Sleep No More

“You’re right. I’d take Lily with me. A bullet in the head for her. Then me.”

She went still, her eyes wide with fear. At last he had rattled her. “You wouldn’t do it,” she said, sounding not at all sure. “You wouldn’t abandon Annelise.”

“Here’s why you’re wrong,” Waters said. “When I shoot Lily, you die with her. I couldn’t live with myself after killing my wife, so I’d finish the job on me. But Annelise would survive and be safe. She’d go to live with her grandmother. That’s already arranged in our wills.”

Lily’s head moved slowly back and forth. “That will never happen.”

“You don’t think so? Do you know why I survived the hell that was the end of our relationship? Because I’m stronger than you are. How many times did you try to kill yourself? Four? Five? But you couldn’t do it. It was all theater. But I don’t act, Mallory. You know that. The day I decide to do it, consider it done.”

Lily got up and began to pace the bedroom, her mouth working in frustration. She gave off the desperate fury of a wild animal pacing a cage. Suddenly she stopped and met Waters’s eye.

“You said you’d do that if I don’t do what you wanted me to do. Well? What do you want me to do?”

“Leave Lily alone. Get out of her head.”

“If I do that, what will you do for me?”

“Why should I do anything for you?”

Her hand went to her neck and twined another lock of hair around her finger. “Because you love me. But if you can’t face that yet, you should do it because I’m the only thing keeping you out of jail.”

Waters fought back his anger. “I do love you.”

Lily’s eyes softened.

“I just can’t let you destroy my wife. That’s why I want you to go into another woman.”

She watched him in silence, trying to work out his thoughts. “Who?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“But you pick this woman, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Someone you like.”

“Whose face and body I like,” he said.

She stared at him for nearly a minute, her eyes growing dark with suspicion. “If I go into this other woman, you’ll kill her. That’s what you’re thinking.”

“You know me better than that. I couldn’t kill an innocent person.”

“If you thought you were saving your family, you might.”

“I’d kill myself, Lily, and Annelise, before I’d kill an innocent person.”

Morbid curiosity flickered in her eyes. “Why?”

“Because I’m responsible for this. For you being like you are. Lily and Annelise are part of me. They’re involved, even though they didn’t ask to be. The sins of the fathers and all that. But I can’t visit this karma on anyone else. If someone has to pay, it should be me and mine.”

She tilted her head, studying his eyes. “You know what, Johnny?”

“What?”

“Lily is too old, anyway. We’re going to have our own babies, and thirty-nine is too old for that.” She lifted the camisole, grabbed a dimple of cellulite from her upper thigh, and pulled. “Yuck. Pick someone under thirty, okay?”

Waters struggled to suppress his rage. “I don’t have any problem with that.”

She walked forward and took hold of his hand. “Just one more thing, Johnny. Pick her soon, okay?”

Lily smiled as though things had arrived at the exact point she’d chosen from the beginning. “Now, get those clothes off and get into bed. I want you to finish what you started this afternoon.”

He pulled his hand free. “That’s not part of the deal. First you move into someone else. Then I come to you.”

She laughed. “Who do you think makes the rules here? I agreed to your idea because of the childbearing issue. But don’t forget that you could be spending the night in jail. I know all this has you freaked out, but I want you, Johnny. Now. And I’m going to have you.”

Waters made no move toward the bed.

“Re-mem-ber,” she said in a singsong voice. “If Mama ain’t happy, no-body’s happy.” Lily walked to the dresser, opened a drawer, and brought out a shining pair of handcuffs.

“Those look like Eve’s,” he observed.

“Of course they are. Your wife doesn’t have anything like this hidden in her underwear drawer. Not even a vibrator.”

Lily pranced toward the bed, dangling the handcuffs as though to provoke him. “These were Eve’s, I should have said. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, right?” She laughed. “Isn’t that what they say, Johnny?”

Waters stared at the handcuffs, a shining little metaphor for his situation. He recalled Eve cuffing him to the bed at the Eola. Thinking of that made him think of Mallory, not as she was now, but when they were together. In those days, Mallory had bound him with scarves, not handcuffs. He saw himself tied to the headboard of her parents’ bed, wondering if Ben Candler and his wife would come home unexpectedly and discover their princess in flagrante delicto. When he thought of Ben Candler, he felt something shift deep in his mind, and he saw what Mallory had described earlier: the local politician who liked to take secret snapshots of little girls. In the dark glow of that image was born his next move in the emotional chess match he would have to play for possession of his life and family.

“Take that slutty rag off and get under the covers,” he said in a harsh voice.

Lily looked curiously at him, trying to read his intent. “You first,” she replied.

“I’ll join you in a second. I have to do something first.”

“Like what?”

“Just get in the bed. And turn off the lights.”

A wary look in her eyes now. “I want the lights on.”

“I can’t do it with the lights on. I can’t look into Lily’s face and make love to her when she’s not there.”

“I thought you’d like the idea.”

“I don’t. You can use your handcuffs or whatever kinky stuff you want. Just turn off the lights.”

“All right. But where are you going?”

“What are you worried about? I can’t hurt you without hurting Lily.”

Pouting with her lips but not her eyes, she went to the bed and slipped off the camisole, then climbed under the covers and switched off the lamp.

Waters walked to the door.

“Tell me where you’re going!”

“For God’s sake, just lie back and enjoy it.”

“I intend to.”

He walked quickly to the den. Inside the cabinet under the TV was the camcorder he had scolded Annelise for using without permission. It was a Sony PC-110, a handheld digital camera with more special-effects functions than he would ever use. But the PC-110 also had one capability that he had found both fun and useful. Called Super Night Shot, it allowed you to shoot video in total darkness, by projecting an infrared beam onto a subject. He and Annelise had used it to film Pebbles hunting in the backyard at night. Tonight he would use it to try to save his life.

He inserted a fresh tape into the slot, then removed the lens cap and switched on the camera. The Super Night Shot switch was on the side. He activated it, then turned off the lights in the den and looked through the viewfinder. A ghostly green image of the room filled the screen, the camera autofocusing wherever he turned it.

“Okay,” he said softly. “Let’s make a movie.”

He took off his shirt and wrapped it partly around the camera, but took care to leave the lens and the infrared beam generator exposed. On his way back to the bedroom, he stopped in the hall bathroom, dug under the sink for a minute, then continued on, the camera and shirt held carefully in his left hand. At the bedroom door, he walked quickly through the darkness to Lily’s low dresser and set his shirt on it, the camera lens facing the bed. Then he