Impact (9 page)

A stewardess interrupts and asks if he needs anything. He motions for another drink. Because it is first class, she knows his name and his libation. The highball is before him in a jiffy, service with a smile.

A year ago he would have made a pass at her—she is ringless, buxom, and has a cast in her eye that suggests an adventuresome bent. But a recent fact of his life is that he has stopped trying to seduce strange women. Hence his abandonment of Molly Christian before the chase was even on. Hence his increasingly monogamous relationship with Martha. To the extent he understands it, Hawthorne believes it has something to do with his anxiety about the course and distance of his life. He has always viewed longevity as an overrated goal, but as his fiftieth year approaches, he is not so sure it isn't the only goal he has.

The plane trembles through an updraft. As his stomach flattens, Hawthorne is reminded of the SurfAir crash. He wonders if his investigator is at the scene yet, whether poor Livingood is wading through debris and decedents. For several seconds he wonders how a man could abide a life like that, until he realizes that most people see him and Livingood as part of the same vile process, jackals gobbling at the entrails of disaster victims, buzzards picking at the dead.

They had been standing on the stoop for a quarter of an hour, braving the chill in the evening air, apparently attempting the impossible, which was to get someone inside the little bungalow to answer the door.

Buried in a full-length winter wrap that enveloped all but her bobbed brown hair, her darkly troubled eyes, and the jut of her stubborn jaw, Brenda Farnsworth pressed the buzzer for the fifth time, as though her sister would materialize just to keep down the racket. At her back, Keith Tollison leaned against the wrought-iron railing and marveled at her determination. Brenda became intent upon the oddest things, most of them beyond achievement.

When she seemed about to ring again, he grabbed her arm. “She's obviously not home. Why is that making you crazy?”

She turned to face him, her breath white in the night, her gloved fists clenched against her chest. “I told Carol last week we might drop by before the dance. She said fine. She said she'd make hors d'oeuvres. She asked if you liked pâté.”

He smiled. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her you didn't, but were too polite to say so if she served it up.” Brenda met his look with eyes half-buried by the tumble of a frown. “Something's going on, Keith.”

“What?”

“I don't know, but something definitely is—I've been having trouble connecting with Carol for months. She doesn't answer her phone, isn't home when I stop by, and when we
do
get together, she's mysterious about what she's been up to.”

“Maybe she's found a man.”

“She's not looking for a man.”

“Sometimes they show up anyway. And sometimes older sisters don't know as much about their siblings as they think they do.”

She refused to yield. “Carol hasn't been happy lately, and when you're unhappy, you do things that don't make sense. Things that come back to haunt you.” Brenda's eyes glazed with the sting of memory. Although she was speaking of her sister, her template was herself.

She shrugged her coat higher on her neck, and looked beyond him at the lawn and the trees and the street, as though even geography were conspiring against her. “Can we come here after the dance? To make sure she's okay? Something's wrong; I can feel it.”

Her brow knit, her features blunted by concern, Brenda leaned against the door and rewrapped her coat around her, struggling for warmth and peace of mind and failing to find either.

“I can't let anything happen to her, Keith,” she said as he reached for her hand. “Every other person in my life got screwed up because of me: you; Spitter; my mother; my husband. If anything happened to Carol, it would kill me.”

She looked at him from within the pain that had become a permanent part of her. According to Brenda, her husband had gone to war because the marriage had been a disaster and she had repeatedly told him so; her son was retarded because she had taken drugs while she was pregnant; her mother had run off because Brenda had been a terror as a child. Tollison didn't know how much of that was true; he only knew that Brenda believed it all was.

“I think you're imagining things,” he said. “Carol probably just snuck off for the weekend. She can take care of herself, Bren.”

Brenda released her coat and grasped his forearm, squeezing at sympathy. “But I'm worried. You know how I am.”

He freed his arm. “You're working yourself up over nothing.
Forget
Carol for the next two hours. We'll have fun at the dance, then come see if she's home. In the meantime, let's just try to have a good time.”

She shoved her hands in her pockets and shivered. Tollison put his arm over her shoulders and pulled her to his side. “Don't make me dance
every
dance, okay?” she murmured.

“Every other.”

“And if your mother's there, promise you won't go off and leave me alone with her.”

“She's not in the historical society anymore.”

“But if she is.”

“Okay, I promise. I won't leave you alone with her.”

“With anybody.”

He nodded. Her head against his chest, she spoke through scattered strands of hair. “Remember the prom?”

“Yep.”

“I still have my dress. Daddy bought it in San Francisco. It cost a fortune. I couldn't remember thanking him for it, so I stopped by the bar and thanked him tonight. I was so proud that night, Keith,” she added quietly.

“Of what?”

“Of myself.”

“Why?”

“Because I was there with you.”

His guilt cowered with him in the darkness.

“I still am, you know,” Brenda went on, watching him with fractured eyes. “I'm proud to go places with you, even after all these years. You're the only prize I ever won.”

He hugged her tight. After a last stab at the door button, they went off arm in arm. As they drove away, Tollison tried to escape the fact that of late his idea of a good time had become holding another woman in his arms.

The high school gym was as spruced and shined as a dozen volunteers and a hundred dollars could make it. Bunting dripped from the rafters like the remnants of a rally for the gold standard. The reflections off a revolving mirrored ball cascaded them with shooting stars. Beneath it all, Altoonans wore what they perceived to be their finest, which in most cases was what they wore to church.

The ladies of the historical society clustered at the door, beaming at the new arrivals, as proud as parents at what they'd wrought. Tollison presented a smile and the tickets to his fifth grade teacher, then edged toward the center of the floor, where most of the guests had gathered at the jump circle to gossip rather than to dance. Brenda stayed silent on his arm.

The band was a major attraction, a nine-piece ensemble that retained the name of its deceased leader, fronted by a sideman from the original group. It wasn't as thrilling as it had been in the old days, Tollison supposed, since swing was as alien as chamber music in a world numbed by heavy metal, but it was good enough to cause him to slip his arm around his partner's waist and urge her toward a space where there was room to do whatever you could call what it was he did when presented with an opportunity to dance.

“But we're the only ones,” Brenda protested as he guided her around a knot of laughing merchants.

“Just close your eyes,” he said as he twirled her toward the stage, “and pretend we're home alone.”

“You
know
I'm not good at this,” she said as he began to move her through the crowd in an ungainly combination of a toddle and a schottische.

“You're as good as you need to be in Altoona,” he said, and apologized for stepping on her toe.

Holding her tight, reminded as he never was when they were arguing that Brenda was almost tiny, they bounced through “One O'clock Jump” and glided through “Loch Lomond” before she begged for a rest. Refreshments were heaped atop a table to the side of the dance floor, and they helped themselves to egg-salad sandwiches, slaw, a walnut brownie, and some of the adult punch. As they munched away beneath the north basket, the band segued into “Stardust,” and Carl Woodley and his wife, Jasmine, joined them.

Carl was the clerk of the municipal court; his wife, the librarian at the high school. The women were friends and the men were reluctant acquaintances. While Brenda and Jasmine launched a new chapter of schoolroom gossip, Carl asked Tollison whether he was going to run for city attorney.

Tollison shook his head, knowing Woodley owed his job to the spoils reaped by the opposite party during the second Reagan landslide, sensing that Carl's pleasure in his answer indicated that Carl saw him as electable. Tollison wondered if he ought to reconsider.

“Can't blame you,” Woodley intoned. “Municipal bonding and street repair probably aren't very challenging. But we do need new leadership. Altoona is going to hell, what with the fight over the new mall and the environmental people trying to get a no-growth initiative on the ballot next fall. And we've
got
to crack down on the hooligans, Keith. Senior citizens are afraid to go downtown anymore, the way those kids carry on in front of that video place and Pauli's Pizza. I've never heard such profanity in my life. And you know as well as I do they're doing drugs down there. What we need is a curfew. I tell you, these punkers make you wonder about the future of the country. I saw one yesterday, his head was shaved bald and painted black and numbered like an eight ball.”

Tollison smiled. The kid Woodley referred to was the son of one of his clients, who thought the pool motif was the only creative thing his son had ever done.

“I don't think it's quite that bad, Carl. You and Ricky Peters got into a few scrapes in your day.”

“Ah, that was only hijinks. Kids today are committing major crimes. The things Jasmine tells me about what goes on at that high school have no place in a civilized society.”

Barely listening, Tollison was looking for Laura Donahue. “I don't think we've ever been quite as civilized as we believe, Carl.”

“No? Well, I'd like you to name a place that's better.”

“There were thirty-five murders in Japan last year. In the U.S. there were nine thousand.”

“So what? You know those Orientals aren't like—”

“In Canada there were six. Australia only had ten.”

“But that's hardly a sign of—”

“Every industrialized nation but the U.S. and South Africa provides government-funded medical insurance to its citizens. And requires TV stations to give free time to candidates for office. And—”

“Come on, Keith. That's just liberal pap. Money won't solve our problems. Values, that's what it's all about. Basic human values.”

Tollison was about to respond in predictable kind when a hand on his shoulder turned him away from his antagonist. It was Sandy, his secretary, a vision in a strapless blue billow and a tiara of silver foil. “Hi, Mr. Tollison.”

“Hi, Sandy. You're looking great this evening. Scrumptious, in fact.”

“Thanks.” Sandy blushed, and the young man who lurked at her back reddened to match.

“I'm sorry to bother you,” Sandy hurried on, “but I was wondering if Mrs. Donahue ever got in touch with you.”

A muscle tightened in his neck. “No. Why?”

“It's just, she called
me
, see, and said she'd been trying to reach you at the office and at home and everything, and she asked if I knew where you were and I said you were probably at the jail, so she said if I saw you to have you call her as soon as possible. She sounded sort of upset.”

“Did she say what was wrong?”

“No, she just said it was urgent. Oh. She said if I didn't reach you right away to tell you she'd be at the airport, not at home. At the, ah, what's that new one? SurfAir? That's it. The SurfAir counter. She said she didn't know if you could get through to her or not, but she wanted you to try.”

“Is that all?”

“I
think
so. I was getting ready for the dance and Travis was early, the geek, so maybe I forgot something. She seemed real worried, that's all I know.”

Tollison turned to Brenda. “I've got to make some calls.” Though Brenda was about to ask a question, he turned his back and trotted toward the door.

The telephones were down the hall toward the restrooms. When the operator came on the line, he asked for the SurfAir counter at San Francisco International. The operator asked for money. Digging for his wallet, Tollison extracted his credit card and read off the number. The operator put him through but the line was busy. He hung up and went through the procedure once again, this time asking for the airport number. That line was busy also. When he got the operator once again, she was irritated.

“Give me station KXYV, the news department, please,” he asked in his kindest tone, the one reserved for Laura and veniremen. When the operator asked for his card number again, it was through clenched teeth.

“Station KXYV, Channel Nine, San Francisco; how may we help you?” a voice sang a moment later, indistinguishable from a pitch for tithes.

“News department, please.”

“One moment … Those lines are busy at this time. May I take a message?”

“Maybe you can help me. Has something happened at the airport tonight? An emergency of some kind?”

“I'm not sure if I should give out that information, sir. Perhaps when the news lines are free you could ask—”

“Come on. Just tell me. Not the details. Just tell me what happened.”

The voice dipped into a sensible range. “I
think
there was a plane crash somewhere, but I'm not sure. People have been running in and out all night, but they never
tell
me anything. I don't have any details—I'm in sales, not news—so if you could call back later, maybe some lines will be free? Or watch our nightwatch edition or our early-bird news at six
A
.
M
. I'm
sure
we'll have complete information by then.”