Page 15

"Zephyr asks with his eyes."

"Ask with your words, Billy."

Then the redwoods let go of us and the house was there.

The eleven-million-dollar barn of reclaimed teak. The porch where I stood the morning of my wedding in a suit Rhoda had chosen for me, while she cried into my hair and told me I was the son the universe had finally gotten around to delivering. And on that porch, summoned by the sound of gravel the way gulls are summoned by a ferry, stood Harold and Rhoda Cauthorne.

Two years since I'd seen them. Not one molecule different.

Harold barefoot in oatmeal colored linen, holding a mug. Rhoda in silver bracelets, reeking of sandalwood, and — I'd have bet the boat I no longer owned — carrying a pack of cigarettes inside a hollowed-out copy of the Bhagavad Gita.

Martin stopped the car. In the rearview his eyes found mine one last time, and they said what they had been saying since the 405.

It is not too late to simply not do this.

And my eyes said back what they always say.

Martin. It has been too late since the yacht club.

I got out of the car, and a stone the size of a walnut went under the arch of my left loafer and rolled. I want it understood that I did not fall. I’ve never fallen in my life. What I did was execute a small, brisk, entirely deliberate hop on one foot, in front of two billionaires, holding on to the Suburban's door.

"Fashion," I muttered.

"GREGORY NORMAND!"

Rhoda's hands flew up to her face and she made a sound like a woman winning a cruise on The Price Is Right.

"Hello, Rhoda."

"Harold. HAROLD. Do you see — am I — is my third eye—"

She came down the steps with her arms out, hardware ringing like wind chimes in a gale, and took my face in both hands the way she takes everybody's face, like organic produce she’s thrilled about.

"You're here. You're — oh, you're thin. You're too thin. Doesn't he look — Harold, doesn't he look like Mabel? The bones. It's the bones. It's the Normand bones."

"He's always had the bones," Harold agreed, ambling down, shaking my hand with both of his. "Gregory. My God. It's been—"

"Eight years since the good day. Two since the bad one."

Name the awkward thing first, and you take it off the table before anybody else can pick it up.

"You both look disgustingly well, both of you.” I said with a smile. “The land clearly agrees with you. Or you've agreed with the land. I never remember which direction the enlightenment flows."

"It's a dialogue," said Harold, with total sincerity.

"Of course it is."

And there it was. The reason everybody loves Gregory Normand. I could watch it happening in their faces in real time — pure, uncomplicated delight, not one shadow in it anywhere.

Neither of them thought to ask what I was doing there.

That's the thing about people who have arranged their entire lives so that nothing unwelcome ever makes it up the driveway. They have no immune system for an ambush. A wanted man arriving unannounced isn't an intrusion.

It's the universe, delivering.

Which is precisely the moment Rhoda looked past my shoulder and saw the man wearing head to toe linen getting out of the car. Let me be honest about the stagecraft. I’d told him: count to ninety, then get out slowly, look at the trees before you look at the people. Nothing sells a holy man like an interest in foliage.

Billy did it better than I directed him.