no dream-or if someone else had clawed him while he slept, he would have
awakened at once. Which meant that he had been awake when it had
happened, then had stretched out on the bed again and gone back to
sleep-and had forgotten the incident, just as he had forgotten his life
prior to that alleyway last night.
He returned in panic to the bedroom and looked on the other side of the
bed, then in the closet. He was not sure what he was looking for. Maybe
a dead body. He found nothing.
The very thought of killing anyone made him sick. He knew he did not
have the capacity to kill, except perhaps in self defense. So who had
scratched his face and hands? Whose blood was on him?
In the bathroom again, he stripped out of his stained clothes and rolled
them into a tight bundle. He washed his face and hands. He had a
styptic pencil along with other shaving gear; he used that to stop the
scratches from bleeding.
When he met his own eyes in the mirror, they were haunted that he had to
look away.
Frank dressed in fresh clothes and snatched the car keys from the
dresser. He was afraid of what he might find in the Chevy parked At the
door, as he disengaged the dead bolt, he realized that neither the frame
nor the door itself was smeared with blood. If he had left during the
afternoon and returned, bleeding from his hands, he would not have had
the presence of mind to wipe the door clean before climbing into bed.
Anyway, he had seen no bloody washcloth or tissues with which a cleanup
might have been accomplished.
Outside, the sky was clear; the westerly sun was bright. the motel’s
palm trees shivered in a cool wind.
The concrete walkway outside his room was not spotted with blood. The
interior of the car was free of blood. No blood marked the dirty rubber
mat in the trunk, either.
He stood by the open trunk, blinking at the sun-wash motel and parking
lot around him. Three doors down, a man and woman in their twenties
were unloading luggage from their black Pontiac. Another couple and
their grade-school-a daughter were hurrying along the covered walkway,
apparently heading toward the motel restaurant. Frank realized that he
could not have gone out and committed murder and turned, blood-soaked
and in broad daylight, without being seen.
In his room again, he went to the bed and studied the rumpled sheets.
They were crimson-spotted, but not a fraction saturated as they would
have been if the attack-whatever nature-had happened there. Of course,
with all the blood, it might have spilled mostly on the front of his
shirt and jeans. But he still couldn’t believe that he had clawed
himself in his sleep-one hand ripping at the other, both hands tearing
at his face-without waking.
Besides, he had been scratched by someone with sharp fingernails. His
own nails were blunt, bitten down to the quick.
SOUTH OF Cielo Vista Care Home, between Corona Del Mar and Laguna, Bobby
tucked the Samurai into a corner of a parking lot at a public beach. He
and Julie walked down to the shore.
The sea was marbled blue and green, with thin veins of gray. The water
was dark in the troughs, lighter and more colorful where the waves rose
and were half pierced by the rays of the fat, low sun. In serried ranks
the breakers moved toward the strand, big but not huge, wearing caps of
foam that the wind snatched from them.
Surfers in black wet suits paddled their boards out toward where the
swell rose, seeking a last ride before twilight. Others, also in wet
suits, sat around a couple of big coolers, drinking hot beverages from
thermos bottles or Coors from the can. The day was too cool for
sunbathing, and except for the surfers, the beach was deserted.
Bobby and Julie walked south until they found a low knoll, far enough
back from the water to escape the spray. They sat on the stiff grass
that flourished in patches in the sandy soil.
When at last she spoke, Julie said,