Her mind churned with so much activity that she couldn't fall asleep. The light patterns shifted on the ceiling. She repositioned her pillow, but it didn't help. Taking care not to wake Sam, she slipped out of bed and headed toward the kitchen so she could get a drink of water. As she passed naked beneath Elvis's full-length portrait in the living room, she glanced uncomfortably at the singer's image. She should have put on a robe, but all her robes were back at Falcon Hill.
The fluorescent stove light in the kitchen was on, emitting a blue-white glow. Her bare feet padded across the floor. She crossed to the cupboard and reached for a glass. At that exact moment she heard a thump.
She spun around, all her senses alert, and watched in horror as the back door began to swing open.
A dark form loomed on the threshold. It took her only a few seconds to recognize the tall, thin figure as Yank Yankowski's. What was he doing here? she thought wildly. It was nearly three in the morning and she was stark naked. What was she going to say?
The chill night air he had brought with him raised goose bumps on her bare skin. Her nipples were puckered, the hair on her arms standing up. He still hadn't seen her. As he pushed the door shut, she glanced desperately around for a place to hide. She wanted to vanish into the walls, get swallowed up by the floor. If she tried to make a dash for the living room, he would see her.
He crossed directly in front of her, passing not more than five feet away but still not looking at her. The edge of the kitchen counter dug into the small of her back as she tried to smear herself into a film as thin as the aluminum coating on a wafer of silicon. The rubber soles of his sneakers squeaked on the floor. He stopped in front of the refrigerator with his back toward her. Her hand snaked along the counter, frantically groping for something to cover her nakedness.
At that moment the kitchen was flooded with light. In her imagination, it seemed as if thousands of watts of electricity had been let loose, but in reality Yank had only pulled open the refrigerator door and activated the small appliance bulb.
She made an audible gasp and then froze, afraid he had heard her. But he didn't turn. He stood in front of the refrigerator staring inside. Seconds passed. Half a minute. The tips of her fingers bumped against a pot holder lying on the counter. She clutched it like a fig leaf in front of her, feeling more embarrassed, more ridiculous by the minute.
Why didn't he move? For one wild moment she thought that maybe she was still asleep, that this was all a silly dream like the ones where she was presiding naked over a committee meeting.
He kept one hand clamped to the refrigerator handle, the other hung at his side. What was wrong with him? Why didn't he move? He was dead, she thought frantically. He had died standing up.
She inched to her right and stepped out of the direct path of the refrigerator light into the glow from the stove light. Maybe she could get to the back door and slip outside. She could hide behind the house until he left. But what if she got locked out?
He turned so abruptly that she made a small, startled sound. It reverberated in the quiet of the kitchen. Finally, he was facing her.
She froze like an animal caught in the beam of a car's headlights. His torso was silhouetted against the open refrigerator, and the stove light had silvered the lenses of his glasses so that she couldn't see his eyes clearly. But there was no doubt about the direction in which he was looking. Those glasses were pointed right at her.
Her hand was clammy around the pot holder. She hunched her shoulders forward, trying to cover her breasts with her upper arms. Her upbringing had prepared her for every conceivable social situation, but she couldn't imagine what to say in this one.
Yank continued to stare at her. She had to do something! Without taking her eyes from him, she began inching toward the living room door, the pot holder clutched over her pudendum so that she looked like Eve fleeing the Garden. As she passed in front of the stove, her body temporarily blocked the stove light and the reflection in his glasses disappeared. For the first time, she could see his eyes.
They were completely blank.
She was so surprised that she stopped moving and looked at him more closely. She had never seen eyes so vague, so unfocused. She took another step to the side. His head didn't move; his gaze remained firmly fixed on some mysterious point to her right. She couldn't believe it. What kind of man was he? Slowly she lowered the pot holder.
She almost laughed.
She slipped from the kitchen and made a dash for the bathroom, where she locked the door and indulged in the first honest laughter she could remember in weeks.
Meanwhile, in Angela Gamble's kitchen, Joseph 'Yank' Yankowski remained just as Susannah had left him. The refrigerator door was still open and he hadn't moved from his position. Only his eyes were different. Beneath the lenses of his glasses, the lids were squeezed tight while inside his skull billions of interconnected nerve cells churned with activity. Thalamus, hypothalamus, the fissured moonscape of cerebrum and cerebellum-all the parts of Yank Yankowski's genius brain were at work, accurately reconstructing from memory each separate micron of Susannah Faulconer's pale naked flesh.
Even though she hadn't slept well, Susannah awakened early the next morning refreshed and full of energy. The encounter with Yank had amused her, and the confrontation with Sam had given her courage. She decided that a woman who could stand her ground in an argument with Sam Gamble was capable of anything. Even while she slept, her mind had been working, and as she stepped into the shower, she once again heard the voice that had whispered to her in her dreams.
Sam came into the kitchen a little after eight o'clock. She had already dressed and she was standing at the sink drying the dishes from the night before. Normally, he teased her about her tidiness, but this morning he didn't seem to have the heart for it. She didn't need to ask why he was so quiet. They were due to pick up the printed circuit boards in an hour. But what good were circuit boards when they didn't have the money to buy the components that went on them?
He walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of orange juice. Without bothering to fetch a glass, he tilted the container to his lips. She wiped off the counter with the dish towel and then hung it away neatly. Appearances, she told herself. Appearances were everything.
He turned, really seeing her for the first time. 'What are you all dressed up for?'
She wore square-heeled leather pumps and a black and white checked suit that was several years old and had never been one of her favorites. Still, it was good quality, and it was the only professional-looking outfit Paige had included. Her hair was neatly coiled at her neck with the pins she had borrowed from the Pretty Please Salon. She stepped forward. Sam had said that Yank's machine could give her courage. It was time to find out if that was true. 'We've tried it your way,' she said. 'Now I want to try it mine.'
Spectra Electronics Warehouse was exactly the sort of place most women hated. It was a vast electronics junkyard of a building with concrete floors and towering shelves filled with cardboard cartons reinforced by wire strapping. An open ceiling supported a network of pipes and jaundiced neon lights. Thick parts catalogues with dog-eared pages were mounted next to a long wooden counter plastered with Fly Navy bumper stickers. The place felt cold and smelled like metal, plastics, and old cigarettes. It was so different from the sorts of places Susannah normally patronized that she might actually have liked it if she hadn't been paralyzed with fright.
'Hey, Sam. Howzitgoin'?' The man behind the counter looked up from a pile of invoices.
Sam swaggered forward. 'Not too bad, Carl. How about you?'
'All right. No complaints.' Carl pulled a pen from an ink-stained plastic pocket protector and returned his attention to the invoices. Sam was obviously not regarded as a customer important enough to warrant any more of his time.
Sam looked at her and shrugged, telling her without words that this had been her idea and she was the one who could see it through. The piece of toast she had eaten for breakfast clumped in her stomach.
When Sam saw that she wasn't moving forward, he came to the proper conclusion that she had lost her nerve and gave her a look of disgust. She wanted to show him that he was wrong-that a socialite could teach a silver- tongued hustler a few things, that she was good for something more than planning cocktail parties. But her feet felt as if they were glued to the floor and she couldn't seem to unstick them. He wandered over to thumb through a parts catalogue, separating himself from her.
