Corkscrew (20 page)

Usually he didn't like shopping, but preferred to hurry into a store, grab the first things he saw that approximated what he wanted, and hurry back out again. Today, though, he felt a kind of underwater stillness inside himself, as though he'd been swimming hard but now didn't have to any more. Now he could coast.

Everything was finished. Detective Johnson had phoned earlier this week, but only to get the names and addresses and phone numbers of some of Lucie's relatives in Kansas and Missouri; he was haring farther afield, he had not found the murderer's spoor. Pegasus-Regent had paid for
Two Faces,
Joe Katz had accepted it as a work by Bryce Proctorr, the distracting and harrying divorce process was eliminated, Wayne Prentice was content. His relationship with Isabelle had stalled, but maybe that merely meant it had gone as far as it could, that he and Isabelle would never be any closer to one another, that she was not at last the answer to what he would do next in that department.

'Excuse me.'

'Yes?'

An attractive face framed by soft waves of ash-blond hair, and the kind of wide innocently eager brown eyes that suggested plastic surgery. A short dark fur coat open on a dark green blouse and tan wool slacks. She seemed hesitant, but not really afraid of rejection. She said, 'Aren't you Bryce Proctorr?' Her voice was throaty, as though she smoked cigars, or liked to laugh at dirty jokes.

'Guilty,' he told her, with his meet-the-fan smile.

'I
thought
so!' She extended a slender hand in which the bones were outlined beneath pale skin. 'I was told you lived somewhere around here. I'm Marcia Rierdon, I'm a huge fan of yours.'

'How do you do,' he said, taking the hand, which was quick and strong. He'd had encounters like this before, one step beyond normal random; the follow-through depended on the circumstances. 'I always like to hear positive words,' he assured her.

Smiling, she said, 'Well, I have one negative word for you, Mr Proctorr. Where's the next book? Your readers are waiting.'

'June,' he promised her. 'I guess there'll be books in the stores in May. It's called
Two Faces in the Mirror.'

'I will buy it at
once.
I think I have every book you've ever written.'

'Well, good.'

'In hardcover!'

'Even better,' he said.

She leaned forward, a sudden hard hand on his forearm, where he was holding his cart. 'Could you — ' she said. Then she retreated, hand off his arm, shaking her head. 'No, it's too much to ask.'

'Is it?' he asked. 'How do I know if I haven't heard it?'

'I live nine miles from here,' she told him, 'toward Amenia, New York.' Looking in his cart, she said, 'I don't know how much more shopping you have to do—'

'I'm almost done.'

A sidelong smile. 'Shopping for one,' she said.

He grinned, nodding his agreement. 'That's what I'm doing.'

'I'd think a person—' Then shock changed her face, she pressed carmine fingertips to her mouth, she said, 'Oh, my God, your wife!'

'It's okay,' he assured her.

'Oh, what a terrible thing, I completely forgot, I am so sorry!'

'No, it's fine,' he said. 'Don't worry about it. I forget myself, sometimes.'

'Well, now I'm embarrassed,' she said, 'now I can't ask you.'

'You want to know if I'll follow you to your house,' he said, 'and sign your books.'

'Oh,
would
you?' Her hand was on his forearm again, tighter than before.

'I'd love to,' he said. 'Give me five minutes.'

'I'll be by the registers,' she told him, and permitted her bright-eyed smile to turn just a little coquettish as she lifted her hand beside her face to give him a tiny ta-ta wave, then turned away.

He didn't have that much more to find in here. Walking the aisles, finishing the selections, he thought about this as a scene in a novel, where it would always have seemed a little opportunistic and now would seem outdated as well. Twenty years ago, these hills were full of stay-at-home wives during the week, childless or their children away at school, their husbands living and working in New York, coming up only for the weekends, some of the wives on the prowl for ways to make country life more interesting while the breadwinner was away. Most of those wives were gone now, either to jobs of their own in the city — almost all of the couples Bryce knew up here had two jobs and traveled to and from New York together — or at the very least they found life in the city during the week more stimulating than life alone in the country. But there were still a few, a minority, maintaining the traditional structure, the woman tending the fire in the cave while the man was out contending with the mastodon.

And hitting on a famous person only because he's famous was an evergreen activity.

So this had happened to Bryce before, over the years, though not often; this would be the third time. The first one, he'd been happily married to Ellen, and he'd been polite and friendly, honored by the attention, but unfortunately stuck with an appointment with his wife; a lie, but it doused the fire.

The second time, he'd been sleeping with Lucie but not yet married to her and she was still resisting the idea of spending time with him in Connecticut, so then he'd been happy to follow the lady home, eventually taking her out to dinner, going back to spend the night. She'd given him her phone number, which he'd immediately thrown away, and wouldn't have been able to find that house again today on a bet. Nor did he remember her name, nor much about what she'd looked like. Oddly, the rejected first one was a little clearer in his memory.

So what was the program this third time at bat? She was attractive, she was intelligent (she did, after all, admire his books), he was completely unattached, and she was unlikely to be a problem in the future, since she already had a man who provided her this place within the tribe. If Bryce didn't want to see her again, it would be just as simple as the other time.

I'm going to follow her home, he thought, but the frisson that gave him was a strange one, almost a revulsion. Wasn't she sexy? Certainly she was sexy. Beneath the uniform of the tribe, she would be very fit indeed.

Somehow, he couldn't imagine forward to that moment. Part of sex, of course, is anticipation, imagining what is yet to be, but his mind was dull, he could only think of the here and now, we have two cars, she's waiting by the cash registers, I will follow her toward Amenia, New York.

Yes, there she was. She waved as he unloaded his goods on to the moving black belt, and then pushed her cart full of bagged groceries outside. He paid, wheeled his own stuff out, and she was across the lot, standing beside a gray-green Jeep Cherokee with Connecticut plates. Again she waved, and he waved back. She got into her car, he loaded his and got behind the wheel, and their two-car convoy left the parking lot and turned left.

All the roads around here were two-lane, winding, hilly, upscale suburban. The houses were set well back, most of the trees still in place, new plantings, fences, hedgerows, tennis courts, swimming pools, multicar garages angled beside Colonial stone. The Cherokee ahead of him glided like a dream through the landscape, and Bryce followed.

Lucie. This had been Wayne and Lucie, just two people getting to know one another, strangers in that engrossing time before sex when every sense is heightened, every gesture has meaning, every slant of shadow across cheekbone is to be analyzed, the world to be discovered approaches across the universe. And then the explosion.

Why am I thinking about Lucie? he asked himself, and clenched hard to the wheel. Am I going to spoil things? Am I going to go in there and be a pathetic grieving widower, impotent in his sorrow? What sorrow? I don't grieve for Lucie, I never have, I never will. I hate it that she made it all necessary, but she did make it all necessary, she did that. I did nothing.

He wanted to know. Lucie had been his enemy, his demon, his succubus, and he should have been there, he should have experienced it for himself. It was only to avoid suspicion that he hadn't been there, that someone else had done what he should have done. He knew, in the dreams he never remembered, he knew he was trying to create the scene, imagine the scene, but it wasn't working. He wanted to know.

Marcia Rierdon. The looseness of her smile, the brightness of her eyes. What would she look like—

Why can't I visualize having sex with her? He forced himself to see a white pillow in a dim room, her smiling face, bright-eyed, looking up from the pillow. But where was he?

His fist smashed down. That nose, which has also been fixed, is fixed again. The fist lifts, the wide eyes are wider, but what does it
look
like? What does it sound like? What is it like?

His eyes snapped open just before he would have driven off the road into an old stone fence. He righted the car, and saw the Cherokee slowing toward a Stop sign ahead, the right-turn signal on. Keep your eyes open, you have to drive with your eyes open.

She stopped at the Stop sign. He switched his right-turn signal on. She turned right. He stopped; he turned right.

Oh, God, is that what I'm going to do? He could feel it coming over him, knowing what it was but not wanting to know what it was. He would never have sex with this woman, this Marcia Rierdon. There was heat for her, but it wasn't in his loins, it was in his shoulders, the straining muscles of his arms, in his legs.

I wasn't there because I couldn't be there because they would suspect me, but I should have been there, it's incomplete if I'm not there. I don't know this woman, she doesn't know me, no one will ever know I was in her house, never know I was this far west in Connecticut, never know anything, at last I can be
there
because I cannot be a suspect.

Sweat ran down and out from under his hair, on to his forehead, down in front of his ears, into his collar in back. He was panting, his hands were clenching and unclenching on the wheel.

You can't do this. You don't need to know. You don't
need
to know. You can't hurt Marcia Rierdon, she isn't Lucie. She isn't Lucie.

She's married, she's self-indulgent, she's faithless, she's evil, she
is
Lucie.

Is not having the memory worse? Or is having the memory worse?

He seemed to be his own prisoner. He watched helplessly, hoping he could stop himself, hoping he wouldn't stop himself, hoping he could come out of this, whatever this was, just come out of this with his mind intact. Just not hurt
himself.

Her brake lights lit. She turned right onto a blacktop driveway between two square brick posts, with a large dark house back there among towering trees. A black mailbox said, in red letters:

He touched the brakes. He breathed loudly through his mouth. He drove past that driveway, and on.

He stared now out the windshield as though he expected some monster to come up out of the roadway at any second and engulf him, car and all. The way he'd stared just after the multicar collision, before he'd realized he was still alive.

He turned at random, the next intersection, the next. I can go back, he told himself, I can turn around and go back, make an excuse, she'll still let me in, she'll still
want
me to come in.

I'm going to have to resolve this, sooner or later, and I can go back right now.

He kept driving. Nearly an hour later he drove into Amenia, New York, from the south, which would not have been a straight line from her place. He turned right at the traffic light, heading back to Connecticut.

I can still go back, he told himself, though he was no longer sure exactly where she lived. If I come to her house, he told himself, I will turn in. We'll leave it to fate, or God, or chance, or dumb luck, or whatever. If I see her house, I will turn in. Absolutely, no question. I can always make some excuse.

He drove another hour, and then he drove home and unpacked his groceries.

By the middle of February, Wayne had sold three more magazine pieces, and had earned nineteen thousand dollars the first six weeks of the year. At that rate — though realistically he knew that rate couldn't possibly continue — but at that rate, if he actually could make it continue, he'd bring in just about twice as much a year from magazine articles as he'd ever made, even in the best years, from writing novels.

So far, the new career had been as much fluke as planning. Flush with his
Vanity Fair
success, he'd done another piece on the subject of charity, again with Susan as his primary source, this time with her also as lead to other sources, this piece on charity and celebrity, on the subject of which celebrities chose to support publicly which charities, and why, with an emphasis on celebrities and charities both based in New York. He'd expected that to go to
Vanity Fair
as well, but they said it was too much like other things they already had, so Willard Hartman sent it to
Playboy,
and they bought it.

All right, then,
Playboy
. He did a piece about seduction on the Internet, aimed right at the crease between
Playboy's
one and three pin, and it proved to be a gutter ball instead. So Willard sold that one to
Vanity Fair;
go figure.

With the third piece, he decided not to even think about a market, but leave that — as, after all, he'd done with that first piece on the charities — to Willard. Using Jack Wagner and Janet Higgins of
Low Fidelity
as his entree — happily, neither of them so much as mentioned Lucie — he did a piece on the current state and future prospects of off-off-Broadway.

Willard called ten days later:
'New York
is very happy with the downtown piece.'

In the meantime,
The Shadowed Other
was going nowhere. He looked at the printout from time to time, thought about it, even knew part of where the story would move next, but he just couldn't force himself to boot that disc into the computer. What was the point? No one waited for
The Shadowed Other.
He'd get to it someday, but at the moment he had a living to make. After all, he now had a major accountant, who treated him like a valued client; no point letting that slip away. With Susan's salary and his own new freelance career, he should be able to keep Mark Steiner's interest alive.