“Yes, Buddy.”
“Which is it?”
“I don’t want to go to prison,” Jack said. He was very humble, as though he were talking to God, and God was impatient with him.
“So it’s no cops,” Buddy said. “Is that right? Just to get things straight.”
“No cops, Buddy,” Jack said.
“Okay,” Buddy said, and shifted into drive, and took them away from there.
Out on the highway, Jack said, humbly, “Why are you doing this for me, Buddy?”
“I’m your best friend,” Buddy said. He was paying attention to the traffic and the speed limit. He didn’t want to get stopped by a highway patrolman.
“You are my best friend, Buddy,” Jack said.
Buddy laughed. “And it’s a movie!” he said.
They left the highway where the signs pointed for the lake, then turned off that road and climbed high to another place where lovers sometimes liked to come. But none were here tonight.
The road made a sharp turn to the right. Ahead, a wide dirt parking area narrowed on the left side to a cliff, with the lake far below, glinting cold in the starlight.
“Open the windows and get out,” Buddy said.
Jack did it and came around to the driver’s side, where Buddy was wedging a rock onto the accelerator, making the engine roar. Jack said, “What’s happening, Buddy?”
“That ought to do it,” Buddy said, and straightened. The engine roared as though it were afraid. Buddy said, “Wendy always said she’d run away from home. So she did. Stole her old man’s car and ran.”
Jack’s jaw trembled, his eyes filled with tears. “She was so nice,” he said.
“She was a sicko,” Buddy said. “Say good-bye to her, if you want.”
Jack moved back to the trunk of the car, remembering how Wendy had looked when he’d first opened the car door and the light had gone on, and there she was. And now...
The engine roar was like screaming. It made the car vibrate; it seemed to heave. Buddy had left the lights on, and the red and white lights reflected from the enigmatic trunk and the gleaming bumper chrome. Jack reached his hand out toward the trunk, wishing with such intensity that it broke his heart, wishing it all undone.
“Here goes,” Buddy said. He reached in through the open driver’s door to shift to drive.
Screams, screaming, engine roars, flashing lights in red and white reflecting from the bumper chrome, slicking on the heaving trunk of the car, madness, danger, movement, peril, speed...
I feel so empty. I feel like a tree after the sap has been drained away. Big, woody, stupid, dull tree, too dumb to fall over. My eyes are open, but I see nothing. Even my forehead can’t see anymore. Hearing how dull my voice is, hearing how I’m a tree and I’m empty but there’s no echo, hearing how even the echo is drained out of me, I say, “Nobody ever knew about that, except Buddy and me.”
“And gradually,” the voice says, “the memory faded. Nobody linked you to Wendy’s disappearance, you got so you could sleep at night again, Buddy’s strength carried you through.”
“Buddy never mentioned it again, not once.”
“Buddy didn’t have to mention it.”
“No,” I say. “That’s right.”
“Still,” the voice says, “time went by, and everything was all right. You were going to be okay. But then it happened again.”
“Yes,” I say.
“It wasn’t your fault this time,” the voice says, “but the ingredients were the same. Sex. The woman. The backseat of the car. And she was dead.”
“Miriam. Don’t die.”
“But she did. And you had your breakdown.”
“I could never weave those goddamn baskets.”
“And when you came out of the hospital at last,” the voice says, “you were still terrified of women. You believed you were doomed to destroy them, not wanting to. That’s why you tried that interlude with George Castleberry.”
“Also,” I am forced to say, “Biff Novak was a great part.”
The voice ignores that. Unstoppable, the voice rolls on: “And since then, you have been attracted only to strong women, too strong for you to hurt. And when they hurt you, as eventually they did, you felt you deserved it, because of Wendy.”
“Did I?” I am surprised to find that I am capable of surprise. “Maybe I did,” I say, and realize that one of these days I must rethink all my relationships. But not just at this particular moment.
“It was the girl who went out the window at Big Sur,” the voice says, “who brought it all back for you yet again.”
So different, and yet the same. The same arcing fall, reaching out and down, so slow and then so fast, plummeting toward the water. The car in the night, its lights on, dropping toward its own illuminated reflection in the still, deep lake. The girl in the sunlight amid the jewels of broken glass, dropping toward the hungry roiling sea. The same. Wendy. Dead again. “It keeps happening,” I say. “No matter what I do, it keeps happening.”
“After Big Sur,” the voice says, “you withdrew to this estate.”
“I’m safe here.”
“You almost never leave,” the voice says. It knows so much about me, this wonderful voice. It knows so much, and it stays so calm. If I knew that much about me, I wouldn’t stay calm. Oh, boy. You couldn’t get me calm, if I knew all that. And the voice goes calmly on, saying, “You keep yourself drugged—”
“Mellowed. Mellowed.”
“It’s been hurting your career, Mr. Pine,” the voice says. “Buddy didn’t like that.”
Flashback 25
The room to the right of the front entrance, a large square pleasant place with views of the lawn and main drive, had been turned into an office. Desks, filing cabinets, library table, computer, shelves filled with scripts and stationery supplies; it might have been a Midwestern insurance agency. Jack himself rarely entered this room, his interest in the mundane details of real life being minimal at best, but today his drifting took him without particular plan or purpose through just another doorway, and there he was, in the office.
And there was his secretary, clipping things from newspapers and magazines and mounting them in the clear plastic folder-pages of an album. And there was Buddy, seated at the library table by the windows, going over ledgers with Sol, the accountant, a short, wide, ugly man with a brain like a Renaissance Italian. Buddy and Sol were both looking grim, which Jack wasn’t likely to notice. In fact, looking around with pleased surprise to see where his drift had led him, he said, “Ah. My merry staff. My merry accountant. My merry Buddy. How is everybody?”
“Good morning, Jack,” the secretary said, glancing up briefly from her work, her manner neutral.
The accountant, squinting at Jack across the ledgers, said, “Jack, if you have a minute—”
“Sol,” Buddy said, placing a hand on the accountant’s forearm on the table, “let me talk to him.”
The accountant shrugged. “Just so somebody does,” he said.
Jack’s smile turned vague but didn’t disappear. Buddy got to his feet, crossed the room, took Jack by the elbow, and said, “Let’s go for a walk, Dad.”
“Sure, Buddy.”
They left the office, Buddy holding on to Jack’s elbow, went out the front door, walked across the lawn, and made their way to the formal rose garden at the side of the house, where two gardeners puttered, accomplishing very little. Buddy looked at them. “Vamos,” he said.
They vamosed. Jack smiled after them, smiled at the roses, smiled at Buddy. “It’s nice here,” he said.
“Dad,” Buddy said, “we’re in trouble.”
“Take some blues, Buddy,” Jack advised him. “Don’t let it get you down. Knock back a little T and B.”