I wanted to tell Alice those details before the end of that life as I knew it. I dreamed that night that she was the Antichrist, that she would be cruel and try to hurt me. Part of me wanted to hurt her. Sometimes I went around wanting to hurt everyone.
I woke in sweat at three in the morning. It was not the heat that woke me but a bright devil noise—a tone somewhere between the cry of a baby and the bray of a small dog. It felt so near that I didn’t want to turn on the light. Afraid there would be a tuft of silver fur on the bed.
I looked and saw only one coyote out of my bedroom window, but there were more out of sight. The one I saw stood on the tallest mound of land, about five hundred feet from me. It was slighter than I expected. I looked at it and it looked at me and then the sound abruptly stopped. It was a peaceful moment. It was windless and none of the landscape moved, as though it were a painting. Then the animal cast its head back, opened its jaws, and emitted a howl like stones cracking in fire. It was joined in chorus by the invisible others.
I ran around the house shutting all the windows. Down the grassy path I saw a light come on in Leonard’s shed-home. I tore my dress off in the agony of heat and noticed, for the first time, an air-conditioning unit mounted on the wall between the first and second floors. The realtor had said there wasn’t one. Probably the unit wasn’t working but I dragged my dining room table toward the door. I hoisted a chair on top of the table and climbed up. Standing on my toes like that, I could switch the thing on. Twice I nearly fell. Then I got it, hit the switch, and it turned on with a gratifying rumble. I smelled paint chips but soon felt the cool air. I was so happy that I began to cry.
From the daisy recipe tin next to the toaster I extracted two 10-miligram tablets of Ambien. I bit one in half. One and a half was my magic number for most pills. It was more than necessary without being too much.
In my dreams I was seldom as alone as I was in life. I wore baseball caps and had a child with me, almost always a girl. My breasts ached in my dreams as though they were heavy with milk. The girl was too old to nurse but I always had the feeling of pulling her into bed with me, against my chest. The bed was by the porthole of a window in some Greek or Italian seaside town. The child was in a white dress and always in danger. Other times we ate, happily, at a fast-food restaurant until suddenly a car was behind us and I understood it was someone coming to take her away from me. When I woke there was the mean little pain of missing someone’s laughter. There was also relief. I had no one for whom to care. No one to fear losing.
* * *
THAT FIRST MORNING IN THE Canyon I woke to pounding on the door. It sounded as though it had gone on for a long time before I’d become aware. One time Vic woke me with knocking like that. He said he’d thought I was dead. I hadn’t returned his calls for a few days. He was ashamed when I opened the door, but also he’d been angry. Later, after I’d sent him away and looked in the mirror, I realized why. There was mascara under my eyes. My mouth looked raw. I hadn’t done anything with anyone the night before, but he wouldn’t have believed me. Partly he liked to think I did.
BANG BANG BANG BANG. Then a pause and then four more.
From an opened suitcase on the floor I pulled on an itchy sweater that fell to my knees. I opened the door to find an old man.
He’d been angry but then he blinked. He looked down at my long legs.
—Joan, he said.
I nodded and squinted. When I woke too early on Ambien there was always the quivering terror—who did I fuck last night, what did I eat.
—I’m Leonard.
—Nice to meet you.
—Sorry, I seem to have woken you.
—Is everything all right?
—Well, he said, stepping into the house without invitation. He led with a cane. He wore old-man sneakers, a beige pair of New Balances. He indicated the air conditioner with his cane. That unit, he said, is not to be used. It’s very dangerous. It’s got asbestos. It causes cancer. It’s unsafe and the filter hasn’t been changed. It’s not approved by the city.
—Oh, I said. So why is it here?
—I need to have it taken down. Didn’t you see in the lease the line about the air conditioner.
—I thought all leases were standard.
—Well, yes, it’s a standard lease, but all leases have provisions.
He said this like I was a dumb thing.
—One about the AC, he continued. Another about pets. Female pets must be spayed.
—On account of the coyotes, I said. Kathi the realtor had explained this in depth. She’d said anything in heat would be torn to shreds by the coyotes. She’d instructed me on how to dispose of my tampons. To triple-bag them in dog waste sacks.
Leonard nodded. I lifted the chair on top of the table.
—What are you doing? Leonard asked nervously as I climbed. Don’t do that, he said, I’ll have Kevin come turn it off.
—Kevin is probably sleeping. He records through the night. I said this as I balanced on the shaking hardback. I wasn’t wearing any underwear and I felt the old man’s eyes between my thighs like a flare.
When I got down, he was winded, as though he’d been the one climbing on chairs. What a cheap little bastard, I thought. We pooled our bills. That was the reason he didn’t want me to use the air conditioner. And I couldn’t offer to pay extra. There were multiple periods in my life when I’d bought something in every store I walked into. I’d bought furniture on a whim, big Edison bulbs for antique iron lamps. I’d bought museum wine stoppers even though I had never not drunk a whole bottle the same night it was opened. But this was not one of those times. I had to turn off old air conditioners. I had to suffer the grotesqueries of crushed old men.
—There, I said. All better.
—I’m sorry to have woken you.
He had nice soft hair and a patrician face, but beyond that he was just another man who could smell it on me, the loss of a father.
—I’m late for an audition so I needed to be up, I said.
He was still nodding as I shut the door in his face.
5
ALICE’S FACE IN THAT MAGAZINE confirmed everything I’d always feared. She was more beautiful. At a rest stop on the way in Alamogordo I overheard a four-year-old child tell her mother that her friend’s mother was beautifuller. The little girl’s mother smiled and said, Yes, Vanna’s mom is really pretty. No, the little girl said, she’s beautiful.
After my brutal little landlord left, I got dressed. I used the same rose-colored balm on my cheeks and my mouth. I tried to look attractive but I knew before meeting her in person that she was, and would always be, beautifuller.
The notion of seeing her in person was nearly too much. I wanted to put it off indefinitely. But I couldn’t. It had become, by that point, irreversible. Seeing Alice would be the key not to my survival but to yours. Sometimes you are little more than a crimped apparition, like the heat that rises off the macadam in front of your car. By the time I’d been two days in the Canyon, you had come to exist. I couldn’t see your form, but I could feel you slipping from me. I could feel someone, something, pulling me away from you. Pulling me into a white room as I screamed for you. Give her back to me!
I would have burned the whole world down to get you back. But what if I could not?