Ghostheart

by R.J. Ellory

  ‘This stuff,’ he said, indicating the boxes against the wall, ‘has been here since I moved.’ He looked to the right, a door in the wall. ‘Through there is the bedroom, the door over there is the bathroom, and the kitchen’s through there.’ He nodded back towards the way he’d walked with the cups. ‘I unpacked some sheets, a quilt, my alarm clock, a few items of clothing, and that was where it ended … the relationship I have with my possessions. I think it has to do with my hotel mentality.’

  Annie frowned. ‘Your what?’

  He smiled. ‘My hotel mentality. Spent so much of my time in hotels I’ve forgotten how to take care of myself.’

  Annie reached for her cup. She sipped. The coffee was strong but good. She savored the smell, the heat through her skin, and over the rim of the cup she watched David Quinn as he surveyed the hollowness of his home.

  Perhaps, she thought, this man is as lonely as I am, but in a different way.

  ‘So when will you work again?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘I wait for a call. As soon as they call I have to leave. Could be anywhere. Newfoundland, Alaska, somewhere on the Pacific Coast. Furthest I ever got was Southampton in England.’

  ‘You’ve been to England?’

  ‘For a little while,’ he said.

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘It’s good … the people are good, different.’ He paused, as if remembering things – images and sounds. ‘It’s a dark country, claustrophobic almost, rains a great deal. They are tough, the English, a really tough people. They aren’t faddish or insubstantial. They know what they want and they’ll do everything to get it. They have persistence, and they don’t take any crap from foreigners.’

  Annie laughed. She liked this man, this David Quinn. He seemed real and unpretentious. He seemed to be the sort of man who would possess a thought and voice it. A man who liked the truth.

  ‘So why did you come here?’ Annie asked. ‘Why not stay in East Village?’

  David shrugged. He drank his coffee. He emptied the cup and set it on the floor. From his jacket pocket he took a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and then proceeded to use the empty cup as an ashtray. ‘I think I wanted a change, but I’m too conservative to go the whole nine yards and move state. I wanted to stay around Central Park, and one day I took a cab up here and there was something about the atmosphere of the place, something learned and academic that appealed to me. Seemed everywhere I looked there were bistros with students eating brioche and drinking cappuccinos and reading Whitman and William Carlos Williams –’

  Annie looked up, struck by the sudden coincidence of what he’d said.

  ‘– and I just felt a strange sensation … sort of like when you’ve been away and then you come home.’

  ‘But you’ve never lived here before?’

  David shook his head. ‘No, always and forever an East Villager.’

  ‘You like it here?’

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘It makes me feel like I have more substance. People look at me and I believe they think I’m a Barnard lecturer, or someone taking a season at Columbia.’

  ‘You ever thought of going back to school, doing something else?’

  ‘You know, I have,’ David said, and in his voice was an element of surprise, as if he was puzzled why someone would ask such a thing. ‘I have thought about it, but never followed it through. I need some English blood perhaps.’ He smiled, smoked his cigarette, and for a little while neither of them said a thing.

  Later, alone, Annie would wonder why she’d broken that silence with a question. Perhaps she had been uneasy, aware of the vast emptiness around her and needed to fill it with something. She didn’t know why, perhaps would never understand her own motivation, but nevertheless she asked the question.

  ‘David?’

  He looked up at her.

  ‘You ever get lonely?’

  He smiled, again that warm and genuine smile that said more about him than any words. ‘Endlessly,’ he said, his voice quiet, almost a whisper.

  ‘And why don’t you go out, meet people … how come you don’t have a girlfriend or something?’

  ‘Or something?’ he asked. ‘And what kind of something would that be?’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Annie said.

  He nodded. ‘I know what you mean. Defence through humor, eh?’

  ‘So how come?’

  He shrugged. ‘Fear?’

  ‘Fear?’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes, fear,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps anxiety is a better word, but that’s just a harmonic of fear anyway, isn’t it?’

  ‘Fear of what?’

  ‘Of the something you end up with being worse than the nothing you had before. Fear of rejection, of losing whatever you might find, of others’ opinions, fear of discovery –’

  ‘Of discovery?’

  ‘Someone discovering that you’re not the perfect human being they first imagined you to be … that you have bad days, that you have irksome habits and idiosyncrasies.’

  ‘But surely those things are all part and parcel of making a relationship, even a friendship, work?’

  ‘Sure they are,’ he said, ‘but they’re also the things that you’re most afraid of when you walk blind into something like that.’

  ‘But you have to accept the fact that whoever you’re with has the same doubts and reservations, and you have to take as well as give.’

  ‘Sure you do,’ he said, ‘but it’s always there at the beginning isn’t it? It’s the first days, the first hours even, when all you think about is what that person might think of you.’

  ‘Isn’t that a little egocentric?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so … more like hoping that someone likes you as much as you like them, and hoping as well that you’re not going to say or do something that drives them away. We all have our monkeys to carry, and sometimes those monkeys jump without warning.’

  ‘I think somewhere you have lost your basic faith in human nature.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I think somewhere all of us fear the unknown, the uncertainty that comes with meeting new people, guessing what they’re like, whether they can be trusted or not.’

  ‘You don’t trust people?’

  ‘Do you?’ he asked.

  ‘I think I do,’ Annie said.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Yes,’ she repeated, ‘I think I do.’

  ‘You trust me?’

  Annie looked at David Quinn, looked at him directly. ‘I don’t know you well enough to answer that.’

  ‘That’s exactly my point,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly what I’m talking about. This could be the start of a friendship, right?’

  Annie nodded. ‘It could.’

  ‘So we have a little time here and there to get to know each other, to ask questions, to hear the answers … not only the words that are said, but what might really be meant by those words, and we make our judgements. You had to have trusted me somewhat to suggest we come here, agreed?’

  ‘Agreed,’ Annie said.

  ‘So you must trust me.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I trust you.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘How much do I trust you? I don’t know … how d’you measure trust?’

  David leaned back in his chair. ‘You want to do an experiment?’

  ‘What kind of experiment?’

  ‘A measure of trust experiment.’

  Annie frowned.

  David stood up, walked across the room and went through the door into the bedroom. He returned a moment later, in his hand a scarf.

  ‘Sit back,’ he said. ‘Relax, close your eyes.’

  Annie shifted uneasily in her chair.

  David leaned towards her, looked right at her. ‘Trust me,’ he said.

  ‘You’re a doctor, right?’

  He smiled. ‘Grace under pressure Annie O’Neill.’

  She leaned back, closed her eyes, couldn’t imagine what she was doing, o
r why.

  David took a step behind her, and brushing the hair back from her forehead with his hand he placed the scarf over her eyes and tied it loosely at the back.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Blindfolding you,’ David Quinn said, and then Annie felt his hands on her shoulders. She tensed physically, and in her mind she was shouting at herself. What the hell are you doing? What the hell do you think you’re playing at?

  ‘So this is the experiment?’ she asked, and even in her own voice she could hear a sense of trepidation and anxiety. She wanted to pull the scarf from her face, but there was something in the simplicity of how he had captured her in this game that made her want to see it through.

  But what if he kills you? What if he really is a deranged sociopath? Who knows you’re here? Does anyone actually know where you are?

  ‘You have to sit there for one minute straight,’ David said. ‘I’ll time it, exactly a minute, and for that minute you cannot move, you cannot say a word, okay?’

  ‘And what will you be doing?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not going to tell you.’

  ‘You’re not going to tell me?’

  ‘Right, I’m not going to tell you … you just have to trust me, okay?’

  Annie was quiet for a moment.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked again.

  She nodded. ‘Okay.’

  ‘So we start the minute now,’ he said. ‘Three, two, one, go.’

  Annie felt the desire to move immediately, but she didn’t. She sat stock-still, every muscle in her body tight like whipcord. She tried to imagine what it was that had possessed her to suggest she come here in the first place, and what in God’s name had made her agree to this ludicrous game.

  And then she thought of David. She was aware of the fact that he’d been behind her when he tied the scarf, but where was he now?

  Was he still behind her or had he moved?

  For a couple of seconds she held her breath in the hope that she would hear his breathing and determine his position, but there was nothing, merely the hollow vastness of the room and the awareness that she was seated by the window. Alone in a stranger’s apartment and blindfolded …

  Surely a minute must have elapsed by now, she thought. What is he doing?

  And where is he right now?

  She turned her head to one side, tried to sense the difference in light between the window and the walls. She couldn’t see a thing. It was pitch-black.

  How many seconds have gone now? she asked herself, but there was no way she could tell. She should have started counting when he tied the blindfold. Hell, why didn’t I think of that?

  Perhaps a minute had passed, perhaps two, and he was leaving her there in silence just to unnerve her.

  She smiled. He wouldn’t do such a thing … would he? How the hell could she know? It was too much; this was just too goddamned much!

  She wanted to say something, anything. She started to move her lips, and then she stopped herself. What if this was nothing more than a simple parlor trick? What if only half a minute had passed, and she was folding up? Was this some way to test her resolve? Was there some other reason for this than David had told her?

  She couldn’t help it, the tension had built inside her chest until she could hardly contain her breathing. She wanted to scream, wanted to say something, to hear something … anything.

  ‘Da … David?’

  She heard the sound of her own voice, like the voice of a lost and frightened child. And that was all she heard.

  ‘David?’

  Did she hear something then?

  She tilted her head to the right, could feel the restraint of the blindfold.

  Was that the sound of breathing?

  Was he closer to her … closing in on her?

  And then she felt angry, abused even, somehow invaded and ridiculed. She felt color rising in her cheeks, felt tightness in her chest. But still there was that sense of disturbing unease that seemed to edge along her spine and settle at the base of her neck.

  ‘David!’ she snapped.

  Again there was silence, nothing that in any way indicated where he was, if he was even there.

  The sensation was like pins and needles, but cold, constantly moving, making her skin crawl upwards. She could feel muscles tensing in her shoulders, her neck, and there was a feeling of nausea building in her throat.

  ‘David!’ she snapped again, her voice edged with fear. ‘David … where the hell are you?’

  Silence.

  Swollen black silence.

  She reached up her hand and wrenched the scarf away.

  David Quinn was seated facing her, exactly as he’d been when they were talking.

  ‘Thirty-seven seconds,’ he said, his eyes still fixed on his wristwatch.

  ‘No way!’ she said. ‘There was no way that was only thirty-seven seconds.’

  ‘Thirty-seven exactly,’ he said.

  She balled the scarf up in her hands and tossed it to the floor.

  ‘What were you thinking?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing much –’

  ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘It’s part of the game … you have to tell me what you were thinking.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, suddenly a little embarrassed.

  ‘You were afraid?’

  ‘I was afraid,’ she admitted.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of what you might be doing.’

  ‘Like I was going to strangle you or suddenly plunge a knife into your chest?’

  ‘Something like that … hell, I don’t like this David, this isn’t fun.’

  David smiled. ‘I’m sorry –’

  ‘It’s getting to be a habit,’ she said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘You apologizing to me.’

  He nodded. ‘You’re right, it wasn’t fair. It’s a little bit of a harsh way to illustrate a point.’

  ‘And the point was?’

  ‘That we all imagine the worst,’ he said. ‘It seems to be basic human nature, to imagine the worst. I think it’s been influenced by the media, by films, by TV … led to believe that around every dark corner someone might be lurking with malevolent intent.’

  Annie frowned.

  ‘How old are you?’ David asked. ‘Twenty-seven, twenty-eight?’

  ‘Thirty,’ Annie said, pleased a little that he’d placed her younger.

  ‘Always lived in New York?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘So, thirty years in New York, a city that’s reputed to be one of the most dangerous cities in the world, right?’

  Annie nodded in the affirmative.

  ‘So how many times in the past thirty years have you personally witnessed an act of violence, someone being killed, someone being mugged?’

  Annie thought for a moment, and then she started to smile.

  ‘What?’ David asked, smiling in unison.

  ‘There was a time when I was younger, a teenager, fifteen, sixteen years old, and my mother and I were walking down through Central Park and this guy was playing a guitar. He was just sitting there minding his own business playing guitar, singing a few songs, and people would stop for a little while and toss dimes and quarters into his guitar case. Suddenly this other guy appears, a guy in a business suit for Christ’s sake, and he grabs the guitar from this guy and starts whacking him with it.’

  Annie started laughing, couldn’t help herself as the image came. A guy in a business suit attacking some poor hobo busker with his own guitar.

  David was smiling.

  ‘So this guy just keeps whacking this guy with the guitar, and every time the guitar hits this guy there’s this sound of the strings. Wha-daang! Wha-daang!’

  Annie started laughing harder, a little uncontrolled, and before long she and David Quinn were fit to bust, tears streaming down their faces.

  ‘And what happened?’ David asked eventually.

  ‘The poor guy just r
uns away, leaves behind his coat, his money, his guitar, and the guy in the business suit just drops the guitar on the ground, straightens his vest and jacket and walks away. He comes past us, my mother’s looking at him with this shocked expression on her face, and this guy turns to her and says “Fuck the Beatles!”, and then he just walks off down the path and disappears.’

  ‘Fuck the Beatles?’ David asked.

  ‘Fuck the Beatles, that’s what he said.’

  Annie was still laughing, settling down a little, and then she looked up at David and believed that perhaps there was nothing to be afraid of here, nothing but what she herself might imagine.

  ‘And that is the sum total of your experiences regarding firsthand violence?’ David asked.

  She nodded. ‘It is.’

  ‘Not a hell of a great deal considering this is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, eh?’

  She shrugged. ‘I s’pose not.’

  ‘See what I mean then? Most of what we fear is within ourselves, what we imagine, what we consider might be there if we look hard enough into the darkness.’

  Annie watched David as he spoke. He was speaking to her, not to himself as so many men did. He was not speaking so passionately because he believed he had something worthwhile to say, nor because he liked the sound of his own voice. He was speaking about something in which he believed, and there were so few people these days who believed strongly about anything that she found it in some way admirable.

  ‘So whatever you thought I might be doing while you were blindfolded –’ David started.

  ‘Was all three inches behind my forehead, right?’ Annie interjected.

  David nodded. ‘Right.’

  She looked at him, at the intensity of his expression, and in the silence that unfolded she felt that tension, the sense of presence around them, and yet where there had earlier been a feeling of trepidation and anxiety, there was now something singularly … something undeniably sexual?

  She felt her cheeks flush.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she said. ‘A little warm perhaps.’

  ‘So take off your sweater.’

  Annie instinctively tried to remember what she was wearing beneath. A tee-shirt, a blouse? It was a tee-shirt, a long-sleeved cotton tee-shirt, and as she tugged the sweater over her head her predominant thought was whether or not it was clean.