Sitting in his father's high-backed smoking chair.
As he'd feared, as he'd known, the assistant had not changed at all.
Billings smiled. 'Welcome back, Mark. I've been waiting for you.'
Daniel It was raining, a heavy fall Pennsylvania rain that drew a curtain over the city and blurred even the houses across the street into indistinct shadows of gray. The snow would be coming soon, and Daniel knew that as tough as it was trying to find a job in good weather, it was absolute hell in the winter. He might as well just write off the next five months and hibernate until spring.
From down the hall, he heard Margot and Tony laughing about something. He'd been getting the cold shoulder from both of them ever since he'd disposed of the doll, and he was getting pretty damn sick of it. He and Margot hadn't made love in a week, and she seemed to be dead serious about wanting him to seek psychological help. He'd tried to explain to her how he felt, what he'd seen, why he was acting this way, but his far-flung concerns had no connections, there were no discernible bridges between the disparate elements of his only partially tied-together tale, and he had to admit that his story sounded loony even to himself.
Tony seemed to be afraid of him.
Daniel sighed. Maybe he did need help. Maybe everything was in his mind, and nothing out of the ordinary was going on. The world was a logical, rational straightforward place, and the thoughts he'd been thinking had a place only in pulp fiction and B movies.
Margot walked into the kitchen, looked at him, and for the first time this week, the sight of him did not knock the smile off her face. She was finally beginning to thaw. He attempted a halfhearted grin and was grateful when she passed by and touched his shoulder.
'Are we pals again?' he asked.
'We're always pals.'
He reached for her hand, gave it a small squeeze.
There was a lot more he wanted to say, a lot more he wanted to ask, a lot more he wanted to tell her, but while he was in her good graces again, it was only by a slim margin, and the slightest misstep could send him back. He'd have to broach things slowly, subtly, carefully for the next few days.
Margot opened the refrigerator, took out a plastic bag of tomatoes from the vegetable drawer. 'Brian's coming over for dinner tonight,' she said.
The last thing he wanted right now was to spend the evening with her brother, but he smiled and nodded and said, 'Great.'
The evening didn't turn out to be that bad. Brian didn't bring up Daniel's job status even once, and he left early, just after nine-thirty. While he was there, he was pleasant, playful with Tony, cheerful with Margot, and after dinner, when the two of them were alone--Tony having disappeared into his bedroom, Margot washing the dishes-- even he found Brian entertaining and fun to be around. The two of them would never be best buds, but Daniel thought that he'd probably been too hard on his brother-in-law, and he vowed to be nicer to him in the future.
It was still raining pretty heavily outside, and he wanted to go to bed and get into some makeup sex, but Margot said she wasn't tired and wanted to stay awake a little longer. There was nothing on HBO or any of the other channels, so he ran through their videotape titles.
None of the movies sounded good, and they finally settled on watching some episodes of Fawlty Towers, Margot's favorite TV show of all time.
She went off to go to the bathroom while he fast forwarded to an episode they hadn't seen in a while, the one with Manuel's rat. On an impulse, he walked back to Tony's room. The door was closed, and he pressed his ear to it but could hear nothing. Margot was still in the bathroom, and he paused a moment, then pushed open his son's door.
A half-finished doll lay on the center of Tony's bed.
This one, if possible, was even worse than the one before. Like its predecessor, it was made up of junk food cups and plastic straws, toilet-paper tubes and toothpicks. But the newspaper photographs that had been cut out and taped together to form its composite face were angry and wild: widely staring eyes, flared nostrils, screaming mouth. The effect was one of discordance and derangement, and Daniel looked from the doll to his surprised son, who belatedly moved his body in front of the figure to hide it.
Daniel stared at the boy, felt the anger rise within him. 'I warned you, didn't I?'
'There's nothing wrong with it!' Tony replied defensively.
'It's just my project!'
Daniel crossed the room in two steps, moved the boy aside with one arm, grabbed the doll with the other.
Did Margot know about this?
If she did, he'd get into it with her. Sticking up for her son in an argument was one thing, but deliberately going behind his back and helping Tony to deceive him was another.
The doll felt strange in his hand. Heavier than it should. More solid. He squeezed it hard, tried to crumple it, but only succeeded in creating two slight indentations in the cup body.
He shook the doll at his son. 'I told youyou couldn't do this, didn't I?'
Tony cowered before him. 'You don't have to go crazy.'
He was a little more out of control than he should be, more adamant than he wanted, and he tried to calm down. 'I specifically told you--'
'Mom!'
Daniel turned to see Margot standing in the doorway.
She hadn't known about the doll. There was a split second expression of surprise upon her face, then what looked like fear crossed her features as her gaze passed over the figure. Her eyes met Daniel's, and the two of them exchanged a wordless understanding.
Margot stepped into the room, her face set. 'Your father told you not to make another one of those dolls.'
'It's not a doll!'
'You purposely disobeyed him.'
'But, Mom!'
'No 'buts,' ' Daniel said. He was still holding the doll in his hand, but he wanted to drop it, get rid of it. The irrational fear that it would come to life and suddenly attack him, biting his face with its newsprint mouth, had come over him and refused to be dislodged from his brain. He could not let his son see that he was afraid of the figure, though, and he shook it again at the boy.
'You're grounded for a week. And if I ever catch you doing this again, you're going to be in big, big trouble.'
Margot looked at him again, her eyes worried, before turning once more toward Tony. 'Why is this thing so important to you? Why are you doing this?'
Tony stared down at his shoes. 'Nothing,' he said.
'The answer to 'why?' is never 'nothing.' '
'I don't know.'
'Look at me, young man.' He glanced up at his mother. 'There's something going on here that you're not telling us.'
'I'm sorry. I won't do it again.'
'What is the big deal about this doll?'
'It's not--'
'It's a doll,' she said flatly.
'Where did you learn how to make it?' Daniel asked.
'Doneen,' Tony said reluctantly. 'Doneen taught me how to do it.'
Doneen?
Margot's expression was blank. She'd obviously never heard of anyone named Doneen .
But he had.
In the House.
'Who's Doneen ?' he asked.
