Pacific (9780802194800) by Tom Drury

treehouse.”
    â€œReally.” Eamon gave Micah a little push. “You’re just the latest thing, aren’t you?”
    Early every morning Joan ran in the park. She did not wear earphones but heard music in her head, Ode to Joy or Alegria or The Munsters Theme . One day at the soccer field she saw a young woman sleeping on the grass. Coming closer, she realized that it was Charlotte Mann.
    Charlotte wore a short black dress, one red shoe, and a black leather jacket with rawhide fringe and brass studs. She was asleep on an orange blanket in the grass. Joan covered her legs and touched her shoulder.
    Charlotte sat up and looked around and scratched the back of her head with both hands. Unbraided, her hair fell in waves to her shoulders.
    â€œWell, this is embarrassing,” she said.
    She got up, took the blanket by two corners, and gave it a shake. Cigarettes and a lighter shot from the blanket. She walked toward them, crooked on one shoe.
    â€œWhat happened?” said Joan.
    Charlotte flopped down, took the shoe off, lit a cigarette, and blew a smoke ring. “What time is it?”
    â€œTwenty after seven.”
    â€œWhat day is it?”
    â€œTuesday.”
    â€œDo you see my phone?”
    Joan looked around. “How did you get here?”
    â€œI don’t remember. We were at a house and then we were at a club. Then maybe a house again. Or that might have been the first house. People kept stepping on my ankles. Maybe I’ll stay here till someone comes.”
    â€œNo one is coming. It’s morning.”
    â€œThey might be driving ever so slowly.”
    â€œCharlotte. Honey. Wake up. You can’t be doing this to yourself.”
    They walked across the soccer field. Wearing the blanket like a shawl, Charlotte dropped the mateless shoe into a trash can.
    â€œI’m sorry you found me this way.”
    â€œYou don’t have to worry about your place with me,” said Joan. “I know you. I know what my boys think of you. You have a good heart.”
    â€œNo I don’t. My heart is a mess.”
    Micah and Charlotte did not go for coffee. Instead she picked him up in a small yellow Datsun pickup and they drove up to Mount Wilson on Angeles Crest Highway. Charlotte wore khaki shorts, green sneakers, and a pink tank top with a border of shiny green stones against her copper skin.
    The mountain road climbed, steep with switchbacks. Rocks had fallen in the roadway, and Charlotte cranked the wheel, steering carefully around them. The sky was deep blue, with lavender clouds around faraway peaks.
    A famous observatory stood on top of the mountain, white domes rising from forests with pinecones big as footballs. Charlotte knew all about the place. George Hale had worked here, and Edwin Hubble. Observations of the sun gave way to observations of all space. Einstein came up to talk things over. The universe expanded.
    Micah and Charlotte looked at Hubble’s chair in the gloomy vault of the Hooker Telescope while listening to a recording by someone named Hugh Downs. The chair appeared to have been borrowed from the Hubbles’ dining room table.
    â€œImagine being Hubble,” said Charlotte.
    â€œI can’t. He’s too smart.”
    â€œIt’s late, it’s cold. You write down this number, you turn some dial, you write down another number.”
    â€œSomething doesn’t add up.”
    â€œThe things you are learning are going to turn this world upside down.”
    They were quiet then. Breathing quickly, Charlotte ran her hands beneath her hair and lifted it back over her shoulders. They walked down with the voice of Hugh Downs fading in the stairwell.
    They ate at the Cosmic Cafe in a wooded pavilion between the observatory and the parking lot. Charlotte drove past a cluster of communications towers and a little way down the mountain before stopping at a turnout.
    A dusty trail took them along the mountain wall, where they sat cross-legged