He released her, but she was acutely aware that he was still at her bedside.
“Love me,” Bryan said.
“Please go away.”
Softly: “Love me.”
If Jennifer had been capable of producing tears, she would have wept.
“Love me, and I won’t have any reason to hurt you again. All I want is for you to love me.”
She was no more capable of loving him than she was of producing tears from her ruined eyes. Easier to love a viper, a rock, or the cold indifferent blackness between the stars.
“I only need to be loved,” he insisted.
She knew that he was incapable of love. Indeed, he had no concept whatsoever of the meaning of the word. He wanted it only because he could not have it, could not feel it, because it was a mystery to him, a great unknown. Even if she were able to love him and convince him of her love, she would not be saved, for he would be unmoved by love when at last it was given to him, would deny its existence, and would continue to torture her out of habit.
Suddenly the rain sound resumed. Voices in the corridor. Squeaking wheels on the tiered cart that carried dinner trays.
The torment was over. For now.
“I can’t stay long this evening,” Bryan said. “Not the usual eternity.”
He chuckled at that remark, amused by himself, but to Jennifer it was only an offensive wet sound in his throat, humorless.
He said, “I’ve had an unexpected increase in business. So much to do. I’m afraid I’ve got to run.”
As always, he marked his departure by bending over the bed railing and kissing the numb left side of her face. She could not feel the pressure or texture of his lips against her cheek, only a butterfly-wing touch of coolness. She suspected that his kiss might have felt no different, maybe only colder, if planted on the still-sensitive right side of her face.
When he left, he chose to make noise, and she listened to his receding footsteps.
After a while, Angelina came to feed her dinner. Soft foods. Mashed potatoes with gravy. Pureed beef. Pureed peas. Applesauce with a sprinkling of cinnamon and brown sugar. Ice cream. Things she would have no difficulty swallowing.
Jennifer said nothing about what had been done to her. From grim experience, she had learned that she would not be believed.
He must have the appearance of an angel, because everyone but her seemed disposed to trust him on first sight, attributing to him only the kindest motives and noblest intentions.
She wondered if her ordeal would ever end.
7
Ricky Estefan emptied half the box of rigatoni into the big pot of boiling water. A head of foam rose instantaneously, and an appealing starchy smell wafted up in a cloud of steam. On another burner stood a smaller pot of fragrantly bubbling spaghetti sauce.
As he adjusted the gas flames, he heard a strange noise toward the front of the house. A thump, not especially loud but solid. He cocked his head, listened. Just when he decided that he’d imagined the noise, it came again:
He went down the hall to the front door, switched on the porch light, and looked through the fish-eye lens in the peephole. As far as he could see, no one was out there.
He unlocked the door, opened it, and cautiously leaned outside to look both ways. None of the outdoor furniture had fallen over. The night was windless, so the bench swing hung motionless on its chains.
The rain continued to fall hard. In the street, the vaguely purplish light of the mercury-vapor lamps revealed rivers along both gutters, nearly to the tops of the curbs, churning toward the drains at the end of the block, glistening like streams of molten silver.
He was concerned that the thump had signaled storm damage of some kind, but that seemed unlikely without a good wind.
After he closed the door, he twisted the dead-bolt into place and slid the security chain home. Since being gutshot and struggling back from the brink, he had developed a healthy paranoia. Well, healthy or unhealthy, it was a damned fine example of paranoia, shiny from use. He kept the doors locked at all times, and with nightfall he drew the drapes shut at every window so no one could peer inside.
His fear embarrassed him. He had once been so strong, capable, and self-confident. When Harry had left earlier, Ricky had pretended to stay at the kitchen table, working on the belt buckle. But as soon as he heard the front door close, he shuffled down the hall to slip the dead-bolt quietly into place while his old friend was still on the front porch. His face had been burning with shame, but he’d been uneasy about leaving a door unlocked even for a few minutes.
Now, as he turned away from the door, the mysterious noise came again.
This time he thought it was located in the living room. He stepped through the archway to find the source.
Two table lamps were on in the living room. A warm amber glow suffused that cozy space. The coved ceiling was patterned with twin circles of light broken by the shadows of lamp shade wires and finials.
Ricky liked light throughout the house in the evening until he went to bed. He no longer was comfortable entering a dark room and
Everything was in order. He even peered behind the sofa to be sure… well, to be sure that nothing was amiss back there.
His bedroom?
A door in the living room opened on a small vestibule with a simply but charmingly coffered ceiling. Three other doors ringed the vestibule: guest bath, a cramped guest bedroom, and a master bedroom of modest dimensions, one lamp aglow in each. Ricky checked everywhere, closets too, but found nothing that could have caused the thumping.
He pulled the drapes aside at each window to see if the latches were engaged and all the panes of glass intact. They were.
This time it seemed to come from the garage.
From the nightstand beside his bed, he got a revolver. Smith & Wesson.38 Chief’s Special. He knew it was fully loaded. He flipped the cylinder out and checked anyway. All five rounds were there.
He developed a stitch in his lower left abdomen, a painful stretching-twitching sensation with which he was too familiar, and although the bungalow was small, he needed more than a minute to reach the connecting door to the garage. It was off the hallway, just before the kitchen. He leaned against it, one ear to the crack of the jamb, listening.
The sound had definitely come from the. garage.
He pinched the dead-bolt turn between thumb and forefinger… then hesitated. He didn’t want to go into the garage.
He became aware of a dew of perspiration on his brow.
“Come on, come on,” he said, but he didn’t respond to his own urging.
He hated himself for being afraid. Although he remembered the terrible pain of the bullets smacking through his belly and scrambling his guts, although he could recall the agony of all the subsequent infections and the anguish of the months in the hospital under the shadow of death, although he knew that many other men would
