“She’s a beautiful woman.”
“Yes, she is,” he said. “And I’m a lucky man.”
“She’s a lucky girl.”
Dante watched Cicero go on up the hill, trudging, bent over but unstoppable, vigorous and old all at once.
Cicero, the undefeated, who knew better than to look back.
But at the last minute, Cicero paused, turning at the corner, surveying the hill behind him. He put his thumb in the air.
All clear.
Dante fired up the car.
He swung a U-turn and headed for the bridge.
TWENTY-THREE
Sooner or later, you had to leave. Sooner or later, you had to get out. When the old Italians abandoned North Beach—the mold, the leaking houses, the fucking Chinese—this is where they came.
Across the Golden Gate to sunny Marin.
Buying up the earthquake cottages, the vacation shanties, the dairy land with its cows meandering in the yellow grass.
Marilyn wanted him to see the bungalow, the little house on the corner lot with the palms out front and a trellis over the gate. He knew what was on her mind. She wanted out of the Beach, just like those old Italians. The place was a bit farther up the road, but he pulled off early, taking the ramp down into Sausalito. He’d spotted a car lingering in the rearview, tagging him since he left the Beach.
But he was mistaken. The car did not follow.
Dante went into town anyway, just to be sure. He walked under the pepper trees on the main street, past the boutique shops and the chocolatiers and the waterfront houses that had been turned into bed-and-breakfasts. He studied the faces of the passersby, a man slouching on the corner, a middle-aged woman in her Porsche. The woman gave him the once-over, but that’s all it was: an attractive woman, well-kept, bored, glancing at a man in the street. He went out to the end of the marina and smoked a cigarette, staring across the Bay at Angel Island and at San Francisco and considered the idea of doing this thing another way. The cigarette tasted awful, but he smoked it anyway, inhaling the black smoke, letting it do its business down there in the soft part of his lungs.
Forget David Lake. Forget the company.
Get Marilyn in the car, and together they would snake down the coast and leave this whole business behind.
Across the border, down into Baja, a little casita in the hot sand, where no one would ever find them.
An idiot dream.
The company would not rest; he knew that.
He smashed the cigarette out on the planking and walked back to the car. It was a new set of tourists now, with the same baffled expressions. The man at the corner still slouched mindlessly, but the woman in the Porsche was long gone. None of them were of any concern, but it did not prevent him from examining the faces. To his mother, he remembered, in her final days, everyone looked suspicious.
Another option was to do nothing at all. To just stand here and feel the breeze.
Do like his father had done. Play it jolly until he disappeared into the abyss.
He drove north, then turned toward Mt. Tamalpais. Following Marilyn’s directions. Through a neighborhood that looked like something out of a picture book, all leafy green. Past the shopping center. Around the corner, between the fire station and the park. Little houses with picket fences, set back from the street, sagging asphalt and wild ivy. Turn again on Willow. Then on Redwood. Stop at the corner of Palm and Pepper.
A neighborhood woman stood idly in the front yard across the way. She had skin like milk. The sun was warm but not too warm. The wind blew through the treetops, and the leaves moved as if in slow motion.
A sign pointed to the open house.
PROSPERO REALTY. BROKER’S OPEN. AGENT MARILYN VISCONTI.
There was a princess tree by the fence, and birds-of-paradise grew in wild clumps on either side of the gate. From the end of the walk, Dante saw the couple amble through the screen, onto the porch, with Marilyn just behind. They made a handsome couple, Marilyn’s clients: the tall man in his shirtsleeves and his Dockers, sunglasses—Asian maybe, or Chicano, with the Anglo blood mixed in, so the ethnicity was hard to tell. Meanwhile the woman possessed a similar indeterminacy about her, more in her manner than in her looks, both ordinary and exotic at once, a sensuous woman with plump lips and eyes that were a little too bright.
“Dante lives in the Beach,” said Marilyn.
“I guess that makes us neighbors, almost.” The woman’s accent suggested time abroad. She had a way of standing, seductive, less than subtle, leaning against her husband as she spoke. “Though only temporarily.”
“Until we get settled,” the man explained.
The conversation went on a little more, giving more information than Dante needed. The man in finance, just transferred. The woman painted. No kids yet, but they were curious about the schools, the neighborhood.
The man shook his hand.
“We’ll be seeing you,” said the woman. The glint in her eyes was almost wholesome.
When they were gone, Marilyn showed Dante around the house. Until recently, she explained, the house had been on the market with another agent, priced too high. Also, the owner’s wife had just died, and the owner got emotional when people looked at the place. It might have sold already otherwise, but the earlier interest had come and gone, and the market shifted. The foot traffic was thin, just the neighbors and the agents, the usual flock, the latter leaving their cards spread over the mantel. The owner had let her make some touches, readying the place for sale, and she suspected he might be willing to come down on the price. Meanwhile, Beatrice Prospero was thinking it might be a good idea to have a full-time agent over here, in Marin, on this side of the bridge.
Dante understood. She wanted the house. She wanted him to like it, too.
Marilyn walked him from room to room.
She had staged the house for sale. Clay pots full of flowers. The bed covered with pillows. Lamps on, even though it was daylight, adjusted just so.
The bedroom had double doors that opened onto a yard with pink flagstone and birds-of-paradise.
He had been here a million times.
They stood looking out at the yard. The way the light was, just now, he could not see her scars. Her face was smooth and radiant. But the one eye rolled, just for a moment, cockeyed, at odds with its partner.
“It’s nice, don’t you think?”
“Your couple, are they interested?”
He had to do it now, the good thing, the thing he had come to do.
Marilyn shrugged. “I don’t think so. They’re new to the area. In love with San Francisco, the city itself. You know how that goes.”
“I know.”
She was waiting for him to say something more. They were back to the same precipice, and he thought now, with a sudden resentment, she enjoyed it, teetering back and forth between two men. She did it to get his attention, or because that’s the way it was between them, and always had been, company or no company. This time was different. He had to end it.
“Talk to your sugar daddy.”
“What?”
“It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? So talk to him.”
Dante was surprised at the venom in his voice, how easy it came. “Though, I think, a man like that, he could afford something a little bigger.”
They stood side by side at the window, and he felt her going cold beside him, arms folded, lost to him, almost. He did not look at her. Maybe he could do it another way, more tender, more good, but tenderness, this kind of situation, it never convinced anyone. Still, I need another word, he thought, another gesture. Then the rest of it will happen of its own accord. Lake will meet her after work, with his flowers, his ring, his earnest proposal. She will look at Lake and realize what happened last night between us, on the boat, was just a last fling, that she is, in fact, in love with David Lake. Or that’s the way she will tell it to herself later, no matter what she’s feeling now, here, arms folded, standing in the bedroom.
“It doesn’t matter.” Dante felt the nastiness rise in his throat. “I’m willing to play it both ways, if that’s what you want.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can live with him here—a place like this. Then come over and see me. A little boat ride, any time you’re bored.”
“You bastard,” she said.
He grabbed her by the shoulders then, surprised again at his own vehemence, face-to-face, taking her by the collar. Her good eye was downcast, but the other one, it stayed fixed. “Look at me,” he said. He curled his lips in disgust. Whore. Trollop. Marry that other son of a bitch. He searched for some final insult, something obscene and unspeakable, but it didn’t come out. Meanwhile the bad eye, the dead eye, the all-seeing eye, it played across his face.
“You’re going to tear my blouse,” she said.
He let her go.
She stood against the wall, in the shadows, but the shadows had lost their tenderness and didn’t hide anything anymore. He saw the suture lines, the mask falling apart.
He walked outside.
The light was bright and idyllic. He started his car and drove back the way he had come.
He glanced in the rearview.
The road was empty behind him.
TWENTY-FOUR
Back in North Beach, the streets were crammed with ghosts. His cousin wandered down Telegraph Hill. Dominick Greene came up from the basement beneath the Serafina Café, lingering with all the other dead, there at the counter. The old Italians wandered with the Chinamen on Grant Street and Dante wandered through them all. Overhead, the light still burned behind the slatted doors in the chambers of Love Wu. Dante inhabited the periphery of Portsmouth Square, studying that light and the Empress Building itself, watching the comings and goings, and for an instant he was up behind those shades, looking down, and in that instant he knew everthing that was going to happen, and he saw Marilyn, too, emerging onto the square, wandering with the dead.
But no. Marilyn had escaped. She was safe. She had met with Lake, and he had gotten on his knees. Lake had spirited her away, to parts unknown.
This had to be so, because Dante had done what he’d needed to do, in the bedroom of that little house with the flagstone patio.
He had done it, the good thing.
TWENTY-FIVE
The next morning, according to plan, Dante drove to Marilyn’s apartment. The new woman should be there by now, the one Cicero had hired. Meanwhile, up the hill, the fog had started to part, and a couple stood at the crest, peering through the white mist toward the Bay. Tourists, judging from the looks of them. A big man, strongly built. A woman. Both in Windbreakers and sunglasses. Fresh from walking the Filbert Steps, or Coit Tower. Pausing to catch their breaths and contemplate the view. Dante thought they looked familiar, but dismissed the notion at first, because there were always tourists on top of the hill, and they always had about them something familiar. Then they came toward him, and he saw they were the couple he had met at Marilyn’s open house out in Marin.
“Imagine this,” the woman said.
“You caught us,” said the man. “Playing tourist in our new city.”
“You probably take it for granted.”
“I do.”
“We’re taking a day off from house hunting.”
It seemed too much the coincidence. The man had a camera about his neck, true, but there was the slightest hesitation in his step, and Dante wondered if they knew Marilyn lived here—if they intended on stopping by. People shopping for real estate could be demanding, he knew. They violated all boundaries. Then something passed between the man and the woman. “Nice to see you,” the man said. Whatever their intentions had been, they sauntered on.
The woman smiled over her shoulder.
Watching them, how they meandered down the street, arm in arm, cooing over their guidebook, he could not help feeling there was something wrong about them, how they gushed and fluttered, something off-key. But he let it go. Who was he to know about such things?
Dante went up the stairs to Marilyn’s apartment. The woman who answered the door wore her dark hair under a scarf, as Marilyn sometimes did. She wore leggings and a loose blouse, untucked, so it fell over her hips, in a fashion Marilyn herself sometimes wore. At first glance, glimpsing her through the side window as she’d approached the door, Dante had thought she was Marilyn and that everything had gone awry, his plan had fallen through, but he was mistaken. She was a younger woman, the decoy, as Cicero had said she would be. Her complexion was more fair, and her eyes were a different shade altogether.
“Come in. I’m just getting packed.” She spoke familiarly, as if they had known each other for a long time. “The outfit, I pulled it from her rack.”
“I see that.”
“Does it work?”
“From a distance.”
“I’m too thin. Aren’t I?”
She turned on her heels, showing herself. A movement a dancer might make, though not quite so graceful.
“A little.”
“The right outfit. It’ll thicken me up.”
He followed her up to the bedroom. As it turned out, she had been through Marilyn’s wardrobe, and clothes lay scattered over the bed.
“Marilyn and Lake—did they get off?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“I was at the restaurant, a couple tables over.” She paused to see how much detail he wanted. Dante did not want any, not really. He could imagine it easy enough: the little scene down at Romano’s restaurant, the candles and the wine, Lake gazing across at Marilyn, the good man, with his earnest, whirlwind plan, his desire to take her away, his promise to be gentle and kind. “You followed them?”
“They spent the night at his place. Then this morning, they stopped here, just for a moment. She came out with a bag, not much.”
The woman slid off her shoes. Marilyn’s shoes.
“I followed them to the airport.”
“Was there anyone else?”
“Just the two of them.”
“Following, I mean. Surveillance?”
“I don’t believe so.”
The woman pulled off her blouse and put on a long sweatshirt, tucking the end down into her tights. She was thinner than Marilyn, a bit taller, less voluptuous, but not without her own attributes. She put the blouse on over the sweatshirt—a loose-fitting blouse that flared below the waist. Then she yanked up a print skirt, running her hands over her midriff, flattening and smoothing, tugging at the flare. She put on a wide belt.
“Is this better?”
“Yes.”
“Not too fat?”
“No.”
She settled in front of the vanity, working her face, brushing the lashes, painting the brows. She worked from a picture of Marilyn tucked into the mirror frame in front of her. Her arrival here had been figured out in advance. Dante had given his key to Marilyn’s apartment to Cicero, that last day in his office, and Cicero had given it to this woman. Then this morning, after Lake and Marilyn had gone to the airport, the woman had let herself in.
Meanwhile, Dante had bought a pair of airline tickets.
“I used to work vice, undercover,” she said.
“Cicero told me.”
“I can make myself look like anyone.”
“I don’t know your name.”
“Call me Marilyn. That’s the idea, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You might as well start now, Dante.”
She put on the contacts, changing the color of her eyes, then dipped her hand into the jewelry box—long fingers, slender, not Marilyn’s hand, but the gesture was one he recognized, the way she held the earrings up, regarding herself, face toward the mirror. It stirred something in him he did not want to think about. They were an older pair of earrings, something he had given Marilyn years ago. She had been wearing them, too, that evening out at the boat.
“Did you get the identification?”
“Of course.”
She pulled a wallet from a purse, one of Marilyn’s purses, borrowed from the closet. She handed him the driver’s license and stood close to him as he examined it, so that he felt her arm brush against his, the soft sleeve of her blouse, Marilyn’s blouse, rustling against his arm, and he smelled, too, her perfume, Marilyn’s perfume, heavier than Marilyn wore it.
“It’s a good resemblance, yes.”
The plan was a simple one, really. Now that the real Marilyn had eloped, gone away with David Lake, this woman would leave, too, only going in a different direction, traveling under Marilyn’s name. Despite all the fuss at security these days, all you needed, still, was a boarding pass and a driver’s license. If you knew the right people, securing identification was no more difficult now than it had ever been. Cicero had managed it, using Marilyn’s name and a picture of this woman in front of him, with her hair dyed and darkened, as she wore it now—a convincing job, not cheap—and the eyes colored in by computer. Her chin was a little sharper then Marilyn’s, but all in all, the resemblance was close. She went on packing, using one of Marilyn’s suitcases, mingling her things with Marilyn’s.
“The universals are mine—but I need a few of her things, signature items, just in case. She did not take a whole lot with her, actually. And anyway, we are close enough in size.”
The woman pulled out some lingerie—a lace nightgown. It was a sheer piece of material, gauze white, and the way she held it up to herself just now reminded him of Marilyn and her white dress.
“Do you really need that?”
“Just in case, Dante.”
“In case of what?”
“Use my name.”
“In case of what, Marilyn?”
She smiled, slyly, pleased at his shyness, at his embarrassment—something a little cruel, perhaps, in the way she turned from him now, folding the lingerie into the suitcase. “This is about illusion,” she said. “The illusion, I believe, is that Marilyn is going away. And Dante will join her in a few days.”
The way they had planned it, Dante had bought two tickets, one in Marilyn’s name, departing today, and the other in his own name, for departure a few days hence. As far as the company was concerned, his goal—he wanted to give the agency the impression that he had decided to clear out, sending Marilyn on ahead.
Naked Moon Page 11
