Dead Lines. Greg Bear
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voice was like a little girl’s. She gave Peter the final directions to Phil’s house in Tiburon. ‘The place is filled with boxes,’ Lydia said. ‘God, was he a pack rat.’
Peter was tired. He thanked Lydia and closed the Trans. He had long wondered where Phil had stuck all the books and old magazines and movies that he had bought over the decades. Apparently, for some years Phil had been hauling his worldly goods north in the Grand Taiga, following through on a long-planned final escape from Los Angeles. And he had not told Peter about any of it.
The last few miles he followed a winding, dark road beneath a black sky dusted with ten thousand diamonds. Shadowy grassland and expensive houses flanked the road. Beyond lay more hunched hills. When he found the last turn, onto a culde-sac called Hidden Dreams Drive, he looked south and saw San Francisco lit up like a happy carnival on the far shore of the Bay.
The house cut three long, inky rectangles out of the starry sky between silhouettes of knobby, pruned-back trees. Peter drove up beside a new-style VW Beetle. As he set the parking brake, he saw Lydia sitting on a front porch swing, short, bobbed hair like a dark comma over her pale face. The orange bead of a cigarette dangled from her hand. She did not wave.
Jesus, Peter thought. The lot alone must be worth a million dollars. He stood on the gravel at the bottom of two wooden steps. ‘Nice night,’ he said.
‘I’m not staying,’ Lydia announced. She got up from the porch swing and stubbed the cigarette into a tuna can. Then she tossed the butt into the darkness. Peter jerked, thinking she might start a fire or something. But that was Lydia.
‘Should I go in?’ Peter said.
‘Up to you. He’d probably want you to,’ Lydia said dryly, ‘just to sort through his stuff. Last hands pawing what he wanted most on this Earth. He sure didn’t love his ladies worth a damn.’
Peter did not rise to the bait. Lydia stretched. At forty-eight, she still had a pruny grace. Low body-fat since youth – and wrinkles from smoking – had diminished her other native charms, but the grace remained.
Peter hauled his one suitcase onto the porch. She handed over three keys on a piece of dirty twine. The twine was tied to a small piece of finger-oiled driftwood. The driftwood dangled below his hand, swinging one way, then another.
‘The medical examiner found my address in Phil’s little black book,’ Lydia said. ‘Some cops came to visit me. They said he had been dead for a couple of days.’ She opened the screen door for him. ‘Did you know he had this place?’
Peter shook his head and entered the dark hallway. He set down his suitcase.
‘He sure as hell didn’t tell me,’ Lydia went on. ‘It didn’t turn up on the divorce settlement. What do you think it’s worth?’
‘I have no idea,’ Peter said.
‘Ancient history,’ Lydia said. ‘Anyway, I got him into a crematorium in Oakland. I think maybe the mailman found him. He had been dead for a few days.’
‘You said that,’ Peter said, grimacing.
‘The mortuary will bring him back tomorrow. Hand delivery. We’ll hold the wake in the back yard. I’ve invited some folks who knew Phil. And some of my friends. For backup.’
‘When did you get up here?’ Peter asked.
‘This morning. I left everything the way I found it. Peter, I hope you understood him. I hope somebody understood Phil. I sure didn’t.’
Peter did not know what to say to that.
‘You know, despite everything, he was the sweetest guy I ever met,’ Lydia said. She poked Peter in the chest. ‘And that includes you. See you tomorrow around one. If they deliver Phil early, just put him on the mantel over the fireplace. And, oh …’ She held out her hand. ‘I have no idea where he kept his money. I paid for everything. Donations cheerfully accepted.’
Peter removed his wallet. He pulled out the five hundred dollars Michelle had given him in Malibu. He was about to peel off several of the bills when Lydia dipped her hand with serpentine grace and snatched the whole wad.
She counted it quickly. ‘That doesn’t cover even half the cost,’ she said. She patted his bearded cheek. ‘But thanks.’ She walked across the gravel to the VW, her bony, denimed hips cycling a sideways figure 8.
The car vanished into the dark beneath the stars.
That left Peter with ten dollars, not enough to pay for the gas to get home.
The house was quiet and still. Outside, not a breath of air moved. A hallway beyond the alcove led past the living room, a bathroom, and the kitchen, to three rooms at the back.
He switched on the lights in the alcove and the hall and stepped around two neatly taped boxes Magic-markered with names and dates: Unknown Worlds 1940-43, Startling Mystery 1950-56. Hand-made pine shelves filled with paperback mysteries and science fiction covered the wall behind the door, arched over the door, around the corner, and into the living room, where more shelves framed the wide front window. Beneath window, records and old laser discs occupied a single shelf. He could make out still more shelves marching back into the shadows of a dining room, and stacked boxes where a table might have been.
In the living room, a single threadbare couch faced a scarred coffee table and the wide window. The coffee table, seen from above, had the outline of a plumped square, like the tube of an old black-and-white television set. In the fifties, those conjoined curves had been the shape of the future. Peter thought about Indian-chief test patterns, the Monsanto House of the Future at Disneyland, and how such curvilinear dreams had become part of the deep and forgotten past.
Their past.
Phil liked old black and white movies best. His taste in music was even more conservative than Peter’s: Bach and Haydn and Mozart, no rock, just big bands and fifties jazz up to early Coltrane. No Monk, even.
For some reason, it was taking time to get used to the idea that he had the house to himself. He kept thinking Phil would show up and grin and apologize, and then show him around, pulling books from shelves, removing their plastic bags to fondle his many little treasures.
Materialism, with a difference. Give me ideas, stories, music. Forget booze and diamonds, forget women. Pages filled with printed words and grooves in vinyl are a guy’s best friend. So Phil had once told him.
Peter found the kitchen. He filled a plastic glass with water from the tap. The sideboard was neatly piled with clean dishes. No cats or dogs, that was a blessing. Phil had never been enthusiastic about pets. Most of the cupboards in the kitchen were stuffed with old pulp magazines, G-8 and His Battle Aces, The Shadow, thick compound issues of Amazing Stories. One small corner shelf was reserved for cereal boxes and three more plastic glasses. The refrigerator held a six-pack of cheap beer, vanilla pudding cups, yogurt, clam chowder in plastic pouches. White foods.
Phil loved mashed potatoes.
Peter searched for coffee or tea. He needed something warm. Finally, he found a jar of instant coffee and a mug, right next to each other on the window sill over the sink. He put on a saucepan of water and set it to boil. Then he pulled up an old-fashioned step stool and sat with a whuff, wiping the long drive from his eyes with a damp paper towel. He did not want to sleep in the house, but there wasn’t enough money left for a motel. The couch did not look inviting. Peter could not just sleep anywhere these days. His muscles knotted if he lay down wrong. Finally, cup in hand, he turned on all the overhead lights in the kitchen and hall and the back bedrooms, inspecting each one until he came to Phil’s. More shelves, mostly new and empty, as if waiting to be filled. It was not a mess; it was actually pretty neat. Spartan. Someone had made up the queen-sized bed. Phil never made his bed.
Peter gritted his teeth.