Silver Lake Read Online Free PDF Page B

anticipating the expression on Robbie’s face when he came home (assuming, as Carlo began to assume, that Tom had in fact revealedsomething), Robbie looking shocked, enraged, bereft. At first Carlo imagined being relieved, unburdened of his secrets, but then he heard himself spinning an explanation, and he considered getting in the car instead and driving, driving anywhere, giving Robbie space to storm about, and then later on Carlo would return, rueful, the first to speak, apologizing as profoundly as he could.
    He took a series of deep breaths. The house was quiet—he tried to quiet his mind, too. Lately he’d been thinking a lot about the man and woman who purchased this home new and lived here for thirty-five years. The husband worked in a studio props department, the wife at the same studio in accounting, and they raised one son, who became a man in the second bedroom, who moved out when he married. His father suffered a fatal heart attack while driving and crashed his car where Silver Lake crossed under Sunset. Thereafter his mother lapsed into a permanent distracted state and died elsewhere. The son sold the house to a single man (according to the title search) who tried to write screenplays and owned a restaurant on Hillhurst that didn’t last long (so reported a long-time neighbor down the street), and like many of his friends, he became sick young and died here at home. Other owners briefly held the deed: a decorator who replaced the windows but then faced foreclosure, a sculptor who rented the place to art school kids with dogs. And then Carlo and Robbie arrived eight years ago, this house the first they owned, and given his profession, Carlo had thought he would understand the sentimental grounding that homeownership would entail, but he had not anticipated the daily elation that came with rootedness. Here in Silver Lake, amid the ramblinghills that resisted the syntax of any grid, with ambitious trees all around, and of course the placid lake at the heart of the place—in this neighborhood, he could say he belonged.
    Was that still the case? Did they, did he still belong here? How did one know when it was time to move on? Where would he, would they go?
    Carlo went out front again and finished his chore. He was collecting his tools when he heard Robbie’s car pull into the driveway, and his heart skipped—although it wasn’t only Robbie arriving home. Robbie pulled in all the way up to the garage, making room for Tom Field’s car, which Tom parked in tandem.
    “I invited Tom to dinner,” Robbie explained as he removed his tennis bag from the backseat.
    “Oh,” Carlo said. “Did you?”
    “I wasn’t sure what you were planning on making,” Robbie said.
    “Nice house,” Tom said to Carlo. “Nice street.”
    “Thank you,” Carlo said.
    “Or if there’s enough,” Robbie said. “Do you want me to run out and get something?”
    Tom’s driver’s-side door had been stripped of paint but not reprimed or repainted. He had some difficulty opening his trunk, which was packed with stuff, including a crate of CDs he shoved aside so he could pluck clothing from a duffel bag.
    “No need,” Carlo said.
    “Tom, I’ll go and put out a towel for you. You should take the first shower,” Robbie said, and then he went inside.
    Tom slammed shut his trunk.
    “Hi,” he said.
    “Hi,” Carlo said.
    “My car really did break down. It’s not like I’m stalking you.”
    “I know that,” Carlo said, unconvincingly.
    “There you were, crossing the street,” Tom said. “I saw your office, I went in. Look, if I’m not welcome—”
    “Robbie invited you.”
    “I meant by you.”
    “I didn’t recognize you at first,” Carlo said, “because last spring you were blond. And I think you’ve lost weight.”
    Tom brushed his now-brown hair forward with his palm.
    “Don’t look so worried,” he said. “I didn’t say anything.”
    Carlo nodded, wary.
    “I don’t want anything,” Tom said.
    Carlo