There was the twitch of a bitter smile at the corner of Ellie's mouth, almost as though she had read Joanna's thoughts.
“Don't worry, you won't see me again. This moment is all I need. You're going to remember it. And before you die, you're going to wish you'd never been born.”
She paused, enjoying the feel of having her victim hooked. “You think I'm a fake, do you? A phony. You'll find out.”
Her face took on the rapturous look of a fanatic entering the hallowed presence of the supreme power.
“It's done,” she whispered. “There's only the nightmare now.”
Joanna shivered. It was a silly, empty threat uttered by an angry and bitter old woman. But the moment had been charged with such emotion that a cocoon of silence seemed to have descended on the two of them, isolating them in a strange and loathsome intimacy. The people pushing past them on the side walk could have been a million miles away or on another planet.
Then, abruptly, it was over. The circulation-blocking pressure on Joanna's arm was lifted, and the woman who had filled her field of vision for the past few moments was just a short and unimposing figure scurrying off amid the shoppers and office workers on their way to lunch.
A shudder ran through Joanna, stronger than before, as though her body was shaking off the memory of the old woman's repugnant touch. She took a deep breath, and felt her heart beating fast. A delayed reaction of anger welled up in her.
And fear. There was no denying the fear.
She started walking north toward the park, telling herself that the exercise would calm her. But two blocks on she felt no better. The anger she now felt was less with the dreadful little woman who had buttonholed her and more with herself for being so easily shaken.
“Miss Cross?”
She jumped. The voice had come from just behind her as she waited to cross the street. She turned and saw Sam Towne.
His smile immediately faded as he saw the look on her face.
“I'm sorry,” he said, “I didn't mean to startle you.”
“No, you…” she stammered, “it's all right, I…I…”
“Is something wrong?” he asked, concerned now.
She didn't mean to tell him anything. It was too absurd, and she felt she would only make herself look foolish by talking about it. She would just say yes of course she was all right, perfectly all right. They would have a polite, brief conversation, and then part.
But instead she heard herself saying, “Something really horrible just happened…”
4
They sat down and he looked across the table at her. His face still wore an expression of concern.
“Feeling better?”
“Thanks-I'm fine.”
“What would you like? Water, wine, coffee?”
“A little water to begin with.”
Sam signaled the waiter. He had suggested they go somewhere, maybe have lunch if she had time. He told her that Mario's was one of his favorite haunts, then apologized for the unintended pun. She laughed, and it released some of the tension in her.
“Seriously, don't feel bad about getting spooked,” he said. “Those people are professionals. They know exactly what buttons to push to trigger all your superstitions.”
“But I'm not normally a superstitious person.”
“Everybody's superstitious, even those who say they aren't. We're rational beings, so we have no choice.”
One of her eyebrows twitched slightly, the way it always did when she reacted to something with skepticism.
“Wait a minute-are you saying that superstition is a rational thing?”
“Absolutely.”
She looked at him slightly sideways and with the faintest narrowing of her eyes. “Could you just run that by me again?”
He shifted his weight a little and leaned forward. “Opposites define each other-black/white, vice/virtue, order/disorder, and so on-including rationality and irrationality. One can't exist without the other. And somewhere in the middle there's a gray area where you can't be sure which is which-a no-man's-land where anything can happen.”
“This sounds like the opening to The Twilight Zone.”
He laughed. “You should know-from what you say you've just been there.”
True, she thought. For a while she had been genuinely afraid. But it was over now, the memory fading with each moment that passed. She ordered a salad and the special fettuccine that Sam said she should trust him about. She even had a glass of Chianti, although she normally never drank at lunch. Today, she thought, she had an excuse.
“The thing that really shook me up,” she said, putting her glass down after a first welcome sip, “was when she told me that her husband had died. Without that, I don't think she would have gotten to me.”
“There's no way you can blame yourself for that man's death,” Sam told her firmly. “It's obvious that he must have had a heart condition already. Anything could have triggered it.”
“I know,” she said, “but that's the rational me talking. And as you've just pointed out, there's an irrational me, too.”
“Acknowledging its existence doesn't mean we have to give it the upper hand,” he said.
As he spoke, he gave her a smile that was somehow so understanding and sympathetic that it took her by surprise.
“I'll try,” was all she could think of in response. They were silent for a few moments as their lunch was served. She made noises about the excellent fettuccine and how right he'd been to recommend it, then she asked him to tell her something about his work. He gave a shrug as though wondering where to begin.
“What would you like to know?”
She thought a moment, then said, “There's one question I'd like to ask you as a scientist. It sounds kind of rude, but it isn't meant that way.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why do so many scientists that I've talked to think that any kind of investigation into the paranormal is a waste of time?”
“Well,” he said, not remotely discomposed by the question, “there are two answers to that. One is that scientists, when they poke their noses outside their own narrow specialist field, are as prejudiced and dumb as anybody else-only worse, because they think they're so smart.”
He forked some more pasta into his mouth and dabbed his lips with a linen napkin.
“And the other?” she prompted.
He smiled again, this time with a hint of resignation. “The other answer,” he said, “is that maybe they're right.”
“Presumably, that's a view you don't share.”
Again he gave a small shrug, as though not sure how to answer. “All I know is I've seen some pretty strange things. I'm not sure what they add up to or what conceptual framework they fit into, but I can't ignore them any more than I can explain them.”
“Give me an example.”
“I'm not talking ghosts and banshees and messages from beyond. I'm talking about anomalies. Things that just don't fit into anything we understand.”
