Rubicon Beach

by Steve Erickson

  * * *

  When Crow returned late that afternoon Llewellyn knew he had something. If he didn’t have something, Llewellyn told himself, he wouldn’t have had the nerve to come back. Crow was moving around the room, excited; he’d come straight from the lab via an agency on Wilshire Boulevard. He carried an envelope which he emptied on the coffee table; he began sorting its contents. Screwed this up in development, he said, and this and this. He was throwing aside the misfires. Maddy, on the stairs, crept down several steps and stood watching them. Crow got to the last photo he’d taken as dawn had shone through the window. Llewellyn looked at it.

  Took it to the Harris people on Wilshire, Crow said. “They flipped.”

  “Forget it,” Llewellyn said.

  “Forget it?”

  “She’s not modeling for anybody.”

  “What are you talking about,” said Crow. “What did I drag myself over here at five in the morning for?”

  “Sorry if you got the wrong impression.” Llewellyn laid the picture on the table.

  “The wrong impression! What’s the right impression? What’s going on here? You know, Lee,” he said angrily, “this is a seriously weird scene you’ve—” He stopped, for the first time seeing Maddy on the stairs. Llewellyn turned to Maddy too. Maddy was looking at the kitchen doorway, where Catherine stood with her bowl of cold water for the living room carpet.

  Not to be discouraged from what had become a point of honor for her, the excision of her blood from the Edgar house, Catherine came into the room and set to work. There she saw the pictures on the table. She stood up from the floor and went over to the table and picked up the picture Llewellyn and Crow had been studying. She looked at it and then looked at Llewellyn. He has taken, she said to herself, the image of my father’s murder and made a map of it.

  “Have it,” Crow said to her. “I can print a zillion.”

  She crumpled it into her fist, still staring at Llewellyn.

  She backed away from the two of them and something else caught her eye. It was one of Crow’s discards, lost in the lab in a blur of light: it had come out a large black spot. Catherine picked it up and turned it from side to side, as though reading it. She looked back at Llewellyn and spoke to him in a language they’d never heard. This is the real map of me, she said, holding it up to them, if you’re not too blind to see it. Then she took it to her room where she set it up against the wall by the bed, pointing out to her kitten its astounding sights.

  * * *

  That night Catherine had the strongest dream of her life, in which the world of the dream was full-blown, in dependent of the gaps in sense that dawn and awakening re veal in dreams. She was running down a long corridor in a dark city. She could feel her arms wet with something, she could smell the thick redness of it, and in one hand she carried something; the feel of it was familiar and fatal. She turned a corner and went through two large doors out into the night, stone steps dropping before her feet. She stopped for a moment and there, at the base of the steps, was a woman she’d never seen before. The woman wore a spotted dress and had long amber hair. Catherine didn’t think her dreams could invent someone so distinctly. The woman raised a camera and aimed it directly at Catherine, who turned and ran back the way she had come. A while later Catherine woke. There was a beginning and end to this dream she’d forgotten before she even opened her eyes. She was alone in her room with the kitten and the black map against the wall, everything just as it had been before she went to sleep. But she had the feeling she’d been somewhere else.

  * * *

  In the days and nights that followed, her face became more. Her eyes became more and her mouth became more. Her hair became more. Her beauty blossomed like the flower of a nightmare; it pulsed through the house. The throb of it kept her awake at night; the throb of it kept Llewellyn awake at night. They both lay awake feeling the throb and pulse of her face at opposite ends of the house. I’m caught in America, thought Catherine, where people know their faces and wear them as though they own them. Perhaps, she thought, in the beginning their faces were the slaves of their dreams. Perhaps, she thought, in the end their dreams are the slaves of their faces. At his end of the house Llewellyn thought to himself, It wasn’t enough to capture her face within the boundaries of a photograph; it hasn’t rid me of the vision. He got up and, for the first time in two years, went into his study. When Maddy woke in the morning she was flooded with joy to hear the sound of his typewriter.

  * * *

  MADDY WAS no less distressed by Catherine’s presence in the house, but the sound of her husband working after so long was a welcome sign of normality. She rationalized to herself that the recent strange dynamics of the house hold were a kind of catharsis for her husband, some last bit of eccentricity to be dispensed with before he got down to serious labor. The studio still called every day and Llewellyn still stubbornly refused to return the calls; but now at least Maddy could sound convincing when she explained he was at work, and once she even held out the phone in the direction of the closed study so Eileen Rader on the other end could hear the telltale clatter. Maddy wanted Catherine out of the house but decided to forgo that confrontation a while until Llewellyn had gotten the new script well under way. Besides, a new plan of action had presented itself with Richard and one of his increasingly frantic phone calls. “He’s writing, Richard,” she said one day.

  “At the studio,” Richard said dubiously.

  “Not at the studio. Here, in the house.”

  “Really?” There was silence. “Listen, Maddy. I have a rather large favor to ask. Some kind of bash is happening here at the hotel in June, some anniversary or other.” A pause. “I may need a place to stay.” Another pause. “Should the management decide to collect on any outstanding bills, in anticipation of . . . inviting some guests to leave.”

  “For Cod’s sake, Richard,” she said. Richard, she thought, living here? Along with the crazy housekeeper . . . and then Maddy realized the opportunity.

  “It would only be for a while, of course,” Richard said quietly, keeping his dignity. “I wouldn’t make a nuisance of myself, honestly—”

  “Richard,” she cut in, “there’s a room in back. It’s not much. As far as I’m concerned you’re welcome to stay a bit. But there’s the housekeeper . . .”

  “Housekeeper?”

  The one you brought here, you idiot. “The one you brought here, Richard. Remember? Almost a month ago?” More silence and then he said, “Yes, I remember now.” “I think you should talk to Lew about this. Maybe you can come by this evening or when it’s convenient. I mean, you’re a friend. Surely you take priority over a housekeeper, I should think.”

  “l haven’t been sure of Lee’s priorities in a long time,” Richard finally said. “Maybe we were never as good friends as all that,” he added almost questioningly, hoping Maddy would contradict him. When she didn’t, he said quickly, “I’ll be by this evening.”

  She hadn’t contradicted him because it struck her as odd that Richard, who’d known her husband some twenty years, since he was a nineteen-year-old New York poet named Llewellyn, now called him Lee, like everyone else in this town.

  * * *

  When Richard showed up that night he’d had at least two stiff drinks. Llewellyn greeted him warily and Maddy had the feeling her plot was a mistake. The two hadn’t seen each other in a while. Heard you’re working, Richard said. Llewellyn answered as though in a trance. Richard, who was wary himself, and drunk on top of it, did not ask this particular evening if Llewellyn was writing him a part; he was afraid to. As do all people with no hope, these days he staked everything on a single hope that was bound to fail. Not despite the fact it was bound to fail but because of it. He had come to Los Angeles to fail, on the assumption that in Los Angeles it was an easier thing to do. “Maddy tell you why I came?” He got to the point directly.

  “Because it’s easier to do,” Llewellyn said.

  Richard blinked at Maddy, who decided to inte
rvene.

  “Richard’s afraid he may be evicted. I thought we might give him the back room for a while.”

  Richard hastened to explain. “Something in June at the hotel. Some anniversary or other.”

  Llewellyn nodded. “Twenty years,” he said.

  “Twenty years?”

  Twenty years ago they shot a man who quoted poetry. “Back room’s occupied,” Llewellyn said.

  “Surely,” Richard answered acidly, as much to Maddy as to Lew, “a friend takes priority over a housekeeper.”

  Llewellyn sat in a chair in the living room corner, not far from the remaining spots of blood on the carpet. He rubbed his eyes with his hand. “Why don’t we,” he said in a monotone, “wait and see. You haven’t been evicted yet have you? Maybe something will turn up at Eileen’s party. We can ask around.” He waved his hand in the air absently. He seemed to Maddy very distracted.

  “Is Eileen giving a party?” she asked. She didn’t understand how he knew such a thing, since he hadn’t talked to Eileen in a long time, judging from the persistent phone calls.

  “Some Academy Award nonsense,” he waved his hand again.

  “Am I going?” she said.

  “Of course,” Llewellyn answered. “You and Catherine and l.”

  She looked at him as if he had taken leave of his senses; she was barely able to repeat what she’d heard. “You and I . . . and the housekeeper?”

  “I’m sure I must have told you,” he said, rubbing his eyes again. Richard appeared absolutely befuddled. Maddy stared at her husband, head pounding with such incredulous fury that she was speechless. Slowly she turned to the stairs and then back to the two men, and then to the kitchen. She couldn’t think what to say or do or where to go.

  Richard watched her walk into the kitchen. He was still befuddled. “Don’t want to go to a party,” he mumbled after her, almost to no one. “I’m tired of the parties in this town. Don’t want to see people I have to explain things to.” He said, “It’s a bloody fucked place with bloody fucked people. Eileen Rader and all the rest of them. My agent. Your producer. That awful Crow fellow. I like New York people better.”

  Llewellyn looked at Richard. For a moment he seemed out of his trance. “Your agent is from New York,” he said through his teeth. “My producer is from New York. Larry Crow is from New Jersey. This whole city is full of people who came from somewhere else, and when they got here they looked at everyone around them and said, Isn’t this a terrible place. Four months later they’re still here and someone else has just gotten into town and is looking at them, saying, Isn’t this a terrible place.” He sighed. “Why are you here, Richard?” Richard stared back at Llewellyn glumly. He didn’t know if Lew meant why he was here in Los Angeles or why was he here in this house; either way it didn’t seem a promising question. He was trying to think of a promising answer when there was the sudden outburst in the kitchen, the sound of Maddy’s voice, and the heightened incomprehensible language of the housekeeper.

  When Maddy came into the room, her speechless fury of moments before had found expression. In her hands she held a small white kitten. Catherine was behind her in the kitchen doorway, clutching at her shoulder. Maddy turned and, efficiently and steaIthfully, reached back and landed a blow across the girl’s face. Catherine fell back against the wall and then came at the woman. Llewellyn jumped up from the chair and took her by the wrists.

  “She’s had this animal the whole time,” Maddy said.

  “Since the first day she’s been asking for milk and it’s been for this animal and she’s kept it in the room.”

  “Maddy,” Llewellyn said.

  “She must have had it when you brought her here to us,” Maddy said to Richard accusingly.

  “It’s only a cat,” said Llewellyn. Catherine was struggling in his grip. Llewellyn pushed Catherine through the kitchen door, back through the kitchen and into the service porch where her own room was; Catherine was screaming something he didn`t understand. He pushed her into her room. He never looked at her face but stared into the background beyond her black hair. He pushed her onto her bed and closed the door of her room and locked it. She pounded on it from the other side.

  By now Maddy, in the living room, understood she was directing her sense of violation at a simple cat. But she had no interest in stemming the tide of it. She gave the kitten to Richard. “You brought it,” she told him, seething. He took it in his hands as though it were an infant. “What am I supposed to do with it?” he groaned.

  “Richard,” she said, trying to explain before her husband returned, “if I can get the damn cat out, maybe I can get her out too.” This didn’t impress him as much as she’d expected; he no longer seemed to care about the question of his residency. She went to the phone and called a cab and went to her purse and gave Richard some money. Take the cat, she said. Richard looked over his shoulder once to see Lew, his hands in his pockets, standing in the kitchen doorway, staring at the spots of blood on the floor of the living room.

  * * *

  Catherine flung herself at the door of her room, pounded on it and clawed at it till it stood pitted and punctured, small flakes of paint like eggshells on the floor. Finally she sank to her knees and slept at the door’s base. Coward, she cursed him, better the men who would look at my face than you who will not. That he and her face couldn’t stand the sight of each other only confirmed to her that the two were conspirators. Without her small white soft friend her life became smaller and emptier than it had ever been. She sobbed herself to sleep and then dreamed she was walking on a beach on a moonful night, a strange but distantly known city on the horizon. Her arms were bare and clean but she still felt in her hand something she’d held from other dreams and another conscious place. Down the beach, in the light of the moon, just beyond the water’s edge, someone knelt on his knees in the sand.

  * * *

  Llewellyn and Maddy did not discuss the situation that first evening; in fact they discussed nothing at all. Llewellyn went not to bed but to the study; when Maddy woke in the morning it was to the volley of his typing. All day there were long periods of no sound at all, followed by bursts of it. Maddy dressed Jane for school. Jane ate her breakfast at the kitchen table and listened to the pounding in the servant’s room. Is it Catherine? the child asked. Maddy hurried lane to school. When she returned Catherine’s pounding had stopped but the door was still locked. Maddy was afraid to open it. Llewellyn didn’t come out of his study all day and was there long into the night after Maddy had gone to bed. In the night she woke to the renewed sound of Catherine’s attempts to get out; she wrapped the pillow around her head. The same pattern repeated itself the next day. By the second night she had finally overcome her state of general mortification to knock on the study door. After a long minute the door slid away. The man who stood on the other side was barely her husband. He was unshaven and his hair was a tangle, and his jaw hung slightly, small streams of saliva glistening in the edges of his mouth. His eyes were pinpoints of color. They seemed to look through her. Yes? he said quietly.

  She backed away from him. Finally she said, I won’t have this. What? he said. Don’t you think she might be hungry, said Maddy, don’t you think she might need to use the toilet after two days and nights?

  I’ve fed her, he said. I’ve attended to her concerns.

  I’m going to call the police, she said, mustering her resolve. Bad idea, he said, shaking his head. Nothing but trouble there. Girl’s illegal, no doubt. They’d send her back.

  Fine, said Maddy, they’d send her back.

  You know what slavery is, Madeline? he said. You own someone and bend them to your will without compensation, locked in a room. . . .

  You locked her in the room! Maddy cried hysterically, her control dissolved. She held her face in her hands. She heard the door slide closed. She looked up and stepped to the door and said through it, I’m not going with you to that party. She listened, and when he didn’t answer she went on, Let them say wha
t they will there. She listened, and when he didn’t answer she went on, You’re pimping her to that photographer and the rest of them. On the other side of the door she heard him begin to type. When she looked around, Jane was standing at the top of the stairs.

  I’m not pimping her, Llewellyn said out loud, though she would no longer hear him. I’m not pimping her, Llewellyn said to himself, I won’t take money for it. Rather I’m like a man who can’t bring himself to love her, and therefore offers her up to others that they may love her for him and he may watch. In this instance I’m a man who cannot bring himself to look at her, and therefore offers her up to others that they may look at her for him. I’m a voyeur, not a pimp, watching others in the act of watching her. There’s a difference. One pimps for a profit. One voyeurs for a passion.

  * * *

  After a week he came to her one night, unlocked the door and took her by the arm through the house. The house was eerily quiet except for the two of them until Catherine heard, just as they were walking out the front door, Maddy call his name from upstairs. Llewellyn put Catherine in his car and they drove. He said nothing to her at all. They went deeper into America than Catherine had ever been, crossing La Brea Avenue up into the Hollywood Hills. After ten minutes they came to Eileen Rader’s house, where a party was going on.