Open not thine heart to every man, Lest he requite thee with a shrewd turn.
—Ecclesiastes 8:9 (KJV)
Fifty miles to the south, in a hospital cafeteria at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, he stood waiting for a bacon omelet and toast. What was offered to him was overcooked, the toast burnt on one side. He took it, sipping steaming coffee as he paid.
At eight-thirty in the morning, remnants of the overnight shift were done, going home, a fresh batch of faces coming on. He was one of those going.
He surveyed the tables, choosing an empty one in the corner.
A dark-haired young man wearing a white lab coat stood nearby studying the specials. Their eyes met and the young man walked in his direction, sat down at the table.
He kept eating, never picking up his knife.
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give you a problem back there.”
“It’s quite all right,” he said.
The young man smoothed his hair, leaned closer. “Look, it’s just that I thought it was a bad judgment call, that’s all.”
“You and I both know she was dead when she came in.”
“What the hell are you talking about? She was doped up, but we could have saved her.”
“Are you questioning my judgment?” He clenched his napkin in one hand below the table.
“You were pursuing her treatment aggressively, then you…didn’t.”
“That’s when I realized she was gone,” he said, matter-of-factly.
The young intern would hear nothing of it. “You should have kept on though. When you got there, she had a respiration rate of six.”
“And pinpoint pupils. We checked the arms and legs for needle tracks.”
“I know that,” the intern snapped.
“I’ve had cases like hers before. The respiration rate didn’t mean anything. Her vitals were erratic. All over the place.” He kept eating, wondering why he was explaining himself to this boy. “Look, I started an IV, ordered a thousand cc’s DELR, 150 cc’s an hour.”
He glanced up. The intern’s face was redder. “Yes, but you didn’t order Narcan. You did nothing to counteract the morphine. Shit, you wanted me on your team… and now I’m standing by as you’re killing people.”
Putting down his fork, he stood, walked around, and sat on the other side of the table next to the young man. He tried to put his arm around the intern, wanting him to understand. He spoke in a whisper. “She’d had such a massive dose, there was little…”
“Don’t give me that bullshit!” the intern snapped, pushing away, standing over him. “You didn’t follow protocol.”
“Will you sit down with me?” He patted the bench. “I have something to tell you.”
“What?” the intern said, exasperated.
“Come on now, sit down for a minute. There’s something I should tell you.”
The young man looked around and realized people were staring. He sat, straddling the bench. “What?”
“I’m sorry about her death. She should have had more time, you know. But I wasn’t stupid; I did what I could. I didn’t mean for her to die.” He whispered, “She would have gone anyway. The amount of morphine in her system would bring down an elephant.”
“Let me ask you something, son.” He looked straight into the young man’s eyes, his face showing no emotion.
“Go ahead.”
“How long have you been in residency?”
The young man considered the question for some time. “This is my first year.”
“And how long have I been practicing medicine?” he said coolly.
“I don’t know.” The intern glanced at the doctor, sizing up his age. “Fifteen, twenty years maybe.”
“Twenty-two years.” His voice did not waver. He kept the same monotone diatribe he used when speaking at medical symposiums. “And how many morphine deaths have you witnessed over your one year of residency?”
“Well, we don’t get many in Newport. About three, I’d say.”
“Now let me ask you another question,” he whispered. “How many do you think I’ve seen in twenty-two years?” He let the words float with their own authority, adding none to his voice.
Normal color began to return to the intern’s face. The glare in his eyes was gone. “Mmm-hmm.” He seemed to consider the words. “You really think she wouldn’t have made it?”
“Yes. With all that trauma, she wouldn’t have lived longer than another ten minutes,” he said, his voice calming, palm supporting his chin.
“But with oxygen and one amp of Narcan, we could have saved her.”
“We?”
“Yeah, we. I should have taken over. Jesus, why didn’t you let me?”
He caught a quick breath. “You are an intern, my boy. What makes you think her outcome would have been any different?”
“I don’t know,” the young man said, his voice muffled, one hand over his mouth. “The medical texts say…”
“What?” His voice rose for the first time.
“The texts say…”
“I don’t really care what they say. I’ve seen ones like her before. She wouldn’t have made it. Real-life medicine and what you read in books are two different things. Trust me.”
The intern started to relax, the grimace on his face giving way to a look of sheer exhaustion.
He lowered his voice again. “I know sometimes these things upset us. I know. I can tell you’re upset. Why didn’t you do something more for her? I know the feeling.” He raised his head and stared at the young man. “Let it go.”
“Huh?”
“Like I have. I simply let it go.”
The intern seemed to understand what he was saying. Sometimes the line between life and death got blurred. Sometimes people died for all the wrong reasons. Rising, the young man barely brushed his forearm. The touch registered. “Thanks, I’m glad we talked.”
“I am too, Craig.”
He watched the young doctor walk away.
He got to the club at about eleven o’clock. The Irvine Sports Cub provided his sole daily interaction with people outside of the hospital. It stood at the end of a paved road that ran though the high-rises south of Costa Mesa. The club’s owners took care of it. Gleaming heavyweights waited for the willing. Now, in late August, mustiness from sweating bodies hung in the weight room. There weren’t many people here in the daytime.
He made an inspection tour of his muscles as soon as he sat on the ab machine, floor-to-ceiling mirrors reflecting his veins pumping. There was no wedding ring on his left hand. Any one of these girls would know he lived alone. His eyes met a long-legged beauty on the Stairmaster. Breasts firm and high, certainly a boob job, it was easy to tell. She’d watched him for some time but was too obvious. The beauty of the game had long since evaporated.
Satisfied he had done enough stomach crunches, he moved to the lockers. Changing clothes, he put on gray cotton sweats that felt comforting. He grabbed his racquet and walked down a narrow stairway to the courts.
As he descended, he made an inspection tour of the courts; it was useful to see who would be watching. With a hand towel, he wiped sweat remnants off his grip, looking around.
He liked the bare floors. Dead air. His footsteps echoed.
In this place, people were encased under white bright lights, as if for exhibition. It was a show of strength, perseverance, as much as anything else that made him come here week after week. Being able to display a glimpse of himself, the power, raw courage. What could be better? He needed an audience.
There was a difference between him and Higgins. Higgins came to win, he came to show himself.
Yet any layperson would not know him for what he was.
He saw Higgins twenty yards before he reached him. Higgins was standing alone, waiting on court five, raising a hand through the plexiglass. Even though Higgins weighed over two hundred pounds, clothes hung off the man’s frame, his hair unbrushed.
He smiled at him. He would cut him to pieces today.
The excitement was there, then evaporated.
They had been doing this for two years.
“How you doing, my friend?” Higgins asked, his frame bending at the knees, stretching his leg muscles.
“Fine, you ready?” He just smiled, small teeth barely showing.
Higgins smirked. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m gonna beat you this week.”
“I hope to God not. I’ve got a chance to kick your ass, and you can be damned sure I’m going to take it, as always,” he said, making haste to his favorite starting point, three feet in from the back line. “Just like last Thursday.”
Higgins said nothing, concentrating on his serve, which came with a blast.
He returned the hard ball with a thumping backhand. The screeching of white-top rubber soles on polished wood and the thump of the rebounding ball filled the small space.
Higgins began talking between quick breaths as he always did. “You heard about this Burning Man killer thing?”
“No, not really,” he lied, as he did to Higgins often. Planting his feet, he let go a loaded forearm shot that scored the first point.
Higgins groaned and wiped sweat off his balding head.
He handed over the ball, and a second service followed.
“How come you haven’t heard of him?”
“I’ve been extremely busy. I’ve got a chance to show my stuff right now, you know, for the director’s position.”
Higgins’s words came in short blasts, between heavy breaths. “Yeah, right. Like they’re going to consider you. How do you know you’re being considered?”
“They haven’t asked me. It’s an open position. I don’t think they have many choices. Board won’t start seriously looking for, I don’t know, another month, till Griswold leaves. Four weeks to show my stuff. You still working with Bristol Medical?”
“Yeah, it’s a genuine showplace,” Higgins said sarcastically. “I wish I was this Burning Man chump, getting all the attention.”
“You think he likes it?”
Clapping against the far wall, the ball whizzed by Higgins’s head. He couldn’t manage a return. He wiped the sweat off his brow, wrung his hand in his shirt, crouched, and said, “You want to put money on the game?”
“Sure.”
“Forty bucks says I make a comeback.”
“You’re on.”
Once the ball was in air, they resumed the conversation.
“How do you see the Burning Man?”
Higgins replied, “I don’t know. Might be some kind of a pervert, you know, gets his rocks off. Maybe he’s got a normal girlfriend, a misses, though I don’t think so. I think he can’t make it any other way.”
Higgins kept talking. “Got strange taste in women, that’s for sure.”
“How so?”
Higgins said, “Geez. If you’re gonna be doing that, why not go for upper-class chicks.
A flat cold feeling. “I thought he did.”
“Yeah, I guess two of them were, but I heard he slashed a whore and some farm worker.”
Going inside himself, he missed a shot.
“Gotcha,” Higgins taunted.
“So you think less of him because he killed those two?”
“Yeah. I guess. Don’t make much sense, you know.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said, straightening. He could feel the fire rising up in him.
“You know with AIDS and stuff, how careful can the guy be? If it was me, I’d be making it with…” Higgins wiped sweat from his brow and returned a vicious hit. “Newport Beach types.”
He slammed the ball as it came at him. It rocketed to the wall in front, just above the painted line, and flew past Higgins.
“Shoulda brought a bat,” Higgins joked.
“Or more likely a tank,” he said. “So you think he knows them?”
“Huh?”
“You think he knows them? You know, the girls.”
“Well, that could be difficult. What if there were witnesses?” Higgins replied.
“You think he’s dumb enough to leave witnesses?”
“I don’t rightly know. Haven’t been any to come forward. It’d be difficult.”
“Why?”
Crashing against the walls, ceiling, floor, the small blue rubber ball continued to give them a workout.
Higgins grunted, taking a shot. “They’re rich. The first one is that surgeon Marsh’s daughter. You don’t think someone saw them?”
“What if no one got a lead on it? What if he doesn’t draw attention?”
There was a moment of silence.
“Jesus Christ. You might as well give up on that idea.” Higgins slapped at the ball and scored a point. He grinned and looked back. “Take that, you sonofabitch.”
He felt his blood pressure rising, felt his face flush. Nobody saw it.
“How do you think he could do it without drawing attention to himself?” Higgins questioned, sweat soaking through his sweats.
He served. “Maybe our guy’s a gentleman caller. Maybe he doesn’t stand out in a crowd. What do you think?”
“Pisses me off, that’s what I think.”
“Huh?”
“If he’s such a gentleman caller, what’s he doing carving up pretty girls?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said, his voice muffled by the ball’s ricochet against polished wood.
Game point. Match.
Higgins was pissed because he was wet and his opponent was dry and smug. “Dammit if you don’t always end up kicking my butt. You want the forty now?” Higgins said, looking at him.
He was used to Higgins showboating, used to his inability to deliver on the goods when the time came. “Don’t worry about it. Next week, it’s double or nothing.”
He got home about 3 p.m. to La Blanca, the house he had built for himself. It stood obscured from view of the Pacific Coast Highway, at the end of a gravel driveway that ran past cactus, succulants, and stone. He fancied the landscaping but did not know why. The starkness of it perhaps, against the blue ocean. Now, in late July, the prickly pear was in bloom. Its yellow-red flower casting no scent, yet magnificent against the sky. The house itself blended seamlessly into the costal chaparral. That is what made it so wonderful. In one instant it was there. In the next it was not.
Turning off the silent alarm, he nevertheless made an inspection tour of the house. There had been an aborted robbery attempt just last year. He flicked on the lights in each room and looked around. A visitor would not think he lived alone. He kept a full line of dresses in a guest bedroom closet. Maria did not question it when he mentioned they belonged to his girlfriend.
“Sí.” She had simply nodded and kept on cleaning.
He made sure the collection of clothing changed periodically to reflect the particular style of the season. Keeping two toothbrushes by the sink furthered the illusion. Regardless, Maria understood. He was not like other men. He did not like questions. But he paid her well, and she kept her comments to herself.
Satisfied he was alone in the house, he went upstairs, took a long shower, washed his hair. Dressed in a light blue cotton bathrobe that felt heavy on his tired muscles, he stood looking out over the Pacific and the gardens. Like the house’s front, no demarcation line separated the wild country from the garden below. The two landscapes blended seamlessly. That is what he wanted. The site, a triangular chaparral that plunged to the sea, first attracted him for its ruggedness, its connection to nature. He wanted an innocuous garden, a garden that celebrated the surrounding natural beauty.
He remembered his grandmother and her carefully pruned roses. Each one a mere token of what it could be if allowed to grow wild. Instead she had pruned each plant, clipped and directed the limbs to the point they looked cajoled, contrived.
It was much the way he felt around her.
Instead of that, here he had hired a landscape designer who understood the beauty of low-maintenance California natives, such as artemisia and toyon. The melding of his garden and native plants and costal scrub provided him a oneness with nature, as this house did with the ocean. Below him, the slate patio’s arched surface seemed to vanish, especially when viewed from the second-story window where he stood.
His human imprint below was slight.
It was as if nature could regain the upper hand at any moment, if it only wanted to. It was as if the sea was lapping at his floor.
This was the view he woke to each morning and savored each evening.
Towel drying his hair, he sat in the red chair and switched the automatic floor-to-ceiling blinds so they covered the windows. Light turned to pitch blackness with a mechanical whir.
He felt excited. Behind him, he turned on a metal reading lamp that cast a halo around him. With another button, a five-foot screen descended out of the ceiling. He turned on the projection television and the DVD. Sitting back comfortably in the red chair, he felt the air conditioning cool and dry his hair. He threw the towel on the floor. Stretching out further, he turned out the light behind him.
Darkness enveloped him. Lying back in it, he could have been anywhere. The video tape images cast a bluish, then red shadow over him. He closed his eyes, imagining he was with the first one. Nancy Marsh. The one he had waited for.
He opened his eyes and she was there on the screen. Closing them again, he let her sheer image wash over him. He could hear her laughing.
Cut to an image of her father’s house. A chocolate Labrador name Hershey jumped at her, ears flopping, a playful bark. He closed his eyes, cementing the image in his eyes, his mind. There was no up or down now. No left or right, no backwards, forwards.
Only Nancy Marsh, only now.
He remembered.
The video jumps as he approaches the young woman, her slim frame hunched over a white and pink iced birthday cake with nineteen candles. She blows them out. Camera catching a glimpse of her breasts. The video image blurs, sharpens to a close-up. His naked body lifting weight, muscles bathed in sweat. He can see the veins and sinews pulsing, can feel his blood surging like a cobra. He spits and writhes as he struggles with the weight. He knows it is training for what he must do.
Even closer, his eyes fill the screen, fluttering, then rolling up into white balls. They engulf the lens.
He is plunged into darkness. Into Nancy.
She died in this house.
This next part he loves.
A white blank blur becomes a white ceiling. Fading back, adjusting the focus, it is the ceiling. The camera drops down abruptly. Nancy Marsh is there. She is thrashing, crying, turning to him as he stands over her. He says nothing, smoothing her hair as she tries to rise. The camera jerks back and there is a room. White tiled walls and floors. A stainless-steel table. He walks to the camera, his naked body obscuring the shot, blackness. Then he walks back to the screaming girl.
He notices now in the scene he is firm, excited.
He feels it here too.
Injecting her, the girl’s body goes limp, although she is still screaming. Shrill screams.
Nancy Marsh is wet with perspiration, gleaming in the light he has installed overhead. Her neck rising up, wildly. Eyes roll, then focus on him. He walks to the camera. The screen goes black.
Darkness hides many sins.
Light again. It is focused more clearly now. The tripod has been moved closer so he can tape her face. Remembering the first time he decided to tape her face, he realizes only now the reason he did so. It was to relive his grandmother.
He closes his eyes and remembers the first time.
“Santa,” he says. It was what he had always called her.
Opening them, he is hovering over Nancy. Cutting. His hand coming into the picture from the right, holding a long stylized knife, its blade gleaming. First there are the numerous small incisions, each one a release for him. He can hear his breath, lumbering and heavy from the camera.
He licks his thick lips as the images play out.
As he approaches the last wound, the one to the abdomen, his hand is shaking. Knitting his brows, he holds it still. He can cut the life right out of her with one blow. Yet she is alive. A dark spot below her buttocks spreading, arms and hands doing nothing, the drug having taken its toll. The screams are there.
Darkness like a sea around him, transporting him. In this room, he is covered in sweat, although the air conditioning continues to purr. Tongue running against small teeth.
She is dead now. Propped against a sycamore bush, her head dangling. A brown blur turns into a black blur as he curses, moving to the tripod; he steadies it and returns to her. Carefully, he arranges her, head facing toward the sea, to Newport. That way she can see La Blanca forever. Share it with him.
He puts his hand on wet skin, taking himself in his palm.
She is with him. Here. Now.
Arranged, her body resembles a scarecrow. Nancy Marsh under a sycamore bush, splayed out for all the world to see.
He comes into the picture from the right, moving slowly, effortlessly, as if on air. He wears a coat now, blood-smeared. With gloved hands, he takes her limp, lifeless arm, putting it around his neck. Lifting the lobbed head, he grins in the direction of the camera, holding the pose for a good ten seconds.
He wants to make sure this is captured on video.
He watches himself and Nancy in an embrace.
Forever.