The light had already gone from beside the pool.
“There!” Paul said, pointing up at something that could have been the light he’d seen, now up on Mulholland Drive. But it could just as easily have been the light of a car coming round the treacherous corner of the road. And anyway, it had gone in a heartbeat, leaving both father and son doubting what they’d seen.
SIX
In the depths of the Canyon, no more than half a mile from the pool and the lawn and the tree where Ava hung, Tammy lay in the dirt, and waited for the end. She’d done all she could do to survive: she had eaten berries and licked the dew off leaves, she’d fought off the fever-dreams which threatened to claim her consciousness; she’d forced herself to walk when she had no strength left in her limbs.
It had tricks, this canyon: ways to lead you round and round in circles, so that you burned up all your energies coming back to the place you’d started from. It put colors before your eyes that were so bewitching that you ended up turning round and round on the spot to catch them, like a dog chasing its own tail. And sometimes (this was its cleverest trick) it went into your head and found the voices there that were most comforting, then made them call to you. Arnie (of all people to find comforting, Mr. Zero Sperm Count); and the man who used to do her dry-cleaning in Sacramento, Mr. O’Brien, who’d always had a smile and a wink for her; and Todd, of course, her beautiful hero Todd, calling out to her just to make her stumble a few more steps. She hadn’t quite believed any of these voices were real, but that hadn’t stopped her following them, back and forth, around and about — voices and colors — until at last she had no strength left in her body, and she fell down.
So now she was down, and she was too weak to get up again; too damn heavy ever to get her fat ass up and moving. At the back of her head was the fear that the freaks would come and find her. But they didn’t come, at least by daylight. Perhaps, she thought, they were waiting for darkness. Meanwhile, there were plenty of things that did come: flies, dragonflies, humming-birds, all flitting around.
As for the summonings from Arnie and Mr. O’ Brien and Todd, once she was down on the ground none of these came either. The Canyon knew it had her beaten. All it had to do was wait, and she’d perish where she lay.
The day crept on. In the middle of the afternoon she fell into a stupefied daze, and when she woke experienced a short and surprising burst of renewed ambition to save herself. After much effort she managed to get to her feet, and started to walk in what she thought was the direction of the house (sometimes she seemed to see the roof through the trees, sometimes not), but after ten minutes the Canyon seemed to realize she was up and walking, and it began its little tricks afresh. The colors came back. So did the voices.
She fell to her knees, crying, begging it to leave her alone. But it was merciless; the voices were louder than ever, yelling incoherently in her head; the sky was every color but blue.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, okay. Just leave me alone to die. I won’t get up again. I promise. I swear. Just leave me be.”
It seemed to get the message, because by degrees the yelling receded, and the colors dimmed.
She lay back in the foliage, and watched the sky darken, the stars emerge. Birds flew overhead, returning to their nests before the onset of night. She envied them, just a little, but then what did she have to go home to, in truth? A house in the suburbs she’d never really loved; a husband, the same. What a mess she’d made of her life! What a ridiculous, empty mess! All that time wasted doting on a man she’d seen on a screen; hours spent flicking through her treasures, fantasizing. Never really living. That was the horror of it. She was going to die and she’d never really lived.