She got out of the car and opened the trunk to take out their beach chairs and picnic basket. Penelope had packed them a pasta salad loaded with grilled chicken. Anne's contribution was a split of champagne and some brownies.
"I'll just take a minute to set the table," she said, laying a blanket on the sand and spreading out their picnic lunch.
Pouring champagne into their glasses, David smiled and lifted his glass to her. "Do you know how beautiful you are? You have truly been the love of my life. Never, not even for one second, never forget that I love you."
To her amazement, he leaned across the blanket and kissed her full on the mouth, then quickly looked away.
David's appetite was a bigger surprise; he devoured two helpings of everything and gobbled down four brownies, rolling his eyes in pleasure and moaning as he took each bite.
"This is too much like the food scene in Tom Jones," Anne said, laughing. "Now I know you're feeling better."
He picked up another brownie and licked it obscenely, once again rolling his eyes at her.
"Oh, my heavens," she said, rocking with laughter, "if you don't stop that, I'm going to be sick. I'm too stuffed to laugh like this. "
"It's all your fault," he said. "You know decadent desserts bring out the swine in me." He made a grunting noise.
Suddenly, he went quiet. "Shhhhh," he said, putting a finger to his lips and gesturing to the rocks off to the right. "Did you bring the jar of unsalted peanuts?" he whispered. "The ground squirrels smell our food."
Anne fished in the picnic basket, found the peanuts, and handed the jar to David, who quietly opened it. Taking out a few nuts, he extended his hand and held it out until several of the squirrels began taking the nuts.
"Look how they grab and dash," David said, as the spotted squirrels scurried about, stuffing their cheeks so full they looked as if they had mumps. Soon, the little animals swarmed about him. Anne snapped a photo just as several ran up into his lap.
After lunch they cleared up and sprawled across the blanket. "Remember?" she said. "The willow tree?"
"Of course I do. Those nights were so exquisite, I could never forget." He looked so deep into her eyes that Anne felt breathless.
"Let's go for a walk," she said, trying to regain her self-control.
Holding hands, they strolled along the beach, leaving a trail of footprints behind them. Anne was glad she had brought her camera so she could catch him feeding the gulls. She knew one shot in particular would be spectacular. David looked up into a cornflower-blue sky, holding a crust of bread high above his head. A gull swooped in, its white wings fully extended, just as she snapped the picture.
He turned to her. "Did you bring your swimsuit?"
She brushed sand off her jeans. "No. I don't feel like getting salt all over me and driving back like that. Besides, it's a little too cool for me."
"Know what? I don't care," he said. "I've got my trunks on under these shorts, and I'm ready to swim."
"But you just ate. I'm afraid you'll get cramps."
"That's an old wives' tale. As many years as I've surfed, I've never worried about it, and I've never had a problem. I'm going in," he said, stripping off his shirt.
His appearance shocked her. The muscles in his upper body had wasted, and she thought he must have lost forty pounds. When he pulled off his now-baggy shorts, his hips were nonexistent.
He looked like a concentration-camp survivor. The cadaver-like man who stood before her now bore little resemblance to the beautiful youth she had loved so much, yet she still saw that young man in his face.
It killed her to watch disease chip away at him, destroying him minute by minute. If not for the AIDS, radiation and chemo might have held forth some hope, but with David's immunological system so compromised, there was no way he could fight the cancer.
"Please wait a while, darling," she pleaded.
"I'll be all right. Now stop that," he said, laughing as he waded into the surf.
Anne watched as he swam out past the breakers, knifing cleanly through the water, his beautiful head moving gracefully. Like a sea otter, he turned onto his back and floated in the sun, bobbing up and down with the movement of the water.
Hearing a bark, Anne glanced away for a moment and saw the man who always walked his German shepherd on the beach. A woman was with him this time, and they were picking their way down the path toward the beach.
When she looked back, David was no longer in sight.
Chapter 28
Without thinking, Anne plunged into the water fully dressed, shoes and all, and tried to swim out to the spot where she last saw David, but her clothes pulled her down.
The water was icy. A wave swamped her, and she nearly drowned, in fact would have, but the man walking his dog saw her go under. He swam out and hauled her back.
The poor fellow's bravery nearly cost him his life, for she fought him, screaming David's name, and trying to swim out to sea.
At last, frantic, the man coldcocked her and swam with her back to the beach, or she probably would have dragged them both down. The man's wife scrambled up the path and went to a nearby house for help.
The rescue squad had arrived by the time she came to, and a crew from the Santa Barbara Coast Guard station was already searching for David. Groggy, with her jaw aching from her rescuer's left hook, Anne lay on a stretcher, wrapped in blankets and shivering.
The ambulance took her to nearby St. Joseph's Hospital, where she was treated for shock. The emergency-room doctor wanted to admit her, but she refused. Once she was coherent and able to walk to a telephone in the hallway, she called Charlie. Between sobs, she gave him a sketchy report of what had happened.
"I'll be there as soon as I can," he said.
As best she could, she held herself together until Charlie got there. But when she saw him, Anne collapsed in his arms, too drained of emotion to speak. They rode in horrified silence back to the house in Laurel Canyon, where photographers already had started to gather.
"Duck down," Charlie said. Pulling his baseball cap low on his forehead, he opened the gates with her remote. No one paid any attention. They were watching for a BMW or Mercedes, so Charlie's station wagon went unnoticed, probably thinking he was a gardener arriving for an afternoon of work. Charlie always kept a couple of rakes and a ladder in the back to further the impression.
Throughout the ordeal that was to come, Charlie never left Anne's house, sleeping on the sofa until she convinced him to use one of the guestrooms. But neither of them slept much. She could hear him down the hall, tossing and turning nearly as much as she did. They said little, each lost in shock, fear, and grief.
Charlie first met David at a shoot in Hollywood in the early sixties. In fact, he landed David his first movie role. Over the years the two became close friends, running with the same crowd, going to the same parties.
If Anne and Charlie reminisced about David, they both ended up crying, so they stopped talking about him.
For Anne, nighttime was the worst. Wanting to sleep, yet unable to, she tortured herself with memories. David standing in her office the day they met. Lying in the moonlight on her bed. Beneath the willow tree.
What could I have done differently when we were first together? Would things have worked out if I had only been more patient? Could I have saved him if I had made him stay out of the water? If I had been a stronger swimmer? Her brain raced from question to question, churning through the dregs of her mind to stir up all sorts of things. And she couldn't turn it off.
Three days after David disappeared, a black Ford sedan pulled up at her gates, which now swarmed with reporters. The maid took the call from the squawk box and let the car in without a word. The unmarked police car could mean only one thing.
Penelope admitted two somber men in dark suits, and Anne remembered the two army officers who came to her door so long ago. Then, she had feared they were bringing her bad news about David, but it had been Louie. Now, her worst fear came true. They to
ld her that her husband's body had washed up not far from the cove.
"You're his next of kin, ma'am, so you'll have to identify him. At St. Joseph's Hospital morgue in Santa Barbara."
"I'll take you there," Charlie said. "When I pull the car around to the back door, you duck down and get in." He nodded to the detectives. "We'll follow them out, but at a distance." His strategy worked, and they swung onto the street with little notice as the photographers took pictures of the police car.
Once again they were silent as they drove up the coast highway, each lost in thought. It's a mistake. It won't be David. It'll be someone else. David is still alive somewhere. My David can't be dead. Somewhere out there, I know he's waiting to be rescued. She could feel it in her bones.
At last they turned off the freeway onto a side street. When Mission Santa Barbara came into view, she breathed a sigh of relief, because it wasn't far from the hospital. They were almost there, and she could hardly wait to prove everyone wrong. She sighed and Charlie patted her hand.
Thank God for Charlie, she said to herself. What would I ever do without him?
As the coroner led her into the morgue, Anne thought of the summer she turned sixteen. Late one afternoon, she pulled a teenage girl out of the community swimming pool, which was nearly deserted because it was close to dinnertime. She should have headed home too, but she decided to swim one last lap. Diving into the deep end, she saw something waving about in the water near the drain. Curious, she discovered it was long brown hair, and it was attached to a girl lying on the bottom of the pool.
Grabbing a handful, she hauled a girl up, and swam with her to the closest ladder, where she latched on and yelled for help. The ambulance crew revived the girl, who looked to be about thirteen. But Anne would never forget the sight of that drowned girl, all blue-white and waxy until the medics worked on her.
When the sheet was pulled back, this man's still face looked nothing like she expected but had turned a horrible dark color. Although his staring eyes glistened, there would be no reviving this drowning victim. Anne recoiled in horror. Charlie supported her, or she would have slumped to the floor. As it was, she had difficulty even walking to a chair not ten feet away in the hallway.
"No, no, no," she screamed. "It's David."
She didn't want to believe it, but she knew it was David. The medical examiner gave her a plastic bag containing her husband's platinum wedding ring. It had their initials and wedding date engraved inside, just like hers.
Her breath came in ragged gasps, and she vomited into a plastic-lined wastebasket that probably had been placed next to the chair for such emergencies.
Afterward, she couldn't breathe. The room spun crazily around her like a broken carnival ride just before she passed out. She awoke to chest pains and Charlie carrying her to the emergency room. He put her on a gurney and a nurse took over, rolling Anne into a curtained cubicle to start an IV, attach EKG leads, and administer an injection of something that made her sleepy.
Later, Anne heard the doctor talking to Charlie. "She's going to be all right," he said. "We're not sure what's going on. Her EKG was normal, but she's had quite a shock. We'll keep her overnight and monitor her to see how she gets along."
Charlie walked beside the gurney as an aide pushed it into an elevator. On the third floor they rolled her down a hall to a private room. Charlie waited outside while a nurse helped her into a hospital gown and then invited him into Anne's room.
For the next three days, he never left her side, seeing that her covers were straight and making sure her water pitcher always was full of fresh ice. He slept, fully clothed, on a cot the staff brought in. Not only did the thin mattress look uncomfortable, but his feet hung over the end, and the skimpy hospital blanket constantly slid to the floor.
Never once did he complain, though. He fetched her extra gelatin and pudding when she stopped feeling nauseated. He called his florist, who personally delivered a huge bouquet of daisies to her bedside.
Charlie told the nurse not to bring Anne any food from the kitchen, because he was having something sent in from a French restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard. There was Salade Nicoise for lunch and Coq au Vin for dinner.
Anne didn't feel like eating, but she didn't want to hurt his feelings, so she poked at her food and even swallowed a little. Although everything was sublime and expertly prepared, she couldn't choke down much.
Between nurses' visits, she got a little rest. The first day, it felt as if every nurse on the floor came to Anne's room when a new shift came on duty. They usually said they just wanted to be sure she had everything she needed, but Anne recognized the real reason for their visits, although they feigned surprise at seeing the tall movie star next to Anne's bed. "Oh, my goodness, aren't you Charles Holiday?" was the inevitable question.
"Darn. My secret is out. Shhh, don't tell anyone," he would say with a smile, turning on all the charm he could muster. "And I'm counting on you to take good care of my friend here. She's had a rough time."
Through it all, Charlie remained unfailingly kind and considerate, even when the nurses' welcome grew thin.
By the next day his presence was no longer a novelty. Now he was a glamorous fixture. Not only did they stop intruding, but the nurses and aides often pressed little treats upon him. "Here, take this to your friend," one would say, handing him an extra juice or ice-cream bar.
No one mentioned David. They all knew Anne's grief was still too raw, and she didn't need any more reminders of the tragedy after the media coverage of his disappearance. No doubt the story would headline all the big newspapers once word got out that David's body had been recovered. She could only imagine the media onslaught to come and refused to turn on the television.
Anne didn't know what medication the doctor gave her, but it worked. Giving in to exhaustion, she napped off and on the whole time she was in the hospital, falling into a drugged slumber without dreams at night. But every day was a nightmare.
When she awoke, her first thought was of David. None of this is happening. David is going to be found. He’s only been gone a day or two.
Then she would remember the horror of the morgue. But she still couldn’t believe David was really gone. It was unreal. Mostly she stared silently at the ceiling while Charlie helplessly sat by her bedside.
Unable to feel anything, she had gone cold and frozen inside. He can't really be dead. She thought she saw him coming through the door or sitting by her bed, and she had to blink to be sure what she saw was real. Several times she caught herself thinking she should call David to tell him about something, only to remember she would never be able to call him again.
Charlie left her side just a couple of times to bring her some items she needed, which he hurriedly picked up at a nearby department store. While he was there, he also bought fresh clothes for himself so he could shower and change.
While she napped, he sneaked off to the hospital gift shop, returning with lavender-scented lotion, a get-well card, and an African violet plant in a white, fluted pot. The velvety flowers were such a vivid purple they were almost neon.
Whenever Anne was awake, Charlie was there, holding her hand, not saying a word. She couldn't think of a more constant friend, except for David.
"Anne, your EKGs look good, and I think you're pretty well hydrated," the doctor said. "So if you actually eat lunch and dinner instead of rearranging your food on the plate, we'll let you go home tomorrow."
Home? Home to what? David's heart was my home, and now I have no home. But she didn't leave the hospital the next day. She was still too weak to take more than a few steps around her room. The following day she was better and could walk a short way along the hall, though still a little weak and shaky.
Although she was not eager to go home, she was growing weary of the hospital, with its night noises and uncomfortable bed. When the doctor told her she would have to stay yet another day, she made an effort to eat more at lunchtime. It was tasteless to her, but she choked down almost
everything and nearly cleaned her plate at dinnertime.
"Good job," Charlie said, smiling. "That ought to put some starch in your collar."
Anne had no idea what the phrase meant, but she smiled for the first time since David's disappearance. That evening, she walked the entire length of the hall and back.
The next morning she ate most of the quiche Charlie brought her, and the doctor released her from the hospital in the afternoon. She should have been happy to go home, but all she could think about was that the house was empty now and would never again be filled and brought to life with David's presence.
By anyone else's standards, she had everything in the world, but all she knew was that the one thing that had ever made her life worthwhile was gone.
Pulling on a baseball cap, Charlie drove around to the front door of the hospital, opened the car door, and helped her from the wheelchair into the front seat. She adjusted her dark glasses and wrapped a silk scarf tightly around her head.
"Damn," Charlie said when they got back to Laurel Canyon. "The press is camped out in front of your house. Good thing your wall and gates are high."
He drove on by. "They haven't discovered the service entrance around back yet, so I think this old jalopy will get us there without notice."
Looking around furtively, he eased the car into the narrow alley, only to spot photographers waiting by the back gate. "Duck down," he said. "Looks as if we'll have to try another tactic. We'll go to my place and wait until after midnight to come back. These vultures have to sleep sometime."
He drove past the paparazzi without being noticed and turned toward his house when they were on the street again. "Okay, you can sit up now," he said. "That was close."
He lived only a short distance away, and they soon pulled up to his gates. The media hadn't yet made the connection between Charlie and David, so there were no photographers lurking about. Charlie pressed his remote, and the tall wooden gates swung open to reveal, at the end of a long tree-lined drive, a massive antebellum house straight out of the Deep South, Greek columns and all.
Water's End Page 24