The car was still there. The black roof and hood glistened with morning dew. I could see the outline of Hector’s frame through the passenger window. Sometime in the night he had rolled up the driver’s window, probably from the cold. He shifted in the seat in a futile attempt to discover that one position that didn’t cause his body to ache. It had to have been a very uncomfortable night’s sleep.

I grabbed the carafe and settled in a chair by the window and with my slippered feet propped up on the sill, I watched the car from the comfort of my house over three very hot, very satisfying cups of coffee.

After a leisurely shower, a little bit of time online to pay some bills, one load of whites, and a quick clean-up of the house, I went outside and sat in the back seat of the sedan.

“Okay, let’s talk,” I said and offered him a cup of coffee.

Hector stretched his stiff body awake and rubbed both his eyes with fat knuckles. He took my coffee but didn’t turn around to face me. After a night in the car he looked ten years older than his already-pronounced age.

“We both have jobs to do,” I stated. “We can continue to do this silly little dance that isn’t going to accomplish much of anything, or we can find a way to work together and save each of us a whole lot of grief. You need to keep tabs on me and report back to your boss. I get it. And I need to do my thing and not feel like a goddamn five-year-old with a helicopter parent. So here’s what I propose. You come with me on every meeting. If you want to drive me, so be it. But when I ask you to do something — whatever it is — you do it. If I want you to wait outside, you wait outside. If I need to see someone on my own, you respect that. In return, I promise to keep no secrets from you. And I am going to start this morning. I know about the incident you were involved in back in 1963. I know it was a relative of Gao Li’s and that Valenti might have saved you from doing time. Right now I don’t see any connection to what is going on today so I’m fine leaving that alone.”

There was no reaction. Hector stared into the cup held tightly in his hands. It looked like he was trying to extract every last bit of comfort he could from the warm coffee.

“Do you accept my offer?” I asked.

Hector finished off the coffee in one long, satisfying gulp and handed me the empty cup.

“Okay,” he said.

THE TOURIST TRADE

We met at an organic, single-sourced coffee shop in Silver Lake where they individually brewed you a cup after an interminable discourse on the genealogy of the family that grew the beans we were about to consume. I wasn’t in the mood and cut the barista off mid-speech and ordered the house blend. The guy then went into shock as he watched Hector stir enough sugar into his cup to achieve the viscosity of strawberry preserves.

“You should really try it first,” lamented the young man behind the counter. “It’s not at all as bitter as the coffee you make at home.”

Hector acknowledged the comment by topping his cup up to the brim with half-and-half. We then joined Sami at a small table on the patio.

“Greetings,” the perpetually-happy man said as he beckoned us to sit down. “I cherish the opportunity to spend time with both of you.”

“The feeling’s mutual,” I told him.

The invitation to meet wasn’t entirely on the level so I needed to play along for a while. I told Sami that I was interested in sitting down and talking over some “heavy issues” but what I really wanted to learn was any inside information he had on Meredith and Jeanette.

Sami eagerly took the bait and suggested we meet at the coffee shop. He sat Indian-style on an already uncomfortable aluminum chair. That, paired with a gingham shirt and flip-flops, presented a very worldly image. True to form, Sami spent most of the time talking about himself rather than trying to understand whatever “issue” was ailing me. He explained his personal “journey” through a rhetorical framework where he was both the interviewer and interviewee. Each question he posed to himself was asked in such a manner that it could only elicit an affirmative response.

“Was I finally ready to greet each day with a sense of purpose?” replayed the internal dialogue he had some years ago. “Yes, I was. Did I want the happiness that had so far eluded me? Yes, I did.” The third time he asked one of these types of questions, this one about it being the time to discover the secret to achieving a fulfilled life, I burst in and answered for him:

“Yes, it was!” I shouted.

Sami smiled knowingly at my enlightenment on his enlightenment. “And so that was how I found my higher purpose,” he announced proudly.

“And what exactly is that purpose?” I asked.

“I uncover one’s artistic potential,” he explained.

“Interesting,” I said because I could think of nothing else to say. In the corporate world, that word was code for “your work has absolutely no merit.”

Sami described with enthusiasm how within every being there is a pool of artistic potential. And that just like the earth’s own springs there are some rare instances where the water naturally bubbles up to the surface. But for the vast majority of us, that pool lies untapped, often deep down inside us. We spend a lifetime never realizing the artist inside all of us.

It was the familiar patter of the self-help guru — the concept that potential is always there, it’s just our own unintended actions that are keeping it from being released. That kind of clap-trap nonsense soothes many an unsatisfied mind. Better it was to be told that you had the talent but that you were holding it back from its true potential rather than accept the cold reality that we are all marginally talented in some fashion and that few have the will to actually do something about it.

None of it resonated with me but it most certainly would have with someone else.

“Was Jeanette one of your clients?” I asked.

“She is,” he corrected in the present tense.

“Have you heard from her?” I probed. “Her mom said something about her running off?”

Sami uncrossed his legs and shifted in his seat.

“I really shouldn’t discuss a family matter,” he told me but then made a very subtle glance in Hector’s direction.

I gave it a moment before reminding Hector that the parking meter needed filling outside.

“We got time,” he said.

“I think you should fill it,” I repeated.

He knew what I was asking for but that didn’t mean he liked it.

“Remember our deal,” I reminded him.

Hector shot Sami a cold look before reluctantly getting up and leaving us so we could talk privately.

“There’s a lot of negative energy in the house,” Sami started without any prodding. “It’s not good.”

“Over what exactly?”

“An article that came out last night.”

“What kind of article?”

“It was in one of the online gossip magazines,” he explained. I gave Sami space to elaborate. “Those things are just filled with hate.”

“Yeah, I don’t much care for them either,” I commiserated. “What was the article about?”

He gave it time for the drama to ramp up: “Jeanette,” he stated and then his voice drifted into a whisper, “…and the baby.”

“Baby?” I repeated as my mind processed the new development. I recalled the text Meredith got at my house the previous evening and assumed it was somehow connected to the article being released. Her response last night was even more curious now that I knew the contents of the text. She seemed almost happy that it was published.

“Did you know she was pregnant?”

Sami looked to the table and his silence told me he had known.