She pushed the bedroom door open all the way. “Oh, you might as well come on in. Nobody’s here.”
“I can still come back.”
“You already woke me up and I can’t sleep wondering what you want.”
She sat on the bed and turned on the small bedside reading lamp, then moved it so she could see him. “You got dressed up.” The light tilted higher. “Nice clothes. You got a haircut. Very handsome, especially for-What time is it? Three or so?”
” ” Yes.
She sniffed. “Expensive aftershave from a barbershop, too. You smell like a whore. And who would know better?”
“Not you.”
She let the light stay on his face for a few more seconds, then turned it off. “What brings you here?”
“This is my last visit,” he said. “Here’s the way it is. I’m sorry I robbed that store twenty years ago. I apologize for doing it and going to prison. I did it because I wanted to have a nice life with you.”
“It would have been a nice life.”
“I thought the money would help us get away, and that away was better. I was young and stupid. I apologize.”
“You were young. You apologized at the time, and you apologized after. But if somebody breaks something, it doesn’t matter why or how. It’s broken. Talking about it forever doesn’t make it unbroken. After the first day, it doesn’t even matter whose fault it was.”
“Yes, it does.”
“No. You went to prison, and things happened there that changed you. I was out here. I changed in ways that I wouldn’t have if you had been with me. We’re not the same people we were. We can’t have the kind of life we would have had.”
“That’s just bitterness.”
She shook her head. “I think about it all the timeabout you and me together then. I can still see us. It’s like we were the first people. It’s not the time that’s gone, it’s the innocence. We don’t have it anymore, and we can’t get it back.”
“Okay. We can’t.”
“You said this was your last visit. I take it you’ve found somebody you like better.”
“No. You’re the one that I’ve always loved, and I’m going to love you until I’m dead. I want you to do what you should have done fifteen years ago and marry me.”
“Oh, Jesus, Jerry.” She sighed wearily.
He knelt in front of her, reached into his pocket, and grabbed her wrist. “I got you a ring.”
“If this is a joke, I’m not laughing.”
He put the ring in her hand, then leaned on the bed to turn on the reading light. He picked it up and held it above the ring. It was a three-carat solitaire, and in the intense white light it looked enormous.
She said, “Now I’m laughing.” She looked terribly sad, and tears began to run down her cheeks. “Why did you do this?”
“We got off track, a long time ago. It was my fault. Now I’m grabbing us by the neck and wrenching us back on. We can’t start over like we were eighteen, but we can take what’s left at thirty-eight.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
She held out the ring in the palm of her hand. “I can see you have money. If I didn’t notice before, I would now. Where did you get it?”
“Selling electrical supplies.” He watched her face fall and her eyes harden. “All right, it’s swag. I got it by being a criminal. But I’m done now. Regardless of whether you ever see me again, I’m done.”
Y•
“Because it’s not a life. It’s just what you do when you don’t have the heart to kill yourself and hope somebody will do it for you.”
“So this is your last visit because now you have the heart. If I won’t have you, then you’ll go out in the desert and kill yourself.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to say things. I can hear you think.” She paused. “You’ll have to make me a promise.”
“What?”
“If you do decide to kill yourself, you’ll kill me first.” She slipped the diamond ring on her finger. “I recognize this. It’s the one I showed you in the magazine when we were kids. Same cut, same setting.”
“Yes.”
“When we go walking, the sun will light it up like fire.”
39
Emily flew to San Jose and rented a car to drive the rest of the way. She didn’t like the car because it was newer than her faithful Volvo, and it had a lot of mechanisms on the dashboard and the console that struck her as childish and self-indulgent. All the padding in odd places seemed to her to be designed to hide the sounds of an engine and transmission that were not to be trusted.
Emily drove the car anyway, in spite of the feeling she had that at every mile it was being used up like a pencil or a candle. She found her way on the 101 freeway to the Golden State Freeway, then down Route 152 to Route 33, which headed south and east into the Central Valley. Once she was on the right road, she tossed the map onto the seat beside her.
She sped across the open country, looking at the broad fields. They were lined with long, straight rows of low, leafy unidentifiable vegetable plants stretching to a vanishing point that seemed to move with her.
She drove fast, but it wasn’t because she was in a hurry. It was because the roads were made for it. She got used to moving to the right shoulder to let over-height pickup trucks flash past, because it felt to her that it was their road and not hers.
Here and there near the towns-Los Banos, Dos Palos, Firebaugh-there were fruit and vegetable stands to sell produce to people like her driving down the highway between big cities. She had always loved stopping at those places, white-painted wooden-frame structures with homemade signs bigger than they were, where teenagers and grandparents handled the sales because everybody else was busy. Here the stands were tiny outposts at the edge of plots of land so big that from the road Emily couldn’t see any farm buildings.
When she reached Mendota, it took her only a few minutes to find the police station and park. She got out of the car, walked to the trunk, and opened it. She took out her tote bag and walked to the front of the station, up the steps, and into the small lobby.
Behind the counter there were two police officers, one male on the telephone and one female busy at a computer. The woman noticed Emily first. She stood up and walked to the counter, then said, “Hello, ma’am. How can I help you?”
Emily said, “I wonder if you could direct me to the officer who was in charge of a murder case. It occurred here eight years ago.”
The policewoman’s shoulders seemed to hunch slightly. She leaned forward, and Emily could see a flat, guarded look in her eyes. “What murder case might that be?”
“The victim’s name was Allison Straight. She was only sixteen when she was killed.”
The policewoman turned to look behind her at the man who sat at the other desk. Emily could see that the policeman had sergeant’s stripes on his biceps. He stood up and walked toward the open door behind the counter. As he passed the policewoman, he nodded.
The policewoman said, “The detective who handled that case is Lieutenant Zimmer. The sergeant just went to get him.”
Two minutes later, the sergeant returned, accompanied by a tall, thin police officer in a sport coat. He said, “Come in, please,” and lifted a hinged section of the counter so Emily could step inside the enclosure. She followed him into an office, and he pulled a chair to the front of his desk for her, then sat down. “I’m Lieutenant Zimmer. I understand you wanted to see me about the Allison Straight case?”
“Yes,” said Emily. “My name is Emily Kramer. I brought you this.” She reached into her tote bag, pulled out the maroon stationery box and set it on the desk.