by John Saul
“I’m actually starting to think I might survive,” she said as Andrea Costanza made her way across the room and seated herself on the chair the maître d’ was holding for her. “If I can stay ahead of the bill collectors for another couple of months, I just might make it. You won’t believe what’s been going on!” Dropping her voice and leaning forward slightly, Caroline began recounting everything that had happened since Saturday morning when she’d met Irene Delamond in the park right up until last night, when Tony Fleming had taken her and her kids out for dinner. Suddenly the air of sophistication Bev and Rochelle had been carefully displaying dropped away, and all four women could have been back in college whispering excitedly about a new boyfriend.
“Now let me get this straight,” Rochelle asked as Caroline finished. “This man lives in The Rockwell, and he likes Chinese food and your children?”
Caroline nodded.
“Marry him,” Rochelle pronounced.
But Beverly Amondson was shaking her head. “Too good to be true. Besides, aren’t you getting a little old for the ‘Oh, my God, we both love Chinese food’ bit? Everybody likes Chinese food when they’re dating! And don’t men always pretend to like your children until they get in your pants?”
“Beverly!”
Beverly rolled her eyes at Rochelle’s shocked tone. “Oh, come on, Rochelle. It’s perfectly true, and you know it.”
“Well, even if it is, I still think Caroline should marry him.”
“Marry him?” Caroline protested. “I hardly even know him! He might not even call me again.”
“Well, if he does, hang up.”
Andrea Costanza’s words hung in the air, silencing the other three women, and it was finally Caroline herself who broke the silence. “Hang up?” she echoed. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“That building,” Andrea said, visibly shuddering.
“The building?” Rochelle Newman echoed. “You mean The Rockwell? It’s fabulous!”
But Andrea was shaking her head. “It’s creepy.” She turned to look at Caroline. “What was the apartment you were in like?”
Caroline shrugged. “It needs some work, but it’s going to be gorgeous when I’m done with it. She wants me to redo everything.”
“Why isn’t it gorgeous already?” Andrea asked archly. Now all three of her friends were staring at her. “Well, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that—well, there’s this girl—one of my cases. She lives there with her foster parents, and every time I have to go there, I get the creeps.”
Caroline rolled her eyes. “Now you’re starting to sound like the kids.” When all three of her friends looked at her uncomprehendingly, she recounted the rumors the children in the neighborhood had been spreading among themselves. “Ryan even made me cross the street to keep from walking in front of it on Saturday.”
“Well, I don’t blame him,” Andrea said. “I’m telling you, the whole place gives me the willies.”
“The willies,” Beverly repeated. “That tells us a lot. So because you get ‘the willies’ in one apartment in a building, Caroline shouldn’t go out with someone who lives in another apartment?” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were jealous.”
“Jealous?” Andrea echoed. “Why on earth would I be jealous?”
“Maybe because you’d rather Caroline didn’t get a second husband before you’ve gotten a first?” Beverly asked. “Especially one who lives in a building where someone’s been kind enough to take in one of your poor little children.”
Andrea stiffened. “I’ve managed not to be jealous of you, Bev, while you’ve plowed through three husbands,” she replied. “In fact, if I felt anything while you were doing that, I think I’d identify it as pity, not jealousy.”
“Pity? For me?”
“More likely for your husbands,” Rochelle Newman said quickly, trying to defuse the situation before either of her friends said something they couldn’t back away from. Andrea and Beverly both seemed to be weighing their options, and it was finally Andrea who spoke, making a visible effort to let go of her anger as she made the decision to let the moment pass.
“Who knows?” she said, offering Beverly a smile that was obviously intended to be conciliatory even if it wasn’t quite successful. “Maybe you’re right.” She turned to Caroline. “And Bev is certainly right that my not liking the building is no reason for you not to date someone who lives there. I’m sorry I even brought it up.”
“What if she marries him?” Rochelle asked. “Will you go visit her?”
“Yes,” Andrea replied. “Of course I will.”
But she’d hesitated a moment too long before she spoke the words, and something in them didn’t ring true.
PART II
THE SECOND NIGHTMARE
Breathing.
It was barely audible, but he could hear it whispering in the darkness.
His own?
His brother’s?
He wasn’t sure.
He had no idea how long he’d been in the darkness. When he’d gone to sleep the last time—or at least what he thought was the last time—it hadn’t been completely dark. It had never been completely dark, at least not that he could remember. Always, there had been some kind of light. The night-light from when they were babies, first sleeping in the same crib, then in the twin beds that were as alike as they were.
Could he really remember sleeping in a crib?
Or was the memory just another one of the dreams that drifted out of the darkness?
The darkness . . . don’t give in to the darkness . . . remember the light. . . .
Even after the night-light was gone, after his mother had said he was too old for a night-light, there had still been the lights outside the windows. Wherever they’d lived, there’d always been some kind of light.
He could remember a streetlight, a glowing yellow globe at the top of a cement column. It hadn’t been right outside the window, but a little way down the block, so its light drifted up the wall across from his bed, and across half the ceiling.
Another room, where the only light came from headlights of cars passing in the street outside, sending shadows racing across his wall in an endless chase. Those shadows had brought bad dreams with them, dreams in which he was the quarry being chased, but it never mattered how hard or how fast he ran, he could never get away. But back then, back when there was still the light, he always awoke from the dream, always escaped from the nightmare back into the light.
The last room, where the light flooded in all night, from the white, bright streetlight, from the cars and trucks that droned down the street all night long, from the skyscrapers that loomed blocks away, even from the moon when it was the right time of the month.
Those were the lights that had brought the nightmares he’d finally gotten lost in.
The nightmares where he couldn’t run fast enough, where he always got caught and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t escape from the torture that followed his capture, tortures that went on until he thought he was going to die.
Tortures where he could feel his life slipping away until he finally faded away into the blackness that closed around him. But even then the light would finally drive the dream away, except that after awhile he couldn’t really tell when he was dreaming, and when he was awake, because even when he was awake he could still feel his life slipping away.
Then had come the night when he hadn’t escaped the darkness at all.
By then the nightmares were coming so often that he was afraid to go to sleep, but it didn’t matter because no matter what he did, he always slipped into that horrible place from which there was no escape, surrounded by indistinct figures that poked and prodded at him, made every part of him hurt as if he was being stuck with a million needles, whispering among themselves, uttering words he could hardly hear, but that made him more fearful than if he’d heard a wolf howling outside his window.
Now he was trapped
in the nightmare, and everything was backward, and it was the light he was afraid of, because now when the light came—any light at all—it brought the figures, and the voices, and the torture.
Was that what the breathing meant?
Were they nearby, and coming for him again?
He opened his mouth.
To call for help?
To beg for someone—anyone—to answer him?
But it made no difference, for no sound escaped his exhausted body.
The breathing came closer, and the sound of whispering voices swirled around him. His nerves began to tingle as he sensed the closeness of the tormentors, and he tried to make himself smaller, to shrink away from them.
A light—dazzlingly white—flashed on, and in the instant before the light blinded him as surely as the pitch blackness of a moment before, he saw the shapes.
The figures circled around him, edging closer.
Trembling hands ending in gnarled fingers reached toward him.
It’s a dream, he told himself. It’s only a dream, and I’ll wake up.
Wake up to the darkness?
He felt himself being lifted, raised from the hard bed on which he lay.
He was being carried now.
Carried to the torture room.
His mind cried out, but once again his exhausted body refused to obey the commands of his mind.
Now the figures were circled close around him, and the whispering voices grew louder and more excited.
For the first time, words emerged from the babble.
“Mine,” someone whispered. “I have a claim. It’s mine.”
The babble increased, and now the jagged nails were digging into his skin. He felt something press against his belly, something hard and sharp. Then he felt a slight popping sensation, and the pressure stopped, only to be replaced an instant later by something far worse.
A terrible pain, slashing upward from his belly, then downward. Almost as if—
He tried to push the thought away, but even as he tried to shut it out of his mind, the image came. It was as if he were hovering in the air, looking down at the carnage that was his own body:
His own body, slit open from his crotch to his throat.
Blood oozing from the gaping wound, trickling through his entrails.
His diaphragm, torn half away, twitching feebly as it tried to draw air into lungs that lay inert in the open cavity of his chest.
His heart, throbbing wildly, then slowing, its beating no longer rhythmic.
Stopping.
Stopping!
He was dying!
This time he was truly dying!
But it was only a dream! A nightmare from which he would awaken into—
The dark?
The terrible dark, where nothing, not even time itself, existed.
He could feel it now, feel the darkness gathering around him. The terrible image of his mutilated body was beginning to fade away, but from somewhere else—somewhere above him, a tiny point of light appeared.
A point that expanded and grew brighter, but was still far away.
He started toward the light, turning away from the terror and the darkness and the phantom figures.
He was running now, running as fast as he could, flying toward the light, a feeling of weightlessness buoying him, lifting him, raising him into the white brilliance.
The dream, the long nightmare from which there had seemed to be no escape was finally ending, and at last he was free.
Free to drift into eternity.
CHAPTER 9
I’m doing the right thing, Caroline told herself. I know I’m doing the right thing. But even with her own reassuring words echoing in her mind, a nagging doubt still buzzed around her like a gnat, so tiny she could barely see it, but its near invisibility frustrating her efforts to banish it. She gazed at her reflection in the mirror, knowing the image she saw should reassure her. The creases of worry that had been forming between her eyebrows only a few short months ago were gone, and even without a trace of makeup, she looked almost as young now as she had at her wedding to Brad.
Brad.
That was part of it, of course. Even though he’d died less than a year ago, there were already days when she didn’t even think of him. Not many, but a few. But that was natural, wasn’t it? She was getting married today, so it was natural that she’d be thinking much more about Tony Fleming than about Brad Evans.
Then why did she feel vaguely guilty—somehow disloyal—about what she was doing? But she knew the answer to that, too. Part of it was simply the unexpectedness of it all. Until she’d met Tony the whole idea of getting married again hadn’t occurred to her. Even dating hadn’t been on her agenda, with the pain of Brad’s death still so fresh. But from the moment his hand had touched hers in the elevator of The Rockwell, she’d known something was going to happen. Still, she’d been on her guard, knowing that even though he seemed interested in her, the relationship probably wasn’t going to go anywhere.
But it turned out he really did like children, and his eyes always seemed to be sparkling with good humor, and even on that first night, when she’d invited him to stay for a glass of wine after the kids had gone to bed, she’d found herself pouring out her troubles to him more easily than she would have thought possible. When he’d told her she was worrying too much, that things had a way of working themselves out, she hadn’t quite believed him. And when Irene Delamond called her the next day and asked her if she’d be willing to help redo the entire apartment she shared with her sister, Caroline had been certain that Tony must have had a hand in it. But it didn’t really matter how she’d gotten the job—the commissions on the pieces Irene picked out that very afternoon had been enough to bring the rent current and pay off all the old bills.
Suddenly her job had become secure, and it quickly became obvious that she had a flair for seeing what would work together and what wouldn’t. Irene had eventually even agreed to part with the hideous vase that she had insisted was “perfect” only a few weeks earlier.
A pattern had quickly developed—Tony had found her in the park the next Saturday, watching Ryan play baseball, and wound up spending the day with her. They hadn’t really done much—but it had just been comfortable having him around. A couple of weekends later, when she’d had to attend an auction to help Irene choose a few pieces for her apartment, he’d volunteered to keep an eye on Ryan while he played baseball in the morning and soccer in the afternoon, joining the other weekend fathers almost as if Ryan was his own son, even though Ryan himself objected to the whole arrangement.
“Why does he have to be there?” Ryan had demanded as they’d been finishing up dinner in the same Chinese restaurant they’d first gone to a few weeks earlier. “He’s not my dad!”
“Ryan!” Caroline had begun. “There’s no need to be rude to—”
“Hey,” Tony had interrupted, apparently totally unfazed by Ryan’s outburst. “Ease up! He’s eleven years old, and doesn’t need a baby-sitter.” Then he’d winked at Ryan. “On the other hand, I have a feeling you’re stuck with me, unless you’d rather skip baseball and soccer entirely. Mothers worry too much, but sometimes there’s no arguing with them.”
The next weekend, when Ryan had put up a fuss about getting his hair cut, Tony had taken the boy’s side again. “Why would he want to go to a beauty parlor?” Once again he’d turned to Ryan. “How about I take you to my barber on Columbus?” Apparently deciding that a barber shop was better than a beauty parlor, even if it meant being with Tony, Ryan had gone along. But despite all Tony’s efforts, Ryan had remained wary of him, and when she’d told him they were getting married, there’d been an immediate storm.
A storm that had almost changed her mind.
Almost, but not quite.
“Of course Ryan’s going to object,” Beverly Amondson had told her. “What did you expect? He’s just turned eleven years old, and he misses his father. It’s not Tony Fleming he objects to—it’s anyone. He
wants his mother to himself.”
It had almost been enough to dissuade Caroline, and when she’d talked to Tony about it, he had told her he understood exactly how she felt, and that whatever she decided wouldn’t change his feelings for her. “If we have to wait until he’s eighteen and goes off to college, then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll just figure out how to make this work.”
But it was Kevin Barnes who had finally made things clear to her. He took her out for lunch one day, and wasted no time with subtleties. “For God’s sake, Caroline, he’s perfect! If I weren’t so happy with Mark, I might just go after him myself. Just kidding,” he’d added as she’d threatened to throw a French fry at him. But then his expression had turned serious. “So what if Ryan doesn’t like him? Ryan will grow up and move on, a whole lot faster than either he or you thinks, and then where will you be? Do you really think Tony’s going to wait for you forever? And why should he, if it turns out you’re a wimp who lets an eleven-year-old kid dictate how you live your life? Believe me, darling, he’ll find someone else—and it won’t be because he doesn’t love you. He’s wants a wife, not a girlfriend, and you can’t expect him to wait around while you pander to Ryan.”
“It’s not pandering!” Caroline had objected, but Kevin had merely rolled his eyes.
“So maybe the word’s too strong. But think about it, okay? Just think about it.”
Which was exactly what she’d done, and in the end she’d decided that Kevin was right.
So this afternoon she and Tony were getting married in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, and in a few minutes she would be leaving the apartment for the last time.
Her eyes flicked to the spot on her vanity where Brad’s picture had always stood, his eyes watching her as she put on and took off her makeup. How many times in the months since he’d died had she sat here talking to him, knowing he couldn’t possibly answer her, but feeling as if his presence was still close. But after she’d made up her mind to marry Tony, she’d put the picture of Brad away, adding it to the collection of things she was keeping for Laurie and Ryan to have when they were grown up. But now, as she started putting on her makeup, she found herself talking to him one last time.