“Sunset will be exactly eight thirty-two. No moon tonight.
Rattlesnakes love a moonless night. You better stay indoors, or you might get bitten.”
“What is your game?”
“Your game. I’m a quick learner. Remember when you said that?
I think I have all your moves down. Let’s see how they play.”
“You’re a rookie, Lise. You won’t make it in the big leagues. And every game I play, baby, is the big one.” He’d had some time to get over the initial surprise and anger, so he was back on the offensive.
He scared her, but because he couldn’t touch her, her resolve held firm as she listened to him. “You’ll be back, Lise. You’ll take a few hard ones to the head and realize how cold and cruel that world out there is. You’ll beg me to take you in and watch over you again. You can be mad at me all you want, but it isn’t my fault you’re such a princess you can’t find your way across the street alone. Blame your asshole father for spoiling you. If it wasn’t for me—”
“If it wasn’t for you, my father would be alive,” she said, cutting off his windup. “I have the proof with me.”
The moment of silence told her she had hit home. She hung up.
Lise swam in the small pool until she felt clean again, until the heat and the sweat and the layer of fine sand had all been washed away, until the warm, chlorinated water had bleached away the fevered touch of Henry LeBeau. Some of her new hair color was bleached away too; it left a shadow on the towel when she got out and dried off.
Lise poured a bathroom tumbler full of straw-colored wine and stretched out on a chaise beside the pool. There was still some blue in the sky when the manager came out to switch on the pool lights.
“Sure was a hot one.” The manager nursed a drink of her own.
“Course, till October they’re pretty much all hot ones. Let me know when you’re finished with the pool. Sun heats it up so much that every night I let out some of the water and replace it with cold.
Otherwise I’ll have parboiled guests on my hands.”
“How many guests are in the hotel?” Lise asked.
“Just you, honey.” The manager drained her glass. “One guest is one more than I had all last week.”
Lise offered her the tray of cheese. “Can you sit down for a minute?
Have a little happy hour with the registered guests.”
“I don’t mind.” The manager pulled up a chaise next to Lise and let Lise fill her empty glass with chardonnay. “I have to say, off season it does get lonely now and then. We used to close up from Memorial Day to Labor Day — the whole town did. We’re more year-round now. Hell, there’s talk we’ll have gambling soon and become the new Vegas.”
“Vegas is noisy.”
“Vegas is full of crooks.” The manager nibbled some cheese. “I wouldn’t mind having my rooms booked up again. But the high rollers would stay in the big new hotels and I’d get their hookers and pushers. Who needs that?”
Lise sipped from her glass and stayed quiet. The manager sighed as she looked up into the darkening sky. “Was a time when this place hopped with Hollywood people and their carryings-on. Liber-ace and” a bunch of them had places just up the road here, you know. We used to get the overflow, and were they ever a wild crowd.
I miss them. That set has moved on east, fancier places like Palm Desert. I still get an old-timer now and then, but most of my guests are Canadian snowbirds. They start showing up around Thanksgiving, spend the winter. Nice bunch, but awful tame.” She winked at Lise. “Tame, but easier to deal with than Vegas hookers.”
“I’m sure,” Lise said.
With a thoughtful tilt to her head, the manager looked again, and more closely, at Lise. “I’m pretty far off the beaten track. How’d you ever find my place?”
“I passed the hotel when I was up here visiting. It seemed so…”
Lise refilled their glasses. “It seemed peaceful.”
Lise could feel the manager’s shiny black eyes on her. “You okay, honey?”
Lise held up the empty bottle. “I’m getting there.”
“That kind of medicine is only going to last so long. It’s none of my business, but you want to talk about it?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. Long-suffering wife skips out on asshole husband.”
“I’ve not only heard it, I’ve lived it. Twice.” The manager put her weathered hand on Lise’s bare knee and smiled sweetly. “You’re going to be fine. Just give it some time.”
The wine, fatigue, the sweet concern on the old woman’s face all combining, Lise felt the cracks inside open up and let in some light.
The last time anyone had shown her genuine concern had been five years ago, when her father was still alive. There was a five-year accumulation of moss on her father’s marble headstone. Lise began to cry softly.
The manager pulled a packet of tissues out of her pocket. “Atta girl. Let the river flow.”
Lise laughed then.
“Does he know where you are?”
Lise shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“Given time, he’ll find me. He always does. No matter how far I run, he can find me. He’s a powerful man with powerful friends.”
“What are you going to do?”
Lise shrugged, though she knew very well. The answer was in the bag upstairs in the closet.
“Well, don’t you worry, honey. No one knows about this old place.
And I already told you, I don’t remember what you look like and I don’t recall your name.” The manager picked up the empty bottle and looked at the Rutherford Hill label, sly humour folding the corners of her creased face. “Though come to think of it, the name does have a familiar ring.”
The sun set at exactly 8:32. Lise showered and changed into long khakis and a pale-peach shirt, both in tones of the desert floor. She took her bag out of the closet and held it on her lap while she waited for the last reflected light of the day to fade.
The big story on the local TV news was what the manager had been talking about, the growing controversy over the proposal to build a Vegas-style casino on Tahquitz Indian tribal land at the southern city limits of Palm Springs. A congressional delegation had come to town to investigate. As the videotaped congressmen, wearing sober gray and big smiles, paraded across the barren hillside site, Lise felt chilled; her husband, wearing his own big smile, was among the entourage. She knew why he was in town and who he would be meeting with. But she hadn’t expected to see him before…
She pulled the bag closer against her and checked the clock beside the bed. If the clock was correct, he had nearly run out of time.
When Lise walked downstairs, she could see the flickering light of a television behind the front desk, could hear the manager moving around and further coverage of the big story spieling across the empty lobby. Quietly, Lise went out through the patio, the bag hanging heavily from her shoulder.
Maybe rattlesnakes do like a moonless night, she thought. But they hate people and slither away pretty fast. Lise walked along a sandy path that paralleled the road, feeling the stored heat in the earth soak through her sneakers. Palms rustled overhead like the rattle of a snake and set her on edge.
Lise slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and, being excruciatingly careful not to disturb the beautiful, five-year-old set of prints on the barrel, took the.380 out of her bag, pumped a round into the chamber in case of emergency, and walked on.
The house where the meeting would take place had belonged to her father. Before her marriage, she used to drive out on weekends and school vacations to visit him. After her marriage, after her father’s funeral, her husband had taken the place over to use when he had deals to make in the desert. Now and then, when he couldn’t make other arrangements for her, Lise had come along. It had been during a recent weekend, when she was banished to the bedroom during a business meeting, that Lise had figured out a way to get free of him. Forever.