Summer Farmer

When Harrigan awoke, the first thing he saw was her left eye with its cobalt-blue iris. She'd snuck into his bed again. He didn't mind it. Any single dad is happy when his nine-year-old daughter gets in bed with him. Beautiful, really, that eye — those eyes. Ruby was tugging his arm, telling him to get up. It was early, and he knew she wanted to watch TV for those few valuable minutes before her nanny made it through the surfer traffic of the Pacific Coast Highway to the house on Malibu Road.

He turned on the cartoons and walked to the medicine cabinet, where he swallowed his morning meds. There were six pills: three Lamictal and three Budeprion XL, the generic brand of Wellbutrin. They picked him up and slowed him down — at least that's how the psychopharmacologist explained it. He was a touch bipolar; how big the touch and how far apart the poles, no one knew. He thought the pills helped, but there was evidence they didn't.

He made his daily fiber-supplement drink and waited for a cappuccino to drip from the machine. One of the artificially distressed kitchen cabinets was losing a handle, another thing to fix. The beach and the sky and the ocean were gray. He read The New York Times more closely than the LA Times, and didn't read the The Wall Street Journal at all. He shifted from left to right, making room for Ruby's brother, Bobby, as he sat sleepy eyed and grouchy, an unspeaking beast, all zits and hair in a Dead Kennedys T-shirt.

Once the nanny arrived, he backed out of the garage and headed slowly south along the shoreline in his black Mercedes S 63 AMG. It had a 518-horsepower V-8 AMG engine, F1 manual shifters, twenty-inch five-spoke light alloy wheels, seven-speed automatic transmission, and calibrated Active Body Control. The S 63 also had AMG-specific piping design and new contoured side bolsters for outstanding seating comfort, as well as an MSRP of $127,000. He wasn't sure what he paid; his business manager had handled it.

The feeling of wealth was still odd for him, so far away from his start. When the doctors had asked for family history, he traced his genealogy to the potato famine of 1845. His eight great-great-grandfathers, to a man, were listed in church records as "gravediggers." Descendants who made it to Baltimore, while they managed to find work out of ditches, did not prosper in the New World. He often wondered how, over the course of 150 years in America, such a big family could not manage to scrape together a goddamn dime.

He pulled into the Starbucks at Cross Creek. There was the usual line of people: moms who just dropped the kids at school, contractors dicking around, evangelical Pepperdine kids. The barista had a nose ring and caramel hair streaked with orange. The women stole glances at him. He spoke to no one, avoiding eye contact by staring at the kids' menu. Chocolate-chip Frappuccinos and Rice Krispies treats. He hated the way they announced the drinks. "Grande vanilla latte for Dennis." Humiliating.

He went stop-and-go down the coast until he hit a lineup at Topanga. He did not put the headset on; he did not roll calls. He moved in traffic amid no sounds at all: no radio, no CDs, no iPhone. He rode in silence as often as he could lately. He even stopped listening to the Dodgers, who were hopeless. The phone rang. His assistant told him she had Stern, his regular psychologist. Harrigan said he'd call back. What could Stern tell him? What would he ask? "Are you still crazy?"

He drove south past the Santa Monica beaches and the volleyball courts and the eroding cliffs of Palisades Park. Past the pier and through the McClure Tunnel where the PCH becomes the I-10 and the sign read Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway. He asked himself, his ritual, "What if I just keep driving?" How far he could go, how long he would last with the assumed names, the hotel rooms, the paying in cash, he did not know. He felt gravity was sideways, that he should be further east, that he was of the Atlantic. He missed the changing seasons and the touch of holy water in the foyer; he missed the cold, dark, freezing rain.

But the western-most point of the eastbound I-10 was where he was in his life. He had long ago become rich producing movies, a vocation that suited him well. There was a house on the beach, a house in the mountains, stock positions, bond ladders, hedge funds for growth, hedge funds for value, and hedge funds for hedging against hedge funds. He let three-hundred-dollar gift certificates expire under other papers stuffed in his desk. Wealth insulated him from the grinding existence of his parents and siblings. But nothing prepared him for what had happened and the pain that visited his soul. The engine of his sleek, black, luxury car was overheating, drying up all its fluids. Harrigan was not young or old. The world had flattened and he'd become a cliché headed east.

How predictable and boring it was to be depressed. He'd heard about it, read about it, been warned about it, and now, right on schedule, he was living it. The source of the depression was no mystery, oldest one in the books. But as he made the drive each day, talked on the phone, had lunch, finished up work at the office, looked at Bobby's homework, and did all the other things that made up his life, he knew it was not what had happened. It was that he was not better, that he couldn't do better, and that he had broken his word.

He turned onto Avenue of the Stars. Century City was 20.7 miles from his home on the Pacific in Malibu. A dozen or so high rises, two large modern shopping centers, and a couple hotels. It was past Westwood and before Beverly Hills, between the country club for WASPs and the country club for Jews. He played golf at both but was a member of neither. Century City: a monstrosity of the modern, bastard child of the scumbags of real estate and the whores of show business. There was nothing in the name — Century City — that justified the importance, the primacy, the notion that it was at the center of things. It was in the center of nothing. Like everything in LA, it was an illusion.

He pulled into his building, past the guards and through the automatic card reader and into the lower circles of the parking lot. His reserved spot was next to the service elevator, which was an express to his floor, saving a trip through the lobby. A small man in blue coveralls was already waiting, which was not unusual. Taking the service entrance meant that Harrigan often rode with the working guys, the electricians, caulkers, framers, and the like. Seeing them made him think of his dad and his uncles, who carried pressure gauges and tape measures and had specks of drywall in the hairs of their forearms at the end of the day. They were far away from him now.

* * *

The little man smiled at him. There was a big O above his pocket, the insignia of the Otis Elevator Company. His nametag said Kingsley, which was a bit confusing to Harrigan, because the guy appeared to be Mexican — a little light skinned but definitely Mexican. He wore a small gold bracelet with a young girl's face, a photo image engraved on a...