That said, he didn’t have to be suicidal. There was a door-lintel up ahead. He’d be safer under there than he was in the open passageway. He made a dash for the spot, and as he did so, the aftershock abruptly ceased.
He took a deep breath.
Then he glanced over his shoulder into the room behind him. Presumably this was the place Joe had disappeared into; there was nowhere else for him to go.
He went to the door. Looked inside. He could see nothing at first, just undivided gloom. He reached in, as many had done before him, to fumble for a light switch, and failing to find one, allowed a little surge of curiosity to take hold of him. Hadn’t he said to himself he wanted to live a little more riskily? Well, here was his opportunity. Stepping into this strange room at the bottom of this lunatic house was probably the most foolish thing he’d ever done, and he knew it.
A cold wind came to greet him. It caught hold of his elbow, and drew him over the threshold into the world-yes, it was a world-inside. He looked up at the heavens; at that three-quarter blinded sun, at the high herringbone clouds that he remembered puzzling over as a child, wondering what it was that laid them out so carefully, so prettily. A star fell earthward, and he followed its arc with his eyes, until it burned itself out, somewhere over the trees.
Far off, many miles beyond the dark mass of the forest, he could see the sea, glittering. This was not the Pacific, he could see. The ships that moved upon it were like something from an Errol Flynn flick, The Sea Hawk or some such. He’d loved those movies as a kid; and the ships in them. Especially the ships.
It was twenty-six seconds since the man from Paramount, who’d spent his professional life keeping the dreamy, superstitious child in him silenced by pretending a fine, high-minded superiority to all things that smelt of grease-paint and midnight hokum, had entered the Devil’s Country; and had lost himself in it.
“Come on, don’t be afraid, the wind from the sea whispered in his ear.
And in he went, all cynicism wiped from his mind by the memory of wheeling ships beneath a painted sky, still young enough to believe he might grow up a hero.
THREE
Todd stirred from a state closer to a stupor than a sleep. He was lying on the immense bed of the master bedroom in the house in Coldheart Canyon. Katya was lying beside him, her little body gathered into a tight knot, pressed close to him. One arm was beneath him, the other on top, as though she’d never let him go of him again. She was snoring in her sleep, as she had been that day he’d found her in her bedroom at the guest-house. The human touch. It was more eloquent now than ever, given what they’d gone through together.
There had been some terrifying moments for them both in the last few hours; fragments of them played in Todd’s head as he slowly extricated himself from her embrace, and slid slowly out of the bed. First, there’d been that breath-snatching moment when he’d turned his back on the Malibu house and headed out into the dark waters of the Pacific with Katya. He’d never been so frightened in his life. But then she’d squeezed his hand, and looked around at him, her hair blowing back from her face, showing off the glory of her bones, and he’d thought: even if I die now, I will have been the luckiest man in creation. I will have had this woman by my side at the end. Who could ask for more than that?
It hadn’t been quite so easy to hold on to those feelings of gratitude in the chaotic minutes that followed. Once they were out of their depth, and in the grip of the great Pacific, the bitter-sweet joy of what they were doing became a shared, instinctive attempt to survive in the dark, bruising waters. Fifty yards out, and the big waves, the surfers’ waves, started to pick them up and drop them down again into their lightless troughs. It was so dark he could barely see Katya’s face, but he heard her choking on seawater, coughing like a frightened little girl.