nose under my hand. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s give you a bath.”
Outside, using my best shampoo and the garden hose to wash a maniac’s gasoline out of my temporary dog’s coat, I suddenly started to laugh. How did I get here? I thought. Bravo took advantage of my lapse in attention to shake himself, covering me in foam and diluted gasoline, and I sat down in the mud puddle I’d created and hugged him to me. “You dope,” I said, still laughing. “Next time, you’ll rip his legs off and eat them as drumsticks.” Enjoying my tone, Bravo hit me in the face with his tail.
When he was clean, I climbed the rest of the way up the hill to open the waxy envelope and study the latest communique from the Incinerator.
Sweet dreams!!! it said. I crumpled it up and threw it.
My college notebooks, at least a hundred of them were piled on the floor of the smaller of the house’s two closets. They were all alike, flat blue hard-covered books filled with lined paper. I picked up as many of them as I could carry and staggered down the driveway to Alice as Bravo watched with the sympathetic expression dogs save for working humans. Then I went back up the hill, got some more, took everything I might need for two or three days-including my five remaining beers-put out food for Bravo, and left.
I needed to see if he’d been to Eleanor’s house, too. There was no way to be sure he knew where she lived, but I didn’t want her coming home from the hotel to any surprises. Alice purred with uncharacteristic smoothness through Santa Monica, heading south, and then carried me west, onto Windswept Court, toward the little house that Eleanor’s royalties funded. I parked Alice half a block down and did the rest of it on foot.
There were lights on in the house. A car I didn’t recognize had staked claim to the driveway, a big American gas-guzzler that reflected the boundless optimism of Detroit.
I smelled smoke briefly as I approached the house, an acrid, sharp smoke that was both familiar and unfamiliar. The hot wind blowing toward the ocean dissipated it before I could grab a second breath, but I knew Eleanor wouldn’t allow anyone who smoked inside her house.
An overgrown hibiscus crowded up against the picture window in front. The house had been built in the thirties, in an age when no one imagined that people might someday be lurking around in front of picture windows to get a look at the picture inside, and Eleanor had fed and watered that hibiscus religiously, using Billy Pinnace’s special ultra-wowie fish-emulsion mixture, to get the hibiscus to mask the window. She had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, and I cursed Billy Pinnace and all dead fish everywhere as I pushed my way through the sharp, brittle bush to get to the glass.
The first thing I saw was a pair of feet.
They were a man’s feet, clad only in argyle socks.
The second thing I saw was Eleanor, coming into the living room with a couple of wineglasses in her hand. She was smiling.
The third thing I saw was Eleanor seeing me. She gasped and dropped a glass, and then realized who it was, and said, very plainly through the glass although I couldn’t hear the words, “Oh, Lord.”
The fourth thing I saw, as he leapt out of his seat, was Burt. He goggled at me like a landed fish as Eleanor leaned down to pick up the unbroken wineglass from the carpet. I went to the door and used my key.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.” She stood in the hall with the empty glass in her hand, and Burt poked a cautious head around the doorframe behind her.
“You’re supposed to be in the hotel,” I said, pointing an accusing finger. She looked at it, and I followed her gaze to see the blood-soaked paper towel dangling from it like the flag of a defeated army.
“You’ve hurt yourself,” Eleanor said.
“Thanks for the news.”
“Um,” Burt said, “hello, Simeon.”
“You know each other,” Eleanor said, sounding faintly embarrassed.
“I’ll admit it,” I said. “But just barely.”
Eleanor looked at the finger again. “Be nice, please. This wasn’t anybody’s idea. Do you need a bandage?”
“He was at my house tonight,” I said. “I wanted to make sure he hadn’t been here, too.”
“Were you there?” she asked, her eyes widening.
“The Incinerator?” Burt asked, a gratifying two beats behind.
“No,” I said to Eleanor. “Yes,” I said to Burt. “The Incinerator. He left me a couple of surprises, and I thought he might have done the same here.”
“He didn’t,” Eleanor said.
“So I see,” I said, wondering how far I could throw Burt.
“That means he doesn’t know where I live,” Eleanor said triumphantly. “I can come home.”
“No, you can’t,” I said. Eleanor set her jaw, and I retreated. “What I mean is, please don’t. He’s got his own agenda. There’s no way for us to know what he’ll do next. And yes,” I added, “I’d love a bandage.”
“Right back,” Eleanor said, heading for the bathroom. Burt looked at me, and I looked at Burt.
“Well, well,” he said, coloring brightly.
“Go away,” I said, moving into the living room. I stumbled on something and looked down at his shoes. They had Velcro flaps in place of laces.
“You’ve got it wrong,” I said nastily. “It’s the Japanese who want you to take your shoes off at the door. Chinese couldn’t care less.”
“This Chinese could,” Eleanor said, coming back in with an assortment of tinctures, gauzes, and tapes. “I think it’s very nice.” I looked down and saw that she was barefoot.
“Is this the little girl,” I said, “who used to sleep in a new pair of running shoes to break them in? Is this the freckle-faced little girl who once took a shower-a shower I shared, by the way,” I said to Burt, “in her nice new running shoes because she figured the water would mold them to her feet?”
“Sit down,” Eleanor commanded, blushing, “and let’s see the finger.”
“It hasn’t been amputated,” I said, obeying orders and sitting in what once had been my chair. “You’ve got more junk than Florence Nightingale had at the Battle of Crimea.”
“There’s no need to be offensive,” Burt ventured. He caught my eye. “On the other hand,” he said promptly, “you’ve been hurt.”
“He’s not really violent,” Eleanor said to Burt, unwrapping my finger. “He just talks that way.” She looked at the cut. “It’s deep,” she said.
“ ‘No, ‘tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church door,’ ” I said,“ ‘but ‘tis enough, ‘twill serve.”
“That’s Shakespeare, Burt,” Eleanor said, swabbing at the cut with something red.
“I admire a man with a frame of reference,” Burt said gamely.
“Do you know one?” I asked.
“We were about to have some wine,” Burt said. “Would you like some?”
“Look,” I said, “I’m not going to be all Noel Coward about this. I’m going to be unpleasant.” Eleanor gave the bandage she was wrapping around my finger an unnecessary tug. “I know I’ll hate myself in the morning,” I continued, talking to Burt, “but right now, I hate you.”
Burt was on his way to the kitchen, but he stopped and turned to face me. “Like Eleanor said, nobody wanted this to happen,” he said. “Do you think this makes me comfortable?”
“Who cares?” I asked.
“Well, then,” he said, keeping his eyes away from the injured finger. Well, I was keeping my eyes away from it, too. Only women can look at a really deep cut. “Think about Eleanor.”
“That’s enough, both of you,” Eleanor said, finishing with my finger. She gathered up the medications and stood. “Burt was just leaving,” she said.
“Now, wait a minute,” Burt said.
“And I’m leaving with him,” Eleanor said. She was looking at the bandages in her hands. “Burt,” Eleanor said, “get the wine, would you? We’ll take the rest of it with us.”
Burt said something, but he left.
“Simeon,” Eleanor said the moment he was out of the room, “are you being careful?” She looked down at the bandages again and then dumped them on the floor.
“Careful? You’re back here, in this house, and you’re asking me-”
