Nightlife: A Novel

6

The girl felt some sadness, but she was satisfied. She had thoroughly experienced Dennis Poole, so she was not disappointed in herself. She was proud of herself for overcoming her shyness and fear in the hotel bar in Aspen, and being the first to speak. That alone was an accomplishment. She had found something about him appealing—his tall, slightly awkward body, the clothes he wore that seemed to be right out of the box, as though he had never worn anything all year but a business suit. She had sat in the bar at a small table near the window that looked out on the mountains, then feigned surprise to find him sitting nearby and said, “What a wonderful sky. I love the color of the sky just after sundown.” How could he not reply?

After she had talked to him for a few minutes, she had found that she almost instantly knew what to say to him and how to say it. There had never been more than a few moments when she had needed to doubt herself. She had listened to him carefully, begun to accumulate a small trove of facts about who he was and what he liked, and then made herself the woman that he wanted. He owned a small, dull business and he was on vacation, so she became a perfect vacation companion. She was the lively girl who was always happy, always on the edge of laughter, ready to go to the next place just to see what was there.

She had experimented with liking him—pretended to find him more interesting than he was, better looking than he was—and found that after a couple of days she actually did like him. She looked back on it now and missed him. She remembered the cool, clear nights of early summer, when they walked out on the balcony of his suite and looked up at the stars and there seemed to be about three times as many as usual.

As she drove along the gently curving highway, she said aloud to the image of Dennis, “At least we had a good time.” Her face felt so right when she said it that she held the expression, and flipped down the sun visor to look at her reflection in the makeup mirror.

Perfect. The full lips pouted, the sparkly blue eyes were wistful and wise. She revised the words slightly. “At least we had fun.” The way the row of small white teeth touched the lower lip to say “fun” was worth going for.

She flipped the visor back up and returned her eyes to the road. The darker hair she had given herself made her look a bit more serious than she had looked as Tanya, too sophisticated to bleach her hair platinum blond. She liked the subtle reddish highlights.

She felt good today. There was something hopeful about driving south, away from rain and toward warmth and sunshine and flowers. She had saved enough money from the month with Dennis Poole to be happy for a while. As soon as she had met him, she had begun pointing a finger at expensive, shiny things in stores and wishing aloud. She had loved it when he had bought them for her, and had rewarded him with affection.

Sometimes she would be about to leave him for the spa or the pool and ask him to give her some money for tips or drinks. A couple of times she had taken money from his wallet while he was asleep. After he had persuaded her to visit him at his house in Portland, she had come with only one suitcase, let him talk her into staying longer, and got his permission to pay for the extra clothes she would need by borrowing one of his credit cards. Dennis had been a satisfying experience, but Dennis was over.

Who to be now? Being a brunette made her feel sedate, understated, aristocratic. Her new name should be something old-fashioned, even biblical, but Anglo-Saxon—no Catholic saints, and nothing faux French. Sarah would be good, or Rebecca. No, both were too common. Rachel. That was just about right.

She had always favored names that sounded like rich people’s names, but nothing too heavy-handed. She didn’t want to call herself a name that was also the name of a company: it would be hard to pass as a Ford or a Pillsbury. She thought about her new self for a few minutes, and decided that she should have roots in New England. Maybe a place-name. Stamford? No. Sturbridge. That felt right: Rachel Sturbridge—how do you do?

Rachel Sturbridge held the car to the south, and began to wonder where to stop. San Francisco was the next city she had heard about along the way, so she decided to aim for it and stop to see if it felt right. She drove half the night and reached the city at three A.M., then parked the car in a big structure near Union Square. She made her way downhill to the square, then walked around staring at the big buildings, the quiet, lighted entrances to hotels and the dark display windows of stores. She loved seeing a city late at night, after all of the superficial busyness and crowding and knotted traffic had been stripped away. She decided that she would stay. Then she returned to the parking structure and slept in the back seat of her car until people began starting the cars near hers and driving off.

In the morning Rachel used her Tanya Starling identification to rent a small furnished house, then added the name of Tanya’s roommate, Rachel Sturbridge, to the lease. That afternoon she rented a post office box in both names, then placed a fictitious-business-name statement in the ad section of the Chronicle. It said that Rachel Sturbridge and T. Starling were doing business as Singular Aspects, and gave the post office box as the address. She went to City Hall and bought a business license for Singular Aspects, which she said on the form produced a “mail-order newsletter for alternative lifestyles.” She was pleased with the fact that the description was utterly meaningless.

Before the banks closed at six she managed to start a Singular Aspects bank account with the two women as signatories and a deposit of four thousand dollars. At the end of each day for the next two days she made another cash deposit. When the balance reached twelve thousand dollars, she made out an application for a business credit card in the name of Singular Aspects. She flirted a little bit with the manager on duty, a young man named Bill, and he took the application without asking any embarrassing questions.

Dennis Poole had been dead three days. On the way home that night she bought the Portland newspapers at a newsstand and searched for stories about what the police were doing, but there was no mention of an investigation. There was only a short obituary that said his death had been declared a homicide. Since there was no mention of a woman, she supposed that meant her part in the episode was over, and decided that in the future she would remember only the good parts.

The next morning Rachel went to a copy center and selected a pack of ten sheets of heavy white paper with high rag content and a blank CD. She paid for them at the counter, rented a computer, and went to a Web site that she had found once before. It was a fan site devoted to every aspect of the life of the actress Renee Stipple Penrose. There were pictures of her parents’ home in Barnstable, Connecticut, including some taken by a camera aimed through the windows, pictures of her elementary school and her high school, and—because there was a controversy about her real birth date—a clear and sharp image of her birth certificate.

Rachel copied the image to the computer and removed the original names and dates without altering the signatures or seals. She copied the blank birth certificate onto the CD for future use, and put the CD into her purse. Then she selected a matching type font and filled in the form to record the birth of Rachel Martha Sturbridge twenty-five years ago, and printed the new certificate onto one of her sheets of official-looking paper.

Rachel still had a driver’s license she had obtained in Illinois as Tanya Starling. Now she found a matching type font, typed her new name a few times, and printed it out on a sheet of thin white paper.

When she was in her house that night she patiently scratched the old name off the license with a razor blade. She took the printout with the name Rachel Martha Sturbridge on it, cut it out in a narrow strip, placed it in the groove on the license she had created with the blade, and used a drop of clear glue to hold it there. In the morning, when it was dry, she placed a laminating sheet over the front of the license, and trimmed it carefully.

Two days later she went to the Department of Motor Vehicles office, flashed her Illinois license and her birth certificate, took a written test, and received a new California driver’s license in the name Rachel Martha Sturbridge. She was so pleased that on the way home she joined the Auto Club and applied for a library card.

She let a week pass before she placed an ad in the Chronicle and sold Tanya Starling’s car for fifteen thousand dollars. She deposited the check in the Singular Aspects account so Rachel Sturbridge would be able to write checks against it. Then she bought a six-year-old Nissan for five thousand in cash. The whole process of changing names was like watching a candle burn down and begin to gutter, and using its flame to light a new one before it went out.

She had made the change now, and it was time to think about the future. She needed to keep working at building her savings. Her goal was that someday she would be rich, and she knew that even though she was only at the beginning of the process, her progress was going to consist of hundreds of small decisions. For now, she had to keep her expenses under control and devote most of her time to finding the next man.

It had always seemed to her that the best kind of man wanted the sort of woman who went to plays and concerts and art exhibits, so she began to read the Datebook section of the paper and then buy tickets to events. While she was there she scanned the crowds for men who did not already have women attached to them. She liked being out, but even when she saw the right sort of man in the lobby before a play or a concert—or, more often, caught one looking at her—the event would be imminent, they both would have to find their way to widely separated seats, and the lights would go out. A few times, when she had seen a promising prospect, she had even stayed in the lobby afterward and given him a chance to find her. He never did.

Sometimes, late at night, she would go to the girl in the mirror and help her become Rachel Sturbridge. For her expeditions into high culture she had developed a rapt expression to indicate artistic appreciation. If she listened to a piece of classical music it might include a satisfied nod or a slightly troubled look around the eyes, as though she were comparing the performance with an invisible score. But her best new look was a serene, smooth-faced expression that was at once benevolent and superior, the habitual demeanor of a just queen.

She decided to try expensive restaurants in the Union Square district. One evening she sat in the bar at Postrio having a martini before dinner, her coat on the stool beside her. She liked the bar because it served as a long, narrow anteroom, where every customer had to pass by on the way to the staircase leading down into the restaurant. There was a grill at the far end of the bar, where three chefs dodged flames under a big copper hood, and there were a few booths along the wall, where patrons ate informal versions of the food served downstairs. The French doors across from the bar opened into the lobby of the Prescott Hotel, and new people entered every few minutes. She watched for unaccompanied men, dismissed several, and then saw one who looked right.

Rachel smiled to herself as she sipped her martini, feeling the icy glass on her lips and then the fire of the vodka warming her as it moved down her throat. She pretended not to see him. He stood for a moment talking with the maître d’, then stepped into the bar.

She turned her head and looked up, her face assuming its new regal expression. The man was tall, wearing a navy blue sport jacket and a pair of gray pants. It was one of the uniforms all men wore when they weren’t actually working, and it would have been difficult for most women to evaluate him, but Rachel Sturbridge had become a shrewd appraiser. The coat was a good cut, the fabric was finely woven wool, and the tie was tasteful and expensive. He had come in through the French doors, not the street entrance, so he was undoubtedly staying at the hotel. Shoes and watches were the best indicators, but she could not see either just yet in this light. He surveyed the bar, looking for a seat.

She caught his eye. “Nobody is sitting here.” She indicated the bar stool next to hers. She took the coat onto her lap.

“Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“No,” she said. “It’s all yours.”

He grinned, sat down, and said, “Thank you. If you’re waiting for someone to meet you or something, I’ll be happy to give it up when he comes.”

“No need,” said Rachel Sturbridge. “I’m alone.”

He ordered a Macallan single-malt scotch, which showed he had some standards, but he wanted the twelve-year-old instead of the eighteen, which meant he wasn’t showing off. He turned to her. “Can I get you another martini?”

“No, thank you,” she said. “I just started this one.”

She decided he was probably the sort of man Rachel Sturbridge would like. He was tall and manly looking, and he was friendly in his manner but polite, and he hadn’t leaned over her to talk, the way some men did when they met an attractive woman.

He sipped his drink and looked straight ahead. She sensed that if she wanted to talk to a gentleman like him, she would have to give him a signal she was willing. “I like this place, don’t you?”

He appeared mildly surprised, as though he wasn’t quite sure that she had intended her question for him. When he turned and she met his eyes, he seemed pleased. “So far, I like it very much. I haven’t been here before, but I’ve heard good things.” He glanced at his watch, and the gesture gave Rachel Sturbridge two competing sensations. The indication that he might be bored made her stomach feel hollow, but her heart’s tempo picked up when she recognized the watch, a Patek Philippe that sold for around six thousand dollars. She was relieved when he added, “It’s pretty crowded. I didn’t have a reservation, but they said they’d try to fit me in. It’s nine now. I have to hope somebody cancels.”

The young maître d’ appeared beside Rachel and said, “Miss Sturbridge, we can seat you now.”

Rachel smiled. She had favors to dispense. “Come along. You can share my table.”

The man was delighted. “Well, thank you.” The maître d’ returned to his podium and the hostess arrived just as they were going about the awkward business of getting down from adjacent bar stools. Rachel noted that he quickly slipped off his, stood back, and held her hand to keep her from falling. They both left their barely touched drinks, but the hostess gave an invisible signal to a passing waiter, who snatched them up and followed.

The dining room at the bottom of the stairs was bright, lit by large bowl-shaped ceiling fixtures, and the light was reflected up from bright linen tablecloths. In the light, Rachel’s companion looked a bit more attractive but a bit older, and she revised her estimate from forty to fifty. While they were getting settled at a table near the far side of the room, she held her compact in her palm to see what the lighting was doing to her, but quickly verified that her makeup had kept her from losing her color, and the new brown hair shone exactly as she had intended. She slipped the compact back into her purse.

He said, “I’m David Larson, and I thank you for your gracious invitation. I was kicking myself for coming without a reservation, and I find that it worked out better this way. I may never call for a reservation again.” She detected a faint accent, but couldn’t quite place it—the South?

She liked it that he was confident enough to give an exaggerated compliment, and she liked the way his blue eyes transmitted sincerity without awkwardness. She decided to encourage him. “My name is Rachel Sturbridge, and it’s a pleasure to have your company.” She delivered her words with a condescending ease, like an actress stopping on the red carpet outside a movie premiere to speak to a camera.

Larson said, “Usually I have my assistant make all my reservations from home, but this time I didn’t have much notice. It was one of those times to throw some clothes in a bag and head for the airport.”

“Where is ‘home’?”

“Austin,” he said. “How about you?”

“At the moment, I’m living in San Francisco,” she said. “I’ve only been here a short time.” If he was from Austin, the safe place to be from was the Northeast. “Originally I’m a Connecticut girl.”

They had to devote some attention to the menu, because the waiter had begun to hover nearby. Larson ordered salmon, and Rachel decided her first compliment to him would be to order the same entrée, the same salad.

He ordered a good bottle of wine without any consultation that would have forced her to acknowledge his extravagance, and she liked that. When the waiter had departed again, he said, “What brought you to San Francisco?”

“Business,” she said.

“What sort of business are you in?”

She devoted a half second to the thought that she should have said it was a vacation. He was obviously a businessman, and now she was going to have to talk about a subject he knew. All she could do was try to sound sensible. “I’m trying to start a magazine. This is a good place to do that. There are plenty of artistic people who will work cheap on the speculation that when the magazine takes off, so will they. There are almost too many good technical and business types who used to work for deceased Internet companies. There are lots of printers and good shipping facilities.”

“What about the rents?”

“They’re expensive, but not like New York, and I can work out of my apartment and my post office box for a long time before I need to expand,” she said.

“I can tell you’re a practical businesswoman,” said Larson. “And I know a little about that. What’s the title of your magazine?”

“I’m calling it Singular Aspects. It’s going to be about alternative lifestyles.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means nothing and everything. Americans love to think they’re special. Every last one of them, no matter how much of a conformist he is, wants to believe he’s a maverick, an innovator. What people want to believe is what they’ll buy, and lifestyle is everything. So I can do clothes, furniture, houses, music, books, movies, art, food, relationships, and say it’s about them. It doesn’t take much of a pitch to get them to buy an attractive version of themselves. They already like themselves.”

“And you think San Francisco is a good place to do this?”

“Not just a good place,” she said. “The very best place. More huge fads have come out of San Francisco than anywhere, block for block. This was the place to be a beatnik in the fifties. Practically the whole hippie movement in the sixties came from the corner of Haight and Ashbury. The food-worship fad came from restaurants like Chez Panisse in Berkeley in the seventies. The computer revolution came from just down the road in the eighties. It’s wave after wave. Not only will fad watchers pay for the latest from here, but advertisers will pay to be part of the next wave before it leaves here.”

He laughed. “Well, that’s just great. I like everything about it, and I think it’s a good bet to succeed.” He stared at her for a few seconds. “I think it’s the best idea I’ve heard this trip.”

She saw her chance to move the conversation onto him. “You’ve heard others?”

“Well, yes,” he said. “I feel so comfortable talking to you that I keep forgetting that we don’t actually know each other yet.” He took out his wallet—she caught a thick sheaf of green bills and a platinum card—and slid a business card out with his thumb, then handed it to her.

There was a logo with a pair of longhorns, and a business address in Austin for David Larson Ventures. She held it out for him to take back, but he said, “No, please hold on to it.”

She slipped it into her purse. “So what are David Larson’s ventures?”

“Oh, I make investments.”

“In what?”

“Young companies, mostly start-ups. Anything where I can evaluate the product, the market, the competition, and the costs. I came to meet some people and hear some pitches.”

Rachel Sturbridge let the topic drop to see whether he was going to be a bore who didn’t talk about anything but business. Instead he talked about other restaurants he knew in the Bay Area, an art exhibition he wanted to see while he was in the city, a book he had read on the airplane.

She silently cursed the waiter when he delivered the check. She had not had enough time. When she reached for the check, Larson’s big hand was on the little tray, covering it. He said, “Please. I already know you’re the kind of person who likes to pay her own way, but you would be doing me a kindness to let me have it. You did a great favor to let me join you, and it’s all I can do in return.”

“Well, all right.” When the waiter took his card and went away, she said, “Thank you.”

She pretended not to pay any attention to the check after that, but she had found that the way people treated servers could be an early indication of unpleasant qualities. She excused herself to go to the ladies’ room at the right moment and looked down at it over his shoulder. He was a generous tipper. When she returned, she said, “I would like to take you out for an after-dinner drink. There’s a place near here that’s quiet.”

He seemed taken aback. “I would be absolutely delighted.” He stood up, then said, “How near?”

“Two hundred feet.” They walked down the street to the bar of the Pan Pacific hotel, just off the huge white marble lobby. They sat at a table and ordered drinks. He said, “I gave you my business card. Have you had any cards printed yet?”

“No,” she said. “I haven’t hired my designer yet, and I want to be sure everything has the right look.”

He produced another card of his and a pen and set them on the table in front of her. “Then please write a number where I can reach you.”

She hesitated, then wrote the phone number at her house. They had their drink, but before either of them had finished it, she said, “I’ve got to get up early and meet with a photographer to look at his portfolio.” He put her in a taxi in front of the hotel, and she went back to her house feeling pleased with herself for timing her exit to pique his interest.

The next day she got up early and walked to a newsstand on Market Street to buy the Portland Oregonian, then had a cup of coffee and a bagel while she searched it for new information about Dennis Poole. She found no mention of him, and she walked home feeling relieved. She turned the television to the local morning news for company while she read the San Francisco Chronicle, but didn’t bother to turn it off when the news was replaced by reruns of a situation comedy. At eleven, her telephone rang for the first time. Nobody had her number except David Larson, so she hurriedly muted the television set before she answered it, smiled to herself, and said, “Singular Aspects.”

The second dinner with David was at the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton on Nob Hill, and it went better than the first for Rachel Sturbridge. Just after their entrées were served, he said, “You know, I’ve been thinking. I would like to buy a half interest in your magazine.”

She smiled and shook her head. “There is no magazine yet. How can I sell it?”

“That’s why I’m offering now. I’m betting you’re going to be so successful that it will be too expensive to buy in later. I bring you capital and business knowledge, and you bring me the idea, the talent, and the effort. That’s how start-ups work.”

“That’s very flattering,” she said. “But let’s not be in a rush.”

“Why the delay?”

“I’m going to ask for fifty billion dollars, and I need to give you time to raise it.”

He laughed and touched her hand. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s why I’m willing to bet on you. I wanted to make you the offer before I left for Austin, but that doesn’t mean I need the answer by then.”

“When are you going back?”

He looked unhappy, as though he had been dreading the subject. “On Friday. I hate to do it, but I have a meeting that afternoon, and I’ve already postponed it once.”

“That’s only two days.”

“One, really. I leave early Friday morning.”

“Is it that important?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. People are coming from New York and London.”

She couldn’t let him go this way. She knew that he had been enjoying his time with her, and that she was rapidly making an impression on him. But he was a rich man in his fifties. He had met a great many attractive women by now, and he probably met more every month. She had not yet had time to reach the point where she would not simply fade into his memory with all of the others. She had to do something quickly. “Then you’ll have to go. But can I take you out for a farewell dinner tomorrow night?”

He looked surprised. “Thank you. I’d love that. But it shouldn’t sound so final. You and I are going to be partners, just as soon as I raise that fifty billion.”

The third dinner was at the Fairmont. Once they were past the lobby, with its high, vaulted ceiling and marble columns, David seemed to relax. There was a quiet, comfortable quality to their conversation. He told her stories about his childhood in Texas, his business associates, his friends. When the waiter asked whether they would like anything else, Rachel said, “No, thank you.” He asked, “Would you like to charge it to your room?” She said, “Yes.”

David met her eyes, and she shrugged. “Another cat out of the bag.”

He said, “You’re staying here?”

“I reserved a suite when I made the reservation. The view from the tower rooms is one of the best in the city. I thought it might be a nice way to be sure you didn’t forget me as soon as you got back to Texas.”

“Not likely,” he said.

She had prepared herself in advance for a night of closing her eyes tight and enduring, but she was pleasantly surprised. He was a gentle, considerate lover with an easy, appreciative disposition that made her feel less self-conscious. When they were not making love he was a cheerful, affectionate companion.

Late that evening after he fell asleep, she lay awake considering the best way to make use of him. She had been wise to resist the temptation to sell him a half interest in her imaginary magazine. She had been very close to yielding. He seemed accustomed to risky investments, and he would probably forgive her when she faked an attempt at a magazine and didn’t return any money. But she could afford to let her bet stay on the table. She was beginning to think that maybe the way to get her money was the way lots of other women had done it. Maybe she should marry it.

The next morning they said good-bye in the room. He called a cab to take him to the Prescott to check out and then to the airport. Rachel took a second cab back to her house. She put his business card on her refrigerator with a magnet and waited.

On the third day, a FedEx package arrived. Inside was a velvet box. She opened it, and found a white-gold pendant with a single large diamond. The velvet box said Van Cleef & Arpels, but that was only a box. She took off the shade of her reading lamp and held the diamond close to the bulb. She could tell it was a good stone, about three carats, and very bright. It must have cost him at least ten thousand dollars, and possibly much more.

Looking at the light sparkling in the facets of the diamond made her feel lucky. It had probably been dangerous to get involved with another man so soon after Dennis Poole, but there had seemed to be nobody looking for her, so she had begun to look for a new man.

Men were a difficult way to make a living. All any of them really wanted was sex. It made them easy to attract and easy to play for a little money, but not necessarily easy to control. They got jealous and watchful, and at times the sex could be troublesome, too. At least with David it wasn’t unpleasant or especially demanding. She took his card off her refrigerator, went to the telephone, and dialed the private number he had written on the back. When he answered, she said, “You certainly know how to keep a girl’s attention, don’t you?”

A week later David was in San Francisco again. He called her from the airport, then picked her up at her house and drove to a hotel in Carmel that consisted of a group of luxurious cabins on a wooded cliff above the ocean. They had dinner in the restaurant in the central building, watching the waves crash against the rocks below, then walked along the path through the pines to their cabin, and sat on the couch before the stone fireplace, listening to the crackling of the wood fire.

After a time, he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about you.”

“Good,” she said. She leaned close and kissed him softly.

“I’ve even been trying to find ways to help you get your magazine started.”

“You’re sweet.” She kissed him again.

“While I was doing it I found out a couple of things that made me curious.”

“What kind of things?” She turned her body on the couch to face him. She could feel the hairs on her scalp rising. It wasn’t exactly fear, but an intense anticipation.

“Well, you said you had never been married.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m wondering if you changed your name at some point.”

She kept her eyes on his face. “You’ve hired somebody to investigate me?”

He smiled. “Now, please don’t get mad at me. It’s a normal thing to do if you’re thinking of making an investment in a start-up. I have a standing account at the Averill Agency in Dallas. Whenever I’m about to make a seed-money investment, they routinely do a quick rundown on the principal players, just to be sure none of them has a tail and a pitchfork. It’s no different from asking your mechanic to take a look at a car you’re buying.”

Rachel leaned forward, her eyes searching his. “And?”

“As you know, they didn’t find any problems, because there are no problems. But they did have trouble finding out much else about you. They said that either you’d had a marriage at some point that you forgot to mention, or maybe had petitioned for a name change.”

She stared at him coldly, sensing the urge to make him suffer. “Rachel Sturbridge isn’t the name I was born with. My family was well-off and respected, but it looked good only from the outside. From the inside, it wasn’t a group you would want to belong to. There wasn’t a lot of love.” She paused, as though bravely controlling her emotions. “What there was, was a lot of cruelty. After I grew up I spent years trying to get over it, and on the advice of my therapist, I severed the connection completely. Being really free of them meant using a different name, so I do. You’re the only person I’ve ever had to explain this to.”

He was embarrassed at his mistake. “Rachel, I’m sorry. I just cared so much about you that I couldn’t know enough.”

She stood up.

He looked horrified. “Please. I never imagined that talking to you about it would bring back bad memories. Stay with me.”

“I’m tired, and I’m going to sleep now. We can talk in the morning.” David had carried both of their suitcases into one of the bedrooms when he’d unloaded the car. Now she went into that room, took hers into the other bedroom, and quietly closed the door.

When she awoke in the morning she knew that two things were going to happen. One was that David Larson was going to buy her a big present. The other was that she was going back to San Francisco. She went into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror, and began to pull herself together. “I’m heartbroken,” she told the girl in the mirror. It was well said. She would use it.

During the time while he was in Austin she had allowed herself to grow overconfident. She had formed plans that carried them both years into the future. She had pictured them spending time in Europe together—maybe in the Greek islands, which looked beautiful and warm in the magazines, or Provence, which sounded in articles as though it existed solely to serve food and wine to people like her. She was sure David had accumulated enough money already. It seemed to her that the only reason he still traveled around chasing investments was that he’d had nothing better to do until he’d met Rachel Sturbridge. She could have made those years wonderful for him. But that was before he had betrayed her.

She watched herself in the mirror as she said, “I’m heartbroken” again. She meant it. He had told his stupid private detectives to pry into her private life looking for incriminating information, and she was just lucky they had not found anything. It had been a cold, calculating thing to do. Men always wanted you to do impulsive, risky things because you let your passion for them get too strong to resist. They wanted you to trust them completely, holding nothing at all back to protect yourself. But then, after your body and soul had gotten to be things they had, rather than things they wanted, they announced that they had reserved the right to be suspicious and cautious about you.

When David knocked and asked if she would go to breakfast with him, she called through the closed door, “No, you go ahead.”

Rachel spent the next hour working efficiently and methodically to make herself beautiful. She had started beautician’s school the summer she had turned sixteen, and had learned some cosmetology and hairdressing before she had missed a tuition payment. But she had learned her most valuable tricks years before that, in the long succession of beauty pageants her mother had entered her in beginning at age four. She had been born with good skin and small, symmetrical features, and she had a quick, practiced hand with a brush, eyeliner, and mascara.

She was good at dressing herself because she had a hard, objective eye. That was something else the pageant circuit had done for her. She could look at herself the way a contest judge would, with no sentimentality and no mercy. She accentuated her figure’s best points and hid the flaws. She tried all three dresses she had brought, chose the one that would give him the most haunting memory of her body, and put on spike heels.

Rachel packed her suitcase, stood it upright on its wheels, and extended the handle. Then she went to the living room, arranged herself on the small couch, turned on the television set, and waited. David returned about an hour after that.

When he opened the door and saw her, she could tell her effect was what she had intended. He stopped at the door and simply stared for a moment, then took a couple of deep breaths and walked toward her. “Rachel,” he said. “I need to talk to you. I’m really very sorry. I never imagined I was going to hurt your feelings or remind you of anything that caused you pain.”

She raised her face to him. Her eyes were cold, as though she were looking at him from a great distance.

He said, “I brought you a little something.” He took a velvet jewelry box from his coat pocket and held it out to her. “Will you please forgive me?”

Seeing another jewelry box nettled her, partly because it showed he thought she was childish enough to be mollified by it, and partly because she wanted whatever lay inside the box. Her expression didn’t change. “I waited here for you only because I felt that I should say something to you for the sake of clarity. If you’ll remember, I never asked you to invest in my business.”

“I never meant to imply—”

“Please let me finish. I won’t be long.” She glared at him, holding him in silence for a breath before she continued. “It was a purely personal relationship, from my point of view. I never offered you anything or asked you for anything. When you asked questions about my business I answered them. When you offered to invest, I repeatedly refused your money. You called in detectives anyway and had me investigated. Well, that was a deal breaker. I’m leaving now. I want you to tear up my telephone number and forget my address.”

“But Rachel.” He tried to sit beside her, but she recoiled and stood up. He held out his hands. “Can’t we talk about this?”

“No. We can’t. If you want to do something for me you can order your detectives to shred whatever files they have on me. Beyond that, I have no further interest in anything you do or say.” She turned, walked to the bedroom, grasped the handle on her suitcase, and pulled it to the door on its wheels.

David Larson stood up, looking pained. “Please don’t go, Rachel. It was a terrible mistake. I’m trying to make it up to you.” As he raised his arms in supplication, he noticed the velvet box in his hand, and held it out. “This was for you. Won’t you at least take a look at it?”

“No, I won’t. Good-bye.” She pushed the door open, dragged her suitcase out, and let the door swing shut behind her. She went down the steps and up the paved drive to the main lodge, and had the concierge call her a cab.

On the long drive to San Francisco she contemplated what she had done, and decided that leaving David Larson had been her only possible choice. She couldn’t continue the relationship after he’d had her investigated. If she stayed, he would have the detectives resume their poking and prying. It was quite possible that they would find out that she had once been Tanya Starling, and maybe even that she had known Dennis Poole. It was also a bit late to allow him to buy into her imaginary magazine, and then make the money disappear on imaginary expenses. Now that the detectives had been called in, she couldn’t even continue to play him for gifts and support.

Her only possible move had been to sever any connection with him. The paradox was that his having her investigated had made her want to kill him, and the only thing that was preventing her from doing it was that he’d had her investigated. Before his body could cool, his detectives would be there to give the police a whole dossier on her.

The next afternoon at one, there was a knock on her door. She looked out the window to decide whether to answer, and saw it was the Federal Express man. She opened the door, signed for the thick envelope, and took it inside to open it.

The envelope contained three items. The first was the typed report that David Larson had received from the Averill Detective Agency in Dallas, Texas, saying that there wasn’t much about Rachel Sturbridge to know. The second was a file folder, stamped AVERILL AGENCY: CONFIDENTIAL. It had Sturbridge, Rachel on the tab, and contained about twenty pages of handwritten notes describing things checked unsuccessfully, credit reports on Rachel Sturbridge that had yielded virtually no information, a copy of her business license, and some photographs. There were pictures of her coming and going from her house, as well as a few close-ups of her face made from blowups of more distant shots.

The third item in the package was a note from David Larson. It said, “You asked that I destroy the background check. These are the only copies. Please accept my apologies. David.”

Rachel searched the kitchen drawers until she found some matches. She took the note, the file, and the report out to the tiny square of concrete below her back steps, then made a small bonfire. She looked at each piece as she added it to the flames.

The detective had been called off, and she was watching the collection of incriminating information burn up, page by page. She was confident that David was feeling contrite and apologetic, not suspicious of her. But this wasn’t enough. She looked at the rented house, then down the hill at the city. She picked up a stick to stir the ashes and make sure there was nothing left of the paper. She would have to disappear.