by Don Sloan
“I guess maybe bread would be a good idea,” he said and signaled the waitress once again. With that taken care of, he repeated his question. “Again, how is this trip both better and worse than you had expected? What were you expecting, anyway?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, running a slim hand through her pixie haircut. “I guess you heard me mention Rob’s name earlier. He was a long-time friend with whom I had been involved and―well, we’re not involved anymore. So, this trip to the shore after all this time―I guess I was hoping to prove something to myself.”
“What? That you can exist without him?” Nathan sipped his wine and looked into Sarah’s blue eyes. “You can, you know.”
“I’ve been single a long time, Nathan,” Sarah said. “I really thought the relationship with Rob would be different and that I wouldn’t have to be single anymore. I guess I’m just a little tired of being alone and a little afraid of what lies ahead. Does that make any sense?” She had made the last statement with a surprising amount of heat, and she now wondered if she was talking too much.
“Well, I think I know what you’re talking about. Being single is both good news and bad news as we get older. The good news is that when we work late and everyone at the office is calling their spouses to apologize for being late, we don’t have to do that. And the bad news is, nobody cares. Does that kind of sum it up? It’s aloneness that sometimes has its appeal, but it’s aloneness that can sometimes turn into loneliness. I go through that a lot, but I try not to let it get to me. I choose the lifestyle I’ve got, and when I’m ready to change it―or find someone I want to spend the rest of my life with―I’ll change it. ”
Sarah looked into her wineglass. “You make it sound easy, like the choices we make at a restaurant. Tonight, for example, I’m letting you decide what I eat. Usually I’m pretty hard to get along with about something even as minor as that. And yet the funny thing is, I don’t really know that it matters what I choose, as long as I’m the one choosing it.”
“Well, that’s it, isn’t it?” Nathan paused, and then went on. “We all want what we want when we want it. But some people are able to either mask what they really want, so the other person in a relationship can’t see it, or they truly don’t care and would just as soon have the other person make all the decisions. Seems like it’s hardly ever a perfect blend. I could force you to decide what to eat, I guess. Would that help?”
She smiled again, another real, down-deep smile. “Touche.” She raised her glass. “So. What are we going to eat?”
“Let’s see. First wine, then bread, then spinach. I think we have our priorities on the right track so far. Let’s get through the salad and see where to go from there. We might just go straight to dessert. I hear that most women never met a dark chocolate they didn’t like. Is that true?”
“You’ve been watching too much Oprah. We also like regular chocolate.”
This time Nathan laughed, and the talk drifted into various channels. Through the rolls (they consumed an entire basket), salad, and dessert (a slice of chocolate mousse pie, which they split), and the bottle of wine, they never talked about the strange two days and nights they had spent thus far in Cape May. They could have been any happy couple, brought together by circumstance and united by common purpose, finding similarities where none existed before and enjoying differences that made each one appreciate the other more. This time, after dinner, they walked home slowly in the cold moonlight. The storm had moved out to sea and stars once more shone beautifully in the heavens.
“Nathan?”
“Hm-mm.”
“Do you believe in an afterlife of some kind―in life beyond death?”
Nathan hesitated. “I guess so. My theology is pretty complicated, although my upbringing was mostly Methodist. Why?”
Sarah shrugged. “I guess that’s the one thing that keeps me pretty well-rooted despite all these weird dreams. That in believing in an afterlife, like any good Catholic girl, I am disbelieving any other alternative to these dreams and strange happenings.”
“Well, if you want to get into this kind of discussion, I suppose we could go down several paths. But I’m not sure we wouldn’t just wind up at the same place ultimately: what do we believe in right now as far as the eternal fight between good and evil; and what role do we have to play in that fight, whether we want to or not?”
“And do we get a vote on that role?” Sarah asked. “That’s the one that’s always bothered me. Do we get to choose, or do we just play out the scenes that have been written for us?”
“Putting it that way begs the question of whether or not we have any control over the outcome of anything, and I guess I just can’t accept that passive a role. Probably too pig-headed, I guess, to turn over that kind of power to anyone else, much less a Higher Power, be it good or bad.” He considered for a moment, then went on: “I’d fight tooth and nail if anyone tried to step on my rights to choose my destiny, and I’d probably do the same for anyone I cared about.”
Sarah stopped on the sidewalk and suddenly pulled his face down to hers, giving him a quick kiss on the lips. Nathan was stunned.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“Insurance. I might be a damsel in distress sometime and I think I’d want you rescuing me.” She said it lightly, but underneath was fear―of exactly what yet, she did not know.
He laughed and gave her a brief hug. “You know, meeting you has just about turned my vacation upside down. I had a whole list of stuff to do, and now I just want to be with you all the time. It sounds funny, but it’s almost as though I’m meant to be here―maybe to look out for us both.” He had never considered himself a knight in shining armor, or any kind of hero for that matter. But he also had never run from a fight, in school or any other time. He guessed it was the blood of his Confederate relations−he was the great-great-grand nephew of the Civil War fighter Nathan Bedford Forrest.
They continued walking, taking their time and talking about many things, until they found themselves back on Beach Avenue. The sun had long since gone down, and the breakers crashed in the starlight. Nathan stopped and drew Sarah close. She did not resist.
“You know, this whole hero thing is a little much for me, and I’m still not sure there’s anything to be afraid of.” he said, “But I can promise that whatever the future holds here, I won’t let you come to any harm. Do you believe that?” He searched her eyes, and found them yielding and soft.
“Yes,” she said quietly, and they kissed again―this one a long, lingering kiss, like in the movies. The moment was perfect and neither of them wanted it to end. She was beautiful out here in the open, under the rich canopy of stars. “Isn’t this your house we’re standing in front of?” Nathan said.
Sarah looked up, surprised. “It is. But I don’t remember leaving a light on upstairs. Would you mind coming in for a minute?”
“Of course,” Nathan said, and she unlocked the front door, leaving it slightly ajar as they entered. To their right, no light was on in the dining room. Sarah went through and turned on lights as she went through the hallway, parlor, dining room and kitchen. When the downstairs was ablaze, they went upstairs―and found the light on in her bedroom.
“I could have sworn I never turned that on this morning,” Sarah said. “This is getting to be a little too much like that movie Poltergeist to me.”
Nathan wrinkled his brow and scratched his thick head of curly hair. “Is this one yours?” He reached around the corner of the doorway and flipped the overhead light off, then back on. Nothing seemed out of place: the four-poster bed was made up and all the furniture was in its proper place. “You’re a pretty neat housekeeper, Sarah.”
She was glad she had cleaned the room up before going downstairs to clean that morning. “I have my moments. Come on, Sir Lancelot,” and she dragged him by the arm back out into the hall, where she insisted on going to every room and turning on each light. Every room was normal, and nothing was out of place.
> “Looks clear to me,” Nathan said. “Are you okay with it?”
“I guess so. I could have sworn that I never turned that bedroom light on this morning, but I’ll just chalk it up to one more weird happening here. They’re starting to add up.”
Nathan smiled his boyish grin and and opened his eyes wide in mock terror. “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night―good Lord deliver us.”
She punched him lightly on the arm. “Where did you hear that? Sounds like old English, or something from school.”
“I used to read a lot of horror fiction and someplace I ran across that. It might have been Ray Bradbury.”
“Who?”
“You’d have liked him. Wrote a lot of great fiction, not so much about horror as about imagined horror. He could make even the most innocuous things curl your hair. Like your bedroom slippers there.” Nathan pointed to a pair of fuzzy pink slip-ons that Sarah had by the bed. “He could make a series of events and circumstances seem so real in a story that you wouldn’t be a bit surprised when the slippers suddenly crept up the bed and smothered the person sleeping in the bed―they’d both just wedge themselves in, and block breathing while the person’s body flopped and flipped and tried to get up. But when it was over, they’d still be just as dead.”
Nathan recounted this while looking at the slippers and was appalled to turn to Sarah and find her trembling.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry, Sarah. Jeez, I never was very good at saying the right thing at the right time.”
“It’s okay,” Sarah said shakily. “I must really be jumpy at the thought of spending another night here alone. I don’t want any more bad dreams. Do you hear that, house?” she suddenly yelled. “I’m tired of all this and just want things to go back to normal. Keep your horrible secrets to yourself!”
“Sarah,” Nathan said quietly.
“I just want things to be normal again,” she said, sobbing. Nathan folded her into his arms.
“Hey, remember what I said about not letting anything happen to you?”
She looked at him with big, liquid eyes and nodded.
“Well, I meant that. I’ll sleep down on the sofa in the parlor tonight, if that will make you feel better.”
“Oh, Nathan, you don’t have to―”
“What, you’d rather stay here by yourself? Remember, I said you don’t have anything to prove. We’ll leave every light in the place on. I’m not much of a hero, and I can’t stop dreams from happening. But I think I could be of some help from any kind of normal intruder. Not that I think that’s going to happen. I just want you to be okay.”
She hesitated, then nodded, clinging to him like a child. “I really don’t know what’s happening,” she said.
“Well, let’s go downstairs for a while, build the fire up, and not tell ghost stories,” he said, taking her by the arm and descending the stairs. “And, I think I’ll lay off the wine tonight as well. I never was that much of a drinker.”
She laughed. “It’s just as well. I meant to go to the market today and buy more, but never made it. How about some hot chocolate?”
“That would be perfect,” Nathan said, and bent to build another fire.
Chapter 9
my dear, do you know what is happening?
I’m sure it’s something delicious
it reminds me of the time back in the late 1890s when two children turned the root cellar into a hidden playroom―only, the plays they performed were dark and full of hatred and fear
oh, my dear. And just children, you say?
they all worked in town at odd jobs and the mother took in sewing to keep them in food and the people of the town took pity on them until strange things started happening like
fire, after fire, after fire in the town’s businesses. Usually they were the ones run by Italians―you know, they’re not much better than the Jews. And they suspected the girl, who was about fourteen, but it couldn’t have been her because she was always down here, lighting candles and reciting from a book she had found.
a book, you say
yes, and the book had symbols and prayers and chants that she and others who dressed in black joined her. They brought chickens at first and then pigs―my how they would squeal―and then the townspeople got together and forced them out of town. I’m not sure where they lived then. But
the locks were changed on the house and no one was allowed inside for a very long time
yes, dear, we know
and I was so lonely. Only the keeper would pass through from time to time and speak words of comfort to me, saying another time would come
and it has, hasn’t it my dear?
yes, darling. Yes, it has.
March, 1908
The sun is beginning to set over the Hudson River, throwing out rays of red and gold that bounce among the buildings in lower Manhattan and it lights, for a brief moment, the alleyway that leads through a clothesline-strewn neighborhood of Italian-Americans.
Carlos Androcci has thrown on his ragged topcoat and is stepping out of a dingy doorway into the fading daylight. He has worked hard that day, one of more than a hundred and fifty workers on the massive construction project that will be called the Queensboro Bridge (and, still later, the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge). He has spent hours climbing the girders and steel cables like an ape, making fast the moorings on the island side of the river. He is tired, and wants nothing more than to slip into Shaunessy’s bar and wash the dust from his throat with some good Irish whiskey. He flips his collar up against the lingering chill of a late winter day and turns the corner onto 14th Street. A young woman with dark hair and striking features steps into his path. Androcci maneuvers to get by her, but she sidesteps directly into his path once again.
“Scuzi,” he says, thinking she is a neighbor that he does not recognize. But when she looks him straight in the eye, he knows she means to speak to him. He smiles. “Do we know each other?”
She smiles back, a disarming and coquettish feature on a very pretty face. “Not yet. But I’m hoping to change that.”
Androcci has gotten paid that day and the money is burning hot inside his front trouser pocket. He knows many prostitutes in New York, but none as attractive as this one. “What is your name?” he asks.
She takes a step closer to him. He can smell strong but pleasant perfume. “Does it really matter?” she says. “Can you buy me a drink? I know a good place.”
Androcci hesitates. He has his heart set on Shaunessy’s, but he doesn’t want to be seen in his neighborhood bar with a streetwalker. Too many tongues would wag and he doesn’t need that. He looks up and down the avenue and then holds out his arm. She puts her hand lightly through the crook and clasps his big forearm firmly. The fire spreads from his wallet to his loins, and he looks forward eagerly to the time he will spend with this one. She cannot be more than twenty years old, at the most. He looks quickly at her lightly powdered face and bright red lipstick. She is genuinely pretty, walking in step with him. He feels as proud as a new husband, steering this young woman down the crowded avenue.
“Turn here,” she says as they get to the corner of Grand Street and Elizabeth Street. They turn right on Elizabeth Street and walk two blocks to Kenmare Street, where they turn right. On this street are many restaurants and fancy bars, not the kind Androcci usually chooses. But it is a special night, he decides. The bridge will be finished by early next year, they say, and he has been congratulated that very day by none other than the mayor himself, who toured the project and showered accolades on all the workers. This bridge will be among the grandest in the United States and even the world, he had said, and Androcci’s chest swells at the memory. He is proud to be a part of American history, and he is glad to make his family proud as well. Family means a lot to him. Family had taken him in after he had fled Cape May twenty-five years earlier, and sheltered him and kept his secret safe. But now he felt he could hold his head up again, and indulge himself in the simpl
e pleasure this young girl could afford him. He is fifty-five years old but still strong as a young ox. Tonight he feels he is in the prime of his life, and feels wonderful, never better. “Where are we going?” he asks.
“In here,” the woman says, and waits for him to open the door of a small but elegant bar and restaurant named Pauly’s. They walk in, hand their coats to a red-haired hat-check girl behind a mahogany half-door, and walk into the restaurant. A maitre d’ immediately seats them at a table for two near the back, sliding the table out so they are both seated side by side on a plush velvet bench. He gives a menu to each one of them, but Androcci hands them back.
“Just Irish whiskey for me, and for you?” he turns to the young woman.
“I’ll take a gin and tonic,” she says, never taking her eyes off Androcci. A flame burns behind her dark lashes and she casually places her hand on his upper thigh, stroking it gently under the white tablecloth. Androcci feels his erection at once, as though it has stiffened in a second. The maitre d’ disappears and Androcci turns to look at his companion in the dim light. “So, what is your name, my pretty young friend, and why am I so lucky as to have your company this night?”
“My name is Stella,” she says, “and I already know yours. You are Carlos, the strongest man on the lower East side. It is said that you can bend a steel bar with your bare hands. Is that true?”
“They exaggerate,” he says. “My strength is only that of an ordinary man. But I have other talents.”
“I can’t wait to find out what those are,” she says, her white teeth gleaming in the candlelight from the table. A waiter appears with the drinks and she takes her glass and tinks it against his. “To chance meetings,” she says.
“To bona fortuna meetings,” he says, and clinks his glass against hers. He takes a long pull on the whiskey and lets the fiery beverage seep down and warm the inside of his stomach. She sips her gin and tonic and watches him over the rim of her frosted glass. He pulls a cigarette from a pack in his front shirt pocket and offers her one. She looks at it and smiles.