“THAT FLIGHT LEAVES IN two hours and ten minutes, Miss Giles.” The ticket clerk handed her the ticket folder. “Gate six.” He pointed to his left.
She stood for a moment with the folder in her hand, watching her suitcase moving on the conveyor belt, one suitcase among many. Most of the suitcases contained enough clothing for a weekend, or a week.
Her suitcase could contain everything, all that was left of her life.
Aware of an impatient cough from the traveler behind her in line, she moved aside, slipped the ticket folder in her purse, made sure the purse was fastened. At five o’clock in the evening, the Burbank terminal was crowded. Conservatively dressed businessmen hurried from their shuttle flights to waiting cars, or cabs. Young people laughed together, their voices clear and clamorous. Just ahead, an attendant pushed a middle-aged man in a wheelchair. The man’s head lolled nervelessly against the chair back; his hands were crossed in his lap, inert. His eyes were empty.
As empty as Nick’s eyes: dead eyes in a cold, dead body.
Riding in the police car from the morgue to the Starlight Motel, the detective had tried to talk to her, tried to comfort her—and tried to pump her, too. Why had she come to Santa Rosa, she and Nick? Where had they planned to go next? She’d tried to be polite, tried to answer him. But, as if they were tethered, her thoughts had returned again and again to Nick’s face. They’d tucked the green sheet close beneath his chin, and arranged another sheet like a nun’s habit, concealing the hair, revealing only the face—the face so incredibly pale in the piteous white light, the eyes so utterly empty.
Finally, because she couldn’t think of anything else, she’d asked the detective—Ochoa—why they hadn’t closed Nick’s eyes. It was only civilized, she’d always thought, to close a dead man’s eyes. Embarrassed, Ochoa could only apologize. It was necessary, he’d said, that they take pictures, for identification. Several pictures. And for the pictures, he’d said, the eyes must be open.
And then he’d gone back to his questions, patiently probing. Like her tethered thoughts, returning again and again to Nick’s dead eyes, Ochoa’s questions constantly came back to the gun. Why had Nick been carrying the gun? The gun had been on the floor beneath the Toyota’s seat. Did she know that it was illegal to carry a gun out of sight—even if the gun was duly registered, which it was.
She realized that she was standing near the entrance of one of the airport’s restaurants. Was she hungry? Had she eaten today?
The uniformed policeman—Henderson—had knocked on her door at eight-thirty that morning. He’d told her that Nick had died. Just that, nothing more. Then, later, Ochoa had arrived. He’d stayed inside with her, waited until she’d finally mastered herself, quit crying. Ochoa had asked her to dress, while he waited outside. There’s been a bag of fruit on the closet shelf, beside the bottle of bourbon that Nick had always taken when they traveled. She’d eaten a banana, she remembered. And later, back at the motel after the trip to the morgue, stuffing clothing at random into her suitcase, she’d eaten an apple. Curiously, though, she hadn’t been conscious of the taste. She’d chewed, and swallowed, and felt the food swell in her throat. But there’d been no taste, no sensation of pleasure.
Neither would there be a sensation of pleasure tonight, alone in a strange bed. Whenever they traveled, every night, they made love. They’d talked about it once, how erotic they felt, in motel rooms. Forbidden games, she’d said, that must be part of it, part of the erotic pleasure. Nick hadn’t responded, not in kind. He’d simply smiled his slow, knowing, stud-in-heat smile, moved close to her, put his hands on her where he knew she liked it most.
Without realizing it, she was standing near the cashier’s stand, waiting to be seated. And, yes, a hostess was approaching, smiling, gesturing for Betty to follow her. The hostess was Chicano, like Ochoa.
She ordered at random: a turkey sandwich, soup, salad, and, after some thought, a glass of wine.
When he’d left her at the Starlight Motel, Ochoa had told her not to leave town, warned her not to leave Santa Rosa. But as soon as he’d gone, she’d started to pack. In minutes, she’d phoned for a cab, paid the bill with her VISA card, and lugged her suitcase out to the curb, where she’d waited for the cab. It hadn’t occurred to her that she was probably breaking the law. Her only thought was that she must get out of the motel room, where Nick’s things were still scattered around. She couldn’t look at his things, and she couldn’t bear to touch them, either, not then. She hadn’t given a second thought to her car, which had been impounded, Ochoa had said—adding that, after they’d finished examining the car, they’d “do their best” to clean it. Only then did she ask him how Nick had died, how he’d been killed. Reluctantly, Ochoa had answered that Nick had been shot while he sat behind the wheel. And then, doggedly, Ochoa had come back to the same refrain, transparently rephrased: Who would have wanted to kill Nick? Why? What were they doing, really doing, in Santa Rosa, she and Nick? Why had they come? Were they really on a vacation? And what about the gun? Why had Nick carried a gun?
Within minutes of arriving at the station, she’d been on an express bus to San Francisco, less than two hours away. Only then, with the bus under way, its tires singing on the pavement, did she realize that she shouldn’t have left his things behind. Rather than leave them to strangers’ hands, she should have packed his bag—packed his shirts and trousers, his underwear, his socks. She should have taken his suitcase with her, taken his things, kept them. She realized that now, realized that she’d made a mistake.
She was intimately familiar with his things; she did his laundry, sometimes. And sometimes he did her laundry. It was part of living together, doing each other’s laundry. She knew that now, knew what it meant, really meant, to live with a man. She’d been thirty-two when he’d moved in. Except for weekends, she’d never lived with a man before. Vividly, she could remember the first time she’d done their laundry. He’d stained his shorts: small brown stains, at the crotch. This, she’d thought, was reality. The movies, the magazines, that was one thing. This was something else.
At the Greyhound station in San Francisco she’d been lucky: immediately, she’d connected with a bus to the airport. Only then, it seemed, during the ride to the airport, had she begun to think, begun to plan.
Plan?
No, not plan. Except to call her mother from the airport, tell her mother what happened, she had no plan. She’d known it wouldn’t help, to call her mother. She’d known how her mother would react, even known what her mother would say, the phrases she’d use. But there’d never been any question, that she must call her mother.
Because her mother was all she had. The two of them, they were alone. All alone.
As she sampled the soup and nibbled at the sandwich, she realized that she was staring through the restaurant window at a bank of telephones.
It had started with a phone call. Nick had discovered DuBois’ number in her phone book, identified only as “D.D.” He’d told her that much, confessed that much. And, yes, he’d been drinking when he’d made the call, doubtless goaded by his persistent, pernicious dreams of glory—and goaded, too, by the suspicion, festering more virulently with every passing year, that his dreams weren’t coming true, might never come true.
They were both products of their past, she and Nick. She and Nick, and everyone else. For better or worse—better for her, worse for Nick—they were cast in the mold their parents had fashioned. Her father had left them, left her and her mother, just the two of them, with no house, no money, no hope. Yet, doggedly, blindly, instinctively, her mother had done her best—worked hard, and cried into her pillow.
From earliest memory, she’d been ashamed of her mother. Whatever the ceremony—the National Honor Society, high-school graduation, college graduation—she’d wished her mother wasn’t there.
Only later, much later, had she realized that her mother, too, had wished she wasn’t there.
In contrast, Nick had always admired his father, admired the new cars, the flashy clothes, the booming salesman’s laugh. In high school, Nick had it all: a car during his senior year, girls calling constantly, parties in the downstairs “rec room,” Cokes served by his mother with her bouffant hairdo—even an honorable mention on the all-state football team.
For Nick, it had all been too much, too soon—too easy. Because, when the house of cards suddenly tumbled down, and his father had shriveled before his eyes and his mother’s voice had shrilled, Nick began to lose his way. He’d struggled, of course, done his best. But always, it seemed, he’d confused style with substance, appearances with reality. First he’d tried stock car racing—until he’d crashed. Next he’d gone back over the same ground, selling performance auto parts, drinking and bullshitting with the customers, as his father had done. Then, finally, there’d been the get-rich-quick schemes, each one a failure, each one leaving him a little less of a man inside himself.
And then there’d been the phone call…
She pushed the food away, and looked at the glass of wine, half full. Should she finish it? If she did finish it, she might not make her own phone call. To the extent that she knew herself, she knew that a small amount of liquor could blur her thinking, cloud her resolve.
Almost reluctantly, she pushed the glass away. She looked at the check, opened her purse, dropped some money on the table beside the check. She rose, left the restaurant, walked to the bank of open phone booths. She put her purse on the shelf beneath the phone, opened the purse. She found her address book, verified that, yes, she still remembered the number. She opened her coin purse, took out two quarters, deposited them in the telephone’s coin slot. She stood motionless for a moment, receiver to her ear, hearing the buzz of the dial tone.
In the eleventh grade, she’d acted in the school play, an avant garde production called Jaguar. On the opening night, waiting in the wings for her cue, she’d felt numbed, suddenly immobilized, her throat dry, her limbs useless. For the first time in her life—and the last time—she’d seemed to exist apart from herself, a terrified stranger.
Until now, the last time…
Until now, when it was all happening again: the same slackness of the limbs, the same clenched throat, the same sense of helpless disembodiment as she touch-toned the numbers, heard the phone begin to ring. As she listened, she could clearly see the large, lavishly furnished room with its magnificent view of the ocean, the room she knew so well.
Three rings. Four.
“Yes?”
“This is Betty.”
A pause. Then, without changing inflection: “Yes, Betty. Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“I see. I’m sorry to hear it, Betty. You believe that, don’t you?”
“You had him killed. Didn’t you? You tried it once here in Los Angeles. And yesterday—last night—you had it done. Didn’t you?”
“We can’t talk about it on the phone, Betty. You realize that.”
She made no response.
“Will you come to see me, so we can talk?”
“No,” she answered. “No, I can’t do that.”
“You won’t, you mean.”
“He said it was you, the first time. I thought he was wrong. I told him he was wrong. But he knew it was you—knew you gave the order.”
“Are you coming back, Betty? Eventually?”
“No.”
“I see.” He spoke softly.
In the silence, she could hear the noise of the telephone lines, a gentle sizzle. Was it possible that he could have the call traced? Could he have sworn out a warrant for her? Would he do that? She couldn’t imagine. She’d never been able to imagine what he’d do. Which was the reason for his success, his incredible success. No one could predict what he’d do. Ever.
She realized that she was nervously clearing her throat, as if she had been called upon by a teacher, required to recite a lesson she’d only half prepared: “I’m going to tell them what you did—and why.”
“No, Betty. You can’t. When you think about it, you’ll realize you can’t. It’s important that you think about it. Very important.”
“I’ve got to go. I can’t talk anymore.”
“Will you promise to think about it? Will you call me again, in twenty-four hours?”
“No, I won’t promise that.” She raised her forefinger, broke the connection. In the receiver, she heard a small, decisive little click—possibly the most significant sound of her life.