Belinda (10 page)

"Where are you?"

"If I'm not on the corner of Page and Clayton, I'll be inside. Hurry, Daddy."

Page and Clayton, one block from Haight.

THERE were two prowl cars double-parked on Page when I got there. Every light was on in the big shabby old house, quite impossible to miss, and they were just bringing the dead body out on a gurney. Shattering sight no matter how many times you see it on the evening news, the shiny chrome stretcher on wheels, and the thing under the sheet bound with straps as if it were suddenly going to wake up and start fighting. I watched them put it in the back of the city ambulance.

A couple of reporters were there, too, though they didn't seem too excited by the whole thing. I hoped and prayed it was nobody who had ever interviewed me. Only the old-fashioned flashbulb newspaper cameras, no television equipment.

"Please, I have to get in there," I said to the uniformed cop at the door. "I have to pick up my daughter."

He looked like a waxwork of himself in the dismal light, billy club and gun too shiny, too visible.

"Oh, that's your kid back there?" he said. Faint sneer. But Belinda had come into the hall and she ran towards me, shrinking into my arms.

She was hysterical. Her face was all red and blotched, and her hair was loose and in tangles. She had on the same leopard coat, black dress outfit down to the rhinestone heels, but no stockings.

I held her for a second, vaguely conscious of people shoving past us in the hall, and that this was a dirty place with cracked plaster and urine stink, and that nobody was paying much attention to us. A pay phone hung on the wall. Stack of old newspapers under it and a sack of garbage. The carpet on the floor was like bandages.

"Come on, let's get your stuff," I said. I stroked her hair back out of her eyes. No makeup, ghostly white. "Let's get out of here."

There was a crowd bottlenecked in the back room, a man on tiptoe trying to see over the others. From the street, there came that awful crackling sound of a police radio.

She clutched me so hard her fingers hurt my skin as she pulled me into her room.

It was a perfect hole, loft bed at one end, a tiny window with wooden slats nailed over it. Posters of film stars all over the walls, and a brown suitcase on the bed with a plastic sack next to it. Videotapes sticking out of the sack. The chair and lamp were junk shop. The woodwork was chipped and filthy.

I went to get the sack and the suitcase as she clung to me.

"You Mr. Merit?" somebody said behind me.

"No!" she said shrilly. "Jack Merit's my husband. I'm divorced, I told you. This is my Daddy. His name is different. I'm still Linda Merit on the driver's license."

I turned and saw another policeman in the doorway. Much older than the other one. Heavily wrinkled face, shapeless mouth. He was clearly exhausted but he radiated disapproval.

For once in my life I was glad I was so dull, tweed coat and all. In this setting I couldn't have been anybody but her father.

He had a small notebook in his hand, ballpoint pen. "Of course," I said. I gave him my address.

"And she sure doesn't look eighteen to me," he said. He wrote my address down in his little notebook. "And she had enough booze in here to run a barroom." He gestured to the trash basket. Bottles of bourbon, Scotch. "The drinking age is twenty-one, you know."

"I told him it was Jack's," she whispered, her voice hoarse, struggling. "Jack still comes around, you know that, Daddy." She pulled a Kleenex from the pocket of her coat and blew her nose. She looked like she was twelve. She was terrified.

"Look, this has really been a nightmare for her, and I would like to just get her home," I said, trying not to sound scared. I picked up the suitcase and the sack.

"I know you from somewhere," the cop said. "I've seen you on TV. Did you say Seventeenth Street or Seventeenth Avenue? Where have I seen you?"

"seventeenth Street," I said, trying to steady my voice.

Someone bumped into him from behind. They were carrying something out of the back room. It looked like a couch. Flashbulbs were going off back there.

"And this is the address where she'll be if we need her?"

"I didn't know them," Belinda said, struggling not to cry. "I didn't hear anything."

"Can I see some identification, please," the cop asked me, "with this address on it?"

I took out my wallet and showed him my driver's license. My hand was shaking badly. I could feel the sweat breaking out all over my face. I looked at her. She was in a silent panic.

If he asks me her birth date, I am up shit creek, I thought. I haven't the slightest idea what it really is, let alone what she told them. And this guy is recording my identity in his little book. And I am standing here lying and saying she's my daughter. My hand was sweating on the handle of the suitcase.

"I know who you are," the cop said suddenly, looking up. "You wrote 'Saturday Morning Charlotte.' My kids are crazy about your books. My wife loves them."

"Thanks, I really appreciate it. You'll let me take her home now, won't you?"

He closed his notebook, and stared at me rather coldly for a moment. "Yeah, I think that would be a damned good idea," he said contemptuously. He was looking at me as if I were dirt. "Do you know what kind of a place your daughter's been living in?"

"Terrible mistake, terrible-"

"That guy in the back, he knifed his girl, watched her die before he called us. Says God told him to do it. Stoned out of his head when we got here. Track marks on his legs and his arms. Doesn't even remember calling us, let alone killing her. And you know what's across the hall-?"

"I just want to take her out of here-"

"Two hard-bitten little hustlers who work the queers on Polk Street. Want to guess who lives upstairs? Dealers, man, the penny-ante juvenile brand we find dead with a bullet in the back of the head after a rip-off."

Nothing to do but let him finish. I stood there, rigid, feeling the heat in. my face.

"Mister, you may write terrific books, but when it comes to being a father to this little girl, you need to read a few."

"You're right, absolutely right," I murmured. "Get her out of here."

"Yes, sir."

S,E broke down completely when we got into the car. Through her sobs I didn't catch all of what she said, but this much came clear. The killer was the same guy who'd ripped off her radio, a real mean son of a bitch who had hit on her all the time, beating and kicking the door of her room when she wouldn't open it.

As for her Linda Merit driver's license, it was fake, but the police couldn't prove anything. She'd scored it with the real birth certificate of a dead Los Angeles girl whose name she'd gotten from old newspapers in the library.

But the police kept saying they didn't believe her. They made her stand there while they checked the name through their computers. She kept praying the dead girl never left an unpaid traffic ticket in San Francisco. Only when she told them she had a father who'd come get her did they leave her alone.

I kept assuring her that was the right thing to do. And she was safe now. I tried not to think about that cop writing down my name and address or recognizing me. When we got home, I practically carried her inside. She was still crying. I sat her down in the kitchen, wiped her face, and asked her if she was hungry.

"Just hold on to me," she said.

She wouldn't even let me get her a glass of water.

In a little while she was quiet. It was almost five now. And the morning light was just coming through the kitchen curtains. She looked stunned and broken. She talked for a little while then about a drug bust, when &e narcotics agents had kicked in both the back and front doors of the fiat above her. Every piece of furniture in the place had been ripped to shreds. She should have moved immediately.

"Let me fix you something to eat," I said.

She shook her head. She asked if she could have a drink.

I kissed her. "You don't really want that, do you?" I asked. She got up and went past me and got the Chivas Regal and poured herself half a glassful. I watched her drink it smoothly, just the way she always drank, as if it was nothing to her. It hurt me to see it, the Scotch just going down her throat.

She wiped her mouth, set the bottle and the glass on the table, and sat down again. She looked dreadful and vulnerable and lovely all at once.

When her blue eyes finally fixed on me, I found her irresistible. "I want you to move in here," I said.

She didn't answer. She looked dazed. I watched her pour herself another glass of Scotch.

"Don't get drunk," I said softly.

"I'm not getting drunk," she said coldly. "Why do you want me to move in? Why do you want jailbait living with you?"

I studied her, trying to figure the angle of the rage. She took a pack of Garams out of her pocket, stuck one on her lip. The book of matches she'd left at breakfast was still there. I opened it, struck a match, and lighted the cigarette for her.

She sat back, glass in one hand, cigarette in the other, hair all free and messy, and the leopard coat still on, just a little womanshape and black sequins showing between the lapels.

"Well, why do you want me here?" Her voice was raw. "You feel sorry for me?"

"No," I said.

"I can find someplace else to live," she said. Hard, woman's voice coming out of the babymouth. Puff of smoke. Incense smell of the clove cigarette.

"I know that," I said. "I wanted you here after the first night we were together. I wanted you here this morning when you took off. Sooner or later I would have asked you. And whatever I feel about it all-guilt, you mow, that kind of thing-I'm sure of this. You're better off with me than living in a place like that one."

"Oh, so you feel this whole mess lets you off the hook, is that it?"

I took a deep breath.

"Belinda," I said, "I'm a pretty square guy when you get right down to it. Call it dull, call it unsophisticated, call it what you will, I think a kid your age should be at home. I think somebody somewhere is crying over you. looking for you-"

"Oh, if you only knew," she said, her tone low and bitter.

"But I can't know until you tell me."

"My family doesn't own me," she said harshly. "I own me. And I'm with you because I want to be. And the old rule still holds. I'll walk out the door if you ask me about my family."

"That's what I figured. You're saying you won't go home, not even after what happened tonight."

"That's not even a possibility," she said.

She looked away for a moment, biting a little at her fingernail, a thing I'd never seen her do before, the pupils of her eyes dancing as she looked around the room. Then she said:

"Look, I bombed as an American kid."

"How do you mean?"

"It didn't work for me because I am not a kid. So I have to make it on my own, either with you or without you. And I'm going to do it. I have to! If I move in with you, it's not because I'm scared. It's because, it's because I want to-"

'q know, honey, I know."

I reached across the table. I took her hand off the glass as she set it down, and I held her hand tightly. I loved the smallness of it, the tenderness, the way the fingers curled around mine. But it was pain to see her eyes squeeze shut, to see the tears spill down her cheeks just the way they had before, at the front door, when she was storming out.

"I love you too, you know," she said, still crying. "I mean, I wanted to be an American kid, I really did. I wanted it. But you're like a dream, you know, you're like some fantasy I made up that's better than that and, and-"

"So are you, little girl," I said.

Ar~rEv, she'd gone to sleep in the four-poster, I put her suitcase and things in the guest room. That could be her private place.

And I went upstairs to work on the punkchild carousel nude, the one of her with the witchy hair, and I painted into the afternoon without stopping, thinking the whole time about the strange things she had said. What a trio this would be, these carousel pictures.

Now and then I thought of the policeman who had recognized me. I thought of him writing down my name and address in his little notebook. I should have been afraid. I should have been a nervous wreck over all that, in fact. I was a man who had never gotten so much as a speeding ticket.

But it thrilled me. In some dark and secret way it thrilled me. She was here with me now, and I knew it was OK for her, had to be, and I was painting with a speed and power I hadn't known in years. Everything felt good to me.

[6]

ABOUT eleven that morning she woke up screaming. I came down as fast as I could. For a moment she didn't know where she was, who I was. Then she closed her eyes and put her arms around me.

I sat there beside the bed until she was asleep again. She looked tiny, curled up under the quilts. I smoked a cigarette, thought a lot about her and me, about falling for her, and then I went back to painting.

ABOUT two o'clock she came up into the attic. She looked relaxed and absolutely cheerful.

I was still in the middle of some detail work on the punk nude figure of her on the carousel horse and she stood watching me quietly. The main part of the painting was done and I thought it was spectacular. She didn't say anything.

I put my arm around her and kissed her.

"Look, there's a gallery opening this afternoon for a friend of mine," I said. "A good sculptor name of Andy Blatky. It's his first one-man show, Union Street, fancy, sort of a big break. You want to go with me?"

"Sure, I'd love to," she said. She tasted like vanilla wafers.

I started to wipe the brushes.

She moved away and spent a long time checking out the roach and rat pictures. Barefoot in her flannel gown, she looked like an angel. Seems the little girls of long ago in my church parish had dressed like that for a procession at Christmas midnight mass. Only thing she needed was paper wings.

No comment on the roach and rat paintings either. just her warm sweet presence and the knowledge, the splendid knowledge that she was here to stay.

I told her I'd put her things in the guest room. That could be her private place. Yes, she said, she found all that. Beautiful brass bed in there. Like a big crib with the side rails. Everything in the house was beautiful, like the sets for an old-fashioned play.