A wasteland of strangers (7 page)

"What did I ever see in you?" I muttered aloud.

"What? What did you say?"

"Nothing." Sip of coffee. Bite of toast. Glance at my watch even though I know what time it is. "I'd better get to the bank."

"It's only eight-twenty," Ramona said. "I want an answer first."

"Answer to what?"

"God, you can be an exasperating man. Where you were until after two o'clock in the morning. On a weeknight."

The squawking and screeching echoed inside my head, making it ache. My eyeballs actually hurt from the pressure.

"George. Where were you?"

"At the Elks Lodge, playing cards."

"Until two A.M.?"

"Yes, until two A.M. Pinochle. I lost nine dollars and had four drinks and then I drove home. Does that satisfy you? Or do you want to know who else was in the game and who won and how much and how many drinks each of them had?"

"You don't have to yell—"

"And you don't have to interrogate me as if I were a fucking criminal."

Her mouth pinched until it wasn't a mouth any longer, just a bunch of hard ridges and vertical creases. Kissing that mouth was like kissing two strips of granite. Was it ever soft, even on our honeymoon? I couldn't remember her lips ever being soft.

"At the breakfast table, George?" Hard and tight like her mouth. "That kind of language at eight-twenty in the morning?"

For a few seconds I lost it. Couldn't stop myself from saying, "That's right, you don't like fucking, do you? In any way, shape, or form, verbal or physical."

She reacted as though I'd slapped her. Good! Up on my feet, in such a spasm I jostled the table and spilled the coffee, to hell with the coffee and her, too.

"How can you say things like that to me? I won't stand for it, I won't be abused. You'll be sorry if you think—"

I went out and slammed the door on the rest of the squawking and screeching.

In the Buick I lit a cigarette. I don't smoke much anymore, but I needed something to try to calm down. My head ... how was I going to get through the day? And the weekend coming up? And next week, and the week after, and the week after that?

Ramona, Storm, Harvey Patterson, that stranger yesterday... them and the rest in this town, all the people with their small minds and small ways. And me stuck here in a dead-end job and a lousy marriage, wanting a woman I couldn't have, a hundred other things I couldn't have. Facing a future that could be even worse, a genuine hell on earth. It could happen.

If that stranger robbed the bank, it would happen.

I told myself for the twentieth time it was a damn-fool notion. The stranger didn't have to be what he looked like; he was probably gone by now and I'd never see him again. But I kept right on imagining the worst.

I couldn't stop him if he walked in and showed a gun. I'm not brave, I don't own a gun myself or even know how to fire one. Fred and Arlene would do what they were told and so would I. We'd hand over the money in the cash drawers, the money in the vault, and chances were he'd get away with it.

And then there'd have to be an accounting.

Bank examiners, within hours.

It wouldn't take them long to find the shortage. A day, two at the most.

Covered it as best I could, but no one can doctor bank records cleverly enough to fool an examiner. It was just a little more than seven thousand dollars, only I didn't have the cash to replace it and no certain way of getting that much on short notice. The house was mortgaged to the hilt, the Indian Head Bay property Ramona had inherited wasn't worth enough to support a loan, Burt Seeley poor-mouthing when he turned me down, Storm laughing in my face, and there was nobody else except maybe Charley Home. Yearly audit was still three months away; the Indian Head Bay property had to have sold by then, priced rock-bottom the way it was. It had to. But I couldn't cover the shortage now without going begging to Charley Home, and he doesn't like me any more than I like him after that zoning flap four years ago when he tried to expand his Ford dealership. He might loan me the money at an exorbitant rate, but more likely he'd tell me to go to hell. I've been afraid to find out because he's my absolute last resort. If he turned me down—

Prison.

I'd go to prison for borrowing a measly seven thousand, for believing in that son of a bitch Harvey Patterson and his big talk about a sure-thing real-estate killing.

I couldn't stand being locked up. The idea of spending years in the company of brutal men like that stranger terrifies me so much I can't think about it without starting to shake and sweat.

Options? Sorry, Petrie, you're fresh out. All you can do is wait and pray the hold-up notion really is a crazy fantasy and the economy picks up and somebody buys the Indian Head Bay property and you don't get caught.

Except that I was already caught. That was what was tearing me up inside, making me wriggle and jump and lose my temper and think wild thoughts. More than one kind of prison for a man to be locked up in. Even if I managed to cover the shortage without being found out— caught, trapped, locked up in Pomo until the day I died.

Harry Richmond

MARIA LORENZO COULDN'T get it through her thick Indian head that I didn't want her to do any maid service in cabin six. She kept saying, "But if he stays another night he'll need clean towels. And the bed—who will make up the bed?"

"He can make up his own bed," I said.

"No clean towels?"

"I told you, no. Don't even go near it."

"How come you don't want to give this man service?"

"That's my business. You mind your own."

"Okay, you're the boss." But it still bothered her; she kept frowning and shaking her head. "You want me to clean the office and your rooms?"

"It's your day, isn't it?"

"Change the sheets, put out fresh towels?"

Indians! Skulls thick as granite. "Everything, Maria, same as you always do on Fridays."

"What about tomorrow?"

"Well? What about it?"

"Should I come and clean six then?"

"If Faith checks out. I'll let you know."

"But not if he stays? Still no service?"

"That's right. Nothing. Nada."

She shook her head again, muttered something in Pomo, and went around the counter into my living quarters. Stupid cow. But she had a nice ass, round and plump. Like Dottie's when we were first married, before she got hog-fat after Ella was born. I couldn't get near Dottie the last few years. All that lard... it made me want to puke when I saw her naked. Her own damn fault when she dropped dead of a heart attack. Two hundred and eighty-seven pounds ...

I shut Dottie out of my mind and watched Maria wiggle around, bend over to straighten the papers and magazines on the coffee table. Dried my throat to see that ass of hers stuck up in the air, all round and inviting. She was in her late thirties and starting to wrinkle and lose her shape like a lot of Indian women at that age, but she was still attractive enough and her ass was just right. I craved a piece of that every time I saw her. But she wouldn't have any of me. Some other white man, maybe, but not Harry Richmond. One time I made a pass she shot me down cold. Didn't get offended or angry, just gave me a reproachful look and said, "I have a husband and three children, Mr. Richmond, and I believe with all my heart in the teachings of our savior, Jesus Christ." Sure. But what if I'd been thirty instead of fifty and had all my hair and a flat belly? Bet she'd have sung a different tune then. Most Indian women are sluts, and the pious ones are the worst.

Indian women. Maria Lorenzo, that snooty little Audrey Sixkiller... what was it about the attractive ones that made me want it so much?

No use standing around here getting myself worked up for nothing. I went outside to the shed and fetched my tool kit. One of the downspouts on cabin three was loose, and this was as good a time as any to fix it. Maria knew enough to answer the phone if it rang.

Cold this morning. No sun, mist rising in the marshes, a high wind pushing thick clouds inland, with more scudding in behind. Couldn't tell yet if we'd get rain on the weekend. Probably would, my luck being what it was. If it did rain, I wouldn't get half a dozen rentals through Sunday night. I ought to be grateful to any guest deciding to stay another night, but not when that guest was John Faith. I'd take his money as long as he wanted to give it to me, but that didn't mean I had to like it or anything about him. No telling what he was up to around here. Whatever it was, I wished he'd tend to it and go back where he came from. I'd sleep better when he was gone, that was for sure.

I was hammering a new clamp on the drain spout when the police cruiser drove in off the highway. Gave me a jolt to see Chief Novak at the wheel. Lakeside Resort is within Pomo township's jurisdiction, just barely, but the town cops don't patrol much out this way. No reason they should, really. I hadn't had to call in the law in over three years, since the couple from Walnut Creek got into a drunken fight in cabin four and the man busted his wife's arm for her. She had it coming, if you ask me, the way she kept running him down all the time, but that hadn't kept me from calling the police. I can't afford trouble.

Novak spotted me and pulled up. Instead of climbing out he rolled down his window. I pasted on a smile as I walked over.

"Morning, Chief. What brings you up here?"

"You have a guest named John Faith?"

No surprise there. I said, "That's what he calls himself."

"Check out already? I don't see his car."

"No, he paid me for another night."

"When did he pay you?"

"About an hour ago. Little after eight."

"Just one more night?"

"Just one. How come you're asking about him? He get himself into some trouble already?"

"I just want to talk to him." Novak's face, now I looked at it close, was tight-skinned and hard around the mouth and jaw. His eyes were bloodshot and bagged, as if he hadn't had much sleep last night. "What time'd he leave?"

"Right after he paid me."

"Tell you where he was going?"

"Didn't say a thing."

"You know if he was here between midnight and two A.M.?"

"Midnight and two? Why? Something happen then?"

''Was he here, Harry?"

"Well... not when I went to bed around eleven-thirty. He's in six and the windows were dark and no sign of that Porsche of his. I was awake another thirty, forty minutes and I didn't hear him come in." The wind had chapped my lips; I took out my tube of Blistex. "Tell you this, Chief. Whatever he's done, it won't surprise me."

"Why do you say that?"

"You had a good look at him, up close?"

"Yesterday."

"Then you know what I mean. Makes me nervous as hell having him here, but I can't afford to turn down anybody's business."

"How'd he pay you? Cash or credit card?"

"Cash. Both times. Wad of bills in his wallet big enough to gag a Doberman."

"What address did he put on his registration card?"

"Los Angeles, that's all."

"No street or box number?"

"Nope. I should've asked, I guess, but he's not somebody you want to prod. Touchy. Mean and touchy. I can tell you his car license number, if you want that."

"I already know it."

"Well, how about the cabin he's in?"

"What about it?"

"You want to take a look inside?"

Novak shook his head. "Not enough cause."

"I could just unlock the door with my passkey and then go on about my business. Never know it if you happened to step inside for a minute or two—"

"No."

"But if he's guilty of something—"

"I don't know that he is. Don't you go invading his privacy either, Harry."

"Not me. No, sir," I said. "Sure you can't give me an idea of what it's all about? A man can't help being curious—"

"I'm sure," Novak said. He slid his window up, swung around, and drove back out to the highway.

Well, I thought. Didn't I see it coming? Didn't I know Faith was trouble the minute I laid eyes on him?

I waited a couple of minutes to make sure Novak didn't decide to come back. Then I took out my passkey and headed for cabin six.

Storm Carey

WHEN NEAL WAS alive we almost always ate breakfast on the sun porch, no matter what the weather. The upper halves of the three outer walls are glass, with panels that slide open to let in air and garden fragrance, and you can look down the sloping rear lawn to the lakefront and the white finger of our dock, north to the sloughs, east all along the sharp, shadowed folds of the hills, brown now with their dark-green spottings of oak and madrone, south down the lake's thirty-mile length as far as Kahbel Shores at the foot of Mt. Kahbel. A lordly view, Neal called it. Lord and lady of the manor, surveying their domain.

But the lord is dead and the lady is a tramp, and I seldom eat on the porch anymore, or even go out there. This morning, however, I felt drawn to it. I sat at the rosewood table and drank my coffee and ate my two pieces of toast and surveyed what was left of the domain and thought about Neal. He'd been warm in my thoughts when I'd awakened, almost as if he were still alive, as if he'd gotten up before me and was waiting on the porch for me to join him. Some mornings it's like that, the feeling that he's still here with me so acute I actually believe it for a minute or two. But, of course, the illusion soon fades and again becomes unbearable loss—a cramping deep inside like severe menstrual cramps, or what I imagine childbirth would have been if we'd ever managed to conceive. Then that, too, fades and I'm able to get up, shower, dress, do all the things that begin another day, that lead to another night.

The bed was a mess this morning, the sheets stained and even torn in one place, smelling rankly of the Hunger. Him, too, last night's fodder for the voracious mouth. Here for two or three hours, and then gone again in the early-morning darkness. Night phantom, incubus. Strange, but when I closed my eyes I couldn't picture his face or remember his name, even though I know him as well as I know anyone in Pomo, even though he's been in my bed before. Instead, it was Neal's face I saw, Neal's lips and hands and body I remembered.