Barry Fields
When I called that morning, I got no further than saying I was looking for my cousin.
Wolf Broughton angrily shouted he didn’t talk to strangers and hung up. Now, after a two hour
drive from Berkeley, I parked in front of Wolf’s two story house in one of Monterey’s upscale
neighborhoods. Bracing myself for a confrontation, I walked along a shrub-lined pathway to the
front door.
The bell chimed loudly. A woman with a hard mouth and squinty eyes appeared in the
vertical window that bordered the door, nose flattened against the glass. She gave me the finger.
Wolf’s wife I figured.
I produced a disarming smile and yelled at the window. “Hi. I’m looking for Suzie
Wheeler. I’m her cousin Ben.” The woman glared at me. Still with raised voice: “She came with
you from Berkeley the other day and I’m wondering if she’s still here.”
The face disappeared and the door opened as far as the chain would allow. The woman
eyed me distrustfully.
“You must be Blossom Broughton. Can I talk to Suzie?”
She examined me as if inspecting a potential purchase. “How do I know you’re not a
cop?”
“I just want to see Suzie. I’m her cousin.”
She barked a challenge. “What was her mother’s first name?”
“Kelly.”
“What’s her favorite sport?”
Her paranoia irritated me, but I answered her. “Soccer. She was a star player on the girls’
team in high school. She just graduated.”
A warm memory: teaching Suzie the basics of soccer when she was eleven years old, the
rules and positions, how to dribble and kick, how to defend. She took to the sport quickly. I
loved witnessing her progress and cheered during her middle school games.
The door shut. I heard the chain sliding, then the door swung open. “Come in, unless
you’re a cop.”
Why was she afraid of the police? “I just want to see my cousin.”
Blossom closed the door. “She thought you weren’t coming.”
“I’m a lieutenant. Army. Stationed in Italy, but when I got Suzie’s call, I was training
troops in Finland for NATO. It took a while before I could arrange to go back to Italy and get
leave.”
“Well, thanks for your service and all that crap.”
She scrutinized me in the foyer, I had the impression again of being sized up like a piece
of merchandise. “She said you weren’t bad looking. I see what she meant, except you’re stiff as
a drill sergeant.”
“Habit.” I tried to make myself relax. It didn’t work. “I’ve been worried about Suzie,
too.”
The last time I’d seen Suzie, four and a half years ago, she was thirteen, I twenty.
Growing up we lived on the same street. Our mothers were sisters, our two families always
together. Suzie’s mother died suddenly – a burst brain aneurism – leaving her orphaned and
panicked at eighteen years old. Tearfully, she pleaded she needed me in California to help her
sort out her life. Promise me you’ll come, and I answered from an army barracks on the eastern
edge of Europe, I promise. I’ll be there as soon as I can.
“When I got to her house there was a for rent sign on the lawn,” I continued. “She never
even answered my texts.”
“She’s having financial trouble. Cell service shut off,” she said. “She tried calling you
from here.”
“I couldn’t use my phone for a couple of days. Military restrictions. I’m lucky she gave
me the number of a friend. She said Suzie got a ride with you, something about a summer job.”
Blossom had a small nose, light eyebrows, and prominent cheeks. Attractive now that
she’d stopped scowling. She wore a black tight-fitting sequined body suit and red knee-high
leather boots.
Her doubts allayed, I tried again. “Is she here? I came a long way to see her.”
I waited but she didn’t answer. “That’s quite the outfit,” I said.
“I’m trying it on for our tour. We play Phoenix in a few days. Do you like it?”
She twirled around, animated now, long hair swirling. “You look like Taylor Swift or
something.” Which wasn’t really true, other than the hair. Blossom was shorter with a fuller
figure.
I’d googled Hungry Wolf earlier that day. Their recent first album broke into the top ten
on the charts. Blossom and her husband Wolf were the creative power behind the band and co-
wrote most of the songs. Wolf played rhythm guitar, she sang lead and played keyboards.
“Your album’s terrific. My kind of music.” Which was true. “I played every track on my
way here. Your lead guitarist is fantastic.” I didn’t mention the incoherent lyrics.
She beamed. “Yeah, it all came together. We’re working on material for our next album.”
“Great.” Now that she was friendly and smiling, I gave it another try. “So listen, can you
tell me where Suzie is?”
“She’s not here.”
“Where is she?”
She shook her head. “No go. It’s up to Wolf if we tell you or not.”
I stared at her, mouth open, stunned. “What? Why?”
“He believes that in life there’s always a give and take. You want something from us, you
have to give something in return.”
“You want me to pay you?”
“Don’t be crass, soldier boy. He’ll have to see.”
Dumbfounded, I was still gaping at her.
“Stay here until I get back.”
She walked a few steps, turned around, and pointed her finger at me. “I mean, do not
move an inch or I’ll cut your legs off with my lightsaber.”
Wolf’s anger and cursing on the phone. Blossom’s eccentricities. A warning light flashed
in my head: Get out of here. Now. And I would have – if Blossom and her husband weren’t my only way to locate Suzie. If not money, what did they want from me? I waited uneasily, as taut as
a line with a big bass pulling on it.
When she returned a few minutes later, Blossom wore standard garb: a loose-fitting
pullover blouse and jeans, bare feet. “I made fresh squeezed lemonade. Want some?”
“Sounds good.”
We sipped our cold drinks in a living room filled with nineteenth century antiques
collected by Wolf’s grandfather, according to Blossom. She asked my sign and I said Virgo, but
she wanted my moon sign, too. She entered my birth details into an app. I was a double Virgo,
which meant I was a hard worker and a perfectionist and liked things to be structured.
Surprised, I said, “Wow! That’s spot on.”
She had a self-satisfied look. “I saw right off the bat you’re the unbending type.”
She got that right, too. I half-listened to an astrology lesson about Mercury going into
retrograde. She finished. I said “Wow” again. Trying to sound enthusiastic.
Since Blossom wouldn’t tell me how to find my cousin, I asked how she was doing.
“Trying to hang in there, but she’s really broken up about her mother.”
“Before she and her mom moved to Berkeley, our families were close, especially after
her father died. She was like my little sister. I don’t get why she didn’t she tell me where she’d
be working.”
“She didn’t find a job until after she got here. She had no way to pay the rent, or to live,
for that matter. She wrote a couple of bad checks to buy food and there was a warrant for her
arrest. She had to get out of Berkeley pronto.”
That explained the fear of the police. “But Wolf can tell me where she is.”
She sipped her lemonade, looked me in the eye, and gave a knowing shrug. I pictured
choking her until she gave up the information. “When is he coming back?”
“Soon.”
Blossom launched into a rant about how aliens had built the Egyptian pyramids and the
government was hiding information about their visitations. I kept a neutral expression, nodding
as if this nonsense was rational. She confided that she’d been abducted by them twice, and they’d
done experiments on her, and Homeland Security knew all about it.
Things had gone from frustrating to bizarre to outright insane. I felt like a prisoner in a
reality-distorting fun house. A door slammed and Wolf came in, wearing a tee shirt that said,
“Get Weird.”
“Hi, Babe.”
Blossom stood and they kissed passionately, all over each other like they’d been
separated for a year. “You you you,” Wolf whispered.
“How’d it go?” she asked when their embrace ended.
Wolf had long silky-blond hair, rugged good looks, and a toned body. He looked more
like a surfer dude than a rock musician. “Fine. Everything’s taken care of. Did you pick up any
beer?”
“Look in Jenny,” Blossom said.
Look in Jenny? I didn’t even want to ask.
“Anyone else want one?”
“Sounds good,” Blossom said. “He’ll take one, too.”
“Okay,” I said, although she hadn’t asked.
I thanked Wolf and popped the lid. Wolf eased into a chair next to a Tiffany floor lamp. He and Blossom talked for a few minutes about one of the other band members.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked at last.
Blossom answered for me. “His name’s Ben. He’s Suzie’s cousin. Came all the way from
Italy and he wants us to tell him where she is. He’s in the army.”
Fortunately, Wolf didn’t connect me with the morning phone call. “An army man, huh?
My great grandfather fought in France, my grandfather served in Vietnam, and my father was in
Desert Storm. I broke the family tradition.”
“No tradition in my family. But it’s something I always wanted. I was in ROTC in
college. Went through jump school and the Ranger program.”
Wolf turned his attention to his phone, flicking then pressing the screen. The sound of
Foo Fighters filled the room. He removed a vape pen from the side table and took a hit, let out
the smoke, then walked it over to the sofa and handed it to Blossom. On the base, I occasionally
smelled a heavy, almost skunky odor and knew that an enlisted fellow was smoking a joint in
spite of the army’s zero tolerance policy. It irked me, but like other officers, I pretended not to
notice. After inhaling, Blossom passed the silver cylinder to me and I put it on the coffee table.
“Go ahead,” she encouraged. “This is as pure THC as you can find.”
“I don’t indulge, but you guys go right ahead.”
Wolf frowned, his eyes steely with suspicion. “What’s the problem? You don’t like to get
high?”
His sharp challenge put me on guard. “Alcohol works okay for me.”
“Don’t tell me you’re a pot teetotaler,” Blossom interjected.
Was abstaining from the drug a crime? “Never tried it,” I admitted.
Wolf’s demeanor abruptly changed. “What?” he cried out loudly. He stood up, cast his
gaze around anxiously, and sat down again. His lip began twitching. He tapped his heel rapidly
on the floor, his leg jerking up and down.
“Ben, you’ve got to take a hit.” Blossom coaxed sweetly but firmly. “You can’t be in our
house and not smoke weed. Don’t be such a Virgo tight-ass.”
Blossom wasn’t the first one to call me out for being uptight. I’d been self-disciplined
since high school, and the military reinforced my tendency to be inflexible. So I held my ground.
“It’s not something I do. What difference does it make?”
“You have to leave,” Wolf demanded. “This is our sanctuary. No uppity weed virgins
allowed.” Blossom patted the empty space next to her. Wolf went to the sofa and wedged himself
against her. She ran her hand through his hair.
“I only came to find out where Suzie is. Just tell me and I’ll leave.”
Wolf began ringing his hands, his eyes wild and movements jerky. Taught, ready for
action. I knew I could take him if he got violent, but that would be the end of finding Suzie.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Blossom said. “I tried to explain that to you before.” She put
her arm around Wolf’s shoulder and nuzzled his neck. “It’s okay, Baby.”
“You mean about having to reciprocate?” I asked.
“You got that right,” Wolf bellowed. “You want us to give something up, you have to
give something up, too.”
“I’m not asking you to give up anything. Just how to get hold of Suzie.”
“Get out of my house!” Wolf stood up menacingly. “Right now!”
Blossom tugged at Wolf’s hand and he sat down. She ran her fingers through his hair
again. I could have been watching a mother calming her upset child.
I appealed to their sensible side. “Wolf. Blossom. Come on. Let’s be level-headed, not
make a mountain out of a molehill.”
“The pen’s right there,” Blossom said mildly. She held it out to me. Her husband tilted
his head back and howled like a wolf.
I jumped to my feet, startled. My training had prepared me for all sorts of combat, but not
an out of whack scene like this. Neither of them approximated anything close to normal. I
walked reluctantly to the front door. Maybe I was out of step with the times, but I’d made a strict
commitment never to use drugs: to my father when I was young, to myself as a teenager, to
ROTC in college, then to the army. Yet my promise to my cousin, undergoing financial hardship
and emotional devastation, had brought me across two continents and the Atlantic Ocean. No
matter what I decided, I would betray a sacred promise. I couldn’t be certain they would reveal
Suzie’s whereabouts even if I did what they wanted.
I stepped outside but left the door open. Although after five, the early summer sunset was
a good three hours away. I called Suzie’s number but it was still disconnected. I put my hand on
the door handle and hesitated.
The door handle flew out of my hands. Blossom stood in the entryway. “You’re still
here.”
“I can’t make up my mind.”
“I thought we were all going to get high together and have a nice evening. Why do want
to spoil it?” She reached out and took my hand, tugged gently as she had with her husband.
“Smoking a little weed isn’t going to hurt you. You’re not even breaking the law. If you don’t
like it, you don’t have to do it again. At least you’ll know what you’re saying no to.”
“And you’ll tell me how to find Suzie?”
“You really freaked out Wolf. Go make him feel better.”
I let her lead me back inside. Wolf handed me the pen, grinning as though overjoyed to
be sharing a magnificent treasure. “Don’t take too big a hit, or you’re going to cough your head
off.”
I held the narrow tube and drew in, feeling the smoke go into my lungs. I held my breath
until a fit of coughing wracked my insides. I sank back into the sofa and after a few minutes
found myself listening intently to the music. Each individual instrument and the sounds working
together drew me in so deeply that everything else took a back seat in my consciousness.
“Well?” Wolf asked. “Feeling anything?”
“I didn’t realize before how intricate the music was.”
Blossom laughed. “You are one stoned dude, and you don’t even know it.”
Wolf suggested another hit, and the vape pen made the rounds.
Conversation started up – mundane topics like music and cars, and heady abstractions
like the creative impulse and esthetic appreciation. I asked if Suzie got high. Blossom laughed
and said she was a real stoner.
I was famished. I suggested pizza, insisted on paying, and ordered two pizzas to
Blossom’s specs.
The party moved to a large tiled kitchen with a massive wood table, a stove with a range
on top, a low chest of drawers, and a high hutch. A disused potbelly stove occupied a corner and
there were two refrigerators against two different walls, one, a JennAir – the mystery of Jenny
solved. We took swigs of beer from cans and ate pizza right from the boxes, one pepperoni and
sausage and the other mushroom and onion since Blossom didn’t eat meat.
“When they were doing experiments on me, they wanted to research how a vegetarian
earthling was different,” Blossom said. She took a swig from her third beer.
I asked what they found out. She said they never told her.
“This is the best pizza ever,” I said enthusiastically. “The contrast in textures of the crust
and the sausage. Incredible.”
“Marijuana heightens your senses,” Wolf responded.
A cat perched on top of the JennAir leaped to the top of the cabinets, which brought to
mind Ranger training when we walked across a log and crawled along a rope high above a pond
and ran the obstacle course. It gave me a flash of insight. “I’ll bet you could go around the
perimeter of the kitchen without ever touching the floor. All you have to do is move this one
chair over here.” I stood and moved an empty chair against the JennAir.
Wolf and Blossom scanned the room. “That is one amazingly brilliant idea,” Wolf said.
“Let’s do it.”
“We’ve got to take another hit first,” Blossom said.
The vaping pen went around while slices disappeared from the pizza boxes. I took my
shoes and socks off; the others were already barefoot.
Wolf insisted I take the lead since it was my idea. Standing on my chair, I stepped left
onto the one I had moved, and hoisted myself on top of the fridge. I let myself down onto a small
chest of drawers on the other side. Hands on top of a set of cabinets, where the cat had curled up,
I took a few steps on a countertop and stretched over to the old pot-belly stove in the corner.
Circumnavigating the kitchen became the most important thing in the world as I clung to
the open door and stepped on its knob. All three of us were crawling, swinging, and skirting our
way across the other refrigerator, stove, cabinets, sink, furniture, and doors.
“This is awesome,” Wolf called out from the top of the stove.
Maybe not for Blossom, too wrecked for such maneuvering. She struggled on a couple of
moves and almost fell off the lip of the sink. The entire escapade took several minutes.
“Victory!” I stretched my arms up like an Olympic medalist when I stood next to the
pizza boxes. Blossom and Wolf joined me on the table and we all congratulated each other.
“A world first,” Wolf declared. “It’s like conquering Everest.” He made a fist and held an
imaginary microphone to his mouth. “Ladies and gentlemen, you have just witnessed the world’s
first successful Counterclockwise Jenny Traverse.”
Blossom proclaimed the accomplishment called for a shot of tequila, and our alcohol-
and-cannabis-boosted conversation steamed ahead. More shots and hours later, when we were all
fading, Blossom offered me the guest room. Rhythmic squeaking came through the wall, I
prayed I’d given Wolf the trade he wanted and would get Suzie’s contact info in the morning,
then passed out.
Sunlight brightened the room when I opened the curtains. I checked emails and texted
friends back on the base until I heard an electric grinder. I found Wolf in the kitchen making
coffee, wearing a pair of drawstring pants and a UCLA tee shirt. We said brief hellos.
After the coffee maker gurgled to a stop, Wolf joined me at the table with two mugs.
“You good?” he asked.
“Hungover.”
“You were a total riot last night.” He chuckled approvingly.
“It was crazy,” I agreed. The cannabis high had been a blast until I drank too much. The
coffee helped ease my headache.
He got a Sharpie from a drawer and wrote on the refrigerator in capital letters,
COUNTERCLOCKWISE JENNY TRAVERSE STARTS HERE. “Next time we have people over, we’re going do it again.”
Wolf left the room and came back with a vape pen, which he handed to me. “Take it with
you. It’ll last a long time. Throw it away when it’s used up.”
He meant well, so I thanked him for his generosity. It gave me the jitters that he still
hadn’t mentioned Suzie’s contact information. The front door slammed and Blossom came in,
sweaty and breathing hard. She wore running shorts and a sports bra.
She chirped, “Good morning, Virgo.”
She and Wolf embraced in a lingering kiss like the one I’d seen the day before. Wolf
whispered, “You you you.”
“You two, you’re meant for each other,” I said. It wasn’t a compliment.
Blossom poured herself a cup and asked Wolf to make breakfast. “He does this wickedly
good omelet,” she promised.
He took eggs and veggies and cheese from the other fridge, then turned to me. “Suzie has
a temporary job as a nanny a couple of miles from here. What’s your phone number?”
I gave it. A text appeared with Suzie’s name and an address. My stress meter plunged to a
one, but a bitterness towards Wolf and Blossom lingered for their antics and the choice they’d
forced me to make. Wolf set about sautéing shallots and zucchini, whistling a tune I didn’t
recognize.
After breakfast, the omelet as good as promised, I said goodbye to them with rather
formal handshakes at the front door. My suitcase was wheeling noisily along the walkway when
Blossom caught up to me. She put her arms around me, pressed her body into mine, and kissed me long and soft the way she’d kissed her husband. Astonished, I looked up when she drew
away, expecting Wolf to howl or curse me, but he waved and gave the thumbs up sign. My last
strange experience of the oddest people I have ever met.
Google Maps navigated. Soon Suzie and I would be sharing memories of her mother,
feeling the loss together, sorting out her bad checks, and considering her future. I envisioned us
having lunch on Cannery Row, walking on the beach at sunset, whale watching. Whatever she
wanted.
Except. I pulled up to a trash can at a 7-Eleven and slid Wolf’s gift out of my pocket. I’d
made the right choice the night before, and loosening up was liberating, too. Yet I still had
principles to uphold, didn’t I? Also three weeks with my cousin before returning to the base.
People came and went from the store. I sat behind the wheel with the motor running,
staring at the vape pen in my hand.