The Tiger Catcher Read online

Julian pulled into a spot at the curb. “Yep. And here we are.”

  They were parked in front of a large storefront whose cinnamon-colored awning read “THE TREASURE BOX.”

  “The Treasure Box?” she said. “What kind of store is that?”

  “The kind where you might find what you’re looking for. It’s Ashton’s. Well, mine and Ashton’s. But he does most of the work. I just count the money.”

  “He’s got a wig?”

  “He’s got a lot of things.” Julian switched off the engine.

  “Really? Like what?”

  “Anything. Everything.” He watched her apply red gloss to her lips. “About Ashton . . .”

  “I need to be prepped before meeting him? Why, is he super cute?” She grinned.

  “That’s not it.” How to explain Ashton to this innocent? “He likes to tease. A bit like you. Remember that and ignore him.”

  “Like you ignore me?”

  “Just like that.”

  Ashton was on the phone behind the register. He had showered and shaved and was wearing pressed black jeans and a white shirt open at the collar. His leather shoes were buffed. The doorbell trilled as they walked in, and Ashton raised his head. He couldn’t drop his call when he saw Julian with Josephine but, by the expression on his face, really wanted to.

  Josephine’s mouth dropped open, too. Even a grizzled cynic would have a hard time not fawning over the cornucopia of baubles and beads that was housed under Ashton’s expansive roof.

  Real and fake furs, old lamps, figurines, designer bags, red carpet dresses, tuxedoes, movie memorabilia of all kinds were on sale and display. From Casablanca (the bar glasses) to Back to the Future (Marty’s Hoverboard), incredible real artifacts from imaginary places abounded. Ashtrays from Chinatown, a replica (not actual-size) of the Starship Enterprise, an actual-size Han Solo frozen in carbonite, Halloween costumes, shoes and hats, and all the bling in between, including signed framed photographs of the stars, including Ashton’s treasured possession, a poster of a joyous Bob Marley from 1981, signed by the man himself a few months before he died. There were albums, playbills, scarves, a wall of arcade games from PacMan to Donkey Kong, a wall of original art by local artists, and next to it a table with brushes, paints, and blank canvases for sale. There was a display of vital herbs and vitamins, a nod to the health-obsessed Riley. There was a red door bathed in black light and a neon sign above it that read, “Haunted House this way.” Yes, there was even a Haunted House, which ran year-round, and all the zombies and ghouls inside it were for sale. Ashton replaced them with new ghouls and zombies as needed. The Treasure Box was a store that no one but the treasure-hunting, adventure-seeking Ashton could’ve devised or imagined. Everything he was and everything he loved was in that store.

  “This is the most amazing place I’ve ever seen!” Josephine said in a thrilled whisper. “Can we come back?”

  “Maybe. Follow me.” Julian popped into one of the narrow side rooms and was relieved when he quickly found what he was looking for: a long-haired 18th-century wig made with real gray hair.

  “Perfect,” she said. “This is fantastic, oh!—but expensive.”

  Julian put a finger to his lips and sighed, hoping he could sneak her out before Ashton got off the phone. Alas.

  Ashton barricaded the door to the small room, blocking the daylight with his tall frame. “Hey, Jules. Whatcha up to?”

  “Not much,” Julian said. “We’re in a hurry.”

  “Hurry? But you just got here. And who’s we?”

  “Oh, sorry. Ashton, Josephine; Josephine, Ashton.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ashton,” Josephine said, smiling over Julian’s shoulder.

  “Yeah, you, too.”

  “You have an incredible place here.”

  “Thanks.” He stared at her and then blinklessly at Julian, who rolled his eyes, mouthing stop it. The three of them stepped out into the main area, where there was sunlight and windows and space to put between one another.

  “Where do you get this stuff from?” Josephine asked, walking around, touching the dresses and the silk scarves.

  “Here, there,” Ashton said. “Hot sets mostly. Before they shut production on a show, Julian and I walk the soundstages, mark what we want, and after they wrap, we return with my truck.”

  “You take the furniture, too?”

  “Why, do you need some furniture? A couch? A bed?”

  “No, just curious.” She didn’t blink.

  Ashton, stop it.

  “We get the larger items for free,” Ashton said, “because that’s first to be hauled to the dumpster. Basically we sell other people’s trash.”

  Julian wanted to knock his friend on the head. “Josephine, we have to go.”

  “A teacher, a writer, and a small business owner?” Josephine said to Julian. “You sure wear a lot of hats, Jules.”

  “Oh, you have no idea,” Ashton said, mouthing Jules? to Julian.

  “I’m not a teacher,” Julian muttered. “Not really.”

  “And people pay you guys money even for the big stuff?” she asked.

  “Yes, in our business, trash is a collector’s item,” Ashton replied. “We have an entire room next to the Haunted House of sofas and tables from the sets of I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, Mork and Mindy, that sort of thing.”

  “How fantastic! Can I see? After the Haunted House, of course. That’s first.”

  “Another time,” Julian said, trying to shepherd her out. “Or you’ll be late.” It was like shepherding out water. Josephine was studying the props as if she couldn’t care less about the callback.

  “Excuse me,” Ashton said to her, “but have we met before?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I could swear I’ve seen you somewhere. I never forget a face . . .” He tapped the counter. “New York! A few weeks ago. The Invention of Love. Weren’t you the understudy?” He peered at her.

  “Yes! Oh wow! You were there, too?”

  “Yes,” Ashton replied. “I was there, too.” Even his small smile vanished.

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  “Yes. Not as much as Julian—obviously—but I enjoyed it. It was out of the ordinary.”

  “But not extraordinary?” Josephine grinned amiably as if she couldn’t care less whether Ashton liked the play or not.

  Mutely Ashton stared at Julian, who was signing out the wig and wouldn’t return his friend’s pointed gaze.

  “Ready to go, Josephine?” Julian said.

  She didn’t reply, her eye spying something hanging on the wall behind Julian. “What’s that?” she exclaimed. It was a lambskin dark red beret. She pried it off the hook, turned it over once or twice, and put it on her head, stepping into the center of the store and smiling at both men. “What do you think, guys?”

  One man suppressed a smile, the other had no hint of it on his somber face. Julian didn’t understand why Ashton was being so unfriendly. He elbowed Ashton, who did not elbow back.

  “This thing’s fresh to death,” Josephine said, gazing in the mirror with approval at her own reflection. “Is it expensive?”

  “No, it’s not expensive,” Ashton said. “It’s priceless. It’s vintage Gucci. From the forties. But it’s not for sale. It’s Julian’s. It’s his lucky hat.”

  “It is?” Josephine stared in the beveled mirror. “Jules, where did you get this marvelous thing?”

  “Yes, Jules,” Ashton said, “where’d you get it? Tell the girl.”

  “I don’t remember,” Julian said.

  “There you go,” Ashton said. “He doesn’t remember. So what do you say? Can she have the red beret you found somewhere and haven’t parted with in a decade?”

  Like it was even a question.

  Josephine nearly skipped in place. With a grateful smile, her adorned head tilted, her fingers splayed, she did a two-step, a shim-sham, twirled around, swiveled her hips, and sang a few lines of the chorus of “Who’s Got the Pain” from Damn Yank
ees.

  Ashton, his light blue eyes dipped in indigo, gave Julian a long anxious stare soaked with question, unease, and, for some reason, despair.

  “Let’s go,” Julian said, grabbing his keys.

  Josephine looked Julian over as they got ready to walk out, at his starched gray-check shirt, gray khakis, black suede Mephistos, tailored greige sports jacket. “Julian, we’re going into the mountains after my callback.”

  “Yes, so?”

  “Well, you’ve put on your teacher uniform again, not your mountain climbing gear.”

  “Oh, you’re adorable, Josephine, to think that’s a uniform,” Ashton said, stepping between her and Julian. Forcefully he shook his head to underscore his words. “That’s not a uniform, dear girl. It’s a costume.”

  9

  Phantasmagoria in Two

  “ARE YOUR SHOES AT LEAST COMFORTABLE?” JOSEPHINE asked him in the Greek parking lot after the callback. Her outcries of woe killed it, she said—because of the lucky beret.

  Julian didn’t know how to answer her. All his shoes were comfortable. Comfort was his MO. “Why, is it a long way where you’re taking me?”

  “It’s up a mountain.” She poked him. “You want to back out?”

  “Who said? No, I’m in. Maybe you should’ve asked Ashton. He loves to do that stuff.”

  Josephine fell quiet as the sun played footsies with the sparkles on the rattlesnake weed. “I don’t think he would’ve said yes. He didn’t seem too friendly. I don’t think he likes me.”

  “Of course he does.” Julian deflected since he wasn’t sure what had been up with Ashton. “He was off his game. He’s not a morning person.”

  They began their uphill climb through the loamy sand in which juniper and spruce grew and eucalyptus was profuse. Josephine was in front of him. Flame trees turned everything to fire. The jacaranda and the pink silk trees looked and smelled like cotton candy and made Julian feel he was in a sweet blooming garden full of redbuds and desert willows and lemon-scented gums. He wanted to point out to her their bright and gaudy surroundings, but what if her response was, yes, sure a garden, but what kind of garden is it, Julian, Eden or Gethsemane?

  What was wrong with him? Gethsemane!

  As he was thinking of something less idiotic to say (frankly, anything would be less idiotic to say), there was a rock in his way, and he tripped over it. She was too fast for him. He could barely keep up, while she was practically sprinting through the peppergrass. It was hard to flirt walking up a steep hill on uneven terrain in a single file. He tried (not very hard) to keep his eyes off the smooth white backs of her slender thighs. His gaze kept traveling to her lower back, bared above the waist of her shorts. He wanted to dazzle her with his knowledge of blessed thistle and golden fleece, of Indian milkweed and fragrant everlasting, of the perennial live-forevers, but he couldn’t breathe and dazzle at the same time.

  She returned to him, fanning herself with the red beret. “Julian Cruz,” Josephine said, one hand on her hip, “come on, a little more hell for leather. We have less than fifteen minutes.”

  Hell for leather? “I didn’t know there was a deadline.”

  “There’s always a deadline. You should know that, Professor Daily Newsletter. I know you’re a novice at walking . . .”

  “I’m not a novice at walking.”

  “We have until noon,” she said. “And then it will be gone.”

  “What will? The sun? The mountains?”

  “You think you’re clever, but you’ll see. If we miss it, that’s it. Tomorrow you’ll have a million things to do, and I have my Mountain Dew shoot. Yeah, they called while I was at the Greek. If I get this Dante gig, that’ll be two for two. I don’t know what’s happening,” she said. “I haven’t gotten two jobs in a row in like never.” The beret went back on her head.

  “Maybe I’m your good luck charm,” he said. “Lucky hat, lucky Julian.”

  “No time for chit-chat, Mr. Talisman—spit-spot.” In her combat boots, she disappeared up ahead, around a cottonwood.

  “If we miss it, we could definitely come back another day,” he said after her. “I’m not saying we’re going to miss it—”

  “We’re going to keep coming back day after day because you can’t hurry up today?” she called back. “What makes you think you’re going to be able to hurry up tomorrow?”

  “I’m hurrying. I’m running uphill.”

  “What you’re doing is called self-paced running,” Josephine said. “That’s another phrase for walking.” Ahead of him, she continued to scoff and mutter. “I can tell you work from home. People who work from home have absolutely no sense of urgency. They never have to be anywhere. It’s always dope-dee-doe.”

  “I’m not dope-dee-doeing.” Julian huffed, wanting to tell her he didn’t only work from home, he also worked out. And drove all around L.A., loading and unloading trucks full of heavy things, and taught a class. Suddenly he wanted to tell her everything.

  Josephine was barely flushed when they made it to the crest. “How you doing, cowboy? Hanging in there?” She smiled. She was flushed enough.

  All he could do was pant. “Where are you taking me?”

  “To show you magic.”

  Pushing through the brush, they went off trail until they reached some scrubby silver dollar gums and a lonely laurel fig. She was happy, open-mouthed, panting, wiping her wavy hair away from her damp forehead. “It’s going to be amazing today, I can feel it,” she said. “Look how sunny it is.”

  He saw. It was blindingly sunny. They swirled around in a 360, taking in the view. Miles of Los Angeles valley simmered below. They were high in the hills, floating in the shivering air, soaring above the vast spaces where people lived. The ocean in the westerly distance was in a mist, downtown L.A. a haze of matchbox towers. All the roads with a million white houses and a million palm trees led to the sea. Up here, the air was thinner, the oxygen weaker. It was time for nosebleeds and birds of paradise and whispering bells. The summer flora was blooming, the mustang mint and golden currant vivid in the high noon sun. There was a smile on her lips and thunder in his heart. He knew there was magic in these hills. All he wanted to do was kiss her.

  She sucked in her breath, a bird of paradise herself, a whispering bell. “We’re standing above the fault in the earth called Benedict Canyon,” she said, rummaging in her hold-all until she pulled out a clear stone on a thin rawhide rope. Silver wire was braided and wrapped around the stone like a basket. She placed it in the palm of her hand. It was a chunky rough teardrop with sharp multi-faceted edges, translucent in part, occluded in part.

  “What’s that?” He studied it with mild curiosity at first. But the stone tweaked something inside him, peaked his interest. Stirred some indefinable emotion. He felt an electric buzz through his body as he stared at it. The buzz wasn’t entirely pleasant.

  “A quartz crystal.” Josephine lifted her arm to the sky. The crystal sparkled in the sunshine.

  “Not a diamond?” Julian smiled.

  “Ha. No. I’ve had it appraised, believe me.” She brushed her hair away from her face. “My grandmother gave it to me. It belonged to her cousin in the old country.”

  “Old country where?”

  “Not sure. Near Blackpool, maybe. Or Scotland.” As if the two were interchangeable. They walked a little farther until they reached a clearing, a hidden mesa in the sun encircled by chest-level exposed rock, a stony enclosure. “Jules, you’re standing in a cave of quartz!”

  “Do I want to be standing in a cave of quartz?”

  “Aha. Mr. Know-it-All doesn’t know everything. Yes, at certain times of the day, the quartz glitters like diamond dust. If you’re lucky, you might find yourself inside a rainbow.”

  What man wouldn’t think himself lucky to stand next to beauty in girl form, rhapsodizing about magic diamond dust inside rainbows. He was motionless, catching his breath, interested, bedazzled, open to her, open to anything.

  Their eyes flicker
ed between the crystal in her hand and each other, the sandy desert hills falling away below them. In the valley, the outlines of Beverly Hills and Century City gleamed, farther west the yawning maw of the Pacific. Her flushed face was so near, all Julian had to do was move his head half a foot forward and kiss her open lips. His head slowly tilted sideways.

  “How long till noon?” she asked.

  He rocked back to check his Tag Heuer. “A minute.”

  “Excellent.” Her palm faced up. “If you can think on your feet, you can make a wish. At noon, for a brief moment, the stars and the earth and the whole of creation will be so perfectly aligned that any wish asked for in faith can be granted.”

  Clearly Julian wasn’t quick enough on his feet, or he’d be kissing her. “Why are you holding the crystal like that?”

  “Trying to catch the sun with it.”

  “You’re a sun catcher.” He gazed at her.

  “I’m a wish catcher,” she murmured. “Around us are the oldest rocks in the Santa Monicas. Like forty million years old. You’re standing inside stone as old as time itself. You can touch time with your hands.” She took a breath. “Do you want to touch time with your hands, Julian?”

  I want to touch you with my hands, he thought. His wish must have been apparent in his eyes. She blushed.

  “What happens to the crystal when the sun hits it?” he asked. “Does it get hot?”

  “Julian, I’ve led you up a mountain,” she said. “This is no time to be a cynic. We’re standing inside a volcano. The river beds below us have dried up, the land looks stern from here and is sometimes cruel, even ruthless, to weakness.”

  “I know that all too well,” he said.

  “Man, despite his fire and chaos, has made barely a ripple in these hills.”

  With slight shame Julian thought that you could tell a lot about how he had chosen to live by his languor in the land of palm trees and summer, by how he had breezed through a decade of his chill life in which he made barely a ripple, and which had made barely a ripple on him.

  “Is that what you’re going to do, Julian Cruz?” Josephine asked. “Be carried unfulfilled to the grave?”