The Resident

by Francis Cottam

  He made for the bedroom peepholes. There they were, kissing on the bed. She was stroking her husband’s hair as the passion grew between them. A part of Max felt a strong compulsion to watch what they did together. But he was torn, conflicted, consumed by so much righteous jealousy that in the end he could not bear to witness it.

  He pounded through the dark passageways like some prowling minotaur, his domain feeling less like his animal kingdom than the tunnels of some dungeon in which he’d been unwillingly confined.

  He did not know what to do. He was struggling to retain control of emotions that had never been so provoked in his life. He knew he still had the will and the cunning to change things, to influence the outcome of events. There was really no point in his existence if he did not have that, was there?

  Thirty-one

  JULIET LAY ON the bed in the aftermath of their lovemaking. Jack was dressing, looking to her like he knew he had to go but was reluctant to leave. His body language was as she remembered, before she stopped noticing him and he looked beyond her for attention and whatever else he’d sought.

  He hadn’t found it. Not in sexual gymnastics with the trophy blonde. He said that he had slept with her perhaps half a dozen times and never again once Juliet had left. She believed him. He was not a good enough actor to fake the level of remorse that had shown on his face.

  He told her he had feared he would never again share a bed with Juliet, and that her absence had told him he was losing the woman he loved completely. Juliet believed that, too. You had to take some things on trust.

  He sat, shirtless, on the bed beside her. He pecked her shoulder and she said, ‘I’m sorry dinner burned.’

  He said, ‘I’m not.’

  They kissed.

  ‘I want you to stay.’

  ‘I have a live radio interview scheduled for first thing tomorrow morning. I haven’t prepped for it at all and I do need to. It’s the last commitment on a national book publicity tour. I’ll be free, after I’ve completed it. We have the rest of our lives in which to enjoy one another’s company and this time, we are going to get it right.’

  ‘I didn’t take you seriously,’ she said. ‘I mean, what you did, what you do. I guess I knew how much it meant to you, but not what it could mean for you.’

  ‘For us,’ he said.

  ‘I remember one occasion. You showed me a book cover, the design for the second hardback. I was on autopilot, thinking about some new operational procedure that hinders excessive bleeding. I barely looked up. Do you remember what I said?’

  ‘You said, “now we’re cooking with gas”.’

  ‘I think that was the moment in which I lost you, Jack.’

  ‘And now you’ve found me again. And thank God you have.’ He sounded like he meant it. ‘Could you meet me for lunch tomorrow?’

  She nodded.

  He got up and put on his shirt and began to button it. He said, ‘You want to keep Amelie tonight? Watch dog?’

  Juliet shook her head. ‘No pets allowed,’ she said. ‘Why the offer?’

  ‘I’d almost rather not say. I could hear the pride in your voice when you told me what you’re renting this place for.’ He glanced around, wrestling with a cuff. ‘And there’s what you’ve done with it. Great location, stunning views, endless space, stylish décor – I could go on. At first sight, it’s the dream apartment.’

  ‘But …?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to rain on your parade, Jules.’

  ‘Writers shouldn’t talk in clichés.’

  ‘I don’t want to spook you,’ he said.

  ‘You won’t,’ she said. ‘I’ve toughened up without you. The reason why I left you meant that I had to.’

  Jack ignored the barbed comment. He probably thought that he deserved it. ‘I’ve sensed something of what Mike did, I think. I don’t really believe in ghosts. Or at least, I didn’t. But there’s something about this place that would make me happy if you left it.’

  ‘And move back in with you?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s too soon?’

  He shrugged. He was fully clothed, on the point of departure. He had Amelie’s leash looped over one fist. ‘I wouldn’t stoop so low as to try to deliberately scare you back into my bed, Jules. You wouldn’t go for it.’

  ‘This place is not haunted, Jack. I’ve been somewhere that was and let me tell you, it was fucking terrifying. The hair wouldn’t sit down on the back of my neck for two hours after I left. It was like the walls were screaming. I’ve had a couple of frights here caused by elderly plumbing and a maintenance train that runs at night. And my own imagination. Fiction writers don’t have a patent on imagination, you know.’

  He smiled at her. She thought the smile apologetic. He would say no more on what was actually a touchier subject than she was allowing herself to believe. He said, ‘Lunch tomorrow?’

  She blew him a conciliatory kiss. And he left.

  Thirty-two

  AS THE FRONT door shut behind Jack, Max stole on silent feet into her kitchen from the door in the closet. He saw the glass from which she had been drinking. She had moved from the margarita to wine. The smudge of lipstick on its rim told him that the glass was definitely hers. He took a small syringe from his pocket and plunged its clear contents into the glass, before disappearing back into concealment.

  Juliet walked into the kitchen about ten minutes later not yet ready for sleep, after the excitement and magnitude of the events of the evening. She picked up her wine glass and took a long swallow. For the first time in what seemed like a very long time, Juliet was looking forward to her future.

  She switched on the kitchen radio. The station she had it tuned to was playing a song by Fleetwood Mac. Stevie Nicks was singing it in that strong, declarative, histrionic style of hers. Juliet was reminded of her mother, faded and lovelorn in their mobile home in the scrub of California.

  She would read Jack’s books, she resolved, as she sipped her wine. She would read them because they mattered so profoundly to him and he was such an important part of her life again.

  Juliet’s cell phone rang. It occurred to her that the coverage here really was as intermittent as Max had warned her it was. It was an inconvenience, but he’d been truthful enough in warning her.

  She expected Jack and a mumbled, romantic goodnight, maybe with the newly cantankerous Amelie growling in the background.

  It was Sydney. She said, ‘You OK, baby?’

  ‘You have a real baby arriving imminently, Syd. You should be asleep. You should maybe have been asleep a couple hours ago.’

  ‘Just checking on you.’

  ‘Mike’s ghoul has vacated the bathroom. I’m absolutely fine.’

  ‘Not afraid of the dark?’

  ‘The dark suddenly doesn’t seem as dark as it did.’

  ‘Oh? That sounds like a significant development. You’ll have to explain that one to me.’

  ‘I will. You know I will.’

  ‘Night, hon.’

  ‘Night, Syd.’

  Juliet yawned, surprising herself. She was more tired than the hour would normally have made her. Sex hadn’t used to make her feel sleepy, quite the opposite. Maybe she was emotionally drained, but she shouldn’t be, because emotionally she felt stronger and happier that evening than she had for months. She was tired, though, she conceded to herself, yawning again. She swallowed the last of her wine. She rinsed the glass. She brushed her teeth with darkness almost impinging at the edges of her vision. She barely made it to the bed before descending into deep slumber.

  Max stood above Juliet in her bedroom, watching her. Lozenges of bright colour in hues of amber and red cast by the lights of the night traffic on the bridge outside slipped across the walls and ceiling of her bedroom. They inked what he could see of her skin above the bed sheet partially wrapping her. He could smell the odour of recent sex rising in the warmth of the bed from her recumbent body. There was something tartly insistent about it, he
thought. It was a new smell to him; a strong but still subtle secretion, part of her secrecy he would get to know well.

  Her cell phone began to ring again, a sudden sound that startled him. The display was backed by a green pulsing light as the device vibrated with life on her night stand. He retreated into the dark corner of the room where the light from the traffic did not impinge and the glow of her cellular was too feeble to illuminate. He was entirely still there, patient and implacable, unafraid, curious as to whether this summons from outside would wake her.

  It did not. The drug was too potent. He emerged from his dark place and crept over to the bed. He studied her some more. She lay on her back, peacefully. He had delivered her this calm period of rest. He did not expect she would be grateful for it. But then she’d never know, would she? He was too careful, too clever.

  He sank to his knees and rolled onto his back on the floor. As he had before, he slipped under her bed, where he was just a mattress thickness away from Juliet’s sleeping shape. He twisted and edged in careful fractions of movement until the excitement in his groin insisted to him that he was perfectly positioned.

  He moved his hands up and pressed them against the mattress feeling her weight. He began to breathe in rhythm with Juliet. He lifted her. He lifted her even higher, aware of her density and warmth and his own strength and growing sexual urge.

  Juliet’s hand flopped from off the bed and hung limply a few inches from his face. He looked at it for a long moment. Very slowly, he lowered his hands from the mattress. He slid towards the hand. He did not dare to touch it; did he? This time it might be safe, he thought. She was so deep in her narcotic sleep that she would not feel his caress.

  He moved his lips to her palm, smelling the skin of her hand, inhaling her. He kissed her softly and felt her move in response sensually in her sleep, and moan with an unconscious pleasure.

  Max slipped out from under Juliet’s bed. He knew he was about to cross a line, but the reward was so sweet that it vastly outweighed the risk. First, though, he had to take extra precautions. He would have to ensure that Juliet remained oblivious to what he intended for them to do together.

  He ran back through his secret passages, emerging from the labyrinthine route in the now vacant apartment his grandfather had occupied until his death. The old man’s medication was still in August’s bathroom cabinet. That was where he had earlier acquired the sedative he had slipped into Juliet’s drink.

  August’s denuded library roused no feeling in him as he passed the vacant shelves, making for the bathroom and an ampoule of something that would befuddle Juliet’s senses and rob her of consciousness should his careful attentions rouse her. A drug imbibed orally was nowhere near so strong or swift in its effect as one injected.

  He was sure he wouldn’t wake her. He would be gentle. He wanted to make love to her, not violate her. He would be tender and grateful because she would satisfy his desire and bring an end to the loneliness that he had endured for what seemed like the whole of his life.

  When he returned to Juliet’s bedroom, he brushed off the dust of his travels before cleaning his teeth with her toothbrush once again and tidying his dishevelled hair with her brush. He thought briefly about attiring her in something sexy from her underwear draw but decided against that. Instead, he arranged her on the bed in the attitude he remembered seeing her in when she had been with her husband a few hours earlier.

  With a wry smile, he sat on the bed next to her, remembering how he had kissed and then licked out the cups of her bra on his first proper inspection of her clothes. No need for that now. He had her, the woman of his dreams. He had no need for keepsakes and mementoes.

  Max was pleased with himself. He was not just clever and imaginative. He was courageous, doing this. He was excited too, as he touched her bare neck, the tresses of her hair and the warm, satiny smoothness of her cheek. The pad of his thumb paused against the resistance of her lower lip. He used it to part her lips, slightly opening her mouth, seeing the tip of her tongue like a ripening red bud succulent between her teeth, before moving in to kiss her properly for the first time.

  Juliet’s eyes opened wide. She groaned, blinking, trying to see straight. She was drugged and bleary, but coming around, so much stronger than August, of course, so much younger and more vital. He had misjudged the dose and hadn’t given her enough sedative to keep her tranquil and him safe.

  Max fumbled in his pocket for the syringe. His erection got in the way and panic made him clumsy. Finally he was able to take the syringe out of his pocket and remove the cap from the needle. He reached for one of Juliet’s feet.

  On the bed, Juliet was trying to look at him. She was trying to raise her head but she could not control her muscles. He could see them spasm in her neck as she tried to raise the weight of her head.

  He pushed the point of the needle under her toenail. He knew enough to know that there the injection would not leave a mark. He depressed the plunger. She whimpered in pain as the shock of the needle coursed through her body. He watched her through a film of tears as the drug did its work and her body swiftly returned to a supine state of relaxation and rest.

  Having to do this to her had made him cry. It was a tribute to his love for her. He didn’t remember crying since he had curled up beside his mother’s dead body. The salt tears coursed down his face as the conflicting emotions mingled and churned inside him.

  Thirty-three

  IT TOOK THE persistent buzzing of her alarm clock to wake Juliet the following morning. It was a sound somewhere between an angry bee and the blade of a band saw shrieking its way through vibrating layers of ply. She had never heard her alarm clock go off before, she realised dully, fumbling for the button that would make the noise stop. It was a precaution only; she always woke up a few minutes before the alarm was set to sound.

  Her head hurt. She tried to inventory what she had drunk the night before, but her mind was not cooperating with its usual clarity. That was a symptom of a hangover in itself.

  She knew what caused hangovers. The principal culprit was dehydration. Then there were congeners. They were the chemicals that fixed the colour in alcoholic drinks and they were toxic so they made you feel bad if you ingested too many of them. They were not added to tequila. She had drunk two margaritas the previous evening. Congeners were at their most concentrated as an ingredient in rum and port. But they were also present in red wine and she had drunk red wine the previous evening too.

  It was true that she had gone to sleep without drinking her habitual night glass of water. She remembered barely staying conscious long enough to brush her teeth. But she had drunk nowhere near enough alcohol to feel as bad as she felt. Her head hurt. It really thumped. And there had been that strange erotic dream she had experienced and now only vaguely remembered.

  Slowly, she examined herself. She could see or feel nothing out of the ordinary.

  She was late. Or she was going to be late, if she did not hurry to get ready for work. She quickly showered and dressed and then walked into the living room, feeling nervous and exposed, not at all sure why she was feeling those things instead of the elation she should have felt after her evening of reconciliation with Jack.

  She did not feel rested. She felt raw and numb at the same time, contradictory sensations, true, but that summed up how she felt. The numbness was the hangover bit. The rawness came from that sense of exposure, a suspicion she realised had been too vague in her before now to find a name. But Juliet did feel exposed that morning, as she got ready for work in her apartment. She felt watched, almost nakedly on show. Something was not right about her situation. An insistent and growing intuition told her so. And she trusted her intuition. In her profession, it had more than once saved patients’ lives.

  The ghost of August did not roam, dribbling into his beard with lust for her, in the night. She did not believe that. But Mike: beneath the ramshackle persona was a sensible man who had made a fortune out of his alertness. The apartment bathroom h
ad spooked him.

  Jack had been spooked too, hadn’t he? He had been most reluctant, in that old phrase, to rain on her parade. But he had felt the need to warn her urgently enough to do it anyway.

  She caught a flash of movement from the monitor in her sitting room that was linked to a security camera rigged in the vestibule. It showed a construction worker entering the building. That gave her an idea that solidified in her mind during her swift walk to the subway station. By the time she reached the main entrance of the hospital and pushed her way through the doors, her idea had become a plan.

  At seven o’clock that evening, Max was at the grocery store. He really thought that by now, he should be shopping for two. The meal he had cooked her had made for a wonderful dinner and up until the end, a wonderful evening too. The chicken had been moist and tender and the roast potatoes, basted in goose fat, were perfect. The parsnips had been sweet and succulent, burnished by a light brushing of virgin olive oil. The Lynch-Bages he had taken from his grandfather’s wine store had been a bottle of the coveted ’62 vintage. He had decanted it perfectly.

  All that meal had done in the end he thought as he drifted between the aisles, had been to inspire the one she cooked for that superciliously smooth husband of hers, that glib adulterer she had demeaned herself by allowing back into her life. The ingredients had been identical.

  Apart from the wine. The wine had been something indifferent, a budget bottle of generic Californian Merlot. He had experienced no qualms adulterating it. She had deserved that, for her tasteless copying of the meal he had cooked her and for inviting back into her life the man who had betrayed her. Her treatment of him, of Max, had been unscrupulous and cruel.

  But he was a forgiving man, he thought, selecting half a dozen choice yellow plums. And he was an optimist. And he believed the adventure of Juliet had a long way to evolve before it was all played out.