She opened the back door of the Echo, tossing her case into the back seat. She didn’t want to see it again, think about that poor old man whose life had just descended like a kid on an amusement ride, from the airy heights to the brutal lows. He had lived in that house for forty years.
He could move out of the Los Angeles area and buy a house in the Midwest for one-fourth of the money he could make on his half of that unhappy house in Pacific Palisades. Or he could move thirty miles to the Inland Empire, the tentacle of the city that stretched into the superheated San Gabriel Valley, once considered almost uninhabitable with its broiling sun and lack of water, now getting hotter, value-wise, by the day.
Many people commuted from there to L.A. proper every morning. They still came, as they had for sixty years, for the weather, the jobs, the ocean. They stayed because, like addicts, they took sick pleasure in the highs and lows, took pride in the daily stresses. They felt muscular and fit, meeting the challenges of rush hour. Maybe they cut five minutes off their commute by finding a handy side street. Maybe they lived in crowded conditions, but the sun shone and they might make it to the beach one fine summer Saturday.
They all lived as if L.A. was still the paradise it must have been once before they all lived there.
She slammed the door, automatically turned up the fan and hit the a/c button, then hit the freeways, such a lovely name for places where nobody moved, everyone felt trapped, and, rich or poor, you heard traces of the same beautiful, evil siren’s song.
At the office, Ray could not avoid Martin who, wearing a starched shirt and fancy tie as if dressed for executive combat, stood sentry behind Suzanne, awaiting Ray’s arrival.
“Any mail?” Ray asked Suzanne.
“Overnight.” She looked a little flushed.
“Good. Antoniou.” He held an envelope up to the light.
“Did he sign or not?” Martin asked.
Ray, who had hoped to savor the moment privately, found himself frowning. He picked up the letter opener on Suzanne’s desk, the one shaped like a dagger, and ripped it open.
“Ah,” he said, reading the letter inside. “He did.” Astonished, pleased, uncertain how he felt, he tossed the check onto Suzanne’s desk.
“Yahoo!” Suzanne said sourly.
Martin followed him back toward his office. “We have to meet,” Martin said. “You have time right now?”
“In twenty minutes,” Ray said. He had nothing particular planned for those twenty minutes except perhaps to read his mail. He just couldn’t give Martin immediate satisfaction. Every time he saw Martin these days, he kept envisioning that stocky, freckled body squirming upon Leigh’s, saw her hips rising to meet that compact body.
“Look,” Martin said, ignoring him and closing the door. “Let’s be civilized. We have a firm to run. People depend on us. Put it aside for this project, what do you say, Ray?”
“Go away.”
“Come on. Let’s give this occasion its proper due. Here’s our biggest residential project in years for our most potentially notable client. Let’s ride down to the site together before the meeting with Antoniou, okay?”
“Why?”
“Talk about where to put his goddamn columns,” Martin said.
“So you already knew he signed this contract on the basis that I’d redo the design?”
“He mentioned he wasn’t happy. I told him to talk to you again. That you were quite reasonable. I know you’ve been doing some sketching this morning. I’d like to see what you’re coming up with while we’re sitting on the hill. Helps me visualize and wax poetic for the client.”
“Okay. Two o’clock? I’ll meet you there. I have a few things to do before then.”
After lunch, late for reaching Laguna Beach in good time, Ray hit gridlock and frustration. Still, in his car alone he could listen to music, zone out, stay calm. Sitting next to Martin for the nearly two-hour drive would have driven him nuts.
He had been there before so had no trouble finding the site, a steep, forbidding-looking scrub-covered hillside with an earthshaking view of the ocean on Sleepy Hollow Lane, a half-mile up the hill from the beach. He parked on the street, then hiked down, avoiding the ubiquitous poison oak.
Martin sat in the shade of a eucalyptus tree, legs propped on a granite boulder, putting his feet between himself and Ray.
Ray clambered down the dusty hill, then sat on a small rock opposite, not saying a word. He did not want to give his partner easy satisfaction.
“You hate that I’m Antoniou’s man,” Martin said.
Ray shook his head. “You’re personally invested in this project. It’s natural. You’re his buddy. Hope he doesn’t know how little weight you give that word.”
“You want to know more about me and Leigh? Because I have the urge to tell you a few things.”
“Let’s not get distracted.” Ray swept sweat from his forehead with his hand, eyes roaming over the vista, the huge, churning ocean below, the unstable land beneath both of them.
Martin took a deep breath. “You know, I used to admire your relationship. You seemed perfect together.”
“Oh?” Well, what else could he say, with this womanizing jackass asserting such an intensely personal connection. Ray loved Leigh, whatever she had done, and he now loathed his former friend Martin down to dust, down to their most insignificant moments eating suspiciously brown cold-cut sandwiches from crummy neighborhood grocery stores together. They used to confide in each other, he remembered, and the thought made his skin hot, like a bad sunburn.
“You’ve changed a lot,” Martin said.
Ray adjusted himself, moving one leg over the other, pulling his sunglasses over his eyes. In the afternoon, the breeze off the ocean could be redefined as wind. No need to shiver. This wind blew hot, like the deadly Santa Anas that had wiped out much of this town in 1993.
“I’m not saying she didn’t love you,” Martin continued. “But your detachment made her vulnerable, buddy.”
“Shut up, Martin, or I’ll have to kill you.”
“We’ve been friends for a long time.”
“Martin, working with you at all right now is a strain. Now let’s get down to the issues about this project and leave Leigh out of it.”
“I was interviewed by a police detective yesterday. I didn’t say anything that would hurt you. I mean, I don’t know anything about Leigh, really, or your personal affairs. Actually, he was looking at me and asking me questions that I didn’t like at all. As if I might somehow be responsible for Leigh’s disappearance, because we-you know, broke up.”
The words hung heavily in the air, while Ray thought to himself, It can’t be. He examined his partner, sitting in the pressed tan slacks that his wife picked up from the cleaners for him, the three-hundred-dollar sunglasses that Martin insisted were the cheapest way to look like a mover for the clients, by concealing his eyes.
“Maybe they know something I ought to know,” Ray said to Martin.
Who spread his hands and said shakily, “I swear to you, I have not seen her since last Wednesday.”
“You could swear from now until the end of the world and nobody would believe you at this point, Martin.”
“Yeah, well, you’re the one who did it, if anyone did anything.”
“Maybe it was your wife.”
“My wife?”
“I heard,” he lied meanly, “somebody called her about Suzanne. Maybe someone called her about Leigh.”
Martin looked stricken. “No. They wouldn’t dare.”