Berkeley Noir Page 8

  What kept Shaila from running? Back to the group, back to what she knew? I'd like to say it was intuition—I know my own had settled. I didn't like the man, but he didn't have the predator in him. Most likely, it was the thought of one more night on Telegraph, waking at every footfall, fingers wrapped around her knife. She might have gone anywhere that night. She might have trusted anyone.

  * * *

  Out of the shower, Shaila stood before the mirror, gazing into it as the steam cleared. Droplets of water poured from her hair down her naked legs. I'm not sure what she was looking for when she slid a finger over her clavicle, traced circles over the round knob of her shoulder. I'd started to fall asleep in the warm womb of that room when we heard a knock on the door.

  "Hey." The grad student. "You all right in there?" A pause. "No drugs. Okay?"

  Shaila did not answer. Slowly, she put on her old dirty clothes, covering that hot, clean skin with the filth of Telegraph Avenue.

  When she opened the bathroom door again, Henry had gone. On the floor were a pair of soft gray pants and a plaid shirt, neatly folded. Shaila tore her old clothes off for the new. She scooped me up and placed me in her flannel chest pocket. Through its cloth I could feel the shower's residual warmth, the small mountain of her nipple.

  I stuck my head out. Henry had a real kitchen with a microwave and a bowl of apples on the counter. He had a kitchen table overtaken by a computer and stacks of paper. We sat on the sofa and watched him type frantically, as if he'd forgotten Shaila was there. A bus passed. Its headlights flashed through the window.

  "Where are we?" she asked. He looked up, dazed. "What part of Berkeley is this?"

  "Kensington. North. Way up." He picked up a metal mug and sipped from it.

  "What's with you and that mug?" she asked.

  He looked at it, shrugged. "It's my travel mug. It's no-spill. Insulated. It's extremely expensive."

  Shaila scoffed.

  He stood up then, but didn't move from the table. "You won't steal anything, will you?"

  "If I wanted to steal something, I'd steal it."

  He stood by his computer, processing this.

  "I won't steal anything," she said. "Asshole."

  He straightened some papers on his desk, tapped them, looked out the window, at this moonless void called Kensington. He was much less sure of himself, now that she was actually in his house.

  He disappeared into a back room and came out with a stack of blankets. "The sofa's yours."

  "Where's your roommate?"

  "I don't have one."

  She looked at the bay window, the spacious living room, the hardwood floors.

  "Rent control," he said.

  She peered out the window. "The main house? Is that rented out too?"

  "The owner lives there. Skye."

  She considered this. "I wonder when she bought the place. It's probably worth about a million now. Do you think she has a mortgage?"

  "You ask a lot of questions about real estate."

  She shrugged. "Bay Area kid."

  * * *

  Shaila made a bed on the sofa and turned to him. "Thank you," she said. "You didn't have to do this."

  "I know. You're welcome." He smiled. "Good night."

  "Good night."

  "Sleep well." He turned and left.

  "Wait!" she called.

  "Yeah?"

  "I have a knife. Touch me and I'll kill you."

  "Okay." His bedroom door clicked shut.

  Shaila pulled open her pocket.

  "Hey you," she said.

  "Hello."

  "You'd better stay hidden, my friend. Grad student doesn't know about you."

  "I realize that."

  She stood up and searched the corners, tiptoed into the kitchen, and opened, silently, a cupboard under the sink. "What do you think?" I hopped from her pocket and poked my head into the cupboard. I could hear the scratch and scuttle of rodent life. Mice. I could smell them.

  She sighed. "I know. It's small. I'm sorry."

  "It seems cold," I said. "I'm not sure."

  "Okay. One night. In my pocket. And you'll get up before sunrise and get into this cupboard before anyone sees you. Okay?"

  "Yes. Yes."

  "You can get up that early?"

  "Absolutely."

  I didn't know how tired I was until Shaila lay down, grew still, and I could finally snuggle into the curve of her breast. Fatigue heaved me over its shoulder and I sank down and down, until it seemed I was upside down, eyes shut, the night somersaulting around me.

  * * *

  I first met Shaila at the Lothlorien co-op on the south side of campus. It had been a week since I'd left my home high in the rafters of a church. So far, no one had noticed me. You have to look down if you're going to see me, and not a lot of people look down. I would have stayed there a good long while, I think, if I hadn't met Shaila.

  That particular afternoon, I had climbed atop the fridge. I hate heights. No. Hate is the wrong word. High places invoke nausea, dizziness, the hot breath of my own demise. But someone had left a cinnamon bun up there. I will do almost anything for a cinnamon bun.

  I'd eaten my fill of the pastry, my gut wailing against its seams, when I heard Shaila enter. I glanced down and nearly fainted from the vertigo. I must have made a sound because she looked straight at me. She didn't scream or whack at me with a broom. She gazed up for a very long time, her eyes squinting, nose twitching high in the air. Then she dragged a chair over, climbed onto it, and lifted me into her palm.

  "Hi," was all she said.

  "Hi," I answered.

  "What're you doing up there?" And I liked that she didn't call me little buddy or little fella. She spoke to me like she respected me. "Are you a rat or a mouse?"

  "I'm a rat."

  She nodded. "Not a bad place for a rat." She stroked my head with one finger, just between my ears, and I fell relentlessly in love.

  Shaila was brown like me but browner, human brown and so much bigger, with long black hair, tied that day into a swirl resembling the crown of a cinnamon bun. She slipped me into the front breast pocket of her jacket, a soft and dark home, redolent of rosemary. Eventually, I would chew a small slit in the fabric, a porthole to the world.

  "I'm not supposed to be here either," she whispered. She opened the fridge and from the blast of cold she grabbed a plastic container. As an afterthought, she leaped up and grabbed for the bun.

  "Please don't jump like that," I called. "It's very jarring for me."

  "I got you a little something too, Lothlorien."

  And now you know my name.

  * * *

  It was almost morning when I woke. Out on Telegraph, this was always the safest hour, when the street slept and cars were rare. In an hour or two, storefront grates would rattle open. Trucks would make their deliveries. Street vendors would set up card tables stacked with beaded necklaces and T-shirts.

  Outside the window: a leafy vine, a lavender sky. Across the courtyard stood the main house, ivory-walled with a tiled roof, a majestic aloe plant beside its door. The fog had stayed away that morning, and the house bathed in sunlight.

  I crawled from Shaila's pocket to the kitchen. No feet to be seen. No grad student. In the living room, I found a small hole and slipped into it. I could see from there, at least. I would not spend this life in a cupboard.

  Soon after, Henry shuffled into the kitchen and brewed some coffee. The smell did not wake Shaila. She'd learned on the street to sleep hard when she could. He poured his coffee into his metallic mug, gazed at Shaila's sleeping form, and left. She and I would spend that day indoors, watching television and eating toast. The house was heat and light. I would never again feel her so at peace.

  Henry came home in the late afternoon. At the sound of his key in the door, Shaila hissed and I ran for my hole. He bounded in, smiling wide, a stack of paper in his arms.

  "Hey, honey," she said flatly. "How was your day?"

  He spread h
is papers over the dining table. "Decent. How was yours?"

  They made dinner together, chatting easily, like roommates. I'd never seen Shaila like this: stepping lightly in bare feet, laughing and kicking him gently in the shins. Henry poured her a glass of wine, but stopped before he handed it over. "How old are you?"

  "Nineteen."

  "Old enough," he said, and poured himself a glass.

  * * *

  They had finished dinner, two heaping plates of pasta with red sauce and meatballs, when Henry asked, "Can I interview you? Would you mind?" He flicked his hair from his eyes and grabbed a pencil and notebook. "I'd love a woman's perspective."

  Shaila sat down at the kitchen table. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Softly, she spoke of leaving home, of finding her way from a town called Larkspur to her perch on Telegraph Avenue. She talked about the thrill of those first days that stretched as long and warm as a South Berkeley sidewalk—finding herself among people who sought no one's approval but their own, who could live without the material frippery of the life she'd come from. She spoke of the Telegraph sidewalk and Telegraph sleeping bags, the Telegraph men and the Telegraph feet endlessly tromping by. At a certain point, Henry stopped writing and simply watched her. When a strand of hair fell to her face, he reached out and slid it back behind her ear. She stopped talking. His hand stayed there, cradling the high curve of her neck. Her mouth opened slightly, silently. He kissed her.

  They stood and he led her to his bedroom. The house smelled of something new, at once animal and familiar and deeply unsettling. I hopped onto the table, my stomach pumping, my head in a frenzy. I climbed atop a stack of paper and read. A title: "Anarchist Movements Among Northern Californian Homeless Populations." I hunkered down and relieved myself. A trail of piss, a scatter of pellets. Eat your pheasant, drink your wine. Your days are numbered, bourgeois swine.

  What is it to watch someone you love fall in love with someone else? I bore no illusions about Shaila. I knew who I was. I knew who she was. And yet, to watch her watch him. Her hand on his shoulder. To watch her lie, for hours sometimes, in a nest of blankets, her eyes locked on his, those turbulent pools fallen still, her tight stony shoulders grown soft. Run, Lothlorien, I told myself. Leave her here. She's happy now. She doesn't need you anymore.

  But I couldn't. I did find a tunnel from the in-law to the back garden, where I could sneak into the main house for bread and cookies and fruit. It was risky, moving out in the open like that, but I had little left to lose.

  * * *

  A few weeks later: a knock at the door. Henry emerged from his room in a kimono. I hadn't seen Shaila for hours and hours. On the porch stood an old woman, her mop of hair, glasses. She held up a brown paper bag.

  "Little fuckers!" she said. "I have a rat. Do you have a rat? I have a rat. I was putting away an old coat yesterday when I opened the door to a closet full of turds. Did you know about this?"

  "Yeah. I found some droppings too." Henry pressed the sleep from his eyes, ruffled his hair, and yawned.

  She looked him up and down. "So you know that if you got one rat, you've got a colony. That's what they say. One moves in and the rest follow." She pointed to the ceiling. "Ever hear their little feet on the roof? Scraping sounds? That's them. Little toenails." She thrust the bag at him. "I brought you some poison and a trap."

  Shaila emerged from the bedroom wearing nothing but Henry's shirt. She stood behind him. The old woman's eyebrows jumped.

  "Skye, this is Shaila. My girlfriend."

  Shaila raised a hand in a shy wave.

  "Uh-huh," Skye muttered. "Well, I'll leave you to it. Get that trap set, hear? PayDay bars. That's what they say." The woman left.

  "Was that her?" Shaila asked.

  "Yes, indeed," Henry said, pulling a trap out of the bag. "Skye Wasserman. Ex-hippie. Beloved companion to Janis Joplin. Debtless owner of a million-dollar home." He held the trap up. It was gray, with a thick metal U-bar. He reached into the bag again and pulled out a plastic parcel. "Rat poison," he said, peering at the package. "Strychnine. Wow. How old is this stuff?"

  "I doubt it's legal," Shaila said.

  "Strychnine could kill a human."

  "Well, only a human dumb enough to eat strychnine." She grinned. "Darwinism. Right?"

  But Henry didn't respond. He was staring through her, past her, into a flicker of possibility.

  * * *

  After we see Henry at the Inn Kensington, he won't leave Shaila alone. His name flashes on her phone three, four times a day. Each time it does, I tell her not to answer. And each time, she answers. She picks up where she leaves off. Yelling. Crying. Pleading.

  Here's what Henry and Shaila were fighting about that morning in the diner. Here's what could bring her world crashing down:

  When Skye left, Henry set the trap and placed it in the corner of the living room. He didn't have a PayDay bar, so he smeared some almond butter on the little tray. If he thought I'd fall for that nonsense, he was sorely mistaken. A rat doesn't die in a trap unless he wants to.

  Shaila ran a hand down Henry's arm. She scanned the room for me, but I'd hidden myself well. She kissed his shoulder, pressed her face into his chest, and I knew. I was losing her completely.

  * * *

  Skye Wasserman came back the next afternoon. "Any luck with the trap?"

  Henry opened the door wide. "Come in!" he said. "No luck yet. It should take a day or two." He led Skye into the living room.

  Shaila was there, wearing real clothes this time. "Can I offer you some tea?" Good Indian girl. She made her way to the kitchen before Skye could answer. "We only have green, I'm afraid," she called.

  "Green's good," Skye said, then turned to Henry. "She's not living here, is she?"

  "No, no." They sat on the sofa. "Just . . . you know." He grinned.

  "Young love," Skye said.

  Henry's laugh brought my vertigo back.

  "How's the dissertation coming along?"

  Shaila emerged with a steaming mug. She sat next to Henry, wove her fingers through his. The two of them watched Skye Wasserman, millionaire hippie landlord, take her first sip of tea.

  * * *

  Skye slurped the last of her tea and slapped her knees. "Time for this old hag to shove off," she said. "Leave you young lovers to it."

  "Let me walk you back, Skye," Henry said. His hands shook as he stood.

  I looked at Shaila, whose eyes darted from Henry to Skye, Skye to Henry.

  "Well," Skye said, placing a hand on Henry's arm, "aren't you a gentleman. Normally I'd say no, but today . . ." She held her hand up, turned it from side to side. "I'm not quite myself today."

  "Let's get you to bed, Skye," Henry said, his voice silken. "It's probably something seasonal."

  Thirty minutes later, Henry returned. He stepped through the door, collapsed to his knees, and rolled into a ball.

  Quietly, Shaila kneeled beside him. "You did it."

  He nodded into his knees and let out a moan.

  "How did you do it?" she asked.

  For the first time, I felt for him. He lay there for a long while, Shaila rubbing his back. He didn't move. Shaila sat beside him with her hands on her knees. Minutes passed, Shaila on all fours now, her head hanging, her impatience flooding the room.

  Finally, she reached out and grabbed him by the square chin. "Tell me how you did it, Henry."

  So Henry told her. Skye Wasserman had started fainting, collapsing, by the time they reached her living room. The poison was working, but he wanted to be sure. He said it three times. I just wanted to be sure, Shaila. We needed to be sure. So he took a throw pillow and pressed it to the old lady's face until she stopped breathing, until her poisoned limbs stopped jerking, until her smothered screams fell silent.

  "What do we do now?" Shaila asked. Henry looked up, eyes red and hollow. He wiped his nose with his sleeve.

  Reader, they threw her in the bay.

  Skye Wasserman had no children, no family. Henry
had made sure of this. She'd fully paid off her home. She had no job, no one who would miss her. Hers was the classic tale of the wealthy old spinster, poisoned and smothered by a graduate student, his homeless girlfriend, and her undercover pet rat.

  * * *

  Shaila and Henry moved into the main house a few days later. They didn't move any of their furniture. Even Henry's clothes stayed in his closet. "We don't want to raise suspicions," he said. "Neighbors notice the strangest things."

  So Henry and Shaila played house. Shaila cooked dinners on a six-burner stove and Henry cleared up, loading the dishwasher, wiping down the granite countertops, sweeping a broom over Spanish tiles. Henry made coffee in the mornings—never tea. In the in-law, the rat trap with its almond butter grew dusty. I could hear mice in the walls still, and now and then I thought of joining them. But, well, me and high places.

  I made myself comfortable in the in-law. Shaila got a job at Pegasus Books. "It feels good to be making my own money," she said to me one day. "I'm doing it, Lothlorien. I can finally afford the Bay Area." She smiled wide and real, like she believed what she was saying.

  For a few months, we lived a good life. I'd spend the days roaming the Kensington hills, thick with succulents, with overhanging oaks and redwoods. I'd nestle into rocks that drank in the day's warmth. In the evenings, I'd return to the in-law, watching the main house through my window. Some nights Shaila would stop in and see me. Some nights she would not. But soon—humans are such predictable creatures—the fighting began. Shaila's cries drifted across the yard. Henry's shouts were hard and cold as iron beams. Often he'd push her out their front door, Shaila reeling backward, catching herself on the patio railing.

  When I think back, it's hard to pinpoint when exactly the changes began. I can't help but think it started a few weeks after the big move. (This is what Shaila called it, whenever she referred to the terrible death of Skye Wasserman. The big move.) Here was the first sign: I was alone one night in the in-law unit, asleep on the sofa. Through the silence of my midnight kitchen, I heard a scraping. And then a thunderous snap. It echoed through the empty house.

  "It's the trap," I said aloud, to no one. I ran to the corner of the house and stopped. A screech, unmistakable.