The Missing Person (23 page)

Arnold thought of Dempsey as a well-coordinated Kaspar Hauser. Once his plan had been to supersede Dempsey's adolescent place with Fanny, to represent maturity to her, to serve her as guide and mentor, to evoke from her responses beyond the powers of her boyish first husband. He had never met Butts but his view of him, he felt sure, was accurate. Only in recent months had Arnold begun to lose faith in the feasibility of his plan.

The line to Florida was busy. It was half an hour before he could get through, and then he could tell by the blurred sound of Demp's voice that he had awakened him. As he asked his questions he prepared himself for the weight of Dempsey's concern, so that when the inevitable answer came—no, he had heard nothing at all from her—he knew what was going on in young Hansel's mind. He flooded Arnold with questions, Arnold turned them away, professing his complete ignorance of Fanny's motives. On the muffled edge of Dempsey's voice he could hear his doubts. He sounded like a man who had sold the family concern and cannot help questioning the capacity of the new owner to handle all the details of so complex a business.

“If I hear from her I'll call you, Mr. Franklin,” said Dempsey, sounding deeply respectful but full of unnamable doubts. “I don't think I will, though. She wouldn't know where I was.”

Arnold remembered that once before, the first month after their return to California, Fanny had thought of something she wanted and couldn't find. “Demp will know where it is,” she said and insisted on tracking him on the telephone from one possible stop to another. He didn't have the energy to remind the quarterback of this occasion. The weariness in Dempsey's voice seemed to have traveled the long-distance line to him. He thanked him, told him he was sorry to have awakened him, and hung up. Only afterward did he become aware of Dempsey's last sentence, like a mechanical playback comprehended some time after it is spoken: “She'll be back, Mr. Franklin. Don't worry. And … take care.”

Take care. Of whom? Fanny Marker? It's too late. She's beyond my care, friend quarterback, and beyond yours. Anyone's. I've got to take care of me, to get out or I will go down with her. In this mad airless space in which she lives, no one can find his way. Now she is off again to some uncharted hermitage. None of us can find her, and who knows if she wants to be found?

For Demp, the night was shot. He shared a room with two vacationing teammates who were awakened by the sound of the telephone. Grumbling, and while he was still talking to Arnold Franklin, they went back to sleep. He decided his bed light would disturb them, so he crept out of the room, pulled on his slacks and sweatshirt in the bathroom, and, gently manipulating the door and the lock behind him, went down to the lobby.

It was deserted except for a night clerk behind the counter under the
RESERVATIONS
sign who was reading
True Stories
. Demp sat in a cube-shaped chair at the far end of the room, put his bare feet on a hassock, fixed his eyes on a distant chandelier shaped like a wagon wheel, and gave himself up to a daydream about Franny. There would be a long search by all the others, and then he would be the one to find her. Like the youngest son in the fairy tale, he would once again be granted her hand.…

The next morning, from the desk of the airline office in the hotel, he called Arnold Franklin to say he'd be in Los Angeles by noon.

Reuben went to the airport to meet Dempsey Butts at Arnold Franklin's request. The well-built, lithe football player was not hard to spot as he came down the steps from the plane. Walking toward him across the hot airfield, Reuben thought of Dempsey Butts in one role only, the former husband of the woman he loved hopelessly. He saw his own love for Franny Fuller as chivalric, nobly silent, adoring. In his mind Dempsey Butts and Franny, Arnold Franklin and Franny, assumed the postures of frozen statues, like those in circus tableaus. Franny stands, white and shining. Around her, the men kneel in the classic attitudes of religious art.

In his fantasy Reuben was never one of the kneeling men. Instead he was ordering costumes or arranging lights to enhance her beauty or, oddly, holding her in his arms in the posture of a male pietà, a compassionate, grieving, solacing father to a suffering child, a faithful parent, after the surrogates had departed the scene, succoring her in her extremities of suspicion, self-distrust, and despair. His fantasy was never disturbed by the absurdity of its concept, or by her ignorance of his secret passion. She hardly knew he was there. In his daydream, a mode of extrasensory communication existed between them. When she needed him, she would know where to direct her summons, and he, mystically, would unerringly find her.

Reuben expected Butts to be full of eager energy for the search. He was surprised by his diffidence, his boyish uncertainty, his willingness to follow whatever directions were issued to him. His greeting of Reuben was reserved, and then he withdrew into himself as they drove to Fullerton. He was silent during the trip, allowing Reuben the private leisure for further elaboration of his fantasy.

Arnold was on the telephone in the living room when they arrived. Olivia showed them in. Arnold, a drink in one hand, walked about the enormous room talking animatedly to someone in New York, as it turned out. Privately, Reuben thought this was not the proper demeanor for an occasion of such gravity.

“Not before the weekend,” Arnold was saying as they came in.

“Any news?” asked Reuben as Arnold circled back to the phone table and hung up.

“What? Oh no. That was about something else.”

Reuben stared at Arnold Franklin, unable to believe that he could be concerned in any matter at this moment except the whereabouts of Franny. For six days he himself had been absorbed in the search. He had achieved a new, almost haloed vision of her. He acknowledged to himself now that he had never before been quite so happy, so single-mindedly in pursuit of an ideal, so knightly in his self-image. He was worried about her, certainly, but even more worried about finding her. To whom would she return when they found her? Not to him, surely. But in the interim, while they waited and searched, she was, somehow, his—partly his.

The three men pulled their chairs closer to the coffee table. Arnold refilled his own glass. Dempsey took a long squirt of seltzer water and some ice, a choice that made him seem still more boyish to the others. Reuben said he wanted nothing. Absurd as it seemed even to him, he had been eating and drinking very little this week, as if to preserve himself in a pure, ascetic state if he should be called upon to act. In his lovesick eyes, he, Dempsey Butts, and Arnold Franklin were now trysting Arthurians about to embark on a search for the Holy Grail …
oh crap
.

Dempsey listened carefully as Arnold Franklin “filled him in”—he had asked to be told all the details of Franny's disappearance and the places they had looked thus far. Arnold left out all reference to his personal disillusion and weariness with her. This omission succeeded only in raising, in Reuben's mind, doubts of Arnold's innocence in the matter.

Dempsey was not deceived. He had lived with Franny long enough to know that blame for her disappearance could not easily be assigned, especially not fastened on any man with whom she might live. As for Arnold, his deletions were part of the defense he was building, the shifting and reassignment of motives and blame, his preparations for ultimate departure.
Witness for the defense deponeth
.…

Arnold began a long narrative, full of dead ends, dumps explored, leads to nothing, as well as a minute history of previous escapes and disappearances.

“Ever since I married Fanny, I've been through this sort of thing, regularly,” said Arnold. “Any suggestions, Demp?”

“About where she might be, do you mean, Mr. Franklin?” Dempsey almost said “sir,” but stopped himself in time.

“Arnold
, for god's sake, Dempsey.” He sounded weary. At this moment, Dempsey's respectful air seemed hard to bear. It made him feel old.

“Well, I remember a place in North Hollywood, I think it was, where … where she used to go when she was low. This was some time ago, of course.” Dempsey's reticence had grown in proportion to Arnold's outpourings. He found he couldn't add “when I first met her.”

“Maybe she's been there recently. She likes familiar places,” he said.

Rubin was on his feet. Arnold stood up more slowly.

“Well, let's go,” he said.

Dempsey was tired, disheartened by having had to listen to Arnold Franklin's story about his past with the woman he had loved.

Unexpectedly, even to himself, he said: “Do me a favor, Mr. Franklin.”

“Sure, what?” Arnold was searching in a hall closet for a jacket, but he was aware of Dempsey Butts's low, strained-sounding sentence through the muddle of tweeds and furs.

“Don't keep calling her Fanny.”

As they drove through the streets, it turned out that Dempsey had only a dim idea of where the place was. For a time he could not remember its name. Suddenly it came to him. He brought it out in a voice that rang with triumph, as if this memory might be a giant step toward finding her:
“Castellano's
it was called!”

Arnold drove Franny's red convertible up and down what seemed to him to be the same streets, without finding Castellano's. They had decided to give up when Dempsey saw a familiar corner.

“That's where it is, I think.”

A large neon sign extended on a wire arm from the building front announced the name of the place: Pico's.

“Name's different, but I'm almost sure that's it.”

Arnold parked the car. They crossed the street and entered Pico's in single file. Arnold and Reuben went to the bar which occupied the entire length of the place. It was shaped like a horseshoe, and the plastic top of each stool was a molded Western saddle. Arnold inspected a stool, bending over to look at the stirrups as though it were not possible to believe in their existence. Disgustedly he climbed into the saddle and ordered a Guiness Stout. Reuben refused to mount. He stood awkwardly beside Arnold. The bartender said they didn't have anything like that. Arnold settled for an anonymous brand of Mexican beer. Reuben asked for root beer.

Dempsey had paused at the door. He looked hard into the dark interior. Searching for the outlines of Castellano's, no, Pico's, he wondered:
Wasn't there another place called El Chico near here?
But the changes in the place disturbed him. Far in the back, where Franny had been that time, her head down in her beery sorrow, there were no tables. Instead, booths made of yellow plastic, decorated with purple Mexican figures sleeping under their sombreros, had been installed. Bright candle-shaped lanterns lit each booth. All the dimness of the old place was gone, there were no dark corners, everything was new, cheesy, overbright.
Franny would never come here
, he thought.
Franny would go to a place full of shadows
.

Dempsey came up to Arnold and Reuben at the bar. “She wouldn't be here. It's all new, all changed.”

“Ask the bartender,” said Arnold.

“No. He wouldn't know. He never saw her. It was a fellow at the back of the place who waited on her. He isn't here now, that I can see. There's no one back there.”

“Well, ask anyway.”

Dempsey said to the bartender, bringing out the words so slowly that he irritated Arnold: “Have you seen a girl, uh, a blond woman here recently … a … a very attractive blond woman …?”

The bartender threw back his head and roared with laughter.

“I see a blond dame in here about every ten minutes these days. What was she wearing? A flower in her teeth or somethin' that I'd remember?”

Dempsey turned to Arnold. “What was she wearing, Mr. Franklin?”

“How the hell would I know?”

They finished their drinks in silence. At the other end of the horseshoe bar a young couple, both dressed in white men's shirts, were holding hands in the bar, absorbed in each other. Dempsey watched them, thinking,
how nice
. Then he saw that both of them were men, one with very long hair and heavy lipstick, and the other with a Marine haircut and blue anchors tattooed on the back of his hand. The Marine, suddenly aware that Dempsey was looking at him, waved to him. Then his expression changed.

“Hey. I know you. You're Demp Butts, the football player.”

Dempsey smiled at the grinning young man and then looked away. In a crisis of disgust Arnold climbed down out of the saddle-stool and threw some coins on the bar. Reuben pushed his glass from him.

The bartender stared at Dempsey. Then, his voice rough with awe, he said, “Dempsey Butts.
Really?”

Dempsey said yes, shook the bartender's outstretched damp hand with the sincere, automatic single jerk of his wrist he always used on such occasions, and followed Arnold out of the door. Reuben hit the bar with his fist to get the bartender's hypnotized gaze away from the door.

“You would have recognized this woman,” he said hoarsely. “She was very beautiful. Blue eyes, lovely, you know?” He could not bring himself to name her. His adjectives, inadequate as they were, must surely, he thought, evoke an image of Franny Fuller.

“I guess I would remember
her
. But I ain't seen anyone like
that
. No sirree. Sounds like some movie star.”

Outside the three men stood close together
(a huddle
, thought Dempsey), trying to decide what to do next.

“There's a place called El Chico …” said Dempsey.

“That's this place,” said Arnold, sounding annoyed.

“No, this is Pico's,” said Reuben patiently. “What about El Chico? Where's that?”

Demp didn't know exactly, he said. Once again they climbed back into the convertible and started to drive slowly through the decrepit, endless city blocks, searching for a bar that, it finally seemed clear, no longer existed.