Daisy never did this and was always doing that. Why, Nick wondered, were solutions to the romantic agonies of others (get over her, for God’s sake, she’s clearly not worth it) so much more obvious than one’s own? Perhaps he should consult Toby on whether or not to encourage Valerie’s visit.

“The thing with Daisy is, if she believes something’s good or bad or whatever,” Toby said, “no way can she accept there might be another way of looking at things.”

“How exactly do you mean?” Nick asked.

“Like her father, for instance.” He stopped. “Look you didn’t hear this from me, okay? I don’t want Daisy coming down on me for dissing her father, but everyone knows he was nutty as a fruit cake. Would Daisy admit that though? Uh-uh. He was eccentric. Different. Emotional. Nuts? Not a chance.”

Nick was interested. “Did you know him?”

“I stayed out of his path as much as I could. Didn’t want to be around him. Daisy put up with stuff from him that no one in their right mind would take. I was the one who had to calm her down after he’d yelled and screamed at her for something or other. He was this famous artist though, so it was okay for him to yell and scream. Anyone else would have the police knocking on the door.”

Nick wondered if Martin considered Toby one of Frank Truman’s detractors. Maybe the truth lay somewhere between Martin Truman’s version and that of the mendacious first wife.

Toby brought the blade down with a hard thwack. “You know what else drives me nuts about her? That bunch of freeloading hippy friends she’s got living up on her property.” He disappeared behind the door of a massive stainless-steel refrigerator, emerged with a tray of steaks. “Well, she calls them friends. Problem is, they’re all on the take. You ever been up to her place?”

Nick said he hadn’t.

“She lives in this cabin on about three acres of land off Laguna Canyon Road. It’s worth millions, but Daisy doesn’t care. Her father built the cabins back in the fifties for these big-time artist friends from Los Angeles who came down to Laguna on weekends. Not a load of deadbeats like Daisy’s got living there.”

“Do they pay rent?”

“‘Oh Daisy,’” he said in a mincing voice, “‘my kitty cat got sick and I had to take her to the vet and now I don’t have enough money to pay the rent.’” In another falsetto, this presumably Daisy’s, Toby said, “‘Just pay me when you have the money.’ Right.”

“Maybe she thinks of it as carrying on her father’s legacy,” Nick said. “Helping struggling artists, that sort of thing.”

Toby made a dismissive gesture. “If what they do is art, then I’m Chef Boyardee. They call themselves artists, but none of them has ever sold a damn thing.”

Nick imagined himself approaching Daisy, who apparently had a blind spot for a sob story. Tin cup in his outstretched hand. Please Miss Daisy, talk to me. This biography will put food on my table. I haven’t eaten for months.

“The thing you gotta know about Daisy is she has a heart as big as all outdoors. She kind of went to pieces after her father died. Gained a ton of weight. She’s dropped it, but she doesn’t look the way she did when I first knew her. It’s like she’s, I don’t know, gone into herself.”

“So she doesn’t talk about her father to you?”

Toby shook his head. “Doesn’t talk about him to anyone. After he died, she just stopped talking about him, period.”

“How long have you known her?” Nick asked.

Toby shrugged. “We grew up together, like, but I didn’t really get to know her until about a year before the old man died. She was kind of lonely then, no one else to turn to.”

He’d started cutting the meat into wafer-thin slices, every move careful and exact. A muscle twitched in his cheek, his jaw was tense. Anger offered another clue that Toby still had a thing for his ex-wife. People got incensed at those they didn’t love, of course, but there was a certain quality to the kind of anger that was all mixed up with having once loved the person who has caused your wrath, making it burn with a particular intensity. Toby was clearly smoldering.

“Naturally, she forgets all that now. She’s got all her hippy friends who are happy to listen to her. Hell, it’s cheaper than paying rent, right?” He shook his head. “To be honest with you, Daisy drives me nuts, but…I dunno, sometimes I think it’s too bad we can’t just make things work again. I mean, we have a kid and everything…but Daisy’s so damn stubborn.”

And you’re in love with her, Nick thought. Was it mutual? Maybe just a sticky patch on the matrimonial road? His own experience had proved, ultimately, to be less sticky patch than insurmountable block. He realized that he felt sorry for Toby. If he could have come up with some words of wisdom, he would have.

“You haven’t met Daisy yet, right?” Toby asked.

“Tomorrow.”

Toby rolled his eyes. “Good luck. She’s not the easiest person to be around these days.”

WHY HAD SHE AGREED to meet the guy? Why? It was four o’clock and Daisy was in the kitchen on the phone with a hysterical Amalia, mindlessly devouring a bowl of Wacky-cake batter. She put the bowl in the fridge, leaned against the door and breathed slowly.

“Amalia, listen to me, okay? Just listen.” She moved to the table and sat down. “I don’t understand why you’re getting so worked up over this dream—”

“I tell you, Daisy, it was so real. You should have been there to see your father’s face. Please promise me you will tell Mr. Wynne there is no book.”

“I’m meeting him in an hour.” She scratched a spot of hardened candlewax from the tabletop. “Look, don’t get mad, okay? This whole dream thing? You just seem to be, I don’t know, overreacting a little. Are you sure something else isn’t bothering you?”

Amalia started crying. “You didn’t hear Franky’s voice. You didn’t see his face. Oh, Daisy, please—”

“Okay, okay.” God, next she’d be driving Amalia to the emergency room. “Look, it’s okay. I’ll tell him it’s off. I promise. Just calm down. And use your inhaler. I’ll call you later.”

She put the phone down. From Emily’s bedroom, she could hear the thump, thump, thump of the stereo. It matched the thump, thump, thump of her heart. She had a headache. The parrot squawked, regarding her, head to one side, with its bright, beady eyes. It squawked again, a shrill, ear-piercing demand for attention.

“You do that one more time,” she said, “and I’ll chop off your head.”

On the counter Baba looked up at her reproachfully from the cover of Forgiveness. She’d left the book there after speed-reading a chapter following an argument with Emmy earlier.

She regarded the parrot. “I didn’t mean what I just said. I’m sorry. Really. I know you’re hungry. I’d squawk, too.” She walked to the hallway. “Did you clean Deanna’s cage?” she called.

But, of course, Emmy couldn’t hear her over the stereo. She went back to the kitchen and fed the parrot. Deanna was a green Amazon. Emmy had wanted her so desperately that she’d promised to stop asking whether she could, please, use makeup like everyone else she knew. In the three months since Deanna had taken up residence in the corner of the kitchen, the parrot had heard Daisy nag Emmy so often that it had started squawking, “Clean the damn cage.”

Emmy appeared in the kitchen. “What’s for dinner?”

“Heat up the soup if you’re starving, otherwise wait till I get home. I’ll do that baked chicken and potato thing you like.”

Amalia was always telling her that she should get Emmy to cook for herself, which was true. But food, good food, was a big deal with her, and she enjoyed cooking for other people. As a child, she’d grown to endure the weird combinations her father had mixed up like the paints in his artist’s palette. Broccoli with maple syrup, eggs scrambled with cranberry sauce. He didn’t like being bound by convention; just because salmon wasn’t usually served sprinkled with powdered sugar was no reason why it couldn’t be served that way. “If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat it.”

She glanced around for her keys. “I have to go meet Nicholas Wynne.”

“Why d’you say it like that?” Emmy had hopped up onto the counter and was swinging her legs. “Nicholas Wynne,” she said, imitating Daisy’s voice.

“Isn’t that his name?”

“Yeah, but when you go to Kit’s, you don’t say, ‘I have to go meet Kit Niemeyer.’”

“Well, it’s different.”

“How?”

“Emmy, don’t bug me, okay? I’ve got stuff on my mind.”

“Want a peanut?” Deanna inquired. “Want some toast?”

“And you’ve got to start feeding her,” she said, with a glance at the parrot which was hanging upside down from her perch. “It’s not fair to leave it all to me.”

“Did Dad talk to you about me living with him?” Emmy said, her voice elaborately casual.

Daisy’s hand tightened around her purse, but she forced herself to remain calm. She figured Emmy had probably been rehearsing the words for some time. “He said he was going to,” Emmy added.

“Well, he didn’t,” she said carefully. This topic came up periodically, usually after they’d disagreed about something, and then it was dropped. She was fairly certain Emmy had no wish to live with her father, fairly certain, in fact, that it was mutual—Toby didn’t want a fourteen-year-old daughter cramping his lifestyle. Still, she had a knot in her stomach.

“He said he was going to,” Emmy repeated, popping a grape into her mouth. “He promised.”

Daisy glanced at the clock. She was going to be late. She looked at her daughter. “What’s the reason this time?”

Emily sighed. “I’ve told you like a hundred times. It’s only fair. You’ve had me for fourteen years. Now it’s his turn.”

“Quit banging your feet against the cabinet,” Daisy snapped. “And get down off the counter. What’s another reason?”

“He has air-conditioning in his apartment?”

The question mark at the end of the sentence and the faint smile on her daughter’s face told Daisy this wasn’t anything to lose sleep over, but she felt irritated anyway. Last week, Toby had asked her for a loan because the brakes had gone on his truck and one of his fillings had come loose, so he’d had to fork out money for the dentist and he was coming up short on the rent. But he’d pay her back, no problem.

She suspected him of putting Emmy up to this. She should call his bluff.

“Emmy.” She studied her daughter. “Maybe it seems like nothing to you when you talk about wanting to live with your father, but it gets me right here.” She poked a finger at her chest. “I know we’ve been fighting a lot lately and I’m not always the easiest person to live with, but I love you and I honestly try my best….” Her nose stung with tears and, not wanting to win a sympathy concession from Emmy, she just stopped. In an instant, Emmy was off the counter, her arm around Daisy’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I love you.”

“I love you too, sweetie, more than anything else in the world. And don’t be sorry. You have a right to feel the way you do.”

“It’s just that Dad asked me to ask you.”

Daisy kept her mouth shut. I am going through a difficult time right now, she told herself as Emily walked her to the truck. But adversity tests character.

Still, it wasn’t the perfect frame of mind for meeting her father’s biographer. And she probably shouldn’t have worn a shirt that proclaimed, Doesn’t Play Well With Others.

Deep breaths. She started the ignition. Everyone comes into our lives for a reason, Baba said. Maybe Nicholas Wynne had come into her life to teach her tolerance. His job in the cosmic universe was to be the fly in her serenity. She would be firm, calm and polite. But there would be no biography.

HIS HAIR DAMP from the shower, Nick took a look at his clothes, lined up on hangers and still slightly wrinkled from their transatlantic voyage. Linen this, cotton that. Served him right he supposed for refusing to buy synthetics. He’d got most of the things on vacation in Nice last year and brought them, thinking they looked somewhat Californian. Now, inspecting himself as he left the apartment, he could see that they didn’t. Pity.

Out on the street, he eyed the never-ending flow of traffic on Pacific Coast Highway, waited for a lull, then made a dash for it. As he reached the other side, he heard the screech of brakes and a hurled epithet from one of the vehicles. Assuming it had been directed at him, he turned toward the road. As he did, a flurry of movement caught his eye. He looked down to see a small, bedraggled and trembling white dog.

He squatted beside it and felt around for broken bones.

“Idiots like you shouldn’t be allowed to have animals,” a woman called out from the open window of a battered gray truck that had stopped for a red light. “You’re lucky it wasn’t killed.”

The woman’s pale oval face was partially obscured by a lot of long red hair, but he didn’t have to see her expression to know that she was angry. “It isn’t my dog,” he said politely, his hand still on the dog’s back. “But if I locate its owner, I’ll pass along your sentiments.” Bad-tempered shrew.

“You need to keep him on a leash,” the woman yelled.

“You need a leash around your neck,” Nick muttered, and then the light turned green and the truck roared out of sight, long hair trailing like a ribbon through the window. He checked the dog’s neck. No collar. It licked his hand. Now that he’d taken a better look, the dog was probably the ugliest little animal he’d ever seen.

The dog licked Nick’s hand again.

“Don’t get attached,” Nick said.