“Well, yeah, but the thing of it—”
“Would you please get her for me?”
“Mr. Croft... she doesn’t want to talk to you just now.”
“What’s the address there?” Jamie said. “Is this your apartment?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the address?”
“Well, Mr. Croft...”
“Young lady...”
“I’m not sure Lissie wants you to have the address.”
“Let me talk to Judd.”
“Sure, just a second.”
Jamie waited.
“Hello?”
“Judd?”
“Yes, Mr. Croft?”
“Listen to me, you little son of a bitch. If my daughter doesn’t come to the phone in three seconds flat, I’m calling the F.B.I. to tell them she’s been kidnapped. Now do you want to get her to the phone, or do you want more trouble than you’ve ever—”
“Hey, take it easy,” Judd said.
“Don’t you tell me to take it—”
“I mean, she’s not hanging by her thumbs here, okay? Just take it easy.”
“I’m counting, Judd. You’ve got thirty seconds.”
“Jesus,” Judd said, and again put the phone down. “Lissie!” he shouted. “You’d better come take this.”
Jamie and Connie waited.
“Hello?” Lissie said wearily.
“Don’t hang up again,” Jamie warned. “Don’t you ever dare...”
“Dad, I just don’t want to talk to you when you’re in this kind of mood.”
“Mood? If you think this is just—”
“Let me talk to her alone,” Connie said.
“Why? Why can’t I...?”
“Jamie, please. Get off the phone.”
“I want you home, miss,” Jamie said, and slammed the kitchen receiver down on the cradle rest.
“Boy,” Lissie said.
“All right, let me hear it,” Connie said.
“Is he gone?”
“He’s gone.”
“I’ve never heard him sound like that in my—”
“I think you can understand why he’s upset,” Connie said levelly. “How long have you known this boy?”
“Mom...”
“Lissie, I don’t think you realize how furious your father is. I suggest...”
“All right, all right. It’s been eight months now.”
“You’ve been living with him for eight months?”
“Well, no, only since January when I... Mom, I really don’t want to discuss this. Not with Dad, and not with you, either.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to discuss it,” Connie said. “This woman Dad spoke to, this Mrs. Steinberg, said that you had no intention of returning to school. Is that true?”
“That is total and absolute bullshit.”
“Lissie, I would appreciate...”
“Okay, okay.”
“Do you plan to stay in California?”
“No. I told you no. But I’m not turning around tomorrow morning if that’s what Dad thinks.”
“When will you be home?”
“For Easter.”
“Why did Mrs. Steinberg’s son think you and Judd...”
“Because he’s crazy.”
“You didn’t tell him you planned to stay in California?”
“Why would we tell him anything like that? Mom, I’m really very tired. We were hassled halfway across the country, and we’re exhausted. So if you don’t mind...”
“What do you mean, hassled?”
“Hassled. The usual.”
“Tell me what you mean.”
“Could we please continue this tomorrow? I’d like to get some sleep. Really, we’ll talk about it tomorrow, okay? And tell Dad not to worry, I’ll be home for Easter.”
“You’re sure about that.”
“I’m positive.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“I’ll call tomorrow, okay?”
“When tomorrow?”
“When I get up. It’ll be afternoon your time.”
“We’ll be waiting for your call.”
“I promise.”
“Is this Steinberg boy Jewish?”
“Yes.”
“And Judd? Is he Jewish, too?”
“What difference does that make?”
“Is he?”
“No. Since when did you...?”
“I was merely curious.”
“It sounded like more than curiosity.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Well, he isn’t Jewish, you can relax.”
“Lissie...”
“I’m sorry, Mom, but I really don’t appreciate that sort of question.”
“I think we have a right to know who or what this boy you’ve been living with...”
“I’m not sure you do have that right, but I don’t want to discuss it now, okay? Mom, I’ll call you tomorrow, we’ll have a nice long talk, okay? Is it okay if I go now?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then. And Mom? Don’t worry, okay?”
“All right.”
“Good night, Mom.”
“Good night, Lissie.”
Connie put the receiver gently back on the cradle. She stood by the bedroom phone for several moments, staring at it, and then went downstairs to the kitchen. Jamie had poured himself a drink. He was pacing back and forth between the pantry bar and the table against the kitchen window.
“What’d she say?”
“Will you make me one, please?”
“Yes, what’d she say?”
“She’s coming home, you needn’t worry.”
“When?”
“She’ll be here for Easter.”
“I want her...”
“It doesn’t matter what you want, Jamie.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Connie said, and took the drink from his hand.
Barbara Duggan was leaving for Europe, and her apartment — in its present barren state — was furnished only with a single mattress in one of the bedrooms, a half-dozen throw-pillows on the living-room floor, and an ancient battered floor lamp, none of which Barbara had been able to sell to the steady stream of bargain hunters who’d traipsed up the stairs to the third floor all through the past month. Her duffel bag was already packed, and she had $3,000 in traveler’s checks tucked into a sock in her shoulder bag, but her final destination was still a question mark. The two boys who were crashing with her were Carnegie Tech dropouts who’d come west in search of acting careers, but who were leery about making the big move to L.A. and were using San Francisco as a sort of decompression chamber.
The five of them were sitting on the living-room floor, propped on the throw-pillows, smoking pot and drinking hot chocolate. The apartment was on a street lined with factories, and fumes from their chimneys seeped through the cracks in the old sash windows to mingle with the headier aroma of marijuana. Now and again on the street outside — this was now close to midnight, California time — a horn honked, but for the most part the night was still except for the sound of machinery in the nearby factories. Barbara had sold her record player; otherwise there might have been music. Jerry, the better looking of the two Carnegie dropouts, and therefore presumably the one with the brighter theatrical future, was telling about the cops who’d stopped them in Kansas.
“Middle of a big fucking wheatfield,” he said, “not another car in sight, we were doing — what, Michael? — fifty miles an hour?”
“Maybe sixty,” the other boy said. “Point is, we were observing the speed limit.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to them,” Barbara said.
She was wearing a brightly printed caftan, her thick black hair pulled into a knot at the back of her head, gold hoop earrings on her ears, sandals on her feet, a string of Indian beads around her neck. She was perhaps Lissie’s age, a girl with a flawless, pale, almost porcelain complexion, and slanted brown eyes that gave her a composed and somewhat inscrutable Oriental appearance. She spoke in a very low, well-modulated voice (Mom would adore her, Lissie thought), her A’s broadened by her Bostonian upbringing, her cadences soft and lilting. Sitting beside her barefooted, in jeans and a scruffy T-shirt, Lissie felt bedraggled by contrast. She wanted nothing more than a hot bath and a good night’s sleep. She did not want to hear about the dropouts’ trials and tribulations on the road; she and Judd had suffered through enough of their own. But she stifled a yawn and listened.