I am telling Dr. Ben Kalinsky all about Norma Banks as we take an early evening walk with Rip.
In this magic time between day and night, the sun has just set over Indian Wells Beach. There’s hardly any wind tonight, just the sound of the waves, the whole scene convincing me all over again, not that I need much convincing, that our beaches are the most beautiful in the world. And this one beach, the closest to my house, is my favorite of all of them, making me want to live forever and not just for a few more months. Live happily ever after with this man, and this dog, and in this place.
I know I ought to be exhausted after what was another bad and restless night. But now I am almost hyper, doing even more talking than I usually do in the company of Ben Kalinsky.
“Funny story, by the way,” I say as my lead-in on the trip to the emergency room yesterday, something I hadn’t shared with him until right now.
“Yeah,” he says when I finish. “I mean, who doesn’t think a fainting spell isn’t a laugh riot?”
Then he adds, “You wait a whole day to tell me about this?”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“It’s a little late in the movie for that,” he says.
I switch the subject back to Norma, and what an absolute pisser she is, how much I believe she’s going to help me at trial.
“I’m telling you,” I say. “This old broad is totally rizzed up.”
“Rizzed up?”
“Means she has charisma, old-timer.”
“And just where did you learn that expression?”
“Netflix, of course,” I say.
We keep walking. Rip runs up ahead, occasionally chasing sandpipers, then comes racing back to us. I tell Ben about Rob Jacobson managing to take a day trip to the city without being violated, and how not knowing whether he might have murdered six people was still keeping me up nights, whether I was about to earn him another acquittal or not.
“And that’s not even the worst part,” I say. “Would you like to know what the worst part is?”
“Shush,” he says.
I stop. He stops. Rip goes bounding back down the beach, through the waves, chasing more sandpipers across an open stretch of sand that the water hasn’t quite reached.
“What did you just say?”
“I told you to shush,” Dr. Ben says. “As in stop talking. As in zip it.”
He is smiling at me. That smile worked for him the first time I met him and is still working just fine for him tonight.
“No one has ever shushed me,” I say, “at least not as an adult-type person.”
“Had to happen eventually,” he says. “Somewhat like this.”
Then he is suddenly kneeling in the sand and out of nowhere the last of the sun is reflecting off the diamond ring inside the blue velvet box he’s just opened.
I don’t shush him.
“You’re the one with the words, so I’ll keep this simple,” Ben says. “Jane Smith, will you please effing marry me?”
NINE
ROBBY SASSOON LEANS OVER the roof of his rented car and watches them with his new Pulsar Merger binoculars. They’re expensive, but worth it.
So am I,he thinks.
He has followed them here from her neighborhood, just beginning to get the lay of the land out here, learning her personal geography. Then he has waited for them to park and get out of his SUV along with the dog. When they’re down on the beach, he parks at the end of the lot closest to the water.
