by John Lutz
“Had you been taking pills?”
“No, no, not pills or any other kinda dope. ’Cept for liquor. And only mixed drinks, that’s all. But a crowd like that, maybe somebody put something in one of my drinks. Maybe somebody’d doctored the drinks of the girl who started dancing topless. She wasn’t acting quite normal. Her eyes were funny. I dunno, bunch of sickos get together that way …”
Allie described the man who’d approached her on Amsterdam and West 74th, then she asked Hedra if he’d been one of the group of Brad’s friends.
“Yeah, I think so. I remember him because he was so thin, and he had this nasty kinda leer and kooky eyes. He kept looking at me like he could see through my clothes.”
My clothes, Allie thought. But what difference did that make? “Remember his name?”
“Carl something, I think. I’m not sure. It’s hazy.” Hedra suddenly looked horrified. “Allie, you do believe me, don’t you?”
Allie wanted to believe, and did believe at least enough to feel the relief of having some explanation about her encounter with the pervert on the street corner, who for Christ’s sake had known her name. It was easier to believe than to doubt, and what Allie was hearing was damning enough, so there was no reason for Hedra to lie. Besides, Hedra had this Calvinistic compulsion to confess, to purify herself. Truth in her would work to the surface like a splinter in a festering wound. Allie was so tired, so worn down. God, all she wanted to do now was sleep, secure in her understanding of what had happened.
Softly, she said, “Of course I believe you.”
Hedra approached and laid her trembling hand on Allie’s shoulder. No, not Hedra trembling. Allie realized she was trembling; Hedra’s hand was steady. Hedra, wearing a sapphire ring given to Allie by an old boyfriend in college. “I’ll stay away from that place and those kinda people, Allie.”
“I know you will.”
“There’ll be no more encounters like today, no more nasty phone calls. Not if I can help it.”
“Why, that’s right,” Allie said. “That explains the obscene phone calls, too.”
“Sure it does.” Hedra’s hand caressed and petted. “Everything’s gonna turn out okay, Allie, believe me. We’ll go out for breakfast tomorrow morning before I leave for work. At that deli down the street. All right?”
Hedra comforting Allie, calling the shots.
“All right,” Allie heard herself say. Through her weariness she realized that things weren’t the same. An important balance had shifted.
Somehow, inexorably, Allie had become weaker and it was Hedra who’d come to dominate their relationship. Mimicking Allie. Dressing like her. Sometimes even wearing Allie’s clothes. Becoming Allie Jones. A strong Allie Jones.
Imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, Allie had often heard. But this was, in some strange way, more than mere imitation. It made her think of that old science-fiction movie The Body Snatchers.
Allie didn’t care. Not right now. Maybe in the morning.
Maybe.
Now, tonight, she was tired and wanted only the sweet oblivion of sleep. The bliss of total surrender.
Hedra said, “I think you should go to your room and lie down, Allie.”
Allie went.
Chapter 20
ALLIE slept deeply until the next morning. The dock radio blared and yanked her awake at eight o’clock. Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones blasting about spending just another night with somebody. Somehow the volume of the radio had been turned up. The Stones might as well have been wailing and gyrating right alongside the bed, Mick jackknifed at the waist to lean insolently over Allie and scream in her ear.
Allie suddenly remembered one of the few responses to the resumés she’d sent out. She had an appointment for a job interview this morning. Not a very promising appointment, but nonetheless a straw to grasp.
She scooted over, reached out, and slapped the plastic button on the side of the clock radio. In the buzzing silence that followed, she lay motionless and let herself gradually wake up.
Her mind reached complete wakefulness before her body. Did she really want to get dressed and be interviewed for a job she most likely wouldn’t get? Of course she did, she tried to convince herself. After all, wasn’t that the reason she’d sent out resumés? Her legs were ignoring this internal debate; they felt too heavy and comfortable to move. The rectangle of sunlight lying over them seemed to have the warmth and solidity of a lead-lined blanket. Another fifteen minutes of rest won’t matter, urged a deep, persistent part of her brain.
Her mind drifted, went blank.
An explosion of sound caused her body to levitate off the mattress.
But almost immediately her pounding heartbeat slowed. She’d pressed the snooze button by mistake and the Stones were back in the bedroom. That got her up in a hurry and she switched off the clock radio. She was a Stones fan, but she wanted no truck with them at eight A.M.
She noticed a sheet of yellow paper, a Post-it, stuck to the top of the radio. At first she thought it was her own handwriting, a reminder she’d left for herself. Then she squinted and read:
Sorry, I didn’t have time for breakfast—had to leave for work.0 Decided you needed sleep anyway.
Love,
Hedra
Allie peeled the note off the radio, wadded it, and tossed it aside. She’d allowed herself plenty of time to make her ten o’clock appointment. After taking a shower, then blow-drying and combing her hair, she stood in front of her closet and chose a subdued blue skirt, navy-blue high heels, and a white blouse to wear for the interview.
When she was dressed, she glanced out the window at the gray morning and saw that it was raining. Not heavily, but with a gloomy regularity that suggested it might rain for the next twenty years, and certainly it was coming down hard enough to make a wreck of her hair. She clattered to the entry hall in her high heels and checked to see if there was an umbrella there.
No umbrella. And her blue coat she’d intended to wear—the one Hedra favored—was gone.
Maybe coat and umbrella were in Hedra’s closet.
Allie went to Hedra’s bedroom door and knocked lightly, to be sure the unpredictable Hedra hadn’t returned.
No sound. No sign of life inside.
She eased the door open and saw that the bed was made. Its white spread was smooth and pristine as layered icing on a great rectangular cake. She turned away, walked down the hall, and peered again into the living room.
She noticed that the lamp near the sofa was glowing feebly in the morning light. Had Hedra left before daybreak, or had she simply forgotten the lamp last night? Maybe she’d stayed up all night, hadn’t slept. Well, she was a big girl, and what she did with her time was none of Allie’s business.
Allie still didn’t want her hairdo destroyed.
She tap-tap-tapped on her high heels back into Hedra’s bedroom and stared at the smooth expanse of bedspread. She’d never seen a bed that looked so unslept in, as if it were a display in a department store window.
Allie opened Hedra’s closet door and there were the familiar clothes that Hedra, and not Allie, had worn lately. A sachet gave the closet a fresh scent of sun and flowers despite the rain outside.
The blue coat wasn’t there. Neither was an umbrella.
Allie’s attention snagged on something else, though. There were three cardboard shoeboxes on the closet shelf. She told herself that one of them might hold a collapsible umbrella, but she knew she really was simply curious about what the boxes contained.
She got them down from the shelf one by one and opened them, moving slowly and methodically, listening; she knew it wasn’t unusual for Hedra to come home unexpectedly any time of day or night.
The first box contained only a few pieces of inexpensive jewelry. It looked familiar to Allie, and she realized the pieces were near or exact duplicates of jewelry she herself owned. Some of it, she was sure, was her jewelry, such as the gold chain Sam had given her for her last birthday. It had a v
ery distinctive link pattern; Allie was sure Hedra wouldn’t have been able to find a duplicate.
The second box held nothing but folded tissue paper, and beneath it some old newspaper clippings. Allie glanced at the top clipping. It was a recipe for blueberry cobbler. That struck her as odd; she hadn’t figured Hedra for someone who liked to spend time in the kitchen. The clipping slipped from her fingers and fluttered to the floor. When she picked it up she noticed that on the back of the recipe was a grisly news item about the discovery of a dismembered murder victim.
When she opened the third box, Allie stood staring at what was inside.
A blond wig. Exactly the shade of her hair. She gingerly drew it from the box and held it up. Then she moved over so she was in front of the mirror. She raised the wig slightly so it was at the level of her head. The wig was tangled and needed to be combed out, but it was cut precisely in the style in which she wore her hair. Something about seeing it reflected next to her own hair made her shiver.
She sat down on the edge of the mattress. She glanced at Hedra’s dresser. The cosmetics lined before the mirror were almost exact duplicates of those on Allie’s dresser. Lying near an eyebrow pencil that was her shade were either Allie’s purple-tinted sunglasses or glasses just like them.
“Jesus!” Allie said softly. Her own voice startled her.
She got up, reached for the end shoebox, and placed the wig inside. She stared at the mass of blond hair again. Looking at it caused something icy to wriggle up her spine. It was so much like a part of her image in the mirror, like a part of her. This was too much, too much!
Then Allie saw the time on the clock radio that was like hers. Nine-fifteen. She had to hurry if she was going to be on time for her interview.
She looked again at the wig in the box and put the lid on gently, as if there were a fragile creature inside that she feared injuring. Then she placed the box next to the other two again on the shelf, in precisely the position it had been in when she’d first discovered it.
Disregarding the rain, she hurried from the Cody Arms and managed to hail a cab at the corner.
As she stepped over an oily dark puddle to enter the cab, she decided it was time to ask Hedra to move out of the apartment.
Sam could move back in. He was due back from L.A. on the red-eye flight, which had probably already landed, and he wasn’t working today. He’d cab in from LaGuardia and soon be in his room at the Atherton. When she finished with her interview, she’d go to the hotel and talk to him.
Chapter 21
ALLIE walked away from the interview without any special feeling that the job was hers. They would call and let her know, Mrs. Quinette, an assistant administrator, had told her. Don’t call us. Allie figured the odds were long that she’d be given a chance, especially after they checked her references and came across whatever poison Mike Mayfair had spread. There was no hiding in the world of computers. But at least she’d tried, taken some control of her life again. It was a partial revival of the spirit. A start.
As was her decision to tell Hedra she must move out.
The rain had stopped and patterns of sunlight lay in stark planes and angles on the buildings. Allie felt so good she rode the subway beyond Times Square and walked several blocks to the Atherton to see Sam.
Sam stood before the full-length mirror mounted on the closet door and adjusted his sport coat so it hung evenly on his thin frame. Posing at a slight angle, he glanced quickly at himself, as if he might catch his reflection by surprise with a button undone or a shoelace untied. No chance. He’d been surprised too often lately not to be on guard, surprised even by himself and his emotions.
He turned from the mirror and looked around the new, smaller suite he’d been given at the Atherton. It was hardly more than a large room with an anteroom and extra closet. But the paint was fresh, the gray carpet was new, and it was an inside, quiet room away from the street. The only sound now was that of a TV or radio, constant patter seeping faintly through the old thick wall from the next room. It sounded like a game show, but the voices were so indistinct he couldn’t even be sure of that.
Sam had done brokerage business with one of the suppliers of the Atherton, Bram Bolton, for years, and a little special treatment on commodity information for Bolton had prompted the man to put in a word for Sam. Shortly thereafter, Sam had been told he could move out of his ninth-floor room, which needed decorating, and into this one, at a rate reduced to the point where it was cheaper than rent for an apartment. He was the conduit for what Bolton and Mellers, the Atherton’s assistant manager, thought to be inside market information, so it was an arrangement that worked beautifully. A phone call here and there concerning news as soon as it came over the broad tape, and all three parties were happy. Nothing there for the SEC to complain about, either; if Bolton and Mellers assumed they were getting inside information, that was their business.
For an uncomfortable moment Sam thought about Ivan Boesky, the convicted Wall Street manipulator who’d placed profit before ethics. But this was quite different, Sam thought. There was nothing illegal here, and it was very small-time. The motive was a better hotel room in a city where living space was precious, but this wasn’t exactly the Helmsley Palace.
There was a knock on the door. He had to leave soon for a lunch date, and he didn’t want to get mixed up in a long conversation with Mellers. He considered not going to the door, then decided that was silly. Mellers might see him leave the hotel later.
He crossed the room and opened the door.
Allie. She was dressed up, wearing a blue dress and high heels. He thought she looked especially beautiful in blue.
She stepped into his embrace and clung to him, then kissed him on the lips. He bent her backward with the strength of his arms, then removed his mouth from hers. He gently massaged the nape of her neck.
She said, “Surprised to see me?”
He grinned. “A bit, but it’s a pleasant surprise.” He stepped back and made room for her to come in.
“Miss me?” she asked.
“Do bears miss honey?”
She stood in the center of the room and looked around. “They told me down at the desk you’d switched rooms.” She peered over his shoulder. “This one looks better. Not that it matters.”
He studied her. There was something new in her eyes. A bright pinpoint of light he didn’t understand. “Why doesn’t it matter?”
She drew a deep breath and said, “I’m going to tell Hedra she has to move out.”
Sam was surprised. “Why?”
“The other day a man mistook me for her on the street. He stopped me and came on sexually, then got mad when I didn’t respond.”
“He propositioned you?”
“No, he reminded me of a conversation we were supposed to have had about a proposed … sexual experience. Kinky sex, suggested by me.”
“And you think it was actually Hedra who talked to him?”
“Sam, I know it was.”
Sam couldn’t conceal his confusion. “Well, Hedra’s allowed a social life.”
“Some social life. It turns out she’s mixed up with this wild crowd down in the Village, doing drugs, I’m sure. And she’s been using my identity. Even wearing some of my clothes. Being me in a way that scares the hell out of me.”
He went to her and held her close, liking the warm length of her body pressing against his own. “It can’t be as bad as all that,” he told her.
“I looked in her closet today, trying to find some of my clothes. She’s got a wig in a box on the top shelf. It looks exactly like my hair, Sam. When I say she’s using my identity, it’s more than simply using my name. It’s … like she’s stolen my life.”
“You went to the police about the obscene calls,” Sam said. “Have you told them about this?”
“No, I don’t see how it’s a police matter, even though it does explain the phone calls. I really don’t care what Hedra does as long as she stops being me. That’s why I’m going
to tell her our living arrangement’s over. I want to make her life none of my business, and mine none of hers.”
“She’ll think you’re doing it so I can move in,” Sam said.
Allie smiled. “I suppose that might even be part of it, but so what?”
He stepped back and cupped her face in his long hands. “Your mind’s made up?”
“Uh-huh. And I won’t change it.”
“Okay, but I think we better wait a few days before I move in. I made a commitment on this suite that’s more than a deal with a hotel. The manager’s a client of mine, heavily into blue-chip stocks. I’ve gotta take this one slow.”
She looked puzzled for a moment. Disappointed. Then she said, “All right, Sam.”
He leaned down and kissed her forehead, somewhat ashamed of his influence on her. “It’s only a couple of days. You understand, don’t you?”
“Sure.” She gave him an up-and-down look. “You look nice. On your way somewhere?”
“Lunch with a bond client who’s big on tax-free mutual funds.” He glanced at his watch. “He’s supposed to meet me here any minute, in fact.”
She took the hint. Moved close to him and kissed him lightly on the lips. He ran the backs of his knuckles lightly down her cheek. He said, “Call me tonight and let me know how things work out.”
“Will you come over later?”
“I can’t. Dinner with the same client. He and his wife are in town from Omaha. They’re going back tomorrow morning, so there won’t be any other opportunity to wine and dine them seriously for Elcane-Smith.” He shrugged and shook his head. “Business. I’m sorry, Allie. Really.”
“There’ll be plenty of time for us,” she said. She kissed him on the lips and went out, giving him a backward glance full of promise. The apartment would be their own exclusive playpen again. Like a couple of teenagers alone in Mom and Dad’s house. Allie, Allie.
As she stepped off the elevator into the Atherton lobby, Allie stopped and stood still for a second.
A sweet, familiar scent, but one she couldn’t quite place, floated on the air like a memory.