Shadowfires

clean-lined desert architecture.
The lush landscaping was distinctly not of the desert-ficus trees,
benjamina, impatiens, begonias, beds of marigolds and Gerber daisies-
green and thick and flower-laden in the soft glow of a series of
Malibu lights. Those were the only lights burning; all the front
windows were dark.
    She had told Benny that this was another of Eric's houses-though she had been closemouthed about the reason she had come. Now, as she switched off the headlights, he said, “Nice little vacation retreat.”
    She said, “No. This is where he kept his mistress.”
    Enough soft light fell from the Malibu fixtures, rebounded from
the lawn and from the edge of the driveway, penetrated the windows of
the car, and touched Benny's face to reveal his look of surprise. “How did you know?”
    “A little over a year ago, just a week before I left him, she-
Cindy Wasloff was her name-she called the house in Villa Park. Eric
had told her never to phone there except in the direst emergency, and
if she spoke with anyone but him, she was supposed to say she was the
secretary of some business associate. But she was furious with him
because, the night before,
he'd beaten her pretty badly, and she was leaving him. First, however, she wanted to let me know he'd
been keeping her.”
    “Had you suspected?”
    “That he had a mistress? No. But it didn't matter. By then I'd
already decided to call it quits. I listened to her and commiserated,
got the address of the house, because I thought maybe the day would
come when I might be able to use the fact of
Eric's adultery to pry myself loose from him if he wouldn't cooperate
in the divorce. Even as ugly as it got, it never got quite that tawdry, thank God. And it would have been exceedingly tawdry
indeed if I'd had to go public with it… because the girl was only sixteen.”
    “What? The mistress?”
    “Yes. Sixteen. A runaway. One of those lost kids, from the sound
of her. You know the type. They start doing drugs in junior high and
just seem to… burn away too many gray cells. No,
that's not right, either. The drugs don't destroy brain cells so much
as they… eat away at their souls, leave them empty and purposeless.
They're pathetic.”
    “Some are,” he said. “And some are scary. Bored and listless kids
who've tried everything. They either become amoral sociopaths as dangerous as rattlesnakes-or they become easy prey. I gather you're
telling me that Cindy Wasloff was easy prey and that Eric swept her
in out of the gutter for some fun and games.”
    “And apparently she wasn't the first.”
    “He had a thing for teenage girls, huh?”
    Rachael said, “What he had a thing about was getting old. It
terrified him. He was only forty-one when I left him, still a young
man, but every year when his birthday rolled around he was crazier
about it than the year before, as if at any moment he'd blink and find himself in a nursing home, decrepit and senile. He had an irrational fear of growing old and dying, and the fear expressed itself in all sorts of ways. For one thing, year by year, newness in everything became increasingly important to him: new cars every year, as if a twelve-month-old Mercedes was ready for the scrap heap; a constant change of wardrobe, out with the old and in with the new…”
    “And the modern art, modern architecture, all the ultramodern
furniture.”
    “Yes. And the latest electronic gadgetry. And I guess teenage
girls were just another part of his obsession with staying young and…
cheating death. I guess, in his twisted mind, being with young girls
kept him young, too. When I learned about Cindy Wasloff and this
house in Palm Springs, I realized that one of the main reasons he'd married me was because I was twelve years younger than him, twenty-three to his thirty-five. I was just one more means of slowing down the flow of time for him, and when I started to get into my late twenties, when he could see me getting a little older, then I no longer served that purpose quite as well for him, so he needed younger flesh like Cindy.”
    She opened her door and got out of the car, and Benny got out on
his side. He said, “So exactly
what're we looking for here? Not just his current mistress; you wouldn't
have rocketed out here like a race-car driver just to get a peek at
his latest bimbo.”
    Closing her door, withdrawing the thirty-two pistol from her
purse, and heading toward the house, Rachael did not-could not-
answer.
    The night was warm