“Will you call an ambulance? And the cops?”
“Yes. I imagine they’re both on the way already, but I’ll make the calls.” He went to the door, then looked back doubtfully, still massaging his throat.
“What’ll you tell the police, Rosie?” She hesitated a moment, then smiled. “dunno… but I’ll think of something. These days invention on short notice is my strong suit. Go on, now. Do your thing.”
“I love you, Rosie. That’s the only thing I’m sure of anymore.” He went before she could reply. She followed a step or two after him, then stopped. From down the hall she could now see a hesitant, bobbing light that had to be a candle. Someone said:
“Holy cow! Is he shot?” Bill’s murmured reply was lost in another howl from the injured man. Injured, yes, but probably not too badly. Not if he could produce a noise level that high. Unkind, she told herself, picking up the handset of her new telephone and punching 911. Perhaps it was, but it might also be simple realism. Rosie didn’t think it mattered either way. She’d started to see the world in a new perspective, she supposed, and her thought about the yelling man down the hall was just one sign of that new perspective at work.
“It doesn’t matter as long as I remember the tree,” she said, without even being aware that she had spoken. The phone on the other end of her call was picked up after a single ring.
“Hello, 911, this call is being recorded.”
“Yes, I’m sure. My name is Rosie McClendon, and my residence is 897 Trenton Street, second floor. My upstairs neighbor needs an ambulance.”
“Ma’am, can you tell me the nature of his-” She could, she most certainly could, but something else struck her then, something she hadn’t understood before but did now, something that needed doing right this second. She dropped the phone back into its cradle and slipped the first two fingers of her right hand into the watch-pocket of her jeans. That little pocket was sometimes convenient, but it was irritating, too-just one more visible sign of the world’s half-conscious prejudice against southpaws like her. It was a world made by and for righthanders, as a general rule, and full of similar little inconveniences. But that was all right; if you were a lefty, you just learned to cope, that was all. And it could be done, Rosie thought. As that old Bob Dylan song about Highway 61 said, oh yes, it could be very easily done. She tweezed out the tiny ceramic bottle Dorcas had given her, looked at it fixedly for two or three seconds, then cocked her head to listen out the door. Someone else had joined the group at the end of the hall, and the man who had been shot (at least Rosie assumed it was he) was speaking to them in a gaspy, weepy little voice. And in the distance, Rosie could hear sirens coming this way. She went into the kitchenette area and opened her tiny refrigerator. Inside was a package of bologna with three or four slices left, a quart of milk, two cartons of plain yogurt, a pint of juice, and three bottles of Pepsi. She took one of these latter, twisted off the cap, and stood it on the counter. She snatched another quick look over her shoulder, half-expecting to see Bill in the doorway (What are you doing? he would ask. What are you mixing up there?). The doorway was empty, however, and she could hear him at the end of the hallway, speaking in the calm, considering voice she had already come to love. Using her nails, she pulled the sliver of cork from the mouth of the tiny bottle. Then she held it up, wafting it back and forth under her nostrils like a woman smelling a bottle of perfume. What she smelled was not perfume, but she knew the scent-bitter, metallic, but oddly attractive, just the same-at once. The little bottle contained water from the stream which ran behind the Temple of the Bull. Dorcas: One drop. For him. After. Yes, only one; more would be dangerous, but one might be enough. All the questions and all the memories-the moonlight, Norman’s terrible shrieks of pain and horror, the woman he had been forbidden to look at-would be gone. So would her fear that those memories might eat away at his sanity and their budding relationship like corroding acid. That might turn out to be a specious worry-the human mind was tougher and more adaptable than most people would ever believe, if fourteen years with Norman had taught her nothing else it had taught her that, but was it a chance she wanted to take? Was it, when things might just as easily go the other way? Which was more dangerous, his memories or this liquid amnesia? Have a care, girl. This is dangerous stuff! Rosie’s eyes drifted from the tiny ceramic bottle to the sink drain, and then, slowly, back to the bottle again. Rose Madder: A good beast. Protect him and he’ll protect you. Rosie decided that the terminology of that last might be contemptuous and wrong, but the idea was right. Slowly, carefully, she tilted the ceramic bottle over the neck of the Pepsi-Cola bottle, and let a single drop fall from the one to the other. Plink. Now dump the rest down the sink, quick. She started to, then remembered the rest of what Dorcas had said: I could have give you less, only he may need another drop later on. Yes, and what about me? she asked herself, driving the minuscule cork back into the neck of the bottle and returning it to that inconvenient watch-pocket. What about me? Will I need a drop or two later on, to keep me from going nuts? She didn’t think she would. And besides…
“Those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat the bastard,” she muttered. She didn’t know who had said that, but she knew it was too plausible to ignore. She hurried back to the phone, holding the doctored Pepsi in one hand. She punched 911 again, and got the same operator with the same opening gambit: watch yourself, lady, this call is being recorded.
“It’s Rosie McClendon again,” she said.
“We got cut off.” She took a calculated pause, then laughed nervously.
“Oh hell, that’s not exactly true. I got excited and pulled the phone jack out of the wall. Things are a little crazy here right now.”
“Yes, ma’am. An ambulance has been dispatched to 897 Trenton, as per request Rose McClendon. We have a report from the same address of shots fired, ma’am, is your report a gunshot wound?”
“Yes, I think so.” “do you want me to connect you with a police officer?”
“I want to speak to Lieutenant Hale. He’s a detective, so I guess I want DET-DIV, or whatever you call it here.” There was a pause, and when the 911 operator spoke again, he sounded a little less like a machine.
“Yes, ma’am, Detective Division is what we call it-DET-DIV. I’ll put you through.”
“Thanks. Do you want my phone number, or do you trap calls?” Definite surprise this time.
“I’ve got your number, ma’am.”
“I thought you did.”
“Hold on, I’m transferring you.” As she waited, she picked up the bottle of Pepsi and wafted it under her nose, as she had the other, much tinier, bottle. She thought she could smell just the slightest tang of bitterness… but perhaps that was only her imagination. Not that it mattered. Either he’d drink it or he wouldn’t. Ka, she thought, and then, What? Before she could go any further with that, the phone was picked up. “detective Division, Sergeant Williams.” She gave him Hale’s name and was put on hold. Outside her room and down the hallway, the murmuring and the groaning replies continued. The sirens were much closer now.
“Hello, Hale!” a voice barked suddenly into her ear. It didn’t sound at all like the laid-back, thoughtful man she had met earlier.
“Is that you, Ms McClendon?”
“Yes-”
“Are you all right?” Still barking, and now he reminded her of all the cops who’d ever sat in their rec room with their shoes off and their feet smelling up the place. He couldn’t wait for information she would have given him on her own; no, he was upset, and now he had to dance around her feet, barking like a terrier. Men, she thought, and rolled her eyes.
“Yes.” She spoke slowly, like a playground monitor trying to calm a hysterical child who has taken a tumble from the jungle gym.
“Yes, I’m fine. Bill-Mr Steiner-is fine, too. We’re both fine.”
“Is it your husband?” He sounded outraged, only a step or two away from outright panic. A bull in an open field, pawing the ground and looking for the red rag which has provoked it.
“Is it Daniels?”
“Yes. But he’s gone now.” She hesitated, then added:
“I don’t know where.” But I expect it’s hot and the air conditioning’s broken.
“We’ll find him,” Hale said.
“I promise you that, Ms McClendon-we’ll find him.”
“Good luck, Lieutenant,” she said softly, and turned her eyes to the open closet door. She touched her upper left arm, where she could still feel the fading heat of the armlet.
“I have to hang up now. Norman shot a man from upstairs, and there may be something I can do for him. Are you coming over here?”
“You’re damned right I am.”
“Then I’ll see you when you get here. Goodbye.” She hung up before Hale could say anything else. Bill came in, and as he did, the hall lights came on behind him. He looked around, surprised.
“It must have been a breaker… which means he was in the cellar. But if he was going to flip one of them, I wonder why he didn’t-” Before he could finish, he began to cough again, and hard. He bent over, grimacing, holding his hands cupped against his bruised and swollen throat.
“Here,” she said, hurrying across to him. “drink some of this. It just came out of the icebox, and it’s cold.” He took the Pepsi, drank several swallows, then held the bottle out and looked at it curiously.
“Tastes a little funny,” he said.
“That’s because your throat’s all swollen. Probably it’s bled a little, too, and you’re tasting that. Come on, down the hatch. I hate hearing you cough like that.” He drank the rest, put the bottle on the coffee-table, and when he looked at her again, she saw a dumb blankness in his eyes that frightened her badly.
“Bill? Bill, what is it? What’s wrong?” That blank look held for a moment, then he laughed and shook his head.
“You won’t believe it. Stress of the day, I guess, but…”
“What? Won’t believe what?”
“For a couple of seconds there I couldn’t remember who you were,” he said.
“I couldn’t remember your name, Rosie. But what’s even crazier is that for a couple of seconds I couldn’t remember mine, either.” She laughed and stepped toward him. She could hear a trample of footfalls-EMTs, probably-coming up the stairs, but she didn’t care. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him with all her might.
“My name’s Rosie,” she said.
“I’m Rosie. Really Rosie.”
“Right,” he said, kissing her temple.
“Rosie, Rosie, Rosie, Rosie. Rosie.” She closed her eyes and pressed her face against his shoulder and in the darkness behind her closed lids she saw the unnatural mouth of the spider and the black eyes of the vixen, eyes too still to give away either madness or sanity. She saw these things and knew she would continue to see them for a long time. And in her head two words rang, tolling like an iron bell: I repay.
Lieutenant Hale lit a cigarette without bothering to ask permission, crossed his legs, and gazed at Rosie McClendon and Bill Steiner, two people suffering a classic case of lovesickness; every time they looked into each other’s eyes, Hale could almost read TILT printed across their pupils. It was enough to make him wonder if they hadn’t somehow gotten rid of the troublesome Norman themselves… except he knew better. They weren’t the type. Not these two. He had dragged a kitchen chair into the living-room area and now sat on it backward, with one arm laid over the back and his chin resting on his arm. Rosie and Bill were crammed onto the loveseat that fancied itself a sofa. A little over an hour had elapsed since Rosie’s original 911 call. The wounded upstairs tenant, John Briscoe by name, had been taken to East Side Receiving with what one of the EMTs had described as “a flesh-wound with pretensions.” Now things had finally quieted down a little. Hale liked that. There was only one thing he would like more, and that was to know where the hell Norman Daniels had gotten himself off to.
