Hard Rain (3 page)

Bao Dai stayed in the garage. After a while, the woman came out alone. Now she had a frown line between her dark eyes. She drove away in her car.

The sky grew darker. The glare remained. When it was fully night, not black night, but a pink and orange, starless night, Bao Dai silently opened the garage door and silently moved toward the house.

4

Jessie Shapiro was in a bad mood. At a glance, anyone would have seen that from the way she was standing in her doorway, arms crossed. But no one saw. The street was deserted.

Jessie Shapiro's watch said 3:30. The colon dividing hours from minutes flashed every second to remind her that time marched on. Flash, flash, flash. She didn't need reminding.

3:31. Jessie looked down Idaho, anticipating the sight of a blue BMW going too fast, a fair-haired man behind the wheel and little girl beside him. But there was no BMW. No fair-haired man. No little girl.

No cars at all. Too cold for the beach, too early for going out. The massed boredom of fifteen million people was almost palpable. Soon they'd have to shop, but for now the traffic hum was no louder than beehives at a safe distance. The sky was the color of tin, and the sun hung at a strange low angle, small as a softball and drab white. Mid-November in L.A. Sunday afternoon.

3:33. That made Pat thirty-three minutes late. Kate was due at the birthday party at 4:00. Pat knew this. Jessie had told him when she dropped Kate off Friday afternoon. Twice. Coming and going. The second time he'd gotten that look in his eye, the bugged teenager look, and said: “How many times are you going to tell me?”

“Till I get some acknowledgment,” she'd wanted to say. But there was no point fighting with him now. Fighting was for the married. Divorce was peace.

3:40. A mother went by, pushing a stroller. The mother was cracking her gum; her Walkman was turned up so loud Jessie could identify the song: “Sometimes When We Touch.” The baby had a runny nose; he looked like Buddy Hackett. They were the only signs of life.

“Damn,” Jessie said, going into the house and closing the door harder than she had to. The house shook. She was strong. It was weak: small, pretty and frail, like an aging belle with osteoporosis. Jessie had drawn up plans to rebuild it from the bottom up. All she was waiting for were money and time.

She went inside, under the only object of value she owned, a little Calder mobile that she'd taken as payment from a client, past a pile of tennis equipment, hers and Kate's, and into the kitchen. There was no point in calling Pat: he'd told her that they were going sailing for the weekend and that he'd bring Kate back directly from the marina. Jessie picked up the phone and dialed his number anyway. “Hi,” said a woman's voice she didn't recognize and didn't like. “No one's here right now, but just leave a message and we'll buzz you back. Promise.”

“Jesus,” Jessie said, putting down the phone, too, a little harder than she had to. Doubts about letting Kate spend every second weekend with her father popped up in her brain. She forced them down with the usual arguments—Kate liked spending time with Pat, a girl needs a father, what possible harm could come of it? Besides, she'd agreed in writing to the visits when she'd signed the divorce agreement, a document as important to their lives as the Constitution, and just as difficult to amend.

She went back to the doorway, looked down Idaho. “Damn.” The party was in Beverly Hills. It would take at least half an hour to get there. She'd hoped to squeeze in a few hours of work. Instead she was standing in the doorway. In a bad mood.

3:50.

The phone rang. Jessie ran in and answered it.

“Hi, Jessie. It's Philip.”

“Hi.”

“Don't sound so excited.”

“Sorry, Philip. I just thought it was someone else.”

“Oh?”

“Pat, I mean,” she said with impatience she hadn't meant for Philip. “He's late bringing Kate back.” Now she was complaining to him; stop it, she told herself. “What's up?”

“It's finished.”

“What?”

“‘Valley Nocturne.'”

Jessie heard a car parking in front of the house. “That's good. Listen, Philip, I—”

“When can you come and see it? We'll crack open a little something and—”

“Well, I'm not—”

“How about tonight? I'd really like—”

“I don't think tonight. Listen, I'll call you back, okay? I think there's someone at the door.”

“But—”

Jessie hung up and went to the door. No one was there. The car belonged to the woman who lived across the street. Jessie caught a glimpse of her going into the house with her son, who carried a stuffed panda bigger than he was. Every week he returned with another trophy from the land of fathers. Jessie had a vision of children all over Southern California being shuttled back to their mothers: boosting gasoline sales, driving toy company stocks higher. There were probably studies that proved divorce was good for the economy.

“Shit.” She thought of calling the marina, but she had no idea whose boat they'd gone out on. Pat knew a lot of people who'd grown nautical in the past few years. She dialed his number again. She had no need to look it up—the phone had once been in her name; the house in Venice had belonged to the two of them. “Hi,” said the voice of the woman she didn't know and didn't like. “No one's here right now, but just leave a message and we'll buzz you back. Promise.” A word she disliked drifted into her mind. Bimbo. She banished it.

Was it possible Pat was at home, just not answering the phone for some reason? Jessie tried to think of a reason and couldn't, but went outside anyway. Passing the hall table, she saw the birthday present, a pen that wrote in twelve colors, chosen and wrapped by Kate before she left. Jessie took it with her.

She got into her car, a five-year-old American model that had been recalled three times, and drove south to Venice. The house was a white Spanish L with a red tile roof; the street, a dead end half a block from the beach. Every time she visited, the neighborhood seemed a little seedier. Today two men smoking joints were roller-skating toward the boardwalk. They eyed her without breaking stride and wheeled around the corner. A man with a bottle in a paper bag was coming the other way. Jessie stopped in front of the house. The BMW wasn't in the driveway. She got out of the car and looked in the garage. Empty. Jessie had a house key, but she didn't bother going in: two rolled-up newspapers lay on the stoop.

Jessie returned to her car. The knuckles of her hands, gripping the wheel as she sat there, turned white. She folded her hands in her lap. Perhaps, she thought, Pat had realized he was late and tried to make up for it by taking Kate right to the party. That didn't sound like Pat, but Jessie turned the car around and drove east. All her other ideas began with an accident at sea.

There were no joint-smoking roller skaters in the birthday girl's neighborhood. She lived on an estate behind a ten-foot wall. The only person in sight was the guard at the gate. He wore a well-tailored black uniform and looked like a movie SS man, minus insignia. Jessie rolled down her window. “I'm looking for my daughter—she was invited to Cameo's party, but there's been a mix-up and her father might have brought her.”

The SS man didn't open the gate. Instead he consulted a clipboard. “What's your daughter's name?”

Jessie told him.

“She's on the list, all right, but she hasn't come yet. And the party's almost over.”

“Maybe he's called. I'd like to go in and ask Cameo's parents.”

“That won't be possible. They're cruising in the Solomons.” He ran his eyes over Jessie's car. Maybe he was worried that Solomon Island references would be lost on the owner of a car like hers.

“Then—”

“I'll let you speak to Miss Simms. She's in charge of the party.” He opened the gate.

Jessie followed a smooth, winding drive, lined on both sides with pink hibiscus. Ahead glittered a high-tech pleasure dome, built on a hill. The birthday party was taking place at the bottom of the hill, where a little state fair had been put up for the children. There was a midway with games and a fortune teller, clowns, jugglers and a ferris wheel. But none of the children were playing in the midway; the hired help had it to themselves.

Two girls sat in the bottom chair of the unmoving ferris wheel. They both had lank blond hair and high cheekbones. Jessie approached them.

“Cannes sucks,” said one.

“Paris is worse,” replied the other.

“Excuse me,” Jessie said. “I'm looking for my daughter.”

They looked up. Jessie could feel socioeconomic sensors scanning her surface. “What's her name?” asked one.

“Kate Shapiro.”

The girls shook their heads.

“Or you might know her as Kate Rodney. Or Rodney-Shapiro,” Jessie added with a smile.

The humor passed them by. “Is she the one with the frizzy hair? Like yours?”

“That's right. Just like mine.”

Something in her tone made the girl's eyes shift down for a moment. “Haven't seen her.”

Most of the children were gathered around a pool in the distance. When Jessie got there, two Mexican waiters were setting a pink cake on a long table. They could have used some help: the cake was eleven tiers high; eleven silver candles burned on the top. One of the clowns played “Happy Birthday” on an accordion, but no one sang except the waiters and a tall, thin woman with an English accent.

“Come now, Cameo,” said the Englishwoman. “Make a wish and blow out the candles.”

The birthday girl reclined in a chaise longue, a fruit punch at her elbow. She wore Vuarnet sunglasses and a cap that read Bora Bora Golf and Country Club. “I'm tired, Miss Simms,” she said. “You do it.”

The Englishwoman climbed on a chair, made a wish and blew out the candles in one breath. The clowns clapped with delight and stamped their floppy feet. Their eyes were very tired. Jessie thought she recognized one of them from a doughnut commercial on TV.

The Englishwoman began to cut the cake. A boy skimmed paper plates into the pool. “I've got the Mr. Mister video that's coming out next month,” said Cameo. “Anyone want to see it?”

The children rose and straggled up the long hill toward the house. The Englishwoman stopped cutting the cake. “Hector,” she said, “put the cake in the cold storage room.”

The waiters picked up the cake and carried it away.

“Miss Simms?” Jessie said.

“Yes?” The Englishwoman, still standing on the chair, looked down. Her thoughts were far away.

“I'm Jessie Shapiro. I'm looking for my daughter Kate. Has she been here?”

“Kate?” said Miss Simms, brightening. She climbed down. “What a lovely child. So—” She began to say something, then censored whatever it was. “No,” she said. “Kate hasn't been here.” Miss Simms raised an eyebrow.

“Did her father call, by any chance? I think there's been a mix-up.”

“Not to my knowledge.” Miss Simms sat at the table, elbowed aside a stack of presents, all neatly wrapped in the paper of famous Rodeo Drive shops, and dialed a portable phone. “Mrs. Sanchez,” she said. “Would you read me the log, please?”

While Miss Simms listened to Mrs. Sanchez, she opened a leather folder, took out some thick deckle-edged stationery and began to write. Jessie read the words upside down.

“Dear Missy, Thank you for the lovely gift. I hope you had a good time at my party. Thanks very much for coming. Your friend—” She left a space at the bottom for Cameo to sign.

Miss Simms hung up the phone. “Sorry,” she said. “No call.”

Jessie realized she was biting her lip, stopped herself. Miss Simms was watching her. Jessie let her breath out with a sigh. “Christ,” she said.

“Yes,” said Miss Simms, taking out another piece of paper. “Dear Hilary,” she wrote.

Jessie got into her car and drove to the gate. The SS man opened it and ticked her off the clipboard. Jessie turned into the road, only then noticing that she still had the gift for Cameo.

She drove home. Traffic was suddenly very heavy, as though everyone were practicing for rush hour. Jessie switched on the radio. She heard a commercial for Levi's. It sounded just like a lot of commercials, except for the ringing guitar line. She recognized the style at once: Pat. He was very good: only by choice did he remain a studio musician. She switched him off.

It was night by the time Jessie got home. She hurried up the walk, then saw that the house was dark, and slowed down. But as she went inside she still called, “Kate? Kate?” There was no answer.

She called Pat's number. “Hi. No one's—” She called the marina. There had been no reports of overdue or missing boats.

Jessie went downstairs to her workroom. She turned on the powerful overhead light. On one side of the room lay a jumble of bicycles, skis, camping equipment. On the other was the big table. Orpheus and Eurydice lay on it, sick with craquelure. Jessie studied them for a moment; Mrs. Stieffler wasn't going to be happy.

She sat by the phone and started looking up Pat's friends in her address book. Almost all of them had been erased since the divorce. Now, after five years, only Norman Wine was left. He'd once been Pat's manager. Jessie supposed that she hadn't erased him because he'd been the only one of all Pat's friends she'd really liked. She dialed his number.

“Norman Wine Productions,” a woman said. A trumpeter played scales in the background.

“Norman Wine please.”

“Mr. Wine is not here right now.”

“Oh.”

The woman was silent for a moment. Then she said. “If it's important, I can transfer your call through the marine operator.”

“The marine operator?”

“Yes.”

“It's important.”

“Your name?”

Jessie told her, then waited; something clicked and the trumpeter was gone. Jessie heard more clicks, a roar like a typhoon, and then Norman was saying, “Hey, this is a nice surprise.” He could have been in the next room. “Over,” he added. “You have to say over. Over.”