‘That’s OK. The only thing I’m smuggling under this shirt is a lifetime addiction to chicken-fried steak.’
‘These your boys?’ the security guard asked him as he patted Matty’s red and orange Hawaiian paunch.
‘Cubs from the Eighteenth Scout Troop. Don’t worry, they’ll only take about twenty minutes to wreck the place, then they’ll leave.’
The security guard grinned at him and slapped him on the back. ‘Have a good day, sir, and thank you for your co-operation.’
The cub scouts whooped and jumped and ran off to claim their seats on the tram. Irene Wallach came across, all spindly arms and spindly legs, with buck teeth and wiry black hair and sunglasses with white upswept frames. ‘This is the bit I like the best,’ she confessed, linking arms. ‘We can sit down and relax and we don’t have to worry about losing them.’
‘I’m getting too old for this,’ said Matty, heaving himself up into the second to back bench of the first tram car. The bench behind them immediately filled up with giggling Japanese girls and a young man in a Desert Storm shirt and mirror sunglasses who was almost twice Matty’s size.
‘Have we decided on a date for Chula Vista yet?’ asked Irene. She was wearing a loose pink blouse and Matty was disconcerted to see her left breast, as pale and as flat as a flapjack, with a raisin for a nipple.
‘Oh, you mean the cook-out? Ray suggested November twenty-third.’
‘I think we ought to concentrate on ethnic food. You know, something healthy, like stir fry, or tacos. Stay away from hot dogs and cheeseburgers and all those saturated fats.’
‘You’re not trying to make a point, are you?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Matty! We all love you the way you are!’
‘I know. A roly-poly figure of fun. Don’t you know why fat men laugh? It’s the only thing they can do to stop themselves from crying.’
The tram jerked and began to move. A tour guide with bouncy blonde hair and improbably white teeth picked up the microphone and said, ‘Welcome to Universal Studios, ladies and gentlemen and children! Today we’re going to take you on a trip into the magical world of the movies – a ride that you’ll never, ever forget!’
Kevin turned around to Matty and said, ‘We won’t forget it because we’ll never be able to go to the movies again and think that they’re true.’
‘Kevin, for Pete’s sake, stop being so pessimistic. Besides, didn’t you tell me you’d been on this tour once before?’
‘That’s how I know how disappointed we’re all going to be.’
Saturday, September 25, 10:32 A.M.
As the tram slowly descended the slope toward the lake where Jaws would appear, Kevin said, dolefully, ‘This is the lake where the great white shark comes out of the water and sprays everybody except that it’s only rubber and nobody ever gets hurt.’
‘Thanks, Kevin,’ said Matty. ‘That’s very reassuring. That’s also spoiled the surprise for everybody else.’
But the big young man sitting right behind Matty suddenly let out a whoop, clapped his hands, and shouted, ‘Woweee! Ain’t this something!’
Matty turned around and frowned at him, but the young man clapped his hands again, and stamped his feet on the floor of the tram. The Japanese girls who were sitting beside him looked alarmed, and edged themselves as far away him as they could.
‘This is the ride to glory!’ the young man yelled. ‘This train don’t take no backsliders, this train! This is where we get to see God, in all His majesty! Yes, sir! This is going to be a ride to remember, all right!’
He stood up in his seat, his belly almost knocking Matty’s cap off, and began to sway from side to side, clapping his hands with every sway, and letting out whoop after whoop.
The guide said, ‘Sir – you at the back of the car – yes, you sir. Will you sit down, please? No standing is permitted while the tram is in motion. That’s a city ordinance.’
The young man whooped again. ‘We’re coming to the Kingdom! We’re coming to the Kingdom! This train don’t take no unholy, this train!’
‘Sit down, sir! You’ll have to sit down!’
But now the young man leaned over Matty and grinned at the cub scout pack. ‘Do you boys know where you’re headed? Do you have any idea? You’re headed for the Promised Land, that’s where you’re headed, and ain’t you the lucky ones!’
The driver brought the tram to a stop, right next to Amityville Lake. On schedule – as part of the Jaws display, the fishing pier was dragged away from its moorings, into the center of the lake, and a row of oil drums bounced across the surface as if they were being pulled by the great white shark. But the driver climbed out of his seat and came back toward the end of the car, and at the same time the guide picked up her radio-telephone and called for security.
‘Sir, I want you to step down out of the tram,’ said the driver. He was over sixty years old, with gray hair, a gray moustache and a stoop. The young man looked down at him and let out another whoop.
‘This is destiny, old man. This is the force of nature. Ain’t nothing on this earth can stand up against the force of nature.’
Matty turned around in his seat. ‘Listen, you asshole. Get off the tram and stop upsetting all of these kids.’
The young man stared at him but all Matty could see in his mirror sunglasses was his own crimson face. Out on the lake, the row of oil drums began to bounce even faster toward the shoreline, but hardly anybody on the tram was watching.
‘You want to say hello to your maker?’ the young man asked Matty.
Matty stood up so that the two of them were standing belly to belly. ‘Do you think I’m scared of you?’ Matty challenged him. ‘I served in the Gulf, and I saw scarier camels than you.’
‘Oh, really?’ the young man retorted, but this time his tone was quieter and much more reasonable. ‘So how scary do you think this is?’
He lifted his fist and opened his fingers just a little and just for an instant, but it was enough for Matty to see the switch device that he was holding in the palm of his hand and the thin wire than ran down his arm and into the sleeve of his camouflage shirt.
‘You wouldn’t,’ said Matty.
But now the driver climbed up on to the boarding step and said, ‘Come on, sir. Until you get off, this tram’s going nowhere.’
The young man ignored him. ‘See this beer gut of mine?’ he asked Matty, even more softly. ‘What do you think it’s really made of? Fat? Wrong! It’s C4 – plasticized RDX.’
Matty turned to Irene Wallach. ‘Irene, get all the kids off the tram, now.’
‘What?’ she frowned.
‘Get all the kids off the tram and do it now. Please.’
‘Unh-unh,’ said the young man in the mirror sunglasses, shaking his head. ‘Nobody’s getting off. You’re all coming with me.’
Matty shouted, ‘No!’ and made a lunge for the wire that ran down the young man’s arm, trying to wrench it free. At the same time, Jaws reared out of the lake in a blast of compressed air, its eyes staring and its teeth bared. With the exception of Kevin, all the children screamed.
Saturday, September 25, 10:34 A.M.
The blast was heard five miles away in every direction – a dull, emphatic thud. The front car of the tram was blown apart so violently that there was nothing left of it but a blackened chassis and a surreal arrangement of twisted seats. Most of the second car was burned out, and hundreds of windows were broken, all over the lot.
Jaws, the great white shark, was wrecked even more comprehensively than it had been in the movie. All of the latex was blasted away from its frame, leaving a smoking, grinning skeleton.
But the human litter was so terrible that when the first police and security officers arrived at the scene, they couldn’t understand what they were looking at. As a Times reporter was later to write, ‘They looked not like cubs, but like cherubs, shot down by anti-aircraft fire.’
Seven
Frank rang the doorbell. Through the intercom
, Astrid said, ‘Hold on,’ and then she pressed the buzzer so that he could let himself in. He walked across the Mexican-tiled hallway and climbed the stairs. She was waiting for him outside apartment three, wearing a very short white muslin dress and bare feet, with silver rings on her toes. She was looking pale and fretful, as if she had taken too many pills.
‘There’s been another bomb,’ she told him.
‘I know. I actually heard it. I was out in the yard, putting out the trash. Then bamm! like somebody slamming a door.’
‘They said on the news that nineteen people were killed. Eleven cub scouts. They showed pictures. God, it’s so terrible.’
‘Hey, you’re shaking.’
‘I’m upset, Frank. I’m so upset. All those little boys.’
Frank closed the door behind them and laid his hands on her shoulders. ‘I know. As soon as I heard about it, I thought about all of their parents. Nobody should have to suffer like this. Not for the sake of some crazy idea about religion or politics or whatever.’
‘Do you think the same people could have done it?’
‘Those Arabs? Who knows. But who else could it be? The cops are pretty sure that it was a suicide bombing and Western terrorists don’t go in for blowing themselves up, do they? And you heard what they said yesterday about wrecking the entertainment industry.’
‘Do you want a drink?’ Astrid asked him.
He nodded. She went to the white wicker table on the opposite side of the room and poured out two long-stemmed glasses of Shiraz Cabernet. He could see her face in the mirror on the wall, and he was surprised how different she looked, in reflection. Perhaps it was the lack of symmetry that made her face so striking.
She brought him his wine. ‘They said that all of the studios are going to suspend their tours. And they’re closing down Disneyland.’
‘A little too late for that, don’t you think?’ said Frank. ‘The next time they’ll probably hit someplace totally different, like a TV studio, right in the middle of a game show or something.’
‘Eleven children killed,’ said Astrid. ‘And what’s it all for?’
The French windows were open. Astrid stepped outside on to the narrow tiled balcony and Frank followed her. Below them was a small shadowy yard with a stone fountain, overgrown with orange blossom. A warm ocean breeze blew across the rooftops and stirred her muslin dress, so that now and again Frank could see the curve of her bare bottom and her hip. ‘That’s the way to kill people,’ she said, almost as if she were quoting somebody. ‘Kill their children.’
‘They’ll catch them, especially after this.’
‘You really think so?’
‘Half of the LAPD is out looking for them, as well as the FBI.’
‘Yes, but who are they looking for?’
Frank shook his head, as if an insect had tried to fly into his ear. She spoke in riddles sometimes. ‘Did you really lie to me about your father and mother?’ he asked her.
‘Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.’
‘You’re teasing me.’
‘No, I’m not. I’m simply asking you to use your eyes.’ She leaned on the railing for a while, sipping her wine. Then she suggested, ‘Let’s go inside.’
He took off his shoes and they sat on the couch together, cross-legged, facing each other. He lifted his glass to her and said, ‘Salut, whoever you are.’ A curved reflection from her red wine danced on her lips, making it look as if she was smiling when she wasn’t.
‘How’s your wife?’ she asked.
‘No different. We went to the funeral home yesterday and saw Danny. That didn’t improve matters.’
‘What did he look like – Danny?’
‘What did he look like?’
‘I’m sorry . . . I was just curious. I never saw anybody dead before.’
Frank thought about it and then shrugged. ‘He looked like Danny but he wasn’t Danny, if you know what I mean. I saw my grandfather when he was laid out and I can remember thinking, why am I here, why am I saying goodbye to this . . . storefront dummy? My grandfather’s body was there but I knew my grandfather wasn’t. He was long gone.’
‘You’re right. A body without a spirit, it’s like an hourglass with no sand in it. It’s meaningless.’
He finished his wine and put down his glass. ‘Talking of spirits, I’ve arranged for Nevile Strange to come around to our house tomorrow and hold a séance.’
‘You’re kidding me.’ She peered at him more closely and then she said, ‘You’re not kidding me.’
‘He thinks he can get in touch with Danny – and one of Danny’s school friends, too.’
‘Whoo! Doesn’t your wife object?’
‘She did at first, but then her friend called her and they got to talking about it, and I guess her friend won her round. Lynn Ashbee, poor woman. There was nothing left of her daughter but her feet, still in their shoes. What kind of a world are we living in when we have nothing left to bury but our children’s feet?’
‘A very heartless world, Frank. Even more heartless than you know.’
They watched the television news. The latest casualty figures from Universal Studios were fifteen children killed, and seven adults. Over a hundred people of all ages had been seriously injured, and the damage to property had already run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not to mention the indefinite closure of Universal City to the public, and almost every other major attraction in Los Angeles.
An FBI press officer said, ‘Early tests have led us to speculate that the suicide bomber fashioned himself a corset or a false abdomen out of malleable plastic explosive to avoid detection at the gates. Yes, there was a dog there trained to sniff out explosives but in this case the bomber somehow managed to elude it. The explosive bears strong similarities to C4 – cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine – which has a less pungent odor than many other explosives.’
Frank switched off the television. ‘Shit. This is serious. It’s coming to the point where we’re not going to feel safe anywhere.’
Astrid leaned forward and touched his forehead, and then the tip of his nose, and then his lips. ‘Do you think you’re safe with me?’ she asked him.
He grasped her wrist to stop her from touching him anymore. ‘Any reason why I shouldn’t be?’
‘Because I think that you and I should think of becoming lovers.’
He looked at her narrowly, still holding her wrist, trying to read those stone-washed denim eyes. ‘I lost my only son less than three days ago. You lost somebody too, although you won’t tell me who it is. I don’t think I’m ready for this yet, even if you are.’
‘Meaning that you might be, given enough time?’
When he arrived home he found that Margot was preparing dinner for them both. She said, ‘Hi,’ and busied herself laying the kitchen table. He stood and watched her. Maybe this was her way of telling him that she might, in time, be able to forgive him. She was making wide noodles with fragments of poached salmon and Pacific Rim pesto, which he detested, but of course he had never told her that he detested it.
She had washed and brushed her hair and put on makeup and she was wearing her white silk Saks Fifth Avenue sweater with baggy sleeves and oatmeal-colored slacks. He recognized her perfume, too. Flowers, the same perfume that Astrid wore.
‘There’s some wine in the fridge,’ she told him.
‘Thanks.’
‘How was your meeting with Joe?’
‘Oh, fine,’ he lied. ‘They’re going to give me as long as I want.’
He poured himself a glass of cold Sauvignon and sat down at the kitchen table. Along the top three shelves of the white oak hutch stood rows of white plates and white milk jugs that Margot had thrown herself, at pottery class. Next to the hutch hung a painting of a red-haired woman covering her face with her hands. It was titled Blind Witness.
‘What time is Nevile Strange coming tomorrow?’ asked Margot as she spooned out pasta.
‘He said he’d try to get here by one o’clock. Hey �
�� that’s enough for me, thanks. Really.’
She served herself and then she sat down. He wound some pasta around his fork but he didn’t lift it up. Instead he found himself staring at Margot with an unexpected feeling of resentment. All right, she was talking to him. All right, she might be ready to forgive him. But he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be forgiven – not if it was going to be like this.
She glanced up at him with those big dark Audrey Hepburn eyes. ‘Is it OK? Your pasta?’
‘Sure, it’s . . .’ He waved a reassuring forkful at her.
‘Lynn will probably be here about twelve.’
‘OK, good.’
‘She’s going to bring a photograph of Kathy, like you said.’
He lowered his fork again. This wasn’t going to work. He felt so badly bruised, not just physically but mentally. Their life could never be the same, not after losing Danny. When he looked at Margot, he had the same feeling as watching a home video of a summer day that could never be relived. What had he read in The Process? ‘You will never pass this way again in a lifetime, effendi.’
‘You’re not eating.’
He frowned down at his plate.
‘You ought to eat something, Frank.’
He couldn’t speak. After a while, she stood up and took his plate away. He heard her in the laundry room, scraping it into the trash. She came back and stood close to him. ‘If you want to come to bed tonight, Frank . . .’
He cleared his throat. ‘Sure, I’ll just . . . watch a little television, you know.’
She stayed where she was. From the way she was fidgeting he could tell that she had something to tell him. ‘Frank . . . I do know that you didn’t let Danny die on purpose. What I said to you – the way I blamed you – well, you have to understand how I felt.’
He nodded, still looking down at the place where his plate had been.
‘I’ve been thinking about tomorrow, and if I can hear that Danny’s at peace . . . that’s all I care about.’
Frank nodded again.
Margot tore off a sheet of kitchen towel and blew her nose. She stood beside him for another minute or so, but he felt too bruised even to raise his head. Eventually she left him in the kitchen and went to the bedroom. When he passed the bedroom door on his way to his study, he saw that she had left it a half-inch ajar.
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