10
DAVE HEADED DOWNSTAIRS NOW, OUT THE SIDE DOOR AND around the back of the warehouse, where he found Collier on the side porch of the bungalow, drinking his doughnut shop coffee that he had decanted into a ceramic mug. There was the sound of a television from inside the house—Sesame Street characters singing about the neighborhood. Jenny was a Sesame Street regular, still young enough at five years old to think she was living in some remote corner of it. With any luck she’d have a couple more years of thinking so before the world changed her mind for her.
Jenny’s parents had died three years ago in a car wreck. She had been two at the time that Collier had gotten custody of her, and he was the only father she remembered. His son had owned a condominium in Anaheim, which had gone to Jenny, except that it turned out to be worth less than her parents had paid for it. Stuck in the middle of a decaying neighborhood, half the condos in the complex were empty, the owners disappeared. Collier had paid the mortgage with his son’s bank account, thinking at first to hold onto the condo as Jenny’s legacy, but with each month that passed, the account shrank and so did the value of the condo, and after five thousand dollars had evaporated that way, Collier had done the same thing that all the other tenants were doing—he gave it back to the bank by simply walking away.
There was some money left in Jenny’s account—money that Collier wouldn’t touch. It wouldn’t change his life in any way he cared about, but some day, he had told Dave, it might change hers.
Collier had pulled his chair over to the edge of the porch, and he sprinkled water onto his garden over the top of the porch railing. He had onions and sugar cane going, along with a half dozen tomato vines in cages. He nodded at Dave and gestured with the hose, nearly squirting him down.
“You should have hollered,” he said. “I’d have bought you a cup of coffee.”
“I’ve had enough,” Dave told him.
“Well, sit down. You work too much. I see that light come on at dawn and go out at nine or ten at night. A person would think you owned the place. Either that or you’re trying to avoid something.”
“I like work.”
“That doesn’t make it healthy. Work can be a disease just like anything else. You find more workaholics than any other kind of holic.”
Dave sat down on a painted metal chair and looked out into the foggy morning. Across the little patch of grass that was the bungalow’s lawn, the back of the Ocean Theater rose three tall stories, its rear windows hung with heavy black drapery to keep out the sun during matinees. It was built of the same redwood clapboard as the Earl’s, but it was considerably older, with arched, Gothic-style windows and lot of interior woodwork that gave it atmosphere. It had fairly recently been painted white on the outside, and from a distance it looked good, but the window putty was falling out, and the old rear porch and most of the sills had been worked over hard by termites and weather. Casey, the Earl’s younger son, had applied to put it on the Historic Register, which might save it from the wrecking ball, in the event that Casey’s older brother Edmund gained control of the business and the property.
“How’s the Duke’s palace?” Collier asked.
“Coming along. We get a new artist today. She’s supposed to be pretty good. How’s old Parsons doing with Lear?”
“Good enough, when he’s sober. He’s about got it down.”
“How is he when he’s not sober?”
“He’s a ball of fire out on the heath, but he can’t keep the monologues straight. If Lear was a drunk, nobody could touch Parsons in the role.”
“Touch up the script,” Dave said. “Make Lear a drunk. Shakespeare’s dead. He couldn’t care less.”
Collier looked at him but didn’t say anything, as if he was thinking the idea over. “That’s a hell of a concept,” he said finally.
“I was kidding.”
“No, I like it. If Shakespeare would have thought of it, he’d have used it. Damn, this is a good idea. We modernize the whole shebang, or else we just mix things the hell up. Eclectic costuming. Anachronistic props. We make Lear a drunk, like you said. He keeps sending the Fool down to the corner for a pint, which he’s hiding from his daughters. Cordelia starts looking around and finds bottles everywhere—in the book cases, the toilet tank, under the beds. She calls him on it, and he gets mad, and the other sisters take his side and get him liquored up so bad that the whole damned kingdom starts to fall apart. He starts having the DT’s out on the heath. Probably the Fool’s been taking a nip himself, and that’s why he talks like such a damned lunatic….” He nodded at Dave. “I’m telling you, this is good—King Lear for the nineties.” He stood up then and crimped the hose in order to stop the flow of water. He unscrewed the sprinkler from the end and set it on the floor of the porch, then leaned out over the balcony and took a long drink out of the nozzle. “Hose water?” he asked, waving the hose in Dave’s direction.
Dave shook his head. “I ought to get back to work, get something done before the boss shows up.”
“The Earl getting in today?” He stepped down off the porch and turned off the spigot.
“I meant Edmund.”
“Edmund,” Collier said flatly. “If this was a fair world, they’d grind that bastard up and use him for chum.”
“I won’t argue with that.” Dave followed him down onto the lawn, and the two of them stood at the edge of the garden.
Collier bent over and pinched the bottom growth off the tomato vines. “You know what he was telling me yesterday? They’re going to tear down the bungalow.”
“Not a chance.”
“Big chance, apparently. They’ll sell the back two acres here to the city. Municipal parking. They’d make enough money to subsidize our rent somewhere else. That’s his word—subsidize. Translated, it means that Jenny and I are out on the street. Eviction. Hell, I don’t have any income besides what I get from the Earl—nothing except Social Security. What good is a subsidized rent to me? I’ve been living here rent-free for ten years. I’m grateful for it, too, but I’ve got into the habit of it now. I don’t know what we’d do if we had to move out. Another hundred a month would break me. I don’t care too much myself, but Jenny’s got to have a decent place to live. Damned Social Services is already yapping at me about Jenny.”
“That can’t be any kind of big problem. You’ve got plenty of friends on your side. They’re probably just doing some kind of routine checks.”
“I think some bastard’s been calling in stories, making stuff up.”
“Who?”
“Ed, that’s who. He wants us the hell out of here because he’s a greedy punk.”
“You won’t be evicted,” Dave said. “It just won’t happen. You know the Earl. He won’t even talk about it. He’ll just put it off forever. I think he’s philosophically opposed to municipal parking.”
“Yeah, I do know the Earl. He nearly dropped dead from that triple bypass last year. If he dies on us, the bastard son ascends to the throne. He doesn’t have any philosophy except for money.”
“He ascends to the throne along with his brother.”
“Well, God bless his brother. He’s always been my favorite. Hell, I’m Casey’s godfather. It pains me to say that he’s drunk most of his backbone away, if you follow me. Don’t get me wrong. I’d jump in front of a train to save him. But I don’t think he’s got a lot of fight in him. I think his brother could take him in a cold second.”
“He’d surprise you.”
“I truly hope so.”
The screen door banged shut, and Jenny came down the porch steps drinking a Dr. Pepper.
“It’s too early for that,” Collier said to her. “What about milk?”
“It’s sick,” she said, and she put a finger halfway down her throat to indicate that she was gagged by the idea.
“Well, I don’t want you drinking sodas, not this early in the morning. With lunch it’s okay sometimes, but not with breakfast.”
“I’m finished,” she said. “See?” She turned the can over, dribbling the last few drops out onto the lawn. “Can I have a ’nother one?”
“No,” Collier said. “You can’t even have this one.” She giggled at Dave, who gave her a hard look in order to support Collier. Whatever wisdom there was in the no-soda-in-the-morning attitude was completely lost on her.
“Give us Cordelia,” Collier said to her.
Jenny shook her head and looked at the ground.
“Just a little bit of Cordelia.”
She shook her head again.
“What? Nothing?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Nothing will come of nothing,” Collier said to her, grimacing in a theatrical rage.
“Unhappy that I am,” Jenny said, “I cannot … I can’t …”
“I cannot heave my heart into my mouth,” Collier reminded her.
“My heart in my mouth,” Jenny said, grinning widely now. She skipped away, circling around the yard, spinning to make herself dizzy.
“She’s a natural,” Collier said, watching her happily. Suddenly he laughed out loud, as if he’d just thought of something funny. “So the Fool walks up to Lear, see, and Lear’s been on an all-night bender. He can’t even see straight. And the Fool says …”
The front end of a car appeared in the parking lot just then, pulling up alongside the theatre and stopping, and its appearance utterly interrupted Collier, who watched the car uneasily. A woman got out, wearing a dress and carrying a notebook.
“Now what?” Collier said. The woman looked around her as if she were assessing the general condition of things.
“Real estate agent,” Dave said.
“Social Services! Jesus.” Collier took the empty can from Jenny, tilted it up to his mouth, and pretended to drink from it. “Why don’t you run on inside?” he said to his granddaughter. “Put on a clean t-shirt. And put on shoes, too.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because this is Aunt Betty, and she likes it when little girls look nice.”
“Who’s Aunt Betty?”
“Aunt Betty Crocker. Now go on in and put on a clean shirt. Whatever one you want.”
Jenny turned and ran up the steps. The screen door slammed again.
The woman crossed the asphalt at the back of the theater, heading toward them. She was a fairly tall woman, with an upright carriage and a way of walking that made it look as if she’d had a few years of ballet. It would have been years ago, though, because she looked about sixty-five, her hair gray.
“Social Services agent,” Collier said. “Her name is Mrs. Nyles. I’ve had the pleasure once before. Somebody called something in again, I guess. Goddamned Edmund …”
“You want me to stick around?”
“No, you go on. I’ll fill you in if it’s anything.” Collier shook his head tiredly.
Dave walked back toward the Earl’s. This was none of his business unless Collier wanted to make it his business. The Earl had already told him that someone had turned Collier in for child neglect, although Dave hadn’t known that Social Services was making an issue of it. This woman was probably a caseworker. The child-neglect allegation was way out of line—probably Collier was right about it being Edmund who had made the call. Jenny led a strange life for a kid, though, spending nearly as much time in the old theatre as she spent at home, dressing in costumes out of the basement wardrobe, climbing up and down the ladders to the backstage balconies like a monkey. She could disappear for half an afternoon in among the litter of stage props and equipment stored beneath the stage. A week ago she disappeared entirely, and the police were notified. Casey had found her across the Highway, digging for sand crabs beneath the pier, dressed like a street beggar out of the Arabian Nights. That incident alone might have stirred up Social Services. As for Collier, Dave was certain he was doing the best he knew how, and Jenny always seemed to him to be a happy enough child.
He looked back as he rounded the corner of the warehouse. Jenny was back outside, barefoot, but dressed in a frilly sort of Easter dress now, her hair completely wild, as if she had blow-dried it with a fan. Collier stood talking to the social worker while Jenny turned multiple cartwheels across the lawn.