Chapter 20. The Descent

The trip to Idaho sank me into a marose reflection
that was exactly what I needed

Priest Lake is my spiritual base. It has been a wholesome connection to nature and family since my earliest years. In the beginning, the family drove fifty miles from Spokane Valley to Priest River Idaho and another forty-mile stretch over a gravel and washboard road to a post office, general store, restaurant and bar, called Nordman. From there it was another three miles on a sometimes oiled dirt and washboard road to Elkins Resort and Reeder Bay. Reeder Bay campgrounds had dozen or so campsites above the beach that stretched a half mile of sandy beach from Elkins Resort to a rocky point with twin pines leaning out over the waters.

In those first years Max Senior would rent a small ten to twelve-foot-long rowboat powered by ten-horse outboard engines. The lake waters weren’t at all crowded then. There were only a few grand mahogany Chris Craft power boat on the lake and a few families like ours had the waters to ourselves. Water skiing and Jet Skis weren’t around yet to interrupt the innocent pleasures of trolling for silvers, building a raft for the kids, or paddling out on inner-tubes to where the sandy bottom turns deep blue that we ominously called The Drop-off.  People had to want to be on that lake really bad to endure the trip from Priest River to Reeder Bay. Otherwise, the less committed went to Pend Oreille, or Coeur d’Alene, lakes.

The trip to Upper Priest wasn’t accessible any other way but by boat via a meandering waterway everyone called The Thoroughfare. We’d head out each year from the campgrounds at Reeder Bay on a four-hour ride up through the winding and pristine Thoroughfare to Upper Priest lake. It was an all-day outing that easily turned into a hazardous adventure because, no matter how calm the lake was on the way up the lake, it often came rolling over the gunwales on the way back with waves that white-capped at three feet. Three-foot waves would be nothing in a craft designed for them but these little rentals, crammed to the gunnels with kids and gear, took foolish courage or good boatswain ship to navigate the trip. Later on Dad built a sixteen-foot run-about, of Chris Craft hull design, mounted with a forty-horse Evinrude outboard engine for water skiing. Dad also crafted a pair of skis for the kids. He was living the dream he came home to enjoy after returning from the ravages of war in Europe.

I had fond memories of roasting marshmallows over an open fire on the beach; of the full moon rising from behind Chimney Rock high above the lake; of the Selkirk Mountain range made for a perfect backdrop above the rolling hills; of hills covered with tamarack, lodge-pole pine, hemlock, blue spruce and cedar. And the forests glades were filled with huckleberry and blackberry bushes that nourished a healthy population of black bear. It was then, the first two weeks of August that our Dad timed family vacations.

Labor Day Week:

The trip to Idaho sank me into a morose reflection that was exactly what I needed. I didn’t have a drink until I got to Weed. I pulled Furthurmore over at the rest stop that used to be at the junction of I-5 and Route-97. I’d been playing a Louis Armstrong/ Ella Fitzgerald’s duet of, You’re Learning the Blues, with a dozen other heartbreak songs, crying and singing, all the way up from Santa Barbara. I sang along loud over the rattle of the engine;

The cigarettes you light, one after another… didn’t help you forget her… and the way that you love her… You’re only burning… a torch you can’t lose… but you’re was on the right track… for learning the blues.

Taking a toke off the pint of Jack I kept in the tool box in the back of the van, I stretched on the tool box and drifted off to sleep until I thought I heard a couple of vagrants arguing over one of the barbeque stands. One sounded remarkably like that old stick from Pal’s, Lucky.

“Damn it,” Lucky protested, “I can’t fuckin’ get to him as long as you keep thwarting me at every turn!”

“Don’t blame me. I have no control over his decisions. Even the Kahuna won’t do that.” The vagrant answered.

“Yeh, well, I almost have him,” Lucky demanded, “You keep your bargain and it will be done!”

Long-distance road trips through those wide-open spaces between cities in the West, the hum of a well-tuned engine, and the open road ahead, put me in a state of contemplation that I considered to be a powerful meditation. Automatically mindful of the road and the sounds of the vehicle, I was in the mind as though floating on a carpet. I could never drive like Neal Cassidy… drive until the bolts fell off and the engine burned up. I had too much respect for the machine. A big part of the responsibility I felt had to do with the fact that I owned the machines I drove and Dean Moriarty didn’t. But, nevertheless, a long stretch of highway on the open road was similarly a balm to my soul.

Route-97 through Oregon was a shorter route by miles but a longer voyage on the clock. By the time I got to Coolin Idaho I was ready for a drink. My nephews kept the campfire burning awaiting my arrival at the site by midnight after driving straight through from Weed. This began a three-day binge in which I was able to shove aside feelings for the Fu with feasting and boozing. I kept up with the young’uns, sitting up at the fire long after all the others had hit the sack, and I prayed for the oblivion of alcohol.

Max Senior, quietly watched my dissipation as though the old veteran understood. My mother, Arlene, tried to slow me down with disapproving comments and glances. She once asked me, “Are you going to waste your college degree digging ditches?”

“Awe, Mom, there’s nothing wrong with digging ditches. It’s honest labor,” I defended myself against the stern prosecution of a concerned mother.

My sisters, all mothers and grandmothers themselves, kindly tolerated my excesses until one afternoon I’d arrived at the campfire with a joint in my mouth proclaiming, “My name is Max and I’m an alcoholic, anyone have a light!”

The next day my sister, Colleen, approached me, asking cautiously, “Do you remember yesterday?”

“Yeh, sure.” I thought I had been hilarious... “lots of laughs, eh?”

“There were children… you had a joint in your mouth… do you remember staggering around saying, ‘My name is Max and I’m an alcoholic!’ Do you remember?”

“Vaguely.” I recalled that maybe I wasn’t all that funny.

“You were their hero once. You know that?” She grabbed my arm as I began to turn away, “The kids call their Uncle Max, the old drunk, now. You gotta get a grip on yourself or I won’t have you in my house around my grandchildren.”

Coleen’s admonition didn’t slow me down until the family gathering broke camp after the last Labor Day feast. Everyone had packed their cars heading back to their homes in Spokane Valley and I packed up the van for the trip back to Santa Barbara. My father sat with me at the campfire before everyone departed. The tents were down, the kids packed into cars, and the cabins closed up by then.

“What are you doing with your life now, Max?” my Dad rarely talked with me like that. He hardly ever had to and had been proud of his son’s accomplishments and adventures. After all, his son was the first of his children to get a degree from college and had a future beyond working in a factory.

As the question broke through the fog of oblivion, I tried to answer but had nothing, “There isn’t much goin’ on at this time, dad.”

“When I was on the Rhine, artillery shells were blasting holes a hundred yards wide and a hundred feet deep…,” Dad spoke quietly. He rarely spoke of the war. He didn’t boast of war just as no one in my family knew anything of my sojourn in Nicaragua. Dad continued, “We were there. We had no idea what the Generals had in mind. We did our jobs: the Germans did their jobs too; brutally, but they had a job to do and so did we. There was no way to dig in deep enough. I realized that fate was all that kept my life from any meaning beyond a pair of Dog Tags in an envelope.”

“What are you getting at Dad?”

“You have a job to do now. It’s Ariel. No matter what you achieve from the time she was born… this is your calling.” He put an arm over my shoulder using his unique sense of humor that tempered any serious lecture, affectionately adding, “It is not chasing pussy around with nothing to show for it.”

I got back in Santa Barbara after mulling over the situation with the Fu, and my father’s words, for 1,400 miles. By the time I pulled up in my yard, retrieved Homer from his vacation pen, and checked for messages (mostly from the Fu complaining about the Freeloader), I was ready to tie on a good one. The drinking I’d done in Northern Idaho was tempered by friends and family… but now I hit it hard. I went to Pal’s first, downed a few brews, letting Claire and friends know I was back in town and then I went back home. It had to be the Jack Daniels but against my better judgment I was compelled to check-in with the Fu.

I punched out the Fu’s number. The phone rang a half dozen times before it was picked up, “Hullo?” Bad news, it was a male’s voice.

“Who’s this?” I asked but, of course, I knew.

“Why, who’re you?” the voice on the other end had to know who I was too.

“Oh, you’re the Freeloader.” I couldn’t resist getting in one jab… “Is the Fu … er, Adrienne, there.”

“Is this Max?”

“Yeh, I want to talk to Adrienne.”

I wasn’t sure but thought I heard a doped-up voice, smacked-up, in the background, “Who ees eet? … Ees eet Max? … Lemme talk to heem right now. No, no, I weel call heem later.”

“She isn’t here; can I take a message?”

“I have one for you, Rod.” There was no response, “Go fuck yourself.” I hung up before Rod could respond.

Fresh in my memory was the first time I met Rod. It was an awkward dinner with the Fu in which Rod and I had been the only guests. First off, Rod asked the Fu about her accent. She told him it was French and Rod launched into the usual pathetic apologetic American crap about how the French are so much more sophisticated than us and how embarrassing it is that we have no culture over on this uncivilized side of “The Pond”. When fools talk like this it is to imply, “though my compatriots are bores, I am most certainly not.” These exclamations are usually followed by a subservience that would be complete with the wagging of a tail had it come from the obeisance of a puppy dog. The Fu was cordial and her ego was mildly fluffed but she moved the subject to other topics.

Dinner was winding down, the Fu had gotten a bit tipsy and quipped, “I had a boyfriend who wouldn’t leave after the party was over…” This was a hint that either Rod, or I, should leave soon?

“Oh,” interrupted Rod, “You just let me know who the next one is and I’ll take care of him for you.”

“You don’t know Adrienne,” I was getting tired of this oaf anyway; “She can take care of herself… and you too, for all that matters.”

She laughed, caressed my shoulder, gave me a peck on the cheek and changed the subject. After Rod left she admitted he was a jerk and playing solitaire with a short deck. I was glad that I was the chosen one to stay and figured that this was the end of it with Rod. Because of this incident I was understandably miffed when a month later Rod had moved, not only into her house, but, into her bed. She had been hanging out with Rod in Manuel’s while I had been at work. Rod saw an opening and had affectively moved me out of her life.

I should have been happy to be rid of her at this turn of events but the fact that this Freeloader was in her bed drove me crazy… crazy in every sense of the word. Crazy, yes, but this insanity couldn’t be called jealousy. It was more a feeling of outrage that she had scooped up a bottom feeder that was a lower form of life… even lower than me. Her dalliance with the Navy Seal was tolerable, though it evoked those feelings of jealousy, envy, and of my own inadequacy. By comparison, I thought I had little to offer. After all, the SEAL was a Vietnam War combat vet and an accomplished diver who owned his own house, boat, and diving business. He had done well for himself. So, how was I ever going to compete with that? I rented a hovel, dug ditches for a living, and was drunk or stoned most of the time. I had nothing to offer the Fu above and beyond my complete and total devotion.

The Navy Seal was clearly out of my league. But this creep, Rodney, was several notches down from where I thought I was. I worked hard for a living and paid my bills. I didn’t take a free ride from anybody and couldn’t tolerate the slightest control over me by taking a handout from my parents, any woman, or the government (except for my VA comp). I’d observed that there was a culture of far too many freeloading punks in Santa Barbara that lived off the good graces of all three. Very few had ever known what it was like to bail themselves out of jail on their own dime. I couldn’t understand how she could prefer another spoiled rotten, piece of shit, toy-boy like this in her bed rather than a self-made man like myself and knowing that this bastard lured her in with heroin added fury to the contempt of righteous indignation. My rage and frothing anger had more to do with a betrayal of principles I’d had fought hard to re-establish in my life… principles… yes, a newly awakened purpose inspired by this futile love for the Fu once more denied.

Part III Chapter 19. The End of the Beginning

The beginning of this tale started with a phone call from the Fu. Yes, she owned her own phone, a land-line and, fancy that, a cell phone. It was also true that her husband had his own phone and he too had a cell phone. She owned a house on a hill far away and down the coast. Her husband lived with her there but everything belonged to her. She was incredibly wealthy but was not averse to having a bottom-feeder like me as a friend and, for an oh-so brief-moment, as a lover.

All the while I was married I longed for a relationship with a woman that could drink like I did. Celeste was one of those people who’d have a few drinks; wine with dinner, maybe a cocktail or two after dinner, but walked away leaving half a glass when she felt a buzz coming on.  I assumed that this was a character defect of some sort because losing control was what I loved about booze. It seemed to me that her moderation was based on fear of her loss of control. I saw her do that but once in the nine years we were together. It was at her cousin’s wedding that she had one too many glasses of champagne and suddenly developed an English accent. I got a kick out of her bouncing around the reception and interrupting conversations, to talk about merry old London. She never did get good and drunk after that nor had she ever been in merry old England.

Man, that Fu was the first woman I’d ever hooked up with that drank worse than me. Even Nunnie didn’t hit it as hard as the Fu did. The Fu moved into town and bought a house on the Riviera to separate from Nick. He was still with her but their relationship was disintegrating. He spent most of his time going back and forth between Buellton and Santa Barbara, leaving the Fu alone in her place to do as she pleased. My job-site happened to be a remodel on a house just up the hill from hers. After work, I stopped by her house and we messed around in her studio. If I wasn’t in love with her before, I most certainly was in love with her after she bought that house.

Her house was modest by Santa Barbara standards but it was worth more on the market than I could earn if I had fifty working years left. There was a music room with a baby grand and French windows on three sides at the end commanding a view of the city all the way to the Channel Islands. It was full of light, tastefully, and sparsely, decorated. We spent most of our late-night hours in that room. Hardwood floors in all the rooms were covered by distinctive oriental carpets of a unique and simple design. She said that they were Tibetan in origin and I haven’t seen anything the likes of them since then.

The master bedroom upstairs opened up on one side through double doors to her art studio. The other side had French doors that seemed to invite us out onto a balcony for breakfast. We spent considerable time in the studio. I stretched her canvasses, or pounded out poetry on my Remington, while she worked on her jewelry or just stood nude for my appreciative attention as I sketched the contours of her lithe body. Her studio overlooked a terraced garden that arose to a Koi pond midway up towards a raked Zen garden overseen asymmetrically by a huge granite boulder she called “The General.” The whole garden could be seen and appraised best from the studio but, when down there in it, the whole picture revealed itself enticingly like a first-time lover disrobing.

The house drew me in as much as her sleek gymnast’s body. My apartment was a dark and mildewed place and Homer was my only companion most of the time. I tried to stay away but a combination of my reticence, and her fear of getting close enough to be hurt by anyone, drew us together like the opposing poles of a magnet. This last round started one night, after a few hours in Pal’s. We found ourselves in an embrace that ended after a few hours of rolling around in her bed, talking about her marriage and how she loved me and how she’d grown to loathe her Nicky.

“What are we going to do about it?” I asked, hoping for the right answer.

“Max, I love you but I don’t know. I’m confused. I haven’t felt like this about anyone since… oh, I don’t know.” Her eyes darted like sparrows from phantom to phantom across the ceiling as we lay on the bed, twisted in the sheets, sweating from love-making and smoking a bit of herb.

“I want you, Adrienne,” I was surprised at my words and knew that more powerful ones were to follow had she not pressed a hand to his lips.

“Please, Max, I know what you are going to say.” She brought her hand down to his chest. “You have a good heart. I know that you love me but it is useless. I am a … oh, what’s the use? I’m a drunken junkie and can’t have love in my life.”

“What if we quit drinking and help each other?” I was willing to go to any lengths for her; even the suicide of sobriety.

“Oh, yeh, that will work out real well… look at me now. That’s what Nick and I were doing when we got married.”

If a stake were driven through my heart it wouldn’t have been any less painful, “But Adrienne, this is our chance to be real with our feelings.”

“Yes, maybe you are right, Max.” She held me desperately. That embrace was so much like that last embrace from Ariel, I could’ve wept. A horrible knot dammed up inside my throat and chest but still no tears… no release.

“Please, go to sleep, my dear eccentric American friend, my Max.”

Her affection was infused with a passion that faded into the oblivion of slumber.

A nudge pulled my consciousness out from that void. It was the Fu shaking me saying, “Max, wake up. Wake up, Max.” she whispered urgently.

“Uh? Wha…”

“Nicky’s home. He’s downstairs in the music room.”

“Does he know I’m here?” I grumbled. Then the fear, the realization of what she was saying stirred me to full alert.

“I don’t know. I went down to feed the dogs and I saw him sitting there on the couch with that damned pistol. I couldn’t tell if he was awake.” She was out of the bed and putting on a pair of jeans.

“What do you want me to do?” I wasn’t so sure of myself now and wanted nothing more than to be far away from Nick and his forty-five automatic and back in my place with Homer.

“Go, you can get out through the kitchen… go Max, I’ll call you later.” She gathered my briefs and socks from the floor where I’d thrown them. I stepped lightly down the stairs, slipped out through the kitchen and put on my jeans and boots without socks while hiding behind a fern in the garden.

She called that night and it was final. That is where this story had begun. Again, I entered that purgatory of “just friends”. She’d come to my place to smoke a joint and beg some pot to bring to her latest lover… but that was all. She had finally kicked Nick out of the house. Having done so, I harbored some remote hopes. Her pattern of drawing me in and pushing me out had been completed. I was out now and she was getting it on with an ex-Navy SEAL. I had to admit that I couldn’t compete with that.

She was still leading me on by complaining about her Seal, like she had done with her Nicky. She said she was in love with the SEAL but the SEAL wasn’t in love with her. She resorted to espousing nothing but contempt for him but, regardless of her contempt, she still bedded down with him whenever she could.

The SEAL drowned in a diving accident: a yacht had ignored his diving buoy and the propeller cut off his air. She mourned the SEAL like a widow at his beach memorial along with several other women who were in love with him. After he was gone I thought once more that I might have another chance with her but she hooked up with Rod, an unemployed construction worker.

Construction was booming in Santa Barbara at that time and it was impossible to be unemployed unless one’s reputation was shot. That was one of the benefits and curses of a town the size of Santa Barbara in the construction trades. Reputation was everything. If you worked well, showed up when you said you would, fairly conscientious about your work, and maybe even got along with people, you never went without a job unless there were no jobs to be had. If your reputation was like her latest beau, you sat at the bar in Manuel’s all day waiting for a call or someone like the Fu to show up.

She did show up one day and the free loader did move in with her. They started doing heroin together as a way to stem her alcoholism. Two months later she complained to me that she couldn’t get rid of him.

She still wouldn’t have me though she came by to smoke a joint and complain so I asked her, “Am I such a loser that you prefer a free-loading junkie to me?”

She didn’t answer.

I demanded, “Is that a yes?”

“Yes,” she said, as tears rolled down her cheeks. Where else was she going to cop her junk?

I should have known. After all, wasn’t she doing exactly what I’d been doing since Celeste packed the Audi and took what was left of me away?

“What are you guarding your heart from, girl?” I turned to the Remington, with my back to her, and put a blank sheet of paper in the roll. I waited to hear the screen door slam and looked out the window to watch her walk away.

I took some time off to go on vacation for a Labor Day annual get-together with family and friends at Priest Lake Idaho. The afternoon before I left for Idaho, the Fu stopped by my place. I saw her coming towards the door with a six pack of beer. She had been crying and, though I’d rarely seen her wearing make-up, her cheeks were streaked with mascara. I let her in the door hoping she would tell me that the Freeloader was out of her place.

“Is he gone?”

“Who?” She said as she passed me an imported beer. She drank imports but I had no use for paying more for anything I was just going to piss away. Still, I appreciated the gesture.

“Rod, the Freeloader.” I was getting impatient with her and was ready to get rolling. The van, I’d dubbed, Furthurmore, was packed and Homer was already boarded at the Cat Palace.

“Oh, him,” She sat on my couch and cracked a beer.  “Yes, he is still at my house. When he isn’t at Manuel’s, he’s drinking my vodka, smoking my pot, shooting my dope, and eating my food.”

“So, why is he still with you?” I could taste the bile rising in my throat and washed it back down with a sip of beer. This crap was getting old. My heart was breaking with the realization that there was absolutely nothing I could do about her bullshit and that I was doomed to forever being the sounding board for whatever jerk had put his hooks in her.

“He is like a fungus… a parasite.” She spat out in disgust.

“Well, the parasite has found a host in you,” I countered.

She bent her head down and sobbed but there was something I sensed was fraudulent about her remorse.

I continued, “I wouldn’t be so upset with you had you not rejected me for someone I could respect but… to take up with… with this sad excuse for a man… this toy-boy!”

She motioned, patting the cushion, for me to sit next to her on the couch. I cursed myself for following her summons. I put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her head to my chest, “Fu, you know I love you and you know I care for you more than anything…”

“I know, please stop saying that…” she put her forefinger to her lips, “Shhh…,” and nuzzled closer into my chest.

Her affection stirred my longing but it also cemented my resolve, knowing she would pull back as soon as the hunger gripped her.

I threw down the gauntlet, “I can’t take this any longer. I’m leaving for Idaho in an hour and, when I come back, he has to be out. You have to choose.”

“But, Max, whatever I choose, it won’t be you.”

“Then take your imported beer, your spoiled brat impulses… take ‘em out my door and leave me alone,” I tugged her by the arm off the couch, picked up the six-pack, and towed her to the door.

She turned towards me. Our lips met. I jerked away. She cried out, “Max, don’t do this. You know I love you but I can’t be with you.”

“Then good-bye Fu. It has been Hell knowing you.” I broke away from her and closed the door.

I watched her walk out to her car, “Why GAWD, why do you put these women in my face only to have them ripped away?”

I hadn’t really cared one way or another about any woman after I’d packed my little Ariel and the dogs into the Audi to be driven away by Celeste over a decade ago. This was the one time I’d given my heart so completely to anyone since then. To suffer the indignity of having it stomped on and trashed was more than I could handle. I was prepared for the run to Idaho and hoped to sort things out… to get my priorities straight on the long ribbon of asphalt.

Before I met the Fu I felt my soul had been a roach that prowled in the dark for a scrap of hope and scurried away, back into hidden crevasses, from the light. Now that I had laid my heart bare, the Fu stepped on it as though I was the cockroach an annoying and insignificant bug... and, in the vocabulary of the exterminator, a pest.

Part III Chapter 19. The End of the Beginning

The beginning of this tale started with a phone call from the Fu. Yes, she owned her own phone, a land-line and, fancy that, a cell phone. It was also true that her husband had his own phone and he too had a cell phone. She owned a house on a hill far away and down the coast. Her husband lived with her there but everything belonged to her. She was incredibly wealthy but was not averse to having a bottom-feeder like me as a friend and, for an oh-so brief-moment, as a lover.

All the while I was married I longed for a relationship with a woman that could drink like I did. Celeste was one of those people who’d have a few drinks; wine with dinner, maybe a cocktail or two after dinner, but walked away leaving half a glass when she felt a buzz coming on.  I assumed that this was a character defect of some sort because losing control was what I loved about booze. It seemed to me that her moderation was based on fear of her loss of control. I saw her do that but once in the nine years we were together. It was at her cousin’s wedding that she had one too many glasses of champagne and suddenly developed an English accent. I got a kick out of her bouncing around the reception and interrupting conversations, to talk about merry old London. She never did get good and drunk after that nor had she ever been in merry old England.

Man, that Fu was the first woman I’d ever hooked up with that drank worse than me. Even Nunnie didn’t hit it as hard as the Fu did. The Fu moved into town and bought a house on the Riviera to separate from Nick. He was still with her but their relationship was disintegrating. He spent most of his time going back and forth between Buellton and Santa Barbara, leaving the Fu alone in her place to do as she pleased. My job-site happened to be a remodel on a house just up the hill from hers. After work, I stopped by her house and we messed around in her studio. If I wasn’t in love with her before, I most certainly was in love with her after she bought that house.

Her house was modest by Santa Barbara standards but it was worth more on the market than I could earn if I had fifty working years left. There was a music room with a baby grand and French windows on three sides at the end commanding a view of the city all the way to the Channel Islands. It was full of light, tastefully, and sparsely, decorated. We spent most of our late-night hours in that room. Hardwood floors in all the rooms were covered by distinctive oriental carpets of a unique and simple design. She said that they were Tibetan in origin and I haven’t seen anything the likes of them since then.

The master bedroom upstairs opened up on one side through double doors to her art studio. The other side had French doors that seemed to invite us out onto a balcony for breakfast. We spent considerable time in the studio. I stretched her canvasses, or pounded out poetry on my Remington, while she worked on her jewelry or just stood nude for my appreciative attention as I sketched the contours of her lithe body. Her studio overlooked a terraced garden that arose to a Koi pond midway up towards a raked Zen garden overseen asymmetrically by a huge granite boulder she called “The General.” The whole garden could be seen and appraised best from the studio but, when down there in it, the whole picture revealed itself enticingly like a first-time lover disrobing.

The house drew me in as much as her sleek gymnast’s body. My apartment was a dark and mildewed place and Homer was my only companion most of the time. I tried to stay away but a combination of my reticence, and her fear of getting close enough to be hurt by anyone, drew us together like the opposing poles of a magnet. This last round started one night, after a few hours in Pal’s. We found ourselves in an embrace that ended after a few hours of rolling around in her bed, talking about her marriage and how she loved me and how she’d grown to loathe her Nicky.

“What are we going to do about it?” I asked, hoping for the right answer.

“Max, I love you but I don’t know. I’m confused. I haven’t felt like this about anyone since… oh, I don’t know.” Her eyes darted like sparrows from phantom to phantom across the ceiling as we lay on the bed, twisted in the sheets, sweating from love-making and smoking a bit of herb.

“I want you, Adrienne,” I was surprised at my words and knew that more powerful ones were to follow had she not pressed a hand to his lips.

“Please, Max, I know what you are going to say.” She brought her hand down to his chest. “You have a good heart. I know that you love me but it is useless. I am a … oh, what’s the use? I’m a drunken junkie and can’t have love in my life.”

“What if we quit drinking and help each other?” I was willing to go to any lengths for her; even the suicide of sobriety.

“Oh, yeh, that will work out real well… look at me now. That’s what Nick and I were doing when we got married.”

If a stake were driven through my heart it wouldn’t have been any less painful, “But Adrienne, this is our chance to be real with our feelings.”

“Yes, maybe you are right, Max.” She held me desperately. That embrace was so much like that last embrace from Ariel, I could’ve wept. A horrible knot dammed up inside my throat and chest but still no tears… no release.

“Please, go to sleep, my dear eccentric American friend, my Max.”

Her affection was infused with a passion that faded into the oblivion of slumber.

A nudge pulled my consciousness out from that void. It was the Fu shaking me saying, “Max, wake up. Wake up, Max.” she whispered urgently.

“Uh? Wha…”

“Nicky’s home. He’s downstairs in the music room.”

“Does he know I’m here?” I grumbled. Then the fear, the realization of what she was saying stirred me to full alert.

“I don’t know. I went down to feed the dogs and I saw him sitting there on the couch with that damned pistol. I couldn’t tell if he was awake.” She was out of the bed and putting on a pair of jeans.

“What do you want me to do?” I wasn’t so sure of myself now and wanted nothing more than to be far away from Nick and his forty-five automatic and back in my place with Homer.

“Go, you can get out through the kitchen… go Max, I’ll call you later.” She gathered my briefs and socks from the floor where I’d thrown them. I stepped lightly down the stairs, slipped out through the kitchen and put on my jeans and boots without socks while hiding behind a fern in the garden.

She called that night and it was final. That is where this story had begun. Again, I entered that purgatory of “just friends”. She’d come to my place to smoke a joint and beg some pot to bring to her latest lover… but that was all. She had finally kicked Nick out of the house. Having done so, I harbored some remote hopes. Her pattern of drawing me in and pushing me out had been completed. I was out now and she was getting it on with an ex-Navy SEAL. I had to admit that I couldn’t compete with that.

She was still leading me on by complaining about her Seal, like she had done with her Nicky. She said she was in love with the SEAL but the SEAL wasn’t in love with her. She resorted to espousing nothing but contempt for him but, regardless of her contempt, she still bedded down with him whenever she could.

The SEAL drowned in a diving accident: a yacht had ignored his diving buoy and the propeller cut off his air. She mourned the SEAL like a widow at his beach memorial along with several other women who were in love with him. After he was gone I thought once more that I might have another chance with her but she hooked up with Rod, an unemployed construction worker.

Construction was booming in Santa Barbara at that time and it was impossible to be unemployed unless one’s reputation was shot. That was one of the benefits and curses of a town the size of Santa Barbara in the construction trades. Reputation was everything. If you worked well, showed up when you said you would, fairly conscientious about your work, and maybe even got along with people, you never went without a job unless there were no jobs to be had. If your reputation was like her latest beau, you sat at the bar in Manuel’s all day waiting for a call or someone like the Fu to show up.

She did show up one day and the free loader did move in with her. They started doing heroin together as a way to stem her alcoholism. Two months later she complained to me that she couldn’t get rid of him.

She still wouldn’t have me though she came by to smoke a joint and complain so I asked her, “Am I such a loser that you prefer a free-loading junkie to me?”

She didn’t answer.

I demanded, “Is that a yes?”

“Yes,” she said, as tears rolled down her cheeks. Where else was she going to cop her junk?

I should have known. After all, wasn’t she doing exactly what I’d been doing since Celeste packed the Audi and took what was left of me away?

“What are you guarding your heart from, girl?” I turned to the Remington, with my back to her, and put a blank sheet of paper in the roll. I waited to hear the screen door slam and looked out the window to watch her walk away.

I took some time off to go on vacation for a Labor Day annual get-together with family and friends at Priest Lake Idaho. The afternoon before I left for Idaho, the Fu stopped by my place. I saw her coming towards the door with a six pack of beer. She had been crying and, though I’d rarely seen her wearing make-up, her cheeks were streaked with mascara. I let her in the door hoping she would tell me that the Freeloader was out of her place.

“Is he gone?”

“Who?” She said as she passed me an imported beer. She drank imports but I had no use for paying more for anything I was just going to piss away. Still, I appreciated the gesture.

“Rod, the Freeloader.” I was getting impatient with her and was ready to get rolling. The van, I’d dubbed, Furthurmore, was packed and Homer was already boarded at the Cat Palace.

“Oh, him,” She sat on my couch and cracked a beer.  “Yes, he is still at my house. When he isn’t at Manuel’s, he’s drinking my vodka, smoking my pot, shooting my dope, and eating my food.”

“So, why is he still with you?” I could taste the bile rising in my throat and washed it back down with a sip of beer. This crap was getting old. My heart was breaking with the realization that there was absolutely nothing I could do about her bullshit and that I was doomed to forever being the sounding board for whatever jerk had put his hooks in her.

“He is like a fungus… a parasite.” She spat out in disgust.

“Well, the parasite has found a host in you,” I countered.

She bent her head down and sobbed but there was something I sensed was fraudulent about her remorse.

I continued, “I wouldn’t be so upset with you had you not rejected me for someone I could respect but… to take up with… with this sad excuse for a man… this toy-boy!”

She motioned, patting the cushion, for me to sit next to her on the couch. I cursed myself for following her summons. I put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her head to my chest, “Fu, you know I love you and you know I care for you more than anything…”

“I know, please stop saying that…” she put her forefinger to her lips, “Shhh…,” and nuzzled closer into my chest.

Her affection stirred my longing but it also cemented my resolve, knowing she would pull back as soon as the hunger gripped her.

I threw down the gauntlet, “I can’t take this any longer. I’m leaving for Idaho in an hour and, when I come back, he has to be out. You have to choose.”

“But, Max, whatever I choose, it won’t be you.”

“Then take your imported beer, your spoiled brat impulses… take ‘em out my door and leave me alone,” I tugged her by the arm off the couch, picked up the six-pack, and towed her to the door.

She turned towards me. Our lips met. I jerked away. She cried out, “Max, don’t do this. You know I love you but I can’t be with you.”

“Then good-bye Fu. It has been Hell knowing you.” I broke away from her and closed the door.

I watched her walk out to her car, “Why GAWD, why do you put these women in my face only to have them ripped away?”

I hadn’t really cared one way or another about any woman after I’d packed my little Ariel and the dogs into the Audi to be driven away by Celeste over a decade ago. This was the one time I’d given my heart so completely to anyone since then. To suffer the indignity of having it stomped on and trashed was more than I could handle. I was prepared for the run to Idaho and hoped to sort things out… to get my priorities straight on the long ribbon of asphalt.

Before I met the Fu I felt my soul had been a roach that prowled in the dark for a scrap of hope and scurried away, back into hidden crevasses, from the light. Now that I had laid my heart bare, the Fu stepped on it as though I was the cockroach an annoying and insignificant bug... and, in the vocabulary of the exterminator, a pest.

Chapter 17. A Rude Awakening

Less than an hour later a knock on my door brought me out of a good nap after a tiring ordeal. The door was open a crack.

A plainclothes cop that stood on the stoop pushed the door open, “Police: Are you Max McGee?”

“Yeh?” sitting up, I wiped my eyes.

“Officer Ryan, do I have your permission to come in?” he flashed his badge.

“Sure,” I put on a shirt.

“Do you know why we’re here?”

‘I have a good idea,” I wondered what kind of story she’d told, “but not exactly.”

“Does Beatrice Brenner live here?”

“No, I just kicked her out today.” I was still a little buzzed from a few hours ago and had to clear my head.

“How long did she live here?” Ryan asked.

A young rookie; in uniform, who’d followed Officer Ryan in the door, was scanning the room looking around for evidence. He spotted the tomato soup that had spilled over some papers during our ruckus. “There some blood here,” he pointed out to Ryan.

Ryan could see the bowl turned over, “Tomato soup?”

I assured the Rookie, “Yeh, she spilled it last night.”

“Can you tell me, in your words, what happened?”

“Sure,” I wondered, who else’s words were going to come out of my mouth? But I disregarded that tautological blunder because I wanted to get this right, knowing it would all go into the report. I thought that if I explained it Ryan would just go arrest Bea and they’d be done with it. I told him about the bruises and the stab wound as Officer Rookie looked over the knife she had pulled.

“When was the last time you two had sex?” Ryan skipped to the meat of the matter.

“Let’s see. Today is Saturday? … Two, maybe three nights ago.” I counted on my fingers, “Yeh, Thursday, I was too tired after work and went to bed early… no, it was Wednesday night.”

“How about last night?” his eyes riveted… reading my face… but not to intimidate… they were asking, what really happened?

“I told you already that she didn’t come home ‘til three in the morning. I made her sleep on the couch after she pulled that knife…”

“This knife?” Officer Rookie probed, slipping it into an evidence bag.

“Yeh, that knife, Officer Rookie.” I read the name on the rookie’s name tag, Dan Richards, “I mean Richards.”

“Did you at any time have physical contact with Miss Brenner?” Ryan asked.

“Yeh, I had to take the knife from her?” I explained.

“And did you stab her with it?” Officer Richards asked as though he was talking to a child.

Richards was really starting to get on my nerves. “No, I told you, she came in the door already banged-up with a stab wound on her shoulder.”

“And you haven’t had sex with her since last night?” Richards continued with an air of pompous righteousness most experienced cops won’t display.

“Wednesday, not last night, damnit!” I glared at Richards.

“That wasn’t last night but did you have any physical contact with her today?” Ryan was an experienced detective and his tone was non-committal.

I knew Ryan was fishing and I was going to be hooked if I wasn’t careful. Still, I was getting impatient and could see this interview wasn’t going well for me, “And it was fucking Wednesday, fa-Chrissakes! And, see that broken window? She did that and I had to push her from my door.”

Rookie sneered when he asked, “How hard did you push her, hard enough to bang her up?”

“I told you, she already had the bruises,” I sighed. I was resigned to whatever was going to happen.

“But you did push her?” Ryan asked again.

“Yeh, but I didn’t,” I mildly protested, knowing there was nothing I could say that would get me out of this mess… it would have to run its course.

“Please step outside with us, Mr. McGee,” Ryan sighed.

I stepped out the door and Officer Ryan put the cuffs on me.

Rookie read the Miranda rights from a card and I was put in the back seat of the squad car.

“What are the charges?”

Richards said flatly, “You are being charged with spousal abuse, assault with a deadly weapon, and rape.”

“Rape?”

Ryan turned to look me in the eye, “Yeh, sorry Max, I have to. It’s the law. She’s claiming it and I’ve seen her do this at least a-half-dozen times. If I were to choose between the two of you… well, it is always the same. She moves in with some sucker and… you know the rest.”

“If you know that, then why am I in cuffs?”

“Once the charges are made and, if there is any evidence whatsoever, we have to make the arrest. You should have protected yourself by filing a restraining order first thing today.”

“I had a hunch,” I realized that she would have access to my place as we were pulling out of the driveway. “Say, can you guys stop a minute so I can get my wallet and tell my neighbor to padlock my door? I don’t want her getting back in there… my wallet is…”

“No, but you’ll most likely be out by tonight if you don’t have any warrants… and the judge will throw your case out once he sees it is about Beatrice Brenner.” He added apologetically, “the rape charges will be dropped because she refused a semen swab at the E.R.” Ryan went back to writing his report and Rookie drove to County Jail. I learned something that day about the criminal justice system.

I learned to never say anything hoping to keep from going to jail. Don’t say a word without a lawyer present because jail is the destination anyway.

A concrete pour was scheduled for the next week and I didn’t want to miss it. My boss told me, after I was hired on regular, that once I started working for him, I wouldn’t be fired unless I missed a concrete pour.

The law, the police, the custody officers, the DA, or the courts don’t care about things like concrete pours. They’re primarily concerned about convictions. Time is irrelevant to them and, whether you are Charlie Manson or as innocent as Baby Jesus, it is a meat-grinder and it just plain doesn’t matter at all. You might lose your gig, or your digs, over a false accusation, but it doesn’t matter what happens to you. It doesn’t matter to them and they lose no sweat over it if you are cut loose or sent up shit-creek. The meat-grinder will take away the paddle, and canoe, to chalk you up on their scorecard either way.

The bench warrants from the Juan Carlos action came up so I couldn’t be released on O.R.

It was the week of the Bronco chase scene with O.J. and, when my mates in the cellblock asked me what I was in for, I just answered, “I did O.J.’s ole lady.”

They didn’t ask any questions after that.

Monday morning, I was taken down by bus to the courthouse. That day I waited in a holding cell all day without being called. One Banger, covered with West Side Boys tats, stuck out his tongue for my benefit to show his pierced tongue adorned with a diamond stud. He boasted, “See, I kept this… got past them with it.”

Getting past the booking search with such contraband was his way of putting it to the system. But, hell, by this time I could see where any impotent gesture would give a Banger the illusion of power against the castrating clockwork of the institution.

Letting the Banger know I recognized his tats, I asked him, “You know Bea Brenner?”

“Oh, yeh, I know her. We grew up together, eh? What, you know her?”

“Yeh, she had me busted.”

“I bet it was rape, huh?’ he wagged his head ever so slightly appraising me and said, “You know, that girl used to be a fox, man. She still looks good but you should have seen her back in her prime.”

I didn’t want to hear any more of her and wondered whether this, jailhouse-buffed West Side Boy, might feel obligated by his gang colors to get even for her sake.

“Hey, don’t worry, you’ll get cut loose. She’s pulled this shit before. They all know her… know what I mean.”

At this point I was more concerned about dealing with the Banger than the courts but his friendly assurance did offer me some respite on both accounts.

We were marched down in a file from the bus in chains to the courthouse where I could breathe the fresh air and hope… hope for what? Then have that hope crushed on the way back to the bus?

Back in jail, in time to be filed down to the mess hall, I sat at the table staring at my meal. The Banger offered, “Hey, Max, what? You don’t want any of this shit?” I let him scrape the shit onto his tray. I knew that, after a period of time, the chow would be agreeable to me… but not then. What the hell, I’d made a friend at any rate.

The night passed ever so slowly as I lay on the bunk. I had this urge to pray but   couldn’t think of what to pray. I knew that one of those jailhouse deals, “Get me out of here, God, and I will do whatever…,” wouldn’t do. I wondered, my life had been up and down but I hadn’t been this low in years. Even when I was homeless I’d always felt I had a chance. What kind of strange karma had me perpetually spinning my wheels? The debate was on between my ears as I’d think about all the times I’d gotten so close to having a life of meaning I could be proud of. Then, as I thought my mind would spiral down. I’d get pissed at whatever this God business was about for causing things like this to happen to me. The thought that came immediately after that one was, shit; this is all your own doing, drugs, booze, and chasing pussy.  Marley’s and Celeste’s words about my luck nagged at me, “but you always manage to fuck it up.”

Morning finally came and the jailhouse dogs were filed down to the bus again. My name was one of the first called for arraignment. The judge pulled out a big file and thumbed through it before he read the charges out loud to the stenographer. I heard the words rape and spousal abuse… assault or something like that. After hearing the word rape, I couldn’t focus on what was being read. I was asked if I could afford a lawyer and was told I’d be assigned a public defender and sent back to the holding cell to wait the rest of the day. Returning to jail on that damned bus hooked up in chains crushed what was left of my spirit.

There was no hope left for me. I’d probably lost my job and apartment, as well as my freedom. I’d gone a few days without a drink and everything was fine along those lines but the depression was unbearable. I thought back to that day when I’d prayed before Laura showed up out of the blue. How much of a coincidence was that? I looked around the cellblock where everyone seemed to be asleep. What would happen if I got on my knees and prayed? It wasn’t all that dark and I was sure to be seen. What the hell, I might as well… from the top bunk? What would it hurt to at least make the gesture, get on my knees up there? It would work or it wouldn’t. George Carlin once said that all prayers are a fifty-fifty proposition. The answer is yes or no… the odds are… would it matter to God if I was on the floor or prone on my bunk?

“I don’t see a way out of this one, Big Guy. Have it your way. I’ll go along with it. I just need somebody to help, some more direction here.” I tucked in and fell asleep.

The Sheriff’s bus ride downtown was the usual noisy affair. Jail as a whole is, in fact, a noisy affair. The concrete and steel all around amplifies the noises of the inmates and guards. Everyone is either yelling or a TV is on full blast. The only quiet comes a few precious hours at night. I was led into the holding cell and just sat down when I was called and led to a closet-sized room with a window separating me from a guy with receding hair and frayed jacket over his blue shirt and yellow tie. He had a file in his hand and he looked as though he would rather be at home in bed than shuffling papers for one plea bargain after another all day.

He read the charges before he said anything, “So, how are you Mr. McGee?”

“Okay, I guess.”

Peeking over his cheap reading glasses he introduced himself, “I’m Jeffrey Connelly, Mr. McGee, I’ll be representing you.”

I raised a hand towards him as though I was going to shake hands but stopped, mildly embarrassed, at forgetting a glass barrier separated us, “Okay, good, can we get going on this?”

“Do you know the charges against you?”

“Vaguely,” I wanted badly to get this interview over with and get on with the court proceedings, “but we have a concrete pour on our job site this week and I need to be there.”

“The good news is that the rape charges have been dropped and…”

“Great, then, can I just plead guilty to the rest… or you could plea them down to the lowest… er, you know… to minor charges? Maybe I can do community service or weekends for my jail-time… anything… I’ll take anything to get out of here.”

“Are you kidding? These are still serious charges.” Looking down at the file opened in his hand he looked worried, “You know that spousal abuse and assault with a deadly weapon can send you to prison?”

What I’d been told sank in after a few minutes. I’d been so worn down by the anxiety of not knowing what was going to happen, and so worried about stupid shit like my job and apartment, that I was ready to cop any plea just to get it over with. I remembered the prayer from the night before as a surge of confidence welled up, “Yeh, you’re right, counselor, I’m not guilty,” then I added, “but, in all honesty, I’m may not be entirely innocent.”

“I hope you don’t mean that last bit.”

“I do mean it.”

“That is why I’m going to do the talking when we go before the Judge,” Jeff said. His tone was stern enough to convince me that he knew more than I did about how to navigate through the courts. We parted and I went back to the holding cell.

With that understood, we went before the Judge by late afternoon. The changes in the charges were cause for more consultation and the assistant DA requested that the arraignment was postponed ‘til the next day. The Assistant DA was a hard-looking woman whose three-piece suite made her look determined enough to send this rapist off to the Graybar Hotel and Spa for as long as she could.

The attorney and I met in that glass partitioned cubicle afterwards, “May I call you Max?”

“Sure, if I can call you Jeff.” I was still miffed that I wasn’t on the streets already. “Man, you can just call me screwed if I don’t get back to that job site.”

“Don’t worry, I had a talk with your boss and he said that the concrete pour was delayed until you get back.” His grin was disturbing. It bordered on glee.

“Whew, that takes a load off my mind.” I was beginning to think this guy was alright… like it wasn’t just another case to plea bargain down.  “Did you talk to my landlord and neighbor, Teddy?... he saw everything.”

“Yes, Mr. Larson says you were the sole occupant of the apartment and your neighbor witnessed most of it.” I became more relaxed, “You have people backing you on this. Miss Brenner was seen at Jon’s with a known gang member that night. She even tried to cash in the Greyhound ticket at the Sportsman. You have a lot of cab drivers, waitresses, and bartenders, for friends. Your story checks out.”

“Thanks.”

My throat constricted and I tried to hold my face but a tear betrayed the mask.

The next day I was with a couple other inmates in a row of chairs behind a glass partitioned room where I listened to the assistant DA make an offer to reduce the charge of assault with a deadly weapon, assault and battery to misdemeanors. She kept the charge of felony spousal abuse on the table. We refused that offer. The assistant DA consulted with another attorney from her office and came back with an offer to reduce the drop the deadly weapon charges keeping the assault and battery but insisted on the felony spousal abuse.

Jeff said something about how the fact that they are backing off might mean they will take a misdemeanor charge on the spousal abuse. I was getting some vigor back and contended, “Besides the fact that I didn’t do it, she wasn’t even my spouse. She’d only lived in my place a few weeks”

Another round came after lunch break. The judge consulted with the assistant D.A. … and Jeff. The judge looked perturbed and the assistant D.A. scowled indignantly all the way back to her desk. She then determined to drop the spousal abuse and reduce the rest to drunk in public.

Jeff refused the offer saying that there was nothing in Detective Ryan’s police report saying that I had been drinking and, had I been drinking, I was in my home and not in public at the time of my arrest.

The Judge called the opposing attorneys to the bench and after a few minutes sent them back. Speaking to the assistant DA he said, “For all of this, I don’t see a crime here.”

Looking at me for the first time he called for me to stand, “Though I don’t see a crime I do see an incredible lack of judgment on your part Mr. McGee.” He shuffled some papers around on the top the file he was holding, “You have a bench warrant for failure to complete sentencing… at, let’s see here, Zona Seca? three years ago? Is this true Mr. McGee?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why didn’t you complete the sentence?”

“I lost my job and had no way to pay for it. I was homeless until three months ago.” That was all I could have said because it was true.

“For failure to complete your sentence you are sentenced to a year in county Jail. But, with consideration for time served, the sentence is extended another three years’ probation for that time and during that time you are to have no contact with Miss Brenner. Is that agreeable to you, Mr. McGee?”

There was more but it was all blah… blah… blah to me from there on. I was free and that was all that mattered to me.