She drives west on Chandler. The street is divided by railroad tracks and trees. It’s after midnight; there’s no traffic.
No evidence of headlights behind her but she feels a crucial need to be certain and so she makes three right turns in succession, switches off the lights and coasts to a stop at the corner, keeping her foot off the brake because she doesn’t want the taillights to flash.
She waits at the corner with the engine idling, watching Chandler in both directions, watching the narrow street behind her-watching everything.
A few cars pass under the street lights. None of them is Graeme’s Datsun.
An instinct compels her away from her natural course; she turns south on Van Nuys Boulevard and drives up into the canyons, up Beverly Glen all the way to the top of the rugged spine that divides Beverly Hills and Bel Air from the Valley. She runs west on the ridge, hairpinning slowly along the tight twists of Mulholland Drive, here and there glimpsing a startling thirty-mile panorama of urban lights; up here on the thin strip of road corkscrewing through rocks and brush she has the atavistic feeling she’s been flung back into primordial wilderness.
The road swoops across a graceful bridge span, crossing above the freeway in Sepulveda Pass, and she continues to pursue the westering half moon, concentrating on her driving, putting everything else out of her mind except steering wheel and brakes and accelerator: the car and the road and the constantly shifting sliver of the world that is illuminated by her headlights.
There’s a clump of buildings on the left-a posh private school-and just beyond it is a wide graded pull-out where half a dozen cars are parked facing the sparkling view of the Valley. She comes slowly through the bend; her headlights sweep across the parked cars and she catches a sign of movement as two heads duck down behind a car seat. Lover’s lane.
Soon Mulholland Drive peters out. She wonders whether to take the steeply descending road to the right or turn around and retrace her course.
What the hell. Why not explore.
Down to the right. The road keeps curving back on itself; it becomes a residential street-one of those high canyon suburbs, houses perched on land-fill outcrops so that each site commands a view. You pay for the houses by the square foot; for the views by the square mile.
The streets intersect one another without pattern or reason. She keeps turning from one into another, always choosing the street that leads downhill. Now and then she finds herself in a cul-de-sac and has to turn back and try another turning; but you can’t really get lost up here-you can see the entire Valley asprawl below and you know you only need to keep going downhill until eventually, like a tributary rivulet seeking its main stream, you’re bound to flow into Ventura Boulevard.
She needs this sort of distraction right now: she needs to clear her mind.
A sudden bend makes her brake. The lights traverse a dark thicket and now there’s an animal caught in the blaze. It stands frozen, its eyes radiating phosphoric yellow. She stops the car.
Dog? Fox?
Then she realizes: coyote.
It stares at her, pinned by the headlights, ears up and bushy tail down, an emaciated grey yellow creature with bony spine and a swollen abdomen and its mouth peeled back in a proud smile.
Doyle says they’re becoming increasingly bold. Feral. The developers and their cancerous urban growth have depopulated the coyotes’ natural hunting ground and they’ve started coming down from the hills to slash Hefty bags and poke through garbage. They’re attracted to back yards by dog food that’s left out overnight unfinished. Sometimes they’ll attack family pets. Not long ago in Burbank one of them killed a six-month-old child.
The coyote stirs at last: turns and trots away toward the brush, exposing a new angle of view that makes it quite evident that the beast is pregnant.
Fleeing alone through the night with no society to protect her. Trying to safeguard her young; trying to stay alive.
The animal vanishes. One more flick of yellow light reflects from its eyes-or is that just a trick of her vision?
I feel as if I’ve been given a sign. I wish I could tell what it’s supposed to mean.
She finds her way down off the mountain and drives to within a few blocks of her apartment and waits five minutes in the mouth of an alley in deep darkness with windows rolled up and doors locked.
We’re going to get a dog, she decides. A female. We’ll adopt it from an animal shelter. When Ellen’s old enough we’ll breed it and Ellen can watch it bear puppies and she’ll learn to raise them and care for them. We’ll-
No. Let’s not dream about the future just now. There’s something more pressing to decide.
She’s waited here long enough. There’s no one following. That’s for sure.
Like a kid playing hide-and-seek. She hears her own giggle.
Don’t go all hysterical now. It’s hardly a suitable time for flying to pieces.
She parks on a side street. Can’t use the apartment building’s carport any longer; if her car were identified there it could lead someone straight to her room.
Walking to the court she keeps looking over her shoulder. In these small hours the emptiness of the street is dreadful.
A shadow stirs; it makes her jump; she peers into the darkness-a lemon tree, a cinderblock wall, something moving … an animal.
It darts into an unpaved alley and she can hear its toenails click on stones.