Boundaries

by Wright, T. M.

  "Her, dammit! Anne Case! Upstairs, in that big room on the third floor. She was there, and I saw her." A quick pause, then Maude hurries on, "Not her face, if that’s what you’re wondering, not her eyes, or her mouth. I don’t need to see any of that, Peter, because I sensed her."

  "Anne Case?" Peter says resignedly.

  "Yes. Anne Case." The image of the tall, stocky, mannish figure in the third floor ballroom has all but receded into her subconscious. She recalls it only briefly, pushes it back. "Anne Case," she says again, with feeling.

  ~ * ~

  David sat rigidly on the edge of his bed in his cottage on Oneida Lake. He was apprehensive. A strange sense of elation filled him and it made him fearful, uncertain: How well did he know himself, after all? This well? He focused on the four blue capsules—A2d-40—in his open right hand. Did he know himself well enough to trust that he was going back for all the right reasons?

  To find Anne?

  To confront her killer? (If Brian Fisher had indeed been her killer; David wasn’t sure, and he didn’t know why he wasn’t sure.)

  To assure himself that death had brought peace to her, at last?

  Or was he going back because something very deep inside him intended to stay? Because something inside him needed the peace that that place seemed to offer?

  If he had asked himself the same questions three weeks earlier—before Anne’s death—he thought that his answer would have been a quick laugh.

  His gaze drifted slightly. It took in his fingers, which were long and pale; the third finger curved slightly outward, toward the little finger. An accident thirty years before had caused that curvature. Occasionally the finger ached dully, as if there were something growing inside it. He had wondered often if, as he aged, the finger would give him more constant pain. He thought now, The strange links we have with our past and our future.

  And then he raised his hand and put first one, then another of the blue capsules of A2d-40 into his mouth. There was a tall glass half-filled with water on a table next to the bed. He drank all the water.

  Within a minute, he felt groggy.

  Shortly after that, he was asleep.

  SIX

  Anne Case’s killer often remembered the moment of her death. And when he did, it was with great regret, because her death had happened with such numbing swiftness.

  He had not wanted it to be so quick. It had been like turning out a light. He wanted to enjoy her, her agony and her confusion. He had been entitled—she had entitled him. But, as was often said of orgasm, the whole thing had been an anticlimax.

  It could not be helped, though. It had been the luck of the draw, the twist of fate—it had happened the way it had happened and nothing would ever change it.

  He could take what pleasure he could from what had happened. But what had happened was so very unimpressive—life metamorphosing into death over the period of a moment or two. No confusion; No agony.

  In his mental replaying of these moments, he sometimes had Anne Case turn and face him and he imagined that her face was twisted with fear. But that was ultimately unsatisfying because he knew that it was a fiction. It was more satisfying to keep her mentally turned away and imagine that her face, hidden from him, had been twisted by fear. Logically, it could have been no other way. If he had been in her shoes, fear would have paralyzed him. He would have had no choice but to surrender to whatever the moment had in store.

  But he had known her and he knew now that fear simply could not have entangled her the way he had so desperately wanted it to. Fear already wrapped her up and entangled her from within, and had for decades. How could he hope to bring it to her from without? He had been aware of that, he realized now, even as he had watched from inside her closet as she tended to her damned plant.

  He had even known it when he had raped her and she had simply watched him do it. Christ, he had nearly killed her then. How could she have simply watched him? It was unnatural!

  But it was too bad that she was dead. She had been a good plaything. She had brought him pleasure. She’d bouyed him up and had shown him what a class act he was, had confirmed it for him. Certainly she was a discriminating woman. It was obvious even in the way she furnished her house—with sturdy utilitarian pieces.

  She was no one’s fool.

  But neither was he. She had proven it. She had not made a fool of him.

  Except, perhaps, in the way she had died.

  But it had not been her choice. It had been the luck of the knife. The slant of her back and the luck of the knife. She was too thin, the knife a centimeter too long. Perhaps if she had not been bending over. Perhaps in bending over she had brought her heart closer to the point of the knife. It was reasonable.

  And he was a reasonable man.

  ~ * ~

  David, lying on his back, hands at his sides, his head against the trunk of a fallen tree, was aware that he was naked. It embarrassed him. It reminded him strongly of dreams of being naked; of his vast humiliation, in those dreams, at his own nakedness. But no one but he had ever cared about it in his dreams, and there was no one to care about it here.

  He remembered that he had not been naked when he had come here before. This was new. This was different. And he didn’t know what to make of it. His body displeased him, for one thing. It was out of shape, not hairy enough—considering that male bodies should always be hairy around the chest, at least—and his genitals were too obvious against his pale thighs; they were genitals which could not be taken for granted, even amidst general nakedness.

  It occurred to him that his nakedness was a symbol—all too real—of his death.

  That was a possibility he could not dismiss. Perhaps he really was dead, here, amongst the trees, and the dust hanging in the air, and the cold light.

  He wanted clothes, suddenly. He was cold, and naked, and he wanted clothes.

  The tree against which his head rested was clearly long dead because moss covered it and he could feel, beneath his skull, that it was fleshy, soft.

  He scrambled to his feet, aware of the insects that lived in such trees, that fed on such decay. He stared at the trunk of the tree; he saw that there were insects on it—elongated, gunmetal blue insects which moved fluidly about on the tree trunk, some carrying bits of the rust-red meat of the tree with them.

  He swiped at his hair, convinced that some of these insects were moving about in it. But his hand passed over nothing but his hair and his skull, so he was able to calm himself.

  He dwelt on his nakedness again. Now he found it vaguely stimulating—as it always had been in his dreams—and he listened closely for voices from within the forest to tell him that he was on the verge of being found.

  It came to him suddenly that he did not remember going through a tunnel toward the light. It was what had happened before, both a week ago, and, as well, five years ago, when he had nearly drowned. But he must have gone through the tunnel. It was the way into this place, after all; it was the entrance, the door. He could not have gotten here otherwise. But he didn’t remember it. Clearly, he had simply forgotten.

  But he had forgotten nothing else.

  Again he focused on his nakedness. He looked down at himself and thought that he was exposed, vulnerable. It did not stimulate him. He thought of bees and remembered that they were drawn to the smell of sweat. He thought that if there were bees here they would be drawn to him because, he could see now, he was sweating.

  And then he saw that there were bees. Big fat honeybees that drifted from here to there—from flower to flower; one from a spray of tiny purple flowers near the trunk of the dead tree to what looked like dandelions close by, and then to the clover, which was in abundance. Others flew slowly, their wings straining against the load of pollen they carried. There were a dozen bees, David thought. Two dozen. And he was afraid for himself because of his nakedness.

  Because bees were drawn to sweat and he was sweating.

  It made him afraid.

  He clutched at h
imself and walked stiffly from the place.

  He found a path through the forest and he took it; but there were hundreds of bees on it, and the light was very cold; the dust choked him.

  And a ghost of the earth existed here.

  At the horizon, there was a line of squat, gaily painted cottages a half mile across the lake. The lake.

  It was as overpowering as fog. As near as fog. It misted his fingers. He was walking in it.

  Still, there were the bees. Hundreds of bees.

  He clutched at himself. He cried out, "Where am I?" He didn’t know. "Where in hell am I?"

  This was not the place he had wanted to come to.

  This was too familiar and too strange. This had the ghost of the earth on it.

  It had the lake on it.

  "Where am I?" he cried.

  Then he thought he knew where he was. And he realized that he had gone nowhere, that he wasn’t naked, that the ghost of the earth which shimmered around him was the earth.

  Because he could smell it now.

  He could smell the lake that he stood in up to mid-thigh.

  He looked down at himself. He saw that he was wearing his gray pants and green shirt and, off-angle through the clear water, his penny loafers.

  It was dusk. The mosquitoes had gathered above the water and they were satisfying themselves on him.

  He closed his eyes, put his hands over them, whispered, "I’ve gone nowhere." It made him happy. It made him unhappy.

  It made him desperate to try again.

  He trudged to shore and then—past the remains of a half dozen thin translucent fish—to his small green cottage.

  He did not get through the side doorway. He collapsed on the narrow porch.

  ~ * ~

  He saw the tunnel opening. It floated tiny and white in a field of darkness, like a small, dying sun. He reached for it. The image of his hand covered it and it was gone. But then he took his hand away and it reappeared.

  He moved toward it as if he were caught in a vortex. It tugged relentlessly at him and made him afraid.

  Shapes pushed up toward him from the darkness. He thought they were hands but they were the color and form of darkness, and their fingers were like fingers of dark earth.

  And he knew that they were the hands of the earth trying to draw him back.

  But the tunnel opening widened inexorably, without the passage of time—it was this wide, it was this wide, it was this wide.

  As wide as the moon hanging in the darkness. As wide as the edges of his vision.

  And it was a fragile and pale blue, like the blue that follows the red of sunset.

  It engulfed him, and the darkness was no more.

  He was engulfed. Swallowed. Within.

  He was underwater and being tugged inexorably and endlessly toward the sun.

  He was being pulled by daylight from the depths of a dream.

  ~ * ~

  Fred Collins said to Leo Kenner, "I just can’t believe that there’s nothing to implicate him." He was talking about Brian Fisher. He had the file on Anne Case opened in front of him. There was also a small pile of personal effects—a few letters, her purse, a telephone number-address book—at the front of his desk, near where it touched Leo Kenner’s desk.

  Leo Kenner nodded. "It happens," he said. "Sometimes people just don’t put things down in writing."

  "But he would have, Leo. And she would have, too."

  "Yes." Leo sighed. "I’m aware of that." He shrugged. "But we can’t expect that everything will be tied up neatly."

  "Why not?" Collins asked. "Given the circumstances, why not? What have we got here? I mean look at it: We’ve got an agoraphobic who spends virtually all of her time inside her house. We know from talking to her brother that she was fond of writing poetry, which assumes that she also liked to write letters, and except for the agoraphobia, her boyfriend—Brian Fisher—is cut from the same mold. And we find his letters and his poetry, but we find nothing in her house."

  "She might have kept those things elsewhere," Leo suggested; then, realizing it was a lame remark, added, "It’s possible."

  "No, it isn’t," Collins protested. "If she spent all of her time inside her house, Leo—"

  "Most of her time."

  "If she spent all the time that matters inside her house, then that is where she would keep her letters and her poetry. But what do we have?" He picked up the letters on his desk. "A few notes to her brother about his birthday and his new job. It makes no damned sense, Leo."

  "So search her place again," Leo said.

  Collins shook his head. "I don’t want to do that. It’s been searched . . . thoroughly. I don’t want to go inside it again."

  Leo looked confusedly at him. "Something’s bothering you, Fred. Why don’t you share it with me."

  Again Collins shook his head. "I think . . . I merely think that it would waste our time to go through Anne’s house again. I’ve been through it. Forensics has been through it. There’s nothing there—nothing that pertains, anyway—that we’re not aware of."

  Kenner’s brow furrowed. "Did you know her, Fred?"

  "Sorry?"

  "You referred to her as ‘Anne.’ "

  "Did I?" He smiled a little, then caught himself. "I wasn’t . . . aware of it. I’m sorry. I guess I’ve been thinking about her . . . about this investigation, quite a bit. And when you do that, it . . . makes you believe, after a while, that you know a person. A victim. I’m sure I’ve done the same sort of thing before."

  Kenner paused. "If you have, I don’t remember it."

  "Uh-huh. Well I’m sure I have." He smiled quickly, as if to dismiss the subject. "Yes," he went on, "I’ll take another look. Tomorrow. Maybe tonight."

  "Tomorrow’s Sunday."

  "It’s okay. I don’t mind. Sunday’s good. I wasn’t going to be doing anything else, anyway."

  ~ * ~

  It’s three weeks before her murder, and Anne is talking with David in the cavernous third floor ballroom in her big house. She nods at a tall, broad-leafed plant, a Dracena, in the far corner of the room. "It’s dying. There’s nothing I can do about it," she says.

  "Water it," David says.

  She shakes her head very seriously. It’s not an emotional thing, the death of her plant, and that is clear to David.

  "I’ve done that," she tells him. "It does no good. It’s dying for some other reason. Old age, probably."

  "I didn’t know plants died of old age."

  She smiles at him as if he has told her a joke, although his remark was serious. "Yes. Plants aren’t immortal."

  They are seated together on a big couch that rarely gets used because she and her brother are the only ones who come to this room. Her moods usually prevent her from coming to the room alone because it’s so big, and although there are heavy curtains on the bay window, Oriental rugs scattered around the floor, and several heavy, upholstered pieces of furniture in the room, voices echo in it, reminding her of its bigness. But she does not mind coming here with her brother. It’s almost, she’s told him, like going for a walk in the countryside, which she hasn’t done for decades.

  He has not seen her for some time because of the pressures of his job. He’s missed her. She’s intelligent and philosophical; all their lives they have enjoyed each others’ company. But he’s having trouble breaking through the barrier that time apart has set up between them. He asks her, "What have you been up to, Annie?"

  She smiles. "You haven’t called me that in a very long time." She pauses, though not long enough to give him a chance to answer. "I’ve been very good. I’m happy, David. I have a lover."

  He doesn’t know how to respond to this. He’s aware that he’s suddenly staring at her dumbly and he’s sure that some inappropriate look of shock or surprise is transforming his features. He knows that she requires comment, but he can think of nothing. He says lamely, "Yes?"

  "Yes. He’s a nice boy," she says, and again she shakes her head and smiles, but sel
f-consciously, now. "He’s not a boy, David. He looks like a boy, I think. Sometimes, anyway. He looks vulnerable, at least." Again she shakes her head, then looks down at her hands folded in her lap. "I’m handling this very, very poorly, aren’t I? I knew that my . . . revelation would be important. To you."

  And it was, of course. She had rarely talked with him about the men in her life before, although there had been several, he knew. Most recently, a man with whom she had had a very brief but apparently very volatile relationship, a man she now refused to talk about, a man whom David had never met. The men in her life were just about the only things she didn’t talk to him about; where to live, how to spend her money, how best to deal with her illness, how to deal with friends and relatives who thought they knew best what she should do with her life—given the restrictions imposed by her illness—all these things and more were topics she discussed freely. Her love life had gone almost totally undiscussed.

  "What’s there to handle poorly, Anne?" David asks. "I’m glad you feel free to talk with me about it." There is an emotion—jealously?—pushing up from deep inside him and he tries to push it back. "What’s his name?"

  She shakes her head. She doesn’t want to tell him the man’s name, she says. Maybe after a while.

  This makes David uncomfortable. She feels free to discuss the fact of the man with him, but not something so mundane as his name. Clearly she is holding something back. "What’s in a name?" he asks, and smiles.

  "Lots," she answers.

  "Is it someone I know?"

  She shakes her head. He’s not sure if she’s saying no, he’s not someone David knows, or no, she doesn’t want to discuss it.

  David says, "It’s not the man you were involved with six months ago, is it?"

  Suddenly, Anne looks as if she’s in pain. "No," she whispers. "God, no!"

  "Sorry," David says, then, smiling: "Can you describe him, Anne? That way I’ll at least have a mental picture of this man who has designs on my twin sister." Yes, he realizes, it is jealousy he feels; and it is one of the reasons he’s been only too happy, in the past, not to discuss with her any of the other men in her life.