Steve Erickson - Rubicon Beach

“My God, Lee,” he said, touching my shirt, “you’re drenched. What the hell happened to you?” He pulled me by the elbow to one of the other chairs and I sat down in it. “Look here,” he said, “can I get you something from the bar?” He was watching me with utter concern. I stared at him and then over at the bar in the dark with all the dusty glasses upside down on the dirty white towel. I looked at the glass in his hand and back up at him, and water ran from my hair into my eyes.

“No thanks,” I said.

“Here,” he said, “pull the chair closer to the fire.” He started to pull me out of the chair so he could move it closer to the fire.

“It’s all right,” I said, resistant. “I’m fine here.” I looked around me.

“What happened to you anyway?” he said. “I’ve been waiting damn near forever. The damn phone doesn’t work or I would have called.” He squinted at me in the dark.

I shook my head. “I’m not Lee.”

He kept squinting at me. He sighed heavily. “No, I can see that now.” He took a gulp from his amber glass and turned to the fire, anxious. He turned back to me. “Well I hope you’re all right,” he said a little absently. He sat in his chair and held the drink on one of its arms, thinking. Presently his attention came back to me. “Someone turn a hose on you or something?” he said, regarding me from head to foot.

“I took a swim,” I explained.

“A swim?”

“Out in the water.” He stared at me. “The lagoon,” I said. “It was the only way I could get here.”

“The lagoon?” he said in complete bafflement. But he waved it away. Ile sighed heavily again and looked toward the door, muttering. “Where is he anyway?” I heard him say under his breath.

I turned toward the door too. “Waiting for someone?” I asked.

“If we don’t come up with this script, it’s over for both of us,” he said. He was clearly agitated. “I can’t afford to lose this opportunity. I’m. . I’m forty-five years old and I need a vehicle.” He was older than forty-five. I knew that not by the way he looked but by the way he said it. “I’ve been patient with Lee a long time, and I’ve been waiting a long time for the right vehicle.”

I nodded. “Who’s Lee?” I said after a while.

“Lee’s not fucking here, that’s who Lee is,” he said, his voice rising. He finished his drink. He was still a moment.

“Name’s Richard,” he said, extending his hand.

I took it. “Cale.”

“Are you an actor?” he said.

“No.”

“Do you work in pictures at all?”

I kept looking around me, at the bulb burning at the opposite end of the room. I was finally becoming warm from the tire. I didn’t know what he was talking about. “No,” I said.

“Good for you. Bloody good for you. I mean it. It’s a fucked business and a fucked place. I admire anyone who can avoid it aItogether. What is it you do?”

“Can you tell me,” I said slowly, “where the kitchen is?”

“What kitchen?”

“The kitchen of the hotel.”

“I think it’s downstairs behind the ballroom,” he said. “Or maybe that’s the dining room.” He added, “The dining room’s closed.”

“I have to find the kitchen,” I said.

“Are you a chef?” he asked, distracted. He was getting agitated again. He stood up from the chair. “The hell with this. I’ve been patient with Lee a long time. I’ve been waiting a long time for the right vehicle.” He looked around. “Maybe I should catch a cab into Beverly Hills, phone from there.”

I stared at him. This man thought he was going to take a cab somewhere. “Lee?” he called. He was calling into the dark beyond the doorway behind me. I turned and then he said, “There’s someone there. Is that you, Lee?” he called. “I’ve been waiting.”

I saw a form move in the dark; there was someone there. I stepped toward the door and the form backed away, and when I got there I could hear the light steps of someone running across the lobby. The guy behind me called again but now I took off after the footsteps and reached the stairs that went back down the way I had come.

‘There was music above me and the shine of stars, and I looked up into the sky six floors away. The tall silhouette of the actor was small in the far door.

I turned back to gaze into the mouth of the stairs, and I saw her. It was absolutely black but I saw her anyway; she held the knife in her hand. It already had blood on it. “It. . is you?” I heard her say, in awkward English.

It’s me, I said. I stepped toward her, down the stairs. She ran.

At the bottom of the stairs I heard her steps fade away down a long corridor. At the end of the corridor was another light and in the light I could see a small glowing object on the floor. As I came closer I could see it was the knife, glistening red. I half expected that, when I reached it, it would vanish. I half expected that, as I bent to pick it up, it would dissolve in my hand. It did not. When I held it, it feIt ordinary, nothing epiphanic at all. It took me ten minutes to find the kitchen. It had a burning bulb too, like the lounge and the corridor from where I’d just come. The kitchen was strewn with utensils and appliances and pots, and the large white doors of the freezer were wide open. It looked as if it had been abandoned only a moment before, and there was the barely lingering smell of rotted food. Next to one of the freezer doors lay the headless body of a man, still bleeding. I reeled for a moment, not looking at him; I wasn’t used to that yet. I didn’t see the rest of him and I wasn’t inclined to search for it. I went over to a place some ten or twelve feet from him and took off my clothes and lay on the ground with the knife in my hand.

Maybe I slept, maybe I passed out. I say maybe because later, when I learned how much time had gone by, sleeping or passing out seemed the only explanation; I feIt as though I’d been lying there only a few minutes. Occasionally I would raise my head to see if the body was still there. But then I must have fallen asleep, because a voice woke me. Cale, the voice said, what are you doing?

I opened my eyes. A very big shadow was standing over me.

“Wade?”

“What are you doing?” he said again.

I held my hand up in front of my face. I still had the knife. “I’m guarding the body of Ben Jarry,” I said. When Wade didn’t answer, I said, “Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me there’s no body over there.” When he still didn’t answer, I raised my head from the floor and looked over in the direction of the body. There were a bunch of cops and there was something on the ground with a sheet over it. I nodded. “Finally. Finally got a body. There’s no eluding me forever.”

“No,” came Wade’s voice out of the big shadow, “there’s no eluding me forever.”

“I knew you’d get him sooner or later,” I explained, “I always had confidence in you. No matter how tough the assignment, you were bound to snare him. Millions of murdered men, true, but not having a head is a distinguishing characteristic. No way you can escape notice very long if you don’t have a head. You guys are aces. You guys are crackerjacks.”

“What are you doing, Cale?”

“In the archives of the library are the legends of murdered men, Inspector. Maybe some are real and maybe some aren’t. I’m familiar with most of them at this point. I’ve been smuggling their legends into my tower, I’ve been poring over them in my sleep. My favorite is the one of the man murdered in this kitchen. This very one. Like Ben over there, except this murdered man would be a little harder for you to track down, since he had a head. He was shot with a gun. Do you know about this man?”