Free Convicted by Jan Burke Page A

all he could see of her, and not really much of her hands. The makeshift panty hose puppets were “looking” at each other.
    â€œHe’s very angry with you,” the right hand admonished the left.
    â€œNo, he’s not,” the left answered, then they both looked at Bill.
    â€œI’m not angry,” Bill said to the hands, giving in a little more. Addressing the puppets now. “Not really angry. Just tired.”
    â€œQuit distracting him. He’s on an important deadline, and he has writer’s block,” the right said.
    â€œHe never has writer’s block,” the left replied. “He’s upset about Mir.”
    â€œThe prospect of a visit from Miriam is an unpleasant one,” he agreed.
    Ellie’s head emerged above the edge of the breakfast table. He saw that she had cut the crotch out of the panty hose, and was wearing them over her head.
    â€œYou are the strangest woman I know,” he said, causing her to smile. Ellie considered this a grand endearment. Bill knew that.
    Her head tilted a little to one side, as if studying him for a portrait. “It’s fine now. Not even my evil twin can stop you.”
    â€œShe is your younger sister, not your twin,” he said, but she was leaving the table, pulling the panty hose off.
    Ellie was right, as always. Not about the twin business, of course, but about the novel he was working on. He got up from the table feeling invigorated, and went straight to the computer. He had a new slant on a passage he had considered unworkable until a moment ago. This was the effect she had on him. Ellie was his Muse.
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    HE HAD KNOWN SHE WOULD be from the moment he first saw her. Seven years ago, well past three o’clock in the morning on a hot summer’s night, at a gas station on Westwood Boulevard. Bill supposed he would forget his own name before he forgot that night.
    He had been uneasy, at loose ends. It wasn’t insomnia: it’s only insomnia when you’re trying to sleep. He had been trying to write. It was his best kept secret then, his writing. None of his professors at UCLA, who knew him as a recent graduate in mechanical engineering, would have ever guessed it. Well-written papers and a flair for creative problem-solving didn’t make him stand out as more than a good student. His friends, although from varied backgrounds and majors, held the same prejudices as the few women he had dated: they assumed that engineers were unlikely to read novels, let alone write them. His father, who expected him to come to work for the family company in September, was also unaware of Bill’s literary aspirations.
    In those days, Bill thought that was for the best. If he was going to fail, he preferred not to advertise it. And while he had faith in the basic idea for his novel, he had to admit it wasn’t working out. Frustrated when he stalled in that place in the manuscript where he had stalled no fewer than ten times before—where the boy ought to get the girl back again—he stood up and stretched. He needed some fresh air, he decided. At least, the freshest he could find in L.A.
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    AND SO HE HAD RESTLESSLY made his way down to Westwood Boulevard, head down, his hands shoved down into his pockets, his long-legged gait taking him quickly past record stores and restaurants. He glanced up just to keep from running into parking meters and lampposts, glancing at but not really seeing the boutiques and movie theaters closed for the night. The gas station was closed, too, but the sight that greeted him there made him slow his stride.
    A lithe young woman was tugging on one of the water hoses most people would use for filling radiators. She was using it to wash a gold Rolls-Royce.
    He came to a halt on the wide sidewalk, fascinated. She looked up over the hood, used the back of her hand to move her bowl-cut, thick, dark hair away from her eyes. Big brown eyes.
    â€œWant to go for a ride?” she