Pulse

by Edna Buchanan

  “How do you always know exactly what I want? Come over here,” she invited, throwing back the sheet, smiling and patting the bed beside her.

  A sound at the door spoiled the moment. Breakfast had arrived.

  “Look.” She stood at the window. “What a beautiful day! The paper says the high will be sixty. Who said it always rains here? I wanna see the Seattle Aquarium and the Space Needle. The SuperSonics are playin’ tonight.” She’d been shuffling through the newspaper and the brochures on the coffee table.

  “We’re not on vacation.”

  She frowned. “I wish we were.” She sat cross-legged on the bed and gazed up at him, resigned. “Okay, where is Denise staying at out here?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t even know that she’s here, or if she was, how long she stayed.”

  Rory’s mouth opened in dismay.

  “This is a perfect jumping-off place for Canada, Alaska, the Orient,” Frank said. “But if somebody wanted to put as many miles as possible between them and Miami, yet still stay in mainland U.S.A., this is the place.”

  “But this is a big city, must be more than a million people. How do we ever find her?”

  “Hopefully she’s a creature of habit. Her old neighbors said she worked out, did aerobics every day. She had her hair done and had fancy manicures, decorated nails.”

  “Nail salons and hairdressers. That’s only a majority of the female population. What else?”

  He shrugged.

  “Shouldn’t we check with the local police departments, see if she got a job?”

  “Doubt if she did, but it makes sense to go with the obvious.”

  “What about the chamber of commerce? They might keep a listing of new residents. You know, like a welcome-wagon kinda thing.”

  By early afternoon, after hours on the telephone, they knew that Denise Watson had not applied to any law enforcement agency, security agency or employment agency in the Seattle area.

  “What did Daniel like to do? Where would he take someone in a town like this?”

  “Daniel isn’t here,” she said quietly.

  “You’ve trusted me this far, Rory. Indulge me.”

  She sighed. “Daniel liked to dine in good restaurants, drink in intimate bars with good music. Liked jazz, good steak houses, Italian food. Liked a good piano player. Always requested ‘My Funny Valentine.’ ”

  Frank got maps of the city and directions from the concierge and they walked to a photo mart to have the pictures of Daniel and Denise blown up to eight-by-ten size, two sets.

  The weather was cool and crisp under blue sky. They were here somewhere, he knew it. Frank felt their presence like an electrical charge in the air. He watched faces on the street, in passing traffic. Rory, her long red hair loose, in jeans, boots and her leather jacket, turned heads.

  “We have to stop and buy you some scarves.”

  “Why? I never wear them, it’s not that cold.”

  “They don’t know me. But they both know you. With that hair, they could spot you a block away. We don’t want them to see us first.”

  She looked exasperated, but bought a cheap scarf in a five-and-dime and covered her hair.

  The city felt strange, yet familiar to Frank. Miami and Seattle share musical three-syllable names and a distance from Middle America that is more than geographic. Both are cities on the edge, gateways to exotic capitals, watery outposts at far reaches of the map, natural destinations for wanderers, the restless and people on the run from the law, each other and the personal demons no one can ever escape.

  But there was something else about Seattle, the older of the two. Though Frank saw as many young people with pierced noses and eyebrows and punk purple hair as on the streets of South Beach, there was a difference. The city exuded a discernible character, a stability and sense of history foreign to Miami’s wild, raw and ever-evolving atmospherewhere life lurches from crisis to crisis and nothing is ever remembered beyond next hurricane season.

  They began the rounds that evening, starting with upscale steak houses and Italian restaurants. They would order a drink, small-talk the bartender or the maître d', and show the photos, saying they were in search of long-lost family members. Frank didn’t know if they bought the story, but all looked, then shook their heads.

  When they were hungry enough, they ordered dinner. Rory seemed to be enjoying herself. Frank remained as alert as a cat, expecting one of the faces he sought to step unaware at any moment from around a corner, to emerge from a rest room, or ride in on a gust of wind off the street.

  More bars, more nightspots, after dinner, ordering drinks, leaving them virtually untouched. He ordered Perrier, she white wine. They returned to the hotel, he frustrated, she tipsy and laughing.

  The sky was gray, with a drizzling rain, when they awoke on the second day. He took his medication at seven a.m. and seven p.m. now, to stay on his Miami schedule. They tore out the Yellow Pages listing Beauty Salons and Services and began those rounds, salons by day, saloons at night. He would frequently pause, scan the street and turn to check behind them. Increasingly anxious, he feared that somehow they were just missing them.

  “You’re making me jittery,” Rory said more than once. The routine and the rain continued for five days.

  At a jazz concert in Pioneer Square, she listened to the music and held his hand. He insisted she wear her scarf and never stopped searching the crowd.

  Then they hit the bars again, this night the watering holes at the poshest hotels, the Vintage Park, the Claremont and Cavanaugh’s.

  At what would be their last stop that evening, Frank leaned over to better scrutinize a well-dressed man passing through the lobby. His height and build were correct, but he was not Daniel.

  “He killed himself,” Rory said too loudly. “He committed suicide.” Tonight the wine did not make her laugh.

  “He didn’t,” Frank said quietly.

  The bartender lounged nearby reading a newspaper. He glanced up. “I’m with the lady,” he said. “Suicide.”

  They stared.

  He motioned to the front page of his newspaper. “Definitely suicide. Kurt Cobain killed himself. Totally messed up on drugs and couldn’t handle success. All these stories now, murder theories, speculation that it was this, that it was that, that it was something else.” He shook his head. “Some people want to make everything into a conspiracy. Some people just don’t wanna accept the simple truth.”

  “Thank you very much. That’s exactly what I’ve been saying.” Rory sounded emotional, near tears. “You are absolutely right.”

  “She was a big fan,” Frank explained, then caught her arm and got her out of there.

  “Hope you find your cousin,” the barkeep called after them as they departed into the drizzle.

  “Why did you insist on coming, if you’re not committed?” he asked bitterly as they walked through the rain.

  “Maybe the search isn’t what I’m committed to.”

  A man and a woman brushed by laughing, huddled together beneath an umbrella, illuminated for only an instant in the lamplight.

  “You see.” He was annoyed. “I missed getting a good look at them. You’re distracting me. They could walk right by us. And you’re not wearing your scarf.”

  She yanked the scarf from her neck and threw it down in the street. He stooped to retrieve it, sopping wet from a puddle.

  Perhaps she was deliberately trying to sabotage the search, he thought bitterly.

  They neither spoke nor touched for the rest of the night. She watched, quiet in the morning, as he mapped their itinerary for the day. He feared that she might announce plans to return to Miami alone. Perhaps, he thought, it would be better if she did.

  No one recognized Denise’s photo in a swanky salon full of women in pale pink smocks. When he turned, Rory was seated in a chair in front of a slim, dark young man who wore five earrings in one ear. Frank thought of Shandi and his heart ached. She had seen the tape by now.

  “This
color is real.” The young man spoke in awe, trailing a wisp of Rory’s long hair between his fingers. “I know people who would kill for color like this.”

  “Daniel,” she said, “you go on and come back for me in a couple of hours. I’m staying, Raymond can take me right now.”

  He felt freer alone on the street, invisible and more powerful. Neither of those for whom he searched even knew that he existed and was hunting them. If their paths crossed now, he held the advantage, the element of surprise. He toured a large health club, telling the manager he might want to surprise his wife with a membership for her birthday. He scrutinized the participants in three aerobics classes in progress, beginners, advanced and a step class. He watched the men and women working out on the machines in the cardiovascular room and even stopped to peruse the candid snapshots of members posted on a bulletin board. He showed the pictures of Denise and Daniel to two employees at the front desk as he left. They shook their heads.

  He visited two nail salons, then checked the time and returned for Rory. She wasn’t there.

  The redhead with the dramatic long curly mane was gone. A brunette with bangs and a boyish haircut was wearing her clothes.

  “No more scarves,” she announced. She jerked her head at the colorist, who looked nervous. “Tip the man.”

  A young woman was sweeping mounds of red hair from the floor. “I couldn’t believe she wanted it brown,” the young man said, pocketing the twenty.

  “It’s great,” Frank said, and handed him another twenty.

  “What a difference,” he said, as they walked out onto the street. “You didn’t have to cut it all off.”

  She shrugged. “You believe I’m committed now?”

  “If we could just find enough putty to fill in the dimples, but there probably isn’t enough in this city.”

  She punched his shoulder, her expression ferocious. “All I kept thinking in that chair, while he had at me with those scissors, was that if you came back and said you’d just found Denise, that it was all over and we could go home now, I was gonna snatch those scissors and cut your heart out.”

  She took his arm. “Two more stops.” They bought a pair of dime-store glasses, wire frames. She knocked out the lenses and put them on. At Sears she bought a shapeless gray raincoat.

  “Satisfied?” Posing in front of the mirror, she looked drab, like an old-maid schoolteacher.

  “We’ve got a problem,” he said.

  “What now?”

  “How am I going to explain to the hotel clerk this strange woman I’m bringing back to our room?”

  “Thank you,” he whispered later, in their rumpled, sweat-soaked bed. Their lovemaking had become all-consuming, theonly time he was free of the other woman and the constant pressure to find them.

  “What more could I do to prove I love you?” she said.

  Neither had mentioned love before.

  “I love you too,” he said solemnly, wondering if this was fantasy or real life.

  He saw her from time to time, regarding her reflection in the mirror, trying without success to fluff up the cropped hair.

  She caught him watching and gamely shrugged. “It’ll grow out. If it don’t, you’re a dead man.”

  On day ten they studied the maps spread out on the coffee table. “You know,” he said, “there are all these islands, like the Florida Keys, off Seattle between here and British Columbia. Accessible only by ferry boat. Visitors can tour a few of them by bicycle.”

  “I saw a brochure that says some have whale sightings,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see a pod of whales in the wild?” She looked up at him. “I know, I know, we’re not on vacation. But you owe me one after this, big time, April in Paris, the Orient Express, or cruising the Nile. Actually …” She leaned back in the room’s one comfortable armchair, her voice dreamy. “What I really want is to go to upstate Florida, to Saint Marks in the Panhandle, when the monarchs are migrating.”

  “Butterflies?”

  She nodded. “Millions and millions of them, on their way to Mexico. I’ve heard that their wings make a wonderful sound, like soft rain, and turn the woods and the trees into an orange flame.”

  “When this is over,” he promised. He meant it. Until now, neither had mentioned anything beyond the immediate future. Miami seemed farther away than ever.

  “Look at these, the San Juan Islands.” He pointed them out on the map. She leaned forward and frowned. “Hundreds of them,” he said, “some pristine and uninhabited, some inhabited by only one person, others with little villages.”

  “We can’t check out every one.”

  “I want to show the pictures to the crews who operate the ferries.”

  They split up, to move faster. With her new look, he was less concerned about her being seen. If he could not trust her now, he could trust no one, and her own mother would not recognize her. She hit salons that day, using taxi cabs. He drove the car to health clubs and aerobics studios. The ever-present drizzle had stopped, but the sky stayed gray and the day damp and chilly.

  He had parked in the wrong place, mistaking the address. Rather than move the car, he huffed and puffed up a steep inclining sidewalk. Miamians are unaccustomed to hills. Next to the health club at the top stood a small strip shopping center, brand-new with construction under way in two of the still vacant storefronts, grand opening banners streamed from a French bakery, a custom bike shop, a gourmet market with blue awnings and outdoor produce bins, and Nails by Nila. Too new to be in the phone book. He would kill two birds with one stone. He reached into his jacket, fingers closing around the envelope containing the pictures. He almost didn’t notice the woman until she had walked by. It was Denise.

  He spun around. She must have sensed it because she glanced back over her shoulder. He was staring. It was definitely her. Startled for a moment, she flashed a small, almost flirtatious smile and moved on, briskly. Her hair, swept back from her face, was longer than in her official police ID picture, but it was her. He would know her anywhere. She wore tight black corduroy pants, high-heeled leather boots and a whiteleather anorak with white fur trim on the collar and cuffs. Her nails glittered, long and decorated.

  A loaf of crisp French bread protruded from the top of the cloth shopping bag she carried, along with green stalks from the produce bins at the gourmet market.

  He panicked. He couldn’t let her get away, but she had already seen him. He dashed up to the news racks in front of the bakery and, hands shaking, fumbled to insert the right change. He slid out a newspaper, then walked quickly downhill after her, pretending to scan the front page. He felt staggered by the emotional impact of seeing her face. He had nearly called out her name.

  She walked into a shop close to where he had parked. He slipped into the rental and watched. She emerged with an armload of dry cleaning. Did it include men’s clothes? He couldn’t see. She deposited it and the shopping bag into a shiny black Range Rover parked two cars in front of his.

  Then she set out on foot again. He jotted down the Washington tag number on the Range Rover, unsure whether to follow her or remain with her car. She crossed the street to a small travel agency, her walk confident, purposeful, a woman who knew who she was and where she was going. She came out after ten minutes, carrying a manila envelope, then back across the street to a liquor store. Minutes later she appeared carrying a brown sack containing several bottles. Before she climbed into the Range Rover, she stood for a moment, surveying the street, alert, a slightly troubled look on her face, almost as though she felt his eyes, sensed his excitement.

  He wanted to call Rory. They were to meet at the hotel to eat lunch and compare notes, but she wouldn’t be there for at least another hour. The Range Rover eased away fromthe curb. He hesitated, started the rental, let one car go between them, then cautiously followed.

  She seemed to be using the phone in the Rover as she drove downtown. She parked on the street and disappeared into a corner boutique. He pulled into a “no parking”
zone down the block, hoping no cop would come along. For long minutes he kept his eyes riveted to the door she had entered. Then somebody rapped on his window, startling him. A delivery truck driver, complaining that Frank blocked the loading zone. He started the engine, then saw to his horror that the Range Rover was not in its space. Gone. She must have left through another door around the corner and driven off without him seeing. Cursing, panicky, he pulled out into the flow of traffic, frantically scanning the cars up ahead, searching down side streets. She was gone. She might have picked up tickets at the travel agency. She could leave the country tonight. He searched the rearview mirror, speeded up, slowed down, uncertain what to do. Which way? Which way?

  He pounded the steering wheel. He had come so close. Find her. Find her. He made a U-turn. Perhaps he could persuade the travel agent to tell him what name she was using, where she was going.

  Then there she was.

  Driving right by in the opposite direction. He didn’t know if she saw him or not. A red light ahead. Afraid he would lose her if he circled the block, he saw a break in traffic and swerved into another quick U-turn, tires squealing. He could not risk being stopped by a cop. But he could not risk losing Denise again either. A taxi driver leaned on his horn and Frank cursed, hoping she wasn’t watching in her rearview mirror.

  There were four cars between them now.

  He followed her through traffic for fifteen minutes, to thedocks. He parked a half block away. She stepped out of the Rover and checked her watch. Then he saw the white ferryboat, a hefty double-decker named The Island Queen. He had been on the right track that morning. The Rover was among half a dozen cars lined up to board. He waited until there were two more, then joined the line. The sign said there were stops at San Juan, Orcas, Lopez and a number of smaller islands.

  He bought a round-trip ticket to the end of the line and back, then drove onto the ferry, stomach taut, teeth on edge. He couldn’t let her spot him. It was not crowded, this was the off season. The passengers, mostly residents, were headed home. The crew raised the ramp, cast off and they departed, motoring across the mirror-bright waters of Puget Sound. He felt a moment of panic, wondering how he could avoid her.