The Orchid Eater (23 page)

His heart
ached with the memory of her beauty, but Edgar only shook his head. “I’m
telling you, Mike, there wasn’t any third girl, and none of the other two went
near you.” He pulled in close, secretively whispering. “You know—you know who
it must have been? Man, I can’t believe it.”

“Who?”

“You just
met your anima. It was your
self,
Mike. Like, your female side. You know, in psychology?”

Mike shook
his head, uncertain why he felt so frightened all of a sudden. Was it because
she had been so real? Because he had known her so intimately, loved her so
intensely? Or was it because he had been planning and hoping to see her again,
and now had lost her more completely than if she had never been. Which, Edgar
seemed to be saying, she never had.

“This is
unreal,” Edgar said. “My mom would flip if she heard this.”

“She was a
hallucination?”

“No, man,
she was as real as you. She was,
is,
like your ally. Your twin. I can’t explain it, but my mom could.
It’s in books.”

“No . . . a
hallucination . . . ?”

Edgar sighed
and shook his head. “I am so jealous. You met your anima, and she was a fox.”

This
judgment was so crass that he could neither agree nor argue with Edgar. Instead
he fell silent, wishing he could call her back again, summon her out of some
deep place in himself. But she had come unexpectedly. What made him think she
would return just because he wished it? How many times had he woken from dreams
of a perfect lover to find himself alone in the narrow bed, the empty room,
staring at the rolling minutes on his Glantz Appliances clock radio? A
desperate pang always followed such awakenings, haunting him all day sometimes,
until he went to sleep praying he would dream of
her
again. At least then he
could console himself with the truth: that his ideal lover was only a dream.
But this girl—he had seen her with his eyes. He’d been drugged, true, but wide
awake. He couldn’t bring himself to believe she didn’t exist, and therefore he
grasped even at the purely psychological existence Edgar offered. Maybe . . .
maybe if he did more acid he would see her again. Yes—if he stayed close to
Edgar, he would meet her eventually. Again. She had seemed as real as the tank
full of mannequins—as real as the spiders, the wolves, the burning key . . .
She’s real, he thought, because I am real.

Edgar saw
him straighten, must have seen the new look of strength and resolve in his
eyes.

“Your power
is definitely cracking tonight, Mike. I think you’re ready for what I’ve got in
mind.”

Edgar’s envy
and exhilaration were infectious. Even with the sense of loss that filled him,
Mike felt ready for anything.

“Come on.
This is gonna blow your mind.”

18

At the back
of the house, Edgar unlocked the sliding glass door and went into his room.
“Wait here,” he said. A moment later, without having turned on a light, he
returned smelling strongly of patchouli and carrying a crowbar.

“While the
psychic link is strong, this is the perfect time.”

“For what?”
Mike asked, though he was starting to get an idea. Edgar’s laugh confirmed it.
There
was
some sort of unspoken communication going on.

“Craig and
me . . .” He shrugged. “We were partners at this sometimes. Not Howard, he’s
too clumsy. But usually I work alone.”

“Work,” Mike
repeated.

“You said
you want to be a master thief. It’s time you start learning the trade.”

Mike had no
reply.

“It’s easy,
really. All you have to do is stay quiet, calm, and alert. And use a crowbar.”

The last few
minutes had been a breathing space, a lull in the night’s strangeness, but that
interval of peace was coming to an end. After the compressed insanity of the
van, his mind had found room to stretch and expand beneath the open sky. But
Edgar’s words, his hinted schemes, quickly brought all Mike’s fears reeling in
again, cinching nightmares tight around him.

The acid
effects had never gone away. Now, with the renewal of adrenaline, they began to
ooze out again. He grew preternaturally aware of the slightest scrabbling
sounds in the scrub around them; the wind in the sage sounded like a rough
voice, whispering. Nature spirits lived out in the wilderness, their domains
threatened by encroaching houses and streets. He thought he could see them lurking
just beyond the reach of streetlights, warning him off. Edgar, also silent,
listened with a similar intensity. He caught Mike’s eye and nodded.

“Yeah,” he
whispered. “This is righteous. You’re the best partner I’ve had yet. I mean,
you’re really tuned in.”

But if Edgar
was tuned in to Mike’s dread, he didn’t show it. He pulled on a pair of leather
motorcycle gloves and rapped his padded knuckles on the sliding glass door.

“In every
house around here, there’s sliding glass doors, right? The ones that back up on
the Greenbelt, like mine, have total privacy. Now these things are baby-simple
to pop. We’ll practice on my door, since we can make all the noise we want
back here.”

Edgar bent
to point out the tracks in which the door slid. “This works almost like a
window screen. You want to pry the whole thing up so it tilts in the frame.” He
demonstrated by slipping one end of the crowbar into the track, edging it under
the door, and levering down on the other end. As the door tipped up, it slipped
free of the simple latch and slid open at a touch. “You’re in. If they’ve been
burglarized before, they’ll probably have stop-bolts built into the tracks. But
I never hit the same house twice. Now it’s your turn.”

Mike
declined without making a sound. The ESP was surely working.

“Well, then,
come on.”

Edgar led
him along the crest of an eroded dirt embankment, a mound that had been piled
behind the houses by bulldozers when the foundations were dug. Most of the
houses dated from the first wave of development in Shangri-La. All were
occupied, though tonight the lights were off in many. Looking between them as
they walked, he caught a glimpse of his own house, one of a row running up the
edge of the canyon. The lights were off there, too; Ryan must have turned them all
off when he’d left for Dirk’s. He suddenly remembered his vision of standing in
the canyon behind his home, looking up at it. A wordless panic reached for him.
Before he could say anything about it, Edgar beckoned him into the bushes,
beyond the mound.

“From back
here you can watch all the houses and no one will even know you exist.”

From where
they stood, well hid in the weeds, he could see straight into half a dozen
houses, through the glass-paneled rears they had turned to the night—and to
him. Like his own house, most had decks and sliding glass doors on every level.
In many, drapes were drawn; but in a fair number the curtains were wide,
showing dark interiors or vivid domestic displays. Kitchen scenes, people
watching TV, talking on the phone, eating dinner, arguing. He watched in
fascination, feeling his mind creep in among them, inserting itself into their
lives. Ignorant, unsuspecting, all of them; as if simply because they saw
nothing beyond their windows, nothing could possibly exist out there. Nothing
could be stalking or spying on them. Not a one of them suspected his presence.
It was as Edgar said: He might not even have existed.

The
sagebrush whispered that this might be truer than he knew.

How often
had Edgar sat here, spying? What a strange temptation—especially when the lives
he glimpsed seemed, if anything, duller than his own uneventful life. Perhaps
the strangeness of distance, the edge of paranoia, lent it all some slight
curiosity. How would his own life appear to someone peering in at him? He
couldn’t imagine that it would look any more interesting than these.

“There’s a
girl down there—the window’s dark now—I’ve seen her stripping. And there’s a
couple Craig and I saw fucking in their kitchen . . . right on the counter!
Couple of geezers. We didn’t watch
that
too long.”

But nothing
was happening now. It was all common and obvious. Only the incredible detail
made it interesting. He might have been looking at an incredibly sharp film or
photograph.

“Okay, so
from here we figure out what everyone’s up to. Now that house over
there—they’re out late tonight. Heard ’em telling my mom all about it.”

Edgar
pointed out one of the dark houses. Beyond the blackness of the rear glass
doors, Mike saw dark rooms and dim shapes of furniture. Remembering the tank of
mannequins, his uneasiness doubled. He was afraid of seeing Edgar’s face go
blank again, and this time no soulmate would remind him that his eyes were
shut. The impersonal night offered no comfort. He felt as if the weeds were
pushing him forward, expelling him into plain sight. The dark house drew him
like a magnet, but the pull was terrifying. Why hadn’t those people stayed home
tonight? He had to find some way to get out of this.

“You’re on
lookout,” Edgar said. “Try to keep our psychic connection. You know, think of
that movie screen if it helps you. Imagine we’re still together. Picture, like,
a two-way radio between us. If you see anyone coming, I’ll pick up your warnings
and get out.”

“What if
that doesn’t work?”

“Then hammer
on the wall and run like hell. Don’t wait for me, either. We’ll have a better
chance if we split up. If there’s trouble?—I mean, if the cops come? You might
not see me for a day or two. I’ve got a hideout back in the Greenbelt. That’s
my fallback, though I haven’t had to use it yet. I’ll hang around and test the
water. You know, the cops might be onto me. It’s always a possibility.”

“Have you
ever been caught?”

“Not at
this. They’ve got fingerprints from some other things, though. Oh, yeah, take
the crowbar. You’ll have longer to get away and hide it. Okay?”

Mike
shrugged. Cops, he thought. They seemed more unreal, more terrifying, than any
of this.

“The main
thing, like I said, is to stay cool. Just . . . feel it. Stay tuned to me,
partner.”

Edgar put
out his hand, palm out, and Mike took it for a brief squeeze.

“No more
talking. Let’s go.”

They crept
over the embankment and darted to the back of the house. The house next door
was all lit up, and patches of indirect light scattered on the dark house’s
patio. They kept to the shadows. An amber floodlight whose model number he
almost remembered was mounted above the sliding glass door, but it wasn’t on.
Mike stared up at the bulb while Edgar worked the prybar into the track. He was
remembering the day he first met Edgar—remembering Scott’s shadow blocking out
the hot light from the alley, Edgar coming in, the fall of lightbulbs, Mr.
Glantz’s anger and suspicion turning to slack, drooling blankness.

The door
popped with a dull thump. Before Mike fully recalled where he was, Edgar handed
him the bar and stepped into the dark house, heading down the hall toward a
staircase.

He knew he
ought to get back to the safety of the underbrush, but it was hard to leave
Edgar alone inside. The more he strained to see into the black interior, the
more he saw to frighten him. He had no desire to go in; the vast empty night,
no matter how hostile, seemed preferable. He could not get in trouble with the
law for simply hiding in the hills.

He moved off
slowly. Dishes rattled in the house next door, making him jump. The sound had
seemed to come from the dark house. A voice rose in anger. Was it aimed at him?

Looking
down, he saw his foot was glowing. He had blundered into a patch of light. He
jerked back, then sprinted around the side of the house where the shadows were
deep and reassuring. Crouching against the stucco wall, he waited for his
heart to slow.

Relax.

He crept to the front of the house and found a clump of bushes where he
could sit and watch the street. It made more sense than going back into the
hills, much as he might have liked to.

A pair of
headlights swooped over the rise, heading east on Shoreview, coming his way. He
tensed to escape. How long would it take Edgar to get down and out once he
warned him?

But the car
pulled over before it had gone half a block, dousing its headlights. He took a
deep breath.

Why was
Edgar taking so long?

He looked
the other way, since it was just as likely that the residents would drive home
by the back road from South Bohemia. His eyes roamed across the canyon, coming
to rest on the row of houses there. He counted them until he found his own.

A light
flickered on in his mother’s room. Jack had said not to expect them before two
in the morning, but they must have come home early from L.A. He realized he
didn’t know what time it was. It might have been later than two. He thought he
saw his mother moving past the bamboo shades; then the inner Levolors closed.
He was guiltily grateful to see her taking precautions for privacy, knowing
now—from firsthand experience—that anyone might be watching.

Who had Ryan
seen that afternoon? Someone actually spying?

Then this
was fair-play, skulking and spying. But what about stealing?

Well, Edgar
was the one doing that . . .

Light
bloomed on the street, another pair of headlights sliding forward. This time it
was easier not to panic. A hundred cars must use this street each night; only
one would come here. The odds were in his favor. The headlights went out,
relaxing him further.

He tried to
reach out with his mind and feel Edgar inside the house, to reassure him if
that were possible. But whatever communion they had shared earlier, in the
flood of acid images, it
was gone. He
felt nothing now but drained. His eyes wanted to close.

The crowbar
dropping from his hand alerted him; he jerked himself awake with a gasp. No
time at all had passed, for the car was still approaching, very slowly, its
headlights still dark. There might be a party somewhere around here; the driver
could be looking for addresses in the dark. He huddled tighter into himself.

Just then,
he saw that it was a different car. Metallic brown. As it passed under a
streetlamp, he saw the shine of a chrome spotlight mounted on the driver’s
door. It swiveled toward him like a silver eye, its lid of light about to open.
It looked like an ordinary car except for that: unmarked.

He stumbled
backward, tripping in the bushes; scrambled to his feet and rushed to the back
of the house. He banged his fist against the glass, unable to draw a sound from
his throat, hoping Edgar heard it.

Inside the
house, Edgar made no sound. He wouldn’t, if he was smart.

Split up,
Edgar had said.

Get out of
there, Edgar!
Mike prayed fiercely, sending the
message as urgently as he could. Get away from that house!

He didn’t dare
wait to see the result of his warnings. He was already running, lost in the
bushes, trying to steer a course into the safety of the Greenbelt. He looked
back only once, as light exploded around the house, surrounding it in a halo of
glare. The powerful spotlight went roving down the path he’d followed a moment
earlier. He thought the sliding glass door gaped wider than before, and hoped
this meant that Edgar had come out already. But the glimpse of light redoubled
his terror. He wanted only darkness now. So he ran.