A Stranger in My Grave

1

My beloved Daisy: It has been so many years since I have seen you...

The times of terror began, not in the middle of the night when the quiet and the darkness made terror seem a natural thing, but on a bright and noisy morning during the first week of February. The acacia trees, in such full bloom that they looked leafless, were shaking the night fog off their blossoms like shaggy dogs shaking off rain, and the eucalyptus fluttered and played coquette with hundreds of tiny gray birds, no bigger than thumbs, whose name Daisy did not know.

She had tried to find out what species they belonged to by consulting the bird book Jim had given her when they’d first moved into the new house. But the little thumb-sized birds refused to stay still long enough to be identified, and Daisy dropped the subject. She didn’t like birds anyway. The contrast between their blithe freedom in flight and their terrible vulnerability when grounded reminded her too strongly of herself.

Across the wooded canyon she could see parts of the new housing development. Less than a year ago, there had been nothing but scrub oak and castor beans pushing out through the stubborn adobe soil. Now the hills were sprouting with brick chimneys and television aerials, and the landscape was growing green with newly rooted ice plant and ivy. Noises floated across the canyon to Daisy’s house, undiminished by distance on a windless day: the barking of dogs, the shrieks of children at play, snatches of music, the crying of a baby, the shout of an angry mother, the intermittent whirring of an electric saw.

Daisy enjoyed these morning sounds, sounds of life, of living. She sat at the breakfast table listening to them, a pretty dark-haired young woman wearing a bright blue robe that matched her eyes, and the faintest trace of a smile. The smile meant nothing. It was one of habit. She put it on in the morning along with her lipstick and removed it at night when she washed her face. Jim liked this smile of Daisy’s. To him it indicated that she was a happy woman and that he, as her husband, deserved a major portion of the praise for making and keeping her that way. And so the smile, which intended no purpose, served one anyway: it convinced Jim that he was doing what at various times in the past he’d believed to be impossible — making Daisy happy.

He was reading the paper, some of it to himself, some of it aloud, when he came upon any item that he thought might interest her.

“There’s a new storm front off the Oregon coast. Maybe it will get down this far. I hope to God it does. Did you know this has been the driest year since ’48?”

“Mmm.” It was not an answer or a comment, merely an encouragement for him to tell her more so she wouldn’t have to talk. Usually she felt quite talkative at breakfast, recounting the day past, planning the day to come. But this morning she felt quiet, as if some part of her lay still asleep and dreaming.

“Only five and a half inches of rain since last July. That’s eight months. It’s amazing how all our trees have managed to survive, isn’t it?”

“Mmm.”

“Still, I suppose the bigger ones have their roots down to the creek bed by this time. The fire hazard’s pretty bad, though. I hope you’re careful with your cigarettes, Daisy. Our fire insurance wouldn’t cover the replacement cost of the house. Are you?”

“What?”

“Careful with your cigarettes and matches?”

“Certainly. Very.”

“Actually, it’s your mother I’m concerned about.” By looking over Daisy’s left shoulder out through the picture window of the dinette, he could see the used-brick chimney of the mother-in-law cottage he’d built for Mrs. Fielding. It was some 200 yards away. Sometimes it seemed closer, sometimes he forgot about it entirely. “I know she’s fussy about such things, but accidents can happen. Suppose she’s sitting there smoking one night and has another stroke? I wonder if I ought to talk to her about it.”

It was nine years ago, before Jim and Daisy had even met, that Mrs. Fielding had suffered a slight stroke, sold her dress shop in Denver, and retired to San Félice on the California coast. But Jim still worried about it, as if the stroke had just taken place yesterday and might recur tomorrow. He himself had always had a very active and healthy life, and the idea of illness appalled him. Since he had become successful as a land speculator, he’d met a great many doctors socially, but their presence made him uncomfortable. They were intruders, Cassandras, like morticians at a wedding or policemen at a child’s party.

“I hope you won’t mind, Daisy.”

“What?”

“If I speak to your mother about it.”

“Oh no.”

He returned, satisfied, to his paper. The bacon and eggs Daisy had cooked for him because the day maid didn’t arrive until nine o’clock lay untouched on his plate. Food meant little to Jim at breakfast time. It was the paper he devoured, paragraph by paragraph, eating up the facts and figures as if he could never get enough of them. He’d quit school at sixteen to join a construction crew.

“Now here’s something interesting. Researchers have now proved that whales have a sonar system for avoiding collisions, something like bats.”

“Mmm.” Some part of her still slept and dreamed: she could think of nothing to say. So she sat gazing out the window, listening to Jim and the other morning sounds. Then, without warning, without apparent reason, the terror seized her.

The placid, steady beating of her heart turned into a fast, arrhythmic pounding. She began to breathe heavily and quickly, like a person engaged in some tremendous physical feat, and the blood swept up into her face as if driven before a wind. Her forehead and cheeks and the tips of her ears burned with sudden fever, and sweat poured into the palms of her hands from some secret well.

The sleeper had awakened.

“Jim.”

“Yes?” He glanced at her over the top of the paper and thought how well Daisy was looking this morning, with a fine high color, like a young girl’s. She seemed excited, as if she’d just planned some new big project, and he wondered, indulgently, what it would be this time. The years were crammed with Daisy’s projects, packed away and half forgotten, like old toys in a trunk, some of them broken, some barely used: ceramics, astrology, tuberous begonias, Spanish conversation, upholstering, Vedanta, mental hygiene, mosaics, Russian literature — all the toys Daisy had played with and discarded. “Do you want something, dear?”

“Some water.”

“Sure thing.” He brought a glass of water from the kitchen. “Here you are.”

She reached for the glass, but she couldn’t pick it up. The lower part of her body was frozen, the upper part burned with fever, and there seemed to be no connection between the two parts. She wanted the water to cool her parched mouth, but the hand on the glass would not respond, as if the lines of communication had been broken between desire and will.

“Daisy? What’s the matter?”

“I feel — I think I’m — sick.”

“Sick?” He looked surprised and hurt, like a boxer caught by a sudden low blow. “You don’t look sick. I was thinking just a minute ago what a marvelous color you have this morning — oh God, Daisy, don’t be sick.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Here. Drink this. Let me carry you over to the davenport. Then I’ll go and get your mother.”

“No,” she said sharply. “I don’t want her to...”

“We have to do something. Perhaps I’d better call a doctor.”

“No, don’t. It will all be over by the time anyone could get here.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s happened before.”

“When?”

“Last week. Twice.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know.” She had a reason, but she couldn’t remember it. “I feel so — hot.”

He pressed his right hand gently against her forehead. It was cold and moist. “I don’t think you have a temperature,” he said anxiously. “You sound all right. And you’ve still got that good healthy color.”

He didn’t recognize the color of terror.

Daisy leaned forward in her chair. The lines of communication between the two parts of her body, the frozen half and the feverish half, were gradually re-forming themselves. By an effort of will she was able to pick up the glass from the table and drink the water. The water tasted peculiar, and Jim’s face, staring down at her, was out of focus, so that he looked not like Jim, but like some kind stranger who’d dropped in to help her.

Help.

How had this kind stranger gotten in? Had she called out to him as he was passing, had she cried, “Help!”?

“Daisy? Are you all right now?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God. You had me scared for a minute there.”

Scared.

“You should take regular daily exercise,” Jim said. “It would be good for your nerves. I also think you haven’t been getting enough sleep.”

Sleep. Scared. Help. The words kept sweeping around and around in her mind like horses on a carousel. If there were only some way of stopping it or even slowing it down — hey, operator; you at the controls, kind stranger, slow down, stop, stop, stop.

“It might be a good idea to start taking vitamins every day.”

“Stop,” she said. “Stop.”

Jim stopped, and so did the horses, but only for a second, long enough to jump right off the carousel and start galloping in the opposite direction, sleep and scared and help all running riderless together in a cloud of dust. She blinked.

“All right, dear. I was only trying to do the right thing.” He smiled at her timidly, like a nervous parent at a fretful, ailing child who must, but can’t, be pleased. “Listen, why don’t you sit there quietly for a minute, and I’ll go and make you some hot tea?”

“There’s coffee in the percolator.”

“Tea might be better for you when you’re upset like this.”

I’m not upset, stranger. I’m cold and calm.

Cold.

She began to shiver, as if the mere thinking of the word had conjured up a tangible thing, like a block of ice.

She could hear Jim bumbling around in the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards, trying to find the tea bags and the kettle. The gold sunburst clock over the mantel said 8:30. In another half hour the maid Stella would be arriving, and shortly after that Daisy’s mother would be coming over from her cottage, brisk and cheerful, as usual in the mornings, and inclined to be critical of anyone who wasn’t, especially Daisy.

Half an hour to become brisk and cheerful. So little time, so much to do, so many things to figure out. What happened to me? Why did it happen? I was just sitting here, doing nothing, thinking nothing, only listening to Jim and to the sounds from across the canyon, the children playing, the dogs barking, the saw whirring, the baby crying. I felt quite happy, in a sleepy kind of way. And then suddenly something woke me, and it began, the terror, the panic. What started it, which of those sounds?

Perhaps it was the dog, she thought. One of the new families across the canyon had an Airedale that howled at passing planes. A howling dog, when she was a child, meant death. She was nearly thirty now, and she knew some dogs howled, particular breeds, and others didn’t, and it had nothing to do with death.

Death. As soon as the word entered her mind, she knew that it was the real one; the others going around on the carousel had been merely substitutes for it.

“Jim.”

“Be with you in a minute. I’m waiting for the kettle to boil.”

“Don’t bother making any tea.”

“How about some milk, then? It’d be good for you. You’re going to have to take better care of yourself.”

No, it’s too late for that, she thought. All the milk and vitamins and exercise and fresh air and sleep in the world don’t make an antidote for death.

Jim came back, carrying a glass of milk. “Here you are. Drink up.”

She shook her head.

“Come on, Daisy.”

“No. No, it’s too late.”

“What do you mean it’s too late? Too late for what?” He put the glass down on the table so hard that some of the milk splashed on the cloth. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Don’t swear at me.”

“I have to swear at you. You’re so damned exasperating.”

“You’d better go to your office.”

“And leave you here like this, in this condition?”

“I’m all right.”

“O.K., O.K., you’re all right. But I’m sticking around anyway.” He sat down, stubbornly, opposite her. “Now, what’s this all about, Daisy?”

“I can’t — tell you.”

“Can’t, or don’t want to? Which?”

She covered her eyes with her hands. She was not aware that she was crying until she felt the tears drip down between her fingers.

“What’s the matter, Daisy? Have you done something you don’t want to tell me about — wrecked your car, overdrawn your bank account?”

“No.”

“What, then?”

“I’m frightened.”

“Frightened?” The word displeased him. He didn’t like his loved ones to be frightened or sick; it seemed to cast a reflection on him and his ability to look after them properly. “Frightened of what?”

She didn’t answer.

“You can’t be frightened without having something to be frightened about. So what is it?”

“You’ll laugh.”

“Believe me, I never felt less like laughing in my life. Come on, try me.”

She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. “I had a dream.”

He didn’t laugh, but he looked amused. “And you’re crying because of a dream? Come, come, you’re a big girl now, Daisy.”

She was staring at him across the table, mute and melancholy, and he knew he had said the wrong thing, but he couldn’t think of any right thing. How did you treat a wife, a grown woman, who cried because she had a dream?

“I’m sorry, Daisy. I didn’t meant to...”

“No apology is necessary,” she said stiffly. “You have a perfect right to be amused. Now we’ll drop the subject if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind. I want to hear about it.”

“No. I wouldn’t like to send you into hysterics; it gets a lot funnier.”

He looked at her soberly. “Does it?”

“Oh yes. It’s quite a scream. There’s nothing funnier than death, really, especially if you have an advanced sense of humor.” She wiped her eyes again, though there were no fresh tears. The heat of anger had dried them at their source. “You’d better go to your office.”

“What the hell are you so mad about?”

“Stop swearing at—”

“I’ll stop swearing if you’ll stop acting childish.” He reached for her hand, smiling. “Bargain?”

“I guess so.”

“Then tell me about the dream.”

“There’s not very much to tell.” She lapsed into silence, her hand moving uneasily beneath his, like a little animal wanting to escape but too timid to make any bold attempt. “I dreamed I was dead.”

“Well, there’s nothing so terrible about that, is there? People often dream they’re dead.”

“Not like this. It wasn’t a nightmare like the kind of dream you’re talking about. There was no emotion connected with it at all. It was just a fact.”

“The fact must have been presented in some way. How?”

“I saw my tombstone.” Although she’d denied that there was any emotion connected with the dream, she was beginning to breathe heavily again, and her voice was rising in pitch. “I was walking along the beach below the cemetery with Prince. Suddenly Prince took off up the side of the cliff. I could hear him howling, but he was out of sight, and when I whistled for him, he didn’t come. I started up the path after him.”

She hesitated again. Jim didn’t prompt her. It sounded real enough, he thought, like something that actually happened, except that there was no path up that cliff and Prince never howled.

“I found Prince at the top. He was sitting beside a gray tombstone, his head thrown back, howling like a wolf. I called to him, but he paid no attention. I went over to the tombstone. It was mine. It had my name on it. The letters were distinct, but weathered, as if it had been there for some time. It had.”

“How do you know?”

“The dates were on it, too. Daisy Fielding Harker, it said. Born November 13, 1930. Died December 2, 1955.” She looked at him as if she expected him to laugh. When he didn’t, she raised her chin in a half-challenging manner. “There. I told you it was funny, didn’t I? I’ve been dead for four years.”

“Have you?” He forced a smile, hoping it would camouflage his sudden feeling of panic, of helplessness. It was not the dream that disturbed him; it was the reality it suggested: someday Daisy would die, and there would be a genuine tombstone in that very cemetery with her name on it. Oh God, Daisy, don’t die. “You look very much alive to me,” he said, but the words, meant to be light and airy, came out like feathers turned to stone and dropped heavily on the table. He picked them up and tried again. “In fact, you look pretty as a picture, to coin a phrase.”

Her quick changes of mood teased and bewildered him. He had never reached the point of being able to predict them, so he was completely unprepared for her sudden, explosive little laugh. “I went to the best embalmer.”

Whether she was going up or coming down, he was always willing to share the ride. “You found him in the Yellow Pages, no doubt?”

“Of course. I find everything in the Yellow Pages.”

Their initial meeting through the Yellow Pages of the telephone directory had become a standard joke between them. When Daisy and her mother had arrived in San Félice from Denver and were looking for a house to buy, they had consulted the phone book for a list of real-estate brokers. Jim had been chosen because Ada Fielding was interested in numerology at the time and the name James Harker contained the same number of letters as her own.

In that first week of taking Daisy and her mother around to look at various houses, he’d learned quite a lot about them. Daisy had put up a great pretense of being alert to all the details of construction, drainage, interest rates, taxes, but in the end she picked a house because it had a fireplace she fell in love with. The property was overpriced, the terms unsuitable, it had no termite clearance, and the roof leaked, but Daisy refused to consider any other house. “It has such a darling fireplace,” she said, and that was that.

Jim, a practical, coolheaded man, found himself fascinated by what he believed to be proof of Daisy’s impulsive and sentimental nature. Before the week was over, he was in love. He deliberately delayed putting the papers for the house through escrow, making excuses which Ada Fielding later admitted she’d seen through from the beginning. Daisy suspected nothing. Within two months they were married, and the house they moved into, all three of them, was not the one with the darling fireplace that Daisy had chosen, but Jim’s own place on Laurel Street. It was Jim who insisted that Daisy’s mother share the house. He had a vague idea, even then, that the very qualities he admired in Daisy might make her hard to handle at times and that Mrs. Fielding, who was as practical as Jim himself, might be of assistance. The arrangement had worked out adequately, if not perfectly. Later, Jim had built the canyon house they were now occupying, with separate quarters for his mother-in-law. Their life was quiet and well run. There was no place in it for unscheduled dreams.

“Daisy,” he said softly, “don’t worry about the dream.”

“I can’t help it. It must have some meaning, with everything so specific, my name, the dates...”

“Stop thinking about it.”

“I will. It’s just that I can’t help wondering what happened on that day, December 2, 1955.”

“Probably a great many things happened, as on any day of any year.”

“To me, I mean,” she said impatiently. “Something must have happened to me that day, something very important.”

“Why?”

“Otherwise my unconscious mind wouldn’t have picked that particular date to put on a tombstone.”

“If your unconscious mind is as flighty and unpredictable as your conscious mind...”

“No, I’m serious about it, Jim.”

“I know, and I wish you weren’t. In fact, I wish you’d stop thinking about it.”

“I said I would.”

“Promise?”

“All right.”

The promise was as frail as a bubble; it broke before his car was out of the driveway.

Daisy got up and began to pace the room, her step heavy, her shoulders stooped, as if she were carrying the weight of the tombstone on her back.

2

Perhaps, at this hour that is very late for me, I should not step back into your life...

Daisy didn’t watch the car leave, so she had no way of knowing that Jim had stopped off at Mrs. Fielding’s cottage. The first suspicion occurred to her when her mother, who was constantly and acutely aware of time, appeared at the back door half an hour before she was due. She had Prince, the collie, with her on a leash. When the leash was removed, Prince bounced around the kitchen as if he’d just been released after a year or two in leg-irons.

Since Mrs. Fielding lived alone, it was considered good policy for her to keep Prince, a zealous and indefatigable barker, at her cottage every night for protection. Because of this talent for barking, he enjoyed the reputation of being an excellent watchdog. The fact was, Prince’s talent was spread pretty thin; he barked with as much enthusiasm at acorns falling on the roof as he would have at intruders bursting in the door. Although Prince had never been put to a proper test so far, the general feeling was that he would come through when the appropriate time arrived, and protect his people and property with ferocious loyalty.

Daisy greeted the dog affectionately, because she wanted to and because he expected it. The two women saw each other too frequently to make any fuss over good-mornings.

“You’re early,” Daisy said.

“Am I?”

“You know you are.”

“Ah well,” Mrs. Fielding said lightly, “it’s time I stopped living by the clock. And it was such a lovely morning, and I heard on the radio that there’s a storm coming, and I didn’t want to waste the sun while it lasted...”

“Mother, stop that.”

“Stop what, for goodness’ sake?”

“Jim came over to see you, didn’t he?”

“For a moment, yes.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Oh, nothing much, actually.”

“That’s no answer,” Daisy said. “I wish the two of you would stop treating me like an idiot child.”

“Well, Jim made some remark about your needing a tonic, perhaps, for your nerves. Oh, not that I think your nerves are bad or anything, but a tonic certainly wouldn’t do any harm, would it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll phone that nice new doctor at the clinic and ask him to prescribe something loaded with vitamins and minerals and whatever. Or perhaps protein would be better.”

“I don’t want any protein, vitamins, minerals, or anything else.”

“We’re just a mite irritable this morning, aren’t we?” Mrs. Fielding said with a cool little smile. “Mind if I have some coffee?”

“Go ahead.”

“Would you like some?”

“No.”

“No, thanks, if you don’t mind. Private problems don’t constitute an excuse for bad manners.” She poured some coffee from the electric percolator. “I take it there are private problems?”

“Jim told you everything, I suppose?”

“He mentioned something about a silly little dream you had which upset you. Poor Jim was very upset himself. Perhaps you shouldn’t worry him with trivial things. He’s terribly wrapped up in you, Daisy.”

“Wrapped up.” The words didn’t conjure up the picture they were intended to. All Daisy could see was a double mummy, two people long dead, wrapped together in a winding sheet. Death again. No matter which direction her mind turned, death was around the corner or the next bend in the road, like a shadow that always walked in front of her. “It wasn’t,” Daisy said, “a silly little dream. It was very real and very important.”

“It may seem so to you now while you’re still upset. Wait till you calm down and think about it objectively.”

“It’s quite difficult,” Daisy said dryly, “to be objective about one’s own death.”

“But you’re not dead. You’re here and alive and well, and, I thought, happy... You are happy, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

Prince, with the sensitivity of his breed to a troubled atmosphere, was standing in the doorway with his tail between his legs, watching the two women.

They were similar in appearance and perhaps had had, at one time, some similarity of temperament. But the circumstances of Mrs. Fielding’s life had forced her to discipline herself to a high degree of practicality. Mr. Fielding, a man of great charm, had proved a fainthearted and spasmodic breadwinner, and Daisy’s mother had been the main support of the family for many years. Mrs. Fielding seldom referred to her ex-husband, unless she was very angry, and she never heard from him at all. Daisy did, every now and then, always from a different address in a different city, but with the same message: Daisy baby, I wonder if you could spare a bit of cash. I’m a little low at the moment, just temporarily, I’m expecting something big any day now... Daisy, without informing her mother, answered all the letters.

“Daisy, listen. The maid will be here in ten minutes.” Mrs. Fielding never called Stella by name because she didn’t approve of her. “Now’s our chance to have a little private talk, the kind we always used to have.”

Daisy was aware that the private little talk would eventually become a rather exhaustive survey of her own faults: she was too emotional, weak-willed, selfish, too much like her father, in fact. Daisy’s weaknesses invariably turned out to be duplications of her father’s.

“We’ve always been so close,” Mrs. Fielding said, “because there were just the two of us together for so many years.”

“You talk as if I never had a father.”

“Of course you had a father. But...”

There was no need to go on. Daisy knew the rest of it: Father wasn’t around much, and he wasn’t much when he was around.

Silently Daisy turned and started to go into the next room. Prince saw her coming, but he didn’t budge from the doorway, and when she stepped over him, he let out a little snarl to indicate his disapproval of her mood and the way things were going in general. She reprimanded him, without conviction. She’d had the dog throughout the eight years of her marriage, and she sometimes thought Prince was more conscious of her real emotions than Jim or her mother or even herself. He followed her now into the living room, and when she sat down, he sat down, too, putting one paw in her lap, his brown eyes staring gravely into her face, his mouth open, ready to speak if it could: Come on, old girl, cheer up. The world’s not so bad. I’m in it.

Even when the maid arrived at the back door, usually an occasion for loud and boisterous conduct, Prince didn’t move.

Stella was a city girl. She didn’t like working in the country. Though Daisy had explained frequently and patiently that it took only ten minutes to drive from the house to the nearest supermarket, Stella was not convinced. She knew the country when she saw it, and this was it, and she didn’t like it one bit. All that nature around, it made her nervous. Wasps and hummingbirds coming at you, snails sneaking about, bees swarming in the eucalyptus trees, fleas breeding in the dry soil, every once in a while taking a sizable nip out of Stella’s ankles or wrists.

Stella and her current husband occupied a second-floor apartment in the lower end of town where all she had to cope with was the odd housefly. In the city, things were civilized, not a wasp or snail or bird in sight, just people: shoppers and shopkeepers by day, drunks and prostitutes at night. Sometimes they were arrested right below Stella’s front window, and occasionally there was a knife fight, very quick and quiet, among the Mexican nationals relaxing after a day of picking lemons or avocados. Stella enjoyed these excitements. They made her feel both alive (all those things happening) and virtuous (but not to her. No prostitute or drunk, she; just a couple of bucks on a horse, in the back room of the Sea Esta Café every morning before she came to work).

While the Harkers were still living in town, Stella was content enough with her job. They were nice people to work for, as people to work for went, never snippy or mean-spirited. But she couldn’t stand the country. The fresh air made her cough, and the quietness depressed her — no cars passing, or hardly ever, no radios turned on full blast, no people chattering.

Before entering the house, Stella stepped on three ants and squashed a snail. It was the least she could do on behalf of civilization. Those ants sure knew they was stepped on, she thought, and pushed her two hundred pounds through the kitchen door. Since neither Mrs. Harker nor the old lady was around, Stella began her day’s labors by making a fresh pot of coffee and eating five slices of bread and jam. One nice thing about the Harkers, they bought only the best victuals and plenty of.

“She’s eating,” Mrs. Fielding said in the living room. “Already. She hardly ever does anything else.”

“The last one was no prize either.”

“This one’s impossible. You should be firmer with her, Daisy, show her who’s boss.”

“I’m not sure I know who’s boss,” Daisy said, looking faintly puzzled.

“Of course you do. You are.”

“I don’t feel as if I am. Or want to be.”

“Well, you are, whether you want to be or not, and it’s up to you to exercise your authority and stop being willy-nilly about it. If you want her to do something or not to do something, say so. The woman’s not a mind reader, you know. She expects to be told things, to be ordered around.”

“I don’t think that would work with Stella.”

“At least try. This habit of yours — and it is a habit, not a personality defect as I used to believe — this habit of letting everything slide because you won’t take the trouble, because you can’t be bothered, it’s just like your—”

“Father. Yes. I know. You can stop right there.”

“I wish I could. I wish I’d never had to begin in the first place. But when I see quite unnecessary mismanagement, I feel I must do something about it.”

“Why? Stella’s not so bad. She muddles through, and that’s about all you can expect of anyone.”

“I don’t agree,” Mrs. Fielding said grimly. “In fact, we don’t seem to be agreeing on anything this morning. I don’t understand what the trouble is. I feel quite the same as usual — or did, until this absurd business of a dream came up.”

“It’s not absurd.”

“Isn’t it? Well, I won’t argue.” Mrs. Fielding leaned forward stiffly and put her empty cup on the coffee table. Jim had made the table himself, of teakwood and ivory-colored ceramic tile. “I don’t know why you won’t talk to me freely anymore, Daisy.”

“I’m growing up, perhaps that’s the reason.”

“Growing up? Or just growing away?”

“They go together.”

“Yes, I suppose they do, but...”

“Maybe you don’t want me to grow up.”

“What nonsense. Of course I do.”

“Sometimes I think you’re not even sorry I can’t have a child, because if I had a child, it would show I was no longer one myself.” Daisy paused, biting her lower lip. “No, no, I don’t really mean that. I’m sorry, it just came out. I don’t mean it.”

Mrs. Fielding had turned pale, and her hands were clenched in her lap. “I won’t accept your apology. It was a stupid and cruel remark. But at least I realize now what the trouble is. You’ve started thinking about it again, perhaps even hoping.”

“No,” Daisy said. “Not hoping.”

“When are you going to accept the inevitable, Daisy? I thought you’d become adjusted by this time. You’ve known about it for five whole years.”

“Yes.”

“The specialist in Los Angeles made it very clear.”

“Yes.” Daisy didn’t remember how long ago it was, or the month or the week. She only remembered the day itself, beginning the first thing in the morning when she was so ill. Then, afterward, the phone call to a friend of hers who worked at a local medical clinic: “Eleanor? It’s Daisy Harker. You’ll never guess, never. I’m so happy I could burst. I think I’m pregnant. I’m almost sure I am. Isn’t it wonderful? I’ve been sick as a dog all morning and yet so happy, if you know what I mean. Listen, I know there are all sorts of obstetricians in town, but I want you to recommend the very best in the whole country, the very, very best specialist...”

She remembered the trip down to Los Angeles, with her mother driving. She’d felt so ecstatic and alive, seeing everything in a fresh new light, watching, noticing things, as if she were preparing herself to point out all the wonders of the world to her child. Later the specialist spoke quite bluntly: “I’m sorry, Mrs. Harker. I detect no signs of pregnancy...”

This was all Daisy could bear to hear. She’d broken down then, and cried and carried on so much that the doctor made the rest of his report to Mrs. Fielding, and she had told Daisy: there were to be no children ever.

Mrs. Fielding had talked nearly all the way home while Daisy watched the dreary landscape (where were the green hills?) and the slate-gray sea (had it ever been blue?) and the barren dunes (barren, barren, barren). It wasn’t the end of the world, Mrs. Fielding had said, count blessings, look at silver linings. But Mrs. Fielding herself was so disturbed she couldn’t go on driving. She was forced to stop at a little café by the sea, and the two women had sat for a long time facing each other across a greasy, crumb-covered table. Mrs. Fielding kept right on talking, raising her voice against the crash of waves on pilings and the clatter of dishes from the kitchen.

Now, five years later, she was still using some of the same words. “Count your blessings, Daisy. You’re secure and comfortable, you’re in good health, surely you have the world’s nicest husband.”

“Yes,” Daisy said. “Yes.” She thought of the tombstone in her dream, and the date of her death, December 2, 1955. Four years ago, not five. And the trip to see the specialist must have taken place in the spring, not in December, because the hills had been green. There was no connection between the day of the trip and what Daisy now capitalized in her mind as The Day.

“Also,” Mrs. Fielding continued, “you should be hearing from one of the adoption agencies any day now — you’ve been on the list for some time. Perhaps you should have applied sooner than last year, but it’s too late to worry about that now. Look on the bright side. One of these days you’ll have a baby, and you’ll love it just as much as you would your own, and so will Jim. You don’t realize sometimes how lucky you are simply to have Jim. When I think of what some women have to put up with in their marriages...”

Meaning herself, Daisy thought.

“...you are a lucky, lucky girl, Daisy.”

“Yes.”

“I think the main trouble with you is that you haven’t enough to do. You’ve let so many of your activities slide lately. Why did you drop your course in Russian literature?”

“I couldn’t keep the names straight.”

“And the mosaic you were making...”

“I have no talent.”

As if to demonstrate that there was at least some talent around the house, Stella burst into song while she washed the breakfast dishes.

Mrs. Fielding went over and closed the kitchen door, not too subtly. “It’s time you started a new activity, one that will absorb you. Why don’t you come with me to the Drama Club luncheon this noon? Someday you might even want to try out for one of our plays.”

“I doubt that very—”

“There’s absolutely nothing to acting. You just do what the director tells you. They’re having a very interesting speaker at the luncheon. It would be a lot better for you to go out than to sit here brooding because you dreamed somebody killed you.”

Daisy leaned forward suddenly in her chair, pushed the dog’s paw off her lap, and got up. “What did you say?”

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“Say it again.”

“I see no reason to...” Mrs. Fielding paused, flushed with annoyance. “Well, all right. Anything to humor you. I simply stated that I thought it would be better for you to come with me to the luncheon than to sit here brooding because you had a bad dream.”

“I don’t think that’s quite accurate.”

“It’s as close as I can remember.”

“You said, ‘because I dreamed somebody killed me.’” There was a brief silence. “Didn’t you?”

“I may have.” Mrs. Fielding’s annoyance was turning into something deeper. “Why fuss about a little difference in words?”

Not a little difference, Daisy thought. An enormous one. “I died” had become “someone killed me.”

She began to pace up and down the room again, followed by the reproachful eyes of the dog and the disapproving eyes of her mother. Twenty-two steps up, twenty-two steps down. After a while the dog started walking with her, heeling, as if they were out for a stroll together.

We were walking along the beach below the cemetery, Prince and I, and suddenly Prince disappeared up the cliff. I could hear him howling. I whistled for him, but he didn’t come. I went up the path after him. He was sitting beside a tombstone. It had my name on it: Daisy Fielding Harker. Born November 13, 1930. Killed December 2, 1955...

3

But I cannot help it. My blood runs in your veins...

At noon Jim called and asked her to meet him downtown for lunch. They ate soup and salad at a café on State Street. The place was crowded and noisy, and Daisy was grateful that Jim had chosen it. There was no need to force conversation. With so many others talking, silence between any two particular people seemed to go unnoticed. Jim even had the illusion that they’d enjoyed a lively lunch, and when they parted in front of the café, he said, “You’re feeling better, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“No more skirmishes with your unconscious?”

“Oh no.”

“Good girl.” He pressed her shoulder affectionately. “See you for dinner.”

She watched him until he turned the corner to the parking lot. Then she began walking slowly down the street in the opposite direction, with no special destination in mind, only a strong desire to stay away from the house as long as she could.

A rising wind prodded her, and on the tips of the purple mountains storm clouds were gathering like great plumes of black smoke. For the first time that day she thought of something unconnected with herself: Rain. It’s going to rain.

As the wind pushed the storm clouds toward the city, everyone on the street was caught up in the excitement of the coming rain. They walked faster, talked louder. Strangers spoke to strangers: “How about that, look at those clouds...” “We’re going to catch it this time...” “When I hung up the wash this morning, there wasn’t a cloud in sight...” “Just in time for my cinerarias...”

“Rain,” they said, and lifted their faces to the sky as if they were expecting not just rain but a shower of gold.

It had been a year without winter. The hot, sunny days, which usually ended in November, had stretched through Christmas and the New Year. It was now February, and the reservoirs were getting low, and large sections of the mountains had been closed to picnickers and campers because of the fire hazard. Cloud seeders were standing by, waiting for clouds, like actors ready with their roles waiting for a stage to appear.

The clouds came, their blacks and grays more beautiful than all the colors of the spectrum, and suddenly the sun vanished and the air turned cold.

I’ll be caught in the rain, Daisy thought. I should start for home. But her feet kept right on going as if they had a mind of their own and would not be led by a timid girl afraid of getting a little wet.

Behind her, someone called her name: “Daisy Harker.”

She stopped and turned, recognizing the voice immediately — Adam Burnett’s. Burnett was a lawyer, an old friend of Jim’s, who shared Jim’s interest in cabinetmaking. Adam came over to the house quite frequently as a refugee from his family of eight, but Daisy didn’t see much of him. The two men usually shut themselves up in Jim’s hobby shop downstairs.

All morning Daisy had been thinking off and on of going to talk to Adam, and this sudden meeting confused her, as if she had conjured up his person out of her thoughts. She didn’t even greet him. She said uncertainly, “How funny, running into you like this.”

“Not so funny. My office is just two doors down the street, and the place where I eat lunch is directly across the road.” He was a tall, heavily built man in his forties, with a brisk but pleasant professional manner. He noticed Daisy’s confusion immediately but could think of no reason for it. “I’m pretty hard to miss, in this neck of the woods.”

“I’d — forgotten where your office was.”

“Oh? For a moment when I first spotted you, I thought you might be on your way to see me.”

“No. No.” I didn’t, I couldn’t possibly have, come this way deliberately. Why, I didn’t even remember his office was near here, or I can’t remember remembering. “I wasn’t on my way to anywhere. I was just walking. It’s such a lovely day.”

“It’s cold.” He glanced briefly at the sky. “And about to be wet.”

“I like rain.”

“At this point, don’t we all.”

“I meant, I like to walk in the rain.”

His smile was friendly but a little puzzled. “That’s fine. Go right ahead. The exercise will do you good, and the rain probably won’t hurt you.”

She didn’t move. “The reason I thought it was funny running into you like this was because — well, I was thinking about you this morning.”

“Oh?”

“I was even thinking of... of making an appointment to see you.”

“Why?”

“Something has sort of happened.”

“How can anything sort of happen? It happens or it doesn’t.”

“I don’t quite know how to explain.” The first drops of rain had begun to fall. She didn’t notice them. “Do you consider me a neurotic woman?”

“This is hardly the time or place to discuss a subject like that,” he said dryly. “You may like walking in the rain. Some of us don’t.”

“Adam, listen.”

“You’d better come up to my office.” He consulted his wrist-watch. “I’ve got twenty-five minutes before I’m due at the courthouse.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I think you want to.”

“No, I feel like such a fool.”

“So do I, standing around in the pouring rain. Come on, Daisy.”

They took the elevator up to the third floor. Adam’s receptionist and his secretary were both still out to lunch, and the suite was quiet and dark. Adam turned on the lamps in the reception room; then he went into his office, hung up his wet tweed jacket to dry on an old-fashioned brass clothes rack.

“Sit down, Daisy. You’re looking great. How’s Jim?”

“Fine.”

“Has he been making any new furniture?”

“No. He’s refinishing an old bird’s-eye maple desk for the den.”

“Where did he get hold of it?”

“The former owners of the house he bought left it behind as trash. I guess they didn’t know what it was — it had so many layers of paint on it. Ten at least, Jim says.”

She knew this was part of his technique, getting her started talking about safe, impersonal things first, and she half resented the fact that it was working. It was as if he’d applied a few drops of oil to the proper places and suddenly wheels began turning and she told him about the dream. The rain beat in torrents against the windows, but Daisy was walking on a sunny beach with her dog, Prince.

Adam leaned back in his chair and listened, his only outward reaction an occasional blink. Inwardly, he was surprised, not at the dream itself, but at the way she related it, coldly and without emotion, as if she were describing a simple factual chain of events, not a mere fantasy of her own mind.

She completed her account by telling him the dates on the tombstone. “November 13, 1930, and December 2, 1955. My birthday,” she said, “and my death day.”

The strange word annoyed him; he didn’t understand why. “Is there such a word?”

“Yes.”

He grunted and leaned forward, the chair squeaking under his weight. “I’m no psychiatrist. I don’t interpret dreams.”

“I’m not asking you to. No interpretation is necessary. It’s all quite clear. On December 2, 1955, something happened to me that was so terrible it caused my death. I was psychically murdered.”

Psychic murder, Adam thought. Now I’ve heard everything. These damned silly idle women who sit around dreaming up trouble for themselves and everyone else...

“Do you really believe that, Daisy?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Suppose something catastrophic actually happened on that day. Why is it you don’t remember what it was?”

“I’m trying to. That’s the real reason I wanted to talk to you. I’ve got to remember. I’ve got to reconstruct the whole day.”

“Well, I can’t help you. And even if I could, I wouldn’t. I see no point in people deliberately trying to recall an unpleasant occurrence.”

“Unpleasant occurrence? That’s a pretty mild expression for what happened.”

“If you don’t recall what happened,” he said with a touch of irony, “how do you know it’s a pretty mild expression?”

“I know.”

“You know. Just like that, eh?”

“Yes.”

“I wish all knowledge was as easy to come by.”

Her gaze was cool and steady. “You don’t take me very seriously, do you, Adam? That’s too bad, because I’m actually quite a serious person. Jim and my mother treat me like a child, and I frequently respond like one because it’s easier that way — it doesn’t upset their image of me. My self-image is quite different. I consider myself fairly bright. I graduated from college when I was twenty-one... Well, we won’t go into that. It’s evident I’m not convincing you of anything.” She rose suddenly and started toward the door. “Thanks for listening, anyway.”

“What’s your hurry? Wait a minute.”

“Why?”

“Nothing’s been settled, for one thing. For another, I’ll admit your, ah, situation intrigues me. This business of reconstructing a whole day four years ago...”

“Well?”

“It’s going to be very difficult.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Suppose you’re able to do it, what then, Daisy?”

“I will at least know what happened.”

“What use would such knowledge be to you? It certainly won’t make you any happier, will it? Or any wiser?”

“No.”

“Why not let it drop, then? Forget the whole business. You have nothing to gain and perhaps a great deal to lose — have you considered that angle of it?”

“No. Not until now.”

“Give it some thought, will you?” He got up and opened the door for her. “One more thing, Daisy. The chances are that nothing whatever happened to you on that particular day. Dreams are never that logical.” He knew the word never was too strong in this connection, but he used it deliberately. She needed strong words to lean on or to test her own strength against.

“Well, I must be going,” Daisy said. “I’ve taken up too much of your time. You’ll send a bill, of course?”

“Of course not.”

“I’d feel better about it if you did. I mean it.”

“All right, then, I will.”

“And thanks a lot for the advice, Adam.”

“You know, a lot of my clients thank me for my advice and then go right home and do the exact opposite. Is that going to be the case with you, Daisy?”

“I don’t think so,” she said seriously. “I appreciate your letting me talk to you. I can’t discuss things — problems, I mean — with Jim or Mother. They’re too involved with me. They get upset when I step out of my role as the happy innocent.”

“You should be able to talk freely to Jim. You have a good marriage.”

“Any good marriage involves a certain amount of playacting.”

His grunt indicated neither agreement nor disagreement: I’ll have to think about that before I decide. Playacting? Maybe.

He walked her to the elevator, feeling pleased with himself for handling the situation well and with her for reacting so sensibly. He realized that although he’d known Daisy for a long time, he had never talked seriously to her before; he had been willing to accept her in her role of the happy innocent, the gay little girl, long after he’d discovered that she was not happy or innocent or gay.

The elevator arrived, and even though someone else was already buzzing for it, Adam held the door back with one hand. He had a sudden, uneasy feeling that he shouldn’t let Daisy go, that nothing had been settled after all and the good solid advice he’d given her had blown away like smoke on a windy day.

“Daisy...”

“Someone’s buzzing for the elevator.”

“I just wanted to say that I wish you’d feel free to call me whenever you get upset.”

“I’m not upset anymore.”

“Sure?”

“Adam, someone wants the elevator. We can’t just...”

“I’ll take you down to the ground floor.”

“That isn’t nec—”

“I like the ride.”

He stepped inside, the door closed, and the slow descent began. It wasn’t slow enough, though. By the time Adam thought of anything more to say, they had reached the ground floor and Daisy was thanking him again, too politely and formally, as if she were thanking a host for a very dull party.

4

When I die, part of me will still be alive, in you, in your children, in your children’s children...

It was 2:30 when Daisy arrived home. Stella met her at the front door looking so flushed and lively that Daisy thought for a moment she’d got into Jim’s liquor cabinet.

“Some man’s been trying to get hold of you,” Stella said. “He’s called three times in the last hour, kept telling me how urgent it was and when was I expecting you back and the like.” It wasn’t often that any excitement occurred out here in the sticks, and Stella was determined to stretch it out. “The first two times he wouldn’t give no name, but the last time I just up and asked him, who is this calling please, I said. I could tell he didn’t want to give it, but he did, and I got it written down right here on a magazine with a number for you to call.”

Across the top of a magazine Stella had printed, “Stan Foster 67134 urgent.” Daisy had never heard of any Stan Foster, and she thought either the caller or Stella had made an error: Stella may have misunderstood the name, or Mr. Foster might be wanting to get in touch with a different Mrs. Harker.

“You’re sure of the name?” Daisy said.

“He spelled it out for me twice: S-T-A-N...”

“Yes. Thanks. I’ll call after I change my clothes.”

“How did you get so soaking wet? Is it raining even in the city?”

“Yes,” Daisy said. “It’s raining even in the city.”

She was in the bedroom taking off her clothes when the phone started ringing again. A minute later Stella knocked on the door.

“It’s that Mr. Foster on the line again. I told him you was home, is that all right?”

“Yes. I’ll take the call in here.” Throwing a bathrobe around her shoulders, she sat down on the bed and picked up the phone. “This is Mrs. Harker.”

“Hello, Daisy baby.”

Even if she hadn’t recognized the voice, she would have known who it was. No one ever called her Daisy baby except her father.

“Daisy baby? You there?”

“Yes, Daddy.” In that first moment of hearing his voice again, she felt neither pleasure nor pain, only a kind of surprise and relief that he was still alive. She hadn’t received a letter from him for nearly a year, though she’d written several times, and the last time she’d spoken to him was three years ago, when he called from Chicago to wish her a happy birthday. He’d been very drunk, and it wasn’t her birthday. “How are you feeling, Daddy?”

“Fine. Oh, I’ve got a touch of this and a touch of that, but in the main, fine.”

“Are you in town?”

“Yes. Got here last night.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I called you. Didn’t she tell you?”

“Who?”

“Your mother. I asked for you, but you were out. She recognized my voice and hung up, just like that, wham.”

Daisy remembered entering the house after taking Prince for a walk and finding her mother seated beside the telephone looking grim and granite-eyed. “A wrong number,” Mrs. Fielding had said. “Some drunk.” And the contrast of the voice, as soft and bland as marshmallows coming out of that stone face, had reminded Daisy of something ugly which she couldn’t fit into a time or place. “Very drunk,” Mrs. Fielding had said. “He called me baby.” Later Daisy had gone to bed thinking not of the drunk that had called her mother baby, but of a real adopted baby that might someday soon belong to her and Jim.

“Why didn’t you phone me back, Daddy?”

“One call is all they allow you.”

“They?”

He gave a sheepish little laugh that broke in the middle like an elastic stretched too far. “The fact is, I’m in a bit of a pickle. Nothing serious, but I need a couple of hundred dollars. I didn’t want you to get involved, so I gave them a false name. I mean, you have a reputation to maintain in the community, so I figured there was no sense getting you mixed up in — Daisy, for God’s sake, help me!”

“I always do, don’t I?” she said quietly.

“You do. You’re a good girl, Daisy, a good daddy-loving girl. I’ll never forget how...”

“Where are you now?”

“Downtown.”

“In a hotel?”

“No. I’m in somebody’s office. His name’s Pinata.”

“Is he there, too?”

“Yes.”

“Listening to all this?”

“He knows it all anyway,” her father said with that sheepish little laugh again. “I had to tell him everything, who I was and who you were, or he wouldn’t have sprung me. He’s a bail bondsman.”

“So you were in jail. What for?”

“Oh, gad, Daisy, do I have to go into it?”

“I’d like to hear about it, yes.”

“Well, all right. I was on my way to see you, and suddenly I needed a drink, see? So I stopped in this bar downtown. Things were slack, and I asked the waitress to have a drink with me, just out of friendliness, you might say. Nita, her name was, a very fine-looking young woman who’s had a hard life. To make a long story short, suddenly out of the blue her husband came in and started to get tough with her about not staying home to look after the kids. They exchanged a few words, and then he began pushing her around. Well, I couldn’t just sit there and watch that kind of thing going on without doing anything about it.”

“So you got into a fight?”

“That’s about it.”

“That is it, you mean.”

“Yes. Someone called the cops, and the husband and I were hauled off to the pokey. Drunk and disorderly and disturbing the peace. Nothing serious. I gave the cops a false name, though, so no one would know I was your father in case the incident gets into the papers. I’ve already cast enough shame on you and your mother.”

“Please,” Daisy said, “don’t try to make yourself out a hero because you gave a false name to protect Mother and me. In the first place, that’s illegal when you have any sort of record, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” He sounded very innocent. “Well, it’s too late to worry about that now. Mr. Pinata isn’t likely to tell on me. He’s a gentleman.”

Daisy could well imagine her father’s definition of the word: a gentleman was somebody who’d just helped him out of a jam. Her own mental picture of Pinata showed him as a wizened, beady-eyed old man who smelled of jails and corruption.

“When I explained my situation to Mr. Pinata, he very kindly paid my fine. He’s not in business for his health, though, so of course I have to stay here in his office until I can raise the money to pay him. Two hundred dollars the fine was. I pleaded guilty to get the trial over with in a hurry. No sense in having to come up here from L.A. just to...”

“You’re living in L.A.?”

“Yes. We — I moved there last week. I thought it would be nice to be closer to you, Daisy baby. Besides, the climate in Dallas didn’t agree with me.”

It was the first she’d heard that he’d been living in Dallas. Topeka, Kansas, had been his last address. Dallas, Topeka, Chicago, Toronto, Detroit, St. Louis, Montreal — they were all just names to Daisy, but she knew that her father had lived in all of these places, had walked along their streets, searching for something that was always a few hundred miles farther on.

“Daisy? You can get the money, can’t you? I gave Pinata my solemn promise.”

“I can get it.”

“When? The fact is, I’m in kind of a hurry. I have to get back to L.A. tonight — someone’s expecting me — and as you know, I can’t leave Pinata’s office until I pay up.”

“I’ll come down right away.” Daisy could see him waiting in the office, Pinata’s prisoner, not a free man at all. He had merely changed jails and jailers the way he changed towns and people, never realizing he would always be in bondage. “Where is the office?”

She could hear him consulting Pinata: “Just where is this place anyway?” And then Pinata’s voice, surprisingly young and pleasant for an old man who’d spent his life hanging around jails: “107 East Opal Street, between the 800 and 900 blocks of State Street.”

Her father repeated the directions, and Daisy said, “Yes, I know where it is. I’ll be down in half an hour.”

“Ah, Daisy baby, you’re a good girl, a good daddy-loving girl.”

“Yes,” Daisy said wearily. “Yes.”

Fielding put down the telephone and turned to Pinata, who was sitting at his desk writing a letter to his son, Johnny. The boy, who was ten, lived in New Orleans with his mother, and Pinata saw him only for a month out of every year, but he wrote to him regularly each week.

Pinata said, without looking up, “Is she coming?”

“Certainly she’s coming. Right away. I told you she would, didn’t I?”

“What people like you tell me I don’t always believe.”

“I could take exception to that remark but I won’t, because I’m feeling good.”

“You should be. You’ve gone through a pint of my bourbon.”

“I called you a gentleman, didn’t I? Didn’t you hear me tell Daisy you were a gentleman?”

“So?”

“No gentleman ever begrudges a drink to a fellow gentleman in distress. That’s one of the rules of civilized society.”

“It is, eh?” Pinata finished his letter: Be a good boy, Johnny, and don’t forget to write. I enclose five dollars so you can buy your mother and your little sister a nice valentine. Best love from your loving Dad.

He put the letter in an envelope and sealed it. He always had a sick, lost feeling when he wrote to this boy who was his only known relative; it made him mad at the world, or whatever part of the world happened to be available at the moment. This time it was Fielding.

Pinata pounded an airmail stamp on the envelope and said, “You’re a bum, Foster.”

“Fielding, if you please.”

“Foster, Fielding, Smith, you’re still a bum.”

“I’ve had a lot of hard luck.”

“For every ounce of hard luck you’ve had, I bet you’ve passed a pound of it along to other people. Mrs. Harker, for instance.”

“That’s a lie. I’ve never harmed a hair on Daisy’s head. Why, I’ve never even asked her for money unless it was absolutely necessary. And it’s not as if she can’t afford it. She made a very good marriage — trust Mrs. Fielding to see to that. So what if I put the bite on her now and then? When you come right down to it...”

“Don’t bother coming right down to it,” Pinata said. “You bore me.”

Fielding’s lower lip began to pout as if it had been stung by the word. He hadn’t minded so much being called a bum since there was some truth in the statement, but he’d never considered himself a bore. “If I’d known that was your opinion of me,” he said with dignity, “I’d never have drunk your liquor.”

“The hell you wouldn’t.”

“It was a very cheap brand anyway. Ordinarily I wouldn’t demean myself by touching such stuff, but under the stress of the moment...”

Pinata threw back his head and laughed, and Fielding, who hadn’t intended to be amusing, watched him with an aggrieved expression. But the laughter was contagious, and pretty soon Fielding joined in. The two of them stood in the dingy little rain-loud office, laughing: a middle-aged man in a torn shirt with dried blood on his face, and a young man wearing a crew cut and a neat dark business suit. He looked more as if he dealt in government bonds than in bail bonds.

Fielding said finally, wiping the moisture from his eyes with a soiled handkerchief, “Ah, how I dearly love a good laugh. It takes the kinks out of your mind, straightens out your thinking. There I was, getting all fussed up over a few little words, a few silly little words. And you, what fussed you up so suddenly?”

Pinata glanced briefly at the letter on his desk. “Nothing.”

“Moody, are you?”

“Moody, yes.”

“Are you Spanish or Mexican?”

“I don’t know. My parents didn’t stick around long enough to tell me. Maybe I’m Chinese.”

“Fancy that, not knowing who you are.”

“I know who I am,” Pinata said distinctly. “I just don’t know who they were.”

“Ah yes, I see your point. A good point, too. Now take me, I’m exactly the opposite. I know all about my grandparents and great-grandparents and uncles and cousins, the whole damn bunch of them. And it seems to me I got kind of lost in the shuffle. My ex-wife was always telling me I had no ego, in a reproachful way, as if an ego was something like a hat or pair of gloves which I’d carelessly lost or misplaced.” Fielding paused, squinting up his eyes. “What happened to the girl’s husband?”

“What girl?”

“The waitress, Nita.”

“He’s still in jail,” Pinata said.

“I think she should have bailed him out, let bygones be bygones.”

“Maybe she prefers him in.”

“Say, Mr. Pinata, you wouldn’t by any chance have another pint of bourbon around? That cheap stuff doesn’t stay with you.”

“You’d better get cleaned up first, before your daughter arrives.”

“Daisy has seen me in worse...”

“I’m sure Daisy has. So why not surprise her? Where’s your tie?”

Fielding put up one hand and felt his neck. “I guess I lost it someplace, maybe at the police station.”

“Well, here’s a spare one,” Pinata said, pulling a blue-striped tie from one of his desk drawers. “A client of mine tried to hang himself with it. I had to take it away from him. Here.”

“No. No, thank you.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t happen to like the idea of wearing a dead man’s tie.”

“Who said he’s dead? As a matter of fact, he’s selling used cars a couple of blocks up the street.”

“In that case I suppose there’s no harm in my borrowing it for a while.”

“The bathroom’s down the hall,” Pinata said. “Here’s the key.”

When Fielding returned, five minutes later, he had washed the dried blood off his face and combed his hair. He was wearing the blue-striped tie, and his sports jacket was buttoned to hide the tear in his shirt. He looked quite sober and respectable for a man who was neither.

“Well, that’s an improvement,” Pinata said, wondering how soon it would be safe to let him have another drink. The old drinks were wearing off fast now, Pinata could tell by the jerky movements of Fielding’s eyes and the nervous whine in his voice.

“What difference should it make to you, Pinata, how I look in front of my own daughter?”

“I wasn’t thinking of you. I was thinking of her.” No, that’s a lie. I was thinking of Johnny and how I never want him to see me in the same shape Daisy has seen, and will see, her father.

It was mainly for the sake of the boy that Pinata kept himself in very good condition. He swam every day in the ocean in the summer, and in the winter he played handball at the Y and tennis at the municipal courts. He didn’t smoke and seldom drank, and the women he took out were all very respectable, so that if, by some miraculous stroke of fate, he should ever meet Johnny accidentally on the street, the boy would have no reason to be ashamed of him or his choice of companion.

But it was difficult, living for a boy he only saw for a month out of each year, and the days were often hard to fill, like a jug with a hole in the bottom. His work, though, saved him from self-pity. Through it he came in contact with so many people in so many and various stages of despair that by comparison his own life seemed a good one. Pinata wanted to remarry and felt that he should. He was afraid, however, that if he did, his ex-wife might seize the occasion to go to court and try to have Johnny’s yearly visits curtailed or stopped altogether; she begrudged the time and effort the visits cost her and the disruption they caused in the life of her new family.

Fielding was at the window, peering down into the street. “She should be here by this time. Half an hour, she said. Isn’t it more than that already?”

“Sit down, and relax,” Pinata said.

“I wish this damn rain would stop. It’s making me nervous. It’s enough of a strain on me having to face Daisy.”

“How long is it since you’ve seen her?”

“Hell, I don’t know. A long time anyway.” He had begun to tremble, partly from the drinking he’d done, partly from dread of the emotional experience of seeing Daisy again. “How should I act when she gets here? And what the hell will I say to her?”

“You did all right on the telephone.”

“That was different. I was desperate, I had to phone her. But listen, Pinata, there’s no real reason why I should have to see her, is there? I mean, what’s to be gained? You can give her a message for me. Tell her I’m O.K. and I’m working steady now, at the Harris Electrical Supply warehouse on Figueroa Street. Tell her...”

“I’ll tell her nothing. You’re going to do the talking, Fielding. Yourself personally.”

“I won’t. I can’t. Be a sport for chrissake and let me out of here before she comes. I give you my word that Daisy will pay you the money I owe, my solemn word...”

“No.”

“Why not, in God’s name? Are you afraid you won’t get your money?”

“No.”

“Then let me go, let me out of here.”

“Your daughter’s expecting to see you,” Pinata said. “So she’s going to see you.”

“She won’t like what I came up here to tell her anyway. But I felt I ought to tell her. It was my duty. Then I got cold feet and went into that bar to warm them up a bit, and...”

“Tell her what?”

“That I’m married again,” Fielding said. “It’ll be a shock to her, hearing she’s got a new stepmother. Maybe I’d better break the news to her more gradually, say in a letter. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll write her a letter.”

“No, you won’t. You’re staying right here, Fielding.”

“How do you know Daisy wants to see me? Maybe she’s dreading this as much as I am. Listen, you said before I was a bum. O.K., I’m a bum, I admit it. But I don’t want to have to spell it out in front of my own daughter.” He took two or three defiant steps toward the door. “I’m leaving. You can’t stop me. You hear that? You can’t stop me. You have no legal right to...”

“Oh, shut up.” The time, Pinata felt, had come. He reached into one of the desk drawers, brought out another pint of bourbon, and unscrewed the top. “Here. Help yourself to some courage.”

“You sound like a goddamn preacher,” Fielding said. He grabbed for the bottle and held it to his mouth. Then, without warning, he made a sudden lunge for the door, holding the bottle against his chest.

Pinata didn’t attempt to chase him. He was rather glad to see him go, in fact: the meeting between Daisy baby and her father wouldn’t have been any fun to watch.

He went to the window and looked down. Fielding was running along the sidewalk in the pouring rain, still clutching his bottle. His step was quick and light for a big man, as if he’d had a lot of practice running in his life.

Daisy baby, Pinata thought, you’re in for a surprise.

5

It is a thought that takes some of the ugliness out of these cruel years, some of the sting out of the tricks of time...

The lettering on the door at the end of the long, dark hallway spelled out STEVENS PINATA. BAIL BONDS. INVESTIGATIONS. WALK IN. The door was partly open, and Daisy could see a dark-haired, sharp-featured young man seated behind a desk, fooling with a typewriter ribbon. He jumped up when he became aware of her presence and gave her an anxious little smile. She didn’t like the smile. It was as if she’d dropped in on him unexpectedly and caught him doing something he shouldn’t.

He said, “Mrs. Harker?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Steve Pinata. Please sit down. Let me take your coat. It’s wet.”

She made no move either to sit down or to unbutton her pink plaid raincoat. “Where’s my father?”

“He left a few minutes ago,” Pinata said. “He had an engagement in L.A. and couldn’t wait.”

“He... he couldn’t wait even a few minutes after all these years?”

“It was a very important engagement. He asked me to be sure and tell you how sorry he was, and that he’ll be getting in touch with you soon.”

The lie came out easily. Practically anyone would have believed it, except Daisy. “He didn’t want to see me at all, just the money, is that it?”

“It’s not quite that simple, Mrs. Harker. He lost his nerve. He was ashamed of...”

“I’ll write you out a check.” She pulled a checkbook from her handbag with brusque impatience like a very efficient businesswoman who had no time or taste for emotional exhibitions. “How much?”

“Two hundred and thirty. The fine was $200, ten is my straight fee, and the rest is my ten percent commission.”

“I understand.” She wrote out the check, bending over his desk, refusing the chair he had pushed up for her. “Is this correct?”

“Yes. Thank you.” He put the check in his pocket. “I’m sorry things had to turn out like this, Mrs. Harker.”

“Why should you be? I’m not. I’m as much of a coward as he is, perhaps more. I’m glad he ran out on me. I didn’t want to see him any more than he wanted to see me. For once, he did the right thing. Why should you feel sorry, Mr. Pinata?”

“I thought you’d be disappointed.”

“Disappointed? Oh no. Not at all. Not in the least.” But she sat down suddenly and awkwardly, as if she’d lost her balance under the weight of something too heavy for her to handle.

Daisy baby, Pinata thought, is going to cry.

In his business Pinata had witnessed too many plain and fancy crying jobs not to know the preliminary signs, and they were all there, from the rapid blinking of her eyes to the clenching and unclenching of her hands. He waited for the inevitable, wishing he could prevent it, trying to think of something to say by way of encouragement, not sympathy; sympathy always pushed them over the line.

Two minutes passed, then three, and he began to realize that the inevitable wasn’t going to happen after all. When she finally spoke, her question took him completely by surprise. It had nothing to do with long-lost fathers.

“What kind of things do you investigate, Mr. Pinata?”

“Not much of anything,” he said frankly.

“Why not?”

“In a city this size there isn’t much call for services like mine — people who need a detective usually hire one from L.A. Most of the work I do is for private attorneys around town.”

“What are your qualifications?”

“What qualifications would I need to solve your problem?”

“I didn’t say there was any problem. Or that it was mine.”

“People don’t ask me the kind of questions you’ve been asking without having something in mind.”

She hesitated a moment, biting her under lip. “There is a problem. But it’s only partly mine. Someone else is involved.”

“Your father?”

“No. He has nothing to do with it.”

“Husband? Friend? Mother-in-law?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“But you’d like to know?”

“I have to know.”

She lapsed into another silence, her head cocked at an angle, as if she were listening to some debate going on inside herself. He didn’t press her; he wasn’t even very curious. She looked like the kind of woman whose darkest secret could be bleached out with a little chlorine.

“I have reason to believe,” she said finally, “that on a certain day four years ago something very grave happened to me. I can’t remember what it was. I want you to help me find out.”

“Help you remember?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, that’s not in my line of work,” he said bluntly. “I might be able to help you find a lost necklace, even a missing person, but a lost day, no.”

“You misunderstand, Mr. Pinata. I’m not asking you to pry into my unconscious like a psychiatrist. I simply want your assistance, your physical assistance. The rest would be up to me.” She studied his face for any sign of interest or curiosity. He was staring, blank-faced, out of the window, as if he hadn’t heard anything she’d said. “Have you ever tried to reconstruct a day, Mr. Pinata? Oh, not a special day like Christmas or an anniversary, just a plain ordinary day. Have you?”

“No.”

“Suppose you were forced to. Say the police accused you of a crime and you had to prove exactly where you were and what you did — let’s make it two years ago today. This is the ninth of February. Do you remember anything special about the ninth of February two years ago?”

He thought about it for a time, squinting up his eyes. “Well, no. Nothing specific. I know the general circumstances of my life at the time, where I was staying, and so on. I assume, if it was a weekday, that I got up and went to work as usual.”

“The police wouldn’t accept assumptions. They would ask for facts.”

“I think I’ll plead guilty,” he said with a quick smile.

She didn’t return the smile. “What would you do, Mr. Pinata? How would you go about finding the facts?”

“First, I’d check my records. Let’s see, February the ninth two years ago, that would be a Saturday. Saturday night is usually a pretty busy time for me, since there are more arrests made. So I’d check the police files, too, in the hope of coming across a case I might remember.”

“What if you had no files or records?”

The telephone rang. Pinata answered, talked in monosyllables, mostly negative, for a couple of minutes, and hung up. “Everyone has records of some kind.”

“I haven’t.”

“No diary? Bank statement? Bills? Check stubs?”

“No. My husband takes care of things like that.”

“What about this check you just gave me? Isn’t it drawn on your own account?”

“Yes, but I don’t write very many, and I certainly haven’t kept track of the stubs from four years ago.”

“Do you use an engagement book?”

“I throw away my engagement book at the end of each year,” Daisy said. “I used to keep a diary a long time ago.”

“How long?”

“I don’t recall exactly. I just sort of lost interest in it — nothing seemed to happen to me that deserved writing down, no excitement or anything.”

No excitement, Pinata thought. So now she’s scrounging around for some, looking for a lost day like a bored child during summer vacation looking for something to do, a game to play. Well, Daisy baby, I haven’t got time for games. I won’t play. “I wish I could help you, Mrs. Harker, but as I told you, this is out of my line. You’d be wasting your money.”

“I’ve wasted money before.” She stared at him obstinately. “Anyway, you’re not in the least concerned about my wasting my money, only about your wasting your time. You don’t understand — I haven’t made you realize how terribly important this is to me.”

“Why is it important?”

She wanted to tell him about the dream, but she was afraid of his reaction. He might be amused like Jim, or impatient and a little contemptuous like Adam, or annoyed like her mother. “I can’t explain that right now.”

“Why not?”

“You’re already very skeptical and suspicious of me. If I told you the rest of it, well, you might consider me quite crazy.”

Bored, Pinata thought. Not crazy. Or maybe just a little. “I think you’d better tell me the rest of it anyway, Mrs. Harker, so at least we’ll understand each other. I’ve been asked to do some pretty funny things, but finding a lost day — that’s a tall order.”

“I didn’t lose the day. It’s not lost. It’s still around someplace, here or there, wherever used days and old years go. They don’t simply vanish into nothing. They’re still available — hiding, yes, but not lost.”

“I see,” Pinata said, thinking that Daisy baby wasn’t a little crazy after all; she was a whole lot crazy. He couldn’t help being interested, however; he wasn’t sure whether his interest was in Daisy’s problem or Daisy herself, or whether the two could ever be separated. “If you don’t remember this day, Mrs. Harker, why do you believe it was so important to you?”

It was almost the identical question Adam had asked. She hadn’t been able to give a satisfactory answer then, and she couldn’t now. “I know it was. Sometimes people know things in different ways. You know I’m sitting here because you can see and hear me. But there are other ways of knowing things than merely through the five senses. Some of them haven’t been explained yet... I do wish you’d stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“As if you expected me to announce that my name was Josephine Bonaparte or something. I’m quite sane, Mr. Pinata. And rational, if the two can possibly go together in this confused world.”

“I thought they were the same thing.”

“Oh, no,” she said with a kind of prim politeness. “Sanity is a matter of culture and convention. If it’s a crazy culture you live in, then you have to be irrational to want to conform. A completely rational person would recognize that the culture was crazy and refuse to conform. But by not conforming, he is the one who would be judged crazy by that particular society.”

Pinata looked surprised and somewhat annoyed, as if a pet parrot, which he had taught to speak a few simple phrases, had suddenly started explaining the techniques of nuclear fission.

“That was a neat trick,” he said at last.

“What was?”

“The way you changed the subject. When the box got a little hot for you, out you jumped. What are you trying to avoid telling me, Mrs. Harker?”

He’s honest, Daisy thought. He doesn’t pretend to know things he doesn’t know or to exaggerate what he does know. He isn’t even very good at hiding his feelings. I think I can trust him.

“I had a dream,” Daisy said, and before he could tell her he didn’t deal in dreams, she was telling about the stroll on the beach with Prince and the tombstone with her name on it.

Pinata listened, without audible comment, to the end. Then he said, “Have you told anyone else about this dream, Mrs. Harker?”

“My mother, my husband Jim, and a friend of Jim’s who’s a lawyer, Adam Burnett.”

“What was their reaction?”

She looked across the desk at him with a dry little smile. “My mother and Jim want me to take vitamins and forget the whole thing.”

“And the lawyer, Mr. Burnett?”

“He understood more than the others how important it was to me to find out what happened. But he gave me a warning.”

“Which was?”

“Whatever happened on that day to cause my — my death must have been very unpleasant, and I shouldn’t try to dredge it up. I have nothing to gain and everything to lose.”

“But you want to go ahead with it anyway?”

“It’s no longer a question of wanting to. I have to. You see, we’re about to adopt a baby.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“It won’t be just my life and Jim’s anymore. We’ll be sharing it with a child. I must be sure that this child will be coming into the right home, a place of security and happiness.”

“And at the moment you think yours isn’t the right home?”

“I’m checking to be certain. Let’s say you bought a house, Mr. Pinata, and you’ve been living in it for some time quite comfortably. Then something happens, say an important guest is arriving. You decide to check the place over, and you find certain serious structural defects. Would you consult a good contractor to see what he could do about the defects? Or would you just sit there with your eyes closed and pretend everything was fine?”

“That’s a pretty desperate analogy,” Pinata said. “All it amounts to is that you’re determined to have your own way no matter what comes of it.”

“I’m not a child demanding a stick of candy.”

No, Pinata thought, you’re a grown woman demanding a stick of dynamite. You don’t like your life or your house. You’re afraid to share it with a child. So blow the whole thing sky high and watch the pretty pieces come falling down on your head.

The phone rang again. This time it was Pinata’s cleaning woman relaying the news that the roof was leaking in the kitchen and one of the bedrooms and reminding him that she’d warned him last year he was going to have to get a new roof put on.

“Do the best you can. I’ll be home at five,” Pinata said, and hung up, feeling depressed. New roofs cost money, and Johnny was having his teeth straightened. I can’t afford a new roof. But Daisy can. If she’s determined to blow up her own roof, at least I can catch some of the lumber to build mine.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll help you, Mrs. Harker. If I can, and against my better judgment.”

She looked pleased, in a subdued way, as if she didn’t want him to see how eager she actually was to begin this new game. “When do we start?”

“I’m tied up for a couple of days.” It was a necessary lie: two days would give him a chance to do some checking up on Daisy, and Daisy a chance to change her mind. “Say Thursday afternoon.”

“I was hoping right away...”

“No. Sorry. I have a case.”

“Of jitters?”

“All right, of jitters.”

“And you need time to investigate me, find out how many steps I am in front of the butterfly net? Well, I can’t blame you, of course. If some woman came to me and told me the kind of story I’ve told you, I’d be suspicious, too. The only thing is, there’s no need for secrecy. I’m perfectly willing to answer any questions you’d like to ask me: age, weight, education, background, religious preference...”

“No questions,” he said, annoyed. “But it remains Thursday.”

“Very well. Shall I come here to your office?”

“I’ll meet you at three o’clock at the front door of the Monitor-Press building, if that suits you.”

“Isn’t that rather a — conspicuous place to meet?”

“I didn’t know this was to be undercover stuff.”

“It isn’t really. But why advertise it?”

“Wait a minute, Mrs. Harker,” Pinata said, leaning across the desk. “Let’s get this straight. Do you intend to tell your husband and family that you’ve hired me?”

“I hadn’t thought about it. I hadn’t even thought about hiring you or anyone else until I noticed the sign on your door. It seemed like fate, in a way.”

“Oh, Mrs. Harker,” Pinata said very sadly.

“It did, it does. It’s as if I were guided here.”

“Misguided might be a better word.”

Her gaze was cool and stubborn. “You’ve done everything possible to talk yourself out of a job. Why?”

“Because I think you’re making a mistake. You can’t just reconstruct one day, Mrs. Harker. It may turn out to be a whole life.”

“Well?”

“You’ll be kicking over quite a few stones. Maybe you won’t like what you find underneath them.” He stood up, as if he were the one who intended to leave. “Well, it’s your funeral.”

“Wrong tense,” she said. “It was my funeral.”

He went with her to the door and opened it. The long, dim hallway smelled of new rain and old wax.

“By the way,” Daisy added casually, as if she hadn’t been thinking about it at all, “did my father give you his Los Angeles address?”

“He gave the police an address when he was arrested. I copied it off the blotter.” He had it written on the inside of a match folder, which he took out of his pocket and handed to Daisy. “1074 Delaney Avenue West. I wouldn’t bother trying to reach him there, though, if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“There is no Delaney Avenue in Los Angeles.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“But what reason would he have to lie about it?”

“I don’t read minds, palms, or tea leaves. Just street maps. There is no Delaney Avenue in L.A., east or west.”

She was looking at him as if she believed he could have located the missing street if he’d only tried a little harder. “I’ll take your word for it, of course.”

“No need to. Any gas station in town will be happy to supply you with a map of Los Angeles so you can check for yourself. While you’re at it, you might look up the Harris Electrical Supply warehouse on Figueroa Street. Fielding claims to be working there.”

“Claims?”

“Well, there’s no reason to believe he was telling the truth about that, either. I got the impression he’s the kind of man who prefers to be left alone except when he needs help.”

“You sound as though you don’t like him.”

“I like him fine,” Pinata said with some truth. “But he could be hard to take in big doses.”

“Is he — drinking very heavily?”

“He’s drinking, I don’t know how much. He told me some news about himself which he may or may not have intended me to pass on to you.”

“What kind of news?”

“He’s married again.”

She stared in silence toward the end of the long, dim hall, as if she saw dark, half-familiar shapes moving in the shadows. “Married. Well, he’s not an old man, I have no reason to be surprised. But I am. It doesn’t seem real.”

“I’m pretty sure he was telling the truth.”

“Who is the woman?”

“He didn’t say anything about her.”

“Not even her name?”

“I presume,” Pinata said dryly, “that her name is Mrs. Fielding.”

“I meant — oh, it doesn’t matter. I’m glad he’s married again. I hope she’s a good woman.” She sounded not too glad, even less hopeful. “At least someone else is responsible for him now. Some stranger has lifted the load off my shoulders, and I’m grateful to her. I wish them both good luck. If you see him or hear from him, please tell him that for me, will you?”

“I don’t expect to see or hear from him.”

“My father does some rather unexpected things.”

So do you, Daisy baby, Pinata thought. Maybe you and Daddy have more in common than you’d like to admit.

He walked her down the hall.

The rain had seeped under the front door of the building, and the welcome mat made a squishing sound when Daisy stepped out on it.

She told Jim that night all about her father’s surprise appearance in town: the Sunday night phone call from the jail which Mrs. Fielding had deliberately kept secret, the second call the next afternoon from Pinata’s office, the meeting which hadn’t taken place because Fielding had run away. She gave Jim every detail except the one he would have been most interested in, the fact that she’d hired an investigator about whom she knew nothing more than his name.

“So your father got married again,” Jim said, lighting his pipe. “Well, you can’t quarrel with that, surely. It may be the best thing that ever happened to him. You should be very pleased.”

“I am.”

“It will be much better for him, having a life of his own.”

“When has he ever had anything else?”

“Don’t be bitter about it,” Jim said, forcing patience into his voice. Daisy’s combination of loyalty and resentment toward her father irritated him. He himself didn’t think much or care much about Fielding, not even to the extent of begrudging him the money he cost. He considered, in fact, that the money was well spent if it kept Fielding at a distance. Los Angeles was a hundred miles away, not much of a distance. He hoped, for Daisy’s sake, that Fielding would take a dislike to the city, the smog, the traffic, or living conditions, and head back to the East Coast or the Middle West. Jim knew, better than Daisy, how difficult it was to handle old family knots when they no longer held anything together and were too frayed to be retied.

The last time he’d seen his father-in-law was five years ago, when he’d gone to Chicago on a business trip. The two men met at the Town House, and the evening started well, with Fielding going out of his way to be charming and Jim out of his to be charmed. But by ten o’clock Fielding was drunk and blubbering about how Daisy baby had never had a real father: “You take good care of my little girl, you hear? Poor little Daisy baby. You take good care of her, you goddamn stuffed shirt.” Later, Fielding was poured into a taxicab by a couple of waiters, and Jim put three twenty-dollar bills in the pocket of his understuffed shirt.

Well, I’ve taken good care of her, Jim thought now, within my limits anyway. I haven’t made a move without first thinking of her welfare. And sometimes the decisions have been almost impossibly difficult, like the business about Juanita. She never mentions Juanita. The corner of her mind where the girl lies has been sealed off like a tomb.

His pipe had gone out. He relit it, and its hoarse wheezing brought back the memory of Fielding’s voice: “You take good care of my little girl... you goddamn stuffed shirt.”

6

This letter may never reach you, Daisy. If it doesn’t, I will know why...

Two days later, on Wednesday afternoon, Jim Harker arrived home for dinner an hour earlier than usual. Daisy’s car was missing from the garage, and the mail was still in the postbox. It meant that Daisy had been away since noon, when the mail arrived. The house seemed lifeless without her, in spite of the noise of Stella vacuuming the downstairs and singing bits of sad songs in a loud, cheerful voice.

He sorted the mail on the dining-room table, and was surprised to come across a bill from Adam Burnett for services rendered Mrs. James Harker, February 9, $2.50.

The bill was surprising in several ways: that Daisy had been to see Adam without telling him about it, that the fee was so small, less than minimal for a lawyer’s, and that the timing was unusual. It had been sent directly after Daisy’s visit instead of being postponed until the end of the month like ordinary bills for professional services. He concluded, after some thought, that sending the bill was Adam’s way of informing him about Daisy’s visit without actually breaking any code of ethics involving the confidences of a client.

It wasn’t quite five o’clock, so he called Adam at his office. “Mr. Burnett, please. Jim Harker speaking.”

“Just one second, Mr. Harker. Mr. Burnett’s on his way out, but I think I can catch him. Hold on.”

After a minute Adam said, “Hello, Jim.”

“I received your bill today.”

“Oh yes.” Adam sounded embarrassed. “I wasn’t going to send you any, but Daisy insisted.”

“I didn’t know until now that she’d been to see you.”

“Oh?”

“What did she have in mind?”

“Come now, Jim, that’s for Daisy to tell you, not me.”

“You addressed the bill to me, so I presume you wanted me to know she’d consulted you.”

“Well, yes. I thought it would be preferable if you were cognizant...”

“No lawyer talk, please,” Jim said in a sharp, tense voice. “Did she come to you about... about a divorce?”

“Good Lord, no. What gave you such a crazy idea?”

“That’s the usual reason women consult lawyers, isn’t it?”

“As a matter of fact, no. Women make wills, sign contracts, fill out tax forms...”

“Stop beating around the bush.”

“All right,” Adam said cautiously. “I met Daisy by accident on the street early Monday afternoon. She seemed bewildered and anxious to talk. So we talked. I’d like to think that I gave her some good advice and that she took it.”

“Was it concerning a dream she had about a certain day four years ago?”

“Yes.”

“And she didn’t mention a divorce?”

“Why, no. Where did you get this worm in your wig about a divorce? There was absolutely nothing in Daisy’s attitude to indicate she was contemplating such a move. Besides, she couldn’t get one in California. She has no grounds.”

“You’re forgetting, Adam.”

“That was a long time ago,” Adam said quickly. “What’s the matter with you and Daisy anyway? A more lugubrious pair...”

“Nothing was the matter until she had this damned dream on Sunday night. Things have been going smoothly. We’ve been married eight years, and I honestly think this last year has been the best. Daisy has finally adjusted to the fact that she can’t have children — maybe not adjusted, but at least reconciled — and she’s looking forward eagerly to the one we’re going to adopt. At least she had been, until this dream business cropped up. She hasn’t mentioned our prospective child for three days now. You’ve had eight children, and you know how much preparation and talking and planning goes on ahead of time. I’m confused by her sudden lack of interest. Perhaps she doesn’t want a child after all. If she doesn’t, if she’s changed her mind, God knows it wouldn’t be fair for us to adopt one.”

“Nonsense. Of course she wants a child.” Adam spoke firmly, although he had no real convictions on the subject. Daisy, like most other women, had always puzzled him and always would. It seemed reasonable to suppose that she would want children, but she might have some deep, unspoken revulsion against adopting one. “The dream has confused her, Jim. Be patient. Play along with her.”

“That might do more harm than good.”

“I don’t think so. In fact, I’m convinced this deathday business of hers will come to a dead end.”

“How so?”

“There’s no place else for it to go. She’s attempting the impossible.”

“Why are you so certain it’s impossible?”

“Because I’ve been trying the same thing,” Adam said. “The idea intrigued me, picking a day at random out of the past and reconstructing it. If it had been simply a matter of recalling a business appointment, I would have consulted my desk diary. But this was purely personal. Anyway, on Monday night, after the kids were in bed, Fran and I tried it. To make sure our choice of date was absolute chance, we picked it, blindfolded, from a set of calendars in the almanac. Now, Fran not only has a memory like an elephant, she also keeps a pretty complete record of the kids: baby books, report cards, artwork, and so on. But we didn’t get to first base. I predict Daisy will have a similar experience. It’s the kind of thing that sounds easy but isn’t. After Daisy runs into a few blind alleys, she’ll lose interest and give up. So let her run. Or better still, run with her.”

“How?”

“Try remembering her day yourself, whatever day it was. I’ve forgotten.”

“If you didn’t get to first base, how do you expect me to?”

“I don’t expect you to. Just play along. Step up to the plate and swing.”

“I don’t think Daisy would be fooled,” Jim said dryly. “Perhaps it would be better if I distracted her attention, took her on a trip, something like that.”

“A trip might be fine.”

“I have to go up north this weekend anyway to look at a parcel of land in Marin County. I’ll take Daisy along. She’s always liked San Francisco.”

He spoke to Daisy about it that night after dinner, describing the trip, lunch at Cambria Pines, a stopover at Carmel, dinner at Amelio’s, a play at the Curran or the Alcazar, and afterwards a drink and floor show at the Hungry I. She looked at him as if he were proposing a trip to the moon in a rocket earned with Rice Krispies box tops.

Her refusal was sharp and direct, with no hint of her usual hesitance. “I can’t go.”

“Why not?”

“I have something important to attend to.”

“Such as?”

“I’m doing — research.”

“Research?” He repeated the word as if it tasted foreign to his tongue. “I tried to phone you this afternoon three or four times. You were out again. You’ve been out every afternoon this week.”

“There have only been three afternoons in the week so far.”

“Even so.”

“Your meals are on time,” Daisy said. “Your house is well kept.”

Her slight but definite emphasis on the word your made it sound to Jim as though she were disclaiming any further share or interest in the house, as if she had, in some obscure sense, moved out. “It’s our house, Daisy.”

“Very well, our house. It’s well kept, isn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“Then why should it bother you if I go out during the afternoon while you’re at work?”

“It doesn’t bother me. It concerns me. Not your going out, your attitude.”

“What’s the matter with my attitude?”

“A week ago you wouldn’t have asked that, especially not in that particular tone, as if you were challenging me to knock a chip off your shoulder... Daisy, what’s happening to us?”

“Nothing.” She knew what was happening, though; what had, in fact, already happened. She had stepped out of her usual role, had changed lines and costumes, and now the director was agitated because he no longer knew what play he was directing. Poor Jim, she thought, and reached over and took his hand. “Nothing,” she said again.

They were sitting side by side on the davenport. The house was very quiet. The rain had stopped temporarily, Stella had gone home after surviving another day in the country, and Mrs. Fielding was at a concert with a friend. Prince, the collie, was sleeping in front of the fireplace, where he always slept in bad weather. Even though there was no fire in the grate, he liked the remembered warmth of other fires.

“Be fair, Daisy,” Jim said, pressing her hand. “I’m not one of these heavy husbands who wants his wife to have no interests outside himself. Haven’t I always encouraged your activities?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then? What have you been doing, Daisy?”

“Walking around.”

“In all this rain?”

“Yes.”

“Walking around where?”

“The old neighborhood on Laurel Street.”

“But why?”

“That was where we were living when I” — when I died — “when it happened.”

His mouth looked as though she’d reached up and pinched it. “Did you imagine that what happened was still there, like a piece of furniture we forgot to bring along?”

“In a sense it’s still there.”

“Well, in that case, why didn’t you walk up to the door and inquire? Why didn’t you ask the occupants if they’d mind if you searched the attic for a lost day?”

“There was no one at home.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, you mean you actually tried to get in?”

“I rang the doorbell. No one answered.”

“Thank heaven for small mercies. What would you have said if someone had answered?”

“Just that I used to live there once and would like to see the house again.”

“Rather than have you make such an exhibition of yourself,” he said coldly, “I’ll buy the house back for you. Then you can spend all your afternoons there, you can search every nook and cranny of the damn place, examine every piece of junk you find.”

She had withdrawn her hand from his. For a while the contact had been like a bridge between them, but the bridge had washed away in the bitter flood of his irony. “I’m not looking for — junk. I don’t intend making an exhibition of myself either. I went back because I thought that if I found myself in the same situation as before, I might remember something valuable.”

“Valuable? The golden moment of your death, perhaps? Isn’t that just a little morbid? When did you fall in love with the idea of dying?”

She got up and crossed the room as if trying to get beyond the range of his sarcasm. The movement warned him that he was going too far, and he changed his tone.

“Are you so bored with your life, Daisy? Do you consider the past four years a living death? Is that what your dream means?”

“No.”

“I think so.”

“It’s not your dream.”

The dog had awakened and was moving his eyes back and forth, from Daisy to Jim and back to Daisy, like a spectator at a tennis match.

“I don’t want to quarrel,” Daisy said. “It upsets the dog.”

“It upsets the — oh, for Pete’s sake. All right, all right, we won’t quarrel. Can’t have the dog getting upset. It’s O.K., though, if the rest of us are reduced to gibbering idiocy. We’re just people, we don’t deserve any better.”

She was petting the dog’s head in a soothing, reassuring way, her touch telling him that everything was fine, his eyes and ears were liars, not to be taken seriously.

I should play along with her, Jim thought. That was Adam’s advice. God knows, my own approach doesn’t work. “So you went back to Laurel Street,” he said finally, “and walked around.”

“Yes.”

“Any results?”

“This quarrel with you,” she said with bitterness. “That’s all.”

“You didn’t remember anything?”

“Nothing that would pinpoint the actual day.”

“I suppose you realize how unlikely it is that you’ll ever succeed in pinpointing it?”

“Yes.”

“But you intend to keep on trying?”

“Yes.”

“Over my objections?”

“Yes, if you won’t change your mind.” She was quiet a moment, and her hand had paused on the dog’s neck. “I remembered the winter. Perhaps that’s a start. As soon as I saw the jasmine bushes on the south side of the house, I recalled that that was the year of the big frost when we lost all the jasmines. At least I thought we’d lost them, they looked so dead. But in the spring they all came to life again.” I didn’t, though. The jasmines were tougher than I. There was no spring for me that year, no new leaves, no little buds. “That’s a start, isn’t it, remembering the winter?”

“I guess so,” he said heavily. “I guess that’s a start.”

“One day there was even snow on the mountain peaks. A lot of the high school kids ditched classes to go up and see it, and afterwards they drove down State Street with the snow piled high on their fenders. They looked very happy. It was the first time some of them had seen snow.”

“Daisy.”

“Snow in California never seems real to me somehow, not like back home in Denver, where it was a part of my life and often not a very pleasant part. I wanted to go up and see the snow that day, just like the high school kids, to make sure it was the real stuff, not something blown out of a machine from Hollywood... The year of the frost, you must remember it, Jim. I ordered a cord of wood for the fireplace, but I didn’t realize what a lot of wood a cord was, and when it came, we didn’t have any place to store it except outside in the rain.”

She seemed anxious to go on talking, as if she felt she was on her way to convincing him of the importance of her project and the necessity for carrying on with it. Jim didn’t try again to interrupt her. He felt with relief that Adam had been right: the whole thing was impossible. All Daisy had been able to remember so far was a little snow on the mountain peaks and some high school kids riding down State Street and a few dead jasmine bushes.

7

Your mother has vowed to keep us apart at any cost because she is ashamed of me...

The next morning, between the time Jim left and Stella arrived, Daisy phoned Pinata at his office. She didn’t expect him to be there so early, but he answered the phone on the second ring, his voice alert and wary, as if early calls were the kind to watch out for.

“Yes.”

“This is Daisy Harker, Mr. Pinata.”

“Oh. Good morning, Mrs. Harker.” He sounded suddenly a little too cordial. She didn’t have to wait long to find out why. “If you want to cancel our agreement, that’s fine with me. There’ll be no charge. I’ll mail you the retainer you gave me.”

“Your extrasensory perception isn’t working very well this morning,” she said coldly. “I’m calling merely to suggest that I meet you at your office this afternoon instead of at the Monitor-Press building.”

“Why?”

She told him the truth without embarrassment. “Because you’re young and good-looking, and I wouldn’t want people to get the wrong impression if they saw us together.”

“I gather you haven’t informed your family that you’ve hired me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I tried to, but I couldn’t face another argument with Jim. He’s right, according to his lights, and I’m right, according to mine. What’s the point of arguing?”

“He’s bound to find out,” Pinata said. “Word gets around pretty fast in this town.”

“I know, but by that time perhaps everything will be settled, you will have solved—”

“Mrs. Harker, I can’t solve a thing pussyfooting around back alleys trying to avoid your family and friends. In fact, we’re going to need their cooperation. This day you’re fixated on, it wasn’t just your day. It belonged to a lot of other people, too — 650,000,00 °Chinese, to name a few of them.”

“I fail to see what 650,000,00 °Chinese have to do with it.”

“No. Well, forget it.” His sigh was quite audible. Intentionally audible, she thought, annoyed. “I’ll be in front of the Monitor-Press building at three o’clock, Mrs. Harker.”

“Isn’t it usually the employer who gives the orders?”

“Most employers know their business and are in a position to give orders. I don’t think that applies to you in this particular instance, no insult intended. So, unless you’ve come up with some new ideas, I suggest we go about it my way. Have you any new ideas?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll see you this afternoon.”

“Why there, at that specific place?”

“Because we’re going to need some official help,” Pinata said. “The Monitor knows a great deal more about what happened on December 2, 1955, than you or I do at the moment.”

“They surely don’t keep copies of newspapers from that far back.”

“Not in the sense that they’re offering them for sale, no. But every edition they’ve printed is available on microfilm. Let’s hope something interesting will turn up.”

They were both exactly on time, Pinata because punctuality was a habit with him, Daisy because the occasion was very important to her. All day, ever since her phone call to Pinata, she’d been impatient and excited, as if she half expected the Monitor to open its pages and reveal some vital truth to her. Perhaps a very special event had taken place in the world on December 2, 1955, and once the event was recalled to her, she would remember her reactions to it; it would become the peg on which she could hang the rest of the day, hat and coat and dress and sweater and, finally, the woman who fitted into them.

The carillon in the courthouse tower was ringing out the hour of three when Pinata approached the front door of the Monitor building. Daisy was already there, looking inconspicuous and a little dowdy in a loosely cut gray cotton suit. He wondered whether she had dressed that way deliberately to avoid calling attention to herself, or whether this was one of the latest styles. He’d lost touch with the latest styles since Monica had left him.

He said, “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”

“No. I just arrived.”

“The library’s on the third floor. We can take the elevator. Or would you rather walk?”

“I like to walk.”

“Yes, I know.”

She seemed a little surprised. “How could you know that?”

“I saw you yesterday afternoon.”

“Where?”

“On Laurel Street. You were walking in the rain. I figured that anyone who walks in the rain must be very fond of walking.”

“The walking was incidental. I had a purpose in visiting Laurel Street.”

“I know. You used to live there. From the time of your marriage in June 1950 until October of last year, to be exact.”

Her surprise this time was mixed with annoyance. “Have you been investigating me?”

“Just a few black and white statistics. Not in living color.” He squinted up at the afternoon sun and rubbed his eyes. “I imagine the place on Laurel Street has many pleasant memories for you.”

“Certainly.”

“Then why try to destroy them?”

She regarded him with a kind of weary patience, as if he were a backward child who must be told the same thing over and over.

“I’m giving you,” Pinata said, “another chance to change your mind.”

“And I’m refusing it.”

“All right. Let’s go inside.”

They went through the swinging doors and headed for the staircase, walking some distance apart like two strangers accidentally going in the same direction. The apartness was of Daisy’s choosing, not Pinata’s. It reminded him of what she’d said over the phone about not wanting people to see them together because he was young and good-looking. The compliment, if it was one, had embarrassed him. He didn’t like any reference, good or bad, made to his physical appearance, because he felt such things were, or should be, irrelevant.

In his early years Pinata had been extremely conscious of the fact that he didn’t know his own racial origin and couldn’t identify with any particular racial group. Now, in his maturity, this lack of group identification had the effect of making him tolerant of every race. He was able to think of men as his brothers because some of them might very well be his brothers, for all he knew. The name Pinata, which enabled him to mix freely with the Spanish Americans and the Mexicans who made up a large part of the city, was not his. It had been given to him by the Mother Superior of the orphanage in Los Angeles where he’d been abandoned.

He still visited the orphanage occasionally. The Mother Superior was very old now, and her eyesight and hearing were failing, but her tongue was as lively as a girl’s when Pinata came to see her. More than any of the other hundreds of her children, he was hers, because she’d found him, in the chapel on Christmas Eve, and because she’d named him, Jesus Pinata. As the Mother Superior grew older, her mind, no longer nimble or inquisitive, chose to follow certain well-worn roads. Her favorite road led back to a Christmas Eve thirty-two years ago.

“There you were, in front of the altar, a wee mite of a bundle barely five pounds, and squalling so hard I thought your little lungs would break. Sister Mary Martha came in then, looking as white as a sheet, as if she’d never seen a brand-new baby before. She picked you up in her arms and called you the Lord Jesus, and immediately you stopped crying, like any lost soul recognizing his name called out in the wilderness. So we called you Jesus.

“Of course, it’s a very difficult name to live up to,” she would add with a sigh. “Ah, how well I remember as you got older, all the fighting you had to do every time one of the other children laughed at your name. All those bruises and black eyes and chipped teeth, dear me, it became quite a problem. You hardly looked human half the time. Jesus is a lovely name, but I felt something had to be done. So I asked Father Stevens for his advice, and he came over and talked to you. He asked you what name you would like to have, and you said Stevens. A very fine choice, too. Father Stevens was a great man.”

At this point she always stopped to blow her nose, explaining that she had a touch of sinusitis because of the smog. “You could have changed the Pinata part as well. After all, it was just a name we picked because the children were playing the piñata game that Christmas Eve. We took a vote on it. Sister Mary Martha was the only one who objected to the name. ‘Suppose he is a Smith or a Brown or an Anderson,’ she said. I reminded her that very few whites lived in our neighborhood, and since you were to be brought up among us, you would do better as a Pinata than as a Brown or Anderson. I was right, too. You’ve developed into a fine young man we’re all proud of. If the good Father were only here to see you... Dear me, I think this smog gets worse each year. If it were the will of the Lord, I wouldn’t complain, but I fear it’s just sheer human perversity.”

Perversity. The word reminded him of Daisy. She was racing up the steps ahead of him as if she were in training for a track meet. He caught up with her on the third floor. “What’s your hurry? The place stays open until 5:30.”

“I like to move fast.”

“So do I, when someone’s chasing me.”

The library was at the end of a long, elaborately tiled corridor. It was rumored that no two tiles in the entire building were alike. So far no one had gone to the trouble of checking this, but the rumor was repeated to tourists, who relayed it via postcard and letter to their friends and relatives in the East and Middle West.

In the small room marked library, a girl in horn-rimmed glasses was seated behind a desk pasting clippings into a scrap-book. She ignored Daisy and fixed her bright, inquisitive eyes on Pinata. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Pinata said, “You’re new around here, aren’t you?”

“Yes. The other girl had to quit. Allergic to paste, broke out all over her hands and arms. A real mess.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“She’s trying to get workman’s compensation, but I’m not sure it applies to allergies. Can I help you with anything?”

“I’d like to see the microfilm of one of your back copies.”

“Year and month?”

“December ’55.”

“One roll of film covers half a month. Which half are you interested in, the first or last?”

“The first.”

She unlocked one drawer of a metal filing cabinet and brought out a roll of microfilm, which she fitted into the projection machine. Then she turned on the light in the machine and showed Pinata the hand crank. “You just keep turning this until you come to the day you want. It starts at December the first and goes through to the fifteenth.”

“Yes. Thanks.”

“Pull up a chair if you want.” The girl for the first time looked directly at Daisy. “Or two chairs.”

Pinata arranged a chair for Daisy. He remained standing, with one hand on the crank. Although the girl in charge had returned to her desk and was presumably intent on her work, Pinata lowered his voice. “Can you see properly?”

“Not too well.”

“Close your eyes for a minute while I turn to the right day, or you might get dizzy.”

She closed her eyes until he said crisply, “Well, here’s your day, Mrs. Harker.”

Her eyes remained closed, as if the lids had become calcified and too stiff and heavy to move.

“Aren’t you going to look at it?”

“Yes. Of course.”

She opened her eyes and blinked a couple of times, refocusing. The headlines meant nothing to her: CIO and AFL merged after twenty-year split. body of unidentified man found near railroad jungle. federal school aid plan backed. youth confesses dozen burglaries. bad weather may close airport. seven hundred to participate in Christmas parade tonight. crash injures pianist Gieseking, kills wife. more snow predicted for mountain areas.

Snow on the mountains, she thought, the kids driving down State Street, the dead jasmines. “Could you read the fine print to me, please?”

“Which fine print?”

“About the snow on the mountains.”

“All right. ‘Early risers were given a rare treat this morning in the form of a blanket of snow on the mountains. Forest rangers at La Cumbre peak reported a depth of seven inches in some places, and more is predicted during the night. Some senior classes of both public and private schools were dismissed for the morning so that students could drive up and experience, many of them for the first time, real snow. Damage to citrus crops—’”

“I remember that,” she said, “the students with the snow piled on the fenders of their cars.”

“So do I.”

“Very clearly?”

“Yes. They made quite a parade out of it.”

“Why should both of us remember a little thing like that?”

“Because it was very unusual, I suppose,” Pinata said.

“So unusual that it could only have happened once that year?”

“Perhaps. I can’t be sure of it, though.”

“Wait.” She turned to him, flushed with excitement. “It must have happened only once. Don’t you see? The students wouldn’t have been dismissed from class a second time. They’d already been given their chance to see the snow. The school authorities surely wouldn’t keep repeating the dismissal if it snowed a second or third or fourth time.”

Her logic surprised and convinced him. “I agree. But why is it so important to you?”

“Because it’s the first real thing I remember about the day, the only thing that separates it from a lot of other days. If I saw those students parading in their cars, it means I must have gone downtown, perhaps to have lunch with Jim. And yet I can’t remember Jim being with me, or my mother either. I think — I’m almost sure — I was alone.”

“When you saw the kids, where were you? Walking along the street?”

“No. I think I was inside some place, looking out through a window.”

“A restaurant? A store? Where did you usually shop in those days?”

“For groceries at the Fairway, for clothes at Dewolfe’s.”

“Neither of those is on State Street. How about a restaurant? Do you have a favorite place to eat lunch?”

“The Copper Kettle. It’s a cafeteria in the 1100 block.”

“Let’s assume for a minute,” Pinata said, “that you were having lunch at the Copper Kettle, alone. Did you often go downtown and have lunch alone?”

“Sometimes, on the days I worked.”

“You had a job?”

“I was a volunteer for a while at the Neighborhood Clinic. It’s a family counseling service. I worked there every Wednesday and Friday afternoon.”

“December 2 was a Friday. Did you go to work that afternoon?”

“I don’t remember. I don’t even know if I was still working at that time. I quit because I wasn’t very good with chil — with people.”

“You were going to say ‘with children,’ weren’t you?”

“Does it matter?”

“It might.”

She shook her head. “My job wasn’t important anyway. I’m not a trained social worker. I acted mainly as a baby-sitter for the children of the mothers and fathers who came in for counseling, some of them voluntarily, some by order of the courts or the Probation Department.”

“You didn’t like the job?”

“Oh, but I did. I was crazy about it. I just wasn’t competent enough. I couldn’t handle the children. I felt too sorry for them. I was too — personal. Children, especially children of families who reach the point of going to the Clinic, need a firmer and more objective approach. The fact is,” she added with a grim little smile, “if I hadn’t quit, they’d probably have fired me.”

“What gave you that idea?”

“Nothing specific. But I got the impression that I was more of a hindrance than a help around the place, so I simply failed to show up the next time.”

“The next time after what?”

“After... after I got the impression that I was a hindrance.”

“But something must have given you that impression at a definite time or you wouldn’t have used the phrase ‘the next time.’”

“I don’t follow you.”

He thought, You follow me, Daisy baby. You just don’t like the bumps in the road I’m taking. Well, it’s not my road; it’s yours. If there are potholes in it, don’t blame me.

“I don’t follow you,” she repeated.

“All right, let’s skip it.”

She looked relieved, as if he’d pointed out to her a nice, easy detour. “I don’t see how a little detail like that could be important when I’m not even sure I was working at the Clinic at the time.”

“We can make sure. They keep records, and I shouldn’t have any trouble getting the information you want. Charles Alston, the director, is an old friend of mine. We’ve had a lot of clients in common — on their way up they land in his lap; on their way down they land in mine.”

“Will you have to use my name?”

“Of course. How else—”

“Can’t you think of any other way?”

“Look, Mrs. Harker. If you worked at the Clinic, you must know that their file room isn’t open to the public. If I want information, I ask Mr. Alston, and he decides whether I get it or not. How am I going to find out if you were working on a certain Friday or not if I don’t mention your name?”

“Well, I wish you didn’t have to.” She pleated a corner of her gray jacket, smoothed it out carefully, and began all over again. “Jim said I mustn’t make an — an exhibition of myself. He’s very conscious of public opinion. He’s had to be,” she added, raising her head in a sudden defensive gesture, “to get where he is.”

“And where is that?”

“The end of the rainbow, I guess you’d call it. Years ago, when he had nothing at all, Jim made plans for himself: how he would live, the type of house he would build, how much money he’d make, yes, even the kind of wife he would choose — he had everything on the drawing board when he was still in his teens.”

“And it’s all worked out?”

“Most of it,” she said. One thing hasn’t, and never will. Jim wanted two boys and two girls.

“What, if I may ask, was on your drawing board, Mrs. Harker?”

“I’m not a planner.” She fixed her eyes on the projector again. “Shall we continue with the newspaper?”

“All right.”

He turned the crank, and the headlines of the next page rolled into view. Gunman John Kendrick, one of the FBI’s most wanted men, was captured in Chicago. California had nine traffic deaths on Safe Driving Day. The Abbott murder trial was still going on in San Francisco. A woman celebrated her 110th birthday in Dublin. High tides were demolishing several houses at Redondo Beach. In Sacramento the future of the State Junior College was discussed by educators, and in Georgia 2,000 students rioted over the racial ban in the Bowl game.

“Any bells ringing?” Pinata said.

“No.”

“Well, let’s try the local news. The American Penwomen gave a Christmas party and the Trinity Guild a bazaar. The Bert Petersons celebrated their thirtieth anniversary. The harbor dredging contract was O.K.’d. A Peeping Tom was apprehended on Colina Street. A four-year-old boy was bitten by a cocker spaniel and the dog ordered confined for fourteen days. A woman called Juanita Garcia, age twenty-three, was given probation on charges of neglecting her five children by locking them in her apartment while she visited several west-side taverns. The city council referred to the water commission a petition concerning—”

He stopped. Daisy had turned away from the projector with a noise that sounded like a sigh of boredom. She didn’t look bored, though. She looked angry. Her jaw was set tight, and blotches of color appeared on her cheeks as if she’d been slapped, silently, invisibly, hard. Her reaction puzzled Pinata: did she have a grudge against the city council or the water commission? Was she afraid of biting dogs, Peeping Toms, thirtieth anniversaries?

He said, “Don’t you want to go on with this, Mrs. Harker?”

The slight movement of her head was neither negative nor affirmative. “It seems hopeless. I mean, what difference does it make to me whether a woman called Juanita Garcia got probation or not? I don’t know any Juanita Garcia.” She spoke the words with unnecessary force, as if Pinata had accused her of having had a part in Mrs. Garcia’s case. “How would I know a woman like that?”

“Through your work at the Clinic, perhaps. According to the newspaper account, one of the conditions of Mrs. Garcia’s two-year probation was that she get some psychiatric help. Since she had five children and was expecting a sixth, and her husband was an Army private stationed in Germany, it seems unlikely she could afford a private psychiatrist. That leaves the Clinic.”

“No doubt your reasoning is sound. But it has no connection with me. I have never met Mrs. Garcia, at the Clinic or anywhere else. As I told you before, my work there was concerned entirely with the children of patients, not the patients themselves.”

“Then perhaps you knew Mrs. Garcia’s children. She had five.”

“Why do you keep harping like this on the name Garcia?”

“Because I got the impression it meant something to you.”

“I’ve denied that, haven’t I?”

“Several times, yes.”

“Then why are you accusing me of lying to you?”

“Not to me, exactly,” Pinata said. “But there’s the possibility that you may be lying to yourself without realizing it. Think about it, Mrs. Harker. You overreacted to the name...”

“Perhaps I overreacted. Or perhaps you overinterpreted.”

“That could be.”

“It was. It is.”

She got up and walked over to the window. The movement was so obviously one of protest and escape that Pinata felt as if she’d told him to shut up and leave her alone. He had no intention of doing either.

“It will be easy enough to check up on Mrs. Garcia,” he said. “The police will have a file on her, as well as the Probation Department and probably Charles Alston at the Clinic.”

She turned and gave him a weary look. “I wish I could convince you that I never in my life heard of the woman. But it’s a free country; you can check everyone in the city directory if you like.”

“I may have to. You’ve given me very little to go on. The only facts I have are that on December 2, 1955, there was snow on the mountains, and you ate lunch at a cafeteria downtown. How did you get downtown, by the way?”

“I must have driven. I had my own car.”

“What kind?”

“An Oldsmobile convertible.”

“Did you usually drive with the top up or down?”

“Down. But I can’t see how all this is important.”

“When we don’t know what’s important, anything can be. You can’t tell what particular detail will jog your memory. For instance, that Friday was a cold day. Maybe you can remember putting the top up. Or you might have had trouble starting your car.”

She looked honestly bewildered. “I seem to remember that I did. But that may be only because you suggested it. You say things in such a positive way. Like about the Garcia woman — you’re so sure I know her or knew her.” She sat down again and began repleating the corner of her jacket. “If I did know her, why have I forgotten? I’d have no reason to forget a friend or a casual acquaintance, and I’m not forceful enough to make enemies. Yet you seem so positive.”

“Seeming and being are two different things,” Pinata said with a faint smile. “No, I’m not positive, Mrs. Harker. I saw a straw and grasped it.”

“But you’re holding on?”

“Only until I find something more substantial to hold on to.”

“I wish I could help. I’m trying. I’m really trying.”

“Well, don’t get tense about it. Perhaps we should stop for today. Have you had enough?”

“I guess so.”

“You’d better go home. Back to Rainbow’s End.”

She stood up stiffly. “I regret telling you that about my husband. It seems to amuse you.”

“On the contrary. It depresses me. I had a few plans on the drawing board myself.” Just one of them worked out, Pinata thought. His name is Johnny. And the only reason I’m trying to track down your precious day, Daisy baby, is because Johnny’s having his teeth straightened, not because you got your head stuck in the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

He turned the roll of microfilm back to the beginning and switched off the light in the projector.

The girl in the horn-rimmed spectacles came hurrying over, looking alarmed as if she expected him to wreck the machine or at least run off with the film. “Let me handle that,” she said. “These things are quite valuable, you know. History being made right before our eyes, you might say. Did you find what you wanted?”

Pinata glanced at Daisy. “Did you?”

“Yes,” Daisy said. “Yes, thank you very much.”

Pinata opened the door for her, and she began walking slowly and silently down the corridor, her head bent as if she were studying the tiles on the floor.

“No two are alike,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“The tiles. There are no two alike in the whole building.”

“Oh.”

“Someday when this current project of yours is finished and you need something new to amuse yourself with, you could come down here and check.”

He said it to get a rise out of her, preferring her hostility to her sudden, unexpected withdrawal, but she gave no indication that she’d heard him or even that he was there at all. Whatever corridor she was walking along, it wasn’t this one and it wasn’t with him. As far as she was concerned, he had already gone back to his office or was still up in the library looking at microfilm. He felt canceled, erased.

When they reached the front of the building, the carillon in the courthouse tower across the street was chiming four o’clock. The sound brought her to attention.

“I must hurry,” she said.

“Why?”

“The cemetery closes in an hour.”

He looked at her irritably. “Are you going to take some flowers to yourself?”

“All week,” she said, ignoring his question, “ever since Monday, I’ve been trying to gather up enough courage to go there. Then last night I had the same dream again, of the sea and the cliff and Prince and the tombstone with my name on it. I can’t endure it any longer. I must satisfy myself that it’s not there, it doesn’t exist.”

“How will you go about it, just wander around reading off names?”

“That won’t be necessary. I’m quite familiar with the place. I’ve visited it often with Jim and my mother — Jim’s parents are buried there, and one of my mother’s cousins. I know exactly what to look for, and where, because in all my dreams the tombstone is the same, a rough-hewn unpolished gray cross, about five feet high, and it’s always in the same place, by the edge of the cliff, underneath the Moreton Bay fig tree. There’s only one tree of that kind in the area. It’s a famous sailor’s landmark.”

Pinata didn’t know what a Moreton Bay fig tree looked like, and he had never been a sailor or visited the cemetery, but he was willing to take her word. She seemed sure of her facts. He thought, So she’s familiar with the place, she’s been there often. The dream didn’t just come out of nowhere. The locale is real, perhaps even the tombstone is real.

“You’d better let me come along,” he said.

“Why? I’m not afraid anymore.”

“Oh, let’s just say I’m curious.” He touched her sleeve very delicately, as if he were directing a highly trained but nervous mare who would go to pieces under too much pressure. “My car’s over on Piedra Street.”

8

Right from the beginning, she has been ashamed, not only of me but of herself, too...

The iron gates looked as though they had been made for giants to swing on. Bougainvillea concealed the twelve-foot steel fence, its fluttery crimson flowers looking innocent of the curved spikes lurking beneath the leaves, sharper than any barbed wire. Between the street and the fence, rows of silver dollar trees shook their money like demented gamblers.

The gray stone gatehouse resembled a miniature prison, with its barred windows and padlocked iron door. Both the door and the lock were rusted, as if the gatekeeper had long since vanished into another part of the cemetery. Century plants, huge enough to be approaching the end of their designated time, lined both sides of the road to the chapel, alternating with orange and blue birds of paradise that looked ready to sing or to fly away.

In contrast to the gatehouse, the chapel was decorated with vividly colored Mexican tiles, and organ music was pouring out of its open doors, loud and lively. Only one person was visible, the organist. He seemed to be playing to and for himself; perhaps a funeral had just taken place, and he had stayed on to practice or to drown out a persistent choir of ghosts.

There was a threat of darkness in the air, and a threat of fog. Daisy buttoned her jacket to the throat and put on her white gloves. They were pretty gloves, of nylon net and linen, but they looked to her now like the kind that were passed out to pallbearers. She would have taken them off immediately and stuffed them back in her purse if she hadn’t been afraid Pinata would observe the gesture and put his own interpretation on it. His interpretations were too quick and sure and, at least in one case, wrong. She thought, I know no person called Juanita, only an old song we sang at home when I was a child. Nita, Juanita, ask thy soul if we should part...

She began to hum it unconsciously, and Pinata, listening, recognized the tune and wondered why it disturbed him. There was something about the words. Nita, Juanita, ask thy soul if we should part... Nita, that was it. Nita was the name of the waitress in the Velada Café, the one Fielding had “rescued” from her husband. It could be, and probably was, a coincidence. And even if it wasn’t a coincidence, and Nita Donelli and Juanita Garcia were the same woman, it meant nothing more than that she had divorced Garcia and married Donelli. She was the kind of woman who would ordinarily seek employment in places like the Velada, and Fielding was the kind of man who frequented them. It seemed perfectly natural that their paths should cross. As for the fight with the woman’s husband, that certainly hadn’t been planned by Fielding. He’d told the police when he was arrested that she was a stranger to him, a lady in distress, and he’d gone to her assistance out of his respect for womanhood. It was the type of thing Fielding, at the euphoric level of the bottle, would say and do.

They had come to a fork in the road at the top of the mesa which formed the main part of the cemetery. Pinata stopped the car and looked over at Daisy. “Have you heard from your father?”

“No. We turn right here. We’re going to the west end.”

“The waitress your father got into a fight over was named Nita. Possibly Juanita.”

“I know that. My father told me when he phoned about the bail money. He also told me she was a stranger to him, a good-looking young woman who’d led a hard life — those were his words. Don’t you believe him?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Well, then?”

Pinata shrugged. “Nothing. I just thought I’d mention it.”

“What a fool he is.” The contempt in her voice was softened by pity and sorrow. “What a fool. Will he never learn that you can’t walk into a squalid little café and pick up waitresses without inviting disaster? He could have been seriously injured, even killed.”

“He’s pretty tough.”

“Tough? My father?” She shook her head. “No, I wish he were. He’s like a marshmallow.”

“Speaking from my own experience, some marshmallows can be very tough. Depends on their age.”

She changed the subject by pointing out of the window. “The fig tree is over there by the cliff. You can see the top of it from here. It’s a very unusual specimen, the largest of its kind in this hemisphere, Jim says. He’s taken dozens of pictures of it.”

Pinata started the car, keeping down to the posted limit of ten miles an hour although he felt like speeding through the place and out again, and to hell with Daisy baby and her fig tree. The rolling lawns, the green and growing things, made too disquieting a contrast to the dead buried beneath them. A cemetery shouldn’t be like a park, he thought, but like a desert: all tans and grays, rock and sand, and cacti which looked alive briefly only once a year, at the time of the resurrection.

Most of the visitors had gone for the day. A young woman dressed in black was arranging a bouquet of gladioli above a bronze nameplate, while her two children, T-shirted and blue-jeaned, played hide-and-seek among the crypts and tombstones. A hundred yards farther on, four workmen in overalls were starting to fill in a freshly dug grave. The green cloth, intended to simulate grass, had been pulled away from the excavated mound of earth, and the workmen were stabbing at it listlessly with their shovels. An old man with white hair sat on a nearby bench and looked down at the falling earth, stupefied by grief.

“I’m glad you came along,” Daisy said suddenly. “I would have been frightened by myself or depressed.”

“Why? You’ve been here before.”

“It never affected me much. Whenever I came with Jim and my mother, it was more like taking part in a pageant, a ritual that meant nothing to me. How could it? I never even met Jim’s parents or my mother’s cousin. People can’t seem dead to you unless they were once alive. It wasn’t real, the flowers, the tears, the prayers.”

“Whose tears?”

“Mother cries easily.”

“Over a cousin so remote or so long dead that you hadn’t even met her?”

Daisy leaned forward in the seat with a sigh of impatience or anxiety. “They were brought up together as children in Denver. Besides, the tears weren’t really for her, I guess. They were for — oh, life in general. Lacrimae rerum.”

“Were you specifically invited to go on these excursions with your husband and mother?”

“Why? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I just wondered.”

“I was invited. Jim thought it proper for me to go along, and Mother used me to lean on. It isn’t often she does. I suppose I... I rather enjoyed the feeling of being strong enough for anyone else to lean on, especially my mother.”

“Where are Jim’s parents buried?”

“The west end.”

“Anywhere near where we’re headed?”

“No.”

“You said your husband has taken many pictures of the fig tree?”

“Yes.”

“Were you with him on some of those occasions?”

“Yes.”

They were approaching the cliff, and the sound of breakers was like the roar of a great wind through a distant forest, rising and falling. As the roar increased, the fig tree came into full view: a huge green umbrella, twice as wide as it was tall. The glossy, leathery leaves showed cinnamon color on the undersides, as if they, too, like the lock and the iron door of the gatehouse, were rusting away in the sea air. The trunk and larger branches resembled gray marble shapes of subhuman figures entwined in static love. There were no graves directly under the tree because part of the vast root system grew above ground. The monuments began at the periphery — all shapes and sizes, angels, rectangles, crosses, columns, polished and unpolished, gray and white and black and pink — but only one of them exactly matched the description of the tombstone in Daisy’s dream.

Pinata saw it as soon as he got out of the car: a rough-hewn gray stone cross about five feet high.

Daisy saw it, too. She said, with a look of terrible surprise, “It’s there. It’s — real.”

He felt less surprise than she did. Everything in the dream was turning out to be real. He glanced toward the edge of the cliff as if he almost expected the dog Prince to come running up from the beach and start to howl.

Daisy had stepped out of the car and was leaning against the hood of the engine for support or warmth.

“I can’t see any name on it at this distance,” Pinata said. “Let’s go over and examine it.”

“I’m afraid.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Mrs. Harker. What’s obviously happened is that you’ve seen this particular stone in this particular location on one of your visits here. For some reason it impressed and interested you, you remembered it, and it cropped up in your dreams.”

“Why should it have impressed me?”

“For one thing, it’s a handsome and expensive piece of work. Or it might have reminded you of the old rugged cross in the hymn. But instead of standing here theorizing, why don’t we go over and check the facts?”

“Facts?”

“Surely the important fact,” Pinata said dryly, “is whose name is on it.”

For a moment he thought she was going to turn and run for the exit gates. Instead, she straightened up, with a shake of her head, and stepped over the small lantana hedge onto the graveled path that wound around the periphery of the fig tree. She began walking toward the gray cross very quickly, as though she were putting her trust in momentum to keep her going if fear should try to stop her.

She had almost reached her destination when she stumbled and fell forward on her knees. He caught up with her and helped her to her feet. There were grass stains on the front of her skirt, and prickly little pellets of burr clover.

“It’s not mine,” she said in a whisper. “Thank God it’s not mine.”

A small rectangular area in the center of the cross had been cut and polished to hold the inscription:

Pinata was sure from her reaction that the name meant nothing to her beyond the fact that it was not her own. She was looking relieved and a little embarrassed, like a child who’s had the lights turned on and recognized the bogeyman for what it was, a discarded coat, a blowing curtain. Even with the lights on, there was one small bogeyman left that she apparently hadn’t noticed yet — the year of Camilla’s death. Perhaps from where she stood she couldn’t discern the numbers; he suspected from her actions in the newspaper library that she was nearsighted and either didn’t know it or didn’t want to admit it.

He stepped directly in front of the tombstone to hide the inscription in case she came any closer. It made him feel uneasy, standing on this stranger’s coffin, right where his face would be, or had been. Carlos Camilla. What kind of face had he once had? Dark, certainly. It was a Mexican name. Few Mexicans were buried in this cemetery, both because it was too expensive and because the ground was not consecrated by their church. Fewer still had such elaborate monuments.

“I feel guilty,” Daisy said, “at being so glad that it’s his and not mine. But I can’t help it.”

“No need to feel guilty.”

“It must have happened just as you said it did. I saw the tombstone, and for some reason it stuck in my memory — perhaps it was the name on it. Camilla, it’s a very pretty name. What does it mean, a camellia?”

“No, it means a stretcher, a little bed.”

“Oh. It doesn’t sound so pretty when you know what it means.”

“That’s true of a lot of things.”

Fog had started to drift in from the sea. It moved in aimless wisps across the lawns and hung like tatters of chiffon among the leather leaves of the fig tree. Pinata wondered how quietly Camilla was resting, with the roots of the vast tree growing inexorably toward his little bed.

“They’ll be closing the gates soon,” he said. “We’d better leave.”

“All right.”

She turned toward the car. He waited for her to take a few steps before he moved away from the tombstone, feeling a little ashamed of himself for the deception. He didn’t know it wasn’t a deception until they were back inside the car and Daisy said suddenly, “Camilla died in 1955.”

“So did a lot of other people.”

“I’d like to find out the exact date, just out of curiosity. They must keep records of some kind on the premises — there’s an office marked ‘Superintendent’ just behind the chapel, and a caretaker’s cottage over on the east side.”

“I was hoping you intended to drop this whole business.”

“Why should I? Nothing’s really changed, if you’ll think about it.”

He thought about it. Nothing had really changed, least of all Daisy baby’s mind.

The superintendent’s office was closed for the day, but there were lights burning in the caretaker’s cottage. Through the living-room window Pinata could see a stout elderly man in suspenders watching a TV program: two cowboys were shooting freely at each other from behind two rocks. Both the cowboys and the rocks appeared exactly the same as the ones Pinata remembered from his boyhood.

He pressed the buzzer, and the old man got hurriedly to his feet and zigzagged across the living room as if he were dodging bullets. He turned off the TV set, with a furtive glance toward the window, and came running to open the door.

“I hardly never watch the stuff,” he said, wheezing apology. “My son-in-law Harold don’t approve, says it’s bad for my heart, all them shootings.”

“Are you the caretaker?”

“No, that’s my son-in-law Harold. He’s at the dentist, got himself an absence on the gum.”

“Maybe you could give me some information?”

“Can’t do no more than try. My name’s Finchley. Come in and close the door. That fog clogs up my tubes, can’t hardly breathe certain nights.” He squinted out at the car. “Don’t the lady care to come in out of the fog?”

“No.”

“She must have good serviceable tubes.” The old man closed the door. The small, neat living room was stifling hot and smelled of chocolate. “You looking for a particular gra — resting-place? Harold says never to say grave, customers don’t like it, but all the time I keep forgetting. Now right here I got a map of the whole location, tells you who’s buried where. That what you want?”

“Not exactly. I know where the man’s buried, but I’d like some more information about the date and circumstances.”

“Where’s he buried?”

Pinata indicated the spot on the map while Finchley wheezed and grunted his disapproval. “That’s a bad place, what with the spring tides eating away at the cliff and that big old tree getting bigger every day and ’tracting tourists that stomp on the grass. People buy there because of the view, but what’s a view good for if you can’t see it? Me, when I die, I want to lie safe and snug, not with no big old tree and them high tides coming after me hell-bent for leather... What’s his name?”

“Carlos Camilla.”

“I’d have to go to the file to look that up, and I ain’t so sure I can find the key.”

“You could try.”

“I ain’t so sure I oughta. It’s near closing time, and I got to put supper on the stove. Absence or no absence, Harold likes to eat and eat good, same as me. All them dead people out there, they don’t bother me none. When it comes quitting time, I close the door on them, never think of them again till next morning. They don’t bother my sleep or my victuals none.” But he belched suddenly, in a genteel way, as if he had, unawares, swallowed a few indigestible fibers of fear. “Anyhow, maybe Harold wouldn’t like me messing with his file. That file’s mighty important to him; it’s exactly the same as the one the Super has in his office. You can tell from that how much the Super thinks of Harold.”

Pinata was beginning to suspect that Finchley was stalling not because of his inability to find the key or any inhibitions about using it, but because he couldn’t spell.

“You find the key,” he said, “and I’ll help you look up the name.”

The old man looked relieved at having the burden of decision lifted from his shoulders. “Now that’s fair enough, ain’t it?”

“It won’t take me a minute. Then you can turn on the TV again and catch the end of the program.”

“I don’t mind admitting I ain’t sure which was the good guy and which was the bad guy. Now what’s that name again?”

“Camilla.”

“K-a—”

“C-a-m-i-l-l-a.”

“You write it down, just like it shows on the cards, eh?”

Pinata wrote it down, and the old man took the paper and sped out of the room as if he’d been handed the baton in a relay race to the frontier where the bad guys were shooting it out with the good guys.

He returned in less than a minute, put the file drawer on the table, turned on the TV set, and retired from the world.

Pinata bent over the file. The card bearing the name Carlos Theodore Camilla bore little else: a technical description of his burial plot and the name of the funeral director, Roy Fondero. Next of kin, none. Address, none. Born April 3, 1907. Died December 2, 1955. Sui mano.

Coincidence, he thought. The date of Camilla’s suicide must be just a crazy coincidence. After all, the chances were one in 365. Things a lot more coincidental than that happen every day.

But he didn’t believe it, and he knew Daisy wouldn’t either if he told her. The question was whether to tell her, and if he decided not to, the problem was how to lie successfully. She wasn’t easily deceived. Her ears were quick to catch false notes, and her eyes were a good deal sharper than he’d thought.

A new and disturbing idea had begun to gnaw at a corner of his brain: suppose Daisy already knew how and when Camilla had died, suppose she had invented the whole business of the dreams as a means of getting him interested in Camilla without revealing her own connection with him. It seemed highly improbable, however. Her reaction to the name had been one of simple relief that it was not her own; she’d shown no signs of emotional involvement or confusion or guilt beyond the spoken artificial guilt over her gladness that the tombstone was Camilla’s instead of hers. Besides, he could think of no valid reason why Daisy would choose such a devious way of accomplishing her purpose. No, he thought, Daisy is a victim, not a manipulator of circumstances. She didn’t plan, couldn’t possibly have planned the sequence of events that led to his meeting her in the first place: the arrest of her father, the bail, her visit to his office. If any planning had been done, it was on Fielding’s part, but this was equally unlikely. Fielding seemed incapable of planning anything farther than the next minute and the next bottle.

All right, he thought irritably. So nobody planned anything. Daisy had a dream, that’s all. Daisy had a dream.

He said, “Thanks very much, Mr. Finchley.”

“Eh?”

“Thank you for letting me see the file.”

“Oh my, look at him take that bullet right in the belly. I knew all along it was the bad guy in the black hat. You can always tell by the horse’s eyes. A horse looks mean and shifty, and you can bet he’s got a mean and shifty critter on his back. Well, he got his, yes sir, he got his.” Finchley wrenched his eyes from the screen. “Program’s changing, must be five o’clock. You better get a move on before Harold comes home and locks the gates. He won’t be in so good a humor with that absence on his gum and all. Harold’s fair,” he added with a grunt, “but he ain’t merciful. Not since his wife died. That’s what women are put in this world for, mercy, ain’t that right?”

“I guess so.”

“Someday, you live long enough and you’ll know so.”

“Good night, Mr. Finchley.”

“You get out of them gates before Harold comes.”

Daisy had turned on the radio and the heater in the car, but she didn’t look as though she were feeling any warmth or hearing any music. She said, “Please, let’s hurry and get out of here.”

“You could have come inside the house.”

“I didn’t want to interfere with your work. What did you find out?”

“Not much.”

“Well, aren’t you going to tell me?”

“I suppose I’ll have to.”

He told her, and she listened in silence while the car rolled noisily down the graveled hill past the chapel. It was dark. The organist was gone, leaving no echoes of music. The birds of paradise were voiceless. The money on the silver dollar trees was spent; the bougainvillea wept in the fog.

Harold, holding his swollen jaw, watched the car leave and closed the iron gates. The day was over; it was good to be home.

9

Even when she talked of love, her voice had bitterness in it, as if the relationship between us was the result of a physical defect she couldn’t help, a weakness of the body which her mind despised..

The lights of the city were going on, in strings and clusters along the sea and highway, thinning out as they rose up the foothills until, at the very top, they looked like individual stars that had fallen on the mountains, still burning. Pinata knew that none of the lights belonged to him. His house was dark; there was no one in it, no Johnny, no Monica, not even Mrs. Dubrinski, who left at five o’clock to take care of her own family. He felt as excluded from life as Camilla in his grave under the great tree, as empty as Camilla’s mind, as deaf as his ears to the sound of the sea, as blind as his eyes to the spindrift.

“What’s a view good for,” the old man had said, “if you can’t see it?”

Well, the view’s there, Pinata thought. I’m looking at it, but I’m not part of it. None of those lights have been lit for me, and if anyone’s waiting for me, it’s some drunk in the city jail anxious to get out and buy another bottle.

Beside him, Daisy was sitting mute and motionless, as if she were thinking of nothing at all or of so many things so quickly that they had crashed the sound barrier into silence. Glancing at her, he wanted suddenly to do something shocking, arresting, to force her to pay attention to him. But a second later the idea seemed so absurd that he went cold with anger at himself: Christ, what’s the matter with me? I must be losing my marbles. Johnny, I must think of Johnny. Or Camilla. That’s safe, think of Camilla, the stranger in Daisy’s grave.

This stranger had died, and Daisy had dreamed the tombstone was her own — that much of it was explicable. The rest wasn’t, unless Daisy had extrasensory perception, which seemed highly improbable, or a singular ability to deceive herself as well as other people. The latter was more likely, but he didn’t believe it. As he became better acquainted with her, he was struck by her essential naïveté and innocence, as if she had somehow walked through life without touching anything or being touched, like a child wandering through a store where all the merchandise was out of reach and not for sale, and dummy clerks stood behind plate glass and sold nothing. Had Daisy baby been too well disciplined to protest, too docile to demand? And was she demanding now, through her dreams, for the plate glass to be removed and the dummy clerks put into action?

“The stranger,” she said at last. “How did he die?”

“Suicide. His file card was marked sui mano, ‘by his own hand.’ I presume someone thought putting it in Latin would take the curse off it.”

“So he killed himself. That makes it even worse.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps I had some connection with his death. Perhaps I was responsible for it.”

“That’s pretty far-fetched,” Pinata said quietly. “You’ve had a shock, Mrs. Harker. The best thing you can do now is to stop worrying and go home and have a rest.” Or take a pill, or a drink, or throw fits, or whatever else women like you do under the circumstances. Monica used to cry, but I don’t think you will, Daisy baby. You’ll brood, and God only knows what you’ll hatch. “Camilla was a stranger to you, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Then how is it possible that you were connected in any way with his death?”

“Possible? We’re not dealing in ‘possibles’ anymore, Mr. Pinata. It isn’t possible that I should have known the day he died. But it happened. It’s a fact, not something whipped up by an over-imaginative or hysterical woman, which is probably how you’ve been regarding me up until now. My knowing the date of Camilla’s death, that’s changed things between us, hasn’t it?”

“Yes.” He would have liked to tell her that things between them had changed a great deal more than she thought, changed enough to send her running for cover back to Rainbow’s End, Jim and Mamma. She would run, of course. But how soon and how fast? He glanced at his hands gripping the steering wheel. In the dim lights of the dashboard they looked very brown. She would run very soon, he thought, and very fast. Even if she weren’t married. The fact dug painfully into his mind as though in her flight she wore the spiked shoes of a sprinter.

She was talking about Camilla again, the dead man who was more important to her than he ever would be, in all his youth and energy. Alive, present, eager, he was no match for the dead stranger lying under the fig tree at the edge of the cliff. Pinata thought, I am, here beside her, in time and space, but Camilla is part of her dreams. He was beginning to hate the name. Damn you, Camilla, stretcher, little bed...

“I have this very strong feeling,” she said, “of involvement, even of guilt.”

“Guilt feelings are often transferred to quite unrelated things or people. Yours may have nothing to do with Camilla.”

“I think they have, though.” She sounded perversely obstinate, as if she wanted to believe the worst about herself. “It’s an odd coincidence that both the names are Mexican, first the girl’s, Juanita Garcia, and now Camilla’s. I hardly know, in fact I don’t know, any Mexicans at all except casually through my work at the Clinic. It’s not that I’m prejudiced like my mother; I simply never get to meet any.”

“Your never getting to meet any means your prejudice or lack of it hasn’t been tested. Perhaps your mother’s has, and at least she’s playing it straight by admitting it.”

“And I’m not playing things straight?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“The implication was clear. Perhaps you think I found out the date of Camilla’s death before this afternoon? Or that I knew the man himself?”

“Both have occurred to me.”

“It’s easier, of course, to distrust me than to believe the impossible. Camilla is a stranger to me,” she repeated. “What motive would I have in lying to you?”

“I don’t know.” He had tried, and failed, to think of a reason why she should lie to him. He meant nothing to her; she was not interested in his approval or disapproval; she was not trying to influence, entice, convince, or impress him. He was no more to her than a wall you bounce balls off. Why bother lying to a wall?

“It’s too bad,” she said, “that you met my father before you met me. You were prepared to be suspicious of me before you even saw me, speaking of prejudice. My father and I aren’t in the least alike, although Mother likes to tell me we are when she’s angry. She even claims I look like him. Do I?”

“There’s no physical resemblance.”

“There’s no resemblance in any other way either, not even in the good things. And there are a lot of good things about him, but I guess they didn’t show up the day you met him.”

“Some of them did. I never judge anyone by his parents, anyway. I can’t afford to.”

She turned and looked at him as if she expected him to elaborate on the subject. He said nothing more. The less she knew about him, the better. Walls weren’t supposed to have family histories; walls were for protection, privacy, decoration, for hiding behind, jumping over, playing games. Bounce some more balls at me, Daisy baby.

“Camilla,” she said. “You’ll find out more about him, of course.”

“Such as?”

“How he died, and why, and if he had any family or friends.”

“And then what?”

“Then we’ll know.”

“Suppose it turns out to be the kind of knowledge that won’t do anybody any good?”

“We’ve got to take that chance,” she said. “We couldn’t possibly stop now. It’s unthinkable.”

“I find it quite thinkable.”

“You’re bluffing, Mr. Pinata. You don’t want to quit now any more than I do. You’re much too curious.”

She was half right. He didn’t want to quit now, but a surplus of curiosity wasn’t the reason.

“It’s 5:15,” she said. “If you drive faster, we can get back to the Monitor before they close the library. Since Camilla committed suicide, there’s sure to be a report of it, as well as his obituary.”

“Aren’t you expected at home about this time?”

“Yes.”

“Then I think you’d better go there and leave the Camilla business to me.”

“Will you call me as soon as you find out anything?”

“Wouldn’t that be a little foolish under the circumstances?” Pinata said. “You’d have some fancy explaining to do to your husband and your mother. Unless, of course, you’ve decided to come clean with them.”

“I’ll call you at your office tomorrow morning at the same time as this morning.”

“Still playing secrets, eh?”

“I’m playing,” she said distinctly, “exactly the way I’ve been taught to play. Your system of all cards face up on the table wouldn’t work in my house, Mr. Pinata.”

It didn’t work in mine either, he thought. Monica got herself a new partner.

When he returned to the third floor of the Monitor-Press building, the girl in charge of the library was about to lock up for the day.

She jangled her keys at him unplayfully. “We’re closing.”

“You’re ahead of yourself by four minutes.”

“I can use four minutes.”

“So can I. Let me see that microfilm again, will you?”

“This is just another example,” she said bitterly, “of what it’s like working on a newspaper. Everything’s got to be done at the last minute. There’s just one crisis after another.”

She kept on grumbling as she took the microfilm out of the file and put it in the projection machine. But it was a mild kind of grumbling, not directed at Pinata or even the newspaper. It was a general indictment of life for not being planned and predictable. “I like things to be orderly,” she said, switching on the light. “And they never are.”

Camilla had made the front page of the December 3rd edition. The story was headlined suicide leaves bizarre farewell note and accompanied by a sketch of the head of a gaunt-faced man with deep-set eyes and high cheekbones. Although age lines scarred the man’s face, long dark hair curling over the tips of his ears gave him an incongruous look of innocence. According to the caption, the sketch had been made by Monitor-Press artist Gorham Smith, who’d been among the first at the scene. Smith’s byline was also on the story:

The body of the suicide victim found yesterday near the railroad jungle by a police patrolman has been identified as that of Carlos Theodore Camilla, believed to be a transient. No wallet or personal papers were found on the body, but further search of his clothing revealed an envelope containing a penciled note and the sum of $2,000 in large bills. Local authorities were surprised by the amount of money and by the nature of the note, which read as follows: “This ought to pay my way into heaven, you stinking rats. Carlos Theodore Camilla. Born, too soon, 1907. Died, too late, 1955.”

The note was printed on Hotel Parker stationery, but the management of the hotel has no record of Camilla staying there. A check of other hotels and motor lodges in the area failed to uncover the suicide victim’s place of residence. Police theorize that he was a transient who hitchhiked or rode the roads into the city after committing a holdup in some other part of the state. This would explain how Camilla, who appeared destitute and in an advanced stage of malnutrition, was carrying so much money. Inquiries have been sent to police headquarters and sheriffs’ offices throughout the state in an effort to find the source of the $2,000. Burial services will be postponed until it is established that the money is not the proceeds of a robbery but belongs legally to the dead man. Meanwhile, Camilla’s body is under the care of Roy Fondero, funeral director.

According to Sheriff-Coroner Robert Lerner, Camilla died of a self-inflicted knife wound late Thursday night or early Friday morning. The type of knife was identified by authorities as a navaja, often carried by Mexicans and Indians of the Southwest. The initials C.C. were carved on the handle. A dozen cigarette butts found at the scene of the tragedy indicate that Camilla spent considerable time debating whether to go through with the act or not. An empty wine bottle was also found nearby, but a blood test indicated that Camilla had not been drinking.

The residents of so-called Jungleland, the collection of shacks between the railway tracks and Highway 101, denied knowing anything about the dead man. Camilla’s fingerprints are being sent to Washington to determine whether he had a criminal record or is registered with immigration authorities. An effort is being made to locate the dead man’s place of residence, family, and friends. If no one claims the body and if the money is found to be legally his, Camilla will be buried in a local cemetery. The Coroner’s inquest, scheduled for tomorrow morning, is expected to be brief.

It was brief. As reported in the December 5th edition, Camilla was found to have died of a knife wound, self-inflicted while in a state of despondency. Witnesses were few: the police patrolman who discovered him, a doctor who described the fatal wound, and a pathologist who stated that Camilla had been suffering from prolonged malnutrition and a number of serious physical disorders. The time of death was fixed at approximately 1:00 a.m. on December 2.

Probably, Pinata thought, Daisy had read all this in the newspaper at the time it happened. The pathos of the case must have struck her — a sick, starving man, fearful (“This ought to pay my way into heaven”), rebellious (“You stinking rats”), despairing (“Born too soon. Died too late”), had sent his final message to the world and committed his final act.

Pinata wondered whether the stinking rats referred to specific people, or whether the phrase, like the grumbling of the girl in charge of the library, was an indictment of life itself.

The girl was jangling her keys again. Pinata switched off the projector, thanked her, and left.

He drove back to his office, thinking of the money Camilla had left in the envelope. Obviously the police hadn’t been able to prove it had come from a robbery, or Camilla wouldn’t be lying now under his stone cross. The big question was why a destitute transient would want to spend $2,000 on his own funeral instead of on the food and clothing he needed. Cases of people dying of malnutrition with a fortune hidden in a mattress or under some floorboards were not common, but they happened every now and then. Had Camilla been one of these, a psychotic miser? It seemed improbable. The money in the envelope had been in large bills. The collection of misers was usually a hodgepodge of dimes, nickels, dollars, hoarded throughout the years. Furthermore, misers didn’t travel. They stayed in one place, often in one room, to protect their hoard. Camilla had traveled, but from where and for what reason? Had he picked this town because it was a pretty place to die in? Or did he come here to see someone, find someone? If so, was it Daisy? But the only connection Daisy had with Camilla was in a dream, four years later.

His office was cold and dark, and although he turned on the gas heater and all the lights, the place still seemed cheerless and without warmth, as if Camilla’s ghost was trapped inside the walls, emanating an eternal chill.

Camilla had come back, quietly, insidiously, through a dream. He had changed his mind — the sea was too noisy, the roots of the big tree too threatening, the little bed too dark and narrow — he was demanding reentry into the world, and he had chosen Daisy to help him. The destitute transient, whose body no one had claimed, was staking out a claim for himself in Daisy’s mind.

I’m getting as screwy as she is, he thought. I’ve got to keep this on a straightforward, factual basis. Daisy saw the report in the newspaper. It was painful to her, and she repressed it. For almost four years it was forgotten. Then some incident or emotion triggered her memory, and Camilla popped up in a dream, a pathetic creature whom she identified, for unknown reasons, with herself.

That’s all it amounted to. No mysticism was involved; it was merely a case of the complexities of memory.

“It’s quite simple,” he said aloud, and the sound of his own voice was comforting in the chilly room. It had been a long time since he’d actually listened to himself speak, and his voice seemed oddly pleasant and deep, like that of a wise old man. He wished he could think of some wise old remarks to match it, but none occurred to him. His mind seemed to have shrunk so that there was no room in it for anything except Daisy and the dead stranger of her dreams.

A drop of sweat slid down behind his left ear into his collar. He got up and opened the window and looked down at the busy street. Few whites ventured out on Opal Street after dark. This was his part of the city, his and Camilla’s, and it had nothing to do with Daisy’s part. Grease Alley, some of the cops called it, and when he was feeling calm and secure, he didn’t blame them. Many of the knives used in brawls were greased. Maybe Camilla’s had been, too.

“Welcome back to Grease Alley, Camilla,” he said aloud, but his voice didn’t sound like a wise old man’s anymore. It was young and bitter and furious. It was the voice of the child in the orphanage, fighting for his name, Jesus.

“All those bruises and black eyes and chipped teeth,” the Mother Superior had said. “You hardly looked human, half the time.”

He closed the window and stared at his reflection in the dusty glass. There were no chipped teeth or bruises or black eyes visible, but he hardly looked human.

“Of course, it’s a very difficult name to live up to...”