Touched by Fire (4 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Thick burnt-umber smoke stretched to the horizon like miles of dusty drapery drawn across the morning sky. The winds were still hot and still gusting, and the slip of yellow paper was fluttering wildly against the mailbox labeled
L. E. GRAHAM.

Lilah captured it and peeled the tape free. “Go get this for me, will you?” she asked, handing the slip of paper to Kauffman. “Little room around the side there. Should be open.”

Kauffman left his backpack and loped off, his eyes already smarting from the microscopic cinders in the air. Lilah removed the rest of yesterday’s mail from the box and was giving it a quick once-over when he returned with the package—a corrugated carton about the size of the one the lab supplies came in.

Her head tilted curiously at the bold black printing that spelled out her name and address. It wasn’t familiar, nor was the post office box that served as a return. Lilah was about to cross the courtyard and have Kauffman put the package in the condo, but thanks to their lusty encounter, the day had barely started and she was already running late. With luck, she could drive to Santa Monica, give her father his checkup, and make it back to campus in time to
teach class—if traffic wasn’t snarled, if she made the lights, and if her patient was cooperative. “Better put that in the car,” she said, heading for the gate.

The green Jaguar looked as if it was covered with a thin layer of dirty snow. They raced down the hill toward the village, sending trails of soot spiraling from the car’s graceful curves. The package with the bold, angry printing—the package that could burn a block-square market to the ground—rode in the backseat along with her briefcase, his backpack, and their gym bags. Lilah ran the light at Le Conte and pulled to the curb opposite the Chevron station.

Kauffman removed his gear, then crouched in the open door and grinned at what he was about to say. “Thanks for the ride, Dr. Graham.”

“It was a selfish act,” Lilah said with a chuckle. “See you at the gym tonight?”

“Can’t,” Kauffman grunted. “Histology study group.”

“Come by my place when it’s over.”

Kauffman winced, his head lolling sheepishly. “We usually go for pizza.”

“So bring me a couple of slices,” Lilah said in her sassy way. She kissed her fingertips, then reached across and touched them to his lips. “Gotta go.”

Kauffman stepped back as the Jaguar’s exhausts added their noxious fumes to the eye-stinging air; but it was the delicate scent of Lilah’s perfume that filled his head now. He inhaled deeply, savoring it, and watched until she made the turn into Wilshire, heading west toward Santa Monica.

Over the years, the sleepy seaside community where Lilah Graham grew up had become a politically polarized battleground where property owners and rent control activists squared off regularly. It had been going on for over
two decades now. Ever since the spring of ’74—the spring Lilah came home on break from Berkeley and got into a discussion with her father over it.

“Shelter is a basic right,” she declared with the self-righteous indignation favored by college students and clergymen. “It shouldn’t be exploited for profit.”

“Tell that to Thomas Jefferson,” her father retorted, unable to reconcile his daughter’s views with her upbringing. “I don’t know what they’re teaching you up there, young lady, but this is America.”

“Yeah . . . land of the brie, home of the slaves,” she quipped with a smile. “Spare me the national anthem, okay?”

Doug Graham dragged hard on an unfiltered Camel, and suggested they take a walk. “There’s this guy I know,” he began as they strolled along the golf course that bordered their neighborhood. “Hardworking, nice family . . . wife works too.”

“Wow, a liberated woman,” Lilah teased. “I thought they were outlawed in Santa Monica.”

“Let me finish,” her father said evenly, exhaling through his nose and mouth as he spoke. “This couple . . . they scrimped and saved and bought a little house. A few years later they scraped up enough to invest in a building with rental units. Now, thanks to this rent control nonsense, it’s damn near worthless.”

“Hey, what goes around comes around,” Lilah replied in the flippant tone of a rebellious eighteen-year-old.

“Talk English, will you?” Doug Graham pleaded.

“Well, they were sticking it to their tenants all those years. Now, the tenants get to stick it to them.”

“I’ve known them a long time,” her father said calmly. “Rents were reasonable. The place was kept up. Did it
themselves too: leaky faucets, clogged toilets, paint jobs, the whole nine yards—”

“Hey, life isn’t fair, you know?”

“Well, that’s one thing we agree on,” her father said with a thoughtful exhale. “Now, what if they’d been planning to sell the building and use the money for something special?”

“Like what?”

“Oh, like . . .” he replied, mimicking her, “to take that dream honeymoon they never had.”

“Hey, you’re really breaking my heart, Dad. Next you’ll be telling me their kid needs open-heart surgery.”

“What if the kid did?” he asked, setting the hook he’d so patiently baited. “Is it okay to ‘exploit shelter for profit’ to pay for some things, but not others?”

“Well . . . yeah, I guess,” Lilah replied, sensing he’d trapped her.

“Okay, now that we’re communicating, what if they had a bright—no, make that a brilliant—daughter?” He paused and his eyes locked on to Lilah’s. “And they were planning to use the money to send her to medical school?”

That was the moment Lilah Graham grew up. She’d known her parents owned that building and had spent untold hours working on it. Yet, she’d been so intent on spouting her sophomoric platitudes, she’d blocked the truth from her mind.

Lilah often reflected on that moment, especially when she wrote the monthly check repaying her med-school loans; but today she was more focused on her father’s failing health and the intricacies of screening imprisoned sex offenders. The latter prompted her to dig out her cellular and check with Cardenas for messages. “Ruben? . . . Yeah, it’s me. Anything going on?”

“
Nada,” he replied, his attention on one of the many medical school applications he was filling out. “Things are real quiet, boss.”

“Dr. Schaefer didn’t call?”

“Not on my watch.” He sorted through a rack of message slips. “Not on anybody else’s either.”

“Okay, have him try my cellular if he does.” She hung up and angled south toward Santa Monica’s Sunset Park section. The rambling enclave of Spanish bungalows and English cottages was home to public servants, blue-collar workers, and young families getting a foothold in the pricey real estate market. The Jaguar cruised past the municipal airport and started down the steep hill toward the golf course. It was just a few blocks to the house where Lilah grew up, to the bungalow with the sunny den where, in the shadow of the exercise equipment he once used regularly, Doug Graham spent his waking hours chain-smoking and channel surfing with the remote that seemed grafted to his hand. That’s how Lilah pictured him now, slouched in his slipcovered recliner—the piping frayed, the arms and headrest burnished with grime, the fabric dotted with pinhole-sized bums—encircled by snack tables that held his can of Coors, Marlboros, ashtray, and cordless phone. He’d lost so much weight that the nylon warm-up suits he once favored for their macho style made him look frail and diminutive, like a child in a grown-up’s chair.

There was a time when Lilah’s image of him was more manly, more heroic, more befitting a man who’d spent thirty years on the Santa Monica Fire Department; a man who had a dozen community service awards and four citations for bravery hanging on the wall behind him, along with the golf trophies and softball plaques.

Lilah turned into the driveway and parked behind her mother’s station wagon. She’d been doing it since the day she started driving, and it still topped her mother’s list of pet peeves. Lilah had no idea why she did it then, or why she was still doing it now. Probably some Oedipal thing, she thought, one of those petty adolescent rebellions that went unresolved. She ground out her cigarette and popped the Jag’s door, stepping into what felt like a blast furnace. Slipping her briefcase from between the gym bag and package on the backseat, she hurried toward the house.

Like most older homes near the coast, it wasn’t air-conditioned; and the small oscillating fan in the den strained to keep perspiration from forming on Doug Graham’s brow as he squinted at the television where a huge helicopter was taking off from a beachfront parking lot. One of the reporters covering the wildfires was shouting over the deafening clatter. “That’s right, Trisha. We still don’t know the fate of those five firemen trapped by the inferno. There
are
reports an arson investigator, working in the area, went in after them. A search-and-rescue chopper has just been dispatched and paramedics are standing by to care for survivors—if and when they’re found . . . .”

Doug Graham was shaking his head in dismay when he heard the jangle of keys outside and brightened.

“It’s me,” Lilah announced, letting herself in.

“Marge? Marge, Lilah’s here,” Doug called out in his dry rasp, thrusting his arms from within the haze of tobacco smoke. “Give us a hug, princess.”

“Hugs are on special today,” Lilah said, concealing her reaction to his wasted pallor. His stubble pinched when she kissed him, and his breath carried the sour odor of bile. “Sorry I didn’t make it last night.”

“Hey, I know how busy you are, sweetheart.” Doug Graham’s watery eyes glistened with sincerity. “I know you’re doing important things.”

Lilah squirmed with guilt and set her briefcase on one of the snack tables. “So, how’s my favorite patient?”

“Lousy.”

“Rather be out there hauling hose, huh?” she said, gesturing to the inferno raging on the television.

“Would be too, if I had me a decent doctor.” His deadpan delivery gave way to a mischievous twinkle.

A little grin—that was pure Doug Graham—turned the comers of Lilah’s mouth as she plucked the Marlboro from his yellow-stained fingers. “Okay, smarty pants, let’s have a listen.” Doug eagerly unzipped his warm-up suit, revealing an expanse of waxen skin. Lilah’s ivory-smooth hands with their long fingers and manicured nails placed the stethoscope on his chest and moved it through a graceful arc that grazed his upper abdomen and ended well below his left armpit; then, gently bending him forward, they slipped beneath the warm-up suit and moved across his back with the same grace and precision.

As always, Doug Graham remained silent and still. He lived for these moments, for the sense of well-being that came from being cared for by the daughter of whom he was so proud; moments that were far more beneficial than anything she or his doctor could prescribe. His illness-glazed eyes, closed in sublime reflection, were brighter and more alive when they opened. “How am I doing?” he finally asked.

“What did Dr. Koppel say?” Lilah asked, draping the stethoscope around her neck.

‘I don’t care what he says,” Doug scoffed. “You’re the genius. I care what you say.”

“He’s your doctor, Daddy.”

“He says I should stop smoking.”

“He’s been telling you that for thirty years.” Indeed, the thoughtful internist had been caring for the Graham family for as long as Lilah could remember; and despite her reluctance, as a matter of medical ethics, to become involved in her father’s care, the two physicians agreed that if it made Doug Graham happy to have his daughter come by once a month and run a stethoscope over his chest and take a vial of blood, so be it. “Now, let’s see if there’s any red stuff in those veins,” Lilah said with a wink. She took a vacutainer kit from her briefcase, swabbed the site with an alcohol prep, and uncapped the needle.

Doug Graham stiffened apprehensively. “I’m tired of being turned into a human pincushion every month.”

Lilah steadied his arm and found the vein on the first try. “How’s that?”

“I think you’re getting the hang of it.”

She laughed and inserted the vial. “Different needle, a butterfly. We use them on babies.”

“Babies?” he echoed with an offended whine.

“Uh-huh. Our veins get thinner as we get older. Makes them hard to find. Brittle too. That’s why you get those black-and-blues.”

“He gets them because he doesn’t drink his orange juice,” her mother said, delivering a frosty glass to one of the snack tables. A slim, nervous woman with busy hands and anxious eyes, Marge Graham wore her SMFD T-shirt bloused over neat cotton slacks that brushed the tops of her tennis shoes. Her dismissive tone and rapid-fire delivery gave everything she said the sound of frivolous chatter. “Vitamin C prevents bruises. I keep telling your father that, but he won’t listen.”

“It’s too pulpy,” Doug Graham said with a scowl.

“Because it’s fresh. Fresh has more vitamin C. You tell him, Lilah. Maybe it’ll mean something coming from you.” Her eyes darted about while she spoke, and settled on the television, where yet another house was engulfed in flames. “Horrible, isn’t it? Those people losing everything like that . . . horrible. But as I always say—” Her voice rose with the promise of profound wisdom.

Lilah caught her father’s eye, and added another. knowing smile to the many they’d shared over the years.

“—the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” Marge chirped, not disappointing them. Then, without missing a beat, she turned to Lilah and asked, “By the way, did you park behind me again?”

Lilah nodded contritely, and went about removing the blood-filled vacutainer from its holder and then the needle from her father’s arm.

“Lilah, I have to go,” Marge whined impatiently. She was an energetic woman who enjoyed being busy; and along with church work and community service, Marge worked part-time at the city’s credit union, a fifties-modern-style building on Fourteenth Street opposite Woodlawn Cemetery. “I have to be at work by noon, and before that I have to pick up some flowers at the market and take them to your sister. You must have a mental block when it comes to this, Lilah. I mean, you’d think by now you’d remember not to park there.”