Rubicon Beach by Steve Erickson Page A

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.
    We went to where she lived. It wasn’t far from the canals but in the direction of the library and the center of town. This was the former industrial section of Los Angeles; the buildings were lined up like bunkers, gray and windowless except for skylights near the roof some thirty feet off the ground. Janet Dart or Dash was living in an old warehouse where the merchants of Little Tokyo used to keep rice and fish that came into the harbors. The bulb in the warehouse doorway was the only light on the street; we could see it from three blocks away. Janet Dart or Dash had a possibly important key that, at the very least, opened up the warehouse; when we stepped inside and the door slammed locked behind us, I was for a moment back in Bell. The feeling didn’t change as we went up the stairs, and it didn’t change when she unlocked another door and it slammed behind us too. Then there was a long hall with no windows she led me down, and it turned left and went about ten or fifteen yards to another door, and through that we turned left again and zigzagged right. By this time I had no idea which direction was which, and that feIt like Bell too. She unlocked another door and it could as easily have led us into another hall; but here was where she lived.
    At first I couldn’t see if the space was big or small; standing there I was just aware of this void in front of us. It was pitch-black and cold. Over to my right I could see one of those little narrow skylights next to the ceiling, so I knew we were at the top of the building. The window was open. The sky was black beyond it. There was the sound. It’s cold, I said, and immediately stumbled in the dark to close the skylight. What are you doing? I heard her say in the dark. Don’t do that, leave it open. I