The Astral

by V. J. Banis

  She had never been beautiful, not even as a young woman, but she had known without conceit (and with a probably too immodest pleasure) that she was attractive to the opposite sex. That, however, had been years ago. Was she still? She honestly didn’t know. Walter didn’t count. She had not for many years thought of him in terms of sex, opposite or otherwise. And, it seemed, the same with him.

  She had a good complexion, what they used to call “peaches and cream,” and eyes the color of old cognac, with gold flecks that glinted when she was angry or excited. She was thirty-two. Well preserved, she thought with all due modesty. Until this last year, she had been careful of diet and exercise, and though no doubt some softening had set in during that time, she could not yet detect any evidence of it.

  Or not much evidence. When she got on the scales, she saw that she had gained a full five pounds. Too much time abed, not enough exercise.

  Even so, she didn’t exactly look chubby. Would a man still find her attractive? Would—the time for pretense in your life is past, my girl, she told herself—would Jack McKenzie still find her attractive?

  Memories crowded in upon her, sweet, stinging. She had been seventeen when they had met. Eighteen when they first made love—the night of her eighteenth birthday, to be exact. His scruples, not hers. Certainly not hers. Despite her most ardent efforts to convince him otherwise, he had stubbornly insisted that he wanted her to be an adult when it happened. “I’m not robbing any cradles, my love,” he insisted. He was eight years older than she. Eight years wiser, she could see now, though at the time she had seen it only as sheer pigheadedness.

  Pigheadedness that somehow allowed her to convince herself that he didn’t love her when he said they would have to wait to get married.

  “Why do you have to go away, to the Middle East?” she demanded. “You could make a writing career here, couldn’t you?”

  “Because I plan to be a war correspondent.” He had been so calm, so reasonable, that it only enraged her all the more. “Iraq is where the war is going to be, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia. That’s where I have to be.”

  “Then I’ll go with you.”

  The tolerant smile he gave her infuriated her. “There’s no way I would take you there. The danger, the hardship—no, my darling, you will wait here until I come back. Assuming I do come back. There’s always that chance.”

  “And if I won’t wait?”

  “Kat, don’t be silly. If it will make you feel better, we’ll get married the first day I step on U.S. soil again, I promise.”

  “Why don’t we get married now, and you go do your Mid-East thing, and I’ll wait here for you. We have a week for a honeymoon, surely, before you have to leave.”

  There was that damned smile again. “Suppose I didn’t come back. Suppose I left you pregnant. What family do you have? Your mother, who is caring for a bed-ridden husband at the present? And I have a cousin in Oregon, who probably barely remembers me. Do you imagine I want the woman I love left with that sort of burden to bear alone? You’d be middle-aged by the time you worked through it all. No, you’re young, you’re single, I want you to enjoy your life, have fun. You’re still a kid. Go out with other guys if you feel like it. There’ll be plenty of time to work on marriage when I get back.”

  He went, and she sent his ring to him without even a note, and before six months had passed, she married Walter.

  She thought again of her husband and that futile effort at making love. Yes, now that she remembered, she could see that part of their marriage had begun to fade long ago. How many years could it have taken him to realize how much spite there had been in the hasty “yes” she gave him when, the field rid of his rival, he had once again pressed his suit?

  What a fool she had been. Now Jack McKenzie was back in the city. Somehow, knowing he was here, close by, made it all the worse.

  The shooting had left an ugly scar at her left temple. She tugged her hair down over it, pulling and fluffing until she had managed to hide it from sight. After a moment, she made a grimace of regret at herself and gathering her robe from the floor, tossed it about her shoulders. Before she turned the light out, she gave the image in the mirror one last glance.

  She could not help wondering: how would Jack McKenzie see her now?

  In the master bedroom, Walter heard the bathroom door open. He tensed, his hand paused in its ministrations. The door to Becky’s bedroom closed a moment later, and he let out the breath he had been holding. His hand began to move again. He closed his eyes and resumed the fantasies playing across the screen of his mind.

  His hand moved faster.

  * * * *

  It seemed to Catherine that she had barely closed her eyes when a voice said, “Wake up.”

  She opened her eyes but the white light that filled the room blinded her and she could see nothing.

  “You must come,” the voice said, “Come see.”

  The light faded, and she was standing in an unfamiliar room, a seedy room with faded wallpaper hanging loose from the ceiling and dust motes dancing in the pale light from a single overhead bulb. There were two men on a bed—and a little girl with them. They were...God in Heaven, what were they doing?

  On cue, the girl cried out with a sob, “Don’t, don’t, please.”

  A giant bear of a man, his back to Catherine, chuckled. The other one—long, skinny—said, “Shut up, or I’ll tape your mouth again.”

  Catherine tried to scream, to call out to them to leave the girl alone, but no sound came. She took a step toward the bed. She must make them stop. This was too horrible to bear.

  Despite her silence, perhaps because he sensed her presence, the skinny man raised his head and looked in her direction, looked directly at her. Her heart thudded. It was him: the man with the yellow beard. The beard was gone now, shaved off, making his face look different, but she would never forget those eyes; nothing could disguise that face from her.

  “What the hell?” he said. He jumped up from the bed and took a step in her direction. The other man looked too, she had a quick glimpse of his face as he said, “Trash can?”

  The next instant, she was back in bed in Becky’s room, lightning shards of pain crashing through her head.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  She leaped up and staggered to the bathroom, barely reaching the toilet bowl in time to vomit wildly into it. Even when her stomach was emptied the dry heaves continued for long minutes.

  Finally, weakly, she sat on the edge of the bathtub. As her head began to clear, she thought of Agent Chang. She ran to the den where she had left the F.B.I. agent’s card and was actually dialing the number before she thought to wonder what she was going to tell her. That she had seen her daughter’s kidnappers in a dream? With another little girl, perhaps the very one who had disappeared yesterday?

  She returned the receiver to its cradle. Chang would think she was insane. Maybe I am, she thought. How could she explain what had just happened? Who would believe her? I don’t believe it myself, she thought despairingly. Yet it had been so real.

  Had it been only a dream? Though it sickened her to imagine it, she summoned the scene she had witnessed back into mind. Even now, when she was awake, it was startlingly vivid. She saw Yellow Beard jump up from the bed, heard him exclaim. Heard the other man on the bed say, “trash can.” Which made no sense.

  Dreams didn’t, though, did they?

  * * * *

  She woke with the memory of that horrible nightmare still fresh in her mind. The Times had the story of the kidnapped child on the front page. Catherine looked long and intently at the grainy photo of a grinning twelve-year-old schoolgirl. Was it the girl she had seen in her dream? She couldn’t say with any certainty. She’d had only the briefest glimpse of the child’s tortured face before Yellow Beard had seen her and jumped from the bed.

  She wished she could share her experience with someone, and at once dismissed her husband. He would shrug it off as hysteria, hysteria and grief, which had brought on a terrib
le nightmare. Even she had to logically suppose that was the truth. If only it hadn’t seemed so vivid, so like she had actually been there.

  Her mother? As if that thought had communicated itself through space, the phone rang and it was her mother. “I have to do some shopping,” Sandra Dodd said, her tone making a question of it, a hopeful question, “And I thought you might join me? We could have lunch together.”

  Shopping and lunch had been a monthly ritual in the past, one of the many that had fallen by the wayside. “Dominique’s in the mall?” Catherine suggested. That had been their favorite spot.

  “At twelve?” Sandra was obviously delighted.

  After she had hung up the phone, however, Catherine was less sure. The thought of the mall crowds, the early Christmas crowds especially, intimidated her. She used to enjoy going out, had savored the noise and bustle, had particularly enjoyed the Christmas season. Now, though, she felt the urge to stay in her safe retreat, with a husband as little interested as she was in interaction, where no one could assault her.

  Only, they had, hadn’t they, had assaulted her, if only in her dreams? Staying in was no safer than going out, if her mind wasn’t free. Hadn’t she been haunted all these months by memories? By the time she was dressed to go out, her mood was decidedly cheerless.

  Walter at least seemed pleased. “It’ll do you good,” he said when she told him her plans. “Tell you what, I’ll try to make it home for dinner tonight and you can tell me all about your shopping. We’ll make a regular evening of it.” He gave her cheek a peck as he went out.

  Ready to leave, she paused to look at herself in the hall mirror. What a grim looking creature, she thought, and laughed bitterly at her own reflection. You simply could not play the role of tragic martyr, no matter how justifiably, without looking just a trifle ridiculous.

  * * * *

  The mall parking lot was crowded and she had to drive around for several minutes before she finally found a space. Even so, she was early. She sat for a brief while, listening to the sound of rain on the car roof and trying to screw up the courage to go inside.

  Don’t be an ass, she scolded herself. She shoved the door open, and walked with determined steps through the rain, forgetting to put up her umbrella.

  Dominique, the restaurant’s petite and pretty proprietress, was happy to see her. “Mrs. Desmond, how delightful,” she greeted her, “We’ve missed you.”

  Which meant, Catherine imagined, that she did not know the reason for the absence. Just as well, she thought, as she followed Dominique to their favorite table in a sheltered corner. That was one person, at least, who would not regard her with pity, liberally laced with curiosity. She ordered a glass of Chablis and told the waitress she would wait for her mother to join her.

  When the wine came, she took a sip without tasting it and turned the glass round and round in her fingers while she looked about at the other diners. They were a decidedly mixed lot: more women than men, lots of children, and a few teenagers, eschewing the fast food outlets favored by their contemporaries and looking their most sophisticated. In the background, Bing Crosby dreamed faintly of a white Christmas.

  At the table next to hers, a young boy, eight or perhaps nine, got up from the table and told his mother he was going to the restroom.

  “Give me a minute,” she sighed. She emptied her coffee cop and started to collect her packages.

  “No, I want to go alone,” he said firmly.

  It was a youngster’s predictable push for adolescent independence and after a moment’s consideration, the mother nodded. “Straight there and straight back,” she said, and motioned to the waitress for more coffee. She could use another cup, she was thinking, and besides, her feet hurt. When had Christmas shopping ceased to be fun and become work anyway?

  Catherine watched the boy stride away, shoulders proud and straight, and felt a sudden wave of fear, of horrible expectation. He looked so very young, so vulnerable with his thin wrists showing out the cuffs of a shirt he had nearly outgrown, probably all too quickly. She thought of everything that might happen in those few unsupervised minutes, thought of the brief time, no more than seconds, surely, in which Becky had been taken. What if someone were there, in the restroom, waiting...?

  Without thinking of what she was doing or how she might appear, she leaped up so suddenly that she startled the approaching waitress.

  “Please.” She stepped the few feet to the woman’s table, “Please, you mustn’t let him go alone. It isn’t safe.”

  The woman looked up at her in surprise and suspicion. She glanced at the waitress as if to say, who let this fruitcake in? Aloud, to Catherine, she asked, “What’s not safe? The mall? For Pete’s sake, there’s a million people here today, it’s not like I’m sending him into a den of lions.”

  “You can’t imagine,” Catherine started to say, but the woman interrupted her in an icy voice: “I think you should mind your own business.”

  “Ma’am.” The waitress tried to intervene, holding her coffee pot in front of her like a shield.

  “I’m sorry, I....” Catherine realized suddenly how she must look. Probably they thought she was mad. She backed away in confusion and knocked over a chair. Other diners were looking, some of them concerned, some amused.

  She snatched up her purse, the umbrella forgotten altogether, and dashed out of the restaurant. “Tell my mother something has come up,” she told a startled Dominique. “Tell her...she’ll understand.”

  She ran through the corridors of the mall, ignoring the puzzled looks of the shoppers she jostled and sidestepped, ran through the glass doors to the parking lot—and ran into Jack McKenzie.

  Ran into him literally. Head down, she plunged through the glass doors, already fumbling in her purse for the car keys—and collided with someone, nearly fell down from the impact.

  Hands caught her arms to steady her and an astonished voice said, “Catherine? My God, it’s you.”

  She stepped back, looked up—and felt her heart stop inside her. “Jack?” She made a question of it only because she could not believe this could possibly be happening.

  “Have I gone downhill that badly?” he asked, making a joke to hide his own confusion. She looked wild-eyed, frantic. God, what more could have happened to her? He wanted to take her in his arms at once, kiss and comfort her, and held himself in check by a sheer effort of will.

  “No.” She shook her head emphatically. “You look....” She was going to say “wonderful,” but amended it to “...good. I just...I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

  “Well, no, of course you wouldn’t be. Me neither.” He glanced around and up and seemed to realize for the first time that they were standing in the rain. “Look, maybe we should step inside.”

  She looked up at the sky too. “Oh.” She sounded as surprised as he was by the raindrops.

  He held tightly to her arm, as if she might try to break away from him, and pulled the door open with his other hand to lead her inside. They paused by the skating rink. On the ice below, a pert young woman in pink and white spun elegantly, showing off for a trio of male admirers.

  It seemed as if neither of them could think of anything to say. He realized belatedly that he was still holding on to her and let his hand drop. “How are you?” was the best he could manage. He tried to say the rest with his eyes.

  Eyes that, she thought, looked altogether too shocked at seeing her. What did he see, anyway: a woman he had once loved, a woman now thirteen years older? Not gray and doddering, that was silly, but faded nevertheless? The thirteen years stuck in her throat.

  “I’m all right,” she said hoarsely. “Thank you for the roses.”

  He shook his head. “Catherine, I felt so awful for you. I wanted...I wanted to come to you, but I didn’t think....”

  She managed a lopsided smile. “No, it’s best that you didn’t. Walter....” She left it at that. She lifted a hand unconsciously to tug a damp curl over the scar at her temple, and as she did, the sp
arkle of her wedding ring caught his eye.

  “Yes,” he said, the shards of light seeming to pierce his heart. He took the gesture for deliberate. “Walter.”

  The silence now was awkward. And painful. He took a step back from her. “Well,” he said again.

  “Are you...?” She wanted to ask, are you married, are you in love, is there someone to whom I should direct all my hate and enmity? Instead, she asked, “Back to stay?”

  “For a while, at least. Peter gave me a job at the station. Peter Weitman, you remember him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Channel Three at four. I reveal my ignorance on the state of the world.” Another try at a joke, as unsuccessful as the previous one.

  She looked long and hard at him. He had changed, of course he had. The truth was, she thought the changes were for the better. The hair was close cut now, and there was a dusting of gray at the temples, which gave him an air of distinction. The gray-blue eyes that studied her with an intensity that took her breath away were still as piercing as ever and his mouth...she had a sudden memory of his mouth upon her, not simply a mental memory, but a bodily memory, she could practically feel him down there, the way he had.... She felt her cheeks redden as if he could read her thoughts.

  “Catherine,” he blurted out of a sudden, too painfully aware of her expression of embarrassment (was it that awkward for her, just seeing him?). “I’m sorry about everything in the past. But that’s what it is, the past. Surely now we could be friends.”

  Which, she thought, settled that nicely, didn’t it? Put her squarely in her place, in case she might entertain any ideas of something more, of his kiss....

  “I don’t see why we shouldn’t.” She made her voice business-like. “I’ve got to go. It was good seeing you. Welcome back.”

  Just like that, she was gone. He stood and stared after her, watched her dash across the parking lot, saw her climb into her car, waited until it had disappeared into the rain.