Stepping beneath them onto the flagstones bordering the front wall, I felt myself entering a zone of shelter, of sanctuary. The door—a large red slab flanked by narrow sidelights and shielded by a glass storm door—nestled within the corner of an L, and the roofline angled across the corner, creating a triangular porch at the entryway. The walkway and porch were bordered by low irregular terraces of river rock and creeping juniper. A small, artificial stream tumbled down the rocks and into a pool at the doorway. To reach the door, I crossed a huge flagstone—it must have weighed a thousand pounds or more—that bridged the pool. Now this, I thought, this is an entrance.
Beside the door, suspended from a curlicue bracket of wrought iron, hung a bell with a leather cord dangling from its clapper. I gave the cord a tentative tug, and the clapper swung gently, barely tapping the bell. I gave a stronger pull, and the clapper struck with a pure, high ring, the sort of ethereal chime you might hear wafting down from some Tibetan monastery high in the Himalayas. I waited a moment, listening for footsteps, but heard none. She’s eighty-five years old, I reminded myself, give her a minute. Still no one came, so I rapped more loudly on one of the sidelights. Still no footsteps. Feeling slightly furtive, I tried the handle on the glass storm door. It was unlocked, as was the red wooden door. I eased it open just far enough to lean my head inside and called out, “Hello? Mrs. Novak?”
“Yes?” The voice had a slight quaver to it.
“It’s Dr. Brockton. We spoke on the phone.”
“I know we did. I might be ancient, but I’m not senile.”
I smiled. Yes, she was sharp all right. “Should I come in?”
“Unless you’d rather stay outside and shout,” she said, sounding simultaneously amused and exasperated, crusty and playful. “Follow my voice.” I stepped inside and found myself in a low-ceilinged foyer, its walls paneled with the same warm redwood as the home’s exterior. The floor was terrazzo, a glassy-smooth mosaic of marble chips set into concrete and polished to a soft lustre of green, red, black, and ivory. “I was beginning to think maybe you’d stood me up.”
Her voice, together with a broad track of reflected daylight, led me to a wide doorway. When I stepped through it, the space opened up dramatically, and I blinked from both the brightness and the unexpectedness of it. “Oh my,” I heard myself saying, “this is wonderful.”
“Yes,” she said. “I designed it to be wonderful. Back when wonderful was still a possibility.”
It took me a moment to find her, just as it had taken some effort to find her house. She was sitting in a high, wing-backed chair that nearly enveloped her; the chair was off to one side of a large living room, facing a wall of glass that looked out into the woods behind the house. The polished floor extended seamlessly beyond the glass and onto a large terrace; the terrace was partly sheltered beneath a high, wide roof overhang; the overhang was made of the same tongue-and-groove redwood as the walls and eaves of the house. Together, the architectural elements and their blurred transitions—the seamless floor, the wall of glass, and the unbroken planes of redwood—conspired to hide the boundary between indoors and out, and if not for the warmth in the sun-drenched room, I’d have been hard pressed to say whether the space was enclosed or not.
“Looks like wonderful is still possible,” I said, walking to the side of her chair, “at least in here. It’s Dr. Brockton, Mrs. Novak. Thank you for letting me come see you.”
“Letting you? I practically twisted your arm out of the socket. Do you have any idea how seldom I have company? Almost everyone I used to know is dead or dying. It’s depressing as hell. By the way, I haven’t been Mrs. Novak in sixty years. Novak was three husbands ago. It’s Montgomery now, and Mr. Montgomery kicked the bucket quite a while back. So call me Beatrice, unless you want to remind me I’m old and make me cranky.”
“I’d hate to make you cranky, Beatrice,” I said.
“It wouldn’t be in your best interest,” she agreed. “Sit down, and tell me what it is you want to know. The tea should still be hot—I made it about five minutes ago.” A large mug sat on a table between the two chairs, and wisps of steam wafting up from it caught the slanting afternoon light. Beside the mug was a small china plate that held two round, golden cookies. “The cookies are Scottish shortbread,” she said. “Butter and flour and sugar. If you don’t want them, throw them out for the birds, because I’m not supposed to have them.”
I headed to the rocker but stopped before sitting down. “You’re not having any tea? Can I get you anything else—some water, maybe?”
“Water? Never touch the damn stuff,” she said. “I’ll have some vodka when it’s cocktail hour.”
“When’s that?”
“Five,” she said. “What time is it now?”
I glanced at my watch; I was about to tell her it was three forty-five when the note of teasing and hopefulness in her voice registered with me. “This watch is not worth a damn,” I fibbed. “It eats a battery once a week.”
She laughed. “Dear me, you are a smooth one,” she said. “Too bad I’m not forty years younger. I’d make you fall desperately in love with me. You’re an interesting fellow, Dr. Brockton.”