by Harker Moore
She rose naked, stepping into the tub. The prayer of Misogi again on her lips. Then her hand reached to free the water. The fine hot spray hit her face, a thousand burning needles running down her shoulders, pricking her breasts. The water scalded, and she prayed. Prayed that the gods wash the soil from her, make her clean. Remove from her the stain he had left behind, when in the same moment he had taken from her the unborn child.
For purification. For worthiness, she prayed. So that once again she could offer herself to Jimmy. Once again be wife to her husband.
CHAPTER
11
Here, Mr. Romero, here.” The driver drove a short distance more before bearing to the right and stopping. “We can’t stay long,” he said. “I’m illegally parked. On the wrong side of the street. But I want to be behind you. . . . You sure you want to do this, Mrs. Sakura?” He was facing her. She could feel his eyes, the soft direct sound of his voice as he’d turned in his seat.
“It’s all right, Mr. Romero. As you said, you will be right behind me. And I have Taiko with me.” At the sound of his name, the dog moved, his harness making a hollow jangle in the shelter of the backseat. “Is that not true, my prince?” She bent and kissed the shepherd on his muzzle.
“This is not such a good area.”
She knew he wanted to say that a black neighborhood was not a place for a blind Asian woman. Even at eleven o’clock in the morning. “It will be fine. And I won’t be long.” She twisted the lead in her hand and opened the door. Taiko bounded out onto the sidewalk.
The cold air was fresh against her skin, though she was glad for the coat she’d worn. A few words in Japanese to Taiko, and they moved forward. She could hear the low rumble of Mr. Romero’s engine. She knew he would follow her as far as he could. An angel on her shoulder. She smiled, her feet making a wary peace with the uneven pavement. A screech of a cat. Music, loud and insistent from across the street. The boom, boom, boom of the bass reverberated inside her. An impatient shout. A baby’s wail. A few more steps and she was there. Where the abandoned car had been left.
Issa body . . . Arm be sticking outta the trunk . . . Look like a woman hand . . . Wrapped up like garbage . . . Sho stank . . . Who done did this shit . . . Their voices a fresh litany in her head. She could almost feel them around her, though no one had actually touched her. They had parted for her as she’d moved forward inside the crowd. She had been as much an interloper as the dead inside the car . . . . She be blind . . . See dat dog . . .
Then, without warning, the same blackness she’d experienced that night struck. Sucked at her like a vacuum. Unzipping its mouth to take her inside itself. Emptier than empty. A nothingness beyond nothingness. And terrible . . . terrible in its need.
She clutched her stomach, fighting the hot ropes of saliva forming, the throbbing at her temples, matching the boom, boom, boom of the music. A sudden wrenching, a doubling over, and she vomited. She was conscious of the faint jingle of Taiko’s harness and Mr. Romero’s shout. Then his feet slamming the concrete, coming toward her, running to catch her before the blackness swallowed her and she fell.
In Margot Redmond’s mind, the room seemed unaccountably cold. She ran her hands up and down her arms. The gesture did not pass unnoticed. His one blue eye, one green, still unsettled her.
“Cold?” David St. Cyr asked.
“A bit. Are you? I could turn up the thermostat.”
“I find it pleasant.”
“I think I’ll get a sweater. Excuse me. . . . Pour yourself another cup of coffee.”
In her bedroom, she shivered again. What was wrong with her? Was it St. Cyr? She had to admit, the architect still made her a bit uncomfortable. But she couldn’t exactly explain why. He was nice enough. Almost too nice. And God knew he was attractive, if you liked the type. Which she did. Tall and chiseled. Reeking of breeding. Had Patrice mentioned he was gay? She could never remember. Somehow she didn’t think he was. She didn’t think he was anything. Maybe she was overstating it, but he seemed indifferent to any sort of physical intimacy, as though he had no appetite for it and sex simply bored him. A beautiful snake that went artfully and stealthily about its business. That was David St. Cyr. She reached into a drawer for a sweater, wishing she’d scheduled this meeting when Reese had been home.
“Back,” she said, sounding overly cheerful. “Was there a problem redoing the boys’ room?” She seated herself at the desk, where he’d stretched out his revised designs. “I mean, dividing the one bedroom into two separate rooms.”
“No, it can be fixed.”
“I’m hearing a but.” She followed his gaze as it moved from the drawings back up to her.
“Am I that transparent?” He wore a smile that appeared practiced.
“It just seemed that there might be some problem.”
“No problem.” He used his pencil to indicate how easily it would be to bisect the space. “I was just thinking that since Jason and Damon are still quite young, they might enjoy sharing a room. And later when they got older, it would be a simple matter of throwing up a wall.”
“Maybe . . .” She stared at the design, thinking. “No, they’ll have the playroom. I want Jason and Damon to each have his own bedroom.”
The wooden smile turned into a dry laugh. “I think you’ve been reading too much literature about twins.”
“Actually I’ve been on-line.” She didn’t care a damn bit for his condescending attitude.
“Sorry, Margot, I’m cursed with ‘only-child syndrome.’ Individual bedrooms it shall be.” This time St. Cyr’s smile managed to spill over into his remarkable eyes.
The day had turned overcast, with dark clouds piling between the buildings that bordered the sculpted green. With its thrusting iron fences and autumn trees turning skeletal, Gramercy Park appeared gothic in the failing afternoon light. Michael Darius, standing near the gate, was nursing his near-wasted cigarette. For the last twenty minutes he’d been hanging around, watching the front of the brownstone, trying to decide whether to go another round with Margot.
The door opened, and a tall man came out, moving with the deliberateness of escape. Face concentrated, shoulders set, a controlled anger in the walk that carried the expensive clothes catlike.
Darius jerked at the cigarette, stubbed it in the sidewalk, and crossed.
Margot answered the door. “Oh, great!”
He ignored her comment. “Who was that?”
“What do you want, Michael?” She let him come in, but only as far as the foyer.
“I want to know who that man was.”
“What man?” She was going to make this hard.
“You fucking him?”
“That’s none of your goddamned business.”
The rawness of the exchange shocked them both.
“Of course I’m not fucking him.” She spoke first. “Why are you here?” She was again on offense.
“Where are the boys?”
“They had a play date at Peg Martin’s. She has a boy of her own their age. It’s almost time to pick them up. I’ll have to go in a minute.”
She was talking too fast, and he looked over her shoulder as she spoke. There was something on the table she didn’t want him to see.
“Michael . . .”
He pushed past her and took in the plans. Redmond House. Architect—David St. Cyr. Some objective part of his brain appreciated the talent behind the design. “You’re building . . . where?” His voice was deceptively toneless.
“I was going to tell you.” Margot had followed him. She appeared deflated in the light that was coming in from the window.
“Where?” he repeated.
“In Connecticut. Not exactly the end of the earth. And nothing is definite; the plans aren’t even finalized. That’s why David was here. David St. Cyr. He’s the architect. And he’s . . . difficult.” She had had to reach for the word.
“Difficult . . . how?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. We disagreed about
some changes I want him to make in the house.” She was looking at him now with something like affection. “You’d probably be on his side,” she said. “Like someone had criticized your models.”
Her tone was deliberately light, an attempt to diffuse the emotion that had built like thunder in the room. Layer on layer of ionized air. The charge remained.
He continued to study the plans. He could not have designed this. He was a copyist; his models of the great cathedrals were lessons. The technical aspects of this house, the materials that made its construction possible were beyond his knowledge. And something else here that was beyond him. A level of abstraction not suited for human beings. This was not a house where Margot should live. Not a house for his children.
He looked up. She was watching him as if for once she could read in his face the things he could not say.
“Michael . . .” she began, but her gaze slid past his face. “Reese just thinks that living in the country would be better for the boys.”
“What do you think?”
“Do you really want to know?” she asked him.
“Yes.”
“I think it’s up to us . . . the three of us, to do what will make Jason and Damon happy and secure.”
“And you think that keeping me out of their lives will do that?”
“I don’t know. Keeping you in mine was making me crazy.”
“You’ve said that.”
“I don’t know what else to say. It’s confusing for Jason and Damon to have you just show up here all the time. They don’t know what to make of you. Reese is their father.”
“It’s getting late,” he said, before she could speak again. He was already walking away. “You better go pick up the boys.”
Victor Abbot waited in his seat for the rest of the movie audience to file out. He needed a few moments alone in the semidark to savor what he had seen. He knew he had been bad—he couldn’t imagine that his obsession with the movie was something Dr. French would approve of—but it hardly seemed his fault if the revival theater on Houston had decided to schedule his favorite silent film. He couldn’t resist coming here to see it played out on the big screen.
It was as if Fritz Lang could read his mind. A truly weird thought. Some film director in the twenties picking his future brain. But that was how it felt, watching his private reality unfolding up there in the dark. He could never really get enough of Metropolis.
The crowd had considerably thinned when finally he emerged into the pink and purple lobby. He went past the few stragglers who remained at the bar, pushed through the door to the street, and walked toward the subway station on Varick. He could feel the rods and pistons working in his legs, the metal plates inside his chest expanding and contracting. Tiny gears at the sides of his face shifted his mouth to a smile.
He had reached the stairs, and was descending now like Freder into the city’s bowels. The rods moved in his thighs, their lubricated heads sliding in the grooves behind his knees. Articulated metal flexed with each step in ankle joints and toes.
It was not very late, and the subway was crowded with night-riders, city slaves in the world of the catacombs. In his private Metropolis, the hero, himself, was not the human Freder but machine. In his version, the robot Hel, and not the human Maria, was the true object of desire.
He slid his card through the slot at the top of the turnstile and went through the gate to the platform to wait behind the yellow line for his train. He stood for a moment with eyes closed, the sensors in his head filtering the machine smells from the effluvia of closely pressed bodies.
His train came. He noted his reflection distorted in the silvered pneumatic doors that parted with a whoosh to admit him. He found a seat across from a woman whose body fascinated. Tall and angular, muscles elongated inside the concealing skin. He longed to burn the flesh away, to reveal the gleaming structure beneath.
2:52 A.M. Margot paced her bedroom, back and forth, back and forth, from the bed to the window and back again, her thoughts looping as endlessly as her footsteps. It took a conscious will to stop, to still her feet and her brain. She made the effort, halting like an actor before the heavy curtains. Her hand parted the fabric and she peered out. But no waiting audience floated in the second-storey air. No one at all on the sidewalk beneath. Or in the park, where the trees stood dark and unmoving as cutouts. The sky itself was a murky black that trapped the city neon and occluded whatever moon still lingered.
Reese was away, which was not unusual. He had to travel a lot in his business. But his absence tonight seemed to have infected her with restlessness. She had looked forward to the quiet after putting the boys to bed, but had still found it difficult to concentrate on the brief that her law firm was expecting tomorrow. When that was finished, she’d had a harder time than usual drifting off to sleep.
And then Damon had woken with a dream, which in turn had woken his brother—something about the dark and the shadow that the night-light made on the wall. She smiled, rueful. There could be a downside to a lively imagination, something which both twins possessed. Dreams had been something that had always plagued Michael.
She had been trying not to think of him, and now she had. Which of course was the real reason for her sleeplessness. Trying to shut Michael out of her thoughts was as difficult as shutting him out of their lives. She could not forget the look on his face when he had seen the house plans today.
She let the curtain fall and returned to her bed. It was not cold in the room, but she had a sudden longing to be beneath the covers. She curled on her side and pulled the bedclothes up to her head. Sometimes it became impossible to keep up her guard. Sometimes, like tonight, she just gave herself over to thinking of her and Michael.
Never an especially pretty child, she had blossomed in high school. She had enjoyed her new attractiveness, but her parents had been watchful, and boyfriends had never been the focus of her existence. By the time she went to college she was considered a beauty, and there had always been men, but never the one. Not until law school.
He had walked into Torts that first day of class, and the buzz among the women around her had started. Someone had said he looked like a Cornishman’s idea of the devil, with his dark complexion and cornflower eyes. Her own description was Byronic. There had been a seriousness in his face, in his whole manner, that was more compelling to her than his looks. He seemed tragic in some overwhelming way, and her instant response was a deep and sexual attraction that made her feel ridiculous.
She had never had crushes on movie stars or rock stars growing up. But here she was waking in the mornings with that giddy “the world is wonderful” feeling just because some guy named Darius was in it—an unconscious euphoria that hit as she opened her eyes, before the censor in her brain had time to catch up. And worse, getting wet pants if he even looked her way in class, which he seemed to do more and more often. She was horrified to think he might guess her reaction.
Finally he’d approached her. She’d watched him walking toward her table in the campus coffee shop, and was surprised that she was glad, not because her girlish dreams were going to be realized, but for precisely the opposite reason. She was certain that her dreams would be smashed. The real Michael Darius was going to set her free from the imaginary man in her head.
But he hadn’t. He’d begun a conversation on New York law, and the effect of Judge Cardoza’s opinions. She had been completely disarmed. She possessed no natural weapons where Michael was concerned. She had had to develop defenses.
She would never be completely free of him. They could move to China, and he would still be in her head. This moment she could see him so clearly, looking at her as he had the other day when he’d asked if she loved Reese. She hadn’t responded, but the answer was easy. Of course she loved Reese.
But there were other questions that he hadn’t asked, and those answers were hard.
Do you still love me? Oh, yes.
Do you miss what we had? I ache for it.
CHAPTER
12
Willie sat yawning in front of Sakura’s desk. “Excuse me,” she said. She was watching him pull tea things from the bottom drawer, including cups for three. She had never seen Darius drink Jimmy’s tea. And right now she’d rather have coffee. It had been that kind of morning, preceded by that kind of night. Michael, silent and moody at dinner, had kept her up hours after midnight. Which was fine, she guessed. Having great sex was not something she wanted to complain about. But she’d had to be up early today, joining the task force for the morning briefing. And then the real occasion, just concluded. Jimmy’s first press conference on the progress of the investigation.
“I think that went reasonably well,” she spoke to no one in particular.
“Considering I had nothing to say.” Sakura had turned to the water boiling on the hot plate behind him.
“What bothers me”—she watched him pour hot water over the tea leaves—“is that I don’t have a better handle on the profile. I can’t seem to get a clear fix on what’s going on with this guy.”
“He’s a serial killer.” Darius had finally spoken from the window, where predictably he was hovering. She’d noted his habit of staring from heights whenever he felt any special pressure to communicate.
“Thanks for the insight,” she shot back.
“Maybe they’re supposed to be androids,” Darius said. He walked over and sat in the chair next to hers. “Mechanical somehow. Stapled together. It fits with the music they play in these clubs.”
“Interesting, but there has to be more than that.”