Long Shot (20 page)

She let the moment pass. She downed her coffee and licked her fingers and readied herself to go. They were doubtless right to stick to the rules of brief encounter. A beat-up Dodge pulled in beside her. The backfield of a football team came tumbling out. They barreled across to the restaurant and shouldered in with great hurrah. As soon as Kay was busy, bantering back and forth, Vivien took the chance and fled. So they wouldn't have to endure that final glance—or worse, the first gleam of regret.

Once she was back on the boulevard, she turned again to the business at hand. As if she had film wound up in her head, she played it with Carl in the lead. He slipped them some kind of sleeping pill. Then he went round the tub, slitting one wrist after another. They probably didn't feel a thing. But that, she thought, was just what they said about people who died of attacks in the dead of night. It always struck her as wishful thinking. Surely the dying woke up in time to know the jig was up. And they clutched their chest and groped in the dark for the someone they couldn't bear to leave, lying there beside them in a dream.

Was it supposed to be some kind of comfort, to think that Jasper died easy? It seemed like a man had a right to a death that caught him at the pitch of conscious life. Jasper would have wanted to go out wide-eyed—feel it for all it was worth.

The thing about neon signs was this: The very thing you were looking for began to shine brighter than what was around it. Just as soon as you needed it, there it was. First it was food, and now it was places to sleep. She was on very tenuous ground, of course. She could say she'd had a pizza before, and assume it had slipped her mind. A motel was something else entirely. Perhaps it was only an accident that she'd never touched down in a place that lacked a good hotel. More likely, her life was programmed long ago to exclude all towns that were not equipped with suites of rooms in muted tones.

So how did a person choose? First, she cut out the names she knew, like Travelodge and Hojo's, as too reminiscent of airports. She'd be much better hidden in one of a kind. She went at a midnight clip, scanning the signs on either side. The traffic was light to moderate. She followed the foot of the mountains, all the way into Studio City. It had to be soon. In a minute, she'd hit the Hollywood Freeway—the route that would take her over the mountains, tomorrow morning at seven.

She pulled the Rolls over and went in under a sign about ten feet high:
THE VAGABOND.
That's me
, she thought lightly, parking off in the dark end of the lot, so the car would not stick out. The name was scrawled in a bold blue hum of neon, meant to echo the script of a human hand. As she came across the gravel, it loomed above her, as if the god of the place had put out a lightning finger and penned it on the air. In smaller letters, stenciled on the office window, it said:
Motor Inn of the Stars
.

Because of who she was, she probably went in acting the way she did at the George V or the Royal Hawaiian. A bit high-pitched for the wall-to-wall industrial nylon, the kidney-shaped tables and maple-jug lamps. On the other hand, the blotchy man in green suspenders seemed to need all the help he could get. Fifty-five and fingerbitten, he wheezed his way from step to step, with a small amnesiac pause at every turn.

He filled in the name,
Mrs. Gregory Cannon
, and handed over the key to number 9. Yes, he would give her a wake-up call at a quarter after six. No, he didn't know where she could send out for croissants.

“You got any bags?” he asked anxiously.

“Oh, I can handle them,” she said, quick to reassure him. “I travel very light. You think the traffic will keep me awake?”

“Soundproof,” he said—tapping the wall to his left with his pencil. “We don't let
anything
bother the guests. Not even cops.”

“Well, that's very thoughtful. I don't think the cops'll be asking for
me
.”

“Sometimes it's cops. Sometimes it's somebody won't go away. Photographer, maybe.”

Did she only imagine it, or had the glassiness cleared in his eyes?

“I keep the whole lot of 'em out,” he said. “To me, it's invasion of privacy.”

“I appreciate that,” she answered pleasantly. Should she give
him
a tip? “It's all bullshit, right? You can't believe what you read anymore.”

“It's true,” he agreed with a magisterial nod. He seemed pleased to find her so savvy. “Promise me now. You need anything, you dial ‘O.'”

“Thanks,” she said.

And she picked up her key from the counter and turned away. She couldn't recall a like degree of chivalry—not at the George V, anyway. It was all a good deal cooler way up there.

“Oh, Mrs. Cannon?”

The first thing she noticed, turning back, was that he'd managed to button his shirt. That, and he'd brushed the fall of dandruff from his shoulders.

“I saw every picture he ever made.”

She didn't have to ask him who he meant. With his index finger, he pushed the bridge of his glasses further up his nose.

“To me,” he said, “they were all about doing the thing that was right. He was decent—you know what I mean?”

She nodded. There was a sermon, it seemed, in every stone she overturned. She saw that she wasn't required to say a blessed thing in return. It was enough to hear these people out. Was that why she didn't mind it? She didn't mind it at all.

“Most of us disappear,” he said. “We don't get to leave behind a record of what we believe in.
He
did.”

Imagine: a combination of Pauline Kael and Heidegger, right in the middle of Studio City. With, now that she took a closer look, a certain vivid glow about the eyes. He didn't seem specially brilliant and doomed, so that you felt he ought to have been a doctor. Desk clerk suited him fine. He had twenty-eight units to oversee, full of people lost in transit. She could see that he'd come to perceive it as work that did the right thing. He was satisfied.

“I don't think Jasper
thought
about what he accomplished,” she said. “Unless it was being a star. I suspect he was proud of that.”

“A man that big doesn't dwell on what he's done. He just keeps going.”

“Well,” she replied in a neutral way, and let her voice trail off. She couldn't go as far as that. He made him sound like a hero, when all he was was a star. For a moment, she thought he was coming around the counter to take her hand. She could tell he felt none of the same mystique in her, since she'd never appeared in a movie. But he stopped himself and came no closer. He pulled in again like a turtle.

“I've talked out of turn,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

“No, no,” she protested. “I'm glad you spoke up. It's just that I feel—I don't know—so many things at once.”

Nothing was what she meant to say.

He nodded and took off his glasses and smiled. “Go to sleep now, Mrs. Cannon,” he said. “You'll see. You'll sleep like a baby here.”

And the funny thing was, she did. Though she had to laugh when she let herself in. The traffic out in the street was loud enough to be a joke—like sound effects in a sitcom. Every surface all over the room was rubberized, so a reeling drunk wouldn't get a concussion. The furniture was hodgepodge—knocked around and color-blind, full of fray and broken corners—but on the whole she found it pretty clean. The bed had sagged and softened to the point of no support. It cradled her like a cloud.

She turned the Aunt Jemima bedside lamp on low, and she read maybe fifteen pages. Thoreau introduced what he liked to call his “brute neighbors”—the mice, the phoebe, the woodcock, the loon. To her it was as otherworldly as the forest in
Snow White
. She knew no creatures herself. When she finally turned to go to sleep, with the susurrus of traffic in her ears, she thought of a weekend long ago, in the Florida keys with Jasper. He was shooting a two-bit thriller, on a salvage boat at Bahía Honda. He came home tired and sunburned every night, with a bucket of shrimp he bought in the harbor. They didn't eat anything else for four days solid.

Outside the cabin, they had these walking catfish, walking across the lawn. Whenever they came, she averted her eyes. Scared to face them because they were weird—too wild, somehow, too close to the edge. How stupid she'd been, she thought to herself, as she fell asleep in the Valley. She should have taken a good long look. There would be no second chance.

She woke up at 6:15 exactly, in the hair-trigger second before the phone rang. But she wasn't the least bit jumpy. She opened her eyes with the sweetest pang of expectation. Her book was still open beside her. She answered before the first ring was quite rung, and the desk clerk told her the time in an upbeat way, announcing that she had a package, just outside her door.

It was a white waxed-paper bag, with half a dozen croissants packed inside. Still warm, in fact. She ate one while she brushed her hair and wondered how he figured out she needed all this many. They tasted rather more like Pepperidge Farm than Ma Maison, but what the hell. She went and got a ginger ale from the bright blue machine at the end of the hall. She ate her second croissant sitting at the desk, while she wrote a note to Artie.

I'll be back. Don't worry
.

When at last she came downstairs, at ten to seven, she had a twenty-dollar bill all folded up in the pocket of her skirt—to pay for the rolls,
et cetera
. She would make him keep the change. Alas, like somebody met at a crossroads, he was gone. The cold-eyed European who'd taken his place explained that the shift was structured to change at 6:30 sharp. Was something wrong? When he'd ascertained it was only money, he put out his palm discreetly and promised to pass it along.

But something made her change her mind and pay for the room and go. She didn't want to say goodbye in cash. Her night clerk must have felt the debt was paid, or he would have got through to her somehow. Goodbyes were maybe his weak suit. Same as hers.

She beat the rush hour over the pass. It was still quite early, not quite seven-thirty, when she pulled up in front of the Cherokee Nile. She hadn't stopped to buy the rest of breakfast, but figured a bachelor must keep butter and jam and freeze-dried. If he didn't, they could just go out on the terrace and eat them straight from the bag. And look out over the hush of the city, while all the shades of mist burned off the morning.

Anyone would have thought it was a romance she was casting. It was lucky for her that no one knew where she was right now. Ringing bells at eight
A.M.
, like somebody serving a warrant. He didn't answer, but then who would, at the crack of dawn? She waited around till a groggy type came through the lobby door on the way to work. Then she slipped in quick before it shut. She tapped the eleven on the elevator panel, as if to knock on wood.

But no one came when she knocked on the door of 11D. She refused to accept that he was out, since she thought of him safe at home compared to her. He'd never told her in so many words that he was a budding agoraphobe, but she always had the feeling that he preferred things done on his own turf. She knocked in sets of three, ten seconds in between. For a while, she beat with the palm of one hand, keeping up a steady thud. But a minute could hardly have passed before she had quite let go. She pounded with both fists, drumming hard. To hell with 11A through C. There must be something wrong.

When the elevator door creaked open behind her, she spun around in a flash of terror. For that one instant, she was convinced someone had followed her all the way from Steep-side. False alarm—it was only Edna Temple.

“Help me,” Vivien pleaded. “I think he may be sick.”

“No,” said Edna flatly, padding forward. Very unsurprised. She might have been expecting it. “He's away on business. You want me to tell him you dropped by?”

“Do you have a number? I have to talk to him—right away.”

“I'm not allowed to give out that information,” Edna said—fiddling the keys to Greg's apartment, but not yet approaching the door. She made it clear she wasn't going in till Vivien had safely left the premises.

“I'm Vivien Cokes,” she explained, wishing it didn't sound so pushy. She only meant to say she was his friend. She wasn't trying to act VIP.

“Really? You could have fooled me. You're thinner in pictures, huh?” And she bent to the door as if she meant to crack it like a safe. Using one key after another, she started releasing the locks. “Wait here,” she said. “I'll get it for you. I'd ask you in, but I'm just a neighbor. He pays me to water his plants.”

With that, she opened the door and pressed on through. She would have closed it tight behind her, not allowing so much as a look, if Vivien hadn't spoken up.

“You're Edna Temple, aren't you?”

Edna stopped with the door between them almost shut. A moment later, silent and grave as a footman, she opened it wide. The visitor's credentials were too good to argue. Vivien fell into step beside her, all the way through to the dining room. It wasn't a bit like she thought it would be. She'd expected a lot of silver frames, clustered about on blond-wood tables, with studio shots of faded stars. But in spite of the phony wall reliefs from Nineveh, and a pair of seated panthers holding up the mantel, it was just another single man's apartment. Haphazard chairs and things from people's attics.

“I would have thought you'd be the
first
to know where to find him,” Edna said, laying the stress on the rank like mortar on a brick. She pulled the string on the dining-room light and threw the domed ceiling into Moorish shadows. She picked up a stack of paper slips and began to go through them, dealing them out in different piles like somebody playing solitaire. “I thought he was doing an errand for you.”

“Is he?” Vivien asked, sitting down on the edge of a bent-wood chair. “Already? I didn't expect him to leave so soon. It's not what you'd call an emergency.”