The Day I Killed James (7 page)

She said, “I can drive you on to Highway Forty-six. It’s only a few minutes out of my way.”

“That would be very nice, if you didn’t mind. If you don’t mind my asking, who were you talking to just then?”

She looked over at his face in the half dark. Closer now, she could see pockmarks in his skin, a remnant of teenage acne perhaps. He smelled like he hadn’t bathed recently, but she felt buoyed by the company and disinclined to judge him. She also knew that many homeless people had mental problems, but she couldn’t find the line to separate him from herself even if that were the case.

So she said, “A friend of mine who died.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s a good thing to do, then.”

“Think so?”

“If it helps. When somebody dies, that’s such a hard thing. Whatever you do to feel better is a good thing. Do you feel better?”

“Maybe a little bit.”

“Well, that’s good, then.”

“Tell me something. Do you think that when somebody dies he’s still around somewhere? Or do you think he just
isn’t
anymore? At all?”

The stranger sat with that a moment. Then he said, “I think everybody is somewhere. But as to where somebody is when they’ve died…I’m not smart enough to know that.”

“No. Me either,” she said. “Come on. Let’s get on the road now.”

They drove down the coast in comfortable silence for a few minutes. She reached into her glove compartment and took out a near-empty pack of cigarettes. Shook one out and took it with her lips and then held the pack out as an offering to her passenger, who’d seemed interested in her movements since the pack appeared.

“That’s kind of you,” he said. “I could sure use one. But you only have a couple left. Maybe I shouldn’t.”

“Go ahead,” she said. “We can stop on the road and get more.”

He took it. Took her offer of a light. Sat back and smoked in satisfaction for a few miles.

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “have you eaten?”

“Not since yesterday morning, no.”

“Well, we’ll stop and get a good breakfast. It’s on me.”

“You’re a kind person,” he said.

“No,” she said. “I’m not. I wish I could say you’re right. I always used to think I was. But it turns out that, when it really counts, I’m not.”

“I guess I don’t know you,” he said. “You seem like a kind person to me.”

“Maybe I’m trying to overcompensate.”

“Well, whatever the reason, I’ll take you up on the offer of breakfast.”

When the waitress came by, she looked at the two of them, sitting on opposite sides of the booth, and took one step back. Annie and her passenger ordered their breakfasts anyway. She did not take out her pad and write the orders down. When they fell silent again, the three just looked at one another.

Then the waitress said, “Mind if I ask if one of you has money to pay for this?”

Annie reached into her jeans pocket for a wad of bills. Three twenties, a five. A few ones. Laid them on the table in a clump.

“I’m terribly sorry,” the waitress said.

“Don’t be,” Annie told her.

“I really meant no offense.”

“None taken.”

“What was that second order?” She took her pad out and wrote it all down.

Annie made a mental note to leave her a good tip, to change her expectations for next time, the next customer.

After the waitress left, Annie looked across the table at her passenger. He looked surprisingly unkempt in this good lighting. “I’d like to ask your advice on something.”

He laughed. His teeth were stained but good and straight, and when he laughed he looked like a child. Like the child he must have been at one time.

“What’s funny?”

“It’s just that nobody’s said that to me for a long time. But go ahead.”

“Okay. Let’s say you have something inside you—a drive, a desire. A force, let’s say—that’s pushing you to do something that you know in your heart is dangerous. Is it better to resist it? Or would it be better to find an outlet for it? The safest one possible?”

“Well, that depends,” he said, blowing on his cup of coffee. Holding it with both hands close to him. Clearly a treasure. “I’d say it depends on whether resisting it is likely to work.”

They drank their coffee in silence until the waitress came back with their food.

“Thank you for this,” he said before digging in. “This is a great blessing. I’m sorry I wasn’t much help with advice.”

“No, you were,” she said. “You told me just what I needed to know.”

She drove him to the corner of Highway 1 and 46 East. Wished him luck. She didn’t ask his name because it didn’t seem relevant.

FOUR

The Specter Steals Cigarettes

When she arrived home, her phone was back. Sitting on the cinder-block stairs to her front porch. Its cord had been carefully wound around the receiver. Just sitting there waiting for her, like a gift.

When she opened the door and stepped inside, she saw her broken living room window had been carefully covered with a plastic garbage bag. White plastic, taped neatly on all four sides with duct tape. From the outside. She sat down and tried to think. She knew none of her neighbors, and as far as she could tell Frieda had gone home. Todd maybe? He knew where she lived now. Maybe. Maybe Todd.

She tried to reconnect the phone, but she’d pulled the wire out of the little plastic connector, which sat comfortably in the phone jack as if it could fulfill its usual purpose there. She took it out, stared at it, stared at the end of the wire. Wondered whether she could fix it if she had some kind of tool. Pliers, maybe. Those things that people tend to have available in a drawer when they haven’t recently run away from home.

Then, feeling too tired to consider it any longer, she went to bed. Tried to catch up on sleep before the morning, when she had to be at work, acting as if nothing had ever been wrong nor ever would be.

She drove in to work an hour early, hoping to get a moment to talk to Todd. It worked out better than she had imagined. As she pulled past the security kiosk, she found him waiting for the next bus up the hill. She pulled over, and he climbed in, as if the whole moment had been carefully arranged.

She said, “I thought you always drove up.”

He said, “I thought I did, too. But my truck is making a funny noise. I’m hoping it might last till payday if I leave it at the bottom of the hill.”

“About the other night—”

He raised a hand to stop her. “You don’t have to say a thing. It’s a nonissue. It’s all forgotten.”

“What’s all forgotten?”

His head took on that tilt. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t let this get around, okay? But when I drink…particularly tequila…I’ve been known to lose big blocks of time. If you know what I mean.”

He nodded slowly.

Annie nosed the car around a sharp curve, and a herd of aoudads swept down the brown hill, came to the edge of the road, panicked. She braked, and they crossed in front of the car, leaping and bolting and bumping into one another. Strangely walleyed Barbary sheep with billy-goat beards, descendants of the old Hearst zoo. Still alive and well as a herd after all these years. Maybe fifty of them. Maybe more.

They sat and watched in silence until the last stragglers had crossed. Then she hit the gas again.

Todd said, “Well, anyway. Nothing happened.”

“I was worried that I might’ve given you some mixed signals.”

“Not at all. No such thing. We just had a couple of drinks, and then you let me walk you home.”

“Thank God,” she said, then wondered if he might misinterpret that.

Before she could rephrase the thought, he said, “I tried to call you a couple of times. See if you were okay. But I didn’t get any answer.”

“I took a drive up the coast. Also, I was having a little trouble with my phone. As you know. Shit. I have a ten-hour day today. Then when I get home I have a guy coming by to fix the window. Not that you didn’t do a swell patch on the window.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

They came around a tight bend and found themselves stuck behind a tour bus. Annie slowed. Said “Shit” again. She wasn’t allowed to pass unless the driver indicated she should, a special gesture of permission with his turn signal. “I think that’s Wes. He’ll never let us by. He lives to torment guides.”

“Could be George.”

“That would be a major break.”

The left rear turn signal on the bus began a welcome flashing, and the bus pulled slightly right. Annie steered around it, waved when she drew level with the driver. Todd waved, too.

“George,” she said. “Good old George.”

“Good old George started this rumor on the hill that you pulled by him one morning and hiked your skirt up a little. Showed him some leg as you went by. Do you believe that?”

“Yeah, I believe it. But then, I was there.”

“You actually did that?”

“I actually did that.”

“I can’t believe that. We were all so sure he was lying. Why did you do that? No, never mind. That was none of my business.”

“He just looked like he needed something like that. You know?”

“Not really. Now I’m jealous. What’s this thing you were saying about your phone and your window? I never got what you meant about that.”

“Didn’t you bring my phone back?”

“No. Where did it go?”

“You didn’t tape up my window?”

“No, I wasn’t by your house at all. Except when I walked you home.”

“Well, that’s really weird, then. Because I don’t know any of my neighbors. Not even to say hello.”

“Maybe one of your neighbors is secretly in love with you.”

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“Oh. Okay. Sorry. I’m always hitting a nerve, aren’t I?”

“Not your fault. I’m all nerves.” She pulled up to the big iron gate, stopped to run her gate card through the sensor box. A young doe lay in wait by the side of the road. Hesitant. Trying to decide whether to rush through or not. Annie purposely hung back, let her car coast back downhill slightly, and the deer bolted in.

As they drew through the gate, past the guide trailer, Todd said, “You wanted that deer to get in. Didn’t you?”

“I like to watch the gardeners all running around like crazy trying to chase them out before they eat the roses. It gives me something to do.”

When she arrived home from work it was nearly dusk and the handyman was waiting on her front porch, glancing at his watch. A heavy older man with white hair and a beard, too disagreeable and too intent on watching her body to remind her of Santa Claus. She walked up the cinder-block steps.

“You have to take the window out from the outside anyway,” she said, not liking him already. “You could’ve started.”

“Whatever,” he said, and went around the back of the trailer.

Annie let herself in, slipped out of her shoes. Sighed, sat down, and began to rub her feet. She wanted to take off her nylons but would have to go into another room to do it. And it seemed like such a long way away.

She took a cigarette from the pocket of her blue polyester blazer. Decided if she ever got smart enough to quit this job she’d never wear polyester again. Which she supposed might have gone without saying, since she’d never once worn it before getting the job. But it felt good to make that commitment all the same.

She lit the cigarette, drew deeply. Closed her eyes and blew smoke toward the ceiling. Set her right foot on her left knee and massaged it again. Opened her eyes to see that disturbing old man staring at her through the broken window. His hands working at the edges of the molding while his eyes worked on her.

She got up and walked out to the front porch, slamming the door. Stood in the cool dusk and drew a second hit and knew she needed to get out of these panty hose.

She set the cigarette in a glass ashtray on the porch rail. Went inside, back to her bedroom, and changed into jeans and a sweater.

Then she walked barefoot back to the front porch to take another hit, but the cigarette was gone. She looked on the porch, thinking it had fallen. Then trotted down the cinder-block stairs and looked in the dirt under the porch rail. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t anywhere. And there wasn’t the slightest breeze. It took her a minute or two to accept that it hadn’t fallen. It hadn’t blown away. It was gone. It had simply left somehow.

She walked back inside and lit another, too tired to worry about it yet.

The handyman had the old window out, and he was nowhere to be seen, which seemed like an improvement. She walked to the open window space and looked out over the heavily wooded creek bed. Just smoked and looked out. Blew smoke through the missing window and glanced at her watch and wished he’d hurry this up.

Her eyes caught a point of light in the creek bed, a glow. She focused more closely and saw a girl sitting in the greenery, watching her. Staring right back. How old a girl was hard for Annie to say, because the girl was many yards away and partly obscured by brush. And Annie was no good at the age of children anyway, having no siblings and no real reason to care. So the girl could have been as young as eight or as old as thirteen. But she was definitely smoking a cigarette. And her face was dirty, her dark hair shaggy and thin and not recently washed. And she returned Annie’s stare flatly. Unafraid. Not hostile exactly, but cool and even. As though the safety of her wild surroundings would support her, provide her with a power she was not about to relinquish to anyone.

The girl lifted the cigarette for another puff, lifted it a bit higher than necessary in front of her face, as if to make a point of it. Brag over the fact that she had it and was far enough away to keep it.

“Yeah, you enjoy the rest of that, you little thief,” Annie said, but in a quiet voice not intended to carry.

The handyman returned, and Annie spun away from the window. Grabbed her checkbook.

When she looked up again, all was as it had been. The handyman was staring at her chest, and the creek bed was empty except for the green things. She knew the girl had been there, that she had seen something real, and so wondered why it seemed so dreamlike now. Why she should question whether or not the little thief had ever been there at all.

The following evening, Annie arrived home to see a girl with almost no hair sitting on the stoop outside the trailer next door. Her hair was less than an inch long and badly uneven, as if she’d cut it herself with scissors and no mirror.

Because it took a moment to focus on the girl’s face, Annie did not initially notice that she had seen the girl before. The girl returned her stare coolly, which is part of what gave her identity away.

Annie said, “What are you sitting there for?”

The girl said, “I live here.”

“You’re joking.”

“Why would I joke about it?”

“If there was a kid living next door I think I’d know it.”

“I’m quiet.”

“No shit.” She almost apologized for the language, but the girl hadn’t seemed surprised, and Annie had to remind herself that a girl this age—eleven or twelve, she decided from this close range—probably knew a few choice words even Annie herself did not.

The girl seemed neither friendly nor hostile, and she was clearly not afraid. In fact, she seemed to absorb the attention, half negative though it was.

Annie said, “What happened to your hair?”

“What happened to yours?”

“I shaved it off.”

“Cut mine with a scissors. Mom was pissed.”

“I can imagine. Why did you do it?”

“Why’d you do yours?”

“Not sure exactly. Punishing myself, I guess.” When the girl didn’t answer she added, “Your turn to talk.”

“I just thought yours looked cool. Mine’s all uneven, though.”

“Maybe your mom will fix it up for you.”

The girl forced out a sound that could have passed for a snort of laughter. But her face did not change, and no mirth or amusement evolved. “You don’t know her. She said it serves me right.”

Annie stared a minute more. Nodded. Realized she had nothing more to say. Turned to walk back to her own door. Two steps later it hit her, and she turned back.

The girl’s stare had not moved or changed.

“You’re the one who brought my phone back. Aren’t you?”

“Was that bad?”

“No. It was nice.”

“Oh. Then I did.”

“How did you know where it was?”

“I was down there. In the creek. I’m down there a lot.” When Annie didn’t answer straightaway, she said, as if questioned further, “I have to go to the bathroom down there.”

“Why? What’s wrong with your bathroom?”

“My brother’s always in it.”

Two kids living right next door. And she hadn’t even heard one. “Tell him to get out of there.”

“He can’t.”

“Is he a teenager?”

“He’s thirteen.”

Annie nodded, thinking that explained it. Wanting not to know more. She felt the wear of her long day. Wanted not to have this conversation.

“Well, you can use mine if you need one.”

“Now?”

“Do you need one now?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Come on.”

She opened her front door, swung it wide.

The girl stepped in and looked around. “Saw you got the window fixed.”

“How did you even get up that high to patch it?”

“I had to stand on a box.”

The two stood awkwardly for a moment, neither speaking, and the girl found her own way to the bathroom. Annie could hear the sound of water, the toilet flush. She sat down heavily and removed her shoes. Lit a cigarette.

The girl came back out and stood with one hand on the door. “Can I have a cigarette before I go?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“They’re no good for you.”

“They’re no good for you, either.”

“That’s not the point, though. If I smoke, that’s called stupid. If I give you one, that’s called contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Which you are. I’m still not sure I believe you live next door. I would have heard you.”

“I told you. I’m quiet.”

“I’d at least have seen you.”

“You’ve seen me. Lots of times. You just never looked. You just never noticed. Not even when I did something nice for you. I had to steal something to get you to notice me.”

She swung the door open and slammed it hard behind her.

Annie sat quietly, finished up the cigarette. Then changed into jeans and her most comfortable shoes. Walked down to the market and bought a frozen dinner, a six-pack of Coronas, and two more packs of cigarettes.

Then stopped at the pharmacy on the way home and bought an electric hair trimmer. Not just for the punk, she reminded herself. She’d use it, too. It might even be a step in the right direction. Over a razor, that is.

When she got home, the punk kid was nowhere around. She knocked on the trailer the girl claimed to live in. First nothing, no voice or footsteps.