Snowstorms in a Hot Climate

by Sarah Dunant

  “They didn’t look like scientists,” she said almost sullenly.

  “And since when could you tell a doctor without a white coat?” I teased her. “Seriously, think about it. If they were Peeping Toms, then why weren’t they in a more convenient spot? This is California after all. Half the people in this state regularly take off their clothes in public. They don’t need a telescope to see that. And if they didn’t look like scientists, then that’s America for you—no proper dress code. It’s been impossible to tell a professional since the sixties, you know that. You should see the visiting academics we get at UC—they look like video stars.”

  This time she laughed. I took it as a sign of surrender. We fell silent. From inside the house the hall light was leaking out onto the deck, reaching almost to where we were sitting. Just twenty-four hours ago we had sat here, cocooned in the knowledge of our isolation. Now, there was just the thinnest thread of possibility that with the house lit up … I had the feeling she was thinking the same thing.

  “I suppose I’m just getting paranoid in my old age,” she said, focusing in the distance on the occasional flickering car beam crossing the base of the canyon. “An occupational hazard from sleeping too many nights next to a man who breaks the law.”

  “What kind of paranoia?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Cops and robbers, I suppose. Stupid really. It’s so safe. Or at least that’s how Lenny makes it feel. But you hear stories.”

  “Such as?”

  “Big fish eating little fish … little fish fighting back, that kind of thing. I don’t usually take any notice. There was a time when every newspaper and periodical carried its own shock-horror tale about the corruption and violence of the cocaine trade. Mutilated bodies in canyons, shoot-outs in mountain strongholds, all good sensational stuff. Gave me the creeps. I stopped wanting to know. What the eye doesn’t see … But then it all seemed so far removed from Lenny. Even when I asked he wouldn’t tell me. I’m just the gangster’s moll, remember?”

  J.T. was only half right. She may have been naïve, but she was still wise enough to be frightened. There they were again, his words caught like small chicken bones in my throat. Except this time, however much I swallowed, I couldn’t dislodge them. But tonight was not the time for such thoughts.

  “Listen, if it still worries you tomorrow, we’ll go and talk to J.T. Who knows? They might even be trespassing on his land. He could go down with a shotgun and run them off.”

  “Naaw … in the morning it’ll all be dissolved by the sunshine,” she said, gathering up the glasses and drifting back toward the house. Inside, as I locked up, she moved to put out the light.

  “Hey, Marla.” I turned. In her hand was the telephone receiver. “Did you know the phone was off the hook?”

  I stared at it, rerunning the haste with which I had replaced it, and hearing again the flat, menacing voice on the other end of the line. Then I remembered something else. Elly’s words out on the deck. “… the other was smoking a cigarette and talking into some kind of walkie-talkie.” Immediately my good sense marched in and stamped on the suspicion. I kept my foot hard down until all traces of it had been crushed. Elly was talking.

  “… Marla?”

  “What?”

  “I asked if someone called.”

  “Yes … Wrong number.” It was a quick lie, based on instinct rather than judgment.

  “I bet it was the same mental defective who called this morning. God, what’s the point of being ex-directory when you’re pestered by idiots. Might as well be in the book.” She slid the receiver back into its cradle. “Bags I the bathroom first.”

  As the water ran, I kept vigil over the telephone. Then, as I heard her snap out the bathroom light and cross the floor to the bedroom, I lifted the receiver gently and wedged it just out of its cradle.

  Later, as we lay out on our mattresses on the upstairs verandah, staring out into the great dome of the night sky with the haze of the Milky Way a faint cloud against the darkness, I thought of stargazing. And more.

  “I have an idea,” I said, and my voice sounded huge in the night. “I was thinking of going back via Paris. To visit Gem. I haven’t seen her for a while now, and she’s been ill recently. She still asks after you. I wondered if you’d like to come along. Just for a visit.”

  The pause that followed was so long I wondered if she might really have fallen asleep. Then her voice, small and clear said, “Yes, I’ll think about it.”

  After that we both lay awake for some time.

  nine

  In the morning, over breakfast, we decided to take the car and spend the day away from the house, as if it was an on the spur of the moment decision, unconnected with the night before. We walked over to J.T.’s to pick up the VW, and perhaps, had he been there, one of us might have said something, but as it was the house and hut were empty. Like a modern-day Marie Celeste, the imprint of a human hand was still warm around the place. The garden soil was dark with fresh watering, and in their pens the chickens had just been fed, heads bobbing up and down to catch the last of the grain. But in the drive the blue pickup was gone, leaving the fashionably old VW snoozing like some snub-nosed animal in the morning haze. Elly disappeared into the house to leave a note, and then, finding the keys in the glove compartment, we set off, leaving it all behind us.

  From Santa Cruz we headed out along Highway One toward Carmel and Big Sur. A few miles out of the city the horizon leveled off and the trees and shrubbery dropped away. The highway glistened mirage-wet in the heat, while to either side stretched long level fields encrusted with artichokes and alfalfa. Nearer to Sand City nothing grew, just wild white expanses of sand dunes, sloping gently to the sea and throwing up sand mists to filter the light. It was like driving into instant science fiction: the horizon designed for the classic long shot of giant tentacles waving into view, followed by a hideous, gaping mouth, eager to crunch up the inevitable unwary Cadillac with its young courting couple canoodling in the back. I have never understood what audiences get so upset about. The mutants are invariably more interesting than the families they consume.

  In homage we ran through a list of monsters we were most sorry to have seen destroyed, and our movie reminiscences got us as far as Monterey.

  There we decided to stop for coffee, to investigate old memories of this little coastal community; Steinbeck country, which had given up its literary associations in favor of style, booming during the late sixties with artists’ studios, restaurants, shops, and bars. A generation later it was already tumbling down the other side of the parabola of fashion, a town after the gold rush had passed through. It proved that you should never go back. But the road ahead was yellow-bricked with memory, and we decided to carry on regardless.

  Nature disappointed less. We picnicked on the Monterey peninsula, seventeen miles of rolling coastline where the wind still sculptured the trees horizontal and the cliffs plunged down to an inhospitable Pacific, glistening blue-green under the sun. And it was there that Elly suggested we spend the afternoon in Big Sur and book a table for dinner at Nepenthe, to test out her one last solid-gold memory.

  Nepenthe is the kind of place, perched as it is on the edge of the cliffs, which stays clear in memory when other things around it fade and are washed away. Elly had come here first as a chubby eighteen-year-old. An Americanophile to the core, she had come to California in the three months between school and university, eking out a living by looking after rich children in a modest mansion not far from the coast. It was the end of the sixties, and professional America was indulging itself in the new morality. The lawyer’s family she dropped into was having marital problems John Updike Couples style, and that didn’t leave them a lot of space for their children. Nepenthe had been Elly’s leaving present from the parents, a statement of their gratitude for all the free time she had given them to experiment with the destruction of their marriage. I knew all these things because those three months had been the first time that Elly and I had ever been separ
ated, and she had written to me regularly, weekly installments of soap. Her letter composed the day after was a classic, detailing the disintegration of the evening as the husband got drunk and made a pass at the waitress, while the wife ordered a taxi home at enormous expense and left without him. Elly, as usual, had been caught in the middle. Two months after she got home to England, she heard that divorce proceedings had begun. Twelve years on, she had lost track of the characters, but the memory of the setting remained clear.

  This time she played the role of the host. We sat out on the verandah with the sunset in front of us, easy little rich girls, less glamorous perhaps than the rest of the clientele, but with enough money to buy our way into their charmed circle for the night.

  So we indulged ourselves, and at the end of the meal, when the waiter brought the bill, Elly hissed at me to keep my wallet in my bag and, with a certain sense of ceremony, laid out two crisp hundred-dollar notes in between the white folds of the napkin and waved away the change. But it was so much money that neither of us could be quite casual about it.

  “We’re both wondering if I’ll miss the money, right?” she said after a while. “The answer is I don’t know. I’ve tried hard not to become dependent on it, but it does rather seep in through the cracks. Wealth. It’s like all the best drugs. You don’t notice it until you’re hooked.”

  “So? You’ve already shown you can break one addiction. If it worries you, you could always use my building society as a clinic for a while. Small doses until you feel strong enough to go it alone.”

  “Marla …”

  “No, I mean it. People keep whole families on my salary. You could become an interior designer. Do for me what you did for Hermosa.”

  “Oh sure—you really want to live in an overpriced goldfish bowl. Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “So, why don’t you ask Lenny for alimony? In lieu of services rendered?”

  “Because he’d give it, that’s why. And I want his charity even less than I want yours. Don’t worry. It’s no big deal. I’ve been poor before. It’s just a question of acclimatization. The money will be the least of my worries.” She finished her coffee. “Come on. Franklin’s head is burning a hole in my pocket. Let’s have a brandy to celebrate our friendship. We’re probably the oldest surviving relationship in this restaurant, let alone in the state of California.”

  By the time we got back on the freeway, the roads were empty of traffic. I was beginning to wonder if we shouldn’t have decided to stay the night somewhere when the engine started to make its feelings on the matter known. For a while we both tried to ignore the grumblings coming from under the bonnet, but we were still some way outside Santa Cruz when the car spluttered, then juddered, and finally choked itself to a congested, graceless halt on the hard shoulder. Elly turned the key in the ignition. The engine gurgled into life again, but with a rasping, desperate sound that made us suspect the worst. We crept along for a few miles in the slow lane, trying to believe in miracles, but all three of us knew there would be no getting home that night. It was after midnight. A tow or a mechanic would take hours, even if we could find a phone. And, as Elly put it, the prospect of sitting out on a dark, deserted highway waiting for the tap of a disembodied fist on the windscreen was a little too close to urban legend for comfort. The only thing to be done was to try to get off the freeway and find a place to stay until morning. Sand City was creeping up around us, the sand dunes dark and eerie in the light of a half-moon. To one side, off the road, there was the gaping carcass of a hotel which looked as if it had been built for a totally different landscape, before the sand had flowed in, bringing commercial disaster in its wake.

  We panted on, and at the next side road, chugged our way toward what must once have been the outskirts of the town. In the distance we reentered B-movie territory, with a flickering neon sign above an arrow pointing left, announcing, SAND CITY MOTEL, with both the C and E missing. We grinned at each other, half anticipating swirling mists and a Rod Serling voice introducing The Twilight Zone. Fifty yards down the side road, there it was, a set of ten rather sad bungalows, two with their lights on, the rest dark. Who could possibly choose to spend the night here? We tossed a coin to decide which one of us would make the introduction. Elly won.

  The owner, whom I roused from a backroom television den, didn’t look anything like Norman Bates and treated the whole transaction as if it was just his job. It made me wonder if we Europeans are the only ones to conjure up an instant vision of Psycho on journeys into the unknown. Americans at least had experience of motels long before that particular highway was removed and Norman’s mother slept once too often with her new lover. In England we expect landladies to be thin-lipped and sullen. Who knows, perhaps a streak of the psychotic is occupational in motel owners? I did not stay to find out.

  Inside the room, safely locked, we tried phoning J.T. to explain our absence. But there was no answer. It was after 1:00 A.M. He must still have been out, cruising the Santa Cruz bars on his night on the town. Elly let it ring, just in case, propping the receiver under one ear, while we lay in bed watching reruns of Lou Grant on a television which had seen better days. After ten minutes she gave up. Lou Grant put the L.A. Trib to bed and we went to sleep.

  Her cry woke me from what must have been the deepest part of sleep, because I remember a sensation of dizziness as I rushed back to consciousness. She was sitting upright, one hand over her eyes, as if she had been struck by a sudden blinding migraine. I got up and went to her, putting my arm around her shoulders. “Elly, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Oooh, it’s nothing.” She shivered violently. “Just a bad dream, that’s all. A touch of Brian De Palma in the canyon. I must have scared myself awake.”

  I leaned over and switched on the bedside light. She winced in the glare. “I’ll get you a glass of water,” I said, taking a sheet with me for protection. In the bathroom a small spider was resting halfway up the sink. I gave him the thumbs-up and ran the water from the bath. Elly gulped at it greedily.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She shrugged. “There’s nothing to tell really. I dreamt I was in the guesthouse on my own at night, asleep on the verandah outside. I woke suddenly to see this figure standing in the doorway, watching me. I cried out, but he began to come toward me. I scrambled up, but there was nowhere to go. He was blocking my path into the house. I desperately started to climb over the side of the verandah to drop down onto the deck below, but just as I was hanging there, about to let go, I spotted something in the corner, the shadow of someone crouching, waiting to pounce. That’s when I woke up. It scared the shit out of me. Stupid, eh?” She grinned wearily. “It must have been the lobster. Seafood revenge. It’s OK. I’m all right now. Just give me a minute.”

  I walked over to the window, where a dull, dirty light was filtering in through the curtains. I peered outside. For the first few yards the lamp above the door threw down a semicircle of yellowish haze. Beyond there was nothing. Somehow the light made the darkness seem blacker. Sand City USA. Once again we were alone in a lost landscape. What was it about this country that seemed so alien when the night fell? Maybe it was just the size.

  I said nothing but kept my eyes focused on the darkness. Finally, when it came down to it, it was her battle and not mine.

  “You know, I really did believe it was the golden land,” she said, more to herself than to me. “The place where anything was possible so long as you had the energy; and that energy was something everyone had, like a natural resource. Funny. I must have squandered mine along the way. It’s certainly taken me long enough to realize there are some things you can’t change … some people—” She broke off.

  Peering into the night, I imagined waves of Indian warriors crouching in the blackness, light-footed, intent on mischief. I tensed myself for the war cries. Elly and Marla’s last stand. One for the history books. Not bad as endings go. Time passed. Outside everything stayed the same.

  “You know, I
think I would like to go to Paris. For a visit. If that’s all right with you.”

  I let the curtain fall softly back into place. The world contracted and became more domestic. Manageable. I turned to face her. She was sitting huddled, staring at the wall, frowning, as if the problem were not yet completely solved. I felt as if we had been in the room for days, working it over, sorting it out. For a moment of triumph, it was all very subdued. She looked up at me and smiled. I smiled back. It seemed enough. She settled herself back down under the covers. “I think I’ll be able to sleep now. How about you?”

  “I think so too.” I got into bed and lay there for a while, feeling a kind of satisfaction. I also felt her sadness. Beginnings are endings too. Eventually her breathing evened out into a regular pattern of sleep. I called her name softly; she did not respond. I turned over and closed my eyes. The next thing I recall was the sound of a car door slamming and a motel morning dragging me out of sleep.

  The first day of the rest of our lives. It did not stand on ceremony. Sand City welcomed us begrudgingly. The girl at the breakfast diner was impatient, though we were the only customers in the place, and even the eggs did not seem sunny-side up. We said very little. Elly was light and shade, the exhilaration of a decision made and the knowledge of the battle to come. I did not intrude. The car limped faithfully into town, only to die quietly a hundred yards from the garage. We pushed it the rest of the way and stood like worried parents as the doctor prodded and poked under the bonnet.

  “Fuel-flow problems,” he announced in a voice that had traveled a long way to get to California. “I ain’t got the right parts here, but I can fix her up temporary like, so you can git home. Take me a couple of hours, though.”

  We left him to it and headed for the beach. Sand City—it meant what it said. Miles of it, dazzling white under the sun, tons of it, pounding in on every roll of surf. Even the air was blurred with sand mist, sticking to your skin and stinging your eyes. We lasted just over an hour, watching a few mad surfers become waterlogged with failure. Then we took refuge in a darkened bar, where we drank tequila sunrises without the tequila and felt the windburn on our faces.