Walkers (5 page)

Her throat was constricted with
alarm. She slowly approached the shower, and knocked tentatively at the glass.
‘Susan? Suze? Are you okay?’

At that moment, there was a
hair-raising moan, and Daffy jumped away from the shower and whispered, ‘Oh,
Jesus.’ But then the moan was followed by an anguished, suppressed sobbing, and
Daffy tugged open the shower door to find Susan crouched on the tiled floor,
her legs drawn up, her hands clutched over her head, shivering and weeping with
delayed shock.

Daffy turned off the faucet, and
then reached over to the rail and dragged a large bath-towel off it, which she
wrapped around Susan’s shoulders.

‘Susan, come on; you’re upset,
that’s all. Susan, it’s Daffy. Come on, baby, let’s get you out of here.’

Susan numbly and shakily allowed
Daffy to lift her up, and half carry her out of the bathroom. They encountered
her grandmother as they came down the hallway, and for one split-second the old
lady was going to protest about Susan’s wet feet on the carpet, until she saw
how white and distressed Susan was, and how determined the challenge was on
Daffy’s face.

‘What on earth’s the matter?’

‘She fainted, that’s all. Her
period.’ For some reason Daffy was reluctant to tell Susan’s grandmother about
the body on the beach. Between them, they helped Susan into her bedroom, and
quickly dried her off. Susan’s grandmother searched through the untidy heaps of
clothes in her closet drawers, until she found a striped nightshirt, which
Daffy pulled over Susan’s head.

‘Maybe I ought to call Dr Emanuel,’
said Susan’s grandmother, anxiously.

Susan opened her eyes. Her
fragmented thoughts were beginning to slide back into place again, like the
film of a car-bomb explosion being played slowly in reverse. She found that she
could focus again, and that sounds coagulated into words. She recognised Daffy,
sitting on the end of the bed smiling at her. She recognised her grandmother,
peering at her from a safe distance through her gold-framed spectacles, as if
she were worried that whatever she was suffering from might be contagious.

‘Did I faint?’ she asked, with a dry
mouth. ‘I thought I was someplace else.’

Daffy squeezed her hand. ‘You’re
okay now. You’ll live. But you gave me a scare, I can tell you. Would you like
some coffee?’

Susan nodded. ‘That would be great.’

Her grandmother said, ‘I’ll fix it,’
pleased to have something to do that didn’t actually involve nursing. She
fretted endlessly about her own ailments, but she was totally squeamish when
other people were sick. She wobbled off to the kitchen in her bright pink
tracksuit, leaving the door open.

Daffy told Susan, ‘Get under the
blanket. You need to keep warm.’

Susan said, ‘I’m okay now. Really.’

‘It must have been shock, you know,
from seeing that body.’

Susan shook her head. Her hair was
tangled and wet. ‘It was kind of like shock, but there was something else too.
I don’t know how to describe it. I thought I could hear somebody’s voice, very
loud and echoing. Then I was travelling very fast; it was like I was in a
helicopter or something, speeding over the surface of the sea. It went so fast
that I couldn’t keep my balance, and I fell down. The next thing I knew, I was
back here with you.’

‘Shock,’ Daffy pronounced. ‘Now,
will you keep warm? The Pink Panther’s going to be bringing you some coffee in
a second.’

It took Susan a little over a
half-hour to stop shivering. Then she dressed slowly, in a green tee-shirt and
white pedal-pushers, and combed out her hair.

‘You’re sure you’re going to be
okay?’ Daffy kept asking her. ‘I mean, you don’t have to come to the barbecue
if you don’t want to. I won’t be offended.’

‘Daffy, I
want to
come. I’m not an invalid.’

‘You just take good care of
yourself,’ her grandmother instructed her.

‘Yes, you take good care,’ her
grandfather echoed.

They left the house and walked down
the sloping driveway in the hot mid-morning sunshine. Daffy lived ten minutes’
walk away, in one of the new houses on Jimmy Durante Boulevard. Usually she
borrowed her mother’s Seville to drive around in, but this morning her mother
had gone to her beautician in La Jolla to have her face jacked up another inch,
as Daffy put it.

They had almost reached the
intersection with the main road when a clear man’s voice behind them said,
‘Pardon me, are you Susan Sczaniecka?’

Susan and Daffy turned around. It
was the man who had been sitting on the wall outside Susan’s grandparents’
house. He was tall – taller than Daffy had imagined – with dark wavy hair. He
took off his sunglasses and both girls had to admit to themselves that he was
undeniably good looking. Thin faced, brown eyed, with one of those slightly
amused faces that can make you feel both excited and at ease – at least if
you’re a seventeen-year-old girl.

‘Didn’t I see you sitting on the
wall?’ said Daffy, in a tone that meant the man ought to establish his
credentials before either she or Susan would start talking to him.

‘Sure you did. I was waiting for you
to come out.’

‘Why didn’t you call at the door?’
asked Susan. She had to close one eye against the bright sunshine.

‘I didn’t want to disturb your
grandparents, that’s all. You know what they’re like.’

Susan frowned. ‘Sure I know what
they’re like. But how do you know what they’re like?’

‘It’s my job. I’m a newspaper
reporter. Here – here’s my card. Paul Springer,
San
Diego Tribune.’

‘You’re really a reporter?’ Daffy
asked him, squinting at the card.

‘Sure. Why else do you think I’ve
been staking out your grandparents’ house?’ ‘To rape us?’ Daffy suggested.

‘You don’t have to sound so
hopeful,’ grinned Paul.

Susan handed his card back. ‘Is this
about what happened on the beach this morning?’

Paul gave a reserved,
down-and-sideways glance. ‘Kind of. That’s part of it.’

‘How did you know about that? The
police said they were keeping it out of the media.’

Paul continued grinning and shook
his head. ‘If the police had their way,
everything
would be kept out of the media. Except successful drug-busts, of course, and
police baseball-team scores.’

‘I don’t really have anything to say
about it,’ Susan told him. ‘I didn’t see any more than anybody else.’

‘It was pretty horrifying, wasn’t
it?’ said Paul.

Daffy butted in: ‘My friend here
doesn’t actually want to talk about it, you know? She was very sick this
morning because of what happened. So, you know, do you mind?

We’re on our way home, and we’d just
like to get on with it.’

But Susan said, ‘Come on, Daffy,
it’s okay. He’s not bothering me.’

‘May I walk along?’ asked Paul.

They continued northwards along
Camino Del Mar, between the rustling yuccas, waving occasionally to kids they
knew who were hanging out beside the bars and hotels and stores along the
strip. One group was gathered around a VW Beetle which had just been resprayed
in ruby metallic flake and decorated with airbrushed pictures of surfers and
Western heroes. There was a strong smell of marijuana in the air, mingled with piña-colada
suntan lotion.

Paul seemed incredibly straight, and
yet Susan felt that there was something strange about him, something almost
unreal. When he spoke, she felt that she could anticipate everything that he
was going to say, and in a peculiar way she felt that she had met him before,
although she wasn’t sure when. It didn’t seem to be necessary to get to know
him. They talked from the very beginning as if they were long-time
acquaintances.

‘I’ve been assigned by the
Tribune
to write a series of feature
articles on young people’ said Paul. ‘Each of the articles is supposed to cover
a different aspect of the way that young people think and react. I guess you
might call it a kind of psychoanalysis of youth. Well, it sounds pretty corny
stuff, but I think that if it’s written and researched properly, it doesn’t
have to be. In fact, I think it could be really enlightening.’

‘You want to write about
me!’
asked Susan, more curious than
flattered.

‘Well – to come straight to the
point – one of the articles has to do with death, and how young people cope
with it.’

‘How do you mean?’ Susan asked him.

‘I mean, how young people come to
terms with losing somebody they love. Their parents, maybe, like you did...’

‘How did you know that?’

‘I’m sorry. I thought I recognised
your name when the police passed me the list of witnesses to what happened down
there on the beach. I looked you up in the morgue. Your parents were killed in
a car-crash, weren’t they, over at Lake Hodges?’

Susan nodded. ‘I didn’t realise I
was quite so famous,’ she said, not without a touch of bitterness, although she
knew that Paul hadn’t meant to upset her.

‘The thing is,’ Paul continued, ‘you
not only lost your parents, you saw a complete stranger lying dead on the
beach. It would be interesting for me to compare your reaction to each of these
events: the death of someone you loved, and the death of someone you didn’t
even know. I’d like to know how you really felt, and how you feel now.’

‘Isn’t that pretty ghoulish?’ Daffy
demanded.

‘Well, maybe it is,’ Paul admitted,
‘and if Susan doesn’t want to have anything to do with it – that’s as far as it
goes. But death is a part of life, and there isn’t any point in trying to hide
away from it. I think that other young people – if they read about Susan and
how she’s handled those tragedies – well, they may find it easier to cope with
their own experiences of death.’

Daffy pulled a face. ‘Sounds like
bull time, if you’ll pardon my French.’

But Susan said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe
we could talk about it some more.’

‘Maybe this evening?’ Paul asked
her. ‘Supposing I buy you dinner, on the
Trib.’

‘Okay, then. Where?’

‘You know Bully’s North? I’ll meet
you there at seven.’

Susan thought about it, and then
nodded yes. ‘Okay. The only thing is, I have to be home at nine-thirty. That’s
the house rule.’

‘I know,’ said Paul.

Daffy was frowning ferociously – her
‘for-Christ’s-sake-be-careful’ face. But Susan, without knowing why, felt safe
with Paul, and reassured. She didn’t even think to ask him how he could
possibly have known that she had to be home by half-past nine.

‘I left my car at the Oceanside
Hotel,’ said Paul. ‘I’ll catch you later, okay?’

He crossed the street, and made his
way back along Camino Del Mar towards the Oceanside. Susan watched him go,
while Daffy waited a little way away, an exaggeratedly sceptical expression
already prepared on her face.

‘What a bull artist,’ said Daffy.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Susan,
without even noticing the special face that Daffy had put on for her.

‘You don’t mean to say that you fell
for all that stuff about death and things? My God, Suze, he wants your body,
that’s all.’

‘Don’t be so ridiculous. He doesn’t
even know me.’

‘Oh, no? Well, he knows your name,
and he knows that your parents died in a car-crash, and he knows that you were
down on the beach this morning, and he knows that you live with your
grandparents, and he knows what time you’re supposed to be home, and he also
seems to know that your personal favourite restaurant is Bully’s North. Now, if
he’s telling the truth, he only got your name from the cops about an hour ago.
How did he find all
that
out in just
one hour?’

Susan looked towards the ocean,
glittering between the buildings on the opposite side of the road like smashed
diamonds. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Well, don’t
you care!
I think it’s scary.’

‘No,’ said Susan, and in her own
mind she was quite sure of this. ‘It’s not scary. But something’s going to
happen. Something’s going to change. I can feel it.’

‘Brother!’ said Daffy, shaking her
head. ‘The lightning bolt of true love has struck you straight in the brain.’

‘No,’ Susan emphatically. ‘It’s more
important than love.’

G
il swerved his Mustang into the
parking-lot across the street from his father’s Mini-Market, gunned the engine,
and then switched it off. He sat where he was for a moment or two, thinking,
and then he hopped out of the driver’s seat, and crossed over Highway 101,
jingling his car-keys in his hand.

The Mini-Market was a single-fronted
store, wedged between the Mandarin Coast Chinese restaurant and Freddy’s
Instant Print Service. It was the kind of store that sold absolutely everything
from ice-cream to cans of Chef Boy-ar-dee Spaghetti Bolognese to shoe-laces to
golfing hats to Jewish get-well cards. It had a wonderful aroma to it; an aroma
of feta cheese and Hungarian salami and penny candy and Superman comics. Gil’s
father was a qualified engineer, and could have brought in four times as much
money designing braking systems for hospital trolleys and hydraulic controls
for locomotives, but he had dreamed about owning a store like the Mini-Market
ever since he was a kid, and he wouldn’t have lived out his life any other way.