White Horse

dead siren leaves an empty space my heart hurries to fill because it’s stopped on my street, on my block, on my front doorstep. I imagine Mo, the night doorman, setting aside his Reader’s Digest, the one he keeps open on his lap while he watches Nick at Nite, shambling to the front door, where he’ll open it just a crack and say, “What can I do ya for?”

Blood rushes through my ears. They’re hot to the touch, which strikes me as odd, because I’m shivering.

Curiosity slithers through my fear. Who’s dead? I need to know. I snatch up my keys and phone and bolt down the stairs. The only thing faster than my heart is my feet. When I throw open the lobby door, I know how I must look: the wild-eyed woman obviously too crazy to bother with polite accoutrements like shoes or a coat thrown over my pajamas.

Mo is already back behind his desk, book in lap, eyes fixed on the small screen. The ambulance loiters at the curb, blocking the entire front view.

“Miss Marshall,” he says. “What can I do—”

I slap my hands on the counter. “Who are they here for?”

“Who?”

I want to reach over the counter and shake him until the answers spill out his mouth.

“The paramedics. They stopped here. Who for?”

He grunts as he sits upright, reaches for the leather-bound ledger that holds the names of guests. He makes a Busby Berkeley production of running his thick ink-blackened finger down and across the page until it sticks on the final entry. Clears his throat.

“Mrs. Sark in seventy-ten.”

The woman with four cats masquerading as one. My fingernails are cut back to the quick, so there’s just a soft pat-pat-pat as my fingers drum the polished countertop. It’s do this or scream, and I don’t want to scream.

“Do you know why?”

He shrugs. “Who knows? A lotta people here been sick lately. Porkchop was telling me how the Jones boy painted the door with his lunch last week. Waste of a good Reuben.”

Porkchop is the day doorman, real name Jimmy Bacon.

Three hard knocks on glass end our conversation.

“What can I do ya for?” Mo says when he gets around to opening the door. Whatever he’s hearing, it must be okay, because he opens the door and the two cops who aren’t cops step inside. Ben’s still dead, I want to tell them as their gazes latch onto me.

They take the elevator up, and when they come back down, they’re accompanied by two paramedics and Mrs. Sark. At least, I think it’s her, but it’s hard to tell through the thick yellow body bag.

“I guess seventy-ten will be available now.” Mo sighs like his world is ending. “More work for me, with all the prospective tenants traipsing through.”

NINE

DATE: NOW

Post-man, pre-man, the countryside knows not the difference. Its beauty flourishes for as long as it can hold progress at bay, which may be forever. We gorge ourselves on grapes meant for high-priced wines and carry as many as we can with us.

We rest, but not for long. Time is running short. Sometimes I wonder why the Swiss is so eager to accompany us. I should ask, but I don’t. His insanity is a cold and quiet one, and I know he’d kill, not to save us, but to eliminate any threat that would cross our path. It’s best he stay with us, not exactly on our side but at least not fighting us. Where I can watch him.

He uses Lisa as he pleases now, often stopping to take her between the fruit trees in some verdant orchard. The smell of spoiled fruit is the scent of his lust, and to smell that oversweet perfume turns my stomach. Lisa is complicit, or maybe just compliant. She goes to him, her expression half-triumphant, half-bewildered. That he wants her thrills her, but she doesn’t understand why he does. She walks quietly afterward, and I know she’s asking herself: Is this love? When we rest, she hangs her head low.

I don’t judge her. She’s just a kid.

“Do you want to watch?” he asks.

“Screw you.”

I don’t need to taste rotting meat to know it’s no good.

“Do you think it’s true?” Lisa asks.

“Is what true?”

“Is there a monster inside me? Inside you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“But you don’t know.”

“No.”

“I don’t want to give birth to a monster.” Lisa faces straight ahead with her one blind eye. “I don’t want to give birth at all.”

DATE: THEN

The shadows don’t make sense in my dimly lit apartment. They seem to have chosen to lurk where they please rather than follow physics’ dictates. I could turn on more lights, shoo them away, but I don’t because there’s a part of me that believes they’d cling to the walls, refuse to let go. And there’s another piece of my mind that doesn’t want to know what they’re concealing.

I don’t hide in the shadows. I pick the center of the kitchen to make my phone call. From here I can see the front door and the jar. From here I can tilt my head an inch or two to the left and make them disappear.

The line rings. My hope diminishes as each note fades. Then voice mail answers and I hear an imprint of Dr. Rose’s voice speaking to me from the past.

I’m glad he didn’t answer. It’s easier like this, talking to a computer that’s converting my words into a sound file stored on a server somewhere, probably in the Midwest or maybe in India. This way I can talk to him and still be heard without being listened to.

“Hi, it’s Zoe Marshall.” The words snag on my tongue as though they’re aware of their triteness. “I don’t really know who else to call. My family would think I’ve lost it and my two best friends are dead. Which means they’re great listeners now, but lousy as far as support goes. Since support and listening is your thing, I thought of you.”

I pull my knees up tight against my chest, rest my chin on the cartilaginous curves.

“I think… I think the jar’s bad luck, or maybe it’s killing people. I know you think I should open it but I can’t. It’s like that whole Pandora’s box story. What if I open it and the world goes to hell? What if all the ills of the world really do pour out? People around me are dying. That’s not normal. I don’t want to be Pandora or Typhoid Mary. I just want to be me. I’m sure you’ll think I’m nuts when you hear this, but… forget it.”

I kill the call.

Just me and the jar chilling in my apartment. The green glowing numbers on the oven flick away the minutes. When my life is seventeen minutes shorter, my phone rings.

“I want to see you,” Nick says. Nick. Not Dr. Rose now. Nick. Thinking his name makes my cheeks warm as though that particular arrangement of letters weaves some kind of aphrodisiac voodoo spell on me.

“Do you still have Friday afternoon open?”

“I don’t mean professionally.”

“Oh.” Then: “When?”

“Soon. But give me a few days.”

There’s a note in his voice, a kind of tension that tells me there’s an obstacle not easily moved standing between us.