“This is insane.” The old fury was in his voice this time. “Where are you?”
“Don’t leave the house. Don’t even think about it. I’ll know if you do. I’ll see the lie in your eyes. I’ll smell it on every lying word that comes out of your mouth.” It was easy; the words just came, like playing back an old, familiar tape. The words did sound funny to her, though, coming out of her own mouth. She wondered how he came up with such garbage and, more to the point, how he had persuaded her over the years that death could be any worse than living under his dirty thumb.
The true joy of talking to him over the telephone was having the power to turn him off. She hung up, took a deep breath, blew out the sound of him.
In the soft soil of a planter next to the phone bank, she dug a little grave for the credit card and covered it over.
After a late lunch, accompanied by half a bottle of very cold champagne, Lise had her hair done, darkened back to its original color and cut very short. The beauty parlor receptionist was accommodating, added a hundred dollars to the American Express bill and gave Lise the difference in cash.
Lise had been moderately surprised when the card flew through clearance, but risked using it one last time. From a gourmet boutique, she picked up some essentials of another kind: a few bottles of good wine, a basket of fruit, a variety of expensive little snacks. On her way out of the store, she jettisoned the American Express into a bin of green jelly beans.
Every transaction fed her confidence, assured her she had the courage to go through with the plan that would set her free forever.
By the time she had finished her chores, her accumulation of bags was almost more than she could carry, and she was exhausted. But she felt better than she had for a very long time.
When she headed for the mall exit on the far side from where she had left Mr. Clean’s Cadillac, Lise was not at all sure what would happen next. She still had presentiments of doom; she still looked over her shoulder and at reflections of the crowd in every window she passed. Logic said she was safe; conditioning kept her wary, kept her moving.
Hijacking a car with its motor running had worked so well once, she decided to try it again. She had any number of prospects to choose from. The mall’s indoor ice-skating rink — bizarrely, the rink overlooked a giant cactus garden — and the movie theater complex next to it, meant parents waiting at the curb for kids. Among that row of cars, Lise counted three with motors running, air-conditioning purring, and no drivers in sight.
Lise considered her choices: a Volvo station wagon, a small Beemer, and a teal-blue Jag. She ran through “eeny, meeny,” though she had targeted the Jag right off; the Jag was the first car in the row.
Bags in the backseat, Lise in the driver’s seat and pulling away from the curb before she had the door all the way shut. After a stop on a side street to pack her new things into the suitcase, she drove straight to the Palm Springs airport. She left the Jag in a passenger loading zone and, bags in hand, rushed into the terminal like a tourist late for a flight.
She stopped at the first phone.
“You’ve checked, haven’t you?” she said when he picked up “You sent your goons to look in on me. You know I’m out. We’re so close, I know everything you’ve done. I can hear your thoughts running through my head. You’re thinking the deal is dead without me. And I’m in another time zone.”
“You won’t get away from me.”
“I think you’re angry. If I don’t correct you when you have bad thoughts, you’ll ruin everything.”
“Stop it.”
She looked at her nails, kept her voice flat. “You’re everything to me. I’d kill you before I let you go.”
“Please, Lise.” His voice had a catch, almost like a sob, when she hung up.
She left the terminal by a different door, came out at the cab stand, where a single cab waited. The driver looked like a cousin of the Indians at the bingo palace, and because of the nature of the meeting scheduled that night, she hesitated. In the end, she handed the cabbie her suitcase and gave him the address of a hotel in downtown Palm Springs, an address she had memorized a long time ago.
“Pretty dead over there,” the driver said, fingering the leather grips of her bag. “Hard to get around without a car when you’re so far out. I can steer you to nicer places closer in. Good rates off season, too.”
“No, thank you,” she said.
He talked the entire way. He asked more questions than she answered, and made her feel uneasy. Why should a stranger need to know so much? Could the driver possibly be a plant sent to bring her back? Was the conversation normal chitchat? That last question bothered her: she had been cut off for so long, would she know normal if she met it head-on?
When the driver dropped her at a funky old place on the block behind the main street through Palm Springs, she was still wary.
She waited until he was gone before she picked up her bag and walked inside.
Off season, the hotel felt empty. The manager was old enough to be her mother; a desert woman with skin like a lizard and tiny black eyes.
“I need a room for two nights,” Lise told her.
The manager handed her a registration card. “Put it on a credit card or cash in advance?”
Lise paid cash for the two nights and gave the woman a fifty-dollar deposit for the use of the telephone.
“It’s quiet here,” the manager said, handing over a key. “Too hot this time of year for most people.”
“Quiet is what I’m counting on,” Lise said. “I’m not expecting any calls, but if someone asks for me, I’d appreciate it if you never heard of me.”
When the manager smiled, her black eyes nearly disappeared among the folds of dry skin. “Man trouble, honey?”
“Is there another kind?”
“From my experience, it’s always either a man or money. And from the look of you,” the manager said, glancing at the suitcase and the gourmet shop’s handled bag, “I’d put my nickel on the former. Don’t worry, honey, I didn’t get a good look at you, and I already forgot your name.”
The name Lise wrote on the registration card was the name on a bottle of chardonnay in her bag: Rutherford Hill.
The hotel was built like an old adobe ranch house, with thick walls and rounded corners, Mexican tile on the floors, dark, open-beamed ceilings. Lise’s room was a bit threadbare, but it was larger, cleaner, nicer than she had expected for the price. The air conditioner worked, and there was a kitchenette with a little, groaning refrigerator for her wine. For the first time in five years, she had her own key, and used it to lock the door from the inside.
From her tiny balcony Lise could see both the pool in the patio below and the rocky base of Mount San Jacinto a quarter mile away.
Already the sun had slipped behind the crest of the mountain, leaving the hotel in blue shade. Finally, Lise was able to smell the real desert, dry sage and blooming oleander, air without exhaust fumes.
A gentle breeze blew in off the mountain. Lise left the window open and lay down on the bed to rest for just a moment. When she opened her eyes again, floating on the cusp between sleep and wakefulness, the room was washed in soft lavender light — hot, but fragrant with the flowers on the patio below. She could hear a fountain somewhere, now and then voices at a distance. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t go straight to the door and listen for breathing on the other side.
Lise slipped into the new swimsuit. A little snug in the rear — she hadn’t taken time to try it on before she bought it. She needed the ice pick she found on the sink to free the ice in the trays so she could fill the paper ice bucket. She liked the heavy feel of the tool. While she opened a bottle of wine and cut some fruit and cheese, she made a call.