“Oh, then there is something wrong with my composition?”

“No, Gail, it was, it was a combination of things!”

She opened the door to Toby Ackland’s Jaguar and stood on its running board. She reached for the purse that was on her seat and took out fifty dollars, which I told her I wouldn’t take. She said I’d better take it now, because we wouldn’t be seeing each other again.

“What about the concert tomorrow?” I asked. “You’re not coming?”

“And be humiliated again? You have yourself the wrong girl.”

She tried to push the money on me again, and I told her that since she’d destroyed my work as well as her own, it was as if I’d done it all for nothing, and that’s what I wanted to be paid.

She flopped down into the passenger seat and closed the car door as Toby Ackland pulled out of the parking space, almost scraping the rear of the white trailer truck. She turned around in her seat and I saw no anger, only sadness. “Good-bye, Ray. You know I could have loved you if you’d have let me.”

“But I do love you, Gail,” I told her. I just didn’t know in what way.

“Go, Toby,” she said, and the Jaguar and Gail receded from my life at forty miles per hour, Gail staring at me over the back of the car seat until I could no longer discern her face.

Chapter 44

44

Opus None

I got off the ferry to Oakland and walked up to the lead cab on the taxi rank. “You know a cul-de-sac off Fruitvale Avenue called Chancery Lane?” I asked the driver.

“Nope,” he said.

“Well, you’re going to.”

From the street, I could see no lights on in the house. It would have been sensible for Russ to snap off all the switches before heading for the Claremont.

The driveway was, of course, empty.

I walked up the steps to the front door. I hoped Gail was there. I wanted to tell her everything. Under the current circumstances, with her life so suddenly untethered, I wanted her to know she was less alone in the world than she thought.

Forget the above. I couldn’t bear to lose her.

I rang the doorbell, but no one answered. I tried the handle of the front door. It was locked.

A slope alongside the house tumbled gently down to Fruitvale Creek. I quickly found myself at the waterbed, staring up at the red-wood deck that Russ had built so he could read the Sunday papers while overlooking the stream. I was still limber enough that I could jump, grab the edge of the deck, and hoist myself onto it. The door from the deck into the kitchen was unlocked and I entered the house.

“Gail?” I called out. There was no answer.