Dark Dreamer

by Jennifer Fulton

  Phoebe felt bad. She could see his point. All the resources were here at Quantico. But she knew if she were living on site, she would be stuck in Dr. K’s office nonstop. He’d probably have her spending more time hypnotized than awake. She thought about Harriet’s warning. The Bureau would own her. Was that what she wanted for herself?

  “Maybe we could reach a compromise,” she said, catching a look from Cara that seemed almost startled. Apparently her sister didn’t think she was capable of sticking up for herself.

  “We can be flexible,” Vernell said cautiously.

  “I want to work from home. You can pay me less, and I’ll spend one week each month here. The rest of the time we could use one of those computer hookups. You know, so we can see each other while we talk. Maybe Dr. K will be able to hypnotize me over the screen. Or you could send him to Maine.”

  “Let me see what I can do.” Vernell stood and took a poster tube from the bookshelf behind him. Handing it to Phoebe, he said, “Colby left this for you, by the way.”

  Expecting to find memento copies of the mug shot and the other sketches, Phoebe popped off the cap and withdrew a single rolled leaf of heavy paper.

  “Oh, my God.” Cara stared at the image unfurled on the table. It was a pastel drawing of Phoebe holding a puppy. “That’s sensational.”

  “When he’s not working for us, he’s a professional portrait artist,” Vernell said. “Mostly for wealthy clients.”

  “I’ve heard of him.” Cara sounded amazed. “He turned down a couple of rappers last year. Says he doesn’t paint misogynists.”

  As she and Vernell chatted about Colby’s talent and how he didn’t need the lousy money the FBI paid but had a conscience, Phoebe read the note that had fluttered from the tube. You said you wanted a puppy. Maybe this little guy will do in the meantime. How sweet of him.

  “God, we’d have to pay a fortune for this.” Cara held the picture up. “We’ll get it framed right away. I can’t believe we’ll have a Colby Boone portrait in the living room.” She glanced at Vernell. “Did you guys arrange this?”

  “No. I guess Mr. Boone just took a liking to your sister.”

  “Well, any artist in his right mind would want to paint her.” Cara returned the picture to the tube and handed it to Phoebe.

  Touched by Colby’s gesture, Phoebe followed Cara and Vernell through the building to the car waiting outside. She could tell from the sketch that he had seen right through her cover story about being a witness, and she was unnerved. Had she accidentally revealed something? Had she sounded implausible? How was she ever going to convince anyone she was an Intelligence agent?

  She wondered if anyone else saw what she saw in the picture, the sorrow that haunted her eyes. Embarrassed that she had failed to hide her true feelings from the artist, she slid the tube along the backseat of the car and stood at the door while Vernell exchanged a few words with the driver, then shook hands with Cara.

  “Agent Young will wait,” he said. “He can drive you to the airport whenever you’re ready.”

  “I could get used to a car service like this.” Cara grinned and got into the passenger seat.

  Vernell closed her door courteously, then faced Phoebe. “Once I’ve spoken with the director, I’ll give you a call. I can’t guarantee he’ll go for it.”

  “That’s fine.” Phoebe shook his hand. “Thank you for not pushing me.”

  Vernell acknowledged her with a faint smile. “You can thank my wife. She says you get more bees with honey.”

  *

  Into the hush of winter, Rowe hurled a tennis ball and watched Jessie and Zoe churn a hail of snow as they ran across the meadow after it. Staring down at her feet, she tramped slowly after them. The light was fading. They had maybe a half hour left before the purple trees turned black and the moon began to glow like a fog light through the heavy cloud cover. There was more snow on the way. By tomorrow she and the dogs would be housebound, sheltering from the freezing peril just outside their door.

  She had never felt this way in Manhattan, so keenly aware of her vulnerability to the elements, her isolation. The feeling was energizing yet at the same time strangely claustrophobic. This was how she imagined she might feel stranded on a desert island, hoping for a boat to appear on the horizon yet dreading that, when it finally did, she would be forced to return to the real world.

  The crack of a branch pierced the heavy silence like a gunshot, and Rowe jerked her head up. A familiar figure emerged from the naked birches a few yards ahead. Rowe’s heart leapt and an irrational joy seized her.

  “Hey!” Phoebe closed the gap between them with several long strides. “Guess what? I’m home.”

  “I thought you weren’t coming back till next week.”

  “We got finished early. I was coming over to see if you want to have dinner with me.” She brushed snow from her coat. A dusting of white powdered her coal black hair. One of the trees must have showered her as she walked through the woods. “It won’t be exciting. Just soup.”

  Rowe kept her immediate thought to herself—that a dry crust and stagnant water would be exciting if her neighbors were sitting around the table.

  “Come over now if you want. Bring the dogs.” Phoebe stooped to pat the two canines prostrated at her feet. “We could watch a DVD or something. I’d like the company. Cara’s gone back to L.A.”

  “Sounds great.”

  Cara was away. Rowe waited for a pang of disappointment that didn’t eventuate. She fell into step beside Phoebe, and they labored through the trees. Every wooden limb seemed to have been dipped in an icy glaze. There was almost no smell, and the only sound she could hear was that of breathing. Her own, loud and hollow in her ears. Phoebe’s, a soft rush next to her. The panting staccato of her dogs.

  “You could break a leg in this…step on something.” She ducked beneath a low branch. “You have to be an idiot to go outside once winter really sets in up here. I can see that.”

  Phoebe looked at her sideways, perhaps reading these pronouncements as relocation remorse. “That’s why a lot of people keep their homes here, but only come in the summer.”

  “Yes, well.” Rowe hoped her tone made it clear she had no plans to join that confederacy of the fainthearted.

  “How’s your book coming along?” Phoebe asked as they reached the house.

  “I burned it in effigy.” Rowe kicked her snow boots against the back steps. “Printed the file and stuck it on the fire.”

  “Did that feel good?” Phoebe hung their coats. Her eyes swept Rowe from top to toe in a guarded foray.

  Perfect, Rowe thought. She’d walked out the door in jeans that needed to go in the laundry yesterday and a heavy shapeless cable sweater over a checked shirt. The bottoms of her jeans were now soaked and she figured she probably didn’t smell that great, either. She hadn’t showered that morning. Her bathroom was too damned cold.

  “I felt completely at peace for several minutes,” she answered Phoebe’s question, following her neighbor’s slender figure through the kitchen to the den.

  The twins’ old-fashioned wood stove radiated heat throughout the room, and the balsam aroma of firewood made Rowe draw a deep, contented breath. The dogs caught on immediately and threw themselves down onto the nearest rug to bask.

  “Let’s get warmed up,” Phoebe invited. “Want to take off your boots?”

  Trying not to notice that her neighbor was casually stripping off an outer layer of damp clothes, Rowe unlaced her boots and stuck her hands out toward the heater. “I need one of these wood burners,” she said. “The cottage is an icebox.”

  “They heat the whole house.” Phoebe stretched out a hand. “Give me your jeans. I’ll put them in the dryer.”

  “It’s okay. They’ll dry off pretty fast if I pull up a chair.”

  Phoebe regarded Rowe with a delicately contained smile. “I wasn’t planning to have you sitting around in your boxer shorts. I’ll go get a robe.”

  As soon as she left the
room, Rowe pulled off the soggy jeans and joined the dogs on the rug close to the heater. She was oddly pleased that Phoebe had made the correct assumption about her underwear. Her mind instantly changed gear, generating an image of Phoebe in matching bra and panties. Oyster colored. Lacy. Sexy, but also a little modest. Phoebe wasn’t the type to wear a hot pink thong and see-through bra. Not that there was anything wrong with showgirl lingerie if that’s what got your motor running. But Rowe preferred her lovers in something classier.

  Lovers. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she groaned out loud. When the snow melted, she would go find the local lesbian watering holes and zone in on someone who also had sex on the brain. A short fling was exactly what she needed. No hassles. No complications.

  A pair of feet in fluffy pink slippers halted in front of her and Phoebe held out a robe. She was wearing a cream chenille gown, not remotely seductive. Bundled into its sensible coziness, she looked adorable. “Want to take a bath with me?” she offered in a matter-of-fact tone. “There’s only enough hot water for one. I don’t mind sharing. Cara and I do it all the time.”

  “Cara’s your sister.” Despite her best efforts, Rowe’s voice came out in a croak.

  Phoebe shrugged. “It’s up to you. We can use Cara’s tub. It’s bigger than mine. Come see.”

  Ignoring warning qualms, Rowe got to her feet, removed her sweater, and pulled the robe on over her shirt. A bigger tub might work out okay, she rationalized as she followed Phoebe upstairs. She had already seen Phoebe naked in a bath. What was the big deal about being in the water with her, naked limbs slithering? In Sweden no one worried about that kind of thing. They didn’t read sexual meaning into every nudity situation.

  Cara’s bathroom belonged in a magazine, with its slate floor and huge, sunken oval tub set below a picture window. The room was very modern. Blown-glass art objects were backlit in recesses around the walls, and an amazing opaque glass hand basin perched on a black cast-iron stand.

  Phoebe turned on the faucets. She had a dreamy expression in her eyes, as if anticipating something that was to be. “Choose some music,” she said, pointing at the opposite wall.

  Cara had not only decorated her bathroom like it belonged in a state-of-the-art loft apartment, she had also installed a high-end sound system. Rowe was almost afraid to touch the sensitive equipment. Feeling like a klutz, she slid a Joss Stone CD into the player and adjusted the volume.

  Phoebe glanced across her shoulder approvingly. “I like her. Can you believe she’s a white girl?” She twisted her hair into a knot and secured it on top of her head.

  Rowe smiled. Nerves rolled through her gut. Phoebe seemed so calm, not a trace of ambivalence. No coyness. Her manner was warm but not flirtatious. This would be a very different story if it were Cara sitting on that step. Thank God it wasn’t. Rowe was instantly startled by the thought. Hadn’t she been pondering the merits of a fling with Cara? If anything, she should be feeling let down that she was in these promising circumstances with the wrong twin.

  She met Phoebe’s eyes and for the first time noticed they were pink-rimmed, as if she’d been crying recently. Phoebe looked away and reached into the tub, trailing a testing hand through the water.

  Watching the graceful motion of her arm and the arch of her neck, Rowe had a sense that Phoebe had invited her into this private world because she needed a distraction. She had not ventured out on a freezing day just for the hell of it. She had not asked Rowe over on an impulse, just because they met by chance on a walk. She had been coming to get her. She wanted company, but there was more to it than that. This bath was some kind of comfort ritual, something Phoebe would normally do with her sister, but Cara wasn’t here.

  Rowe was not sure how she felt about being seen as a safe substitute. She was flattered that Phoebe trusted her enough to do this, but it was kind of dispiriting to be seen in such a sisterly light. Guilty that she couldn’t view Phoebe quite the same way, she said, “I’ll finish getting undressed in your sister’s room, if that’s okay.”

  “Of course. It’s directly across the hall.” Phoebe smiled that faraway smile of hers. “Do you like bubble bath?”

  Rowe hesitated in the doorway. The additional concealment of a foam layer versus the flowery scent?

  “You don’t,” Phoebe concluded. “That’s okay. We have fragrance-free soaking salts.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  As she left the room, Rowe noticed Phoebe hit a switch on the wall near the tub. The lights promptly dimmed to a level that would make getting naked into the bath less of an ordeal. Thankful, she crossed the hall to Cara’s bedroom. Also a designer statement, the room was an expensive blend of Japanese and modernist design. Cara had done her best to convert her part of the house into the kind of apartment she wanted to live in. The décor didn’t really suit the place but was striking all the same.

  Rowe folded her clothes and sat them on a black lacquered chair. The piece was astounding, a subtle pattern of cranes in translucent jade tones visible only when you drew close. She lifted her clothing back off the gleaming surface, uneasy about littering a costly work of art with her laundry. Instead she dropped everything on the floor just inside the door.

  Tying her robe tightly, she crossed the hall and found Phoebe standing naked at the tub, one foot extended into the water. She looked like a nymph. Rowe stepped back and knocked like she hadn’t seen anything, giving her time to reach for a towel.

  “Come on in.” Phoebe turned slightly. She made no attempt to cover herself. “I left the shower running for you.”

  Rowe closed the door behind her, throwing the room into merciful near darkness. She knew her face was bright red. Avoiding the thin pools of light seeping from behind the glass objects around the walls, she removed her robe, hung it on a hook, and quickly entered the glassed-in shower. It was lined with slate, the same as the floor, and had the kind of luxurious European fittings Rowe wanted to use when she got around to renovating her bathroom at the cottage.

  She soaped and scrubbed herself methodically, almost unable to believe she was doing this. Again she contemplated Phoebe’s invitation, finding it difficult to accept at face value. Surely her neighbor was not so naïve she thought bathing with a woman who was not her sister fell into the same innocent category as taking a sauna with strangers at the gym. Was this a seduction minus the flirtatious overtures? Was Phoebe playing it cool and expecting Rowe to make the first move? No, that would presuppose she had been overwhelmed by Rowe’s stoic charm and wanted her. Highly unlikely.

  For a split second she contemplated getting out of the shower, getting dressed, and going home. Then she decided to act like a grown-up. She had no plans to go to bed with Phoebe, and she was perfectly capable of leaving if things got uncomfortable. Resolutely, she turned off the jets and stepped out onto a toweling mat.

  Phoebe had lit a candle and placed it on the window ledge above the bathtub. A pale gold halo shimmered on the misted glass behind. She was sitting on the edge of the tub, candlelight dancing across the graceful arch of her back, her small pale breasts and slender thighs. She rose and extended a hand. Rowe took it.

  They climbed into the tub together and, facing one another, sank down into the hot water. This was bizarre, Rowe decided. In fact, it was completely surreal. She slid her legs to one side, angling herself slightly away from Phoebe to face the door. For a long moment they sat stiff and unmoving. Rowe could smell a sweet, musky fragrance. The scent was faint, probably coming from one of several bottles of oil lined up next to a burner on the ledge below the window. She closed her eyes and tuned in to the Aretha-like voice of the British soul singer.

  An odd sadness assailed her then, a sense that this was all wrong. She was sharing a bath with a woman who was not her lover, in a home that was not hers, on an island she’d run away to. Her work was shit, her personal life a disaster. Her days drifted by, carrying her like a disinterested passenger to a future that seemed more and more like an accident o
f fate, not the tomorrow she had planned for herself.

  She sifted through memories trying to find one that would serve as an anchor, confirming that she had once known certainty and contentment and would know it again. There was a time when everything had seemed perfect, when she’d thought she was on the fast track to permanent happiness. She had just made the New York Times Best Seller list and had found herself living in her own garden apartment in the West Village, dating women who claimed to adore her. It was her first summer in her new home. She had sent her parents on an expensive cruise and given her brother a new car.

  Rowe woke up one magical morning after making love all night with an intelligent, charming woman who wanted her to give up horror novels and write poetry. Out in her tiny walled-off garden, surrounded by jasmine and roses, she’d written a couple of stanzas, just to see if she could. They were so ridiculous, so dismally trite, that she had laughed at herself. Her pleasure was completely unburdened by doubt. In that moment, she had known exactly who she was and she had liked that person. How could she have lost her confidence so completely?

  “What are you thinking about?” Phoebe asked.

  “I was having angst.”

  “About your book?”

  “Not exactly. My book is more of a consequence than a cause.”

  “A consequence of what?”

  Rowe hesitated, wondering how she would sound if she told the truth. Like an idiot, no doubt. “I’m not really sure,” she said, chancing it. “I feel like I took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in the wrong future.”

  Phoebe lifted a sponge from the water and slowly squeezed its contents over her back and shoulders. “What was the right future?”

  “Good question. I thought I knew. For a while, I felt like I was on the right path and all I had to do was stick to it.”

  “Maybe you did. Maybe you’re still on it.”