Toll Call Page 18

  I hung up with her trust ringing like a carillon in my ears, but I found myself wondering if we had meant anything we’d said to each other, or if it had been in the nature of a pep talk, one that would be meaningless once the game had been played.

  I threw off the covers and struggled into my clothes, brushed my teeth, grabbed a slice of bread for breakfast, and went down to my car. The night was cold but dry. My breath made momentary clouds; my windshield was a sheet of icywhite geometry.

  My engine didn’t want to be disturbed and resisted when it was. I gave up trying to start it and coasted down my hill instead, then popped the clutch, pumped the gas, and hijacked the Buick to my bidding. It took six minutes to reach Pacific Heights.

  The Alta Plaza was a dozen blocks uphill from Peggy’s apartment. It covered an area of two blocks square, and was surrounded by some of the finest homes in the city. The grassy expanse rose in tiers to a gentle knoll in the center, from which three sides of the city could be seen and marveled at. On the east side of the park were tennis courts, and just to the west of them was a play area, with swings, sand, basketball hoops, even a slide and a junglegym, all of it sheltered by shrubs and pine trees and supervised by an imitation adobe restroom that was padlocked against both vandals and the incontinent.

  I drove around the park two times, looking for a suspicious character or at least a red-faced man in a big gray Ford. When I didn’t find either I parked in someone’s driveway, hoping they had no errands to run at that hour. After glancing across the empty adjacent streets I strolled into the park, as alert as I could be for other beings. Although I seemed to be alone, and the park benign and vacant, I was edgy and afraid, the way I always am at three A.M.

  After hiking to the top of the knoll, I traversed the play area, mimicking an insomniac on a soporific stroll. No one appeared to challenge or converse with me. When I reached the opposite street at a point out of sight of the playground I doubled back the way I’d come, as silently as I could manage it. This time I was looking for a hiding place.

  The one I found was deep within a lilac thicket, behind a huge magnolia, not far from the swings where Peggy was to meet her menacer. As I eased into the tangled bush I convinced myself that from where I was I could put a stop to anything. The conviction was evanescent.

  From my nest I could see the entire play area and, nailed to the trunk of a tall tree in the center of the playground, a sign of the litigious times: USE APPARATUS AT OWN RISK. The sign was a reminder that on this evening the risk was not mine but Peggy’s, a reminder that intensified the chill in the clear night air.

  I snuggled deeper into my brittle lair, curling into myself for warmth. The wind caused the pines overhead to stir uneasily, as though they too were leery of the evening’s tryst. Beyond the fringe of the park the lights of the city spilled away from me. I felt on top of the world, which meant among other things that I was in a position to fall off.

  Although I spent some time trying to imagine what was likely to happen over the next hour, I couldn’t come to grips with it. Peggy and the spider. “Tea for Two.” Brief Encounter. Sunday in the Park with John. The stuff of song and story, except this rendezvous was perverted, sullied and extortionate, a coerced union. The possible product of the meeting was so disturbing I tried not to think about consequences, tried instead to think of tactics.

  Something crackled, then rustled, then fell silent. I looked toward the sound but didn’t see anything beyond windblown shadows and the skeletal arc of the frame that held the swings.

  A cloud crossed the moon. The breeze picked up, usurping other sounds. I rearranged my limbs and wished I’d brought a flask of brandy. Then I saw a problem.

  There were two sets of swings. I’d stationed myself near the westernmost, the first I’d noticed, the ones for tiny children. It was the most private end of the playground, the one farthest from the tennis courts, the most likely setting for what the spider had in mind, but it was still possible that instead of being close to the action I had placed myself too far away to be effective.

  Dismayed by my predicament, I didn’t see or hear her approach. But suddenly she was there, standing in the center of the little playground, a blue and yellow slide to her left, a trash barrel to her right, facing this way and that, looking for her tormentor or maybe just for me.

  She was dressed in black—shoes, coat, gloves, scarf—not casually but stylishly, as though a minute earlier she had been sipping cocktails and exchanging gossip and getting slightly drunk. Her hands plucked at the buttons on her coat as though they were insects that infested her. Her eyes were wild and overzealous, seeing more than could possibly be there. I wanted to go to her and call it off and take her away from all of it, the cold and the hour and the danger that was as likely to occur as not, but I stayed in my prickly cave.

  “John?”

  Her voice was small, tentative, shoved almost beyond my hearing by the wind.

  “John? Are you there?”

  Someone answered her. I couldn’t make out the words he used, but they came from somewhere east of me, from the bushes below the tennis court or the trees beyond the silver swings, the larger swings, the ones far too far from me. I cursed my stupidity and my untenable position. In the meantime, Peggy repeated the spider’s name.

  He answered a second time. Once again I could only hear an uninflected hum. Peggy turned his way, which put her back to me. I considered moving closer to my target, but detection was likely if I did so, and at that point I was prepared to ruin the setup only to put Peggy out of a clear and present danger. And I still wasn’t certain where he was.

  Peggy must have heard something else, because she shook her head and backed away, as though frightened by what he said. Then he spoke again, louder this time. The only word I heard was promised.

  As chastened as if he’d slapped her face, Peggy stood stock-still, slumped, head down, a docile servant. Once again it was a struggle not to go to her and take her home.

  A further word, peremptory this time, caused Peggy to straighten and look quickly to her left and right. To look, I guessed, for me. When I refused to let her find me she abandoned her earthly search and looked to the sky, as though her final hope resided there. Then she began to unbutton her coat.

  She did it slowly, her fingers gloved and cumbersome, her stare fixed firmly on the sand beneath her feet. When the buttons were undone, she shrugged the garment off her shoulders, extended her arms to the rear, and let the dark wrap slide slowly to the ground. She hesitated, then undid her scarf as well and tossed it onto the woolen heap of coat. The gloves were next, each peeled slowly from her hand, each dangled from between two fingers before she flipped it toward the growing pile behind her back.

  Her dress was basic black, knee length, short-sleeved, set off by a celestial string of pearls. It was testimony to my flayed and battered senses that I didn’t realize what was going on until she twisted an arm behind her back, grasped the talon of her zipper, and tugged it to her waist. The sound that reached my ears seemed a perfect duplication of a cry for help.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  My heart assailed my chest; my lungs threatened to absorb the wind. I didn’t want to watch, except I couldn’t do anything else.

  The zipper parted to reveal a V of powdered flesh. The loosened fabric flapped softly in the breeze, caressing her shoulders like the fluff of a feather boa. The thin black band of her brassiere bisected the wedge of epidermis like a draftsman’s precise slash.

  She was stripping for him, had known all along she would, had possibly even originated the idea in the hope that the prospect of seeing her stark naked would cause him to grow careless in the heat of dense desire. What must she be imagining—a stage, a band, a drunken, urging crowd—and what seamless desperation must have brought her to this point. With alternate glances I searched intently for the spider and admired her every move.

  Peggy leaned forward, and the black bodice fell off her shoulders and onto her outstretched arms. Washed
by a spot of moonlight, her neck was a pristine stem, her shoulders a bank of morning snow. She lifted one arm and then another free of the encircling sleeves, and gathered the bodice at her waist. Seconds later she had loosened her belt and tossed it aside as well, another doffed encumbrance. Had we been in one of my old Broadway haunts—the Chi Chi or El Cid—the band would have moved to “Night Train” and the customers would have begun to cheer her on. For an instant I felt like cheering her myself.

  Free of the belt and tugged by upraised arms, the dress floated like a magician’s trick above her head, catching momentarily on her chin, then soaring free and clear and shaken loose of twists and tangles. When the dress was fully off and in her hands she folded it and placed it carefully on the ground beside her. Knees bent, thighs sandwiched, torso twisted to conceal her private parts, her shyness made sublime what would have been indecent.

  When she stood up straight she wore only the pearls, the black brassiere and panties, and her black high-heeled shoes. She looked around the park again and lingered when her eyes caught the twisting helix of the gaily painted slide, as though it brought back memories or reminded her how far she was from youth. For an instant her face froze in a mask of abject panic, and I thought she was going to give it up. I wanted her to, almost begged her to, but instead of surrendering she set her chin and firmed her jaw and raised one arm above her head and posed a wanton pose that was incongruous in the middle of the children’s soft white sand.

  From somewhere beyond the farthest swings her audience barked an order, impatient and dictatorial. I tried to pinpoint its source but couldn’t. Peggy stiffened, then crossed her arms and bowed her head, awaiting his instructions. The spider spoke again, and again she did his will. I still didn’t know where he was, but I knew he wasn’t near enough.

  Arching her back, Peggy reached to the center of her spine and unclasped the black brassiere, struggling at first, then subduing the tricky hooks. Bowing once more, she rounded her shoulders until they were free of the twin black straps, then extended her arms before her and bent forward at the waist to let the bra slide slowly down her arms, a stunt that must have made the spider boil. Because she tossed the silken halter negligently behind her, she didn’t see it fly to the top bar of the little junglegym and dangle there, a comic gloss on the simple toy, and a brutal hint of what might one day lay in store for the next little girl who frolicked there if she was as unfortunate as Peggy.

  Naked from head to waist but for the pearls that ringed her like an owner’s collar, she stood uncomfortably in the center of the park, awaiting the spider’s further urge. Her hands fluttered to her breasts and down again, uncertain whether to camouflage or anoint their resting places. Moments passed, the spider in a swoon no doubt, Peggy more and more abandoned to a self-cast spell.

  “Don’t stop,” he ordered suddenly, the loudest words to date. “All but the shoes. You can keep the shoes.”

  She started to shake with shame and cold and the image of what she looked like and the definition of what she had become. Still, she lowered her hands, hooked her fingers through the waistband of her dusky panties, tugged them away from the sharp ledge of her hips, and rolled them down her thighs until they fell to her feet as noiselessly as leaves. As though she walked a tightrope, she lifted one leg out of the silken hobble, then raised the other so that the panties dangled for a moment from the pointed toe of her left shoe before she kicked them toward the bushes. Naked to me and to her enemy, she straightened proudly and defiantly, daring the spider to demand more.

  “Turn,” he said sharply, and so she did, a careful pivot that displayed the whole of her so gracefully I had to remind myself again that this wasn’t for my benefit, that we weren’t continuing our foreplay of the other night, that this was not my treat.

  That fact was enough to prick my trance. I tore my eyes from Peggy’s flesh and searched for a place to move to, a spot closer to the spider, a nook from which I could effect a rescue and put an end to the evening’s long debasement. But before I could make a move the spider issued another command: “Tease me. Pose for me, like in a magazine.”

  She responded fitfully, uncertainly, afraid she would disappoint or even anger her instructor. Her hands darted like butterflies around her body, lighting here and there, remaining briefly before they flew away, skittish and awkward oddities. Her hips slid one way and then the other, her legs bent and straightened; her toes stretched her upward then brought her back to earth. Biting her lower lip, her brow knit with memory and with effort, she clasped her hands behind her head, thrust her chest, and rotated her torso left and right, a movement borrowed from aerobics or remembered from a stag film.

  When she finished with the stretching twists, her hands slid down her ribs and came to rest beneath her breasts, then moved to hide and then to knead them. As she pursued her ministrations her head leaned back to prohibit her eyes from seeing how she used herself.

  The breeze became a gust; the trees became a rooting throng. I took a breath and left my perch and scurried toward a second clump of bushes, this one behind the restroom, ten yards closer to the man I hated as I absorbed his crime. At the same time the spider spoke again, and his voice helped conceal my progress as it told me where he was.

  When I reached the new position I waited, giving Peggy but a glance to see what she was doing. Her head was cocked to hear him better, and after the rumble of distant words she asked a question. I was thankful not to hear it. The next thing she said was throaty and alluring, but the spider stayed hidden out of sight.

  I used the sounds to move once more, this time to a cypress tree. When I reached its trunk I turned to see Peggy moving farther from me, toward the swing set across the playground. I swore beneath my breath and watched to see where she would stop.

  She went directly to the swings, leaned against the slack strap seat, lifted her legs above the sand, and began to pump, her hands grasping the rusty chains as though they were descended from the heavens and would therefore lead to rescue. Back and forth, higher and higher, she drove the swing seat up until her hair streamed out behind her and her legs raised toward the moon that loomed before her, yet another onlooker. In a moment she was almost horizontal, a marble eagle soaring above us all, compelled to fly still higher until the stars made room for her to join them. Like meteors, her shoes flew to the ground and buried partway in the sand.

  It was now or never. At the top of her next arc the chains slacked and bucked and Peggy uttered a frightened squeal. I took advantage of her risk and left concealment, running headlong for the bushes where the spider’s orders had been issued. My feet crunched twigs and leaves and gravel, my legs snapped fronds and branches, my noisy journey dispossessed the other sounds of night and warned my quarry that I was coming.

  I heard him swear, heard him thrash to escape his hiding place, heard him curse the woman in the swings and heard him cry out in anticipation of defeat. I ran faster. Ahead of me, the bushes parted for a moment and I could see a shadow turn and scramble toward the other side of the hedge and safety. I veered, and in the process met my fate.

  My foot caught under an upraised root and I hurtled headlong into a pile of leaves and pine needles that had been gathered by the tender of the space. I landed on my shoulder and my hip, and when the latter tried to pulverize a stone I groaned. As chorus to my cry, the spider cursed once more, somewhere far beyond my sprawl. Above the laughing pines I heard the clatter of his quick escape and his final, frantic dictate: “Think of me, Margaret. Think of me!”

  By the time I was on my feet and chasing him he was a blur in the dark distance, a creature in full flight, topcoat flapping, arms flailing to maintain his balance. I ran as fast as I could without falling once again, but I trailed too far behind. As I reached the crest of the grassy knoll I could see a car door flash open, a figure duck inside, the interior go back to black and the whole shape lurch crazily from the curb like a rabbit flushed from a hidden warren.

  The car disappeared down
the Pierce Street hill. It was a black sedan, no machine I knew. I came to a stop in the middle of the empty park, panting like a racer, my nerves a tangle, my head a void, my senses bloated to the point of failure. When I could harness my lungs and distinguish time between the thumpings of my heart, I turned and walked back toward where it had all gone wrong.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Peggy had dressed but for her shoes and was sitting on the edge of one of the benches that lined the walk, waiting for me, waiting for the night to end, waiting for someone to condone what had just gone on inside the halcyon little park.

  When I made enough noise to interrupt her introspective scan, she looked up. She was huddled like a pariah beneath her coat, its collar atop her head, its sleeves across her chest, but there was light in her eyes until she sensed my message. “He got away,” she observed lethargically, as though her life was an unrelieved fiasco.

  I nodded and sat down beside her. She leaned my way until our shoulders touched, then reached out a hand and took one of mine. “Unbelievable, huh?” she murmured, her body a warm compress, a quick reminder of its earlier labor at allure. I was determined to divert us from all that, but I didn’t know how. Memory is not easily avoided, especially when its well-spring is fresh and its ramifications tarnish essential assumptions about oneself.

  “Not unbelievable,” I said. “Just unfortunate.”

  “Hootchy-kootchie,” Peggy went on dully. “Like some two-bit carnival attraction. Like those places up on Broadway, the ones with the barkers out front and the women rolling around naked on the floor and the little Japanese men scurrying in and out in their shiny black suits.”

  “Like the places Allison works,” I said, my intention better than my phrasing.

  Peggy stiffened and withdrew her hand. The warm spot on my shoulder quickly cooled. “When did you see her?” she demanded.

  “Earlier tonight. About a thousand hours ago.”