“I don’t know. That’s how God made it. You don’t want to mess with God, do you?”
“Well, all right, what is it you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Anything. Something personal, something about yourself.”
“Like what?”
“What’s your favorite color?”
“
That’s
what you want to know?”
“Well?”
“I never thought about it. Chartreuse.”
“Oh, you don’t even know what chartreuse is.”
“Sure I do. It’s purple.”
“It’s green.”
“Oh. Well . . . brown then. I have a brown jacket I like. Kind of orange-brown. It’s nice.”
“What kind of things are you afraid of?”
“Conversations like this, for one.”
“Not like guns or dying or something like that. Something stupid. Something you’re embarrassed by.”
“Let’s see. I never liked spiders much.”
“Hate spiders.”
“Ugly little bastards, aren’t they? And they can jump at you, some of them.”
“What’s your earliest memory?”
“Oh, Christ . . . Playing catch in the backyard with one of my foster fathers. He coached Little League, you know. Wanted me on the team. He was shocked I’d never even played catch before so he taught me.”
“Was he a good guy?”
“Yeah, he was.”
“Did you have to leave him?”
“Yes. He got sick or something. I don’t remember.”
“That must’ve been hard.”
“Oh, man. Does this have to be some kind of sob session about my sad childhood?”
“Oh, no, we wouldn’t want that,” Bethany said. “Big tough fellow like you actually having emotions. Completely unacceptable.”
“I have emotions. Is
being annoyed by a lot of questions
an emotion?”
“All right, we’ll move on.”
“Or we could stop.”
“What about your first girl? And no, I don’t mean for sex. I don’t want to hear about some Russian hooker.”
“She said she was a Kansas farm girl. She did talk kind of funny now that I think about it.”
“Who was the first girl you had a crush on, the first girl you ever loved?”
“You know what?” I reached down and smacked her backside.
“Ow!”
“I’m tired of this game.” I threw my legs over the side of the bed and sat up, my back to her.
She came up behind me and laid her fingertips against me. “Just tell me
something
you love, Dan. I just want to know what it’s like.”
I had my hands pressed into the mattress, ready to push up and stand, but I lingered a while, breathing her scent. She had a nice scent. It wasn’t her perfume, either—it was her. She smelled clean and natural; innocent somehow. I always liked that about her.
“What’s the point?” I said. “Look, it’s no secret: You grow up how I grew up, it does something to you. You’re never entirely comfortable in your own skin.”
“I know that.”
“Maybe nobody is. I’m not complaining. It was what it was. I got myself straight in the Army and now . . .”
She stroked my back. “Now what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I just want . . .”
“Me to leave you alone?”
“It’s not that exactly. It just does no good for me—always talking about everything, thinking about everything. What good does it do? When things are over, they’re over, you can’t change them. I just want to go about my life, go about my business.”
“Agh, Dan!” She came up on her knees and wrapped her arms around me. It was a pleasure to feel her press against me. “You’re such a great guy and you’re so exasperating!”
“Am I?”
“You make me so crazy! Couldn’t you just . . . ?”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Let me in? Just a little. You don’t have to love me, sweetheart. Really. Just let me in.”
I started to say something. I don’t know what—some dodge or other. Luckily, I was rescued from the whole business by my phone’s ringtone.
Then it’s hi-hi-hey—the Army’s on its way
. . .
The phone was in the pocket of my slacks. My slacks were lying on the floor. I had to root around for them, and then root around in the pocket. During the whole process, the phone sang and sang.
For where e’er we go, you will always know, that the Army goes rolling along
. . .
“Damn it.” I couldn’t get it. Finally, just as I managed to yank the phone out of the pocket, the singing stopped. The readout showed it had been Sheriff Brady calling. “Oh, hell.”
“What?” said Bethany.
“It was the boss. Something must’ve happened.”
I was about to dial him back when the phone started ringing again.
Then it’s hi-hi-hey
. . . I answered before the first verse finished.
“Hey, Sheriff, here I am,” I said.
“We just got a 911 call,” said Brady. “Floater in the Hudson just south of the picnic grounds. Figured you might be at Bethany’s, nearby . . .”
“Yeah, I’m, like, a minute away. I’ll be right there.”
“Send that good woman my apologies . . .”
It really was barely a minute’s drive from Bethany’s place to the river. I got there just behind the sirens. The blue and red lights of a couple of cruisers and an ambulance were flashing as I pulled to the curb. The deputies and EMS workers were already climbing out of their vehicles in the shifting, colored glow. More sirens sounded, more lights flashed against the night as two more cruisers came racing to the scene.
Walking quickly, I passed Hannah and Mike from the EMS as they paused to snap open their rolling stretcher. I stepped onto the asphalt of the river walk. Deputy Stinson, a husky veteran, was already there. He was shepherding the small crowd of onlookers over to one side. I stood and looked down the dirt slope toward the water. The moon was almost full. It hung directly above me. A line of its silver light lay glittering on the river’s surface. I scanned the water for a moment, searching for the body, but there was nothing there.
Then Deputy Holbein, walking ahead of the EMS stretcher, lifted a handheld spotlight and turned it on.
There she was. Lying not in the water but on the narrow bank. Sprawled stark naked and facedown, one foot in the water, one hand stretched out over the grass in front of her, as if she’d been trying to climb onto the land when her strength gave out. I could see in that first instant that she was beautiful—strikingly white; pearly white . . . and beautiful, the shape of her as full and graceful as a statue.
Carrying an oxygen canister, Hannah raced ahead of the stretcher to get to the body. She knelt down beside it and felt around its neck and spine.
“Hold that light steady,” I said to Holbein. Then I stepped down off the walk into the broad misty glow of the spot.
I was standing right above the woman when Hannah turned her over. The spotlight was shining on all three of us, catching us in its ghost-white beam. The light transformed the deathly pallor of the nude body into something resembling marble. But she wasn’t marble. When Hannah turned her over, I saw her flesh ripple and flow.
I caught my breath. I felt the blood drain out of my face. I looked—I stared—I gaped down at the body. An involuntary noise—an unspoken word, choked off in my throat—escaped through my parted lips. I heard it as if it had come from someone else, as if it were the sound of someone else’s wonder and amazement.
It was Samantha. The woman lying on the grass was Samantha.
There was no mistake, no possibility of a mistake. It was her, all right. I had never forgotten those features. How could I have? I had dreamed about them every day for years, preserving every detail in my memory.
Now I stood staring down at her in something like shock. It was impossible. How could it be possible? She wasn’t real. She never had been real.
Dumbstruck, I stood and watched as Hannah—with what seemed to me dreamy slowness—pressed the oxygen mask over Samantha’s mouth, then raised her free hand in a beckoning wave to her partner Mike. She shouted at him to bring the stretcher.
I just went on staring. Staring and wondering how it was possible, how it could be possible . . .
And then Samantha opened her eyes.
“Good God!” I said.
The words broke out of me. I sank to one knee in the grass beside her. I gazed, still gaping, at that sweet, pale, beautiful face. I watched as she struggled back to consciousness.
Her eyes moved back and forth above the oxygen mask, searching the scene around her, searching the faces that were hovering over her.
She came to my face. Her eyes stopped moving. Her gaze rested on me.
I stared and stared down at her, stunned into silence.
After another moment, Samantha’s white hand lifted weakly. She pulled the mask away from her mouth. She turned her head and coughed up water.
“Samantha,” I heard myself say.
She turned back to me weakly, her eyelids fluttering.
And then—so softly I could barely hear her—she whispered, “They’re coming after us.”
6
Death and Death
N
OW
I
WAS
in the hospital, sitting in a plastic chair against the wall. The dead glare of the lights made the hallway seem sterile and spiritless. The nurses and aides went back and forth in front of me. They looked like silent figures in a white, white dream. Sitting against the wall across from me was Deputy Holbein. He had been assigned to guard Samantha’s room. He was drinking coffee, lifting the paper cup to his lips. He stared into space as he drank, saying nothing, as if he were some kind of automaton. The soft sounds of gurney wheels and opening doors, elevator tones and footsteps, even the occasional sound of voices—they all struck me as flat and mechanical, as if I were inside some gigantic machine.
I was stunned and dazed, I guess. Everything seemed far away and alien. Ever since I had seen Samantha on the riverbank, I had felt like this, like a stranger in the world. I kept thinking and thinking about it, but I couldn’t get it to make sense.
“Champion.”
I looked up. Grassi was standing over me. Despite the colorful sports coat, his usual sinister energy seemed dimmed. His mean-boy smile was nowhere in evidence. His eyes were dulled—with alcohol, probably. With his hands in the pockets of his slacks, he looked here and there over the hallway, as if he were bored, fitful, searching for a way to escape. Well, it was late.
I managed to lift my chin to him by way of greeting.
“How’s the girl?” he said.
I shrugged. “We’re waiting to hear.”
“Boss says you know her?”
“Not sure. She looked familiar. I may have met her once.”
In a hallucination,
I added bleakly to myself. “I don’t remember where.”
“You don’t remember.”
“No.”
“You know her name?”
“I think her first name is Samantha. That’s all I know.”
“Amazing though. Right? She washes up in Gilead. You’re in Gilead. You maybe know her. What’re the odds?”
“None,” I murmured. “She must have been looking for me.”
“Or you tossed her in the drink in the first place. You didn’t toss her in there, did you, Champ?” There were those white teeth of his now. Because he was only pretending to joke about it. He had his suspicions—or maybe his hopes.
“Yeah. When did I do that?” I asked him with a weary sigh. “I was drinking with you all night.”
“Oh, what, I’m your alibi now? Hell, I never saw you before in my life.”
“Then after Sal’s, I went home with Bethany.”
“Ooh, lucky man.” He pumped his hips obscenely with a mirthless laugh. But I could see he was still turning the whole thing over in his mind—the woman in the river; the fact that I had spoken her name—he was trying to find some way to make trouble for me. Then, as if it were an afterthought, he muttered, “Oh—the boss says you should head in and make a report. I’ll take lead here. Since you know her and all.”
I couldn’t work up the energy to protest. What was I going to say? I don’t know her. I only dreamed her. Anyway, Grassi was just passing on the sheriff’s orders. I’d take it up with Brady later.
“Go on, get out of here,” Grassi said. “After all that wrestling with Bethany, you must need the rest.” He pumped his hips again.
“I will,” I said. “I just want to wait until we find out how she is.”
“I’ll call you, let you know.”
“I’ll wait.”
It wasn’t long. I stood up when I saw the doctor push through the swinging door into the hall. Dr. Owens. A tiny caramel-colored woman. Looked competent and either humorless or exhausted beyond any emotion at all, I wasn’t sure which.
Grassi approached her and I hovered behind him.