Full Stop

by Joan Smith

  A few minutes later she closed the little red book. There were four possibles in New York City although one of these was the colleague Toni had mentioned, Michael Koganovitch. Loretta had an obscure notion, which she knew she would be hard put to justify, that a man who had published a scholarly study of Derrida was unlikely to get his kicks from telephone sex. That left three. Loretta hesitated, inhibited equally by the lateness of the hour and by the fact that she had no idea what she would do if someone answered. Then, telling herself not to be a wimp, she could always hang up without speaking, she pulled the phone towards her and tried the first number. She held her breath as it connected, trying to think of something to say if Michael Day picked up the phone — or his wife, or his boyfriend, or his mother; the possibilities were endless. Listening to the ringing tone, she gradually relaxed as it became clear that, whoever he was, neither Michael Day nor any other member of his household was at home. Returning to her notebook, she read the next number aloud as she dialled, as if by doing so she could give herself confidence.

  It rang twice, she heard a click, and suddenly her ears were blasted by music so loud that she automatically moved the receiver away from her ear. It faded and a recording began: ‘Hi, this is Michael Lindsay. If you’re calling to offer me the lead role in an exciting new Broadway production, leave a message and I’ll call you right back. Or you can try my agent, Frank Sussman, at Actors Unlimited.’ Loretta gripped the receiver, her knuckles white, as the familiar, confident voice rapped out the agency’s telephone number. ‘Otherwise, if your call is social, leave your name and number.’ There was another burst of music, this time something lush and romantic which might have come from a film score, and a single long tone; apparently no one else had left a message that evening, which suggested that Michael Lindsay had not been out for long.

  Loretta returned the receiver to its cradle, stunned by her discovery that Michael wasn’t just a friend of Toni’s — she had found his name a couple of lines above her own in the Ls — but an actor. Immediately she felt better about being taken in, he was clearly used to changing his voice and accent, and it occurred to her that he might even have acted the part of a detective in a play. Still not quite able to believe it, Loretta picked up the receiver and dialled the number again. This time, taking the precaution of holding the phone a little way from her ear, she was able to make out the words of the song, a woman’s voice complaining tonelessly, almost hypnotically, ‘I feel small when I am next to you, I feel big when I forget you, I feel small when I am next to you, I feel big when I forget you.’ It seemed nastily appropriate after the lengths Michael Lindsay had gone to in tormenting her and she stabbed her finger on to the rest, cutting the connection as soon as she heard his voice.

  The elation prompted by her success began to fade as she thought about what to do next. Her first impulse was to ring John Tracey at the Gramercy Park Hotel but she drew her hand back, uncomfortable with the notion of once again seeking his help. In any case, what could he do that she couldn’t? Ring the answering-machine and tell Michael Lindsay he’d been rumbled, threaten to report him to the police or the telephone company; other than going round to his flat to confront him, that seemed to cover all the options. Loretta stretched her legs out in front of her in a wide V, staring discontentedly at a point on the carpet between her bare feet.

  Although she wasn’t seriously considering going round there, she was curious about where Michael Lindsay lived. She picked up Toni’s address book, turning the pages rapidly until she came to the Ls, and ran a finger down the list until she came to his entry. The significance of what she read took a few seconds to strike her, and when it did she started up from the bed in alarm. Michael Lindsay’s address was West 82nd Street, within easy walking distance, and she wondered what he looked like: youngish, with a pony tail, like the man who’d tried twice to sneak upstairs to the flat? His voice had suggested someone older, in his 30s, but now she knew he was an actor that didn’t mean a lot. Perhaps he was middle-aged and balding, like the man in the book shop? Incidents came back to her in such rapid succession that she felt dizzy, pacing up and down and disturbing the dog again without realising what she was doing. There was a spy hole in the front door and she rushed to it, peering into the dimly lit corridor as though she expected to find Michael Lindsay lurking there. The corridor was entirely empty, the front door of the flat opposite weirdly distorted by the tiny lens, and as she stared she thought she could hear the distant whoosh of the lift.

  Otherwise, there was silence. Loretta turned and leaned against the door, reassuring herself with its solidity, its failure to give under pressure. On the other hand she was a woman, and a slender one at that; for all she knew Michael Lindsay was six foot four and as powerfully built as Magic Johnson. Even so, he would have to get past the porters, who had proved their reliability in challenging strangers. But what would she do if —

  Loretta pushed herself away from the door, trying to stem the influx of gory images. She had seen too many slasher movies, too many films in which single women were stalked by maniacs with knives. Nuisance callers and flashers tended to be timid men, she reminded herself without knowing the exact source of this piece of wisdom, and there was no point in allowing herself to dwell on notorious murder scenes from movies with quasi-domestic settings: Angie Dickinson slashed to death in a lift in Dressed to Kill, Janet Leigh in the shower in Psycho, the actress whose name she had forgotten at the beginning of Jagged Edge. And of course her conversation with that ghastly woman, Cary something, the one who had wanted to confide in her about the Brooklyn Beast, that didn’t exactly help.

  ‘Honey,’ she said, sitting on the edge of the bed and encouraging the dog to come forward. Honey regarded her suspiciously for a moment, then lumbered to her feet, dipping her head so that Loretta could stroke her. She pulled the duvet round her shoulders and was for once relieved when the dog slumped against her bare legs, drawing comfort from her warm bulk. Not wanting to disturb the animal, she raised her head and peered at the books on the shelf above Toni’s bed, wondering if there was something among them to take her mind off dismemberment and gore. Honey growled when she made an experimental move towards the shelf and Loretta froze, stretching her right arm as far as it would go until her fingers closed on the only book within her reach. As she lifted it down, a folded press release fluttered to the floor and she saw it was a review copy. Toni occasionally reviewed fiction for the New York Review of Books but when Loretta turned the book right way up it she was confronted with an amateurish photo of hooded figures cavorting round a bonfire. Sympathy for the Devil, she read, and in smaller letters: ‘a shocking exposé of the true facts about Satanic abuse in the United States’. She groaned, tossed the heavy book on to the bed, and pulled the duvet more snugly around her.

  Ten

  Toni gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘I was going to tell you on Thursday but the conversation kind of –’

  ‘Took an awkward turn,’ finished Loretta, ‘I know. It seems a bit silly, saying congratulations, but — well, you know what I mean. I hope you’ll be very happy.’

  ‘Thanks. Was Mom cross?’

  Loretta was glad they were talking on the phone and Toni couldn’t see her expression. ‘More upset than cross,’ she said guardedly. ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell her?’ She had been woken up by a phone call from Mrs Stramiello, who’d come back from visiting relatives in Jersey City and found a letter from Toni telling her about the wedding. She was so angry and hurt she could hardly speak, and Loretta had spent an uncomfortable few minutes listening to her before she pulled herself together and rang off.

  ‘I guess you gave her this number?’

  ‘I had to. She said she’d ring you when she got back from Mass.’

  Toni made a little sound. ‘That’s the problem, Dad’s not so bad but Mom’s so devout. She’d have made such a fuss about us not getting married in a Catholic church.’

  ‘But Jay’s parents, aren’t they just as ... ’ Lore
tta trailed off, realising the phrase she had been going to use — just as bad — was hardly polite.

  Toni appeared not to notice. ‘Oh sure, but that’s different. Jay’s Dad is a Minister, it’s his job. There were only eight of us in church and it was over real fast. Mom would have insisted on a nuptial Mass and we’d have had to promise to bring the kid up Catholic, which I’m absolutely not going to do, not after ... well, I wouldn’t exactly say I had a happy childhood.’

  Loretta said: ‘When’s the baby due?’

  ‘January.’ She made an odd sound, not quite a laugh. ‘I’ve hardly told anyone, I’m not superstitious but... We’d almost given up hope but then someone told Jay about Dr Rosenstein. She does ... her big thing’s IVF.’

  ‘IVF,’ Loretta repeated, startled. A vision of laboratories and test tubes floated into her mind. ‘Did you speak to her, by the way? She left a message.’

  ‘Yes, thanks, I did.’ Toni changed the subject. ‘Listen, Loretta, I can’t talk for long. How’s it going, you having a good time?’

  ‘Ye-es.’

  ‘Honey’s OK?’

  Loretta glanced across the room at the dog. ‘She’s fine. You know I asked you about someone called Michael, Michael Lindsay?’

  ‘Michael Lindsay? I thought you said Michael Koganovich. Michael Lindsay called? How did he get my number?’

  Loretta said, puzzled: ‘I thought he was a friend of yours. It’s a bit complicated but basically he ... ’ She felt her cheeks redden as she thought again about how she’d been fooled. ‘Basically he’s been making obscene phone calls.’

  ‘He what? Are you serious? Hold on, I’m taking the phone into the hall so I can hear if anyone comes.’ Loretta heard footsteps, a door closing, then Toni came back on the line. ‘Obscene, how?’

  Loretta remembered the honeyed yet imperative voice and shuddered. ‘Do I have to? I mean, I’m sure you can imagine.’ When Toni didn’t respond she added reluctantly: ‘Fellatio, that seems to be his thing.’

  ‘What? I knew the guy was weird but he never ... ’ Suddenly she changed tack. ‘You didn’t tell him anything? About Jay and me? That we got married?’

  Loretta frowned. ‘I hardly got the chance. I told him you’d gone away for the weekend and he — that’s when he started asking all these questions.’

  ‘I can’t think how he got my number,’ Toni said worriedly, as though she wasn’t really listening. ‘I changed it after we broke up, I thought everyone knew not to — ‘

  ‘You mean he was your boyfriend?’

  Now Toni sounded embarrassed. ‘A friend introduced us, I’d seen him in a play off Broadway, at first he seemed so charming. It wasn’t till ... gradually I got to think something wasn’t quite ... ’She sounded exactly as Loretta had a moment before when she didn’t want to spell out the whole story of the obscene phone calls, and Loretta wondered what humiliations Michael Lindsay had inflicted on her.

  ‘I couldn’t always tell what was acting and what was for real,’ Toni burst out and, apparently acknowleding the circumlocution, tried to explain. ‘One time it was my birthday and he fixed up a surprise, he said to dress up and he’d call for me at ten. I thought it was a little late to eat and when we got out of the cab it was some kind of a club in the East Village. You go down the steps and it’s so dark you can’t see, then you’re in a room with crucifixes on the walls and the waiters dressed up as choirboys. The menu’s all religious stuff, Bloody Marys and Holy Joes, and the main course, it was some kind of a paste sandwich but on the menu they called it Loaves and Fishes. Not that I’m still Catholic or anything but — well, I didn’t see it was funny and we had a row.

  ‘After I broke it off,’ she added, ‘he started calling at peculiar times, two or three in the morning. I used to pick up the phone and I could hear him breathing, he didn’t say a word, ever, but I knew who it was. In the end I called the phone company and they changed the number. Loretta, what I don’t understand, did he tell you his name? Before he. . . before he did a number on you?’

  ‘He said he was called Michael. I — I’m afraid I went through your address book. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘There were only two or three Michaels with New York numbers and I recognised his voice on his answering-machine.’

  ‘You mean you called them all? What did you say?’

  ‘They were out.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’ Toni thought for a moment, then added: ‘You know, it’s just like Vox. I mean –I wonder if he read it?’

  ‘Is it? I tried ringing the police on Thursday but they just said I should – ’

  ‘You called the cops?’

  ‘Yes, why not? I was — well, not exactly scared.’ She hesitated, remembering how frightened she’d felt the night before, alone in the dark flat, when she realised Michael Lindsay knew Toni’s address. It was not in her nature to dissemble but Toni’s reaction had wrong-footed her.

  ‘The guy’s a fantasist,’ Toni said, ‘he needs help. I guess it doesn’t totally surprise me, say he really does have these psychosexual problems. But I don’t see it’s going to advance the situation, involving the cops.’

  ‘So what do you suggest? Who’s to say he won’t do it again?’

  ‘I hear what you’re saying, Loretta. I need time to think about this.’ Abruptly her tone changed, becoming bright and superficial. ‘We’re leaving now? What’s the hurry, hon?’ She came back on the line. ‘Sorry, Loretta, apparently we have to go call on Jay’s grandmother. Families, you know how it is. We’ll talk later, OK? Your flight’s not till tonight. And don’t — I know you’re pissed but let me handle it. Please?’

  ‘I suppose,’ Loretta began reluctantly, and then remembered something. ‘Toni, wait, you haven’t told me’ — the line went dead and she finished the sentence to herself, flatly — ‘what he looks like.’

  She put the phone down, thinking it was all very well for Toni, miles away in Long Island, to take the view that Michael Lindsay needed help — which was probably a euphemism for counselling, Loretta speculated. At the first dinner party she went to in San Francisco, a history professor had told her, when she expressed surprise at the number of people she had met whose lives seemed to revolve around appointments with their analysts, that in America poor people went to gaol and the rich had therapy; she didn’t know if Michael Lindsay was rich, but judging by his voice he was certainly middle-class. Gazing abstractedly round the room, unable to remember what she had been doing when she answered the phone, it occurred to her that she was perhaps being a little hard on Toni. She actually knew Michael Lindsay, was better placed than Loretta to decide whether he was a threat to women or merely playing some bizarre practical joke; always assuming, of course, that there was a clear distinction between the two. Toni’s attitude might be based on no more than her natural reluctance to turn in someone she used to sleep with, and presumably had once liked a lot.

  Loretta sighed and ran her hands though her hair. It was a morning of hazy brightness, with no sign of the rolling storm clouds which had made the weather so changeable on Saturday. Half an hour before, when she pulled up the blinds and looked out on to West End Avenue, the nondescript modern buildings stretching away from Toni’s apartment had their outlines softened by mist until they were no more than ethereal shapes in a pale, mysterious vista. There was an occasional shimmer of light from a distant high wall of glass, or where the sun reflected weakly from the bronzed peak of a skyscraper, but for the most part the city was softly shrouded, reminding her unexpectedly of Venice. They were the only cities she could think of which sustained the illusion, regardless of weather conditions, of having effortlessly incorporated light and air into the most grandiose of architectural schemes. Now she drifted to the window, peering out and sensing that the mist was starting to dissolve. The sun was a bright disc behind the hazy layers and she could make out windows and other details on apartment blocks which had earlier presented blank façades. Behind her Honey barked, a r
eminder that she hadn’t yet had her morning walk, and Loretta called over her shoulder: ‘In a minute. I’m not even dressed.’

  Her weekend case was on the bed, surrounded by clothes and shoes. Rummaging through the piles, Loretta found that most of the things she had brought with her were too crumpled to wear again, or too tight for a seven-hour plane journey. Deciding on thin black trousers and the white shirt she’d bought at Bloomingdale’s, she rolled her underwear into a bundle, stowed it at the bottom of the bag and laid the more delicate items of her wardrobe on top. She showered, dressed in the clothes she’d picked out and went to Toni’s desk to consult the phone book, in search of a book shop within walking distance of the flat where she could buy Dale Martineau’s novel. She had had a mildly erotic dream about him when she finally fell asleep in the early hours, so pleasant and full of promise that she had actually thought about ringing him to see if he was busy at lunchtime. That was when she realised he hadn’t given her his home number in return for hers, probably an oversight but one which was compounded by her discovery that he was ex-directory. There were several Martineaus in the phone book, none of them with the initial D, and she could hardly ring them all in the hope of finding a relative. The next best thing, the only way of feeling connected to him, was to buy his novel; she was about to dial a book shop on Broadway to find out if it was open on Sunday morning when the phone rang again.

  ‘Hello,’ she said eagerly, hoping it might be him until she remembered he didn’t know where in New York she was staying.