“Jonah? I need to go.”
“Wait, wait wait wait—”
“I’ll call you later. Sorry—I—Lou!—”
He continued to say Hello? George? as his ear filled up with dial tone. “Fuck.”
A stair creaked. He turned and saw Hannah in her nightgown.
“That was your dad,” he said. “He says hi.”
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2004.
He cut the day into pieces: doing push-ups, running on the treadmill, reading. He fed the cat and cleaned out the litter box. The snow had begun again, healing footprints and rounding off tire marks. The bedroom windows were locked from the inside. The front door was chained and bolted, as were the side doors. The back door he had fortified with a chair.
Housework didn’t fall under his purview, but it kept him sane, and the place needed it badly: no way would he let everything go to hell, not on his watch. He realized he was beginning to sound like the embittered sergeants from war movies. Charlie’s everwhere, boys. Turn your back he steals your asscheeks. I run my unit with discipline, that’s what separates the dignified from the deadified. Tight ship or we all sink.
He got out the vacuum.
Snow bricked up the windowpanes.
He could not see out.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2004.
George had not called in two days. In the Rolodex Jonah found a number for Bernadette, Hannah’s usual nurse. It had been disconnected.
(nobody nobody’s coming forever and ever)
Hannah watched from the kitchen table as he dealt with the cruise company, trying to get them to patch through a phone call. No, he did not want to send a fax or an e-mail; this was an emergency. Why was it so hard to get through? He already knew the answer: they wanted George to call him at four dollars a minute.
The ship was docking for several hours that afternoon. When the phone rang at five, he readied his most self-righteous, sermonizing tone.
Hello he said. Hello.
The line went dead.
He called Villanueva, who called the Great Neck PD on his behalf, then called back to inform him that a squad car would be by soon.
Great Neck cops were friendly, neighborhood suburban enforcers. They listened to what he had to say and promised to drive by every couple of hours. He wanted to ask them to stay, stay for good, stay the rest of the week.
If anything happens give us a
They wished him a good night and left.
He and Hannah watched several Very Special Episodes of sitcoms that had been off the air for years, their tired jokes made all the more depressing by the knowledge that a high percentage of the child stars delivering those jokes had grown up to become junkies, thieves, or infomercial hosts.
He defrosted an ancient chicken, doused it with teriyaki sauce, and set it in the oven. Within the hour he had produced a kitchen filled with foul, acrid smoke. They made do with microwave mashed potatoes and salad. Tomorrow he would have to go out for supplies.
She dripped raspberry vinaigrette down the front of her T-shirt, a Stüssy logo print that had once belonged to him, and that he’d forgotten about giving her.
HE DREAMT OF A cruise ship. An alarm wailed. The boat was on fire. The cherries jubilee had gone awry; juice gushed from a gash torn in the floor of the ballroom, cresting the smokestacks and drenching the deck. The burning life preservers, passengers screaming, scrumming for lifeboats, skating through hot syrup in untucked tuxedoes and ripped evening gowns. Eve surveyed the scene from the prow, calmly stirring a plate of ice cubes as she smiled at him; he was next to her but unable to reach her, his fingers growing through an infinity, never making contact although she was right there, microns beyond. The ship’s frame belched as it tilted, Dixieland tubas of structural grief. The band played on. The band fiddled as Rome sank. They had run aground. The fire alarm sectioned him into rounds. He slid through sweet boiling cherry muck, the floorboards awash in shoes and twitching rodents and drowned bugs, he slid away from her collecting woodgrain under his nails as he scraped, flailed, fell, all of him was on fire, and the pain was incredible, so complete that it surpassed his capacity to feel it, becoming instead a sense of expansion, of flying apart, a trillion jigsaw molecules strewn wild by the hand of God. He slid faster, the cant worsened, splinters piled up beneath his nails and then his nails tore off simultaneously like eight ripping matchbooks, his fingers came off, too, all he had left were thumbs, and he reached for Eve, fixed in space, smiling, stirring. The ship broke apart as the skin of his palms peeled away hello
The basement was dark. He didn’t know what time it was. He didn’t remember waking, didn’t remember answering his phone but felt it in his hand.
A clipped whisper, don’t wake the baby—“Jonah Stem”—
His head still splashed around in fire and melted sugar.
He wanted to hang up but he knew he should not. Keep her on the line. Find out where she is. Call the cops. He had the Great Neck PD’s number upstairs on the notepad with the flowers. The notepad was upstairs in the kitchen. The kitchen was across the basement, across the living room, through a door, it—the notepad—the phone number—help—was on the kitchen table. He’d left it there after dinner; he had to get it. He should call 911. It was dark. He had to get the number. He stood up and swayed, disoriented.
He groped his way toward the basement steps. Eve was still talking. He became aware of his heart in his bowels, his bowels bearhugging themselves. He was so drowsy and dizzy and sick, he felt along the wall in the dark, the phone pinned between his hot face and the clammy flesh of his shoulder. He heard her talking and she seemed to be inside his head, much closer than she should’ve been, closer than a voice over the phone.
He said, “Where are you.” He reached the top of the steps and opened the basement door. All the living room lights were off; snow barred the moon. He crossed the room, turned on the kitchen light. A crossword puzzle half-concealed the notepad. He would keep her on the line while he dialed 911 from the house phone. He would induce her to reveal her location. The kitchen clock said four eleven. His mind was clearing. He felt up to the task of deceiving her. He said, “Tell me where you are.” She said, “In your heart.”
• 33 •
AS HE STEPPED out of the kitchen, he touched the switch near the door, and the living room blazed bright. He cringed. He had to open his eyes. Groggy and achy and dehydrated and stuffed with dread and unwilling but he had to open his eyes.
Then he did open his eyes, and in doing so took in a number of facts at once, like swallowing an entire meal. Wet footprints ran from the back room across the living room’s hardwood floor, becoming dark spots in the staircase carpeting. He had missed Eve because she had been upstairs. Now she descended.
“Good morning,” she said.
She stopped on the bottom step: barefoot, her outerwear discarded, probably on the floor of Hannah’s room, where she had been. Her lips pale from overexposure. Her hair rigid, like Hannah’s when it froze while she hurried out of the shower and across campus without letting it dry. Once some jackass in her Spanish class broke a chunk of it off, laughed, handed it to her, and said hair you go, forcing her to get a haircut, despite the fact that she’d gotten a haircut four days earlier, an expensive haircut, the haircut she got for the winter formal. Jonah had been furious on her behalf; but Hannah said It’s just hair, it grows back.
In her right hand, Eve gripped a knife.
Upon the mantel a digital camcorder hummed.
She said, “You look like you could use a cup of joe.”
He nodded. He was doing math. The distance to her. The distance to the door. The distance to Hannah. If Train A leaves the station traveling at the speed of fear at the same time Train B leaves its station traveling at the speed of desire while Train C sits upstairs—he had never been good at word problems. He had never been too good at math, in general. He was more of a people person. He was an idiot.
“I’m sorry to wake you so early. I wanted to
get a jump on the day.”
In the time it took him to go back into the kitchen and call the police she could easily reach him; could easily get upstairs to Hannah. Assuming she had not done something already. Train C is idling. Train C is bleeding to death.
“This place is hell to get to,” she said. “The roads are closed. Do you know that? There are no cars out, I doubt if the ambulances are running. I had to walk all the way over. It took me forever. Look.” She held out her hand. It was bluish and trembling. “I’m still not warm. I feel like a zombie, Jonah Stem. I swear I could break off a limb and not feel a thing. That’s funny, isn’t it.”
He could use the phone, come in swinging. Who was he kidding, it was a piece of garbage four inches long. The glass candlestick was on the far side of the room. (The crash in the bushes, snow breaking branches; or feet trampling the dead flowerbed; had he missed her? had she been here? ) He could return to the kitchen and get a knife but he did not want to let her out of his sight. If he turned for—how long? Thirty seconds. That would be enough. She could go back upstairs. She could come after him. Although he did not think that she wanted to hurt him. Why would she? She loved him.
“Well,” she said, “say something.”
The heaviest object within view was a hardcover crossword dictionary, resting on the end table that joined the couch and the loveseat.
“Say something.” She took a step toward him. The skin around her eyes was mottled and puffy, and she shook all over, like the night when she broke the teacup and cut herself. He remembered her blood in the kitchen sink, swirling against the stainless steel, forming fractals and washing away, sucked down into the lead guts of the City, a city feeding on the blood of its residents, and Eve shaking against him. “If you don’t say something I’m going to get angry, say something. Now.”
He said her name.
She stopped shaking then. Her posture restored itself. Her dignity returned. She stepped back, once again blocking the stairs.
“You don’t have to whisper,” she said. “Nobody is asleep.”
He said, “Where’s Hannah.”
“That’s all you can think of? I come all the way out here, to this frozen witch-tit hell, and all you can muster is What’s behind door number two? Surely you jest. Surely you’ve made a mistake. I’ll give you another chance, Jonah Stem. And I’ll give you a hint. Say, ‘Good morning.’”
“Good morning,” he said.
“‘Good morning, Eve.’”
“Good morning, Eve.” He could hit her with a chair.
“‘How are you?’”
“How are you.” He could throw the phone but that would break the phone and dent the wall and then he would be phoneless and she angry. It might distract her. He could—shove the, he could throw the cat at her. He could throw the videocamera. He could charge her straightaway, use his bare hands…. He was unfortunately clear on the unintended consequences of scrapping at close quarters with a knife.
“With a little more pomp, please.”
He could use—
“Again.”
“How are you, Eve.”
“Been better. Been better.” Her laughter was warped and high. “This isn’t working the way I planned. To be honest, I’m not sure how we should proceed. As should be evident, I’ve never been a very good director. My talent is in concept rather than execution. In low light, for example, the autofocus has trouble. Did you notice that on the DVD?”
He nodded.
“We never had a chance to discuss that, did we. What did you think? Tell me. But please, please don’t tell me it was ‘very interesting.’ I really shall weep if you resort to that. Did you think it was interesting?”
“No.”
“What then.”
“Disgusting.”
“Ah,” she said. “I suppose that’s reasonable. Disgust is one of the basic human emotions. You may be familiar with the work of Paul Ekman.”
He said nothing.
“No? Then take notes. Ekman identified anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, and joy as the six basic expressions common to all humans. That’s quite remarkable, don’t you think? Of those six, only one is positive. Four are negative. Surprise could go either way, I suppose. What do you think?”
He said, “I think it could.”
Were he somehow able to get past her and upstairs, they still would not be safe: Hannah’s door didn’t have a lock. George had removed it as per the recommendation of her psychiatrist.
“But back to topic. The film. Did it surprise you.”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
“Oh good. I was hoping it would. Suspense. Film can do that like no other medium. One of its many unique qualities. The written word can never jump out and bite quite the way a picture can. Don’t you agree?”
He said, “Sure.”
“You’re not very talkative, Jonah Stem. I’m going to mark you off for participation.”
He said nothing.
“I majored in film. Did I tell you that? I think I told you I majored in theater and literature. I don’t remember what I told you, but now I’m telling you the truth. Are you listening? What was I saying. Oh yes.” She had begun to shake again. “The other aspect of film I find so beguiling is its eternal present tense. Who’s to say, for example, that you and Raymond aren’t happening, right now, at every instant? Somewhere, on some tape, you are. Over and over again you are killing him, and you will be, forever, until the last copy finds its way to digital dust. And even then it remains in your head. The image lasts forever. That’s why it’s critical to capture my work, by nature ephemeral. Nobody really wants their fifteen minutes to last that long. So I have chosen to work in the medium of memory. Don’t do that.”
“What.”
“Move.”
“I thought you wanted me close to you,” he said.
“Not at the moment,” she said.
He stopped moving.
“I have a confession to make,” Eve said. “I’m a very insecure person.”
He said nothing.
“Were you aware of that?”
“I had an idea.”
“Have you been psychoanalyzing me all this time?”
“No.”
“What else have you come up with?”
“I haven’t been psychoanalyzing you.”
“Well, I’ve been psychoanalyzing you,” she said. “Are you attracted to women with deep insecurities?”
“No.”
“Is Hannah insecure?”
He shook his head.
“It’s hard to tell what she’s like, looking at her. She’s rather different than I expected.”
He said, “What did you expect.”
“To be honest, I don’t know. But not…that.”
He wanted to beat her, which after all was the whole purpose of this exercise. He could not, of course, on principle. Did that matter now? He believed that if he started hitting her, he would keep on hitting her until something or someone intervened. Maybe she wanted him to. He believed he would. Their interests had finally aligned.
“Love,” Eve called, “come down and show yourself.”
There was nothing, nothing, silence. And he envisioned the worst of all worlds, Hannah emptied out like a man in a gutter, like a deflated balloon.
“Hannah, love, come here. Don’t be afraid.”
She appeared at the top of the stairs. The relief of seeing her alive and untouched was overturned by the horror of her proximity to Eve.
“Hannah,” he said. “Go back in your room.”
“Come down here, love, we want to see you.”
“Hannah go back in your room.”
“Hush, we’re old friends, aren’t we, love. And old friends aren’t unfriendly. They come in times of need. There.” Hannah, mouthbreathing, allowed Eve to take her hand and lead her downstairs. “There. Look at you. For the love of love, look at you. I don’t know what I’d imagined she’d
be like, but whatever it was, I was wrong.”
“Hannah.” He did not sound like an authority figure. “Come here right now.”
Eve smiled, brushed Hannah’s bunched cheek, a gesture that should have caused her to shrink back but did not; she appeared mesmerized.
“Please,” he said. “Please go.”
“Stop moving.”
He stopped.
“Apologize.”
“I’m sorry.”
Eve said, “You interrupted me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you. But I’m angry, Jonah Stem. You should have told me sooner. You should have said something sooner, and saved me the trip. Spared my ego.” She drew Hannah into an embrace. “You’re hideous, my love. Shhh, now then, don’t be cross. You don’t even know what I’m saying, do you.” Over Hannah’s shoulder, Eve stared at him. “You should have told me before. You should have shown me a current photograph. So I could see firsthand what a monstrosity she is. You poor girl. You ugly thing.” Both their bodies shaking; or just one. “Mercy of heaven, Hannah, are you not but the most repellent creature in Nassau County. A rancid plaster cast. Compared to you I’m a cherub; I am beauty itself. Compared to you I am a thousand feet tall. You should be locked in a cage and dropped to the bottom of the sea.” She laughed, she was crying. “You’re not like me. We’re not even the same species. You don’t know, do you. How could you. You can’t know anything, for you’re as stupid as you are ugly. You’re not even a person, Hannah. It kills me. You kill me. You can’t be expected to know what it says, when he chooses you. It says a lot—” She broke their embrace, and the hand with the knife moved a lot about how toward the plane where their eyes met; and he saw a lot about how he that they were exactly the same height; that a lot about how he feels at one point in time, in a kinder world, they might have been taken for a lot about how he feels about me sisters.
In his socks he slipped on the hardwood floor, catching himself on the arm of the loveseat with enough time to look up and see the soundless tunnel of Hannah’s face, bathing cherry syrup.
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