“The bastard just said that he’s mining Haiphong Harbor.”
“The bastard?” I asked. I took a shot and missed the pocket by an inch.
“We don’t say his name,” Jim said with a laugh.
Mary laughed. “If you say Nixon three times into a mirror, he’ll appear next to you.”
“What’s Haiphong Harbor?” I asked.
John took off his hat and twirled it in his hands. “Don’t know your Vietnam geography?”
“I know Hanoi and I know Saigon,” I said. “I know the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Gulf of Tonkin.”
“And what, may I ask, is your position on the war?”
It was Mary’s turn, and she drilled the 5 ball into the side pocket. She held out her hand as she walked past me and I slapped it. “Good shot.”
“Thank you.” She lined up another one.
“My father,” I said to John, “would tell you that the Vietnam War is being fought to prevent the vile spread of Red Communism and strengthen our alliance with Australia. I worked with him nine to seven almost every day of the year, selling furniture, and he said that at least four times a week.”
John smiled and put his hat back on. “And what do you say?”
“I think we’re sending kids over there to die just so the president can say we’re doing something about the ‘communist threat,’ with the false belief that, as a superpower, we have the right to invade any small country we want.”
Mary knocked in the 7 ball and then stood up.
John nodded his agreement, and the waitress arrived. She set the drinks on the table beside John. John paid her and, if I was seeing correctly, gave her a huge tip.
“And today,” John said, “the bastard has declared that he’s going to be placing mines in Haiphong Harbor, the main port of North Vietnam. There are military ships in those waters, but it’ll mostly affect imports, like food and medical care. Yeah, it will hurt the army, but it’s sure as hell going to hurt the civilians more.”
Jim nudged me. “He was over there.”
“You’re a vet?” I looked at John.
He stared back at me and then pulled up his sleeve. There was a tattoo of a skull wearing a green beret.
Mary walked over next to me. “You coming? I don’t want to have to win this all by myself.”
“She could too,” John said.
I stood up. John looked older than everyone else. He looked weathered. “John, what do you do?” I asked.
John exhaled, a deep, slow breath. “It’s a long story.”
Mary pulled on my arm. “Come on.”
He grinned. “It’s called Endgame. Now go play pool.”
CHAPTER TWO
I sat on one of the couches, watching Jim and Julia play nine ball against each other. Mary had stuck with me all evening, which surprised me, but I didn’t want to question it. I didn’t think a girl like Mary had ever even looked at me, but here was one who was pulling me over to the couch by the hand and was in no hurry to let go. Tommy followed us and sat down in the chair next to our couch. He put his feet up on the table in the center, and I waited for John to join us.
“So, how do you know all these people?” I asked again, more to cut the silence than because I was interested.
Mary waved her hand dismissively. “Eh, I don’t want to talk about them. Tell me about you. Who is Michael Stavros?”
I took a breath. “Well, I already told you the important stuff. I came to Berkeley to do something more with my life than just be a furniture salesman. But for now I’m a janitor. Classy, right?”
“Don’t feel bad about that,” she said. “I worked at a burger place until I got my internship. I’ll probably go back there when school starts.”
“I thought you were on scholarship.”
“Pays for tuition, but nothing else. My dad has plenty of money, but he wants me to make my contribution, which is a buck sixty-five per hour, fifteen hours a week. But it could be worse. He originally didn’t want me to go to college at all.”
“You should be a janitor. We make one eighty.”
“I’d rather flip burgers.”
“What about your internship? That doesn’t pay?”
“Nope, but that’s okay, because I don’t really do anything. I make coffee, I take notes in meetings, and I get ogled by men who are divorcing their wives. But I have a desk with a window on the eighteenth floor, and my mom took me on a shopping spree for business clothes. That was fun. You should see me before I change clothes after work. I look like a Republican.”
“Scandalous,” I said with a laugh. “I could see you as a big-name lawyer in the city.”
She grimaced. “That’s because you don’t know me very well yet. I should get paid just for having to wear high heels every day. I’m a country girl, born and bred. I hated leaving the ranch and moving here. Give me boots and a rifle and I’m your girl.”
“I liked that about Pasadena. You can be over the hills and out of the city in ten minutes. Well, scratch that. I don’t like Pasadena. It’s too suburban—is that the word I’m looking for? It’s too bland. Nothing happens there.” I laughed. “The thing I just said that I liked about it was how easy it is to get out of there.”
“Never been there. Is it close to Disneyland?”
“About an hour. If you’re still a country girl at heart, how did you ever get into law?”
“I like to argue,” she said, and laughed.
John sat down with us and put a foot on the coffee table. He was wearing boots—looked like alligator skin.
“Mike, answer a question for me.”
“Sure,” I said. “Anything.”
“I don’t know Pasadena, but there was something in the paper about it a couple weeks ago. Made me think. There was an apartment fire. A guy had gotten out safely, but he ran back inside. They found his body in a hallway—they speculated that he’d been knocking on all the doors. Now, he wasn’t the manager. Neighbors said he was quiet, and no one really knew him.”
I nodded. I’d heard about the fire. “So what’s the question?”
“Why did he run back in? He was safe. The fire department was there.”
“Do you want details from a Pasadena native? Or just my opinion?”
“Just your opinion,” John said. “Hypothetical. Let’s say you’re the guy.”
“I think he was just a good guy. Wanted to help. Got out of his depth.”
A waitress brought him a new Scotch and water, but he seemed in no hurry to drink it. “You know, the Mormon missionaries came knocking on my door once. They have a saying: ‘It becometh every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor.’ You sure you don’t want a drink?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said, and decided to change the subject. “Tell me about that game. What’s that?”
“Endgame?” John asked, and took a sip.
“It’s scary shit,” Tommy said.
Mary squeezed my hand.
“There’s a lot to know,” John said. “The history of it would take hours to tell. I’ll start with a question—what do you believe about the end of the world?”
I laughed for a moment, because I didn’t think he was being serious. But I was the only one laughing. “The end of the world? I don’t know. My mom is the churchgoer in our family. A Baptist. I’ve never paid much attention. Raining fire and brimstone, and all the sinners go to hell and the good people go to heaven, I guess? Why’s that important?”
“You want to know about Endgame, right? Mary, tell us what you know,” John said.
“What I know? Or what I was taught in catechism?”
“First what you were taught.”
She brushed some loose strands of hair out of her face. “I was raised Catholic. The Bible says that Christ will return, and that no one knows the time of his coming. The wicked will grow worse and worse and the Antichrist will come and the entire world will fall away. Finally Christ will come down to purge the wicked and sit in judgment of all people. That??
?s what I was taught, anyway.”
I smiled, first at her and then at John. “Are we really sitting in the back of a bar talking about the end of the world? Do you know what I’d be talking about if I was back home? Furniture. And if I went out with my friends—which I never had time to do—we’d talk about baseball. And I hate baseball.”
“Oh, you’ve just never seen good baseball,” John said with a laugh. “But yeah—the end of the world. It’s is a crazy topic. You’ve got to be a little bit nuts to deal with it all. Tommy, how about you? What do you believe?”
Tommy rolled his eyes. “I’m Hopi. Everything is different for us.”
“Yeah,” John said, “but I like to hear it. And it will help Mike understand.”
“There are, supposedly, nine signs to watch for. The first one is that white men will come. As you can see, that one’s already happened.” Tommy laughed. “There are prophecies about covered wagons and longhorn cattle and telescopes. But it all comes down to the ninth sign. All the others have happened already. We’re currently in the Fourth World, and the ninth prophecy says we’re going to hear a crash in the heavens and see a blue star. The Blue Star Kachina will be revealed and take the faithful to the Fifth World.”
“So,” I asked, “what happens if you’re not Hopi?”
He pointed at Mary. “What happens if you’re not Catholic?”
John took a sip of his drink, looked at me, and said, “What do you think the truth is?”
“Nuclear holocaust,” I said. “Sooner or later.”
“And you don’t believe in a god or a kachina or the Rapture or anything like that?”
“I’m not saying there definitely isn’t a god. I’m just saying I never really believed in one, like you.”
John eyed me carefully. “I don’t believe in God,” he said. “I believe in Endgame.”
“What?” I asked. “What religion is that?”
“It’s not a religion. It’s the end of the world. It could start at any moment. I don’t know.”
I looked at Tommy, who stared at me like he was waiting for me to say something. Mary still held my hand, her other holding her bottle of Budweiser. She looked back at me as I stared, our faces close together.
“This,” I said, turning back to John and laughing, “is why I never drink. You guys are freaking me out.”
“I like you, Mike.” John leaned back and laughed. “Listen, when do you start work?”
Mary’s hand brushed against mine, but I tried to focus on John. “Uh . . . not till next week.”
“We’re having a get-together this weekend with a lot of my friends. Up at Mary’s ranch. Nothing formal, just fishing and shooting and hiking. Come with us—it’ll be fun.”
“Thanks, man. But I don’t have a car.”
“That doesn’t matter,” John said. “We have plenty of people coming who can give you a ride. Why don’t you get a lift with Mary?”
She nodded emphatically. “I have my dad’s old Buick. I’ll pick you up.”
Tommy spoke up. “C’mon, Stavros. It’s cool. You should come.”
I never did anything like this. And not only that, but I never did it so spontaneously. “Well, I don’t know how to shoot, and I haven’t fished since I was in the Boy Scouts, but sure, sounds good.”
I was happy. I’d found a group of friends who felt like they could be my people. And for a moment I forgot about all the talk of the end of the world as John bought another round of drinks.
Tommy and I walked back to our dorm. He was drunk—we’d played pool for two straight hours. For my first day of college, this had been pretty cool. I’d met a bunch of new people, including a beautiful girl who’d stayed next to me most of the night. I had no idea where that had come from—I didn’t know what she meant by it.
I hoped it meant something.
“Tommy,” I said, “how long have you known Mary?”
“Not long. I only started hanging out with that group . . . um . . . during fall semester?”
“So you’re pretty new?”
“Yeah,” he said, his words slightly slurred from all the beer. “I guess. She’s been with the group for only a little longer than me. But I always get the feeling that she’s known John forever.”
“Forever?”
“For a long time. I don’t know. Longer than a year anyway. Are you interested in her?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Hey man, that’s cool. She’s not my type anyway.”
We turned onto a street without any streetlights.
“A totally hot girl with deep blue eyes and blond hair isn’t your type? She’s on a scholarship at Stanford, so she’s smart too. What is your type?”
“I like brunettes,” he said.
“Well, your loss is my gain.”
Tommy winked at me. “I assume this means you’re coming on our ranch trip?”
“A whole weekend with Mary?” I said. “Are you kidding? Of course I’m in.”
I really did want to go—and not just because of Mary. I’d had this picture in my head of what Berkeley was supposed to be like, and suddenly I was living it. Getting together with friends, talking about big issues—the war, the government. Even the end of the world.
Of course, at that point I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
CHAPTER THREE
We all met in the grocery store parking lot Friday at five in the morning, and I was stunned by who showed up. I thought it was going to be just our group, but it turned out to be a whole lot bigger than that. There were the people I knew—Mary, Tommy, Jim, Julia, and John—but there were also many I’d never met.
Other than a change of clothes, I hadn’t brought anything with me, but most had fishing poles or shotguns or deer rifles. When we got there, Mary threw her arms around me in a huge hug. She smelled like flowers, and I let my face nuzzle in her hair. My heart sped up at what that hug could mean. But then she gave the same big hug to Tommy, and another one to John. She was a hugger, I guessed.
She looked like the youngest girl there, and I was probably the youngest guy. I introduced myself to everyone.
“We’re going to have fun today,” said a girl named Kat, smiling at me. She was in her twenties, super skinny, and a nurse. She gave me a hug too, and whispered in my ear, “This may seem crazy at first, but you’re going to love it.”
What? I thought. It seemed like such an odd thing to say. I figured she meant I’d love the group—the fishing and shooting.
“The old guy,” I asked Kat. “Who’s he?”
“That’s Rodney. And he’s only thirty-two,” she said. “That’s not old. It’s his beard. But you should get to know him—he owns a deli in Oakland. And watch for it: he’ll ask you to go fishing with him, and he’ll make a bet on who will catch the first fish. Don’t take him up on it. I swear, he could get a fifteen-pound bass out of a pothole.”
Mary came and took my hand and led me to her car. “It’s a coupe,” she said, “so there’s only room for the two of us.”
“Great,” I said. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that showed her curves, and I couldn’t believe Tommy wasn’t interested in her. She was beautiful. Her hair was loose and long, and her skin was soft and warm in my hand. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was that we had the whole car ride to ourselves.
Once everyone had arrived—there were eight cars and 21 people—Mary and I pulled out of the parking lot and headed west. Her ranch was five hours north. I’d heard Northern California was pretty, and she said there were lakes and rivers and hills on her family’s property.
“Do your folks know you’re going up there?” I asked.
“What makes you ask that?” she said, tilting her head.
“Just curious.”
“No,” she said, her expression suddenly tense. “They don’t. And they can’t find out, or I’m dead.”
“So we have to keep the place nice and tidy?”
“Exactly.” Mary glanced over at me, noticed I
was smiling. Her face loosened up, and she laughed. “Really, though, my parents don’t use the ranch for much anymore. So they don’t care. In the spring my dad will go up and make sure the fences are okay, and in autumn he still takes us hunting. The ranch is really big—have I said that? It’s fifty-five thousand acres.”
“Wow,” I said. I knew from my time with the Forest Service that that was enough land to get seriously lost in. It could cover whole mountain ranges.
“My oldest brother owns a feed store up in Klamath Falls, Oregon. We keep expecting him to ask for the land so he can start his cattle operation, but so far he hasn’t. His wife is from there, and I think she wants to stay. For now everything works out well for the ZL, though.”
“The ZL?”
“Oh,” she said, glancing over at me, like maybe she’d said something she shouldn’t have. “That’s us. The group of us. It stands for Zero line.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means . . . basically, it means that we consider each other family. You know how people talk about their bloodline? We—this group—call ourselves Zero line. We’re our own kind of family.”
“I like that idea,” I said. “God knows I’d like to distance myself from my own family.” Mary laughed. I loved her laugh: so quick and light.
“Speaking of family,” I said, “where does yours think you are this weekend?”
Mary laughed. “Back at school for a workshop. There are just some things you don’t want to tell your parents, you know? They’re not the most open-minded people in the world. My dad—forget about sneaking onto the ranch. He wouldn’t care about that too much. But if he knew I was with a boy from Berkeley, I think he’d flip.”
“Too liberal?”
“My dad is a staunch Catholic, Nixon-supporting old cowboy. Just the idea that you want to study urban planning is enough to make him think you’re a pot-smoking hippie with newfangled ideas and immoral goals. He thinks a man should work with his hands. He should be a self-made man with big plans for being self-reliant.”
“And has that worked with the rest of the family?”