Elsinore Canyon (7 page)

He turned his board sideways and paddled in line with the shore. The current sidewashed him—every stroke was worth a fraction of what it should have been. The energy in his arm muscles fighting this vast, mighty flow. Single human versus planetary forces. Stroking and stroking, and barely a change in his location. He stopped, looked out. There it was, a bomb, the big wave that would take him back in. It was gathering dark and huge on the horizon. The thing would swamp a small boat, but it was his salvation. Twenty-footers were rare in California, but not close to the largest he’d ever caught. If this were Hawaii he’d even do some turns on the board, but right now he felt bizarrely unsure of himself and he wanted to get back in. He pointed his board at the shore. The water slapped across his hands. He looked over his shoulder. The wave was bigger than he’d thought—twenty-five feet, no, a thirty-footer, no lie. Its mere existence would make the local news. It was fattening and starting to peel. Damn, now it was exploding against the backwash, he would be slammed—but no, at his location it recovered its height. A dark blue wall thirty feet high racing towards him with enough force to smash through the windows of a house. The closer it got, the higher the horizon rose, replacing daylight with darkness. It was coming. He flattened himself and paddled slowly as the wave lifted the back of his board. It was under him, the shoulder swept him up twenty feet as fast as a roller coaster and he stared down a black, watery bluff. He paddled fast, then popped to his feet. The crest sprayed his head—his board dropped ten feet, like lightning, down the face of the wave—he got its motion and adjusted his board with his feet so it pointed slightly north. His stance was solid, he was charging now. Standing in dark water. All his joints and muscles tight, his crouching body light and fast. Balanced. He was good, he was on his way back in, the shore was his. And then he saw her.

Polly left the main house that day at three thirty and bumped back down to the cottage in his van. His mood was foul to say the least. Claudia’s gay assistant—Oscar, the great worm’s name was—had walked in on Polly while he was playing computer solitaire. Oscar. A doughy, fine-skinned man over the age of thirty with bad posture, a deep voice, and girlish mannerisms. And collarless shirts. He had pointed at Polly’s screen with a half-eaten churro and spoken laconically. “Black queen.” Polly slammed his computer shut and got out, but now he regretted it. Ending his workday at three thirty did not convey the right or true impression of his importance to the organization. He had spent eighteen years with the Hamlet Family Foundation, the last two an increasing struggle. The dead one, Danielle, had had that damned she-devil sense of humor, that scathing smile and grating tolerance of Polly. In the months before her death, she had been transferring more and more of her attitude to Garth, which made Polly feel a secret—well, he couldn’t help it, a secret relief at her passing.

The respite had been short-lived, however, and when it was over, things were worse than before. His problems, doubled and tripled, came down to one tough, unbudgeable little element: Dr. Claudia Black. It was no coincidence that Polly’s influence had waned as hers had waxed. Garth was the one Polly had always dealt with, the one who held the wealth, but now Garth had less and less for Polly to do. He took
her
advice about matters Polly had always overseen, conferred with
her
and then point-blank announced his decisions without a word of consultation with Polly. But how could Polly oppose her? He was helpless against her novelty and her other attraction—that wicked beauty that both sisters possessed. Polly pursed his lips. That was how Garth liked it. Well, it gave Polly time to develop his own projects—but then what good were they without the opportunity to bring them to fruition? Danielle had barely regarded him, but Claudia did for some reason, and she was perversely doubtful of his value.

He arrived at the cottage. A necessary minute, freedom from his tie and wingtips, and a fresh cup of tea. He opened his computer—peh, the solitaire game was still there—and recorded a few thoughts. He hadn’t been at it long when he heard a car pull up. He knew the engine. A few minutes later he heard the front door open slowly. It didn’t shut. He tiptoed to his office door and poked his head around to look downstairs.

Phil lay slumped in a chair, wearing bermudas and a stringy sweater. His hair was clumped and he was dusted with sand.

“Phil?”

“Dad,” Phil said flatly. He didn’t glance up. “Wenja get home?”

“Are you alone? Phil?”

The boy sighed on the chair like a sick puppy.

“Phil, did you get in a fight?”

“I got a ticket.”

“Is that all?”

“I saw Dana.”

“Dana?” Polly moved downstairs without taking his eyes off the tan, limp figure. He pulled an ottoman up in front of Phil and put a hand on his knee. “What do you mean? Here?”

Phil lay unmoving. “Dad, it was weird. I was surfing about three o’clock, catching a wave in, and all of a sudden she was”—he waved his hand out at arm’s length as if he was trying to focus something—“standing in the water, near the shore. She was in all her clothes—her skirt was floating around her—just standing out there, up to her hips, with her arms stiff at her sides and the waves washing right up over her wrists.”

“All her clothes? I should be surprised she was wearing any.”

“As I got in closer I realized she was staring at me. Her face was white, and she had this expression like she was being tortured. I was so freaked I fell off my board. Right over a trench, I had to paddle in and when I got to the sand, she was running up the cliff. I called her and called her and I ran up after her, but she was too far ahead, and then she jumped in her car and took off. So I got in my car and took off after her, all the way out on the Coast Highway, and tried to catch up with her but I got pulled over. I was still in my wetsuit.”

“Oh, for—so now
you’re
going to be part of the soap opera.”

“I didn’t have my license with me.”

“Now that’s enough. I don’t want to find myself going before a judge the way Garth did.”

“She spooked me. Right before I fell off my board, she lifted her hand towards me. Her eyes were staring, and her mouth was open like she wanted to say something to me.”

“Don’t listen to her! If you had, you might be driving off a cliff after her this very second.”

And at that, poor Phil put his hand to his eyes and snuffled a little. “I feel bad. She took it hard when Mr. Hamlet got remarried.”

“She did?”

“No, maybe I’m not right. You’re right.”

Polly feared this connection between the two young people. He feared his inability to fathom it. People all around him with their plots and confidences. Dana’s behavior had even further worsened Polly’s position in the household. Claudia was contracting around the disturbances and pulling in Garth, tightening the circle of secrecy. “Phil, do you mean…Phil, look at me.”

Phil’s hand fell from his eyes and he stared at the floor.

“Phil, what, eh, what have you and Dana
done?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what do you and she do? When you’re together.”

“Nothing. I haven’t seen her since the wedding reception.”

“I mean before the reception. You won’t be punished. I just want to know. What do you and Dana do together?”

“Nothing, Dad.”

Polly angled his head and tried a persuasive smile. “Listen, Phil. Dana needs help. She’s going to get herself a criminal record or a drug addiction if her friends won’t help her. Or something even worse might happen to her. We need to find out everything we can about her problems in order to help her with them.”

“Why don’t we ask her?”

Polly leaned away slowly. This was the same problem he always had with Phil, on a host of issues—his late ex-wife and Laurie among them. The boy was as pliant as piano wire to a point, but there was a core of mystery and silence in him that Polly could never penetrate. In all other ways Phil gave the appearance of natural and willing transparency; always obedient, but setting his soul on some greater good or private joy that stubbornly, silently blocked the outcomes Polly preferred. He wondered if he hadn’t gotten it backwards about Phil and Dana. The distance of the one baffling the wits of the other. God knew Phil could baffle Polly’s wits. Was it possible that the pain of unrequited love had touched the fantastical girl in the gossip columns, rather than the flesh-and-blood son who lay before him?

The next afternoon, Marcellus noted the license plate of a car parked in front of the Hamlets’ house. The driver had been there before, in a brand new Chevy Corvette ZR1. The car today was a gently used 2006 Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet. Marcellus tsk’d. The age of the vehicle and its new coat of yellow paint proclaimed it as a recent purchase by parents who had had second thoughts about something. He made a few more notes in case he’d have to recount his impressions at a future date. The way things were going, he had to expect it. Strange: setting aside the obvious problems, Garth hadn’t done too bad with his new wife. Danielle had always been challenging and sharp with him. Always curbing and jousting, always unpredictable. Intense green eyes and one dimple. How often Garth would get caught in her thickets of irony. Sometimes he went into action and sliced his way out, other times he smiled and fell slo-mo into a bed of thorns. But Dr. Claudia was different. She accommodated his loose, wandering mind. She mirrored his amazed and joyful eyes: they had found love. Garth was a sucker for ecstasy.

Ghosts did not exist, the dead did not speak, and there was no such thing as magic blackness or black magic or whatever the hell you called it. There was definitely something beyond death; he’d been convinced and comforted on that matter by Socrates. But the wise ones had nothing to say about the things he’d been through.

He turned his mind to more visible problems, which were also considerable. Polly was using a business appointment to layer up some new plot, and Dana seemed to be the target. Marcellus thought he pretty well had the outline of it, and he’d be able to figure out the details if necessary. And there were other matters he felt he should know more about. But a lot of secrets in Elsinore Canyon opened themselves right up as long as you didn’t poke at them. For instance, he knew without looking, even as he wrote, that Dr. Claudia was watching his every move from her office window above.

Puzzling out Marcellus’s drab figure as he walked his duties around a bright yellow convertible with his swinging, perfunctory gait was a task fraught with anguish. An ache deep in her jaw, a greasy section of hair that ruined the contours of her face and made her look skinned. Nothing worked. When she came down to it, she had had only two days. That glorious build-up, that promise of heaven, laden with delicious dreams of her deep, eternal union with Garth—she would weep if she thought about it. It had ended. Her life now, her every waking moment, was spiked with fear. Like spending the night in a sumptuous room where you knew a huge tarantula was creeping around, or walking alone in beautiful, wild woods and suddenly realizing something behind you was matching their footsteps to yours. Survive without a scratch or meet a violent, excruciating end. Maybe Dana’s craziness was all about something else, maybe it had nothing to do with what Dr. Claudia knew. But the looks, the jabs, the jokes. She and Garth were now unbreakably and intimately bound in marriage, their flesh was one. (How were people capable of divorce, she wondered?) And yet the laborious adjustments she now had to make on a daily, hourly basis wore away her happiness and threw her desperately back on those two perfect days. They were not an illusion. They had happened. All she wanted, all she asked—she would drop all her plans and all the unpleasant things she was being forced to do the moment she got it—was to get back to those two perfect days, pick up where those two days had left off, and fulfill their promise. Give me Day Three. Give me Day Three and I’ll never bother You again.

Mr. Hamlet stepped into the room behind her and peeked over her shoulder. His clean jaw lightly crushed her hairdo.