The radio is set to a Portland station featuring twenty-four-hour-a-day news. Ordinarily, when bathing and attending to his toilet, Mr. Vess likes to listen to the news, not because he has any interest in the latest political or cultural developments but because these days the news is largely about people maiming and killing one another—war, terrorism, rape, assault, murder. And when people can’t kill one another in sufficient numbers to keep the reporters busy, nature always saves the day with a tornado, a hurricane, a big earthquake, or an outbreak of flesh-eating bacteria.
Sometimes, listening to the news and letting the various reports spark fond memories of his own homicidal exploits, he realizes that he himself is also a force of nature: a hurricane, a lightning storm, a planet-smashing asteroid hurtling through the void, the distillate of all human ferocity in a single body. Elemental power. The thought pleases him.
Now, however, news will not set the stage properly. Hastily he turns the tuning knob until he finds a station playing music. “Take the A Train” by Duke Ellington.
Perfect.
The big-band sound brings to his mind’s eye an image of light flaring off cut crystal and luminous bubbles rising in a champagne glass, and it reminds him of the smell of fresh-cut limes, lemons. He can feel the notes in the air, some shimmering-bursting like bubbles and others bouncing off him like hundreds of little rubber balls and some like windblown leaves crisp with autumn: a very tactile music, exuberant and exhilarating.
The woman will be subtly lulled by the swing beat. It will be difficult for her to believe, really believe, that anything bad can happen to her with such music as background.
Perfect.
He hurries back to his bedroom, to the window, having been away from it no more than a minute.
Rain snaps against the glass, streams.
On the driveway below, the motor home stands as before. The woman still must be inside. She probably won’t just burst out of the vehicle and run pell-mell; she’s likely to exit warily, hesitant on both sides of the door. Although there might have been time for her to get out of the motor home while Mr. Vess was in the bathroom, she would almost certainly be huddling against it, getting her bearings, assessing the situation. From this high vantage point, he can see around most of the vehicle, with the exception of blind spots toward the rear on the port side and at the very back, and the woman is not in sight.
“Ready when you are, Miss Desmond,” he says, referring to the Gloria Swanson character in Sunset Boulevard.
That movie had had a great effect on him when he’d first seen it on television. He’d been thirteen, a year out of counseling for the murder of his grandmother. On one level, he had known that Norma Desmond was supposed to be the tragic villain of the piece, that the writer and director intended for her to fulfill that role—but he had admired her, loved her. Her selfishness was thrilling, her self-absorption heroic. She was the truest character he had ever seen in a movie. This was what people were actually like, under the pretense and hypocrisy, under all the crap about love, compassion, altruism; they were all like Norma Desmond but couldn’t admit it to themselves. Norma didn’t give a shit about the rest of the world, and she bent everyone to her iron will even when she was no longer young or beautiful or famous, and when she couldn’t bend William Holden’s character as far as she wanted, she just boldly picked up a gun and shot him, which was so powerful, so audacious, that young Edgler had been too excited to sleep that night. He had lain awake wondering what it would be like to encounter a woman as superior and genuine as Norma Desmond—and then to break her, kill her, take all the strength of her selfishness and make it his own.
Maybe this mystery woman is a little bit like Norma Desmond. She’s bold, sure enough. He can’t figure what the hell she’s doing, what she’s after; and when he understands her motivation, maybe she won’t be anything like Norma Desmond. But at least she is already something new and interesting in his experience.