quaint as always. Only a few passersby were about, evidently on their way to or from the tavern, or one of the late-night cafes. What bothered Fanshawe most was the vibrancy of the street lamps—
Street lamps that weren’t there a little while ago. But his unease toned down in a moment. He was a logical man, so there had to be a logical explanation.
Unsure steps took him back into the hotel. He crossed the near empty atrium, thought of putting the looking-glass back into the display case—though he still didn’t remember ever taking it out—but changed his mind when a pair of professors loped drunkenly out of the pub. I’ll put it back tomorrow, he resolved, and I better make damn sure no one sees me. A quick glance into the pub showed him Mr. Baxter, not Abbie, idly tending the bar, but then he remembered seeing her: undressing, getting ready for bed. Yep, I’m a scumbag, all right—peeping on a girl I’ve got a DATE with tomorrow… He thought of stopping in to say hello but realized that conversation was the last thing he desired just now.
What the hell was I seeing back there?
He hastened for the elevator, hoping Baxter hadn’t noticed him. What a day. A dead body and now…this… He couldn’t have gotten to his room faster; the hall’s muffled silence seemed to chase him inside like a pursuer.
The pursuer, he knew, was guilt.
Not too long ago, he’d been spying on some women on this very floor.
He locked the door behind him, then sat on the high bed with a nervy sigh. Only now did a flattened sensation at his groin tell him that he’d masturbated on the hill. Disgust drew lines in his face. Probably while looking at Abbie. What a sick slob. Ordinarily his mind would be swimming in all those delectable images, but now his anguish sabotaged them. Other images struck him now, images not of Abbie or the other women he’d seen, but images of the town.
Fanshawe took out the looking-glass, noting again how heavy it felt for such a small object. Acid trickled in his stomach.
Images of the town. The town…changed…
Yes, just after he’d spied Abbie naked in her room, her abundant breasts so apparent as she removed her contacts, his eyes showed him that the town had indeed changed. And it had seemed to change at the precise stroke of midnight—
From a bell that doesn’t exist.
He dropped the glass on the bed like something that nauseated him.
Ridiculous. He shook his head, then put his brow into his hand. I’m not cracking up, am I? Now his watch—not a distant bell—beeped once.
Just go to bed…
He began to undress but found his eyes oddly lured upward, toward the ceiling. The trapdoor, he thought, staring at it. In a moment he was standing on the bed— feeling ludicrous in his boxer shorts and Gaultier shirt—reaching up. He pushed on the board, slid it off, then stood on tiptoes and patted his hand around just inside the egress. There, he thought, feeling something. He pulled it out: a rope ladder.
Why am I doing this? the question drifted but it never solidified. He hopped off the bed, slipped a penlight in his shirt pocket, then grabbed the unstable rungs, ignoring the rope’s sheer age. Carefully but with determination he couldn’t fathom, he climbed up. Eventually he was standing stooped in a long narrow wood-scented chamber. There were no dormer windows or vents—nothing to offer light or air; in seconds he was shedding sweat. He aimed the penlight around, finding nothing of interest, just several boxes—reading in Magic Marker XMAS DECORATIONS—and piles of what appeared to be old drapes. Dust lay an inch thick on the floor but his light showed him the footprints of someone else. They appeared very new.
Had someone been up here recently? Probably Mr. Baxter, putting the decorations away after Christmas.
But Fanshawe couldn’t figure why he’d come up here. What did he expect to find? I’m just getting nuttier and nuttier, I guess. Still, he walked down the narrow space, fanning his light. Tree sap—more than likely cooked out of the rafters and wood slats from hundreds of years of hot summers—hardened like tinted glue everywhere he looked. When he made it to the chamber’s end, he stopped, sniffed. He wasn’t sure but he thought he smelled—
Old cigar smoke?
But the fetid odor was gone just as he thought he’d detected it.
Enough Nosy Parkering for me. He climbed back down and replaced the trapdoor, shaking his head at himself. Snooping in other people’s business wasn’t like him, but then he laughed and frowned at the same time when he realized the outrage of that impression.
I’m a voyeur, a peeper. I’m the worst kind of snoop.
He went to bed, baffled by his actions. But at least the trip into the attic, if only temporarily, had freed his mind of the impossibilities he’d glimpsed—or thought he’d glimpsed—on the hill.
Some time later, he was sinking into sleep—sinking, as if in a trench of slime. He twitched under the sheets; the darkness clotted around him.
He dreamed…
««—»»
A bright window comes into focus through a familiar binocular frame. A beautiful woman is undressing, in seeming slowness, but once she’s nude, she turns toward the window, showing all—
Behind him a voice trumpets: “Freeze! Police!”
Fanshawe is slammed against the alley wall, his cheek rubbing bricks. Snap! Snap! and next his wrists have been handcuffed behind his back. “How do you like that shit? A peeper…” Red and blue lights pulse blob-like within the alley.
Next, Fanshawe sweats on the pay phone in the booking section of the chaotic police station. “Artie, it’s me. I’m in big trouble. Call the lawyers and get me bailed out…,” and then he tells his confidante what he’s been arrested for, his voice tinted by shame. Artie’s initial reaction is only a guttural silence, as though he were choking on the information—
Next, Fanshawe stands haggard in the foyer of his luxury brownstone, his shirttail out, his hair mussed. A Tiffany clock on the mantle chimes three a.m. as Fanshawe’s silk night-gowned wife stares with a look that’s half-outrage and half stupefaction.
“You-you…were arrested for what?”
“I—”
Next, she’s haphazardly dressed in the spacious bedroom, her head a blond blur as she maniacally crams clothes and toiletries into a suitcase. When she slams the case closed, tears fly off her face.
“Laurel, please,” he croaks. “Let me ex—” but the words die as if his lungs have collapsed.
“You think you know someone,” comes her shrill sob, “you think they love you so you give your life to him, and then you find out he’s a pervert!”
“Honey, I’m sorry, I—”
“You’re sick!” she shrieks.
He pleads now not to her but into his hands. “I’ll get help, I go to a counselor—I don’t know how to explain this to you because I don’t even understand it myself—”
Laurel’s face has contorted into a pink mask stamped by every conceivable negative emotion. “Explain what? That you’re a pervert? That you’re a common criminal who gets his jollies looking at women in windows?” but then the rictus deepens with a worse thought. “They were women, weren’t they?” She is teetering in place. “Or were they really children?”
Fanshawe feels flattened, like the ceiling has just collapsed on him. “No, no, I swear, it wasn’t
