After a time she heard a small commotion behind the door. The door opened slightly and was instantly pushed closed; then she heard a child's voice, whispering.
"No, Granddad, you're supposed to look through the peephole first, to make sure it's not robbers or something."
She heard a man's voice, also hushed, an older man, a notably hill-country sound—West Virginia, perhaps Kentucky. No, West Virginia, surely.
"Hell, son, I did, and it ain't nobody but your teacher."
The woman smiled. The door opened wide.
***
A row of limousines stood waiting at the curb on Fifty-second Street, the drivers lounging against the first vehicle in line. To Peggy, they looked like a rescue team sent out to race her away from Hell. She held on to Hal's arm as if without his support she might stagger and fall and be left behind. But he pulled himself free of her to speak to one of the drivers, who listened studiously, then touched the bill of his cap, and spoke to the other men.
As the drivers went to their stations—some getting in behind the wheel, other flinging open doors to receive passengers—Hal turned to the knot of people that had begun collecting on the sidewalk, shouting and gesturing as he assigned them to their cars. When the sidewalk had cleared and some of the vehicles were already pulling away, he came to Peggy, put his hand on her back, and moved her toward the curb.
"They'll never miss us," he said, his voice strangely husky.
"What?" she said, not sure she'd heard him right.
She saw him look at her as if she was unimaginably stupid.
"You get in this one," he said, shifting his grip to her arm and urging her toward one of the two limos still standing at the curb.
"Aren't we riding together?"
"Pegs," he said, and his face showed his anger, "will you quit asking me these dumb questions?"
"But I don't understand," she said. "Aren't we all going to Regine's? I'm starved. And I've had enough of all this anyway." She fingered the cameo on her chest.
"They're going to Regine's. Everybody in these two cars is going to Plato's Retreat. Now, will you come on, Pegs?"
Again he coaxed her toward the opened door.
"Where?"
"Will you get in, for God's sake? I'll explain later."
She was winding the gold chain around her finger, tightening the slack around her neck.
"Hal," she said, turning away from the opened door so that the people waiting wouldn't hear. "Honey, you can't send your bosses off like that and then disappear."
He yanked her by the arm and stuck his face up close to hers.
"Will you just shut up?" he said, his eyes so narrowed the freckles at their corners seemed to turn black. "It's where The Six want to go, and I don't have to give one good goddamn fuck what my bosses think. Now get the hell in, Pegs—I'm asking you to get the hell in."
"No," she said. "Give me enough money for a cab and I'll go home."
"Like hell you will!"
He took her violently and half-lifted her from her feet. The green-haired man sitting nearest the door, an emaciated man no bigger than a boy, screeched as if he'd touched a millipede, and then, giggling hysterically, he shoved over to make room as Hal pushed her down onto the seat and slammed the door closed.
She heard him rap his knuckles on the roof and then call through the window to the driver.
"You know where to go!"
***
"Mr. Potter!" the woman exclaimed when the man with the patch over his eye stood facing her across the threshold. "How good to see you again! And Sam, still up at this hour? Good evening to you, young man. Is your mother home?"
"She's out," the boy said, craning back his head to see up to the ball of hair at the nape of her neck.
The woman flattened her fingers against her lips in a gesture of disappointment and dismay.
"And your father, is he out, too?"
The boy stepped back as if he'd seen what he wanted and lowered his eyes to look at the woman's hands.
"The kids have taken off for some kind of party," the man said. "Be home real late, I understand."
"Oh, yes," the woman said. "Of course. I remember. Peggy did say she was planning an evening out. Well, no matter, no matter—I've only come to retrieve my briefcase."
The woman stepped across the threshold and put her hand on the back of the door as if to help the man get it closed.
"I believe," she said as she turned around, "that I must have left it in your room, Samuel. Will you be a good boy and show me the way?"
"That's right," the boy said as he set out down the hallway with the woman just behind him, her shadow so wide in the light from the foyer that her shoulders seemed to brush the walls. "Mom found it, but you'd already gone. She said we'd bring it over in the morning."
The man shouted down the hallway after them. "If you need me, I'll be in the kitchen cleaning up! And hey, Sammy boy, you best scoot now! I promised your ma I'd have you in the sack no later than nine o'clock!"
"I'm walking as fast as I can!" the boy yelled back as he preceded the woman into his room.
"Ah, there it is!" the woman cried, swooping down and gathering the dark satchel to her chest all in one startling, powerful motion. She stood gazing at the boy, her lips smiling, her nose testing the texture of the air.
"We would've brought it," the boy said, because he felt some pressure to keep talking and he didn't know what else to say.
"Yes, of course," the woman confirmed, peering down at him from her great height. "I know I can always count on you and your mother to do what's required."
"Sure," the boy said uncertainly, not flinching from the force of her terrible eyes.
"Well then," the woman said, tightening her grasp on the briefcase, "I shall be off. Time you were snug in your bed." But she made no motion toward the door.
"It's okay," the boy said. He hiked up the trousers of his pyjamas. "Me and Val were playing Go Fish. I mean, me and Granddad," the boy said, his eyes still locked within the violence of the woman's paralyzing stare.
"Granddad and I," the woman corrected, nodding her head pleasantly.
There was a long silence while their eyes fought out some unseen struggle across the churning space between them.
"Well then," the woman said again, her smile never more glorious.
She started for the door—but then she turned abruptly as if recollecting some item of good manners that had been carelessly overlooked.
"Your mother's art closet—show it to me, please."
"Why?" the boy said, his tone making no secret of the challenge he intended.
The woman's eyes seemed to color with a molten yellow light, their frosted surfaces liquefying under fever of some sudden animal heat.
"Because I want you to draw me a picture," the woman said, her voice so mild and gentle she might have been bidding the boy good night.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The limo cut across midtown and then headed uptown along the Avenue of the Americas toward Central Park West with Peggy sitting next to the window and the skinny, green-haired boy jammed up so close to her that she could feel his hipbone stabbing into her buttock. As the car angled through Columbus Circle, the boy fell against her, tittered, and then flipped open the heart-shaped locket that hung from the platinum chain around his neck.
"A little lift, love?" he said, displaying the contents of the locket, a white powder flecked with tiny, clear crystals.
"No, thank you," Peggy said.
"No charge," the boy said, tittering again, almost tipping the contents of the locket as he conveyed it closer to her nose.
"I don't do it," Peggy said, turning her face away. "Thanks."
"Don't you, now?" the boy giggled. "You with one of the Manhattan Records blokes?"
"Cooper," Peggy said. "I'm Harold Cooper's wife."
"Ah, now," the boy said, his tone turning grave, "H.C.'s missus, are you?" He hunched forward and looked back up at her. "Already sporting the odd trin
ket, I see."
"What?" Peggy said.
"That bauble there," the boy said, flicking the cameo with a dirty fingernail. "It was me that give it to the lad."
"This?" Peggy said, feeling for the cameo.
"Cut into me kip about ten yards, it did," the boy said, giggling again.
"A thousand dollars?" Peggy said.
"Would you like to see the blood?" the boy said.
Peggy turned in her seat to get a better look at him.
"Why in the world would you give my husband such an expensive gift?"
"Him?" the boy looked astonished. "H.C.? You think I'm some bloody fool? That one there's going to be the bleeding toff, he is. H.C.? You want to stay on the good side of that one, you bloody do."
"Hal? What makes you think Hal Cooper's going to head Manhattan?"
Again the boy's voice turned grave. "Manhattan?" he said. And then he giggled hysterically. "The bloody lad's got it wired, missus—your bloke's got it wired the whole bleeding trip!"
"How?" Peggy said. "How has Hal got things wired?"
The boy slapped his thigh with furious force, giggling as if he'd just performed the world's funniest stunt.
"How? How the bleeding hell should I know how! Perhaps the fellow signed a bit of a pact with the Devil!"
At this the boy fell into a fit of laughter, slapping his own thigh and then Peggy's, then with both hands beating a light rhythm on the seat between his knees.
"I'm the drummer, you know," he announced, his voice very solemn again.
Peggy opened her purse and checked her wallet—three subway tokens and eighty-six cents in change.
"Look," she said to the boy, "do you think you could give me about five dollars? My husband'll give it back to you when we get where we're going."
The boy kept whipping at the seat in a fast, syncopated rhythm.
"Not a filthy sou on me," he smiled. "It's all plastic, you know. H.C. keeping you down, is he, love?"
"Please," Peggy begged. "Don't you have anything at all?"
"You can have this," the boy said, interrupting his dramming to pull his watch from his wrist and drop it into her lap. "He'll fetch a sight more than she will," the boy said, using his dirty fingernail to tap the cameo again.
She faced forward while the boy went back to his thumping. The limo turned left at Seventy-third Street and slowed to a standstill behind a thicket of cars jammed farther up the block. The boy went on beating at the seat, muttering to himself, apparently oblivious to everything save the subject that concerned him now.
"My arse, The Six! Call it Instant This when I get bleeding Jakey out of me bloody face. Instant This, by Gulliver! There's a proper name. Or S-I-C-K-S, by Gulliver! Bloody bleeding right! None of this bleeding S-I-X fishcakes, not on your bloody life! Get into more ska, we will—the whole bleeding power-pop trip. Like the bleeding Specials and the Cars, by Gulliver. 'Naked man, naked woman, where did you get that nice suntan?' Bloody right! Instant bloody This!"
The boy left off his drumming and touched Peggy's arm.
"You know me sax man, Jakey Ross?"
"I'm sorry," Peggy said.
The car started to roll again. She put the wrist-watch on the seat beside her, and with her shoulder and hand she banged at the door. It was heavy, but she had it open before the limousine had fully accelerated again.
She hit the street hard, and in the fall she lost her shoe. But she didn't turn around for it. Instead, she ran back toward Central Park West, and at the corner, to make speed, she kicked off the other shoe.
***
"You will do as I ask you," the woman said.
"No," the boy said.
"You will do it," the woman said, the color in her eyes deepening to a lurid orange.
"No!" the boy said, backing up, his eyes not wavering from her riveting stare.
"I gave you a chance to be good, young man. But now I shall have to punish you for your defiance," the woman said, and started toward him.
"Val!" he screamed. "Granddad! Granddad!"
When the man with the patch over his eye came shuffling along the hallway, he had a dish towel flung over his shoulder and a sponge in his hand. He saw the woman lurch out of the boy's room.
"Something wrong?" the man said, looking at the woman and then back to the closed door.
"It would appear," the woman began, a smile unfurling across her face, "that our Sam is having himself a bit of a tantrum."
"Sammy?" the man said. "You don't say. Don't believe I've ever seen the boy act up before. What set him off, do you think?"
The woman said nothing. She stood gazing at the man, smiling bloodlessly, her nose lifting as she turned to look back at the locked door.
"Sammy boy?" the man said.
He shifted the sponge to his other hand and tried the doorknob.
"You open up now, lad," the man ordered. "Come on, boy. You got your teacher out here and I don't think she's going to like it if you make her mad."
No sound came from the room.
Again the man tried the door.
"You hear me, Sam boy?"
"You see?" the woman sniffed, her nose thrusting at the air.
The man rattled at the doorknob.
"Now that ain't like you, son," he called through the door. "Sammy? You listening to me? You're okay, aren't you, son?"
But there was no reply, just the deep silence that poured through the hall.
"Ah well," the woman said. "It's all right," She laughed a small laugh. "As the prophet says, boys will be boys. Do you suppose you could persuade him to open up? All I want is my briefcase."
"Val! Don't listen to her, Val. Make her get out of here!"
It was the boy's voice, a terrified, pitiable wail.
"You see?" the woman said again. "Virtually hysterical. It seems our young gentleman is greatly overtired. It happens, you know—ask any teacher. Fatigue can turn the poor things into absolute demons. If you'll forgive me for saying so, the child shouldn't be kept up so late."
"We were only playing Go—"
But the boy was screaming again.
"Granddad! Please!"
The man turned back to the locked door, twisting the knob back and forth.
"Sam boy," he shouted, "you're testing my nerves now, son!" Again he worked at the doorknob, twisting it with real force. "Now I'm telling you for the last time, Sammy, quit it and take this damn lock off this door!"
"West Virginia!" the woman sang out merrily, smiling pleasantly when the man turned suddenly to face her. "I thought so," she said. "I should say Webster or Randolph County."
"How's that?" the man said, letting go of the doorknob.
"Where you were born and reared, Mr. Potter—in West Virginia. Which was it? In Randolph or Webster County?"
"Webster," the man said, amazed. "Place called Boggs."
"Yes, of course," the woman said, grinning triumphantly, moving almost imperceptibly closer to him.
"Val!" the boy screamed—a single, deafening shriek.
"Now hold on," the man said, moving with lazy speed to jiggle the doorknob again. What in God's name ailed the boy, anyway? But his hand never made it, and he never spoke again.
She already had the pencil out and the point driven through his windpipe before she extracted the yellow shaft and inserted it once again, this time puncturing the carotid artery on the right side of the dead man's neck.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
She ran for Seventy-second Street and made it to the uptown subway entrance just as the sky shattered and the rain came again, a gusting torrent pelting at her back as she took the steps two at a time in stockinged feet. Breaking her pattern near the bottom to skip a step strewn with glass, Peggy plunged for the turnstile, slammed a token into the slot, and pushed through onto the deserted platform, her feet already aching from running on concrete.
She kept within sight of the token booth, leaning out over the tracks and peering into the downtown direction to see if a train might be co
ming. Almost immediately an express screamed by from the wrong direction, and then a downtown local. When the local pulled out, she looked across the tracks to watch the passengers as they made their way toward the exit, some with umbrellas, others with newspapers held over their heads.
It was then that she saw what might have been an old woman or an old man lying curled on a bench across the way, a shopping bag, its sides bulging, propped against the armrest like a pillow.
Again she leaned over the tracks to look down the tunnel for an uptown train—and when she saw nothing, she turned back to the tile wall and tiptoed along, studying the posters. At length she faced around just in time to see three teen-agers in hooded sweatshirts under khaki raincoats vault the turnstile on the downtown side. She could hear the man in the token booth shouting after them and the boys' vicious laughter as they ran up the platform. When they saw her, they came back down the platform and called across to her.
As if it was what she had meant to do anyway, Peggy faced around again and moved up close to the wall, her eyes on a poster but not really seeing it.
"Hey, white mama!" she heard from behind her, "motherfucker don't give you no shoes?"
She edged slowly toward the uptown token booth, her face turned to the wall as if she were deeply absorbed in reading the posters, her heart listening for the approach of an uptown train.
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