‘I keep seeing little Danny. I don’t know how you can bear it.’
‘Well,’ said Frank, ‘I don’t think I can.’
‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘I hope he’s at peace.’
‘I think so, Daphne. Thanks.’
‘What are you going to do now?’ Mo asked him, after Daphne had left the room. ‘You’ll have to go home sooner or later.’
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure that our marriage is going to be able to survive a thing like this.’
‘Of course it will. Margot’s in shock, that’s all, just like you are. She needs somebody to blame for what happened and you’re that somebody. You wait till the cops nab these bastards, then she’ll see that it wasn’t your fault.’
Frank sat staring at the balls of crumpled-up paper all over the floor. He had been thinking about Danny so much that he felt as if somebody had been repeatedly hitting him on the head with a heavy book. He needed to sleep but he knew that he couldn’t. He needed to talk to Margot, too, to try to atone for what he had done, but he knew he couldn’t do that, either.
‘What about next week’s show?’ he asked Mo. ‘Do you think you and Lizzie can wrap it up on your own?’
‘For Christ’s sake, don’t worry about the show, Frank. They’ll probably cancel it in any case.’
‘They shouldn’t. They shouldn’t cancel it. We can’t let people like that destroy everything we’ve worked for. That’s just what they want.’
‘Frank, it’s not just Pigs that’s going to be affected here. What about Philly 500 and The Fairchild Family and May To September and The Kings of Orange County? What about Ollie Peller? He’s halfway through scoring that new John Badham picture. It’s going to be total fucking paralysis. Anybody who lost a kid is not going to be able to do any serious work, are they? And everybody else is going to be far too jumpy.’
Frank slowly shook his head. ‘They sure know how to pick their targets, don’t they? American capitalism on September 11, American popular culture on September 22.’
Mo said, ‘My advice to you is go home. You have to face up to this situation with Margot. You do and she does, both. I’m talking to you as a brother.’
‘OK,’ said Frank. He looked around the conference room and gave something that was nearly a smile. ‘I can’t think of any good gags, anyhow.’
Three
He didn’t go home. He was too sick at heart and he knew that Margot wasn’t yet ready to talk to him. He called her from his cellphone but she didn’t pick up. Either she didn’t want to hear from him, or she was out seeing her friend Ruth in Coldwater Canyon.
The smog had cleared and it was a warm, clear morning. He had the impression that there were more police cars around than usual, and he saw two police helicopters in the time it took him to drive from The Avenue of the Stars to the San Diego Freeway. He didn’t switch on his car radio, though. There was only one topic of conversation on every waveband.
He reached the ocean. The water was glittering like smashed mirrors, and gulls were wheeling and screaming over the beach. He parked his car and walked along the promenade toward the municipal pier.
An old man approached him. He was wearing a long-billed baseball cap and a saggy gray T-shirt and saggy orange shorts. The veins in his legs looked like a street map of Laurel Canyon, a mass of wriggly blue roads. One of his eyes was totally white.
‘Lost?’ He grinned, showing four mahogany-colored teeth.
Frank shook his head and carried on walking, but the old man limped along beside him. ‘I can always tell when someone’s lost. They have that look about them.’
‘Really? What look is that?’
‘That lost look.’
‘Well, let me put your mind at rest. I’m not lost. In fact I know exactly where I’m going and I really don’t need anybody to help me. Particularly you.’
‘You’re misunderstanding my meaning. When I say “lost,” I don’t mean geographically lost. I mean lost in the sense that you don’t know what the hell you’re going to do next.’
Frank stopped, reached into his shirt pocket and gave the old man a ten-dollar bill. The old man took it and flapped it from side to side. ‘What’s this for?’
‘Philosophical services rendered. Now will you push off and leave me alone?’
The old man pulled his mouth down in an exaggerated expression of dismay. ‘I’m not a panhandler, if that’s what you’re thinking. I can tell when people need guidance, that’s all. I can see when they’ve reached an impasse.’
‘Well, that’s a very great gift. Now, if you’ll just . . .’ He made a toddling gesture with his fingers.
The old man stayed where he was, so Frank carried on walking toward the pier. He had only gone a few paces, however, when the old man called out, ‘It wasn’t your fault, Frank!’
Frank felt a fizzing sensation in his scalp, as if he had touched a bare electric wire. He turned around and stared at the old man. ‘What?’
‘You heard me. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘How do you know my name?’ Frank demanded, walking back to him.
‘That’s a gift, too. See that girl on the roller-skates there? Her name’s Helena. Go ask her if you don’t believe me. See that fellow with the dog? Guy.’
‘This is a scam. Get the hell out of here before I call a cop.’
‘No scam, Frank. It wasn’t your fault, and that’s the top and bottom of it. What you have to do now is forgive yourself, and move on.’
‘So why should you care?’
The old man took out a filthy crumpled handkerchief and blew his nose. ‘I care because I care because I care. What’s the point of having a God-granted gift if you never share it with anyone?’
‘All right, you know my name, or else you’ve guessed it, or you’ve seen me on TV. What does that prove?’
‘I know more than your name, Frank. I know what’s going to happen to you. I know the reason you’re here, even if you don’t. You’ll cross the road and you’ll never come back.’
Frank waited for the old man to explain what he meant, but he simply stood there smiling at him with his four brown teeth and a look in his one good eye that was almost triumphant. After more than a minute, Frank turned, hesitated, and then he walked away. The old man continued to smile at him until he disappeared amongst the crowds.
Frank leaned on the pier railing and closed his eyes and let the ocean breeze blow into his face. He could hear slowly moving traffic and the slurr-chunk! of skateboards and people talking and laughing. He could hear the Pacific, and the monotonous clanking of yachts. He could hear the gulls.
Inside his head, soundlessly, The Cedars was still blowing up, black smoke growing up into the air like fir trees, bits of metal and bits of brick falling all around him. And Danny’s blood-streaked arm, waggling from side to side as he ran along the street, silently screaming for help.
You’ll cross the road and you’ll never come back.
‘Hey!’ said a woman’s voice, very close to him.
He opened his eyes and blinked. A young woman was leaning against the rail just two or three feet away, although the ocean was sparkling so brightly behind her that he could see little more than a silhouette. The silhouette wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and a sleeveless white cotton dress.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know your name,’ she told him.
He thought, that makes a change. Everybody else around here seems to know it.
‘Don’t you remember me?’ she said. ‘We met yesterday. When the school was bombed.’
He shaded his eyes with his hand. It was the young woman with one sandal. She was wearing brass-rimmed sunglasses with very tiny oval lenses, and a white ribbon around her neck.