A Stranger Like You (30 page)

He looks at himself in the mirror, dissatisfied by his reflection, the stubble on his cheeks. Presentation is everything right now, he realizes. A certain degree of professionalism is required, the same sort of generic, weary banality that he’d projected on the floors of Equitable Life. As he shaves, he listens to the radio. Remotely, he hears the end of the news:
Chase’s car was found at a small ranch a few miles from Death Valley National Park in Nevada. The producer, whose film opens nationwide this week, has not yet been found. Local authorities are investigating the car and the surrounding area.

Blood splatters in the sink and he feels a sting of pain. He dabs the cut with tissue and tosses the razor into the sink.

The rain continues to fall. The rain is glorious. Its reckless beauty floods the streets. It makes people honest, Hugh thinks, it stirs them sober. The road up the canyon is slippery. Mud runs down the hills into the street. The house juts out, a glistening cube of wet glass. A light burns in the window. The sight of Tom’s jeep parked in the carport fills him with relief. They’ll talk to each other like civilized men, he thinks. They’ll figure it out.

Hugh parks and gets out. The rain pummels his back, a cold rain bleeding through his shirt, making him shiver. He peers through the glass door. Suitcases in the hall. Tom’s raincoat draped over the couch. Tom comes around the corner, something rolled up in his hand. A script, Hugh realizes. Tom glares at him, tosses the script on the counter. Hugh knocks on the glass.

Tom frowns, shakes his head, but the door is open and Hugh walks in.

“Not now, Hugh.”

“Look,” he says, “we need to talk.”

“It’s too late.”

“Calm down, Tom. We can talk about this. You’ve got the wrong idea. I can explain.”

“Tell it to the police.”

“I thought we were friends, Tom.”

Tom grins unhappily, shaking his head, and mutters, “God, you’re sick.”

“What did you say?”

“It didn’t actually make sense until I saw Hedda’s letter. Then I came back here and read your script.” Tom puts on his raincoat. He shakes his head. “They found her car; you’d better hope she’s still alive.”

Hugh stands there a moment, trying to think. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about the woman I love.” Tom looks at him, his eyes grim with disapproval. “Now if you’ll excuse me I have a plane to catch.”

Hugh takes out his gun, the same gun he’d used on Hedda Chase, only this time it’s loaded. “You’re not going anywhere.” He grabs Tom’s arm and pulls him outside.

“What are you going to do, kill me now?”

“Outside.”

“This is a mistake,” Tom says. “You shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Move.”

They step out into the rain. It is just getting light, the sky white, bleak. The world is a dazzling blur. Tom walks ahead of him. He’s a big man, walking slowly. Methodically. Trying to stall, Hugh thinks. As they cross the pool deck Tom swings around and hits him in the face, jerks back Hugh’s arm. Hugh drops the gun and it skids across the stones. He loses his balance and falls back and Tom goes down on top of him. Tom’s weight is powerful. They roll around on the ground, hitting each other, the rain beating down on their backs, their faces, making it impossible to grasp one another.

Tom hits him in the face—Hugh rams Tom’s forehead—Tom shoves him down toward the pool, the black water inches from his head. Hugh smells the chlorine, blinks the rain out of his eyes. He needs to cough, but Tom is choking him, his hands around his throat. Tom is going to kill him unless he does something. Some deeper strength is required, some kind of power that he doesn’t know he has—something from deep inside of him that has always been there, waiting for a moment like this, some primal force, and he rips Tom’s hands off his throat and shoves his knee into his groin. Now the air pulses through him, the sweet wet air, and he gains the upper hand. Tom may be bigger, stronger, but he is less agile, clumsy even, and Hugh rolls him onto his back and straddles him, pushing his head under the water, pushing his head down with both hands, pushing it deeper as Tom weakens, and holding it there until he no longer resists.

Hugh stands up, looking down at the man who has suddenly become a complete stranger to him. Unable to stand the sight of him, the strangely serene expression on his face, he pulls Tom out of the pool and turns him over. Staggering, Hugh picks up his gun then goes into the house to change his shirt. In the closet, Tom’s heavy smell overwhelms him and he feels a little sick. He chooses an oxford shirt, buttons it up, and heads for the door. Tom’s keys beckon him on the table and Hugh thinks: Why not?

Hugh has always admired the Bronco, the rugged image it gave Tom, an image he envied. Plus, the jeep is good in weather like this. Tom will be with him in spirit, he thinks, brightening a little, the way they used to be, when they were friends.

The rain renews its vigor. The freeway is jammed, he slogs through traffic. Nobody knows how to handle weather out here, not like he does. He’s driven through snowstorms, hail, hurricanes. This is nothing. The cars crawl along with trepidation. He doesn’t know what he’ll do to her when he finds her. He has the next five hours to figure it out.

They’re at a gas station buying some food and drinks when Denny sees himself on CNN. The TV is up in the corner, over the cashier’s head. Mindlessly, she bags their items: some cheese and crackers and a jar of peanut butter and a carton of milk and a bar of chocolate and some bottled water. He pays the woman while his fate unfolds up on the screen.

They show the car at the old man’s farm; they show the empty trunk. They have Denny on camera, driving the BMW out of the airport parking lot. They have his army ID picture, the one they’d taken when he enlisted. They say he was allegedly involved in the gang rape of a thirteen-year-old Iraqi girl. They say he’s been treated for PTSD. They make it sound like he’s a psychopathic killer, like he has an ax to grind with the army, the administration, over the war. The woman out in the pickup is a movie producer, he learns. She made a film about the war that pissed people off. Now they are trying to connect the dots.

Back outside he gets the feeling Daisy wants to run. She twists away when he tries to touch her. Just then a cruiser pulls in and parks. Two cops get out and go inside. He waits till the doors close to ask her what’s wrong.

“Is that true, what they’re saying?”

“Some of it, not all.”

“You raped someone?”

“No. No, I didn’t. They’ve got that wrong.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.”

“You think it’s true? You think I’d do something like that? You think I put that woman in the trunk?”

She whirls around, her eyes bright with rage. “What if it is? Where does that leave me?”

“Daisy, look at me,” he whispers urgently. “I think you know me better than that.”

Through the glass doors Denny sees the cops paying for their coffee, joking around with the cashier.

“Well, if you want to go, now’s your chance. They’re right there. They can send you back to your mother. Maybe that’s where you belong. Just hurry up and make up your mind.”

She gets into the truck, slides over into the middle, and resumes her position, holding up the old Coke bottle. But he can tell she still has her doubts. The woman’s head lolls on her chest. He waits for the cruiser to pull out. He watches it disappear in his rearview mirror. Then he starts up the truck and drives the other way.

The tricky thing about war is you have to make decisions without having all the facts. It’s something you get used to over there. But here, he doesn’t have the excuse of war. The woman’s life is in his hands. If she dies it’ll be his fault. He doesn’t know where a clinic is. Could be ten minutes away or two hours. In these parts you don’t know. He feels the same anticipation he’d felt in Iraq, driving along in the convoy—anything could happen at any time. Anyone could be aiming at you, easing back the trigger. It didn’t take much effort to end someone’s life.

The desert is enormous. It stretches for miles on either side of the road. You don’t see anyone, no people, no houses even. Nothing. Just that wobbly heat in the distance.

Both Daisy and the woman have fallen asleep, leaning against each other. At another time, he’d be proud of himself for taking such good care of them. But right now he feels at a loss. Pretty soon every cop within a hundred-mile radius will be looking for him, if they aren’t already. And at this rate, it won’t be long before they find him.

He drives another half hour with the sun beating down on the truck. Even with the windows open it feels like a furnace. Sweat runs out of him, down his back, his arms, his fingers even. Up ahead, maybe a half mile or less, they’ve blocked off the road. He can see some cops standing there, checking cars.

Waiting for him, he thinks.

Off to the right, beyond fields of desert grass, he notices a cluster of houses, a development of some sort, set back from the road. He turns down the private driveway past a sign that says Rolling Hills Development, only the sign is faded and weather-whipped. As he gets deeper in, he sees that the streets are vacant, the place is deserted. A kind of ghost town. Only the houses aren’t old, they’re new. Half-built houses lined up along the street, one after another, with unseeded, dirt yards. Open squares for windows, no glass. The roofs are intact, and the sides are wrapped in Tyvek, but no siding installed. A bunch of unrealized dreams, he thinks, imagining all the sad families who never got to live here. It comes to him that something started and unfinished is just as bad as something finished and torn apart, like the houses they’d ruined all over Iraq. Whole neighborhoods taken out, nothing left but dust and blood.

“What’s this place?” Daisy says.

“Some kind of development. Looks like they ran out of money.”

He pulls the truck up alongside a house. It’s the farthest house on the cul-de-sac; he doubts it can be seen from the road. The woman is asleep, her head resting against the door. “Help me get her out.”

They bring the woman in and lay her down on the floor and set up the IV, suspending the bottle of fluid with rope from one of the rafters. He feels her forehead, it’s cooler. “It’s working,” he tells Daisy. “She’s getting better.”

He covers the woman with his jacket. She stirs a little and opens her eyes. “You feelin’ better?”

She nods, but doesn’t speak.

“That’s okay, you don’t have to talk. You just rest. We’ll get you to a doctor as soon as we can.”

She reaches for his hand, squeezes it with considerable strength. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

It’s just the frame of a house, an empty dwelling. Floors of poured cement. It’s plumbed, but no fixtures, no sink or toilets. Windows without glass. “It’s nice,” Daisy says. “It’s nice here, Denny.”

“It’ll do for a while. I’m not sure how long.”

“Look at all this space,” she says, twirling around with her arms spread out. “This is our living room. And over here, this is our kitchen.”

“We could put a table right here,” he says, indulging for a moment in her fantasy.

“Look at the view.” She peers out the open window, a little wind going through her hair. Then she starts up the stairs. “This place is amazing.”

“Be careful.”

“It’s nice up here. Come up.”

On the second-floor landing she looks at him, shy, and he pulls her close. “I’m sorry about before,” she says. “I know that’s not you.”

He nods at her, appreciatively. “You should think about it, though. You should know what we’re up against.”

“The truth is the only thing that really matters.”

“You’re right.” He looks away, a little scared of her.

“You want to tell me what happened?”

He shakes his head. “Things happen over there. It’s war. You can’t predict how you’ll react. Everybody gets a little fucked up. People do things they might not have otherwise done, ugly things. I’m not saying it’s forgivable; it’s not. But the situation makes you different.”

She puts her hand on his face like a mother. “It hurt you, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” he says softly. “It still hurts.”

“Put your head here,” she whispers.

They stand there a moment, holding each other.

“One day, I’ll give you a house,” he tells her. “A real house just like this, only finished.”

She smiles and closes her eyes like she’s making a wish. Her face is shaped like a heart. He touches her cheek.

“We can just pretend,” she says, opening her eyes. “That’s almost just as good.”

He kisses her slowly, carefully. “Welcome home.”

They feast on crackers and peanut butter and chocolate. Then they walk up the incline behind the house to look over the ridge. The sun is setting. They stand there a while, looking down at a valley. In the distance there are horses, a whole herd crossing the plain. Denny feels the earth trembling under his feet. It is something to see, the way they all run together, their shadows following behind, quick as clouds.

“You’re not afraid of anything, are you?” she says.

“No, I’m not. I’ve already been through the worst of it. Can’t get much worse than that.”

When they get back the rooms are dark. The woman is muttering something, steeped in dreams. They kneel down beside her.

“Is she okay?” Daisy says.

“She’s feverish.”

“She’s dreaming.”

“She’s been though a lot. She needs a hospital.”

“Who would do that?”

“Some crazy person.”

“It’s sad.”

“I know.”

“It frightens me.”

“Me too. Can you sleep?”

“Maybe. No. Not yet anyway.”

“You should rest. Do you want to count sheep?”

“Some people count sheep, I say the pledge.”