majolica china gleamed on glass shelves. Here, the air smelled of furniture polish.
If all the lights had been ablaze, the apartment would have proved to be spotless, cleaner than a surgery. Susan Jagger had a lot of time to fill.
Judging by the melange of odors in the living room, the carpet had been shampooed recently, the furniture polished, the upholstery dry-cleaned in place, and fresh citrus-scented potpourri had been placed in two small, ventilated, red-ceramic jars on the end tables.
The expansive windows, which framed an exhilarating ocean view, were covered by pleated shades. The shades were for the most part concealed by heavy drapes.
Until four months ago, Susan had been able at least to look out at the world with wistful longing, even though for sixteen months she had been terrified of venturing into it and had left her home only with someone upon whom she could lean for emotional support. Now merely the sight of a vast open space, with no walls or sheltering roof, could trigger a phobic reaction.
All the lamps glowed, and the spacious living room was brightly lighted. Yet because of the shrouded windows and the unnatural hush, the atmosphere felt funereal.
Shoulders slumped, head hung, Susan waited in an armchair. In a black skirt and black sweater, she had the wardrobe and the posture of a mourner. Judging by her appearance, the paperback book in her hands should have been the Bible, but it was a mystery novel.
“Did the butler do it?” Martie asked, sitting on the edge of the sofa.
Without looking up, Susan said, “No. The nun.”
“Poison?”
Still focused on the paperback, Susan said, “Two with an ax. One with a hammer. One with a wire garrote. One with an acetylene torch. And two with a nail gun.”
“Wow, a nun who’s a serial killer.”
“You can hide a lot of weapons under a habit.”
“Mystery novels have changed since we read them in junior high.”
“Not always for the better,” Susan said, closing the book.
They had been best friends since they were ten: eighteen years of sharing more than mystery novels — hopes, fears, happiness, sorrow, laughter, tears, gossip, adolescent enthusiasms, hard-won insights. During the past sixteen months, since the inexplicable onset of Susan’s agoraphobia, they had shared more pain than pleasure.
“I should have called you,” Susan said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t go to the session today.”
This was ritual, and Martie played her part: “Of course, you can, Susan. And you will.”
Putting the paperback aside, shaking her head, Susan said, “No, I’ll call Dr. Ahriman and tell him I’m just too ill. I’m coming down with a cold, maybe the flu.”
“You don’t sound congested.”
Susan grimaced. “It’s more a stomach flu.”
“Where’s your thermometer? We’d better take your temperature.”
“Oh, Martie, just look at me. I look like hell. Pasty-faced and red-eyed and my hair like straw. I can’t go out like this.”
“Get real, Sooz. You look like you always look.”
“I’m a mess.”
“Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, Cameron Diaz — they’d all kill to look as good as you, even when you’re sick as a dog and projectile vomiting, which you aren’t.”
“I’m a freak.”
“Oh, yeah, right, you’re the Elephant Woman. We’ll have to put a sack over your head and warn away small children.”
If beauty had been a burden, Susan would have been crushed flat. Ash-blond, green-eyed, petite, with exquisitely sculptured features, with skin as flawless as that of a peach on a tree in Eden, she had turned more heads than a coven of chiropractors.
“I’m bursting out of this skirt. I’m gross.”
“A virtual blimp,” Martie said sarcastically. “A dirigible. A giant balloon of a woman.”
Although Susan’s self-imprisonment allowed her no exercise except housecleaning and long walks on a treadmill in the bedroom, she remained svelte.
“I’ve gained more than a pound,” Susan insisted.
“My God, it’s a liposuction emergency,” Martie said, bolting up from the sofa. “I’ll get your raincoat. We can call the plastic surgeon from the car, tell him to get an industrial-size sump pump to suck out all the fat.”
In the short hall that led to the bedroom, the coat closet featured a pair of sliding, mirrored doors. As Martie approached it, she tensed and hesitated, concerned that she would be overcome by the same irrational fear that had seized her earlier.
She had to keep a grip on herself. Susan needed her. If she leaped into looniness again, her anxiety would feed Susan’s fear, and perhaps vice versa.
When she confronted the full-length mirror, nothing in it made her heart race. She forced a smile, but it looked strained. She met her eyes in the reflection, and then quickly looked away, sliding one of the doors aside.
As she slipped the raincoat off the hanger, Martie considered, for the first time, that her recent peculiar bouts of fear might be related to the time that she’d spent with Susan during the past year. Maybe you should expect to absorb a little overspill of anxiety if you hung out a lot with a woman suffering from an extreme phobia.
A faint heat of shame flushed Martie’s face. Even to consider such a possibility seemed superstitious, uncharitable, and unfair to poor Susan. Phobic disorders and panic attacks weren’t contagious.
Turning away from the closet door and then reaching back to slide it shut, she wondered what term psychologists used to describe a fear of one’s shadow. A disabling fear of open spaces, which afflicted Susan, was called agoraphobia. But shadows? Mirrors?
Martie stepped out of the hall and into the living room before she realized that she had reached behind her back to pull shut the sliding door in order to avoid glancing in the mirror again. Startled that she had acted with such unconscious aversion, she considered returning to the closet and confronting the mirror.
From the armchair, Susan was watching her.
The mirror could wait.
Holding the raincoat open, Martie approached her friend. “Get up, get in this, and get moving.”
Susan gripped the arms of the chair, miserable at the prospect of leaving her sanctuary. “I can’t.”
“If you don’t cancel a session forty-eight hours ahead, you have to pay for it.”
“I can afford to.”
“No, you can’t. You don’t have any income.”
The only psychological malady that could have destroyed Susan’s career as a real-estate agent more effectively than agoraphobia was uncontrollable pyromania. She had felt reasonably safe inside any property while showing it to a client, but such paralyzing terror had overcome her while she was traveling between houses that she hadn’t been able to drive.
“I have the rent,” Susan said, referring to the monthly check from the parakeet-infatuated retirees downstairs.
“Which doesn’t quite cover the mortgage, taxes, utilities, and maintenance on the property.”
“I have a lot of equity in the house.”
Raising her delicate chin in an unconvincing expression of brave defiance, Susan said, “Besides, Eric sends me a check.”
“Not much. Hardly more than pocket change. And if the swine divorces you, maybe there won’t be anything more at all from him, considering you came into this marriage with more assets than he did, and there aren’t any kids.”
“Eric’s not a swine.”
