By morning there was no doubt. At least he wouldn’t, thank God, be stone-blind. And all during the day, between naps, it had gotten better, until now he could see. Not perfectly, still fuzzy, but enough.
Dorothy Burgess — from Maury’s office — had been in before she’d gone to work that morning just to see if he was all right, bringing flowers. Now she was coming through the door again — visitors’ hours — smiling, concerned, the most lovely sight he had ever seen.
She sat down. ‘How are you feeling?’
He pushed himself up, half sitting now. ‘Much better. I can see you.’
He hadn’t called his parents back in Wisconsin. He didn’t want to worry them. He thought he’d call them when the attack was over, when they could assess the latest damage. After he’d been admitted last night, he’d made a call to the Chronicle, but nobody from there had been in to visit.
He didn’t know what to say to Dorothy. Before the MS, he hadn’t done much dating to speak of, and since losing the use of his legs, his confidence in that area had dipped to zero. He’d concentrated on his career. But he was doing all right — he wasn’t asking for anything more.
If you were crippled, you couldn’t expect women to be crawling all over you, except the pity-groupies, and he didn’t want any part of them. He knew he was probably the last mid-twenties virgin in San Francisco, if not the known world, and it was okay. He could live with it. At least he was alive. You had to keep your priorities straight.
Dorothy moved her chair against the bed and rested her arm down by his legs. Her hair was the color of wheat just before it was harvested. The white blouse had a scoop neck, a scalloped row of blue cornflowers that perfectly matched her eyes. Freckles on a tan bosom. He found he couldn’t stop taking her in, like the air he breathed. ‘I’m staring.’
She laughed, more sunlight. ‘I’d stare too if I’d been blind yesterday.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He always felt apologetic about this damn disease. ‘I didn’t mean to get anybody involved in all this. Don’t feel like you have to come visit. I’m okay.’
‘It is a terrible inconvenience.’ Was she teasing him? ‘I was just saying to Maury today, ’I guess I’ve got to go visit that awful Jeff Elliot again. He is really making my life difficult, going blind in our office like that.‘
‘I was just saying —’
‘I know what you were saying. And it’s silly.’ She patted his leg. ‘Are they feeding you all right here?’
He tried to remember. ‘I guess so. I must have had something. It doesn’t matter. I’ll be out tomorrow anyway. They just wanted to observe me for the day.’
‘Kaiser,’ she said. ‘Keep those beds empty. You never know when someone might need one.’
‘It’s okay,’ he repeated. ‘All I need is steroids. I don’t need to be in the hospital.’
‘You need food.’
‘I guess so. I never really thought about it.’
‘You never think about food? I think about food all the time.’
His eyes traveled down over her slim body. ‘Where do you put it?’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I put it. Now who’s picking you up when you leave here? How are you getting home?’
He hadn’t thought about that, either. He supposed he’d take a cab. He hoped his car was still parked in one of the handicapped stalls behind the Hall of Justice.
‘Okay, it’s settled then. I’m coming by tomorrow, taking you home, and cooking you a meal. After that, you’ve just got to stop bothering me.’ She stood up, leaned over and kissed him. ‘Don’t get fresh,’ she said, then was gone.
* * * * *
Hardy reflected, not for the first time, that he was too much in touch with himself. Wouldn’t it be nice to sometimes be able to truly fool yourself? Not know every motive you had down to about six levels.
He wanted to see Celine, and not in his office. That was the problem.
He had simply decided — last week, as soon as it had come up — that he was not going to do anything about it. It was too risky — for him, for Frannie, for the new life that was making him more content than he’d ever thought possible. It seemed to him that sometimes you met people who were immediately recognizable as having an almost chemical power to insinuate themselves into your life. Those people — men or women — could power your engines if you weren’t yet settled down. But if you had a career and a family and a rhythm to your life, a blast like that could only destroy things. If you wanted to keep your orbit you avoided that extra juice. Simple as that.
Hardy could control himself — that wasn’t it — but Celine was fire. And the best way to avoid getting burned, even if you were careful, was to avoid the fire.
‘Dumb,’ he said, pausing a moment before pushing open the semi-opaque glass doors of Hardbodies! He was greeted by twenty reflections of himself. Mirrors, mirrors, on the wall.
‘Can I help you?’
The name tag said ‘Chris,’ and Chris, Hardy thought, was the Bionic Man. Muscles on his muscles, green Hardbodies! headband, yellow Hardbodies! t-shirt, black Spandex shorts. Wristbands on both wrists. Perfect shiny black Beatle-length hair. Behind the long counter he could see three girls and four guys, all from the same mold as Chris.
‘I’m meeting somebody,’ he said.
‘Sure, no problem,’ Chris said. ‘We got a pager at the desk here.’
He heard her name called while he waited on a padded stool. There weren’t any chairs, only stools. And little mushroom tables with magazines on them: City Sports, Triathloner, Maximum Steel, The Competitive Edge. There was music playing, heavy-beat stuff. He heard what sounded like a lot of basketballs getting dribbled on a wooden floor.
The place already seemed packed, and people were filing by him as though they were giving away money in the back room.
Suddenly, though he jogged four or five days a week, he felt old and flabby. Everybody in here was under thirty, except for the ones who were fifty and looked better than Hardy figured he had at twenty.
And Celine, who wasn’t anywhere near fifty and looked better than any of the twenties, even with a good sweat up. Especially, perhaps, with a good sweat up. A blue sweatband held her hair back, a towel was draped around her neck. She wore a fluorescent blue Spandex halter top soaked dark between her breasts. The bare skin of her stomach gleamed wet and hard. The leotard bottoms rose over her hips at the sides and dipped well below her navel in the front. A Spandex bikini bottom matched her top. White Reeboks.
He was standing almost before he was aware of it. They were shaking hands, hers wet and powdery. She brushed his cheek with her lips, then wiped the slight moisture from the side of his mouth. ‘Sorry. Thank you for coming down.’
Hardy stood, wanting to rub the spot on his cheek. Fire burns.
‘I feel a little funny here,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid this isn’t my natural environment, especially dressed like this.’
She took him in. ‘You look fine.’
‘Is there someplace to talk?’
Celine told him there was a juice bar on the second floor. Would that be all right? Hardy followed her up a wide banistered granite staircase to the upstairs lobby, the entire space bordered by hi-tech metallic instruments of torture — exercycles, Climb-Masters, rowing machines, treadmills. Each was in use. You couldn’t avoid the panting, the noise of thirty sets of whirring gears, occasionally a moan or a grunt. Beyond the machines, the glass wall to the outside showed off another of the city’s famous views — Alcatraz, Angel Island, Marin County. You could see where the fog abruptly ended a mile or so inside the Golden Gate.
The juice bar was about as intimate as a railroad station, but at least the noise level was lower. The aerobic music wasn’t pumped in here, although it did leak from the lobby. Celine ordered some type of a shake that the perfect specimen behind the bar poured a bunch of powders into. Hardy thought he’d stick with some bottled water; he paid $4.75 for the two drinks.
They sat at a
low table in the corner of the room where the glass wall met brick. ‘Do you come here a lot?’ Hardy asked.
‘Sometimes it’s like I live here. Then since Daddy…’ She sipped her shake. ‘It works it off. I don’t know what else to do to fill up the time.’
‘What did you do before?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Before your father died. Sometimes the best thing you can do is go back to your routines, what you were used to.’
A tanker that appeared through the fog bank on the Bay seemed to take her attention for a minute. ‘But I didn’t really do anything routinely,’ she said. ‘I mean, I don’t work or anything. I just lived. Now…’ She let it trail off, went back to staring.
‘Did you see your father every day?’
‘Well, not every. When he wanted to see me, I had to be there. I mean, I know that sounds weird, but he’d get hurt.’
‘He’d get hurt if you didn’t drop everything to see him?’
‘Well, not everything. I had my own life too.’
‘That’s what I was talking about. Getting back to your own life.’
She was shaking her head. ‘But it’s like there’s no point to it now. Don’t you see? It’s like the center’s fallen out.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘that’s how it feels, but it hasn’t really. You’ve got your own center. You do. You just have to find it again.’
But he seemed to keep losing her. Again, her eyes were out toward the evening sky. ‘Celine?’ He brought his hand up and laid it over hers, exerting a little pressure. She came back to him. ‘You mind if I ask you how old you are?’
‘No, I don’t mind. You can ask anything you want.’ She met his eyes, solemn, then suddenly broke into a smile. Thirty-nine,‘ she said. ’Almost got you, didn’t I?‘
Hardy nodded, smiling himself. ‘Almost.’
‘So what about thirty-nine?’
‘I’m just thinking that’s not too young to stop being dependent on your father.’
He felt the shift in her tension just before she pulled her hand out from under his. ‘I wasn’t dependent on my father. I loved my father.’
‘Of course, I’m not saying anything else. But, well, isn’t thirty-nine a little old to be at his beck and call?’
‘I wasn’t at his beck and call.’
‘But he made you feel guilty if you weren’t there when he wanted to see you. That’s pretty classic parental control.’
‘It just hurt his feelings. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, that’s all.’
Hardy knew he was digging a hole, but thought he might get all the way through to China and see some light. ‘Remember when we were talking the other day, what you said about being so mad at him? Maybe that’s why.’
‘I’m not mad at him! Ken’s the same way.’
Hardy leaned back, slowing down, wanting to make the point and not get in a fight over it. ‘Your father controlled people, Celine. Ken too. Maybe that’s why he was so successful.’
‘My father did not control me.’
She clearly didn’t want to hear it. Time to back off. ‘Okay, okay.’
‘And who are you to talk? What makes you such an expert?’
Hardy help up a hand, trying to slow her down. ‘Whoa, I didn’t say —’
‘I know what you were saying. That my daddy was this control freak who was ruining my life because he loved his daughter and wanted to see her. Well, that’s all it was. We loved each other. We had the best times. You didn’t know him. We loved each other!’
She was starting to cry now, punctuating her speech by punching her glass into the table. Other people were looking over at the commotion.
‘Celine…’
‘Just go away. I don’t need your help. Go away. Leave me alone.’
Hardy leaned forward in the chair, put his hand again on the table. ‘Celine.’
She slammed her glass down onto the table, the drink spilling out over her hands, over the glass. ‘Get out of here! Now! Get out of here!’
* * * * *
‘I think she’s nuts.’
‘She’s bereaved, Diz. The girl’s father dies, you don’t pick that moment to point out to her he was a prick.’
‘I didn’t say he was a prick. I was trying to give her something to help her break away, give her a little insight —’
‘Insight comes in its own sweet time.’
‘That’s beautiful, Mose. I’ll remember that. Give me another hit, would you?’
Hardy was drinking Bushmills at the Shamrock. It was Wednesday, date night, and he was meeting Frannie at seven, in another half hour. There weren’t more than twenty patrons in the place and only two others at the bar, nursing beers.
The Little Shamrock had been in existence since 1893. Moses McGuire had bought it in 1977 and pretty much left it the way it had been. The place was only fifteen feet wide, wall to wall, and about forty-five feet deep. The bar itself — mahogany — extended halfway to the back along the left side. Twelve tables, with four chairs each, filled the area in front of the bar on the linoleum floor. Over that area hung an assortment of bric-a-brac — bicycles, antique fishing rods, an upside-down sailfish and the pièce de résistance, a clock that had stopped ticking during the Great Earthquake of 1906.
The back of the place had an old wall-to-wall maroon Berber carpet and several couches, armchairs, coffee tables, a fireplace. It wasn’t designed to seat the maximum amount of bodies, but to make it comfortable for what bodies there were. The bathrooms had stained glass in the doors. There were two dart boards against the side wall in the back by an old-fashioned jukebox.
The entire front of the bar was comprised of two picture windows and a set of swinging doors. Out the windows was Lincoln Boulevard. Across the street was Golden Gate Park, evergreen and eucalyptus. Three years ago, after working as a bartender there for nearly a decade, Hardy had acquired a quarter-interest in the place. It was almost as much his home as his house was.
McGuire walked down to the taps and came back with a pint of stout. ‘And what I am supposed to do with this? I see you come through the door, I start a Guinness. It’s automatic. So now I got a Guinness poured and tonight you’re drinking Irish.’
‘It’s that element of surprise that makes me such a fascinating guy to know. Tonight I needed a real drink.’
‘My father told me that the secret to controlling alcohol is never to take a drink when you feel like you need one.’
‘Those are noble words,’ Hardy said. ‘Aphorism night has come to the Shamrock. Hit me again, though, would you?’
Moses sighed, turned and grabbed the Bushmills from the back bar and poured. ‘We’re never heeded in our own countries, you know. It’s the tragedy of genius.’
‘Leave the Guinness,’ Hardy said. ‘I’ll drink it, too.’
Moses pulled over his stool. Hardy had often said that Moses’s face probably resembled the way God’s would look after He got old. His brother-in-law was only a few years older than Hardy, but they had been heavy-weather years. He had long, brown hair with some gray, pony-tailed in the back, an oft-broken nose. There were character lines everywhere — laugh lines, worry lines, crow’s-feet. He was clean-shaven this month, although that varied. ‘So why’d she want to see you in the first place — Celine?’
Hardy shrugged. ‘Hold her hand, I don’t know. She seemed to be hurting. I thought I might be able to help her out. Now I’m thinking we ought to get some protection for May Shinn.’
‘You don’t really think she’d do anything to her, do you?’
‘I don’t know what she’ll do. I don’t think she knows what she’ll do.’
Moses took a sip of his own Scotch, a fixture in the bar’s gutter. ‘She’s upset, can’t exactly blame her. She probably won’t do anything,’ he said.
‘It’s the “probably” that worries me.’ He took his dart case out of his jacket pocket and started fitting his hand-tooled flights into the shafts. ‘I think I’ll go shoot a few b
ull’s-eyes,’ he said. ‘Do something I’m good at.’
* * * * *
David Freeman picked up his telephone. It was after work hours, but he was still at his desk, back after dinner to the place he loved best. He didn’t have any particular work to do, so he was doing some light reading — catching up on recent California appellate court decisions for fun.
‘Mr Freeman, this is Nick Strauss. I got your card from a neighbor of mine, Mrs Streletski. How can I help you?’
‘Mr Strauss, it’s good of you to call. As Mrs Streletski may have mentioned, I’m working for a client who needs to establish what she was doing during the daytime on Saturday, June twentieth. The woman in question happens to live directly across the street from you on the same level — that other turreted apartment?’
‘Sure, I know it, but I can’t say I’d know any particular person who lives there.’
‘She’s an Oriental woman. Quite attractive.’
‘I’d like to meet her. I could use a little attractive in my life.’ A little manly chuckle, then Strauss was quiet a moment. ‘Sorry. June twentieth, you say?’
‘That’s the date. I know it’s a while ago now.’
‘No, it’s not that. Normally I probably wouldn’t remember. It’s just that’s the day I picked up my kids. They’d been traveling in Europe with their mother —we’re divorced — and I picked them up at the crack of dawn at the airport.’
‘And they didn’t mention anything, seeing anything?’
‘I don’t know how they could. They’d slept on the plane and were ready to go, so we just stopped in to have a bite and drop their luggage. Then we took off, exploring the city. It was a great day really, they’re good kids.’
‘I’m sure. But you saw nothing?’
‘No, sorry. What did she do, this attractive Oriental woman?’
‘She’s being charged with killing someone, although the case is weak. If anyone saw her at home during that day, we can make a case that there is no case.’
‘I’ll talk to the boys, double-check, but I really doubt it. Who’d she kill, by the way?’
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