Impersonal Attractions (28 page)

“I told you this topic was hot!” Millie had said. “We’ll do ‘Today,’ we’ll do ‘Donahue.’”

Was Millie crazy? She’d only written three chapters and now TV! She had nothing to wear.

Millie had chattered on with the cheerleading and motherly clucking that made her so valuable as an agent and long-distance friend.

“Just go sit at the typewriter,” she had signed off. “I’ll take you shopping when you get to New York.”

Annie couldn’t contain herself. She called her parents, Sam, Tom, Quynh, Angie and Frank. She called almost everyone she’d ever known. By the time she was done her long-distance bill would be bigger than her advance.

When she finished the calls nobody was available to play and she couldn’t just stay home. So she took herself downtown and bought something short, black, and slinky. In Magnin’s she ran into her writing student, Eve Gold, and flung herself on Eve’s bosom with the good news.

Mrs. Gold grabbed her hand and marched her straight into a cab, over to Nob Hill and Fournou’s Ovens at the Stanford Court Hotel.

“My friend, the famous author, needs a snack,” she said to the waiter. “A bottle of your best champagne and four ounces of Beluga caviar—for now.”

*

Annie was happily drunk by the time she arrived home. A message from Tom awaited her.

“Sorry about this damned meeting tonight. I’d love to be with you. But tomorrow night we’ll celebrate. Get dressed up pretty, and be hungry and ready to go at eight.”

That was easy. She held up the new, slinky black dress against herself in the mirror.

And then she gave in to the champagne whirlies. It was time for a nap. A well-deserved, very long nap.

*

“Toot-toot!” The raspy bleats of children’s party horns heralded the arrival of the three musketeers at her door. Along with a shower of confetti and a bouquet of balloons.

Sean poured a round of champagne and, after toasts to the book, to friendship, to love, they were ready to step out for the evening.

Almost.

“Not quite so fast there, little lady,” Tom said. “Close your eyes. This is
really
going to be a surprise!” And with that he slipped a blindfold over her eyes.

“Trust me,” he said, “you’re in good hands.”

*

It was thrilling, this fantasy of abduction, even if she did know she was in the back seat of a sedan with Sean, a policeman, at the wheel. Her other senses heightened, she was aware of her slip of a black satin dress sliding against the leather seat. Samantha’s laughter from the front seat was silvery. Tom’s after-shave, cigarette smoke, the zing of a breath mint. The tires whooshed on the pavement and she leaned heavily into the hard, woolly warmth of Tom’s body.

They drove for maybe ten minutes. Then she heard brakes, the voice of a valet attendant. Hands helped her out. A burst of laughter, a few steps, and they were inside a space crowded with noise and people.

“Surprise!” The blindfold came off and she was awash in the sparkles of revolving ballroom lights.

“I’m your lifeguard. May I help you to your seat?” asked a tall man in red swim trunks and T-shirt.

It was her favorite cabaret
—Beach Blanket Babylon.
She’d seen many versions in its seven-year run, but not this latest:
BBB Goes to the Stars…and the Beach!

She clapped her hands with delight. Tom, Sam, and Sean smiled. It was the right choice for her celebration. With food flown in from New York: Sabrett hot dogs, knishes, egg creams, and the famous Madison Avenue Greenberg’s brownies. Who could ask for anything more?

The cabaret was loonier and tunier than ever. It was the quintessential San Francisco show—funny, camp, magical, fantastic. A dancing box of Tide rushed in and kissed the shore. An Academy Awards envelope belted “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” The headdresses of Cuckoo Racha, the matchmaker, grew more bangled and bananaed with each costume change as she tried to help the innocent Snow White in her search for Prince Charming.

There were razzmatazz, fancy hoofing, and ridiculous puns that had them pounding on one another with helpless laughter.

In among all the silliness, the lyrics spelled out the show’s theme.

Someday he’ll come along, the man I love.

On stage, Snow White burst out of her shell, opened her heart, strutted her stuff, and discovered the man she loved in “a very pretty little city without pity” San Francisco, right in her own backyard. Annie’s eyes filled with tears.

Her book, her friends, Tom—it was too much. She thought her heart would burst.

FORTY-THREE

Ac
ross from Annie’s apartment, Eddie Simms watched and waited. He’d been following her routine for three days now. A pile of stubbed-out Picayunes grew at his feet as he watched Annie Tannenbaum come and go, her apartment lights flick on and off.

It had been difficult at first. She had no regular pattern: no nine to five, exercise classes at odd times of the day, her
boyfriend in and out and overnight. Eddie’s hours at the flower market were three to eleven in the morning. He couldn’t afford to miss a day of work.

But then it dawned on him. The one constant in her schedule. Of course. He had known it all along. Her Monday- and Wednesday-night classes. He had dropped out, but she had always been there. He could depend on that.

So it would be a little different from the rest of them, maybe a little harder. But the prize would be worth it.

*

“And then,” Eve Gold was saying, “I add a little allspice, my secret ingredient.” She was sharing her recipe for chili with Annie as they walked toward their cars in the parking lot after class.

“Sounds great. I’ll have to try it for Tom. He’s mad about chili.”

“Looks like that’s not the only thing he’s mad about.” Eve beamed at her. “You’re simply glowing.”

“Does it show that much?”

“My dear, love always shows in a woman’s face. Just like pregnancy. Five minutes later, I can tell.”

“Five minutes? You under the bed?”

Mrs. Gold waggled a finger at her. “You know what I mean. Anyway, I’m so happy for you. I was beginning to worry.”

“About me?”

“Of course about you. A smart, nice-looking girl like you, you should be married.”

“Eve, you sound like my Aunt Essie.”

“Obviously your Aunt Essie is a smart lady. She knows what’s good for you too.”

Annie laughed and buttoned her blazer. It was cold out here near the ocean. She should have worn a heavier sweater.

“Did it ever occur to you that I might not want to get married again? That I like living alone? Just the other day I read something Katharine Hepburn said about marriage being overrated. Maybe I agree with her.”

“Katharine Hepburn is an old lady. Besides, Spencer Tracy was already married.”

“That doesn’t mean she was wrong.”

“Doesn’t mean she was right either. And she’s a movie star. You’re not.”

At Eve’s car, they continued to talk.

“Take my advice. If this nice man who makes you look so happy asks you to marry him, do it. I look around me in this city. I know what’s going on. It’s not as if most men I see are even interested in women. You’re not going to get an offer every day.

“Now,” she reached in her bag for her keys, “you want to go for a drink?”

“I’d love to, but I’m a little tired after last night. Have to get my beauty sleep if I’m going to look pretty for my…beau.”

“That’s the spirit! Maybe next Monday. And,” she shot Annie a cautionary look, “you keep thinking about what I said. A hard man is good to find.”

Annie laughed. “You mean a good man is hard to find.”

Eve Gold winked. “That too, dear, that too.”

FORTY-FOUR

D
riving home from class, Annie tuned in KFAT, her favorite country and western station. It broadcast from Gilroy, garlic capital of the world.

The DJ was playing one of her all-time top ten—the name of which she could never seem to remember. Nor did she ever get to it in time to tape it. It started like an ordinary C&W song, but broke in the middle with a verse that tried to wrap up the entire C&W experience:

I was drunk the day my ma got out of prison

And I went to pick her up in the rain

Before I got to the station in a pickup truck

She got runned over by a danged old train

One of these days she was going to have to call the station and find out the name of that tune.

She passed Petrini’s Market a block from home. What was she going to make Tom for dinner tomorrow night?

Chicken? She’d done that too recently.

Angie’s mother’s spaghetti sauce? Maybe he wouldn’t like it as well as his own mom’s. Anyway, she’d need to start it tonight and it was much too late.

She stopped the car in her driveway and got out to unlock and open the garage door.

Maybe a rack of lamb. She hadn’t done that in ages. With lots of garlic and French rosemary.

She flipped on the light switch beside the garage door and climbed back in the car.

Lamb and broiled tomatoes with fresh basil. Could she find basil this time of year?

She parked Agatha in her spot in the back of the garage and locked her. She’d like to think she could trust her new radio and tape player to the people she shared a garage with, but common sense told her she couldn’t be too careful.

Rice? No, buttered noodles. Or roasted potatoes. That would be good. And a green salad.

She pulled the garage door down by its rope on the inside. It crashed with a satisfying
ka-boom
on the concrete floor. She was getting so strong in exercise class. One hand!

Maybe fresh asparagus if she could find it. She’d look for it along with the basil. It would be worth calling around for.

She turned and walked toward the door to the lobby, keys in hand.

And for dessert…apples and cheese would be fine. Maybe a Stilton, a double Gloucester. Or even a Gorgonzola.

Suddenly the garage went black.

Profoundly black. It was like the elevator ride when Tom had turned off the light.

The bulb must have blown, she thought. But there were several. Would they all have gone at once? She’d have to find the other switch, the one beside the lobby door. Now how far ahead of her was it? She couldn’t see a thing.

Eddie Simms had closed his eyes against the garage light when he’d slipped in after her and crouched behind the first car. Eyes squeezed tight, he’d listened to her park, to her footsteps as she approached the garage door and as she’d walked away. Then he counted to five, reached up, and doused the light. He’d planned it carefully, knew how many steps it would take her. Now he must be quick.

He opened his eyes. Just as he’d planned. He had cat’s eyes, and in the dark she was blind.

*

Goddamn Tony, she said to herself. Why couldn’t he replace the light bulbs once in a while?
Before
they blew.

She groped toward the door, bumped into a car, dropped a book.

But what was that sound? The falling book, or was that something else? Before she had time to finish the thought Eddie Simms crooked his left arm around her neck.

“Gotcha,” he rasped into her ear.

Her blood stopped. In her mind’s eye she saw it, dark red, like a pool of Cabernet, deep and still in a wide-mouthed glass.

Her fear thrummed like a wave across the tension of the ruby-red liquid and then skittered away as it hit the edges.

Visions flashed in milliseconds on the screen inside her head. She saw her ex-husband Bert lifting the back of a pickup truck out of the mud on a lonely back road, his back straining with the force born of necessity.

Herself, one cold night in Atlanta, carrying a friend who had slit her wrists over a love turned sour into the college infirmary at midnight. Carrying her as easily as if she were a bag of groceries.

Then steel replaced the blood in her veins, coiled steel. But she’d have to be patient, to wait until the right time to unleash it. While she waited, time crawled, the black creeping in. The dark of the grave.

“Yes, bitch, I’ve got you now,” he whispered in her ear. His voice was the one that desperate men use in the middle of the night on the telephone, to terrify women they can’t see. The voice that arouses women from a deep sleep they’re afraid to return to.

Eddie tightened his hold on her neck, flexing his biceps. If there had been any light, he could have seen the blue lettering of his tattoos jump above the coiling muscles. He liked that.

The muscles in his groin quickened too. He felt himself jump up against her hips. Not as high as he’d have liked. He had heard her heels tapping against the concrete floor. She was taller than he’d expected. But he’d get her down soon. Down where he wanted her. It was just a matter of time.

He smelled the perfume radiating off the warm neck he cradled in the crook of his arm. And her hair, those masses of blonde hair fresh with shampoo, enveloped him, billowing into his face, creeping into his open mouth as his breathing grew faster, harder.