themselves.
She would usually let the sky get too dark before she made it home, so she would have to come up the street running. She remembered the sound and feel as, breathing hard, she made her sneaker pound on the bottom step of the front porch, and she pushed through the screen door into the living room.
Her mother and the latest boyfriend would already be in the bedroom getting ready. Her mother’s skin would be pink and moist from the shower, the tight straps of her bra making depressions in the fat on her back. She would dance to tug the panty hose up over her hips. If the girl came in right at dark, her mother would be in a cheerful mood, the morning’s hangover and remorse erased by the afternoon’s nap, and her mind set on the adult evening that was coming.
The bathroom would be steamy. She remembered the boyfriend picking up the hand towel from the sink to wipe off the mirror so he could see to slide the razor along his bristly jowl, leaving a swath in the white shaving cream, pink and irritated but hairless, his mouth pursed and squeezed to one side to present a smooth, tight stretch of skin to the safety razor. She thought of it as a joke name for something that left small bright cuts on his chin so he had to stick bits of white toilet paper there, and let the red blood hold it in place.
It was a summer memory tonight because of the summer sky outside. The man in the memory changed, because there were so many of them. They were both a series and a progression, the nicer, younger ones all part of earlier memories, and the older ones coming later, when her mother’s body began to thicken and her skin to loosen and wrinkle. Each man was the same in every way that mattered—the drinking and the yelling—but they differed in small ways, like how much hair they had or what color it was, or their names.
The boyfriend would get ready, and be standing around getting irritable before her mother would really begin. She would go to the other bedroom she had converted to her closet in her panty hose and bra, and then begin to try on each of her dresses in front of a big mirror with a frame that was supposed to hang on a wall, but was propped against a chair at an angle.
Each night the dressing would proceed all the way to its end several times. She would choose a dress, put it on, then go into the bathroom to apply her makeup and brush her hair, and suddenly discover some invisible flaw in the way the outfit made her look or feel, and take it off again. The earrings, necklace, and shoes were specific to the outfit, so they had to go too. Then she would put on another dress and the same thing would happen. Eventually, she would announce she was ready and would emerge, suddenly impatient to go, as though someone else had delayed her.
The little girl would look at her mother in amazement. Already it was clear that they were not going to look alike. Her mother was short, with big blue eyes and skin like cream. The girl was tall and bony, with pale skin and stringy hair. Her mother would look at her on her way out the door as a kind of afterthought.
“Lock the door after us,” she would say. “Don’t open it for anybody.”
Her mother and the boyfriend would go out and stand on the porch until the mother heard the click, and then they would get into the car. Usually they would be gone until just before dawn. The girl would sit alone in the house, feeling the loss as the sky darkened and deepened.
Often she heard voices outside her house in the calm night air as people passed by. Sometimes they sounded as though they were young, even her age. She was forced to stay in, lying on her bed in the dark, listening, while they were out there doing things and knowing things that she could not.
She would sometimes get up and go into her mother’s room to look at the pageant trophies she had won. Her mother kept them in her own room, where the girl wouldn’t break them or touch them and make them corrode. She called them “my trophies,” just as an owner of a show dog would.
Nancy Mills had been inside this apartment every night for weeks. She’d had one problem turn up from San Francisco, but it had just been one of those rare coincidences that Bill Thayer had been here visiting his parents and seen her. The fact that it had happened once would seem to prove that it couldn’t happen a second time. It was just too unlikely. Besides, this was night. There were fewer people out, and the darkness would help protect her from being recognized. As she was pacing back and forth thinking about it, Nancy Mills had picked up her purse. She noticed it, gave herself permission, and walked to the door. She went out and closed the door behind her.
She didn’t know where she was going, and it didn’t matter. She had been staying out of sight since she had arrived, never going out after dark, going nowhere even in daylight but to the plaza, and she had not left this apartment for several days. She felt as though a rope had been tightened around her chest so she could barely breathe. As soon as she was on the street again, the rope seemed to loosen. The warm night air filled her lungs.
She walked to the plaza, used a pay phone to call a taxi, and waited for it outside Macy’s. She said she wanted a ride to La Cienega Boulevard in Hollywood. When the dispatcher asked for the actual building number, she didn’t know. When the dispatcher asked for the name of the nearest cross street, she didn’t know that either, so she said Sunset. He said a yellow cab would arrive in about fifteen minutes. Nancy looked around her and began to feel bored and awkward standing alone in front of the store, so she reached into her purse and found the notebook where she had written the policewoman’s phone numbers.
She carefully dialed the home number and waited, her eyes closed to help her concentrate.
“Hello?”
“Uh, hello,” she said. “I’m looking for Catherine Hobbes?”
“This is Catherine Hobbes.” The voice was high and feminine. It sounded like a teacher. Nancy wasn’t sure what she had expected, but this wasn’t it.
“Hi. My name is Tanya Starling. Mrs. Halloran told me that you had come by the apartment in San Francisco to speak to me, but Rachel and I had already moved away.”
“Yes,” said Hobbes. Her voice was tentative, almost preoccupied. Tanya knew that she was probably reaching to turn on a tape recorder or even pressing some button to tell somebody to trace the call. Nancy would have to do this quickly. Hobbes said, “I have been trying to reach you. We need to ask you some questions. Mrs. Halloran didn’t have a forwarding address for you. Where are you living now?”
“I’m still on the road. I stopped for the night, checked into a motel, and started to clean out my purse. I found the piece of paper where I’d written your number, and realized I should call you.”
“Then I need to have the exact location where you are right now.”
“I’m in Southern California, off the freeway in a small motel. I don’t know the exact address. I’m leaving for New York tomorrow, but I don’t know where I’ll be staying yet.”
“Please listen carefully. I want you to go to the nearest police station. Give the officer in charge my number. I’ll fly there to talk with you.”
“You know, that’s not possible tonight. Why don’t you just ask me your questions right now? I mean, my memory isn’t going to get any better staying up all night waiting for you.”
“I’m trying to help you, Tanya. But you have to cooperate, and you have to tell me the truth.”
“I called you, remember?”
“I know that you’re afraid. It’s not a bad thing to be right now. You had a relationship with Dennis Poole, and then he was murdered.”
“Are you implying that I had something to do with that?”
“I don’t know any such thing. Someone killed him, and they could be after you too. I want to hear your side of the story. I want to know anything you can tell me about Dennis Poole. I want to know why you decided to leave Portland right after it happened.”
“This is stupid. I’m just trying to be polite, return your call, straighten this out, and get past it. Rachel and I had planned for a year to go to San Francisco and start a business together. I wasn’t running. I didn’t know anything had even happened to Dennis until I talked to Mrs. Halloran. She was the one who told me.”
“I need to get through to you, Tanya. You and Rachel are both wanted for questioning in a murder investigation. You don’t seem to be grasping the seriousness of that.”
“Well, sure I am,” said Tanya. “That’s why I called, so you could cross my name off your list and go on to somebody who knows something.”
“I don’t think you’re understanding me. Even if you are telling the truth and you’re not withholding any information about the death of Dennis Poole, you could still be charged with fleeing to avoid prosecution, obstruction of justice, and about fifteen other things. They’re all serious, and they all involve jail time. I can make sure that those things don’t happen, if you will just do as I ask.”
“I will, if you’ll ask for something I can do. I’m a thousand miles away from you, heading in the other
