"Hurry up," he told the photographer. "I need to get to work."
The last thing I did before heading home to write the article was make a quick stop by Sorrento's up in the Orange hills.
Brent Sides was indeed tending bar. He was tall and tanned, with a swatch of thick blond hair, and eyebrows sun-bleached to white, which hovered over his blue eyes like frosted comets. But in spite of his tan, he blushed deeply when I introduced myself as Grace Wilson's father.
"I like your books," he managed. "And the article today about the killings. The waitresses here are all freaking out."
I watched him drying glasses with a clean white towel before I spoke again. When I did, it was to tell him that Grace was in some very deep trouble with some very unfriendly men. He did not seem surprised by this.
I asked him about his whereabouts on the night of July 3, and he said he had been with Grace-first dinner, then the movies, then drinks. He took her back to her place, late.
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-three."
He blushed again and looked away.
"Do you love her?"
He nodded. "We've never been to bed, if that's what you mean, but I love her."
A cocktail waitress ordered a round of drinks, and Sid was relieved to be away from my prying eyes while he made them, set them on the counter, and recorded his action onto keyboard. He eased back my way when the waitress swung away from the service bar, tray loaded.
"Have you seen these men?" he asked. "The ones who are after her?"
"No. You?"
"Yeah. They look heavy. I've got some friends, though
"That's not the point, Brent. Describe them."
He did, and his portraits were very close to those of Grace: one fat man with big ears and one slender young man with close-cropped hair and sunglasses.
I was quiet while he wiped the counter, apparently deep in thought.
"I'd never hurt her," he said finally.
"You'd do just about anything for her."
He nodded.
"Would you lie?"
"Probably. If she asked me to."
I suddenly liked Brent Sides for his guilelessness, his boy’s shyness regarding my daughter, his obvious affection for her.
"Please ask her to call me," he said.
"I'll do that."
I paid up, shook Sides's cool, moist bartender's hand, and stepped back out into the heat of the afternoon.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Neither Isabella nor Grace was at home when I got there. Instead, there was a note on my pillow:
Dear Russ,
I'm sorry but I can't be here alone. I fell in the bathroom after the maid left. Not hurt, but it scared me. Grace was gone. Mom and Dad came and got me up and are taking me to their place. I wanted so badly to be your baby, not your infant. I miss you already.
Love, Your Isabella
For a while, I stood there in our upstairs bedroom, listening to the roar of Isabella's absence. The sun was lowering over the hills, and through the picture window came a clear, fierce light that splashed across the carpet, hung against the far wall, angled over the lower corner of our bed. So much was missing: Isabella's wheelchair-a contraption that I'd despised at first, then grown to regard with some sort of odd affection as it came to be more and more a part of her; the bottles of pills that always cluttered her nightstand; the cane, upright on its four-toed foot, always waiting nearby for her; Isabella's journal, catalogs, cookbooks, novels, and travel books that were always strewn across the bed; even her favorite blanket.
Now they were gone and the place-our place-was as forbiddingly neat as a motel room. A terrifying, urgent loneliness hit me then as I had a vision-not my first-of what this house and this life would be like without Isabella in them. A voice inside reminded me that the liquor cabinet was just downstairs. But I didn't move. I stood there in that unmerciful sunlight, drenched in a world without my wife.
I looked around the room, wondering whether the truest and simplest measure of a person is in what they love, whether a life is, most basically, a time to discover what those things and who those people are. And here was so much of what Isabella had found to love: the crystal hummingbird dangling on a string just inside the window; the cheap cut-glass figure of an Aztec warrior we'd gotten in Mexico and that now stood guard on the TV; her piano, which sat against the far wall in all its burnished, pampered beauty; her books of Neruda and Stevens and Moore; her hundreds of music tapes-everything from Handel to the sound track of "Twin Peaks." There it all was, illuminated by the sun but enlightened and made precious by Isabella's love.
And as I stood in front of her piano-her deafeningly silent instrument-and looked at the pictures framed and displayed there, I realized for the first time that of everything Isabella loved in this life, she loved me the most. There were pictures as we said our vows, as we climbed into the limo, cut the cake, waltzed the first dance. I'd looked at all these in passing a thousand times-every day, probably-and they'd always struck me as nice but common, charming in a ritual, almost institutionalized way. After all, didn't every married couple have a bunch of shots like these? But then, that day, standing in our room alone saw and really understood with absolute chilling clarity that Russell Monroe, was the prize of Isabella's life.
I, Russell, who had stumbled upon her reading poetry in the orange grove, five million years ago.
I, who had sworn to love and honor her.
I, who had sat outside Amber Mae Wilson's home not once, but four times, wondering whether I should go in, knowing that one night I would.
I, who carried a flask so as never to be too far from my beloved whiskey.
I, who had left her alone to fall in her own bathroom who was now not even the first person she would call to help her get her suffering, besieged body off the floor.
I was her greatest prize.
The sunlight continued burning the room, bearing down into my eyes. I felt singled out by it, revealed, exposed. When I looked to the mirrored closet doors, there was no Russ Monroe to be seen, only the bright outline of something manlike and hollow-a glare. I wondered whether that was what Isabella saw when she looked at me: just the shape of a man where the substance used to be.
I walked down the stairs, acutely tuned to the sound my shoes on the steps of our empty house.
Joe Sandoval, broad-faced and barrel-chested, was doing something to his front door when I parked in front of his house half an hour later. He and Corrine lived in San Juan Capistrano, quiet inland town south of Laguna, known mainly for its mission, to which the migration of swallows in March of each year is both a local legend and a tourist event. Isabella and I were married in that mission on a scorching Saturday in September, a day that felt much like this one in the sheer overwhelming presence of its heat. I read the inscription on the silver flask again-"With all my love, Isabella"-after taking a slug of the whiskey inside.
Joe stopped his labor and studied me as I came up the walkway. Years of work for SunBlesst Ranch had left his face lined and dark, his black eyes in a perpetual, dubious squint that contradicted his general good nature. His thick gray-black hair was combed straight back as always, tied in a short ponytail. He transferred a screwdriver and offered me a heavy, gentle hand. "She's okay," he said.
"Was the fall bad?"
"Just a bruise, but it scared her. Come in."
He guided me into the house, one hand on my shoulder, the other on the door. I noted that he had been installing a second dead bolt, courtesy, no doubt, of the Midnight Eye. "Corrine is upset," he said quietly as we went in. "You know."