Nightlight (6 page)

He swore and knocked. There was dim movement somewhere inside, and the knob twisted like an object trying to escape. The door opened, and a huge pale face smiled down upon Paul.

The man seemed delighted, and kept Paul's hand a moment longer than normal. “Ed Garfield. And you are”—he touched his ear lobe as if it were the seat of memory—“Paul Wright. The restaurant fellow.”

Paul agreed brightly that he was indeed.

“So how can we help you?” The man had a comfortable voice, strangely like a man pretending to be a talking cartoon creature, a friendly bear, or a wise old horse.

Paul had explained on the telephone, but perhaps the man wanted to hear it in person. The man folded large wrinkled hands over a woolly sweater, and leaned back in his chair.

Paul finished.

The man looked up at the ceiling. “I' remember the young man perfectly well. I only do a little managing nowadays. Semiretired. Wife not well …”

Paul made a murmur of sympathy.

“… and I don't know. I could always take work or leave it alone.”

They both laughed about leaving work alone.

“But you know. I really can't help you.”

Paul straightened in his chair.

“Can't. Your young man said not to let anybody bother him in any way. Not a soul. For any reason at all. Period.”

The man—it was hard to call him something so blunt as “Ed”—said these words in the voice of a Walt Disney character. But his eyes were the twinkleless organs of a man who had handled a good deal of money in his day, and could sell anything to anybody.

Paul appreciated this sort of man. This baggy-faced oaf would never go into the restaurant business, a business prickly with so many risks. He would stay forever in real estate, his investments greening under the steady rain.

Paul relaxed. “You're right, of course. I would do exactly what you are doing.”

“Of course, in the emergency situation. A mother. A relative. Well, you know.”

“Absolutely. Your fiduciary responsibility doesn't extend to keeping secrets.”

“Oh, secrets.” The man laughed, a single mild guffaw. “But you know, that Parker cabin.”

Paul waited, uncertain. When the man did not continue, Paul said, “No. Is it a historical place?”

“No.” The man felt his sweater and chuckled shortly. “No, not historical. Except to stretch the meaning. Some pioneers died up there of cholera. You can see the graves if you look around. That's hardly major history.”

Paul felt a twitch of impatience, but smiled.

“Except to stretch the meaning all out of shape,” the man said slowly, with a strangely unpleasant expression on his face. “It's not the sort of place you would see a whole lot about in any of the guide books. But it's a very remarkable place.”

“Tell me more about it.”

The man looked beyond Paul, out the window, watching the rain. “A charming place. Remote. Hard to get to. And very picturesque. Native stone. Fireplace.” As he spoke he did not seem to be thinking the words he was saying, but other, much different words.

“Is there anything else especially remarkable about it?”

“Hardly anyone's ever heard of it.” The man smiled in a fatherly way. “Hardly anyone. I was glad to have a tenant for it.”

“Is there anything unusual about the house?”

“It's an unusual house.”

“In what way, exactly?”

“In a wide variety of ways. A wide, wide variety of ways.”

“I see,” said Paul dryly.

Ed pulled his lip, and said, after a long while, “So nobody's heard a lick from this cousin of yours in two months?”

“That's right.”

The two large, pale hands tugged open a drawer and took out a small manila envelope. The envelope opened with a snap. A brass key gleamed in the suddenly much brighter light from the desk lamp.

“Just continue on up to Calistoga. Take the county road, two-lane, like you were going to the coast.” The complexity of the instructions, or a distracting thought, brought silence. He picked up a pen. “I'll draw you a map.”

The pen scarred a sheet of paper without a sound. Paul took the paper and thanked Ed, shaking his hand.

“And you might drop by the sheriff. Drop on by and say hello, how are you doing today, that sort of thing.”

“The sheriff.”

“Couldn't hurt. And take your time, maybe spend the night in Calistoga. Start out tomorrow morning. Those little county roads just aren't what they could be, you know.”

“That sounds like good advice.”

“And you can get yourself some pretty good food in Calistoga. Really have yourself some good food in quite a lot of places up there; maybe you know about all that.”

Paul said that he did.

“But you really ought to go out there tomorrow. In the morning.”

Paul said that he would, and hurried through the rain to the car.

Lise wanted to know what had happened. “What did you talk about? I thought you'd just pop in and pop out with the key.”

“I did.”

“You sat there talking to him.”

“I couldn't just snatch it and run away.”

“What did he say?”

“You know these guys who spend all day sitting alone in an office. They like to talk.”

The vineyards on either side of the road were rust-black in the rain. The hills of the valley vanished into the low clouds. The wipers struggled to clear the glass of the rain that fell in huge splatters. Paul turned on the headlights and a pheasant broke across the road. The white ring around its neck was brilliant, and then the bird was gone.

“Beautiful,” said Lise, but her voice was joyless. Perhaps because they could have hit the bird, Paul thought, although it had not been even close. Perhaps because of some private thought that troubled her.

“I thought we'd spend the night in Calistoga,” Paul said.

“Oh, that sounds wonderful,” she replied, and Paul was surprised at how happy she was.

9

Paul poured them both some zinfandel, and sighed. He was glad at last to be in a simple restaurant, a place that served magnificent hamburgers and golden onion rings, and simple red wine. It even had a fireplace of artificial stone and a fire of concrete logs and a pipe that squirted flames.

Sometimes, sitting across a table from Lise like this, he felt so happy he could not believe it.

He had reviewed this restaurant three years before, when he had done a series on the perfect hamburger. It still served a perfect hamburger, four stars, and still had the plain ambience that Paul found himself loving. He examined the burst of parsley on his plate, and, smiling at Lise, ate it.

Apple pie would be too perfect, so he took a deep breath and ordered cheesecake. It was hard to tell whether or not the coffee had been filtered, perked, or simmered in a skillet. For once, he did not mind at all. It was hot, and it tasted good.

The bartender glanced his way, and Paul sensed interest from the swinging door of the kitchen. “I don't go in for the gourmet hamburger. Those fancy burgers on sourdough, with artichoke hearts, or whatever. I like a simple burger. Like this.”

“Simple food, for a simple guy,” Lise suggested, with a mischievous smile.

Lise was having strawberry ice cream. They both seemed to enjoy their escape from good taste.

“I think anything done well is worth admiring. Even something normal, like good cheesecake. And this is delicious.”

But he knew that one of the reasons he enjoyed this food so much was Lise. It was a good thing he would not have to review this restaurant. He would probably give it maniacal praise.

“Maybe we ought to slip back into good taste for a moment,” said Paul.

“And ruin a perfect meal?”

“I know. It's a bad idea. But aren't the gods supposed to dislike perfection among mortals? Maybe some cognac.”

“I've never cared for cognac,” she said.

This struck Paul as very sad, and he considered her in a new light.

She guessed that he was troubled, and suggested, “You don't like this place.”

The table was being cleared, and all ears were, no doubt, tuned to his voice. “I like it,” he said, “I like it a lot. What is it you don't like about cognac?”

“The flavor, I suppose.”

This was tough news. The flavor was the very best thing about cognac. He ordered a snifter for himself, and some Kahlua over ice for Lise, and tried not to think about the dream. The way his legs could not move. The way his head could not turn.

“The only thing I can think of not to like about cognac,” he said, “is the color.”

“But look at it! It's beautiful!”

He sipped. “Not real. Caramel coloring is added. I have often wondered what it would look like uncolored. Pale, I suppose, maybe even very pale, like vodka with a dash of bitters.”

“I hate it when they add color to things. I like to see what's really there.”

“You're in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Kahlua has added color. So does Coca-Cola. Everything. The whole world is tricked out, just the tiniest bit fake. And I wish it weren't, but I can't get too upset about it.”

They strolled along the sidewalk, as long as awnings protected them from rain. Lise stayed close to him, in a way that made him happy. He put his arm around her. The street was empty. Orange leaves the size of baseball mitts floated in puddles.

“Doesn't it seem odd that we have to travel from home in order to feel happy?” she asked.

She surprised him often in the things she said. She truly was more intelligent than he was, although perhaps not smarter. He thought of smarts as the ability to get things done. Intelligence was the ability to consider, and the ability to love.

He knew she loved her studies, but did she love him? And if she did, would she marry him? He had taken too long to respond to her question, so he said, “Do you think it's wrong to want to see new places?”

“No, it's a good thing, but why do we have to?”

He didn't know. He didn't know himself, and he didn't know her. He was very ignorant. But at least he wasn't a fool. He didn't sit up all night in graveyards, trying to take pictures of a ghost.

As he emerged from the bathroom, he was puzzled to see her reading the Bible from the nightstand. But why not? She probably had spiritual depths he could not dream of. This thought made him feel quiet, and small.

“We're having an adventure!” he said.

She closed the book, and looked at him, as if frightened.

“We shouldn't think so much,” he said. “We shouldn't be so serious. This is an exciting time.” He plunged back into the bathroom and made a hood out of a towel.

He turned off the light, and slowly opened the door.

“Paul, you're scaring me.”

He did not move.

“Paul, stop it. You're scaring me.”

He held his breath.

“Paul, stop it and come out of there this very minute or I'll never forgive you.”

He opened the door a little more, and crouched low, sticking his head into the darkness.

“Paul, God damn it!” she cried, and Paul swooped across the room in a flutter of towel, unable to tackle her as she eluded him and ducked behind the television set.

Paul laughed until he had to sit on the bed, and flicked the towel at her. “I scared you,” he wheezed.

“You're a total maniac,” she said, mussing his hair.

“I want to be a ghost again.”

“An absolute, complete maniac. You ought to be in an institution.” She bit his ear, enough to hurt.

“You're crazy, too. Afraid of someone wearing a towel.”

“Afraid of someone who's hopelessly silly.”

“I'm sure ghosts are very silly, too. They'd almost have to be. Wouldn't you be silly if you walked around looking like a length of toilet paper all the time?”

“Seriously?”

“Sure.”

“The mistake,” she said, “is thinking of a ghost as the residue of a dead person. Like a sheath of wrapping paper left in a place where the person was murdered, for example. A spirit left to wander, like Hamlet's father. That we can set aside. We have to see the ghost as something quite separate. As a thing that perhaps was never a person at all.”

“Silliness,” he said, slipping the strap from her nightie. She stood, and her nightgown pooled on the floor, looking like a husk a spirit might leave behind, diaphanous trash, impossible, naturally, as ghosts were impossible.

He woke early the next morning, ran the electric shaver over his chin, and slipped out of the motel alone. He had imagined a day blazing and clear, if not warm at least crisp and cloudless. He jammed his hands into his pockets, and considered going back into the room for his raincoat.

Instead, he ran across the street, and around the corner. A single policeman read a newspaper behind a desk. As always at the sight of a newspaper, Paul wondered if this was one of his issues.

“Help you?”

“You aren't the sheriff, are you?”

“No. Sheriff would be back in Saint Helena. A problem?”

The cop had an angular face, like wood carved quickly to resemble a human head. Paul liked the way the cop happily put aside the newspaper, which Paul saw was merely a local, and leaned forward with at least a show of interest.

Paul explained his search for his cousin, making it all sound offhand, which it was. He mentioned that the realtor had suggested checking in with the authorities, and here he was. Not the right authorities, though, they both agreed.

“County jurisdiction would definitely be the sheriff. Give him a call. Have a sheriff meet you out there. They'd be glad to help.”

He was a friendly cop, and made Paul imagine for a moment that just maybe a sheriff would be glad to drive for miles on a country road to help look for a fool, but explaining the cousin to the policemen, with a policeman's Mr. Coffee in one corner, and a silent but competent-looking police radio in the other, made Paul realize how thin the problem was, how silly, and how puny compared with the problems police usually faced.