V Is for Vengeance

During the rainy season, the road would wash out and the occasional mud slide would make passage impossible. A brush fire of the most inconsequential sort could easily sweep up the hill, gaining momentum, sucking in fuel until it engulfed everything in its path.
    Behind the house, mountains rose implacably, shaggy with chaparral and low-growing scrub. Paddle cactus had taken over the steep clay slopes, which were laced with old animal paths and fire roads. Most of the year, the surrounding hills were a dry brown, and the fire danger was constant. Channing’s solution to the endless months without rain was to have a Japanese landscape architect create monochromatic gardens composed of gravel and stone. Boulders, chosen for their shape and size, were set in sand beds in asymmetrical arrangements that seemed studied and artificial. Lines were carefully raked from stone to stone, sometimes in straight rows, sometimes in circles meant to simulate water. Flat limestone slabs had been laid in the sand to serve as stepping stones, but they were too widely spaced for Nora’s stride, which forced her to adopt a mincing gait, as though her feet had been bound.
    The landscape architect had spoken to them at length about simplicity and functionality, concepts that appealed to Channing, who was no doubt congratulating himself for the reduction in his water bill. For Nora, the carefully composed patterns generated an almost overpowering desire to scuffle her feet, making a proper mess out of everything. Nora was a Pisces, a water baby, and she complained to Channing about how out of her element she felt in the arid environment. He was gone all day, happily ensconced in his air-conditioned offices in Century City. The house was also air-conditioned, but the sun pounding on the wide expanses of glass left the interior smelling stuffy. She was the one stuck on a mountaintop where the house was totally exposed. His concession was the addition of a shallow reflecting pool at the front of the house. Nora took an absurd pleasure in the stillness of the surface, like a mirror on which the cloudless blue sky shimmered with the faintest breeze.
    She turned into the drive and left her car on the parking pad beside the gardener’s battered pickup truck. She glanced over at the wide gravel circle where the full-time Japanese gardener, Mr. Ishiguro, squatted on his heels, removing pine needles. He’d worked for the Vogelsangs since the gardens went in. He’d come highly recommended by the landscape architect, but Nora would have been hard-pressed to describe what he did all day, fussing about with his wheelbarrow and his bamboo rake. He had to be in his late seventies, wiry and energetic. He wore a gray tunic over baggy dark blue farmer pants. A wide canvas hat shielded his face from the sun.
    The next-door neighbor had trucked in a row of knobcone pine trees that he’d planted on his side of the wall that divided the two properties. The pines were meant to serve as an additional windbreak. Channing had taken a dim view of the plan because the pines shed quantities of dead brown needles that blew onto their side. Mr. Ishiguro was perpetually exasperated at having to remove the debris, which he plucked up by hand. If he managed to catch her eye, he’d shake his head and mutter darkly as though she were to blame.
    She unlocked the back door and entered the house by way of the kitchen. The alarm system was off. They’d both become careless about arming the house. To Nora, it was a blessing to enter the air-conditioned space, though she knew within minutes she’d feel like she was suffocating. She put her handbag on the counter and made a quick circuit of the downstairs rooms to assure herself she was alone. The house, built twenty years before, was Channing’s when she married him. She’d never cared for the place. The scale of the rooms was out of proportion to the occupants. There were no window coverings, which created the illusion of living on a stage. He’d resisted her few suggestions about making the place more comfortable. Curiously, the style of the house looked dated though there was nothing she could pinpoint that contributed to the effect. This was one reason the house in Montebello was such a welcome relief. The ceilings there were twelve feet tall instead of twenty, and the views from the mullioned windows revealed trees and shrubs of a dense, lush green.
    She heard a loud banging at the back door, so ferocious and