“Molly, look at me.”
Theo saw a blue eye look away from the leg and the bloodlust faded from it. He had her back. “That’s right, Molly. It’s me, Theo. Now what’s the problem?”
She spit out the man’s leg and turned to look at Theo. Mavis helped the man to a bar stool. “Get her out of here,” Mavis said. “She’s eighty-sixed. This time forever.”
Theo kept his eyes locked on Molly’s. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. Bloody drool was running down her chin. Theo grabbed a bar napkin and wiped it away, careful to keep his fingers away from her mouth.
“I’m going to help you up now and we’re going to go outside and talk about this, okay?”
Molly nodded and Theo picked her up by the shoulders, set her on her feet, and steered her toward the door. He looked over his shoulder at the bitten man. “You okay? You need a doctor?”
“I didn’t do anything to her. I’ve never seen that woman before in my life. I just stopped in for a drink.”
Theo looked at Mavis for confirmation. “He hit on her,” Mavis said. “But that’s no excuse. A girl should appreciate the attention.” She turned and batted her spiderlike false eyelashes at the bitten man. “I could show you some appreciation, sweetie.”
The bitten man looked around in a panic. “No, I’m fine. No doctor. I’m just fine. My wife’s waiting for me.”
“As long as you’re okay,” Theo said. “And you don’t want to press charges or anything?”
“No, just a misunderstanding. Soon as you get her out of here, I’ll be heading out of town.”
There was a collective sigh of disappointment from the regulars who had been placing side bets on who Mavis would hit with her bat.
“Thanks,” Theo said. He shot Mavis a surreptitious wink and led Molly out to the street, excusing himself and his prisoner as they passed an old Black man who was coming through the door carrying a guitar case.
“I ‘spose a man run outta sweet talk and liquor, he gots to go to mo’ direct measures,” the old Black man said to the bar with a dazzling grin. “Someone here lookin fo‘ a Bluesman?”
Theo put Molly into the passenger side of the Volvo. She sat with her head down, her great mane of gray-streaked blonde hair hanging in her face. She wore an oversized green sweater, tights, and high-top sneakers, one red, one blue. She could have been thirty or fifty—and she told Theo a different age every time he picked her up.
Theo went around the car and climbed in. He said, “You know, Molly, when you bite a guy on the leg, you’re right on the edge of ‘a danger to others or yourself,’ you know that?”
She nodded and sniffled. A tear dropped out of the mass of hair and spotted her sweater.
“Before I start driving, I need to know that you’re calmed down. Do I need to put you in the backseat?”
“It wasn’t a fit,” Molly said. “I was defending myself. He wanted a piece of me.” She lifted her head and turned to Theo, but her hair still covered her face.
“Are you taking your drugs?”
“Meds, they call them meds.”
“Sorry,” Theo said. “Are you taking your meds?”
She nodded.
“Wipe your hair out of your face, Molly, I can barely understand you.”
“Handcuffs, whiz kid.”
Theo almost slapped his forehead: idiot! He really needed to stop getting stoned on the job. He reached up and carefully brushed her hair away from her face. The expression he found there was one of bemusement.
“You don’t have to be so careful. I don’t bite.”
Theo smiled. “Well, actually…”
“Oh fuck you. You going to take me to County?”
“Should I?”
“I’ll just be back in seventy-two and the milk in my refrigerator will be spoiled.”
“Then I’d better take you home.”
He started the car and circled the block to head back to the Fly Rod Trailer Court. He would have taken a back way if he could, to save Molly some embarrassment, but the Fly Rod was right off Cypress, Pine Cove’s main street. As they passed the bank, people getting out of their cars turned to stare. Molly made faces at them out the window.
“That doesn’t help, Molly.”
“Fuck ‘em. Fans just want a piece of me. I can give ’em that. I’ve got my soul.”
“Mighty generous of you.”
“If you weren’t a fan, I wouldn’t let you do this.”
“Well, I am. Huge fan.” Actually, he’d never heard of her until the first time he was called to take her away from H.P.‘s Cafe, where she had attacked the espresso machine because it wouldn’t quit staring at her.
“No one understands. Everyone takes a piece of you, then there’s nothing left for you. Even the meds take a piece of you. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about here?”
Theo looked at her. “I have such a mind-numbing fear of the future that the only way I can function at all is with equal amounts of denial and drugs.”
“Jeez, Theo, you’re really fucked up.”
“Thanks.”
“You can’t go around saying crazy shit like that.”
“I don’t normally. It’s been a tough day so far.”
He turned into the Fly Rod Trailer Court: twenty run-down trailers perched on the bank of Santa Rosa Creek, which carried only a trickle of water after the long, dry summer. A grove of cypress trees hid the trailer park from the main street and the view of passing tourists. The chamber of commerce had made the owner of the park take down the sign at the entrance. The Fly Rod was a dirty little secret for Pine Cove, and they kept it well.
Theo stopped in front of Molly’s trailer, a vintage fifties single-wide with small louvered windows and streaks of rust running from the roof. He got Molly out of the car and took off the handcuffs.
Theo said, “I’m going to see Val Riordan. You want me to have her call something in to the pharmacy for you?”
“No, I’ve got my meds. I don’t like ‘em, but I got ’em.” She rubbed her wrists. “Why you going to see Val? You going nuts?”
“Probably, but this is business. You going to be okay now?”
“I have to study my lines.”
“Right.” Theo started to go, then turned. “Molly, what were you doing at the Slug at eight in the morning?”
“How should I know?”
“If the guy at the Slug had been a local, I’d be taking you to County right now, you know that?”
“I wasn’t having a fit. He wanted a piece of me.”
“Stay out of the Slug for a while. Stay home. Just groceries, okay?”
“You won’t talk to the tabloids?”
He handed her a business card. “Next time someone tries to take a piece of you, call me. I always have the cell phone with me.”
She pulled up her sweater and tucked the card into the waistband of her tights, then, still holding up her sweater, she turned and walked to her trailer with a slow sway. Thirty or fifty, under the sweater she still had a figure. Theo watched her walk, forgetting for a minute who she was. Without looking back, she said, “What if it’s you, Theo? Who do I call then?”
Theo shook his head like a dog trying to clear water from its ears, then crawled into the Volvo and drove away. I’ve been alone too long, he thought.
Two
The cooling pipes at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant were all fashioned from the finest stainless steel. Before they were installed, they were x-rayed, ultrasounded, and pressure-tested to be sure that they could never break, and after being welded into place, the welds were also x-rayed and tested. The radioactive steam from the core left its heat in the pipes, which leached it off into a seawater cooling pond, where it was safely vented to the Pacific. But Diablo had been built on a breakneck schedule during the energy scare of the seventies. The welders worked double and triple shifts, driven by greed and cocaine, and the inspectors who ran the X-ray machines were on the same schedule. And they missed one. Not a major mistake. Just a tiny leak. Barely noticeable. A minuscule stream of harmless, low-level radiation wafted out with the tide and drifted over the continental shelf, dissipating as it went, until even the most sensitive instruments would have missed it. Yet the leak didn’t go totally undetected.