“Mainly,” I said to C. David Cantrell in his limousine twenty years later, “to have something that wouldn’t go away.”
“But did you love him?”
“More than anything in the world,” I said.
Joseph Goins looked up from the journal, his heart heavy and his eyes misting over. Such a pure young thing, she was, he thought, so innocent.
And a plan started forming in his mind. It was still unclear, the actual details, but those would fall into place as they always did.
What he began to see was a way to end all of this running, a way to escape without having to leave, a way to make sure that people got what they deserved. A little wobble of excitement crept across his back as Joseph let the ideas come, let the plan take shape. He fingered the sheet taped over the word processor that sat on the table in front of him.
The late-afternoon sunlight warmed the avocado leaves outside his window, throwing a soft golden shade into the room. His fingertips burned with the terrible dryness that came when he began to feel this way. Joseph looked at the tree leaves outside, then pressed his fingers gently against the table. There was only so much of the world that he could take at a time, then he reached his fill and, like water brimming over the top of a cup, he simply had to go somewhere else.
Open your arms again, Sweet Ann, he thought. And let me in.
What happened that night after our first ride in the limousine is important. I got home at quarter ’til one, half an hour before Ray did. I took off my wet clothes and put them on hangers far back in my closet; I washed and brushed my hair; I put on fresh makeup and lipstick. Then I got out some of our adult toys — we called them “learning aids” back when we used to use them — a red lace teddy that snaps under the crotch, a garter belt and some fishnet stockings, a very slinky black silk robe, some ridiculously high heels. My skin felt so warm and sensitive as I put it all on, opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses.
I felt like a prehistoric flower inside, one of those kind that can gobble up a man if he steps in.
When Ray came home, I took him in my arms and we kissed, but it was mechanical and disembodied, and I could feel that Raymond was somewhere else. So he moved down and tried to please me another way.
But that night, well, it wasn’t going to happen.
So we ended up so strangely, with Raymond sitting on the bed where I had been, and me standing in front of him, quivering on those dumb high heels for balance. I poured another glass of wine, closed my eyes, drank the wine, said to myself, If you can’t make him happy, at least let him make you happy.
And I’ll admit now what I refused to admit then, what I drank the rest of the wine to deny — that I was hungry not for Raymond that night but for David. Although I could certainly not have said that I loved Dave Cantrell then, what I craved that night was not to be pleasured but to be loved, not to be worshiped but simply to be needed, not to take satisfaction but to give it. Sometimes I think of life as an elegant party going on constantly inside our heads. Mine is a masquerade. It was David’s role to wear the mask of love. Could I have known he would be so eager? I admit that from the first time I saw him again on Lady of the Bay, I believed he would be.
Ray had not played that part in a long time. Five months, two weeks, and eleven days, since the last time we made love, or held each other with true affection. I know because it was my birthday last year.
But the masquerade kept going on, despite my confusion. As the days went by, I was afraid, then elated. I was content, then desperately thirsty. Sometimes I even felt that I was being watched! I turned and saw no one; I scanned my mirror when I drove; I peeked from my windows when I was home alone. My conscience, Dear One, hounding me already. Once I thought I saw a young man — standing at a distance from the playground with a camera around his neck, staring directly at me. But when I looked again, he was gone. So, I thought, my conscience is a cute guy, dogging the heels of my betrayal, logging every step of my treachery. I was disgusted with myself. I was angry. My confusion was very real.
Joseph placed the Poon’s Locker postcard on the open page, then shut the journal over it. Things were beginning to make sense now, like an image coming through fog, as if Ann’s confusion were becoming his clarity.
It was too hard to get close to C. David Cantrell. Joseph was not allowed past the PacifiCo Tower security booth; he was hustled off the steps by security men three days running; he could neither walk nor drive past the guardhouse of Cantrell’s private Newport Beach neighborhood. He hit upon a simple alternative.
Joseph had just turned to lie down on his bed again when someone knocked on his door.
It was loud, so loud it sent a riot of alarm into his ears, a terrible clanging noise. As it settled into a quieter roar, he turned, to see Lucinda, halfway into his room and halfway out, studying him with her dark brown eyes. She brushed away a long golden band of hair and offered a very small smile. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I—” Joseph’s tongue wallowed against his dry mouth, trying to get positioned. The roar was better now, but he couldn’t seem to get his thoughts down into his lips. His cracking fingertips felt as if they’d been held against dry ice. “I... was reading.”
“What a drag.”
Joseph thought with new terror of the leather-bound journal sitting on the table in front of him. He gathered it up without looking at it and slid it into his box beside the desk.
“Aren’t you gonna unpack?” she asked.
“Yes. In a while.”
“What were you reading?”
“Just a story.”
“Horror is my favorite,” she said. “If I really have to read.”
Joseph nodded. The ringing in his head lowered in volume again.
“My grandmother will talk your ear off. That’s why I’m gone a lot.”
“She seems like a nice old lady.”
“Old people are so, like serious. How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.”
“I’m eighteen. My name’s not rilly outta here. It’s Lucinda. Not Lucy. Lucinda.”
Joseph cleared his throat with some difficulty. “I’ve always... liked that name.”
She continued to regard him from behind a corner of bright straight hair. “So, can I come in, or what?”
“Sure,” he said calmly.
Lucinda slid in with an air of secrecy, and shut the door. She looked at him with a cumbersome, self-conscious expression — kind of a smile — then glanced around for somewhere to sit. She picked the bed. A deep updraft of warmth spread into his genitals.
“What beach do you go to?” she asked.
“Any beach.”
“I go to Fifteenth.” Lucinda apparently intended for this information to do something once it sunk in. “Older guys,” she prompted. “Even the cops there are cool. Cute, too.”
Joseph wasn’t sure why it mattered what beach you went to. It was all the same beach really, street numbers or not. Did Lucy... Lucinda like cops? “Cool,” he said.
“You’re not very tan. Where are you from?”
“Irvine.”
“Inland. Bummer. What do you listen to, like, for music?”