She went into the living room and called his name again. Kept calling it as she roamed the apartment, peering into all the rooms.
She was alone.
As she walked back through the living room, she noticed one of the blinds was raised.
Something else that doesn’t belong.
But she made no further connection between the blind and the steaks in the kitchen. After all, she might have raised the blind and forgotten. Or maybe Donald had done so.
Mary lowered the blind, restoring-in her mind, anyway-elegance and balance to the room. She only absently took note of the smudges on the windowpane, as if someone had leaned against it in order to peer out and down.
She went back to the kitchen and gingerly touched the shrink-wrapped steaks with the backs of her knuckles.
They were cool.
Can’t have been here long.
Mary sat at the table and stared at the expensive cuts of meat she was sure she hadn’t seen before.
Donald again? Playing his games?
She knew he’d deny it.
This is strange. This is goddamned strange.
She recalled stepping out of the elevator into the hall, the hiss of the adjacent elevator’s door closing, what she’d felt, how the hair on the nape of her neck seemed to stir. She hadn’t thought much about it at the time. And maybe she shouldn’t think about it now.
Nothing…it means nothing… Imagination…I am not afraid…
But maybe I should be!
Mary put the steaks in the refrigerator’s meat compartment and left the apartment immediately. In the lobby she realized she’d forgotten her umbrella, but she decided not to go back for it.
She’d kill time down the street at Starbucks, sip a cafe mocha while she browsed through this morning’s paper, and return to the apartment later, when she was sure Donald was home.
Definitely, they needed to talk.
The Night Prowler had stood in the elevator on the twelfth floor and waited for her, his fingertip on the button marked open so the door wouldn’t close and the elevator would remain where it was.
When he heard the adjacent elevator arrive, he removed his finger from open and pressed lobby. The door slid closed just as the door next to it was opening. He actually caught a buzzing glimpse of her gray skirt-its hem, for only an instant-as she emerged into the hall.
As the elevator plunged, he leaned against its back wall and breathed in deeply. For an instant she’d been so near. The scent of her! Not of her perfume, but of her!
The scent of her flesh, of her color and movement and smile and glance!
She knows!
She might not realize it yet, but she knows. Somehow, on some dark level of consciousness in the ancient country of her mind, she has to be aware of what fate plans for us, of the inevitability and momentum of desire, to know how close we are, united, merged, cleaved unto each other, almost as one.
Original sin. Original betrayal.
Almost as one…
She knows!
28
God, this is awful!
Pearl had a terrible taste in her mouth and her teeth felt mossy. She’d fallen asleep on her sofa watching cable news, and the precarious state of just about everything seemed to have taken over her mind. She couldn’t quite recall her dreams, but they’d left a residue of gloom.
She’d had dinner alone at home-a small steak, French fries, deli slaw, and a glass of cheap red wine. Satisfying. After doing the dishes at the sink, she’d put on some old jeans and a worn-out shirt and painted in the living room until she got tired. Then she did a hurried cleanup and decided to drink a soda while she watched television before going to bed.
A new reality TV show was on. Several men and women had been living together for weeks in isolation in a lighthouse on a small island. One of the women had finished last in a round-robin tennis match, and viewers were calling in to vote on which of the men should marry her.
Huh?
Pearl had dozed.
Now it was past one A.M., and on television a man in a blue suit with a red tie was arguing with another man in a blue suit with a red tie about abortion.
Pearl blinked and sat up. The TV was pulled out toward the middle of the room. Behind it, the wall was almost completely painted. This visual affirmation of accomplishment didn’t afford the satisfaction Pearl had imagined. In her depressed state she wondered why she’d felt the surge of optimism and energy that prompted her to drag painting materials from the hall closet and begin rolling the wall.
She thought it might have had something to do with Quinn, but when she looked at it another way, that seemed preposterous. Quinn was old enough to be her father-biologically, anyway. Theirs would be the kind of romance you saw in old Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall movies, where nobody noticed or cared that Bacall was young and Bogart was closing in on senility. Or like Fred and Ethel on I Love Lucy. What the hell was Ethel doing with a fossil like Fred?
On the other hand, Pearl thought, it might not be so bad to be the celluloid Lauren Bacall. Or, for that matter, Ethel. Instead of a woman on the verge of unemployment, and getting hooked on an aged ex-cop everyone thought was a child molester.
Almost everyone, anyway.
The talking heads on TV had switched subjects and were discussing the federal deficit. Pearl heard something about “sacrificing future generations.”
The truth was, the future didn’t look so good for Pearl, Quinn, and Fedderman. They were way out on a limb that some very important people were trying to saw off. Egan was a total asshole, and even Quinn didn’t trust Renz. The local media were starting to get nasty, and Quinn was the only one who thought there’d been any actual progress on the case.
Pearl decided she’d call Quinn’s sister tomorrow, maybe try to meet her someplace for coffee, and get a renewal of optimism. Michelle Quinn seemed constantly buoyed by whatever magic she worked on her computer to suggest her brother was innocent of the rape accusation. There was always the possibility she’d somehow fit together cyber pieces and make progress on the Night Prowler puzzle.
The Night Prowler. Pearl didn’t want to think about that sicko tonight. She wouldn’t be able to sleep. Quinn, innocent, was suffering like some poor schmuck in the Bible who’d been exiled to a far land to do penance, while the Night Prowler, a killer, took his sadistic satisfaction with impunity.
Pearl decided not to let herself get riled up. She noticed she hadn’t put the lid on one of the paint cans. Oh, well. By now there was probably a skin of dried paint over the surface. As good as a lid. No need to bother with it tonight, tired as she was. In the morning she’d stuff the paint and other materials back in the closet and try to forget about them.
One of the TV pundits was waving his arms and trying to outshout the other guy, assuring everyone the future was secure. Pearl used the remote to switch him off in midsentence and went to bed.
Even in her life there were small satisfactions.
There she was. He was almost certain.
New York was big, but people still unexpectedly saw someone they knew.
She wasn’t wearing the fuck-me oufit she’d had on when they first met. This morning she was dressed like a
