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To this day Emory still took pride in the way he could read a man by his shoes. Shoes revealed how much walking a man had to do. Scuffs and scars told where, and the condition of the heels said why. Style and quality were also considerations. Were the man's shoes cheap but stylish or more conventional, of better leather? Either told a lot, the way Emory saw it. He didn't believe he had ever misjudged a man by his shoes, and he was amused that, by the same means, so many people had been wrong about him during those early, crucial times.

Then.

How many policies ago had that been? Millions since those eighteen-hour door-to-door days.

Now, thank our land, there was a twenty-four-story earthquake-proof building on Wilshire Boulevard with his name chisled on it. Home office of his People's Fidelity Insurance Company. Branches in San Francisco, Seattle and soon San Diego. Agents in almost every West Coast city.

Emory had become secure from people being afraid. Not only afraid of dying but of almost every aspect of living. The most benign and pleasurable things held hazards. Only someone dumb and asking for it would swim, walk his dog or even sleep entirely at his own risk. Mind's ease came with coverage. Snug it was under the vast, invisible money blanket. No need to shiver at the thought of cold poverty, that, of course, could result from nearly anything imaginable happening.

It had come to the point where people were now afraid of being afraid. And what they were most afraid of was one another: those thieving, beating, crashing, irresponsible, grubbing
other
people.

Emory kept that in mind like a personal secret. He believed knowing it gave him a man-over-man edge. He could always act braver.

Besides, when it came down to it, really the bottom-line fear of all was the fear of being moneyless, and Emory and his would never have to worry about that. All those policies. His actuarians fixed the odds and the fine print made it a sure thing.

Worth a million for each of his years.

He was forty-nine. Slightly shorter than average. His weight fluctuated from fifteen to twenty-five over. He was going to jowls, despite the ten minutes of facial isometric exercises he did each night and morning — making faces at himself in the mirror under flattering fluorescence. He had two kids, girls, at Stanford, getting good enough grades and in with their own kind. And a wife who matched him Scotch for Scotch any time of day.

The way Emory counted, he also had many friends. A large circle of them. Quality people. When meeting someone new, after assessing the person's footwear, Emory would put it to them — same test question every time:

“Do you consider yourself an honest person?”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely honest?”

“Yes, sure.”

“Okay, then, let's say you're making a call from a pay phone. You don't get your number. Your dime drops into the coin return and along with it comes a bunch of quarters. Do you put those quarters back into the box or what?”

Emory figured anyone who said he'd give back the quarters was a liar and not to be trusted. Definitely not anyone he wanted to know. The most ridiculous reply Emory ever got was from a young man who said he'd walk away, leave the quarters and the problem for the next guy. A real do-nothing bullshitter, was Emory's opinion.

As for himself, Emory would pocket the quarters, damn right. Despite all he had, he still got a charge from such unexpected windfalls, and whenever he needed to think good thoughts he recalled little extras he'd gotten away with over the years. Once at a hotel cigar counter in San Francisco he'd been given change for a twenty instead of a five. He'd felt positively blessed. Usually, however, Emory didn't leave such things to fate. He created his own godsends.

Newspapers, for example. Whenever it was convenient or even a little out of his way Emory bought his newspaper from a vending machine on the street. When he put in his coin and the machine unlocked there was nothing to prevent him from taking two papers. He'd been doing it for years. An edge. Insurance.

Now, there he was, driving south on the Coast Highway in his 1976 Lincoln Continental Mark IV with the waving United States flag decal on the rear window. Humming and da-dee-da-ing along with a Mantovani on the triple-stack cartridge-playing stereo. To pass time he decided to call ahead.

He took the phone from its cradle, the operator came on and within seconds Emory was talking with wife Eleanor. She sounded a few degrees too cheery, slurry, and Emory knew she was already several stiff Scotches up on him.

“Coconut chips,” she said.

“What?”

“Toasted coconut chips — you know the kind, the special kind. You know.”

“Look in the cabana pantry.”

“I looked, looked every goddamn place.”

“Okay, I'll stop somewhere and get some.”

“I've got a craving. You know me when I get a craving.”

He sure did.

“I can be meaner than shit.”

“I said I'd stop and get some.”

“Toasted coconut chips like I like.”

“Say please.”

“Fuck you.” She hung up.

A few miles further on Emory noticed the Seaside Supermarket. He went past, thinking it was raining too hard and to hell with her and her chips. But then he had a second thought that made him let up on the accelerator pedal. He found a spot to turn around and went back to the market. The excuse he gave himself was a temporary escape from his underwear.

7

The trip was another try for Peter and Amy Javakian.

Another try at making a go of it.

During the year and a half they'd been married they'd been separated twice seriously, twice briefly. The main reason, at least the admitted one, for this new try was Amy's sixth-month condition.

When she first learned she was pregnant, she definitely wanted an abortion. But there had been so much discussion with Peter, with his family, with her mother, that she became ambivalent. She let months pass and then it was too late.

Her body had trapped her.

She resented that, showed she did by resisting the pressure put upon her by everyone, including herself, urging her to reconcile with Peter. For the baby's sake, some said, their exact words.

For two months she lived alone in one room in Fresno, worked there for an unmarried older woman, a lawyer who was very sympathetic.

In her fifth month Amy telephoned Peter and pretended the real reason for her call was not to share with him how active the baby inside her had become. Hearing his voice, she realized how much her resolve had weakened. In a roundabout, pride-saving way she let him know she might be receptive to another try.

And this was it.

Starting, restarting, with a trip.

So far it hadn't been promising. Several times Peter had almost been exasperated enough to turn the car around and head back home to Hollister. Just as often Amy'd had the urge to jump out and escape to anywhere.

“I didn't need any help,” she said.

“You sawed the boards and everything?”

“Everything.” A small smug smile, chin up.

“You liked doing it?”

She nodded, definitely.

“Even the sanding?”

“Sure,” she fibbed. She had hated the sanding, had thought she'd never be done with it. It had made her arms and shoulders tired, sore.

“But you wouldn't ever want to do it for a living — be a carpenter, I mean. Not really.”

“Maybe. Anyway, it's good to know I could if I wanted.”

“There's a union.”

“So?”

“They wouldn't let you in.”

“They'd have to.”

“Never.”

“Women are working in steel mills.”

“Where?”

“Someplace in Michigan.”

“Paperwork.”

“Uh uh. At the furnaces, rolling out extrusions. I saw it in a film.”

Peter was surprised and a little annoyed that she used and seemed to know the word extrusion. He considered silence, letting her have the final say. He almost did. “Pepper wouldn't stay in it,” he said, getting back on the original subject that was the doghouse Amy had built. Pepper was the pup they had chosen together at the city pound in San Francisco shortly before they were married. A mongrel that had consistently loved them both.

Regarding the doghouse, Amy could have said honestly that building it had given her a new sense of appreciation for any man who did such work.

Peter could have praised her for how well she had done.

He told her, “It wasn't square.”

“It was.”

“The floor slanted.”

“It did not.”

“Not even a dog wants to sleep on a slant.”

Amy kept her look straight ahead, clenched her teeth, kept in the string of words that came up from her anger. Her complexion felt flushed, but if she had looked in the mirror then she would have seen her face drained, pale. That was partly because she didn't wear any makeup, hadn't for the past few months — except those times when for no reason outside herself she'd given in to feeling inconsequential. Then she used all the usual devices to exaggerate the size and perhaps the power of her large blue eyes. But only her eyes.

Plain pretty without makeup, the most impressive kind of prettiness, really. More intelligent looking, Amy thought, and, as well, another shucking-off step toward independence, naturally facing things.

She was an only child and considered herself fortunate for that. Seldom having to share attention, getting spoiled with one sort of love almost made up completely for not having had a father since she was ten—half her life.

As she understood it then, and still, father had become unbearably discontent. Father had left everything but one suitcase. Father had divorced her mother and, without ever being asked, had sent postal money orders for various amounts from various Eastern cities. He never visited, and only during her fourteenth and fifteenth years had she especially felt the need to know him.

But she never went to him and only remembered vaguely what he looked like. He disliked having his photograph taken, her mother recalled.

Amy's maiden name was Stone. By no means an eponym.

Even in pregnancy there was a lanky sort of immaturity about her, her movements and postures, which seemed to convey an indifferent attitude. The opposite was true. She was vital, extremely suggestible, and almost always too quick to respond. Whenever she spoke or listened, her eyes widened and fixed on the other person, as though that allowed her to say or hear more.

That was one of the many things Peter liked about her.

Peter was twenty-two. The second eldest son of an Armenian farmer, whose crops were mainly celery and children. Typical of his extraction, Peter had an abundance of dark, deep brown hair, speckled black eyes, thickly lashed. A sensual look. His mouth also contributed to the impression. The bridge of his nose was prominent enough to make him appear all the more interesting. He was not a large man. Solidly boned, though. Strong.

Being second eldest in his family had its advantages. Peter didn't have to be totally concerned with the farm; perhaps he could look forward to something else. As a boy he'd always been intrigued by color and drawing. Later at San Jose State College he had concentrated on what seemed a polarity of subjects: concerned with what he might have to do and what he hoped to do. He majored in agriculture and minored in art.

Did passing well, dutifully, in modern farming.

Better at putting color to canvas, huge stretches of canvas for furious slashes of color, adamant, virile, the abstract shapes of his emotions — sometimes — and at other times, more diminutive but equally powerful work: bright, joyful landscapes of his feelings. Like that in life too, he was extremes. Brooding and gypsy melancholy one moment, affable and laughing the next.

Amy frequently called him a purebred manic-depressive.

For her benefit she once used a Magic Marker pen to label the lids of his eyes “glad” and “cry.”

It was not Peter's galvanic moods that irritated Amy. She believed his spontaneity, up or down, showed how unusually sensitive he was. It was one of the many things about him that she admired.

What she could not tolerate was what she called his Armenian macho. Ironically, that also had been one of her original reasons for loving him. She had enjoyed being necessary to him in an abiding way. It had made her feel in place, secure.

That was before she saw the liberated-female light, before she was brought to realize that she was another victim of gender. How blind she'd been, how much she'd been used, limited, how grateful she was to know better and how sorry for every woman who didn't. Amy became so fanatical about the feminist cause it got to the point where it seemed Peter couldn't say or do anything without committing an offense.

He was often guilty. But it was difficult for him to admit or even recognize that. An Armenian male naturally assumed the controlling role in his family. It was also expected that he would worship his wife.

When Peter explained that to Amy, she'd told him she'd gladly forfeit worship for equality.

Side by side, they were now on the Coast Highway, headed for Mexico. The first day of two weeks of stopping anytime and anywhere they wanted, and maybe, if their money held out, they might make it all the way to Puerto Vallarta, or even Acapulco.

One of Amy's sometime wishes was to be on the beach at Acapulco. She had always pictured herself there in a skimpy bikini, a turn-on. Now she would have to settled for sitting swollen in the sand in a smock.

“Hungry?” she asked.

“No. You?”

“No.”

Their stomachs grumbled. They laughed.

“Pick a place and we'll stop.”

She rolled the window down a bit to see better. She noticed two, three likely restaurants but let them go by.

“I could fix us something to eat on the way.”

He preferred that. It would be less expensive. But this was supposed to be a vacation. Besides, he knew what friction it would have caused if he had suggested it.