The force of her emotions made her feel like she was losing her balance. She caught herself and leaned on the edge of the sink, eyes closed, remembering to breathe. This is not me, she told herself. I am a team player. I have not forgotten that it’s the public that is paying for this flight. And all my training. And all the years I spent at university. The least I can do is help them celebrate American’s highest achievement.
She opened her eyes and stared at the floor. Her gaze came into focus with her eyes aimed at infinity, focusing on the centers of two tiles in the pattern instead of one. The wider parallax made the tiles jump and float with an illusion of greater depth, as if she were staring at a stereo pair of air photographs. Her mind slipped into a tight observation of the phenomenon, careening away from the stress of the evening’s coming event. But she was unable to maintain the abstraction, and her mind soon crashed back to her ongoing awareness of the danger she must face by being seen in public. Her ears rushed with a sound like the crowd of people who would fill the hall, earthbound enthusiasts and their semi-interested spouses hoping to be inspired or at least entertained by what she had to say. Like a drowning woman clutching a floating piece of wreckage, she clamped onto the thought of the task itself, and ran the assignment through her head, rehearsing. She was to speak to them about the various projects in which a geologist would be involved in space. She would go for the usual laughs—What’s a rock hound doing going into space, where there are no rocks?—and when they were warmed up, she would speak to them of observation. Of the beauty of patterns and what they told her, seen close up through a microscope, or as the naked-eye observer standing in the landscape, or from a distant platform in space or beyond, a never-ending expansion of fractals.
And she would speak to them of one objective of her voyage: the whirls of dust that blew off the Earth’s deserts. She would tell them of the diseases carried on that mineral dust, and tell them about the synthetic chemicals riding along as aerosols, and help them to perceive the importance of doing primary research on these phenomena. She would describe the various observation platforms NASA was using to study them, what and how much was riding on the wind, and how and where it originated, and when the problem had reached lethal proportions. She would tell them about the satellite image slices used—TOMs, SeaWiFS—and about observations made from the International Space Station and from the shuttle itself.
And she would try, desperately, to convey to them her passion for the beautiful orb over which she would soon float, a lover levitated by her force of feeling. But she wouldn’t use such words. Such words were too revealing, too intimate. Instead, she would keep her voice level and forceful and pump out scientific terms that aimed more abstractly at her truths.
She had learned public speaking in graduate school. Years working as a teaching assistant to earn her funding had long since ironed out the wrinkles of terror that used to fall like heavy drapery around her as she walked to the front of the room, turned, and faced the assembled listeners. She had learned to be poised, confident, dynamic … at times even charming. More usually, people perceived her as aloof. The PR coach at NASA had taken pains to tell her this, trying to get her to drop some of her multisyllabic, Latinate terms for simpler words with more emotional punch. And to smile, and make better eye contact. Lucy had fought this badgering every inch of the way and would tonight of all nights perform her task any way she damned well could, interpersonal warmth be damned.
Tonight, she would not be looking into her audience’s eyes except to scan each face to make certain that he was not there. After confirming this, she would be staring over their heads, keenly watching the entrances to the room. But what would she do if he appeared?
Her mind shot backward to the evening she had met him. How ironic that it was at a speaking event like this. He had come up after her talk to compliment her. She had been tired, lonely, hungry for approval, and … he had been quite attractive, all big and brawny and blond, just the way she liked her men. How she wished she could take back that night, rewind, and live forward again without the fateful accident of that meeting. Her mind went blank with dissociation as the intensity of that upset once again overwhelmed her.
Shaking herself back to the present moment, Lucy straightened up, picked up her hairbrush, and began, mechanically, to pull it through her hair. Three strokes on the left, three on the right, one front-to-back to lift it off her forehead. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, assessing the weight of the years. She was a month shy of forty and had never married. Marriage and raising children had just never seemed an option, not with everything she aimed to accomplish … or were her former boyfriends right when they said that she had armored her heart to protect her precious mind and ambitions? To hell with them all, she thought bitterly. In just days, or at worst weeks, I will achieve my goal. We’ll climb into the T-38’s and fly to the Cape. The next day, final prep, begin to suit up. The day after that, we climb aboard Endeavor for the final countdown. At T minus O, we have ignition, we lift off, and I … She stared into the mirror at the dark areas under each eye, and thought, How strange to be looking forward to the risk of space travel to feel safe.
The timer she had set in the kitchen buzzed distantly. She dropped the brush into the sink. Time to go. She moved out of the bathroom, headed down the hall toward the hat stand that filled the space next to the door into the garage. There she had ritually placed her pocketbook, her keys, and the light jacket that protected her from the ubiquitous air-conditioning of house, car, office, and meeting rooms. She surely did not need it for the sultry Houstonian night air.
She paused with her hand on the knob of the door into the garage. This was the moment that scared her most, ever since the morning she had opened this very door and found him standing on the other side.
In one terrible moment, she had frozen.
He had lunged, hands flying toward her.
Thawing, she had slammed the door and shot the bolt, saved by decades of physical training and the lightning-fast reflexes it took to make the astronaut corps in the first place.
Had he held a knife, or had she just imagined that?
And—this question tormented her—how had he gotten into the garage? How had he gotten past the security system?
She still did not know.
Her mind plummeted back to that day. How long ago had it been? Two months? Three? Was it really that long ago? That recent? Time seemed to dilate either way, the effect of stress.
The knob felt cold in her hand. Too cold. Did that mean that he was there now, on the other side of her door again, waiting for her to unlock it?
For the thousandth time, her mind whispered its question: What would he have done to me if I had not stopped him?
She knew, and did not want to know. A spurned lover, insane, willing to do anything to get her under his control. He’d have her chained to his bedstead if he could.
Her mind reeled out of control, spinning back through the events that had led to her present moment of terror, of torture. He had at first seemed so charming, almost impish in his capacity to shift from one apparent personality to another, like dating an actor who was always in rehearsal. But there had always been little signals, even from their first meeting, telling her that something was wrong, each clue too small or inconsequential in itself to make her turn and say, “Sorry, but I don’t want to see you again.” One moment he’d seem infinitely suave and pulled together and then, suddenly, she’d note a moment of disarray, the man flickering instantaneously toward the inchoate rage and panic of an abandoned child; then, not a word or a gesture having quite skidded over the line past which she could be sure of what was happening, he would resume the appearance of normalcy, a sly deception giving him the image of an adult male.
She had dated him erratically, when he was in town on business that was never quite described. She had gone to bed with him three, no, four times, and wondered still how he had talked her into it. Why had she let him? Was it his intensity, o
r his obvious need of her? She had let herself imagine that it could work, his house of mirrors encouraging her to select whichever fantasy suited her own fragile needs. But always something about him seemed off, discolored. Yet each meeting seemed innocuous enough, and he even handed her the rationalizations. We’re not kids, he’d tell her. Be my lady just this night. And one more night. And one more. Inching ever closer to the darkness that seethed within him. Just one more. As if, having hugged this tar baby and become slightly soiled, she could tell herself that she might as well hug again and wash later. His sexual demands had been by turns exciting, overwhelming, unnerving, and finally … frightening.
She had decided—for the fifth or sixth time—to see him maybe one more time before breaking off the relationship when a mutual acquaintance phoned. An old classmate, a member of the association that had invited her to that first fateful meeting. He invited her now to join him for a cup of coffee at a public cafeé. His tone was casual, but she knew something was up. Over the smell of beans, he had revealed the awful truth. This man she had been dating—this creature that she had let near her—had held another woman at knifepoint, naked, squirming, begging for her life.
“What do you mean?” Lucy had asked.
“I mean he very nearly killed her,” he had replied.
“But he didn’t.”
The friend had looked at her. Blinked. “No. She said he was interrupted. The bastard heard the mailman coming up the walk. He made her promise she would not tell.” When Lucy said nothing in response, he continued. “She said it was as if he suddenly became a small boy. He let her up and told her to put her clothes on. Said it was their secret. Imagine.”
“Did she go to the police?”
“No. She was too frightened. She left town instead. I only know about this through a mutual friend.”
“Then there’s no record of the event.”
“Correct.”
Lucy had sat there, her coffee untouched and going cold, stray bits of observation finally clicking together.
“Sorry,” the friend had said. “It must be tough; I mean, you’ve given up so much of your social life to get this far, making the astronaut corps and all. You’re my age, right? Almost forty? Is there anything I can do?”
Leaping past his pity, Lucy had said, “No,” the word flying from her lips, the old pattern of denial closing all access to her heart. She had managed a wry smile to indicate a lack of importance. She had said, “I’ll take care of this. I appreciate your telling me. I was just breaking it off anyway. Only went out a couple of times. He’s not my type.” So casual. Let everyone think it was barely a scratch.
But the scratch had proved a vicious gash as talons sank deep into her flesh, a predator who would not let go.
That night he had called just as she was turning out the light to go to sleep. Even from their first meeting, he had thus moved to throw her off her rhythms, keeping her awake past her schedule. This night she would not let him steal her sleep. This night, she decided, she would not answer. Not answer to the creature who had lied so deeply about himself.
When the phone clicked over to the machine, he had left a message. His words had been innocuous enough, but his tone told her that, by the very fact that she had not picked up the phone, he knew she knew. She lay back on her bed and waited. Fifteen minutes later, she had heard a car drive up and slow down, its driver scanning her house.
Her hand moving faster than conscious thought, she had clicked off the bedside light.
The car had stopped, its engine idling.
Seconds later, the phone rang.
She did not answer. No message was left.
The next day, he had phoned her at work, asking her to lunch. She had declined, citing EVA practice drills in the pool. You can’t do this, he had said. Can’t. And had repeated the word twice, like a chant, then told her, You haven’t asked my permission.
The morning after that she first found footprints pressed into the dew in her backyard. Large, like him.
No night after that had borne the rest she needed.
A cycle quickly emerged. Always the phone call at bedtime, and an ebb and swelling of signs appeared, telling her that he had often been there, watching her, while she tried to sleep. Each clue cut like a knife through her gossamer illusion of safety.
And then came the morning that he was right there outside her door. In the garage. In the brief instant before she slammed the door, his hands had swung toward her. He had held something shiny.
She had begun to live in the dark, only leaving lights on in rooms other than the one she was in. She used only the downstairs bathroom, because it had no windows. She installed security alarms on all the doors and windows including the garage, but still she languished in uncertainty.
One evening, she had come home late to find the house pitch dark and a note from the security company taped to the door to demonstrate that they had done their bit and checked on her when the interruption of power at her house had set off an alarm at their monitoring station. How long did it take them to get here? she asked herself. Ten minutes? Twenty? When the stroke of a knife takes no time at all?
The electrician she called found duct tape between the meter and the house current, breaking supply. A sophisticated job, he had told her. Do this wrong, and you electrocute yourself.
That night she did not sleep at all.
She knew instinctively that reporting this vandalism, this harassment, this stalking to anyone, least of all the law, was not an option. One thought always stopped her: Involvement in such a mess will bump me from the flight. And, most likely, from all future flights.
I just have to outlast this … .
In the hours before dawn, she had decided to hire a lawyer to advise her. A lawyer was held to stringent codes of client-lawyer privilege. She would pay cash, give a false name.
She had made the appointment. Waited, hardly breathing, hanging from the slim thread of hope that this man would be able to tell her how to deal with him.
The day of her appointment had arrived. The lawyer drew lazy circles with one finger on his desktop and listened, his eyes glazed, the meter running. She spoke with a constricted throat, her voice tight with rage and the humiliation of telling this agony to a stranger.
When she was done with her recitation, he leaned back, studied her a moment longer, and then told her the awful truth: That in the eyes of the law, he hadn’t really done anything yet. That her fear did not motivate a warrant for his arrest. She had to have evidence of a crime. A crime? “You mean theft of my peace of mind is no crime?” she had said. “How about breaking and entering? How about skulking around my personal space, unwelcome, unbidden ?”
“No witnesses,” he had said. “Your word against his. Do you want to play this in court? Your insistence on paying in cash says that you do not.”
“But he’s breaking the law.”
“Yes, but you are not the law. You have no right to prosecute. You are not sleeping, but nothing has really happened to you. The law would consider him merely a nuisance.” Here the lawyer had laughed humorlessly and stared out the window. Then he had told her, his voice tight with anger, that the slogan painted on police cruisers in some cities—To Serve and Protect—should in fact be To Clean Up the Mess.
Sorry, lady, he was telling her. Your life is screwed.
She changed tacks. Asked, “Do you think I really have anything to worry about?”
“Oh, yes. The graveyards are full of women who did not take action.”
Moments had passed, then she asked, “What action can I take?”
“None. Are you authorized to carry a concealed weapon? You might consider it. You could get a restraining order. A simple thing. I take you into court, and you tell the judge that you fear for your life, that gets you a temporary restraining order. To make it permanent, he gets his day in court to contest the fact that you are in effect relieving him of some small part of his liberty. It becomes a matter of public record.”<
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Here he had sat back and observed her for a moment, knowing that the last thing this Miss Jones or Smith or whatever she called herself would do was to let anything show up in the public record.
“Moreover,” he had said, “the restraining order is no kind of armor. It is a piece of paper. It is a civil order, not criminally enforceable. He will not be arrested on the basis that you are scared, or even should he cross the lines set by the order. If he does, you must tell the police, and they will go to a judge—when next court is in session—and ask the judge to issue a bench warrant for his arrest. The judge might not do it. After all, you have done a good job of preventing injury so far. Further, if you call the police, they will classify your complaint as domestic violence because you know this man, and then you are caught on another hook. You are in essence blamed as part of the problem, as if it’s just your bad relationship that is at fault and not the state of his mind or the wrongfulness of his actions.”
Her voice was almost gone, as thin and colorless as a ghost, as she said: “But all I want is to be left alone.”
He had picked at his cuticles, said, “Not much to ask, I agree, but even if you have gotten a restraining order and a permit to carry and he breaks down your door, you will be asked why you did not leave the state to escape him. Do you understand? If you use lethal force to stop him from hurting you, you will be held accountable. The statistics are that you will go to jail—ninety-eight percent chance—because you knew him. The police call this a dirty crime. The first thing they ask is: Did you sleep with him?”
Lucy’s face had gone tight.
He had his answer. “They’ll search your house. Take your sheets. Even if you’ve washed them, chances are there will be public hairs still in them. Or in your bed. Or in the carpet underneath it.”
Killer Dust Page 10