Five-Eighty is a novel about a private detective working in the suburbs of the Bay Area of California in the early 1970s. Each Saturday morning a new installment appears. As the events of this novel take place during the election season of 1974, the story will be released during this, the election season of 2024. May it prove an entertaining distraction from the news of the day. Please enjoy, and as always, comments are welcome!
—HF
Chapter 8
I go home to change into the tuxedo I borrowed from Nick. The house, as ever, looks new, a little brick here, a little siding there, a lot of plate glass between, and all heaped together in rectangles as if the architect had only owned a T-square. I park the car under the carport on the north side, behind Laura’s white Benz convertible, then get out and go around to the front door past the little walled entrance court. The door, though solid wood, is painted mustard yellow, with little amber pebble-glass inserts. I put my key in and open it.
“Laura?”
Silence, muffled shuffling, then more silence. I swing the door shut behind me with my right foot. I’m still not used to the space, the wall of glass in front of me, the flagstone patio beyond, and the view of the entire bay from Mount Tam to San Bruno beyond that. It is the kind of house that in a flat place would have a pool, but we have the view instead, and the tops of roofs below us on the next street as the landscape slopes down through El Cerrito. It is a gift from my father-in-law, the kind of extravagant property that only falls your way when your family is either fabulously wealthy or sell real estate. In all honesty, I am not certain if Paul Savoy isn’t both of those things. Laura and I have lived here for something like half a decade now, but the puritanical cleanliness of the house is off-putting. It’s like living on the show-room floor of an auto dealership.
“Come help me,” I hear, from the hallway. I cross through the big open living room and find, in the hall, a large dark oblong piece of furniture with Laura on the other side of it, trying desperately to push it without scratching up the floor. “Pick up your end and then help me get it around the corner into the living room.”
I do as bid. The trip through the doorway into the living room requires a lot of finesse and multi-point turns, but we get it past. “Now where?”
She nods towards me, indicating that I continue backing up towards the dining area of the big room. A few minutes of careful shuffling and we are there. “Let’s turn it.”
“So its back is against the screen?”
“Yes.”
We shuffle it around some more, and the big console-like thing, all darkened and polished mahogany, is sitting with its back against the pebble glass panel that separates the dining area from the front foyer.
“What is this, anyway?”
“It’s a buffet. You put chafing dishes on top of it, and extra ones on the shelf down below.”
“Chafing dishes?”
“Serving dishes on little stands above candles that keep them warm. Some people use Sterno cans for that now.”
I want to point out that we have no chafing dishes. I don’t. Turning around, I notice for the first time that the blonde maple dining table and Danish chairs are gone, and in their place sits the dining set that Laura’s father had given her last week, when he started to clean out his house. It’s all flutes and tiny carved florets, prim in an Edwardian sort of way, and polished within an inch of its life. The reflectivity, now I think about it, is the only thing holding it all together in this house, the furniture’s only modern touch, harmonizing with the gloss as the glass patio doors and the enamel metal cabinets in the kitchen and the bathrooms. Surrounded by so many square, flat, clean, unadorned surfaces, the buffet looks like it needs a little placard explaining its style, manufacturer, and make, along with a large print admonition for children not to touch it.
“I can get the rest,” I hear Laura, from behind me. Leaving her to whatever unusually illogical project she was now embarked upon, I went to our bedroom to change. I am still surprised that Nick’s lent tuxedo fit so well, and feel a bit like James Bond, putting it on. The bow tie takes three tries. Looking in the full-length mirror, I realize I look more Roger Moore than Sean Connery, but I don’t let it bother me. Camp is hip.
The problem, of course, is the shoes. I’ve only worn a tuxedo a few times in my life, but I know that they require special shoes, black and about as polished as the dining room set that Laura is setting up in the other room. The best I could do was a pair of black dress shoes, slightly scuffed, from the back of the closet. The finish on them is more satin than gloss, but I have no other options, and can’t find my Kiwi shoe polish kit anywhere. I give up, dust them off a bit, put them on.
I go back out to the great room and over to the dining area. Laura is sitting, her back to the windows, looking across the table at the buffet. Atop the latter are now several small framed photos: Her parents’s wedding photo from 1927; a photo of her mother Ruth before she died, almost ten years ago; childhood photos of Laura in the old real estate office on Piedmont or the house in Albany; our wedding photo inside Saints Peter and Paul. There were also a few candlesticks and candles, a small prayer card from her mother’s funeral, a fantastic and almost erotic orange glass vase that her father had bought her in Rome last year. Chafing dishes? No room for them.
Laura: “Move the vase a couple inches to the left.”
“My left or yours?”
“Mine.”
I reposition the vase. “Does it really matter? We do live right on top of the Hayward fault. It’s going to move, anyway.”
“You look nice.”
“Thank you.”
“Those shoes, though….”
“I know. Can’t be helped.”
“No, move the vase back about an inch.” I comply, and she responds: “perfect.”
“What started this off?”
“I didn’t like just storing it all in the spare room. It was bothering me.”
“Well it doesn’t really fit out here though, does it?” I wave a hand around at the room. “It isn’t part of the modern world.”
“So where are you headed tonight?”
“A party with Nick. In the city.”
Laura sighs. “Guess I had better get back to doing the quarterlies. You going to be gone late?”
“Probably.” Outside, a horn sounds twice. “That’s Nick, he’s going to drive us both down to the BART.” I come around the table, give her a kiss, then leave. “Hey, you okay?”
“I’m fine. Go on, I have more than enough accounting to do and I’d better get on with it. There’s a new development set to open up off Phoebe Road and I want to get everything cleared and start planning a marketing budget. Plenty to do.” I leave her to it, the last glimpse I have of her she is sharpening pencils and laying out green accounting paper in precise piles on the new old dining room table.
Out front, Nick’s white Coke-bottle Corvette hardtop sits, idling, while he sits against the driver’s side door, smoking a cigarette very casually. His shoes gleam perfectly.
“Stop playacting,” I snap, reaching up and grabbing his cigarette as I pass him. I take a drag off it as I round the front of the car, then drop it and stomp it out.
“What’s got into you?”
Inside the Corvette it is all squishy, squeaky black vinyl. “It’s not me. Laura’s just in a weird mood. Moving furniture. Building shrines.”
“Hrmmmmm.”
“What?”
“Sounds like nesting, to me.”
“Nesting?”
“You know. Like birds. Feathering a nest before they start laying eggs.”
“You have too much imagination.” I notice that instead of heading west, we’re turned south on Arlington. “Say, I thought we were going to the station?”
“And park this baby in an unguarded lot all night?” Nick pats the steering wheel with sexist propriety. “No sir, I have a locked private lot to use in the city.”
“Doesn’t that cost money?”
“I know a guy.”
More each Saturday!
Enjoy this installment of Five-Eighty? Watch for future installments every Saturday morning during Fall, 2024. The next intallment will post on Saturday, September 30th, 2024. Previous chapters can be viewed here.
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Harbour Fordyce 