Walkers

Chapter 9

Joana awoke on Friday with a vague feeling that ail was not well. Her brain felt sluggish with the residue of troubled dreams. The dreams slipped away as quickly as she tried to remember them. Then the cobwebs cleared and she remembered the unsettling experiences of the last two days. She pushed the images out of her mind and concentrated on immediate tasks.

Out of habit she rolled over to look at the clock. Seven-fifteen exactly. In another five minutes the alarm would beep if she allowed it to. She punched off the alarm button and switched on the radio. A manic morning disc jockey yammered away nonstop while Joana collected her thoughts.

She reached up and drew back the curtains across the bedroom window. The morning was overcast. It was June, what could you expect? Joana allowed herself five more minutes curled up under the covers, then swung out of bed.

She pulled on a robe and went outside and down the path to where the morning Times lay, folded and tied with string. She carried the paper inside and scanned the headlines. There had been a terrorist bombing in Tel Aviv, a student riot in Mexico City, and a congressman censured in Washington. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Back inside, Joana walked through to the kitchen and plugged in the electric coffeepot. The water and coffee she had measured in the night before. Then she returned to the bedroom, peeled off her robe and pajamas, and got into the shower.

It felt good to get back to the schedule of little things she did every day. The familiar routine was welcome after the violent disruptions of her life in the past forty-eight hours. She looked forward with pleasure to returning to work this morning. The job was interesting and challenging, and Joana was good at it. When her boss moved up, which figured to be in two or three years, she would have a good shot at becoming advertising manager.

She turned off the shower and dried herself vigorously. From her closet she selected a plaid skirt-and-vest outfit and carried the newspaper with her into the kitchen, touching things as she walked past, enjoying the familiar look and feel.

The little house where Joana lived was on Beachwood Drive in a quiet neighborhood above Hollywood. Originally it had been a guest cottage on the grounds of a large estate. The main house had been torn down some years ago to make way for an apartment building, and the guest house was scheduled to follow soon. While she had it, Joana enjoyed the feeling of living in a house that was all her own in an age of apartments. The house was just one room deep, with the rooms set end to end like a train: living room, den, bedroom, kitchen. The place was hard to keep clean and expensive to heat, and the roof leaked in heavy rains, but there were no neighbors to contend with, living just a wall's width away from you. Also, there was a nice spread of lawn out in front with oleanders and palmettos and great jungly ferns that were cared for by the real-estate company that owned the property.

Joana made herself two slices of toast, poured a cup of coffee, and sat down with the Times. She skimmed over the bad news and discarded Section 1 for the sports page. Things were better there. The Dodgers had come up with two runs in the ninth last night to beat the hated Reds in Cincinnati. Way to go.

She poured another cup of coffee and lit her first cigarette of the day. By the end of the day she would have smoked no more than half a pack. Were it not for the self-righteous militancy of the antismoking people, Joana would have given them up completely. She kept to her ten Salems a day as a token rebellion.

Behind her the screen outside the kitchen door rattled. Joana got up and opened the door. Standing outside was a burly black cat with a torn ear. He had been abandoned as a kitten and now lived very well by his wits, mooching food and shelter from the soft-hearted residents of the neighborhood.

"I'm sorry, Bandido, I don't have anything for you this morning."

The cat looked up at her with disbelief in his luminous green eyes.

"Well, let me look, maybe there's a scrap of something." She pushed open the screen and the black cat sauntered in. In the refrigerator she found the end piece of a block of cheese, chopped it into bite-size morsels, and put them in a saucer. The cat sniffed at the cheese, poked at it with a paw, and finally ate.

"I'm so glad you approve," Joana said.

She went into the bathroom to put on her makeup, came out and removed the cat from her bed where he was feigning sleep, and left for work.

Another thing Joana liked about her location was ' that she had a direct route to the office that involved no freeway driving. She dropped down Vine Street to Santa Monica, then headed west through the tacky part of Beverly Hills to Century City, the island of gleaming high-rise office buildings across from 20th Century-Fox studios. Traffic slowed as she approached her building and the cars funneled into the subterranean parking area. While Joana was stopped for a moment a boy on a skateboard rolled up beside her on the street side. He carried an armload of flowers-red roses and pink carnations-divided into bouquets of twelve and wrapped in tissue, paper.

"Hi, Joana," said the boy. "I didn't see you yesterday. Were you sick?"

"Hello, Davy. No, I wasn't sick, I just took the day off."

"That's good." The boy smiled at her, a sweet, childlike smile. He had the body of a rangy fourteen-year-old, but his mind would be forever seven.

"I'm glad you're back," he said. He took a rose from one of the bouquets and handed it to her. "This is for you."

Joana fumbled in her purse while watching for the car ahead of her to start moving.

"You don't have to pay for it," Davy said. "That's just from me."

"Well, thank you very much, Davy. That's awfully nice."

"Ah, that's all right."

A panel truck sped past in the traffic lane just beyond where the boy was standing balanced on his board. Joana winced.

"You worry me, Davy, rolling around on that thing in all this traffic."

"Ah, I'm okay. I can always get out of the way if somebody's coming too close."

"Be careful, anyway."

"I will."

The line of cars began to move and Joana drove on through the cavelike entrance to the underground parking. She inserted her coded parking pass into a slot and the cross-arm barrier rose to let her car through. She drove down the curving inclines to the second sublevel, where her company kept an area reserved for employees. She got out of the car and sniffed at the rose Davy had given her. Smiling, she promised herself she would buy a bouquet tonight on her way home.

She rode the elevator up to her floor and was welcomed back enthusiastically, although she had been off only one day. The advertising manager had a stack of back-to-school layouts for her to approve, and Joana plunged into the job eagerly.

The hours passed quickly and pleasantly enough, yet Joana sensed a growing anxiety. It took a while before she recognized the cause. It was Glen. She had not spoken to him since leaving his apartment yesterday morning, and that exchange had been none too warm. Why, she wondered, hadn't he called?

Yesterday, of course, had been hectic, and even if Glen had called, she was probably not at home. She might have called him last night, but by the time she had gone through her examination with Dr. Hovde, the business with the wild woman driver, and Peter Landau with his Tarot cards, she was exhausted. When she finally got home she had not felt like talking to anybody.

At three o'clock she stopped waiting for a call from Glen and picked up her own phone. She punched the button for an outside line and dialed his number at Datatron, his company in Torrance. Usually she did not like to call him at work, but it was silly to sit here wanting to hear from him and not doing anything about it.

She reached Glen's secretary, an attractive but noncompetitive redhead she had met a couple of times.

"Hi, Vicki, this is Joana Raitt. Is Glen busy?"

"He hasn't been in the office at all today. He's out calling on subcontractors."

"Oh. Will you give him a message to call me?"

"I'll do it, but he may not come back here."

"Thanks anyway."

As quitting time drew near, the other employees began to perk up with the thank-God-it's-Friday flow of adrenaline. Joana became steadily more depressed. Glen had not called. Although they had never made it a formal arrangement, spending weekends together had become a regular thing for her and Glen. She hoped the little disagreement they'd had at his place yesterday would not be one of those foolish arguments that ballooned into a major quarrel and wrecked a relationship.

Joana was a little surprised to discover just how much she really cared for Glen Early. Being a liberated young woman with a lively career and a bright future was well and good, but as far as Joana was concerned it didn't amount to beans if there was no man to share it with. A strong, caring man. Glen.

Five o'clock came, and still no call.

One of the girls from the art department stopped by her desk.

"A bunch of us are going over to Serior Pico's for margaritas," she said. "Want to come?"

"No, thanks," Joana said. "I've got some copy to get ready for the printer by Monday morning, so I'm going to hang in here a while."

"listen to the company woman. Anyhow, if you get through before too long, come on over."

Joana gave her a noncommittal smile. Friday night after-work parties with the gang usually turned into bitching sessions about the job, the bosses, and the company. Joana liked it here. In her opinion, anybody who was unhappy with a job should leave and find something else to do. The complainers got no sympathy from her.

The copy she had stayed to prepare was not much of a job, and in half an hour she had finished it and stacked it in her out box. The big empty office oppressed her, and now she was anxious to leave. She said good night to the security guard and rode the elevator down to the first sub-basement.

Most of the people who worked in the building were gone now, and it was too early for the dinner and theater crowd to start coming in. Joana's footsteps echoed in the concrete cavern as she walked toward her car.

She got out her key and inserted it in the door lock, then froze at the sound of running feet behind her. She whirled and saw a man running down the aisle toward her.

Glen Early came pounding up and stopped in front of her, breathless and a little red in the face.

"I was afraid I'd missed you," he said. "I went up to your floor, but the security man told me you had just left."

"What is it, Glen? Something important?"

"You're damned right it's something important." He pulled her into his arms and kissed her hungrily. Joana let her body respond, and when they broke apart there were tears in her eyes.

"I love you, lady," he said. "And I've missed you."

"It's only been a day."

"So what? I was worried that I might have messed up somehow yesterday by not telling you how important you are to me."

"Me too," she said, laughing and hugging him. "I tried to call you at Datatron."

"I was out of the office all day, in meetings, and couldn't get to a phone. I'm sure glad I caught you."

"So am I."

"Got any plans for the weekend?"

"I was going to start a new thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, but I suppose I could postpone that if I got a better offer."

"Want to go to the mountains?"

"You and me? All weekend?"

"Yeah. We'll get a cabin off by ourselves at Big Bear. No parties, no discos, no swimming pools, just us and nature."

"It sounds like fun."

"Great. My car's outside in a red zone. I'll follow you home, and you can throw a couple of things in a bag, and we'll take off."

Joana drove Glen up to the street level and waited while he jogged back up the street to his car. Davy, the young flower seller, rolled up beside her car on his skateboard.

"You're about the last one out tonight, Joana."

"Do you keep track of everybody in our building?" she asked, smiling.

"Just the people I like. You look happy."

"Do I? I guess I am, Davy. How many bouquets do you have left?"

"Only these two-one roses and one carnations."

"I'll take them both."

Joana took the flowers through the window and passed the money out to Davy. Glen pulled up behind her in his dusty Camaro and beeped the horn. She drove off toward Hollywood feeling warm and buoyant. Suddenly the weekend ahead was bright with promise, the dark thoughts that had clouded her mind were forgotten.