Escape the Night (35 page)

“You talk to your neighbors?”

“Worse than incest, huh?”

“That's all right.” Carey pulled acrid smoke deep into his lungs, held it, breathed out. “I don't think I've smoked dope since 1973. It's sort of nostalgic.”

She grinned. “You're such a snob. Actually, it
is
nostalgic—it reminds me of college, when you had time to know people and even waste it with them. I miss that—things seem more superficial now.”

Carey smiled into the fire. “‘Ciano Looks Back—A Retrospective.'”

“Oh, come on, Peter—you remember.”

“Not in the same way.” He handed her the joint and drank more wine: the Cabernet tasted rich. “I pretty much kept my own company.”

“Why was that?”

“The dreams, partly.” His limbs felt warm as he stretched. “I suppose it was a matter of trust—maybe trusting myself.”

She exhaled. “You really don't like letting go, do you. It's like someone's going to turn it on you.”

He shrugged. “People do, though.”

She rolled on her side, tapping ash in a tray, then looked at him. “But not me, Peter.” She passed the joint again. Their fingertips brushed.

The fire spat and crackled, burning brighter. They watched it in silence, finishing the joint. “It's almost hot,” she said.

He nodded. “Want to move?”

“It's okay.” Sitting up, she shook back her hair, then peeled off her sweater.

She wore nothing underneath.

Carey stared at her. She sat cross-legged in blue jeans, sipping wine and watching the flame leap higher. Its glow burnished her olive skin, casting shadows beneath her breasts and cheekbones. Her hair shone black. Her nipples were deep pink.

With sudden fierceness, Carey wished to keep this moment.

He rose.

She looked up, startled. He raised his hand, signaling her to stay, then went to the kitchen and returned with her camera. He knelt beside her. “I'd like to,” he said quietly.

Her eyes were dark brown. “Me?”

He nodded, mute. She hesitated. Then she took the camera from his hand, adjusted the light meter, and placed it in front of him, looking into his face. “No one's ever done this before, Peter.”

“I know.”

She turned toward the fire again. He watched her, unmoving, the camera still before him on the rug. “You can now,” she said softly. “I fixed it.”

He picked up the camera.

Flames danced on her skin. He pressed the button.

Turning, she took the camera, then his hand, rose, and led him to the bedroom door. There she turned again, without words, and placed the camera in his hands.

“Noelle …”

She put one finger to his lips. “It's all right, Peter. I trust you.”

She closed the door gently behind them.

Martin was greeted by the security guard as he opened the glass door. “Back so
soon
, Mr. Marlowe?”

Martin felt his smile turn to rubber. The remark angered him: he did not like breaking into buildings twice. “Forgot something,” he said sheepishly; signing in, he stalked to the elevator, a picture of self-disgust.

Inside Pogostin's office, he still felt edgy.

In haste, he pulled the tape recorder from his briefcase and placed it next to the recorder on Pogostin's desk—a perfect match.

Unplugging the first tape recorder from the wall, Martin put it in his briefcase; the one remaining would be used for Peter Carey. He bent by the outlet, to plug it in.

The door opened behind him.

Martin whirled. A slender Hispanic cleaning lady recoiled in the doorway, bucket swinging. He rose, smiling. “Wait …”

Frightened, she backed into the corridor.

Martin started for the door. He could twist her windpipe before she reached the elevator, pulse throbbing in his hands.

The door shut between them; Martin felt it interrupt the sequence of her death. Her footsteps skittered down the hall like a rabbit's.

He could not kill yet.

In moments she would warn the guard. He must move quickly.

In rapid sequence he replaced the second recorder with Pogostin's, plugged it in, and put the duplicate in his briefcase, leaving the office exactly as it was. Running to the elevator, he looked up at the red luminous numbers of its floors, and saw the light flash: one.

The maid would scamper through the lobby, to tell the guard. She would hide, and then he too would begin to watch the elevator.

Martin pressed the button marked ten; hearing the elevator begin to rise, he took the exit door and started scrambling down the pitch-black stairwell. He could see almost nothing; feel nothing but the rail in his hand, and his own sweat. Going down, he counted each new floor.

Five.

With a gun, even a fool could kill. Damn Englehardt …

Three.

As Martin counted two, he burst onto the second floor and ran to its elevator. Above it, the red number hit ten.

Martin pushed the button marked two, and sprinted back to the stairwell. If he was lucky, the guard would watch the numbers moving toward him.

He reached the first floor, skin crawling with tension. Creeping to the exit door, he peered out.

Back toward Martin, the guard pointed his revolver at the elevator. Above him, the red number turned to five.

Gently, Martin let himself out the door.

The soles of his shoes were rubber.

The guard's shoulders tensed; with each silent step closer, the elevator descended.

Four.

Martin took two more soft steps; a single sound, and the stupid guard would whirl to shoot him.

Three.

Five feet more; four feet; three.

The elevator hit two, and stuck.

Too late, the guard began turning, and then Martin's arm hooked around his windpipe.

The revolver clattered, echoing, on the floor.

The guard quivered. Martin could feel the warm pounding pulse in his throat, too tight to make a sound.

Martin wrenched his arm still tighter. Softly, just before the guard passed out, he whispered, “Back so
soon
, Mr. Marlowe?” and then the man dropped at his feet.

Noelle touched Peter's hair. “It feels blond,” she whispered. “Even in the dark.”

Naked, he lay holding her, head resting on the pillow. The camera sat on the night stand. She felt his warmth, the utter relaxation of his body. “I'm sorry,” he murmured. “The way you were with me, how I felt—I just couldn't hold back.”

She smiled, shaking her head. “I didn't want you to.” He raised his face. “I didn't,” she told him. “I've hoped someday it could be like that for you. I mean, you've always been so controlled with me—I wasn't sure …”

He put a finger to her lips. “You should be, now.”

Englehardt's hand tightened around the telephone. “How did it happen?”

“You gave me one day, to bug an office in a building I didn't know.” Martin's voice was slurred and insinuating. “Carey's memories were clearly more important than the arrival time of cleaning ladies.”

Englehardt counted to five. Softly, he said. “If Carey agrees, this man will have a tape.”

“I won't go back in there.”

Englehardt paused for one last moment, marshaling his sense of command. “In that case,” he answered coldly, “you'll go back into Levy's.”

Carey still felt their second loving in the numb curl of his feet and fingertips, a lightness in his temples, warm lassitude spreading through his body in deep, even breaths. The night around them felt close, heavy, intimate. Her breasts were damp against his chest; silver moonlight crossed her face; her hair, thick, soft and clean-smelling, had fallen back upon the pillow. Her eyes shone with feeling. Carey had never been so close to anyone.

He cradled her face in both hands. “There's something else I have to tell you.”

She smiled. “About us?”

He could not stop now.

“About Levy—he wants me to see a hypnotist.” Carey looked away. “If I agree, I may remember what happened to me, very soon.”

Noelle waited until he looked back at her. “You've been sitting on a lot, haven't you.”

“I just don't know if I can do it.” Rolling on his back, Carey spoke to the ceiling. “Ever since I met you, I've been afraid that you would die.”

Her eyes widened. “Because of your father?”

“My guess is that Levy thinks so.” He twisted sideways, to see her. “What he's
said
is that I may feel responsible for my father's death.”

“But you were six—how could you be?”

“I don't know—I don't
want
to know. What I keep feeling is bad enough.”

“That something will happen to me?”

“Yes.” He looked away. “As soon as I remember …”

“Because I saw an ugly stranger? Peter, you can't live like that.”

“I can't explain it,” he said wearily. “It's just something I feel. Can you understand at all?”

“Of course—I'd be frightened, too.” She grasped his wrist. “But I'd be more frightened of the way you're living now. Your father's death has defined half your life and will keep on defining the rest of it, and you don't even know why. What could be more frightening for either one of us?”

Carey's voice was soft. “I don't know yet.”

Noelle said nothing.

For a long time they lay side by side, fingertips touching in the dark.

Finally, they slept, until his dream awakened them.

Martin had not slept in forty-eight hours, and his nerves were raw: this morning, he must take extra care.

Fighting weariness, he watched the three men dressed as movers re-enter Carey's apartment with the identical crate they had moved out earlier.

Checking their inventory, they unpacked and placed one item in each room.

Four.

The clock-radio, the coffee-maker, the lamp …

The bell to Carey's alarm system, from the dining room.

Martin smiled; the duplicates were perfect.

Taking the photographs from his pocket, he walked through each room, checking the pictures to ensure that each appliance was replaced exactly as before.

The three men returned to the van. Martin stayed, staring at the wall above the bed.

He felt less tired.

Carey felt his muscles straining as he passed Noelle and then turned at the bottom of the run just before she reached him in a powdery spray, laughing into the mist and sunlight and hanging onto his shoulders. “You finally win one, Carey.”

He brushed snow from her hair. Softly and seriously he said, “Live with me.”

“It seems so sad,” the old woman told her dog, “not to live here anymore.”

Her husband nodded to himself. “Still, I suppose it's the best thing. In our condition.”

The doorman handed her a dog leash as she stared up at their window. “Dropped it,” he said cheerfully. “Can't forget that.”

The woman thanked him shyly, then knelt to apologize to the yipping gray poodle. Her husband watched the three movers load their couch onto the van, murmuring under his breath, “Be careful.”

The man preferred watching the truck, he decided: he wished to remember their living room as it was rather than watch holes appearing, tables picked clean of vases. Strange that the things that filled their living room filled so little of the truck …

It was cold. The woman comforted her dog. “I'm sorry, Abner—the man told us we can't even say goodbye to Peter.”

Her husband nodded again.

Driving into the afternoon sun, Carey pushed down the visor and slid a muted version of Vivaldi's “Four Seasons” into his tape deck, in preference to Tchaikovsky. “Bombast doesn't suit New England,” he remarked to Noelle.

“What about surprises?” she asked dryly.

“It can't be that much of a shock.”

“It's just that this weekend was so much more than I'd expected.” She paused. “Not so long ago I was wondering whether I should call it off.”

He glanced quickly over. “You're not serious?”

She nodded. “Sometimes you don't give me much to go on.”

“I'm trying …”

“I know,” she said quietly. “But do
you
know how frightened you looked after you asked me? Like you'd heard yourself.”

For a moment he watched a distant spire peering from between pines and rolling hills, listened to the intricate, baroque violins. In a low voice, he answered, “Maybe I was afraid that you'd say no. Please, I want you somewhere safe.”

“But that's not a reason, Peter. I can't be like some Ping-Pong ball, bouncing back and forth between emotions—mine
or
yours. I need to feel more substantial than that. I mean, Manhattan's where we'd be living, with Phillip and all those ghosts.”

“And nightmares?”

She turned to him. “Please, let's just go with the weekend for a while. We were good there,
you
were so good with me. I want to build on that.”

“But the dream's part of it, right? This hypnosis thing with Levy.”

“Look, you've told me how you feel. I don't want to put that pressure on you.” She stared ahead, as if torn by indecision, then looked back. “I love you,” she said softly. “Okay?”

He turned to her. “Noelle …”

She held up one hand. “Don't say anything back, not now. You're too afraid yet.” Quickly, she smiled. “And so am I. The road's pretty narrow.”

A narrow road
…

Carey forced himself to concentrate, shifting and accelerating and passing cars, letting his subconscious work on what Levy wanted, what
she
really wanted. Already he missed the cabin: he did not wish to face it.

There was a red Fiat ahead; as a distraction, Carey chased it, caught up. Passing, he took a curve.

“
Faster, Daddy
…”

A corner flashing in the windshield
…