Not Safe After Dark (13 page)

Or so he found himself reasoning as he stood there by the traffic lights. Should he risk it? Over the road, the dark, tangled mass of branches tossed in the hot breeze like billowing black smoke
against the starlit sky. A yellowish full moon, surrounded by a halo, gilded the tree tops. The traffic lights changed to green, and after only a moment’s hesitation, he began to cross. Why
not? What could possibly happen? The entrance, a long, tree-lined avenue, seemed rolled out like a tongue ready to lick him up and draw him into the park’s dark mouth. Maybe he had a death
wish, though he didn’t think so.

Muted wrought-iron street lamps flanked the broad cinder path, which led under a small imitation Arc de Triomphe gate overgrown with weeds and lichen. Beyond that, the branches swayed slowly in
the muggy gusts, leaves making a wet, hissing sound. The dimly lit path, he noticed, was lined with statues. He went over to see if he could make out any of the names. Writers: Shakespeare, Sir
Walter Scott, Tennyson, Wordsworth. What on earth were they doing there?

The avenue ended at a small boating pool. In the water, a child’s yacht with a white sail turned in slow circles. The sight brought a lump to his throat. He didn’t know why, but
somewhere, perhaps buried deep in his memories, was just such a feeling of loss or of drifting aimlessly in circles, never arriving. It made him feel suddenly, inexplicably sad.

Beyond the pond the park stretched, rising and falling down to the lake. Here were no broad avenues, only tarmac paths and dirt trails. He took one of the main paths that wound deeper into the
woods. He could always take a side path later if he wanted. So far he had seen no one, and the traffic from the main road sounded more and more distant behind him. It was much darker now, away from
the dim antique lights of the entrance. Only the jaundiced and haze-shrouded moon shone through the trees and slicked the path with oily gold. But as he walked, he found his eyes soon adjusted. At
least he could make out shapes, if not details.

After he had been walking a few minutes, he noticed a playground to his left. There was nobody in it at this time of night, but one of the swings was rocking back and forth gently in the wind,
creaking where its chains needed greasing. He felt like sitting on one of the wooden seats and shooting himself high, aiming his feet at the moon. But it would only draw unwelcome attention. Just
being here was supposed to be dangerous enough, without asking for trouble. Somewhere, back on the road, he heard the whine of a police siren.

Off to the right, a path wound up the hillside between the trees. He took it. It was some kind of fitness trail. Every so often, he could make out wooden chin bars where the joggers were
encouraged to pause and do a few pull-ups. Occasionally, he would hear a scuttling sound in the undergrowth. At first, it scared him, but he figured it was only a harmless squirrel, or a chipmunk
running away.

The path straightened out at the top of the short hill, and almost before he knew it he was in a clearing surrounded by trees. He thought he heard a different sound now, a low moan or a sigh. He
pulled back quickly behind a tree. In the clearing stood a number of picnic benches, and at one of them he could just make out a couple of human figures. It took him a few seconds to focus clearly
in the poor light, but when he realized what was happening, his throat constricted and his heart seemed to start thumping so loudly he was sure they could hear him.

There were two of them. One half-sat on the table edge, hands stretched behind, supporting himself as he arched backwards. The other knelt at his feet, head bowed forward. They seemed to freeze
for a moment, as if they had heard him, then the one on the table said something he couldn’t quite catch and the one on his knees continued slowly moving his head forward and back.

He felt sick and dizzy. He clutched onto the tree tightly and tried to control the swimming feeling in his head. He couldn’t afford to faint – not here, not now, with those two so
close. After a few deep breaths, he turned as quietly as he could and hurried down a dirt track that forked off in another direction.

After he had covered a good distance as fast as he dare go, he squatted in the ferns at the side of the trail, head in hands, and waited for his heart to still and his breathing to become
regular. An insect crawled up his bare arm; he shuddered and brushed it off.

He was beginning to feel really scared now. He had no idea where he was, which direction he was travelling in. Like that yacht back in the pond a million miles away, he could be going in
circles. Again he fought back the panic and walked on. Now he cursed his stupidity. Why had he come here? It hadn’t been a good idea at all. He would wander round and round, then end up back
where he started. He would collapse with exhaustion and those two men from the picnic table would find him and . . . Maybe he did have a death wish, after all. He should have taken notice of the
guidebooks. He told himself to stop panicking and calm down.

Before he had got much further, he heard voices just off the path over to his left. He paused. Someone was singing an old Neil Young song. Someone else said ‘Shut up,’ then a girl
giggled. After that came more singing, then a loud yell. They were drunk; that was it. As if to confirm his suspicions, he heard the sound of a bottle smashing on a road. He decided he had better
lie low and keep out of their way. There was no telling what a gang of drunks might do to someone walking alone in the park. So he waited, behind a tree, as their voices faded slowly into the
distance. He stayed where he was until he could hear them no longer, then set off again.

When he crested the next hill, he could see the lights of houses to his right and left. The park had narrowed to a kind of deep ravine now, and the path he was on ran parallel to its bottom,
about halfway up one side. If he left the path and walked all the way up the side, he would probably soon find himself in someone’s back garden.

He could see the moonlight gleaming on the surface of the narrow stream that flowed along the bottom. Across the other side, he could make out the lights of a police car flashing along a road
that skirted the ravine’s edge. The hillside was thickly wooded and the spaces between trees filled with ferns and shrubbery. At least now, he thought, he ought to be able to find his way
back to civilization easily enough.

He heard a noise lower down the hillside and realized there was another path, running parallel to his, about fifty yards below, closer to the water. Again, he froze. This sound was far too loud
to be a squirrel or a bird; it certainly wasn’t the sound of a small animal running away, but more like a large one coming
towards
him.

He crouched by the edge of the dirt path and peered down through the bushes. He couldn’t make much out at first, but something was moving through the undergrowth. A few moments later, his
heart beating fast again, he saw the eyes, not more than thirty yards away down the slope. What was it? A fox? A wolf? Then he heard the woman’s voice: ‘Jason! Jason! Where are you,
boy? Come on.’ And she whistled. So it was a dog! But Jason took no notice of her. It seemed to have caught his scent and was making its way cautiously up the hillside to check him out.

He couldn’t tell from that distance in the dark, but he was worried that it might be a pit bull or a Rottweiler. Surely no woman would go walking alone in the park at night without a
vicious dog to guard her? He felt beside him on the path and his hand grasped a large stone, just small enough to hold. The dog came closer. ‘Come on, Jason,’ he whispered. ‘Come
on, boy!’ The dog barked and made the last few yards in a dash. He swung the rock hard at its head, and the dog whimpered, then let out a low wail and collapsed.

‘Jason?’ the woman called from below. ‘Jason! Where are you?’ She sounded worried now. He could just about make her out in the faint light. She looked youngish, with long
hair tied behind her neck in a ponytail, and she was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. She called for the dog again, then left the path and started climbing the hill through the shrubbery to the place
she’d heard it wail.

Thirty yards. Twenty-five. Twenty. He could see the moonlight glint on her bracelet. Fifteen. He could hear her panting with effort. Ten. She ran the back of her hand over her brow and pushed
back a stray tress of hair. ‘Jason?’ Five. He glanced around and listened. Nothing. So close to civilization, yet so far. There was nobody around but him and her.

Four. He held his breath. Three yards. She slipped back but managed to grasp a root and keep her balance. Two. He gripped the rock tight in his hand and felt it sticky and warm with the
dog’s blood. She was almost there now. Just a few more steps. One. He gripped the rock tighter, raising his arm. Suddenly he felt himself filled with strange joy and he knew he was grinning
like an idiot. So this was why he had come. He didn’t have a death wish, after all. What on earth had those fools who wrote the guidebooks meant? Of course it was safe after dark. Perfectly
safe.

Los Angeles was
the last place Walter Dimchuk would have chosen for the convention. A confirmed Torontonian, Walter had never been able to take California seriously. It
seemed to him that the people there merely played at life under the palm trees and came up with loony-tune ideas.

Take the cuisine, if you could call it that: it was either Mexican, which gave Walter the runs, or so-called ‘Californian’: watercress, alfalfa sprouts and avocado with everything,
even a burger. Faggot food, more like. He’d had a house salad just yesterday in which he hadn’t recognized one single ingredient. Cilantro, arugula, fresh basil, sun-dried tomatoes and
goat’s cheese, the waiter had told him. With a dressing of tarragon, balsamic vinegar, cardamom oil and toasted pine nuts, for Christ’s sake. Just his luck. Couldn’t a person get
a simple grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk in this state?

Smog, killer freeways, serial-killer bubblegum cards, earthquakes, Rodney King riots, more fruit loops per square mile than an asylum . . . the list went on. He hadn’t been happy about
leaving Kate and Maria alone in the house either. They might not be as close a family as they had once been – what could you expect after thirty-five years of marriage and three children
grown up to adults – but they still got on all right, mostly thanks to Maria, a late blessing when Kate was forty-five, and now a gawky thirteen-year-old.

The only good thing about the trip that Walter had been able to come up with on the plane over (Air Canada, three hours late, sweet Jesus, just Walter’s fucking luck) was a brief respite
from a cool Toronto October.

But he hadn’t banked on the Santa Ana. When Toronto got hot, you sweated; here you dried to dust, dehydrated in seconds. He had once read a story about the hot, desert wind, the way it
made meek wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. The writer was right: it
did
make you edgy and crazy. Walter felt as if he’d had a steel band
around his forehead for two days. It was getting tighter.

‘Wally!’

Walter came out of his reverie. He was sitting in the hotel lobby taking a smoke break between sessions. Nobody seemed to smoke these days. In California it was hardly surprising: you
couldn’t find many places where it was legal to do so. Damn government health warnings on everything now, even the wine. And he had seen the way the young hotshots with their white teeth
turned up their noses when he lit up, even if they were sitting in a goddamn bar. Christ, who was this coming towards him, hand outstretched, teeth bared in a predatory smile? Should he remember?
Awkwardly, he got to his feet.

‘Hi, good to see you,’ he said.

‘Good to see
you
!’ the stranger said. ‘It’s been years.’

‘Yeah.’ Walter scratched the side of his right eye and frowned. ‘Now where the hell was it . . . ?’

‘Baltimore. Baltimore, ’seventy-nine. Jimmy Lavalli. Remember, we closed down that bar together?’

‘Yeah, of course. How you doing, Jimmy?’

And so it went on, the empty greetings, inane conversations, tales of triple bypasses, and all the time Walter knew, deep inside, that they were all out to get him, were all laughing at him.
‘Oh, old Wally Woodchuk, Wally Dump-truck, Wally Up-chuck, fucking dinosaur, sales have been down for years.’ No one had said it to his face, but they didn’t need to. Wally knew.
At fifty-nine, he was too old for the pool supplies business. And it was obvious from the number of tanned young men around the convention that the company thought so too. You’d almost think
the new breed were chosen because they’d look good sitting around a swimming pool, like the way auto manufacturers used curvaceous women to sell cars. Wally’s curves were in all the
wrong places. Ungrateful bastards. He’d given his life to Hudson’s Pools and Supplies, and this was how they paid him back. He felt like that salesman in the play must have done, the
one that guy who’d been married to Marilyn Monroe – not the baseball player, one of the others – had written for Dustin Hoffman.

He had heard the talk around the office, noticed the muted conversations and insincere greetings as he passed couples chatting in the corridor. They were putting him out to pasture. That was why
they sent him to California. He wouldn’t be surprised if his office – if you could call a screened-off corner in an open plan an office – was cleaned out when he got back and
someone else was sitting there in his place. Some tanned young asshole with white teeth and a wolfish smile. Maybe called Scott.

He got rid of Jimmy with promises to look him up if he was ever in Baltimore (not if he could help it!) and looked at his watch. Five o’clock. Shit. Time for another boring session, then
up to get changed for the convention banquet. Tofu burgers again, most likely. Maybe grab a few minutes in between and call Kate . . .

•

Thank God that was over with, Walter thought, as he waved goodnight to the stragglers in the Pasadena Ballroom and headed for the elevator. What a fucking ordeal. And typical
California, too – no smoking, not
anywhere
in the dining hall. Not tofu burgers, but almost as bad: Cornish game hen or some such skinny little bird stuffed with grapes and olives and
jalapeño peppers, basted in lemon, garlic and the ubiquitous cilantro, of course. And they had to put him at the table with that loud-mouthed jerk Carson, from United. Just his luck. Still,
Walter had kept his end up. He had been nice to the right people, managed a smile, passed his company card around, even if the recipients did absently slip it into their side pockets where
they’d throw it out with the lint and the hotel matches.