After a few minutes he glanced over his shoulder and said, “You sure we got enough stash laid in?”

Focusing her attention again on the paper, Hedra said, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Gotta worry. Stuff’s gettin’ impossible to steal at the hospital. Locks, record sheets, sign in, sign out. You wouldn’t believe the shit they make everybody go through so nobody can walk out with a thing. I mean not even a fuckin’ tongue depressor leaves that place.”

“You don’t need it from there anymore,” Hedra reminded him. “Don’t need a bit of it from there.”

“Good fuckin’ thing,” Lawrence said, clinking knives and forks into the dishwasher’s flatware basket.

She’d lived with Lawrence Leacock in his tiny apartment in the days since Sam’s death, seldom going out. She hadn’t even been inside a church since the incident at St. Ambrose’s. She’d waited until after mass and attended confession, not out of guilt but as a plea for understanding. She should have known better. She could still hear the gasp of the priest on the other side of the confessional screen before she’d fled. She was sure he hadn’t gotten a good look at her. She’d been careful about that, even while entering the confessional, perhaps anticipating his reaction.

Lawrence, a kinky lab technician and coke addict she’d let pick her up in a bar up near Harlem, was only too glad to take care of her. After all, she took care of him, and almost every night. A girl had to do what a girl had to do.

Hedra flicked a glance at Lawrence and then continued to read. The Times speculated that, given the nature of the crime, it was possible Allie might plead insanity. That irritated Hedra. She knew Sam’s killer wasn’t insane. Allie’d had to kill him, as well as that obnoxious snooping playwright. Sometimes Fate took control, grabbed people by the short hairs and dragged them, leaving no real choice of direction or destination.

“You want another cup of coffee, Allison?” Lawrence asked.

Hedra shook her head no, not looking at him. You could take only so much of a kitehead like Lawrence. She continued staring at the paper, now only pretending to read it. Thinking.

No, she wasn’t insane. Not anymore. If she’d ever been. They’d never really made up their minds about her anyway. Their own minds that circled like pale vultures so high above hers, so far above suspicion. One of the white-coated fools had even suggested she might be a multiple personality. As if everyone didn’t have more than one side. Hedra had overheard them talking about her overwhelming and formative need to escape reality, as if that, too, were unique. Tell me about it, she thought. Explain how I’m different from the millions of people who use drugs and alcohol regularly to escape from this shitty world for a while. Explain why I shouldn’t want to forget the past, after what my father did to create that kind of past. Night after night in my bed, putting his hands on me again and again. Dream after dream that was real. “She wants desperately to be someone else,” they’d whispered, trying to keep it a secret, but she’d heard it through the walls. “Poor child never really developed a center,” her mother, poor mother, had said, quoting another white coat. “Doesn’t have a sense of self-worth or identity. Wants to be someone else, anyone but who she is. My fault, my fault. Wants to be someone else.”

Not anymore, Hedra thought, spreading strawberry jam on her third piece of toast.

Now I know who I am.

Lawrence had picked up the long-bladed knife he’d used to slice bacon and was placing it in the dishwasher. Hedra thought about asking him to bring it to her, then she changed her mind. She couldn’t imagine why the thought had occurred to her.

Chapter 34

HEDRA had watched and waited, and when the time was right she met a Haller-Davis rental agent at the Cody Arms, a woman named Myra Klinger who was blocky as a soccer player and wore a pin-striped blue business suit complete with a yellow power tie and cuffed pants. Unexpectedly, Myra had a martyred nun’s face with brown, injured eyes.

As she unlocked the door to apartment 3H, she looked oddly at Hedra. Hedra had dyed her hair red and styled it in a graceful backsweep, and with her altered makeup and deliberately added weight she had no fear of being recognized by any of the tenants. And even if she were recognized, it would merely be as someone they’d seen before in the building; they wouldn’t connect her with Allie, whose own presence they’d only vaguely acknowledged. New York anonymity was a curse for some, for others a proper blessing.

Myra said, “Strange, you being named Jones. The woman who lived here last was named Jones.”

Hedra smiled. “Common name. That’s why my parents named me Eilla. Eilla Jones.”

Myra swept open the door and stepped aside so Hedra could enter. It was all one smooth and expectant motion, like someone introducing a celebrity to an audience.

The apartment looked shockingly bare, and the traffic noises from outside seemed louder and more echoing than Hedra remembered. The scatter rugs were of course gone; there wasn’t the slightest clutter in the place, and that changed its character entirely. But it could be furnished almost exactly the way it had been the day Hedra moved in. Standing and staring, Hedra could see it, all the furniture in place, the television playing and a book lying on the sofa, and there was a cup of hot chocolate resting on the fat sofa arm.

Home, she thought. I live here. I’m who I am, so there’s nowhere else I should be, nowhere else I could be.

The air stirred by the opening door had settled back down; the atmosphere in the apartment was hot and close, thick enough for Hedra to feel lying smooth and heavy as the softest velvet on her bare skin.

She knew she was expected to react to the apartment, to say something, so she said, “Spacious, but it could be cozy, too.” She walked down the hall, glanced into the bathroom as if looking at it for the first time. She nodded with approval. Nice touch, that. She peeked into the bedrooms and smiled.

“The place’ll be painted,” Myra assured her.

Hedra faced Myra Klinger and said, “No, I love it exactly the way it is. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“You sure? It can be painted the same colors.”

“I’m sure. And I can pay you three months’ rent in advance. I’m promised a good job here, have been for months and now it’s been confirmed, so money’s no problem.” Hedra told her about a job as a computer

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