Dead Lines

by Greg Bear

  Maybe he should go get an EKG. He had responsibilities after all, and he had been making excuses too long. Besides, this had been an exceptionally hard week. Idly, he removed his black address book from his coat’s breast pocket, turned the pages, searching for old colleagues, those less well placed than Karl, less busy; an old boy’s network for the grumpy, date stale, and unpredictable.

  Then, closing his eyes, he folded the book and felt a fresh wave of despair. Face it.

  Face what? What was he supposed to face? His failure? He hadn’t started yet; he hadn’t had time to fail. Face up to a lack of confidence? Even in his so-called heyday, Peter had never felt confident beginning film projects.

  He could not shake the de-rezzed images of Sascha. On the screen like that for all the world to see, forced to do whatever the world wanted, forever and ever. What if every photo Peter had ever taken, every frame of film he had ever shot, had stolen a bit of an actor’s soul? Would that explain why so many actors and models seemed to fade, to get more and more eccentric and desperate over time?

  To become so needy?

  Were they ever pushed to the point where they had nothing more to give, nothing left to be sucked away, and the camera knew?

  Disgusted at his own imagination—there were thoughts that did not deserve thinking—he buckled up. He was done for the evening. He would get home a little early, fix supper, wait for Helen and Lindsey. Seeing Lindsey again would help.

  Peter needed all the help he could get right now.

  CHAPTER 23

  A HUGE TRAFFIC jam had packed the 5 and spilled out onto the 10. Peter sat in his low, low seat behind a massive SUV—a Porsche SUV, he noted with a slight curl of his lip, built like a stack of shaved hockey pucks. Was nothing sacred?

  He could not see ahead to know whether to push right and get off at the next exit. When he edged right to reconnoiter, he saw the surface streets were already jammed and that traffic was, if anything, moving more slowly there than on the freeway.

  It took an hour for the never-ending conga line of red taillights to ooze like cold molasses to the interchange. Peter glanced at his watch—an old, scarred, gold-plated Bulova he had had since high school—and saw it was eight-thirty.

  “Damn it,” he said, clenching his fists on the wheel. Helen would be at the house before he got there. He would not have food for Lindsey’s breakfast or ice cream for a late night snack. He was once again a loser, fulfilling Helen’s heartfelt expectations.

  Suddenly, he hated Los Angeles, the freeways, his ineptitude for not foreseeing such a delay. He had lived here most of his life but had not in fact braved Friday-night traffic for years, his social life being what it was. Blame LA. Blame everything and everyone.

  After ten long minutes of angry speculation, the Porsche finally crept around the slowdown’s dreadful cause. Traffic was snaking to the right. Purple flares created a proscenium around a stage of spun and crumpled wrecks, like gaslights for a theater in hell. Firefighters and police waved red-muzzled flashlights to get traffic to move along, move along. Two of the wrecks, still smoking, had been doused with white foam.

  Despite his vow not to look, Peter stared, thought for one plunging moment Helen’s car might be among the ruins, he might see them trapped or on stretchers. Two covered stretchers were being lifted into a big square white van. Cars had halted to let an ambulance push out from the shoulder of the highway.

  The wreckage fell behind and still the traffic did not let up. He endlessly shifted and pushed in the clutch and brought the revs up for first gear and let the clutch out and turned the wheel minute fractions of an inch, watching the temperature needle move closer to the red—it did that in prolonged slow driving. He crept along the last mile until he could get into second gear on the off-ramp.

  Five minutes later, he pulled onto Pacific and breathed a sigh of relief, watching the temp gauge drop back to normal. Traffic here was light. He might make it.

  Climbing into the hills, with less than a mile left to the house, the oil pressure pegged on zero. The Porsche made a desperate little grinding noise and coughed a chuff of blue smoke. The engine mercifully died. By dint of quick action slipping the car out of gear, he was barely able to coast to the curb.

  The time was now 9:05.

  Peter lifted the rear lid and looked at the engine, but he knew already that the problem was nothing he could fix, not here and not now. A tow and expensive days in the shop would be necessary. The Porsche had not given him this kind of trouble since an engine rebuild five years ago.

  Gently, as if lowering a dead pet into a grave, he dropped the lid and latched it, then dialed Helen’s cell number on the Trans. Her network was busy. He tried the apartment number. All he got was a sharp run of wheedling chirps. He had left his own cell phone back at the house. After three more tries, face grim, he rolled up the car window and locked the doors and began the long walk.

  At 9:37, out of breath but with, fortunately, no chest pain—and wasn’t that proof it was only indigestion?—he walked up the asphalt slope of the driveway and past the black hollow of the garage. The crickets were busy and the air was lovely and soft and cool and the house was dark and quiet and looked empty.

  They have come and gone, Peter thought. He had not even left the porch light on. The sadness as he walked under the twining loops of jasmine was deep and hard, a determined letting down of something that had more in it than just Helen and Lindsey; a sadness that was totally bottom line, the sum of an indulgent life too deep in arrears ever to make good.

  Bankrupt Peter Russell.

  He removed his key and was about to fit it into the brass lock when he saw the French door was already open. Helen had come and gone and had left the door unlocked behind her, hoping perhaps he would be robbed, and wouldn’t that teach him a lesson?

  And what would the robbers take—books? Vinyl records? An old TV and stereo worth maybe a hundred dollars—that might go. But the even older magazines? Basement file cabinets full of moldering, feelthy pictures a lot less suggestive than what you could catch any night on cable TV?

  Peter pushed the door open with a small squeal of the upper hinge and stood for a moment. He surveyed the darkened living room, the sun-warmed silence after a day of broken clouds, the faint mustiness of corners filled with dust that always eluded him during halfhearted attempts at cleaning. Empty life, empty house.

  Peter’s shoulders sagged. He walked down the dark hall, not bothering to turn on the lights. In his bedroom, stumbling over a pair of running shoes, he relented and turned the knurl on the pullout wall lamp. Light flashed across the room. Normal light, normal night.

  He had arranged the Enzenbacher chess set on his dresser, below the mirror, all the pieces neatly lined up, game ready. In the mirror, from where he stood, Alice’s copy of the chess set showed in reverse. He took a step forward and looked down at the real board. On the side of the silver pieces, good guys and ghosts, the king’s pawn had been advanced two squares. Phil’s favorite opening move. Had he jostled the piece after setting them up? He distinctly remembered leaving them all straight.

  Stillness, stillness, and then the creak of a roof beam settling, an almost laughable pause, followed by the sharp crack of furniture or a wall stud somewhere, sounds he had heard for decades, often at this time of night. Chunks of wood pushed up against other wood, just happening to enjoy tandem moments of relaxation from the heat.

  From the twin’s bedroom his ears caught a rustling as of disturbed linens.

  His heart thumped a mighty thump and his throat itched as he heard, from down the hall, “Daddy?”

  Suddenly everything changed, and he was happier than he had been in years, all his debts lifted and failings blown off through the roof to the stars and clouds.

  Helen had come and left Lindsey behind, tucking her into bed.

  “I’m here, sweetie,” he called, walking down the hall, pushing the door open, and stepping softly into the girls’ bedroom. She had chosen the right-h
and bed, where she lay with her face poking out from under the covers, a small moon in the blackness above a pale smear of gray that was the coverlet, a band of lighter gray that was the counterpane, straight and tidy. Two thin arms lay folded on the counterpane. She looked smaller and younger, lying in the bed in the dark, and she sounded younger, too, perhaps afraid of the dark, waiting for him to come home.

  That would give him some leverage with Helen, leaving their daughter alone in the house with the front door unlocked. Was any date hot enough to be worth taking that kind of risk?

  And then she would come back at him for his not being there in the first place, when she needed him, betraying her once again . . .

  Peter stowed all that and knelt beside his daughter.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “Stuck in traffic,” he said, smoothing back the dark hair above her forehead. Her skin was soft and cool. “It was a monstrous big beast that grabbed me. Nothing else could have kept me away.”

  “Traffic,” she echoed in just his tone of voice. “A beast.” She rolled to one side, facing him. He wished he could see her more clearly, but just touching her sent a thrill up his arm and into his body. It was the babies that mattered, the sex that made them was nothing—it was the babies that made one feel so excellent and unworthy. He wanted to lay his head down on his daughter’s lap and beg forgiveness, spill his sorrows, but he was a daddy. None of that.

  He would be here for her when she awoke in the morning. He would walk down to the market and get milk and cereal; no, he would just wait and they would walk down together.

  “Mother left you here,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s okay. You’re here and that’s what matters. I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you,” she said. “It’s been too long.”

  “Now you just sleep.”

  She nodded a big up-and-down nod. He reluctantly got to his feet and watched her for a long, lovely moment, all the loneliness gone. Full again, to the top.

  Then he turned and looked to the left, at the broadly sketched suggestion of an empty bed in the lighter shadows on that side of the room. He seldom came into this room now, but somehow, with one bed filled, the empty one was tolerable.

  It was a condition of life everywhere that parents sometimes lost their babies; knowing that did not stop the pain, but with Lindsey here, he was all right. He could believe that life would go on.

  “Sleep cozy,” he whispered, and closed the door to a crack.

  PETER SAT IN the kitchen, wishing that he had just a single beer, for this moment. Just a wish.

  No beer, no liquor, no drugs—not that he had ever done much in the way of illicit drugs. Working as he did, under the sort of federal and state scrutiny it was all too easy to imagine, drugs had never seemed a smart move and had never appealed to him anyway.

  No, it was alcohol that had seemed a safe haven and then had turned around and slowly, blearily blotted out six months of his life. Phil had found him in this very house, alone, passed out in his pajamas in the bathtub. Days before, Helen had taken Lindsey and moved out. Phil had been both sympathetic and disgusted. “Jesus, Peter, you still have a wife and kid.”

  “I had a wife. I had another kid.”

  “Well, shit. You still have a daughter, and that’s all that matters.”

  Other than the Scotch in Phil’s motor home—utterly excusable—Peter had not taken another drink in eighteen months. He put a kettle on the burner to make tea. Spooned a small mound of Earl Grey into the wire filter sitting low in the cup. Poured the hot water.

  Christ, he missed those times, all of them in the house. It had all gone wrong in so many ways, his fault, Helen’s fault . . . neither of them to blame.

  He thought about returning to the bedroom to look at his daughter, decided not to bother her. Just sip the tea and linger on the moment, feel like somebody other than a wastrel—such a word. A loser. A man who could not jump-start his life. But at least, and most important of all, a father.

  For now.

  Helen had gained custody by having her lawyer tell the judge what Peter had done for a living. Not that Peter would have contested. After all, look what he did for a living.

  He actually smiled around the first sip of tea. A ridiculous life, but it was his life. And it was ridiculous. After the marriage, he had locked up all his photo files in the basement, and Helen had considered it done with.

  In the late nineties, to supplement his earnings from the Benoliels, and to fill the spare time, Peter had fallen back on writing movie and TV novelizations, as fast as one or two a month. He had planned a mystery novel and they had talked about his writing full-time. Helen had gone back to construction, this time working in an office, and for a while, together, they had brought in more than enough money. They had started a nest egg, a college fund. A writing career had seemed possible.

  They had been a family. He had been happy, though restless. Always restless.

  What he would not give to go back for one hour.

  The boiling hurt was no more than a simmer now, cooler than the kettle as its whistle subsided.

  “Tomorrow I’ll call the tow service,” he said. “I’ll get my life back in shape. No more stalls. No more weirdness. No more self-destruction.”

  Peter finished his cup and thought about going to bed. Maybe he would descend to the basement office first and look at his notes, now that his head was clear and he was feeling good. It was the depression that had kept him down, kept him from thinking clearly and being inventive. With that lifted, surely he could move forward, if only a few steps.

  Happy.

  Jesus, he was actually happy.

  He marched barefoot down the steps into the basement and opened the door. Just as he switched on the lights, the phone rang upstairs. He jumped up the steps two by two to get to the phone before it woke Lindsey. Out of breath and face flushed with irritation, he lifted the receiver in the kitchen. “Hello.”

  “Peter, this is Helen.”

  “Sorry I wasn’t here to meet you,” he said quickly. “She’s—”

  Helen interrupted, “I was going to call earlier. The bastard stood me up. To hell with them all, right, Peter? To hell with men. That’s the story of my life. I’m not the raving, enchanting beauty I once was, am I?”

  “Well, I’m glad you—”

  Helen broke in again, her tone still bitter, but she was trying to hold it back. “Lindsey was sorry not to see you, but I’m a nervous wreck, and I’m certainly in no mood to drive. She’s watching TV. She’s mad at me. Well, maybe I’ll bring her over this weekend. Maybe we can all go for a drive. Have a picnic. That would be nice. Are you available?

  “Peter?

  “Peter?

  “Damn it, it’s not my fault, Peter.”

  She hung up.

  Peter had left the receiver dangling by its cord. He was walking stiffly and deliberately down the hall to the girls’ bedroom. The weirdness had not gone away. It had lain in wait for him to drop his guard.

  Lindsey always slept in the left-hand bed. How could he have forgotten?

  Daniella had always slept on the right.

  CHAPTER 24

  SOMETHING STOPPED HIM in the hall. He did not dare to turn on the light to see what it was. He could feel it watching him, part of the general darkness. It almost had a shape, almost had a smell—a dry coil of eels, a nest of long smooth lizards, all joined together and smelling of charcoal and damp earth.

  Many shaped into one.

  It was very old and yet it had been born in this house, or reborn. It was hungry but patient. He did not dare move or go back into the bedroom for fear of rousing it and exposing his daughter—his dead daughter, he reminded himself—to whatever danger it represented.

  Sweat broke out all over his body. He felt something in his hand and realized he had picked up the two-foot-long piece of steel rebar he kept in the corner of the kitchen, hidden by the stove, read
y to hand in case of burglars. What did he expect to have to defend himself against? Not burglars, not this time.

  What could he protect his daughter against now?

  They swarmed and fed. They ate the image of Lydia. Predators.

  No.

  Scavengers. Scavengers go after the dead and all they leave behind.

  Peter’s thinking was sharp and chilly. He took a soundless step forward and felt the darkness at the end of the hall contract reflexively. The charcoal scent became more like mud, like damp, moldy wallboard. Whatever was waiting in the far corner was imitating the odors found in an old house, as camouflage. Peter could tell the difference, like seeing the colors of a jaguar trying to hide in the jungle.

  He cleared his constricted throat. “I know you’re down there,” he said. “Go away. Get out of here.” He could almost see the coils tighten, the scavenger press back into the corner. How can a shadow twitch? How can a shadow know I’m here? It was not happy that Peter was watching for it, addressing it. For once, Peter felt some power. The rebar would do no good, but so long as he was here, the predator could not attack.

  Could not go after his daughter.

  His dead daughter.

  Somewhere in the house, another—or the same—stud or beam let out a sharp crack, like a gun going off. A pause, and then the furniture replied.

  As if a door had slammed, everything changed. The hall was suddenly empty; no coiled thing waited in the darkness. The smell of mud and charcoal and mold returned to the dry, familiar smell of an old house nestled on a dead-end street in the Glendale hills. Peter dabbed at his face with the back of his hand. Anger and fear flashed in his head like lightning. His fingers reached out and touched the light switch, then, with a jerk, he pushed the switch up. It rose in apparent slow motion, thudded into the on position, and light moved out in an oily wave from the milky glass ceiling fixture, washing up against the corners, flooding the walls, and splashing out to fill the hall. Brightness lay over everything like a thick coat of paint, but he was not reassured; paint could cover things up, but they might still be there. So he waited for a while until he could smell only the house and had stopped sweating.