North of Montana

“The thing Claire Eberhardt wants out of life is a good lay,” spits Kathy Donovan before she can stop herself. “In high school she was the first to lose her virginity.”

I nod, returning the bitchy sneer. “There’s always one.”

“She wasn’t actually a tramp. She had a boyfriend, Warren Speca. He’s out on the coast now, too.”

“In Los Angeles?”

“Pretty close to there. The girls in the neighborhood threw her a going-away party. We gave her Warren Speca’s phone number in — what? — Venice, California?”

“That’s right.”

“I wrote it on a prescription. ‘Rx for horniness — Call Warren Speca.’ She died. She turned beet red.”

“She still had the hots for Warren?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. They weren’t in contact after high school. For a long time nobody knew where Warren was. He was into some stuff”—this time she catches herself—“I shouldn’t tell you about. Anyway, my mother was talking to his mother and it turns out he’s an electrical contractor in this place called Venice, California. I mean it was a joke — the only person Claire ever heard of in California was her old high school boyfriend. I thought it was a hoot.”

I agree with her and force a smile, making sure to get the correct spelling of Warren Speca’s name. We have balled up our plates and napkins and tossed our cans of Diet Slice into the trash. I’ve got Donnato’s meatball sub triple-wrapped in aluminum foil inside a waxed paper bag. I thank Nurse Kathy for her help and move toward the door. If I leave now and don’t get lost I can make the last plane.

“So what’s it like in California?” she asks as we hit the night air.

“Great. You can wear a T-shirt in December. Are you thinking of coming out?”

I hand her my card. She studies it, intrigued.

“Who knows.” She pockets the card and looks at me for the first time in an unguarded way. “I promised myself next year I’m moving out to my own place in Quincy.”

• • •

I have noticed that violence happens very fast, faster than the way they stage it in movies, faster than you’d think of it in your imagination.

Moments after leaving Nurse Kathy, I am at a traffic light at Cushing Avenue. I look down for half a second, checking the map for the fastest way to the airport, and am rear-ended with enough force to throw me almost to the steering wheel before the seat belt locks. A moment later the front-seat passenger window explodes and I am smacked so hard on the shoulder by a brick that my arm goes numb.

Gloved hands reach quickly through the shattered glass and grab my purse off the passenger seat.

“Suck my dick!” howls a male voice, then he and the purse are gone.

I get out of the car with my hand on my weapon but the late-model Oldsmobile that whacked me is already disappearing into the night. I can’t make out the plates. I stand there in the intersection in a daze like any other victim, flexing my tingling right hand. I take off the raincoat and shake out shards of broken glass, picking them out of my hair. The lady two cars back pulls out and takes off, she wants no part of this. My federal ID and plane ticket are in the blue canvas attache case in the trunk and thank God they didn’t take Donnato’s meatball sub. I get back in and toss the brick into the backseat. I am shaking like a dog. The pain is tightening my shoulder muscles into a spasm and my back does not feel great. I slam the car into gear and, swearing steadily, kick it up to fifty miles an hour as cold air pours in through the busted window, not stopping for traffic lights or asshole pedestrians, focused on only one thing: Get me out of this depressing fucking place and onto a plane for Los Angeles, knowing that Claire Eberhardt, leaving Savin Hill, was thinking the very same thing.

Forty minutes later, as I gimp toward the open door of the plane, I think again of Claire Eberhardt, possibly hurrying down this very same ramp, the toddler asleep on her shoulder, the little girl holding her hand. She believes she is escaping those dead-end streets, but instead arrives in California with the phone number of an old high school boyfriend written out like a prescription, a gift from the gals in the neighborhood. I begin to wonder if Warren Speca was the “wrong guy” she was talking about in the doorway, and if so, how many times she made the same “really bad” mistake.

If they had wanted to destroy her for saving herself and starting another life, they couldn’t have found a better way. That innocuous slip of paper was like a time bomb placed on the airplane. My buddies on the InterAgency Task Force Against Terrorism have come up with some pretty hardened amoral killers. But they are amateurs compared to the terrorists who operate with skillful deadly accuracy among our own friends; and, as I am soon to find out, within our own families.

PART THREE. TRAVELTOWN

TWELVE

THE VISIBILITY over Los Angeles is a million miles, the air so smooth I feel as though I am gliding home in an armchair, one of those heavy green damask armchairs from the thirties with fringe along the bottom, sailing over the crystalline city of Oz.

The Russian immigrant cabdriver tells me, “They predict a socko storm,” which must be some lunatic misinterpretation of English because there can’t be rain so late in the season, especially on a night so clear. We are driving up Lincoln Boulevard with all the windows open. It is midnight and I should lie back and dream, but my mind is ready for the start of the day, churning with a catalogue of urgent tasks, from calling the credit card companies to checking up on Wild Bill.

The cab lets me off at the main entrance to Ocean View Estates, where I borrow twenty bucks for the fare from the night guard, Dominico, who has been here as long as I have. Carrying the overnight duffel, the blue attache on the good shoulder, I walk the familiar maze of pathways to Tahiti Gardens.

The ritual is always the same: I’m glad to be home but instantly crave fresh air, opening the glass doors to welcome a humid breeze and the calming view of legions of sailboats peacefully moored under bright white spotlights.

Even after such a brief absence, my bedroom seems unfamiliar, a hotel with a few pieces of institutional furniture scrupulously dusted, on view for the next occupant; nothing personal or telling except a trace of White Linen perfume and an antique handmade quilt that covers the double bed.

If I were trapped in a fire and could save one thing, it would be this quilt. It belonged to my great- grandmother, Poppy’s mother, Grace, who was born in Kansas in 1890 and drove all the way to California in a Model T. The design is made of tiny hexagons in pale floral prints and you can plainly see the topstitching in coarse white cotton thread. The fabrics must have come from ladies’ house dresses and kitchen curtains that hung in farmhouses lit by kerosene lamps.

I remove my clothing, which smells like the inside of an airplane, and lie naked on this quilt, wondering about the circle of women who made it, imagining their fingers working all around the hem, callused fingers, lean hard fingers, joining scraps of fabric in weak yellow light; as long as they kept working they could hold in their hands the sweet connection of female companionship. Where is my connection?

I am thirsting for fresh orange juice. I am back in Los Angeles, back to the feeling of being watched, maybe by a camera mounted on a crane up there in the shadows of the ceiling, looking down at me on the bed. I should call Poppy. Outside the wind is nudging the brass chimes hanging off the balcony, sounding them like tiny warning-bell buoys for tiny distant boats. The camera is moving closer, a slow spiral ending with the pupil of my eye.