“If I could find it …”
She stood closer to him. “If you found that, Nic, they’d be someone else. Not who they really are.” She sighed. “Unless of course you’re in my business, in which case you have to be other people. God, I wish I could still use the word actress. Katharine Hepburn. Kim Novak. Bette Davis. It was good enough for them. I can’t stand in their shadow. But maybe one day.”
“I promise to see one of your movies. Soon.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
The wind quickened. It ruffled her hair. For a moment she looked like the urchin, a very elegant and well-kempt one, he’d first seen in Rome. She took a deep breath of the clean, sweet air.
“I love this place. The ocean. These trees. When I was a girl, I used to imagine I was a bird, a gull or something. That I could fly off this headland, over that beach, head west, on and on, free forever. Where do you think I’d wind up?”
“Hawaii?”
“Shame on you. Are all Italians bad at geography?”
“This one is. I’ve never been out of Europe before. What do you expect?”
“Better. Head that way, my boy …” Her long, strong, purposeful arm stretched out into the wind. “… and you will, after a very long journey, end up in Japan.”
She bowed like a geisha and said, “Konbanwa,” then paused to enjoy his bafflement. “It means ‘good evening.’ I can do small talk in a million languages. Helps when you’re on tour.” The forest of slender, upright eucalyptus made a whispering sound, leaves rustling in the breeze. The scent seemed stronger. Night was on the way.
“What did you do?” he asked. “When you camped here. As a girl.”
A different expression on her face now, amused, mock angry. “On a warm San Francisco night …” she sang. He dimly recognised the song. “What do you think? I smoked pot. Fell into the sleeping bag of any passing stranger. The usual.”
“I didn’t mean that.” It was true and had to be said. “I didn’t think it. For a moment.”
“Why? You might be right.”
“It’s none of my business.”
“Oh.” She raised her finger in front of his face, in a way that Teresa Lupo might have done. “So you do believe in intuition. When it suits you. But you’re not far wrong.” The shadow he was coming to recognise flickered across her face. “That all came later. Do you really want to know what I did?”
“If you want to tell me.”
“I ran.”
This was California, he reminded himself. “You jogged?”
Her green eyes lit up with indignation. “Jogged? I ran. Like the wind. Not your kind of running. Peroni told me about that. Long-distance stuff. Marathons. I sprinted. Pushed myself until I could feel my heart ready to burst. And then …” She raised her shoulders in a gesture of self-deprecation. “… I curled up alone in my sleeping bag with a bunch of Twinkies, feeling alive, watching the moon until I fell asleep. All alone. I liked it that way. I still do.”
A part of him wanted to touch her. A part of him wanted to resist.
“I’ll count to five. Give you a start.” She nodded across the campsite. “There’s an information sign with a map a hundred yards over there. I’ll still beat you to it.”
“Too old … too tired …”
“Get running, damn you!”
He turned, not quite thinking right, and happy with that idea, the release of sanity, the embrace of something less rational. He could see the sign she spoke of in the shade where the trees became denser.
Costa didn’t move as quickly as he could. He felt a little giddy. He wanted her to win, wanted her to overtake him, laughing, childlike, racing in front of him. And then …
He didn’t know. San Francisco was a million miles from home. None of the old rules — the old cares, the old burdens — existed here. He was free of them, for a while anyway.
When he got to the sign, he wasn’t even out of breath.
“Maggie …” he said as he turned.
There was no one there. Just a forest of grey trees standing like petrified soldiers, unmoving except for the dark fluttering diamonds of leaves, rippling their aroma into the land breeze that was running through the forest, down to the ocean.
He stood and thought, realising, with the old head he used in Rome, that he’d acted like a fool. Then, in the distance, where the light was failing, he saw a figure flit through the grey trunks.
It was a man, heavily built, carrying something low in his right hand. Something black and made of metal.
“Maggie!” Costa yelled again.
There was the faint echo of her laughter from somewhere. A shape in a white sweater slipped through the glade ahead to the right, not far from the man he’d seen. Not far at all.
Costa raced towards her, at full speed this time, half tripping over the rotting branches and the carpet of crisp dry leaves at his feet, bellowing into the thin night air, summoning up all the threat and force he could muster.
A voice wasn’t much against a weapon but it was something. In the distance, a little down the hill, just off the road, stood the yellow car he’d seen earlier. Trying to stifle the fury he felt with himself, he ploughed on, half stumbling into a crater full of ferns and moss and trash, fighting to keep his balance, yelling all the time.
He didn’t catch sight of the man anywhere. But the third time he called he heard her laugh again, a calm, musical sound, followed by a mild French curse directed at his masculinity.
“This is not a game!” he roared.
A flock of birds rose unseen in a noisy, squawking gaggle. The suddenness and the sheer physical noise of their presence made him jump.
“Not a game …” he whispered to himself, trying to still his thoughts.
Something white emerged briefly from behind a silvery trunk ten steps or so to his right.
He didn’t say anything. He walked straight there. When he was close, she stuck out a foot to make sure he saw.
Costa rounded the tree and found her. She was smiling, looking like a guilty schoolgirl. The apple she’d gotten from the catering van in the car park at the Palace of Fine Arts was in her hand.
“We’re going,” he said, and took her arm, more roughly than he’d intended.
“Why? What’s the rush? Oh, come on, Nic. Loosen up. Help me. Just a little. This is new to me, too, you know. I’m starting to feel like I’m fourteen again. Only this time, I’m happy.”
“There’s someone here,” he warned, glancing around, seeing nothing.
“What? A Peeping Tom? Who cares? I don’t. I’ve had those since forever.”
“Well, I haven’t.” He reached for her arm. She stepped back, away from him. “I’m taking you home. You’re supposed to have security.”
“Not from you, mister! You know, I could lose patience with all this. I don’t usually have to beg.”
“I’m sorry.” He was still scanning the grey trees for the lone individual who was surely stalking them. “Let’s go back to the city. We can find a restaurant. Have dinner.”
“I don’t need dinner, thank you very much.” She waved the apple in his face. “I have this. Got it myself.” She took a huge, greedy bite of the fruit and screwed up her face as if it wasn’t so good. “I don’t need anything from anyone. Ever.”
“Fine. So can we go? Please?”
She didn’t say another word. But she moved, striding in front of him, long steps, trying to make a point. In other circumstances he might have laughed. There was a theatrical quality to her petulance. It was a performance, one that was deliberately comic.
They were just a couple of steps from the car when she fell. Costa rushed to her side. The ground was treacherous: leaves covered potholes, snarled roots of the stiff military trees lurked hidden, waiting to trip the unwary.