rain and an early cloud-sodden twilight. She shook her head. ‘No. I stuck around till yesterday morning; I guess I was in shock. And Dad … Jack was so sweet, like he always is. He tried … tried to explain how they felt, but who wants explanations?’ She swung around to face me again, and even if she’d already done the bawling, tears weren’t far away. ‘Oh God, I know he loves me, I know they both do, so why the hell couldn’t they both keep their mouths shut?’
I understood her anger and her emotion, but plain old adult practicality made me ask, ‘Marisa, do they know where you are?’
‘No. And you mustn’t tell them. Don’t look like that, Will – please, please don’t tell them I’m here.’
‘They’ll be worried sick.’
‘That makes three of us.’ A flash of rebellion. Obviously prevarication was called for: ‘OK, I won’t tell them right now – which is what I ought to do.’
‘Not ever.’ She sounded like herself at eleven. It’s a strange age, seventeen, balanced on the seesaw of growing up.
I said, ‘You know that’s not fair.’
‘Was telling me fair?’
‘I don’t know. It was honest.’
‘Oh, honest … shit! Anyone can be honest, it’s so damn easy, and it’s a killer.’
Back went the seesaw. Where did she get that kind of knowledge? Honesty as killer – and in my experience it often is.
She turned away from the window which the wind was trying to turn inside out. ‘When they told me … it was kind of weird. My mind stopped, I mean it actually wouldn’t go forward and it wouldn’t go back.’
‘Like a clogged drain.’
‘Exactly. And then … I guess somebody poured in the Drano, and I began to think again, I saw what I had to do. I must know, Will, I must find out.’
That was understandable. Knowing probably wouldn’t matter much in the end, could be dismissed; not knowing mattered like hell and could never be dismissed. So that was why she had appeared out of the storm on my doorstep, and in a jangling state of nerves.
‘Just … Oh, just meet him. Once. Kind of … feel his genes in me, know what I mean?’
Yes. Difficult enough when you’re young to discover who and what you are without a great mystery, a black hole, hanging over your head. ‘And you think you’ll find him up here?’
‘I know it. I haven’t just sat around since Thursday, I’ve been Sherlocking.’
The doorbell rang. ‘Nick. I’ll get it.’ I thought she’d reacted a little too quickly, but put it down to her taut nerves; so I wasn’t prepared for her to step outside and close the door on me. I could hear the murmur of voices from the hall and wondered just what they were up to.
Suddenly I was feeling very sorry for my brother Jack. Sorry for Ruth too, of course, but somehow it seemed worse for him. We’re not close, we never have been: not even when we first came to the US together some twenty years ago, aged twenty-six and twenty-three respectively: the Adams brothers. It sounds like a singing duo or an ancient vaudeville act; actually we were a British director/writer team; we’d done pretty well in Europe but, like most young men, had our eyes fixed on the big time, i.e. Hollywood …
The front door opened again, the conference was over. Ushering him in she said, ‘This is Nick Deering. Nick, my … my not-uncle, Will Adams.’ And, quickly: ‘He says we can stay here.’
We all grew out of the stereotyped image long ago; well, not all now I come to think of it; there are still a lot of brutish old dinosaurs clumping around. Her best, and gay, friend was a big burly boy, your Sixth Grade, high-school football boy, with a dry, strong handshake. He wasn’t handsome, but there’s a clean young American look which does almost as well: benign brown eyes, neatly cut brown hair falling over the wide forehead in a fringe. And when he smiled the eyes smiled too, and that’s rare. But, I realized at once, he too was in a state of extreme nervous tension. Trying to rise above it he said, ‘Hi. Get the story?’
‘Some of it.’
‘Ballbreaker, ain’t it? You’re not going to call your brother?’
‘Not yet anyway.’ Carefully, I added, ‘Look, it may be none of my business, in which case you’ll tell me so – but why are you both jumping like junkies in need of a fix?’
They glanced at each other. Marisa said, ‘No reason really. I mean … it’s no big deal.’
Her best friend shook his head. ‘For Pete’s sake, we need help, why mess around? And what do you mean, no big deal? Someone tried to run us off the road, could’ve killed us.’
‘He was just smashed, he was nothing to do with it.’
Nick sighed. ‘Like I know I’m seventeen and you don’t, that’s the problem.’
She gave him a sweet smile. I could see she’d been telling the exact truth – her best friend; she could certainly have done worse. ‘You’re probably right, you usually are.’
‘So,’ I said, ‘is this where I ask, “What do you mean, ran you off the road, could have killed you?” Or do I just wait?’
Nick spread large hands. ‘We goofed.’
‘No,’ said Marisa, ‘I goofed.’ And to me, ‘It’s a long story, and it won’t make sense unless you hear it from the beginning.’
‘Then tell it from the beginning.’
‘Really?’
‘The night is young. When did you two last eat?’
‘Around noon.’
‘Right. You can talk while I cook. Fettucini OK?’
‘Marinara?’ Sophisticated Hollywood brat!
‘Sure. Clams, mussels, squid.’
‘Super!’
‘So come in the kitchen. Fix drinks. Mine’s a gin and French, and I don’t mean a Martini – half gin, half Noilly Prat, on the rocks.’
Why am I writing this story instead of going back to chapter nine as I ought? Because I resent people who try to kill me, and because it’s there – same for writers as it is for mountaineers.
Chance, the same implacable joker that motivated the bulldozer, led me by the nose off the highway and into the American wilderness. And for the benefit of my fellow-Europeans, let me add that leaving the highway in this neck of the woods doesn’t mean a stroll through the bluebells; the underbrush is full of nasty surprises like poison oak and poison ivy, a person can get hurt. Semi-human creatures also dwell there; they can cause you irreparable harm and won’t hesitate to do so if your interests, or those of your beautiful niece, conflict with theirs. They have no moral sense, money is their only morality, and you don’t beat them because they’re ten thousand times richer than you are. The law doesn’t beat them because it doesn’t want to
