Gary Brandner - Walkers

After sundown. Marvelous. Why not make it at midnight with a full moon? Better yet, with an electrical storm booming and crashing around the witch's old house on a craggy mountain top.

With an effort Joana got hold of herself. The urge to laugh was uncomfortably close to hysteria. She immersed herself in her work and managed to get through the next two hours. At five o'clock she called Glen and told him what Ynez had said.

"What the hell is wrong with seeing the old lady today?" he demanded. "Why do we have to wait till tomorrow?"

"I don't know," Joana said. "Ynez says that's the way her grandmother wants it, and she's the one making the rules."

"Yeah, I suppose she is," Glen conceded. "It's just that I hate knowing you may be in danger and not being able to do something about it."

"I know," Joana said, "I'm frustrated too, but we're doing all we can."

"I'm still not happy about it. What about tonight? Do you want to come to my place?"

"What I'd really like to do tonight is go out," Joana said. "I don't like the feeling of hiding away behind locked doors."

"Do you think it's safe?"

"I was home Sunday night. How safe was that?"

"You've got a point," Glen admitted. "Where would you like to go?"

"Tell you what, I'll take you out. It will be your birthday dinner. We can go to Seacliff. You always liked the lobster there."

"My birthday isn't until next month."

"So what? I feel like celebrating it tonight. You may not get another offer, so what do you say?"

"You're on," Glen said.

Three hours later they were driving north on Pacific Coast Highway. They passed the funky beach houses of Topanga and the moneyed colony of Malibu, and climbed the cliffs above Pepperdine University where the mountains marched right down to the sea. They drove by the blackened skeleton of an unfinished condominium, victim of one of the devastating brush fires that sweep annually through the California hills. A group of scruffy young people now lived in the burned-out shell. Throwbacks to an earlier decade, the last of the flower children.

Sitting erect in the bucket seat, both hands on the wheel, Glen did not have much to say. Although he had made adjustments to his thinking to accommodate the changing times, he was still not comfortable with a woman taking him out to dinner, instead of the other way around. Joana knew this, and she knew that taking her car too would be crowding him, so she agreed to ride with him in the Camaro. In truth, she did not much like driving, so it was an easy compromise to make.

The Seacliff Restaurant was perched on a rocky promontory where the winds converged and turned the sea below into a foaming caldron. The Seacliff was famous for its huge lobsters, for which they charged outrageous prices, and for serving the best margaritas north of Puerto Vallarta. The building was gray stone and driftwood to match the cliff, the view on a clear day was spectacular. Geologists issued periodic warnings that sooner or later the point on which the restaurant stood would break away from the land and send the Seacliff tumbling fifty feet to the rocks and smashing surf below. Californians, however, living in a land undercut by earthquake faults, pay little attention to the doom prophets. The restaurant enjoyed a booming business.

A little before nine o'clock Glen and Joana pulled into the Seacliff parking lot. They left the car with a red-jacketed attendant and went inside. The table they were given was away from the long window that overlooked the ocean, but tonight they did not care. They had seen the view before, and there were other things on their minds.

Glen ordered a broiled lobster tail, Joana decided on the succulent red snapper. They each sipped on one of the famous margaritas while waiting for the food.

Glen maintained a kind of petulant silence. He frowned more openly than usual when Joana lit a cigarette. She heard herself talking too loud and too fast, to compensate.

Finally she said, "Glen, this is supposed to be for your birthday. Couldn't you try to celebrate a little?"

"Sorry. It's not easy to be a barrel of fun just three days after bashing a man's brains out."

"Come on, we made a deal we weren't going to talk about that tonight."

"Sure. Keep it light and frivolous, right? Pretend everything is fun-fun-fun, and we don't have to give a thought to when the next walker is going to come out of the crowd and go for you."

"Cut it out" Joana said. It came out more sharply than she had intended. Glen blinked and said no more.

They ate their salads, crisp greens with a wine-vinegar dressing, in any uneasy silence. The waiter appeared promptly to remove their empty salad plates and to serve the main course with an appropriate flourish. When he was gone, Glen reached across the table and touched Joana's hand.

"Honey, I'm a drag tonight, and I'm sorry. This is a terrific birthday, even a month ahead of time, and from here on I am going to enjoy the hell out of it. Okay?"

She smiled at him, but her eyes were troubled. "I understand, darling. There's no use pretending the strain isn't there, because it is. Maybe coming here tonight was a bad idea."

"No way. It was a wonderful idea, and we are going to have a wonderful time. Tomorrow we can deal with the walkers. We'll go see the witch lady and get exorcised, or whatever it takes. Tonight we have fun."

They shared a bottle of Pinot Chardonnay with their dinners, and by the time the waiter came with coffee they were laughing together easily and naturally. Glen even managed a small joke when Joana took out her Master Charge to pay for the dinner.

They walked out to the parking lot holding hands like teen-agers.

"Honey, this was really a sweet idea," Glen said. "I do love you a lot."

"Still want to marry me?"

"More than ever."

Joana squeezed his hand and felt a rush of tenderness for the young engineer. Somehow his moodiness earlier in the evening, the evidence that he was less than perfect, made her love him all the more. She did not want to spend her life with a flawless hero, she wanted a flesh-and-blood man who could be wrong, and who could admit it.

Out over the ocean the clouds rearranged themselves and the moon came into view. It was fat and orange as a harvest-time pumpkin.

"Oh, Glen, look at that," she said.

"Spectacular," he agreed.

"Let's walk over for a minute and look."

Glen told the parking attendant to hold the car, and he and Joana walked over close to the edge of the cliff and stood by the guard rail looking at the moon.

"What is it that makes the moon so romantic?" Joana wondered aloud.

"Maybe because it rhymes with so many words in romantic songs. June, spoon, soon, lagoon."

"Buffoon," Joana offered, laughing.

"Macaroon."

"Baboon."

"Spittoon."

By now they were both laughing and holding onto each other. Suddenly Joana pulled back and gave a little sigh of exasperation.

"What is it?" Glen asked.

"I just thought of something." She opened her little clutch bag and looked inside. "Yes, I did, damn it, I left my credit card back there in the restaurant."

"I'll go get it," Glen said. "You wait here and think-up some more moon rhymes."

Glen left her with a kiss and walked on hack toward the entrance to the restaurant. Joana turned again toward the sea. Standing there alone, she saw the moon differently than when Glen was there to share it. The bland, expressionless face seemed somehow menacing. There was something about it that made her uncomfortable. Something dead.

She was about to go after Glen when there was a wild, high-pitched scream from the direction of the parking lot. Joana spun around and froze. Running toward her, bare feet slapping the asphalt, was a tall, thin girl in a filmy white dress. In the moonlight, Joana could see clearly the dead white face, the gaping mouth, the glittering eyes.