still got my tongue. I’ve heard tell I can raise welts with it.” She flashed a suggestion of a smile.
“I’ve seen some.”
She motioned me to sit on the bed. Another time I would have pondered the unprecedented acceptance that her offer indicated, but now I sat and said, “So what have you seen out the window?”
She raised her hand as if to run it through her hair. I remembered that movement from the hearing, when she’d been considering whether to speak. Now she stopped the hand halfway up and let it fall back to the covers. “I haven’t observed much. You can’t see down under the trees. There are kids down there during the day, they tell me, but I never see them. Coco barked a bit the first time I was here. But he was just put out to find potential sources of attention who were ignoring him.” She gave his head a rub.
I nodded. The live oaks and the bays made a carpet twenty feet above the canyon floor. Even for someone with spyglasses it’d be a trick to see movement beneath them. Of course she hadn’t observed anything down there. I braced my hands to push myself back up and leave.
“I used to sit outside when I was here before.” Her voice was higher, more anxious. “Down there on the walk. In the summer the sun would get that far in the afternoons. I could walk down there by myself then. We didn’t have many sunny days this summer. Maybe one every three or four. I’d go out, but each time it was a little harder. You see, the body becomes the enemy. When you’re healthy, you don’t realize. It inconveniences you, it hurts you, it waits to kill you. By the time you understand it’s an object that you can’t control and they can do whatever they want with, well …” She looked up, suddenly flushing. “You watch your control growing narrower and narrower, like water circling down the drain.”
I didn’t know what to say; the chasm between us was so great, much wider than at the police review commission when we were merely defending police officer and prosecuting attorney. Now we were the living and the dispossessed. Despite the bed large enough to accommodate Coco, the woodsy prints on the wall, the deep red clearly authentic Persian rug, I was struck by her absolute poverty. When you have no future, you have no power. And if you have no control, you have nothing.
Equally, I could feel my own fear of contagion, that somehow if her hand touched mine she would grip it in a death vise and yank me with her across the Styx. It was all I could do not to pull back.
And yet I couldn’t possibly have moved.
She rubbed Coco’s head. As if reading my thoughts, she said, “I’m fortunate to have a place like this, not like the awful nursing home my mother died in. Here I can have Coco with me, and have Mike to take care of him. And”—she forced a laugh,—“even Claire.”
She was trying to keep me from leaving: me, a cop. Anything to keep out the dark that echoed pain and let fear race unchecked? Or was there something she couldn’t quite bring herself to tell me, tell the police? I swallowed hard. “Claire?”
“The woman in the other room. She really doesn’t like dogs, but she’d never say that to my face. She’s one of those traditional ladies, trained to be polite, remain pure, and never create unpleasantness. A product of the days when purity was all.” The scorn was clear in her voice. I wouldn’t have expected otherwise from a woman who had spent years representing those who marched and demonstrated, who slept in doorways on Telegraph Avenue, those who wouldn’t or couldn’t conform.
“If Claire doesn’t like dogs, why did she choose to share this cottage with you and Coco?”
“I promised to keep him out of her room.” Madeleine half smiled. “That lasted almost a day. I was sure once she knew him she’d see what a sweetheart he is.” She rubbed his head, her forefinger running down the ridge between his eyes.
“And did she?”
“She asked Mike to keep the
“I’ve seen some.”
She motioned me to sit on the bed. Another time I would have pondered the unprecedented acceptance that her offer indicated, but now I sat and said, “So what have you seen out the window?”
She raised her hand as if to run it through her hair. I remembered that movement from the hearing, when she’d been considering whether to speak. Now she stopped the hand halfway up and let it fall back to the covers. “I haven’t observed much. You can’t see down under the trees. There are kids down there during the day, they tell me, but I never see them. Coco barked a bit the first time I was here. But he was just put out to find potential sources of attention who were ignoring him.” She gave his head a rub.
I nodded. The live oaks and the bays made a carpet twenty feet above the canyon floor. Even for someone with spyglasses it’d be a trick to see movement beneath them. Of course she hadn’t observed anything down there. I braced my hands to push myself back up and leave.
“I used to sit outside when I was here before.” Her voice was higher, more anxious. “Down there on the walk. In the summer the sun would get that far in the afternoons. I could walk down there by myself then. We didn’t have many sunny days this summer. Maybe one every three or four. I’d go out, but each time it was a little harder. You see, the body becomes the enemy. When you’re healthy, you don’t realize. It inconveniences you, it hurts you, it waits to kill you. By the time you understand it’s an object that you can’t control and they can do whatever they want with, well …” She looked up, suddenly flushing. “You watch your control growing narrower and narrower, like water circling down the drain.”
I didn’t know what to say; the chasm between us was so great, much wider than at the police review commission when we were merely defending police officer and prosecuting attorney. Now we were the living and the dispossessed. Despite the bed large enough to accommodate Coco, the woodsy prints on the wall, the deep red clearly authentic Persian rug, I was struck by her absolute poverty. When you have no future, you have no power. And if you have no control, you have nothing.
Equally, I could feel my own fear of contagion, that somehow if her hand touched mine she would grip it in a death vise and yank me with her across the Styx. It was all I could do not to pull back.
And yet I couldn’t possibly have moved.
She rubbed Coco’s head. As if reading my thoughts, she said, “I’m fortunate to have a place like this, not like the awful nursing home my mother died in. Here I can have Coco with me, and have Mike to take care of him. And”—she forced a laugh,—“even Claire.”
She was trying to keep me from leaving: me, a cop. Anything to keep out the dark that echoed pain and let fear race unchecked? Or was there something she couldn’t quite bring herself to tell me, tell the police? I swallowed hard. “Claire?”
“The woman in the other room. She really doesn’t like dogs, but she’d never say that to my face. She’s one of those traditional ladies, trained to be polite, remain pure, and never create unpleasantness. A product of the days when purity was all.” The scorn was clear in her voice. I wouldn’t have expected otherwise from a woman who had spent years representing those who marched and demonstrated, who slept in doorways on Telegraph Avenue, those who wouldn’t or couldn’t conform.
“If Claire doesn’t like dogs, why did she choose to share this cottage with you and Coco?”
“I promised to keep him out of her room.” Madeleine half smiled. “That lasted almost a day. I was sure once she knew him she’d see what a sweetheart he is.” She rubbed his head, her forefinger running down the ridge between his eyes.
“And did she?”
“She asked Mike to keep the
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