The Naked Detective(37)

Friends? She had me abducted when she felt like chatting and wiggled her backside when she wanted information. This was not my idea of friendship. Then again, with the rank warmth of the thugs pulsing on both sides of me, I had to acknowledge it was better than some other arrangements I could think of. "Friends," I echoed. "Believe me, I agree. So don't hire me. Please. Let's just keep it..." Keep it what? Weird? Insane? Finally I had the word for how we'd keep it. I gestured down at my tennis outfit and my chilly legs. "Let's just keep it casual."

She looked at my crotch, I swear she did. "Casual. Okay. But let me give you one piece of advice. Check out Mickey Veale. Paradise Watersports."

"Why?"

"Because he's a scumbag and a liar and a sneak."

"Your father was in business with him," I pointed out.

"So am I," she said. "What of it?"





18


I'm not the kind of person who believes in miracles.

Miracles, angels, affirmations, apparitions— all that muzzy-headed New Age shit. I mean, come on.

But let me confess that, when Lydia's goons finally drove me home and I climbed from their car with my racquets and towel, I beheld something that partook of the miraculous: My bicycle was there, chained to the palm I always chain it to.

As if doubting its reality, I went over and touched it. The fenders were dented, and rust lived in the dents. The handlebars were rough with tiny bubbles of corrosion and not quite aligned with the tires. It was mine, all right. The only thing foreign was the lock. But I knew where that had come from; it could only have been Maggie.

I imagined her roused from sleep as the cops clambered aboard Dream Chaser. Drowsily coming up her companionway, perhaps, in time to see me carted off. And caring enough to climb down into the night to rescue my abandoned bike, to keep it safe. I pictured her rolling it over the gravel toward her trawler, locking it, with a mute nuzzling intimacy, to her own; and my throat closed down with gratitude. It was a small thing, maybe—but what was devotion if not the habit and the piling up of small considerations?

I went into the house. As I stepped across the threshold I saw a key and a brief note that had been slid under the door. The note said, Hope you're okay. Teaching at noon. Home after that. Please come see me when you can. M.

A flattering invitation, if less emphatic than sending bruisers to kidnap me. I stepped into the kitchen to check the clock. Just after twelve- thirty. This meant that if I stalled, say, another ten or fifteen minutes, I could show up just in time to miss the more humbling exertions—the contorting and the coiling, the straining up and the clamping down—and to join in as the class was moving into its deep-relaxation phase. Dessert without the bother of the meal. Why not? I walked around in circles for a little while, then traded in my tennis towel for one big enough to lie down on, and headed out again.

It was great being reunited with my bike. I rode slowly, savoring. A few houses down from mine, jasmine was in bloom. Half a block beyond, the sweeter, pinker smell of frangipani overwhelmed it. A midday heaviness was in the air. Cats didn't wander; bugs didn't fly. Lizards stood on top of rocks, and blinked, and puffed their throats out. The asphalt had softened enough so that I could feel the slightest sexy yielding underneath my tires.

I locked up outside the Leaf Shed, took my sneakers off on the porch, and tiptoed toward the studio. Inside, ten or twelve people with assorted bandannas and tattoos and eyebrow studs and nose rings were standing on their heads; it was one of those moments when you can't help wondering: What if a Martian spaceship landed right outside and this was the first thing that the little green men saw? The more advanced practitioners shot their legs straight up in open air; a couple of beginners in red leotards used the mirrored wall to support their inverted asses. The mirror doubled the already ample volumes, and the reflected image suggested something grossly floral—Georgia O'Keeffe on a very bad day. At the front of the room, Maggie was as graceful upside down as right-side up. Her back was long and it seemed to cost her nothing to hold her hips aloft. Her gray tights traced out the muscles in her thighs; her taut calves reminded me of full-to-bursting wineskins.

I spread my towel on the floor and lay down on it. Suddenly I was sort of sleepy. No way was I going to launch myself into a shoulder stand. I rested.

I rested on a freelance basis until the class came down off its shoulders, and then I rested as part of the group, as Maggie eased into deep relaxation. Padding silently amid the prone bodies, her voice a mesmerizing purr; she urged us to let our weight settle into the earth, our eyeballs to float lightly in their sockets, our tongues to be soft in our mouths. Above all, our minds should be still.