The sun had gone down. Wisps of fog were floating in from the sea and gathering in the treetops like spiders’ webs. It was time to turn on the headlights but he wasn’t sure which button to press, there were so many of them on the dashboard. He pulled over to the curb and stopped the car about fifty feet from an intersection. The intersection looked familiar to him although he didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t until he switched on the headlights and their beam caught the street sign and held it, that he knew where he was. Jacaranda Road, 300 block.
He felt a sudden and terrible pain in his head. He heard his own voice in his ears but he couldn’t tell whether it was a whisper or a scream.
“Ben! Louise! Come and find me, I’m not hiding. It’s not a game anymore. Help me. Come and take me home, Louise, don’t leave me in this bad place. You don’t know, nobody knows, how bad — dirty — dirty bad—”
At 8:30 the phone rang and Ben, who’d been sitting beside it for a long time, answered on the first ring.
“Hello.”
“Ben, this is Louise. Charlie was supposed to pick me up half an hour ago. He may have forgotten, so I thought I’d call and jog his memory a bit.”
“He’s not here.”
“Well, he’s probably on his way then. I’ll just go wait on the steps for him. It’s a nice night.”
“It’s cold.”
“No, it’s not,” Louise said, laughing. “You know how it is when you’re in love, Ben. All the weather is wonderful.”
“You’d better stay in the house, Louise. I don’t think he’s on his way over.”
“Why not? Is something the matter?”
“I’m not sure,” Ben said in his slow careful voice. “He came to the cafeteria at noon with some crazy — a far-fetched story about a strange woman trying to kill him with her car. I didn’t know how much of it, if any, to believe. He may have invented the whole thing as an excuse to buy a new car. You know Charlie, he can’t just go ahead and do something; he has to have a dozen reasons why, no matter how nutty some of them are. Anyway, he told me he was going to buy a new car after work.”
“He got off work three and a half hours ago. How long does it usually take him to buy a car?”
“Judging from past performance, I’d say five minutes. He sees one he likes the look of, kicks a couple of the tires, sounds the horn, and that’s it. It can be the worst old clunker in town but he buys it.”
“Then he should be home by now.”
“Yes.”
“Ben, I’m coming over.”
“What good will that do? It will simply mean two of us sitting around worrying instead of one. No, you stay where you are, Louise. Get interested in something. Read a book, wash your hair, call a girlfriend, anything.”
“I can’t. I won’t.”
“Look, Louise, I don’t want to be brutal about this, but waiting for Charlie is something you must learn to handle gracefully. You may be doing quite a bit of it. Ten chances to one, he’s O.K., he’s just gotten interested in something and—”
“I can’t afford to bet on it, even at those odds,” Louise said and hung up before he could argue any further.
She went down the hall toward her bedroom to pick up a coat. All the weather was wonderful, but sometimes it paid to carry a coat.
She walked quickly and quietly past the open door or the shoebox-sized dining room where her parents were still lingering over coffee and the evening paper, going line by line over the local news, the obituaries and divorces and marriages, the water connections and delinquent tax notices and building permits and real estate transfers. But she didn’t move quietly enough. No one could, she thought bitterly. Not even the stealthiest cat, not even if the carpet were velvet an inch thick.
“Louise?” her father called out. “Are you still here, Louise?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“I thought you were going out tonight.”
“I am. I’m just leaving now.”
“Without saying good-bye to your parents? Has this great romance of yours made you forget your manners? Come in here a minute.”
Louise went as far as the door. Her parents were seated side by side at the table with the newspaper spread out in front of them, like a pair of school children doing their homework together.
Mr. Lang rose to his feet and made a kind of half-bow in Louise’s direction. For as long as Louise could remember he had been doing this whenever she entered a room. But his politeness was too elaborate, as if, by treating her like a princess, he was actually calling attention to her commonness.
Louise stared at him, wondering how she could ever have been impressed by his silly posturings or affected by his small, obvious cruelties. She said nothing, knowing that he hated silence because his weapon was his tongue.
“I understood,” he said finally, “that this was the night your mother and I were to congratulate our prospective son-in-law. Am I to assume the happy occasion has been postponed?”
“Yes.”
“What a pity. I had looked forward to some of his stimulating conversation: yes, Mr. Lang; no, Mr. Lang—”
“Good night.”
“Wait a minute. I haven’t finished.”
“Yes, you have,” Louise said and walked down the hall and out the front door. For once, she was grateful for her father’s cruelty. It had saved her from trying to explain where Charlie was and why he hadn’t kept their date.
Ben must have been watching for her from the front window because as soon as she pulled up to the curb in front of the house he came out on the porch and down the steps.
To the question in her eyes he shook his head. Then, “You might as well go home, Louise.”
“No.”
“All right. But it’s silly to start driving around looking for him when I haven’t the slightest idea where he is.”
“I have,” she said quietly. “It’s just a feeling, a hunch. It may be miles off but it’s worth trying. We’ve got to find him, Ben. He needs us.”
“He needs us.” Ben got in the car and slammed the door shut. “Where have I heard that before? Charlie needs this, Charlie needs that, Charlie needs, period. Some day before I die, I’m going to have a need. Just once somebody’s going to say, Ben needs this or that. Just once— Oh, what the hell, forget it. I don’t really need anything.”
“I do.”
“What?”
“I need Charlie.”
“Then I’m sorry for you,” Ben said, striking his thigh with his fist. “I’m so sorry for you I could burst into tears. You’re a decent, intelligent young woman, you deserve a life. What you’re getting is a job.”
“Don’t waste any pity on me. I’m happy.”
“You’re happy even now, with Charlie missing and maybe in the kind of trouble only Charlie can get into?”
“He’s alive — you’d have been notified if he’d been killed in an accident or anything — and as long as Charlie’s alive, I’m happy.”
“I’m not,” he said bluntly. “In fact, there have been times, dozens, maybe hundreds of times, when I’ve thought the only solution for Charlie would be for him to step in front of a fast-moving truck. Before this is all over, you might be thinking the same thing.”