Wendy Hornsby - Midnight Baby

“Sure, Guido.”

“And that brass iguana you picked up when we were in Honduras?”

“Sure, Guido.”

He continued with his wants list all the way down the hill.

I opened the car door and leaned toward him to kiss his cheek. He started to meet me, but then he suddenly drew back, his face bright as if the flash had exploded.

“I’ve got it.” He grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a wet smooch full on the lips. “It started coming to me as soon as you said ‘Mike.’ I know why you seem different.”

“Dare I ask?”

“You got laid. After months of celibacy, Maggie MacGowen finally got laid.”

“Jesus Christ, Guido.” I pulled away from him and climbed into the car.

He held the door so that I couldn’t shut it. He was positively bubbly. “That’s it. I know it is. So you gotta tell me about it, Mag. This is major. I mean, I figure Mike probably joined the police sometime early sexual revolution: post-Pill, pre-herpes and pre-AIDS. We all know what those guys did. What’s it like to hop into the sack with a guy who must have fucked his way through half of the female population of L.A.?”

I turned on the engine, slipped it into drive, and eased off the brake. The car started to roll, but Guido still clung to the open door.

“Shit, think about it,” he said, jogging now. “L.A.‘s like the third-largest city in the country. What’s that, like the twelfth-largest city in the world or something? That’s a lot of tutors. The things he must have learned how to do. God, I hope you kids are being careful.”

“Close the door, Guido,” I said. My toe tapped the accelerator. The car leaped forward, forcing Guido to drop back. I reached for the door and slammed it just as I turned out of his drive and onto the twisty street below. Through the rustle of eucalyptus, I heard him yell:

“Way to go, Maggie.”

Just for academic reasons, I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror. I seemed no different. It was just me, with mussed hair. And roses in my cheeks.

The canyon below Guido’s house was dappled with patches of deep shade and bright sun. The sky above was the hard, artificial blue of a Beverly Hills swimming pool. A day of rare beauty. To waste any part of it slogging along a grimy freeway seemed sacrilege. I thought about finding a place to pull over and go for a walk down to the narrow creek that ran along the canyon bottom, breathe some real air, scuff the dry earth, clear my mind.

Watching Pisces over and over, hearing her voice, hearing my voice talking to her, had left me feeling haunted. Like spending the morning with a ghost. I peered again into the darkness at the bottom of the canyon and kept moving along.

I took the most direct route south, skirting along the blighted eastern fringe rather than traveling down the more genteel Westside. Not that it mattered; from the freeway, all neighborhoods look more or less the same.

When the freeway ended, I followed the signs toward Long Beach. As soon as I crossed the bridge over the cement gash labeled the San Gabriel River, the air freshened and the sky was clearer than it had been downtown. The ocean was only two or three miles farther on. I could see it on the left, a flash along the horizon.

The first public telephone I spotted was at a bus stop in front of the large state university. Parking was by permit only. So I stopped in the bus zone and left the motor running while I got out to use the directory attached to the phone.

The night before, Dennis, the jeweler, had told us that the Ramsdales were part of the yacht-club set. I wrote down the listed address for the yacht club, then flipped to the M’s.

There were two listings under Metrano: George and Leslie, and Amy Elizabeth. Both gave telephone numbers only, no address.

Out of curiosity, I called Amy’s number first.

A recording kicked on after the first ring. A soft, woman’s voice, sounding very nervous, said, “Thank you for calling the Amy Elizabeth Metrano Search Foundation. Correspondence may be mailed to…” A post office box was given. “Messages are checked regularly. If you have any information about our Amy, please wait for the tone and speak clearly.”

I wondered how often the message phone rang. Anytime that phone rang, I knew it must sound like a fire bell in the night to the family.

I dialed the second listed number. The same soft voice answered. Live this time.

“Mrs. Metrano?” I said.

“Yes?”

“This is Maggie MacGowen. We met at the morgue yesterday.”

“Oh.” A response with new energy. “Are you the one that said you have videotape of Amy?”

“I have videotape of the girl in the morgue.”

“That’s what I meant to say. The girl in the morgue.” She seemed chagrined.

“We made some stills from the tape. Would you like to see them?”

“Oh! Yes. Oh, thank you,” she said in a breathy rush. “I have to go to work right now. I have to be there when the shift changes. But I could get away right after. Where do you want me to come?”

“Maybe we could meet. I’m in Long Beach right now. At the university.”

“My job isn’t so far from there. I need about forty-five minutes or an hour.”

I said fine. She told me she worked at an outlet for Bingo Burgers, and gave me directions.

“Mrs. Metrano,” I said, “would you bring along some pictures of Amy?”

She hesitated. “All right. If you need them.”

“Thanks.”

I saw a bus approaching fast up the street behind Mike’s car.

I said goodbye to Leslie, scooped up my notepad and change, and made a dash. I didn’t peel rubber when I pulled away, but almost.

Bingo Burgers sat on a corner across from a large city park, an ideal location. As it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, the place was humming. Dodging kids and minivans, I managed to get inside unscathed.

The menu was the usual fast-serve bland-in-a-bun the several thousand Bingo Burgers restaurants sell nationwide. This particular outlet had evolved a long way from the sticky plastic-and-linoleum places Casey used to drag me to when she was little. If Ronald McDonald and Walt Disney had done it in the dark, this place would have been their offspring. I walked into a two-story fantasy of tropical birds and giant aquariums, of ten-foot palms and tables in imitation grass shacks. A long spiral slide connected the upper dining room to the lower. The racket of over stimulated children and squawking birds merged into a steady, high-decibel roar.

My thought was that whoever owned this franchise saw life in the big picture.

I found Leslie behind the service counter, directing a couple of dozen adolescent employees. She wore slacks and a blazer with the company’s clown logo on the breast pocket. The manager’s blazer. She was pretty, trim in her uniform, but there was a hardscrabble edge about her. Leslie was a working woman, not a mom with a weekend job.

When Leslie saw me, she grabbed a manila envelope and two large drink cups and came around the counter.

“Maggie?” She handed me a cup. “Get yourself a soda. It’s a little quieter in the back. We can talk there.”

We filled the cups and I followed her into a beachless cabana with a view of the street in front. When we sat down, we did show and tell, lining up both our sets of pictures on the table.

I gave her a minute to look them all over.

“What do you think?” I asked when she sat back.

“I just don’t know.” There was some country twang in her speech. “I really hate it when I get told that Amy would have changed a lot by now. Like I didn’t already know that? I look at my older girls.” She glanced up at me. “Did you know I’m a grandma now?”

“Congratulations,” I said.