She shoved it back into the shadows and reached for the switch on the coffee machine instead.
A couple of errands took her up into Midtown, a nice change. The big buildings and overshadowed streets there reminded her of the mountains and forests of Washington State. If you’d been raised accustomed to deep woods, a city was an easier transition than a town (and she should know, having bailed spectacularly from several of those in the past). In mountains and cities you are small in the face of geography and environment. Nobody knows your name, or cares, and that was generally fine with her.
Now it seemed as though some of these strangers were getting too close for comfort, however. More than twenty-four hours after the fact they still had no idea who’d been on their roof and left the message on the window. She wasn’t easily unnerved and John sure as hell wasn’t either. It was pretty strange, however, as the period yesterday afternoon in Union Square had also been. As John had pointed out, serious people who meant you real harm tended to get on and do it rather than leaving clues—but a warning was still a warning.
He’d said this with a distant look in his eye, as if considering ways of dealing with the situation that might not involve her—steps like taking the last night off from the restaurant and going to talk to the priest, a plan he hadn’t told her about ahead of time. Yes, he told her what had happened when he came into the bar later, but he should have told her he was going, like he should have told her about meeting Catherine that time. It probably wasn’t personal. Despite what society does in attempting to turn men into team players, they all think theirs is the only name above the title of the movie. She’d met John as a man who’d returned to his previous home in Black Ridge, Washington, to seek an explanation for the death of his older son, who’d perished there in what had appeared to be a freak accident. She’d watched John go at that situation like a bull at a gate, declining assistance until he’d already been shot by people he’d come to believe were implicated in his son’s death, and the situation looked to be getting even worse. In the end it had been resolved, albeit messily. So why did it bug her so much that he kept doing these things? Was it because it felt just a little like he was treating her like some young girl?
And had he left the note this morning because he sort of knew he was doing it, too?
The next thing she noticed, she was in Little Brazil, a short stretch of 46th near Times Square, narrow and shadowed and unexceptional, a cut-through between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Presumably there’d been reason for self-exiled denizens of a South American country to congregate in this corner of the grimy heart of Midtown, but all that remained of their passing—amid a smear of dusty buildings being knocked down or repurposed or ignored and a battered Irish bar—were a couple of small restaurants still flying the green and yellow flag and touting feijoada and caipirinhas—memories of a community now gone. Near the end of the block, she cut up an alley and onto 47th, the old diamond district, another historic enclave. The street still featured discount jewelry shops and stout men in homburgs but wasn’t the separate universe it would once have been. The future homogenizes.
Kristina found herself slowing in front of one of the store windows, in front of tightly filled ranks of metal and shiny stones, arranged to catch the eye of commercial buyers rather than passing individuals. She’d been gazing vaguely at a tray in the center for a few minutes before she realized something.
Was she really looking at rings? Was that what this was about? It couldn’t be. She’d never, in any relationship, started thinking along those lines. She sure as hell wasn’t going to start now. Even though there was a ring on the left that …
No.
As she jerked her head away from the sun-bleached velvet cushions and their rows of expensive I-dos, she saw something reflected in the glass.
She hesitated, unsure what had caught her eye. Then she moved her gaze back down so she’d appear to be looking through the wares in the window again. She kept this up for fifteen slow seconds before allowing her eyes to drift up once more, pulling focus at the same time, so she was looking at the reflections in the glass rather than what lay beyond.
Yes. There, on the other side of the street, someone was standing in front of a boarded-up store.
Kristina held her position, moving now and then to make it look like she was still browsing—meanwhile drifting along the window and watching.
He or she kept in movement. Slow, but constant. Passersby kept coming between them, and it was hard to be sure, but it looked as though the figure was watching Kristina. The figure was tall and slim. The figure wore a dark coat. The figure looked a hell of a lot like …
“I give you good price.”
The voice made Kristina jump. A man had come out of the shop. He had the cheap charisma of the kind of person that will always be selling something, and offering discounts regardless of whether they’ve been sought.
“No,” Kristina said firmly, heart beating hard.
He reversed back into his store. Kristina took a chance and glanced directly across the street. There was nobody there now except for buyers and sellers of jewelry and a trio of tourists with bright anoraks and a big map.
Had there ever been? Or had she been confused by the shadows of passersby reflected in a dirty store window?
She started up the street and after twenty yards took a right into a narrow alley. It was filled with steam and the complex odors of old garbage. She slowed as she entered, to give anyone behind her a chance to see where she’d gone, and then headed along the alley, casting a quick look back after ten feet.
It was hard to be sure, but it looked like someone was now in position on the other side of the street she’d just left, opposite the alleyway, watching her.
It was morning and she was bang in the heart of Midtown. If this person was planning anything, they’d chosen the wrong time and place.
Unless, of course, they crossed the road and followed her up this alley, where there was no one to see anything at all.
She pulled out her phone as if to check incoming, to broadcast to anyone watching that she was plugged into the world and could summon assistance right now.
A glance to the left made her heart jump, a heavy double-thump. Someone was at the other end, in silhouette against the light.
It could be they were merely pausing on the street, but Kristina didn’t think so.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said in a quiet, low voice.
“Huh?” someone said, and she whirled to see a pudgy oriental man in the filthiest chef’s whites she’d ever seen, sitting smoking in an open back doorway.
She shook her head, making a mental note to check the name of the restaurant and make sure she never, ever ate there. She walked the rest of the alleyway, not too fast … but not slowly either.
Sixth Avenue was reassuringly crowded, people striding up and down and across and back as if fired from a battery of cannons positioned at right angles. She didn’t want to stand in a public place and call John, however. It wasn’t only that it would make her feel like a damsel in distress, which would suck. She knew that if she pulled John up here, he’d arrive with a strong following wind and scare off her shadow, taking them back to square one.
So instead she walked down the avenue, dawdling at each street crossing, and bought an Americano from the kiosk at the corner of Bryant Park. She kept her eye on the smeary plastic window between her and the server as she waited for her change—just as she’d kept glancing in the windows of stores and banks for the last four blocks—but saw nothing behind her except solid citizens going about theirs and other people’s business.
She took the drink down one of the plaza’s side paths, under the trees. She found one of the small, rickety metal tables and sat down at it.
She waited and she watched.
And began to feel foolish. Nobody came into the park that looked like the figure she’d glimpsed. Just office workers with deli boxes, tourists, and some middle-aged guy ten feet away, sittin
g holding a Kindle that didn’t seem to be commanding his full attention. Otherwise it was just a park, and not very warm.
Eventually she pulled out her phone and discovered there was a message on it—left forty minutes before, when she’d been hurrying out of the alley. It was from John, asking where she was and if she wanted to have lunch. She was about to call back when she realized something had changed in her environment.
Someone had sat on the opposite side of the table.
A young woman, tall, with dark hair, wearing a dark coat with a red dress underneath. She had high cheekbones and a strong nose, red lips, and big, dark eyes.
“You can see me, can’t you?” the woman said.
Her voice was soft, a little fuzzy around the edges, as if made up of facets of background noise.
Kristina stared at her. The girl seemed curious, but also wary, as if it was Kristina who’d been following her. “You can, can’t you?” she insisted, still quietly.
“Yes. Of course.”
“But … you’re real.”
“Well, yeah,” Kristina said, with no idea what she was agreeing to. “Who … are you?”
The girl made a puzzled face, as if unwilling to let the first matter go. “I’m called Lizzie.”
“I’m Kristina.”
“I know.”
“How … how do you know?”
The girl looked sheepish. “I heard your boyfriend call you that. He is your boyfriend, yes? John?”
“Yes. But when did you hear this?”
The girl seemed more nervous, glancing over Kristina’s shoulder, and didn’t answer.
“When?” Kristina pressed her. “Were you on our roof? Why are you following Catherine?”
The girl stood up. “I’ve got to go.”
She walked quickly away without looking back.
Kristina jumped to her feet to follow but realized someone else was now standing by the table. It was the man she’d noticed earlier, reading a Kindle.
“Hey,” he said.
Kristina glared at him. “Yes, what?”
He smiled. “Saw you sitting by yourself, wondered if you might like a little company.”
“No,” Kristina said.
“You sure?”
Kristina took a couple of steps past, trying to see where the girl had gone. She thought she got a glimpse of a dark coat at the top of the steps at the back of the library, but it could have been the shadow of the trees. The man was still standing by the table hopefully.
“What do you mean ‘by yourself’?”
“Hey, it’s fine,” he said. “I do it all the time. A bit of peace is good for the soul, right? Just, sometimes it means people might want to hook—”
Kristina threw a look that made him take a hurried step backward, and walked away dialing her phone.
“Hey,” John said, when he picked up. “Fancy some—”
“They just made contact,” she said.
Chapter 30
David and Dawn held hands in the middle of the couch. Dr. Chew sat on the other side of the desk, peering over his glasses at a scattering of papers across his desk. There was silence. David was reminded of the judges on reality television shows and the insufferable way they milk the moments of truth in which (according to prearranged and carefully constructed narratives) one hapless individual is eliminated from the competition, removing them forever from the hungry gaze and fickle affection of millions of box-watching morons. David thought they’d been given the news during the ultrasound itself, but now he wasn’t sure. He could feel Dawn’s fingers gripping his, and forced himself to breathe.
He didn’t need this.
Not this morning. Not ever. They’d sat on this couch in exactly this position eight months before and been told that the woman wielding the ultrasound probe had misread the grainy black-and-white images on her screen—whoops!—and the little blob she’d cheerfully pointed out as showing clear indications of life had in fact been manifesting signs of being rather dead.
Did Chew remember that meeting? Presumably in a technical sense—it must be there in his notes—but did he recall it emotionally, the impact it’d had on this particular couple among the hundreds he saw? No. That style of remembrance wasn’t the physician’s job. For Chew, news was a subset of uninflected information. Somewhere in his mind there would probably be a formalized distinction between “good” and “bad” types of news—so he could differentiate when events occurred to someone within his own family or tribe—but he evidently didn’t allow this to unbalance a dispassionate attention to whatever facts happened to obtain at any given moment. This doubtless made him an excellent physician.
It made him a mighty crappy news bearer, however.
Eventually he raised his head and smiled.
Even this wasn’t enough to break the tension or give a clear indication of the direction in which the sheet of glass between their ignorance and his knowledge was going to break. The smile could equally have been one of affirmation of good, or soberness before the delivery of yet more bad. It could betoken nothing more than a fleeting happy recollection of the fact that he was due to get steak for dinner.
David believed he’d give the man maybe three, four more seconds, and then he was going to let go of Dawn’s hand, leap over the desk, and beat the guy senseless with his angle-poise lamp.
“Everything’s fine,” Chew said.
Dawn remained rigid. David let out an explosive breath, and this time when Dawn gripped his hand it was to give rather than seek reassurance.
Having delivered his showstopper, Chew dispensed with the suspense and got on with it. “As I indicated during the ultrasound, it all looks good and there’s nothing in the numbers to make me think, ah, otherwise. It’s going to be hard for you, I know, with your history, but right now you should feel happy that things are going well. Really. Happiness and calm are very positive during pregnancy. I believe that.”
Dawn started thanking him profusely. Chew waved this off as if it was a common but regrettable misunderstanding of his power, and shuffled the papers into a neater pile. “Have you started thinking about a name?”
Silenced, Dawn shook her head, blinking rapidly. “Well, no,” David said for her, and with some surprise. “Not after what happened the last couple of times.”
“Of course,” Chew said. “Very understandable. And it’s early days. Always wise to remain poised in the face of fate. Actually, the question was my clumsy way of telling you something. The ultrasound was unclear, so the technician didn’t mention it until I’d had a chance to examine the still images properly. But it’s clear to me.”
He paused, frowning down at the pieces of paper in front of him, the very picture of someone witnessing a lack of clarity.
Then he looked up and smiled more broadly. “You’re going to have twins.”
They walked out of the hospital in a dream, still holding hands. After delivering the end-of-episode kicker, Chew had waxed cautious, warning that the passage of twins into the world was more arduous and uncertain and noting that—speculative though it could only be at this stage—though both showed a strong heartbeat, one of the fetuses appeared more developed, a common situation that would hopefully right itself.
This Columbo-style zinger had caused a familiar sinking feeling in David’s stomach (nothing was ever simple, was it) but he’d decided to take Chew’s businesslike delivery of this caveat as a good sign.
“I’m so glad you came home last night,” Dawn said, as they drew to a halt at the car.
“Me too.” And he was, though he felt bad about positioning this as a desire to make sure he was on time for the consultation. “I still can’t believe it.”
“Believe it, Daddio,” said Dawn. “I guess I’ll get back to school. Shall I drop you home?”
“Think I’ll stop by and get a coffee first. Not sure I’ll get much done for an hour or two anyway.”
Dawn started nodding, eyes brimming. David nodded back, equally senselessly, thinki
ng how much harder it was to respond to good news. When they’d walked out of this hospital after the second miscarriage, it had been easy. They’d cried and held each other and said this wasn’t the end, that they deserved a child and it would happen somehow. With bad news the bad thing has already happened. Hearing something good, or its promise, leaves you out on a limb, even more at the mercy of fate. It would be that the Bad Thing is still out there waiting to happen, enjoying its own shitty piece of showboating, waiting for maximum impact before revealing that, I’m so sorry, Dawn and David are out of the reproduction competition for good, but please give them a big hand.
Then David reached out for her, and they held each other and cried. News is news, and our bodies and minds respond much the same whether it’s good or bad.
Dawn dropped him off on Main and then cruised off in the direction of the school, driving at about half her usual speed. David didn’t think this was conscious caution, more likely that she hadn’t stopped running the consultation over in her mind. He watched her to the end of the street and saw her indicate properly and was reassured she’d get to school without sailing serenely off the road into a house.
He hit the late-morning rush at Roast Me, and only as he waited in line did he realize he was going to have to say something to Talia about her book. He found it hard to remember much about it today, except that he’d been enjoying it. Hopefully that would do—along with something he recalled thinking during his last stretch of reading, after meeting Maj in Kendricks, which was that she could rein back on the fantasy elements and present it as something rather more edgy and urban, if she chose. Not that she’d be likely to, but saying this would at least prove that he’d been thinking about it.
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