The Ditto List Page 9

  The voice was birdlike, not possibly in peril. His muscles momentarily retired. “What can I do for you?”

  “My name is Esther Preston, Mr. Jones. We’ve never met. However, a young woman named Rita Holloway apparently went to see you on my behalf this afternoon. Do you recall her?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Her visit was entirely unsolicited by me, as she tells me she disclosed.”

  “Yes.” D.T. tried to think of who she sounded like. Doris Day? No. More like the youthful Katharine Hepburn. Gaily cynical. Firmly self-deprecating. Slightly tipsy.

  “I very much do not want to waste your time, Mr. Jones. However, I have a problem. Miss Holloway is currently ensconced on my divan. She has already called her young man and broken her engagement for the evening. She is about to embark on a search for linen, in order to make herself a bed. She threatens to remain until I agree to see you. I hope you understand that she means what she says. She is a very determined woman.” There was a pause. “Also a delightful one.”

  “I agree. On both counts.”

  “Then I’m afraid we must arrange a meeting. So that Miss Holloway can resume a normal life.”

  “When would be convenient?”

  “My time is entirely unburdened, Mr. Jones. Any time you wish. I assure you it will take no more than a minute to confirm what I’m sure you already suspect.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That I have no case at all against my former husband.”

  D.T.’s mood flip-flopped. For reasons unclear to him, he felt a need to be encouraging. “We’ll see,” he said. “I have to be in your neighborhood tomorrow evening. Perhaps I could stop by around six?”

  “Of course.”

  “Until then.”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  He replaced the phone but his mind retained her, spun with imagined portraits—gentle, handsome, serene, and maternal. His thoughts floated freely, until he realized he had imagined everything but the central fact of Esther Preston’s being—the disease that wracked her body and the chair in which she lived her life. The phone rang once again and he was grateful.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Ah …”

  “Yes? Who is it?”

  “Is this Mr. Jones?”

  “Yes … Who is it? Michele? Barbara?”

  “This is Lucinda Finders, Mr. Jones. I, ah, seen you this afternoon? At your office?”

  “Sure. I remember. How are you?” he asked, knowing from the sounds that scraped his ear that she was far from fine.

  “Not so good, I guess.” She coughed or something like it.

  “What’s the matter?” D.T. began to sweat a toxin.

  “Del was here.”

  “Where?”

  “My sister’s.”

  D.T. couldn’t recognize her next sound. Its source was clearly agony, its product an otherworldly whistle. D.T.’s bowels loosened then cramped. “Is it the baby?” he asked. “Did he hit your stomach again?”

  “Not there. My face, I think … can you get a broken face?”

  D.T. couldn’t bring himself to answer. “Was he threatening you if you didn’t stop the divorce proceedings?” he asked instead.

  “Uh huh.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him to get out of my life.”

  Of course she did. Her courage was a trophy he only dreamed of. With it, he could have conquered Everest. Without it, he lived in fear of calls like this.

  “It’s my fault, Lucinda,” he said. “I should never have let you go back to your sister’s. Is there anywhere else you can stay? Somewhere Delbert doesn’t know about?”

  “I don’t know of any. We, I mean I, ain’t got many friends. Not since I come to the city. My girlfriend went back to Reedville to work at the cannery.”

  “How about the Spousal Abuse Victims’ Environment? Remember I mentioned it this afternoon? The places they put you are absolutely secret. I don’t know where they are myself.”

  “No. I told you.”

  “But you can’t stay where you are. He’ll be back.”

  “I’ll make out, Mr. Jones. I just think I’d best see a doctor about my face. Maybe you could call your friend? If you’re not too busy?”

  “Of course.” His mind spun. “Here’s what we’ll do. Let me make the call, then I’ll pick you up and take you to see the doctor. At the hospital or his office, wherever he wants. Okay?”

  “I couldn’t let you do that. The bus runs right near here. I got a pass and everything.”

  “I insist, Lucinda. I’m just sitting here watching morons on TV. What’s your address again?”

  When she told him without further protest he realized how damaged she must be. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he said.

  D.T. hung up and put on his coat. When he called John Faber, his doctor, he got an answering service. He left his name and a message that conveyed his urgency, and asked the girl at the service to have the doctor leave a number where he could be reached when he called in. Then he drove to Lucinda Finders’ sister’s house.

  It was a single-story bungalow of post-war plainness, complete with mulberry tree and cyclone fence and a lamb lying in plastic, precious peace on the front stoop. All lights in the house were out. D.T. tapped tentatively at the door, wondering if after hanging up the phone she’d done the thing he would have—fled blindly until something stopped her.

  The darkness swallowed his knocks. He tried again and waited, looking from time to time for Delbert at his back. “Mr. Jones?”

  Her voice crept to him from behind the black screen that was a foot from his nose. “Lucinda? Is anyone here?”

  “Just me.”

  A light glowed suddenly above his head and immediately attracted moths. The screen door opened. She stood on the border of light and dark, and he assumed the streak across her face was shadow. Then she stepped toward the light and he saw that it was blood.

  The right side of her face was a balloon of red and black with a creeping stripe of yellow. Her left eye was an involuntary wink. Blood had caked below a nostril. “Are you okay?” he asked insanely.

  She nodded and it hurt her. She drew air noisily. From within a wince she suggested that they go. “Del might come back,” she explained. “And Marilyn might not let me go off with you if she gets back and you’re here. She thinks men are bad for me. I think I’m kind of broke up,” she added, touching her face.

  “Come on,” D.T. said, and took her hand and led her off the stoop. “Did he have a gun?”

  “Not that he showed.”

  “What did he hit you with?”

  “His hand.”

  “What did he say, exactly?”

  “He asked if I’d seen a lawyer yet. When I told him I had, he asked me who it was. I wouldn’t tell him. He spit on me. Then he hit me. Twice. He would have done it more but he heard a siren somewheres and took off. He said he’d be back if he ever got served with papers.”

  So. She had been beaten at least in part in defense of his anonymity. D.T. tried not to believe her but couldn’t, no more than he could shun the obligation her chivalry created.

  He opened the door to his car and helped Lucinda inside, as conscious of touching her luscious body as he was conscious of being the proximate cause of her hurt. “I’m taking you to the hospital. Is that okay?”

  “I guess. I don’t know if I can pay, though. I only got twenty dollars. But I got more coming the end of the month.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  When they were inside the car, D.T. handed her his handkerchief. She took it from him and looked at its laundered whiteness and placed it on the seat between them, then pressed her fingers to her nose. Her breathing gurgled like a drain.

  On the way to the hospital, D.T. stopped at a phone booth and called the answering service. The doctor had left a number. When D.T. called it a woman answered. D.T. asked for Dr. Faber. The woman giggled. “Poopsie? You want
Poopsie?” A minute later Poopsie grasped the phone.

  D.T. explained the situation. His friend said he’d meet them at the hospital in fifteen minutes, with neither reluctance nor inebriation in his voice. D.T. thanked him and apologized for the intrusion and suppressed an observation about the etymology of Poopsie.

  “No problem,” Dr. Faber said. “But Christ, D.T. How many is that?”

  “Four or five.”

  “What happened to the one who swallowed bleach?”

  “She’s okay. She moved to San Bernardino with a guy who digs wells.”

  “Jesus, D.T. You get some characters. But why do they always fall apart on Friday night?”

  “Booze,” D.T. said, then hung up.

  When he got back to the car he pulled the keys out of the ignition and went around to the back and opened the trunk. Among the driving junk was a cardboard carton containing shag balls, a swimming suit, towel and jockstrap, a ball glove, and a camera. He pulled out the camera, checked it for film and batteries and flash attachment, then put the camera behind his back and went to the passenger side and asked Lucinda to get out for a minute.

  “What for?”

  “Surprise,” he said.

  He snapped the first one as she was scrambling out of the car, before she knew what he was doing. “Hey. What’d you do that for?” She put a hand over her face and started to get back in the car.

  “It’s evidence, Lucinda. We might need it.”

  “To do what?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows what’s going to happen. But this is the best record there is of what Del did to you tonight. Let me take another one.”

  “No.”

  “Come on. Please. I won’t use it unless I have to. Remember your baby,” he added cruelly.

  “No. My looks is all I got.”

  She turned from him and got back in the car. He stood where he was and when she lowered her hand he pressed the shutter again. The flash exploded both the night and his honor. He told her he was sorry and put the camera back in the trunk and got behind the wheel and pulled quickly into traffic and drove the route that would get them to the hospital in the shortest time.

  Beneath a starless sky he turned left and then right and found himself on a lonely stretch of road that crossed the fringe of the industrial area he had recently been viewing from the relative security of his deck, which lay somewhere above them, behind a forest of smoke stacks and storage vats and warehouses that from the look of them housed monsters. He drove as fast as he dared. Beside him, Lucinda Finders breathed in whispers, as though she plotted vengeance. He guessed she was as angry at him as at her mate.

  The road was poorly lit and marked, virtually unused. D.T. was afraid he might simply drive off into a pole or a ditch in the gloom, and Delbert’s crime would seem to be his own. Squinting, he searched out the ancient center line and followed it as though it led to grail. When he felt the first bump he thought a tire had blown. Then it bumped again and he almost lost control of the careening vehicle.

  “What the hell?” As he wrestled the steering wheel, Lucinda looked through the rear window of his Ford.

  “It’s that other car,” she said.

  “What other car?”

  “The Dodge back there with its lights off. It’s ramming you.” She paused. “I think it’s Del.”

  “What? Are you sure?”

  “It’s not Del’s regular car. But he can steal one in a minute and this is the kind of thing he’d do. He’s warning me to keep away from you.”

  When the car smashed them this time the rear wheels lost traction and he had to swerve to bring the car in line. The tires screamed the way he wanted to.

  Their assailant was a black blob in his mirror, sparked occasionally by a source of useless light, a generic horror. They were as far from help as they could get and still be in the city. A lonely pickup passed them going the other way, oblivious.

  The car behind them honked, then banged into them again. D.T. fought the wheel with slippery hands. Hot sweat rolled into his eyes and seared them. “Do you think he’s trying to kill us?” he asked, hating the girl because she had generated the danger that pursued them, hating himself for his craven question.

  “No,” Lucinda said. “He’s just funning. I was with him once when he did this to a guy that hustled him at pool. If he wanted to run us off the road we’d already be there. Del’s a good driver.” She might have been at beauty school, discussing hair.

  D.T. laughed tightly at her praise of the devil who pursued them, then pushed his accelerator to the floor. The car barely responded. He pounded the wheel with his fist and looked about for saviors.

  And as suddenly as it had appeared the car was gone. The mirror framed only the odd comfort of darkness. He thought he heard the sound of wheels spinning on gravel, and guessed Del had turned and gone the other way, done with sport and warning.

  “We should go to the cops.” D.T. slowed the car and breathed deep breaths and felt the clamor of his heart.

  “No. Please?”

  “The man’s nuts, Lucinda.”

  “No, he ain’t. He just wants me back.”

  “It’s more than that. He’s violent and he can’t control it. He’s a danger to society. To you.”

  She was quiet for a minute, then her hand lit like a butterfly on his arm. “Maybe he is what you say. But I married him. And I loved him when I did. And he’s the daddy of the thing that’s kicking inside my belly. I just couldn’t live with the idea I had my baby’s daddy put in jail.”

  His thoughts unvoiced, D.T. drove to the hospital and helped Lucinda through the emergency entrance. A nurse guided them to an empty room. When D.T. told her Dr. Faber was on the way she left them alone amid the steel and gauze and glass that seemed too pure to be a remedy for anything so savage.

  The lights in the room were brighter than the sun. Beneath them, Lucinda Finders’ face ebbed and flowed with color. Her cheek and lip were larger than before, laughable and cryable at once. When the door swung softly shut behind the nurse, Lucinda began to cry. “I ruined your whole night. It’s just I didn’t know where else to go.” Her words nudged each other comically.

  D.T. put his hand on her shoulder and felt it buck. “It’s okay. Really.”

  “It’s just … he scared me this time. He really scared me.” She seemed deeply interested in the emotion, as though it were a first encounter.

  “He would have scared anyone,” D.T. told her. “He scared me plenty in the car. Let me call the cops, Lucinda. So they can revoke his probation and put him away.”

  “No. I can’t do that. I just can’t.”

  “But why not? Look what he did to you.”

  “Don’t you see? I married him. If I put him in jail it means I’m just a stupid country girl who married a drunk and a jailbird both. I don’t want that scratching at my mind. I just don’t. I’d sooner be in jail myself.” She sobbed silently, belly and breasts and battered cheek all bobbing to the rhythms of her sadness.

  When Dr. Faber arrived he shoved D.T. out the door and closed it. While he waited, D.T. watched them wheel people past on gurneys, each of them apparently dead or quickly dying. He felt increasingly light-headed, and when one of them screamed in abject terror, he thought he was going to faint. He was seeking a passage to the medicine of the out-of-doors when Dr. Faber emerged. D.T. asked him how she was.

  “Broken nose,” he said. “I packed it. Cleaned the abrasions. She’ll be all right, I think. Unless he hits her again. She really took a shot. The police been called?”

  D.T. shook his head.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “She won’t let me.”

  “Well, I sure as hell can do it.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” D.T. said quickly. “She’d think I tricked her. I’d never see her again. Neither would anyone else who could help her.”

  Dr. Faber frowned. D.T. sensed he should explain, but couldn’t seem to manage it. “Did you check on the baby?” he as
ked instead.

  “I listened for a heartbeat and found one. She still has some pain but I don’t think its source is uterine. I think she has an ulcer. If she’d let me run some tests I’d know for sure.”

  “She doesn’t have insurance, I suppose.”

  “Nothing. And this hospital won’t admit her without it, either. Maybe she could try the county.”

  “She won’t,” D.T. said. “Is there anything special she should do right now?”

  “Just stay out of that bastard’s way,” Faber said, then patted D.T.’s shoulder. “Hang in there, champ,” he added, then left. D.T. went back inside the room.

  Lucinda Finders’ face wore different colors, medicinal hues that glowed more vibrantly than blood or bruises. White stuffing sprouted from her nostrils. She was looking in a mirror. “Don’t look at me,” she ordered. “I’m horrible.” Her hands rose to hide her face. “Can we go?”

  “Sure.”

  “He was real nice. What do you figure I owe him?”

  “He’ll total it up later. I’ll let you know.”

  “I’ll have to pay on time,” she said, lowering her eyes.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  D.T. guided her to his car and drove away from the hospital. He felt suddenly vital and content as though he had cleansed her wounds himself.

  “Hey,” she said after a few blocks. “Where we going?”

  “My place. You’re staying there tonight.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “But—”

  “It’s the only place I can think of that’s both free and safe. So don’t argue. I won’t listen.”

  She was quiet the rest of the way. When she entered his apartment she squealed, a reaction never previously provoked by his quarters. “I love chairs like that,” she said, looking at the imitation Eames. “Can I sit in it? Just for a second?”

  “Be my guest.”

  “Is that real leather?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I bet it is. I bet everything in here is real. Can I look around? Just a little?”

  “Help yourself.”

  His bed wasn’t made and the sheets were stained from Barbara’s menstrual seep and the bathroom looked like a jaundiced hair factory, but what the hell. He watched her prowl, pleased at pleasing her with his poster-sized photo of Heather on skates and his collection of Pez dispensers and his hole-in-one trophy. When she came back from the bedroom she asked if he’d ever been married.