“Through the years,” she sang, “we all will be together, If the fates allow …”
Natalie watched Julie humming along to herself. Julie’s eyes glistened, as if filling at the lyric.
MacPherson leaned across and whispered in Natalie’s ear, “Goddamn Christmas songs always make me want to cry. Promise not to tell anybody.” She nodded. “This girl, Susannah Durrell, she was Quirk’s … whatever, girl friend? Pal? I’ve talked to her about the murder, she’s tried to help, but Alicia kept her dealing well apart from her girl friend.” He shrugged. “Anybody look familiar to you?”
She shook her head. “It’s hopeless. I just didn’t see his face.”
Susannah was singing “Fools Rush In.”
“Romance is a game for fools
I used to say …
Then you passed by and here am I
Throwing caution to the winds …”
The onlookers were pretty well mesmerized by the singer. Natalie glanced again at the faces but she knew it was no good. She smiled to herself. Romance doubtless was a game for fools. … From the corner of her eye she saw MacPherson turn slightly to watch her. She shivered, pleasantly, looked at him. What had really been going on with the Christmas tree, the kiss?
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread
And so I come to you, my love,
my heart above my head,
Though I see the danger there
If there’s a chance for me
Then I don’t care …”
Natalie felt him squeezing her hand. “Are you okay, Nat?”
She nodded.
It was eleven-thirty when MacPherson acknowledged that it wasn’t going to work. He told Natalie not to worry and not to feel badly: it had been a crazy long shot. He thanked Julie for coming along, it was his pleasure, then put them in a cab, said he was going back to Lulu’s. He had a few more questions for Susannah.
In the cab the two women rode in silence. Natalie couldn’t get the song out of her mind.
“Though I see the danger there
If there’s a chance for me
Then I don’t care …”
Julie said, “Okay. He’s okay, Natalie.” Then she winked and Natalie felt a momentary warmth, contentment.
Chapter Fifteen
SIR WAS BOUNDING AROUND on the other side of the door when Natalie said good night to Julie and went into her own apartment. She was baby-talking him, feeling him wriggle at her ankles in what was, even for him, an excessive joviality and excitement. She hugged him in the darkness, glad to be home, weary from the long day but still wide awake, ready to watch a movie on the tube or read … and the lights wouldn’t go on.
She heaved a mighty sigh. “Shit, shit, shit! Sir, did you blow out the lights?” Somewhere in the wiring system there was a glitch no one had been able to find. Three or four times a year it blew the fuses and she had to fumble around in the darkness, inevitably spilled the fuses, wouldn’t be able to find the flashlight … why tonight?
She felt her way down the stairway to the living room, across the width of the room, and down three more steps into the brick-walled kitchen, muttering the entire way.
“What’s going on, Sir? It’s all dark, isn’t it? Now where’s the flashlight?” She rooted around in a utility drawer and came up empty. Where was the damn thing? “Remember the Audrey Hepburn movie, Sir? The bad guy opened the refrigerator to use the light inside. …” She stepped on one of Sir’s tennis balls on her way to the refrigerator and swung the door open. As she turned to go back to the utility drawer, she saw something wrong in the living room. A trick of the light maybe. Or had Sir knocked something over? She went to the steps, looked into the shadows, her eyes accustomed now to the dim light from beyond the huge windows.
And then she heard herself scream.
The cry choked her and once it was gone she found she couldn’t repeat it, all the vocal mechanism had frozen, and she stood helplessly for endless seconds staring into the living room.
Across the room, in a silvery shaft of moonlight reflecting off the snowbanks in the courtyard, she saw a man’s leg crossed over a knee, the shoe slowly tapping in the air.
All the muscles in her throat constricted but she couldn’t make a sound, stood shaking, feeling her legs weaken. The foot just kept slowly keeping time. A trench coat was folded across a chair.
She stumbled backward, feeling along the countertop for the row of Heinkel knives in the rack, her arms weak, fingers trembling, her brain shorting out in fear and shock.
Sir was scrambling around her feet and finally she was able to speak. “Sir, get him, Sir … oh no …”Afraid to take her eyes away from the foot in what looked like a polished boot, she found the knives at last and grabbed the biggest handle, yanked it from the rack, and stood in the doorway. She heard herself moaning, not words, just the sound of someone in pain, wounded too often.
His voice was surprisingly hesitant, as if he was as unsure of himself as she was frightened.
“Please, Mrs. Rader,” he said from the shadows, “don’t come at me with that knife. That would just be stupid, and besides, you might stab me, and then think how we’d both feel. Really, think before you try to kill me. Okay?” She heard him swallow hard, heard him moisten dry lips.
“What do you want?” She could barely raise her voice above a whisper.
“Look, before we get to that, you’d better close that refrigerator door, it’s a terrible waste of energy. You can’t be too careful about stuff like that these days.”
“You’re crazy,” she whispered. “No, it’s just that I want to talk, and having that door open pouring energy into the kitchen is a dumb idea. Believe me, Mrs. Rader, I’m not going to hurt you—I’m in more danger here than you are.” He laughed softly and she felt a chill.
Still holding the knife, she went back across the kitchen and closed the refrigerator door. She was getting back her breath and had stopped shaking. Back in the living room, she stood watching him in the moonglow from the snow. He hadn’t moved, his face was still in darkness.
“Look, Mrs. Rader, you can relax. I have to talk to you. Come on,” he wheedled, making fun of her, his manner gaining in confidence, “just relax and grab a chair. I’m really sorry about being here like this but … well, I’ve been watching you and when you went out I thought I’d just come in and wait for you. See, I’ve got this story to tell you. Come on in, sit down.”
She had stepped through the looking glass and she knew it, saw it happening, saw herself leaving the world of normal reason and sanity and entering this … other place. It was like looking up into the grinning face of the man in the shadows. She felt almost reassured, almost at home with the bizarre voice coming from the corner. He hadn’t moved since she’d first seen him: he just spoke quietly, pleaded with her, tried to convince her that she should hear him out. She should have been holding the knife on him while she called the police … or she could just as easily have run up the stairs into the hallway calling for Julie. But she didn’t. Instead, still holding the knife, she went farther into the darkened living room with the snow glistening beyond and the pink glow of the city in the night sky—she went in and sat down on the couch across from her visitor. He seemed supernaturally calm, as if he had once known her a long time ago.
“All right,” she said, “I’m sitting down. I’ve still got the knife—”
“You’ve got a hell of a fierce dog, too. He kept bringing me tennis balls, one after the other, until I got the idea and threw them. Great dog, Mrs. Rader. Really.” His innocent-sounding voice, the ordinariness of his remarks set the fear working in her again: she’d heard that same kind of innocent control, the determination to be pleasant and undisturbed whatever the circumstances. She’d heard it from certifiable crazies, the loons you ran into while living your life. … She felt Sir come in and curl up at her feet.
“What have you got to say?”
“First, let me apologize for the melodrama here tonight. I�
��m going to try and explain myself if you’ll give me the chance. There’s nothing wrong with your fuses, either. I ran all over the place pulling the plugs—I had to have darkness, I can’t let you see me. Try to understand—if I could let you see me, well then, I could just have called you and met you somewhere.” He crossed his legs in the other direction and she tightened her grip on the knife, flinching, half-expecting a lunge, an attack.
“Look,” he went on, “I’m just your typical New Yorker, no matter how hard that is for you to believe right now. My main interest in all this … mess, I guess … is that I don’t want to get any more deeply involved than I am. I’m just a regular guy—you know how it is, I’m like everybody else, lonely as hell most of the time, alienated from the impersonal city, sexually frustrated but I hate the singles’ scene—” He laughed again, softly, as if she weren’t there. “I’ve got a good job, I make pretty good money, the recession doesn’t really bother me much. You hear what I’m saying? I’m just an ordinary person, somebody you might even like if we met somewhere in the normal course of life. …
“And now, suddenly, I’m getting a lock-picking kit from a guy I met at a Giants game one time, I’m breaking into your home here, I’m running around like an idiot throwing tennis balls for your dog and unplugging lamps, scaring myself half to death … and then I naturally scare hell out of you, which was not the point of this whole stupid exercise. But I had to talk to you and I couldn’t let you see me—that’s damn hard to do—”
“No it’s not. You could simply have called me.”
There was a long pause. “Jesus, I swear to God I never even thought of that.” He paused again, considering what might have been. “Still, it’s better to talk like this. I’ve got a fairly weird story to tell you, I think convincing is easier in person—”
“Look,” Natalie said, feeling as if the control of the situation was passing to her, “why don’t you just leave me alone? I couldn’t care less why you threw the gun away, why you had the gun, what you did with it … and I obviously can’t identify you—so just stop following me. Forget about me—”
“Well, all of that is sort of why I’m here. I mean, it is why I’m here.” He cleared his throat like a reluctant after-dinner speaker. “I don’t think you have any idea how hard this is for me to do. Breaking and entering aside, just venturing out to meet somebody—well, sort of socially—it’s a big step for me—”
“I wouldn’t say,” Natalie observed, almost smiling, “that this is a social engagement.”
“Not for you.” He laughed softly. “But like I said, I’m a really lonely guy, quiet guy, I have to talk a lot in my job and be a gladhander type and pick up a lot of tabs—but on my own I’m a loner. And I like it, pretty much. I go to concerts and museums and once in a great while I have a date. But basically I don’t seek contact with people. I get plenty of that in my job. Look, I don’t mean to bore you with all this. I just wanted to put you in the picture, because you don’t have any way of knowing what’s going on and I’m sure you’ve been worried—”
“Listen, you got rid of the gun—you’re in the clear!”
“There you go, that’s the whole point. It wasn’t me, I wasn’t the guy with the gun. Oh, God, no, I didn’t have a gun—”
“Then who are you? Why are you here?”
“It’s about my … well, he’s my roommate, actually. No, really, I can imagine what you’re thinking and I don’t blame you, but I’m not kidding. It was my roommate, he did the number with the gun—what you saw that day.” He sighed. “I’m a nervous wreck, do you mind if I smoke?”
“No, go ahead. There’s an ashtray right there.” She watched the match flare, only caught the planes and shadows of his face, saw the glitter of his glasses. “Would it be all right with you if I turned on the Christmas-tree lights?”
“Oh, sure, I guess so.” She knelt on the floor and felt around for the plug and the extension, fitted them together, and the soft glow of red and blue and green lights flickered on. “I still can’t see you, if your anonymity is so important.”
He laughed softly, ruefully. “Oh, it is, it is.”
“Back to your roommate,” she prompted. She was getting to the heart of something, felt a weird elation. He might be telling the truth. He certainly sounded confused and honest enough to have gotten himself into such a ridiculous situation.
“Ah, my roommate—he’s not such a bad guy, actually, though I don’t really know him terribly well. About six months ago, we met at a party on some guy’s boat, I had to go for business reasons. Anyway, that’s irrelevant. We’ve got a loft down in Chelsea, he’s pretty good with tools and did a lot of the work on it himself—his jobs are pretty irregular—”
“What does he do?”
“Oh, I can’t tell you. I’ve got to play this pretty close to the vest. Anyway, we’re a couple of not-very-swinging bachelors, like those jerks on ‘Saturday Night Live’ years ago. Which is how I usually spend Saturday nights, watching the damn television. I don’t know, maybe you can’t relate to all this loneliness stuff, the life I guess you lead—”
“Are you kidding?” She laughed, somehow enjoying this strange Woody Allen kind of conversation. “I’m just as lonely as you are. You get used to it, don’t you?”
“Anyway, my roommate got mixed up with some very odd people. He got into all sorts of weird shit that scared me half to death. I mean, you know … cocaine, sexual stuff, home movies, the works … and he found out some things about some drug dealers and hoods that he wasn’t supposed to find out—I don’t know what, he talked about snuff movies and getting little girls for big shots to use, the worst stuff you can imagine. So, anyway, these people started threatening him … they weren’t the kind of people who spend much time kidding around, y’know?” He took a deep breath and ground out his cigarette. She felt sorry for him.
“Do you know who these bad guys were?” She blinked away the image of the dead woman, Alicia Quirk. …
“Christ, no. I tried to divorce myself from the whole business—I thought about just moving out, I didn’t want to be there when they came for him with the muscle. And my friend was getting pretty scared and one day he came home with a gun, see. He said he was going to be ready for these bastards.”
“It sounds like a movie,” she said.
“Well, now the gun’s gone, he told me he threw it away. He was really weirding out on me, doing lots of cocaine, he had more around the loft than he’d ever had before. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. Then he reads this thing in the newspaper, that Garfein guy’s column, he shows it to me and he’s got this dumb, scared grin on his face and he tells me that it was him that you saw throw the gun away. He said he looked up and saw you in the window and he doesn’t know what to do, he’s scared shitless that you saw him well enough to recognize him—”
“But wait a minute,” she interrupted. “What if I could? When would I ever see him again? What are the chances?”
“Well, that’s sort of the point—I guess I’m going to have to tell you this part.” His voice was shaky: he sounded like her little brother years ago confessing an indiscretion to her, afraid of giving something away but having to tell someone. She wanted to pat his hand and tell him it was all right, she’d take care of things for him. “See, you might very well recognize him on TV He’s an actor, he’s worked in a couple of soaps, a couple of TV movies, he works off-Broadway every so often … and he does TV commercials. He did one for some kind of motor oil and one for a life-insurance company and one for maple syrup, he’s a good actor, got a very ingratiating quality about him, and he looks different every time you see him. Anyway, he thought you might see him and something would click in your mind and you’d tell the cops that he’s the guy … so he’s been following you around, trying to figure out what he should do about you. …”
She saw his shoulders shrug heavily and slump. He leaned forward in the chair. When he spoke again his voice was still shaky. “He’s so scared an
d I’ve been worried about him, worried he might go off the deep end and then … then, for Christ’s sake, I started getting worried about you. I mean, if he thinks you can identify him, then I don’t know what he might do. Let’s face it, he’s not the most rational, the stablest guy in the world, and you’re just an innocent bystander and what if he decided he had to do something about you?”
Suddenly she realized he was crying. He was afraid and she knew what he felt, the vulnerability to a situation, a person, he couldn’t control. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, his head shaking. “God, I’m sorry, but I’m just an ordinary guy and this whole thing has been driving me nuts … my heart gets to pounding in the middle of the night and I can’t sleep when he’s not in his room and I just wander around that loft wondering what he’s doing. … Please, forgive me, you must think I’m a real creep, but I didn’t know what else to do—”
She went to him and knelt in front of him, took his hands in hers, and started to tell him that she understood, that she’d also felt the awful, consuming anxiety that ate you up and reduced you to a sobbing shell. He nodded, wiped his eyes with one hand. “Here I sit, thirty-one years old, crying my eyes out—fuckin’ idiot!” He tried to laugh. “And then I break in here and scare you—somebody ought to lock me up!”
They both laughed.
“Well, Merry Christmas,” he said.
She stretched up and kissed his cheek, not thinking what she was doing, or why, just reacting, empathizing with the man. Softly he took her face between his palms and kissed her lips and she felt the sudden surge of desire, returned his kiss, opened her mouth and drew him inside. She wanted him and she heard herself breathing too hard, heard him whispering in her ear, telling her what he wanted with a sudden, driven urgency, and then she had him in her hand and was stroking the wetness, inflaming him, feeling his fingers at her nipples, stroking her through the material, tugging gently as they hardened, feeling the heat and the flood between her legs.
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