by Nathan Field
Eventually, I heard Kendall say, “… it does look like he’s hurting.”
“Fuck, I was sure it was all in his head,” Oliver said, sounding disappointed.
“I don’t think you could fake that,” Kendall said.
“Switch the flashlight off, Ollie,” Tiffany said, now back in the living room. “I think we’ve got our answer.”
The light went dark behind my eyes. I peered tentatively through my eyelashes. The siblings were standing in front of me, but their attention had shifted to each other.
“Can we get going now?” Tiffany said. “It’s a school night, remember?”
“You’re right, we should wrap things up,” Oliver said. “You girls got your stuff together?”
They nodded excitedly. And all of a sudden, things began to move very quickly. Kendall and Tiffany dashed upstairs, telling Oliver they were going to have one last rummage through the bedrooms for valuables. “Nothing you can’t sell!” he shouted after them.
Oliver’s eyes fell back on me. He grinned. “You’re awake, good. I’d hate you to miss the final act.”
He picked up the gas canister and shook it, frowning at the thin sloshing sound. “Guess it’ll have to do,” he said, proceeding to splash the contents over the floorboards. “There’s tons of wood in here, and I’ve emptied another can outside. It’s a dry enough night – the place should go up like a torch.”
I gathered the last of my strength to speak. “Jesus, Bruno. Stop and think for a minute. You’re making a huge mistake.”
“The name’s not Bruno,” he said, crossing behind me. “And we’ve done nothing but think about this moment for the past twelve months. Isn’t that obvious by now?”
I craned my neck to eyeball him. “You’ll be caught.”
Oliver was slopping gas into the remaining corners of the room. “I don’t think so. We were all at Tiffany’s place tonight, enjoying her famous lamb casserole and too much red wine. And you’re the one the cops are investigating. Calling Ralph Emerson’s house every other week, just a few minutes at a time. What was that all about?”
“You forget, I’ve got an alibi for his murder.”
Oliver had returned to the main doorway, dropping the empty container onto the floor. “Yeah, the skinny whore. Hardly a reliable witness. But who cares, anyway? We’re not trying to frame you for Ralph’s murder. You’ll be dead, that’s our closure. We just need you to provide us with reasonable doubt. And let’s face it, your behavior’s been mighty suspicious. Asking questions about Lucy all over Sacramento. Beating up a private eye. The calls from your office to Ralph. Not to mention the fact it’s your body in here, and your car outside. Man, I can’t wait until the cops discover Lucy’s love letter in your glove-box. It’s pretty clear the guilt’s been eating away at you for the past eight years. Then, when you found out about Ralph, it tipped you over the edge. You’d been living a lie, mourning a love that never existed. And what a fitting way to end it all – driving out to your cheating lover’s fishing lodge, putting a torch to her shrine. Very poetic, Sam. It must be the writer in you.”
They’d thought of everything. I tried to remember Lucy’s exact words in the letter, searching for a flaw in his logic. “There’s nothing incriminating in that letter,” I claimed with false confidence. “And besides, it’s addressed to Johnny.”
“I’m sure we can help the cops out on that score,” Oliver said. He then adopted a naïve-sounding voice. “Johnny, you say? Sure Detective, I remember a guy named Johnny coming round to the house. He was a reporter at the Tribune. He said he was writing a story on Piper & Son, but come to think of it, he always turned up when Dad was out of town.”
“Forensics,” I said quickly. “They’ll see I was tied up when the house burnt down. They’ll see I was tortured.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Oliver said. “We’re going to clean you up before we burn you alive. Make the scene fit the story.”
Tiffany and Kendall appeared at his side. They were both carrying plastic bags, looking at their brother expectantly.
“You find anything?” he asked.
“Not really,” Tiffany said. “A few pieces of jewelry. Some horrible diamond earrings. That woman has the worst taste.”
“Just like her daughter,” Kendall said.
“Then we’re done,” Oliver said decisively, moving out of my eyesight.
I’d given up talking. All the fight had drained out of me. There was nothing I could do or say to change their minds. I could only put on a brave face and hope the fire spread quickly.
“Oh, he looks sad,” Kendall said, sticking out her bottom lip.
Tiffany had a serene, faraway look in her eye. “It’s perfect though. How it ends. In front of her burning shrine.”
Kendall nodded thoughtfully.
“I can feel Dad in the room,” Tiffany said. “Evan, too.”
Oliver’s heavy footsteps came to a halt behind my chair. The girls held their breath, eyes wide in anticipation.
I looked away, towards the window blinds, hoping their faces wouldn’t be my final memory. I strained to hear a comforting sound from the outside world – trickling water, an owl, even a plane flying overhead. But there was nothing to distract me. The Piper children would have their final revenge.
“This one’s for Dad,” Oliver said.
I closed my eyes, steeling myself for the final blow. “Fuck you and get it over with.”
I barely felt the air move.
27. “How did you find me?”
I was back in the motel room where we first fucked. I was lying on top of the bed, watching Lucy sway her hips to a Bryan Ferry song. She was naked. Her skin glowed in the sunlight streaming through the curtains. I asked her to come back to bed, but she didn’t seem to hear me, lost in the music. Her back was turned to me, dancing to an invisible audience. My mouth was dry with desire. I tried to get off the bed, but I couldn’t move my legs. My muscles felt heavy and weak.
The music faded out, and Lucy stopped dancing. She turned her head slightly, checking I was still there. Then she walked into the bathroom and shut the door. I called after her, but my throat was parched, and the words wouldn’t come out. I started to panic. The room had grown uncomfortably hot, and my clothes were sticking to me like candle wax. My eyes fixed on the bathroom door. I sensed something terrible was about to happen.
All of a sudden the room’s curtains burst into flames. I lay paralyzed on the bed as the fire spread down the walls. I could hear Lucy screaming behind the bathroom door…..
“Sam! Wake the fuck up!”
I felt a cold spray on my face, like a shower of fine hailstones hissing on my sizzling skin. “Lucy,” I moaned, shaking my head. Time muddled, and my eyes blinked open to a new kind of chaos.
CC was standing over me, her face dirty with soot. She was holding a fire extinguisher. I stared at the nozzle as another blast of white powder hit me in the face, stinging my eyes.
“Get up Sam!” she screamed.
The pressing heat from my dream was suddenly overwhelming. I wiped the powder from my eyes and looked around. The Pipers’ living room was engulfed in black smoke and whipping flames. I struggled to my feet, coughing as I inhaled a mouthful of smoke. I lifted my shirt over my nose.
“Can you walk?” CC yelled over the roar of the inferno. “I’m leaving now, with or without you!”
I nodded a yes, putting a hand on her shoulder for balance. My right foot was a lump of pain, but I tried to take as much weight as possible. We moved forward, one halting step at a time. CC used the fire extinguisher to cut a slow path through the blaze, steering us towards the doorway. The spray began to fizzle just as we made it into the hallway. Ahead of us was the front door, opened to the night. A line of thick orange flames guarded the exit.
CC shook the spluttering fire extinguisher. White fluid bubbled from the nozzle. She dropped the spent extinguisher to the floor.
“Fuck it,” she said, spinning me around to
face her. “We have to go through the door, before the whole place burns down.”
I stared at the flames blocking the door-frame, listening to the wood splinter and pop. It seemed like the wrong path to take. I turned my head, looking for another way out, but straight away my vision blurred, and I felt my legs give way. Only CC saved me from tipping over.
She grabbed me by the shoulders. “Jesus, Sam! We have to leave now, so you’d better pull yourself together. I’ll fucking leave you here if I have to.”
Before I had a chance to respond, CC took my hand and started to count to three. In the next instant, we were hurtling towards the burning doorway.
For a moment I thought my entire body had burst into flames. I lost hold of CC’s hand as the fire whooshed around me. Then suddenly I was through, stumbling out of the house and into the night air, the burning heat still clinging to my skin. I lost my footing on the porch steps, collapsing onto the front lawn. I rolled over frantically on the grass, trying to smother my smoldering clothes. I didn’t stop rolling until CC kicked me with her heel.
“For fuck’s sake, you’re not on fire,” she said.
I sat up and checked myself. CC was right. Apart from my ballooning right foot, I’d emerged from the house unscathed. I felt neither relief nor joy. Just mild amazement.
CC sat down next to me. We stayed there for a while, gazing up at the flames pouring into the golden sky. It was until we heard the distant wail of sirens that we snapped out of our stupor. CC abruptly stood up, holding out her hand.
“C’mon,” she said. “Time to go.”
She pulled me to my feet, and we hobbled over to the driveway where my Corolla was parked. I was still in a state of confusion. “How did you find me?”
“It doesn’t matter. Right now, I’m getting the fuck out of Dodge. If you’re still afraid of the cops, you need to get yourself, and your car, as far away as possible. I’m parked up the road, but you can’t come with me, you understand? If you don’t remove your car from the driveway, the cops will blame this mess on you.”
I nodded slowly, replaying her words in my head. I still didn’t understand what had happened, or how CC had come to rescue me, but I could hear the sirens getting louder, and that was enough knowledge for the moment.
When we reached my car, CC peered inside the driver’s window. “The keys are in the ignition.” She turned around, frowning down at my swollen foot. “Are you okay to drive?”
I smiled at CC, touched by her concern. Her long hair was thick with ash, and her bloodshot eyes were huge in her blackened face. She looked like she’d been to Hell and back. I could only imagine how I looked.
“Sam, are you okay to drive?” she repeated in a loud voice.
“Yes, I’ll manage.”
“Good,” she said with finality. “Drive fast, but not too fast.”
I wanted to say something, but CC wasn’t hanging around. She left me at the car, her high heels crunching on the driveway. By the time I found my voice and called after her, she’d disappeared into the night.
I climbed into the driver’s seat and buckled myself in. Nearby, I heard another car take off. I waited for a moment, listening to the steady rhythm of my breath. In the distance, the sirens were getting louder. Fire engines, most likely. The cops would arrive later – when the fire was under control.
I turned the ignition and reversed up the driveway. Swinging the nose around, I found myself on a narrow road, banked on one side by trees. I started to drive. I had no idea which way I was heading, only that I needed to put some distance between myself and the burning fishing lodge. I felt remarkably calm. The further I drove, the more I became just another car on the road.
28. “We should start using our new names”
The woman on screen – late fifties, comfortably lined, tortoiseshell reading glasses – sobbed like her heart had just been broken. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she drew breath in quick, shuddering gasps. Then, after a lingering close-up, the camera pulled back to reveal her pink dressing gown, a couch in front of a crackling log burner, and a copy of The Bridges of Madison County in her lap.
Relieved laughter murmured through the audience.
A handsome, silver-haired man entered the frame, placing a reassuring hand on the crying woman’s shoulder. “Charlotte, I don’t know why you put yourself through it.”
She laughed through the sobs. “It’s just escapism, Bill. I enjoy it.”
He began massaging her neck and shoulders, her face melting at the sensation.
She said: “Especially when I know I’m coming back to you.”
I squirmed in my seat at the mawkish scene, but the mostly retired audience let out a collective sigh. They’d got their fifteen dollars’ worth.
As the credits to Sensible Shoes rolled, I stayed in my seat and watched the crowd shuffle out. There were contented smiles all round. I was smiling, too, in a bitter-sweet way. Eleanor Cook hadn’t needed my help after all.
Leaving the sanctuary of the cinema, I put on my dark glasses and lowered my head to the grey afternoon. Daylight still made me nervous, but keeping conventional hours was an important part of my self-imposed rehabilitation program. Slowly, I was learning how to function as a normal person again. I made a point of venturing out on overcast days. I was getting used to sleeping nights. I’d even managed to commit to a relationship. Life wasn’t easy, but it was a million times better than the life I’d left behind.
The fire had been my cue to leave the country. Change was coming anyway, and after my near death experience at the Pipers’ fishing lodge, I figured my good luck in America was well and truly tapped out.
The day after the fire, I sold my car, packed a suitcase, and bought a cheap flight to Melbourne, Australia. It had come down to a toss-up between Melbourne and London – big, English-speaking, not-too-sunny cities that were thousands of miles from California – but Melbourne eventually won out because it seemed like the ends of the earth.
CC helped tidy up my affairs in San Francisco. She settled my outstanding bills, closed out the lease on my Ellis Street office, and put my apartment on the market. The one thing I was sad to leave behind was my business. I could write from anywhere, but to preserve my anonymity, I had to kiss goodbye to the client list I’d spent eight years building up. And that really stung.
During my first few months in Melbourne, I kept a subterranean profile, mindful that I was still very much a loose end. I avoided dark alleys, and tensed up every time I heard footsteps behind me, convinced I was about to feel a cold blade in my neck. The Piper children had to have known I’d escaped – in the local news coverage of the fire, there was only a vague suggestion of arson, and certainly no mention of a body. It was a minor story, even by Napa County standards.
But after a while, I realized they weren’t coming for me. They’d achieved closure that night by the lake. For their own peace of mind, Oliver, Tiffany and Kendall were holding onto the view that I’d perished, choosing to ignore the inconclusive news reports.
The Pipers had moved on. And in many respects, so had I.
“I’m back,” I called out, pushing open the door to my new home. One of the perks of moving to Melbourne had been cashing in on the San Francisco property boom – the proceeds from my modest one-bedroom apartment had bought a spacious three-bedroom penthouse in Melbourne’s Docklands.
She padded into the hallway to greet me, dressed in one of my business shirts that just made it to her thighs. “How was it?” she said.
“Not bad. Much better than I thought, actually.”
“Oh, I’m sure you would’ve made it better.”
She gave me a long hug, and then stepped back to appraise me. “Don’t be sad. You’re better than some geriatric rom-com.”
“It was a paying job. And a movie credit would’ve looked great on my CV.”
“Yeah, well I wanted to dance on Broadway, and now I’m getting creeps to jerk off on the Internet. Shit happens.”
“Touc
hé.”
I followed CC into the window-lined living room, where the city’s skyline blurred into the concrete-colored sky. I grabbed a beer from the kitchen, and she sat cross-legged on the sofa, positioning her iPad on her lap.
“You’re working?” I said.
“Just playing a recording,” she said, frowning down at the screen. “I’ll let you know if there’s a paid request.”
CC had been rattling around my apartment since she’d moved in three weeks ago. She was keen to work the Melbourne clubs, but I didn’t want her name appearing on any local payroll data, just in case one of the Pipers started digging again. We both needed new names; new identities.
In the meantime, CC was operating a live-cam. She made next to nothing, but it stopped her from climbing up the walls.
She looked up from her iPad. “What’s up?” she said.
“Nothing. I was just thinking how gorgeous you look.”
“Really?” she said, lifting a hand to her hair. She’d recently cut it shorter, like I’d suggested. “I’m still not used to it,” she said. “Doesn’t it make me look old?”
“No, not at all. You look hot.”
“Well, I’m growing it back anyway. I’m sure it’s half the reason these pervs aren’t biting.”
“Those pervs have no taste.”
“That’s a sweeping generalisation,” she said, tapping away at the screen. “God, they’re so cheap though. As if I’m going to show my asshole for free.”
She threw the iPad onto the sofa with a grunt of disgust. Then she looked up at me with a twinkle in her eye. “So you want to get into the movie business, huh? I’ve got a pitch for you.”