“Where are you from?” Jason asked absently. He was really thinking there was a song lurking here. Sun Valley serenade. Sun Valley was a renowned resort in Idaho where movie stars had ski lodges; it was also a San Fernando Valley suburb that welcomed all the junk and garbage from Los Angeles. A mushroom-headed plume of smoke rose night and day from an incinerator into the wide skies.

“I come here to find my brother,” Candy replied. Even in his absented-mindedness, Jason perceived that she had evaded his question.

“I call and call and call,” Candy went on. “Then one day some guy answers the phone and they tell me he dead. My brother is dead.” There was a catch in Candy's voice. “I know he's alive,” she said pointing to a place just below her bust. “I feel it here.”

Jason reached over in the dark car and hugged her and kissed her on the forehead. Then his lips slid slowly down near hers. In the glare of the full moon and the mountains of trash looming, he glanced back and saw Kit sound asleep. He felt reassured about that her eyes were closed and she breathed softly. The seven-year-old might be traumatized, seeing him kiss a woman other than her mother. His stubble chin chafing Candy's soft cheeks, Jason reached the snug harbor of her mouth. She kissed back thirstily and he wondered how far he could go, should go . . .

“What are you thinking?” he imagined the voice of his ex-wife asking. Suzanne had been so insecure, he was braced for this question that had intruded so many times in their marital intimacy. Candy did not ask what he was thinking, though, and in Jason's new-found rapture, this merely added to Candy's store of charms.

“You spoke and acted very well tonight,” he said. “Your English was really great.”

“You helped,” she said. “In that one class you teach us to work for walnuts.”

“Huh?”

“You said work for walnuts,” Candy said. “If you can get a job with low pay, but you use English. You take that job. I am learning too much English with Suzanne.”

“Oh you mean work for peanuts.”

“Yea-uh.” Her eyes smiled. It was funny he didn't even remember saying it and here he had influenced one person, who attended only one of his classes. Pretty wild. It was a vivid affirmation of the rewards of teaching, of giving to others what one had gleaned.

Candy helped kindle Jason's passion for teaching. Oddly enough, this growing passion made Jason become a meaner dad.

He'd get all gung ho to meet these people in San Anselmo in the mornings now. He would dread facing Kit when he picked her up at her mother's apartment. Any number of issues could sabotage departure: early morning clinging to the woolen blankets against the cold, the socks—not having the kind she liked (knee highs instead of anklets)—discord over the navy-blue Mary Janes versus the black-and-white Converse, the search for backpacks and brushing teeth. All these pending matters of waking and dressing made it positively sinful for Jason to lust after that cup of freeze-dried instant, a sin to boil the water (avoiding the noisy beeping microwave so Candy's slumber would remain undisturbed behind the rice-paper screen) and a sin to knowingly indulge his creature comforts and neglect Kit's readiness for school.

The scales of duty and enthusiasm inexorably tipped away from teacherly duty and enthusiasm toward an unhealthy craving for that cup of sugar-laced Taster's Choice. Hang the class at San Anselmo. It was a vortex: a new fondness for teaching had made him resent Kit. Made him recoil from her touch, put a sharp, nervous edge in his voice, when he said, “Not now. I'm busy grading papers.” He couldn't sit still long enough to watch TV with his daughter and have the sharing she craved.

Just as Candy was coming in to his life, Jason was in danger of losing his daughter just the way he had lost Suzanne...

To be continued...

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