Hot Springs (14 page)

“Took her and left,” said Gillian. “I’ve been looking around for a note or something, but I haven’t found one. She just got up early and went. Yesterday.”

“Did she say anything about where she might be going?”

“Not really.”

“Think hard, OK? This is important.”

“I know it’s important. Do you think I don’t know it’s important? You’re the one who ought to think. Where have you been? She’s been waiting to hear from you. She probably thought she never would again.”

“This is not my fault,” he said. “Maybe she just went someplace for a few hours, like on a picnic or something. Maybe she’ll be back soon.”

“Picnic? Her stuff is gone, and she stripped the mattress and folded up the sheets.”

A voice told him to deposit another dollar fifty, so he did, taking the quarters from the stack he’d placed on top of the phone box. A low-rider sixties Buick with gold roulette wheels for hubcaps pulled up to one of the gas pumps, its engine revving before falling silent.

“I’m coming there,” he said.

“Why?” she said. “I’m telling you, she left. You should have called before. What happened to you?”

“I was busy,” said Landis. “There was a lot to do.”

“Maybe you should leave well enough alone,” said Gillian.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She told me all about it. When that kid’s parents find her, at least Bernice will have some kind of excuse. She is the mother. But you—you’re not even related. I think what you did is kidnapping, no matter how you try to slice it, and if they press charges, you’re going to jail. Actually, they may not even have to press charges—it’s probably just automatic.”

Landis didn’t like being lectured, and he didn’t like standing at a public phone while someone told him he’d be going to jail. “Where’s she from?” he asked.

“Where’s she
from
? What, are you serious?”

“She never said. I know it’s back east someplace. I know about Atlanta, I know about Florida after she had the baby. She just—” he closed his eyes in frustration at all the games he’d let her play—“she never said where she was from. New York? Washington?”

“I find this hard to believe,” said Gillian.

“I don’t care how you find it,” said Landis. “Philadelphia? New Haven? Why don’t you just fucking tell me.”

“Baltimore,” she said. “But I doubt she’d go there. She’s not on good terms with her dad.”

“What about her mom?”

There was silence on the other end, and Landis fingered the diminished pile of quarters. He wondered if he shouldn’t hang up soon—everything was monitored these days. You typed
Islam
into an Internet search engine and some light went off at FBI headquarters. You said
kidnapped
on a pay phone, and before you knew it, the cops were pulling up with sirens wailing.

“You don’t know anything, do you?” said Gillian. “Her mother’s dead.”

“I didn’t know. How’d that happen?”

“She told me she killed her.”

“She what?”

“Well, that’s Bernice. She speaks in code. I doubt she
actually
killed her, although I am pretty sure her mother is dead.”

“Do you have an address?”

“Someplace. Maybe. You could probably find it yourself. Her dad’s name is Don. I’m sure he’s listed.”

“Could you go look for it? Please?”

There was a pause. “Now that I think about it, she did ask me about going home.”

“When?”

“In Mexico.”

“You went to
Mexico
? Whose bright idea was that? I’m going to call you back later, is that all right? You look for the address, and I’ll call you back.”

He went into the 7-Eleven and scanned the front page of the paper for an abducted-child article, but found none. His breakfast was moving around in his stomach, and he thought he ought to find a bathroom. There was a deli across the street, Spooners, next to a running-shoe store.

Spooners held only a scattering of customers—a man in a
business suit reading the paper, two middle-aged women talking and laughing. A short guy with Down syndrome and a reedy voice greeted him like an old friend. “Hey!” he said. “Where you been?”

“Oh, all over,” said Landis, who felt certain that if he’d ever met this person before, he’d remember him. “You know.”

“Yeah,” said the guy, his eyes tiny and set at angles in his face, like pinball flippers. “I know.” He had a rag in his hand, and Landis realized that he must be working here. “All right, then.”

“You bet,” said Landis. And then he was left alone. A transaction had occurred between them, but he couldn’t say what it was, exactly. The kid had glowed with good feeling, proud to be at his job. Landis inhaled the warm smell of the blueberry-and-almond muffins arrayed on the counter, and of the three flavors of coffee sitting hot in their brushed-steel urns.

He used the bathroom, then bought a coffee, brought it to a booth and stared at it. This was his fault. Why hadn’t he just called? He took out the portrait Bernice had done of him one night on the back of a bar-tab receipt and unfolded it. It was remarkable—somehow, she’d captured everything about him with only a cheap ballpoint pen. His eyes, in particular, surprised him—he saw they looked like his father’s. Bernice had entrusted herself to him, difficult parts and all. She’d put herself in his arms and he’d dropped her.

There had been problem moments before with Bernice. A week after they’d met, she’d shown up unannounced at his trailer when he was on the phone talking to Junebug, a waitress he’d been dating, and he’d held his hand up in a “wait-a-minute” gesture because the conversation was at a critical juncture, as he was explaining to Junebug that she wouldn’t be seeing him again for a while, possibly ever. He was happy to see Bernice, happy that she felt free to come over without calling. A new relationship was like a new shirt or shoes, and he still
had the excitement of unfamiliarity, that pride that he’d managed to find something so great for himself. But then he heard the angry, consumptive sound of the Hyundai’s engine, followed by her tires spitting gravel, and she was gone, headed back up the drive toward the access road and, ultimately, the highway. He called her for an hour, but she wouldn’t pick up. And when he drove over, she wouldn’t answer the door. He stood there on the concrete walkway outside her door in the cold pressing her buzzer. Finally, she opened it. She had changed into a nightgown—a very old-fashioned-looking thing—and the look she gave him was withering. “What?” he asked. “What was all that about?”

“You can’t do that,” she told him. “You can’t treat me that way.”

“I was on the phone.”

“With
her
?”

He had not, up to that point, made it clear that there
was
a her, but he found himself unsurprised that Bernice had intuited the circumstances of his life.

She allowed him in, but wouldn’t speak, though he tried to make conversation with her, even after she buried herself back inside her bedclothes and put a pillow over her head. So he sat in the dark beside her for over an hour. Then she put a hand out toward him. Without saying a word, they made love until they were both sweating like marathoners.

He paged though the free paper’s classifieds in the ridiculous hope that she might have left him a message there.

She could have found herself a place in Tucson. Possibly. Except Landis knew her well enough to know that if she’d left, she’d really
left
—gone someplace far away.

Where exactly was Baltimore? South of DC? North of it? He’d been past it before, he knew that, knew it was someplace along I-95, but he’d just never paid any real attention.

He went back to the 7-Eleven and dug his remaining quarters out of the pocket of his jeans, then dialed Gillian Cooper’s number. She answered on the first ring.

“Did you find it?”

“Yes. It’s old, though. It’s off a sketchbook of hers she gave me.” She read him the address and telephone number. “If she calls here, should I tell her anything?”

“Tell her what you like.” He hung up the phone. “Damn,” he said. He said it again and kicked at a rock on the ground, sending it skittering into a parking meter. Then he went to check the oil level in the truck.

“S
ee that?” Bernice said to Emily, pointing up, as they walked from the illegal spot where she’d left the car. Baltimore’s Washington Monument stood fifty yards away, its base like an emperor’s tomb, the high column sticking up into the soupy evening, George himself atop it dressed in a toga and holding what appeared to be a lightning rod. “That’s the father of our country. He never told a lie, and he had wooden teeth.”

“If I had wooden teeth, I wouldn’t have to brush them,” said Emily.

“That’s right. You just slap on another coat of paint. It’s very convenient.”

“Or buy more at the store.”

“Exactly.”

She found his new place easily enough, although she was surprised to see it had a steep set of marble steps, since the whole point of his moving
out two years ago and taking this apartment had been to get
away
from steps. He’d written her a letter at the time, and she remembered how formal it was—no questions about her, only the single statement, “I hope you are well.” Just news of the move and his knees. She’d been living in a musty apartment on the corner of West and Ninth in Miami Beach, a concrete box on the eighth floor of a building called the Sun Palace. The letter had made her cry. She hadn’t wanted him to move.

Calling these things houses was ridiculous—they were mansions. People wouldn’t have lived in them without a full staff, and all of them would originally have had their own coach houses. Her father’s had a Greek revival front complete with massive Ionic columns. Looking up the front steps, through the glass of the front door with its elaborate wrought-iron decoration and heavy security bars, Bernice could see into the entrance hall, where a newel-post nymph held aloft a lit torch, an imposing staircase rising above and behind her.

She climbed the steps and pored over the brass mailboxes. Beneath the bottommost one, a piece of paper taped to the metal read, “Click—Terr. Rownaside.” She stared at this for a while, wondering whether it was in some way about killing. Insecticide, parricide, homicide. Then she pronounced it in her head.
Around the side
. Humor.

She was fried. Her legs felt like noodles, and her entire body was buzzing. Her eyes were so sore and dry from staring out at the highway that she thought she might have done permanent damage to her brain and would for the rest of her life see everything with superimposed little white lines running toward her. They’d stayed in Amarillo at a Motel 6, then gotten up early and driven all day and well into the night, until they reached Nashville (another Motel 6); today had been more of the same. Only when they’d hit the mountains of Virginia and started seeing signs for Baltimore had it become real to her that she’d done this, that there would be an end to the
traveling. The last challenge had been swinging around Washington, and the beltway traffic had nearly made her scream. But she hadn’t. She hadn’t. Instead she’d tried to keep up a stream of happy chatter for Emily, telling her about Dulles Airport and the National Gallery and the Mormon temple, the spire-topped towers of which rose up windowless and white like something from a science-fiction novel.

She walked with Emily around the side and downhill, past two sets of low, barred windows, to what she guessed was the side entrance of the house, a simple white wooden door in a brick wall with an unmarked buzzer. A few feet away at the curb there was a cast-iron post in the shape of a horse’s head for travelers to tie up to and an oval lozenge of white marble for their descent. Across the street on the stoop of a crumbling brownstone, a fat man with a long beard sat watching her, drinking soda from a liter bottle. She ignored him and pressed firmly on the bell. There was no sound, so she pressed again.

Eventually she heard noises. There was a peephole, and she figured he was behind it, checking them out. He opened the door.

“You made good time,” he said. He wore jeans and a white oxford shirt, flip-flops. His white hair rode his head like a wave. He looked down at Emily with surprise. “Well,” he said, and opened the door wider. “What do you know?” He stuck out his hand toward Emily. “Don Click,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Pearl,” she said.

He gestured toward Bernice. “You go with her, do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Pearl, do you like buttermilk?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, we’ll just have to find out. Come in.”

On the other side of the wall there was a small courtyard accommodating a fire escape, two concrete planters with flowers in them,
a couple of pieces of plastic lawn furniture, and a yellow Weber grill with a picture of Homer Simpson on it. They passed these things and entered the back of the house through another door that led them into a dim hallway.

“Kitchen’s that way,” he said, gesturing. “Rest of the place is over here.”

“
The Simpsons
?” she said.

“You don’t like
The Simpsons
?”

The next room was enormous—perhaps thirty feet across and at least twenty wide. The floors were polished hardwood, and the inner wall was brick painted white. The street-side wall bulged outward where the windows were. Peering out through the dusty blinds, Bernice could see the sidewalk, which was more or less at eye level.

“Welcome to the Bunker,” he said.

“Great place.” Bernice looked around. One end of the room had been arranged as a living area, with chairs and a sofa and a television set, all of which she recognized from the old house. There was a massive fireplace in the south wall, complete with fake logs and a set of fire tools. The other end of the room had been fitted out as a work space, with his easel and a desk with a computer.