sick, he said. What was wrong with him?”
She shrugged. “What does it matter? Something he didn’t want to wait for. But –” And then she sang, “We’re young and healthy, so let’s be bold.” She giggled. “Do you remember that song?”
“No.”
“No, it would have been before your time.”
The steep little road did seem to be something more than a driveway – Kohler kept the Saturn to about five miles an hour, and they slowly rumbled past several old Spanish-style houses with white stucco walls and red roof-tiles and tiny garages with green-painted doors, the whole landscape as apparently empty of people as a street in a de Chirico painting. Campion had lit another cigarette, and Kohler cranked down the driver’s-side window, and even though it was hot he was grateful for the sage and honeysuckle breeze.
“It’s on the right,” she said, tapping the windshield with a fingernail. “The arch there leads into the parking court.”
Kohler steered in through the chipped white arch between tall trees, and he was surprised to see five or six cars parked in the unpaved yard and a big Honda Gold Wing motorcycle leaning on its stand up by the porch, in the shade of a vast lantana bush that crawled up the side of the two-story old building.
“Tenants?” he said, rocking the Saturn into a gap beside a battered old Volkswagen. “I hope … what’s-his-name, the guy who inherited the place, wants to keep it running.” A haze of dust raised by their passage across the yard swirled over the car.
“Mister Bump. He will, he lives here.” She pointed at the motorcycle. “Jack’s bike – running boards, a windshield, stereo, passenger seat – it’s as if his RV had pups.”
Kohler hadn’t turned off the engine. “I could do this through the mail, if I could get a valid address.”
“They get mail here, sort of informally. Somebody will tell you how to address it.” She had opened her door and was stepping out onto the dry dirt, so he sighed and twisted the ignition key back and pulled it out. Now he could hear a violin playing behind one of the upstairs balconies – some intricate phrase from Scheherazade, rendered with such gliding expertise that he thought it must be a recording.
With the wall around it, and the still air under the old pepper trees, this compound seemed disconnected from the surrounding streets and freeways of Los Angeles.
“These were Jack’s friends,” Campion said. “Bring the urn.”
Kohler was already sweating in the harsh sunlight, but he walked to the trunk and bent down to open it. He lifted out the heavy cardboard box and slammed the trunk shut.
“Jack is who we all have in common,” said Campion, smiling and taking his free arm.
She led Kohler across the yard and up the worn stone steps to the porch, and the French doors stood open onto a dim, high-ceilinged lobby.
The air was cooler inside, and Kohler could hear an air-conditioner rattling away somewhere behind the painted screens and tapestries and potted plants that hid the walls. Narrow beams of sunlight slanted in and gleamed on the polished wooden floor.
Then Kohler noticed the cats. First two on an old Victorian sofa, then several more between vases on high shelves, and after a moment he decided that there must be at least a dozen cats in the room, lazily staring at the newcomers from heavy-lidded topaz eyes.
The cats were all identical – long-haired orange and white creatures with long fluffy tails.
“Campion!”
A tanned young man in a Polo shirt and khaki shorts had walked into the lobby through the French doors on the far side, and Kohler glimpsed an atrium behind him – huge shiny green leaves and orchid blossoms motionless in the still air.
“You bitch,” the man said cheerfully, “did you lose your phone? Couldn’t at least honk while you were driving up? ‘’Tis just like a summer birdcage in a garden.’”
“Mr. Bump,” said Campion, “I’ve brought James Kohler for the, the wake.”
“No,” said Kohler hastily, “I can’t stay –”
“Can I call you Jimmy?” interrupted Mr. Bump. He held out his hand. “Mentally I’m spelling it J-I-M-I, like Hendrix.”
Kohler shook the man’s brown hand, then after several seconds flexed his own hand to separate them.
“No time to go a-waking, eh?” said Mr. Bump with a smile.
“I’m afraid not. I’ll just –”
“Is that Jack?”
Kohler blinked, then realized that the man must be referring to the box he carried in his left hand.
“Oh. Yes.”
“Let’s walk him out to the atrium, shall we? We