Innocent Blood (23 page)

‘My mother,' said Mo proudly. ‘She could empty Carnegie Hall in three minutes flat.'

He was woken up at six twenty-five the next morning by the telephone ringing. He picked it up and said, ‘Astrid?'

‘Mr Walker? This is your six thirty alarm call.'

‘You have the wrong room. This is Frank Bell in 105.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry, sir! You have a nice day now.'

‘You too,' said Frank. He turned over and tried to get back to sleep but the room was already filled with sunlight and outside the gardener was noisily hosing down the pool. He had only drunk three or four beers at Mo's party but he still felt blurry-headed, as if he had a hangover.

He kept thinking about what Mo had said. He could very well be right about this spirit that was masquerading as Danny. But that still didn't answer the question of why, or what it was that the spirit was trying to tell him.

At six fifty-one he got out of bed and spooned some dark roast coffee into the percolator. Then he took a shower, although he turned the water off three or four times and listened, because he thought he heard the phone ringing. This was ridiculous. Here he was, a grown man, a well-known TV writer, a husband and a father, waiting for some girl to call him and tell him how he was going to spending his weekend.

He sat on his balcony drinking coffee and eating a toasted muffin with apricot jelly. He felt unsettled – not only because Astrid hadn't called, and he still couldn't get in touch with Nevile – but because he didn't have any writing to do. This was the first weekend in three years when he hadn't been pushed to finish a new episode of
Pigs
. He had already blocked out a new storyline in which Dusty had at last won the heart of the classroom beauty, Libby Polaski. Ever since episode three, Dusty had harbored fantasies about sitting on the banks of the Thick Silty River with Libby, picking the scabs off her knees and eating them. ‘At the age of twelve, that's about as close as you're going to get to oral sex.' But now there was no point in writing any more.

Maybe he could work on a series about a man whose son was killed, and the son's spirit comes back to help him sort out his tangled love life. Half tragedy, half bittersweet comedy.

Maybe Astrid would call.

By noon, nobody had knocked on the door and the phone had remained silent, so he decided to drive to the ocean. It was a warm day but a strong wind was blowing from the west, and the clouds were tumbling over each other in their hurry to get to the mountains.

Frank didn't know if he had expected the old man to be there or not, but he had been sitting on the beach for less than ten minutes when he appeared, in his duck-billed baseball cap and purple T-shirt, dragging a moth-eaten gray mongrel behind him on a length of string. The old man stopped about twenty feet away and took off his cap and scratched his scalp.

‘All on your own?' he said, his eyes narrowed against the wind.

‘I was, until now.'

‘Well, Frank, we can't always expect other people to do what we want them to do. Sometimes we have to realize that we're not the sun, and that other people, they're not our planets.'

‘I took your advice.'

‘Oh, yes? And what advice was that?'

‘I kept on putting one foot in front of the other, but I still don't know where the hell it's taking me.'

The old man chuckled and sniffed. ‘Have patience, Frank. You'll find out where you're going, sooner than you think.'

He was sitting on the edge of the bed on Sunday evening, taking off his socks, when there was a frantic knocking at his door.

‘OK, OK! I'm coming!'

He opened the door to find Astrid standing there. Her hair was messed up and she had two crimson bruises under her eyes. She was hugging a dark-blue sweatshirt around herself as if she were cold.

‘For Christ's sake,' said Frank. She limped into the room and immediately sat down on the couch. He saw that she was wearing no shoes, and that her left foot was bleeding. He closed the door and sat down beside her, trying to take hold of her hands. ‘For Christ's sake, Astrid, what the hell's happened?'

‘It doesn't matter. I got into some trouble, is all.'

‘Trouble? What kind of trouble? Look at you – you look like you just went the full distance with Mike Tyson!'

‘It doesn't matter. Could I have a drink, please?'

He went through to the kitchen and brought her back a glass of Diet Coke.

‘A drink, Frank. A proper drink.'

‘You think you ought to? Look at the state of you.'

‘Frank, you're not my mother.'

He poured her a Jack Daniel's, straight up. She tipped it back in one, coughed, and held out her glass for another.

‘So . . . are you going to tell me what happened? I thought we were going to Rancho Santa Fe.'

‘I'm sorry about that, Frank. I had to go see somebody.'

‘And that somebody beat up on you? Are you going to tell me who it was?'

She took another swallow of whiskey. ‘I told you, it doesn't matter. I deserved it.'

‘Look,' he said, sitting down beside her again, ‘I don't have any right to stick my nose in your private business, but you and I are a little more than friends, aren't we? And when you come back here all covered in bruises, I think I deserve an explanation.'

‘I'm sorry about Rancho Santa Fe. I should have called you.'

‘What happened? Where did you go?'

She looked at him and he thought that he had never seen anybody looking so sad. ‘I'm sorry,' she repeated.

They sat for a long time in silence. Astrid sipped her whiskey and kept her eyes on the television, even though the sound was turned down. Frank kept his eyes on Astrid. A television reporter was standing amongst the shattered remains of Happy, Sneezy, Sleepy and Bashful. The caption read ‘Disney Death Toll Reaches 113.'

Fifteen

H
e pulled open the shower door without warning. Astrid tried to cover herself, but it was no use. She couldn't hide the bruises on her shoulders and her thighs, or the bite-marks on her breasts. She stood there with water coursing down her face, half ashamed and half defiant.

Frank took a long, long look at her, and then he closed the door. He was sitting on the end of the bed waiting for her when she came out of the shower, wrapped in a thick white hotel robe.

‘I don't know what to think about this,' Frank told her, and he didn't.

Astrid stood in front of the mirror and toweled her hair. ‘What you don't know can't hurt you, can it?'

‘That's bullshit. Anything that hurts you hurts me.'

‘Frank, we've spent two nights together. It's not as if we're married.'

‘Danny said that you were my future. Don't you think that counts for something? It does to me.'

‘For God's sake, Frank, Danny didn't tell you anything. It was Nevile Strange and Nevile Strange is a fake.'

‘Well, I don't agree. I heard what I heard and I saw what I saw. And if you're
not
my future, why do you keep calling me and coming around to see me and sharing my bed?'

Astrid came up to him and gently tilted his chin up so that they were looking at each other eye to eye. ‘I thought you needed somebody. Somebody who understood how much you're hurting. I also thought that you needed to forget about Danny for a few hours, and think about yourself.'

‘Right now I'm thinking about you. I don't see how we can sustain any kind of relationship unless I know who you are.'

Astrid smiled and kissed him on the forehead. ‘I'm just
me
, Frank. I'm not worth losing any sleep over.'

‘I need to know who hurt you. I also need to know
why
they hurt you.'

She kissed him again. She smelled of summers gone by. ‘No, you don't.'

They both drank too much Jack Daniel's that evening, and when they went to bed they fell asleep almost at once. But Frank was woken in the middle of the night by Astrid tugging his penis. He mumbled, ‘No,' but she pressed her hand over his mouth, and continued to rub him, harder and harder. When he grew stiff, she climbed on top of him and guided him inside her, gasping with pain.

‘
Astrid!
' he cried, and tried to push her off him, but she gripped his wrists and held him flat on the bed.

As she approached orgasm, she began to sob and snuffle. Again he tried to roll over, but she screamed at him, ‘Don't! Don't!' and she jumped up and down on him faster and faster until she finally went into spasm, her thighs gripping him tight, her perspiration dropping on his face and scalding his eyes.

Afterward she lay with her back to him, quivering, and when he touched her face with his fingertips her cheeks were wet with tears.

‘Astrid,' he said, ‘you have to tell me who did this to you.'

‘I can't.'

‘You have to. Whoever he is, he deserves to be in prison.'

‘I'm not worth it, Frank. I've never been worth it.'

He sat up and switched on the bedside light. ‘How can you say that? You're beautiful.'

‘No, I'm not. I'm nothing.'

He didn't know what to say to that. He was too tired and his head was banging and his mouth was all furred up. But he knew one thing for certain. He would find out who had beat up on Astrid, and he would make sure that the bastard got what he deserved, in spades.

The next morning Astrid slept until almost eleven o'clock. The red bruises on her cheekbones had already turned purple and her eyes were almost closed. The first thing Frank did was sit on the bed beside her and hold up his shaving mirror.

‘Oh, God,' she said.

‘You're still not going to tell me who did it?'

She shook her head.

‘All right. If you won't tell me, you won't tell me. That's your privilege. What are you doing today? How about lunch at Captain Hooker's, up the coast? Come on, you can always wear dark glasses.'

‘No, I'm busy today.'

‘How about this evening?'

‘This evening? Well . . . OK.'

‘I'll see you round seven, then? That's if you don't change your mind and go off to get another beating.'

‘Frank . . .'

‘Yes, I know. Not funny. You'd think that I'd be able to come up with a really good gag about it, wouldn't you, a professional humorist like me? “Does your boyfriend beat you up?” – pause – “No, I'm always out of bed first.”'

‘Frank . . .'

‘I care about you, Astrid, even if you don't care about yourself. I can't understand why you don't want to tell me anything about yourself, but if that's the way you want it, I'm prepared to accept it. I'd rather go on seeing you, even if you keep me in the dark. Even if you come back with bruises and bites and you won't say who did them.'

Astrid kissed him. ‘You're a rare man, Frank.'

No I'm not
, he thought.
I'm a liar
.

He made two mugs of strong coffee and they drank it together in the living room. He didn't really know what to say to her, because he felt so angry and jealous and he didn't want her to know.

‘So, what are you doing today?' he asked her, trying to sound offhand. ‘Anything interesting?'

‘Running a few errands, that's all. Meeting some friends.'

‘Well . . . if you're finished before seven, you can call me any time.'

She didn't answer, but put down her half-empty coffee mug, stood up, and came over to kiss him. ‘I'll see you this evening, OK?'

‘Sure.'

He waited until she had closed the door behind her. He counted to five, slowly. Then he reached under the couch and pulled out his light tan deck shoes. He picked up his blue linen coat, grabbed his cellphone, and went to the door. He opened it quickly but very quietly, and listened. No footsteps on the stairs; no elevator whining. She must have left the hotel by now.

He hurried down the staircase to the lobby. He was just in time to see Astrid outside in the street, climbing into a red and green taxi. He leaned back against the wall, half-concealed by a bushy fig plant, until the taxi had pulled away. The receptionist raised an eyebrow at him but didn't say anything. As soon as the taxi had disappeared, he pushed his way out through the revolving doors. His own car was parked only fifty feet up the hill, its front wheels cramped against the curb. He climbed into it, started the engine, and backed it into the front bumper of the Jeep parked behind him.

Astrid's taxi took a left on Holloway Drive, and then a tight right on to Santa Monica. Frank had to wait at the intersection with Santa Monica, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, while a long, dawdling procession of traffic crawled past. But by weaving in and out of the west-bound traffic he caught up with the taxi by the time it reached Rodeo Drive. He could see Astrid's head in the rear window, and he prayed that she wouldn't turn around.

Eventually the taxi took a left into the Avenue of the Stars, and then another right, and pulled into the semicircular parking space in front of the Star-TV building, which was new and gleaming-white, built in an S-shaped wave, with a huge revolving star on the roof, made of dazzling steel. Its windows were all tinted black, and its staff called it the ‘Limo.'

Frank drew into the curb behind a UPS delivery truck and watched as Astrid climbed out of the taxi. She crossed the white marble sidewalk and disappeared into the Limo's black-tinted revolving doors.

Frank hesitated for a moment, then got out of his car and followed her. There was a chance that she was still in the lobby, waiting for somebody to meet her, or waiting for an elevator, but he would just have to risk it. He pushed his way inside and was instantly met by a penetrating air-conditioned chill. The lobby was clad in white polished marble, three stories high, with water cascading down one wall and a galaxy of stars suspended from the ceiling.