Still, the silence was there. Sometimes that happened. He would be in a quiet room and the ambient noise would flicker, replaced by a distant, high-pitched hum that faded slowly into a new silence. He remembered listening to the whine of the air as a boy, back when his ears had been far more sensitive.
He instinctively patted his pocket and felt the green Trans.
His thoughts wandered as the traffic grew sparse and the freeway straight and monotonous. Someday, he mused, before all passion was spent, in this world of high-tech communications, his own final true love would call him and her voice would rise above the ambient noise of all the other women. That was Peter’s one supernatural quest now: the perfect woman, a beauty who watched him with cool amusement from behind his thoughts and memories, elusive and brazenly sexy.
Peter had met only one woman that came close to that impossible ideal, a model and sometime actress named Sascha Lauten. Buxom, smart, cheerfully supportive, Sascha had been sufficiently vulnerable and sad about her life to make his heart puddle. Phil had warned him about Sascha. ‘She sees right through you,’ he had said. ‘Your charms do not soothe her magnificent breasts.’ Sascha had ultimately turned down his proposal and married a skinny-assed salesman with bad skin. They now lived quietly in Compton.
He stuck his hand through the half-open window to feel the speed. Over the wind he sang, ‘I hate this crap, burn up the road, I hate this shit, burn up the ROAD.’
Peter crossed the Golden Gate Bridge at midnight and climbed the long hill into Marin before turning inland. Somehow, he missed a turn. Sitting at a gas station, he used the Trans to call Lydia. When she answered, her voice was like a little girl’s. She gave Peter the final directions to Phil’s house in Tiburon. ‘The place is filled with boxes,’ Lydia said. ‘God, was he a pack rat.’
Peter was tired. He thanked Lydia and closed the Trans. He had long wondered where Phil had stuck all the books and old magazines and movies that he had bought over the decades. Apparently, for some years Phil had been hauling his worldly goods north in the Grand Taiga, following through on a long-planned final escape from Los Angeles. And he had not told Peter about any of it.
The last few miles he followed a winding, dark road beneath a black sky dusted with ten thousand diamonds. Shadowy grassland and expensive houses flanked the road. Beyond lay more hunched hills. When he found the last turn, onto a culde-sac called Hidden Dreams Drive, he looked south and saw San Francisco lit up like a happy carnival on the far shore of the Bay.
The house cut three long, inky rectangles out of the starry sky between silhouettes of knobby, pruned-back trees. Peter drove up beside a new-style VW Beetle. As he set the parking brake, he saw Lydia sitting on a front porch swing, short, bobbed hair like a dark comma over her pale face. The orange bead of a cigarette dangled from her hand. She did not wave.
Jesus, Peter thought. The lot alone must be worth a million dollars. He stood on the gravel at the bottom of two wooden steps. ‘Nice night,’ he said.
‘I’m not staying,’ Lydia announced. She got up from the porch swing and stubbed the cigarette into a tuna can. Then she tossed the butt into the darkness. Peter jerked, thinking she might start a fire or something. But that was Lydia.
‘Should I go in?’ Peter said.
‘Up to you. He’d probably want you to,’ Lydia said dryly, ‘just to sort through his stuff. Last hands pawing what he wanted most on this Earth. He sure didn’t love his ladies worth a damn.’
Peter did not rise to the bait. Lydia stretched. At forty-eight, she still had a pruny grace. Low body-fat since youth – and wrinkles from smoking – had diminished her other native charms, but the grace remained.
Peter hauled his one suitcase onto the porch. She handed over three keys on a piece of dirty twine. The twine was tied to a small piece of finger-oiled driftwood. The driftwood dangled below his hand, swinging one way, then another.
‘The medical examiner found my address in Phil’s little black book,’ Lydia said. ‘Some cops came to visit me. They said he had been dead for a couple of days.’ She opened the screen door for him. ‘Did you know he had this place?’
Peter shook his head and entered the dark hallway. He set down his suitcase.
‘He sure as hell didn’t tell me,’ Lydia went on. ‘It didn’t turn up on the divorce settlement. What do you think it’s worth?’
‘I have no idea,’ Peter said.
‘Ancient history,’ Lydia said. ‘Anyway, I got him into a crematorium in Oakland. I think maybe the mailman found him. He had been dead for a few days.’
‘You said that,’ Peter said, grimacing.
‘The mortuary will bring him back tomorrow. Hand delivery. We’ll hold the wake in the back yard. I’ve invited some folks who knew Phil. And some of my friends. For backup.’
‘When did you get up here?’ Peter asked.
‘This morning. I left everything the way I found it. Peter, I hope you understood him. I hope somebody understood Phil. I sure didn’t.’
Peter did not know what to say to that.
‘You know, despite everything, he was the sweetest guy I ever met,’ Lydia said. She poked Peter in the chest. ‘And that includes you. See you tomorrow around one. If they deliver Phil early, just put him on the mantel over the fireplace. And, oh …’ She held out her hand. ‘I have no idea where he kept his money. I paid for everything. Donations cheerfully accepted.’
Peter removed his wallet. He pulled out the five hundred dollars Michelle had given him in Malibu. He was about to peel off several of the bills when Lydia dipped her hand with serpentine grace and snatched the whole wad.
She counted it quickly. ‘That doesn’t cover even half the cost,’ she said. She patted his bearded cheek. ‘But thanks.’ She walked across the gravel to the VW, her bony, denimed hips cycling a sideways figure 8.
The car vanished into the dark beneath the stars.
That left Peter with ten dollars, not enough to pay for the gas to get home.
The house was quiet and still. Outside, not a breath of air moved. A hallway beyond the alcove led past the living room, a bathroom, and the kitchen, to three rooms at the back.
He switched on the lights in the alcove and the hall and stepped around two neatly taped boxes Magic-markered with names and dates: Unknown Worlds 1940-43, Startling Mystery 1950-56. Hand-made pine shelves filled with paperback mysteries and science fiction covered the wall behind the door, arched over the door, around the corner, and into the living room, where more shelves framed the wide front window. Beneath window, records and old laser discs occupied a single shelf. He could make out still more shelves marching back into the shadows of a dining room, and stacked boxes where a table might have been.
In the living room, a single threadbare couch faced
