Steve Erickson: Rubicon Beach

I didn’t offer to buy her a drink. I’d given the boatman out by the lagoon too much money and now I was short. I told her my name and she smiled again in a way that said she already knew it or that it didn’t matter. Her own name was Janet Dart or Dash or Dot; Wade would tell me later. Come here often? I asked. She laughed; it looked like I was putting the make on her. I decided I should say something that would change that. “Are you a cop?”

She looked down at the camera and then back up, sort of surprised. “No,” she said.

“But you were over at the library, the night of the murder.”

“Was it murder,” she said, “I didn’t hear anything about a murder.” She looked at me cautiously. I hoped she wouldn’t say something like What did you say your name was again?

“But you were there at the library.”

“I was taking some pictures.” She picked up the hemp and took a drag.

“Been in Los Angeles long?” I said.

“No.” She looked at me evenly; she was remarkably composed for all the dope and liquor and questions. “I got here not long after you did,” she said. That was when I knew she knew who I was, and she knew I knew it.

“Where you from?” She still looked at me evenly and didn’t answer. “Did you come to take pictures?”

She thought about it. She wanted to be precise in her answer. “I don’t go anywhere,” she explained slowly, “with the primary purpose of taking pictures. The primary purpose is always different. But everywhere I go, taking pictures is the secondary purpose. Which makes it the thing all places have in common for me.” She smoked some more hemp. She picked up the most recent glass and stared into the bottom of it as though something might be there that wasn’t easily visible to the naked eye. She put the glass down and glanced at me wondering if I was going to buy her a drink. I bought her a drink with the rest of my money. “Aren’t you going to have one?” she said.

“No.”

“I don’t like that.”

“We’ll share this one.”

“I don’t like that either,” she said, but we did share it when it came, at least for a while; then it became her drink.

“I’m looking for someone,” she finally said after it had been her drink for a while.

“Yes?”

“Yes,” she said. The camera sat in her lap and for the first time she seemed completely unaware of it.

“Are we getting to the primary purpose now?”

“Yes,” she said, “we’re getting to the primary purpose now. Do you know where he is?”

“Who?” I said, surprised.

“Who I’m looking for.”

“Who are you looking for?”

She didn’t believe me in the least. “You don’t know?”

“No.”

“He hasn’t made contact with you?” And then she thought a moment and answered her own question, in a mumble, “No, perhaps he wouldn’t have,” and finished the drink.

“Who is it?” I said.

“Why don’t you tell me who you’re looking for?”

“Did I say I was looking for someone?”

She shrugged. “My mistake.”

I shook my head. I said, “Actually, I am looking for someone.”

“I know,” she said. “I saw her.”

“What?”

“I said I saw her.”

I adjusted myself in the chair and put both my hands flat, palms down, on the table. I must have sat there with my mouth open for half a minute. “You saw her?”

“That night,” Janet Dart or Dash said calmly. “I was by the library and she was in the door, or it was more on the steps I guess. Right there outside the library. I remember the light of the library behind her, so the door must have been open.

“I don’t think,” I slowly shook my head, “we can be talking about the same—”

“Oh hell,” she said suddenly in exasperation. “I’m talking about the dark girl, she looked like she was from one of the southern annexes. Maybe South America. Brown skin and black hair and she had a light-brown dress and no shoes. There was something all over her and I thought it was mud, but later of course I realized it was the blood. She had something in her hand that was hard and bloody too. You know we mean the same person.”

“You got it from the police report,” I said, but I knew there was something wrong with that: the light-brown dress and no shoes, I hadn’t told the police that because I’d seen her in a dress that had no color and, incredibly, I hadn’t noticed the shoes or no shoes. Except now in my mind I saw her on the beach and then I saw her in the back room of the archives and I still wasn’t sure about the color of the dress, but there was no doubt about the shoes. In my mind she was plainly barefooted now. How could I have not noticed that before? So the police couldn’t have known about it unless they knew about her all along; this might, I suddenly thought, be part of a plan to keep me unhinged. “You’re in with the feds on this,” I said to the woman across the table. “It’s part of a plan to keep me unhinged.” She looked at me as if I were already unhinged. “There is no such woman,” I said, but I didn’t believe that either. It didn’t go with the look on Wade’s face that night in the archives. It didn’t go with all the blood.

“All right,” she just said.

“What happened when you saw her on the steps of the library?” I said.

“She went back in.”

“Back in the library?”

“I think I frightened her. I think the camera frightened her.”

“The camera?”

“When I took her picture.”

I stood up from the table. “You took her picture?” I said.

“Perhaps it’s Indian superstition, about cameras. Are lndians superstitious about cameras?”

I came around the table and stood in front of her chair. “You took her picture?” It must have appeared a little threatening; she looked around the room and l looked too, and there were guys watching us as though they thought I was about to get out of hand. She smiled and said to me, with her eyes still on the other men, “I think you should sit down.”

After a moment I said, “Do you have this picture?”

“Yes.” She put out the hemp in the ashtray.

“With you now?”

“It’s with my other pictures. You know I wish you hadn’t pointed me out to the cops like that, the way you did that night. I’d just as soon stay clear of them.”

“Why?”

“Because I have somebody to find too and I don’t think I can with cops everywhere.”

“What were you doing there if you didn’t want to be around cops?”

She paused a moment and said, “To be honest with you, I thought something had happened. When I saw the girl come out of the library and she was all a mess like that. I thought something had happened to you.”

“So you knew who I was and that I was working in the library.”

“Yes I knew that.”

“You knew who I was the last time I was here in the grotto.”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean how you know me and why you know me and why what I do and what happens to me is important to you.”

“What did you say your name was again?”

“It’s too late for that line.”

“I should have used it before,” she agreed.

“Or not at all.”

“Would you like to see the picture?”

“Would you like to tell me what’s going on?”

“No. Would you like to see the picture?”

We left the grotto together. The other guys in the bar hadn’t stopped looking at me. Up above ground she was transfixed by the sound of the buildings; it stopped her in her tracks a moment as if it reminded her of something. Is it the same, she said to me, it’s the same isn’t it. What’s that, l said. The sound, if hasn’t changed has it? she said. No it hasn’t changed, I said, and I hope it doesn’t either. It takes me a long time to get used to it every time it changes, and every time it changes the sound gets worse. I don’t agree, she said. She said, I wish it would change every single day. l wish it would change every single minute.