He spat in the sink, and rinsed out his mouth with cold tap water scooped up in his hand because the bathroom glass was in the other room, sticky with liqueur. He had closed the bathroom door when he had come in here, and now he paused before opening it again; and after a moment of indecision he picked up his jeans and pulled them on and zipped the fly before he turned the damp doorknob and stepped out onto the bedroom carpet.
And he blinked in surprise—Plumtree was sitting up in bed, anxiously holding the sheet up to her chin.
Her shoulders slumped when she saw him. “Oh, you, Scant?” she wailed. “Oh, why? I told you I’d go to bed with you, if you’d wait! I was sure it was going to be a stranger that would walk out of that bathroom! I was just waiting to see what sort of—creep!—it would be, so I’d know who to give this flop to! Oh, Sid—Tiffany?” She buried her face in the sheet, and her muffled voice went on, “I loved you! And I thought you loved me.”
Cochran could feel his face get instantly hot, and at the same time chilly with evaporating sweat, for he suddenly had to fully admit to himself that what he was about to say was a lie. “Janis,” he said, too shrilly, “I thought it was you! Are you saying that it wasn’t you? Good God, I’m sorry, how was I—”
“You stole—me! It’s as if you had sex with me while I was knocked out, unconscious, like when I nearly got raped in the van behind that bar in Oakland. At least that guy didn’t … have me.” She shook her head furiously. “How could I ever give myself to you now?”
“Janis, it was a, a horrible mistake, I swear I really thought we—you were conscious, for God’s sake—we were both drunk—”
“I said ‘as if.’ You knew. Oh, God, I’ve lost you.” She lifted her tear-streaked face and stared at him; then she looked down at the sheet over her body, and flexed her legs. Finally she smacked her lips. “Oh, you horny son-of-a-bitch. Do you have any idea how badly you’ve hurt her? She was in love with you, you asshole!”
“Oh, I know, Cody,” he said miserably. “But goddammit, we were both drunk, and you do all look exactly alike!”
Cody was scowling at him with evident disgust. “You’re saying you didn’t know it was Tiffany? Didn’t even suspect it might be? Are you honestly telling me that?”
“I—” He sighed. “No.” He lifted his shirt from the chair and slid his numb, leaden arms through the sleeves. “No, I guess not—not the didn’t even suspect part, anyway, I guess. You’re right—she’s right—I wasn’t thinking about who it was, I was just … what you said.” He could feel the fabric of the shirt clinging to his chest already. “Jesus, Cody, I’m not being flippant, and I am sorry. You all deserved way more … respect? consideration? … from me. God, what can I—”
“Try getting out of here, so I can get dressed.”
“Okay. Of course.” He gave her a fragile smile as he buttoned the shirt. “I’m asking for an insult here, and I deserve it—but I’ve got to say I hope you won’t leave. I hope you’ll stay, somehow.” He stepped toward the hallway door. “I’ll be in the kitchen, making some coffee.”
At least she didn’t say anything as he walked out.
At the kitchen sink he filled the glass coffeepot with water and poured it into the back of the coffee machine; the action reminded him of that Mavranos guy pouring beer down the back of the Star Motel TV set, and he remembered that the room had been on Nina’s credit card. Five nights, plus a wrecked TV set. God knew what it would cost.
As he spooned ground coffee into the filter he wondered who Tiffany might be, how complete a person—whether she was anything more than the Plumtree sex function, with no character details besides the sketched-in tastes for More cigarettes and Southern Comfort. Maybe she had been provided with one or two other props he hadn’t discovered—some surface preferences in movies, or food. The ideal girlfriend, some sophomoric types would probably say with a snigger. He wondered if he had ever been shallow enough to say something like that. Well, he’d been shallow enough to act on it, today, which had to be worse.
He slid the filter funnel into the coffee machine and clicked it on and opened the cabinet to snag down a couple of cups. His hands were still shaking. Sugar was on the table, and he opened the refrigerator and took out a half-full carton of milk.
Plumtree was like a family of sisters—with a scary, seldom-seen father, and a crazy mother. Cochran had been initially attracted to the nice sister, and now he had gone to bed with the nymphomaniac one; but the one he had come to rely on and even admire was the … the tough one.
He tweaked open the milk carton and sniffed the contents. The weeks-old milk smelled cheesy, and he sighed and poured it down the sink. There was a jar of Cremora in the cabinet, he recalled.
The coffee machine had just started to sputteringly exhale air when Plumtree stepped into the kitchen from the hall. She was wearing her jeans and white blouse again, though she was still barefoot, and she was tugging one of Nina’s hairbrushes through the disordered blond thatch of her hair.
“Coffee sounds good,” she said. “I think spiking it would be a bad idea.”
“I think we’ve had enough to drink for today,” Cochran agreed cautiously.
“Well,” she said, pulling out one of the chairs at the kitchen table and sitting down heavily, “as for the whole day, I don’t know. I kind of picture a glass or two of something at around sundown.” When Cochran had set a cup of steaming coffee in front of her, she added, “Bring that milk over here.”
“It’s empty,” he said, turning back to the cabinet. “I’ve got Cremora, though.”
“Cremora,” she echoed, stirring sugar into the coffee. “What do you keep the milk carton around for?”
“I just now poured it out, it was bad.” He glanced at the milk carton, thinking he might save it for the garden. “At the vineyard we put half-gallon milk cartons around young vines,” he added absently as he poured his own cup. “It keeps the rabbits from getting at them, and prevents sunburn, and makes the shoots grow straight, up toward the light at the top.” He carried his cup to the table and sat down across from her, and stared out the window at the roof of the greenhouse as he sipped it. “They’ll be putting out the new seedlings soon, at Pace, in the couple of acres down by the highway.” He used the Italian pronunciation for the vineyard name, pah-chay.
At last he looked at her. Plumtree seemed to be listening, and so he let himself go on about this neutral topic. “And,” he said, “the malolactic fermentation will be starting up soon in the casks of last year’s wine—that’s a second fermentation that happens at about the same time that the new year’s leaves are budding out, as if they’re in communication; it’s bacteria, rather than yeast, and it converts the malic acid to lactic acid, which is softer on the tongue. You want it to happen, in the Zinfandels and the Pinot Noirs.” He smiled faintly, thinking about the vineyard. “When I left for Paris, the grape leaves were all in fall colors—you should see it. The Petite Sirah leaves turn purple, the Chardonnays are gold, and the Cabernet Sauvignon leaves go red as blood.”
“You miss the work,” said Plumtree. “Do you make good wine there?”
“Yeah, we do, actually. These last few years we’ve been having ideal marine-influence weather, and we’re picking later in the season, and our ’92 and ’93 Zinfandels, not bottled yet, are already showing perfect old-viney fruit, with tannin like velvet.” He shrugged self-consciously. “But, hell, since 1990, everybody in California’s been making good wines, it seems like. Not just the names you’ve heard of, like Ridge and Mondavi, but Rochioli in the Russian River Valley and Joel Peterson’s Ravenswood in Sonoma; everybody’s producing spectacular harvests and vintages, in spite of the phylloxera bugs. It’s almost as if the world-scale has to stay balanced—Bordeaux, all of Europe, in fact, have been getting way too much rain in these growing seasons, and they’ve been consistently mediocre since ’90.”
“Well, Scott Crane became king in 1990. I bet ’95 will be a terrible year.”
“That
Kootie kid might be a good king. Maybe we’ll be able to tell if he’s okay, by how the wine turns out.”
Plumtree tasted the coffee and grimaced. “Did your wife like wine? Just because I’m talking to you doesn’t mean I’ve stopped thinking you’re a heartless dickhead.”
He gave her a constricted nod to show that he understood. “Nina,” he said, clearing his throat. “Actually, she seemed to resent the big, vigorous California wines—”
Plumtree’s mouth opened. “Why should the god favor this coast on the wrong side of the world? Where none of the Appellation Controlee commandments are even being observed! Here you are free to mechanically irrigate, if no rain comes! And you may produce … three, four, six tons of grapes per acre, with no penalty! In the Médoc our vandangeurs hold to the god’s old laws, making no more than thirty-five hectoliters of wine from each hectare of land, and we nurture the sacred old Cabernet Sauvignon and supplicate the god to make it into his forgiving blood, as he did in the centuries before the Revolution—and for our pains we scarcely get a wine that’s fit to drink with dinner! It’s rejected like Cain’s sacrifice. Here in barbaric California the desecrated Cabernet is turned into wines like, like cathedrals and Bach concertos, and it’s not even the wine he blesses—he consecrates this unpedigreed upstart interloper Zinfandel.”
Cochran had stopped breathing, for this was Nina’s voice. He could see his shirt collar twitching with his heartbeat, and he hardly dared to move, fearing that any motion might startle her ghost away.
He realized that he should speak. “Uh, not always,” he said in a quiet, placating tone, peripherally reminded of poor Thutmose with his rusty grail full of Zinfandel that he craved to have transformed into the pagadebiti. “Most Zinfandel is just red wine.”
“You called me,” said Nina’s voice. She looked around at her own kitchen. “When I was on the lit marveil, the jumping bed, in the room with all the people in it.” She shifted her chair back from the table and peered out the window at the midday glare on the greenhouse roof. “When was that?”
Cochran remembered having called Nina! when Plumtree’s mother had been controlling her body, right after the pre-dawn earthquake. “That was this morning, early,” he said steadily. He had been ashamed of calling her name, immediately after he’d done it, and he didn’t want to look squarely at the action now. “I didn’t think you heard me.”
“I had a long way to come, to answer.” She was frowning thoughtfully, and Cochran felt goose bumps rise on his forearms as he recognized the top-of-the-nose crease of Nina’s characteristic frown, on Plumtree’s sunburned face. “I was in a—unless it was a dream?—a bar, with a lot of very drunk people.” She visibly relaxed, and smiled at him. “But I’m home now.”
This isn’t her, he told himself as his heart hammered behind his ribs, it’s just her ghost. Wherever the real Nina is—her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl—she has no part in this. Still, this is a ghost of her, this is her ghost. Could she stay? Sleep in the bed, dampen the toothbrush? She was building a stone fountain in the garden, when she died; could she finish building it now?
But there was something wrong—something subtly but witheringly grotesque—about the idea of dead-reflex, mimic hands finishing the living woman’s interrupted garden work.
And would the unborn baby’s ghost come back, sobbing inconsolably in the darkness late some night?
And could he do this to Cody?
He lifted his coffee cup and stood up and crossed to the sink, pausing by the refrigerator to pry off of its door one of the little flat promotion-giveaway magnets stamped to look like a miniature bottle of Pace Zinfandel. “I’ve decided to have the mark on the back of my right hand removed,” he said over his shoulder as he dumped the half-cup of lukewarm coffee into the sink. He was speaking carefully. “Laser surgery, get it done in a couple of out-patient sessions.”
“Ce n’est pas possible!” she exclaimed, and he heard Plumtree’s shoes scuff on the floor as she stood up. “It is your Androcles mark! The lion owed Androcles an obligation after Androcles merely pulled the thorn from the lion’s paw—but you at some time put out your hand to injury to save the god! I’ve never spoken of it; but the mark is for only the god to take away, as it was for him to bestow it. I would never have—I would not have your child, if its father were not marked by him. My family didn’t send me here simply to—” She gripped his shoulder with Plumtree’s strong hand. “Tell me you won’t do it, Scant.”
“Okay,” he said gently. “Sorry. I won’t do it.”
He filled the coffee cup with cold tap water and carried it back to the table. “Sit down,” he told her, placing the cup of tap water on the table between them and stirring it with the forefinger of his right hand. After she had resumed her seat, he asked, “What … happened, on New Year’s Day?” He touched his forehead with his wet fingertip. Then he took the cassette from the phone-answering machine out of his shirt pocket.
“In the morning, at dawn,” said Nina’s voice with Plumtree’s lips. “I thought it might be him again, this morning, when you called me on the leaping bed. I was thrown awake at dawn on New Year’s Day, and I knew he was calling me, from outside the house. My … I was married to him, through you. And he was freed that morning, when the earth moved and the trees were all knocked down. I wrapped myself in a bedsheet, and tied ivy in my hair, and I ran out to meet him, down the backyard path to the highway. And I—did?—it was loud, and it hurt—but I knew that was how he would come.” She was staring into the clear water in the cup, and she sighed deeply.
Cochran felt empty. “What’s your name?” he asked, in a voice that he tried to keep from being as flat as a dial-tone.
Slowly, he slid the little bottle-shaped magnet back and forth over the cassette.
“Nina Gestin Leon. Ariachne.” Plumtree’s blue eyes met his. “I see two of you, Scant. I died that morning, it seems to me now. Didn’t I?”
“Yes, Nina.” Fighting to conceal the aching bitterness in his throat, he said hoarsely, “You died that morning. I flew your ashes back to the Bas Medoc, to Queyrac, and I talked to your mother and father. We were all very sorry that you were gone, none sorrier than me. I loved you very much.” He pushed the erased tape away, until he felt it tap against the coffee cup.
She shivered visibly, and blinked away tears. “Where do I go now?”
Her peace is the important thing here, he told himself wonderingly, not your betrayed love, not your pride. Let her rest in what peace there is to be had. “To your real husband at last, not just to a symbol anymore.” He couldn’t tell if the quaver in his voice was from rage or grief. “I imagine you’ll find the god … in the garden.”
The frown unkinked from Plumtree’s forehead, leaving her sunburned face expressionless; and Cochran closed his eyes and slowly lowered his face into his hands. He was panting, his breath catching in his throat each time he inhaled, and when he felt hot tears in his palm he realized that he was weeping.
He heard the lifeless voice of Valorie: “O he is even in my mistress’ case, just in her case!” A cold finger touched his cheek. “Stand up, stand up! Stand an you be a man.”
He raised his head and dragged his shirtsleeve across his wet eyes. And then it was recognizably Cody who sat across from him now, blinking at him in bewildered sympathy.
“Sid,” she said. “There’s a car pulling into your driveway.”
He pushed his chair back and stood up. He had left his revolver in the bedroom, and he started down the hall—but then, in the moment before the engine in the driveway was switched off, he recognized the sound of the rumbling exhaust.
He padded barefoot to the front door and squinted through the peephole.
The old Suburban in his driveway was bright blood red. An aura like heat waves was shimmering around it for a distance of about a foot, and the green box hedge on the far side of the driveway shone a brighter green through the aura band.
Pete and Angelica Sullivan were climbi
ng out on this side, and he could see Arky Mavranos getting out from the driver’s side. Kootie’s head was visible in the back seat, and there was no one else with them.
Cochran unlocked the door and pulled it open, and the ocean-scented breeze was chilly on his wet face.
Pete and Angelica were helping Kootie step down from the back seat, but Mavranos plodded around the front of the truck and up the cobblestone walkway.
“Congratulations,” Mavranos said from the bottom of the porch steps. “You’ve got four houseguests.” He looked over Cochran’s shoulder and smiled tightly, and Cochran realized that Cody must have followed him to the door. “It looks like the trick can still be done—somehow—on new terms that no one’s got a clue about.” His smile broadened, baring his white teeth. “I hope you’re still feeling up for it, girl.”
“Oh, shut up, Arky,” Cody said. She stepped past Cochran, out onto the porch. “Is Kootie hurt?”
“Somebody shot him,” said Mavranos. “Probably your psycho doctor. But the boy’s apparently gonna be okay.”
Cody gave a hiss of concern and hurried down the steps, past Mavranos, to help Pete and Angelica.
In Cochran’s living room Angelica stitched up Kootie’s wound with dental floss from a freshly opened box, Pete kneeling alongside to hand her scissors and cotton, while Mavranos paced back and forth at the front window with his revolver in his hand, watching the road. Cochran and Plumtree retreated into the kitchen, where they threw together in a stockpot a big stew of canned clam chowder, crabmeat, chopped green onions, cheap Fume Blanc and curry powder. When it was hot, the aroma apparently convinced everyone that the late breakfast at Seafood Bohemia hadn’t been adequate, and in half an hour all of them, even Mavranos, were sitting around Cochran’s dining-room table mopping the last of the makeshift chowder out of their soup bowls with stale sourdough bread. By unspoken common consent they were all drinking Pellegrino mineral water.