She'd been scared. As scared as she'd ever been. If it hadn't been for her quick thinking-the lie about her husband, the fictitious brother, cocktails for god's sake-who knew what might have happened? Of course, it could have been innocent-maybe they were just hikers, as they claimed-but that wasn't the feeling she got. She looked into that man's eyes-the tall one, the one with the hat-and knew that anything could happen.
She was thinking about that as she wound her way up the road to the Da Ros place, hurrying, a little annoyed at the thought of the burden she'd taken on when she'd jumped at the listing. Now it almost seemed like it was more trouble than it was worth. And tonight of all nights. It was almost seven, she hadn't been home yet, and she'd agreed to help Erna Jardine and Selda Cherrystone canvas the community on the wall issue at eight.
That was Jack's doing. He'd called her two days after Osbert had been killed, and she was still in a state of shock. To see her puppy taken like that, right before her eyes, and on top of everything else… it had been too much, one of the worst experiences of her life, maybe _the__ worst. And Jordan-he was just a baby and he had to see that? Dr. Reineger had prescribed a sedative and she'd wound up missing a day at the office, and Jordan had gone to his grandmother's for a few days-she just wouldn't let him stay in that house, she couldn't. She was sitting at her desk the next day, feeling woozy, as if her mind and body had been packed away in two separate drawers for the summer, when the phone rang.
It was Jack. “I heard about your little dog,” he said, “and I'm sorry.”
She felt herself choking up, the whole scene playing before her eyes for the thousandth time, that slinking vicious thing, the useless fence, and Osbert, poor Osbert, but she fought it back and managed to croak out a reply. “Thanks” was all she could say.
“It's a shame,” Jack said, “I know how you must feel,” and he went on in that ritualistic vein for a minute or two before he came to the point. “Listen, Kyra,” he said, “I know nothing's going to bring your dog back and I know you're hurting right now, but there is something you can do about it.” And then he'd gone into the wall business. He and Jack Cherrystone, Jim Shirley, Dom Flood and a few others had begun to see the wisdom in putting up a wall round the perimeter of the community, not only to prevent things like this and keep out the snakes and gophers and whatnot, but with an eye to the crime rate and the burglaries that had been hitting the community with some regularity now, and had she heard about Sunny DiMandia?
Kyra had cut in to say, “How high's the wall going to be, Jack? Fifteen feet? Twenty? The Great Wall of China? Because if eight feet of chain link won't keep them out, you're just wasting your time.”
“We're talking seven feet, Kyra,” he said, “all considerations of security, aesthetics and economics taken into account.” She could hear the hum of office machinery in the background, the ringing of a distant phone. His voice came back at her: “Cinder block, with a stucco finish in Navajo White. I know Delaney's opposed on principle-without even thinking the matter through-but it so happens I talked with the coyote expert at UCLA the other day-Werner Schnitter? — and he says stucco will do the trick. You see, and I don't want to make this any more painful for you than it already is, but if they can't actually see the dog or cat or whatever, there'd be no reason for them to try scaling the wall, you follow me?”
She did. And though she'd never have another dog again, never, she wanted those hateful sneaking puppy-killing things kept off her property no matter what it took. She still had a cat. And a son. What if they started attacking people next?
“Sure, Jack,” she said finally. “I'll help. Just tell me what to do.”
She started with Delaney that night after work. He'd fixed a salade niçoise for dinner, really put some effort into it, with chunks of fresh-seared tuna and artichoke hearts he'd marinated himself, but all she could do was pick at it. Without Jordan and Osbert around, the house was like a tomb. The late sun painted the wall over the table in a color that reminded her of nothing so much as chicken liver-chicken-liver pink-and she saw that the flowers in the vase on the counter had wilted. Beyond the windows, birds called cheerlessly to one another. She pushed her plate away and interrupted Delaney in the middle of a monologue on some little bird he'd seen on the fence, a monologue transparently intended to take her mind off Osbert, coyotes and the grimmer realities of nature. “Jack asked me to work on the wall thing,” she said.
Delaney was caught by surprise. He was in the middle of cutting a slice of the baguette he'd picked up at the French bakery in Woodland Hills, and the bread knife just stuck there in the crust like a saw caught in a tree. “What 'wall thing'?” he said, though she could see he knew perfectly well.
She watched the knife start up again and waited for the loaf to separate before she answered. “Jack wants to put a wall around the whole place, all of Arroyo Blanco. Seven feet tall, stucco over cinder block. To keep burglars out.” She paused and held his eyes, just as she did with a reluctant seller when she was bringing in a low bid. “And coyotes.”
“But that's crazy.” Delaney's eyes flared behind his lenses. His voice was high with excitement. “If chain link won't keep them out, how in god's name do you expect-?”
“They can't hunt what they can't see.” She threw her napkin down beside the plate. Tears started in her eyes. “That thing stalked Osbert, right through the mesh, as if it wasn't even there, and don't you try to tell me it didn't.,”
Delaney was waving the slice of bread like a flag of surrender. “I'm not. won't. And I'm sure there's some truth in that.” He drew in a breath. “Look, I'm as upset about this as you are, but let's be reasonable for a minute. The whole point of this place is to be close to nature, that's why we bought in here, that's why we picked the last house on the block, at the end of the cul-de-sac-”
Her voice was cold, metallic with anger. “Close to nature,” she spat back at him. “Look what good it did us. And for your information, we bought in here because it was a deal. Do you have any idea how much this house has appreciated since we bought it-even in this market?”
“All I'm saying is what's the sense of living up here if you can't see fifty feet beyond the windows-we might as well be living in a condo or something. I need to be able to just walk out the door and be in the hills, in the wild-I don't know if you noticed, but it's what I do, it's how I make my living. Christ, the damn fence is bad enough-and that fucking gate on Arroyo Blanco, you know I hate that, you know it.”
He set the bread down on his plate, untouched. “This isn't about coyotes, don't kid yourself. It's about Mexicans, it's about blacks. It's about exclusion, division, hate. You think Jack gives a damn about coyotes?”
She couldn't help herself. She was leaning forward now, belligerent, angry, channeling it all into this feckless naive unrealistic impossible man sitting across the table from her-he was the one, he was guilty, he was the big protector of the coyotes and the snakes and weasels and tarantulas and whatever in christ's name else was out there, and now he was trying to hide behind politics. “I don't ever,” she shouted, “want one of those things on my property again. I'd move first, that's what I'd do. Bulldoze the hills. Pave it over. The hell with nature. And politics too.”
“You're crazy,” he said, and his face was ugly.
“Me? That's a laugh. What do you think this is-some kind of nature preserve? This is a community, for your information, a place to raise kids and grow old-in an exclusive private highly desirable location. And what do you think's going to happen to property values if your filthy coyotes start attacking children-that's next, isn't it? Well, isn't it?”