She smiled at him, but her eyes were troubled. "I understand, darling. There's no use pretending the strain isn't there, because it is. Maybe coming here tonight was a bad idea."
"No way. It was a wonderful idea, and we are going to have a wonderful time. Tomorrow we can deal with the walkers. We'll go see the witch lady and get exorcised, or whatever it takes. Tonight we have fun."
They shared a bottle of Pinot Chardonnay with their dinners, and by the time the waiter came with coffee they were laughing together easily and naturally. Glen even managed a small joke when Joana took out her Master Charge to pay for the dinner.
They walked out to the parking lot holding hands like teen-agers.
"Honey, this was really a sweet idea," Glen said. "I do love you a lot."
"Still want to marry me?"
"More than ever."
Joana squeezed his hand and felt a rush of tenderness for the young engineer. Somehow his moodiness earlier in the evening, the evidence that he was less than perfect, made her love him all the more. She did not want to spend her life with a flawless hero, she wanted a flesh-and-blood man who could be wrong, and who could admit it.
Out over the ocean the clouds rearranged themselves and the moon came into view. It was fat and orange as a harvest-time pumpkin.
"Oh, Glen, look at that," she said.
"Spectacular," he agreed.
"Let's walk over for a minute and look."
Glen told the parking attendant to hold the car, and he and Joana walked over close to the edge of the cliff and stood by the guard rail looking at the moon.
"What is it that makes the moon so romantic?" Joana wondered aloud.
"Maybe because it rhymes with so many words in romantic songs. June, spoon, soon, lagoon."
"Buffoon," Joana offered, laughing.
"Macaroon."
"Baboon."
"Spittoon."
By now they were both laughing and holding onto each other. Suddenly Joana pulled back and gave a little sigh of exasperation.
"What is it?" Glen asked.
"I just thought of something." She opened her little clutch bag and looked inside. "Yes, I did, damn it, I left my credit card back there in the restaurant."
"I'll go get it," Glen said. "You wait here and think-up some more moon rhymes."
Glen left her with a kiss and walked on hack toward the entrance to the restaurant. Joana turned again toward the sea. Standing there alone, she saw the moon differently than when Glen was there to share it. The bland, expressionless face seemed somehow menacing. There was something about it that made her uncomfortable. Something dead.
She was about to go after Glen when there was a wild, high-pitched scream from the direction of the parking lot. Joana spun around and froze. Running toward her, bare feet slapping the asphalt, was a tall, thin girl in a filmy white dress. In the moonlight, Joana could see clearly the dead white face, the gaping mouth, the glittering eyes.
Seized by panic, Joana turned and ran along the cliff by the guard rail, away from the restaurant. Behind her she could hear the slap-slap of the girl's feet and a high, tragic-sounding wail. It was like a familiar nightmare. Running, Joana fought to get her breath. Behind her, the girl in the white dress gained.
Joana stole a look over her shoulder. She could see the moonlight reflected in the girl's staring eyes. The clawed fingers reached toward her. In an instant of flashback Joana saw the people who stood in the shadows along the walls of the frightful tunnel, reaching for her, reaching to pull her back.
"No!" Joana cried. "Oh, no! God, no!" She ran, stumbling, past the spot where the guard rail ended, and along the unprotected lip of the cliff. Far behind her, shouts came from the direction of the restaurant. She thought she recognized Glen's voice, but it was too late. They would never catch up in time to help her. Too late, too late.
Something gave way beneath her foot. A heel had broken off her shoe. Forced into a limping, staggering gait, Joana could no longer keep ahead of her pursuer. She turned and braced herself as best she could to meet the assault of the wild-eyed girl.
With a cry that was like nothing human, the girl was upon her, grasping, scratching, tearing. Joana fought back, lashing out with her fists, but the blows she landed had no effect. The girl possessed unnatural strength.
Despite her struggles, Joana felt herself being forced step by step closer to the cliff. The girl's face, white and damp, was pressed close to hers. Joana could smell her fetid breath.
With a desperate effort, Joana wrenched herself free for a moment. Something tore. The girl rocked for a moment off balance, holding the front panel of Joana's silk blouse in her two clenched hands. The sound of shouts and running feet was suddenly loud as Glen and others from the restaurant pounded up to where Joana and the girl stood.
For an endless moment the girl swayed on the lip of the cliff, then in ghastly slow motion she went over.
Instinctively Joana turned away, but she could not shut out the fading, wailing cry and the thudding impact as the girl's body hit the rocks below and bounced lifeless into the roiling sea.
Glen was with her then, holding her tightly. He stripped off his jacket and put it over her shoulders to cover the torn blouse.
"God, Joana," he said, "another one."
This time there were no tears to shed. Joana's eyes were dry, her emotions numb. She nodded her head slowly. "Another one."
Chapter 19
The Boyle Heights district to the east of downtown Los Angeles was in its third or fourth incarnation of the past fifty years. First there had been the original old families who grew rich when Los Angles was young. They moved on in the 1920s to Bel Air in the north and the Palos Verdes peninsula in the south. Then came the Jewish immigrants. They worked hard, prospered, and left for the greener lawns of the San Fernando Valley and Beverly Hills. The middle-class Mexican-Americans were next, and after World War II they migrated east to the suburbs of the San Gabriel Valley. The once-proud Boyle Heights district now decayed under the sun, populated by poor Cubans, recent immigrants from Mexico, and uncounted illegal aliens.
Glen and Joana rode down a pleasant-seeming residential street in the Camaro. In the twilight of the June evening, the stucco houses, with their red tile roofs and arched windows, looked comfortable enough. The lawns in front of the houses had bare brown patches, but they were not piled with trash. The pavement was in good repair, and the small stores were brightly painted with the off-beat pastels typical of Mexican buildings. With the palm trees lining the street rustled by the soft summer wind, it was hard to visualize the grinding poverty of the people who lived here.
Glen stopped at the corner of Brooklyn Avenue and checked the number written on a slip of paper against the street addresses. "That should be it," he said.
He pointed across the street to a two-story wooden frame building painted burnt orange on the side that faced the street. On an enameled metal sign advertising Coca Cola were printed the words Perez Liquor.
"A liquor store?" Joana said.
"That's the address you got from the nurse."
Glen parked the car and they got out. Up the street, under a sputtering mercury-vapor light, a group of young Mexicans was gathered around a Plymouth Fury with stylized flames painted on the hood. They watched silently as Joana and Glen crossed the street to the small liquor store.
The store's one large window had been boarded over with plywood, which now carried the multicolored graffiti of the neighborhood gangs. Los Avenidas, Gato Negro, Hombres Locos, Calle XVIII. There were the lists of names in the distinctive angular printing style of the barrio, some of them X'ed out and scrawled over with the heavy insult, puto. For those who knew how to read it, it could serve as a bulletin board of community activities, telling who was on the street, who was moving into what territory, and who was likely to be in trouble.