The Stranger Next Door

by Joy Fielding

  We had a few more drinks, and he suggested going somewhere more private. Without another word, I slid from my barstool and walked to the door. Surprisingly, I had no trouble walking, despite all the liquor in my system. In fact, I didn’t feel the least bit drunk, although afterward, I convinced myself I’d been very drunk indeed. But as much as I’d like to blame what happened that night on a combination of grief and alcohol, I’m no longer sure I can do that. The truth is that I wasn’t drunk that night, at least not so drunk I wasn’t responsible for my actions. The truth is that I knew exactly what I was doing when I agreed to leave that bar for somewhere more private, when I let Jack or John or Jerrod feel me up as we stumbled toward his car, when I whispered that I lived just around the corner.

  He parked on the street in front of my house, and I led him around the side to the cottage at the back. “Who lives in the main house?” he asked as I opened the cottage door and began turning on the lights.

  “My mother,” I told him, glancing toward her bedroom window.

  “Aren’t you afraid she’ll see us with all these lights on?”

  “She’s a very sound sleeper,” I said, pulling off my jersey in front of the window, hearing my mother’s silent gasp.

  After that, we said little. But if I’d been expecting great sex, I was sorely disappointed. If I’d been looking for some kind of release, I got nothing of the sort. Instead I got a lot of grunting and thrashing about to no particular purpose, and when it was over—too fast, yet not nearly fast enough—I couldn’t wait for Jack or John or Jerrod to put on his tight jeans and Hawaiian shirt and leave.

  “I’ll call you,” he said on his way out the door.

  I nodded, looking up at my mother’s room, feeling the crushing weight of her disapproval, as heavy as the weight of the man who’d just left my bed. I took a shower and got dressed, then I called for an ambulance and returned to the main house, where I sat dutifully by my mother’s side until it arrived. Then I wiped that night from my mind as if it had never happened and refused to think of it again.

  Until now.

  I glanced at my watch. It was midnight. “Happy New Year,” I whispered, kissing Myra’s warm cheek.

  “Happy New Year,” she repeated, opening her eyes briefly, her thin lashes brushing against my skin.

  Seconds later, she was asleep, and once again, I was alone.

  NINETEEN

  I thought I heard something when I stepped into the hallway. I stopped, looked around, saw nothing but an empty corridor. I stood there, my hand still on the door to Myra’s room, my head cocked to one side, like an attentive puppy, my ears on full alert for any errant sounds—a stray step, a heavy breath—anything at all out of the ordinary.

  But there was nothing.

  I shook my head and started down the hall, looking in on my patients as I passed each joyless room. Most were asleep, or pretending to be. Only Eliot Winchell, a middleaged man saddled with the brain of a toddler as the result of a seemingly harmless spill from a bicycle, was awake. He waved when he saw me.

  “Happy New Year, Mr. Winchell,” I said, automatically checking his pulse. “Is there anything I can get for you?”

  He smiled his eerie child’s smile and said nothing.

  “Do you need to go to the bathroom?”

  He shook his head, smiled wider, the white of his teeth flashing in the semidarkness of the room.

  “Then try to get some sleep now, Mr. Winchell. You have a very busy day ahead of you.” I doubted this was true, but what difference did it make? One day would be pretty much the same as the next for Eliot Winchell for the rest of his life. “Why weren’t you wearing your helmet, Eliot?” I scolded in my mother’s voice, watching the child’s smile vanish abruptly from his face. “Get some sleep,” I said, softening, patting his arm, and making sure his covers were secure. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I heard the noise as soon as I stepped back into the hall.

  I spun around, my eyes darting back and forth, up and down the brightly lit corridor. But again, there was nothing. I held my breath, waited, tried unsuccessfully to figure out exactly what it was I thought I’d heard. But there was nothing I could put my finger on, nothing but a vague sense of disquiet.

  “It’s nothing,” I said out loud as I walked past Sheena O’Connor’s former room. Sheena O’Connor was no longer a patient at Mission Care. Her doctors felt she’d recovered sufficiently to release her, and her parents had arrived to take her home the day before yesterday.

  “Isn’t it great? I’ll be home for New Year’s,” she’d exclaimed.

  “You take good care of yourself,” I urged.

  “You’ll keep in touch, won’t you? You’ll come visit me?”

  “Of course I will,” I said, but I think we both knew that once she left the hospital, I’d never see her again.

  She hugged me. “I’m gonna call you every time I can’t sleep,” she warned. “Have you sing to me.”

  “You won’t have any trouble sleeping.”

  What was she doing now? I wondered, returning to the nurses’ station, realizing I missed having someone to sing to.

  On holidays, the hospital retained only a skeletal staff. Beverley and I were the only nurses on the floor. Truthfully, I would have preferred total solitude. Then I wouldn’t have to spend the first moments of the New Year mired in boring small talk or pretend to be interested in Beverley’s mind-numbingly stupid problems. I wouldn’t be expected to offer advice I knew would never be followed. I could simply enjoy this time alone. Chances were slight there’d be an emergency, and doctors were on call if I needed them. A glorified baby-sitter, that’s all you are, I heard my mother whisper.

  “Did you hear something?” I asked Beverley, drowning out the sound of my mother’s voice.

  “Like what?” Beverley looked up from the double issue of People she was perusing and listened. “I don’t hear anything.”

  I shrugged, unconvinced. The silence of the night pounded against my head like a hammer.

  “Just your imagination working overtime,” Beverley pronounced.

  God knows I have plenty of imagination, I thought. Yes, sir—lots of imagination.

  And no life.

  The people dying in their beds just down the hall had more life than I did. Myra Wylie, for God’s sake, at eightyseven and sick with leukemia and heart disease, still grew wistful at the very thought of sex. Ten years ago, ten years ago, she’d still been sexually active! And here was I, almost half her age, with only a tiny fraction of her life experience. What was I waiting for? How much of my life was I going to waste?

  I’d never made New Year’s resolutions before, but I made one now. Come hell or high water, this year was going to be different. Josh would be back from California in a few days, and I was going to be ready for him.

  “Who would you sleep with if you had the chance?” Beverley startled me by asking, as if privy to my thoughts. “Tom Cruise or Russell Crowe?” She held up the magazine, tapped fake, orange nails against the appropriate pictures.

  “Is George Clooney an option?”

  She laughed, and I listened in mounting fear as the laugh spun circles around us. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear that.”

  “I heard it.” Beverley dropped the magazine to the counter and rose to her feet. “Probably Larry Foster in 415. He has that weird little laugh. I’ll go check on him.”

  “Maybe we should call security.”

  Fake, orange nails waved my concerns aside as Beverley headed down the hall.

  I picked up the People magazine and flipped through its pages, trying to pretend there was no cause for alarm by concentrating on which stars had undergone plastic surgery in the last year. “You, definitely,” I said, pointing to the picture of an aging starlet who, except for an exaggerated mane of curly blond hair, barely resembled her former self. In fact, it was only after I read the name beneath the photograph that I realized who she was.

  That’s when I heard the so
und again.

  The magazine dropped from my hands and slid off my lap as I jumped to my feet. “Who’s there?” I demanded, eyes straying toward the alarm button on the wall.

  A figure emerged from behind a nearby pillar and sauntered slowly toward me, his fingers hooked into the pockets of his black jeans, a cruel smile tugging at his lips. Tall, skinny, dressed all in black, his brown eyes laughed at me from atop his hawklike nose. I didn’t need a name beneath a photograph to identify him.

  “K.C.!”

  “Happy New Year, Terry.”

  I fought to get air into my lungs. “What are you doing here? How did you get past security?”

  “You mean my friend Sylvester?”

  “What did you do to him?”

  The smile disappeared from his mouth. “You mean after I slit his throat?”

  My voice fell to my knees. “Oh, my God!”

  K.C. laughed, slapped his thigh in disbelief. “What—you think I’m serious? You think I’d hurt my friend Sylvester? What kind of people have you been hanging out with, lady? Of course I didn’t hurt him. I just explained how unfair I thought it was you had to miss out on all the festivities and said I wanted to surprise you with a party of your own. Sylvester was very understanding, especially when I presented him with a nice bottle of ten-year-old Scotch. What’s the matter, Terry? You don’t look very happy to see me.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “What do you think?” He lifted his right hand, aimed it at my heart. It was only then I saw the gun.

  There was a loud bang, and in a blinding flash, the world exploded. I fell back, cried out, glanced toward my chest, waiting for the sight of my blood to seep through the whiteness of my uniform.

  “My God, what’s going on here?” Beverley exclaimed as my vision began to blur. “Who are you?” she demanded of K.C. as the taste of blood filled my mouth.

  “Friends of Terry’s,” K.C. answered easily, and I was too weak to object.

  And then Alison suddenly jumped into view. “Happy New Year!” she shouted.

  “Happy New Year!” echoed Denise, popping up beside her.

  “Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life,” Lance announced from another corner, laughing as champagne gushed from the large bottle in his hand to spill across the floor. “That was one noisy cork. Anybody see where it went?”

  “What’s going on here?” Beverley asked again, although a smile was already creeping into her voice.

  “New Year’s celebration,” Lance told her. “We didn’t think you angels of mercy should miss out on all the fun.”

  “Well, aren’t you sweet. I’m Beverley, by the way.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Beverley. I’m Lance. This is Alison, Denise, and K.C.”

  “Any friends of Terry’s”—Beverley began, then stopped when she saw the look on my face.

  “You scared me half to death,” I said, realizing I hadn’t been shot after all.

  Lance laughed. “A little scare’s good for you. Gets the adrenaline pumping.”

  “We didn’t mean to scare you,” Alison apologized. “We just wanted to surprise you.”

  “Don’t you like surprises, Terry?” Denise asked, approaching the nurses’ station. Her black hair had outgrown its trendy cut, and as a result, its spikes had lost some of their sharp edges, collapsing around her pale face like ash from a cigarette. Her eyes were rimmed with black, making her look more ghoulish than sophisticated, an effect I don’t think was intentional, although knowing Denise, perhaps it was.

  “Please don’t touch anything,” I admonished, still trying to catch my breath.

  “We brought glasses,” Alison said, producing them from the large shopping bag in her hands.

  “We thought of everything,” K.C. added.

  “Where do you keep the drugs?” Denise asked.

  “What!”

  “Just joking.”

  “What happened to your lip?” Alison asked.

  I touched the side of my mouth where I must have bitten down. Immediately, Lance was beside me, licking the drop of blood from my finger with the exaggerated gusto of a movie vampire. “Hmm. Two thousand two. A very good year.”

  I pulled my hand away. “Save it, Bela Lugosi,” I told him, struggling to keep everyone in my line of sight. Beverley already had a glass in her hand.

  “Don’t be upset with us, Terry,” Alison pleaded. She was dressed all in white, her strawberry-blond curls falling loosely around her face, Botticelli’s Venus removed from her shell.

  “I’m just not sure this is such a good idea.”

  “It’s a great idea,” Beverley countered with a slap on my arm, as Lance began carefully measuring out equal amounts of champagne. I noticed that he too was dressed all in white.

  “We couldn’t let you spend New Year’s Eve alone,” K.C. said.

  “That wouldn’t have been very nice of us.” Denise began rifling through a nearby stack of patients’ charts.

  I quickly moved them out of her reach. “You shouldn’t be back here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Denise,” Alison said.

  Denise promptly left the nurses’ station, grabbing a glass of champagne from the counter as she brushed by. “Cheers, everybody.”

  “Wait. We have to make a toast.” Alison waited to make sure we each had a glass.

  “What are we drinking to?” Lance asked his sister.

  “To the best year ever.” Alison raised her glass into the air.

  “The best year ever,” we all agreed.

  I didn’t want to be considered a wet blanket, so I took one sip, then another. The champagne tasted surprisingly refreshing, so I took several more, the bubbles stinging the insides of my nose. “Good health,” I said under my breath.

  “And wealth,” Denise added quickly.

  “May we all get exactly what we want in the coming year,” Lance continued.

  “Everything that’s coming to us,” K.C. added, smiling at me from over the rim of his glass as everyone took another sip of champagne.

  “Everything we deserve,” Denise said.

  “Everything we need,” said Alison.

  “And what exactly is that?” her brother challenged.

  Alison buried her nose inside her glass of champagne and said nothing. I finished the last of my champagne in two quick gulps.

  “Well, I know what I need,” Denise said, laughing. “I need a change of scenery.”

  “Weren’t you just in New York?”

  “New York doesn’t count. I was with my mother.”

  “What’s wrong with your mother?”

  “Nothing—if you like uptight, anal-retentive, old farts.” Denise immediately doubled over with laughter.

  “Alison likes uptight, anal-retentive, old farts,” Lance said, looking directly at me. “Don’t you, Alison?”

  “I like everyone.” Alison finished the contents of her glass and poured herself another. I could tell by the way she was swaying, by the way they were all swaying, that this wasn’t the evening’s first bottle of booze. “Terry, your glass is empty.” Alison filled it to the top before I had time to object. “Drink up,” she urged, watching as I lifted the glass to my mouth.

  “I’m serious,” Denise was saying. “I’ve had it with the East Coast. It’s time for a change.”

  “Could this have anything to do with getting fired by your aunt?” K.C. asked.

  “My aunt’s an uptight, anal-retentive, old fart.”

  “Why’d she fire you?” Beverley asked, holding out her glass for a refill.

  Denise shrugged. “Because she’s jealous of me. She’s always been jealous of me.”

  “I thought it was because she caught you stealing from the till.”

  Denise waved away K.C.’s unwanted explanation. “Wouldn’t have happened if she wasn’t such a damn tightwad. She was paying me next to nothing, for God’s sake. And she has all this money. Plus, I’m family. You’d think she could afford to be mor
e generous. I hate people like that. Don’t you hate people like that, Terry?”

  “I think people have a right to decide what to do with their own money.” I took another long sip of champagne, struggled to stay focused.

  “Yeah, well, I think she’s—”

  “—an uptight, anal-retentive, old fart?” Lance asked slyly.

  “Exactly.” Denise wobbled toward him, pushed her breasts against his chest. “I was thinking of trying New Mexico. Want to come with me?”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Lance put his arms around Denise’s waist, stared over her wilting dark spikes at Alison. “I’m getting a little tired of South Florida myself.”

  Alison looked away, smiled in my direction, though her smile was tight, as if it were holding back a torrent of angry words.

  A buzzer sounded.

  “What’s that?” Denise raised her head from Lance’s chest.

  I glanced at the wall behind the nurses’ station. The button indicating Eliot Winchell’s room was lit up. “It’s one of my patients. I have to go.”

  “We’ll come with you,” Lance said.

  I shook my head in an effort to clear it, watched the room spin instead. “No. You have to leave now.”

  The buzzer sounded again.

  “Come on, guys. We should get going,” Alison said. “We don’t want to get Terry in trouble.”

  Denise shook her head. “Oh, come on. Don’t be such an uptight—”

  “—anal retentive—” K.C. continued.

  “—old fart,” Lance concluded, and they all laughed. Except for Alison, who had the decency to look both embarrassed and ashamed.

  The buzzer sounded again.

  “Persistent little bugger, isn’t he?” Beverley said, making no move to respond to his call.