The Gold Coast

62

Up on Tashi’s roof it’s quiet and dark. The tent is lit on one side by the dull glow of a lamp inside. On the other side of the roof, among the vegetable trays, there’s a dim glow of hibachi coals. Tashi, a big bulk in the darkness, sits in a little folding beach chair beside the fire. A sweet soy smell of teriyaki sauce rises from the meat on the fire. “Hey, Jim.”

“Hey, Tash.” Jim picks up a folded beach chair from beside the tent wall and unfolds it. Sits.

Tash leans forward to flip over one of his infamous turkey burgers, and the grease flares on the coals for a moment, lighting Tashi’s face. He looks as impassive as ever, picking up a water bottle, spraying out the flames. In the renewed dark he squeezes a little of his homemade teriyaki on the turkey burgers, and they hiss and steam aromatically.

“I heard about Erica.”

“Hmm.”

“She just left?”

“… It was a little more complicated than that. But that’s what it comes down to.” Tash leans forward again, slides the spatula under the burger and checks it out. Puts it into a sandwich already prepared. Eats.

“Damn.” Jim finds himself furious with Erica. “She just… did it?”

“Umph.”

“Unbelievable.” To leave someone like Tash! “Stupid woman. Man, it’s such a dumb thing to do!”

Tash swallows. “Erica doesn’t think so.”

Jim clicks his tongue, irritated. Tash seems so even-headed about the whole thing, as if he has judged the matter and found he is perhaps in agreement with Erica.…

Tash finishes eating. “Let’s get stoned.”

They get out a full container of California Mello, and lid the whole thing, back and forth, back and forth, until the tears are running down Jim’s face, and his corneas feel like thick slabs of glass. White-orange clouds, heavily underlit by the city, roll slowly inland. Slowly, very slowly, Jim’s anger subsides. It’s still there, but it’s been muted, banked like the coals in the hibachi to a small, melancholy feeling of betrayal. That’s life. People betray you, betray your friends. He recalls the look on Debbie Riggs’s face as she yelled at him. He himself has betrayed more people than have ever betrayed him, and the realization dampens his anger even more. He was shifting onto Erica what he felt toward himself.…

“Angela called,” Tash says. “She said you went to dinner with Virginia?”

“Yeah. Damn it.”

Tash chuckles. “How is she?”

“Feeling enormous amounts of righteous indignation, I would guess, this very moment.”

“Virginia nirvana, eh?”

Jim laughs. They can insult each other’s ex-allies, and cheer each other up. Very sensible. The Mello continues to kick in and he sees how silly his thoughts are. He’s blasted into a calm almost beyond speech.

“Whoah.”

“No lie.”

“Heavy.”

“Untold.”

They chuckle, but only in a very mellow way.

Much cloud gazing later, Jim says, “So what will you do?”

“Who knows.” After a long silence: “I don’t think I can go on living this way, though. It’s too much work. I’ve been thinking about moving.” And suddenly Jim can hear pain in Tashi’s voice, he understands that the stoic mask is a mask and nothing more. Of course the man is hurt. Emotions punch their way through the fog of the Mello, and Jim regrets the anesthetizing. He feels, all of a sudden, overwhelmingly helpless. There’s nothing he can do to help, not a thing.

“Where to?”

“Don’t know. Far away.”

“Oh, man.”

They sit together in silence, and watch a whole lot of orange clouds float inland.