He crumpled down next to her, suddenly docile as a child. She trailed her long, blood-red fingernails lightly across his forehead. He was burning hot, feverish. Her fingers flicked across his temple, light as a butterfly. When she eased over to kiss him she realized he had fallen fast asleep. The dog lay collapsed at the foot of the bed, snoring.
She twisted her body to the side of the mattress, arrested by the chain, and flailed her arm over the side, trying to locate her handbag and the mace canister. But it was out of reach, a few feet away.
Oh Christ, she thought, how did I ever get myself into something like this? She had only one other threatening experience: A crazed out-of-town salesman in a bungalow at the Bel Air Hotel had pointed a handgun at her navel.
When room service came with their shrimp cocktails and steaks, she managed to slip out naked, vomiting in the little stream out front among the floating swans. After that she always carried her mace safeguard.
She turned over on her stomach and massaged the raw skin where the steel bracelet cut into her wrist. Then she sighed and closed her eyes. She felt empty of adrenaline, everything, and within seconds she too was asleep.
At first she didn’t know if she was dreaming or if she was in a half cogent stage of sleep. Corey was saying, close to her ear, “...Mrs. Dimas in Covina. Mrs. Hannah Dimas...”
She mumbled, “Who?”
“Tell her... I appreciate all she’s done. And... and that I love her.”
“Yeah, but who is she? Can’t... can’t you tell her yourself?”
He was muttering something else, but she was falling back asleep...
She was almost awake now. Her eyes snapped open and the first thing she realized was that he was no longer in the bed. The window, behind dirty aluminum blinds, showed long strips of tawny twilight, an unearthly, almost marine glow. Herman was still sleeping, still as a rock.
“Corey,” she called. Then more loudly, “Corey!”
Maybe, half asleep, he had wandered back into the living room or the kitchen to get another beer and had collapsed on the floor or the sofa.
“Corey!”
The dog stirred but didn’t wake.
She acknowledged to herself, with a cold, sick feeling in her stomach, that the little bungalow was empty.
She suddenly felt the hot rush of tears, but she willed them away. She was abandoned again, like when her father left her mother, and there was no one who would come to help them. She would starve to death in the big brass bed.
Soon, weariness replaced her apprehension again. The twilight slowly faded into darkness, and the room became velvet and strangely restful. It was then that she realized she was still wearing her sunglasses. She was almost too tired to take them off.
Voices floated through the tunnel of her sleep. There was still darkness outside the window when she woke, and she heard the voices, which seemed to come from outside, receding into the distance.
She wanted to know the time, but she realized her watch was on her handcuffed wrist.
Herman barked. He lifted himself sluggishly and prowled over to the door.
From somewhere, probably the living room, there was the scraping sound of a key in a lock. Voices again, two people. Corey coming back, but who was with him? The click of a switch, on and off, on and off.
“Must’ve turned off the power,” a man’s voice said. “Didn’t pay his bill.”
Pause. Then, calling: “Anybody home?”
Footsteps. She decided not to answer, lay perfectly still, scarcely breathing. Curious, the dog left the room, investigating.
“Here boy,” a second voice called. It held the remnants of a Southern accent. “Everything’s all right, fella. Don’t worry any, we’ll feed you.”
More footsteps, stopping, starting, obviously covering the living room and the kitchen. Then a shard of light slanted against the far wall of the bedroom from the hallway. A moment later, bringing her free hand across her eyes, shielding them, she was staring through her fingers into the blinding bull’s-eye of a flashlight.
“What do we have here? Miss?”
She kneaded her eyes and the red dancing circles began to dissolve. There were two uniformed policemen in the doorway, one black, one white.
The black man, holding the flashlight, moved closer. “You awake, miss?”
“Yes.” Her voice was hoarse with sleep and disuse.
“Who are you?” Then he noticed she was handcuffed to the headboard. He frowned. He had a broad, magisterial face like an African chieftain. “Jimbo,” he said over his shoulder to his partner.
The other man came forward. He was carrying an unlit flashlight and a large manila envelope.
The black cop took the envelope and shook its contents out on the sheet. There was a wallet, a few loose coins, a comb, and a key ring. He picked up the key ring, washed it in the glare of his flashlight, selected one of the keys, and quickly opened the handcuff.
Her relief was instant. Her arm was numb, the fingers tingling, and she rubbed at the red band of inflamed skin around her wrist. Now it began to itch like hell, but it nevertheless felt good, very good.
The black cop said, “He do this to you?”
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
“You his wife?”
“Friend. Just a friend.”
She pitched herself over to the side of the bed, tried to stand, and the cop steadied her as she wavered, was about to fall. She was lightheaded. She experienced a brief bout of dizziness, and then she was all right.
“Why’d he lock you up?”
She shrugged. “Crazy. Just spaced out.”
“He ever do this to you before?”
“No.”
“Where do you live?”
“West Hollywood.”
The man seemed genuinely puzzled. “You mean he just invited you over here and did this?”
“Right. Where is he?”
The white cop looked straight at her. “Dead.” He was the one with the accent.
She started. “Dead? But he was just here... a couple of hours ago.” She stared at him. “How?”
“Walked across the Hollywood Freeway. Near the Silver Lake off-ramp.”
She sat down on the bed. It was beginning to lighten between the slats of the blinds. She could hear, far off, the grinding of a garbage truck.
She said, “Suicide?”
“Probably.”
“He was blind, did you know he was blind? It could have been an accident.”
“Well, witness says he walked right into a stream of traffic. He wasn’t deaf too, was he? So what was he doing taking a stroll across the freeway at night?”
She was looking down at the pathetic little group of effects on the sheet. “These are his things?”
“What we could find on what was left of him.”
The black cop picked up the almost empty bottle of bourbon, handed it to her. She swallowed what remained, coughed, and was almost sick again. He patted her on the back and waited while her head cleared.
The white cop said, “You’ll have to make a statement.”
She nodded, navigated a few tentative steps toward the door. The black cop stopped her, gave her one of Corey’s shirts to put on. Then the two men and the dog followed her into the living room. A few bars of sunlight filtered in, gleaming on the metal rim of the snare drum. Herman settled down, yawned, not yet missing his master.
“What are you going to do with the dog?” she asked.
“Get him to the seeing-eye people,” the black man said. “But he looks pretty old to be placed with another blind person.”
He shined the light into the dog’s face, bending down beside it. “Jesus,” he said, “look at his eyes. Wall-eyed blind. Poor bastard. Must’ve got progressively worse as he aged.”
Annabella put a steadying hand on the sofa. One shock after another. She said nothing for a long time. The two men respected her silence. As the room brightened the flashlight was clicked off.