Eighteen

“Want to go for a ride?” she asked him.

He nodded, but didn’t move forward.

“You’ll have to give up hesitating if you’re going to ride with me,” she said, opening the driver’s door. But Bill was distracted from this edict when he saw an elderly man sleeping on the front seat.

“Wake up, Harry,” she said, gently nudging the old man, who came awake with a start. “We’re taking…” She looked over her shoulder. “I’m Ellie. What’s your name?”

“William. William Gray.”

She turned back to the old man. “We’re taking Bill here for a ride on Mulholland Drive. You can sleep in the back.”

The old man reach for a cap, rubbed a gnarled hand over his face and quickly transformed himself into a dignified chauffeur, moving to hold the passenger door open for Bill, waiting patiently as Bill finally moved toward the car. Harry gave a questioning look to Ellie, now behind the wheel.

“No, you need your rest.”

Harry nodded and climbed into the back, asleep again before Ellie had started the car.

They had traveled Mulholland and beyond that night, climbing canyon roads that twisted and turned.

She was a good driver; calm and assured, not crazy on the winding roads. At first, he was afraid, wondering if he had made the biggest-and perhaps the final-mistake of his life. He started envisioning bold headlines: “Missing UCLA Student Found Dead,” or “Still No Suspects in Topanga Canyon Torture-Murder Case.” Perhaps he wouldn’t be missed much. Maybe he would only rate a small article on a back page, near a department store ad: “Boy Scout Troop Makes Grisly Discovery in Canyon.”

“Either you just had a big fight with your girlfriend or you’re a writer,” she said, not taking her eyes off the road. “I’m betting you’re a writer.”

He hesitated, then said, “I’m a writer. Or I want to be one. How did you guess?”

“The time of day, the way you were walking. You looked frustrated, I suppose.”

“Anyone can be frustrated. Why would you think I’m a writer?”

She shrugged, then smiled a little. He waited, hoping she would answer, but she startled him by saying, “You’re also a bit of a romantic.”

He laughed nervously. “That’s an odd thing to say.”

“I am odd. But there’s nothing odd about knowing a romantic when you see one. At three-” She glanced at the clock on the dash. “At approximately three-twenty-five in the morning, you agreed to get into a Rolls-Royce with a sleeping old man and a woman you had never met before.”

“Perhaps I just needed an adventure.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps both. So, what’s your favorite movie of all time?”

“Rear Window,” he said without hesitation.

“Wonderful!” she said, laughing but still not taking her eyes from the road. “Whose work in it do you admire, Hitchcock’s or Woolrich’s?”

He smiled. Many people knew that Hitchcock directed Rear Window. Fewer knew that it was written by Cornell Woolrich. “Both, really,” he answered. “I’m a fan of both. I’ve seen every Hitchcock film, with the exception of a few of the very early British ones.”

Soon they were discussing Hitchcock and Woolrich, and Bill forgot all about Boy Scouts and headlines. She had seen most of the films he had seen, read more Woolrich.

He eased back into the passenger seat, studying her. She didn’t make a move toward him, didn’t reach across the seat, didn’t even look at him much. Every so often, finding a vista she liked, Ellie would stop the car. The first time she stopped, Bill expected her to turn her attention to him. But she didn’t do more than glance at him. “Just look at it,” she said, gesturing to the carpet of city lights below. Soon he realized that was all she would ask of him-just to look at it.

At one of these turnouts, she kicked off her shoes and rolled down a window, resting her bare feet on the sill. She drove barefooted the rest of the night.

She asked him questions. He talked more that night than he had ever talked in his life. About his writing, his family, his childhood, his love of Woolrich stories and Hitchcock films and chocolate and on and on, even describing the furniture in his apartment.

“And you?” he asked. “Where do you live?”

“Somewhere in these hills. Perhaps I’ll take you there someday.”

As many questions as she asked, and as few as she answered, somehow she still managed to make him feel that he was of vital interest to her, not in the way some questioners might-as scientist studying an insect-but as if she cared about him from before the time she had met him. He was wondering at the trust he had placed in this stranger just as the sun was coming up over the hills. She had parked the car on a ridge. Harry was snoring softly.

“I’ll take you home,” she said.

“I’m not sure I want to go home,” Bill answered, then quickly added, “Sorry, I don’t mean to be pushy. You’ve been a great listener. You’re probably tired and-”

She reached over then, and laid a finger to his lips. She shook her head, and he stopped talking, unsure of what she was saying ‘no’ to.

She took him back to his apartment, leaving Harry asleep in the car.

“Do you want to come in?” he asked on his doorstep.

She shook her head, an impish smile on her lips. “I know exactly what it looks like-I’m sure you’ve described it perfectly. Besides, you’re very busy. You’ve got to get a little sleep, and then you’ll wake up and write your book. It’s going to be terrific, but no one will ever find that out until you write it.”

She turned and skipped back to the car.

“Will I see you again?” he called out.

“Stop worrying,” she called back. “Write!”

And he had. He slept about three hours, woke up feeling as if he had slept ten, and wondering if he had dreamed the woman in the Rolls-Royce. But dream or no dream, he suddenly knew how to get around that problem in his story, and went to work.

Harry appeared a few hours later, a picnic basket in hand. “Miss Eleanor sends her regards, and provisions so that you need not interrupt your work.”

“You can talk!” Bill exclaimed.

“When necessary,” Harry said, and left.

Bill searched through the basket, and found an assortment of small sandwiches, a salad, a slice of chocolate cake and several choices of beverages. He also found an old-fashioned calling card:

On the back she had inscribed her phone number. “Delicious,” Bill said, holding it carefully, as if it might skip away, disappear as quickly as she had.

And so he went back to writing. Bill saw little of Ellie during the first few weeks which followed their ride through the hills, but he called her often. If he found himself staring uselessly at the place where the wall behind his computer screen met the ceiling, unsure of how to proceed, a brief chat with Ellie inspired him. They played a game with Hitchcock films and Woolrich stories.

“A jaguar,” he would say.

“Black Alibi,” she would answer. “A name scrawled on a window.”

“Easy-The Lady Vanishes.”

And his writer’s block would vanish as well.

When Bill completed his manuscript, Harry brought him and the manuscript to her home for the first time. Bill, trying (and failing) not to be overawed by the elegance which surrounded him, handed her the box of pages. She caressed the corners of the box, looking for a moment as if she might cry. But she said nothing, and set it gently aside without opening it. She held out her hand, and he took it. She led him upstairs.

Later, waking in the big bed, he found her watching him. “Did you read it?”

“No,” she said, tracing a finger along his collarbone. “I don’t want there to be any mistake about why you’re here. It’s not because of what’s in that manuscript box.”