The Good Partner Read Online Free PDF Page B

light—but she had felt as if someone were looking down on her through binoculars.
    Now she thought she saw something flash again, further up the beach this time. But she was being silly. It could be someone’s glasses, a ring, anything at all. Maybe just a birdwatcher.
    She told herself not to be so paranoid, but she couldn’t shake the feeling. There was something else that bothered her, too. This time, in the letter, he had called her Sally.

 
    2
    She should have left for work hours ago, but he hadn’t seen her go. Usually a cab or that gray-haired man in the Cadillac picked her up to take her to the studio around eight-thirty. Not today. She had to be still in the house. He hadn’t seen her leave, and he knew he couldn’t have missed her; he had been in the area for four hours, since before dawn, watching her house just like he had every day for the past two weeks, first up in the hills, now down on the beach.
    As usual that Tuesday morning, he had found his safe, secluded spot in the hills before dawn and watched her run. His powerful Zeiss binoculars silhouetted her moving image against the slowly brightening sea. Every morning she ran at least a mile up the beach and back as the sun came up. She was always alone, the only one out at that time.
    As he had lain high above her, though he could sense the city throbbing and buzzing behind him, hardly a soul stirred nearby. He could see the lights of ships twinkling out at sea, the headlights of cars on the Coast Highway, already pale in the light of the rising sun as they arced around the long curve between Topanga and Santa Monica.
    She timed herself against the sunrise, as if following and emulating its natural rhythms, in tune with it, like the dawn goddess. Or so it seemed to him. Every day now the sun rose a little later, but it was always just hidden behind the eastern hills when she started out and balanced on top of them like a huge fireball when she got back.
    He watched the tide, too, how it ebbed and flowed. She always ran right along the water line. He had seen the spent waves foam and sparkle around her feet as if she were the very rebirth of Venus.
    Suddenly, here she came again. Walking out of the gate onto the beach. Not to run this time, but just walking, looking contemplative. His heart expanded so much he thought it would explode in his chest. She was thinking about him. He knew it. She must have received his latest letter and read it. Now she was walking alone on the beach thinking about him.
    He lay on a rock about a quarter of a mile further west, on the Topanga State Beach. It was eleven in the morning now and there were a few people around, some brave surfers and couples walking hand in hand. They didn’t bother him, though. He knew he just looked like someone lying on a rock watching the seabirds. Plenty of other people did that. It didn’t look strange at all.
    In fact, living here, you would have to think very hard to find anything that really did seem weird, he thought. His kind of city. The place where he had finally become what he had been from the start but had only vaguely sensed before; where he had recognized himself at last; the place where he had both lost and found his soulmate, his life’s companion.
    He pulled her into focus through the lenses. The binoculars were so strong that he could fill them with her head and shoulders. She wasn’t silhouetted now, and he could see her downcast eyes, see her chewing softly on her lower lip, that slightly crooked tooth overlapping at the front, the only blemish on a perfect face. Well, that could easily be altered.
    He could almost hear her thoughts, how she was racking her brains to remember who he was, who it was loved her so much, so she could come to him. He felt her calling out to him. But no, not yet. There was still much to do before they could truly be together. For a moment, he felt guilty for torturing her so, but it passed. After all,