He was in the sitting room again when Trina came in from the hallway, her face mirroring concern, confusion—the same fright which had seized her the day before. She was kneading a floral-bordered dish towel between her hands as if it were biscuit dough. “Supper’s ready, Jim,” she said quietly.
“I’m not hungry, Trin.”
“You haven’t eaten anything all day. It’s after seven.”
“I’m just not hungry.”
She walked up close to him and stood staring into his eyes, trying to read them, and failing. She said, “Jim, what is it? What’s troubling you? What happened last night?”
“Nothing happened last night.”
“Please, dear. You’ve been acting so ... strangely since you came home from San Francisco.”
“I’m all right,” he said. “You go ahead and eat now.”
“Not without you.”
“Do I have to be there for you to eat?”
“No, of course not, but—”
“Well, then?” Conradin finished the dark liquid in the tumbler and moved to the tray of liquor set on an oval table near one wall. He lifted a black-labeled bottle. The bottle, unopened that morning, was now less than a quarter full.
Behind him, Trina said, “I wish you wouldn’t drink any more.”
“Trin, please go eat your supper.” He filled the tumbler, replaced the bottle on the tray, and turned. “Can’t you see I want to be left alone?”
“Yes, I can see that,” she said. “But why? Why are you shutting me out this way?”
“I’m not shutting your out.”
“Yes you are. You won’t tell me anything about this mysterious San Francisco trip, you won’t talk to me at all. The only things you’ve done today are drink and pace like some caged animal. I’m frightened, Jim. I really am. I’m frightened because I can’t understand what’s happening to you.”
Conradin moistened his lips. “Honey, there’s nothing to understand. Nothing’s happening to me. I’m just feeling out of sorts today, that’s all. You know how I hate the winter.”
“You didn’t used to hate anything.”
“People change,” Conradin said. “People . . . change.”
“Yes, they change. They change and they become strangers. You’re a stranger to me now.”
“Trin . . .”
“I’m your wife,” she said. “Don’t you think I know when something’s wrong? Tell me what it is, Jim. Confide in me—you can do that, can’t you?”
“No. No, I can’t do that.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I just can’t.”
Abruptly, tears began to form in Trina’s eyes. “I . . .” she began, but then the tears came in a rush and she fled the room. Conradin stood there, looking into the hallway after her. He drank the contents of the tumbler in a single convulsive swallow, put the glass down carefully on the eagle’s-claw stand in the hallway, and crossed to the winding staircase which led to the second floor. In his and Trina’s bedroom, he took his sheepskin jacket from the closet and put it on and scraped his car keys off the dresser. He descended the stairs again.
Trina was waiting for him, her eyes tinged in red, but she had dried the tears in the downstairs bathroom and was standing very straight and rigid. She said, “Where are you going, Jim?”
“For a drive.”
“To where?”
“I don’t know,” Conradin said. “Just for a drive.”
“Jim, please don’t go out tonight.”
“Why not?”
“The fog is so heavy . . .”
“The fog is always heavy in the winter.”
“Please don’t go.”
“I’ll be back in an hour or two.”
“You won’t have any more to drink, will you? Promise me you won’t have any more to drink.”
“All right, I won’t have any more to drink.”
“Jim, I . . .”
Conradin stepped forward and brushed his lips across her forehead; then, quickly, he walked to the front door, opened it, and started out.
“Be careful!” Trina called urgently behind him.
“Yes,” he said. He shut the door, bowing his head against the drizzle like chilliness of the fog, his footfalls making soft, brittle sounds on the crushed-shell surface of the drive. He reached the car parked facing out and slid inside and brought the engine to life. He switched on the headlights—a pair of saffron eyes in the vaporous darkness—and then took the car down the inclined drive and onto Shoreline Highway, turning east there toward Highway i.
When he reached Highway i, he swung north, driving rapidly and with full concentration. He followed the winding, two-lane highway for several miles. The night seemed almost completely deserted; once, when headlights flickered briefly in the Dodge’s rear-view mirror, Conradin tensed and his hands gripped the wheel more tightly; but after a short time, the shine of them retreated and then disappeared completely.
A few minutes later, Conradin came in sight of a thin strip of state road, attached to a wide circle of macadam, which wound off to the west. The right forward curve of the circle touched the highway and was designed for cars coming in from the south, or coming out to the north; the left forward curve did likewise, designed for cars coming in from the north, or coming out to the south. In the middle of the circle, imbedded in gravel and cement, was a large redwood sign with gold letters that were almost obliterated by the fog. It read: GOAT ROCK.
Conradin nodded to himself, slowing, putting on his directional signal. He turned into the right curve of the circle and entered the state road. Walled by shale bluffs on the right and steep cut-away cliffs heavily overgrown with anise and thistle and sage and wild strawberry on the left, the road dog-legged and twisted its way seaward; Conradin knew it well, had traversed it hundreds, if not thousands, of times, and he had no trouble negotiating its precarious width, even with the roiling mist shredding in his head lamps like fine gossamer cobwebs.
Exactly one mile from the highway, there was a graveled turn-out area and another redwood and gold-lettered sign; this one read: BLIND BEACH. Conradin brought the Dodge in there, nosing up to one of the black asphalt bumpers at its far edge. He sat there for a moment before darkening the car, and then stepped out into the frigid night.
A numbing sea wind blew in across the turn-out, and Conradin felt it billow his clothing and slap wet fingers across his face. He walked to the seaward edge and stood looking out. On his left, now only a vague outline, a shadow slightly grayer than the fog, was a high flat rock covered with nests and lichen and bird droppings—the home of thousands of seagulls and cormorants; and on his right, perhaps a mile away by the state road, was the huge eroded visage of Goat Rock, with a gaping half-moon cut in its back by man in search of raw materials, and beyond it the village of Jenner, where Russian River empties into the Pacific Ocean. But none of these were discernible from where Conradin stood, not on this night.
He let his eyes drop to the inclined dirt side of the short slope below him. Even though he could not see it, he knew the exact location of the narrow, meandering pebble-and-sand path that led down the face of the cliff to Blind Beach. The beach itself—a circumscribed strip of clean white sand, extending for perhaps a quarter mile—was so named because even on the clearest of summer days, it was hidden from view by the convex proportions of the cliff side.
The path began at the far end of the turn-out, near where Conradin had parked his car and near the twin gray outhouses which served as public rest rooms; but instead of taking that lengthy, if somewhat safer, route, Conradin made his way carefully down the short dirt slope. He intercepted the path some one hundred feet below the turn-out, in a narrow ledge-like area. He paused there, looking down at the growth of sage and tule grass and bleak, clustered stalks that would be wild dandelions and purple lupins in the spring—all clinging to the side of the precipice: amorphous green-black shadows in the fog.