Page 16

He got out of the Suburban and didn’t look at the house, or the porch, or the two richest hippies in Northern California. He walked three steps toward the tree line and stopped. He laid one hand flat over his own heart.

Then he bowed, very slightly, to a redwood.

Rhoda grabbed my wrist hard enough that I felt my own pulse against her rings.

"Gregory," she whispered. "Who is that?"

I'd been drafting the answer since somewhere around the 405. I built it the way you build a trailer. Every word load-bearing, nothing you can cut, and they leave needing the entire movie.

"He's the subject of a documentary I'm producing. Zephyr Amaranth Aeolian. He doesn't do press, he doesn't take clients, and I found him through a contact I'm not permitted to name. I'm only in California at all because he agreed to a week of filming."

I put a hand on her arm.

"And Rhoda — I'm so sorry, I should have called. But we were coming up the 101 and I saw the exit, and I thought, my God, the wedding. I couldn't be this close and not congratulate you in person." I squeezed once. "We can't stay, obviously. I only wanted to hold your hands for a minute. Then we're gone."

Observe the machinery. I asked for nothing and I offered loss. We can't stay — which for a woman like Rhoda is the only thing that has ever reliably produced desire.

"A documentary," she breathed. "About his teachings? His practice?"

"There's no practice." I dropped my voice to match hers. "A practice implies you're practicing for something."

Rhoda's hand flew to her sternum. "Harold," she said, in a voice I can only describe as pre-weeping. "Harold, did you hear—"

"I heard it."

He was watching Zephyr commune with the redwood, and on his face was the expression of a man who had spent forty years buying every ticket to transcendence and watching every single show get cancelled, and who cannot help himself even now. Even after the Zoom man.

Hope.

That one landed somewhere I hadn't budgeted for. It's easy to con the greedy. It is not comfortable to con the hungry.

"You'll stay for dinner," Rhoda breathed, eyes glittering.

"Rhoda, no, we couldn't possibly—"

"You'll stay for dinner, and Zephyr will stay for dinner, and Gregory, the wedding—" Her hands went back up to her face. "Gregory, you have to — oh. Oh. Harold. The energy of it. Do you feel what I feel?"

"I feel it," said Harold, who I’m confident felt nothing whatsoever except dinner approaching, and who has spent four decades agreeing to feel whatever Rhoda feels.

"It's a sign," Rhoda announced — to me, to Harold, to the redwoods, to the universe that had come through for her again. "The week of Blaine's wedding. The very week. You arriving with — with him — Gregory, darling, you cannot leave. I won't allow it. The guest house is empty. This week is a celebration."

She took my face again. Her eyes were wet.

"And family comes home, Gregory. That's what family does."

This was the part I'd counted on.

It still went through me like a blade.

Over her shoulder, at his redwood, Billy Truman turned and looked at me. And very slowly, in full view of nobody but me and one extremely discreet tree, the son of a bitch winked.

We had them. Completely. In under six minutes, without a single fact being verified by anybody.

I felt the old magic come up through the gravel and into my chest. The opening-weekend feeling. The numbers-coming-in feeling.

We were green-lit.

"Rhoda," I said. "I would love nothing more."