Ghost Lights (4 page)

When it was accomplished he turned toward his nightstand. The alarm clock had fallen on its face; he set it upright again. Otherwise the order was usual—all of it familiar except for, wait, a very small piece of plastic.

It was minuscule, a triangle maybe three millimeters long with a couple of scallops along the edge, and shiny black or maybe even dark green. It could be anything. He thought about this, his heart racing. He held the dark piece of plastic between thumb and forefinger. A small scallop, a small serration.

He was paranoid. He should seek help.

In the meantime, it was an itch that had to be scratched.

With difficulty he deposited the fragment on the nightstand again, careful not to drop it on the carpet and thereby lose it, and went back to the bathroom, to the nearest trash can. Susan had the shower radio on—a song about coming to a window, which he seemed to recall was sung by an annoying yet strangely popular lesbian.

The air was hot and moist and heavy and he couldn’t see even her blur through the curtain now. Good, for his purposes.

Quickly and furtively he pulled the can from beneath the counter and looked inside. Balled-up tissue, mostly; a Q-tip was visible. To stick his hands in the trash can would be openly desperate. Yet he did so.

Nothing hidden in the wads of tissue but an empty aspirin bottle. He put it down and washed his hands, let his breath out softly.

Still.

He went back to the bedside table and carefully picked up the fragment. He did not let it go.

“Going out for a soda, back in five,” he called out.

He stepped over the dog and took the stairs two at a time. There was a drugstore on Wilshire. He kept the fragment pressed between the pads of his fingers, pressing it hard even as he grabbed his keys with the other hand, strode out the front door and got into the rental car. He pressed it hard all the way there, strode purposefully to the back and was face-to-face with a wall of condoms.

But his findings were inconclusive. The piece was small, its color indeterminate. It might be one brand with certain specifications or it might be another. He held it up next to the packages and leaned in close, squinting despite the fluorescents in the hope of seeing more precisely. It might be none of them. Plainly. Abruptly he smelled something familiar from antiquity—what was it? Yes: benzoyl peroxide.

A pimply boy leaned past him and grabbed a single Trojan.

Science, he scolded irritably as he made his way up the aisle, could easily discern the answer, with a microscope and maybe one or two more instruments. Science could plumb the mystery, could discern, for example, whether this had been part of a foil packet or simply plastic.

He was not a scientist, unfortunately.

What other form of packaging would there likely have been, in that location on the nightstand? Kleenex? It was not a piece of a Kleenex packet, though. Too thick, too solid. Crackers? No. Also no. The fact that she had been taking a shower right then, the warmth of the sheets . . . he could ask her himself, but regardless of the answer it would be humiliating. Even the suspicion was destructive. He knew this. Better simply, on his own recognizance, to know. One way or the other. Robert: maybe he would test him. Go into the office tomorrow. Find a pretext to discuss marriage? Casually, in passing. Few specifics. Confide in Robert, ostensibly, about the pluses and minuses of marriage? The costs and benefits it might bring? On Robert’s face, as he listened, he would catch any sign of shame.

But this would not happen.

When he first met Susan, he remembered, stepping through the metal detectors and out into the parking lot, she was almost a hippie. The year was 1966. She was a teacher back then. Though she did not engage in politics much or smoke marijuana she had honey-colored long hair, wore all-natural fabrics and believed in free love. Shortly after they met she announced a plan to move into an intentional community called “The Eden Project” up in Mendocino. He had to work hard to dissuade her. She was young and idealistic and more than that she was romantically inclined, with a tableau in her mind of fresh air and fields of strawberries. A pure life, etc. He was idealistic too, but wary of stereotype and quite certain of what he wanted, namely for her not to move into an intentional community with a lute player named Rom.

In the end he won her over by arguing that the intentional community was elitist. He added to this an insinuation that it was also racist.

He smiled ruefully at the memory, recalling his earnest youthful idiocy and the forcefulness with which he had prosecuted his aims. He could still hear the discussion, at a party on the beach. She wore faded cutoff jean shorts and her legs were tan and slim. He had held her wrists in his hands and argued passionately that for her to move with the other well-meaning hippies to Mendocino would mean a “renunciation of society” that would lock her into a “white, upper-middle-class cultural ghetto” and ultimately augur “an abdication of personal responsibility.”

After that they had moved into a one-bedroom together—in a white, upper-middle-class neighborhood, of course. She cut her hair and he finished his accounting degree. Eventually the free-love notion faded.

Possibly now, however, the free love had made a resurgence.

He tried to remember how the free love had ended. They had argued about it on and off, but not with great engagement; Susan had always believed it more in theory than practice. She was shy by inclination and reluctant to let others see her naked. But she said the usual things the hippies liked to say back then about the limits of monogamy, such as “Why should the intimacy and joy of sex be reserved for one relationship?” and “People are not property.” Once, almost to prove her point it seemed, she kissed another man at a foreign movie—an individual she barely knew who was French, had body odor and smoked cloying cigarettes. This had provoked a minor drama in the relationship. But in due time the Frenchman retreated, as they were wont to do.

Still, he had never, he reflected, actually asked her formally to renounce the free-love idea. There was nothing contractual, there were no stipulations. He had merely assumed she had grown out of it. In a certain sense it seemed ridiculous now that the matter was unclear to him; most marriages did not allow for such ambiguity. Did they? On the other hand this was not ambiguity, exactly, rather it was an element they had forgotten, a corner left untucked . . . it was like a religion that receded, leaving a vague memory of faith but few practical details. The religion had been overtaken by the day-to-day.

He had to admit: there was the possibility that quietly, in a private realm, she was still a believer.

The fragment was imprinted into the pad of his right thumb. He stood beside the rental car and flicked it off with his forefinger. It disappeared instantly; it was too small even to watch flitter down . . . to tell the truth, he thought, unlocking the car door, Susan was probably right, or at least had been more honest back then than he had. He had been looking out for himself, frankly. He had known she was too good for him, but also felt that, having attracted her, it was more or less his sovereign right to retain her. Like a lost-and-found coin.

They got married, had Casey and were happy, the three of them. Time passed; the events were not important, only the feel of it. Then the accident happened. Somehow after the accident he had assumed they would always stay as they were, exactly.

In his own case he loved Susan steadily and took for granted that he always would. He had believed until now that she felt the same way. Also, when couples lost a child they frequently divorced, but something like the accident tended to lock you together like clenched teeth. At least that was what he observed in the parents’ groups. Sitting in pairs around the circle, on those hard, awkward chairs, many wives and husbands seemed to share nothing more than a sloping and gray defeat.

When he considered it, though: since the boss man went missing her interest had been diminishing. He had not taken it personally. He had believed she was preoccupied, and this, he thought, was still true. For whatever reason, he had seen, he was currently on the periphery of her life, or at least at the periphery of her attention. By itself this was not a problem; he was comfortable in the background. He often thought of himself on the sidelines, not at the center of the action, and the image was not unpleasant. For a long time there had been more pressing matters than his own needs or preferences; there was Casey first and always and then there was Susan’s job, where she considered her boss a virtual prodigy, a kind of urgent cause that required service.

Why the cause of real-estate profit should now command her fealty, when it had never before done so, he had not seriously questioned. Her sense of professional obligation seemed grounded in the personal, chiefly.

Backing up in the rental car—careful now, careful; he could easily have two accidents in one day—he considered the possibility that her preoccupation had been due not to Stern’s absence, as he had previously reasoned, but to the new chemistry of her small office in the awareness of that absence, a small office now inhabited solely by her and Robert.

2

T
he mother lived in a small townhouse not far from their own near the Venice–Santa Monica boundary, connected to other units around an open yard. She was not much older than Susan or Hal but apparently somewhat
non compos mentis
, since she required a live-in attendant. He was not clear whether she suffered from early-onset Alzheimer’s, presenile dementia or some other condition, and Susan did not enlighten him.

They met to visit her at lunchtime, pulling up to the curb at the same time from different directions. Susan had spent the morning at her office, of course, no doubt closeted with Robert, whereas he himself had spent the morning at his office closeted with Rodriguez, who picked his teeth with a plastic cocktail sword. When they stepped out of their cars Hal leaned in to kiss her and breathed in her sweet smell; he also scrutinized her face closely, trying to detect the vestigial presence of the free love.

But there was nothing out of the ordinary. Still his suspicions hovered as he followed her up the front path.

A busty, squarish woman opened the door, a woman with a large mouth and bulbous nose. She had a thick accent, possibly from eastern Europe. She led them in and seated them on a sofa, where a large china cabinet dominated the view.

“You’re lucky. It’s a very good day for her. Clear, you know?”

As they waited Hal gazed through the glass diamonds of the breakfront at a large, Asian-looking soup tureen in faded pink and green, trying to discern what scenes it depicted. He was deciding whether to rise and inspect it more closely when Susan grasped his hand with a sudden fierce need.

“I’m not sure how to tell her,” she whispered. “Even though I practiced.”

He leaned his shoulder against her, but before he could say anything Mrs. Stern came in smiling, wearing white slacks and a linen blazer. A good-looking woman, if a little weak-chinned—thin and pale-blond and somewhat patrician, as though born into wealth and then faded from it.

“Susan,” she said warmly. “It’s so good to see you again.”

“Angela,” said Susan, and rose to embrace her. “This is my husband Hal.”

“A pleasure. And what a wonderful daughter you both have.”

“We think so,” said Hal.

“We used to do jigsaw puzzles, the two of us. I had to give it up though. It’s my vision—I need cataract surgery. Can I get you a drink? Iced tea or coffee? I have a fresh pot brewing.”

“Oh. Sure. Thank you.”

“Yes,” said Hal. “That would be nice. Thanks.”

Roses and leaves and very small Chinamen.

The term was out of favor.

“So what’s the latest,” she said, as she moved into the kitchen. They were separated by an island with barstools. Susan got up nervously, followed her and leaned against it.

“We—we still haven’t been able to establish contact,” she told the mother with some hesitation, and he felt certain that only he could hear her voice waver.

“Milk?” asked Angela. “Or sugar?”

“Just a little milk, please,” said Susan, and nodded distractedly.

“No thanks, not for me.”

“I check in with the embassy on a daily basis,” went on Susan. “But there’s nothing they can do, on the active side. It’s quite a small facility. They don’t have resources. All they can do is relay any reports that come in.”

“Oh, yes,” said Angela, nodding as she poured milk into both of their cups. Hal considered waving a hand to prevent her, but then gave up. “The boat man worked for them, didn’t he.”

“Pardon?”

“I think the man who called about the boat worked for the embassy.”

She put Susan’s cup in front of her on the counter and walked around the island toward Hal. At the same time Susan turned to both of them, wide-eyed and deliberate. He accepted his cup and smiled gratefully.

“What boat?” asked Susan, with a hint of alarm. “What do you mean?”

“The man called about a boat he was in.”

“I had no idea,” said Susan. “Oh my God.”

She wandered back to the couch and sat down heavily. Angela glided back to the kitchen, oblivious, and poured her own coffee.

“Oh yes. The little white motorboat. They found it.”

Susan gazed at her agape as she came back in, holding her cup delicately, and perched in a chair opposite.

“Tell us the details,” said Hal carefully. “Won’t you? Susan has been very, very worried.”

“There was a little white motorboat he was in? With a native guide, you know, a tour guide doing the driving. Then the other day they found the boat, but there was no one in it. It floated back down to the beach, and there were some people fishing just then, or someone there was a fisherman . . . ? Anyway. Do they fish there? Something about fishing.”

“Just the boat?” asked Susan.

She seemed to him to be entranced, breathless and possibly fearful. He reached out and rested his hand on her shoulder.

“A man from the embassy called me, I thought he said. Or wait. Maybe it was the United Nations. Don’t they also have policemen?”

Angela crossed her legs gracefully and cocked her head, as though idly wondering.

“Uh,” said Hal slowly. “Are you sure they called you?” She was beginning to show her lack of acuity; for all they knew the boat story was a full-fledged delusion. “Did you, for instance, get a name from this informant?”

“It was the hotel where Thomas was staying,” said the attendant from the doorway, and Angela sipped her tea. “The resort hotel. They made an inquiry and then they called us.”

“Of course,” said Susan faintly. Her cheeks were flushed, Hal noticed, but he could not tell whether she was upset or excited at the news, whether it chilled or encouraged her.

“They have not seen Thomas yet,” said the attendant.

“No,” agreed Susan, and shook her head. “I do know that much.” She went to pick up her coffee cup—for something to occupy her, Hal guessed—and gulped from it thirstily, looking away from them.

“You take care of his business,” said the attendant, and smiled at Susan. “I know because of the paychecks!”

“Yes, I do,” said Susan. “But we may need to change that. It’s one reason I came. Mrs. Stern? If you have the means, you may find it easier to pay Vera’s wages out of your own accounts for a while. T.’s finances are in transition. With all this confusion. Will that be a problem?”

“Oh? Oh. No,” said Angela, and waved a hand dismissively at Vera. “My checkbook is in there,” and she gestured toward a small writing desk.

“I am already paid for last week,” said Vera. “No problem. OK. Excuse me.”

“I would also like,” said Susan slowly, as Vera disappeared down a corridor, “to hire someone. I want to take
action
, I want to step in. I owe it to him. We all do. And to his business, which needs him. We’re losing money daily.”

“Someone?”

“A private security firm. To investigate what happened down there. I can handle it out of our petty cash fund at first, and draw on his other accounts later, if it starts to drag out.”

Angela nodded but Hal thought she was hardly listening.

“You know, to fly down and be in-country. Have a team on the ground. A search party actively looking for him. I would do it myself, but I have to handle things at this end.”

“Whatever you think, dear,” said Angela. “But don’t worry too much. He doesn’t really need them.”

“Them?”

“You know. Policemen.”

There was a pause, during which Angela recrossed her legs and smoothed her slacks over one thin thigh. From the apartment above them Hal could hear a bass line thudding. The rhythm was powerful but the melody indistinct. He tried to attune himself to the music, in case of recognition. In the meantime he was conscious of the quietness in the room, the soup tureen with its outdated homunculi in their robes and black topknots.

He had a sense of the rapidly cooling coffee in his cup, which he could not drink because he did not like coffee with milk, and the uncanny calm of the mother, which settled on her like a soporific . . . was she indifferent to her son, his well-being? Or was she absent?

“I hope you’re right,” said Susan to Angela, and smiled tightly.

“That boy has always landed on his feet.”

“But this is . . .”

“Trust me.”

After a few moments Susan consulted her watch.

“Well. I should probably be getting back,” she said, and Hal placed his coffee cup on the end table, relieved to be rid of it, and rose. “Do you have a couple of photographs I could take with me? To give them for the investigation?”

“Oh!” said Angela. “Certainly.”

She handed Susan a white and gold album off a shelf, and Hal waited impatiently while Susan paged through it, slipping snapshots from beneath plastic.

“It was good to see you,” said Angela when Susan gave it back. “Thank you for visiting me.”

She stood beside them at the door, benign and passive as they filed out. Susan was agitated, almost distraught. For his own part, all he was thinking as they left was: So, about the free love.

He wanted to ask her but he knew the question would seem irrelevant, pathetic in its smallness and its self-interest. There was a man’s life at stake. She was thinking only of that. The specter of death trumped the free-love worry.

“I should have done it before,” she said, shaking her head as she strode ahead of him toward the street. “I should have followed my instincts.”

For him, however, there was no specter of death, frankly. For one of them, there was the specter of death; for the other, only the specter of free love.

“I should have hired someone right away, but it’s not the kind of . . . I mean who thinks of that? You know?”

“I do know,” he said, with what he hoped was solemnity.

“I’m going to call them today. All it takes is picking up the phone and a credit card. A couple of photos . . . but why would they call
her
?”

“I’m sorry?”

They were standing at her car, facing each other.

“That hotel. They had explicit instructions to call
me
. I had to authorize the charges to his card, finally . . . she can’t do anything with the information, you saw how she is.”

“I did. It’s just she
is
his mother.”

“Still. It’s unprofessional that they didn’t call
me
.”

“Maybe the language barrier. A misunderstanding.”

He wondered if she was close to discerning his near-complete indifference to these questions, if she could discern the fact that he was hiding the real worry. What about the free love.

“OK. Anyway. Thank you for being here, honey. Sorry I’m so scattered,” she said, and opened her car door.

He was due back immediately—it had been two days now of distraction and not attending to his workload—but he did not go back. Instead he let her car disappear down the street and then drove toward her office himself.

He pulled into a parking structure close to the Promenade, from which, if he went to the third floor and gazed southward, he could see through the windows of her suite. She had pointed out this feature to him when she first began working for Stern—how from the west windows of the office you could look over a few white rooftops to the Pacific Ocean, and from the east you had almost nothing in view save the hulking gray levels of the parking complex.

He made a few circuits before a space opened up in the right location. He wanted to be able to stay in the car as he watched, unseen. He had become a stalker.

He was almost sure he had the right window, and gazed at it expectantly, but the rectangle stayed dark.

For a few minutes, idle and slightly anxious, he listened to the squeak of tires as cars rounded corners in the structure behind him. He tried to rethink his position. Give this up, this adolescent fixation; return to doing your duty.

He was not quite willing to leave, but still he had his hand on the keys in the rental car’s ignition—disappointed but also a little relieved—when the light in the rectangle flicked on. He saw Susan. She leaned over a cabinet. He could not make out her facial expression or even her features, only the lines of her silhouette. He wished he had a pair of high-end binoculars. She could be a bird, he thought, and he could be a birdwatcher. He had always thought there was something furtive about birdwatchers, mainly the ones who kept “life lists”—something voyeuristic and calculating in how they observed and catalogued their quarry.

The young man Robert stood in the room also, further away. His head moved slightly: he must be talking, Hal thought. He turned and opened a file cabinet. The free love. The free love.

But no: the free love was not yet in evidence. Wait, he told himself. Only wait. The free love was bound to rear its head. Eavesdroppers heard no good, or something. Almost because he was here, his wife had to be guilty.

Susan and Robert were currently in Stern’s office, which was large and stretched from the east, or back, side of the building to the west. The main window in that office was the ocean window, a large picture window, he thought. He had been in the office several times, though rarely when Stern was. The large metal cabinet backed up beneath this eastern window, out of which Stern had probably seldom deigned to look, was a little lower than shoulder-height. It contained large flat drawers for large maps and the like. Hal felt he was fortunate the vertical blinds were not down; they might be, so easily. No one needed to look out this eastern window. And yet if Susan did so now, she might see him watching, if she could make him out in the dimness behind his windshield.

The young man was behind Susan now as she looked down at something, possibly something in a drawer she’d pulled out. Look up, thought Hal, but she would not—there it was. The young man Robert was facing the window as Susan turned; their heads were aligned. Hal could see the back of her head and this obscured the young man Robert’s face completely. Jesus Christ. Were they kissing?

He had asked for it—at this point he believed he deserved it, even—but still he resisted. He sat there feeling a scream rise in him, trying to suppress it. Robert’s hands were up on either side of Susan’s head, blurs, moving. His own hands shook. He waited for Susan to turn, to adjust how she stood. They could be conversing face-to-face, having a close discussion. It was by no means a foregone conclusion. . . .