Dangerous (37 page)

Val drove in silence, true to her word. In that vacuum I thought of all the time we’d shared, the tears I’d shed, the thrills and humiliations. All of it suddenly a cruel joke. I wanted to vomit.

Ten minutes later on the westbound 101 we hit a wall of somber taillights, as traffic jammed just before the 405 interchange. The start-and-stop crawl was a torment. I just wanted to be home, far away from this woman and everything she represented. In the tiny, still car my sniffles were painfully loud. But when Val offered a tissue, I angrily brushed away her hand. That same hand had held a loaded gun in Gabriel’s mouth, years ago.

I would never, ever be a doll again.

§

Val parked by my front gate. I sat with my fingers on the door handle, my wrath having finally cooled into resolve. The odor of smoke lent a note of finality to this moment. This was our parting, and it seemed to require the sacrament of last words.

“I tried Val, I really did,” I said, wiping tears. “I’m sorry.”

I climbed out and shut the door. Val stood too, and regarded me soulfully from across the car. So many words piling up, yet none would come.

It was time to go. I climbed the short flight of steps to the gate.

But as I fumbled with my keyring, it fell into the flowerbed beside the intercom. “Crap,” I muttered, and after a minute of searching I still couldn’t find it.

Then Val came up to the gate to help, and shined her little key fob flashlight where I was looking. The brilliant white LEDs made the flowers glow unnaturally in the still night air. In another minute I found my keys and stood up, uncomfortably aware of Val’s proximity.

“Goodbye, Val.”

She carefully didn’t touch my cheek, though I knew she wanted to. “Goodbye, little koi.”

I unlocked the gate and passed through, making sure it didn’t slam shut and wake Mr. Murphy.

“I don’t really hate you, you know,” I said, as I turned around.

“Thank you.”

Crickets chirped, and I let the gate close slowly before turning away.

“Let me buy you a drink?” she asked, in a voice soft as a moth’s wing.

I stopped and looked at her through the metalwork of the gate. Was she serious? Her split lip was dark, almost black, in the soft upward glow from the yard lights.

“I…I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said at last.

“You’re right. But come anyway.” She looked like a completely different person. Humble.

“I can’t do this any more. I can’t.” My voice cracked.

“Then we’ll do it differently.”

I shifted my weight as emotions warred within me.

“I couldn’t, I look like hell.” So lame.

“Go inside and think about it. Clean yourself up. I’ll wait a little while in the car. Come back down if you like, but if not, then…” she paused to weigh her words, “…thank you and goodbye, Koishi. You’ll always be very special to me.” With that, she returned to her car and I heard bass begin to thump from within, the stereo’s light on her face.

Once upstairs I carefully clipped my broken nail, washed the blood, and applied a bandage. As I scrubbed off my streaked makeup I cried some more. Then I changed into sweats and made tea. Twenty minutes later Val’s car was still parked in front, and I felt a pang.
You’re a fool, Koishi. It’s over. Let her go.

But as I slipped on jeans, I noticed the fake ice cube sitting dormant on my bookshelf. It had still worked when I tried it yesterday, all these months after the Christmas party.

I slipped Val’s watch into my pocket, then locked the door behind me. And, for the second time that night, descended those steps into the unknown.

part three

28     
closure

VAL DROVE TO The Cheesecake Assembly, an upscale casual restaurant in Woodland Hills. It wasn’t exactly her kind of place, but it was close, and they didn’t take reservations.

Since the Nineties this part of the Valley had become a hive of office towers, in whose shadow lay apartment complexes aswarm with the suited drones who worked here. I saw dozens of those same drones doing the corporate mating dance as we entered the restaurant’s neo-Egyptian lobby.

Val added her name to the waiting list, and was given an electronic pager the size of a large drink coaster. Rather than wait in the lobby, we stepped into the small sports bar where, on a plasma screen high in one corner, the Dodgers were beating the Mets. A few eyes noted our arrival before returning to the game.

Val ordered a martini. I got a beer with an offbeat name designed to convince me it wasn’t actually owned by the largest brewery in America—which, Val pointed out, it was. We found a small table, and sat on stools so high one almost needed a stepladder to mount them.

“I didn’t think you’d come. Thank you,” Val said.

“I don’t know why I did. Closure, maybe,” I admitted.

Val nodded in resignation, her gray-green eyes now amber in the dim, warm light of the bar. “You’re hurt. Angry.”

“Don’t patronize me. Of course I’m angry, what did you expect? The first thing you do when you get back is treat me like a slu—like dirt,” I hissed.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been under enormous pressure at work.”

I’d heard that before. “Yeah, and just what is it you
do
exactly? Huh? The mystery thing was cute at first, but dammit, Val. I can’t live on secrets. I need more.”

“If there was any way I could be more forthcoming, I would. You have to believe that.”

“Is it a matter of
national security
? Please. I’m sick to death of your secret agent act.”

That earned me a glare. “You haven’t the
slightest idea
what you’re talking about. Everyone here,” she said with a brusque wave, “is living in a dream world. Be thankful you don’t know how fragile that dream is.”

In a movie, that would have been the start of an impassioned monologue, explaining all. But this was reality, and she was Val. No monologue.

Turning away in frustration, I gazed at the televised baseball game without actually seeing. Two tables away, a woman with bad Eighties hair and makeup stared at us. I imagined she was some unmarried middle-manager from Cornfield, Illinois, on a starry-eyed pilgrimage to the Home Office. I could guess her reaction to my recent lifestyle choices.
Run along home, dear. You wouldn’t like the games we play in the big city.
When I fearlessly returned her gaze she capitulated, and turned back to her associates.

Did Val see my own life from a similar vantage? Was I as blind to the true nature of the world? I recalled our discussion of Morlocks and Eloi two weeks before, and wondered what she’d been hinting.

But I was compelled to fire one last arrow.

“You have some messed-up friends, to play a stunt like tonight,” I said in a hushed voice. “
Normal
people don’t do that crap. They have book clubs. Barbecues. Tupperware parties.” I took a long swig of beer, holding the bottle carefully so as not to bump my throbbing, bandaged finger. “I should sue your asses, every one of you.”

She lowered her head slightly. “I misjudged your limits, and for that I’m deeply sorry.” Quite a different thing than saying the game was wrong, however.

With a jump, the pager started to blink and buzz on the table, describing the circle of a honeybee dance. When Val rose to return the pager to the front desk, I followed.

“There’s an open table out on the patio, if you don’t mind the air,” said the hostess, who tried not to stare at Val’s scratched face. We had no objection, so she led us through the restaurant to the covered patio in back.

The warm night air smelled of distant apocalypse, though not as much as before. Either the fires were being brought under control, or the wind had shifted. Our hostess gave us each a menu before describing the daily specials, with the tone of a stewardess reciting emergency procedures. And then she was gone.

I absently flipped through the oversized menu, not the least bit hungry.
What was I doing here?
I asked myself.
Breaking up, I guess. Ending this.

Our waitress—her name tag said Ellie—brought glasses of water and took our order. I chose the soup of the day, having already forgotten what it was; something with lentils. Val got the Caesar salad. It felt strange not to order for her.

And then we were alone again, and the void between us yawned wide. On impulse, I drew her watch from my pocket and placed it on the table top between us, the chain making a cool, slithery pile. “I should give this back,” I said.

She pushed it toward me. “No. I want you to keep it, no matter what.”

But it had always felt alien, that watch. I couldn’t force myself to pick it up again, and wanted nothing more than for it to go away.

“No,” I said, after a moment’s contemplation. “It’s a part of you.”
And not me
, I didn’t say, but the idea was there. We were truly done.

For a moment her eyes burned, and then she was perfectly composed again. Her pale, slender hand took up the watch with feigned casualness.

Predictably, the meal was an uncomfortable affair.

“I am unaccustomed to begging, Koishi,” Val said quietly, after putting down her fork and touching the cloth napkin to her split lip, which had long ago stopped bleeding. “But…I’m willing to try a more conventional sort of relationship, if it means holding onto you.”

I nearly dropped my spoon in disbelief.

I pictured myself introducing Mom and Dad to this monstrous woman, declaring her my lover. They might get over the initial shock, but not the loss of their dream of grandchildren. It was tragic, darkly funny, and more than I could handle.

“Will you at least consider it?” she gently urged.

Here at last was the prize I’d sought for months. Val’s heart on a plate, but too late. I can’t do it, I thought. Why not? I sifted through my feelings as I looked out on the courtyard, a hollow space encircled by office towers, the parking structure, the Hilton hotel. Then I knew it wasn’t the little girl inside Val asking this of me, but her Guardian, falling on her sword for the sake of her fragile ward.

I sipped my drink and pretended to consider Val’s plea. “What about Millie? Grace? The others?” A touch of acid in my voice.

“What of them?” she asked, more out of surprise than defiance, and I realized she was flying blind, too. “Millie’s not a problem, she’s busy for the foreseeable future. Grace—well, I know someone who could take her in. There’s…no one else.” Her last admission had a note of desperation.

It was nothing less than unconditional surrender.

The pity I felt was dark, bitter, a little nauseating. Curiously, I saw that Val was not an especially pretty woman. Without the haughty Keeper act she seemed plain, hard-edged, a little sad. But when I recalled the marks on her body, a story told in cryptic runes of flesh, I felt guilty for abandoning her.

I seriously weighed her offer then, measured it against the pain and humiliations I had suffered at her own hands. At one time I had thought of them as achievements, trophies won by a special kind of intimacy. Now they just hurt.

No. I couldn’t do it.

“I’ll think about it,” I lied.