Sleep No More

“I probably should go,” he said, looking at his watch.

She slowly shook her head. “No. Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you up in plenty of time.”

He rolled back over and closed his eyes for an hour, but he did not sleep. He lay like a man spending his first night in prison, waiting for a fist, a knife, or worse. It took all his willpower not to leap out of bed and run from the room.

After he finally escaped the suite, he vowed never to see Eve again. When she called his cell phone the next day, he lied and told her Lily was leaving town for the night, and that he had to stay home with Annelise. Eve offered to come to his house and wait for him in the slave quarters, but he told her he couldn’t possibly see her with Annelise in the house. She tried to act casual, but thirty minutes later she called back. Couldn’t he find a sitter for a few hours and come to the hotel during that time? No, he told her. Annelise would tell Lily what he’d done, and that wasn’t their agreement. Eve called back twice more and tried various approaches, but Waters held firm. That night, after he and Lily put Annelise to bed, he sat on the porch at Linton Hill until dawn, like a lone settler guarding his family on the Great Plains. He wasn’t sure what he feared, but he knew he could not sleep.

Several times, headlights slowed as they passed the house, and one car actually nosed into the driveway and parked, its engine idling. This was not uncommon in a tourist town; people got lost all the time. Yet as the vehicle sat at the end of the drive, obscured by the trees and darkness, Waters felt in his blood that behind those bright lights was a black Lexus, and behind its wheel Eve Sumner, her eyes as watchful as the previous night when she had watched him in sleep. He thought of switching on his cell phone, but he did not want to give Eve a chance to interrogate him or persuade him of anything.

Just before dawn, he went out to the slave quarters and crashed on the twin bed he kept there. When he awakened that afternoon, Lily was gone. His cell phone showed fourteen missed calls, all from pay phones. He knew that if he didn’t answer soon, Eve would show up in person at his home or office. Just as Mallory would have done.

As he drove to his office, his phone chirped. The caller ID showed a pay phone. Despite Eve’s recent behavior, the Pavlovian response still kicked in: desire stirred in him, utterly detached from the misgivings in his mind. He picked up the phone.

“Here.”

“Tonight,” Eve snapped, her voice so clipped it was hard to read. She might have been crying.

“Um-”

“You don’t want me anymore?”

“Of course I do.”

“I know I scared you, Johnny. I know I’m going too fast. It’s just that I’ve waited so long-”

“I know,” he cut in, not at all sure what he knew. “Look, are you going to keep on with the Mallory stuff? All the painful things from the past?”

“No. I swear to God. No talking. Let’s go back to what we know. I need you inside me.”

Even if it was a lie, her words dulled his anxieties like Valium.

“We could go right now,” she whispered. “I’m ready now. You know how I get.”

Images bloomed like night flowers in his mind: Eve’s dark hair lying across her shoulder blades; the river of sweat running down her spine; her mouth as she growled in a way that was not quite animal and not quite human-

“Not now,” he whispered. “Tonight.”

“Tonight,” she said. “Don’t stand me up, Johnny.”

“I won’t.”

Rain lashed the walls and windows of the Eola in silver sheets turned pink by the streetlamps as Waters drove his Land Cruiser down Main Street toward the old hotel. At the corner of Main and Pearl, he turned right, and his breath stuck in his throat. Police and ambulance lights arced like antiaircraft tracers from the intersection of Pearl and Franklin streets, a block to the north. This was close to where Waters normally parked. Braking, he saw that an old Grand Am had smashed into a Mississippi Power amp; Light truck with its cherry picker extended. He considered cruising slowly past the scene and parking farther away than usual, but something made him stop. Perhaps it was the memory of Detective Tom Jackson recognizing his vehicle and stopping him that night. In any case, the police and rescue vehicles were blocking most of the intersection, and no one working the scene seemed to notice when he reversed the Land Cruiser back onto Main Street and continued toward the river.

Passing the bars near the Eola, he saw the silhouettes of several patrons through neon-lit rain. He turned left on South Wall, then made another left and parked in a law firm’s lot on South Pearl. He’d brought an umbrella with him, but it was almost useless. The rain blew at a forty-five-degree angle, soaking his coat and slacks. As he ran across Main Street, he used the umbrella to hide his face from any curious drinkers in the bars.

He walked through the hotel doors like a businessman late for an appointment, despite the hour. The bell chimed through the spacious lobby, and he heard the scrape of the security guard’s chair, but as usual no one challenged him. He ascended to the mezzanine and pressed the elevator button. Waiting, he fought the urge to look back over the mezzanine rail. If he did, he would be visible to the desk clerk working below and to his right. The ancient elevator always seemed to take forever. At the sound of groaning cables, he willed the car to be empty, as it had been on most nights he’d come.

It was.

He reached the door of the suite without seeing a soul or-he hoped-a soul seeing him. But as he turned the doorknob, he felt a disquieting premonition, like the one he’d had when he first touched the door at Bienville. Nerves, he thought. Suck it up. He shook his head and pushed open the door.

Tonight Eve wasn’t sprawled across the bed or hiding naked in the dark, as she had been on some nights, and for a moment he thought he had arrived first. Then he felt wind blowing through the suite. He looked across the bed at the door-sized windows and saw Eve silhouetted on the balcony, her unmistakable curves framed in the pink glow of the streetlights below. She was leaning on the rail with her back to him, naked, apparently oblivious to the rain that had stung his face only moments ago.

As he stared, she looked back over her shoulder, and her eyes glinted in the dark. The rain and the halos of the streetlights created the impression that the balcony was superfluous, that Eve was floating in space. He started to go to her, but she stopped him with an upraised hand.

“You lied to me,” she said in a voice devoid of emotion.

“What?”

“Lily didn’t leave town. She was home with you. I saw her leave the house this morning.”

Waters swallowed and tried to marshal his thoughts. This was Mallory to the life: paranoia, surveillance, confrontation. She would begin with cold fury, then escalate to the inevitable explosion. He felt himself tensing for violence.

“I know why you lied,” she said. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

Lightning strobed, freezing her body in time, burning eerie images onto his retinas: her soaked hair hanging limp, rainwater spattering her breasts and abdomen, her skin almost blue from cold. Then a colossal peal of thunder shook the building, and she seemed to shudder in place. He saw confusion in her eyes, as though for a moment she had forgotten who and where she was.

“I’m not afraid,” he told her.

Eve blinked several times, then folded her arms across her breasts. “I’m cold,” she said, her teeth chattering.

Waters grabbed the comforter off the bed and went to her. He gathered the fabric around her shoulders and pulled her inside. His shoes made sucking sounds in the soaked carpet as he shut the windows.

Standing by the bed, he switched on a lamp. Dark circles shadowed Eve’s eyes, and her cheeks looked drawn. She might not have slept or eaten for days, yet thirty-six hours ago she had looked the picture of health.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

She did not reply.

“I’m worried about you.”

Now she looked up at him. “Are you? What are we going to do, Johnny?”

“What do you mean?”