Wavewalker

by Stella Duffy

  Saz shook her head and wiped the crumbs from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Look, I really don’t know what to say. How much to say. You seem really nice Rose, but … I just don’t know how much I should give away.”

  “As much as you want. It really won’t make any difference to me. I have no contact with Max and no desire to be touched by him. Whatever you say will go no further than this room. These rooms. That hill. The ocean. Unless it affects my baby, of course?”

  “I don’t think it does. At least not directly.”

  “Good. And whether you believe it or not, we’re protected here. The sea to wash us clean and the air to fly us clear and the rock,” Rose said, patting the floor, “to ground us and make us air and fire girls see some sense.”

  Saz smiled at this long, thin giant of a woman describing herself as a girl. With her hair tumbling down her back and smiling unmade-up eyes, she made no concessions to the passing of time. Admittedly she was not even that much older than Saz, though certainly with enough years to be the mother of a grown womanchild. Then, taking a deep breath and hoping she wasn’t wasting her time on someone who might not know anything after all, she started at the very beginning.

  CHAPTER 29

  When she’d finished, Rose looked up, her face even whiter than usual.

  “He hasn’t stopped then.”

  “Stopped what?”

  “Killing people.”

  “Fucking hell! I mean, um, sorry … what?”

  “There’s no need to apologize. Oh God. You know, Max, he … well, you know …”

  “No Rose. Actually I don’t think I do. Just what do you mean by ‘killing people’?”

  “Well, I mean helping people kill themselves. See, when I first was at the House, there was this guy, Michael? And I was in love with him. I was only just seventeen, I was pregnant. I’d been in San Francisco for a month or so. Anita found me and took me home.”

  “To the House?”

  “Yeah. Well, it was better than my own home where they’d kicked me out. Sixteen-year-old girls just don’t get pregnant to black men in Bellefontaine, Ohio.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought they were supposed to get pregnant to any men.”

  “Not in 1971 anyway. Actually, I don’t suppose they do now, either. But black man, white woman? That’s the kind of prejudice America’s built on.”

  “And the rest of the world.”

  “Yeah, I guess. So I left – or was kicked out – a little of both. I decided to go to San Francisco because it was where the flower people were.”

  “Just like in the songs?”

  “Sure. Only I was just a greyhound bus away. Actually it was three buses and far too many truck stops. Easy. Or it should have been, unfortunately I’d missed that particular bus by a couple years. Charlie Manson had come and gone by then and the whole hippy ideal was being questioned – even by the hippies. People weren’t exactly dancing in the streets, San Francisco isn’t that warm all year round and I’d landed there with hardly a cent and a rapidly swelling belly. I met Anita at the zoo, she took me in, made me a part of the House and within twenty-four hours, I’d fallen in love with Michael.”

  “Was it reciprocated?”

  “Michael was gay.”

  “Then he’d come to the right city?”

  “I don’t know, honey. Seems all the misfits found Max. Michael was gay but not cool about being gay.”

  “I thought being gay was always cool in San Francisco?”

  “Sure, it’s a nicer place to be out – or so I understand – but the environment can’t make it better if you’re not OK with it yourself. You’d know that?”

  Saz smiled.

  “I didn’t know I was that obvious – I thought I grew out of my dyke uniform in 1984.”

  “You’d certainly pass, but you have a very proprietary use of the word ‘gay’. You don’t say it so it means ‘them’.”

  “I wouldn’t want to either, I’ve been out so long I wouldn’t know how to go back in. This Michael, he didn’t come out happily?”

  “He didn’t come out at all. It was all hidden and pretending straight.”

  “Pretending with you?”

  “Yeah. Not that I didn’t know, but for me at that time, any man to latch on to was better than none. And unfortunately I chose two.”

  “Two?”

  “I’m not proud of it, but for the first couple months I was in the House I was also having sex with Max.”

  “Really?”

  “He was a good lover. A great lover actually. I thought he was wonderful, thought he knew everything. But of course I didn’t expect Max to actually talk to me as well. I was getting sex from Max and affection from Michael. I hadn’t yet worked out that I was entitled to expect both from one man. And Michael was very sweet. He and I kissed and cuddled and he thought no one knew he was gay, so…“

  “He was blindingly obvious?”

  “Exactly. He was having an affair with Chris, another guy in the House and they were planning to leave together – of course, I didn’t know this at the time – and then, one night, Michael just disappeared. There was a big fuss and Max told us all that Michael had declared his undying love for him.”

  “For Max?”

  “That’s what he said. And it wasn’t really beyond belief. Max was beautiful. Very charismatic. Max said that Michael was in love with him and when he realized it wasn’t reciprocated, he must have run away.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I think Max made Michael kill himself.”

  “You do?”

  “See, Max told us all that Michael had left but, years later when we’d got away from the House, Anita told me that Michael was dead. She said he’d killed himself on the night that Max told us he’d run away. She said Max had ‘taken care of everything’ because he didn’t want anyone from outside coming in and disturbing the House. The House, the Process – they mattered more.”

  “And what did the others think?”

  “We all took Michael’s disappearance hard. It meant we didn’t ask a hell of a lot of questions. Later though, once I knew Max had helped Michael to kill himself, then I knew it wasn’t my fault.”

  “Does it have to have been because of Max? It seems a bit extreme, don’t you think he could have really wanted to die?”

  “No I don’t. See, Michael hadn’t been happy as a teenager and yeah, he wasn’t really OK with the gay thing either, but since he’d been with Chris, I thought he’d been a little better, and … well, he told me he loved me. He was really looking forward to the baby. I don’t mean love like that … we both knew it wouldn’t be that, but he said he wanted to be the dad. I don’t think he was lying. He was sad and he was confused and, for all I know, he may well have been in love with Max, it wouldn’t surprise me. As I said, Max is very attractive.”

  “And very straight?”

  “I’m not the expert but I certainly don’t think Max is gay. At the same time though, I’m just as sure that Michael didn’t mean to kill himself. Not even for Max. I think that Max somehow made him do it and then tidied it all away. And if that is so, then maybe Max did the same with these other people?”

  “Look, hang on, I really don’t understand. I mean, why would someone as well-respected as Max, with so much to lose … why would he run those risks?”

  Rose picked up the empty trays and took them through to the kitchen.

  “I guess you have to weigh it all up. If Michael was going to spoil the balance of the House and if maybe this girl in England was likely to do the same – well, Max doesn’t care about anything as much as he cares about the Process. You have to admire him, the dedication – it’s all paid off. And he had to overcome so much resistance to get it off the ground – from his family to the State Medical Board – it wasn’t easy. I just can’t see Max letting someone get in the way of that.”

  “So why didn’t you call the police?”

  Rose t
urned to Saz and laughed.

  “And tell them that I, astrologer, hippy and single parent, thought that Dr Maxwell North – of the Boston Norths – made a young gay man commit suicide? I don’t know about you Sarah, but I do know that many straight men think being gay is a good reason for killing yourself. And who’s going to believe me? But if you could get some real evidence, that’s another story…”

  Rose trailed off and looked out at the ocean, steadying herself against the wide wooden window frame. Saz tried to stop herself but a yawn shuddered out anyway as she asked, “OK, so you didn’t tell, but what about Anita and Jasmine?”

  Rose smiled at her.

  “Look, I’ll run the tub for you and then you can wash and rest up a little.”

  “But I need to get on – I’m going to Idaho to talk to Anita’s sister.”

  “I understand that, just listen. You’re too tired to do anything right now. Take a bath, have a short sleep. While you do that I’ll pack some food, call the bus people and see what’s available. Then I’ll take the rental car back for you and take you to whatever is going to get you to Idaho fastest – with a sleep on the way.”

  “But I… “

  “It’s cool, I’ll call Julia and let her know you’re on your way, we’ve had a little contact over the years and she’ll be glad to know someone’s finally doing something about all this. So, you’ve got as far as the journey to Sacramento to hear what I know about Anita and Jasmine. There isn’t a whole lot actually, but I’m sure you’d rather get it part-awake than half-asleep?”

  Saz grinned at Rose and shrugged her shoulders.

  “Lead me to the bathroom.”

  CHAPTER 30

  While making Michael kill himself had been somewhat disturbing for Max, it wasn’t really that difficult to achieve. They were living in the same house, Michael was completely dependent on Max and Max knew that he could ask Michael to do anything he wanted. And he did.

  Anita and John had been more difficult. Their hasty departure a few months after Michael’s death had caused a huge amount of disruption. The ensuing problems took weeks to die down, Max had to work for long hours on the new House dynamic, on the remaining members and especially on himself so that he again appeared to be completely in charge. Eventually though, largely thanks to Max and the blossoming talents of Paul and Jake, the House got back to normal – better than normal, since Max and Anita were no longer regularly arguing and a year later, Max’s future seemed secure enough to allow him to move to London and begin planting the seeds for the British version of the House.

  Max left the States, began his new life in earnest and felt that his past – at least the past he didn’t want to acknowledge – was well and truly behind him. A difficult time that had nonetheless set him up perfectly to conquer Britain, hardening his resolve and fostering his belief that his Process was the only way. All the more disturbing then when, three years after his arrival in London, having set in motion the beginnings of the Toronto House, after successfully handing the San Francisco House over to Jake and having more or less excised those difficult early years with Anita from both his real and remembered CV’s, and just as he was beginning to build up a fairly impressive client list of minor royals and major celebrities, the first dangerous call came in. Out of the blue Anita contacted him at his London practice and told him she needed money. Max knew Anita well enough to know that this wouldn’t just constitute a one-off payment and that he would have to deal with her face to face to sort things out.

  Two months after their flamboyant society wedding, Max told his brand new wife that Anita needed help. Confronted with the story of his ex-girlfriend who was the mother of the baby he had delivered – while believing it to be his, Caron couldn’t possibly object to the return trip, knowing Max’s story of how heartbroken he had been when Anita told him the truth back in San Francisco. Caron told her husband to fly to the States and sort it all out. She paid for his tickets. She took him to Heathrow and wished him bon voyage.

  Max traded in the tickets at the airport. Instead of San Francisco, he flew direct to New York and booked into a hotel there to cover his tracks. He then flew to Idaho where he stayed just two nights with Anita and John. They were living in a squatted farmhouse with no electricity and no heating, their hippy ideals transported into a dubious plan to give them a home and security. The owner, who lived in a much more prosperous farmhouse seven miles down the unlit road, had no objections to them living in the almost ruin, as they had assured him that within a year or so their work on the land and some other “investments” would mean they would have enough capital to buy the house from him along with the five acres of fallow land it stood in. They certainly did need money, reality not having been as kind to Anita’s theories of universal providence as it had to Max’s counter-culture implementation of the Protestant work ethic. John and Anita however, did not want a loan, or even a gift. They had a carefully worked-out blackmail scheme that would entail Max sending them £2,000 a month. Forever. As Anita put it to Max in his first discussion with them, “You know, we did the work in the House for you, we helped you discover your theories, now you’re doing so well, we should benefit from them too. After all, you’d still be in Boston if it weren’t for me.”

  Max argued with them both, even offered to give them the deposit for the house and land, and further help by guaranteeing a bank loan to set their development plans in motion. After a morning of fighting with Anita, Max and John went for a long walk. John explained that, now he had married Anita, he wanted to “do right by her”. To make their lives secure, to make a safe home for Jasmine. He told Max that he would have been prepared to accept the loan but that Anita really saw the Process as being as much to do with her as with Max. She honestly believed she was entitled to benefit from the regular income it generated and she wouldn’t be fobbed off with just a single payment. The two men talked for hours, then over dinner that night, Max tried to talk to Anita again, he agreed that to a large degree his present success was very much due to her influence, but he disagreed that he should have to pay her for it. They argued through the meal, Anita getting more vehement the more wine Max poured for her. John refused the alcohol but tired himself out anyway with several joints. Max stayed sober. The three of them went to bed with the situation unresolved and Max’s return flight to New York booked for the next afternoon.

  That night, Max lay on his bed for three hours until he heard the sounds of Anita and John’s lovemaking die away and their rhythmic, sleeping breathing through the thin wall beside his head. He then got up, quietly walked into their room and killed them both with a lethal overdose of heroin, John while he slept stoned and heavy, and Anita as she looked into the eyes of a man she had once loved.

  He left Anita and John in their bedroom and went to the spare room where he’d been sleeping. He washed the syringe, took off his thin surgical gloves and then washed his hands thoroughly. That done, he put on clean gloves and went back upstairs to John and Anita’s room, slowly and methodically going through all their cupboards and drawers – the few that there were. John was already dead and Anita was comatose, he had no need to worry that they might wake up. He did the same downstairs in the kitchen. When he had collected every letter and note about himself that he could find – there wasn’t much, just a note about his arrival time, a few photos of a holiday long ago and a couple of old letters he’d sent Anita when she first left the House – he put them in his briefcase with the syringe and locked it. He put his bags in the car. He let the cats and dog out into the yard and collected three cans of petrol from his car. He walked through the house spilling petrol everywhere, but especially in the hallway outside John and Anita’s bedroom. At the back door he stripped off his clothes and threw them behind him into the petrol-soaked kitchen, washing his hands again with the garden hose and walked naked to his car.

  He slowly dressed in the clothes he’d left sitting on the back seat, took out his father’s pipe, filled it with tobacco and lit it
. He was tempted to actually smoke the pipe, but he knew too much about the dangers of tobacco to do that and threw it through the open kitchen window. He stayed long enough to see the smouldering tobacco catch light and then the fire destroyed his clothes and spread quickly through the rest of the house. He drove off as John and Anita’s bedroom went up in flames. The pair of charred bodies lying in a burnt-out bed would look just like any other couple of dead fire victims. If the small town police made an effort they would find that John had died before the fire and, Max hadn’t bothered to check before he left her, maybe Anita had died after – asphyxiated in her sleep and without even the chance to wake up and acknowledge that she was dying. Or maybe they both just died of an overdose while the place went up in flames – a gruesome suicide pact. What Max knew for certain was that none of the local officials would waste too much time raking over the ashes of a couple of dead drug addicts.

  By the time Max arrived back in New York, the police were sifting through what was left of the still smouldering house and the local busybodies were discussing the unsurprising fate of the “godless hippies”. The identification was confirmed by their dental records and the sad news conveyed to their families. What Max hadn’t reckoned on was that the local police were much more interested in catching the arsonist, which they did about six months later after another two arson attacks on local barns. This wasn’t the first fire in the area and the police logically assumed they were all down to the same troublemaker, doubling their efforts to find him. When they did, catching Morgan Davis in the act of setting fire to the small local drugstore, he admitted to the barn burnings but said he’d never been near the hippies’ house. He got life anyway.

  Michael’s suicide and Anita and John’s murders were happily buried in the past as far as Max was concerned. Difficult but necessary adjustments had to be made occasionally, for the far greater purpose of the Process of course, and these had been just those sort of adjustments. Max had expected Michael would try to kill himself, had encouraged him to do so. Michael’s infatuation with Max was becoming apparent to the House and beginning to make waves. Max was prepared to give his whole being to furthering the cause of the Process and, having finally started on his mission, he certainly wasn’t prepared to let a mixed-up kid like Michael get in the way. When Anita and John had tried their little blackmailing trick, they too had found that Max’s belief in his work, its future and power, meant that their banking scheme was as nothing compared to his single-minded dedication to his purpose.