Dead Lines

Dead Lines Greg Bear Ring, ring. You’re dead.We were all there in that city that draws its paycheck from the manufacture of ghosts, itself made of ghosts: Los Angeles. We were there when one man started handing out free talk. And we are there now, sad little dolls made of dust…Peter Russell lost a daughter to a serial killer. His marriage was the next casualty. Now he gets by as Mr Fixit for a film millionaire with a young wife on a big Hollywood estate infamous for its association with a historical scandal. The millionaire invests in a new kind of phone, the Trans. The problem with the Trans is that not only can you talk to your friends on it, you can also talk to the dead – though that wasn't part of the design spec.The Trans accesses forbidden channels. It has disrupted the exit routines of the recently dead to wherever they should have gone. At first, Russell is only haunted by his dead daughter. Now there are phantoms everywhere. Many are ghosts of the living, people with nothing inside them, called wraiths.A cascade of transgression and murder is unleashed as sales of the Trans take off. Harried near to death himself by his murdered child, Russell must find out who killed her and find a way to put an end to it all, if it kills him. DEAD LINES GREG BEAR Dedication (#ulink_ac90beb7-4414-5e10-81bc-6d4f2df13ce1) For J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Henry James. M.R. James. Arthur Machen. H.P. Lovecraft. Shirley Jackson. Fritz Leiber. Richard Matheson. Kingsley Amis. Peter Straub. Bruce Joel Rubin. Ramsey Campbell. Dean Koontz. Stephen King. Scary people, all. Contents Cover (#ufc6a627c-9198-59bd-aa99-0d38a6f54562) Title Page (#u451571e1-3582-5a83-8f1f-f597221a1173) Dedication (#u104f779f-dc03-54e4-a42e-cabdb4b0c2fc) Chapter One (#u411e7ad8-701c-5660-b4ff-f413dd71c257) Chapter Two (#u8cae1b63-cbaf-515f-b194-a298469ce4db) Chapter Three (#u48624efe-ae46-5c5c-8420-384af5ea8bfc) Chapter Four (#u524f4d21-c75f-5866-8730-77fda4ed39d6) Chapter Five (#u7fbd0fca-16b5-5844-b0cc-e04e6db37055) Chapter Six (#u6cb4cbc6-8938-552a-876e-2593c07c38e2) Chapter Seven (#u7f74a962-d31b-5fd5-94ad-371e9e698632) Chapter Eight (#u17f9fda2-0a3e-590d-b509-360cdd94ef9d) Chapter Nine (#ub8290339-b610-5d80-85c4-ee842a629742) Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo) Chaptre Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Three (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Four (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Five (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Six (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifty (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) By the same author (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_4c7158ab-f759-5707-9c79-773b8dfdcc88) Paul is dead. Call home. Peter Russell, stocky and graying, stood on the sidewalk and squinted at the text message on his cell phone, barely visible in the afternoon sun on Ventura Boulevard. He lifted his round glasses above small, amused eyes, and brought the phone closer to see the display more clearly. Paul is dead. He flashed on his youth, when for a week he had sincerely believed that Paul was dead: Paul McCartney. I am the walrus. But he had misread the phone’s blocky letters. The message was actually Phil is dead. That shook him. He knew only one Phil. Peter had not talked with Phil Richards in a month, but he refused to believe that the message referred to his best friend of thirty-five years, the kinder, weaker and almost certainly more talented of the Two P’s. Not the Phil with the thirty-two foot Grand Taiga motor home, keeper of their eternal plans for the World’s Longest Old Farts Cross-country Hot Dog Escapade and Tour. Please, not that Phil. He hesitated before hitting callback. What if it was a joke, a bit of cell phone spam? Peter drove a vintage Porsche 356C Coupe that had once been signal red and was now roughly the shade of a dry brick. He fumbled his key and almost dropped the phone before unlocking the car door. He did not need this. He had an important appointment. Angrily, he pushed the button. The number rolled out in musical beeps. He recognized the answering voice of Carla Wyss, whom he had not heard from in years. She sounded nervous and a little guilty. ‘Peter, I just dropped by the house. I took the key from your bell and let myself in. There was a note. My God, I never meant to snoop. It’s from somebody named Lydia.’ Lydia was Phil’s ex-wife. ‘I thought I should let you know.’ Peter had shown Carla the secret of the bronze Soleri bell, hanging outside the front door, after a night of very requited passion. Now, upset, she was having a sandwich and a root beer from his refrigerator. She hoped he didn’t mind. ‘Mi casa es su casa,’ Peter said, beyond irritation. He tongued the small gap between his front teeth. ‘I’m listening.’ Carla’s voice was shaky. ‘All right. The note reads “Dear Peter, Phil died. He had a heart attack or a stroke, they aren’t sure which. Will let you know details.” Then it’s signed very neatly.’ She took a breath. ‘Wasn’t he another writer? Didn’t I meet him here in the house?’ ‘Yeah.’ Peter pressed his eyes with his fingers, blocking out the glare. Lydia had been living in Burbank for a few years. She had apparently made the rounds of Phil’s LA friends. Carla rattled on, saying that Lydia had used a fountain pen, a folded sheet of hand-made paper, a black satin ribbon, and Scotch tape. Lydia had never liked telephones. Phil is dead. Thirty-five years of kid dreams and late night plans, sitting in the back yard in old radar-dish rattan chairs on the dry grass between the junipers. Shooting the bull about stories and writing and big ideas. Phil hanging out on movie sets and model shoots – not so selfless – but also helping Peter carry his bulky and unsold wire sculptures to the dump in the back of the old Ford pickup they had often swapped. Only the truck, never the women, Phil had lamented. Slight, wiry Phil with the short, mousy hair who smiled so sweetly every time he saw a naked lady. Who longed for the female sex with such clumsy devotion. ‘Are you okay, Peter?’ Carla asked from far away. ‘Heart attack,’ Peter repeated, lifting the phone back to his mouth. ‘Or a stroke, they aren’t sure. It’s a very pretty note, really. I’m so sorry.’ He visualized Carla in his house, locked in her perpetual late thirties, leggy as a deer, dressed in pedal pushers and a dazzling man’s white dress shirt with sleeves rolled up and tails pinned to show her smooth, flat tummy. ‘Thanks, Carla. You better leave before Helen comes over,’ Peter said, not unkindly. ‘I’ll put the key back in the bell,’ Carla said. ‘And Peter, I was looking through your files. Do you have some glossies of me that I can borrow? I have a new agent, a good guy, really sharp, and he wants to put together a fresh folio. I’m up for a credit card commercial.’ All of Carla’s agents had been good guys, really sharp; all of them had screwed her both ways and she never learned. ‘I’ll look,’ Peter said, though he doubted cheesecake would help. ‘You know where to find me.’ He did, and also what she smelled and felt like. With a wave of loose guilt, Peter sat on the old seat in the car’s sunned interior, the door half open and one leg hanging out. The hot cracked leather warmed his balls. A cream-colored Lexus whizzed by and honked. He pulled in his leg and shut the door, then rolled down the window as far as it would go, about half way. Sweat dripped down his neck. He had to look presentable and be in Malibu in an hour. His broad face crinkled above a close-trimmed, peppered beard. Peter was fifty-eight years old and he couldn’t afford to take ten minutes to cry for his best friend. One hand shielded his eyes from sun and traffic. ‘Damn it, Phil,’ he said. He started the car and took the back road to his home, a square, flat-roofed, big-windowed fifties rambler in the Glendale hills. Carla was gone by the time he arrived, leaving only a waft of gardenia in the warm still air on the patio. Helen was late, or maybe not coming after all – he could never tell what her final plans might be – so he took a quick shower. He soon smelled of soap and washed skin and put on a blue-and-red Hawaiian shirt. He picked up his best briefcase, a maroon leather job, and pushed through the old French doors. The weedy jasmine creeping over the trellis had squeezed out a few flowers. Their sweetness curled up alongside Carla’s gardenia. Peter stood for a moment on the red tiles and looked up through the trellis at the bright blue sky. He pressed his elbow against a rough, sun-battered post, breath coming hard: The old anxiety he always found in tight places, in corners and shadows. When events fell outside his control or his ability to escape. A minute passed. Two minutes. Peter’s gasping slowed. He sucked in a complete breath and pressed the inside of his wrist with two fingers to check his pulse. Not racing. The hitch behind his ribs untied with a few solid pushes of cupped fingers under the edge of his sternum. He had never asked a doctor why that worked, but it did. He wiped his face with a paper towel, then scrawled a note for Helen on the smudged blackboard nailed below the Soleri bell. Reaching into the oil drum that served as an outdoor closet, mounted high on two saw horses, he tugged out a lightweight suit coat of beige silk, the only one he had, a thrift-store purchase from six years ago. He sniffed it; not too musty, good for another end of summer, soon to turn into autumn. Peter let the old Porsche roll back out of the garage. The engine purred and then climbed into a sweet whine after he snicked the long, wood-knobbed shift into first gear. Last he had heard, Phil had been traveling in Northern California, trying to unblock a novel. They hadn’t seen each other in months. Peter tried to think why friends wouldn’t stay in touch from week to week or even day to day. Some of his brightest moments had been with Phil; Phil could light up a room when he wanted to. Peter wiped his eye and looked at his dry knuckle. Maybe tonight. But Helen might drop off Lindsey, and if he started crying with Lindsey around, that might rip open a wound that he could not afford to even touch. Numbness set in. He drove toward the ocean and Salammbo, the estate of Joseph Adrian Benoliel. CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_19af7109-7235-5e75-9211-7d4bfcb8a94e) The sunset beyond the hills and water was gorgeous in a sullied way: lapis sky, the sun a yellow diamond hovering over the gray line of the sea, dimmed by a tan ribbon of smog. Peter Russell pushed along in second gear, between lines of palm trees and golf-green lawn spotted with eucalyptus. Flaubert House cast a long cool shadow across the drive and the golf-green approach. Crickets were starting to play their hey-baby tunes. Salammbo covered twenty acres of prime highland Malibu real estate. She had survived fires, earthquakes, landslides, the Great Depression, the fading careers of two movie stars, and tract-home development. In more than thirty years in Los Angeles and the Valley, Peter had never encountered anything like her – two huge, quirky mansions set far apart and out of sight of each other, looking down descending hills and through valleys rubbed thick with creosote bush and sage to Carbon Beach. Here was illusion at its finest: the fantasy that peace can be bought, that power can sustain, that time will rush by but leave the finer things untouched: eccentricity, style, and all the walls that money can buy. Life goes on, Salammbo said with sublime self-assurance, especially for the rich. But the estate’s history was not so reassuring. Salammbo was a nouveau-riche vision of heaven: many mansions ‘builded for the Lord.’ The lord in this case had died in 1946: Lordy Trenton – not a real lord but an actor in silent comedies – had risen from obscurity in the Catskills for a good twelve-year run against Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd. His character – a drunken aristocrat, basically decent but prone to causing enormous trouble – had palled on audiences even before the onset of the Depression. Trenton had gotten out of acting while the getting was grand. One grand, to be precise, which is the price for which he had sold all rights to his films in 1937. During the Depression, Lordy had invested in sound equipment for the movies and made big money. In the mid-thirties, he had built Flaubert House and then started to erect what some architectural critics at the time referred to as Jesus Wept. Trenton’s friends called it the Mission. The Mission featured a huge circular entry beneath a dome decorated with Moorish tile, high vaulted ceilings, bedrooms furnished in wrought iron and dark oak, an austere refectory that could seat a hundred, and a living room that by itself occupied two thousand square feet. It consumed much of his fortune. In the early forties, beset by visions of a Japanese invasion of California, Lordy connected Flaubert House and the Mission with a quarter-mile underground tramway, complete with bomb shelter. He lined the smoothly plastered stone-and-brick tunnel with a gallery of nineteenth-century European oils. At the same time, he became involved with a troubled young artist and sometime actress, Emily Gaumont. After their marriage in 1944, she spent her last year obsessively painting full-sized portraits of Lordy and many of their friends – as clowns. In 1945, during a party, a fire in the tunnel killed Emily and ten visitors and destroyed the tram. Four of the dead – including Emily, so the story went – were burned beyond recognition. A year later, alone and broken by lawsuits, Trenton died of acute alcohol poisoning. The next owner, a department-store magnate named Greel, in his late sixties, acquired a mistress, allegedly of French Creole descent. To please her, he spent a million dollars finishing the Mission in Louisiana Gothic, mixing the two styles to jarring effect. The name Jesus Wept acquired permanence. Greel died in 1949, a suicide. In 1950, the estate was purchased by Frances Saint Claire, a Hitchcock blond. Blackballed by the studios, her career ruined by allegations of leftist sympathies, Saint Claire had married a savvy one-time pretty boy named Mortimer Sykes. Sykes, playing against type, wisely invested her money and endlessly doted on her. In 1955, they built the third and final mansion of Salammbo, the trendy, Bauhaus-inspired Four Cliffs. In 1957, just six months before Saint Claire’s death from breast cancer, a grove of eucalyptus trees caught fire. The flames spread to two of the mansions. Four Cliffs burned to the ground. Most of Jesus Wept survived, but the refectory lay in ruins. A police investigation pointed to arson, but friends in local politics hushed up any further investigation, suggesting there was already enough tragedy at Salammbo. In 1958, Sykes put the estate up for sale and moved to Las Vegas. A broken man and heavily in debt, he tried to borrow money from the wrong people. Two years later, hikers discovered his body in a shallow grave in the desert. The estate lay vacant for five years. In 1963, Joseph Adrian Benoliel became Salammbo’s newest master. A lifelong bachelor, Joseph had made his fortune producing beach flicks and managing a chain of real-estate franchises. And between 1970 and 1983, he had secretly financed four of Peter’s titillation movies; lots of nudity but no actual sex. Peter parked the car, got out, and pulled his coat down over a slight paunch. Broad-shouldered, he carried the extra weight well enough, but he was starting to look more like an aging bodyguard than an artist. No matter. The Benoliels didn’t care. Peter lifted and dropped the bronze fist on the striker plate mounted on the huge oak door. A young man with short black hair, dressed in an oversized blue sweater and beige pants, opened the door, looked him up and down, and held out something as if making a donation to the poor. Peter had never met him before. ‘Here, Mr Benoliel doesn’t seem to want one,’ he said in a clipped tone of British disappointment. ‘They’re free. Who are you?’ He pressed a black plastic ovoid into Peter’s hand and stood back to let him in. ‘That’s Peter,’ Joseph said. ‘Leave him alone,’ He walked into the entryway with a persistent poke of his rubber-tipped cane, moving fast for a man with a limp. ‘I hate the goddamned things.’ He did not sound angry. In fact, he smiled in high good humor at Peter. In his early seventies, with a football player’s body gone to fat and the fat carefully pared away by diet, the flesh of Joseph’s arms hung loose below the short sleeves of his yellow golf shirt. Bandy legs weakened by diabetes stuck out below baggy black shorts. His bristling butch-cut hair had long since turned white. ‘Hate them when they beep in restaurants. People driving and yakking. Always have to be connected, like they’d vanish if they stopped talking. There’s too much talk in the world already.’ He waved his hand in a gesture between permission and irritated dismissal. ‘If you take the damned thing, turn it off while you’re here.’ ‘They don’t turn off,’ the young man explained to Peter, drawing closer. His wide blue eyes assessed Peter’s character and the size of his wallet. ‘You can turn the ringer down, however.’ Peter smiled as if at a half heard joke. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Free talk,’ Joseph said. ‘But it doesn’t work. Where’s Mishie?’ ‘She told me to get the door,’ the young man said. ‘Well, hell, Peter has a key. Mishie!’ The young man regarded Peter with newfound but uncertain respect. Mishie – Michelle – walked out of the hall leading back to the drawing room. ‘I’m here.’ She smiled at Peter and hooked her arm around Joseph’s. ‘Time for his lordship’s monkey nut shots,’ she announced with thespian cheer. ‘Come along, dear.’ Joseph stared gloomily at the small elevator to the left of the long flight of stairs, as if doom awaited him there. ‘Don’t ever leave me alone with her, Peter,’ he said. ‘You two fine young bucks wait in the drawing room,’ Michelle instructed primly. ‘We’ll be down in a whiffle.’ ‘I’m down now,’ Joseph said. ‘If there’s anything I hate, it’s monkey nuts.’ He patted Peter’s arm in passing. ‘Nice couple,’ the young man said as they sat in an alcove looking over the west lawn. The wistful last of the day faded far out over the cliffs and the ocean. ‘They were joking, weren’t they?’ ‘I think so,’ Peter said. ‘I’m Peter Russell.’ ‘Stanley Weinstein.’ They stretched out of their chairs and shook hands. Chairs throughout Flaubert House were always set shouting distance apart from one another. ‘Scouting for an investment?’ Peter asked. ‘An investor,’ Weinstein corrected. ‘One million dollars, minimum. A pittance to finance a revolution.’ ‘In telecom?’ Weinstein cringed. ‘Let’s please avoid that word.’ Peter raised the plastic ovoid to eye level and twisted it until he found a seam, then tried to pry it open with a thumbnail. It wouldn’t budge. ‘If it’s not a phone, what is it?’ ‘We call it Trans,’ Weinstein said. ‘T-R-A-N-S. Plural, also Trans. Invest a little, and you get one to use. Invest a lot, and you get more to hand out to friends. Very chic, extraordinarily high tech, nothing like them on the market. Feel that weight? Quality.’ ‘It’s a cell phone,’ Peter said, ‘but not.’ ‘Close enough,’ Weinstein agreed with a lean of his head. ‘They’ll be free for the next year. Then we go public and open booths in every shopping mall in the world.’ ‘Joseph won’t invest?’ Peter asked. Weinstein shrugged. ‘Our demo did not go well. Something seems to be wrong with the house.’ ‘There’s a steel frame. Lots of stone.’ ‘Trans will work anywhere from the center of the Earth to the moon,’ Weinstein said, puffing out his cheeks. ‘I don’t know what the problem is. I shall have to ask my boss.’ ‘And your boss is …?’ Weinstein held his finger to his lips. ‘Mr Benoliel trusts you?’ ‘I suppose,’ Peter said. ‘He trusts me not to hit him up for money too often.’ Weinstein looked funny at that, then wiggled his finger in the air. ‘Monkey nuts?’ ‘That is a joke,’ Peter said. ‘I do stuff for them. I’m nobody, really.’ Weinstein winked. ‘You have influence. They trust you, I can tell,’ he said. ‘Keep the unit. In fact, let me give you more. Hand them out to your friends, but if you would, please give one to a good friend of Mr Benoliel’s, or better yet, Mrs Benoliel’s.’ Peter shook his head. ‘I already have a cell phone,’ he said. ‘I get calls every week about new service plans.’ ‘What about no service plan?’ Weinstein thrust out his fingers like a magician. ‘A Trans unit lasts for a year, and then you replace it with another, price yet to be established – but less than three hundred dollars. Unlimited calling day or night, anywhere on the planet. Better than digital – in fact, pure analog sound quality, just as God intended. Do you like vinyl LPs?’ ‘I still have a few.’ In fact, Peter had hundreds, mostly jazz, classical, and 1960s rock. ‘Then you know what I mean. Lovely, like a soft whisper in your ear. No interference, just clean sound. If you can convince Mr Benoliel we’re on to something, you’ll get free units for life. You and five – no, ten of your friends.’ Peter gave a dry chuckle. ‘And?’ Weinstein lifted an eyebrow. ‘Five thousand shares, IPO guaranteed to be set at twenty-three dollars a share.’ Peter raised his own eyebrow even higher. He hadn’t survived a career in films for nothing. Weinstein grinned devilishly. ‘Or five thousand dollars, up front, your choice, payable when Mr Benoliel invests.’ ‘How about ten thousand?’ Weinstein’s smile remained, tighter but still friendly. ‘Okaaay,’ he said, mimicking Joseph’s deliberate drawl. ‘Pardner.’ He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and began scrawling on it with a fountain pen. ‘Do you have an agent?’ ‘He hasn’t heard from me in a while.’ Peter examined the short, neatly penned document. The address was in Marin County. He would probably need to go north anyway, for Phil’s funeral – if there was going to be one. He asked for the fountain pen and signed. ‘What the hell,’ he said. ‘Joseph rarely changes his mind.’ Weinstein excused himself and returned a few minutes later with a white cardboard box. In the box, buried in layers of foam, were ten plastic ovoids in various cheery colors. ‘All active and good for a year. Push the help button for instructions.’ ‘How do you open them?’ Peter asked. Weinstein demonstrated. Pressing a barely visible dimple on one side released the upper half, which swung aside with oily smoothness. There were no buttons. A screen covered most of the revealed face and lit up pearly white with black touch keypad and letters, different from his Motorola. The unit was neatly made and felt just right in his hand, slightly warm, slightly heavy. ‘It’s not a gift from aliens, is it?’ Peter asked. ‘It should be,’ Weinstein said, chuckling. ‘No, it’s entirely human. Just … people.’ Weinstein handed Peter the box and looked around the drawing room. ‘Quite a place,’ he said. ‘Have you worked here long?’ Peter smiled. Joseph did not like to be talked about, in any fashion, by anybody. Weinstein turned serious. ‘Get this done, Mr Russell, and you’ll rate a visit to our new headquarters, as well as your bounty money. Then you’ll meet the man behind Trans.’ Peter folded shut the top of the box. ‘I’ll put these in my car,’ he said. ‘That lovely old Porsche?’ Weinstein asked. ‘Is it a replica?’ ‘Nope,’ Peter said. ‘Then it’s older than I am,’ Weinstein said. After Weinstein’s departure, Peter followed Michelle up the long curve of marble stairs to the second floor. Flaubert House was huge and quiet, as solid as a tomb but cheerful in its way. ‘That was awkward,’ Michelle murmured. ‘Joseph knew someone’s daddy way back when. Now one of his boys sends a salesman to hit him up for ten million dollars.’ Peter walked beside her for the last few steps, silent. It had taken him into his forties to realize that the true art of conversation was saying almost nothing. ‘Joseph’s been a little down. I mean, not that he’s ever a ball of fire, you know? But a little less twinkle.’ In truth, Joseph had never struck Peter as being capable of twinkle. Blunt honesty, sharp conversation, an uncanny ability to pin down character – and a good joke every now and then – defined his few charms. Over the years, Peter had come to like Joseph; honesty and the occasional joke could make up for a lot. Michelle looked tired. ‘Says he has a palooza of a chore for you. Won’t tell me what. Man stuff, do you think?’ Her long legs carried her more quickly over the thick Berber carpeting in the broad hallway. ‘Monkey nuts,’ Peter said. Michelle smirked. ‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’ She left him standing between walls covered by framed glossies of movie stars. Most of the stylish portraits were autographed, souvenirs of Joseph’s days as a producer. Peter recognized them all: beautiful or soulful people brooding or sunny, feigning humor or dignity, looking inaccessible or seductive, but all seeking approval no matter what attitude they copped. Long ago, he had realized an almost universal truth about actors. They became real only when they were being witnessed, when they were on-screen. Hidden behind doors, alone, or looped around a reel and locked in a dark metal can … For an actor, not being seen, not having an audience, was worse than limbo. ‘All right,’ Michelle said, returning. ‘He’s decent.’ She opened a door near the end of the hall. ‘Joseph, it’s Peter.’ ‘Who else would it be, Eliot Ness?’ a voice bellowed in the dark beyond. Michelle sighed. ‘Ten percent bonus if you leave him a contented man.’ ‘I heard that!’ Michelle sighed loudly and closed the door behind Peter. Joseph sat in a huge leather chair near full-length windows opening onto a false balcony about a foot deep and faced with black wrought-iron railing. Lights from the front drive and the last of the sky glow drew him in broad grainy strokes like chalk on velvet. The room also contained an antique oak bar from a saloon in Dodge City, so the legend went, and two brown leather couches separated by a square black granite table. ‘Goddamned awkward,’ he said. ‘Did Weinstein try to suck you in?’ ‘Yeah. Ambition,’ Peter said. ‘In spades.’ Peter nodded. His eyes adjusted slowly to the twilit gloom. ‘Offer you stock to convince me?’ ‘And cash.’ Joseph chuckled. ‘They’ve been yammering at me for a week. Goddamned things don’t work. You’d think they would check that out before they try to hit up a rich old fool.’ There was a strange set to Joseph’s words. ‘Old trumps rich,’ he murmured. ‘And fool trumps old.’ He was staring fixedly through the windows. Peter stood about six feet from the chair. ‘Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. I need you to go see a woman. Interested?’ ‘For you, always,’ Peter said. ‘She may be the most charismatic female on the planet. Certainly one of the smartest. If I went personally, she would play me like a farm trout. You, however … You know women better than any man alive. You’ll survive.’ Peter gave a small, dubious laugh. ‘Well, you will. You’ve made it with over two hundred women, photographed maybe two thousand, and Michelle genuinely likes you. That’s a r?sum? no other man in my experience can equal.’ ‘Who gave out my track record?’ ‘We’ve known each other a long time,’ Joseph said. ‘I did some research before bankrolling your films.’ ‘A bit exaggerated,’ Peter said. ‘I never kept count.’ Joseph lifted his hand, spread his fingers, then let it drop back to the chair arm. ‘Before she met me, Michelle used to know a lot of photographers. Long-haired sacks of fermented pig shit. That’s what she called them. But not you.’ ‘I’m respectable?’ Peter asked. ‘Not if you work for me, you aren’t.’ Joseph shifted in his chair. ‘This woman you’re going to meet is seventy years old. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, bar none. I’ve watched her on TV. Her teeth aren’t perfect, but she smiles like some sort of Eastern saint, whatever you call that.’ ‘Kwan Yin,’ Peter offered. ‘Yeah, maybe. Her name is Sandaji. Used to be Carolyn Lumley Pierce. She’s from the Bay Area, started out as a New Age groupie, but I checked up on her, and she’s been through hell and come out wiser. Amazing story. She’s holding meditation seminars in Pasadena.’ Joseph’s voice became a low, assertive bellow. ‘I want you to drop a roll of money, ten thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, into her collection plate. Then ask her my question. Bring me the answer tomorrow morning.’ Peter’s errands for Joseph were varied and often peculiar, but he had never done anything like this. Peter was not fond of New Age types, followers or leaders. They had disappointed him. ‘Directions. Loot.’ Joseph held out a folded piece of paper and a thick roll of money. ‘Don’t tell Michelle. She’s still mad at me for paying a quarter of a million dollars for a watch last week.’ ‘Jesus,’ Peter said involuntarily. ‘It’s a good watch,’ Joseph said with petulance. He pulled back his sweater cuff to reveal a wide flash of platinum. ‘Maybe I’ll will it to you when I die.’ ‘I’m a humble man,’ Peter said. ‘Well, Michelle’s already in my face, so don’t tell her how much this time, okay?’ ‘All right.’ He pocketed the money and the directions. The money pushed against the Trans. Joseph shuddered. ‘Goddamn, it’s cold in here. Peter, you look gloomy. Worse than me, and I feel like an old cabbage. What’s up?’ ‘My friend died. A writer named Phil Richards.’ ‘Sorry. Friends … can’t afford to lose them.’ Joseph’s eyes moved beyond Peter to the far corner of the room. ‘Water out there somewhere, reflecting moonlight,’ he murmured. Peter looked up over his shoulder and saw a dim, milky flare play across the ceiling. Then it was gone. ‘What should I ask her?’ Peter asked. ‘I’ve arranged for a private audience. You will absolutely not tell anyone else. I trust you, Peter … but I want you to promise me anyway. Swear to me as much as one atheist can swear before another, all right?’ ‘Cross my heart, hope to die,’ Peter said. Joseph seemed to accept this. He folded his hands in his lap like a schoolboy about to recite. Peter had never seen him so vulnerable. ‘Ask her if she believes it is possible for someone to live without a soul. Ask her in private, not in front of all those salivating white-collar geeks she cultivates.’ ‘Someone, live, without a soul,’ Peter said. ‘Don’t mock me, Peter Russell.’ Joseph’s voice was hard and clean. In the glow of the rising moon, his face was the color of an expensive knife. ‘No disrespect, Mr Benoliel,’ Peter said. ‘Just getting my lines straight.’ ‘He has been such a lemon lately,’ Michelle said in the entry, holding the door. The veranda lights cast a dull golden glow over the stonework. ‘Please make him feel better.’ ‘Isn’t that your job?’ Peter asked. ‘You’re short tonight,’ she observed. ‘My best friend just died,’ Peter said. ‘Oh, shit, really?’ Michelle was shocked and saddened. On her face, the effect was of a curtain drawing open to a new play. She stood straight and let go of the door. ‘How much time do you have?’ she asked. ‘Time for a drink?’ ‘You know I don’t drink.’ ‘A small glass of sherry for me, ginger ale for you,’ Michelle said with studied grace. ‘We’ll toast your friend.’ They went into the huge kitchen and Michelle sat Peter at the marble-topped counter. Only the counter lights were on and the rest of the kitchen fell back into olive-colored shadows. Peter felt as if he were under a spotlight. Michelle poured two glasses as described and sat at the corner next to him. ‘To your friend,’ she said, lifting her sherry. ‘To Phil,’ Peter said, and felt his shoulders make a quaking motion. He sucked the ginger ale down wrong and started to choke. He used that to disguise the tears, and coughed until the impulse was almost gone. Michelle gave him a napkin to wipe his eyes. ‘Want to talk about him?’ ‘I don’t think there’s time.’ ‘Your appointment isn’t for another hour and a half,’ Michelle said. ‘Was he famous?’ ‘Not really,’ Peter said. ‘He was a better writer than me. Maybe a better man.’ ‘Do you still write?’ Michelle asked. ‘When I need the money,’ he said. ‘I admire people who do something with their talents.’ Michelle put down her glass. ‘What did you think of Weinstein?’ ‘A hustler,’ Peter said. He reached into his pocket and took out the Trans. It slid smoothly past the roll of hundred-dollar bills. ‘Haven’t tried it.’ ‘Give me your number,’ Michelle said. ‘Weinstein left a box of them. I’ll pick out a nice blue one.’ ‘Do they even work?’ ‘Not in the house, apparently,’ Michelle said. ‘But I need to get outside more. Besides, Weinstein will pay you if we convince Joseph … won’t he?’ Peter smiled ruefully, tilted his head, and nodded. He opened the unit and read her the number from the screen. It was odd, seven sets of two digits separated by hyphens. Michelle wrote the number on a slip of paper. ‘See?’ she said, and patted his hand. ‘I was hard up once. Cast adrift. I know how life goes. It isn’t easy finding a safe harbor.’ She shook her hair and shoved out a hand toward the kitchen walls, as if to push them back. ‘I just get lost here. It’s been thirteen years with Joseph, and I still haven’t explored all the rooms.’ She shook her head. ‘Half aren’t even furnished. I can do whatever I want with the houses, but it’s just the two of us, and you, and the cleaning people once or twice a week. Joseph doesn’t want servants living on the estate.’ ‘It’s quiet,’ Peter said. ‘Very quiet,’ Michelle said. She took Peter’s Trans and opened it. ‘Weinstein explained it to me a few days ago, before he spoke with Joseph,’ she said. ‘Is this the only one you have?’ ‘He gave me nine more,’ Peter said. ‘Should I throw them away?’ ‘No, no. Maybe it’s the weather and they’ll work inside the house later. We’ll just spread them around. They’re no use sitting in a box. Then I’ll talk to Joseph again and try to convince him. For your sake, not Weinstein’s.’ Peter leaned forward. ‘I don’t know what to say. You’re treating me like a brother.’ ‘You might as well be a brother,’ she said. ‘You know your boundaries. You give me more respect than my real brothers ever did. You understand that I have a tough job, but it’s one I intend to stick with. We’ve seen a lot of the same old world, from different sides of the fence. And we both mean what we say.’ ‘Wow,’ Peter said. ‘That’s something I can, I don’t know, cherish.’ Michelle’s lips twitched. ‘You’re my project, Peter Russell.’ She sipped her sherry. ‘When you toast the dead,’ she said, ‘they feel comforted and don’t bother you, and you have only good thoughts about them.’ ‘You sound like an expert,’ Peter cracked. Michelle smiled. ‘That’s what my grandmother told me when I was a little girl. She was French, from Louisiana.’ Peter took up his glass and they toasted Phil again. ‘May he sleep tight,’ Michelle said. CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_9cee64ac-7fc5-5a00-97e5-a0f47d6d7298) Joseph’s map took Peter into Pasadena and down a series of narrow streets. The summer evening air oozed through the half-open windows, filling the car with the green odors of juniper and eucalyptus cut by the sweetness of honeysuckle. Sticky jacaranda flowers filled the gutters with purple rivers. Old-fashioned street lamps dropped puddles of dim yellow light. He drove slowly, looking for a restored Greene and Greene home, a classic wood-frame bungalow with Japanese touches. Can’t miss it, Joseph had written on the map. Numbers hidden. Guidebook says it’s fronted by a huge river rock wall. Bamboo garden inside. Joseph and Peter’s last picture together, in 1983, had been Q.T., the Sextraterrestrial, Peter’s biggest budget production—half a million dollars. Too old-fashioned, the film had gone straight to late-night cable. The hard-core porn revolution had punched heavy-gauge nails into Peter’s film career. Whatever his morals, Peter had been more of a gentleman than his competitors. He had cared for his ladies. It had been tough watching them waltz off to shoot hard-core. Some had ended up sadly; others had become underground legends. Movies had never left his thoughts, however, and in the early nineties, while visiting Benoliel to drum up support for a low-budget horror feature, Peter had discovered a new element in Flaubert House: Joseph’s young wife. They had been married two months. Michelle had taken an immediate liking to Peter and had talked up his screenplay, but Joseph had refused to lay out good money for bad horror. Persistent almost to a fault, Michelle had asked Peter if he could do other work. Down to his last few hundred dollars, he had agreed. Gruff, never easy to get along with, Joseph Adrian Benoliel could turn on the charm when he wanted to, but only if he needed something. Worth half a billion dollars, he rarely admitted to needing anything. Under Michelle’s tutelage, Peter had become his more charming face. ‘You’re a gem, you know that?’ she had told Peter at the beginning of his new role, as she had walked ahead of him, a slight, wiry figure in shorts and halter top, her lambent contralto and slapping zoreys echoing across the marble-lined entry of Flaubert House. ‘You won’t believe the weirdoes trying to take advantage of Joseph. You’re just what he needs.’ For thirteen years now, Peter had toted, met with, dismissed, couriered, and kept mum. He had made more money from helping Joseph and Michelle than he had ever earned from his movies. In the end, Peter had become a decent factotum, fed his family, and acquired a loose sort of freedom from want. Now he was locked in, wary of trying anything new, of making another wrong move and losing the last important things left in his life. A fair number of people in LA now knew Peter only as Joseph’s dogsbody. So had ended his big dreams. Peter spotted a river rock wall nine feet high and thirty feet long, then found an open space across the street just big enough to fit the Porsche. Beside the wall, twin red cedar garage doors were illuminated by hyperbolas cast by jutting tin-saucer lights fitted with clear glass bulbs. Authenticity meant a lot in Pasadena. He walked along the rock wall, knuckles brushing the jutting boulders, until he came to the cedar gate. Somewhere deep within the night behind the wall, chimes tinkled. A breeze stirred dry leaves and they made a sound like little hands rubbing together. Peter found a small ivory button mounted in green bronze above the standard NO SOLICITORS sign and re-checked the description. Nothing else like it on the block. He pushed the button. Security lights switched on within the yard. Two minutes later, a thin woman of sixty or so peered through the gate with intense black eyes. ‘Yes?’ she said, leaning to look behind him. ‘My name is Peter Russell. I’m here for a private meeting with Sandaji.’ ‘Representing yourself?’ ‘No,’ Peter said. ‘Who, then?’ ‘I was told to come here and you’d know everything you needed to know.’ ‘Well, identification would certainly help,’ the woman said. Peter produced his driver’s license. She held out a small flashlight and examined it with wrinkled brow. ‘You make a good picture,’ she said, and then stepped back. The gate pulled open on a metal track. To either side of a slate walkway, bamboo formed an undulating curtain, up to and around a stone lantern. Through the stalks, he could see a porch and dimly lit windows. ‘Come in, Mr Russell,’ the woman said. ‘My name is Jean Baslan. I’m Sandaji’s personal assistant. She’s very busy this time of year. We always love coming back to this house. A peaceful place.’ Her voice had a pleasant ululation to it, accompanied by a trace of Nordic accent. Peter followed her up the winding walkway. ‘We’ve cleared this hour for you,’ Jean Baslan said. ‘If you plan on taking less time, please let us know. Have you met Sandaji?’ Peter said he had not. Baslan smiled. ‘You have a treat in store, Mr Russell. We’re all totally devoted to her.’ With a gentle wave, she guided him through the front door into the living room. Dark wood and exquisite built-in cabinetry set off antique furniture and hand-woven oriental carpets. Tiffany lamps sat contented and elegant on long tables of solid bird’s-eye maple. Peter recognized Morris chairs that looked genuine, and the books within the glass cases were rich and interesting: leather-bound sets of Voltaire, Trollope, Dickens. He wondered what kind of women had lived in this house when it was first built: no doubt lovely, their dresses ankle-length, stepping like young deer with charming hesitations and subtle glances. He could almost smell their perfume. ‘We’re here to help needy people,’ Jean Baslan said, ‘people living in pain and confusion, who desperately need Sandaji’s message of hope. What sort of question did your friend, your employer, have?’ ‘Well,’ Peter said, ‘it’s private.’ ‘Is he elderly?’ ‘In his seventies,’ he said. ‘A friend as well as an employer?’ Peter tilted his head to the left. ‘We respect each other,’ he said. ‘Is he married?’ Peter smiled. ‘Mostly I run errands and take meetings. That sort of thing.’ ‘How intriguing …’ She lifted her hand. ‘Sandaji will know what to tell him, I’m sure.’ They had passed through a dining room and into the rear portion of the house. He saw a sleeping porch with two women sitting in warm darkness on wicker chairs. Their eyes glinted at him as he passed. For a moment, he half imagined them in long silken dresses. The effect was at once charming and disconcerting. ‘You know what our greatest difficulty is?’ Baslan asked. ‘Discouraging proposals. For marriage, you know. The men who come to Sandaji find her so comforting. But then, she is beautiful, very much so, and that confuses many.’ Peter said he was looking forward to meeting her. Personally, however, he had never found age much of an aphrodisiac. The house was a work in progress and in these back rooms, it looked more like a middle-class grandma lived here than a very rich aunt. Past the dining room, tables, couches and chairs were not antiques. The jambs and rafters still supported decades of paint, rather than being stripped to native wood as in the restored sections. The first thing Peter noticed as Jean Baslan opened the last door was the scent of freshly crushed herbs: thyme, rosemary, and then spearmint. Aromatherapy, he thought. Oh, goodie. Sandaji was pressing her dark velvet gown down over her hips, having apparently just stood up from a plain wooden chair. Peter saw her first, and then the room she was in. Later, trying to remember the room, he would be hard-pressed to describe what was in it. The rest of the house remained clear, but from this moment, all he truly remembered was the woman. She stood six feet tall, hair a grey curly fountain tamed by clips and a ribbon to flow down her back. The black gown she wore ended at mid-ankle and she was barefoot, her feet bony but well formed, like the rest of her; hips protruding, though she was not excessively thin, roll of tummy pronounced but not obtrusive, faint nubs on not particularly small breasts. As Peter’s eye moved from bare feet to shoulders, he received the impression of a willowy college girl, and then Sandaji turned her head to face him, and he saw the mature woman, well past her fifties but surely not in her seventies, observant eyes relaxed in a face lightly but precisely seamed by a subset of whole-life experiences. Her lips, still imbued with natural color and utterly lacking in lipstick, bowed into a knowing Shirley Temple smile. She seemed wise but mischievous, awaiting a cherished playmate, inviting speculation that she might be won over to a deeper friendship; his eyes moved down in reappraisal. The black gown covered a trim, healthy body, promising rewards beyond the spiritual. She enjoyed his appreciation. Peter had met many beautiful women. He knew what they expected, the charming dictates they imposed on all their unequal relationships. Somehow, however, he did not think his experience would be much help with Sandaji. ‘This is Peter Russell,’ Jean Baslan announced. ‘Representing Mr Joseph Adrian Benoliel.’ Sandaji narrowed her eyes like a cat settling in for a coze. ‘How is Mr Benoliel?’ she asked, and looked back at the table. ‘It’s a pity we will not meet this evening. I understand he has a question.’ ‘He does,’ Peter said. Sandaji looked around the room, pink tongue tipping between her lips. ‘That’s a good seat,’ she said, and pointed to the forest green couch against the wall, beyond the glass-topped table, all of which Peter now noticed. ‘Please feel at ease.’ ‘I’ll leave you two alone for a few minutes,’ Jean Baslan announced with a wink, as if she were a liberal-minded duenna leaving her charge in the trust of a gentleman. She closed the door behind her. Peter sat on the green couch, knees spread comfortably, and rested his big, dry hands on them; an easy workman’s way of sitting, not a gentleman’s, and for once, he was acutely aware of the difference. Sandaji pressed her gown again with a downward stroke of her hand and returned to the plain wooden chair. She sat straight and with knees together, not as if manner dictated, but equally in comfort. Her long fingers continued to shape precise smoothing motions, drawing the clinging velvet down an inch as she made a small contraction in the corner of her mouth. Human, that contraction said; no matter what else you see or feel, I am merely human. Peter was not so sure. He could not take his eyes off her. She seemed utterly at peace. Her eyes remained fixed on his. ‘I do odd jobs for Mr Benoliel,’ Peter said. ‘He told me to come here.’ Sandaji obviously appreciated the effect she had on men and probably on other women, but it did not in the final balance seem to mean a lot to her. She raised her brows with an expression that said, how nice. ‘There’s so much pain to be soothed, so much confusion to be guided into useful energy.’ Her voice was tuned like a cello. Peter could imagine himself swimming in that voice. ‘I’m sure,’ he said. Then, without willing it, he added, ‘My best friend died today.’ Sandaji leaned forward and she held her breath for an instant before exhaling delicately through her nose. ‘I am so sorry to hear that,’ she said. ‘He was a writer, like me,’ Peter added. ‘You both have qualities,’ Sandaji said. ‘You are valued, that I can see. So many people – women in particular, I think – have placed an astonishing faith in you. That is something special, Peter.’ ‘Thank you. I like women,’ he said. ‘They seem to like me. And around me, well … I can’t …’ He could not stop talking. Embarrassing. His hands clutched his knees. ‘I understand,’ Sandaji said. ‘I commit only to my work now. That confuses some who need the kind of love we can’t afford to give, for different reasons.’ Peter chuckled uncomfortably. ‘Well, it isn’t because I’m successful and devoted to my work.’ ‘No?’ ‘More like I’ve never grown up.’ ‘There’s a charm in youth, and a sting,’ Sandaji said. ‘We let go of youth for a great price. Life does not offer the price to all.’ Ah, Peter thought, and felt a measure of control return. I’m getting her range. She’s very good, but she is not impenetrable. Still, she is very good. ‘Sorry. That just slipped out. I’m not here to talk about me.’ ‘I see.’ ‘My employer has a question.’ ‘ We have time.’ ‘Michelle told me that earlier. Mrs Benoliel.’ A wrinkle formed between Sandaji’s pale brows. ‘She worries for her husband.’ ‘All rich wives worry,’ Peter said, feeling defensive now, and not because of the implied analysis of Michelle. He could feel the spotlight of Sandaji’s attention moving around his personal landscape, touching points he might not want illuminated. She looked to his left, then leaned back in the chair. ‘Your daughter,’ she said, and the wrinkle between her brows deepened. Peter stiffened until his neck hurt. ‘I didn’t ask about my daughter,’ he said. Sandaji opened and closed her hands, then folded them on her lap, dimpling the black velvet. She seemed agitated. ‘I assure you, I’m not a psychic, Mr Russell.’ ‘I’m here on Mr Benoliel’s behalf. Why bring up my daughter?’ ‘Please ask … your question.’ She looked up at the ceiling, frowning self-critically. ‘I’m so sorry. I did not mean to intrude. Please forgive me.’ Peter looked up as well. Light flickered there, as if reflecting from a pool of water somewhere in the room. Sandaji moved – jerked, actually, as if startled – and the light vanished. That, and mention of his daughter, and Sandaji’s unexpected discomfiture, made Peter nervous. The house was no longer welcoming and Sandaji’s enchantment had evaporated. She suddenly looked fragile, like chipped china. It was time to get this charade over with. ‘Please,’ Sandaji insisted. ‘The question.’ ‘Mr Benoliel asks if a man can live without a soul.’ She dropped her gaze to look over his shoulder, then slowly returned her focus to Peter. ‘He asks if a man …’ The wrinkle between her brows became a dark valley. She was starting to look all of her years, and more. ‘Live without a soul?’ ‘No,’ Peter corrected himself, getting flustered. ‘He said “someone”, actually. Not “a man”, but “someone”.’ ‘Of course,’ Sandaji said, as if it were the most obvious question in the world. Peter blinked. For an instant, a shadow seemed to fill the room, sweeping across walls and ceiling and then hiding behind the furniture. Sandaji appeared shocked and frightened. She stopped smoothing her gown. ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said. ‘I did not expect … I am not feeling well. Could you call my assistant?’ Peter started to get up from the couch. Before he could reach for her, she slumped forward like a dying ballerina. Her hands fell limp against the worn oriental carpet. A copper bracelet dropped and lodged around her wrist. Her grey hair slipped and pooled. Peter kneeled, decided it would not be wise to touch her – she appeared stunned, half conscious. He shouted, ‘Help!’ Jean Baslan entered with a prim, pale look and together they lifted Sandaji back into the chair. ‘No, this isn’t very comfortable,’ Baslan observed, her face a tight mask of concern. They picked the woman up by her arms and helped her to the couch, where she lay back gracefully enough, skin waxy and hair in disarray. ‘Of course,’ Sandaji said as she opened her eyes. ‘What happened?’ Baslan asked Peter. ‘She just spoke a few words and fell over,’ Peter said. ‘She must have fainted.’ ‘I saw her,’ Sandaji said. She angled her head to stare straight-on at Peter. Her green eyes were intense. ‘I am not a psychic,’ she repeated. ‘I do not have visions.’ ‘Did you slip her something?’ Baslan accused Peter. ‘In her water?’ ‘Water? No, of course not,’ he insisted to her steady glare. ‘Did you see her?’ Sandaji asked. Both women stared at Peter. ‘There was a reflection,’ he said. ‘That’s all I saw.’ ‘It’s time for you to leave, Mr Russell,’ Baslan said. Sandaji made an effort and sat up. ‘I’m so sorry. This has never happened before. I’m usually a strong, healthy woman.’ She tried to resume control, but it was a poor effort. ‘Let’s go,’ Baslan insisted to Peter. She took his arm and started to drag him away. ‘No, his question,’ Sandaji said. ‘It can wait,’ Baslan said. Peter nodded, eager to get out of the house, away from this nonsense. He wondered how much was being staged. It would not have taken much digging to find out about his children. A good conjuror or medium was always prepared ‘No, it’s a good question. I should answer.’ Sandaji sat upright on the couch and took a deep breath. She lifted her shoulders and arched her neck, then slowly let out her breath. She looked at them with renewed deliberation and her voice resumed its rich cello intonation. ‘Many live on without souls,’ she said. ‘They are intense in a way most cannot understand. They are driven and hungry, but they are empty. There is nothing you or I can do for them. Even should they try for enlightenment, they are like anchorless ships in a storm.’ Her lips moved without sound for a moment, as if practicing a line, then she concluded, ‘A curious question, but strangely important. My beloved guru once spoke long on the subject, but you’re the first who has ever asked me. And now I wonder why.’ ‘It was the wrong question.’ Baslan glared at Peter. ‘I am feeling much better,’ Sandaji said, attempting to stand. She fell back again with an expression of mild disgust. ‘I am so sorry, Mr Russell.’ ‘You have your answer,’ Baslan insisted. ‘We are polite, Jean,’ Sandaji remonstrated softly. ‘But I am tired. And the evening started so well. I think I should go to bed.’ Baslan brusquely escorted Peter to the front door. ‘The gate will open automatically,’ she said, her face still tight and eyes narrowed, like a mother cat protecting kittens. Peter walked onto the porch and down the steps, then turned and looked back as the door closed. He stood there for a moment, the anxiety returning, and the shortness of breath. For an instant, he thought he saw something dark in the bamboo, like an undulating serpent. Then it was gone; a trick of light. He reached into his pocket and felt the smooth plastic phone – Trans, he corrected – and the roll of hundred-dollar bills. The donation. For a moment, he thought of just walking on and pocketing the money. Otherwise, what a waste. He could pay a lot of bills with ten grand, Helen’s bills in particular. Lindsey was starting school soon. She needed clothes. He would tell Joseph and Michelle that Sandaji’s people were lying, that he had given Baslan the money. But he had never stolen money in his life. Not since he had been a little boy, at any rate, lifting coins from his mother’s change bowl. And he was not a good liar. Perhaps for that reason, he had always hated liars and thieves. His feet again made soft cupping noises on the porch’s solid wood. He knocked. Baslan swiftly opened the door. ‘How is she?’ he asked. ‘Some better,’ she said tersely. ‘She’s gone upstairs to rest.’ ‘I asked her a question on behalf of Mr Benoliel. I got an answer. That’s why I came here. No other reason. Anything like a personal reading was uncalled for. You do her research, no doubt. I resent you telling her about Daniella. I just wanted you to know.’ He held out the roll of money. Baslan, her face coloring to a pale grape, took it with an instinctive dip of her hand. ‘I do not do research,’ she snapped. ‘I told her nothing. Sandaji does not do readings or communicate with spirits. We don’t even know you, Mr Russell.’ She bobbed left to put the money aside. He heard the clinking of a jar or ceramic pot. ‘We are not charlatans. You can leave now.’ With Baslan out of the doorway, Peter had a clear view through an arch to the dining room, about thirty feet from the porch. A little boy in a frilled shirt and knee stockings stood there. He looked sick; not sick, dead; worse than dead, unreal, unraveling. His face turned in Peter’s direction, skin as pale and cold as skim milk. The head seemed jointed like a doll’s. The grayish eyes saw right through him, and suddenly the outline blurred, precisely as if the boy had fallen out of focus in a camera viewfinder. Peter’s eyes burned. Baslan straightened. She gripped the edge of the door and asked sharply, ‘Do you need a receipt?’ Peter’s neck hair was bristling. He shook his head and removed his glasses as if to clean them. ‘Then good night.’ When he did not move, Baslan looked on with agitated concern and added, ‘We’re done, aren’t we?’ She prepared to close the door. Her motion again revealed the arch and the dining room. The boy was no longer visible. He couldn’t have moved out of the way, not without being seen. He simply wasn’t there. Perhaps he had never been there at all. Baslan closed the door in Peter’s face with a solid clunk. Peter stood on the porch, dazed, face hot, like a kid reacting to an unkind trick. He slowly forced his fists to open. ‘This is crap,’ he murmured, replacing his glasses. He had not wanted to come here in the first place. He walked quickly down the steps and along the winding stone path between the bamboo to the gate. The scuff of his shoes echoed from the stone wall to his left. The gate whirred open, expelling him from the house, the grounds: an unwanted disturber of the peace. On the street, he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, then opened the car door and sat. He started the car, listening to the soothing, familiar whine, and tried to recall the answer Sandaji had given to Joseph’s question; despite everything, it remained clear in his head. He repeated her words several times, committing them to memory before putting the Porsche in gear. Slowly his breath returned and the muscle binding in his chest smoothed. The back of his eyes still felt tropical, however, as if they were discharging a moist heat into his skull. They were charlatans after all. Why go through that awful charade in the back room, then trot out a little boy in a Buster Brown outfit? Both had been stunts to gull the shills, trick the unwary into asking more questions, paying more money. That was as reasonable an explanation as any. Peter was happy to leave Pasadena. His thick, powerful hands clasped the wheel so tightly that he had to flex his fingers. ‘Ah, Christ!’ he shouted in disgust once again at all things. New Age and mystical. There was life and this Earth and all the sensual pleasures you could reasonably grab, and then there was nothing. Live and get out of it what you could. Leave the rest alone. That other sort of madness could kill you. Then why did I reach out for Phil? Driving alone, his work done, the traffic on the 210 blessedly easy for this time of night, going back to his home in the hills, he pictured Phil’s rueful, ingratiating smile. On the highway, his tears flowed. His shoulders shook. And a pretty little girl in a blue sweater, pink shorts and a tank top. Don’t forget her. Ever. The loss and the old, much-hated self-pity just piled up and spilled. It was all he could do not to break into a mourning howl. All he could do, almost, not to spin the wheel and drive right off the freeway. CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_99e1dc1b-2ff2-5db1-a97f-9e5655b22c20) Peter rolled over in the tangled sheets and opened his eyes to an out-of-focus bedscape. He blinked at a blur of satin trim coming loose from his brown wool blanket, then rubbed his eyes and closely observed another blur spotted with white: a rumpled pillow leaking feathers through its seams. He was still half asleep. His hand fumbled on the bed stand for his glasses. A shaft of sun fell across one corner of the room from the skylight, reflected from the full-length mirror, and beamed over the space beside his bed. He made out dust motes in the beam. The motes danced with a puff of his breath. Nice to just sink, let sleep win. His head fell back onto the pillow. Eyes closed. Delicious blankness. Birds sang in the back yard. He opened his eyes again, arm twitching. The beam had shifted and the dust motes were swirling like spoiled cream in coffee. As he watched, bleary, they took a sort of elongated shape. He thought he could make out two legs and an arm. Small. The arm lengthened, adding a hand-shaped eddy. A face was about to form when he opened his eyes wide and said, bemused, ‘All right. I’m waking up now.’ He leaned over and waved his arms through the sunbeam. The motes dissipated wildly. His jaw hurt. He was a mess and he stank. He got out of bed and straightened, hooking a temple piece around one ear. The night had been disjointed, filled with scattered flakes of dream, memories drawn up from a deep sea like fish in a net. The dreams had all possessed a jagged, surreal quality, as if scripted by restless demons, pent up for too long. ‘Art, sperm, and sanity don’t keep,’ Peter said to the face in the mirror. He thought about that for a moment, then padded into the bathroom to turn the hot-water tap for a shower. The old white tile in the stall was cracked and creased with mildew. The room smelled of moisture. It was a good thing the air up in the hills was dry or the floor would have rotted out a long time ago. As he dressed, his clothes became a kind of armor, like blankets wrapped tight around a child’s eyes. The waking world was filled with traps designed to make him feel bad and he did not want to feel bad any more. He stepped into old slippers and shuffled into the kitchen to make coffee in a French press, the only way he liked it. As he pushed the red plastic plunger down through the grounds, a bell-like tone came from the living room, not his house phone and certainly not his cell phone, both of which sounded like amorous insects. He finished the plunger push and went to look. Big throw pillows in Persian patterns covered an old beige couch. Two graceful sixties chairs made of parabolas of steel wire and slung with purple canvas supported massive green pillows, like alien hands offering mints. The big front window looked out over a garden left to itself the last nine months, and doing fairly well without Peter’s attention. Jasmine and honeysuckle vied with Helen’s old rose bushes to scent the air, and the splashes of red and yellow and pink in the late-morning sun were cheerful enough. The bell toned again. He peered back through the now-contrasty and dark spaces of the living room. Then he remembered. He had left the box of Trans on the table by the French doors. He had also carried one with him into Sandaji’s house in Pasadena. He opened the door, stepped out across the brick pavers to the upright oil drum closet, and fished out his coat. The unit was still in the coat pocket. He opened it and the display lit up at his touch. ‘Hello?’ he said into the tiny grill. ‘Peter, it’s Michelle. Seven rings. Hope I didn’t wake you.’ ‘Just getting cleaned up.’ ‘Good. Weinstein left a map. It led me to ten more phones in a box hidden behind the couch. Is that cute, or what?’ ‘Pretty cute,’ Peter said. ‘So I have fourteen phones now. I was trying to remember which one you put in your pocket. Did I dial the right number?’ ‘You probably didn’t dial anything,’ Peter said, looking at the circle of shaded graphic lozenges on the touch screen, numbered from zero to twelve. ‘Yeah, right. Smartass. Well, I’m standing outside the house, on the drive. It seems to work out here.’ ‘Great,’ Peter said, longing for coffee. ‘Joseph’s curious to hear what that woman told you.’ ‘I could come over now,’ Peter said, hoping his sincerity sounded thin. ‘He’s taking hydrotherapy. How about noon? He’ll be ready by then and relaxed, and besides, you know that noon is the best time of his day.’ ‘I’ll be there,’ Peter said, and stifled a small urge to say, I’s a-comin’, with bells on. ‘Are you glad to hear the phone works?’ ‘Trans,’ Peter corrected. ‘Delighted. I’ll tell what’s-his-name.’ ‘Weinstein. No, I’ll tell him, once I convince Joseph. And I’ll tell him you convinced me.’ Peter was picking the other units out of their box, just to give his hands something to do. Each was a different color: opalescent black, dark blue, red, a trendy metallic auburn, and the one he held, dark metallic green. They looked like props in a science fiction film. Something from the parts catalog in This Island Earth. ‘It’s our little conspiracy,’ Michelle said. ‘Besides, it won’t hurt you or me to help Joseph make another pot of money.’ What few telecom stocks Peter had owned had gone south long ago, leaving his retirement scheme in a shambles. ‘Never mind,’ Peter said. ‘I’ll talk to Weinstein when the time comes.’ ‘If you insist. Noon, then. How do you end a call with this thing?’ ‘Shut the cover,’ Peter suggested. ‘Right.’ A click, then silence. Peter pulled the unit away, then raised it to his ear again. The quiet in the room seemed to deepen. He tried the other ear. Same thing. Actually, he was impressed. He had never heard voices so clearly on a phone. Michelle could have been right there in the house. Maybe Weinstein was on the up-and-up. As he drank coffee and ate a bowl of Trix, Peter opened up the green Trans on the counter and punched the single button marked ‘Help’ below the circle of numbers. Welcome to Trans, the display said. The message scrolled across, then shrank to fill the touch screen, with arrows pointing left and right at the bottom. Trans has voice recognition. Ask a simple question or say a key word. ‘Dial,’ Peter said in a monotone. He had worked with computers enough to know the drill: talk like a robot and the unit might understand. Would you like to dial a number? ‘How do I dial?’ Peter asked. Trans works with a base-12 number system: 10, 11, and 12 are treated as integers. Every Trans unit has an individual identification number seven integers long. There are no area codes or country codes. To communicate with another user, dial the ID number of the unit you wish to connect to. Remember, a hyphen before 10, 11, or 12 means you should push one of those buttons rather than entering the component numbers (1 or 0 or 2) on separate buttons. Trans is base-12! Peter made a hmph face and wondered if anyone other than computer geeks would ever catch on to that. ‘What’s my number?’ he asked. The number of your Trans unit is -10-1-0-7-12-3-4. Your unit has been used once to receive one call. You have not yet made any outgoing calls. Please use Trans as often as you wish to place a call anywhere on Earth. Don’t be shy! There are no extra charges with Trans. ‘My own personal Interociter,’ Peter murmured, lifting the unit and looking at it from above and below. There were no holes for a recharging plug or an earphone. Except for the top of the case, the unit was seamless. The Soleri bells gonged loudly outside the front door. Still in his robe, Peter marched across the slate floor to the door and peeked through a clear section of glass. Hank Wuorinos – thirty-one, buff, his close-cut gelled hair standing up like a patch of bleached Astroturf – stood on the patio. He reached out one tattooed hand to play with a drooping branch of jasmine. Peter undid the locks and opened the doors. ‘Hey!’ Wuorinos greeted. ‘I’m on a flick, a Jack Bishop film. I’m off to Prague. Wish me luck.’ ‘Congratulations,’ Peter said, and stood back to let him in. Hank had gotten a start as a teenager handling lighting for some of Peter’s more decorous and ornate model shoots. The girls had nicknamed him Worny, which he had hated but tolerated, from them. Now he was a full-bore professional, IATSE card and all. ‘Got some coffee?’ Hank asked. ‘Half a cup. I can make more.’ ‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’ Hank followed Peter into the kitchen. He poured himself what was left from the French press and filled it to the brim with milk, then slugged most of it down with one gulp. ‘I’ve never been to Europe. Any advice?’ ‘I’ve never been to Prague,’ Peter said. ‘I hear it’s fatal sensuous. Beautiful women eager to get the hell out of Eastern Europe.’ ‘Look out for yourself,’ Peter advised with some envy. Hank waggled his extended pinky and thumb. ‘No worse than your average day at Peter Russell’s house.’ ‘Did Lydia tell you about Phil?’ Hank’s smile faded. ‘No … what?’ ‘He died yesterday.’ Hank was too young to know what to say, to feel, or to actually believe. ‘Jesus. How?’ ‘Heart attack or stroke.’ Death was new to Hank. He tried to find something appropriate, some sentiment, and his face worked through a range of trial emotions for several seconds. ‘You going to the funeral?’ ‘I haven’t heard about a funeral yet,’ Peter said. ‘Lydia will want one,’ Hank said with assurance. ‘Or at least a wake. But I’m leaving tomorrow. I won’t be able to come … I could …’ Phil had introduced Peter and Hank. Hank had stayed with Phil and Lydia for a few weeks as a teenager. It had been a seminal moment for Hank Wuorinos, young runaway from Ames, Iowa. Lydia had probably shoplifted Hank’s virginity. Phil had never much held it against Hank. Lydia was what she was. A real Hollywood career, after such an introduction to Los Angeles, was a sign of persistence and genuine talent. ‘Go to work,’ Peter said. ‘Phil would understand.’ ‘Besides, I couldn’t face Lydia,’ Hank said. ‘She’d want you to stay over and console her,’ Peter said. ‘Shit,’ Hank said, crestfallen. ‘She would. You know she would.’ Peter held up the cardboard box. ‘You’ll need one of these to keep in touch,’ he said. ‘Take your pick.’ Hank peered. ‘What are they, Japanese Easter eggs?’ ‘They’re called Trans. They’re like cell phones but they’re free. You’ll love them. They use a base-12 number system.’ ‘Wow! They actually work?’ ‘I just took a call on one.’ Hank picked the red unit and twisted it with delight in his hands. Hank’s dark emotions were wonderfully transient. He had a job, he was about to see the world, and that easily trumped the death of poor, hapless Phil. ‘No long-distance charges?’ ‘Not so far. They’re demos.’ ‘Let’s try.’ Peter indulged him. Just being around Hank cheered him. Peter showed him the help button and they took down the numbers of all the phones on two pieces of paper. Then they tried calling the different units from various rooms in the house, like boys with cans on strings. The sound was crystal clear. Hank was thrilled. ‘They are so cool,’ he said. ‘They’re like Interociters.’ ‘That’s what I thought,’ Peter said. ‘How many can I have?’ Peter overcame an odd twinge of greed. ‘Take two,’ he said. ‘One for your girlfriend.’ ‘I don’t have a girlfriend,’ Hank said seriously, ‘but I will find one in Prague. I’ve been reading Kafka just to get in the mood. The tourist brochures say Prague is supposed to be the most haunted city in Europe. City of ghosts. A church made of bones. That’s what the DP told me. Who ya gonna call?’ The dark emotions returned and Hank picked up his cup of coffee in a toast. ‘To Phil. Is this what it’s like to get old, your friends start dying?’ ‘Something like that,’ Peter said. After Hank left, Peter checked his answering machine in the kitchen. A red 1 flashed on the display. He rolled back the tape – it was a very old unit, he seldom bought new appliances – and listened. It was Lydia. She had a voice like the young Joanne Woodward, honey and silk and baby’s breath. She told him she was already in Marin – she had taken the train – and she had finalized arrangements. She said she would be at Phil’s house and gave his address and phone number. The wake would be late tomorrow. ‘No funeral. Phil wanted to be cremated. Just a few friends, mostly from the time we were married.’ He listened to the message again. Double whammy: Lydia had used a phone, and Phil had a house in Marin. ‘Who’d of thunk it?’ Peter asked. His voice sounded childish, even petulant, as if he were resentful that Phil had kept secrets. Phil had kept secrets from his best friend and then ditched him. He went to pack his bag. CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_303b92f0-68d8-5370-ae2d-409913fba6e0) Joseph stretched out on a lounge chair with a florid towel spread over his legs. He listened to Peter’s report with a grey, still face. Not even the sun shining through the sunhouse glass over the pool could improve his pallor. He looked impassive, like an old king who has seen and done it all. When Peter finished, Joseph started to tap his thumb on his draped knee. Peter did not tell the rest of the story. He still had not made any sense of that part of the night’s events. ‘Sandaji took my money?’ Joseph asked. ‘Her assistant did,’ Peter said. ‘All God’s children need money,’ Joseph said with yielding disappointment. Peter had never heard such a tone of defeat coming from the man. ‘Actually, I forgot to hand it over and had to go back,’ Peter said. ‘I thought about just keeping it.’ Sometimes Joseph was cheered by confessions of human greed and weakness. ‘I would have,’ Joseph said. ‘What did she mean by that answer?’ Peter shrugged. ‘I’m not much on this soul business, you know that.’ ‘I didn’t used to be. I’m giving it some real thought.’ ‘We’re getting old,’ Peter sympathized. ‘Hell, you can still jog around the house and fuck when you want. For me, just going to the bathroom is a thrill.’ ‘Bull,’ Peter said, shading his eyes. ‘Yeah,’ Joseph said. ‘Old man bullshit. I can still get it up, but I don’t know that I want to any more.’ They sat for a minute. ‘I’ve led a wicked life, Peter,’ Joseph said. ‘I’ve hurt people. Messed around and messed up every which way. Despite it all, here I am with the sun and the sea and the hills and the cool night breezes, living on twenty acres of paradise. Makes you think. What’s the downside? Where’s the comeuppance?’ Peter left that one alone. He was not in the mood for discussing ultimates. ‘Where do we all go?’ Joseph asked in a husky whisper. ‘I’m going to Marin,’ Peter said. ‘To a wake. That’s sober enough, isn’t it?’ ‘Was your friend a good man?’ Peter shrugged. ‘A better man than me, Gunga Din.’ Joseph cracked a dry smile. ‘Was he your water bearer?’ ‘He saved my life when I was at the end of my tether. And he braved many an insult for a chance to peer at the ladies.’ ‘Sounds like he had at least one good friend,’ Joseph said, softening. Right before his eyes, Peter thought, the sun was melting this chilly man with the grey face. The sun and the thought of a wake. ‘You’d love what I saw last night,’ Joseph said, apropos of nothing. He stared at the horizon, the hazy blue sea beyond the grass and hills. ‘Do you believe in spooks, Peter?’ ‘You know I don’t.’ ‘I hope I never see them again.’ Peter shivered involuntarily. He did not like this. Another silence. Joseph grimaced as if experiencing a stomach pain and waved his hand. ‘I’ll tell Michelle to give you a five-hundred-dollar bonus. Come say howdy when you’re back.’ Peter prepared to leave. Joseph spoke out from across the pool. ‘Michelle tells me those damn plastic thingies actually work. She’s passing them around to her friends. Maybe I booted that whelp son of a bitch too early.’ Joseph waved his hand again. All was square. Michelle was unusually quiet as she handed Peter five hundred dollars in cash in the foyer. It was eleven o’clock. The whole damned house felt sad, Peter thought. ‘When are you going to use a checking account?’ she bugged him, a favorite topic. Peter had cut up all his credit cards and never carried a checkbook. He had a small savings account and that was it. He was now strictly cash-and-carry, paying his bills in person when he could, and having Helen write his tax and other checks when he visited to make child-care payments. ‘When I deserve to be a yuppie again,’ he answered. ‘You can be such a pill,’ Michelle said. As he left, she gave him a quick peck on the cheek and a friendly pat on the buns and wished him a good trip to Marin. ‘Don’t let it get you down,’ she warned. Peter had already put his bags in the Porsche. He descended the winding road to Pacific Coast Highway and turned left into light traffic. He had had his share and more of grief, of unbearable loss and hopeful speculation. After his lowest moment, when manic anguish and drink had almost killed him, he had come down firmly on the side of tee totaling skepticism. Put on armor, wrapped himself in blankets. Now, for reasons he could not fathom, people were trying to poke him through the blankets. First Sandaji, and now Joseph. ‘Blow it off,’ he suggested. Then he glanced in the rearview mirror, looking into eyes made cynical by the rush of warm air. He puffed his upper lip into a feline pout and said ‘Spooks’ several times, mimicking Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion in the forest of Oz. Fifty miles north of the Grapevine, driving north on 5, lulled by the road, he felt an oddly comforting, bluntly selective silence fill the Porsche. He could still hear the slipstream, the whine of the engine, the rumble of tires on the grooved freeway. Still, the silence was there. Sometimes that happened. He would be in a quiet room and the ambient noise would flicker, replaced by a distant, high-pitched hum that faded slowly into a new silence. He remembered listening to the whine of the air as a boy, back when his ears had been far more sensitive. He instinctively patted his pocket and felt the green Trans. His thoughts wandered as the traffic grew sparse and the freeway straight and monotonous. Someday, he mused, before all passion was spent, in this world of high-tech communications, his own final true love would call him and her voice would rise above the ambient noise of all the other women. That was Peter’s one supernatural quest now: the perfect woman, a beauty who watched him with cool amusement from behind his thoughts and memories, elusive and brazenly sexy. Peter had met only one woman that came close to that impossible ideal, a model and sometime actress named Sascha Lauten. Buxom, smart, cheerfully supportive, Sascha had been sufficiently vulnerable and sad about her life to make his heart puddle. Phil had warned him about Sascha. ‘She sees right through you,’ he had said. ‘Your charms do not soothe her magnificent breasts.’ Sascha had ultimately turned down his proposal and married a skinny-assed salesman with bad skin. They now lived quietly in Compton. He stuck his hand through the half-open window to feel the speed. Over the wind he sang, ‘I hate this crap, burn up the road, I hate this shit, burn up the ROAD.’ CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_8a4d58cb-8477-558d-82e6-5470d50474d2) Peter crossed the Golden Gate Bridge at midnight and climbed the long hill into Marin before turning inland. Somehow, he missed a turn. Sitting at a gas station, he used the Trans to call Lydia. When she answered, her voice was like a little girl’s. She gave Peter the final directions to Phil’s house in Tiburon. ‘The place is filled with boxes,’ Lydia said. ‘God, was he a pack rat.’ Peter was tired. He thanked Lydia and closed the Trans. He had long wondered where Phil had stuck all the books and old magazines and movies that he had bought over the decades. Apparently, for some years Phil had been hauling his worldly goods north in the Grand Taiga, following through on a long-planned final escape from Los Angeles. And he had not told Peter about any of it. The last few miles he followed a winding, dark road beneath a black sky dusted with ten thousand diamonds. Shadowy grassland and expensive houses flanked the road. Beyond lay more hunched hills. When he found the last turn, onto a culde-sac called Hidden Dreams Drive, he looked south and saw San Francisco lit up like a happy carnival on the far shore of the Bay. The house cut three long, inky rectangles out of the starry sky between silhouettes of knobby, pruned-back trees. Peter drove up beside a new-style VW Beetle. As he set the parking brake, he saw Lydia sitting on a front porch swing, short, bobbed hair like a dark comma over her pale face. The orange bead of a cigarette dangled from her hand. She did not wave. Jesus, Peter thought. The lot alone must be worth a million dollars. He stood on the gravel at the bottom of two wooden steps. ‘Nice night,’ he said. ‘I’m not staying,’ Lydia announced. She got up from the porch swing and stubbed the cigarette into a tuna can. Then she tossed the butt into the darkness. Peter jerked, thinking she might start a fire or something. But that was Lydia. ‘Should I go in?’ Peter said. ‘Up to you. He’d probably want you to,’ Lydia said dryly, ‘just to sort through his stuff. Last hands pawing what he wanted most on this Earth. He sure didn’t love his ladies worth a damn.’ Peter did not rise to the bait. Lydia stretched. At forty-eight, she still had a pruny grace. Low body-fat since youth – and wrinkles from smoking – had diminished her other native charms, but the grace remained. Peter hauled his one suitcase onto the porch. She handed over three keys on a piece of dirty twine. The twine was tied to a small piece of finger-oiled driftwood. The driftwood dangled below his hand, swinging one way, then another. ‘The medical examiner found my address in Phil’s little black book,’ Lydia said. ‘Some cops came to visit me. They said he had been dead for a couple of days.’ She opened the screen door for him. ‘Did you know he had this place?’ Peter shook his head and entered the dark hallway. He set down his suitcase. ‘He sure as hell didn’t tell me,’ Lydia went on. ‘It didn’t turn up on the divorce settlement. What do you think it’s worth?’ ‘I have no idea,’ Peter said. ‘Ancient history,’ Lydia said. ‘Anyway, I got him into a crematorium in Oakland. I think maybe the mailman found him. He had been dead for a few days.’ ‘You said that,’ Peter said, grimacing. ‘The mortuary will bring him back tomorrow. Hand delivery. We’ll hold the wake in the back yard. I’ve invited some folks who knew Phil. And some of my friends. For backup.’ ‘When did you get up here?’ Peter asked. ‘This morning. I left everything the way I found it. Peter, I hope you understood him. I hope somebody understood Phil. I sure didn’t.’ Peter did not know what to say to that. ‘You know, despite everything, he was the sweetest guy I ever met,’ Lydia said. She poked Peter in the chest. ‘And that includes you. See you tomorrow around one. If they deliver Phil early, just put him on the mantel over the fireplace. And, oh …’ She held out her hand. ‘I have no idea where he kept his money. I paid for everything. Donations cheerfully accepted.’ Peter removed his wallet. He pulled out the five hundred dollars Michelle had given him in Malibu. He was about to peel off several of the bills when Lydia dipped her hand with serpentine grace and snatched the whole wad. She counted it quickly. ‘That doesn’t cover even half the cost,’ she said. She patted his bearded cheek. ‘But thanks.’ She walked across the gravel to the VW, her bony, denimed hips cycling a sideways figure 8. The car vanished into the dark beneath the stars. That left Peter with ten dollars, not enough to pay for the gas to get home. CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_73071786-0164-53ed-b843-a8acf35ef8d4) The house was quiet and still. Outside, not a breath of air moved. A hallway beyond the alcove led past the living room, a bathroom, and the kitchen, to three rooms at the back. He switched on the lights in the alcove and the hall and stepped around two neatly taped boxes Magic-markered with names and dates: Unknown Worlds 1940-43, Startling Mystery 1950-56. Hand-made pine shelves filled with paperback mysteries and science fiction covered the wall behind the door, arched over the door, around the corner, and into the living room, where more shelves framed the wide front window. Beneath window, records and old laser discs occupied a single shelf. He could make out still more shelves marching back into the shadows of a dining room, and stacked boxes where a table might have been. In the living room, a single threadbare couch faced a scarred coffee table and the wide window. The coffee table, seen from above, had the outline of a plumped square, like the tube of an old black-and-white television set. In the fifties, those conjoined curves had been the shape of the future. Peter thought about Indian-chief test patterns, the Monsanto House of the Future at Disneyland, and how such curvilinear dreams had become part of the deep and forgotten past. Their past. Phil liked old black and white movies best. His taste in music was even more conservative than Peter’s: Bach and Haydn and Mozart, no rock, just big bands and fifties jazz up to early Coltrane. No Monk, even. For some reason, it was taking time to get used to the idea that he had the house to himself. He kept thinking Phil would show up and grin and apologize, and then show him around, pulling books from shelves, removing their plastic bags to fondle his many little treasures. Materialism, with a difference. Give me ideas, stories, music. Forget booze and diamonds, forget women. Pages filled with printed words and grooves in vinyl are a guy’s best friend. So Phil had once told him. Peter found the kitchen. He filled a plastic glass with water from the tap. The sideboard was neatly piled with clean dishes. No cats or dogs, that was a blessing. Phil had never been enthusiastic about pets. Most of the cupboards in the kitchen were stuffed with old pulp magazines, G-8 and His Battle Aces, The Shadow, thick compound issues of Amazing Stories. One small corner shelf was reserved for cereal boxes and three more plastic glasses. The refrigerator held a six-pack of cheap beer, vanilla pudding cups, yogurt, clam chowder in plastic pouches. White foods. Phil loved mashed potatoes. Peter searched for coffee or tea. He needed something warm. Finally, he found a jar of instant coffee and a mug, right next to each other on the window sill over the sink. He put on a saucepan of water and set it to boil. Then he pulled up an old-fashioned step stool and sat with a whuff, wiping the long drive from his eyes with a damp paper towel. He did not want to sleep in the house, but there wasn’t enough money left for a motel. The couch did not look inviting. Peter could not just sleep anywhere these days. His muscles knotted if he lay down wrong. Finally, cup in hand, he turned on all the overhead lights in the kitchen and hall and the back bedrooms, inspecting each one until he came to Phil’s. More shelves, mostly new and empty, as if waiting to be filled. It was not a mess; it was actually pretty neat. Spartan. Someone had made up the queen-sized bed. Phil never made his bed. Peter gritted his teeth. Lydia did not say where they had found Phil. The room did not smell. Still, he decided against sleeping in here. He took blankets from the hall closet and reluctantly settled on the couch. The window looked slantwise across the Bay at San Francisco, framed by two willow trees farther down the road. It was a beautiful view. ‘Jesus Christ, Phil,’ Peter said. ‘If you come back, I’ll punch you. I swear to God I’ll punch you right in the face. You should have told me you were sick.’ He was so tired. Against all his intellectual rigors, all his best intentions, he was still hoping to find Phil somewhere in the house. Hoping to grab one last minute together. ‘Where are you, buddy?’ He finished the cold coffee. Caffeine had little effect on him, but he doubted he would be getting much sleep tonight. ‘Come on, Phil,’ he cajoled, his voice like a small bird in the big living room. ‘One more time. Show up and give me a heart attack. Don’t ditch me.’ Peter leaned back and pulled up a small wool blanket. He kept rolling around on the old cushions, pushing his legs out as his knees felt antsy. Sleep came, but it was uneven. Finally, awake again and bladder full, he got up, stumbled around the boxes, and walked down the long hall. Never afraid of the dark. Never have been. Empty dark. He touched his way along the wall to the bathroom door and turned right. A small plug-in nightlight illuminated a claw-foot tub, a round-mouthed porcelain toilet, and a standalone corner sink that must have dated from the teens or twenties. He lifted the toilet lid, unzipped his pants, and peed. Sighed at the relief from the sharp incentive nag. Not as bad as some his age, but still. Jiggled the stream around with childish intent, roiling the water. The little things we do when facing the big things, the imponderables. Peter softly sang a Doors song, ‘This is … the end … beautiful friend.’ His stream finally faltered and he shook loose a few drops, harder to get the last dribble out, a small indignity, meaningless in the face of that awesome and final one. ‘My only friend … the end.’ Something passed the open door, black against a lesser dark. Peter’s last squirt splashed on the floor. Half asleep, he stared in dismay at the puddle, zipped quickly, then bent to dab it up with a folded piece of toilet paper. What? Glancing left, he lowered the lid. His fingers slipped and the lid fell with a loud clatter on the ceramic bowl. Crap. Tell the world. He poked his head through the doorway and looked up and down the hall. His eyes were playing tricks. He wished Lydia, somebody, anybody, would pop out and go, ‘Boo!’ just to show him how ridiculous he looked and sounded. How much he was betraying his vows to be skeptical. He might be doing it again, deceiving himself, hoping beyond hope, beyond the material world, and if it kept on this way, sliding into this painful, hopeful retreat from the rational, he knew where it could all lead: straight into another case of Wild Turkey. Trying to find the one who did it. Asking for Daniella. One last conversation with my daughter, oh my God. Something moved again in the hall, making not so much a distinct sound as a change in the volume of air. Now Peter was sure. Someone had come into the house while he was sleeping – not Phil of course; a burglar. He reached into his pants pocket, feeling for the knife he sometimes kept there, and did not find it. It must have slipped out in the car or on the couch. He pushed open the bathroom door with a, this time, deliberate bang and stepped into the hall, looking both ways. Dark left, dark right. ‘Whoever you are, get the hell out,’ he called, hands clenched. Peter had no tolerance for burglars. He had been robbed often enough – the house four times, his car three times. People who stole deserved no mercy as far as he was concerned. He found an antique button switch and pushed it. The hall light came on. Empty. The door at the end of the hall, leading into Phil’s bedroom, was open just a crack. He stood for a moment, listening. Someone crying. The sound could have come from outside, from another house. But there were no houses close enough, not here at the end of Hidden Dreams Drive. Peter could feel heat rising again behind his eyes, steamy. Tropical. Such a weird sensation. He realized he was making little hiccupping gulps as he finished his walk toward the end of the hall, Phil’s bedroom. The door’s closing had been blocked by wire hangers hooked over the top. He was astonished by how clearly he saw everything in the light of the hall fixture: wallpaper pastel flowers in diamond patterns, dark-stained baseboards, antique oak floor, worn oriental-design runner rucked up and curling on one side, boxes on the left stacked almost to the ceiling, WEIRD TALES 1943-48, the bedroom door and the hangers again, the darkness beyond the crack. It sounded like a woman crying, soft, silky sobs, voice like dusty honey. Not Phil, then, of course, and probably not a burglar. A lost little girl, maybe. Some out-of-it doper marching around late at night. Peter forced his breath to slow. Maybe it was someone Phil knew, a lover come back to pick up her toothbrush, her underwear, her jewelry, as unlikely as that might be – Phil had kept so much to himself. Peter assumed a fencer’s position in the hall, En garde. ‘I’m out here, and I won’t hurt you,’ he said, hand outstretched. ‘Don’t be afraid. It’s okay.’ He knew, could feel it as a tangible fact, that the bedroom was empty, but he could still hear the sobbing through the door. Slender lines of darkness gathered in the periphery of his vision like smeared ink. As he tried to focus, they blended into corner shadows like wisps of spider web. Still, outside his direct gaze, the smudged lines flashed toward the bedroom door, wriggling like dark, blurry eels anxious to get in. I’m having a stroke, just like Phil. But he did not feel ill. Physically he was fine; it was the house, the bedroom, that was not fine. It was the bedroom that was crying. Peter was not a coward. He knew that about himself. He could feel fear and still act, but what he felt now was not fear; it was an unwillingness to learn, and that was very different. Some things that you discover – infidelity, the death of loved ones – you cannot turn back from. What you suddenly know changes you, chops you up into little pieces. He did not want to learn what was in the bedroom. Still, he poked the door open with a stiff finger. He leaned slowly into the bedroom and fumbled to push the button switch. The ceiling fixture slowly glowed to sterile yellow brightness. Shadows fled across the bedroom like little cyclones of soot. Peter grabbed the door jamb. A woman stood at the foot of Phil’s bed. She had buried her face in grey hands, but Peter could tell who she was by the dark comma of bobbed hair and the honey-silk quality of her weeping. ‘My God,’ he said, and his shoulders slumped. He let out his breath and started to smile. ‘Lydia. You scared me.’ The woman’s hands dropped. She turned, head cocked, listening; slowly turned and listened some more, as if to far-off and unpleasant music. All of a sudden, through his relief, Peter’s tongue moved involuntarily, and he bit into it. His head exploded in pain. Eyes watering, gasping, he felt vulnerable and very, very foolish. Through his tears, he saw that the woman’s face was like a flat sheet of mother-of-pearl. Her eyes opened to quizzical hollows. Less than solid, she resembled a paper doll frayed by careless snipping. Peter could actually see her edges ripple. Trying to back out, he thumped against the door, closing it, and for an instant felt something tug at his head, his throbbing tongue, his nerves. Her blank and empty eyes vibrated. They seemed to point not quite in his direction, but through and beyond him. The image filled out like a balloon, assuming a counterfeit and temporary solidity. Not Lydia. But it looks like her. The image moved its lips. As if pushing through gelatin, the sound arrived late at his ears. ‘Phil, how could you do this, how could you just die?’ came the high-pitched silken wail, only a little louder than the buzzing of a fly. The eel shadows swooped through the door and into the bedroom like descending hawks. He could feel them brush his shoulders like the tips of cold, damp fingers. The figure jerked in a horrible simulation of fear, trying to escape, dodging faster than flesh, like a bad film edit. But escape was impossible. Peter’s mouth went stone dry. He wanted to look away, block his vision with a hand. Instincts old and deep instructed him that he was about to bear witness to something private, a sight no living human should ever have to see; but he could not stop himself. He stared. Pity held him. And curiosity. The eel shadows swarmed and lanced and worried the image, snatching away scalloped bites and crumbling pieces. It lifted its hands in weak defense, shuddering with an astonishing, dry simulacrum of pain. Whatever it was, its time had come. As the likeness of Phil’s ex-wife diminished and deflated, its wailing turned tinny and desperate. It unraveled drastically, peeling and dissolving in shreds like a tissue-paper cutout dipped in a bowl of water. In a few seconds, the last of its murky outline disintegrated and fell away. Sated, the shadows fled, draining like water around his feet. The room seemed to shiver off the last of them, leaving just the bed, neatly made and undisturbed, and the threadbare carpet and empty shelves. The image, the delusion, the reflection or copy of Lydia – whatever it might have been – was gone. Peter leaned his shoulder against the door jamb. He could not move. For the moment, he could not even turn his head. Blood pounded in his ears. His calf cramped and he gritted his teeth. Even in his worse days of besotted grief, he had never seen anything remotely like this. Pitiful, something left behind, dropped like an old Kleenex. His heart slowed. The heat behind his eyes cooled. Finally, he had to blink. That instant with his eyes closed terrified him and he felt his neck tense and intestines curl. Nothing came. Nothing touched him. Quiet and still. The room was innocent. Nothing had actually happened. Nothing real. Peter was finally able to turn. He put out one foot as if rediscovering how to walk, then another, and slowly left the bedroom, reaching back with numb and inept fingers to close the door. The hangers caught. He could not close it all the way, so he angrily slammed it. The hangers jangled. One fell and bounced off the wood floor with a tinny resonance. The whine of the hanger wire made him grit his teeth, it sounded too much like the voice. He gave up and walked on what felt like tingling stumps to the couch in the living room. Sat on the couch with hands folded on his lap. Did not even try to relax. Watched the carnival of the city across the water, darker now in the wee hours. His neck knotted and stayed that way. He was still alive and wasn’t sure he wanted to be, not if he had to think about what he had just seen. Peter watched the dawn light gather slowly over San Francisco, then burst forth along the eastern hills, reflecting gold against skyscrapers and banks of fog, the most beautiful sight of all: day. He was making a big, grown-man decision. There was only one way to react – it must have been a bad dream – and two things to do. He walked into the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of Cheerios, chewing reflexively each milky mouthful. The milk had been in the fridge since Phil’s death and was on the edge of spoiling, but served well enough. He forced himself to take a shower in the big bathroom, removing his clothes with catlike caution, climbing into the claw-foot tub, and drawing the curtain around on its pipe, tucked inside just enough to keep water from spraying on the floor, but with a clear view of the open bathroom door. This took tremendous will but it had to be done, and just this way. The water was set hot and stung his back. Phil did not believe in wimpy showers; no water inhibitor valves for him. No Bergson valves. As Peter scrubbed using Phil’s rounded block of Ivory soap, he tried to recall what a Bergson valve was. Something he had picked up reading The Doors of Perception in the sixties. This is the end … beautiful friend. Aldous Huxley. Something about drugs opening doors, or was it spigots? Letting the taps of reality flow free. He’d look it up when he got home. Or maybe Phil had a copy. After toweling dry, he dressed in the living room, putting on his good wool slacks and a black long-sleeve shirt and the thrift-store suit coat to get ready for when they delivered Phil, or when – and he did not know how he would react to this – the real Lydia turned up again on the porch. Peter washed the bowl in the sink and suddenly started snorting with laughter. It didn’t last long; it wasn’t funny, really. It was sad. ‘I see live people,’ he said, and started snorting again until he had to take off his glasses to wipe his nose and his eyes. His best friend’s wake was today and he couldn’t keep his act together long enough to get a good night’s sleep. He had to start seeing things. Peter the screw-up, two nights running. Maybe he was hoping to draw attention to himself; poor Peter, maddened by loss once again. Really sad. The self-hatred built like bad clouds before a storm. Then it burst and went away. Peter’s ground state was a mellow kind of cheer, high energy at times, but usually slow to blame or anger. Sometimes he just reverted to the ground state when things got really bad, without explanation, but no solution either; the bad clouds inevitably returned. He would have to deal with them. Just not now. ‘It did not feel like a dream,’ he told himself. He was clean and well dressed, wearing his beige silk coat. He had become a figure of calm masculine dignity, grey-bearded, with wide-spaced and gentle eyes and glasses, lacking only a pipe. Bring it on. He sat on the porch swing, relishing the sun, the cool fresh air. ‘What a great house, Phil,’ he said. ‘Really.’ A dark blue unmarked panel truck came up the road trailing a thin cloud of exhaust and dust. It parked on the gravel beside the Porsche and a man in a dark brown suit got out, carrying a square cardboard box. ‘Is that Phil?’ Peter called from the porch. ‘Delivery for Ms. Lydia Richards,’ the man said, holding out the box in both hands. He had thick, theatrically wavy grey hair and walked and spoke with a jaded but professional dignity. Peter had once known a stripper who had married an undertaker. It was all about flesh, after all. ‘I’ll take him,’ Peter said. ‘Are you authorized by the family to receive the mortal remains of Mr Philip Daley Richards?’ the dignified man asked. ‘I’m family,’ Peter said, and signed for Phil’s ashes. CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_5882663a-b6e1-5199-81a7-6ead2a9e016d) Peter gingerly placed the box on the mantle of the fireplace. It barely fit. The morning’s explanations weren’t making much sense now. ‘“Lydia, where did Phil die?”’ he rehearsed out loud, standing before the fireplace. ‘“Lydia, I don’t think he died in the house. Did you die in the house, Lydia? Because it wasn’t Phil who showed up this morning, in the dark.”’ He rubbed his lips as if to wipe away that potential conversation. Best to just let the wake roll on. Unlike Peter, Phil had not become a teetotaler. He would have appreciated a few drinks hoisted on his behalf. But solemn speeches and rows of furtive people dressed in black would have bummed him. Peter looked down at his hands. They were trembling. He was not cut out to lose people. He was not cut out to face the death of loved ones, and he had loved Phil. Maybe he was not meant to be a friend or a husband or a daddy or any kind of serious human being. He had been at his happiest, he thought with a real twinge, facing the softer truths of young flesh, bawdiness and bodies live, parties on sets that sometimes turned into happy orgies. So much joy and laughter, walking around with a large pad of newsprint and a marker, wearing a wide floppy Shakespearean hat and nothing else, sketching his actors while orating like Richard Burton; loose easy conversations and kisses and oral sex and gentle, easy fucking and food, just between friends. In the sixties and early seventies, he had stayed well away from the serious and somber. He would have loved to go on that Old Farts Hot Dog Tour, had there been time; that would have been something he could have done well with Phil. This, he did not think he was going to do well. ‘“Lydia, do you burn incense, practice astral projection?”’ Peter gave it up. At noon, still alone in the house, pacing, glancing at the mantel, Peter realized that the cardboard box was not decorous. He walked up to the fireplace and lowered the box to the brick hearth. Inside, a bronze-colored plastic urn looked both cheap and better. He lifted the urn from the box and centered it, creating two urns, one on the mantle, one in the mirror above the mantel. Phil and anti-Phil. Through the looking glass. By one o’clock, Peter was irritated and not in the least nervous or worried about what he would say. By two, he was furious. He opened a can of baked beans from the back of the cupboard and ate them cold. He spooned up the sweet smoky beans and the little lump of pork fat and thought of all the pot-luck food Lydia would no doubt bring. As he finished the last bite, the Trans chimed in his pocket. He answered. ‘Yeah?’ ‘Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?’ ‘Who is this?’ Peter asked. ‘Stanley Weinstein. Mrs Benoliel told me you were in the Bay Area. I’m calling to say thanks.’ ‘For what?’ ‘For convincing Mr Benoliel to invest in our company.’ ‘Did I?’ ‘You did. And he did. We’re bubbly. I’m inviting you to come to the Big House and meet the crew. We have some of your reward, and if you’re interested, we might have some work for you. I’ve been doing my research. I didn’t know I was meeting a famous man.’ Peter stared out the window at the city. ‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘Michelle says you’re somewhere in Marin. We’re not far, if that’s true – and I don’t otherwise know, because a Trans unit cannot be located, it is completely private.’ ‘I’m in Tiburon,’ Peter said. ‘That’s grand. We’re less than half an hour away. Let me give you directions. You can’t miss it, actually. Do you know where the old San Andreas prison is?’ ‘I’ve never been there.’ ‘Now’s your chance. California Department of Corrections closed the prison three years ago to sell the land. Very posh, four hundred and fifty acres, great Bay views.’ ‘I didn’t know that,’ Peter said. ‘We lease space in the condemned wing. It’s right next to the gas chamber. When can you get here?’ ‘There’s a wake today. Maybe tomorrow?’ ‘I was sorry to hear about your friend.’ ‘Thanks,’ Peter said. ‘You’ll need some time, obviously. Why don’t we get together at eleven tomorrow morning? If that’s not too soon.’ Peter realized he could use the money, if any, to get home. ‘Thanks. I’ll be there.’ Weinstein gave him his Trans number and the backup landline office number. ‘We’re still having some glitches,’ he explained. ‘Just temporary.’ Peter wrote the numbers on a piece of scrap notepaper with a ball-point pen. ‘Looking forward to it. I think you’ll enjoy the whole experience.’ Weinstein ended the call. The cut-off was noiseless. The silence next to Peter’s ear just got deeper. He closed the unit, then turned over the paper. Phil had cut an old typed manuscript into smaller pieces. Always thrifty. He read the truncated bit of dialog. ‘Do you play any games?’ Megan asked him, licking her lips. ‘Not really, not very well,’ Carlton replied huskily. ‘Why? Do you have something against rules?’ Peter folded the scrap and put it in his shirt pocket, then walked down the drive for the fifth time in the last two hours to see if cars were coming. For a moment, he wondered if Lydia had died in an accident and he actually had seen her ghost last night. Perhaps she had committed suicide, taking his five hundred dollars and driving down the road to the beach and drowning herself in the cold waters of the Bay. That was crazy. Crazy thinking. Here he was, seeing things, almost flat broke, hoping for a payout from Stanley Weinstein because he didn’t have enough money to get home. His imagination had slipped into a tense, angry riot when he finally saw cars driving up Hidden Dreams Drive. The first one, a green new-style Beetle, carried two people. The driver was Lydia. Behind the Beetle came three more cars. Peter straightened his coat and walked back to the house. What the hell, he thought as he climbed the porch. Phil, you might have liked this. I sure don’t. But it has your touch, somehow. CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_26b5bb81-d624-514d-b9e7-c36cf3d35836) Lydia looked tired and pale but vital, and she certainly behaved as if nothing untoward had happened. She introduced the guests to Peter. Two he had met long ago, writers from a group Phil had belonged to for almost thirty years, the Mysterians. Peter had attended several meetings and liked them well enough. Mystery writers, reporters, a couple of cops. The two Mysterians that Lydia had invited were both male, portly, and in their sixties. Peter had the impression they were gay and lived together. Two women Peter did not know – matronly, in their early forties – carried Tupperware bowls of potato salad and green salad and a foiled tray of lasagna up the walk and into the kitchen. Four other unfamiliar faces drifted by and were introduced, all male and in their mid to late fifties. The guests shook hands with Peter, stood awkwardly in the living room, and circulated past the bronze plastic urn, giving it sidelong glances. ‘I’m glad Phil showed up,’ Lydia whispered to Peter in the kitchen. Peter watched her closely. ‘They had him for two days before they called me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why they didn’t call you.’ ‘You kept his last name,’ Peter said. Lydia brushed his shoulder with her arm. She smelled cool and nervous, beneath the haze of tobacco. If she had not smoked for thirty years she might still be beautiful. She faced him square and her expression turned to concern. ‘You look bad, Peter. Maybe you shouldn’t have stayed here last night.’ ‘It was not a comfortable evening,’ Peter admitted. ‘Spooky?’ she asked, piquant. He awarded her a thin smile for the jab. ‘I doubt it was Phil,’ Lydia said. ‘He’s long gone. This world never did suit him. I didn’t suit him. But you know, even so, I kind of lost it yesterday,’ she suddenly confessed, her eyes bright. ‘I had a little fit. I started shouting his name, in the empty house. Isn’t that strange? Just blew out my grief. I felt better after. I didn’t know I still gave a damn.’ Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/greg-bear/dead-lines/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.