And In Summer Fire Read online

And in Summer, Fire

  by

  David LaGraff

  For Cynthia, forever.

  Let me seek you in my desire,

  Let me desire you in my seeking.

  Let me find you by loving you,

  Let me love you when I find you.

  Copyright © 2013 David LaGraff. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  Chapter 1

  A couple of days before the 4th of July, Donica, while breakfasting on her patio, picked up her iPhone, but before she could press the speed dial for her mother Liz, the phone rang in her hand.

  It was Liz. "You're obviously not checking your e-mail."

  Donica, with her mouth full, replied, "Mother, it's 6:30 a.m." It didn't surprise her that when she'd been about to call Liz, the phone had rung in her hand, as if to affirm that between them there did in fact exist a connection best described as telempathy, a word Liz had made up two years before, on the night they'd both decided they might try operating together a business aimed at attracting law firm clients in need of corporate interior redesign.

  "Don't talk with your mouth full. I know what time it is. Did you forget you were supposed to call me?"

  "I was just dialing you," Donica said.

  "Where are you dear? And what's that noise I'm hearing in the background?"

  "I'm out on the balcony," Donica said. "Finishing a low fat bagel and a Benadryl with a coffee chaser. There's a garbage truck in the driveway. You'll have to shout to be heard."

  "I'm not hearing a garbage truck. It sounds more like a TV. Is it coming from one of your many inconsiderate neighbors?"

  "It's my TV," Donica said. "I'm the one being inconsiderate. I've got it turned up loud in the living room to hear the news out here. That new blonde on KTLA says the Bel Air fire is still burning out of control. How close has it come to the house?"

  "We're getting a lot of ash," Liz said, "but the main blaze is still at least a couple of miles east of here, south of Mulholland on the west bank of the freeway. Of course, if the wind comes up, it could be on us in a flash. Your father refuses to evacuate. I've been hosing the place down all morning, but the water pressure keeps dropping out of sight. Earlier, a frightened coyote ran right down the middle of our street! I had to lock little Punchy in the bathroom. With his arthritis, he could never outrun a hungry coyote!"

  "Mother, this is starting to worry me."

  "This shouldn't even be happening," Liz continued, "but in spite of the fines and the warnings, some people, including a certain famous faux-educational TV quiz show host, who only works 4 days a month and whose name I won't mention, don't keep their brush cut and the next thing you know, everybody's home has gone to blazes."

  "What's dad doing while you're watering?"

  "He's in the garage wiping the Mercedes with a diaper. He says if he doesn't, the ash will ruin his precious Desert Silver paint job. Men. It's a good thing they only run governments. If they ran anything else the world would be completely ruined. Thank God they don't try to raise the children. The human race would disappear within 90 days."

  "I wish you and Dad would come stay at my place until it's contained."

  "And stay where? Your place is hardly big enough for the cat, let alone yourself. Not to mention the last time we visited, the cat scratched your father."

  "The cat has a name."

  "I talked to Cher last week. She knows a reliable vet who can perform the de-clawing. And there's some new medication you can mix with its tuna that blunts all that male territoriality."

  Donica ignored her. It's true; Fletcher had scratched Dad, but not defensively. Fletcher often scratched, lovingly, his owner, and select others, of whom Bertrand was particularly favored. It was just Fletcher's way. But Liz was right--the one-bedroom apartment was small, but at least it was hers alone, to have and to hold, for better or for worse. And she had a great view of North Hollywood Park, not something which could be said for most other L.A. apartment dwellers. But all was not perfect. This morning, the air was heavy with scents of fresh cut grass from the park, along with diesel exhaust, sulfur, and something else she couldn't define, something chemical, a recent addition to the smells of Los Angeles her nose wasn't even equipped to identify.

  "I'm calling because there's been a change in plans. I don't want you picking me up this morning," Liz said. "There's too much commotion from all the emergency vehicles in the area. I'm having your father's driver take me. I'll meet you in the Mark Carson conference room at 10. And you'd better leave an hour early. You don't want to get stalled coming over the pass if the fire comes down alongside the freeway."

  "I was going to skirt the 405 and take Sepulveda. At least as far as Sunset."

  "Please don't, honey. Sepulveda's too close to the fire. You might get swallowed up in the blaze."

  Donica sneezed. Mightily and with abandon.

  "God bless you," Liz shouted. "But you better not do that at the presentation."

  Los Angeles, Donica thought, should have been, on this morning, rechristened Los Allergies, if her itching eyes were any judge. She'd popped the prescription cap of Benadryl in hopes the redness would be gone before she and Liz made their sales pitch to the partners of The Mark Carson Law Firm downtown at eleven.

  "What're you wearing?" Liz shouted. "The red or the blue?"

  "The blue," Donica replied. "I'm afraid the Mark Carson people might think I'm just another insecure woman trying to pump up my courage with a red power suit. So I'm going blue. Light on the jewelry. And don't you wear red. We don't want to look like some tag team dressed early for the 4th."

  "I am too going with the red," Liz answered. "No matter what you say. Although they might confuse me with Hillary Clinton."

  "Funny. Since when did she ever weigh two hundred pounds?"

  "Not! One-nine-niner this morning."

  Donica sighed. Her mother was two-fifty if she was a pound. They were going to look like they'd dressed for the Fourth and there was nothing she could do about it. There was no way she could make her mother understand the degree to which one was judged by appearances, even in a place as supposedly laid back as Los Angeles. Mother was simply too flighty. An artist, who just couldn't color between the lines.

  Donica had taken after her father. Matching him in somberness, and business instincts. Accordingly, she'd chosen for the presentation a simple blue skirt and matching jacket of lightweight summer wool, an outfit she hoped would add enough solemnity to her youthful appearance to impart a sense of credibility to the members of the committee upon whose decision her livelihood for the next several years could well depend.

  I just hope it doesn't make me look like a flight attendant, she thought. Not much chance. Donica wasn't slim. In that department, she'd taken after her mother. For now, at one hundred sixty five, she was holding the line, but only just, thanks to her height, which was a hair over six feet. She knew exactly what she'd look like in twenty years. Or perhaps ten, if children were in her near future. There presently being no man in her life which even remotely presented that possibility, she decided to continue her estimate at twenty. Although pretty, finding a male counterpart had been a problem ever since her height spurted up in her sophomore year of high school. Most men were simply too insecure to show interest in a woman who was taller than they were. She sometimes wondered how her moth
er, from whom Donica had inherited her size and height, had found Bertrand, who was a good four inches shorter.

  Back to the present predicament. Two gigantic Amazon women dressed for the 4th two days early. One husky, one rotund. Grimly, she pictured the worst. Herself and Liz falling apart, losing their composure, foreheads shining in the glare of recessed spots at the head of a boardroom table the size of an aircraft carrier, high up in the hushed environs of The Mark Carson Law Firm, on the 25th floor of the north face of the Century Towers.

  "I'm scared, Liz."

  "Of what?"

  "Of everything. Up until now, it's all been a dream. The first door opened without our even trying. But now this ..."

  "This, as you call it," Liz said, "is exactly what we have made it. No more, no less. What did you expect when we went into business? That we'd fail? No! We're succeeding, just as we've always known we would. We've worked and prayed and this is the result--success."

  In spite of her mother's faith, in Donica's mind she could see them at the presentation. Two clowns, one young and one old, reduced to tears and humiliation in a corporate aerie populated with a bunch of old fat guys with better dye jobs than most women could afford. Big mouthed veteran legal eagles, who dealt harshly with unwary prey by the law of agenda and command. Pinned down by lawyers with uncanny political savvy, boring into them with the kind of pointed questions designed to sink forever, and to the bottom of impenetrable depths, Donica’s and Liz' newly launched ship, an entrepreneurship focused on the installation and design of the latest in corporate office environments.

  "You need to get a grip, Donica. We can't afford to blow it," Liz said. "There's a lot at stake. And I want you to put your hair up."

  "Mother--"

  "I mean it. This is no time for you to go with the surfer girl look. No matter how gorgeous your long hair is, remember, this is a law firm we're presenting to."

  "You're right. It's just that I've been realizing that the business has been my entire life for the past two years. And I mean my entire life. Do you realize that except for attending church once a week and the occasional family get together, I have no social life? But I'll get a grip."

  "What verse are you standing on this morning? You sound weak."

  "We are more than conquerors."

  "Then stand on it and start sounding like you mean it."

  "Mother. Did you ever wonder if there was ever something more?"

  "More than what, dear?"

  "You know. Just more."

  "Don't drift, dear. Conquer like you mean it."

  Donica sighed. The verse had rung hollow over the phone. She did not feel like a conqueror. Mother was right. There was a lot at stake. Her ability to believe her dreams were coming true was being stretched. A dream of which freedom was perhaps the main component. If they were successful at the meeting, it would mean the opportunity to continue doing what they liked to do as heads of their own business. If they failed, it could mean a life doomed to forever wonder about what might have been. Donica could not imagine herself working for somebody else. When she did, she pictured pointless days spent slaving in the cubicle of a corporate high rise fitting together some harshly controlled piece or other of managerial boorishness, her best ideas under attack from every side by the company gnats who managed the finances, and pared the non-essentials to a point where life and creativity weren't values to be upheld, but outbursts to be strictly controlled.

  Their fledgling self-business was precious to Donica. She was completely emotionally invested in her job as co-founder, partner, webmaster, janitor, sales executive, errand runner, and any other title required by a business which had on its roster but two employees--herself and Mother. Their business name, Design Ex Facto, had come to Donica in a dream one night, probably induced by working within the legal environs of their first corporate client, the firm of Wellington, Kelly, Conroe and Titcherton, the prestigious L.A. law firm where her father Bertrand Kelly, now retired, recently served as Senior Partner. The firm had been the first to offer Donica and Liz a chance to prove themselves by undertaking an interior redesign of the firm's nifty corporate condo located on Grand Avenue in the historic older section of downtown.

  Although this first corporate job referral had come by way of a freebie from her father, the current referral to the Mark Carson Law Firm was in truth based more on merit than nepotism. The office manager of the Mark Carson Law Firm had invited them to make a presentation after seeing some pictures of the condo job at the Design Ex Facto website. Mark Carson was a group which, if it liked what Donica and Liz had to offer, could well be their ticket to huge success, what with the firm's solid connections to the entertainment industry people and their inherent need for fabulous and lavish redesigns of formerly and tastelessly decorated canyon, mountain top and beach bluff domains.

  "I've made a few last minute changes," Liz said. "Mostly to the colors."

  "You what?" Liz could hardly believe her ears. They'd set everything in stone the day before, and her entire presentation was built upon that stone.

  "Changes. You've heard of them. They're things that happen in a world where nobody's promised tomorrow. You'd better inspect the changes. I've already e-mailed them to the firm's secretary."

  "You what? Mother--"

  "Shush, dear. The Holy Spirit led me to something new. A creative rush I haven't felt in years. Not since the time I filled in for Mama Cass at The Trip in the Sixties. I was up half the night at this incredible new website. There's a new design wave coming out of Bombay that everybody's after. I'm dropping all the fake teak and Italian marble. Nobody wants their workspace to look like something from the Vatican anymore. Look, we've got to show them something new, something leading edge. Check your e-mail. Gotta go, honey." And hung up. As was typical with Liz, a woman best described as abrupt, but a large woman with a huge talent, her design abilities rivaled only by her uncanny sense of where and what would be the next fashion trend among those who were, in her own words, the "owners of our little old world".

  Changes. At the present moment, in Donica's life, change was the only constant. Had it been only two years since she had emerged from the holy cloisters of UCLA B-school, wearing the Master's mantle, only to be swept onto her present fast track? In spite of the hand up from her influential father, the present opportunity had to have come from the hand of God. In response to the bread they'd cast on the waters of local commerce. A chance hit on their website from a high class prospect. What were the odds? There was simply no other way to explain this potential meteoric jump from the dog-eat-dog world of home interiors to the highly coveted redesigning of corporate spheres, where the successive job referrals could well make her wealthy in her own right beyond her dreams as she and Liz sculpted their wares in a heady variety of domestic and international materials and markets.

  Was she on her way to becoming a player? The thought made her shiver. A player in Los Angeles. The City of Angels. The largest city in the wealthiest state of the most powerful country on earth. She'd watched her father play the game. And now it was her turn.

  Donica drained the last of her coffee and went inside to inspect the last minute e-mail from Liz regarding the changes, the knot in her stomach growing tighter. She glanced at the TV. Bel Air was still burning. They'd just closed the San Diego Freeway due to smoke reducing the visibility to near-zero. The CHP was shepherding selected groups of cars through. She'd have to take the long way around, perhaps through Laurel Canyon, and then make the serpentine westerly crawl along Santa Monica Boulevard to Avenue of the Stars in Century City. The morning commuters, infuriated by the closing of the major north south artery between the valley and Century City, would be in a nasty mood. Shots might be exchanged. Which meant she had about thirty minutes to get herself together and be out the door.

  She murmured a quick prayer, something she often found herself doing lately. And after the prayer, a quick aff
irmation. This is the day the Lord hath made, she whispered. A day in which the Lord required her to take her place, as she always did, at table in a city alongside eighteen million other deserving souls. A day when she made known her requests to God along with the other eighteen million. A day like any other, which had brought herself and her mother Liz to a defining moment in their lives.

  She popped open the e-mail and double-clicked on the attachment. Liz had changed everything. The colors were hideous, a blend of puce, chrome, and lavender. Such a color scheme would render the interior of the law firm into something akin to a sleazy gaming casino. An impossible sell. She gasped as she watched her dream fly out the window. At which exact moment she heard a very familiar sound. Unh-whoo-uk! Unh-whoo-uk! Unh-whoo-uk! Fletcher, wheezing up a hairball. Only not on the patio where he was supposed to do it. But in her bedroom. Where, only a few minutes before, she'd laid out her best blue suit on the top of the bed.