Run Jane Run

by Maureen Tan

  * * *

  Alex left for work.

  I spent the afternoon writing.

  I moved into the library at the front of the house, turned on the gas fireplace to take the chill from the room, set my laptop on the oak table, turned on the brass desk lamp, and settled into one of the comfortable leather chairs. I stared at the glowing screen, cursing the electronic page for being as difficult to fill as its fiber-based template.

  Sometimes I hated writing.

  Most often, it was merely difficult. Pulling words into sentences and building sentences into coherent paragraphs was like walking through the thick, sweet sorghum Alex poured over his corn cakes. Progress was made through habit and persistence. Motivation came from without— my publisher’s deadlines, my agent’s suggestions, my readers’ expectations.

  At other times, the words flowed onto the page, my writing an impulse driven by need. I understood that need. My writing enabled me to excise wounds, exorcise demons, impose order on chaos. The best of Andrew Jax’s world was created from the worst of mine, and the resulting scenes were the ones that readers related to, that reviewers pointed to. Book after book, the reviews repeated the same descriptions. “Emotional.” “Bloody and brutal.” “Raw.” “The kind of story you’d expect from Murdock.” Whether the commentary was a blessing or a curse depended on the reviewer.

  I typed a sentence. Highlighted and deleted it. Typed another sentence, did the same. I spent half an hour accomplishing nothing, then decided to blame lack of inspiration on hunger. It was as good an excuse as any.

  I went to the kitchen, fixed myself a tuna salad sandwich, and stood at the back door as I ate it. My gaze wandered along the flagstone path, following it across the fenced garden, beneath a rose arbor, and through a dogeared gate. The path wound through flowerless clusters of magnolias, oleanders, and dogwoods, eventually ending at the treeline. There, a clearing between two massive oaks marked the beginning of a trail that led down to the Ogeechee River and the sturdy dock that Alex and his father had built.

  Alex loved that patch of swampy forest. When we walked there together, he would often tell me of his childhood, of shrieking along the paths with a mob of children as they pretended to be guerrilla forces escaping into the sanctuary of their swamp. Alex had grinned sheepishly, confessed that he and Tommy had often bloodied each other’s noses fighting for the privilege of being Francis Marion, aka the Swamp Fox. The Robin Hood-style hero—whom I’d never read of in our history books—led a band of American revolutionaries against the villainous British Redcoats.

  Despite my dismay that my ancestors were cast as the bad guys, I’d enjoyed Alex’s stories. But his childhood playground frightened me, as had the dark forest behind my grandfather’s house.

  The first time I’d peered down the gloomy path to the Ogeechee River and felt only terror, I’d convinced myself that a recent assignment in Belfast—no less nightmarish than childish imagination—had compounded an atavistic fear. Nearly dying in Alex’s woods had simply reinforced that fear. In the months before I’d left Savannah, I’d attempted, with limited success, to pacify unreason by frequently walking alone through the swampy woodland. Now I suspected that my fear had its roots in Greece, beneath a forest of twisted olive branches.

  I stared out at the tree line behind Alex’s house, studying the ragged horizon created by the tall oaks and pines and the scrub between them. Then I brought my focus forward, to the shorter, wider magnolias spotting the swatch of yard beyond the house. If I looked at a particular grove off to the left, I could almost imagine that they’d been planted in rows. Long cultivated rows with the sun dappling the earth between them.

  Row after row of olive trees. Short and twisted.

  Dizzily, abruptly, I found myself beneath them.

  * * *

  Running.

  Running away as fast as I could.

  He’d shoved my face against the glass, forced me to see—

  Something horrible. Something I didn’t want to remember.

  Then he’d swung me around, slammed me back against the car, pinned me there with his hand around my throat.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  Couldn’t move.

  I stared up into eyes that were yellow, flat, deadly. Like the copperhead’s.

  “Talk about this and you’ll end up like them.”

  Then he let me go.

  I ran.

  Ran until I stumbled and fell.

  I scrambled forward on all fours, scraped my bare legs against the rocky soil, hid behind the nearest tree. I huddled there, fist against my mouth, listening, not making a sound.

  Birds sang in the distance. A gentle wind rustled the leaves overhead. Sunlight danced on the dry earth.

  * * *

  “Yellow eyes,” I murmured.

  Had I actually remembered seeing those eyes or simply assigned them to the face of my nightmare?

  Memory or imagination?

  I couldn’t tell.

  But I was angry anyway. Furious.

  I wrenched my eyes away from the trees, sought focus for my unspent rage. At the extreme corner of the grounds, a long six-foot-tall mound of dirt and stacked bales of hay created an ideal shooting range. I’d often practiced there.

  As I looked at it, I could almost feel the Walther in my hand.

  My hand flexed as I imagined myself taking careful aim at a man with yellow eyes.

  I would pull the trigger.

  Again and again and again.

  I would kill him.

  Again and again and again.

  Enough!

  I took a deep breath, curbed runaway emotions with a dose of logic.

  I had no weapon. No Walther. Not even my tiny Beretta.

  My hand and arm relaxed, the muscles along my shoulder and spine followed.

  I began thinking about a weapon, not a target.

  It was easy enough to buy something locally. There were people in Georgia even Alex didn’t know of. Perhaps I should make a few phone calls, and, after that, take a drive—

  I shook my head again, recognizing the impulse for what it was.

  Anxiety. The need to run away, to escape. Now.

  A bad impulse.

  I would follow my plan.

  I would control my emotions.

  I would sit down and write.

  I forced myself to finish my sandwich, poured myself some orange juice instead of more coffee, then took the large glass back with me to the library. I returned to my chair, returned my fingers to the keyboard and my eyes to the blank screen.

  I spent a few minutes stretching my right arm, took a bathroom break, downed a couple of aspirins, and returned to the computer. I found a thought and spun it into a scene.

  “Screwing is one thing. Marriage is another alto gether.”

  Jax sat with his chair tipped back, feet on the windowsill. The trio of pigeons just beyond the soles of his wing-tip shoes focused their beady eyes on him and cooed encouragingly. He often shared his donuts with them, so they always listened pa tiently.

  That their loyalty was so easily bought put the pi geons on Jax’s short list of valued confidants. They shared the list with Fast-Hands Eddie, who was a deaf-mute and a damned good pickpocket, and Jamie McMurphy, who had grown up with Jax at St. Vincent’s Home for Boys. In spite of the good Sis ters’ best efforts, Jamie had not gone on to become a priest. He was the best second-story man on Chicago’s North Shore.

  As Jax tossed the last piece of a raspberry-filled jelly donut into the pigeons’ midst, it occurred to him that his short list now included Millicent.

  “A mistake,” he told the pigeons.

  That mistake, he was sure, had led to the shocking thought he’d had earlier that morning. He’d been lying with his lean body curved around Millie’s softer, rounder form and his left hand tucked into the warm nook between her breasts. The thought of marriage had crept, unannounced, into the midst of the slightly smug contentment he always felt after they’d mad
e love.

  “Fucking impossible!”

  His vehemence startled the pigeons into a brief retreat.

  “What’s impossible?”

  Jax put his feet on the floor, swung around on the chair’s squeaky metal casters, looked beyond the battered grey metal desk and a pair of thread bare orange client chairs, across the stretch of cracked green linoleum. Millicent stood in the doorway that connected his office to the reception area. He’d been so preoccupied that he hadn’t heard her come in.

  Dangerous if it’d been Marty Morris instead of her, he thought. Then I’d have been too dead to worry about marriage.

  That snapped his thoughts back to Millicent.

  She wore a sky-colored dress that clung to her body and matched her eyes. Her blonde hair, which had slipped like raw silk through his fingers the night before, was pulled back in a neat French twist. She smelled faintly of lilacs.

  Jax couldn’t help himself. He imagined her naked. Which reminded him of how he’d left her that morn ing. Which made him think of marriage. Which made him angry all over again.

  She crossed the room, graceful and completely innocent despite her walk and the three-inch-tall fuck-me heels she wore. She dropped the morning mail in the wire In basket at the corner of his desk, leaned forward, and landed a kiss on Jax’s fore head.

  “What’s impossible?” she repeated.

  For a moment, he couldn’t remember. He shook his head, peeled his eyes from an up-close-and- per sonal view of her cleavage, and struggled to recap ture his anger.

  “Marriage.”

  He said it aggressively, wanting an excuse to argue with her.

  She flashed him a bright smile.

  “You’re right. Now about the Winslow case . . .”

  The words seemed to flow from nowhere, one thought leading smoothly to the next. Like beads onto a waxed string. I finished the scene, but the mood remained. The odd detachment. The ability to convert thought into words with no conscious filter in between.

  I exploited it.

  I began typing a story that was not about Andrew Jax or his girlfriend, Millicent. It had no action sequences in the usual third-person. There was nothing in the writing that my alter ego, Max Murdock, would ever claim.

  It was not a work of fiction.

  I wrote from a child’s perspective.

  I wrote as Jane Nichols.

  I wrote what I feared.

  And what I absolutely remembered.

  * * *

  It was to have been a holiday—an unexpected treat.

  Why not let her come to Delphi with us? my mother had said. As it is, we spend too little time together.

  My father had agreed.

  I sat beside our driver, Stavros. He was my friend, always teaching me things like how to wax a car properly and how to say important things in Greek. My parents talked quietly together in the backseat.

  From a side road, a battered black Mercedes pulled out in front of us.

  Stavros tapped the brakes, avoiding a collision.

  The old car accelerated away, belching dark smoke from its exhaust. But the steep, narrow road was too much for it. The old car slowed.

  Within moments, only a car’s length separated us from the Mercedes’ rusty bumper. There was no room to pass unless the Mercedes pulled over.

  Stavros cursed loudly, laid on the horn.

  I listened carefully, memorizing these new Greek words.

  The Mercedes drifted toward the right shoulder.

  Stavros accelerated, nosing our car forward.

  The Mercedes abruptly changed direction, rammed us, and sent our car careening across the road.

  The silver crucifix that dangled from the rearview mirror danced at the end of its chain, glinting in the sun.

  Stavros hauled on the steering wheel. The car skidded out of control anyway. It crashed through the twisted branches of the olive trees bordering the road and stalled.

  I was thrown from the seat, slammed against the dashboard, and landed in a heap on the floor. My face was just inches from Stavros’s polished black boots. His right foot moved frantically as he tried to restart the car.

  Behind me, the door opened.

  I had forgotten to lock it.

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  A man leaned into the car. A stocking mask hid his face. He held a gun, aimed it past me, fired. Something warm and sticky hit my cheek and neck, my shoulders and arms.

  The man pointed the gun into the backseat.

  My father shouted, “No, not my—”

  The man fired twice. His second shot silenced my mother’s screams.

  I tried to get away, tried to claw my way past Stavros’s unmoving legs.

  The man grabbed the back of my dress, dragged me from the car, dropped me to the ground.

  I stared upward, into the gun’s barrel.

  “Sorry, love,” he said. “You weren’t supposed to be here.”

  * * *

  At three o’clock, I saved the document, called it simply “Jane.” Then I closed it. Fewer than five hundred words, and I was exhausted.

  I didn’t reread it. Couldn’t.

  I tucked the electronic arrow down into the lower lefthand corner of the screen, cueing the screen saver to come on. It was an animated Cheshire cat that I’d found somehow appealing when I’d seen it demonstrated at the electronics store. The cat faded, one body part at a time, until it was merely a smile, then gradually reappeared. Though I hadn’t tinkered much with the speed with which the cat vanished and reappeared, I’d made one modification to the screen saver. I’d turned off the babbling, manic laughter that accompanied the cat’s antics.

  I stood, rolled my shoulders, and walked away from the computer.

  20

  The fog rolled in after sunset.

  Alex was out in it.

  He’d called on his cellular phone, apologized for being late, and then described an upscale neighborhood on the eastern city limits bounded by Gwinnett, Bonaventure, and Pennsylvania.

  “I’m on my way to a whorehouse.”

  “So glad you told me. Remember, use a condom.”

  For a moment, nothing but the wash of static carried over the line. Then there was a quick snort of laughter.

  “Wouldn’t have known about the place, except one of the johns had a conscience. Called 911 from a pay phone. Seems he walked into the house on Kentucky Avenue and noticed several of the girls were just kids. So he walked out again. Dispatch said the guy was really upset, kept sayin’ he’d just gotten into town and all he was after was some good, clean fun. What the hell did he expect?”

  I mimicked his accent.

  “Ah know what you mean. Damn tourists! Should have ’em all shot at the Chatham County line.”

  He laughed, which had been my intent.

  “Gotta go,” he said. “I’ll be home as soon as I can. And I’ll bring dinner with me.”

  * * *

  By seven o’clock, the fog was so thick that I couldn’t see beyond the house. It reminded me of the fogs that sometimes enveloped London—swirling, vaguely romantic, tremendously appealing. I decided to enjoy it from the front steps.

  Actually, I used the fog as an excuse to have the cigarette I’d denied myself all day long.

  The closet in the library was deep and narrow, lined with pegs, and cluttered with shoes, outerwear, and odd pieces of sports equipment. Just inside the door, a dark green, oilskin drover’s coat hung between a pair of dusty golf shoes and a light blue nylon windbreaker.

  I took the drover’s coat from the hook, slipped into it. I’d seen Alex wear the coat when he fixed the car or did yard work during inclement weather. It was patched in several places, and its lower sleeves were smudged with grease. Comfortably large on Alex, the coat was huge on me.

  I did up the buttons, briefly turned my head into the corduroy collar, caught a whiff of the fabric. It smelled, lightly and not unpleasantly, of wood smoke and fish—a smell that seemed almost part of the f
ibers and suggested camping trips long past.

  For some reason—and certainly not because of the smell—the coat reminded me of the tweedy woolen jacket my grandfather wore when he worked in his rose garden. I shoved my pack of cigarettes and a lighter into one of the coat’s deep pockets, turned off the alarm, slipped out the front door, and pulled it shut behind me.

  I stood for a moment in the shadow of the verandah, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. Satisfied that I was alone, I sat on the top step with my back against one of the house’s massive columns. Moisture condensed on my face, a pleasant contrast to the warm, dry cocoon the coat created.

  My light flared briefly in the darkness, reflecting eerily off wisps of fog. I lit my cigarette, inhaled a lungful of nicotine, felt my muscles relax as I exhaled. After that, I smoked slowly, savoring the treat, pleased that I’d resisted the temptation to break my resolution of months earlier and smoke in the house.

  Old, bad habits would be too easy to slip back into. Earlier novels had been written with a full coffee cup and an overflowing ashtray beside my typewriter. I’d given up my typewriter and my cigarettes. Next, I was sure, I would be convinced to drink decaffeinated coffee. One step beyond that, and writing would be impossible. Perhaps I’d take up piano.

  Near the end of my cigarette, I stood and walked down the steps. Beside the steps were flower beds bordered by stacked flagstones. In the warmer weather, the beds overflowed with bright perennials—bleeding hearts, foxglove, coral bells, and bellflowers—in shades of white, pink, and lavender.

  I bent briefly, snubbed my cigarette in the damp mulch between some spiky clumps of ornamental grass. Then, almost without thinking, I field stripped it—crushed the butt between thumb and forefinger, tearing the paper. I scattered the shreds of tobacco, rolled the paper into a tiny wad, then tucked it and the filter into my pocket.

  I’d acquired my smoking habit not in front of a typewriter, but during the long weeks of a fruitless stakeout. As the match had flared in the shelter of her hands, the operative from whom I’d bummed my first fag offered a warning along with a light.