Sunland: A Novel

4

• • 26 • • Outside, a saguaro threw a flexed shadow across the hood of my car. Behind me Danni’s footfalls raked the gravel sloppily and sounded to me like pouts. Two jets in formation streaked through the ashen sky, their contrails dividing the heavens into quadrants. One thing struck me as true: Danni had the view. Olive-green, chest-high brush rolled toward the horizon , and the only thing stopping it from running on forever was a distant swell of mountains, bubbling from the earth and smashing into a sky that outlined the ridges in blue. I mopped a pile of thrift-store cassette tapes to the floor and set the Styrofoam cooler on the passenger seat. I belted it in. Danni inspected the child’s car seat through the window, ogling it, but she refrained from commenting . When I started the car, Danni swung her boot onto the hood, throwing the pen into her mouth again. Her well-worn jeans were tattered and rode high. “Just give the idea some thought,” she said. “That’s all I ask. You, me, we’re good. I know you need money.” I rolled down my window. “You’ll have better luck winning your pension off video poker,” I said. “But listen, do me this favor. I’m on the hunt for Mexican scrip pads. Official médico forms. Doctor’s pads. It’ll save me money.” I watched her lick the demolished pen. “And by the way, I keep asking myself,” I said. “What year were you born? I’ve been trying to remember our age difference.” Danni laughed to herself. “You know better than that, soldier.” The café hummed with low chatter. Japanese lanterns dangled from exposed beams over our heads, and the teenage barista, a girl with pixie hair organized by blue barrettes, called my order number even though I was standing directly in front of her. She wrapped my chocolate-drizzled cookie in wax paper, slid it across the counter, and tossed change on top. As I set the mugs in front of Seymour Epstein, he said, “Such downy flesh. So unpuckered. Such untried shores.” The old man was busily watching two college-age kids play footsie on a wide, plush sofa. He appeared fascinated by the pair. He studied them through amber-tinted tortoiseshell glasses. His old-man prescription made his eyeballs appear enormous. “Let’s introduce ourselves,” he whispered to me. He looked down at his mug. “You forgot the sugar.” 4 • • 27 • • A bowl of sugar was on the table, beside the sweeteners. I pointed at it. “Ah, screw it,” he said. “Stuff messes with my blood numbers anyway.” The old man liked pretending he didn’t have Type II adult-onset diabetes, that he didn’t have any health issues, that his hands were as steady as a surgeon’s, his heart as sturdy as a twenty-year-old’s. I knew better. I kept Epstein’s stat sheet in my grandfather’s file cabinet. I had every client’s stat sheet—everyone filled out a form. After my pharmacist told me about Mr. Garland Bills, I now kept informed about the health conditions I was helping to treat. “Did you see your doctor about those headaches yet?” I asked him. “That dickhead doesn’t know a goddamn thing.” Epstein swatted the air. “Man probably bought his diploma from one of those low-rent Caribbean schools,” he went on. “But you’re having headaches?” “Now? No. My eardrums buzz sometimes. I’m losing hearing,” he said. “So what and who cares? I’m eighty-two years old, cryin’ out loud. Forget it. I’m fine.” Epstein lifted his feet onto a chair, getting more comfortable in his old haunt. The clientele tonight was mostly students—kids burdened by classes, what to wear, whom to date. I’d tried talking him into going somewhere else because the Standard Bean was too close to the university, and I wasn’t particularly fond of the street or its shops, which were eager to turn eighteen-year-olds into retro hippies. Epstein was a professor emeritus of mathematics, and I knew age had forced him into retirement. That, plus his colleagues had urged him. He’d finally given up at seventy-seven, he’d told me, when the equations on the chalkboard began resembling petroglyphs. Now in his twilight years, Epstein liked to act like the fraternity boys he once instructed, believing that his ninth decade was a chance to...