I stopped at Ron's bar for a drink, but they wouldn't let me in. At Adolfo's, they did, and I downed two quick beers. Another one at the Sports Tavern, another at the Saloon, which left me downtown at 1:00 A.M., sweating, stinking, exhausted, drunk, and without immediate prospects for a ride back out the canyon to my house. I called Isabella, got Grace instead, told her breathlessly that I loved Izzy and everything would work out. "Tell her that," I demanded. Grace asked me where I was and I gave her my approximate whereabouts.
At the intersection of Coast Highway and Forest Avenue the main corner of our little hamlet by the sea-I just stood a watched the cars go by. They all had slowed to that deliberate, negotiable speed perceived as actual by the drunken. The sound of their tires-just a few feet away from me-was of rubber swooshing through water. I wondered whether it had rained while I was in the phone booth.
I put out my thumb and watched the cars pass. I was close enough to the highway to make eye contact with any driver who looked my way. A streetlight beside me cast each passing interior into cool, stark visibility, from which the faces stared back as from a stage. What their eyes offered me was smug refusal, nascent fear, and the overriding desire that I would go away.
I did not. I stood my ground, thumb out, challenging every windshield face that passed by me.
And that was exactly where I was standing a minute two later when the gray Chrysler K car-a body style so bland as to be noticeable-rolled up and made the right turn onto Forest, directly in front of my outstretched thumb. I was vaguely aware of a yellow rental-company sticker on the right bump But what I was most aware of was the driver's face, staring me in that moment of perfect enlightenment as the car slow, for the turn.
In a heartbeat, I made a positive identification. It was not difficult, not even a little. The driver was-undoubtedly, assuredly, without any shred of doubt at all in my mind-no other person on earth than Amber Mae Wilson.
She looked afraid.
I stepped in the direction of her disappearing car, misjudged the curb height, and lost my balance again. I was clever enough to make it look as if I was just trying to sit on the curb. So I sat on the curb. People parted around me, muttered, passed on. Amber's car vanished into a left turn on Third. I rubbed my eyes, watched a manhole cover levitate, and listened to the sharp slap of waves mixed with the hissing of car tires on pavement.
A moment later, Grace's red Porsche appeared in front of me and I felt my daughter's strong arms lifting me up to stand on my own two, only slightly functional, feet.
"Get in, Russell."
I felt the transmission engage beneath me, heard the roar of the exhaust, watched the shops of Forest Avenue blink past us. I could hear myself talking. I was telling Grace everything that had happened on the nights of July 3 and 4. I was back in Amber's room, somehow, reliving every detail of those dismal nights, confessing my obsession with Amber, my run-in with Martin Parish, trying to explain to my daughter that her mother's body had disappeared and that truly, truly I loved Isabella more than any living creature and all we'd wanted was a normal life and maybe a child… "And I swear, Grace, I just saw Amber driving a car not five minutes ago right down this…"
My daughter's hand pressed against my mouth.
"Shut up, Russell, you're embarrassing yourself."
I shut up, melting into the g force of Grace's turn onto Broadway. She glanced at me.
"Look," she said, "Amber's alive, no matter what you think you saw. It's totally in keeping with the way she is. You, of anyone, should know that. Were you as drunk that night as you are now? How in hell do you know what you saw? As for you and your pitiful obsession with Amber, well, you're just another one of a million men made stupid by her. Maybe the only man made even stupider than you is Marty. He's so fucked up, he thinks he saw me there that night, when I was watch a goddamned movie with Brent Sides."
"You can prove that?"
"When and if I choose to," she snapped. “I’ll tell you something, Russell. My mother is so full of deceit and manipulation, I wouldn't doubt it if she'd played a great big joke all of you. I know her. Nobody in this world has gotten more of her hatred than I have."
"I wouldn't know."
"You sure wouldn't. While you were slogging away the Sheriff's Department, Mom and I were galavanting around the world, having fun."
Grace turned onto Coast Highway and headed north. She ground the car into second and shot past a tourist trying to make it across the asphalt, flipping him off through the window as we whipped by his wide-eyed face.
"I tried to find you," I said.
"That's not the point. You did, or you didn't. You could have found us, anyway. Those postcards I sent you from Rome? I wrote them from a boarding school not twenty miles from your home, sent them to Amber, who mailed them to you from Italy. By the time you got them, she was in Paris, anyway, used that trick a lot on you. Amber didn't want you to see me and she saw to it. It's the way she works. Funny, though, because you were one of the few men in the world she didn’t want me to see."
"I don't understand."
"Did you know she tried to turn me out when I was ten? Not like a whore, I mean, but like a… woman. She had me nylons and makeup and heels and pranced me around this party like some kind of show pony. She encouraged me to keep the company of men three times my age. And when I wouldn't what she wanted, when I'd dress the way a girl wants to and mouth off to her big beautiful friends and just get up and leave when I felt like it- that's when she started to despise me. Every inch I carved out for myself was a point of betrayal for her. She suffocated me. Later, she became delusional."
"What delusions?"
"That I was trying to take away her men. That I was stealing her money. She accused me five years ago of stealing this stupid netsuke and inro that John and Yoko had given her when we were in New York one year. She loved the ugly little thing because they'd given it to her, right? I didn't take it, but she's been obsessing over it for five years now, demanding I give it back, claiming I stole it just to hurt her. I never even wanted the goddamned trinket, though it's worth about twenty grand. But she's convinced I've got it stashed in a safe-deposit box somewhere. For that, she's threatened to write me completely out of her will."
"And your response?"
"I told her to fuck herself, keep her money, and leave me alone. I can work. I've got a job. Or at least I had one until those creeps Amber sent started hanging around the store. They truly scared me. They really scared me."
"Amber sent the men?"
"Of course she did. It's all a way to get me frightened back into her fold. She doesn't want to write me out of her will. She just wants me to lick her boots."
Grace jacked a right turn onto Cliff and headed down toward the Canyon Road. "Look, Russell. I've got my problems, but they're not your problems. I appreciate you putting me up for a few days. Take care of Isabella-she needs you. And quit thinking about Mom. She's a waste of time. Believe me."
I thought about these words, and they seemed to be full of great wisdom. From the mouths of babes. "Drive faster," I said.