Charlie went around the side of the building to the loading Zone, which was serviced by a short spur of railroad track. He followed the spur for no reason other than that it led somewhere. He took short, quick steps, landing on every tie and counting them as he moved. At the junction of the spur and the main track he stopped, suddenly aware that he was not alone. He raised his head and saw a man coming toward him, walking in the dry, dusty weeds beside the track. He looked like one of the old winos who hung around the railroad jungle, waiting for a handout or an empty boxcar or an even break. He was carrying a paper bag and an open bottle of muscatel.
He said, “Hey, chum, what’s the name of this place?”
“San Félice.”
“San Félice, well, what do you know? I thought it seemed kinda quiet for L.A. It’s California, though, ain’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Not that it matters none. I been in them all. They’re all alike, except California has the grape.” He touched the bottle to his cheek. “The grape and me, we’re buddies. Got a cigarette and a light?”
“I don’t smoke but I think I have some matches.” Charlie rummaged in the pocket of his windbreaker and brought out a book of matches. On the outside cover an address was written: 319 Jacaranda Road. He recognized the handwriting as his own but he couldn’t remember writing it or whose address it was or why it should make him afraid, afraid to speak, afraid to move except to crush the matches in his fist.
“Hey, what’s the matter with you, chum?”
Charlie turned and began to run. He could hear the man yelling something after him but he didn’t stop until the track rounded a bend and a new sound struck his ears. It was a warning sound, the barking of dogs; not just two or three dogs but a whole pack of them.
The barking of the dogs, the bend in the tracks, the smell of the sea nearby, they were like electric shocks of recognition stinging his ears, his eyes, his nose. He knew this place. He hadn’t been anywhere near it for years, but he remembered it all now, the boarding kennels behind the scraggly pittosporum hedge and the grade school a few hundred yards to the south. He remembered the children taking the back way to school because it was shorter and more exciting, teetering along the tracks with flailing arms, waiting until the final split second to jump down into the brush before the freight train roared past. It was a game, the bravest jumped last, and the girls were often more daring than the boys. One little girl in particular seemed to have no fear at all. She laughed when the engineer leaned out of his cab and shook his fist at her, and she laughed at Charlie’s threats to report her to the principal, to tell her parents, to let some of the dogs loose on her.
“You can’t, ha ha, because they’re not your dogs and they wouldn’t come back to you and a lot of them would have babies if they got away. Don’t you even know that, you dumb old thing?”
“I know it but I don’t talk about it. It’s not nice to talk about things like that.”
“Why not?”
“You get off those tracks right away.”
“Come and make me.”
For nearly an hour Virginia had been standing at the window with one corner of the drape pulled back just enough so that she had a view of the front of the Brant house and the curb where the black Chrysler was parked. She had seen Gallantyne and the lawyer getting out of it and had stayed at the window watching hopefully for some sign of good news. Minute by minute the hope had died but she couldn’t stop watching.
She could hear Howard moving around in the room behind her, picking up a book, laying it down, straightening a picture, lighting a cigarette, sitting, standing, making short trips to the kitchen and back. His restless activity only increased her feeling of coldness and quietness.
“You can’t stand there all night,” Howard said finally. “I’ve fixed you a hot rum. Will you drink it?”
“No.”
“It might help you to eat something.”
“I don’t want anything.”
“I can’t let you starve.”
For the first time in an hour she turned and glanced at him. “Why not? It might solve your problems. It would certainly solve mine.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Why not? Does it hurt your ego to think that your wife would rather die than go on living like this?”
“It hurts me all over, Virginia. Without you I have nothing.”
“That’s nonsense. You have your work, the company, the customers — you see more of them than you do of me.”
“I have in the past. The future’s going to be different, Virginia.”
“Future,” she repeated. “That’s just a dirty word to me. It’s like some of the words I picked up when I was a kid. I didn’t know what they meant but they sounded bad so I said them to shock my aunt. I don’t know what future means either but it sounds bad.”
“I promise you it won’t be. I called the boss in Chicago this morning while you were still in bed. I didn’t mention it to you because I would have liked the timing to be right but I guess I can’t afford to wait any longer. I resigned, Virginia. I told him my wife and I were going to — to adopt a baby and I wanted to spend more time at home with them.”
“What made you say a crazy thing like that?”
“I hadn’t planned to, it just popped out. When I heard myself saying it, it didn’t seem crazy. It seemed right, exactly right, Virginia.”
“No. You mustn’t—”
“He offered me a managerial position in Phoenix. I’d be on a straight salary, no bonuses for a big sale or anything like that, so it would mean less money actually. But I’d be working from nine to five like anybody else and I’d be home Saturdays and Sundays. I told him I’d think about it and let him know by the end of the week.”
She had turned back to the window so he couldn’t see her face or guess what was passing through her mind.
“Maybe you wouldn’t like Phoenix, Virginia. It’s a lot bigger than San Félice and it’s hot in the summers, really hot, and of course there’s no ocean to cool it off.”
“No... no fog?”
“No fog.”
“I’d like that part of it. The fog makes me so lonely. Even when the sun’s shining bright I find myself looking out towards the sea, wondering when that gray wall will start moving towards me.”
“I guarantee no fog, Virginia.”
“You sound so hopeful,” she said. “Don’t. Please don’t.”
“What’s wrong with a little hope?”
“Yours isn’t based on anything.”
“It’s based on you and me, our marriage, our life together.”
She took a long, deep breath that made the upper part of her body shudder. “We don’t have a marriage any more. Remember the nursery rhyme, Howard, about the young woman who ‘sat on a cushion and sewed a fine seam, and fed upon strawberries, sugar and cream’? Well, the sitting bored her, the cream made her fat, the strawberries gave her hives and her fine seams started getting crooked. Then Jessie came to live next door. At first her visits were a novelty to me, a break in a dull day. Then I began to look forward to them more and more, finally I began to depend on them. I was no longer satisfied to be the friend next door, the pseudo-aunt. I wanted to become her mother, her legal mother... Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you, Howard?”
“I think so.”
“I saw only one way to get what I wanted. That was through Dave.”
“Don’t say any more.”
“I have to explain how it happened. I was—”
“Even if Phoenix is hot in the summer, we can always buy an air-conditioned house. We could even build one from scratch if you’d like.”
“Howard, listen—”