The Gold Coast

79

Early that afternoon Dennis McPherson finds out that he is forcibly retired. Dismissed. Fired. The news comes in a freshly printed and stiffly worded letter from Lemon. He’s given two months’ notice, of course, but given his accumulated vacation time and sick leave—and since there’s nothing left to work on, as someone else is overseeing the transfer of the Ball Lightning program to the Florida plant—which is a meaningless and in fact stupid maneuver, as far as McPherson can tell—well… Nothing to keep him here. Nothing at all.

He makes sure with a quick calculation of his vacation days on the desk calculator. Nope. In fact they owe him a few days. But after twenty-seven years of work here, what does it matter?

Numbly he orders up a box and packs his few personal possessions from the office into it. He gives the box to his secretary Karen to mail to him. She’s been crying. He smiles briefly at her, too distracted by his own thoughts to respond adequately. She tells him that Dan Houston has been dismissed too. “Ach,” he says. That on top of everything else; bad for Dan. “I think I’ll go home now,” he says to the office wall.

The quick, shocked automatism of his actions gives him one moment of satisfaction; he’s on his way out when Lemon steps out of the elevator and says, “Dennis, let me talk to you,” with that automatic boss-assumption in his hoarse voice, the assumption that people will always do as he says. And without a glance back McPherson keeps on walking, out the door and down the stairs to the parking garage.

Driving out he doesn’t even notice the melted company sign at the entrance.

Automatic pilot home, as on so many other days of his life. It’s impossible to believe this is the last one. Traffic is a lot better this time of day. The only real clog is at the Laguna Freeway-Santa Ana Freeway interchange. On the way up Redhill the streets look empty and wrongly lit, like a bad movie set of the city. Same with Morningside, and his house.

Lucy is out. At the church. Dennis sits down at the kitchen table. Funny how not once during the struggle for the Stormbee program did it occur to him that he was fighting for his job. He thought he was only fighting for the program.…

He sits at the kitchen table and looks dully at the salt and pepper shakers. He’s numb; he even knows he’s numb. But that’s how he feels. Just go with your feelings, Lucy always says. Fine. Time to get behind some deep shock, here. Dive full into numbness.

It was nice the way he was able to walk out on Lemon at last. Just like he always wanted to. What could they possibly have in mind moving the Ball Lightning program to Florida? It’ll just screw up the work they were doing on the phased array; and if they had gotten that working right—

But no. He laughs shortly. A habit of mind. Working on the problems at home, in reveries around this table.

What will he think about now?

He solves the problem by not thinking anything.

Lucy comes home. He tells her about it. She sits down abruptly.

He glances up from the table, gives her a look: well? That’s that—nothing to be done. She reaches across the table and puts her hand on his. Amazing how extensive the private language of an old married couple can be.

“You’ll get another job.”

“Uhn.” That hadn’t occurred to him, but now he doubts it. It’s not a track record that is likely to impress the defense industry too much.

Lucy hears the negative in his grunt and goes to the sink. Blows her nose. She’s upset.

She comes back, says brightly, “We should go up to our land by Eureka. It would do you good to get away. And we haven’t seen that land since the year it burned. Maybe it’s time to build that cabin you talk about.”

“The church?”

“I can get Helena to fill in for me. It would be fun to have a vacation.” She is sincere about this; she loves to travel. “We might as well make what good we can out of the opportunity. Things will work out.”

“I’ll think about it.” Meaning, don’t pester me about it right now.

And so she doesn’t. She begins making dinner. Dennis watches her work. Things will work out. Well, he’s still got Lucy. That’s not going to change. Poor Dan Houston. She’s all sniffly. He almost grins; she hates the idea of that cabin on the coast of northern California, away from all her friends. It’s always been his idea. Build a cabin all by himself, do it right. There must be churches up there, she’d have new friends inside a week. And he—well, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have any friends down here, does he? None to speak of, anyway—a colleague or two, most of them long gone to different companies, out of his life. “I should call Dan Houston.” So it wouldn’t make any difference, being up near Eureka. He loved that tree-covered sweep of rocky coastline, its bare empty salt reaches.

“We could visit, anyway,” he says. “It’s too late in the year to start building. But we could pick the site, and look around a bit.”

“That’s right,” Lucy says, looking steadfastly into the refrigerator. “We could make a real vacation of it. Drive up the coast all the way.”

“Stop at Carmel, first night.”

“I like that place.”

“I know.”

Fondness wells up in him like some sort of… like a spasm of grief. As he comes out of the numbness his feelings are jumbled. He doesn’t know exactly what he feels. But there is this woman here, his wife, whom he can count on to always, always, always put the best face on things. No matter the effort it costs her. Always. He doesn’t deserve her, he thinks. But there she is. He almost laughs.

She glances at him cautiously, smiles briefly. Maybe she can sense what he’s feeling. She goes to work at the counter by the stove. A sort of artificial industriousness there, it reminds him of LSR. Ach, forget it. Forget it. Twenty-seven years.

As Lucy is serving the hot casserole, the phone rings.

She answers it, says hesitantly, “Yes, he’s here.”

She gives the phone to Dennis with a frightened look.

“Hello?”

“Dennis, this is Ernie Klusinski.” One of Dennis’s long-lost colleague friends, now working for Aerojet in La Habra.

“Oh hi, Ernie. How are you?” Unnatural heartiness to his voice, he can tell.

“Fine. Listen, Dennis, we’ve heard over here about what happened at LSR today, and I was wondering if you wanted to come up and have lunch with me and my boss Sonja Adding, to sort of talk things over. Look into possibilities, you know, and see if you’re at all interested in what we’re doing here.” Pause. “If you’re interested, of course.”

“Oh I’m interested,” Dennis says, thinking fast. “Yeah, that’s real nice of you, Ernie, I appreciate it. Uh, one thing though”—he pauses, decides—“Lucy and I were thinking of taking a vacation up the coast. Given the opportunity, you know.” Ernie laughs at this feeble jest. “So maybe we can do it when I get back?”

“Oh sure, sure! No problem with that. Just give me a ring when you get back, and we’ll set it up. I’ve told Sonja about you, and she wants to meet you.”

“Yeah. That’d be nice. Thanks, Ernie.”

They hang up.

Still thinking hard, Dennis returns to the table. Stares at his plate, the casserole steaming gently.

“That was Ernie Klusinski?”

“Yeah, it was.” It’s been a strange day.

“And what did he want?”

Dennis gives her a lopsided grin. “He was head-hunting. Word has gotten around I was let go, and Ernie’s boss is interested in talking to me. Maybe hiring me.”

“But that’s wonderful!”

“Maybe. Aerojet has got those ground-based lasers, phase six of the BMD—I’d hate to get mixed up in that again.”

“Me too.”

“It’s a goddamned waste of time!” He shakes his head, returns to the topic at hand. “But they’re big, they have a lot of things going. If I could get into the right department…”

“You can find that out when you talk to them.”

“Yeah. But…” How to say it? He doesn’t understand it himself. “I don’t know… I don’t know if I want to get back into it! It’ll just be more of the same. More of the same.”

He doesn’t know what he feels. It’s nice to be wanted, real nice. But at the same time he feels a kind of despair, he feels trapped—this is his life, his work, he’ll never escape it. It’ll never end.

“You can figure that out after you talk to them.”

“Yeah. Oh. I told him we’d be off on vacation for a while.”

“I heard that.” Lucy smiles.

Dennis shrugs. “It would be good to see our property.” He eats for a while, stops. Taps his fork on the table. “It’s been a strange day.”

That night they pack their suitcases and prepare the house, in a pre-trip ritual thirty years old. Dennis’s thoughts are scattered and confused, his feelings slide about from disbelief to hurt to fury to numbness to bitter humor to a kind of breathless anticipation, a feeling of freedom. He doesn’t have to take the job at Aerojet, if it comes to that. On the other hand he can. Nothing’s certain anymore. Anything can happen. And he’ll never have to deal with Ball Lightning again; he never has to listen to Stewart Lemon boss him around, ever again. Hard to believe.

“Well, I should call Dan Houston.”

Reluctantly he does it, and is more relieved than anything else to get an answering machine. He leaves a short message suggesting that they get together when he returns, and hangs up thoughtfully. Poor Dan, where is he tonight?

Lucy calls up Jim. No answer. And his answering machine isn’t turned on. “I’m worried about him,” she says, nervously packing a suitcase.

“Leave a note on the kitchen screen. He’ll see it when he comes over.”

“Okay.” She closes the suitcase. “I wish I knew… what was wrong with him.”

“He doesn’t even know what’s wrong with him,” Dennis says. He’s still annoyed with Jim for leaving before dinner, the previous night. It hurt Lucy’s feelings. And it was a stupid argument; Dennis is surprised he ever let himself say as much as he did, especially to someone who doesn’t know enough to understand. Although he should understand! He should. Well—his son is a problem. A mystery. “Let’s not worry about him tonight.”

“All right.”

Dennis loads the car trunk. As they go to bed Lucy says, “Do you think you’ll take this other job?”

“We’ll see when we get back.”

And the next morning, at 5:00 A.M., their traditional hour of departure, they back out of the driveway and track down to the Santa Ana Freeway, and they turn north, and they leave Orange County.