THE POLICY Page 3

  Abrams told him to come in tomorrow, gave him a brief overview of what to expect, and Hunt hung up the phone. There was a moment of self-pity. How the mighty have fallen, he thought. But that was replaced almost instantly by a sense of renewed optimism. The pay was not significantly lower than what he would have earned as a computer operator at any number of private firms in Tucson, and county benefits were extremely generous. The insurance package easily matched the one he’d had at Boeing. Looked at objectively, this was really not a bad deal. Besides, this was why he had moved here. He was reinventing himself, starting over, and what could be more liberating than that?

  “And,” he explained to Joel later, “my job isn’t my life, it’s a way to earn money so I can live my life.”

  His friend grinned. “You keep telling yourself that.”

  “Asshole.”

  But he really did feel that way, and he realized that a sea change had occurred in his makeup since the divorce. No longer was he driven by a need to prove himself, by a desire to keep up with some imaginary yardstick of career milestones. He had been competing since childhood, striving for good grades, getting into a top college, making sure he got the job he deserved, the promotions he deserved. He’d been successful but not necessarily happy, and he thought that this was his opportunity to turn that around, to not worry about success and allow himself to be happy.

  Joel clapped a hand on his back. “Seriously,” he said. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” Hunt told him. “I think things are finally looking up.”

  The alarm woke him up at five-thirty, and Hunt tripped over a chair as he clumsily made his way through the darkness to the clock on the dresser. He shut off the alarm, then stood there for a moment, holding on to the dresser’s edge, trying to will his sleep-fogged mind into some semblance of alertness. In California, he used to wake up at five in order to beat the rush-hour traffic, but during his time off he’d gotten out of the habit of rising early, and this was like pulling teeth.

  He showered, shaved, then stood in his underwear looking through his closet. He was supposed to meet with the personnel manager at seven-thirty for an orientation, and then with the manager of maintenance services at nine. The personnel manager hadn’t told him what to wear, and Hunt hadn’t thought to ask. A tie was obviously too formal, but he probably shouldn’t wear his weekend clothes, either. Didn’t tree trimmers have their own uniforms? Orange jumpsuits or something? Or were those prisoners? He wasn’t sure.

  He finally settled on new jeans and a nice dress shirt. A compromise.

  As it turned out, there were uniforms for tree trimmers, but he’d made the right decision to wear what he did because he spent most of the morning inside the offices of the county building meeting with bureaucrats, watching a “Welcome to County Government” video, filling out insurance forms and tax forms and liability forms. Shortly after ten, he finally met Steve Nash, the brusque maintenance services manager, who took him out to the corp yard, exposed him to some of the tools with which he’d be working, and gave him a boxed tan uniform and cap before bringing him back and making him watch another video, this one on trees and trimming techniques. After a half-hour lunch, he was required to go to a nearby medical clinic and take a physical and a drug test. It was nearly three o’clock by the time he finished.

  “Am I supposed to go back to the corp yard?” he asked. “I thought I was going to start working today.”

  “Tomorrow,” the personnel manager told him. “Although your status is considered temporary until we receive the results of the drug test, and you will be on probation for six months, during which time you can be fired without cause.”

  “So what do I do now?”

  “Go home, get a good night’s sleep, report to Steve in the corp yard at eight.”

  Eight was late. The trucks and the trimming crews were already out and about, and the maintenance manager told him that while the office workers started at eight and got off at five, here they started at seven. Six in the summer months. “I won’t dock you this time because it’s that choda Abrams who screwed you up, but from here on in, you’d better be on time.”

  “I will,” Hunt promised.

  Steve stared at him suspiciously. With his mustache, stocky frame, and perpetual scowl, he looked like a meaner Dennis Franz. “Jackson,” he said, squinting, “what the fuck are you doing here?”

  Hunt was taken aback. “Excuse me?”

  “College man like yourself. Why’re you here? Writing a book?”

  Hunt didn’t know how to respond. “No,” he said. “I just… needed a job.”

  “So this is just a temp job to you? You’re going to move on in a month or so, when something else comes in, and leave us high and dry?”

  “No,” he lied.

  “Just get out,” Steve said disgustedly. “And don’t be late again. You’re on your probation period, you know.”

  He’d already been assigned to a three-man crew, with himself as the third man, so Hunt took the map Steve gave him and drove his car out to a park in the east end of the city. He found the county truck easily enough but locating the other tree trimmers was more difficult. He finally met up with them several hundred yards down a hiking trail that wound through a hilly area near a dry creek.

  A burly white guy who looked like he could be a professional wrestler, Edward Stack stood atop a metal stepladder, sawing through the upper branches of a palo verde tree with a long-handled cutter. Smaller, skinnier and darker, Jorge Marquez was gathering up cut branches and loading them in an orange trailer attached to a small motorized cart. Hunt apologized profusely for being late, but neither of them seemed to care, and both men stopped working and casually introduced themselves. Hidden under a bush was a cooler filled with ice and Snapple, and Jorge grabbed three bottles of raspberry iced tea, taking one for himself and passing two around.

  “I just had breakfast a half hour ago,” Hunt said, declining.

  “Well, we’ve been working for an hour already and it’s hot as hell,” Jorge said.

  The two of them conducted their own unofficial interview while they drank, asking Hunt about his life, his background, how he happened to get this job. They didn’t seem overly concerned about his utter lack of experience, which was good, and they seemed to like him, which was even better. After they finished asking questions and had satisfied themselves that he was all right, they showed him what to do. He’d watched the tree-trimming video and Steve had explained how the tools of the trade worked, but that superficial overview had been next to useless. Edward and Jorge gave him a hands-on demo and let him practice a bit before telling him to take over cleanup—picking up the cut branches and piling them in the trailer.

  “You picked a good day to start,” Jorge told him, walking over to the palo verde. “You get to see Big Laura.”

  “Who’s Big Laura?”

  Edward chuckled. “You’ll see. What’s the time, Whore-man?”

  “Nearly nine-fifteen!” Jorge called.

  “Big Laura’s as regular as my fiber-eatin’ grandma. She jogs on these trails every day. And on the days we’re here… well, she likes to say hi.” Edward pointed up the dirt pathway. “Face that direction. She’ll be here any second.”

  Sure enough, he saw a glimpse of red through the trees and bushes, and a moment later, a young blond woman came jogging toward them. She was tall and she was hefty, but that wasn’t why Edward and Jorge called her Big Laura. No, those two reasons bounced in front of her like jellied basketballs, pushing the limits of even the loose-fitting red sweats, and as she approached the three of them, she smiled and lifted her top, exposing the biggest breasts Hunt had ever seen.

  Then she was gone, around the bend of the path, and Edward and Jorge were both laughing.

  “There are a few perks to this job,” Jorge said.

  Hunt shook his head. “Wow. I guess so.”

  “Just wait until Thursday,” Edward said.

  “What’s Thursday?”
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  “We’ll be working on the east side, off the Rillito. There’s a new housing development next door.”

  “Stripping Susan. That’s a sight you won’t soon forget.”

  “Stripping Susan?”

  Jorge grinned. “Big Laura was just the opening act. Welcome to tree trimming.”

  TWO

  No.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  But though Sy Kipplinger had never experienced an earthquake before, he knew without a doubt that he was experiencing one now. The ground beneath his feet rolled and rocked, like a small boat in a rough sea whose hull was being pounded by hammerhead sharks. Time seemed to have stretched out, and the seconds seemed like minutes, his heightened, panicked senses acutely attuned to everything that was going on, seeing the swaying of the hanging plants in the kitchen, hearing the crack of the house’s wood foundation beneath his feet, smelling the odor of the broken gas line from the hot water heater.

  His breakfast flew into his lap, eggs and orange juice staining his pants.

  Mary was screaming, and he was on automatic pilot as he stood, grabbed her, and tried to steer her out of the kitchen into the backyard. But plates and cups were falling about them from the open cupboards, a mixing bowl barely missing Mary’s head, and then the refrigerator slid in front of the back door, blocking their way. The window above the sink shattered inward, pelting them with glass, and several shards cut his arms and face.

  Sy had been through a lot in his seventy years, but nothing had prepared him for this, where the very ground beneath his feet was moving and shifting, no longer safe and stable, the earth actively trying to throw him off as though he were a flea on its back.

  A chunk of ceiling collapsed in front of them as they hurried into the living room, and he nearly tripped over it, his grip on Mary’s arm the only thing that kept him upright.

  He had no idea how long the earthquake had been going on—less than a minute, probably—but it felt like an hour, and it showed no sign of slowing or stopping. If anything, the shaking intensified, all rolling motion gone and now just a wrenching series of successive jerks. The television tipped over, shattering on the hardwood floor; Mary’s knickknack shelf hurled its contents onto the couch and coffee table and throw rug.

  For a brief impossible second, he thought he saw a man silhouetted in the hallway off to the left, a husky man in a hat, but then they were staggering across the lurching floor toward the front door, avoiding falling furniture, and he forgot all about the figure.

  They made it outside just as the eastern half of the house collapsed, his den and the bedrooms falling in on themselves as though a pin had been pulled and everything that had held the structure together suddenly dissolved. They hobbled, limped across the lawn, and at some point Sy realized that the shaking had stopped, that he was compensating for a pitch that was no longer there.

  They reached the street and turned around, staring back at the pile of rubble that had been their home. Without warning, Mary began beating him, sobbing as her fists rained blows on his cut shoulders and chest. “I told you we should’ve bought earthquake insurance!” she shrieked. “I told you!”

  He stared dumbly at the spot where his den had stood, wondering why none of the other houses in the neighborhood had fallen. “This is Tucson,” he said. “We don’t have earthquakes here.”

  Neighbors emerged from their homes, many in their bathrobes, some with cups of morning coffee in their hands, and all of them looked bewilderingly at the Kipplingers’ ruined house. A few ran over to try to help.

  “I told you!” Mary sobbed, hitting him.

  “This is Tucson,” he kept repeating. “We don’t have earthquakes here.”

  THREE

  1

  Stacy really did have a friend who was single, and though Hunt had been joking about it, Joel and his wife set up the two of them, inviting both over for dinner one Friday night. They were each forewarned, so it wasn’t a complete surprise. Both were assured that it was not a blind date, that there was no pressure, but that in itself was pressure, and he found himself trying on outfits like a schoolgirl going to her first dance, consciously trying to look good but in a casual “I don’t really care about my appearance” way.

  Her name was Beth, and she worked with Stacy at Thompson Industries in the public relations department. For the first part of the evening, Beth stayed with Stacy in the kitchen, while Hunt and Joel remained in the living room, watching television and talking. Lilly shuttled back and forth between her parents. At dinner, all of them ate at the big dining room table, Hunt and Beth conveniently and not coincidentally seated next to each other. The two of them hit it off immediately, and though help was ready and available if necessary, no conversational rescues were required of the hosts, who were able to focus their attention on their daughter and her melodramatic account of her day.

  Afterward, Stacy took Lilly up to bed while Joel retreated to the kitchen to load the dishwasher, discreetly leaving them alone. They sat next to each other on the couch, close but not too close, and eased into the subject of themselves by reminiscing about how they met the McCains. Beth described how she and Stacy had met on her first day of work at Thompson Industries, and Hunt explained that he and Joel had lived down the street from each other and been best friends in elementary school.

  “Wow,” she said. “You’ve known him that long?”

  “Well, there was a gap. We sort of hung out with different crowds in high school, and after that we went our separate ways. I moved to California, got a job and got married, and I just looked him up again last month when I moved back after my divorce was final. Before that, I hadn’t seen or heard from him in… I don’t know, fifteen years.”

  Stacy returned from upstairs. “You two ought to go for a walk around the neighborhood,” she said, passing through the living room on her way to the kitchen. “It’s a nice night out.”

  “Subtle,” Beth said. “Very subtle.”

  Stacy laughed.

  But they decided to take her advice, and after informing their hosts that they’d be going out, they walked down the driveway and out onto the sidewalk, strolling past the closely built, nearly identical houses.

  “So you’re divorced,” she said.

  “Yeah. Does that bother you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about you?”

  “Never married. Never even lived with anyone,” Beth admitted.

  The surprise must have registered on his face.

  “I haven’t been a nun,” she said. “I’ve had plenty of boyfriends, and I was with the last one for over five years.”

  “But you never lived with him.”

  “He stayed over sometimes, or I stayed at his place… but, no, we never lived together.”

  “So why did you break up?”

  “You’re awfully nosy, aren’t you?”

  “Sorry. I’m not… I haven’t… I’ve been out of circulation for a while. And back when I was in circulation, we were all doing the confession thing. I’m not up on current…” He took a deep breath. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’m just winging it. I’m sorry if I—”

  But she was already laughing. “It’s fine, it’s fine. I wouldn’t’ve said anything if I knew you would take it so seriously. It’s just that… well, I’m not that great at self-examination, and you were making me—”

  “Examine yourself?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. And for the record, the reason Tad and I broke up is because he dumped me. He met some bim at a bar, and the next morning he called me up and said it was over.”

  “Tad?”

  “Your name’s Hunt,” she pointed out. “You don’t have a lot of room to talk.”

  “Still.”

  She punched his shoulder, then took his arm. He felt the warm softness of her body next to his. This was going far better than he had hoped.

  “Now that we’re in su
ch a nice confessional mood, why did you get divorced?”

  He shrugged. “The usual reasons, I guess. We drove each other crazy. There was no one else, if that’s what you’re wondering. Neither of us were seeing other people… we just couldn’t live together. Probably, we shouldn’t’ve gotten married in the first place.”

  “Oh.” She held him closer, held him tighter, and as they walked the talk drifted off to other, happier topics.

  A half hour later, they returned, hand in hand. Joel and Stacy had finished the dishes and were seated on the living room couch, listening to an old Spyro Gyra CD. Beth excused herself and went to use the rest room. Hunt looked over at Joel and saw his friend grinning, wiggling his eyebrows in an exaggerated Groucho Marx manner.

  He nodded, smiled back.

  This just might work out.

  2

  It was not a whirlwind romance by any means. They had both been recently burned, and they took things slowly. It was a week before he even called her; a week after that before they went out on their first official date: the traditional dinner and a movie. He’d been afraid they’d have nothing new to talk about, that they’d used up their quota of original thoughts and interesting topics at the dinner party, that there would be long stretches of awkward silence punctuated by pathetically obvious attempts at conversation. But if anything, they were even more comfortable with each other than they had been at Joel’s, and the talk flowed easily. They had a lot in common. Not so much that they’d be one of those pukey couples who never did anything apart, but enough that there was a foundation upon which to build a relationship. They ended up going to a coffee shop after the movie and talking until midnight. When he dropped her off at her house, she invited him to come in and spend the night.

  After that, not a weekend went by that they weren’t together. They did ordinary things like go to bookstores, go to malls, hike, and rent videos. They did touristy things like spend one Saturday at Tombstone and another at Old Tucson Studios. Edward and Jorge made fun of him for being so whipped that he spent a Sunday afternoon weeding Bern’s garden—“I’m working on trees and bushes all week long,” Jorge said. “Last thing I want to do is spend my weekends gardening.”—but they both understood and they both liked Beth, and one uncharacteristically cool Saturday afternoon he and Beth; Joel, Stacy, and Lilly; and Edward and Jorge and their wives all went to the Sonora Desert Museum and then out to dinner at an Italian restaurant, where Lilly fell asleep on the floor and the rest of them closed the place.