As she passed a pair of SUVs parked next to each other, a flash of movement caught her eye. Without thinking, she turned to look in that direction, and she saw…something. It moved too fast for her to get a good look at it, but she had the impression of a tall person with thin arms and legs, dressed entirely in black. But whoever it was slipped in front of the vehicles with silent, liquid grace, blocking her view. It happened so fast that she wasn’t certain she’d seen anything at all. It had probably been her imagination, she decided. She’d been creeped out by the goat-eyed woman, and now she was seeing sinister shadows flitting around the parking lot.
She frowned. That was odd. Why did she think it was sinister? The way it moved? Or…. An image came to her then of the dark figure she’d glimpsed. Originally, she’d thought she’d seen a person dressed in black: black long-sleeved pullover, black pants, black shoes…. But now she realized that the figure – she was having an increasingly hard time thinking of it as a person – had been black all over. The hands had been black, and so had the head. It was as if the figure had been garbed in a black skin-tight outfit that completely covered its body, making it look like a living shadow.
It was a ridiculous thought, but she walked faster, and although she felt an itch between her shoulder blades, as if someone was watching her, she didn’t turn around to look, too afraid of what she might see.
* * *
Neal Goodman was tired.
He’d started working at seven this morning, and – with the exception of the half hour he’d taken for lunch – he’d worked straight through until five. To someone looking in from the outside, the work of a dentist hardly seemed strenuous, and it wasn’t as if he spent his days digging ditches or anything. But bending over to peer into patients’ mouths and holding your arms up while working on their teeth hour after hour took a physical toll. His lower back ached, and the base of his neck was so sore that it hurt to turn his head in either direction. The joints in his hands throbbed thanks to his arthritis, and it was all he could do to maintain his grip on the steering wheel of his Volvo. When he got home, he’d have to do his best to hide his discomfort from Rosie. If his wife saw how badly he was hurting, she’d start nagging him about retiring again. He would turn seventy this January, and while he liked working – even if it was getting harder on his body as time passed – Rosie was beginning to wear him down.
You’ve been a dentist for almost forty years. You’ve had your own practice – a very successful one – for thirty of those years. You’ve earned a rest, and you should take it before you’re too old to enjoy it.
It was this last part of her argument that was the most effective. Aside from some aches and pains, he was in good health for a man of sixty-nine. But how long would his health hold up? How much time did he have left before his life ended? He wasn’t by nature a morbid man, but he was a realist. With luck, he’d live another decade, but more than that? Maybe not. And even if he did live into his eighties, would he still be strong and healthy enough both physically and mentally to keep enjoying his life, or would he end up parked in some assisted-living facility, marking time until his old body finally had the good sense to give up the ghost? The latter outcome seemed more likely.
Maybe he should make an appointment to talk with his financial advisor to see if it was feasible for him to retire at the end of the fiscal year. If nothing else, it would make Rosie happy and keep her off his back, at least for a little while.
That decided, he started thinking about what he might do with his newfound leisure time. Go on a cruise, maybe. Rosie had always wanted to take a cruise to Alaska. He had no idea why the notion appealed to her so. She hated winter. Maybe he could talk her into going someplace warmer, like the Caribbean. He’d seen commercials for Caribbean cruises on TV, and they’d always looked—
His train of thought broke as he realized he was approaching FoodSaver. He remembered that Rosie had asked him to stop there on his way home and pick up…something. He hadn’t written it down because it was such a normal thing to pick up – like milk or bread – that he figured he wouldn’t forget it. But of course he had. He could stop anyway, go inside, and hope that being in the store would jog his memory. Or he could pass FoodSaver by, continue on home, and when Rosie asked if he’d gotten what she’d asked for, he could say he’d been too tired to stop. She might feel sorry for him then and let him off the hook. Calling her and asking her to remind him what he was supposed to get wasn’t an option. She worried about him enough as it was. He didn’t want her to think he was starting to show signs of dementia. Passing by FoodSaver because he was too tired to stop was one thing. But forgetting the single ordinary item she’d asked him to pick up? She’d take that as an early symptom of Alzheimer’s. Best just to go on home.
He’d eased up on
