Fear Dreams

by J. A. Schneider

  Depression becomes a wave that rises up and swallows you. Drags you down. Tells you that all your best and most desperate efforts are worthless. They all felt it, but Kerri Blasco had an easier time letting tears come.

  4

  She made it to her desk, her piled-high, littered desk, and fell back in her chair. Through a stinging blur she scowled at stacked files, ME reports, witness statements from other open cases. So many. Face it: the system favors bad guys, lets them slip through the cracks more than half the bleeping time. She wanted to let out a good, self-indulgent, wonderfully howling bawl, but instead reached and whacked over her red papier-mâché pen holder. Ballpoints spilled to the floor.

  “Oh, that’s really going to help.”

  Alex Brand had been on his way back to his desk facing her, and knelt to pick up the scattered ballpoints. “Pencils too?” he said, rising, shoving his fist full of Bics and stubby pencils back into their holder. “Who still uses pencils?”

  “People who wanna chew ‘em,” Kerri groused. “Don’t interrupt my tantrum.”

  Ah, sweet Alex. Tough and terrific cop, feeling lousy like the rest of them but kneeling again now near her black Nikes for a last ballpoint he had missed. Once, they loved each other - a bad idea on top of Department Don’ts since Alex was married at the time and Kerri was struggling through a divorce. Since then they’d managed to contain their feelings, pretty much. They’d each gone through pain and needed peace for a while. Plus they’d been partners for nearly two years, which can lead anyone to sometimes bickering like old marrieds.

  Do I still love him? Kerri often asked herself.

  Of course I do. It always came back to her like that, a slam to the heart.

  But how did he feel? Had he moved past that dangerous, red-hot attraction of twenty months ago?

  If so, he had it too well under control, had recognized his aversion to drama. But he still cared about her, no doubt about that. He worried out loud, got sometimes downright fretful. “Hey, I’m a cop, remember?” she’d remind him, and he’d mutter, “Yeah, yeah,” and wave a hand. Anyway, he was seeing someone else, although he hadn’t mentioned her lately. Kerri wondered how that was going…

  …and leaned down to him, to his flopping brown hair that needed a cut and had started to curl at his collar. He smiled at her, his hazel eyes urging her to feel better.

  “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown,” she told him.

  He got to his feet. “Nah. Mark Twain said the best way to cheer yourself is to cheer someone else, so I’m being selfish.” He cracked another smile, went to his own desk and sat facing her. Poked at his files for a few seconds, then raised his eyes back to her. She looked really tired. Still pretty, now pulling her hair back into its usual ponytail, but there were dark circles under her dark blue eyes and her tall, slender frame looked suddenly thinner. The collar of her white blouse looked too big on her; ditto the pants of her black pants suit.

  “Take a day, Kerri. Go home. What little sleep you’ve gotten has been up in the crib. Don’t you have plants to water or something?”

  As Sergeant he was also her boss, telling her nicely before pressing harder as he sometimes had to do. Kerri knew the boundaries of their give and take; knew too when she could say no.

  “Home is lonely. The plants are watered and the cat has enough Meow Mix for a week.” She pulled some folders to her and opened the top two. “I’ll just do some of this cheery light reading to decompress,” she said, letting out a pent-up sigh. “That hedge funder who says he didn’t drown his wife in the bathtub. That mother of the year who says her kid fell accidentally off the fire escape.”

  Abruptly, she got up. “But first I shower. Yech, that reeking, murdering POS touched me.”

  He caught her arm as she started past. “We’ll still get him. They’re going to be sitting on him every move he makes. He’ll make another mistake and we’ll get him.”

  “Will he have to murder someone else first?” she grimaced. It obsessed her that women were so easy to harm.

  Jo Babiak, another detective, came and put a new folder on Kerri’s desk. “Unpleasant update on that missing coed,” she said. “They’re about to close the case, declare her a runaway.”

  Kerri frowned at the folder’s label: Sasha Perry. “No way. That’s a homicide.”

  Jo shrugged unhappily. “Agreed, but hard to prove with no body. She disappeared in June.”

  Kerri flipped open the folder. A blonde looked up at her from what would have been her graduation photo: pretty, delicate-looking with a crooked smile. Anger re-took the hurting detective’s heart, which was good, it was a fast cure for depression. “There is no way this girl wanted to die or disappear,” Kerri said bitterly. “She was thrilled about graduating. Wanted to become a vet - rescued animals, for God’s sake.”

  “Yeah, this one hurts,” Jo said, catching Alex’s grim head shake that said he felt the same. Over two months, Sasha Perry had been missing. Everything pointed to foul play but there was no way to prove it; it was hard, even, to investigate. The P.D. had really worked this, tried to build a case, collected hundreds of witness statements but were left with big holes.

  Sasha had been a student at NYU. It was August. Friends and friends of friends were scattered. Funds had run out for this. The door was about to close and every detective in the squad now worried about Kerri, who’d become obsessed with the case. Was found, after double shifts, exhausted and still poring over evidence, rereading witness statements, getting nowhere.

  They had taken turns helping her when they could, but they’d all started to shake their heads. Gotta give it up, Kerri…

  Gently, she straightened Sasha Perry’s photo in the folder, then closed it and placed it on her desk. “I’m going to shower and be back in five minutes,” she said. “Can we talk more about this?”

  Alex was now on his phone, but Jo said yes. “In an hour if I don’t get called. That woman who says she didn’t kill her boyfriend-”

  Her phone went off too. She answered, rolled her eyes at Kerri. She and her partner Buck Dillon had been called out.

  Kerri rushed off, in a hurry to be back.

  5

  Beth Harms, surprisingly, tried to veto the Prince Street loft, on the grounds that it was “trouble.”

  As undergraduates, Beth had served as the pragmatic brakes to Liddy’s too-easy leaps from practicality. They’d become friends in one of their art history classes; had bonded further in their studio art and over boyfriend and financial troubles and Beth’s divorce and years of struggling to get gallery representation. Beth was a born New Yorker, with her healthy cynicism built in. Liddy came from a small town upstate, the youngest in a family often too busy or overwhelmed to pay much attention to her, so she’d grown up lonely, in her own world, reading and sketching compulsively. Even now, as they met first at a sidewalk cafe on Soho’s Spring Street, Liddy’s hand zoomed her charcoal pencil around in one of the sketchbooks she carried everywhere.

  Paul wanted to know why the loft would be trouble. “The price sounds right.”

  “Well...” Beth put down her lemonade, still admiring Liddy’s sketch of a dark-haired woman who had passed them minutes before. “Amazing,” she said. “You only caught a glimpse of her.”

  “But she was so striking.” Liddy smudged charcoal into the lines of the woman’s dark eyes. Her hand worked. Beth turned back to Paul.

  “For starters, the place is going to need work. The owner trashed it. Charlie Bass, ever hear of him?”

  They hadn’t.

  “He was a troubled actor who had a role in that whatchamacallit vampire movie, and he…ah, hung himself. The joist is still there, bent where he did it.”

  Liddy’s hand holding her pencil stopped motionless. “How awful.”

  “But it’s near,” Paul said, finding a voicemail on his phone, cursing that it was Carl Finn his research partner probably wondering where he was. “If we don’t see the place we’ll be curious.”

 
He rose and paced near the shade of their umbrella to argue into his phone about “different mechanisms” and “modify the compound” and “Propofol analogue, it’s the analogue!”

  Beth watched him for a moment. “Carl’s working today?” she asked Liddy. “It’s Sunday.”

  “He’s manic.”

  “Back on uppers?”

  “Up, down, up, down.”

  “He’s an M.D. Nice when you can prescribe for yourself.”

  “Definitely. So…the loft?”

  Beth leaned closer. “It isn’t that bad,” she said low. “Just depressing even for me, and I’m the listing broker and – given those awful dreams you’ve been having…”

  “They’re lessening.”

  “Lessening but more intense when they happen. You told me.”

  “Yes but…” Liddy inhaled, seeing her fear dream of this morning flashing in her mind for just a second, then disappearing. The day was bright and sunny; it felt so euphoric to be out. “We could make the loft beautiful,” she said, back to sketching. Now working on another woman’s face, this one younger, maybe twenty, a delicate-looking blonde with a crooked smile.

  “Who’s that?”

  “She just walked by too.”

  “Uh, her I would have noticed. She’s a magazine cover.”

  “You were watching Paul. I saw her for a split second.”

  Beth peered at Liddy a bit open-mouthed; incongruously looked up and down the busy sidewalk and across the narrow street with its colorful jaywalkers. She hadn’t seen the blonde. “Well, that sketch is even more gorgeous. Hey, the charcoal’s going to smudge. You gonna spray it?”

  Liddy did. Got out her Krylon fixative for pastel and chalk and sprayed both drawings, flipping from the older, dark-haired woman to the girl with the crooked smile.

  Then stared at her, touched her cheek and then her delicate brow; seemed suddenly forlorn. Beth frowned and reached for her scrapbook, angled it on the table so she could study the girl’s face.

  “I’ve seen her before.”

  “Right. She just walked past.”

  “I mean before today. Like, on TV or something.”

  “Maybe she’s a model.” Liddy’s eyes stayed on the girl; now seemed almost lost as she angled her sketchbook back. Her expression bothered Beth. It was how she’d looked in the days and weeks after her accident.

  “Lids? When was your last nightmare? And headache? Hey, you had a concussion, too.”

  No answer. A car had honked and someone called out to it, but Beth was sure Liddy heard. She leaned closer.

  “Fess up. Tell.”

  Liddy snapped out of it. The question was painful, so she looked out to the sunny street with its colorful commotion and a daisy-decorated bakery van and a man carrying brightly painted mannequins. “The headaches are fewer,” she finally said. “And this morning was another dream but they’re getting further and further apart too and I’m feeling better, really.”

  “Okay, what about your memory?”

  “Things are coming back.”

  “Paul said so, he’s thrilled.”

  “Yesterday for the third time I went out for groceries. Got off at the right floor, imagine that. Not the wrong floor, wandering around wondering why I couldn’t find our door. I also remember where my sock drawer is and no longer replace the milk next to the Cheerios or the soup cans. I’d love to see that loft.”

  6

  It was one of those narrow old cast-iron buildings Soho is famous for, painted the color of red brick with huge, arching windows. On the stairs, which Liddy took slowly, they passed workmen coming down carrying Sheetrock panels and electrical wiring. Construction, Beth explained, was underway on the fourth floor, and she snickered. “Construction’s always going on around here. Everyone has to have their own unique vision, blah, blah. Oh, and the first and second floors are owned by some rich guy from Shanghai who’s seldom here. You’d have the building practically to yourselves.”

  Paul climbing up behind Liddy said, “Until the fourth floor people move in.”

  “Which will be a while,” Beth answered. “You should see what they’re doing up there.”

  At the end of a short hall on the third floor landing, she turned the key in the door, pushed it open, and punched off the security system. “After you, please,” she announced, hoity toity as if showing around her usual artsy types. “Watch your step.”

  It was a bright but dusty artist’s loft, still partially furnished, the floor gritty with piles of ground gypsum plaster where poor Charlie Bass had apparently taken a sledge hammer to what was left of an interior wall. Otherwise the space was mostly open with exposed wooden beams, original cast iron columns painted white, and three huge arched windows facing south. Beth turned up the air conditioning, then droned almost reluctantly about the “two bedrooms, two baths, great kitchen,” but Liddy rushed – the fastest she’d moved in weeks - to the arched window furthest on the right.

  “Ohh,” she burst out, shielding her eyes from the brilliant sun and looking around. Below, bustling Prince Street. To her right and brushing her shoulder, huge plants - ficus trees, a rubber plant, smaller hanging ferns, and what looked like a lemon tree – and to her left, a telescope. Paul, coming up behind her, fingered the telescope, bent to examine the tripod it was mounted on, then rose to the telescope again.

  “Hey, a Celestron Omni,” he said. “Nice. You could see Mars with this.” He peered into it; moved the ‘scope barrel up, then down.

  Beth said, “Charlie Bass was a peeping tom. Considered the windows across the street better entertainment than cable.”

  Paul thought that was funny and kept peering through the telescope. Liddy asked, “Who’s been watering the plants?”

  “I have. See that little hose running into the wall? And this spray bottle?” She bent to it. “Despite the air conditioning the leaves fry this close to the glass and need spraying.” Hurriedly, she sprayed some of the leaves, put the bottle back behind the rubber plant’s tub, and straightened. “Charlie called this his greenhouse and apparently loved it. Told pals his dream was to run a real greenhouse someday, get out of trying to make it in the nasty, crazy film world.”

  She sighed, turned and looked back to the furniture still in the room. “His executor says a lot of his stuff is for sale.”

  “The telescope?” Paul asked.

  “The plants?” from Liddy.

  “Yes and yes.” Beth looked toward a doorway. “Want to see the rest of the place?”

  They walked past the white columns and an exposed brick wall to the kitchen, never-used-looking all white with granite counter tops and laundry/dryer and an all-purpose center island. The master bedroom was large, nearly its whole wall another arched window now half covered with drooping, smeared drapes. At the sight of the second, smaller bedroom Liddy cried “Oh, Paul,” found his hand and squeezed it. He said “Mm” noncommittally, but squeezed back.

  It faced north, would be a perfect studio with shelves already built in, a three-sided window seat nestled into more floor-to-ceiling shelves, and a long, east-west wall perfect for drying canvases.

  Beth muttered, “I was afraid you’d like it.”

  Liddy spread her arms, as if to take in and embrace the whole loft. “I love it, it’s marvelous! We can fix it and make it beautiful and replace poor Charlie Bass’s darkness with light!”

  “Speaking of Charlie,” Paul said. “Where did he, uh…”

  Beth showed them.

  In the living area not far from the plants, she pointed to a ceiling joist running under one of the wooden beams. “There,” she said.

  The joist was tubular metal, still bent raggedly. Tragic to look at. A terrible downer reminding them of a sad, troubled life that ended badly.

  Liddy stared at the joist. Her heart started pounding, and the oddest feeling came to her that Charlie was there in the room, reaching out to her. Where had that come from? She didn’t know. She felt sorrow and…something else; looked a
round, then looked at the others as if trying to explain her feelings to herself.

  “I feel connected to this place. That studio? Charlie made it like a cozy cave for a hermit who loved to read. And his plants…I love plants.” She looked back to the foliage. “You missed some ferns, Beth, they are frying.”

  She went for the plastic bottle and started to spray ferns and other leafy branches. Paul came next to her, fingering the telescope as she sprayed, up, down, back up, inadvertently hitting the window’s glass as droplets slid and coalesced and then…lit up in colors.

  “A rainbow!” Liddy exclaimed. “Ohh…” The glowing arc shimmered, then changed into something like back-lit stained glass, then melted as droplets dripped down, and were gone. The glass still steamed and glowed.

  “Pretty,” Beth said.

  Softly, Liddy said, “This place speaks to me.”

  Paul said dubiously, “Today this place is cheery with the sun pouring in. But picture it when it’s dark and gloomy, and your painting isn’t going well or you’ve had one of your clients reject your hard work or you’ve had another one of your dreams. What then?”

  It didn’t penetrate, his words seemed like white noise. Liddy kept staring out, then down to the street again. She felt mesmerized, thrilled. “It’s cheaper than those places you’ve already looked at,” she said, trying to sound as if practical considerations stood foremost in her mind. A force took greater hold and she found herself turning, looking back in the direction of the second bedroom.

  “I could be happy in just that studio! Lock me up in it and it could be my happy little cell.”

  Beth made comic tugging motions on her sleeve. “Sleep on it, Lids. Come on, I’ve got other places to show you and you shouldn’t tire.”

  On the way down they passed another couple coming up with another realtor Beth greeted. Liddy stopped at the landing below; looked fretfully up as the couple entered the loft.

  “They’re gonna take it,” she whimpered the rest of the way down and on the sidewalk. And three apartments later – three elevator apartments later - exploring a place with a terrace on Sullivan, she looked anxiously out trying to see the Prince Street building. It frustrated her that she couldn’t. She kept insisting, as they left the third place, how the Prince Street loft felt as if she already lived there and had been living there. It felt so perfect but that other couple was going to grab it! Or others would!