Shadow Woman

by Thomas Perry

  Carey was gripped with self-loathing. He did not belong here, listening to this nonsense and watching this woman strip. He stood up abruptly, then moved to the couch. He saw her smile return and the lids of her eyes go down like the eyes of a purring cat. “You’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said. “You’re funny, clever, and very persuasive. If I were ever going to cheat on my wife, this would have been the time.” He snatched the pile of clothes off the cushion of the couch and tossed them to her. “Now get dressed and go home.”

  He walked to the dining room and began to carry dishes out to the kitchen and set them on the counter. On his third trip into the dining room, he heard some rustling sounds, then the front door closing. He closed his eyes, took five deep breaths, poured another glass of champagne, and drank it down. Then he went to the living room and looked: yes, she had left his key on the end table.

  28

  Jane found a shelf above the trail that was sheltered by big rocks on the north and west, where the cold mountain wind was coming from. “This is a good place,” she said. “Does it look homey to you?”

  Pete stopped and looked up at it doubtfully. “I could keep going for a while,” he offered.

  “We’ve come at least eight or nine miles in the dark,” she said. “We might run out of steam in the middle of an ice field or on a mountaintop, and then be worth nothing by the time we find another safe spot. That’s how you get hurt.”

  “Sold,” he said. “Should I build a fire?”

  “The rocks will protect us well enough from the wind.” She reached into his pack and handed him his knife. “Go collect boughs from the fir trees down there. Not branches, just the soft parts near the tips. I’ll get us unpacked.”

  Pete carefully made his way down onto the trail, then disappeared into the trees. In a moment she heard the whispery sound of pine boughs tossed onto a pile.

  She had wanted Pete to be gone while she used her flashlight and a forked stick to search the cracks and crannies along the rock shelf. It was the sort of place where a rattlesnake would curl up to get out of the cold, then sun itself in the daytime. When she was satisfied that they would be alone, she searched the packs for the items they would need and laid them out.

  Pete labored up the little path carrying a pile of boughs the size of a hay bale, dropped them on the rock, and saw her sitting cross-legged in front of a group of small packages. “What’s that?”

  “Canned beef, biscuits, dried fruit, and nuts,” she said. “The bad news is that it’s dinner. The good news is that if we eat it, we don’t have to carry it.”

  “You should have been in marketing.” He sat down across from her and imitated her as she opened cans with her Swiss Army knife. He took a bite of meat and a bite of biscuit. “It’s kind of frightening. That stuff they’ve been saying about fresh air and exercise all these years could be true. This actually tastes good.”

  When they had finished, Jane stood up, sealed the empty cans and packages into a plastic bag, and put it in her knapsack. “More bad news: the garbage truck isn’t due until a road is built—figure a thousand years or so. We have to pack the trash out with us.” She looked at the pile of pine boughs. “Time to go to bed. Watch carefully.”

  She spread the boughs like a mat on the rocky shelf, then laid one of the waterproof ponchos on top of it and set the other one aside. “Unless it rains, most of the cold and damp comes from below.”

  Jane took off her jacket and boots and propped the boots under the rock shelf. “Your boots need to dry out while you sleep or you’ll get blisters. You put them in a place where you can reach them and rain can’t. You wear as little as possible while you’re in your sleeping bag, and an insulated jacket makes a great pillow.” She pulled her watch cap on. “This helps. You lose most of your heat through your head, so it’ll keep you warm.”

  She fiddled with the zippers of the sleeping bags for a moment, then zipped the two bags together and slipped inside. “You sleep on that side, where you’re farther out of the wind. Your blood is probably still thin from living in the desert.”

  Pete sat at the foot of the sleeping bags and looked up at her while he arranged his boots and jacket and put on his hat.

  She could feel him staring at her in the darkness, trying to read her mind. She sighed, then said in the kindest voice she could summon, “No, I haven’t.”

  “Haven’t what?”

  “Changed my mind about … anything. All I want is your body heat. This is the way to sleep if you want to be warm without a fire.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ve heard that somewhere.”

  He carefully slipped in beside her, holding himself in a straight, rigid position so far from her that a cold breeze blew under the taut surface of the sleeping bag and chilled her toes. She laughed. “I’ll tell you what. If this is too weird, we’ll each go it on our own. I don’t think we’ll freeze tonight.”

  “No, no,” he said. “It just takes a certain mental … what’s the word? Insensitivity.” He nodded sagely. “I can manage that.”

  “Good,” she said. After a long silence she said, “But if I wake up with a hand on my ass, I’m going to pinch it. The one who says ‘ouch’ had better be me.”

  It worked. She heard him shifting on the bed of boughs and then felt the sleeping bag regain some of its slack and warm her back. She closed her eyes and listened to the wind blowing past above her head and the sounds of trees moving back and forth, whispering like the sea. In a moment she was asleep.

  She was not cold anymore. She felt the hot, mild breeze where her skin was exposed to the air, then sank lazily beneath the surface. The warm water supported her, made her feel as though she were flying. She slowly, effortlessly glided above the bottom of the pool, the light resistance of the black water running along her body like a warm touch.

  She looked up at the silvery underside of the surface, saw the bright moon wavering above it, and let herself rise up to meet it.

  She came to the surface and took in the first dry, sweet breath, then let her muscles relax and floated. She was in suspension now, drifting passively, waiting. She reveled in the knowledge that he was sure to be here, and fretted, teasing herself with the lie that he would not.

  She heard the water sloshing somewhere behind her head and looked up at the moon, her body going tense with anticipation and longing. When his big arm slipped around her waist, she let out a gasp that was certitude and joy and laughter at the same time. She let him pull her close. She could feel his chest against her back, his lips softly kissing the back of her neck. She leaned her head back on his shoulder. He was strong and gentle, and warmer than the water. She could feel his hands moving, never leaving her body, instead touching her lovingly everywhere from her scalp to the tips of her toes, the hands returning, lingering on each of the places she would never have let him touch.

  He slowly turned her around and she looked into his eyes. There was no question in them, no uncertainty that would force her to speak. They did not have to talk, because they had been through this before, and he had somehow sensed this time that her answer had changed. She had just misspoken, forgotten on that other night that this was all right. The first kiss was slow, their lips drawn together and barely meeting at first, then staying together. She let it go on as long as she could bear it, feeling so safe, being cradled in his arms and cherished.

  She slipped the straps of her bathing suit off her shoulders, then took his hand and made him peel it down and off. Pete’s bathing suit came off too, or maybe it was already off. They embraced again in the warm, dark water, and this time it was so much better, with the water tickling the exposed skin to remind her it was bare. She felt so free that she was surprised at how constricted and uncomfortable she must have been before. She and Pete floated weightlessly, and something about the motion of the water seemed to make them drift together.

  She let herself savor the moment, the world so dark and quiet around her, but her fe
elings so bright and hot and clear. She was so glad she had found out that this was allowed. But then she sensed that off in the dark beyond the pool, there was some kind of disturbance. Maybe someone was coming. “No, not yet,” she pleaded. “Just a little longer.” But Pete seemed to lose his solidity, to slip away from her. She reached for him.

  Jane felt cold. Why had the water turned cold? She slowly rose toward consciousness to investigate her surroundings and opened her eyes to a terrible sense of loss. Then she was suddenly, abruptly, wide awake. She was shocked—frightened—not by the dream but by the realization that she was the dreamer. It was an enormous relief that it had not happened. She had not committed adultery, thrown her marriage away. She had not betrayed Carey. She had not done anything at all.

  She sat up, as careful not to touch Pete as though he were a rattlesnake that had slithered in beside her for warmth, and extricated herself from the sleeping bag. She felt deeply depressed as she slipped her jacket on and walked across the cold stone shelf to retrieve her boots.

  The Old People had studied dreams the way they studied every other event that passed before their eyes. When somebody awoke from a dream, he would immediately do his best to interpret it and fulfill whatever command it had brought him. Something was bothering the dreamer, something he had not given sufficient attention to while he was awake. Now that he was conscious again, he had to correct the oversight—overcome the inertia, the fear, or the inhibition that had prevented him from seeing clearly before. If Jane had lived in the Old Time, she would have been required to wake Pete up and demand that he act out the dream with her to set her mind at rest.

  As she tied her boots, she looked over at Pete Hatcher. He was lying on his side facing her, his eyes closed and his jaw slack in sleep. He would be one of the seventeen men on the planet who looked good when he was asleep. She fought off the urge to resent him. None of this was his fault. She was just lonely for her husband, and she had been alone with Pete so much that her misguided subconscious mind had somehow drafted him to stand for Man. No, she thought. The dream had been too convincing and too specific for anything so abstract. Pete was an attractive guy who had the morals of a stallion and had made it disconcertingly clear that she was the one he wanted. Some part of her mind obviously had not taken her refusal as final but had been mulling the offer over.

  She found her watch in her jacket pocket and consulted it as she strapped it to her wrist. It was only four o’clock, but she wasn’t going to crawl back into that sleeping bag with him right now.

  She heard the distant screeching of birds. She cocked her head to listen, but she could not identify their kind. She did sense that they weren’t singing, they were frightened. Something must have come too close to their nesting place. She heard the wings of a flock of them passing overhead in the dark. It was too early for the birds she knew to fly.

  “Pete!” she said. “Get up. It’s time to move.”

  It was dark and still and cold, and as Jane and Pete rolled their sleeping bags and ponchos and put on their jackets, she could see thick clouds of steam puffing into the air from their nostrils.

  Hatcher whispered, “Why are we in such a hurry?”

  “Some birds woke me up,” she whispered back. “I think something scared them.”

  As Jane gathered the pine boughs and carried them below the trail to hide them, she knew that she was not being foolish. This was unfamiliar country, but she had begun to get used to the sights and sounds, and the birds were behaving strangely. When she had removed every sign of the campsite, she used the last pine bough as a broom to sweep the rock shelf, then all of the footprints that led to it from the trail.

  Jane set a brisk pace as they moved up the trail in the frigid predawn stillness. She led Pete northward, past thickets of berry bushes in alpine meadows, up rocky inclines that skirted the treeline. When the sky began to take on a blue-gray luminescence and she could see objects in depth, she began to hear other birds. She listened to them as she walked, trying to detect any sudden calls from behind that might be warnings. When the sun had turned the peaks to her left a dull orange, she said, “Are you up to a little run?”

  Pete said, “Ready if you are.”

  They jogged until the sun was high, going single file on the narrow footpath. Jane listened harder for sounds that came from behind but heard nothing. When she saw a mountain that might be Iceberg Peak on her right, she stopped running and walked while she studied the map.

  “Where are we?” asked Pete.

  She pointed to the spot. “What we want to look for next are more glaciers: Ahern Glacier, Ipasha Glacier, and then Chaney Glacier, all middle-sized, close together on the right. Then we take a fork in the path. It looks like a good five miles from here.”

  “It’s rough country,” said Pete. “Are you planning to run all the way to Canada?”

  “I wish we could,” she said. “I’ll probably feel better when we’ve passed that fork in the trail—one more chance to send a tracker in the wrong direction.”

  “Do you seriously think somebody could have followed us this far?”

  “I honestly know some people could do it. I don’t think it’s likely that these people made all the right decisions and did it, but I’ve decided that it’s stupid not to minimize the risks.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “Move faster, stop less often, and keep traveling as long as the light lasts.”

  Pete walked along beside her, ducking now and then to shrug a branch past his shoulder. After a moment she realized he was trying to get a close look at her face, so she turned it to him. “Something wrong?”

  “I was just having a fantasy.”

  “Pete …”

  “It was about dancing. Honest.”

  “Pretty tame, for you. It must be the lack of oxygen up here.”

  His hands came up to gesture as he described it. “See, we’re at this ballroom. It’s got one of those old-fashioned spinning balls in the center made out of mirrors. The light is dim, except for that. I’ve got a tuxedo on. You’re wearing—”

  “A blue business suit.”

  “A black velvet dress: straps, just low enough to hint that the endowment is adequate.”

  “ ‘Endowment is adequate’?”

  “Nice tits.”

  “Sorry I asked. Are we done yet?”

  “No. I walk up to your table. You smile. You stand, you hold out your right hand—”

  “And wave good-bye.”

  “No. I take your hand. The music begins.” He hummed a waltz as he walked, his eyes closed. Jane waited, but he kept humming, the waltz going on and on.

  She looked at his face. “Is that smile supposed to make me uncomfortable? Pete?”

  “Sssh. Don’t interrupt my fantasy. I finally got to lead.”

  She stared at him for a moment, then the laugh fought its way out and she slapped his arm. He opened his eyes and shrugged happily. “A guy can dream.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I apologize. I’ll let you make the decision. Do you want to get to Canada quickly, or do you want to stroll along like this for a few hours, sleep on a frozen rock in a forty-knot wind, and maybe get killed?”

  “Lead on,” he said.

  She pulled ahead of him again. For the rest of the morning she tried a new routine. When they were in thick cover among the evergreen trees she walked, striding along with a purposeful gait, trading the time lost for the chance to catch her breath. But when the trail led them up into grassy fields or onto bare, rocky ridges, she broke into a run, taking them across the open ground as quickly as she could. She never let herself forget the rifle.

  Earl sat under the set of trail markers and rested while his dogs sorted out the conflicting sets of footprints. T-Bone raced off up the right-hand trail and Rusty took the left, sniffing the ground methodically. It was good to see that Jane had tried to throw him off like this. It had certainly taken her longer to do it than it would take him to find the right path. A
lmost as soon as he had formed the thought, he saw both dogs coming back, sniffing the grass beside the trail.

  The dogs converged again beside the third path, the one that didn’t have a sign anymore, and Earl stood up to watch the dogs work. They were staying beside the trail instead of on it, and in places Earl could look ahead of them and see spots where the weeds had been pushed aside by feet.

  Earl found the first footprints a hundred yards farther on. The first ones were hard to see, so he wasn’t positive yet, but his heart beat a little faster and he hurried on. He found the next set in a muddy depression, and they were much clearer. They had wrapped something around their boots to disguise the zigzag treads. He took in a breath that tasted thick with tantalizing possibilities. “Auf den fersen folgen!”

  Rusty and T-Bone scrambled to his side, and he knelt by the prints while the dogs sniffed. He saw their eyes brighten, as though the smell were some kind of drug that actually conjured an image in their brains. They looked at Earl, ran ahead a few steps, then came back, panting and pleading with him. He was sure now. Hatcher and the woman had done the worst thing they could. Maybe it was a piece of a shirt, maybe even a sock. But it wasn’t something they had picked up along the way. They had tied something around their boots that had touched their skin, something they had worn and sweated on. Now the dogs had their scent.

  Earl adjusted the straps on his pack, tightened his belt, and said, “Jagen! Hunt!”

  It took the dogs fifteen minutes to reach the place where the prey had spent the night. At first Earl was not sure, because there was no sign of charred wood or scorching, but the dogs showed him the pine boughs, and then he knew.

  He headed down toward the trail, and the dogs hurried to beat him there. They galloped off along the trail, no longer set in motion by his command or the pleasure of running along a smooth dirt path in the woods with him. They had picked up the scent, verified it, and found it again. They were eager now, because at each leap they were closer, the scent was fresher.

  Earl worked himself back up to a jog. He held his head up, staring into the middle distance and breathing deep, easy breaths. He gauged his speed to keep the dogs in sight and let them work without inhibition. He had no apprehension that they might forget their training. When it was time, they would let him come in and join them in the kill.