“As bad as that?”
“Yes. As bad as that.” She cried out suddenly: “I hate this city. I know it’s a dreadful thing to say, but I sometimes wish the earthquake had wiped it out entirely.”
“Because your sister had trouble with your father?”
“I’m not thinking of her,” she said, “or him.”
I glanced at her. She was sitting rigid in the seat, her eyes almost black in the white glimmer of her face. She roused herself and leaned to touch my arm: “You turn off here to the left. I’m sorry. I’m afraid Father upset me more than I realized.”
The road spiraled off among low hills whose flanks were dotted with houses. It was a good residential suburb, where people turned their backs on small beginnings and looked to larger futures. Most of the houses were new, so new that they hadn’t been assimilated to the landscape, and very modern. They had flat jutting roofs, and walls of concrete and glass skeletonized by light.
I turned up a blacktop drive at her direction and stopped the car. The house was similar to the other houses, except that there were no lights behind the expansive windows. She sat motionless, looking out at the dark low building as if it was a dangerous maze that she had to find her way through.
“This is where you live?”
“Yes. This is where I live.” Her voice surrounded the words with tragic overtones. “I’m sorry. I keep saying that, don’t I? But I’m afraid to go in.”
“Afraid of what?”
“What are people afraid of? Death. Other people. The dark. I’m terrified of the dark. A doctor would call it nyctophobia, but knowing the name of it doesn’t seem to help.”
“I’ll go in with you if you like.”
“I would like. Very much.”
I gave her my arm as we mounted the flagstone path. She held it awkwardly, pulling away, as if it embarrassed her to lean on a man. But her hip and bosom bumped me in the doorway. She took my hands in both of hers and drew me into the dark hall.
“Don’t leave me now.”
“I have to.”
“Please don’t leave me alone. I’m terribly afraid. Feel my heartbeat.”
She pressed my hand to her side, so hard that my fingertips sank through the soft flesh and felt the rib cage, hammered from within by fear or something wilder. Her voice was a whisper close to my ear, so close I could feel her breath: “You see? I am afraid. I’ve had to spend so many nights alone.”
I kissed her lightly and disengaged myself. “You could always turn on the light.”
I fumbled along the wall for the switch.
“No.” She pushed my arm down. “I don’t want you to see my face. I’m crying, and I’m not pretty.”
“You’re pretty enough for all practical purposes.”
“No. Anne is the pretty one.”
“I wouldn’t know about Anne. I’ve never met her. Good night, Mrs. Church.”
She answered after a pause: “Good night. I won’t say I’m sorry again, but I lost my head for a minute. Brandon has to work late so often. I’ll be all right when he comes home. Thank you for driving me.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“If you do see Anne, you’ll let me know right away?”
I promised her that I would, and drove back into the city.
Chapter 8
Bougainvillea Court was guarded by a pair of date palms which stood like unkempt sentries on either side of its entrance. When I left my car, a heavy-bodied rat crossed the sidewalk in front of me and scampered up one of the palm trunks. A pockmarked concrete cherub presided over a dry fountain in the center of the court. Each of the eight cottages surrounding it had a small front porch overgrown with purple-flowering bougainvillea. There were lights and music in most of them, but not in number three.
The door opened when I touched it. I switched on my pocket flashlight. The edge of the door was grooved and splintered around the lock. I stepped inside and closed it with my elbow. Six days missing, I thought, and sniffed instinctively for the smell of death. But all I could sense were the stale odors of life: old cigarette smoke, mixed drinks, heavy perfume, the musky indescribable odor of sex.
My light picked walls and furniture out of the darkness. There were brown Gauguin nudes on the walls and big-hatted Lautrec tarts in light wood frames; a false fireplace containing a cold gas heater, a small bookcase, spiffing paperbacks, a bird’s-eye maple secretary, a rattan portable bar, and a sectional davenport covered in zebra stripes, which looked both new and expensive.
The secretary was hanging open, the bolt of its flimsy lock bent out of shape. Its drawers were stuffed with papers and envelopes. The topmost envelope was addressed to Miss Anne Meyer in a masculine hand. It was empty.
A curtained archway led through a short hall to the bedroom and bathroom. The bedroom was small and feminine. The vanity and the Hollywood bed had yellow organdie skirts that matched the curtains. The closet was full of clothes – sports clothes, business suits, a couple of evening dresses, lightly scented with sachet.
It was impossible to tell if anything was missing, but there were gaps in the shoe-stand. The bed was carelessly made, and there was a rumpled depression on one side where someone had sat. A white-gold wristwatch studded with small diamonds lay on the bedside table.
There was nothing under the bed; nothing of special interest in the chest of drawers, except to underwear fetishists. Anne Meyer had spent a lot of money on underwear.
I entered the bathroom, closed the Venetian blind over the little high window, and switched on the light. Nylons were strung on the towel racks over the tub. I opened the medicine cabinet above the sink. It contained the usual clutter of bottles and boxes. One cardboard box half full of blue-banded capsules was prescribed: “To be taken when needed for rest and sleep.”
Shutting the mirrored door, I saw my face through the tiny snowstorm of toothpaste specks on the glass. My face was pale, my eyes narrow and hard with curiosity. I thought of the palm rat running in his shadow on the sidewalk. He lived by his wits in darkness, gnawed human leavings, listened behind walls for the sounds of danger. I liked the palm rat better when I thought of him, and myself less.
Radio music from the next cottage came loud and insistent through the closed and blinded window. Baby, won’t you please come home? There was no toothbrush in the holder beside the sink. I went back to the vanity in the bedroom. Certain things were missing that probably should have been there: lipstick, powder, face cream, eyebrow pencil. But there were tweezers and a razor.
I returned to the front room and went through the drawers of the secretary. There was nothing personal left in them, though bills and business letters were undisturbed. A half-used checkbook showed a balance of over nineteen hundred dollars. The last stub recorded a payment of one hundred and forty-three dollars and thirty cents to Mademoiselle Finery, on October 7, eight days ago.
The pigeonholes were stuffed with receipted bills, most of them for clothes and furniture. Again nothing personal. I was ready to give up when I found a folded envelope jammed into the back of one of the pigeonholes. It had been postmarked in San Diego nearly a year before. It contained a letter written in indelible pencil on both sides of a sheet of cheap hotel stationery. The letter was signed “Tony.”
I shut myself into the lighted bathroom to read it:
Dear Anne!