Leroy's canyon home was the newest and biggest house on the river. Somebody's had to be. He had definitely come to feel that a house ought not to be outsized or conspicuous, and his own place caused him a jot of self-consciousness. The thing was, it had been like a new toy, and hard for him in the first flush of ownership not to improve on it and add features. The pool had been something of an engineering feat, but it was a joy, looking cut into the rock, though it really wasn't, and ingeniously supplied with water at great cost. There was glass on one wall of the den, cantilevered so as not to catch the full force of the wind coming down the canyon but commanding a view of the national forest and wilderness to the north and east. It would have been hard for him to say why, but the dimensions of the place made him feel somehow younger. It proved he belonged to an age group below his calendar years, a Bullshit Walks generation. The right people understood.
Maybe he had figured there would be more people around. In the past they always came to pick his brains, to find out what he could do for them, to listen to his strategies and plans. Girls came for the fun and games, an adventure by the pool, the brightness and glossiness. You always had to be careful with girls, he realized. Girls could go a long way toward making or unmaking your reputation, especially in California. Guys came for access, to prove themselves to him, eager for his blessing on some project. He had taken the Orvis trout-fishing course twice in the hope of excelling on the river. He had become a proficient skier, having learned, one on one, from a top Kraut.
Everybody had to be kept in line. The fact was, Leroy knew, to be too accessible was dangerous. Accessibility aroused the predator. When they call you a nice guy, beware. The nice guy will find his brains on the floor — a proverb from somewhere, some newly competitive nation. Leroy could envision his brains on the floor, gray, bloody, posthumously active, refusing to cease their clamor. He often contemplated with satisfaction the brilliance concentrated within his intellect and will. Sometimes, he knew, it burned with too bright a flame.
He was running a supervisory eye over the road and the garage side of the house when it fell upon an undesirable oddity. Tied to one of the aspens over his driveway — certainly visible from the road — was a twisted length of plastic, the kind of transparent tube in which a newspaper might be delivered on a rainy day. The tube was wet, soiled and blackened like something that had washed up in some filthy city gutter. It was knotted on a high branch of the tree so that part of it floated like a pennant over his turnoff, perhaps a signal pennant. Signaling what? His presence? It was unsettling. It made him imagine piracy, a Jolly Roger.
He moved out of the well-appointed kitchen and sat before his floor-to-ceiling window, watching the stormy night darken the borders of the canyon. The black clouds brought down the night sky, the moon that had been rising; the first stars all disappeared. He took his glass of wine outside to the patio, walked down the stone steps to his pool and switched on the poolside lights and underwater illuminations. The sleekness of the lighting was comforting at first. Then in the blue-tinted light he saw that lapping against the tile of his pool was another soiled piece of plastic like the one in the tree. He felt a wave of disappointment — in things, in the sorry aspect of his rewards, blemishes on good fortune. It seemed like the work of a spoiler, and it frightened him. He looked around him. Somewhere in the sunken canyon behind his house thunder broke and echoed massively; the sound of it felt as though it might shake the house on its stone fortress. A fork of lightning struck rimrock overhead, and whether by reflection or a second strike, it lit the canyon below in stunning detail, displaying precisely the coloring of each cliff, its cuts, layers and scars, its geological history. Leroy stepped back against the rock wall of his house. There was a smell of scorched sage and burning pine. The air was bone-dry, and not so much as a drop of rain fell.
He went back inside, finished his wine and poured another. The drink made him hungry — on the trip up he had not given any thought to food. All that was in the house unfrozen were the eggs and milk he had bought at Craw's, a half stick of butter and an unopened jar of caperberries the beautiful Ilena had brought him months before. The caperberries were imported from Romania, from a place called Cluj, which happened to be in Transylvania, where Ilena herself came from. She had always described herself as Transylvanian, which meant she might have been Romanian or Hungarian or descended from Saxon or Slavic settlers. Leroy had never asked her. He required only that she be as beautiful as she was, and as accommodating. To be seen with her was to command envy and respect and to display the superior quality of his life. Any fool could see her out in Valentino and Cole Haan, and that, Leroy thought, was all they needed to see.
He opened the berries with difficulty and took out the butter, milk and eggs. He broke an egg onto the Teflon surface of the frying pan. Looking at the yolk under the kitchen light, he saw that there was a bright blood spot in the center of it. This was mildly disturbing to such a perfectionist as Leroy and he tried to remember what it might signify. Perhaps, he thought, the egg was not fresh. Or the opposite. He stood reflected in his kitchen window against the black night outside, seeing his own blank face. A flash of lightning lit the rock landscape outside, revealing the aspens, the plastic flag at the top of one tree. He sipped his wine, put the pan aside and dialed Ilena's number in San Anselmo.
"Allo, Leroy," Ilena said in her husky voice when she heard who it was. "How may I serve you, my kink?"
"I miss you," Leroy told her. "Why didn't you come with me?"
"Aha. Your punishment, cheri."
"Punishment for what?" He smiled wanly at his reflection. "I've been good."
"Good? Ho ho. A good one."
"No, really. Come up, get a morning plane to Rock City. Get one tonight. I'll get you picked up."
"Naah," she said in a vulgar comic voice. He hated her speaking that way. "Naah," she said. "No fuckink way."
Leroy suspected Ilena might be drunk. She had a drinking problem.
"But why, sweetheart? Don't you love your king?"
"Naah," she said.
"Come on."
"Come on," she mimicked. "Come on. Leroy, you're a noodle, eh?"
"Please come."
"Naah."
"I'm opening your caperberries. Thinking of you."
She laughed charmingly. "Don't be so stupid. You make me pissed off."
"If you don't come," Leroy said, "I'll make you sorry."
"Ya? I don't think so. How about: Fuck yourself, dollink."
"Listen," Leroy said, trying to change the subject. "I broke an egg into the pan to cook your berries. There's a red spot in the yolk. What about that?"
She gave a soft canine yip. "Break other egg."
Leroy reached for a second egg and broke it. It also had a red spot in the yolk.
"A red spot," he told her. "Honestly."
"Yes? No shit? Whoa."
"What?"
"Break next egg. Egg next to it."
Leroy did. There was a red spot. He told her so.
"Somebody playing a joke on you, boss. Like the jokes you like. Put-on, pain-in-the-ass jokes you like."
"I thought you liked my jokes, Ilena."
"Naah."
"You always laugh at them."
"Tell your name for me," she said.
"Oh," he said, trying a laugh. "It's harmless." His nickname for her was Strangepussy. Harmless. But who could have told her?
"I laugh when you put-on somebody else," Ilena said. "You too, when someone hurts. You're cruel motherfucker."
"When did you decide this?"
"Lewis tells me."
Lewis was a business associate of whom Leroy had had enough.
"Lewis! He told you? That nitwit?"
"You think? Screw you! Hey, kink, what looks like? The red spot?"