The Secret Life of Anna Blanc (41 page)

She heard the front doorknob rattle. Anna fell to her knees and crawled, frantically running her hands along the waxed parquet. Her heart pounded in her ears, rapid and irregular. There was a violent
bang
, as a man threw his weight against the door, then silence.
Bang. Bang
. Anna groped faster, as the banging continued, breathing like frightened prey, rivulets of sweat dripping down her face, her back, between her breasts. No gun.

With a
crack
, the door gave. Anna kept searching. She heard rustling in the foyer and then she saw him, a shadow sauntering into the parlor holding a bottle and one shoe. “Good evening, Anna.”

She rose to her feet. “I was expecting you.”

The man leaned casually against the wall. “Were you? How did you know?”

“You married Miss Curlew just before the first Poodle Girl died. You never set foot in a parlor house before January. You never had the coin. The parlor girls were out of reach, but the prostitutes in the crib were too ugly. So you killed ordinary girls. You were very clever at hiding it. But once you had the money, you weren't afraid to get caught. In fact, you wanted someone to know.”

“Bravo. Go on.”

“The LAPD's corrupt. If you came under suspicion, you thought you could bribe your way out of it. But you wanted the world to know that someone was cleaning up the town. I suspect you were disappointed when the coroner covered up your crimes.”

“He did that? For me? How kind. I had come to the conclusion that the police were stupid. Anything else?”

“The police are stupid. But, yes. There's more. The day we eloped, I lost my shoe. I found it again on Peaches Payton's foot. You had gone back for it. The woman they found on the tracks that night—did you kill her, too?”

“You're good.”

“I am. Then there was your British ancestry, your general lack of courtesy, and the rumors about your mother's affairs. She's the original Gomer.”

He moved toward her. “You're a bit of floozy yourself, Aimee Amour.”

Anna limped backward and began to mount the stairs one at a time, fumbling for each step with her stubbed toes and the pads of her scraped feet. He floated closer, his Cheshire cat grin reflecting the moonlight.

“You think you're Hosea, Prophet of Doom, saving the souls of loose women. But you're the Gomer, Louis. You slept with Miss Curlew, and no one would do that without getting paid.”

“You bitch.” A flame had caught in his eyes, and for the first time he had the look of a murderer. He kept coming, slowly, deliberately, placing each foot like a panther.

She reached the dark hallway at the top of the stairs. She turned her back on Louis and fled into Edgar's bedroom. She tried the window. If she jumped, and landed in the roses, she might survive the fall. She heaved at it, rattled it, but it was stuck with paint. Outside, she saw a future in the rows and rows of citrus trees. She jammed the nails of both hands into the cracks and pulled until her nails bent backward. She could feel the orange-scented air leaking through the gap, but the window wouldn't give.

Louis kept coming. Anna moved across to the bed, grabbed a goose-down pillow and, like a knight, held out her feather shield.

Louis laughed. “Look at you. You ran straight for the bed. But of course you would. I hear you slept with the police chief's son.” He licked his lips.

“You're the whore, Louis. A prostitute. A floozy.”

Louis growled and unbuttoned his coat. A trickle of sweat dripped down Anna's temple. Louis stalked her, his skin glistening, his eyes black and burning. She threw the pillow at his head and scuttled backward on the mattress like a crab. It missed. He looked amused. “How about Edgar Wright? You sure showed him.”

“He loves me, and…and so does Joe Singer. If you touch a hair on my head, they'll settle their differences and kill you together.” That was a lie, but she'd completely run out of ideas. She was flat against the oak headboard with nowhere else to go.

“From what I just saw, I don't think either man loves you anymore. No, they'll be relieved when you throw yourself in front of a train,” he said. “No one will be surprised after what's happened. Everyone thinks you belong in the giggle-giggle ward. Especially Edgar.”

“You're the lunatic.” Anna dodged sideways.

“No!” Louis Taylor lunged and grabbed her ankles, yanking her flat onto her back. Red finger marks bloomed where his hands squeezed her. She tried to twist away, thrashing in her skirts, but he jammed his knee into her belly, forcing the wind out of her lungs. She gulped air, wheezing like punctured bellows, unable to catch her breath.

He relaxed the pressure a bit and looked at her with something like tenderness. It made her skin crawl.

“I'm not doing this to hurt you, Anna. I've always liked you. You'll die my faithful bride. Anna, you'll go to heaven.”

She scoffed. “Does your wife know you're a murderous bigamist?”

His eyes went half-lidded. He jammed his knee deep into her diaphragm, forcing out her breath, sending out bolts of white-hot pain. Louis lowered his reddening face until their noses were touching and their lashes entangled. Anna clamped her trembling lips closed. Her eyes wondered at his demented ones. It was all very clear now. He was as mad as a March hare.

He put a hand around Anna's throat, leaning his fingers into the mattress, so that her breathing tapered to a faint rasp. With his other hand, he snatched a handkerchief from his pocket and reached for the
bottle. He unscrewed it, tipping it onto the handkerchief one-handed. The liquid spread, wetting his fingers and turning the linen gray. Chloroform.

He was going to drug her, play groom with her. He would kill her and leave her body on the tracks and the papers would say that she had committed suicide. She would not be buried in a gown by Vionnet of the House of Doucet. Her gory, dripping pieces would be buried in the potter's field alongside the murdered brothel girls and others who had truly committed suicide. No one would mourn her. Everyone would tut tut because Anna Blanc had gone to hell. She would have descended from gold to silver to bronze to a slimy blob of damned rotten flesh. And she had thought her reputation could not get any worse.

Anna tried to wriggle free, but he pushed his knee deeper into her diaphragm, until she stopped breathing altogether. She struggled ineffectually, beating her hands on his back, and when she thought she would lose consciousness he eased off. She gasped, gulping air. Louis laughed. He brought the handkerchief with the chloroform down toward her face. Anna grabbed his arm, yanked it down to her mouth, and bit him, drawing blood. When he recoiled, she grabbed the chloroform bottle from the nightstand and smacked him over the head. The bottle shattered. Chloroform ran down his hair and dripped onto her face. Before she could spit, she blacked out.

Someone was ringing a bell. It woke Anna. She lay supine on Edgar's slippery sheets and couldn't seem to complete a thought. She felt like a fishing weight. Each beat of her heart sent a painful rush of blood to her head. Her mouth tasted like cotton and Louis Taylor. She tried to suck saliva to spit him out, but couldn't. Her limbs were buzzing with sleep. She tried to wake them up, but they patently ignored her.

Ding. There was the bell again. She smelled kerosene burning, thick and heady, and saw the shadows of a lamp flickering on the ceiling. With effort, she was able to lift her chin. Louis Taylor sat beside her, his face flaring in shadow. He looked like a malignant spirit, one of the fallen angels who seduced the daughters of men. He held a little bell. “Do you remember the campañas at the Mission Inn?”

Anna didn't answer. She still wore her wedding gown, and on one foot she wore Eve's red shoe, which fit Anna loosely. She whimpered.

“You almost killed yourself with that chloroform, and you gave me a nasty headache,” Louis said. There was a dark stain on one shoulder of his undershirt and a lump from a bandage. His eyes were dilated to black.

Anna cleared her throat, her voice raspy and raw. “Joe is coming back for me, and he's going to kill you.”

Louis checked his pocket watch. “We have time. The nearest receiving hospital is twenty miles, and I siphoned most of the gas.” He smiled.

Anna's stomach turned. Was Edgar stranded on a country lane, wounded and far from help? Would she ever see him alive again? How far could Joe carry him? Her dear, sweet Edgar—her savior, whom she had stabbed, clubbed with a chair, and bludgeoned between the legs,
simply because he knew the Minor Prophets. Simply because he had loved her like Heathcliff, with a love that transcended betrayal. Would it now transcend death? And whose death? His or hers? Anna said a silent prayer to Philomena, patron saint of lost causes.

Louis gave a lift to his groomed eyebrows that she once would have thought debonair. “Would you like champagne?” He didn't wait for a reply but stood and crossed the room out of sight. Anna worked on her fingers, running her thumbs across their tingling tips. She made a fist with her left hand. She could move her arms a little, though they were cold with pins and needles. Both legs were numb. How long would it be before she could feel them again? She needed time so she could fully wake up and fight.

Louis was coming back with two bubbling flutes. She lay still. He sat beside her and lifted her hand, cradling it in his own. He turned her hand and drew a slow figure eight on her bare palm. She shivered in utter repulsion. He smoldered at her. Then he slapped her. Her cheek stung like a sunburn rubbed with sand. Adrenalin shot through her body and her eyes watered. She found she could wiggle her toes. “How are you going to kill me?” She flexed first one foot and then the other.

“Do you have a preference?”

He put Anna's champagne glass to her lips and tipped it. She swished the drink in her mouth and then spit out the bubbly pink, blood-wine mixture. It burbled over her lower lip and dribbled down her chin. Louis winced and wiped her face.

“I prefer that you don't kill me,” she said. “But, if you insist, don't slit my throat. It's ugly.”

“All right. But it's not as if you're going to have a wake. I'm throwing your dead body in front of a train.”

She tensed her calves and released. “Oh please don't. That's even worse. And not fire. Burning is the most painful death.”

“All right, no train, not fire. That leaves…what?”

“Carbon monoxide poisoning, natural gas…You could throw me off a cliff. A high one, please.” She commanded her thighs to contract and they obeyed her.

“I'm not prepared for that,” he said. “And we're running out of time.” He smiled. “Strangling is quick.” He ran a finger down her cheek and along her jaw. He put his hands around her throat. She gritted her teeth.

He laughed and moved his hands to graze her collarbone. “Not yet, my queen.”

Anna found she could move her arms a little, though they still felt like they belonged to someone else. She lifted her right arm a discreet inch and let it drop. Her legs had no strength. Once more, she scanned the vicinity for a weapon. There was nothing on the table now but the oil lamp and a large jug of kerosene that Louis must have used to refill it.

Louis sat back in his chair and sighed. “Anticipation is half the pleasure.”

Anna flung out her rag doll arm and knocked over the kerosene. It chugged out of the bottle, running across the tablecloth and down Louis's shirt, filling the room with its heady odor. It poured onto his lap and down onto the carpet. He jumped to his feet. “You've ruined my trousers!”

Anna closed her clumsy fingers over the tablecloth and yanked. The lamp tipped and tumbled, rolling to the edge of the table. The globe smashed onto the floor. For a moment, the flame reflected off the shards, sending a hundred tiny lights dancing on the ceiling. Then, the burning wick touched the wet cloth. The fabric caught and the table exploded into flame. Across the spreading fire, Louis looked at Anna with saucer eyes. His trousers caught. He dropped onto the floor and rolled, a marshmallow on fire. Flames crawled across the saturated carpet. The bed curtains caught. The feather tick caught. Maybe Anna would die by fire after all, but she would not die alone. She would take Louis Taylor with her. She slithered off the bed and rolled onto the floor, her legs jelly. Tiny black feathers flew on drafts around the room. She inhaled one and coughed, pushing it out of her mouth with her tongue. She dragged herself toward the stairs, away from the spreading flames.

Anna lay in the dirt and crunchy leaves beneath Edgar's orange trees, a half resurrected phoenix, hiding from the firemen and reporters who would inevitably come, drawn by the smoke. Her face was black. Her thighs and forearms stung, scraped from crawling on her belly through a flaming house and onto the gravel drive. Her smoky hair fell down her back in a frizzy mess. Her wedding dress was black with soot, with several large holes in the back where falling cinders had burned all the way through her drawers. No doubt her bottom was as black as any bottom at the Octoroon.

Anna heard a motor and saw Joe Singer ride up on Lulu's motorcycle with the sidecar empty. He held his head and yelled, but his words were lost in the
whoosh
of the flames. His face contorted in anguish. He bolted to the water trough and jumped in, wetting his hair and clothes. Anna stood. What was he doing? He charged back to the porch. He must think she was in the house. She hoped the wanton cur felt guilty.

Joe leapt onto the porch holding his wet shirt over his mouth, peering into the parlor. Smoke streamed from the windows. He doubled over, coughing. He would be hurt if he stayed on the porch. Anna stood and called to him, “I'm here! Here I am!” Her words were lost in the roar of the fire.

Anna said a silent prayer to Saint Rose of Lima, patron saint of the vain, that no firemen or reporters would arrive because of the smoke and see her ebony face or her bare, blackened bottom now visible through the holes in her wedding dress. She picked her way across the rocky drive in her tender bare feet and wobbly legs. She felt the breeze on her derrière and the jiggle-jiggle of her body as she hopped along without a corset.

Anna gave a cry of horror as Joe dropped to his knees and crawled inside the burning house. The faithless Beelzebub had trounced her heart, yet there he was, risking his life to save her. She couldn't sort it out. She began to run on the sharp gravel, suddenly covered in sweat, her heart pounding. “Joe!”

Anna watched as the roof of the veranda caught fire. She stumbled to a stop at the porch. If she went inside after him, she would likely burn to death, and burning was the most painful way to die. There would be no grave for Anna Blanc in the potter's field. Her ashes would be mingled with those of Louis Taylor's, and they would blow into the orchard, fertilize the oranges, and be eaten by the people of Los Angeles. She might save Joe, but more likely, he would become orange juice too. If she didn't go inside and tell him to stop looking for her, he would be orange juice for certain.

Joe Singer would die for her. She would live on to tell the world his heroic story. She would write a book about his glorious sacrifice. It was a rather stupid thing to do, to crawl into a burning building, but she wouldn't say that in the book. Nor would she mention the prostitute.

A beam crashed from the upper floor, crushing half the porch into cinders. Anna screamed, and then screamed his name over and over. There was no decision to be made now. Joe Singer, the hero and the profligate, was certainly doomed if he wasn't dead already.

And so, Anna did what any girl would do in her situation. She dodged around the flaming beam, dropped to her knees, and slithered head first into the burning death trap.

The stairs were obscured by a mushroom of black smoke. One wouldn't know that the sun had risen. She saw her gun on the floor and thought how useful it would have been to have had it earlier. She would not have had to light Louis Taylor on fire and spoil Edgar's farm. She crawled closer to the blaze. Though she was breathing, there was very little air. She breathed faster, coughing and breathing, her cheeks and eyes burning. The Franz Bischoff painting of the coast was burning, the cypress trees curling into the cliffs.

Beneath the plein-air masterpiece, she saw Joe's feet on a thick Persian rug. They weren't burned, but they were no longer crawling.

Anna crawled faster and grabbed him by his boots. She tucked her skirts into her drawers. Like a burro pulling a yoke, she turned her back to him, put his legs across her shoulders and hauled him feet first and face down out across the parlor floor. The rug dragged along under him. He began to kick. Anna held tight. She pulled him into the foyer, over the bumpy threshold, and out of the house. She hopped off the edge of the burning porch and dragged him after her. He fell three feet into the rose bushes on his magic carpet, his face swinging down with a thud. Anna fell forward on the gravel drive onto her scraped and bloody knees. She stood and grabbed the rug, tugging with both hands, pulling him out of the thorns and away from the house toward the trees.

The top floor came down in an explosion of heat, smoke, and cinders. It shot out a blast of hot air and sparks that singed Anna's eyebrows and hair, leaving pieces short or missing altogether. She pulled harder, faster, her bare, skinless soles caked with gravel. She was thrown forward by another blast. A wheel from Lulu's motorcycle, folded in two like a taco, flew over her and penetrated a tree in front of them. She kept moving.

And then the ground was soft. She stepped on a squishy, moldy orange. They were in the orchard. The air was cleaner and she could breathe. She rolled Joe onto his back and loosened his collar. She undid the buttons on his shirt, then the buttons on his undershirt, just to be sure. His bare chest rose up, and went down, up and down. She laid her cheek on his belly and sobbed. She sobbed until she slept.

“Holy…Holy drawers,” a male voice said.

It roused Anna from sleep. She lay across Joe Singer. She thought she'd heard him praying—a very good sign. She opened her eyes to the morning light and saw the boots. Twelve shiny ones. Anna tilted back her sleepy, sooty face and let her eyes follow the boots to their occupants
and the speaker of the words. Not a man looked at her face. The volunteer fire brigade and two reporters were staring down through the large holes in her wedding dress and the big holes in her drawers, at her bare, black bottom.

One snapped a picture.