Dead Lines

by Greg Bear

  Two women Peter did not know—matronly, in their early forties—carried Tupperware bowls of potato salad and green salad and a foiled tray of lasagna up the walk and into the kitchen. Four other unfamiliar faces drifted by and were introduced, all male and in their mid-to-late fifties. The guests shook hands with Peter, stood awkwardly in the living room, and circulated past the bronze plastic urn, giving it sidelong glances.

  “I’m glad Phil showed up,” Lydia whispered to Peter in the kitchen. Peter watched her closely. “They had him for two days before they called me,” she said. “I don’t know why they didn’t call you.”

  “You kept his last name,” Peter said. Lydia brushed his shoulder with her arm. She smelled cool and nervous, beneath the haze of tobacco. If she had not smoked for thirty years she might still be beautiful. She faced him square and her expression turned to concern. “You look bad, Peter. Maybe you shouldn’t have stayed here last night.”

  “It was not a comfortable evening,” Peter admitted.

  “Spooky?” she asked, piquant.

  He awarded her a thin smile for the jab.

  “I doubt it was Phil,” Lydia said. “He’s long gone. This world never did suit him. I didn’t suit him. But you know, even so, I kind of lost it yesterday,” she suddenly confessed, her eyes bright. “I had a little fit. I started shouting his name, in the empty house. Isn’t that strange? Just blew out my grief. I felt better after. I didn’t know I still gave a damn.”

  Peter’s eyes turned warm again. “Where were you when that happened?”

  “In his bedroom. Looking at all the empty shelves. Why?”

  “Standing at the foot of the bed?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “It doesn’t,” Peter said.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Lydia said with a shrug.

  She called the guests into the living room. The room was not crowded. Three of the men stepped up to the mantel and offered half-accurate descriptions of Phil, short, false literary tributes. The second called him a neglected talent. The third spoke fondly of a short story that Phil had not in fact written.

  Lydia thanked them quietly. Peter spoke for a moment about their friendship, saw eyes glaze, and felt his throat get thick with emotion. None of them had known Phil well. Phil was not famous enough to want to suck up to, not in town often enough to make a strong impression; and none of them had known about the house.

  They then stood around eating sandwiches and potato salad on chipped plates from Phil’s sideboard. The two gay male writers took the opportunity to step out on the porch to smoke.

  The four men Peter did not know left quickly when they realized there was to be no liquor. Phil would have left as well, Peter thought. The two on the porch returned and wanted to look around the house, examine the artifacts and old mystery pulps and Phil’s books, but Peter politely put a stop to that by saying the best of the collection was in boxes now, not much to see. Phil would not have liked strangers pawing his prize possessions. They seemed mildly affronted. Lydia politely accompanied them down the drive, back to their car.

  The matronly younger women stayed to clean up. Peter helped stack the old plates on the drying rack beside the sink. Only then did they introduce themselves. The redheaded woman with a plump, pleasant face was Hanna; the mousy-haired one with an expression of peaceful vacancy was Sherry.

  “We only knew him to talk to a few times,” Hanna said. Sherry nodded. “He was nice. Sherry wants to write, but neither of us have published much.”

  “We keep journals,” Sherry said.

  “We don’t write real books, like Phil,” Hanna said.

  Lydia returned to the kitchen and sat on the stool. “That’s that,” she said.

  “Where did Phil die?” Peter asked.

  “Does it matter? Jesus, Peter.” Lydia stared at him with large, expressionless eyes. “They didn’t tell me—the ME’s boys, I mean. Neither did the cops.” She tongued her upper teeth, picked at a piece of lettuce with a fingernail, then concluded softly, “Not in any of these rooms, I guess.”

  Hanna and Sherry regarded each other with bowed lips.

  Peter took Lydia aside, into the living room. “Did you do anything here yesterday I should know about?” he asked.

  “Another odd question. You look odd, Peter.”

  “Humor me.”

  “I made arrangements. I told you. I had my moment, my grief thing, then got ready for what has turned out to be a truly sad little shindig. By the time you arrived, I was completely worn out. What is wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know,” Peter said. Hanna and Sherry exchanged glances in the dining nook.

  Lydia shuddered. “Don’t creep me out anymore,” she said. “This house already feels weird with a beard. I don’t want to stay any longer than I have to.”

  Peter could feel it, too. The same quality that he had sensed, or not sensed, while driving north in the Porsche. The deeper silence that made quiet seem loud.

  “Do you think Phil is still here?” Sherry asked softly, trying for delicacy and not succeeding. Her cheeks pinked.

  “He might have wanted to stay with his books and magazines, wouldn’t he? It’s such a fine collection,” Hanna observed.

  “The house is quiet, not noisy. Right, Peter?” Lydia asked.

  “Mostly,” Peter said.

  Lydia squinted at him. “Whatever Phil was, he was not quiet,” she said, walking to the mantel. She touched the urn with a long finger. “If he was here, he’d be talking our ears off about this and that.”

  They returned to the kitchen, where the matronly women gathered up the bowls and dishes of leftover food. “All done,” Hanna said, seeing boredom in their near future. She folded and draped the dish towel. “We should be going. I came with Lydia, but I can go back with Sherry.”

  “Go on ahead,” Lydia said. “I need to talk some more with Peter.”

  CHAPTER 10

  THE DUSK SKY over the hills faded through shades of peacock blue, distant and serene. After the curious pair had left, Lydia took a seat on the porch swing and lit up a cigarette. Peter stood by the rail.

  “He didn’t leave a will,” Lydia said. “I never heard about any family. I don’t know who this stuff belongs to. I suppose the state will take it all eventually. So you should pack up whatever you think is rightfully yours. I could try to sell his books in the city and send the money to whoever you think should get it. Myself, I don’t want any of it—books or money.”

  Peter had never made out a will and did not blame Phil for the oversight. “You should hire a lawyer,” he suggested.

  “I’m his ex, not his wife. I suppose some of this is community property, but I don’t know what, and certainly not the house. I never saw this place. I just want shut of it.”

  “I understand,” Peter said.

  “You should look around. Maybe there’s a little key or a combination on a piece of paper. Maybe he left a document in a bank box somewhere and it all belongs to you. That would be great. A load off.” She waved her cigarette in the gathering dark.

  “Something is just not right here,” she added a minute later. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Peter, but . . . is it you? Because the house did not feel this way before you arrived.”

  Peter shook his head. “I’m just a screwed-up old friend of the deceased,” he said.

  Lydia glared at him in the gathering dark. “So what did you think I was doing here, casing the joint? Waving my juju wands to exorcise poor Phil and move in?”

  “I’m sorry I asked. It was a rude question.”

  “I have a lot of baggage, but none of it has to do with this house. Just with Phil. We were not good for each other. But you asked for a reason. I know you well enough, Peter.”

  Peter could not bring himself to describe what he had seen. So he compromised. “I felt your grief here last night,” he said. “I’m not psychic, but it was here. Pretty obvious, too. That’s all.”

  “Well, I’ll be
darned, Peter Russell. You’re a sensitive man after all.”

  “I actually went to a medium once,” Peter said sheepishly, digging the hole a little deeper.

  Lydia stubbed out the cigarette. This time, she left the butt in the sand-filled can. “Really?” she asked, savoring this breach in Peter’s wall. “Do tell.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “After Daniella?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lydia nodded. “We learn our lessons. Phil was one of my lessons. I do not do well with nice, nervous little men. Mean and self-assured, that’s my style.”

  “Hank Wuorinos came over to visit yesterday. He’s off to Prague on a film shoot.”

  Lydia’s face hardened. “Why mention him?”

  “He remembered you and Phil.”

  “Did he tell you I fucked him?” she asked.

  “No,” Peter said.

  “I was crazy, Peter. I hated Phil. I hated men in general. Phil talked about nothing but your goddamned movies and model shoots and being your guest at the Playboy Mansion, that stupid cartoon thing, you introducing him to Hef and meeting Miss October or whatever. That was the high point of his life. Do you know what that made me feel like?”

  “No,” Peter said, folding his arms.

  “Like spoiled leftovers. Then this innocent, beautiful young man comes into the house, I don’t know where Phil found him, but we put Hank up, and he was so sweet. I told myself I could start all over again, I could feel something with this boy. It was a bad season, Peter. I hope Hank remembers me fondly, because that was the beginning of the end for me and Phil.”

  “I’m sorry,” Peter said.

  “Poor Phil,” Lydia mused, pushing out her lips. “Having to ogle all of Peter Russell’s naked ladies.” She took a smoker’s dialog beat, picking at a flake of tobacco on her tongue. “How could anyone compete with your fantasy life?” She said this with a sad but radiant smile. He had never seen her like that, glowing with the short-lived brilliance of a bulb about to burn out. She stood and hugged him. “You charming bastard,” she whispered in his ear. Then she jogged down from the porch. “It’s all yours, Peter.” She opened the door to the Volkswagen and turned to wave cheerily at the house. “Good-bye, Phil! TTFN. Ta ta for now.”

  With two quick honks Lydia backed out, spun around, narrowly missing the Porsche, and roared down the road and around the willow trees.

  The stars came out.

  Peter pushed back from the porch rail and puffed out his breath. He could not stay in the house, not another night. He had been taken by an idea, however, listening to Lydia: not a pleasant idea, but more than a hunch. Before he left, he had to explore.

  He walked down the steps, his shoes tapping hollow drumbeats in the dark.

  He knew where Phil might have gone to die.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE LAND BEHIND the house stretched for a hundred yards before meeting a wobbling wire fence, the end of the property, Peter presumed.

  The night was beautiful, not very cold. Peter left his suit coat in the car.

  The rough ground behind the house was covered with oat grass and scrub. A packed-dirt drive skirted a run-down toolshed and pushed up to a large old barn, slant-roofed, gray, and rickety. Someone had once kept horses on the property. Behind the barn rose low hills and a broad sweep of stars around a brilliant orange rising moon.

  Peter followed the rutted drive, noting dark oil stains on the center hump. The old Grand Taiga had always been incontinent. He found the motor home parked behind the barn, out of sight from the house and half covered by a blue tarp. The exposed rear half gleamed white. Peter had always possessed good night vision, despite being nearsighted; he could make out the license plate number, the long awning rolled and tucked up against the roofline, the door. A long strip of plastic police ribbon lay discarded before the door.

  Now he was sure. Phil had walked out here to die. Or perhaps he had planned to sleep in the motor home before making another trip south to pick up more stuff. A few days later, perhaps the mailman had knocked to deliver a package, and discovered that the house door was open. Even in Tiburon’s countryside, leaving a door unlocked was not wise.

  The mailman had called out several times, walked around the house to check the back . . .

  Peter could piece together the rest of the story.

  The Grand Taiga’s cold metal door handle turned easily. He swung the door wide and held his breath for a moment, then sniffed. The interior smelled musty, faintly ripe, as if the sewage tank had not been emptied. He pulled back and leaned against the metal side, thinking.

  The door swung closed on its piston.

  Peter looked across the field to the house. A breeze from the Bay was rapidly cooling the land. Out in the long oat grass, insects tried to muster some enthusiasm.

  He opened the door again, then grabbed a vertical metal grip and hoisted himself inside. The smell wasn’t so bad. More like a weak fart. Certainly not strong enough to drive him out. He switched on the interior lights. Muddy boot prints and straw had been tracked on the floor. Phil had always kept the motor home immaculate. These, then, were police tracks. Coroner, medical examiner. The official violators of a privacy no longer needed, abandoned with the body. Go ahead. Look. It’s official; I’m out of here.

  The smell was stronger in the nook behind the stove and refrigerator. Stronger still as he moved forward, toward the big blue-corduroy upholstered captain’s chairs.

  He unlocked the driver’s seat with his foot and rotated it. Blotches marked the lower cushion, darker than water stains and more suggestive.

  Peter closed his eyes, letting go of the dream, laying to rest the Hot Dog Tour and Escapade. He slumped into the passenger seat and rubbed his short beard. Peered through the windshield. The motor home creaked from cooling off. The interior was still warm after sitting in the sun all day. How long had Phil sat propped behind the wheel, dead? How long did it take him to die?

  Peter pushed up from the seat. He didn’t have the heart to look for papers. It was all over. He just wanted to get away from the Grand Taiga, away from the house with its reminders that when you died all your precious stuff had no value to you; he simply wanted to get back into his car and drive somewhere, anywhere. He was about to open the metal door when he spied something on a small desk beyond the kitchen, hidden in deep shadow. Phil had often kept his typewriter there when he worked in the motor home. Peter found another switch. A small lamp glowed warm orange in the short corridor. As he stepped toward the rear, he saw that the desk supported not a typewriter, but a wooden game board and chess set.

  He remembered the set. It had been one of Phil’s favorite possessions, had cost most of the advance on a book: a Dale Enzenbacher original cast in bronze and silver, depicting the archetypal heroes and villains of pulp fiction. On one side, cast in silver, stood the heroes: the king, a stalwart adventurer in boots, jodhpurs, and waist-length double-breasted jacket, clutched what might have been a blaster or a long-barreled pistol. The queen was Dejah Thoris in all her naked pulchritude. Knights were private eyes, fedoras slumped low and collars pulled high, guns bulging in their tiny pockets. Bishops were bald, wise Asian priests in long robes, hands folded in Asian humility, no doubt waiting to torment and train the cruel and headstrong Lamont Cranston. Rooks were squat pyramids topped by radiant, all-seeing eyes.

  The pawns on the hero side were all ghosts, specters and litches, and for the first time Peter found that odd. Spooks on the side of the heroes?

  The villains, cast in dark-patinaed bronze, consisted of Ming and another princess, probably Ardala. She wore a spoiled, sulky expression and little else. Bishops were mad scientists, monocled and clutching tiny crystal beakers; knights were evil henchmen, dwarfish and hunched; rooks, castles mounted on hills and surmounted by lightning strokes. The pawns on this side consisted of tentacled and bug-eyed monsters, no doubt moving above and around our normal set of dimensions.

  Pages of manuscript had been sh
oved up behind the game board—Phil had always preferred a typewriter to a word processor. Peter pulled down the last few pages and read them with a squint. Phil’s great crime novel, talked about over the years: a young FBI agent investigating corruption in Salt Lake City. The last page ended in the middle of a sentence.

  Phil could type over ninety words a minute on his old Olympic portable. And where was that essential tool? Peter glanced into the rear bedroom. Minus its silver-gray case, the typewriter had been deposited in the middle of the bed. The police, Peter suspected, had left these things untouched, eager to close a fairly obvious case file. Tag ends of a life too short and too disorganized by half.

  Peter returned to the desk and the chess set. He stood with hands on hips, trying to figure out the extent and path of the rearrangements, based on Phil’s habits. Above the desk was a small cupboard in which Phil had kept pencils and paper clips. Peter pulled the cupboard open. Inside were two shot glasses half filled with amber liquid. He carefully lifted one glass and sniffed it: Scotch. He put the first glass down in the middle of the chessboard, beside a leering monster, and lifted the second, finding underneath a page ripped from a notebook or bound diary. In Phil’s crabbed handwriting:

  Peter:

  That you, bud? I hope you find this and not the cops or whomever. My last will and testament. Take whatever you want. I won’t need it anymore. Leave whatever you don’t want in the house.

  I finally figured it out. This world is awful—it’s bad art. Some of us don’t fit because we’re always trying to look deeper. There’s something underneath, something wonderful and full of color. It’s happy and it makes sense. I can feel it. Some hifalutin, cruel god has painted over an ancient masterpiece filled with joy. Well, I’ve run my course. I’m going exploring.

  See you later, old friend.

  Phil had always found the world of fiction—heroes and monsters, villains and exotic women—far more comfortable than reality. And for that matter, so had Peter. Phil had known he was dying, had known it for at least an hour. He had come out here to finish the job, given to drama even in his pain, leaving clues stuffed in the cubbyholes of their rolling clubhouse.