by Delia Ephron
While a screen on his left was raised and a man fiddled with a video machine, I perused the room again. This time my sights landed on McKee, who, like me, had opted to stand. I eyed him frankly, testing his effect—would my heart quicken, my palms grow sweaty, would there be any other telltale signs of sexual attraction, even at this distance? None. His head was cocked, listening while a man jabbered in his ear.
Was this Billy? His age was in the vicinity of Tom’s; they had similar complexion and hair color. But this was a big, sloppy fellow, with a round face, juicy plump cheeks, and an ample girth, cinched by a narrow black belt that forced flab to spill over.
No woman was by Tom’s side. His wife must be home with the kids. The sergeant was enjoying his brother’s chatter—it must be his brother, something about their exchange was snug. I detected the faintest curl of a smile before McKee straightened up, hooked his thumbs into his jeans pockets, and traded the coziness with his brother for a bold gaze at me. He’d known all along that I’d been watching.
I quickly began scribbling, filling my notebook with details for my article, such as a description of the sandwich boards worn by several of Coral Williams’s compatriots. They were plastered with photos of deer, their names gracefully scripted underneath in black marker: Strawberry, Squeakie, Uncle Joe. Then, the way one cannot resist poking one’s tongue into a tooth to see if an ache is still there, I checked to see what he was up to. His eyes remained fixed, awaiting my return. I succumbed, felt my shoulders slump, my will turn to mush. I was pinned in place, a helpless butterfly. Oddly relaxing, the sense of having no choice whatsoever. Similar to hypnosis, a state for which I have always been certain I am completely unsuited.
After a few moments, maybe minutes, months in dog years, of being linked to McKee with mesmerizing intensity, I moved backward, and then sideways to the door, skirting the standing-room crowd. I was no longer looking at him, and had no sense of seeing or hearing anything. I was responding only to an overwhelming desire to leave, which I did. In the hallway the spell mercifully evaporated under the harsh, unforgiving fluorescent lights and the institutional flatness of beige linoleum, dead-white walls, and the smell of disinfectant. My head throbbed, and I went to the drinking fountain. I tucked my notebook under my arm, and was patting cold water on my neck when McKee came into the hall as well.
“Hi,” I said, as if we had bumped into each other by chance, and I had not been ordered by some higher force to attend this rendezvous.
“There’s a staircase behind you.”
“So?”
“Lily, for God’s sake.”
I opened the door at the end of the hall to find narrow, uneven stone steps winding upward. The hidden gothic remains. It made me nervous to have McKee following me, I would have preferred the reverse. The staircase was a confining swirl, and I kept climbing until I arrived at the tower. A small unlit space. I felt the wall, stone, cold and rough. A large open window on one side framed a massive square of black sky awash with stars. A perfect place to knock me off, like that girl in Vertigo. Kim Novak. Falling right out of a church steeple before some nun or Jimmy Stewart could catch her. There was just enough starlight to perceive McKee as a solid. The gingerbread man minus the identifying sugar sprinkles.
“I wish you’d never come here.” He sounded wild, a little crazy.
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“I should never have gone into that house.”
“Right.”
“I’m in danger?”
“Yes. Don’t be dense.”
What I saw there … that girl. How foolish to have alluded to that event in my column, to have vented my frustration at McKee’s refusal to take me seriously. It was madness to announce that I was going to get to the bottom of things.
“Tom?”
“Hush.”
His hand was now against my cheek. In the dark I didn’t see it move there, but found myself biting it. Shifted my head barely, and gnawed his palm. And then he kissed me, an experience I can liken only to being knocked down and run over. A spectacular collision from which I ended up not demolished, but the opposite: so whole and so fine, but just as out of it. Only vaguely did I hear the sirens, getting louder. We broke apart. My head was swimming.
I realized he was at the tower window, nearly cantilevered. I uttered a slight sound, a swallow intended as an inquiry, What do you see?
“I’ve got to go down there.”
“My God.”
“Exactly.”
He left, and I pulled myself together enough to venture a dizzying look. Three patrol cars had whizzed in, sirens blasting and spinning, red lights atop the roofs.
I should go down, too. This simple directive took a second to sink in, and then I attempted to renegotiate the stairs. The way down seemed especially perilous. Baby steps. Palms braced against the wall, I proceeded tentatively, and didn’t remember until I struck bottom that I was supposed to be covering this event and had absolutely no idea what had taken place that had necessitated the arrival of the Sakonnet Bay police.
Where was my notebook? I had dropped it during that clinch. Somehow, I was still clutching a pen.
The corridor was jammed, and filled with a jumble of noises that couldn’t penetrate the fog around my head. I attempted one feeble, croaking “Sakonnet Times.” Would the sea part for me? I didn’t care. My face was pressed against the back of some tall man’s Gore-Tex jacket. Did tears roll off as easily as raindrops? Did it offer refuge from steam heat as well as snow? I was too light and too short—could hardly squeeze out the door from my stairway to heaven. I would have to jump to see anything. I couldn’t jump, too weak-kneed. I could sit, that was possible. Passing out was also possible. Where was McKee? I didn’t have the energy or inclination to find out anything.
Time passed, I had no idea how much. The crowd thinned and I followed the flow outside. Apparently the meeting had been cut short. I saw an ambulance pull away, escorted by patrol cars. I stumbled through the parking lot to the meadow behind, wondering what had happened to me in the tower, when I should have been wondering what had occurred downstairs at the meeting. Had I engaged or simply acquiesced? As I recalled, I had participated enthusiastically. Where was my car?
Waiting for it to reveal itself, standing dumbly as vehicles departed, I saw a wild bird: Bernadette galumphing toward me, her jacket ballooning, catching the wind. “Thought that was you, give me a ride, okay? That was bonkers, wasn’t that completely bonkers?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you standing here? Where’s your car?”
I looked around. Fortunately, I spied it. “Over there.” We started walking.
“Are we going to put out a special edition?”
Omigod, it was that serious. “I didn’t know Art ever did that. Is it even possible? Don’t we rent the presses for only a certain hour every week?”
“What presses?”
“Forget it, never mind.” We got in the car. “Where do you live?”
“Extra, extra, read all about it. I live on Wilton off Branch, you know where that is, behind the Little League field, near Jake’s Farm Stand. You weren’t there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw you leave the meeting.”
“I didn’t leave. I got a drink of water, Bernadette, and came right back.”
“Hey, Timmy.” Bernadette shouted at someone driving by in the other direction. “Wonder where he’s going? Uh, where’s my lipstick?” She began searching her purse.
There ought to be a psychiatric term for Bernadette’s mental gifts, like narcissistic perceptivity: the state of being really perceptive but being so preoccupied with oneself that one doesn’t notice one’s own insights. “Has Art ever put out a special edition that you can remember?” I asked again.
“Nope. Not even when an airplane crashed in the bay and an arm floated onshore.”
I would not under any circumstances ask her what had taken place at Town Hall. Too
humiliating. There ought to be a psychiatric term for my behavior, like narcissistic self-destruction: the state of preferring to lose one’s job rather than be perceived as human.
“Then I guess I don’t have to write tonight.”
“Yeah, don’t you hate it?”
“No, I love it. Bernadette, why do you intern at the paper, anyway?”
“My nail polish chipped.” She proceeded to scrape more of the red off her thumb. “I didn’t go to college.”
“I’m not following.” I wasn’t sure whether it was her addled logic or my addled state.
“My brother married Art’s niece, and my mom said reporting would be a good thing to train for since I’m not trained for anything, so she called Art.”
“You hate to write. You hate making phone calls.”
“It might change. I’ve only been working for three months.”
“It’s unusual to decide to be a reporter if you didn’t enjoy journalism or English class. What gave your mother the idea—?”
“Life isn’t perfect, Lily, like you don’t get to do everything you want. That’s what my mom said. But I wasn’t good at school. A dolt, sort of.”
“I’m sure you weren’t a dolt.”
“Thanks.” She popped across the seat and kissed my cheek. “Good grief, you’re burning. Wasn’t Coral Williams just nuts?”
So what happened this evening had something to do with Coral. “Yeah. What’s her story?”
“She’s got the biggest butt in town,” said Bernadette. “From being plopped behind that cash register in the Comfort Café day in and day out, it stretched. My mom said that when she got married her butt was small, but then it spread like batter on a hot griddle.” Bernadette giggled. “What do you call it when you did it but it’s not your fault because you’re crazy?”
“Not guilty by reason of insanity.”
“That’s my house, stop. Where’s the door handle?”
I reached across and opened the door for her.
“Bye, Lily. You’re really nice.”
After staring blankly at the illuminated dashboard, continuing to experience post-necking torpor, I forced myself to consider my options. I could go home. I could go to the hospital. I should go to the hospital and find out who was injured and how. McKee might be there. Another reason not to go. Where was the hospital? What hospital? I could stop by the police station and find out where everyone was and what had happened. I didn’t want to go to the police station. I didn’t want to be exposed; some officer, aside from McKee, might have noticed more than Bernadette had. I could remain in my car and be still. I could daydream about New York City on a glorious spring day when people jostled for space and sunlight. The choices there were so simple. Whether to change at Fifty-ninth Street, or stay on the Number 1 train and walk an extra block. What a lovely problem. McKee was married. A rogue. This situation was unacceptable. I was in a mess. A complete mess. Perhaps I could persuade Sam to give me one of my own dopey lectures. McKee told me I was in danger. Oh my God. I wasn’t going to sit on this dark, empty street. Besides, I was working. Tonight I was reporting. I needed some baseline knowledge about what had happened this evening, and there was only one logical place to get it.
The problem was that now I was nervous. My eyes darted back and forth from the street ahead to my rearview mirror, expecting to see big bold headlights closing in. To have thrown that Nicholas house into my column about haircuts—that was definitive proof of how off-center I was. And what about that last paragraph … Watch out … Once mistreated, she wouldn’t shut up. Whatever I had written—my nerves were too frayed to remember precisely—I had been so pleased with it.
On the main drag, I changed lanes several times and pulled over once, which, in retrospect, seemed especially muddled. My block was deserted. What I wouldn’t give for Mr. Woffert to be stapling Tyvek in the middle of the night. Although what did I know about Mr. Woffert? Was it normal for a person to spend his life encasing his house in padded synthetic fiber?
I dashed from the car to the house and went up to Sam’s bedroom.
“sam?”
“What?”
“Can I come in?”
He grunted, and I opened the door to find the person I wanted. “Deidre, when did you get here?”
The usual alien stare, but not as intimidating, because I knew something. I’d seen her smile at her mother, so I prattled on. “No words for it in Klingon, I suppose. No words for ‘My mother dropped me off.’ Was that your mother with you at the meeting?”
Deidre remained silent, sprawled on her back on the floor, her long legs wrapped up and over the bed, dusty boots plonked in the middle of formerly cleanish blue sheets. “I need your help. Desperately. It’s very important for my job.”
Sam said something like “Blah chug qua.”
“I hope that means, ‘Tell my mom what she needs to know.’”
“It means, ‘If you say the wrong thing, I’ll kill you.’” This produced a harsh bark of a laugh from his girlfriend.
“Please.”
Deidre’s head rocked back and forth. I assumed she was considering my plea.
“How would you guys like some cocoa?”
Cocoa is powerful, very powerful stuff. Luckily I also had mini-marshmallows in the cabinet, because I sometimes sit in my room late at night and eat them. It makes me feel that living without a man is fun. Cocoa with marshmallows invokes simultaneously the childhood you had and the childhood you wish you’d had. Deidre could not be immune. Cocoa would produce normal-range behavior.
“What happened at the meeting?” I asked Deidre, explaining that I had stepped out to the bathroom at the crucial time. I pushed a hot mug in her direction across the breakfast table, and she dropped in a few marshmallows from a fairly high altitude. Her manners were normal range but barely (NRBB).
“Coral Williams stabbed Mayor Dorley with an immunization dart.” When she conversed in English, her voice remained uncommonly low but not unpleasant. She was quite serious. She compartmentalized, all amusement and bizarreness the province of her Klingon persona. For our interview, she was unnervingly efficient. Not exactly adult in her speech, but devoid of teenage slang. And immobile—Jell-0 that had been left in the refrigerator for weeks and stiffened. Thank goodness, she had excellent recall. Coral Williams had charged the stage when the film showed Fred Till igniting a blast in which deer bodies flew into the air and were trapped in a net. She barreled toward Till with Bambi’s Friends in her wake. No one knew she had a dart. Deidre detoured momentarily, informing Sam that these darts, injected with either tranquilizer or birth control medication, were generally shot from a blowgun. They looked like pushpins, she said, except that the steel part was about half an inch longer and the point had a fishhook snare.
“Cool,” said Sam.
They shared a moment of appreciation for the design of the weapon.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“The movie had a close-up,” said Deidre. “It showed the dart under a magnifying glass. But someone knocked over the display. The darts rolled every which way, and probably some tranquilizer or birth control fluid leaked out, because the floor was wet.” She went on to report that Till ducked, and Coral jabbed Mayor Dorley by accident. First Coral screamed. Then, when the mayor collapsed, she cried. A woman wearing a sandwich board and an antler beanie put her arms around her. “Lonnie Webster—”
“Who is that?”
“A friend of Glenn’s.”
“Who’s Glenn?”
“My mother. Lonnie was sitting next to us and she said, ‘Now Mayor Dorley can’t have any more fawns.’” I smiled, but Deidre did not. “Afterward, when Lonnie found out that he’d had a heart attack, she told Glenn and me that she felt awful.” Deidre added that Coral insisted deer only know flight, that’s all they know. “Deer only know flight,” she repeated somberly.
“What was that about, when did she say that?”
“Earlier. The film showed deer being
herded into cattle cars to go to a farm. She said that even if they were sedated, they would try to flee the car, and go crazy crashing into walls.”
“So she first got upset during the movie?”
“Yes,” said Deidre.
It was not clear whether our talk marked the beginning of a new relationship or merely an interlude.
I drove Deidre home, taking Sam in the car with me. I felt safer with company.
CHAPTER 9
I AWOKE the next morning, my arms hugging my pillow, my head nestled in soft down. I lay there viewing my shaded bedroom sideways, then sat up. The place appeared so mundane. The usual messy stack of magazines on the side table, my flats kicked off near the closet, last night’s clothes tossed onto my wicker rocker. How could I, Lily Davis, a person with a broken clock radio and a half-drunk bottle of Evian, possibly be in danger?
I must have overreacted.
As I took a shower and got dressed, it crossed my mind that the danger was McKee. That’s why he wanted me to leave town. We were trouble. Our attraction. Yes, that’s what he was talking about. Things had been so deranging the night before. I ticked off the reasons. First of all, it had been night; night is always distorting. Second, I had been trapped in an eerie starlit tower. Third, I was reeling, initially from his presence, then from his embrace. In fact, in spite of this display of logic, my head was still logy, a hangover from the astonishing kiss.
I hadn’t seen anything in that summer house anyway, only a naked woman whose face I couldn’t recall. I threw on a robe, went out back and retrieved the previous week’s Sakonnet Times from the recycling bin. Rereading my column would reassure me. My words may have upset Deborah Cooke, but not anyone else. There was nothing in print except a lot of noise about haircuts.
As I sipped tea and skimmed the piece, I wasn’t entirely reassured. My attitude had been provocative.
Over the next few days, my mood and opinion seesawed. One minute I was relaxed—a problem with McKee was at least not life-threatening. The next, I became panicky, sure that my initial intuition had been correct. Something unscrupulous was going on in the Nicholas house, and someone out there thought I knew about it. After considerable debate with myself, I left a message for McKee at the police station. I had to get a proper fix on my situation. He did not return my call.