Nightlight

by Michael Cadnum

  Nightlight

  A Novel

  Michael Cadnum

  FOR SHERINA

  with special thanks to Adam and Jessica,

  and to Craig and Joanne

  1

  The street outside had the sheen of pavement when it is just beginning to rain. Paul opened the notebook on the table and sat, but he could not read.

  He had forced himself to get up because of the nightmare. He had been in a house, a house cluttered with books and clothes, as this apartment was cluttered. A comfortable place, homey. And just as he had felt contented he had felt, without any prompting from the dream itself, that this was going to be a nightmare.

  He had tried to wake, but he was not able to, and as soon as he realized his failure someone was in the house. Someone fumbled through the kitchen, and into the hall, and Paul turned to run, but his legs were feeble. Too feeble to do more than twitch as the intruder felt down the hall, like a man without eyes, or even worse, like a man missing more than simply eyes. The intruder paused at the doorway to the room Paul was in, and Paul struggled to turn his head so he could at least see who it was, and he could not turn his head. He could not move at all, and the footsteps dragged across the floor, and a hand gripped his shoulder as he woke with a gasp.

  Usually, he could not even remember his dreams. Now he was afraid to be alone. Paul prided himself on his level-headedness. Nothing made him nervous. He knew very well what was wrong with him, and it was very simple. He needed a vacation. Nothing elaborate. Just a break from this constant pressure to be fair and entertaining at the same time. He was sick of assistant managers calling them on the phone because the owner was too upset to talk. He was sick of reading letters to the editors describing him as insensitive, ignorant, inept. Friends admired him, and envied his job. It was a dream job, one of them had said, helping himself to another chocolate truffle. The kind of job a person would do for free.

  Paul used to think the same thing. It’s amazing what a few years can do to a dream job. He listened to the patter of rain outside and debated whether to try to go to sleep again. It was three thirty, a hellish hour, the worst possible time to be awake. If he went back to sleep he would wake with a tender, swollen ache for more sleep. And if he stayed up he would spend the day feeling burned out.

  He put his hand on the telephone but stopped himself. It was selfish to even think of calling Lise at this hour, although he wanted to talk to her very badly, desperately, as if she were the cure to all his problems. He took his hand off the phone as if it had suddenly grown painfully hot. He would call her later.

  He got dressed and sat at the kitchen table, leafing through the pasted-up recipes he had invented, or guessed at from various sauces in some of the best restaurants in the world. His favorite recipes were surprisingly simple. The nutmeg fresh-ground over fettucini. The sprig of basil in the olive oil the sweetbreads had simmered in. The Scotch in the French-roast coffee, fresh-ground, with a pinch—no more—of sugar.

  It was an eccentric collection of recipes. He thought of them as spare and elegant, Spartan and gourmet at the same time. He doubted the French chefs of the more highbrow restaurants would admire his chicken broth and chenin blanc veal, but it was exactly the sort of dish that tasted extravagant without incurring savage indigestion, the single most severe occupational hazard Paul suffered. True, French cooking was magnificent. He simply couldn’t eat it every night and live.

  For three hours he worked on his notes, sorting, recopying, until the phone rang, and he snatched it with pleasure.

  “No, don’t apologize. I’m sitting here, wide awake. I was going to call you.”

  “I had a terrible dream,” she said.

  “Me, too. I got up and was sitting here, wondering if I have a chance of putting together a cookbook.”

  “Why not? Everyone loves to cook.”

  “No, they don’t. They hate to cook, except by rote or by imitation. Very few people are brilliant concocters of their own sauces. Which is what I mean by cooking. I don’t mean simply preparing a dish. I mean ‘cook’ in the sense of ‘compose.’”

  “Snob.”

  “True. And I shouldn’t talk. I tried to make mayonnaise once and came out with something that looked like gorilla semen. I’m just fed up with the entire subject of food. I wanted to be a sportswriter, you know. I wanted to get flown to Las Vegas to watch heavyweights hook each other bloody. Instead, I live like a spy.”

  She made a croon of sympathy and invited him to breakfast.

  Paul crouched in his Volkswagen and shifted gears through the dark, wet streets of Berkeley, arriving at an apartment that was as cluttered and homey as his, although there were many more books. Books were jumbled everywhere he looked, and he had to lift a volume of the Oxford English Dictionary off a chair before he could sit. He used the magnifying glass to examine the hairs on the backs of his hand. His skin looked as vast and wrinkled as the hide of a woolly mammoth.

  Lise nudged coffee from the bag into the electric coffee grinder. “I’m beginning to hate myself for doing my dissertation on Donne,” she said. “Of course, when you spend a lot of time on a project you wind up hating it, no matter how you originally felt about it. The question is, do you want to end up hating something you used to love?”

  His thumb was horrifying. The cuticle was ragged, and his thumbnail ridged, as glossy as a sheaf of balleen. He put down the magnifying glass. “Is it too late to change?”

  She ignored his question. “I should have done Woolf. She’s interesting, but doesn’t give rise to any strong enthusiasm in me.”

  “What is it you are focusing on in Donne? Exactly?” Paul asked, feeling that he should know this already.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Paradox.”

  “Ah.”

  “And I’m sick of it.”

  Paul had read only one or two poems by Donne in his entire life, and was slightly embarrassed at his ignorance. But he sympathized with Lise.

  “Even when you love something you can get fed up with it,” he said. “Maybe especially then, because you pay it so much attention.”

  She punched the button and the grinder chattered. She opened a filter and arranged it in the Melitta cone. He watched her with pleasure, admiring her lean sexuality, the early-morning frowsiness of her hair, the precise way she chose the cups and set them, handles just touching, beside the coffee grinder. One cup was beet-red, the other cloud-gray, both of them the products of local artisans. Paul thought them a little crude, but they would keep the heat of the coffee very well.

  “I got Kona coffee,” she said. “It was a little more—what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. Well, actually, I don’t like Kona. Too light. It has an odd nutty flavor, an aftertaste that is feeble, and it lacks body. A fault it has in common with Mexican Arabicas, although Kona is arguably better.” He silenced himself. “I’m sorry, Lise. I’ve gone crazy.”

  “I don’t mind. I’m not one of those idiotic women who identify with their ability to make coffee. I don’t give a shit what you think of anything I make. You can fry your own eggs, too. This one here has a speck of blood in it. Means more hormones and better nutrition.” Spots of red brightened her cheeks as she set a bowl before him. A raw egg stared up at him, red in the shape of a comma floating off-center in the yolk.

  Paul looked up from the bowl. “I’m sorry, Lise. I really am.”

  “Maybe you’ve been doing it too long.”

  “I was just thinking that. I was thinking I need a break. Even a few days. I’m turning into the kind of person I always hated. Arrogant. Humorless. Impatient.”

  “It doesn’t help to know that you’re a lot smarter than most people,” she said. “Damn near perfect. That most people are lucky to even be on the same planet
as you are.”

  They had grown cheerful by the time she poured the coffee. She hesitated before giving him the cloud-gray cup. Outside, it was still dark. Drops elongated from the eave and broke free, silver spears of water. He shivered, and cupped the coffee in his hands. “I always thought you were a lot smarter than me. By a unanimous decision.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know about that.”

  “You’re the one getting a PhD in English. I squeezed out a BA in journalism, and was lucky to get that. The food editor was in the hospital with a burst appendix, and I lucked out with what everyone swore was a plum.”

  She was plainly pleased with his high opinion of her, but she made an expression of denial. She blew on her coffee, and he admired the pucker of her lips. She looked better with no makeup. Smaller, somehow, and passionate.

  Breakfast, he thought, could wait.

  He had to move books to make room in the bed, and books edged into the side of his knee as he held her. They were quick, as if both wanting to get somewhere they had looked forward to for years, silent and working hard with their bodies. Her body surprised him as always, so much more athletic than his, but making his body feel powerful above hers, as she moaned and said his name in that way that burned him.

  Later, he scrambled the eggs, and when the toast popped up they ate in silence. You couldn’t surpass a scrambled egg, he thought. You could enhance it, of course. A little parmesan and a sliced mushroom or two, or fungi, as he liked to call them, with perhaps some apricot chutney.

  She was watching him. “Sun’s coming up.”

  The window was the color of his cup. “A miserable day,” he said. “Although I actually like rain.”

  “It happens in November,” she said idly. “This is when the rainy season begins.” She lay a hand on a book beside her plate. “I’d give anything to take a break today.”

  “Join me tonight. I can always use help. No snide remarks about being cheap. It’s business, not pleasure. But—please come. I’d like you to be there.”

  “So you won’t be bored?”

  “There are worse reasons.”

  “Shall I wear a disguise?”

  “They don’t know you that well. I, on the other hand, should probably wear a false beard. By the way, what was your dream about?”

  She looked away. “It was just a dream. Except, it was the first nightmare I’ve had in a long time. It actually made me afraid to be alone. Isn’t that silly?”

  “What was it about?”

  She shrugged, but he could tell that the dream had troubled her. “It was just a nightmare. But if you insist …”

  He made an expression of interest.

  “I was in a house. A house I felt very comfortable in. And someone was suddenly in the house, and I couldn’t wake up, and I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t even turn my head.”

  2

  Mary Lewis waited in her garden. Only the roses still had flowers, and these were loose-petaled and huge, edged with brown. One or two were nearly perfect, though, she discovered as she felt among the thorns. The gardener did good work, and she must compliment him.

  It had been raining, and it would rain again, soon. She crossed her arms, wishing for a sweater. And wishing for much more than that, she realized. Wishing that she could remake her entire life. Undo everything she had ever done. Why she had waited so long, she could not guess.

  A sprinkler head oozed water. A finch paused on it, but fled immediately as Sandy stepped across the patio and announced the visitor, the guest, she supposed he was, but he was scarcely here on a social visit.

  She was disappointed in the doctor. She had hoped they would send someone mature, robust and slightly gray, someone who looked wise.

  “I hope you don’t mind if we talk out here. I know it’s cool, and I expect rain any minute. But I feel more at ease here.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” said the thin young doctor. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you. I don’t think it’s like any other garden in San Francisco. My father designed it. From the street, you aren’t aware that it is here at all.”

  “You certainly aren’t.” The young man accepted coffee, and she repeated his name as if to test whether he responded to it. “Dr. Kirby?”

  He said that, yes, he would like sugar, and used the silver tongs to select a cube.

  “It’s what you would call a hidden garden. You can’t see it from the street, or from any of the surrounding houses. I think no one really knows it’s here. It uses land that does not seem to be here at all.”

  She waited for him to respond, but he was hesitating over Sandy’s petits fours.

  “My father was fascinated by secret places,” she continued. “I have often wondered if perhaps he had them build a secret room into this house. He could have, and no one would know it.”

  “Do you think he did?” asked Dr. Kirby, dabbing at his lips with linen that kept its folds even when shaken open, like the map of a totally empty countryside.

  His interest was amusing, and made him seem, briefly, charming. “My late husband wondered. He even thumped walls and made measurements.” Decrepit creature that he became, he had never been stupid. She collected herself. “He decided that every square inch of the house is present and accounted for. There is only this garden, this beautiful secret.”

  Dr. Kirby chewed, and sipped coffee.

  “But you will wonder why I asked you here.”

  “Is there anything we can help you with, Mrs. Lewis?” asked the young man, setting aside his cup and saucer, adjusting the napkin beside him as if it hid a rabbit.

  She could not begin to talk about it. After all these years of silence. It was simply too difficult. She could simply announce that she was going to give yet another grant to the hospital, so they could build a new wing for hydrotherapy, or plan a parking lot so their outpatients could park their BMWs closer to the magnolia trees.

  But this was not why he was here. To plug the silence, she said, “I don’t even know how to begin.”

  “Start anywhere you like. At the beginning.”

  She saw that he was used to people who had trouble talking. He was experienced in spite of his appearance, his off-the-rack polyblend, and his tattered knit tie. His eyes took her in, and she was pleased that she was looking especially good today. Her hair only slightly gray, and her figure still slim enough to draw attention, quite a bit of it. In her youth, she had been pretty without being beautiful. Now, on her best days, she was a little bit—dare she suggest it to herself?—beautiful. Classical, at least.

  She studied her manicure. “The beginning.”

  He smiled helpfully.

  “Do things have beginnings? Lives do, but lives are altered by things that happened long ago.” She could continue in this vein for a long while. Dr. Kirby would never do anything but fidget. She could bore people, and waste their time, and they would resemble Egyptian masks of the dead, patient and cheerful, and interested in the void that surely—there was no doubt—was filled with promise, like passengers on a plane to Paris. She never bored people, except deliberately.

  “We can choose to call a certain event a beginning,” suggested Dr. Kirby.

  “My family has always craved secrecy.”

  The roses across the lawn swayed in a brief gust.

  “My father would be in pain,” she continued, “and no one could tell. My mother kept her silence, no matter how she disapproved. And I carry on the tradition. Being a somewhat prominent family in society made us keep to ourselves. We hungered for a secret life. To avoid scandal, of course. But more than that. To have something no one knew about, something powerful because it was secret.”

  Dr. Kirby smiled, as if he knew all about secrets. An exterminator would smile in this way if told about roaches.

  Under her beauty, if that’s what it was, she was a sick woman. She knew it. She had enough sanity to admit that. She was not raving; she was not dangerous.

  Except to one person.
>
  “I am,” she said, “very concerned about my son.”

  Sick. She should have gotten help long ago.

  Dr. Kirby folded his hands. He seemed unwilling to interrupt her silence. “It’s really too cold to be sitting out here,” she said at last.

  He did not move, but offered, “Shall we go inside?”

  “No. Everything else in the house these days reminds me of my husband. He was”—she had never expressed it plainly before—“a drunk.”

  Dr. Kirby’s pleasant face waited for her to continue.

  “I married him because he reminded me of my father.” That should tell him everything, she thought, but it won’t.

  “Your son,” he suggested gently.

  “Yes. My son.” She watched a black bird listen for worms. How loud the surge of worm through soil must be to a bird. The bird stabbed, and came up empty. “To me this garden has always seemed like the center of the universe.”

  “It’s very pretty.” Said as if he did not really care for gardens.

  “It’s not pretty,” she said. “Pretty is superficial. It’s beautiful.”

  In which case, she realized, she herself could not really be beautiful.

  “Did your son enjoy the garden?”

  “He spent his entire life here.”

  He smiled blandly, not comprehending. Why hadn’t they sent someone perceptive? Why did she have to spell everything out? She wanted someone who would see her, see this place, and immediately know her.

  “I mean he lived here until he was an adult, and never left this house, this garden.”

  “Never?”

  “Virtually.” She said the word carefully, wishing she could wrap it around Dr. Kirby’s neck. “I mean, and forgive me if I am vague, that this house and this hidden garden were his life.”

  He looked around at it through new eyes. He still did not seem concerned. He frowned, though, looking across at the pale roses, and touched the saucer beside him. “So that he never had much contact with the world outside?”

  “The outside world,” she corrected. “Because this is a world, too. A small world, but complete. In its way,” she added.