“Lots of people drive them out in Los Angeles. It’s not an Adolf Hitler car.”

“Well, what kind did Mr. Hitler drive, Mr. Smarts? A Dodge?”

Paul’s father turned his head. “Hitler wouldn’t drive no Dodge, Daddy.”

“That’s my point. He had to drive the best, like a big shot. I remember the newsreels. He had bigger nuts than the governor of Louisiana.”

“Colette told me that car will last twenty years.”

The grandfather sat up and talked into Paul’s ear. “I had me a Ford Maverick lasted longer than that. I’d still be driving it if they hadn’t stopped giving me my damned license.”

Around Paradis his grand-père fell asleep. Paul could think of nothing to say for miles. An unnatural darkness rested between him and his father, and Paul could not fool himself into forgetting that he was leaving again; the youngest was going away, taking along his parents’ image of youth, removing from them his unlined face, the noise of him in the house.

At the airport he hugged the two men, and through his father’s cotton shirt, he smelled Aqua Velva and felt his bones.

“Ask Colette to please write” was the last thing his father said. Paul boarded the flight with the dry, husky feel of the men tingling on the ends of his fingers.

Chapter Ten

Ten

Something was happening to Colette. Shopping for dried flower arrangements and framed prints began to bore her. She couldn’t tolerate more than a few pages of Victoria magazine. The novelty of her car waned. She had driven the length of California, from the Oregon border to Tijuana, and knew that she had been too greedy with the landscape, had eaten it up too quickly. Every night she began to get out of bed and go to the sliding glass doors to stare into the grave vault of the Los Angeles River, rubbing the air-conditioned chill from her satiny arms.

On a Saturday, she went to a shopping center and parked out back in the employees’ lot; when she returned, she found that the car would not start. She had not called Paul since his visit to Tiger Island, afraid of being weakened by news from home, but her car was in trouble. He came in a few minutes, unshaven, his work shirt out.

“Pop the hood and let’s see.”

She gave him a suspicious look. “What are you going to do?”

He looked at her steadily, detecting something new in the air between them. “Jeez, if you don’t trust me to look at the damn thing, why’d you call me out?”

She went into the car and pulled the hood latch. Paul came to her side of the car.

“What is it?”

“I’m glad you’re sitting down.”

“What?”

“Somebody went up under this thing and stole the starter.”