He looked at her soberly throughout, interjecting reporter-type questions on what she thought was going on with Alcatraz and Smith’s book, questioning her about Louise and what the blonde really knew, about whether pretending Louise was dead would really work.
Then, when the pies were done and the coffee was half-empty from a third refill, Rick began, his voice blending against Sal’s piercing laugh and the ambient noise of Playland and the soft music they were playing inside the white and black shop.
Looking for yesterday … most any day I spent with you …
He held her eyes, brown against blue, and there was understanding in them and warmth, and not a little pain.
“Miranda—I told you I wanted to—to talk—”
She stubbed out a cigarette end from a new pack of Chesterfields. “I thought that’s what we’ve been doing. Talking. And having a little—well, fun, I guess.” She leaned across the table and covered his hand with hers. “It’s meant a lot to me, Rick.” She paused, cleared her throat, the words coming out with no control, no protection.
“You mean a lot to me.”
A couple of months ago the words would have made him turn red and stutter and then puff himself up. A couple of months ago he would have tried to kiss her, saying something earnest about her and John and New York and Spain.
A couple of months ago she wouldn’t have said them.
Now he looked away from her nervously, patting her hand with his free one until she pulled hers out from under. She looked him over, the leaner face, the erect posture, the tougher, more guarded emotions.
Miranda shook out another cigarette and he lit it with a lighter. His hands were shaking.
Hers were, too.
You’re a good soldier, Randy, a good soldier, so charge ahead, into the Valley of Death, ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to do or die—
“Rick—what exactly did you want to talk to me about?”
He swallowed. She noticed it dispassionately, emotions shut off, shut them off, goddamn it, the closet’s locked, the old man’s drunk, Hatchett won’t let you out for hours …
“I—I, well, I’ve said everything before and I don’t want to rehash it, Miranda. But the army, I … I learned a few things about myself. I love you. I always will, I think you know that. But I’m not like John, never was. Never should’ve tried to be. I can’t lead you into danger. I can help you as a friend, and as a friend I’m always here when you need me, I hope you know that. I respect you as a—a person, Miranda, not just as a woman. I admire you—you’re like Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt and Texas Guinan all wrapped up in Rita Hayworth, and I don’t want you to—I’d never ask you, never again, I told myself—never ask you to change.”
She drained the coffee cup and shoved it to the side of the table. Flicked her eyes up, met his.
“And?”
He swallowed again. “I—I just wanted you to know how I feel, Miranda. You’re my friend—probably my best friend—but I realized—I realized I wanted something … something more. Something you can’t give me. I told you I have furlough and I’ve got two days to spend with you. That’s because—that’s because I’m heading up to Santa Rosa for the rest of my week. I—there’s a girl, Annabelle, and—well, I’m meeting her parents.”
The Big Dipper roared, the windows of the Pie Shop rattling, as a middle-aged couple with two kids walked inside and ordered a strawberry rhubarb packaged up.
HaaHAHAhaahaaHAHAhaahaa …
Deep inhale on the Chesterfield. Thank God for cigarettes. James said they’d kill her, but not today.
Not today.
He looked up at her nervously. “So—I just wanted to, to tell you, Miranda—I meant what I said, I’m here for anything you need until day after tomorrow—”
She murmured: “‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago. They called me the hyacinth girl.’”
He wrinkled his brow. “What? Hyacinths? Miranda, are you—”
She raised her face, rubbed out the cigarette, grabbed her handbag.
“Nothing, Rick. Nothing at all. I’m very happy for you and Annabelle. Is she a blonde?”
He looked startled. “Why, yes, she is—”
“I’m sure she’s very pretty and Santa Rosa’s a nice little town. Nice people live there. I’m truly happy for you and truly grateful for everything you’ve done.”
“Well, I’m not through yet, I’ve got to call all the boys and Herb and make sure they stay on the same page about Louise and I’ve got all day tomorrow to get out to Alcatraz with you—”
She shook her head. “No, I think you’d better not, Rick. I think—if it’s all the same to you—I’d very much appreciate it if you could just make those calls for me.”
“But Alcatraz—”
She interrupted him smoothly, standing up. “Alcatraz is a federal penitentiary, remember, and I don’t want you to get in trouble. There could be some sort of army regulation—”
“I don’t think there’s—”
“It’s all right, Rick. I’ll be all right. Let’s just call it a night right here … I’ve got to get out to Smith’s place, anyway, and try to set up the Alcatraz trip.”
Rick slowly stood up and looked at her, mouth like a sad clown.
“Then I probably won’t see you again before you leave for London.”
She nodded. “Forward your post address when you get it. Bente’ll make sure I receive important mail.”
He took a step forward. “Miranda, I—”
She put up her hand to stop him. “I’m happy for you. You deserve everything life can give you—a wife, kids, nice house, a good career. I want you—I want you to be happy, Rick.”
He looked down at her, the blue in his eyes sharp and clear like a cold winter’s day. Miranda took a deep breath and reached upward, gently kissing his cheek.
“Be seein’ you, Sanders.”
She pushed open the door against the cold wind, feeling his eyes on her back, never looking behind.
HaaHAHAhaahaaHAHAhaahaa …
Miranda bent her head against the wind and walked toward the Great Highway and a taxi stand.
Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing.
Twenty-Four
Living or dead. Which was she?
Hail the cab. Yellow Cab. Wanna Yellow Cab, lady? Just dial TUXedo 1234.
1-2-3-4, A-B-C-D, no more lopsided grins, no more bullshit brogues.
No more Rick.
Miranda leaned back against the worn brown leather of the taxi, a ’35 Ford. The cabbie was talking, animatedly, trying to make eye contact in the rearview mirror. She saw herself respond like a machine, like something out of Things to Come or that old German horror picture where all the workers live underground, hoping for a savior.
Saviors were hard to come by in 1940.
Better to stay underground, where the worms are, where the bones lie, where the flesh decays.
Underground.
Miranda tried to light a cigarette but that just reminded her of Playland, Playland and the man she drove away, like all the men since Johnny, the ones who deserved it and the ones who didn’t. The ones she despised and the ones she cared for.
And finally, the one she could’ve loved …
All of them guilty of not being Johnny Hayes, all of them guilty of wanting her, one way or another, usually her body, always her beauty, fading now, growing older.
Miranda exhaled against the window, distorted reflection of white face and auburn hair wavering like water, yellow streetlights bright and garish, until she was swallowed up again by darkness and the black-green of Golden Gate Park.
Her looks would leave her like everything else, just like that medieval morality play she read at Mills’. Everyman’s left with nothing but faith, slung on a dung heap like Job, stinking in his own e
xcrement, thank you so much, Yaweh, thank you so fucking much.
Faith’s a little hard to come by when you keep trying to believe, trying to escape, and the closet, the bottle, and the belt keep coming back, day after day, caught in a trap not of your own devising, trap of pain, waking up to it, going to sleep with it, pain your lullabye, not Irish ones, no, just the bottle, the closet, and the belt, and the knowledge you weren’t good enough. Not good enough to be wanted.
Not good enough to be loved.
Pain coming back, over and over …
Not like the men she drove away.
Phil, the old cop trying to find his lost youth, paunch quivering with excitement, policeman’s ironed shirt stretched tight while he watched Dianne pour tea …
Gonzales, who wanted to marry her against his better principles, a Mr. Darcy nobility she neither wanted nor appreciated, a rich Mexican cop with a bright future and hard muscle that sparked desire in her flesh …
Flesh, flesh, the Way of All Flesh, and your very flesh shall be a great poem, said Walt Whitman, and so it was.
Keats wrote it, wrote it for her.
La Belle Dame Sans Merci.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing.
No bird song, no mercy for herself, not since she lost John. No mercy for her friends, the few who cared about her, Bente and Meyer and Gladys and most of all Rick, the man who’d helped make the City her home again, the man who loved her, who saved her life, her knight in mustard-stained armor.
The man she drove away.
The lights were coming faster now, the neon bright with possibility, the snap and crackle of electricity, the promise of hard liquor and soft women, the hope of loneliness assuaged, the sound of a scratchy Victrola and a slamming door.
Faster, now, faster, like the lights of Playland, so Miranda lit a cigarette, watching the cigarette form a wall of gray smoke between her and the flashing lights, taxi motor humming like a juke in the corner bar.
She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna-dew, And sure in language strange she said “I love thee true.”
Too late, too late, too late. Too late in 1937, no time to stop the shell, stop the bomb. Too late on the twentieth of September, nineteen hundred forty, too late to build again, too late to discover, too late to receive absolution from her ghosts, the ones who watched over her, the one she’d lived for when she wanted to die.
Our faults may not lie in the stars, O Bard, and maybe we are the remedies which we oft ascribe to Heaven, but then you wrote Romeo and Juliet, didn’t you, and you knew, you knew, we are all Fortune’s fools …
A year, a month, a week, a day.
Maybe even a fucking hour, and it might have worked, it could’ve worked, blindness gone and sight restored.
One less harsh word, one less shove aside.
One less goddamn moment of self-pity and self-absorption, one less.
One more day to tell him she loved him.
To tell herself.
And there she lullèd me asleep, And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—The latest dream I ever dreamt On the cold hill side.
The cab was slowly crawling up California, the cabdriver prattling on about the Seals and a horse at Bay Meadows and London getting bombed and whether or not war was coming. She made the appropriate noises, plucked out a dollar bill from her wallet in readiness.
The City stretched before them from the top of Nob Hill, dark hills, dark water, red, blue, yellow, and green neon glistening, glowing, sparkling, ready for anything and willing, too, not respectable, no, not the marrying kind.
Not the marrying kind …
Miranda smiled perfunctorily at the cabdriver, climbed out at 1201 California.
She left the kewpie doll in the backseat.
She straightened her back, wind in her face, and stared up at the Spanish-style apartment house, just across the street from Grace Cathedral.
A tony place, the kind with a sleek-haired young man waiting to greet you, the kind for a writer who had money or knew how to make it.
An apartment for someone who was going places.
She lit another stick with a shaking hand.
Hell, she’d gotten what she wanted, hadn’t she? She was a friend, treated like a friend. That’s all she’d wanted from men since Johnny, treated like something without a goddamn target between her legs, treated like a human being, not a pair of thighs and a pair of breasts, not a promise of a hot night and a hand job in the backseat.
That’s all she’d wanted.
But not, she knew now, too late, too late. Not, she knew now, from Rick.
And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
Miranda blew a stream of smoke into the black night.
Then she climbed the stairs to the front of 1201 California Street and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
* * *
She hit the buzzer for 602. The typewritten address card read SMITH. A sleek-haired young man, evident proponent of Wildroot Crème Oil, looked up at her curiously from the modern curvilinear desk, blond wood shining.
She smiled.
He hit a button and let her in.
“I’m looking for Mr. Smith—Mr. Howard Carter Smith.”
The young man smelled of bay rum and cheap tobacco but he was fresh-faced and ambitious and he leaned forward with his arm on the desk and leered just a little.
“He went out a few minutes ago but I’m available.”
Old pain, new pain, and for a moment she thought about it, about blotting out the night. About blotting it all out, losing herself again, drifting, drifting, like the wood washed up on Baker Beach, like the broken china from shipwrecks off Land’s End.
Then she remembered the license in her wallet.
Remembered the blond girl in the hospital.
No, goddamn it, no going back …
She smiled again. “I won’t ask what you’re available for. Mind telling me where he was headed?”
The young man sighed with resignation. “No, I guess not. Mr. Smith usually goes down to the Lodge Tavern. Sometimes he doesn’t come back until very late and he’s in no condition to … well, you know.”
He followed up the line with a wink. Miranda raised her eyebrows in mock innocence.
“I don’t have the faintest idea of what you’re talking about. But thanks for the information … junior.”
His face fell momentarily, then the natural exuberance of youth and a high-quality hair oil picked him back up.
“I’m here all night if you get bored. Got plenty of pep! Lots of vitamin A.”
She nodded on her way out the door.
“A word of advice: go easy on the fastballs when you’re pitching woo.”
He stared after her, mouth open, while Miranda stepped into the cold night September air of California Street, the gray stone of Grace Cathedral lit by passing cars.
Next stop, Lodge Tavern.
* * *
460 Larkin and the Lodge Tavern was a long, slow slide down the slope of Nob Hill into the working-class lowlands of San Francisco.
About a mile away. About five thousand miles away.
Small, squat, and dark, the bar was full of longshoremen and factory workers, with a sprinkling of Irish cops thrown in for good luck. Italian, Irish, a smattering of Poles, long faces with tough, pockmarked skin and knuckles scraped dry from too much abrasion against shipping crates and other men’s chins, they sat around a long ancient bar, still shiny from constant use, pulling pints of Acme beer or the occasional Old Crow whiskey, telling tales about the wharf and the ships and the ’34 general strike.
Perfect place for a writer of means to pick up the patois, to burnish his credentials as a man of the people, rather than a man of the bourgeoisie.
Just don’t tell ’em where you live.<
br />
Smith was seated on a stool in the middle, nursing a gin and tonic.
Hell, he even had the wrong goddamn drink.
The denizens—and a few of their women—looked up when Miranda walked in and kept looking. She felt a shuffling, a drawing together of ranks.
Ironic that she, not Smith, was the fucking outsider.
She walked over, tapped him on the shoulder. He pivoted around slowly, unevenly. He was already out on the roof.
“Yeah? Oh … you. The, the, the peeper dame, Corben or Kirby or somethin’…”
“Corbie. Miranda Corbie. I need to talk to you, Smith.”
At the utterance of “peeper” the louder voices fell silent before beginning again, louder than before, and the man in the dark gray fedora next to Smith hopped off the green stool and gestured toward it, bowing to Miranda.
She gave him a nod and perched on the leather. A bald man in a dirty white apron, age indeterminate, approached her from behind the bar.
“You want something, lady?”
“Yeah. Best bourbon you’ve got. Make it straight, no ice.”
He grunted, ignored the dollar bill she’d casually thrown down.
The men around her didn’t.
Miranda looked up at Smith.
“Louise is dead.”
The writer shrugged elaborately. “Shorry to hear it. Nothin’ t’ do with me.”
She leaned into him, voice low. “Bullshit. You’re up to your eyeballs in it. We need to talk about the Rock. About your sources. About your goddamn book that people have died for.”
He opened his eyes slowly and elaborately, the way drunks always do. “I gotta lotta books. Jus’ finish’d another one, matter o’ fact, so f’rget goddamn Alcatraz. This one’s better, no int’rviews necessary … gonna win me the goddamn Pu-lit-zer. Besides, I already told everythin’ to the coppers. Go talk to them, lady. Get offa my back.”
“I haven’t been on your back, Smith. Not yet. You’ll know when I am.”
One of the men on the other side of Smith made a grunting noise. “I’d know, honey. I’d know in a heartbeat.”
Miranda frowned. The bar was too full, too crowded, and too public. She picked up the shot glass in front of her and threw the whiskey down her throat, lungs and stomach burning. Grabbed Smith by the arm.
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