Frank said, ‘I’m OK, Astrid. Really, I’m OK.’ He disentangled himself from her arms and closed the door.
‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you all day.’ She looked different – her hair was different, slicked back with gel, and she was wearing a white silk Spanish-style blouse and tight black satin pants, flared at the ankle.
‘I’m OK. The funeral was good for me.’
‘It didn’t upset you too much?’
He shook his head. ‘We sang some of Danny’s favorite hymns and some of his friends said a few words about him and everybody cried. And it was good. It wasn’t closure. Closure’s going to take a long, long time. But at least it gave me the chance to say goodbye to him. And sorry.’
‘I don’t know why you had to say sorry.’
‘Because Danny still blames me, that’s why. Even if it wasn’t really my fault.’
He went into the kitchen area and poured them both a vodka and tonic, with a slice of lime. Astrid sat cross-legged on the couch. ‘Nothing on television,’ she complained. ‘Nothing but bombs, bombs, bombs.’
‘Well, it’s getting serious,’ said Frank. ‘The whole industry’s in a state of total paralysis. They haven’t put Pigs on hold yet, but Mo reckons they’re going to make an announcement in the morning. Did you see that Hallmark have canceled Beltway? Disappointing ratings, that’s the excuse they gave. Actually it was doing pretty good. The only trouble was, the chief villain is a treacherous, lecherous, Middle-Eastern diplomat.’
‘I don’t want to talk about the bombing. It scares me.’
‘I think it scares everybody, and with damn good reason.’
‘It’s never going to be the same again, is it? Hollywood?’
He nodded. She was right, Hollywood had been changed forever. Not just the town itself, but the whole self-image of America that Hollywood had reflected in a million movies and television series. This wasn’t a fictitious threat from giant ants in the desert, or aliens with mile-long mother ships. This was a real threat that really killed people you knew, and it was everywhere and anywhere. You couldn’t escape it by walking out of the movie theater or switching it off.
You could never mow your lawn again, or invite your family around for Thanksgiving, or drive along the coast with the sun in your eyes, in the absolute certainty that because you were in America, you were safe. Dar Tariki Tariqat had murdered much more than people. They had murdered certainty, and left its blood running into the gutters.
Frank had ordered pepperoni pizza and they ate it, very messily, in bed.
‘What are you going to do about Margot?’ asked Astrid, sucking her fingers.
‘I don’t know what I can do. Give her some time to cool off, I guess.’
‘Do you think she will? Cool off, I mean.’
‘I don’t know.’ He didn’t actually say that he didn’t care, either, but he nearly did, and he surprised himself because he meant it. If he had cared, he wouldn’t be sitting in bed with Astrid on the night of their only child’s funeral. But, he thought to himself, I’m the last person in the world that Margot wants to console her. Just like she said, she might be able to forgive me one day, but she could never forget, and how could she bear to stay married to me, if she was always going to blame me for Danny’s death?
He looked at Astrid’s profile, limned by the light from the TV screen – her hooded eyes and sharp cheekbones and her sensual, slightly parted lips. He looked at her feet, her long toes with silver rings on every one of them. There was something elvish about her, a magical quality, as if she came from Middle Earth. He didn’t know if this relationship would develop into anything, but there was a strange sparkle about it that he had never known with Margot.
‘You were going to tell me something,’ he said.
‘Was I? What?’
‘I don’t know. You started to tell me on the phone but then you said you’d leave it till later.’
‘Oh, yes. I was going to ask you if you wanted to come away with me this weekend.’
‘Where did you have in mind?’
‘I have a friend who has a cottage in Rancho Santa Fe. It’s only an hour’s drive.’
‘And we could do what?’
‘Swim. Talk. Eat too many strawberries.’
‘Well . . . I probably won’t have any writing to do.’
‘Is that a yes?’
‘Yes, OK. It’s a yes.’
‘Good. You can sing me “The Girl With the Left-Footed Limp.”’
He tried to read her eyes. They were sparkling and alive, but he couldn’t decide if they were lit up with pleasure, or with something else altogether – the secret delight of a woman who has got exactly what she wants.
They slept in each other’s arms, restlessly, all tangled up, but they didn’t make love. In the small hours of the morning, when it was just beginning to grow light, Frank was woken up by somebody talking. At first he thought there was somebody in the living room, but then he realized that it was Astrid.
‘Believe it . . . in your head. It’s the only path. Dark . . . I know it is. Dark! Can’t you hear the fountain? Go through the garden and never come back.’
After a while she turned her back to him and started to breathe very deeply, as if she were trying to calm herself down. The sky outside grew lighter and lighter, and at last the sun came in, and lit up the bed. She opened her eyes and smiled at him.
‘I was dreaming,’ she said.
Frank didn’t realize that he had overshot the entrance to Nevile’s house until he passed the Earth Mother Juice Stand by the side of the road. If you pass the Earth Mother Juice Stand, Nevile had told him, you’ve gone two hundred yards too far. He twisted around in his seat and backed his car up all the way.
The driveway to Nevile’s house sloped steeply downhill between two dark yew hedges. He followed it around a tight left-hand curve until he reached a wide shingled area in front of the house, where a skinny teenager in a splashy Hawaiian shirt was waxing Nevile’s Mercedes. Frank didn’t have to ask if Nevile was home. The house was walled almost entirely in glass, so that Frank could see right through the living room to the deck at the rear, where Nevile was pacing up and down with his cellphone.
He went to the front door and pushed the bell. A dumpy Mexican woman in a flowery apron stopped chopping red capsicums in the kitchen and came waddling along the shiny hardwood hallway.
‘Yes?’ she said, as if she were surprised to see anybody standing outside.
‘Frank Bell. Nevile’s expecting me.’
‘Hokay. You come inside.’
She showed him into the living room, which was furnished with low couches upholstered in natural linen and chrome-plated Italian chairs. A tall bronze statue of a naked woman stood in one corner, her hands covering her eyes. On the opposite wall hung an abstract painting of a scarlet triangle and a black square. It was titled Doubt.
Nevile saw Frank through the window and beckoned him out on to the deck. The back of the house was built up on pilings and it commanded a precipitous view of Laurel Canyon, with trees and rooftops and bright-blue swimming-pools, and the hazy city sprawling in the distance. Nevile gestured to Frank to sit down.
‘Yes,’ he snapped, into his cellphone. ‘That’s all it’s giving me. I’ve tried, believe me, but you wouldn’t want me to fabricate evidence, would you? Even psychic evidence.’ He dropped the cellphone into the pocket of his blue-black Armani shirt. ‘Lieutenant Chessman again,’ he said to Frank. ‘He gave me what was left of the driver’s seat from the catering truck, the one they used to bomb The Garry Sherman Show. He wants to know if I got any feedback from it.’
‘And did you?’