Bill Pronzini - The Stalker

No, she wanted nothing, no one, that much.

Then her recourses were clear.

Adoption.

Or abortion.

The latter was totally unthinkable. In spite of everything, she was incapable of committing a sin of that magnitude; if she had been unable to prevent the conception of human life by simply taking birth control pills, how could there be within her the capacity for destroying an unborn child, a child of and within her body, from the seed of the man she loved?

But adoption—yes, she would do that. It wouldn’t be easy, especially if she saw the baby after it was born, if she held him (her?) in her arms, so warm and soft and defenseless; it wouldn’t be easy, but she would do that if it meant keeping Larry. She would find a good foundling home where they screened the applicants very carefully, where only those who desperately wanted a baby and would give it love and a good home and all the requisite material benefits, too, were allowed to adopt, and if necessary she would do it out of her money. Of course that wouldn’t be necessary, because Larry wasn’t a cruel man—strange and cold at times, but never cruel; he wasn’t like those men you read about in books who got a girl in trouble and then denied all responsibility and abandoned her completely. Not Larry, not her Larry.

Why, she might even be wrong about his refusal of marriage.

He might want to marry her with the baby coming.

There really was a good chance of that.

There really was.

She had to see him, she had to tell him about the child in just the right way. And she had to do it soon, very soon.

She called El Peyote again, but Juano didn’t know where he had gone—“back east somewhere, I think, he didn’t say exactly”—and he didn’t know when Mr. Drexel would be back. Yes, he would have Mr. Drexel call her as soon as he showed up there, yes, no matter what time it was, yes, he would tell him it was urgent.

Fran had begun calling his home then, just before six, and it was ten-fifty now. No answer yet, and her phone had not rung. She continued to stare at the instrument, and she imagined she could feel the child move inside her. She closed her eyes and put one hand against her abdomen, pressing it there; then she opened her eyes again and with her other hand lifted the receiver out of its cradle, put it down on the breakfast bar, dialed Larry’s number again, and then picked it up and put it to her ear. She listened to it ring five times, six, seven, eight...

Then: “Yeah, hello?” a little breathlessly.

Her hand tightened around the receiver, and she leaned forward, her heart singing violently in her chest. “Larry? Oh, thank God!”

“Fran?”

“Yes, darling,” she said. “Oh, Larry, I ...” The words constricted in her throat, and she swallowed and tried again. “Larry, I have to see you.”

“Sure, baby,” he said. His voice was distant, abstracted. “Tomorrow, at El Peyote.”

“No, no, tonight.”

There was a brief silence. Then he said, “Look, Fran, I just got in from Chicago. It’s late, and I’m tired...”

“Larry, I have to see you!”

“Not.”

“Please, please, I have to!”

“Goddamn it, I told you no.”

“Darling, please, it’s . . . it’s very important.”

“I don’t give a crap how important it is,” he snapped. “Not tonight. Do you understand? Not tonight!”

He hung up.

Fran replaced the receiver very carefully. Her eyes were like polished amber pebbles glistening in a thin rain. She felt warm moisture begin to flow high along her cheekbones, and she put up her hands with the palms turned outwards to wipe it away—the gesture of a pigtailed little girl scolded for mud-pie batter on a pink organdy dress.

But she wasn’t a little girl any more, oh no, not now, especially not now; what she was, was a consummated woman, carrying the illegitimate child of her lover in her womb, and the sooner she faced that, the better it was going to be for her, and for Larry, and for her unborn daughter or son. It was certainly time for her to assume the responsibility of her situation, to take some initiative in seeing it through this primary crisis, instead of merely lying back all dewy-eyed and trembling and innocently passive. She took her hands down and drew in several deep breaths, and her mouth firmed into a tight, resolute line. Yes. Yes, it was certainly time.

She thought: You’re the father of my baby, Larry, and you have to know that, for better or for worse, and you have to know it now, tonight. It’s the wrong time, perhaps—you’re tired and you’re in a poor humor and I’m more afraid now than ever of what you’ll say when I tell you—but I can’t wait, I just can’t wait, not until tomorrow, not this night through. I have to tell you, I’m going to tell you. I am.

She went into the bedroom and put on her plastic, belted raincoat and a matching, softly wide-brimmed rain hat. Then she left the apartment and went down the wood-and-fieldstone outer stairs to the parking area in the rear courtyard, running a little through the gentle rain to where her car was parked. She fumbled with her keys and got the door unlocked and slipped inside. She had a glimpse of the dashboard clock in the pale light from the ceiling dome just before she closed the door after her.

The time was 11:02.

Andrea Kilduff held the telephone receiver pressed tightly with both her small hands, listening to the distant, empty circuit noises humming through the earpiece. No answer.

On the fifteenth ring, she put the receiver back on its hook and shivered tremulously inside her heavy wool jacket. She hugged herself, and the wind moaned across the wet, puddled blacktop outside the glass walls of the public booth, fanning clumps of darkly painted autumn leaves toward the bright fluorescent lights of the Shell station at the opposite end of the rectangle. And there was the mournfully constant hissing of cars passing along the rain-slick expanse of Highway 101, near the first of the three Petaluma exits less than a thousand yards away.

Why didn’t he answer? she asked herself silently. It’s after eleven now; he should be home. He really should be home. Where would he be at this hour on a Wednesday night? He never goes to bars or anything like that, and seldom to the movies, and he certainly wouldn’t go walking in Golden Gate Park this late. Maybe he’s... out with someone. Well, no, I don’t think so. No, he wouldn’t be, but he isn’t home and he should be home.

Andrea retrieved her dime and dialed the apartment number again, carefully. She let it ring another fifteen times. Again, no answer.

Damn! Why hadn’t she made up her mind to call him sooner? She’d been thinking about it all day, hadn’t she?—she hadn’t slept much at all last night thinking about it. And she’d known darned well that she was going to do it, because she simply had to talk to Steve; this way wasn’t any good at all. She had to talk to him and get it all said and done with, say all the words she’d been afraid to say to him before: words like “divorce” and “property settlement” and “good-bye.” She didn’t want to say them, ever, they were like lashing epithets, but this way—her way—had been a fool’s errand from the very beginning, a defense against those words but an ineffective one, only prolonging the inevitable. At long last, she was woman enough to admit that she had been wrong. And so she had driven here from Duckblind Slough, through the wind and the rain to the nearest telephone because the Miramonte Marina and Boat Launch was closed for the night; but it had been for nothing, Steve wasn’t home...

A sudden thought struck her.

Suppose the reason he wasn’t home was because he had moved out? Suppose he had packed up his things and gone—but where? To a hotel? To a new apartment? What if he had left San Francisco altogether? What if he had just run away? Oh God, how would she find him if that were the case?