She didn’t know it was Satan. The man was short, almost elfin, with a full white beard and suntanned cheeks, a large shiny tanned bald spot on his head, and kindly wrinkles around his eyes. “Come in, come in,” he said, as if he’d been expecting her. Marion said she was looking for Isabelle Washburn. “Isabelle no longer lives here,” the man said, “but come in. Please.”
“Are you the landlord?”
“Why, yes, I am. Please come in.”
In the living room were comfortably weary chairs, framed soft-focus head shots of young actresses or models, also a framed poster for King Kong. A bottle of red wine and a stemmed glass of it stood on a coffee table. “Let me get you a glass,” the man said, disappearing.
Farther back in the house, water was splashing in a bathtub, skin squeaking resonantly on porcelain. The white-bearded man returned with a glass, sat down, and filled it. He seemed very happy to see Marion.
“I just need to find Isabelle,” she said.
“I understand. But you’re shaking like a leaf.”
This was undeniable, and the wine looked good to her. She sat down and drank some. It was much weaker than the whiskey she’d drunk with Bradley. By the time she’d explained how she knew Isabelle and had come to the red house, her glass was empty. When the man moved to refill it, she didn’t stop him. The wine helped her rise with the upwellings of her fear, like a buoy on deep ocean.
“I’m afraid I don’t actually know where Isabelle is at present,” the man said, “with respect to her street address and so forth. But I know one girl who might.”
“That would be good,” Marion said, drinking.
“You’re a very comely young woman,” he added for no obvious reason.
Marion reddened. The wine was both weak and not so weak. She heard a door open, water draining from a tub, the soft stepping of bare feet, a door closing.
“So the girl,” she said. “The person who knows where she lives.”
“Oh, dear, you look terrified,” the man said. “Are you frightened? Marion? Why are you so frightened?”
“I just want to find Isabelle.”
“Of course,” he said. “I can help you with that.”
There was a kindly light in his eyes, a sort of gentle mirth.
“I’m a helpful person,” he said. “You wouldn’t be the first girl to come here in trouble. Is that what it is? Are you looking for Isabelle because you’re in some kind of trouble?”
She couldn’t answer.
“Marion? You can tell me. Are you in trouble?”
Her trouble was too large to be spoken. To emerge from her in words, it needed to be broken into smaller pieces and arranged in a coherent sequence, and even if she’d been capable of the breaking and the arranging she would have been telling a total stranger that she was carrying a married man’s child. As the stranger waited for her to answer, she noticed a different, less kindly sort of light in his eyes. She noticed that his shirt was untucked and that he had quite a potbelly. She must have been mistaken about Isabelle’s romantic interest in her landlord.
“It’s man trouble, isn’t it,” he said.
She couldn’t breathe, and she had no intention of answering, not even with a nod.
“I see,” he said. “And is your man still in the picture?”
Had she nodded? Apparently she had. She went ahead and shook her head.
“I’m very sorry,” the man said.
“But the girl you mentioned. The one who knows where Isabelle is.”
“Would you like me to telephone her?”
“Yes. Please.”
He left the room. Marion’s glass was empty, as was the bottle. While she waited, a series of small noises culminated in a clicking of heels, a woman entering the room. She stopped when she saw Marion. She was dressed in a narrow skirt and a matching jacket with padded shoulders. Her mouth, crimson-lipsticked, had a hard set to it. “You here about the room?”
“No,” Marion said.
“Good for you.”
The woman turned and left the house. The man returned with a corkscrew and a second bottle of wine. Marion waited in suspense while he opened it.
“No luck,” he said, pouring. “Jane hasn’t seen her since before Thanksgiving. She thinks she might have gone back to Santa Rosa. Apparently she’d talked about doing that.”
Isabelle’s returning to Santa Rosa seemed strange to Marion, but everything seemed strange to her. She wished she hadn’t already spent the travel money Roy Collins had wired her. Imagining Isabelle in Santa Rosa made her homesick for the place.