Cemetery of Angels (7 page)

Labor Day weekend came.

The Moores went off to one of the beaches south of Malibu to spend the day. They had seen a few of their neighbors go by and had managed a few brief words of greeting. There was a young woman with gorgeous black hair who lived in one house and drove a ten-year-old yellow Mustang convertible with the California plate, HOTCHICK. There were several men who donned suits every morning and set out for jobs that looked to be professional and in the straight world. There were several wives who appeared to have careers and an equal number of women who stayed home and managed their children and households.

But during the day, the neighborhood was quiet. Most residents seemed to be out. A handful of the people in the neighborhood, however, kept irregular hours. The neighborhood looked to be what Bill called “upper middleclass California composite,” meaning young to middle-aged adults bent on successful careers, whatever they were.

Though they had met the other parents on the street, no one had reached out to befriend them. This unsettled Rebecca more than Bill. But she wasn’t yet ready to admit that it bothered her.

“It’s okay,” Rebecca said late one evening. “Let’s get the house in order first. Our social life will follow.”

“I second that thought,” Bill said.

They sat before their fireplace in the living room. It was still warm in September and the windows were open to allow a breeze.

“On the other hand, maybe we should have a party,” Rebecca suggested. Bill looked up from a laptop.

“Try that one again?” he asked.

“Maybe we should have a party,” she said. “It’s an idea I’ve been playing with.”

“A party?” he asked. “With people?”

“Yes. That’s how it usually works. Something informal. Just drinks and hors d’oeuvres. For everyone on the block. We’ll get to know everyone at once.”

This was one of Bill’s sullen nights. He said nothing. He only looked at her, turning over the idea in his head.

“It’s just an idea I’ve been playing with,” she repeated. He surprised her.

“Might be a good idea,” he said. “We’ll get to know everybody at once.”

Another minute passed.

“Should we do it?” she asked.

“Sure.”

She smiled. She leaned over and kissed Bill on the side of the face. “Great idea you had,” he said.

New friendships were all over the place, waiting to be made. The kids had made an interesting one, too. Or so they reported. They had an imaginary friend, as children often do.

Imaginary,
as opposed to the real flesh-and-blood friends that they were making in school.
Imaginary,
as opposed to the many friends they had back in Connecticut.

He was a man, the kids said, and he came by every couple of nights to make sure they were safe.

“
What?!
How’s that again?” Rebecca asked the first time she heard of this.

“He lives in the turret room,” Karen said. Rebecca looked at her children. And unfortunately an image of the horrible man in the parking lot was before her.

“Oh, he does, does he?” she asked. Both kids smirked. This first came up, Rebecca would remember, about a week after Labor Day. She was in the living room with Patrick and Karen. It was just before bedtime.

“What are you guys talking about?” she asked.

“Ronny,” Patrick said.

“Ronny Sinbilt,” Karen giggled. The kids shared a magnificently childish laugh, as if they were the private participants in an off color joke that was too funny for words.

“Come on,” Rebecca insisted. “Share it with me, guys.”

“Ronny looks in on us to make sure we’re safe,” Karen said. “After you and Daddy go downstairs.”

“Uh huh,” Rebecca said. “And how do you know that’s what he’s doing?”

“He told us,” Karen said.

“We asked him who he was and that’s what he said he was doing,” Patrick answered. Bill came into the living room from the kitchen, tuning curiously into the conversation.

“And you’ve both seen him?” Rebecca asked. “This same dude?”

The kids nodded in unison. Patrick said that he had seen him first.

“But then I saw him real soon after that,” Karen added. Bill listened to this and looked from boy to girl and then back again.

“Uh, huh. Right,” he said.

“And he’s a big guy? Like an adult?” Rebecca pressed. The kids agreed that he was a nice man with shaggy brown hair, dark pants, and a white shirt. There was disagreement about the rest of his description, however, but they did agree that he lived in the turret room.

“How do you know he lives there?”

“That’s where he comes from,” Patrick said.

“And that’s where he goes to,” Karen said.

“And doesn’t the smell bother him?”

They shook their beautiful young heads. Rebecca always marveled at how gorgeous, fresh, and fair her two young ones were.

“Oh, no,” Patrick said.

“I asked him that,” Karen added, “and he says he
likes
that bad smell.”

More laughter. Both kids. Ronny or
anyone
actually liking that sour acrid stench was a real thigh slapper.

“And, uh,” Rebecca asked, feeling her way along, “Ronny visits every night?”

The children looked at each other.

“Not every night,” her son said, hedging slightly. “Only sometimes.”

“Well,” Rebecca said, rising to the moment. “Let’s go upstairs now and see if we see him. I’d like to meet Ronny, too.”

Again in unison, they answered. “Okay.” They were enthusiastic about introducing Mom to their friend.

Bill bailed out of the event, giving Rebecca a bemused raised eyebrow and a bored but understanding smile. Kids! She walked upstairs hand in hand with her small brood.

Nope. No Ronny this evening. Not visible, anyway.

The kids brushed their teeth and put their pajamas on. Bill came upstairs and prepared a bedtime story for two. Something about a rabbit running through the woods and stopping for a carrot and lettuce pizza — hold the cheese, please! — on the way home.

Rebecca took the moment to walk over to the turret room and glance in. There was only a mild hint of the smell that had been bothering her. Otherwise, the room was empty, awaiting renovation, renewal and its eventual salvation.

And still no Ronny.

“Yoo hoo,” Rebecca finally called to the empty chamber. But no imaginary guy tonight. Then both parents kissed their children goodnight and went back downstairs.

“An imaginary friend?” Rebecca asked softly, not wanting to be heard upstairs. “With a name?” She shook her head.

“The only imaginary Ronny that I knew of in Southern California was the former president,” Bill grumbled, hardly looking up from his laptop.

“It is a little creepy, isn’t it?” Rebecca said.

“What is?” Bill asked.

“An imaginary friend. With quite so much detail.”

“Didn’t you have one when you were a kid?” Bill asked.

“Have what?”

“An imaginary friend, with or without a lot of detail.” She thought about it.

“Yeah. I did,” Rebecca admitted. “She was a girl my age.”

“Did she have a name?” Bill still wasn’t looking up.

“Her name was Sally,” Rebecca admitted.

“Then what bothers you about Ronny?” Bill asked.

“I find it a little strange that they both see the same dude,” Rebecca said. “Usually…”

“Screw ‘usually’!” Bill snapped. “McLaughlin and I work on the same architectural plans. Same principle: joint creation. Is that creepy?”

“No, but…”

“A joint creation of the mind,” her husband said, finally raising his head. “Patrick and Karen working in tandem. Now what’s really bugging you?”

She thought about it. She knew the answer. It took her a few moments before she had the nerve to give voice to it.

“What bothers me is the way they keyed in on the turret room,” Rebecca finally admitted. Bill turned and looked fully at Rebecca.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s something about that room that bothers me. Always has.”

Her husband was watching her. Then she saw something unsettled in his eyes, and she felt his gaze settling in on her. It almost scared her when her husband’s moods changed so quickly. With narrowed eyes,

“Like what?’ he asked.

“The smell in Ronny’s room, for one thing,” she decided. “Yuck!” She tried to make a joke of it, hoping that might drive away the whole problem.

“It’s not ‘Ronny’s Room!’” he snapped. “It’s the ‘turret room,’ soon to be the ‘second floor playroom’ as soon as I have time. Now, anything else?” he asked.

She searched. She didn’t want to dredge up her feelings from the attack in Connecticut. She had done so well since the move in conquering all those old anxieties.

“No,” she said sullenly. “Nothing specific. Just a feeling.” He continued to gaze at her. Then his annoyance dissipated, and he eased.

“The room will be a lot more comfortable, a lot more welcoming, once we renew it,” he said. “You know, paint it. Get some stuff in for the kids. Okay, honey, look. Even
I
admit that it’s a little tiny bit creepy now.”

“You feel that, too?” she asked.

“I didn’t say I felt anything,” he said. “I just think maybe that room should be a priority. I don’t want it to turn into something that’s scaring the kids. Or my wife. Okay?”

“It’s now a priority,” she said. She knew when to ease off and agree with her husband. She had learned in her years of marriage to him that this was sometimes the only way to avoid a major fight. So she pondered the point and tried to make a joke of it.

“I wish Ronny would do something about that smell while he’s wandering through our upstairs,” Rebecca added. Bill went back to his laptop.

“Maybe you can get him to paint and reinforce the walls while you’re at it, too,” he said.

“You’re such a pragmatist,” she said.

“The turret room is empty,” Bill said, losing himself in cyberspace again. “So Patrick and Karen fill it with their imagination. That’s fine as long as they’re not scaring themselves. And obviously they’re not.” He paused. “They think this ‘Ronny’ clown is funny. So let them think that.” Rebecca sighed again. There was a creak in the floorboards behind her husband.

“And by the way, architects are pragmatists by nature,” he continued. “Theories don’t hold buildings up. Nails, wood, and the proper use of physics do.
Comprenez?
“

“Bill, you really are one of the great B.S. artists of all time,” she said. “Or should I phrase it,
‘artiste de merde du taureau’
?”

“Call it anything you like, Becca,” he half replied without looking up. “And thanks for the accolade. You made it sound real elegant.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. Then she waited for a full minute. “Want to do some sex after the kids are asleep?” A curled eyebrow in response from her husband, two eyes glancing up.

“How about tomorrow?” he asked. “I have a lot of tweaking to do for Jack McLaughlin tonight.”

“You animal,” she teased, maybe with a little too much sarcasm. “I don’t know how I resist you.”

But Bill let the comment pass, continuing with his laptop. She walked over to him, half to touch him, half to see what was on the computer screen. She arrived: architectural plans.

“Okay,” she said.

Twice miffed, she tuned her husband out the rest of the evening. And she felt a pang of loneliness, on the other side of the continent from her best friends and passively ignored by her husband.

And this “Ronny” nonsense didn’t help, either.

In fact, the uneasiness about “Ronny” carried over for several more days. Twice a week, Rebecca phoned her widowed mother in Illinois. Somehow, in their next conversation, Rebecca drifted toward what was bothering her: the imaginary friend both her children saw.

This Ronny.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Rebecca’s mother answered. “Patrick and Karen left friends behind in the East. So they’re imagining new ones until they’re secure with their new playmates at school.”

Rebecca thought about it. And her instincts were at work again, the same extra sense that had once told her in a Connecticut parking lot that her life was in danger. Here she didn’t feel danger. She just felt… well,
creepy
.

Silly, she told herself, but sometimes in the house she had that old sense of being watched again. Under observation, from an unknown point, someone hidden somewhere.

“It still unnerves me a little,” she admitted to her mother.

“Don’t let it, dear. Your nerves are still tingling from that horrible incident in Connecticut. And Ronny will be replaced by real friends in a matter of days.”

“I guess,” she said with a sigh. Sometimes mothers are right, even on the long distance horn.

Like clockwork, within the next few days, Patrick and Karen started talking more about new acquaintances at school. No more mention of Ronny. And Rebecca didn’t ask about him. Somehow she associated him with trouble, though she didn’t quite know why.

But indeed, he had vanished. To celebrate, Rebecca convinced Bill that they should throw their party on the first Saturday in October.

Silently, he brooded about the date for several minutes. Then he gave his blessing.

“Yeah. That’ll work,” he said. “It’ll give us time to fix the place up a little. It won’t look so bare when we have people in.”

She smiled and kissed her husband on the cheek. She went out the next day and picked out fifty invitations. Almost without notice, her sense of being observed vanished at the same time.

There was another positive note, too. Over the next two days, Bill stripped the walls in the turret room and prepared them with white primer. Rebecca held her breath as her husband worked. Deep down, as she was afraid to admit to anyone, she had this horrible sense of dread that something terrible was about to happen.

But the first step of renewing the room went without incident. It was a complete success. The stench even receded when the old wallpaper was torn away.

And best of all, she thought to herself, no Ronny.

Two afternoons later, a sunny Wednesday, Rebecca was stepping out of her car in front of her new home. She heard another vehicle on the road. She turned. She saw the dark haired woman in the yellow Mustang convertible. The woman — California plates
HOTCHIK
— drove past her without acknowledgment. Rebecca had been about to raise her own hand to wave, but the convertible passed too quickly.