SUMMER of FEAR (18 page)

"I am."

"Nice little town."

"It's a good place to live."

"What do you do?"

"Word processing. You?"

"Structural engineer, back in Des Moines. Came for Disneyland, and
some whale watching."

He'd missed the whales by six months, but it was a little late to point
that out. His wife smiled at me and picked up her drink. She was slender,
sandy-haired, cute when she smiled. We talked a while, then the conversation
dribbled off.

A moment later, they were both looking at me rather pointedly.
"Tell
him, Mike," she said, nudging her husband.

"You tell him, Janice," he said back, not unkindly.
"You
tell him."

"Okay, I'll tell him." She leaned a little closer. "This
is the worst place we've ever gone. By the time we book a new flight out and
pay for a week's worth of a hotel room we won't use, it will have cost us over
two thousand dollars. You've got sunshine, Disneyland, and a person
slaughtering people while they sleep. I just felt like, since you lived here
and this is a tourist town, you should know."

I was in no mood to hear about tarnished vacation plan "Tough luck.
We all have our disappointments."

Mike chuckled uneasily. "You could be a little more polite about
it, guy."

"And you could get yourself thrown out this window," said.
"So why don't you give it a rest?"

"I'll be damned," said Janice, slapping her drink glass on the
table and standing. "Mike, let's just get the hell out of here. Killers
and drunks like this guy. This is a rotten place, and you can have it."

"Thank you," I said.

"Hope he gets you."

"Who's that?"

"The
Midnight Eye."

When Mike and Janice had left, I studied the crowd, observed a bearded man
who wore a trim Italian jacket and a pair of expensive round glasses. He was
roughly the Eye's size. He had the hair and beard. But I had him for a
university type or a shrink. He was with a redhead who pouted, looking out the
window.

I smiled, kind of, then turned and watched the black Pacific. The
Midnight Eye as a tourism deterrent, I though hurting Disneyland and the
California gray whale. And what if he goes out again tonight?

It got late and the crowd thinned. Amber, of course, did not show. I was
relieved, exhausted, and deeply, furiously, sad when I thought about Isabella,
which was every other second or two. Would the operation work? Would it be a
disaster? On chance in
ten...

The piano player did a good job on "The Way It Is. Ponytail seemed
to be pleading with the still-dour redhead.

I paid my bill, went into the men's room, and threw some water on my
face. Drying off with a paper towel, I regarded myself in the mirror and saw
with some alarm the weight that had settled behind my jaws, under my chin. My
nose was plumper—maybe a little pink—and my eyes seemed smaller. I look like a
fucking manatee, I thought. Booze. Must cut that out. I straightened my back,
inflated my chest, shoulders relaxed, head erect. Better. On my way out, the
blonde in the corner motioned me over. She had taken her cigarette from its
ridiculous holder and now placed it between her lips, aiming it at me for a
light. Sure. I bent over, instrument poised.

When my thumb went down and the flame appeared and I set the fire close
to her mouth, I saw that I was looking into the eyes of someone I used to know
very well.

My heart stalled. I stared into those unmistakable gray eyes, making
sure.

By the time my thumb released the lighter and Amber's face returned to
the bar darkness, I had already begun-— tentatively, very hesitantly—to piece
together what had happened.

I drove south
through the hot darkness. Amber slumped again: the far door in her utterly
convincing blond wig and a pair of sunglasses across which the city lights
inched like rain on windshield. The breeze whipped through her hair as she
stared out the open window. Her face was pale and the shine of tears lay on her
cheeks. The air smelled of ocean and exhaust and the opiate scent of
nightshade—one of several sweet, poisonous beauties that blossom on our coast.

We went in silence all the way to Dana Point. I locked and unlocked my
fingers on the wheel; they were governed by alternating currents of dread and
hope that I could hardly identify, let alone control. I felt as if I were
falling, twisting untethered through the air, careening toward an impact that
promised both death and clarity. I kept glancing across at Amber.

She was crying without sound, a talent that had always amazed me. The
only giveaways were the running tears and the sound of her congested
inhalations.

When she finally spoke, her voice was thin and tight, stretched to cover
the words.

"I
...
Damn."
She produced from her purse a cigarette and lighter. She leaned forward to miss
the wind. From behind the blond perimeter of her head, I saw a glow, then a
small cloud of smoke. She sat back up, and for the first time since we had
gotten into my car, she looked directly at my face. "I was planning to be
home on the Fourth—two or three o'clock. Reuben had a morning session set up in
Malibu. It was a sunblock ad, and they wanted the holiday crowds for backdrop.
At first, I said fine. I doubled my rate for the holiday, so I was getting
about twenty thousand for the morning. I went up the day before, got a hotel in
Beverly Hills. On my way to Malibu the next day, I changed my mind. It was too
pretty and hot for work, so I called Reuben, argued, and headed up the coast to
Santa Barbara. I left him believing I'd make the shoot, but Reuben believes
what he wants to, no matter what someone tells him. I got a room on the beach
in Santa Barbara and spent most of the Fourth. There was a man involved—a
friend—someone I'm just starting to know. Don't ask me his name, because I
won't tell you."

"The room on the beach was at his place," I said. "It was
too late to get a hotel in Santa Barbara on the Fourth of July."

"Yes. I left about eleven that night, made it home at two. I walked
into my house, but Alice was gone. Oh Hell, Russell—
Alice.
Oh Oh."
Amber broke down finally, burying her face in her hands, tears rolling forth
over her fingers, smoke from her cigarette wobbling up and out the window.

"Amber," I asked, "what in hell are
you talking about?"

"You remember Alice, don't you?"

"Why would I remember Alice? I never
met
Alice. You
mentioned Alice maybe twice in the two years we lived together. You said she
was the only woman in the world prettier than you."

She looked at me again—face pale, lights creeping along the lenses of
her sunglasses. "I said that?"

"You said that."

"Hell, what a terrible person I used to be.
She was my big
sister, Russ. My only big sister, ever."

I waited, saying nothing, while Amber turned away I stared out the open
window. She pulled off her glasses, wiped her eyes with a balled fist, choked
back a sob, and exhaled long, fluttering breath. "I know you were in my
house, Russ, Martin told me. Now you're angry. Is it because I made you mourn
me?"

In the two years I had been with Amber, her uncovering of my sundry
angers had never done anything but multiply them. Amber had flown to my furies
like lightning to the rod. It had not taken me much time with her to realize
that she
enjoyed
this, that she craved the flash point. I learned that
my rage-exposed and unleashed—was Amber's prize: It proved her power. And it
wasn't until much later, when I came to know Isabella, in fact, that I
discovered my furies were often little more than the unanswered brayings of a heart
greedy for affection. Isabella exploded me safely within her strong confines,
as gingerly as might a bomb squad handling some crude amateur device. I would
never try to describe the desire that arises when anger collides with
understanding. I can only say that into Isabella flowed the most heated and
uncontrolled angers, transformed by the genius of her heart into the simple
fuels of loving. It had been so long since I had allowed them out in the
presence of another person.

But now they tried to come again, unchecked and snarling, swirling
around like ghosts inside my car. I would have lowered my window to flush them
out, but it was already down. I turned up the vent fan all the way. I would not
be baited.

"It's because you made me mourn you falsely," I said.

"Does that mean you feel cheated? Yes, I think it does. It means
that you were happier believing I was dead. You can admit that, Russ. Damn,
what a vicious, shallow man you are."

I ignored her provocations. I stayed on track. "When were you
expecting Alice?"

"How patient you've become. We sure could have used some of that
when we were together."

"When were you expecting Alice?"

"On the fifth, originally. But she left a message on the third
saying she'd hit Laguna two days early. I was already in Beverly Hills, like I
said, so I got a hold of her at her hotel, told her to go straight to my place,
get comfortable, and I'd be home the next day. The maid was staying with family
down in San Diego for the week, so she hadn't made up the guest room. So I told
Alice to take the master. I wanted her to feel welcome. She and I had just
started... we were trying to... well, I was trying to connect with her. It was
part of my new, well,
self.
Gad, it sounds so fucking trite."

Amber sniffed and ran her fingers under one eye, then the other.

Amber's new
self,
I thought. My anger slid out of the car,
whipping away in the slipstream. I began the long circle around the Dana Point
Marina. The harbor sprouted thousands of yacht masts; the dark water shone with
wedges of light that flickered on the swells, then vanished.

"But I enjoyed my friend in Santa Barbara, and it was late before I
knew it. By eleven, I was on the road. When I got home, she was gone. Her bags
were there. I saw a new throw rug beside my bed. There was a stain under it.
There was fresh paint on the walls. In my study, someone had knocked over a
lamp and some magazines. My heart was racing. The only thing I could think of
was to call someone I trusted, someone who might know about these ... these
kinds of things."

"Marty," I said. It explained his abrupt change in attitude
that day at the Wynns.

"Yes."

"And it took Marty a long time on the phone to believe you were
really you. He didn't believe it at first. He insisted on seeing you that
night—morning by then. Drunk or not."

Amber drew lightly on her cigarette, an action so fraught with distaste,
I wondered, as I had always wondered, why she bothered smoking in the first
place. It was so much like Amber to be able to flirt with a such a strong addiction
and never real surrender to it. I'd seen her go for days without one.

"I'd never seen Martin so upset," she said. "Never. And
he'd been married to
me
for a whole year, the poor man. He told me that
Alice had been murdered, and that someone he obviously cleaned up the... my
room."

Amber puffed again on the cigarette, staring out the window at the
marina. The breeze blew through her platinum blond wig, and in the harsh violet
light of the harbor lamps, her face looked like one freshly prepared for burial.
For a moment, all the death of the last few days paraded through my mind: the
Fernandezes; the Ellisons; the Wynns; their once-perfect two boys, Jacob and
Justin; Alice Fultz, Amber's sister. Then I could actually see the tumor cells
raging unchecked in the brain of my Isabella—tiny black star-shaped little
fuckers programmed multiply themselves out of existence, aiming at nothing but
the final annihilation of their host. For a moment, I saw those monstrous
vultures circling with hideous ease outside our window, I saw Black Death
sitting atop our telephone pole, lazily assured, patient, stinking.

My car was veering off the narrow drive.

I lighted a cigarette and took a pull from my flask, packing my visions
down deeper inside with all the efficiency of a Lexington patriot tamping the
ball into his musket.

"You smell funny," said Amber, not
unkindly.

"I don't feel very funny. What then, after Marty told you what he'd
seen?"

"I could only focus on one idea. Something that Martin kept saying
again and again: '
Whoever killed Alice was trying to kill you.'
I was
terrified, Russ. You know me well enough to understand that I wouldn't react...
well
to this kind of thing. So I agreed to do what Martin told me."

"Disappear."

"Yes. And wait for him to handle who had killed
Alice."

"That being me."

"You and Grace."

"Does he still believe that?"

Amber studied me for a long while, then turned away.

"Yes."

"How much did Alice look like you?"

"A lot. Especially to someone in a dark bedroom, someone assuming
I was sleeping in my own bed."