No One You Know Part 10

"I wish he could," Mrs. Wheeler said, "but Jimmy had a stroke three years ago. He hasn't spoken since. He used to communicate by writing, but he can't even do that anymore." She stretched her fingers and fiddled with her wedding ring. "Jimmy wasn't in the book. I remember. I went out and got it from the library as soon as it came out, and I read the whole thing cover to cover. I was scared out of my mind that he might be mentioned by name. I worried he couldn't handle it, after everything that had happened. I'm just wondering, hon, how did you know about him?"

"I talked to a detective who worked on the case," I said. The truth was far too complicated.

She frowned. "Then you must know what happened to Jimmy after."

I shook my head.

"The police took him in for questioning. It was horrible. They showed up one night when we were getting the kids ready for bed and hauled him off like some kind of criminal. I stayed up all night, praying and crying. The kids were scared to death. When he came back the next morning, he looked awful. They hadn't let him sleep, hadn't given him anything to eat. They tried to make him confess. They just kept saying, 'You're the janitor. What's the janitor doing talking to a pretty young college student?'

"But he was just like that, you see. He talked to anybody who would listen. And I'll be the first to admit, he talked way too much. Once he had your ear, he wouldn't let go. Drove me crazy, but now that he can't talk, I miss it. Your sister was such a sweet girl, she always said h.e.l.lo to him in the hallway. He really liked her, but not in the way the police wanted to believe. We had two boys, and Jimmy had always wanted a girl. He told me once, before all this happened, that if we had a daughter, he wanted her to be like Lila. She was a good girl, he said, always acted modestly, never talked loud or tried to attract attention to herself."

I sat quietly, listening. It was easy to believe that Lila would have been friendly with the janitor. She was most comfortable around people who didn't fit into her peer group, people who wouldn't demand more than a few minutes of her time, who wouldn't ask for her phone number or invite her to a movie.

"Did the police ever talk to him again?"

She shook her head. "Oh, there was no need to. The reason they kept Jimmy so long that night was that he wouldn't give them an alibi. He kept refusing to tell them where he had been on the night she died. But after a while they started getting rough with him, saying real terrible things, and he realized they honestly believed he could have done it. That's when he told them about his second job-he worked at a steel mill in South City. We were having a real hard time back then, poor as church mice and a third baby on the way. He was working two full-time jobs to keep us afloat. But there was a strict policy at Stanford back then against moonlighting. That job was our bread and b.u.t.ter, and Jimmy couldn't afford to lose it. He knew if he told the cops about the steel mill, it would make it back to his boss at Stanford, and he'd get fired."

"So what happened?"

"He finally gave in and told the police, and they went out and talked to his boss on the night job, and sure enough, he'd gone straight from one job to the next. He clocked out at Stanford at seven p.m., then clocked in at the steel mill in South City at eight-thirty and worked all night. After that they left him alone."

She reached across the table and took my hand. "I know why you're here, hon, and I don't blame you for trying to figure some things out. But I want you to know, it wasn't Jimmy. You believe me, don't you?"

I did.

"It tore him up what happened to her, and that they thought he could have done it," she said. "Things fell apart after that. Within weeks he lost his day job at Stanford, I miscarried, and we almost lost the house. It changed him. He'd been so strong before, so eager. He grew up real poor, got a late start in life, and he had this idea that if he just worked hard we'd be able to move up in the world.

"The crazy thing is, now this little place is worth a fortune, but we'll never sell. Jimmy hardly gets out of bed, he's got all sorts of problems with his lungs and everything else. He worked his whole life for something he'll never get to enjoy."

There was a thumping noise from the front room. "Oh, that's Jimmy," Mrs. Wheeler said. "Two thumps. That means he's thirsty." She got up and poured water into a gla.s.s.

"Thank you so much," I said, standing. I felt there was something else I had to say, even though I knew I was far too late. "I'm sorry your family got caught up in all this."

She smiled. "Well, what can you do? You just try to get by as best you can. Fortunately Jimmy and I were always pretty much head over heels for each other, that helps."

I followed her through the living room into the entryway. She pulled the curtain back, and there was James Wheeler, a skeleton of a man with a wild swirl of gray hair. The dog had climbed up onto the pillow beside his head. "I'm here, hon," Mrs. Wheeler said.

He looked up at me and for a moment, something flashed across his eyes. He raised an arm, as if to wave, but it dropped back to the sheet.

"I know," Mrs. Wheeler said, holding the gla.s.s of water to his lips. "She looks just like her sister, doesn't she?"

Twenty-three.

ON SAt.u.r.dAY, AS PROMISED, I MET THORPE at Opera Plaza. When I arrived he was still signing books, a line of customers stretching through the store. He looked up, saw me, and mouthed "Ten minutes."

A good-looking guy walked into the store, carrying an ugly baby in a Maclaren backpack. He wore an expensive leather jacket, brown Skechers, and rocker jeans cut so low and tight it was a wonder he could walk. The baby wore a pink hat that said Nader 2008.

The guy's s.h.a.ggy haircut and sideburns were too perfect to be real. He was of the cla.s.s of young, disaffected San Francisco hipsters who had long baffled me with their seemingly unlimited supply of free time and money, none of which they appeared to spend on food. He turned and gave me a lopsided grin. "Who's the author?" he said.

"Andrew Thorpe."

"Any good?"

"I haven't read the book."

I excused myself and walked to the coffee shop attached to the store, where I bought a tin of chocolate-covered espres...o...b..ans. Back at the store, I popped one in my mouth and let the chocolate melt on my tongue. By the time Thorpe was finished, I'd had a dozen and was beginning to feel the buzz.

"Ready to walk?" he asked.

Half an hour later we were sitting at a little table at Mangosteen, crowded in on both sides by noisy lunchgoers. The place smelled of lemongra.s.s.

"I recommend number ten," Thorpe said. "Cubed steak with potatoes over rice, or number twenty-two, same thing but with noodles."

I went with the noodles. The service was slow, but the food was good. Thorpe talked about a meeting he'd just had with his life coach before launching into a series of questions about my personal life. Without exactly knowing how it happened, I ended up telling him about Henry, our breakup in Guatemala three years before.

"Was he the one?" Thorpe asked.

I just shrugged, but he asked again. Reluctantly, I said, "I thought he was, at the time."

"Do you still think about him?"

"On occasion." The truth was I'd been thinking about him a lot lately, but that was none of Thorpe's business.

"Then he wasn't the one," Thorpe said. "If he was, you'd think of him every morning when you wake up. You'd think of him when you go to bed at night, when you drop off your dry-cleaning, when you're sitting in a movie."

"I saw James Wheeler."

"You went through with it." He sounded surprised.

"Why didn't you tell me he'd been cleared by his alibi?"

"Was he? I don't remember that. Like I said, he just wasn't that interesting."

He swirled the last bite of steak around in the sauce and popped it in his mouth. The server came over with the check, and Thorpe handed her his credit card before I could protest. "I'm stuffed," he said, patting his stomach. "What say we take a walk, work off the lunch?"

The sun was out, scorching the sidewalk, glinting off the parked cars that lined the street. I took off my sweater and twisted my hair up in a bun to get it off my neck. The Tenderloin smelled atrocious in the heat, like dog s.h.i.+t, petrol, and baked p.i.s.s. Guys urinating on the sidewalk were one of the commonest features of the neighborhood, second only to drug-addled prost.i.tutes working their trade at all hours. This was a part of the city I'd never learned to love.

We walked South on Larkin, block after block in silence.

By the time we got to Market, my shoes were beginning to pinch and I wondered where Thorpe was taking me. Every minute with him made me feel uneasy, but I was determined to ask him for more names.

"Do you like horse races?" Thorpe asked. "I sometimes go to Bay Meadows. It's more fun than you think. I was planning to go next Sat.u.r.day. You should come."

Fortunately, I didn't have to answer, because just then we were overtaken by a posse of a dozen men linked together by a complex matrix of chains, clad in leather vests, kilts, and combat boots.

"Oh, I forgot, it's the weekend of the Folsom Street Fair," Thorpe said.

I had the feeling he hadn't forgotten, that this had been our destination all along.

We continued walking south. Within a few blocks, we were caught up in the crowd: men in leather chaps with nothing underneath, women in painful corsets, towering trannies in six-inch heels. I felt out of place in my knee-length summer skirt and T-s.h.i.+rt, like Exhibit A in the Suburban Soccer Mom display at the Museum of Mainstream Morality.

"If I'd known this was our destination, I'd have worn something a bit more dramatic," I said.

"You look great. Maybe people will think you're being ironic."

Eventually we came to a barricade in the middle of the street.

"Three bucks to enter," said an extremely tall man in a bit and harness. He whinnied, stomped his big foot, and shook his hair extensions. He was so convincingly horselike, I wondered if he dressed like this every day.

"Well, since we're here already," Thorpe said, fis.h.i.+ng a five and a single out of his wallet.

One thing I loved about San Francisco was that, when it came to public exhibition of all varieties, the vibe was decidedly laissez-faire. At any moment, you might wander into what seemed like a scene from a movie. Years ago, I'd been folding my towels at a Laundromat on Diamond when the theme song from Grease came on the radio, and all five patrons literally burst into spontaneous song. If you had the time and inclination, you could live your life as a picaresque without ever leaving the city.

Thorpe turned his attention to a whipping demonstration going on at a booth a few feet away. The sun was oppressive, the smell of leather and mysterious lubricants overpowering. Someone swatted me on the backside with a wooden paddle, but when I turned to identify the spanker, I met a sea of guileless faces. I felt like Alice in a freaky San Francisco version of Wonderland, where the Mad Hatter and all his loopy friends were into S& M.

And then I saw a familiar face.

"Jack?"

He wrapped me in a hug. "Ellie. G.o.d, it's been ages."

His thick black hair hung down to his shoulders. He wore a Mickey Mouse T-s.h.i.+rt and brown leather pants. "You look great," I said, and he did. Thorpe beamed his most confident smile. "This is Andrew Thorpe," I said. "And this is my friend Jack, from college."

"Jackson," he corrected me. That's when I remembered how he'd insisted on being called Jackson, even though his actual given name was just Jack.

We'd met at the beginning of my senior year and had been together morning and night for several weeks before he went to Senegal with the Peace Corps. It was good to see him. The city was full of men whom I'd had brief relations.h.i.+ps with in the year following Lila's death. Every now and then, I'd run into one of them. It was always interesting, if somewhat unsettling, to see who they'd become, how they turned out.

A tall blonde in a red leather dress came up and put her arm around Jack's waist. "This is my wife, Stacy," he said. To my surprise, he introduced me as "an old girlfriend."

There was an awkward pause. "The kids are at home with the sitter in Atherton," Stacy said.

"Kids?"

"We've got two. First grade and preschool. They think we're at a company picnic."

Stacy was friendly and quick, and I got the feeling that when she wasn't dressed like a hooker, she wore serious business suits and pulled in a serious income-maybe as an attorney or a realtor. But I remembered Jack/Jackson as a skinny guy with a joint in one hand and a book in the other, lounging naked on his ratty mattress in the aftermath of s.e.x. It was strange to think of him married with kids.

He handed me his business card. "Give me a call. We'll have you over for dinner. You can meet the little monsters."

"That would be great," I said, but I knew I'd never call.

Thorpe and I pushed past booths selling giant d.i.l.d.os and gold-plated c.o.c.k rings, vendors peddling anatomically vivid funnel cakes, posters advertising special events for various fetishes. A woman in a rubber nursing uniform thrust a flier into my hand. It read, Meet Your Submissive. First consultation free.

Finally we came to the end of the street and exited the fair. I was trying to figure out how to phrase my request when Thorpe said, "I've got another one for you."

"Pardon?"

"Another name. Something else I didn't put in the book. There was a car out at Armstrong Woods around the time Lila went missing, a white Chevy. Somebody thought it looked weird and took down a license plate, reported it to the cops."

He pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me. On it was printed a name: William Boudreaux.

"He was some sort of musician, went by Billy. I originally planned to follow up on it, but then I just got busy. And anyway, by the time I discovered it, I already liked where the book was going."

I folded the paper carefully and slid it into my wallet. "Thank you." We walked for a couple of minutes in silence before I said what was on my mind. "I have to ask-why are you doing this?"

Thorpe smiled. "I guess I've got this crazy thought in my head that if I do you a good turn, maybe I can win you over."

We kept walking. The crowds thinned out, the fog moved in. When we got back to Opera Plaza, where my car was parked, I said, "Hey, before I go, could you clear one thing up for me?"

"Yeah?"

"Your house. The view from your desk."

"Ah, that."

"Well?"

"Would you believe it's a coincidence?"

"No."

He looked away. For a moment, he actually seemed to be blus.h.i.+ng. "When it came up for sale, I'd gone almost two years without writing a word. I'd sit down to type, and I'd just stare at the blank page for hours. This had gone on for so long, I'd finally decided to abandon writing altogether and go back to teaching. I was visiting a friend in the neighborhood one Sunday, when we drove by and saw the open house sign. He wanted to have a look, so I joined him. I wasn't looking to buy, and it's not really even my style-too modern, somewhat cold-but when I realized I could see your house from the upstairs window, I knew I had to have it, and I knew that the room with the view would be my office."

"That's a little creepy."

"Maybe, but it worked. Within two months of moving in, I had three chapters of a new book. I did my writing at night, but only on those nights when the light was on in your room."

"By then, it wasn't even my room," I said. "My mother had turned it into an office."

He rested his hand on the roof of my car. "Oh, I knew you weren't there anymore. But when the light was on, I could pretend you were. I imagined you sitting at your old desk, reading books, listening to music. I at least had the illusion of your being nearby. And sometimes you were. Until your mother moved away last year, I rarely went out on Thursday nights. That was the one night of the week when I could be almost certain of seeing you. Even though I couldn't speak to you, I still could conceive of an imaginary line running from my desk to you. I would watch you down there, standing on the sidewalk in front of the house with your mother. I wondered what you were talking about. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that there were times when I wondered if my name came up."

"You must understand that's weird," I said. "Very weird."

What I didn't tell him was that even the one man in my life who had truly loved me, Henry, had never been so devoted to me. In comparison with Thorpe, Henry had given up on me relatively easily. Did obsession breed a deeper loyalty than love?

He rubbed at an imaginary spot on my car. "What can I say? You were my Zelda, my George Sand, my Stella. My books, the house, the mild celebrity I've enjoyed-it's all because of you."

It was easy to see he'd put me on a pedestal. If the circ.u.mstances had been different-if his book had been about anything other than Lila-I might have been flattered. I could see how, under the right conditions, it might be really nice to be someone's muse.

Finally, I unlocked the driver's-side door, but before I could open it, Thorpe did it for me. "Really," he said, once I was settled behind the wheel, "it might not be a bad idea to look up Billy Boudreaux."