He was right. The rain continued for a half hour. It formed little rivers that pushed down the sides of the narrow streets and ran off happily into the lake. And when the rain stopped, people trudged up the streets and into their houses.
June Alexander seemed pleased to see him. She smiled, saying, "I'll be right with you, Mr. Briggs," then unlocked her front door, went into the house and closed the door behind her.
He had expected to be invited inside.
She reappeared within moments, behind her front door, looked blankly at him, asif she didn't know who he was, then came out onto the porch.
"I believe," she said, "that you were looking for someone." She grinned.
He nodded. "Yes." He withdrew the snapshot from his shirt pocket and handed it to Mrs. Alexander. "I'm looking for her."
"And she is . . ." Mrs. Alexander coaxed.
Harry took the photograph back. "Her name is Barbara. I call her Babs. I was told that she lived here."
Mrs. Alexander appeared to think about this a moment, then said, "Well, yes, she did. She lived with us for some time. But she moved out a month ago." A quick pause, then, "Mr. Briggs, your trench coat is all wet."
He shook his head. "It's all right." He glanced at himself. He was soaked. He looked at Mrs. Alexander again. "Can you tell me where she went?"
"Who can tell anybody anything, Mr. Briggs?" She smiled.
"Sony?" he said.
"My little joke, Harry Briggs. Or should I say 'Hirsute'?"
He forced a chuckle. "Then you don't know where Babs is, Mrs. Alexander?"
"June," she said.
"Yeah, sure. June. Call me Harry."
"I thought I just did." She was smiling through this bizarre exchange. It was a cozy, self-satisfied smile—her lopsided sense of humor seemed to give her much pleasure, but Harry was becoming impatient with it.
"Listen, sister," he barked, "I ain't fooling around here. This dame is missing and I'm down here lookin' for her. You got that?"
June was all smiles. "Goodness, that's very entertaining, Mr. Briggs. Amelia told us you were a private dick, but I had no idea that you talked like one too."
Harry sighed. He felt as if he were caught up in a Mobius strip. "Just hear me out, would you? Barbara's husband hired me to come here and find her. So here I am, okay? He misses her very, very much." He closed his eyes briefly, then went on, "His life is . . . he asked me to tell you that his life . . ." He stopped, uncertain how to continue.
"Yes?" asked Mrs. Alexander breathlessly. "His life is what?"
"His heartache," Harry said, "is unbelievable. He blames himself for her disappearance. He . . . neglected her momentarily. It's the same old story. Treat someone badly and they ... find better circumstances. They go off and hide. They find peace in a place that's almost completely inaccessible. It happens every day, Mrs. Alexander. Except, this time, it happened to him."
He paused Mrs. Alexander said nothing—her round face was all smiles. He went on, "And if I don't find her, he'll ..." He faltered, again uncertain how to continue.
"He'll what? What will he do if you don't find his wife for him? Please, tell me!"
"Listen, sister, this ain't what I came here to talk about, okay?"
Mrs. Alexander's smile faded. "How disappointing," she said.
"Now didn't you say that she lived with you for a month…?"
"No. I said she left us a month ago. A little memory lapse, Mr. Briggs? A small problem with the synapses?"
He ignored the remark. "But she did live with you, so you probably know where she went."
"She went out of this house. I didn't inquire as to her destination and she didn't offer to tell me. We're not nosy people in this community, which is a fact you should bear in mind."
"I ain't trying to be nosy. I got a job to do."
Mrs. Alexander cut in. "Babs is going to be a mother, Mr. Briggs."
"Huh?"
"She is well into the age for procreation. Such an important age. We all have a stake in it. The little darlings we give birth to grow up and grow their own darling little breasts, and their little ovaries grow up and start spitting out little tiny eggs. It's something we all have a stake in. It's life pushing itself into the future. Life making the future! Because that's really all any of us have, isn't it? The future." She smiled oddly. "How can we have the past? It's gone, kaput, dead. Or the present. One moment it's here and the next moment—Pfft!—it's not. It's been replaced by something else. Some other present." She paused. "But this is the point, Mr. Briggs—we make our future from the past." She smiled again, clearly pleased with herself.
A lone wasp appeared and landed on her shoulder. Harry nodded urgently at it. "There's a wasp on your shoulder," he said. "It'll sting you. You'll get sick."
She glanced quickly at it, then at Harry. "Oh, Mr. Briggs. Don't be silly. No one gets sick here."'
"They don't?"
She looked confused. "Why, Mr. Briggs, I'm surprised. Here you are, a private dick, someone who finds people, someone who has all the answers, and you obviously don't know where you are."
"Of course I do. I'm in the village of Silver Lake."
She nodded smilingly. "That's right. And Babs-slash-Barbara is staying with the Contes. They live at number twenty-six Vine Street, at the top of the hill."
Mrs. Conte opened her front door only a crack, though she smiled just as cordially at Harry as everyone else in the community had. "Babs is at work," she said. She was a matronly woman in her forties, and her face, fringed with curly dark blond hair, was round and jowly. She wore a bright green dress.
"Where does she work?" he asked.
"At a temporary employment agency, Mr. Briggs, so her workplace changes from day to day. She's like a will-o'-the-wisp sometimes. Last week, she worked at Crosman Arms. They make guns. And the week before that she worked for a car dealership on Route Sixty-four. They had her washing cars. Terrible job for a woman."
"But she does live here with you?"
Mrs. Conte nodded. "And has for some time, Mr. Briggs."
"How long?"
"Six months, I think."
"Six months?"
"Longer, really. This is July? She came to us just after Christmas. She was sort of a Christmas present. We found her under the tree." She smiled. "Just my little joke," she hurried on. "Humor is what makes us human, after all. Humor, human, Mr. Briggs. They both have the same root, don't they?"
"So they do," Harry said. "Mrs. Conte, do you mind if I come in and look at Babs's room?"
"I don't mind, no. But my husband might. He's not home. He works."
"Then can you tell me what time you expect Babs to come home?"
"I would if I could, Mr. Briggs. But since I don't know where she's working this week, it would be difficult to tell you. It could be five, it could be five-thirty, it could be much later. She's a hardworking woman. Saves money. Wants to give her child the best."
"Her child?"
"Oh, yes. She's pregnant." The same odd smile he had seen on Mrs. Alexander's lips appeared on Mrs. Conte's. "Pregnant, Mr. Briggs. I'm surprised you aren't aware of it."
"Of course I'm not aware of it." He paused. "Can you tell me who the father is?"
She answered, still smiling coyly, "He's a man whose carnal works are legend, Mr. Briggs."
Harry shook his head. "You people speak in riddles, and I have to say that it's…"
"His name is Jim Anderson," she cut in, still smiling.
"And he lives here? In Silver Lake?"
"No."
"Where, then?"
She lifted her chin. "There," she said.
He looked. "You mean the lake?"
"I mean the other side." She turned her head a little and looked down the slope. "Do you know that there's someone watching you? I think he's been watching you ever since we started talking."
Harry turned his head round quickly and looked where she was looking. He saw a tall, fat, balding man. The man was dressed in a black suit,
white shirt and wide, silver tie. He was standing a hundred yards away. He wore spats.
When Harry looked at him, the man stepped very gracefully to one side so he was hidden behind a house.
"Hey, you," Harry called. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"He doesn't look like one of the regular residents," Mrs. Conte said. Her voice was suddenly hoarse, as if she was frightened.
"Thanks for your help, Mrs. Conte," Harry said, without turning his head to look at her. "I'll take care of him." He patted his shoulder holster, beneath the damp trench coat, and grimaced. He'd locked his snub-nosed .38 in the glove compartment of the monster Buick. "Dammit!" he whispered.
He heard Mrs. Conte close her door.
He went down the slope cautiously, to the spot from where the fat man had been watching him, but found nothing, only the imprints of two large feet in the soft, dark, wet earth.
"I allowed them to have their own personalities, of course, and their own possessions. Each of them had first and last names too. And I made cardboard furniture for them to use in their cardboard houses. They could come and go as they pleased. They could rearrange their furniture, they could paint, put in lawns. Whatever. They were free to do as they wished; within certain parameters, of course. They lacked for very little."
"You're talking about your dolls?"
"Of course. What else?"
"But you're talking about them as if they were actually alive."
"C'mon, Harry. Get with the program. Of course they were alive. I was a kid, remember. So my little playmates, as static as they might have been to everyone else, had to be alive to me. Jeez, Harry, weren't you ever a kid?"
"Sure. And I had imaginary playmates too."
"Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry. My dolls weren't imaginary, for Christ's sake."
Chapter Eleven
Harry didn't believe that Barbara was pregnant. He didn't believe there was a man named Jim Anderson, whose carnal works were legend. Jim Anderson, after all, was the name of the father on Father Knows Best, and Harry supposed that calling him, in essence, a stud was Mrs. Conte's idea of a joke.
It was 2:00 P.M. He went back to his motel room. There was a note in a green envelope taped to his door. The note read:
Please don't continue looking for me. I'm all right.
Everything's all right. Nothing is your fault.
B.
He was back in the village of Silver Lake five minutes later. The rain had ended, the sky had cleared, the afternoon was warm and bright. And the community was deserted.
Except for Amelia, who was sitting on her park bench, arms up, head back, legs crossed. And ashe approached her from behind, she lifted her arm and waved a little before he said anything. "What did I tell you, Harry?" she called toward the lake.
He sat beside her. "I feel like I'm the butt of some perverse joke," he said. "Rumor has it that Barbara is pregnant." He gave Amelia a flat smile.
She chuckled. "I don't know where these people get their sense of humor. Sometimes I think they actually have minds of their own."
He was puzzled.
She went on quickly, "The lake's so smooth today. Look at it. It's so smooth."
He looked. Something floating in the lake, a good distance out, caught his eye. He nodded. "What's that?"
Amelia said, "Do you see something?"
He nodded again. "Yes. I see something floating in the lake. Don't you see it?"
Amelia shook her head. "There's nothing floating in the lake, Harry."
"Sure there is. You're not even looking."
"Don't get excited. Of course I'm looking, and if there issomething out there—something I'm not seeing—then it's probably a piece of driftwood."
He thought about this, then said, "Yes. It probably is." He sighed and looked at Amelia. "So, again, I'll take a rain check on that boat ride, okay?"
She smiled very quickly, then tilted her head back to take in the warm daylight. "I'll be right here," she said.
He turned to go, looked back and said, "How well acquainted are you with the people in this village, Amelia?"
"Very," she answered.
"And if I described someone to you, you'd know him?"
"I would. Yes."
He shoved his hands into his pants pockets. "I saw a man. He was tall and fat, and he wore a black suit and a wide, silver tie." He stopped. In his mind's eye, he saw the man again. "Good Lord, Amelia," he went on, smiling, "this guy looked just like Sydney Greenstreet."
"Who?"
"Sydney Greenstreet. He played the villain in a lot of films from the 1940s. Don't you remember?"
Amelia grimaced. "No one like that lives in Silver Lake, Harry." Her tone was suddenly less poised, as if he had caught her off guard.
"You're certain?"
"I couldn't be more certain. For Christ's sake, Harry, what have you done?"
"Huh?"
"I knew you'd show up here and fuck things up. I knew it!"
"Amelia, I don't know what you're talking about."
"Why don't you just do us all a favor and go away?"
"How can I do that? I haven't found Barbara—"
"Maybe she doesn't want to be found. Maybe she's hiding from you for a reason."
He didn't know what to say.
Amelia nodded brusquely at the bench seat. "Sit down, Harry. We have to talk."
"We do?"
"Urgently."
He sat.
Chapter Twelve
Sam Goodlow knew that he had once lived in Boston. And that he had died there too. Run over by a madman in a Lincoln Town Car. Stowed away in the attic of a dowager's cavernous house and eaten by rats, because the dowager was a fake, because she was greedy and because she was a murderer as well. And because Sam, who had only been trying to do his job, had gotten too nosy. But the dowager had gone the way of the dinosaurs, and whatever she had been or done didn't matter anymore. And what pitifully little was left of Sam's temporal self lay quietly decomposing in a tree-dotted cemetery outside Boston.
But now Sam's memory showed him faces, buildings, skylines, swinging skirts, stray animals, a harbor bulging with boats and bilge.
It showed him rats, and he cringed.
He became queasy and light-headed, because he could hear the rats munching, chowing down, gorging themselves. He thought they sounded like people eating mouthfuls of cheesy salad.
And so he remembered picnics on lazy afternoons instead.
He remembered bee stings, sunburns and foraging ants. Kisses that found all the right places.
And what places were there now? he wondered. Femurs, perhaps, and mandibles and rictus grins.
Oh, it was good to be sure of that, come hell or high water. Good to be sure of one's final place in the great unscheme of things.
He sat.
He thumped the arms of the chair with his big hands and billowy clouds of dust rose up and wafted off. It was a satisfying thing to do, to thump the arms of an old chair and see it respond with dust.
The naked woman reappeared and stood very still in the doorway. She didn't look at him. She looked beyond him;
"You should see me dive!" she said.
"No," Sam said, "I don't want to see you dive." And he didn't. She made him uneasy. She frightened him. She gave him an almost unbearable pang of conscience, or guilt. Who was she?
And why was she following him around?
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Watch me dive," she said. Still she wasn't looking at him. Her focus was beyond him, beyond the four walls.
Whose four walls were they? Sam wondered. And what was he doing here?
He remembered something suddenly, with a sense of déjà vu: moving quietly through snow, trying to feel again the cool evening on his face, trying to smell just once more the heady odor ofwood smoke.
Remembered a naked woman rising from a big swimming pool that was alive with steam. Heated pool. Remembered watching as she climbed the dozen metal steps to the diving board
, suspended above the blue, steamy water. Remembered watching as the water dripped from her wonderful body onto the diving board. Remembered thinking, "The water's going to freeze on that diving board. She'll slip."
Remembered . . . "Who's that?"
"Who?"
"Him, there! Hey you! What in the hell do you think you're doing?"
Remembered the naked woman flying, arms outstretched like an angel, breasts moving quickly up, asshe made her stationary leaps before diving.
Mannequins Howl and Weep
Chapter Thirteen
Amelia looked at the lake. "This place is capricious, Harry. Smell that? Smell the clay? How can this place help but be capricious?"
"It's a hell of a time to be dabbling in your little fantasies, Amelia."
"It's not me that's dabbling, Harry." She bent over and fingered some of the dark earth in front of the park bench. She seemed incredibly adept with it. With one hand, she fashioned a perfect cube, flattened it, fashioned a ball, flattened it, fashioned the uncanny likeness of a man, flattened it, threw the dirt down. "So malleable," she said. She looked at Harry. "Just like you."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"And so blind." She shook her head. "You can be good company, Harry. Not always. Sometimes you're simply ... absurd. Like when you wear that getup." She nodded to indicate the trench coat and fedora, which he held on his lap. "But you're ... someone I can talk to. I knew you were coming here, and I thought, It's okay, I can play with him."
"You can play with me?"
"You have a mind of your own, Harry, and feelings of your own, memories of your own. It's so complex. I mean—imagine this: imagine you're in a huge department store at night. No. Not at night. Forever. For eternity. And you're surrounded only by mannequins. They walk and talk and breathe. They have needs too, and desires, and memories. But these are all qualities that you've given them. You've dredged them up from your own life and your own creativity. So you know what these mannequins are all about. You know, more or less, how they're going to act, how they're going to respond, what they're going to do. So where's the challenge? Where's the spark, the difference, the life, for God's sake!" She paused, though not long enough to give Harry a chance to answer. "You do what you can," she continued. "But what can you really do? It's like a goddamned ... accident simulation. Bodies everywhere dripping with blood, bones sticking out, people running around. But none of it's real, and everyone knows it. You go through the motions and emotions, but it's all a sham, it's all a game. It's all the wrong kind of game, because you're simply too much in control. It's like cheating at solitaire, or pitching a baseball game to blind hitters. For a while, it's fun. There's a perverse kind of fascination in watching things happen the way you expect them to happen, the way you've programmed them to happen." She looked away briefly, looked back. "Did you ever think how really bored God must be? I mean, he devises these beings he calls human and then, because he devised them, and created the places they live in, the earth they live on, the stars that surround them, the little. . . spaces in the emptiness that they can flit off to when they stop breathing, he knows what they're going to do, when they're going to do it, how they're going to do it. Where's the fucking challenge? Where are the surprises?"
Sleepeasy Page 4