A Biedermeier pedestal stood in one corner of Susan Jagger’s bedroom. Atop the pedestal was a bronze bowl containing a miniature ming tree, which received no sunshine from the perpetually covered windows but flourished because a small plant light stood behind it.
At the base of the ming tree was lush ivy with small star-shaped leaves, which covered the potting soil and trailed over the curves of bronze. After calculating the best angle of view between bowl and bed, she placed the camcorder in the container and artfully arranged the trailers of ivy to conceal it.
She switched off the plant light, leaving on a nightstand lamp. The room couldn’t be dark if she were to get anything useful on tape.
To explain the lamp, she would appear to have fallen asleep while reading. Only a half-finished glass of wine on the nightstand and an open book, precisely tumbled among the bedclothes, would be necessary to create that impression.
She circled the room, studying the bronze bowl. The camcorder was well hidden.
From one acute angle, an amber reflection of the lamp glowed like animal eyeshine in the dark lens, as though a cyclopean lizard were peering from the loops of ivy. This telltale was so small that it wouldn’t draw the attention of either incubus or mere mortal.
Susan returned to the camcorder, slipped one finger into the ivy, searched briefly, and pressed a button.
She retreated two steps. Stood very still. Head cocked, breath held. Listening.
Though the heat was off and no furnace fan was churning, though no wind whispered in the eaves or at the windows, though the silence in the bedroom was as complete as one could hope for in this age of omnipresent mechanisms, Susan couldn’t hear the hum of the camcorder motor. Indeed, the equipment fulfilled the manufacturer’s guarantee of whisper-quiet operation, and the faint sibilant sigh of turning tape reels was completely muffled by the shrouding ivy.
Aware that quirks of architecture could cause sound to travel in unexpected arcs, amplifying it at the end of its bounce, she moved around the room. Five times she paused to listen, but she could hear nothing suspicious.
Satisfied, Susan returned to the pedestal and extracted the camcorder from the ivy. She reviewed the recording on the camera’s built-in monitor.
The entire bed was visible in the frame. The entrance to the room was captured at the extreme left side of the image.
She watched herself move in and out of the shot. In and out again. Pausing to listen for the softly whirring motor.
She was surprised that she appeared so young and attractive.
These days, she didn’t see herself this clearly when she looked in mirrors. In mirrors, she perceived less of a physical reflection than a psychological one: a Susan Jagger aged by chronic anxiety, features softened and blurred by sixteen months of reclusion, gray with boredom and gaunt with worry.
This woman on the tape was slim, pretty. More important, she was full of purpose. This was a woman with hope — and a future.
Pleased, Susan replayed the recording. And here she came once more, out of the camcorder’s iron-oxide memory, moving purposefully around the bedroom, in and out of frame, pausing to listen: a woman with a plan.
Even a spoon could be a weapon if she reversed her grip on it, held it by the bowl, and stabbed with the handle. Although not as sharp as a knife, it could be used to gouge, to blind.
Fits of tremors came and went, causing the spoon to oscillate between Martie’s fingers. Twice it rattled against her plate, as though she were calling for attention before raising a toast.
She was tempted to put the spoon out of reach and eat with her hands. For fear of appearing even crazier in Dusty’s eyes than she did already, she persevered with the flatware.
Dinner conversation was awkward. Even after the detailed account she had given in the living room, he had many questions regarding the panic attack. She grew increasingly reluctant to talk about it.
For one thing, the subject depressed her. Recalling her queer behavior, she felt helpless, as though she had been cast back to the powerless and dependent condition of early childhood.
In addition, she was troubled by an irrational but nonetheless firm conviction that talking about the panic attack would induce another one. She felt as if she were sitting on a trapdoor, and the longer she talked, the more likely she was to speak the trigger word that would release the hinges and drop her into an abyss below.
She asked about his day, and he recited a list of business errands that he usually attended to when the weather didn’t favor housepainting.
Although Dusty never lied, Martie sensed that he wasn’t giving her the full story. Of course, in her current condition, she was too paranoid to trust her feelings.
Pushing aside his plate, he said, “You keep avoiding my eyes.”
She didn’t deny it. “I
“Like what?”
“Weak.”
“You aren’t weak.”
“This lasagna has more spine than I do.”
“It’s two days old. For lasagna…hell, that’s eighty-five in human years.”
“I feel eighty-five.”
He said, “Well, I’m here to testify, you look way better than that damn lasagna.”
“Gee, mister, you sure can charm a girl.”
“You know what they say about housepainters.”
“What do they say?”
“We know how to roll it on thick.”
She met his eyes.
He smiled and said, “It’s going to be all right, Martie.”
“Not unless your jokes get better.”
“Weak, my ass.”
Walking the battlements of her four-room fortress, Susan Jagger satisfied herself that all the windows were locked.
The only apartment door opening to the outside world was in the kitchen. It was protected by two dead bolts and a security chain.
Finished checking the locks, she tipped a kitchen chair onto its back legs and wedged it under the doorknob. Even if Eric somehow had obtained a key, the chair would prevent the door from being opened.
Of course, she had tried the chair trick before. It hadn’t foiled the intruder.
After hiding the camcorder and testing the view angle, she had removed the battery pack to plug it into a bathroom outlet once more. Now it was fully charged.
She inserted the battery and hid the camcorder in the ivy under the potted ming tree. She would switch it on just before she got into bed, and then would have three hours of tape — in extended mode — on which to catch Eric in the act.
All the synchronized clocks agreed on the hour: 9:40
P.M. Martie had promised to call before eleven o’clock.
Susan remained eager to hear what analysis and advice her friend might offer, but she wasn’t going to tell Martie about the camcorder. Because maybe her phone was tapped. Maybe Eric was listening.
Oh, how lovely it was here on the dance floor at the Paranoia Cotillion, gliding around and around in the fearsome embrace of a malevolent stranger, while the orchestra played a threnody and she grimly worked up the courage to look into the face of the dancer whose lead she followed.
