“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she exclaimed. “I know I said I didn’t want to come, that it would be too vulgar and crowded, but you were right: I would have hated to miss this. I’m going to write to my nephews tonight, to tell them all about it. Yesterday would have been too much, official opening or not, but today, with all the cars—” She pointed to the Zeppelin Roadster, one of the largest of the cars, with a front end reminiscent of the diesel engine of the Santa Fe Chief and a body like a Trailways bus. “Isn’t that impressive?”
“Not as much as the driver would like it to be, I would think,” said Saint-Germain.
She laughed almost merrily. “Your Pierce-Arrow is nice enough for me.”
“You have the gift of tact, Rowena, and you use it well. I’m glad today is going as you would like, with all you have been through, and all the memories that have been stirred up. If you reach a surfeit of crowds, we will leave, but as long as you’re enjoying yourself, we’ll remain. Remember, you have a chance to spend some time in the countryside when we’re finished here,” said Saint-Germain. “We can go over the mountain to the ocean when this is over.”
She clung to his arm more from enthusiasm than apprehension. “I think that would be lovely. We’d get time alone together.” Her expression became more serious. “There are some things I want to discuss with you.”
“I realize that, and we’ll have a fine opportunity a little later on,” he said. “At the end of the afternoon, shall we go back by ferry, as we came, or do you want to drive over the bridge?”
“I want to drive over the bridge, but since the traffic is going to be hideous, I think it would be wiser to take the ferry back, because it will be half-empty, I expect To see the bridge in use from the deck of the ferry! Sort of hail and farewell, don’t you think? Out with the old, in with the new?” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Is it my imagination, or do things change faster than when I was a child?”
“They do change faster; I’ve been noticing it for the last four hundred years,” said Saint-Germain. “And the changes will continue to accelerate, unless something intervenes to stop them. This Great Depression here in the United States has certainly slowed change down.”
“How can you say that, here, at this bridge?” She turned away from the towering structure, gazing out toward the east and the hills of Alameda County. “The Bay Bridge is new. Treasure Island isn’t even complete yet. They’re going to have a permanent port for the China Clipper in place. And yet you say change has gone more slowly.”
“Oh, this is impressive enough, but, useful though these bridges are, they are an artificial change in many ways, imposed to make it possible for people to earn enough to live by building them, and using them to make earning a living easier. This is not the result of—” He stopped. “Never mind. I won’t impose my economic theories on you.”
“Why not? All the pundits are doing it all the time in the papers and on the radio; you, at least, have some perspective on the problem.” She sighed. “But you’re right. Not today. Today we are tourists, aren’t we?” She pointed toward the bay. “All those sailboats. They must be having a wonderful time.”
“On the water,” said Saint-Germain sardonically.
“Oh, I don’t mean that you would, I only mean that it would be fun to see this bridge from down there, with the sails singing in the wind.” She laughed, a bit tentatively. “Is crossing running water so far above it any easier for you?”
“No,” he said, a frown forming between his fine brows.
She glanced at him and changed the subject. “Where did you finally park your car?”
“Half-way into Sausalito,” he said.
“It might be a good idea to get out of here in a while,” she said, admitting in a lowered voice, “I’m beginning to feel as if I’m being watched again.”
“We’ll go,” he said, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I won’t make you come with me to get the car. I’ll find a spot where you can rest and I’ll go fetch it. Then you can decide where we might go next.”
“All right,” she said, not wanting to wear herself out hiking back to the car. The last few weeks she had been worn out, and little as she wanted to acknowledge it, she had to conserve her energy, at least until the strain of her attack passed, and the nightmares it had spawned. She was thankful for the many times Saint-Germain had come to her room and held her so she could sleep, yet she was disgusted that she should need such coddling. An independent woman like her, bothered by bad dreams! For the first time in her life she began to feel age pluck at her, and the experience chilled her more than the salt-scented wind.
They made their way through the throngs of reveling people; loudspeakers magnified the voices of officials and bands as several of each took turns in front of the microphones. It was almost impossible to hear what was being said, for the people gathered at either end of the bridge were boisterous. A family with three children was pushing through the crowd ahead of them, trying to stay together, for it was apparent that if they were separated, they would have an extremely difficult task to find one another again. Those swarming around them jostled and rejoiced, making the most of this day for which they had waited so long.
“It’s not as bad as yesterday,” said Saint-Germain. “There aren’t nearly so many people.”
“That’s unnerving,” said Rowena, laughing a bit self consciously. “Your three best friends could be in this mob and you might never see them.” They were on the footpath down to Bunker Road, with people moving up toward the vista point. “Are you on the Lateral Road?”
“Just up the hill from Alexander Avenue, actually—inside the city of Sausalito, on Sausalito Boulevard.” He nodded to a well-dressed couple struggling up the steepest part of the slope.
“That’s a fair distance.” She was a bit ashamed at how glad she was not to have to walk it for herself. “I’ll watch the people. There must be faces I’d like to sketch.”
“That isn’t the only thing that might be in the crowd,” said Saint-Germain, and felt her falter at his side. “I don’t mean to frighten you, not with all you’ve been through. But it is best to be alert in such a place as this.”
“I understand,” she said, the merriment gone from her voice and her eyes. “And I know you’re right. I wish you weren’t, but you are.”
“So if you will let me find you a place to sit a little out of the ebb and flow…” He nodded toward the curving road. “I shouldn’t be long. Traffic isn’t piling up yet.”
“We could take the ferry from Sausalito,” she pointed out.
“Then you wouldn’t get your afternoon in the countryside. But we’ll do whatever you choose.” Saint-Germain indicated a line of thick posts made from broad tree-trunks. “Take one of those for your chair, and give yourself twenty minutes or so to relax. I won’t need much more time than that.”
She put her hands to her hair. “I’m going to look a fright.”
“Never,” he said, and chose the broadest of the posts that marked the edge of the road. “Be careful. Remember, these are here to stop cars from going off the pavement. Keep an eye on the traffic, and don’t take any chances.”
As she sat on the broad post, Rowena said, “I’ll make every effort.” She kissed her fingers in his direction as he strode off down the curving hillside. “And I’ll study faces.”
“Very good,” he answered, and lengthened his stride, using the footpaths to cut over to the Sausalito Lateral Road, his deceptively easy stride covering ground more rapidly than most people could run. It was a windy day, which took most of the warmth away. The chill did not bother him, but the hazy sunlight did, making his skin prickle.
Rowena shielded her eyes so she could watch Saint-Germain as he slipped through the crowd on the road. The way he moved fascinated her—lithe, swift, and powerful, like watching a gifted dancer, although Saint-Germain did not dance—and she wished she had a camera so she could freeze his movement and paint it later,
to remind her of this day when he was gone, providing he photographed at all. Eventually she lost sight of him as he went around the bulge of the hillside. She had left her watch on her dresser, so there was no way to keep track of the length of time Saint-Germain had been gone. If she had had cigarettes with her, she would have smoked, but as it was, she contented herself with studying the faces of people going by her. Occasionally she could hear music blaring from the loudspeakers at the vista point above her, but for the most part, she let her thoughts drift; it was a wonderful time to sit in the sun and feel the crisp breeze snapping around her. It was easy to half-doze in the sporadic warmth and let the excitement of the day eddy around her.
The sound of a siren cut into her reverie, and she got up from her tree-stump post, slightly disoriented. How long had she been lethargic? It seemed more than twenty minutes. She was suddenly worried. Where was Saint-Germain? Shouldn’t he have returned by now? She listened to the wail of the siren with increasing alarm, all the while telling herself that she was borrowing trouble, that the chances were that the siren had nothing to do with her. She noticed that many others were watching the police car as it rushed down the Lateral Road, and that bothered her, as well. She wanted to know what had happened that the police had been summoned. Who could tell her? Impulsively she began to walk along the road, going the direction Saint-Germain had.
Another police car bawled past her, the faces of the two men inside grim; Rowena felt a cold mass solidify in her solar plexus, her fear made physical; whatever was the cause of the police being summoned, she saw that the officers thought it was dire. She resisted the urge to run, telling herself that the reason Saint-Germain was taking so long to reach her was that the emergency that had summoned the police had delayed him. How much she wanted to believe it and how much she dreaded what might have happened. Her head was starting to ache, another manifestation of her dawning panic. She could not think of anything more to do than go toward the place where the police cars were going, all the while hoping to see Saint-Germain’s Pierce-Arrow coming down the road in her direction.
She had gone more than half-a-mile when she found a white-faced man approaching her, occasionally looking back over his shoulder. “What is it? What’s happened?” she asked the man as he staggered up to her.
“It’s … pretty bad. You don’t want to go look, lady, you really don’t,” said the man.
“What—?” she asked. “Tell me what happened?”
He shook his head. “A fancy silver car lost its brakes, they think. It came down the hill, crashed across Alexander, and went over the retaining wall and bounced down the side of the hill below, into the bay.” As he spoke, his skin took on a greenish tinge, and when he finished talking, he flung away from her and went off into the dry grass to vomit.
“A silver car?” Rowena repeated, aghast at the emotions that took hold of her.
The man could not answer her; he stood bent over, his hands on his knees, his elbows akimbo as his guts lurched again.
Rowena began to run, her thoughts blurred by all the awful possibilities jumbling through her. She forced herself not to break into a run, but she walked rapidly, and occasionally dashed the tears from her eyes, trying to convince herself that she was being foolish to worry so. As she rounded the hill, she saw two police cars drawn up at the side of the narrow road near a break in the metal railing above the concrete retaining wall, three of the officers standing at the break, looking down the steep incline toward the edge of the water. “Oh, Good Lord,” she burst out.
One of the policemen caught sight of her and bustled toward her. “Sorry, ma’am. You shouldn’t be here. This isn’t the kind of thing ladies should see.”
But she would not be turned away. “Tell me what kind of car it is.”
“It don’t make any difference,” said the policeman. “It’s a wreck, in any case. The doors on the left side are off, and the roof looks like crumpled paper.” He regarded her with that official menace that police often employ to discourage onlookers.
“Let me see,” she insisted. “I have been waiting for my friend, who went to get his car so we could leave.” She met his eyes with the upper-class imperiousness she had learned in her youth; status won, and the officer looked away first. “My friend drives a Pierce Silver Arrow, three years old, as I recall.”
The officer coughed. “Do you know where he was parked?”
“He said he was on Sausalito Boulevard,” Rowena answered, making herself sound unafraid.
“Um.” The policeman now avoided her stare deliberately. “Would your friend be a middle-aged man, on the shortish side, in a black suit with a striped tie?”
“Yes,” said Rowena, holding her breath.
“Sorry, ma’am. I don’t know how to break it to you. They’re fishing him out of the bay right now. He got tossed out of the car when the doors came off, and I’m afraid he bounced down the cliff pretty hard. His suit caught on the bumper, or he’d’ve landed next to the Benson house, not in the bay.” He pointed to the sixty-year-old structure that stood at the edge of the water, backed up against the cliff, built on piles that were lapped by high tide. “As it is, he’s … well, there’s an ambulance coming. We’ll have to let them—”
Rowena felt a single idea go through her. “He can’t die.”
“We all hope so, ma’am,” said the officer in a manner that revealed he thought otherwise.
“No,” she said. “He can’t die.” She looked about her. “I need to make a telephone call. To his house.”
“You might want us to do that, ma’am, after he’s out of the water,” said the policeman with rough sympathy.
“I need to do it. Now.” She stared down the road. “Where is there a telephone?”
The policeman looked disquieted. “Well, there is the Red Slipper, just down the way, off of Second. The sign’s pretty discreet, but you can see it when you get to Richardson Street.”
“All right,” said Rowena, determined to do her utmost for Saint-Germain. “Don’t take him away until I get back,” she warned.
“We might have to, ma’am, if he’s—”
“I’m his blood relative, and I am ordering you to wait for me. I have some arrangements I have to make for him.” She was already walking, feeling strength coming back into her body as she walked down the hill. Much as she wanted to know what had happened, she would not let herself dwell on the dreadful possibilities. She had to call Rogerio and begin making arrangements for getting Saint-Germain back to his house, for once in the hospital, he would be in as much danger as he was when his car had plunged over the cliff. At Richardson Street, she turned away from the bay and began looking for the Red Slipper. This turned out to be a fifty-year-old three-story house with widow’s walks and two cupolas, painted pink and white. A valentine-shaped sign identified it as the Red Slipper, and Rowena realized that this was one of Sausalito’s famous-but-discreet bordellos. She faltered, then went up onto the broad piazza-porch and knocked on the door.
“Yes?” The man who opened the door was a big mulatto with cauliflower ears and a mashed nose.
She was determined not to be embarrassed. “I’m sorry, but my friend was just in a car accident, and I’d like to use your telephone to notify his—”
“Come on in,” said the man, regarding her with curiosity. “The telephone’s over there, next to the cloakroom. It’s pay.”
“That’s fine,” she said, and hurried in the direction he pointed; she had a vague impression of glossy cherry wainscoting and burgundy wallpaper, and there was a perfume in the air that was spicy and flowery. The telephone was in an alcove with a sliding door, and she slipped into it quickly, taking change from her purse and dropping a nickle into the coin slot. “Operator. I need a San Francisco number,” she said when asked what number she wanted.
“That’ll be fifteen cents for the first three minutes,” the operator informed her, and took the number while Rowena deposited a dime.
“Ragoczy household,” s
aid Rogerio after four rings.
“Thank God you’re home,” Rowena said without greeting. “Rogers, there’s been an accident. A bad accident.”
“Indeed, Miss Saxon,” he said, so coolly that Rowena knew he was upset.
“In Sausalito. The car is wrecked. And the police will be taking him to the hospital.” She spoke in rapid spurts.
“The hospital? Which hospital?”
“I plan to ask them to take him to one in San Francisco,” said Rowena. “Which do you recommend?”
“The Affiliated Colleges of the University of California are just down on Parnassus, which is convenient to this location, and the hospital is considered excellent.” He paused. “I’ll call and make arrangements to meet his ambulance.”
“Good,” said Rowena. “I’ll see if they’ll let me go with him.” She did her best to keep from dwelling on what might happen to Saint-Germain.
“Very good,” said Rogerio. “And I wouldn’t fret. He’s come through much worse than this, and survived.” He had a brief impression of Saint-Germain hanging from a crucifix, the sun burning him almost beyond recognition; that had been in Mexico, three centuries ago, but he banished it from his thoughts.
“Thank you, Rogers,” said Rowena, and hung up. For several seconds she hung on to the telephone and shook, but then she told herself she had no time to waste this way. As she came out of the alcove, she found the man who had admitted her standing nearby. “That was very kind of you,” she said to him.
He gave her a half-smile. “You sure you don’t want to stay for a while?”
She achieved a shaky laugh. “No, thank you.” On impulse, she held out fifty cents to him.
He waved the money away. “This wasn’t business. I don’t want a tip.” He led her back to the door and held it open for her. “I hope your friend’s okay.”
Midnight Harvest Page 53
