Elsinore Canyon (28 page)

Dana had also fallen to her knees just outside the circle. Laurie’s eyes fell on Dana’s dress, visible behind ankles and dark cuffs, and traveled rapidly to her face—the last one on earth she wanted to see.
“You.”

Shocked mourners stepped around, revealing Dana’s wide eyes, fixed on the box. “Phil.” Hands stretched out to set her upright, and she fell back into a lattice of arms. “What the hell has been going on here? When, how—”

“You!?” screamed Laurie. She tottered up. “You killed him! You didn’t even care that he died, and now you have to come here and ruin this!”

“Me,
kill him. Me, not care?”

“Get out of here!” Laurie swung her fists. “Who do you think you are, showing up here now?”

Dana shook away from the supporting arms and faced Laurie through stunned, wet eyes. “I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.
I’m Dana Hamlet!”

“I came from the same womb as him!” Laurie screamed. “I’m his sister, do you hear me, and I will keep your filthy hands off of him!” Her arm shot out to Dana’s throat and she pulled her down. They grappled in the white-and-grey fragments.

The air was filled with shouts and cries—“Oh God!” “Separate them!” “Step back, step back!” Stockinged legs were skinned, and a flurry of arms fought to untangle the two girls.

Dana rolled away from the mound and her hands rose to her mangled throat, which was smeared with grey. She recoiled at the gritty feel and looked at her fingers, horror-struck. Her arms were smeared, her dress. Phil’s bones and tissues. Her father was at her side, holding her on her feet and saying her name over and over. Dr. Claudia, beautiful in black, extricated herself from the clump that restrained Laurie. She stared in awe and bewilderment as Dana fought in her father’s grip like a tigress. “Fuck sisters! I loved him for his soul, not his blood!”

“Dana, you’re…off,” her father panted. “Baby, your mind is running away.” He crushed her against his side and held off the shocked crowd. “She’ll be all right in a while. She’s been upset since her mother died.”

Dana jabbed her head out from her father’s encircling arm and snarled at Laurie. “What’s your problem with me? We were friends, I never did anything to you!”

“Come on, Dana,” her father said as he dragged her towards my car. I was moving that way, too.

“God damned diseased minds!” Dana gasped as her father dragged her away. “Hurt me! Try! You’ll be the sorry ones!”

Her father loaded her into my car. She pulled her knees up and whimpered. “I’m sorry.”

“Horst, take her up to the house,” Mr. Hamlet said. He put his hand on Dana. “Baby—”

“I w-want to go,” she sobbed. “I wanna be with H-horst.”

“I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days,” he said to her. “You never picked up your phone, you never answered your mail—”

“And I wouldn’t spy on yours!”

“Spy? Wha— okay.”

Dana moaned. “I didn’t think it was safe.”

Mr. Hamlet looked at me. “Horst, I thought you knew. He drowned last Wednesday, surfing, it was in the news. Marcellus and I, none of us thought—”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s my fault, not checking in. How’s Polly?”

“Alive.”

I backed my car out and took Dana away. She didn’t want to go back to Santa Barbara. We still had her luggage and mine, so I drove to a motel near the Beach Bean and got us a room.

She flopped into a chair and looked down at herself: ashes, still, all over her. She hadn’t rubbed them or touched a thing. “Horst,” she said weakly. “Clean me up, will you?”

“All right.”

“I don’t want to see it.”

“You won’t.” She shut her eyes while I swabbed her neck, her shoulders, her hands, her legs. I used all the cloths from the bathroom and then I had to find some wipes in my car; she wouldn’t let me wash anything down the drain.

“You’ll get rid of those things?” she said. She still wasn’t looking at herself, or the things I’d cleaned her with. “Completely, rid of them?”

“Yes.”

“Respectfully, Horst.”

“However you want it.”

She opened her eyes and stared upward. “Is there anything on my dress?”

“Some.”

Her eyes rolled down to mine. She looked at me plaintively for a moment, then leaned forward and rested her forehead on my shoulder. I moved her hair off the back of her neck and unzipped her. She sat up, obediently, and let me pull her dress down, off her shoulders, and over her knees and feet. She sat there in a lacey bra and underpants.

“You want to take a shower and get changed, and I’ll go take care of it?” I said.

“There’s no more on me?”

“No more.”

“Okay.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

She nodded again. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Respectful, Horst. Not in a trash can or anything.”

I went out and bought some lighter fluid and drove to Malibu Creek, where I burned it all, her dress, the wipes, the towels. Those things don’t burn that easily, I discovered.

When I got back, Dana sat up expectantly from the bed, dressed again. She looked at me and I nodded. “It’s done.”

“Completely? There was nothing left?”

“Nothing.” In fact I had overdone it; it probably looked like I was destroying criminal evidence.

She smiled at me wanly. “It always seems to be that way. I should make my motto ‘Better Horst than me.’”

“My motto is, ‘Shut up, I’m your friend.’”

She picked up a piece of paper lying next to her. It was creased and worn, many times folded and unfolded. “You might as well read this. It’s the one e-mail I wrote while I was away. To Phil. I was waiting till I got back to send it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I want you to know. You don’t have to tell me what you think of it.” She pulled her legs back onto the bed and curled up on her side. I read with quite a mix of emotions.

My own darling Phil,

I don’t know what you’ve heard about the things that happened in the main house the night I left, but you must believe this: neither I nor my dad would ever deliberately hurt anyone that way, and I would never at all hurt anyone or anything you love. Your sorrows are mine. I’ll be back soon in the hope of comforting you, and I will explain everything as soon as you like. After the last time we talked I also got the feeling there is something you want to tell me. Fear nothing, Phil. There is nothing that could make me love you less.

That takes me to the main reason for this message. There is so much for both of us to say and it’s so difficult and complicated, so let’s start from scratch, you and I, and say nothing when we meet again. We can pick some time and place to meet—your house, mine, the beach, wherever—and look at each other and say nothing, nothing, until you want us to talk. Whether it’s minutes or hours or days or weeks. Just our hands and eyes, no explanations or apologies, no openings for misunderstanding. Yes, I’ll wait for you to decide when to break our silence. And then I’ll answer any question you ask and say anything you want. Phil, I am so ready to submit my whole will to you. I’ve done it before, you know, and I want to do it again. I want us to connect, just us soul to soul with nothing between us, none of the things we’ve been forced to do because of other people who have no place in our feelings for each other. I tried doing this once before—I went to see you just after you got back from Alaska because I missed you so much, and I was perfectly mute. I spooked you. But I’m so sure it would work if we did it together.

Phil, shall we do it? I so want us to keep loving each other.

Your Dana

Dana curled tighter on the bed. “He did drown. I read about it while you were gone. You told me he was acting strange. Was it my fault he died? No no,” she said quickly. “Sorry—I said you didn’t have to talk to me about it.”

“It’s not your fault. Phil was fragile.” And at that, I was ready to weep for the guy myself. Artistic, passionate, nature-loving, physically perfect, brilliant Phil was gone. We would talk about him in the past tense. The world had barely known him, but how it would miss him. A guy who embodied such goodness and perfection, such a squire, a life that deserved to be told, but who would believe it? Who would believe any description of him that did him justice? Maybe this was how people went crazy.

And yet, with Dana before me in all her vulnerability, the unthinkable thought wouldn’t leave, the one that had numbed my joints and veins while I burned Phil’s ashes to finer ashes, the one that had come to me the day Dana sat on the roof and told me what her mother’s spirit had said to her.
What if Phil didn’t exist?
And now he didn’t. “I’m sorry, Dana,” I said. “I can’t even imagine…”

“Neither can I. People go through this all the time, losing loved ones? How do humans live?”

“We could go outside and see.”

“You want to go out? I’m so…”

“Whatever.” I rolled to her and transferred to the bed—with difficulty, since it was too soft. “I feel like I owe you something. Everything. I didn’t save Phil.”

“Oh, Horst,” she said piteously. “You feel guilty, too?”

Yes, I honestly did.

“Let’s go to the coffee shop and cry,” she said. “Right with everyone staring at us.”

We went to the Beach Bean and took an outdoor sofa, where we sat for hours. Life was going on around us, but we were cocooned in our cares and our desperate gratitude for each other’s presence. We stayed right there, not moving or speaking, all through the afternoon and evening, and into the night. Because of my disability, I had necessities that Dana didn’t. I had to leave her alone while I went to the room. Woops, no towels. When I rolled back out, her voice called softly from the motel’s courtyard. She had grabbed pillows and blankets and spread them on some chaises. “I don’t want to sleep inside,” she said.

“Okay.” I got myself on my back on a chaise, and she rolled onto me.

“Am I squishing you?” she said.

“Not that I can feel.”

“I’m playing with your foot with my foot. You can’t feel that?”

“No. But I can see it.”

“We’re gonna talk about you some time.”

“All right.” We stayed still. I wasn’t sure when either of us fell asleep, but we did, and we stayed warm under layers of blankets even in the night air. It was close to six in the morning when daylight and the sound of traffic woke us up.

Dr. Claudia tiptoed up the cottage steps under the pre-dawn sky. Dull blue, the chill of diurnal certainties that yielded nothing to her prayer for eternal night in her husband’s arms. Through the windows she could make out people sleeping on couches and inflatable mats, their bodies angled like pick-up sticks wherever they’d collapsed. She craved their peace. No Laurie in sight—she would probably be in her own room. Dr. Claudia pushed on the door tentatively.

“What do you want?”

“Shit!” Dr. Claudia spun around. A damp blanket fell to the ground as Laurie got up knock-kneed from a beanbag chair. “I thought you’d be inside.”

The girl stood in front of her. Ripe underarms, purple half-moons under her eyes. “What?”

“It was a rough day yesterday.”

“It’s over.”

“I just wanted to make sure you’re still good with the plan.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I was afraid you might want to take some time with your grief.”

Laurie stared unflinchingly. “I don’t want to take time with that.”

“Well. Good.” Dr. Claudia hesitated. “Dana’s done that to me, too. She pushed you into a corner. I guess you saw there’s only one way out.”

“I’ve had only one way out for a while.” Laurie leaned against a railing. “I was engaged to be married, you know.”

“I heard about it.”

“He could have loved me if he’d tried harder. He didn’t have to make an ass of me.”

What would Garth say? He would see Laurie as lovable and having no reason to give up hope. “Sometimes it takes a while to find the right person.”

“The right person is someone who hates my life as much as I do.”

I pushed two cups at Dana. “That one’s getting warm. And that one’s getting cold.” It was seven in the morning, and we had taken an outdoor table at the Beach Bean, where it was beginning to appear we would spend the rest of our lives. I stared at a piece of bread on my own plate. “I’m not going to eat until you do.”

She pulled herself out of her slouch. “I could live on grief. But since
you
can’t…” She dipped a spoon into a yogurt parfait and licked the edge.

“Thank you for surviving.”

“You’re not going to like this, but if I have to keep living I wish it could be just this, forever.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

“No school, no tomorrow, no future. Just this. One big now.”

I revised my thoughts from the drive in Santa Barbara. Back then, Phil was alive as far as I knew.
This
was now the happiest moment of my life.

She peered into the parking lot and set her spoon down slowly. “Of course.” A small red convertible made a squealing left into the lot and stopped a few feet away from us. Oscar got out and ambled over. A cigarette dangled from the ends of his fingers.

“Good morning, kids,” he said. “Mind if I sit? How is everyone doing?”